Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?

[ I never wash my pants. I like to keep the night on them. ]
[ Wednesday, October 29th, 12:16am ]

I watched Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist last week and liked it. It also has an awesome soundtrack.

I have learned how to skid stop on my bike. I'm quickly wearing out my rear tire and have ordered a new one for backup. Since my bike has smaller 650cc tires, tires are hard to find at most bike stores. I have no plans of removing my front brake-- it's still useful for stopping quickly.

Starting tomorrow, I'll be working out of the San Francisco office about 4 days a week. The shortened commute (which will be by bike on non-rainy days) will give me an extra 60-90 minutes a day.

I tried out wesabe for tracking my spending habits, but have switched to just using bank of america's "my portfolio" feature to track spending. It doesn't have as many features as wesabe (and I hear mint.com is even better), but I trust them more with my financial data. I spend less money on eating out than I thought I did.

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[ 30 Rock and NewsRadio ]
[ Sunday, September 28th, 12:25pm ]

I've just started watching 30 Rock. I find that it's like a more modern version of NewsRadio. Both have rich eccentric owners. Both have super nerdy characters. Both have prima donna show hosts.

Discuss.

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[ Google Chrome ]
[ Tuesday, September 2nd, 12:56pm ]

We're live!

Google Chrome

I'm going to try to get back in the habit of blogging over at ponderer.org. There's lots of technical stuff to talk about as we work towards a linux version.

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[ we'll be alright / we have our looks and perfume ]
[ Sunday, May 18th, 10:15am ]

the national - apartment story

As dr_nuk mentioned, Paris has a bike sharing system. It appears to be used quite extensively as I would guess that about 1/3 people on bikes seem to be riding one of these bikes. In general there are a lot of bicycles, vespas, and motorcycles on the street-- many more than what I see in SF. Of the bicycles I see, I would guess that about half are cruisers and half are hybrid bikes. I've seen only two fixies and only a couple road bicycles, which seems weird to me considering the popularity of the Tour de France. Maybe people just don't ride road bikes in the city?

The other really strange thing is that no one on a bicycle is wearing a helmet! Given how crazy the traffic is here (not all the streets have lanes painted on them, motorcycles and scooters regularly get in the lanes headed in the opposite direction to get around cars), I find that quite surprising. Maybe it's a function of socialized medicine?

Obligatory plug: The Aids/LifeCycle starts in two weeks! Get in those last donations before I start the ride from SF to LA.

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[ I wondered how fast is light speed ]
[ Sunday, May 11th, 9:08pm ]

matt and kim - lightspeedYesterday, I rode in my first >80mi ride to Point Reyes and the Cheese factory. It actually wasn't too bad and I don't feel that sore today. I think that means I'll be in decent shape for the actual ride.

There are only 3 weeks left before the ride. I'm actually going on vacation to Paris this Wednesday and losing a week of training time (the vacation was scheduled before I signed up for the ride), but I don't think I'll lose too much fitness during that time.

Also, suggestions for Paris welcome.

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[ we'll stay inside til somebody finds us ]
[ Saturday, April 5th, 11:52am ]

the national - apartment storyHere's a picture of me riding to work last week.

I've ridden to work a dozen times so far. Twice along the skyline route and ten times along the bayway route. Bayway is a pretty easy ride, it takes about 3 hours now with a rest break about half way. I mostly ride my fixie when going the bayway.

I've also accumulated a lot of bike clothes. I think distance cycling should be on stuffwhitepeoplelike. It's like snowboarding: predominantly only white/asian people do it.

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[ I glide and swan cause I'm the best slow dancer in the universe ]
[ Wednesday, February 6th, 9:59pm ]

the national - green glovesA few people have asked me what percentage of the money raised for the AIDS/LifeCycle actually goes towards organizing the event and what percentage goes into the hands of the charities. Last year, the number was about 1/3 spent on the event, although it looks like the general trend is for that percentage to go down year to year. Since this is an aggregated total, it comes out to an average of $4,274 raised per person and a cost of $1,402 per rider (assuming that there were about 2500 people last year).

The cost per rider seems surprisingly high to me, but I guess that provides incentive to raise more than the $2500 minimum.

I draw two conclusions from this: (1) It would be more effective to donate directly to the charities and (2) most people won't do (1) on their own, so this event still raised over $7 million last year.

(obligatory donation link)

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[ Out of my league, I have birds in my sleeves and I wanna rush in with the fools ]
[ Thursday, January 31st, 6:20pm ]

the national - squalor victoriaOn Tuesday morning, I biked to work for the first time. We went the slightly longer but substantially more hilly Skyline route (~45mi, 2500' climbing). The more direct Bay way is a bit more common ride (~41mi, 1000' climbing).

Andy rode with me and we brought in the tail of the pack, but finished the ride with no injuries or flats.

Once the rain subsides, I'm going to start biking to work a couple times a week and work my way up to going daily. This is still only about half the number of miles that I'll need to cover in a day during the ride to LA.

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