Time to RIDE!!!

I forget what a pure joy it can be to just "ride" on my bike.  It is nothing like running (which to me is similar to being crushed  and set on fire simultaneously).  Instead, riding is like the feeling of precision ball bearings rolling along a track.  It is therapeutic, giving me time to focus on just one thing, the road ahead. 

The idea of just being "out there", with only your mind to keep you company... The thrill of the miles rolling by below you, and the concept of being completely self powered is exhilarating.  I got up early Saturday morning to get a little riding in.  I woke up at 8, ate breakfast and was on my bike tackling the streets within 20 short minutes. After a few challenging hills, I was a few miles along, my lungs were clear, my heart was racing and my endorphins were pumping as I crested a large hill.  After a short break, I started down the backside and coasting along reached 34 mph.  It was still 6 miles to get back home, and most of it on a slight, long incline, but I didn't care.  

All said and done, about 10 miles, in about 45 minutes.  On Sunday? Another 23 miles come and gone.  And this weekend I am riding in the Bike New York, 5 Borough Tour.  42 Miles of racing around the city... through midtown, to the bronx, down the FDR, back in to Queens, the BQE in to Brooklyn, over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to Staten Island and the ferry back to Manhattan.  It is my first year doing it, and I am very excited.

Now my only concern is that I never have enough time for biking.  

Frustration levels rising....

Someone once told me that I was cynical, in fact I was the most cynical person that they knew.  I think I am more of a realist.  I take life, discount it and everyone in it, and evaluate the results, believing little to nothing of what is being presented.  Anyone who isn't cynical to some degree is ignorantly waiting for bad things to happen to them.  But enough about that.

Last night I went out with some friends for dinner.  I don't know why I agreed to go, and looking back I should have told them to kiss my ass, because I should know better.  These friends are loosely termed as friends; the kind I will see when it is convenient, but I would never go out of my way to see them.  They are usually expensive, where every meal is over $100 a head, and every event costs in the hundreds of dollars.  They clearly live beyond their means and are inconsiderate about what others want. What bothered me so much about last night wasn't that it is restaurant week (which, by the way is the worst way to visit a nice restaurant, in my opinion), but it was the whole deal.  After the intermezzo I found myself sitting listening to the conversation at the table.  I don't know what it was about specifically, but it was no different than any other conversation that these apes could contrive. It hit me like a ton of bricks... "Why am I sitting at a table, out late in NYC (9:30 or so) in a suit, hot as Satan's ball-sack, paying $100 for a meal that isn't that good, listening to the opinions and thoughts of people that wouldn't know how to use Silly Putty?"  At that moment, all flavor left my mouth, and everything tasted flat.  I wanted to reach across the table and choke the living shit out of each and every one of them.  I could feel the rage boiling up inside of me.  My blood became fire and my nerves as cold as ice.

I contemplated getting up at that moment and walking out.  Like in American Psycho, I could see myself taking my steak knife (still with wild boar and rabbit sausage on the blade) slitting the throats and stabbing everyone I was sitting with.  Later I was so angry with myself for sitting quietly through the rest of the dinner privately hating all of them vehemently.  They look at me and talk to me as if I was just like them, and that makes me feel like an average chump. Needless to say that I won't be seeing them again, under any circumstances, except maybe their funerals, if I can be bothered.  

It is true, it never changes...

It helps to believe.  I tell myself that, because it helps to believe that.  Self-describing redundancy is exactly the issue at hand here.  I was out the other night with the crowd from the old job.  If I haven't mentioned it yet, the old job was a bunch of monkeys in a room lording over the souls of the damned to do their evil bidding at the cost of our own morality.  That being stated, here is the breakdown of how that place works...

First, you start working there, and you believe that it is a good place.  Everyone is smiling and having fun.  Whistle while you work is the motto.  Then it starts to be an uphill grind.  There are political battles at every turn, and the departmental infighting is terrible.  Through it all you do the job, believing in the cause.  You still whistle as an example to others, so that you might be promoted one day to master monkey whistler.  After some time though, you don't believe in the cause.  You hurt from the constant pain of knives in your back, and you do the work in order to keep the organization afloat, and to keep your job.  You whistle to distract yourself from the truth and the pain.  Then, in a moment of tequila induced clarity, you realize the problem isn't the business, but it is the master monkeys.  

