I wanted to have a big porterhouse steak for dinner so I decided to ride for 45 minutes to balance out the calories. No rests on this ride. I rode out 5 miles and then rode back. Tried to push it a little. Not a bad ride.
I also noticed before I left that the tire pressure in both tires was down 20 psi. That may be why my last ride felt harder than normal. I gotta make sure I check the tire pressures before I leave from now on.
When I was in middle school and high school I read nothing but science fiction and fantasy novels – probably to the detriment of my grades. When I had a choice between The Grapes of Wrath and The Sword of Shanara, it was an easy decision. One of my favorite books from back then was The Man Who Used the Universe by Alan Dean Foster. I read it twice in high school. I pretty much read everything Alan Dean Foster wrote back then.
A couple of weeks ago I was looking for something to read so I decided to re-visit this old high school favorite. Wow, is this book bad. My standards must have seriously changed in the past 25 years. It was hard for me to finish the book it was so bad. I’m starting to think I should try and read some of those books they forced on me in school. Maybe they weren’t so bad after all.
One interesting thing about reading the book is that nothing was familiar. I know it’s been 25 years but I thought something in the book would seem familiar. It was like reading a new book. I would start re-reading books from 25 years ago (since they’d seem new to me now), except I’d probably dislike them all. Who was the person reading these books in the 80s? That guy has more in common with the annoying kids I encounter playing Rock Band on xbox live than with me.
This just reinforces my belief that English classes in high school do more to stop people from reading than anything else. They make reading so un-enjoyable for a teenager. They should devote some of the reading to reading for fun. Instead they turn reading into such a joyless chore. There was only one book or short story that was required reading that I enjoyed in all of high school or college. Thank goodness I had friends who encouraged me to read SF/F. Otherwise I wouldn’t have read anything.
16 miles today. I ate a large cheeseburger and fries at Costco for lunch today. I don’t know exactly how many calories are one of those giant cheeseburgers but I’m guessing that an hour and twenty minutes of bicycle riding ought to be enough to burn off those calories. I tell you what, that cheeseburger was not 16-miles-of-bicycle-riding good.
Justin Gawronski, has a compelling story about his experience with Amazon’s memory hole. Apparently, he was reading his copy of 1984 as a summer assignment for school, and had been using one of the Kindle’s selling points—the ability to attach notes to specific parts of the e-book text—to prepare for his return to school. Since he was actively reading the work when Amazon pulled the plug, he actually got to watch the work vanish from his screen. He’s left with a file of notes that are divorced from the text that they reference.
This story also has a different form of evil involved. Class action lawsuits – which seemed to be a way for lawyers to make a bag of money off of other people’s problems. (another form of Evil).
The second is about Apple trying to put a gag order on people who want refunds when their iPods explode:
Apple attempted to silence a father and daughter with a gagging order after the child’s iPod music player exploded and the family sought a refund from the company.
The Times has learnt that the company would offer the family a full refund only if they were willing to sign a settlement form. The proposed agreement left them open to legal action if they ever disclosed the terms of the settlement.
When you do stupid shit like this to your customers you can expect people to start believing the nonsense about large corporations always being bad. I guess if companies do this enough they’re just proving that it’s true.
The other thing that makes Big Corporations look evil (and stupid) is when they provide extremely poor customer service unless the problem is brought the the media’s attention. Like this story about United breaking this fellas guitar and the run-around he got when he tried to get them to accept responsibility for it. He wrote a song (and plans 2 more) about the experience.
Rode 13 or so miles. It was a tough ride. I had no energy and about 4 miles in I was shaky and a little light headed. I stopped and drank some water (it was very humid) and ate a powerbar. That helped a bit and I was able to have an ok ride.
