Now that I’m not traveling for a living anymore (what AM I doing for a living anymore?), I have to make an actual effort to see people I love. I’m doing it, even if it’s not THAT often, and this weekend is Philly. I’m actually psyched – it’s a long weekend and I can promise we won’t get up to much, but that’s okay because I’m lazy.
I’ll definitely snap a couple photos, though.
It’s not a holiday yet, but someday, no doubt, we’ll look back and know when it all began. It’s an incredibly exciting time to be me.
In order to lose weight (and I certainly have belly fat to be losing), you have to operate at a caloric debt. there’s a lot of science going on that I don’t understand, and a lot of pseudoscience that I’m not qualified to debunk, but at the root, the rule is Lose Weight: Caloric Debt. Build Strength: Exercise. You can basically never exercise away eating too much, so I’ve just got to stop eating too much. Especially since I don’t exercise much. I haven’t changed my 12,000 step “goal” on Fitbit, but I also almost never get anywhere close to it (last Monday-Friday: M:4647, T:6107, W:1504, T:13780 F:18.518). Keep in mind on Thursday I played 3 hours of volleyball and on Friday I hiked and was generally active with a couple friends, hiking, hill climbing and wandering around much of the day. Today I’ve done just north of 3100 steps and it’s not looking like I’ll do many more. I’m the laziest, is the moral of the story.
I didn’t even realize I’d been thinking about it, but I guess I was, over these last, umm… months since my last update. Well, I’ve decided. Clapboard lives. It gets updates again because despite the splintering of my attention into a million pieces, despite the lack of easy options for posting photos and such that benefit Twitter, Facebook and so many others, despite the fact that it just isn’t cool, Clapboard is mine, and that’s good enough for now.
I’m off to look into ways to post things. Maybe it’s even the right answer to change the underlying software (gasp?!). Whatever it is, it’ll get some attention from me while I’m doing normal updates again. My computer works (although I did just realize I lost a few folders of pictures – nothing heartbreaking, but I’m still rattled all the same), my phone works, my camera works… I can update. And I shall.
So hi.
I know this is like trying to draw attention to a rock concert by sitting in the stands and whistling, but I really dig Randall’s work on XKCD from Monday:
That is all.
I’m noticing more and more that people certainly have a lot of opinions that they like to list in, well, lists. I often want to refute or ask questions or just generally comment on these lists, be they standard “top ten” lists or bullet-style lists. I mean, how does one rank things like “Hairstyles I’ve seen on Vegas trannies”? How does one know where to stop when compiling a “list of ways to make flying better”? Like, “no sweatpants” makes it on, but “the evening before your flight, eat a familiar meal without too much spice” didn’t? I don’t know.
I’ve never been very good at/interested in ranking things, feeling that it puts too must trust in subjunctive things and momentary emotion rather than in quantifiable fact. Some things you can put numbers to, of course (I weigh 190.7 right now), but others you can’t (today isn’t in the top ten most slovenly-feeling days I’ve ever had), and that’s fine, right? So why rank the latter group?
I love chocolate cake. Love it. You probably already know this. I couldn’t tell you what I consider to be the “best” chocolate cake on the planet, and I don’t care what the editor of Gourmet magazine thinks on the subject (although I’d probably try them all even if it was a list of the worst chocolate cakes on the planet…), no offense to the editor of that stalwart, maybe-real publication. I’m probably going to go get chocolate cake this evening now, actually, now that you mention it. Chocolate cake and earthy Carneros pinot noir might just go together amazingly.
I’m not offended by lists, just baffled. Probably about the same feeling you have as you finish this absurd screed. Sorry about that.
Okay, where to start?
First of all, some caveats. This is long. It’s boring. It’s probably profane. I should be embarrassed by much of it. But it all happened, and maybe writing it down will help me remember it. And it feels right to start 2014 with a “State of the Wrangler” manifesto, so here goes. You probably shouldn’t read this.
My poor Sebring needs like $1400 worth of maintenance again. Last time I had it in for maintenance was during last tour and it cost me like $2k, so I guess this is a step in the right direction? I don’t know that I should even be putting that kind of money into my car, considering that it’s 10 years old, but given that I’m looking at a year of limited income (to say the least), I’m definitely not in the market for a new car. Besides, I like my car.
{ppgallery}content/GN3/{/ppgallery}
Over the years, I’ve accumulated a lot of hosted domains on my VPS, and this is the morning where I finally cull the herd and drop the dozens of addresses no longer using my services, no longer paying JVS, or just that have dropped off the face of the earth. It’s taking a surprisingly long time. It’s also bringing up a raft of memories and ghosts of dead projects that’s making me a little sad, even though they weren’t generally my projects in the first place. Then again, maybe it’s a tribute to the endless creativity of my friends and the people I know that they’re always coming up with new things.
Either way, this has been on my “When I get Home…” list for a long time. Then back to cataloging wine even though I don’t want to.
It’s 36 bottles. I brought them home on the airplane, so I checked 4 items (3 cases and my backpack), the third and fourth of which cost $175 each to Quantas. Dayum, says I. Then again, WineFlite wanted $585 for 30 bottles, I think, and who knows how that would have gone.
Now it’s on to finishing the data entry so I can get through some of the other projects that I’ve got on my plate. Whee!
I keep doing these things – I don”t know why. I know that I”m in Australia and that”s cool, and I know that most people don”t get to see this sort of view often (at least, I don”t), so I”ll put it up. I spent an unreasonable amount of time tweaking this thing, recording the voiceover (which is terrible, I apologize in advance), making decisions and generally fretting, but at the end of the day I figured it wasn’t going to get better, so I hit the EXPORT button.
Like the rest, vid moved after the break for organization’s sake.
I did a weird time lapse video of the drive south through basically the entire Barossa Valley in South Australia yesterday. It’s weird because I inexplicably chose 12 fpm as a format, which just makes it all look unnaturally-jumpy to me.
Sorry about that.
As usual, video after the break.
well, shit!
Hey!
I broke clapboard like a month ago trying to do some halfassed maintenance, and here’s what it gets me. Basically 2013 was a wash, update-wise, since I wrote almost nothing at all, either here or elsewhere, but it would have been nice to get SOME things on board here. I’ll update more in a bit, and I’m even putting together a scheme where I put up a bunch of photos from the world tour I just completed. Maybe some of that will get written now that I know I have a place to put it.
For now, from the porch at the Lyndoch Hill restaurant, I’ll sign off.
From the camera on my GalaxyS4, here are some pictures from my trip to South America with Bon Jovi!
or, at lea
st what I would do were I a porn star.
Leaving for South America to try that leg one more time, so I’m in a weird mood.
I failed to update much while I was home. I did not, however, fail to be busy. Jeep rhinolining came in and it’s AWESOME.
Getting this one posted has been giving me trouble for some reason.
Test prints I made, including an oversized clip test
and a successful print with a too-small expansion fastener
and the final version.
still some work to be done, but I think
I’ll redesign the whole thing and try another tack.
I just did a hike. click on the read more link to see the details, straight from the Endomondo’s mouth.