I left because I knew that I couldn't change the system, and it had changed me far too much.  After meeting with the condemned souls still there, I realized that now all of the master monkeys are gone, and there are no new monkeys, and yet, EVERYTHING is exactly the same.  The wheel is too big and complex to ever change without some type of IT plague that would take out every last employee in one clean swipe.  I am beginning to doubt that even that would do it.

I believe because it helps.  I used to believe that change was possible in even the worst systems.  I still believe, but only in the fact that some systems are corrupt by nature and that the universal laws of entropy will always win.  

Getting ready

It is odd to think about how much I am trying to be "prepared" for the program at Pace.  When going to school online, it is fairly easy.  Supplies include a laptop, an Internet connection, and a comfortable place to sit.  Now I am worried about having a reliable bag for my laptop so I just bought a great bag at "Village Tannery" on Bleeker St. in Greenwich village.  It was hugely expensive, but the reviews of that place phenomenal.  They have been there for somewhere over 20 years, and everyone who bought a bag from them is 100% satisfied.  One review is a woman's blog who bought a bag, and travelled with it for 11 years.  After that time, it was looking a little rough, so she brought it back and they more or less rebuilt the bag for free.  The bag is 100% handcrafted leather that will withstand about any amount of abuse I could dish out.  

On other news, I have recently discovered why everyone says "guitar hero" and "rock band" are so much fun.  I was at a friends house over the weekend, (drinking of course) and they were playing "Rock Band".  After a few minutes and drinks, I joined in.  The hilarity ensued for the next 4 hours, with all of us having the greatest time.  If you haven't played it, even if you don't like video games, it is really a lot of fun.  

Allergies suck

I remember when I was younger, I would spend more than 90% of the time outside.  If I wasn't in school or sleeping, I was outside.  I used to camp a lot, so even sleeping was an outdoor activity.  In the past few years though, I have suddenly become wildly allergic to the outdoors.  I sneeze, sniffle, cough and tear every time I mow the lawn or spend more than 5 hours in the woods.  WTF?!  Is it because I have since spent 8 years in the deep south, only to return as an office worker who has a weakened immunity to allergens?  

This past weekend we went up to the winery we frequent and know the owners in Warwick, NY.  After about 6 hours of hanging out in the sun, my eyes had the all-too-familiar sensation of an allergy attack.  Within a few short minutes, they were burning and I could barely see.  I did the usual stuff: splashed water on my face, in my eyes, dunked my head underwater, etc.  By that night BOTH of my eyes were red and puffy.  (Oh, didn't I mention? I have already been taking Zyrtec for almost 3 days at this point).  The next morning, I can barely open my eyes, they are almost completely crusted over, and I look like I have been crying for 18 hours straight.  

So I go to the pharmacy for some eye drops to alleviate the itching that makes me want to scour away my eyeballs with a cheese grater.  I found two bottles, one is ClearEyes, and the other is Visene.  Both of them claim to reduce itching from allergy symptoms but have different active ingredients.  So I wait in line to talk to the pharmacist to get her opinion on which is a better product.  (That is why they are there, isn't it?)  I tell her my tale of woe, and this is the summation of the conversation:

Me: Hello, I have had an allergy attack and now my eyes are itchy.  I want to use eye drops to help the itching stop.  Can you tell me which of these two products are better?

Her: Lets see... They are both basically the same.

Me: Yes, but they have different active ingredients.  One is Tetra-something or other, and the other has Hydrocortiza something.  What is the difference in the active ingredients?

Her: Well, one has glycerin which is also an ingredient used for lubrication.  But they will both help.

***  She is blankly staring at me ***

Me: But if they both do the same thing, why aren't the ingredients the same?

Her: I don't see the difference between them.

I realized that if I don't leave, my head will implode from her lack of pharmaceutical knowledge.  I thought I was being clever, by asking a trained professional on the chemical differences between similar products.  The end result? Stupidity that makes me angry.  Now I am angry AND my eyes still itch.  I know they both would have worked, but the question was "why are they different".  The answer I got was "I don't know why you think they are different".  

That really annoys me.  I expect people who are doing their jobs to, well, DO THEIR JOBS!  If you have a job, and you are even slightly trained, you should know more about it than someone who isn't, right?!?  If I had a nickel for every time this makes me mad....

Sometimes, life gets in the way.

Someone once said to me, you have to plan for the unexpected.  Not necessarily because of things that happen to you, but because "life gets in the way".  I thought this was a true, but odd statement.  I filed it away, to be returned to later.  After pondering it, I find myself using it, not as an excuse, but as a valid reason for the fact that life doesn't always follow schedules.  

In a busy adult life, there are many things that we are involved in, and they aren't all respectful of the schedules we create.  Sometimes, important stuff has to be put to the side to handle life's little emergencies.  Basically, "life gets in the way".  A friend of mine has been trying to schedule time with me for almost 2 weeks now, and every time I look at my calendar, it is filled up.

Another observation is that people aren't always "happy" about success.  Success to most people is a limited idea that can only be described in terms of a lack of misery, or in terms of a familiar feeling of wealth and showmanship.  A friend of mine and I often go out for drinks, and we will causally observe the crowd.  Sometimes, in a bar full of suits, we will pretend that we are like the other people.  We will make up random financial statements like "Er, Oh, How did you do on the market merger of the IPO stock offering?" At which point we will both throw our heads back and mock laugh "yuk yuk yuk".  The point of the anecdote?  I guess it is that happiness should be defined by the limitless possibilities of our existence, by experiencing new things, and having fun doing it.  I am often saddened by the inability for people to experience things outside of their comfort zone, to really let down their guard, and to look at something new as a child might.  This being the case, people find levels of mediocrity in their world, and when something changes for the better, they label it "success", and they are slightly happy about it. It is unfortunate that people don't honestly experience happiness and contentment thought the human experience.

Converting to Mac! F*** Vista!

So far, with every degree, I purchase a laptop.  While that might seem excessive, what I have found is that by the time I am done with a degree, the laptop I purchased is at least 2 years old, and has been worn out like a two dollar whore at a bachelor party.  I end up using the laptop so extensively that given two years of extensive use (at least 2 hours per day of heavy use, and very few days off), it needs to be retired.  It would be OK in the beginning, but I am sure in the middle of some project, it would fail.  It would roll over and die and leave me with none of my data, all of my work lost and I would still need to buy a new one.

So the laptop I am retiring has Vista on it.  For obvious reasons, I hate it.  It was a "Vista compatible" laptop, that had a one way upgrade path.  Toshiba provided the Vista Upgrade CD, which included the drivers, etc.  The original software, drivers, etc for XP were "on the hard drive", so the Vista upgrade completely wiped them out, including the partition they came in on.  To make a long story short, Toshiba can no longer support the installation of XP, and will not provide an XP restore disk, or any of the drivers.  The laptop is now, and forever will be, a Vista piece of shit.

Having had about 9 months of terrible experiences with Vista, I have come to hate it for all that it is.  It is big, slow, has a terrible interface, hard to use, incompatible with everything, and is by far, the worst operating system I have ever used (and that DOES include OS2/Warp).

So my decision was to go with something more "tried and tested".  Since an XP laptop can not be purchased any longer (without sacrifice that is), and since most of my doctoral work will be word processing anyway, I figured I would give a Mac a try.  

I am now writing this on my new Mac book.  It is strange, and the interface is "odd, but easy".  I am sure many of my blog entries to come will revolve around this new machine, but for now... It works.  Everything works.  It works like it should.  It is the fastest machine I have ever used, with the longest battery life (4+ hours, but is closer to 6),  and the best screen.  The built in web cam, mic and easy to use trace pad (has nice intuitive scrolling features and multi-touch) makes this quite an impressive machine.

I may not be a Mac convert yet, but I can definitely see why people are so devoted. Everything is "easier".  I am still waiting for the other shoe to drop, but so far, it has all of the features of any Windows XP machine I have used, with none of the hassle.  (I use WinXP as a reference, because the only OS that is fair to compare to Vista is Windows Millennium).