I posted this AM about our neighbors’ new nasty habit of having loud parties on Tuesday nights. This is most annoying for a variety of reasons, but the main negative is that I get to lose three hours of sleep.
This leads to a domino effect of me being logy and off my game all day. I hate this. Tonight, I will fall asleep early, and hopefully will not be disturbed.
I am fully acclimatized to the Phoenix (and Arizona in general) weather. Yesterday, I thought nothing about pulling on shorts and going for a 4 mile run at lunch time (95F when I left).
Additionally, yesterday, it was 100F at the high. The lowest temperature this June (from my memory), and it felt very comfortable.
Of course today it will be 108, tomorrow 113, and Friday 117 or more.
Yes, I am sick.
(Warning: I am going to use some harsh language below)
We live in a nice subdivision in Chandler, in SE Phoenix. It is a clean, well kept, and in general a very friendly neighborhood. But there always seems to be someone who has to stand out as a twat-waffle.
Our neighbors to the north are one such “family”*. They have a Son who just graduated high school, and he was a baseball player (you can see the batting cage they built in their backyard without even needing to snoop). The father is away a lot. Sales? The mother works nights and long shifts. I think you can see where this is going…
The “son” (Called Sonny-Boy) is unsupervised, and takes advantage. Last year there were some loud parties on the weekends that went until 4:00 or 5:00 AM. Really obnoxious, but I pulled the covers over my head and bore it. But now that he has graduated, Tuesday nights are the designated pool party nights. Stating about 9:00 and running until 1:00AM, they have been at it on Tuesdays for a month.
We have taken to calling the police to complain, and it appears that this group has a lookout, for they get really quiet when the police car comes by. They see and hear nothing, and leave a door hanger. 10 minutes later, the hooting and hollering are back up to amusement park rollercoaster level.
Last night we called the police again, and told them to check around the back. That did seem to bring a lasting peace but they still partied until 1:00AM or so.
There are other downsides. After one of the soirees we have to go picking up cigarette butts that the kids toss over the fence, sometimes having to fish them out of the pool. Often in the front yard, there will be beer bottles (whole or broken, and why do kids drink Bud Light? Sheesh, I had better taste at that age.) And, the inevitable barf pile will be around somewhere that our dogs get super interested in.
So, we live with it until the kid goes to college, or otherwise moves on.
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*Family might be a loose definition. They behave like it is three roommates sharing a flat. Hell, Sonny-boy had his very tramp-y girlfriend spending the night every night. It was a joy to have to dodge her as she peeled out leaving while my dogs and I walk in the AM. Truly makes you wonder..
As I have posted before, I have been grooving on watching TV series from my youth. (well, ok, not really my youth) I have come to a realization. Regardless of what show it is, it seems that in the 5th or 6th season, the shark is invariably jumped.
X-Files, in the 5th season, they kill off all the conspirators, and in the 6th season it gets mega campy. Sigh, because I still groove on Gillian Anderson.
Family Guy – I was a big early fan, but I have been dropping in on episodes, and season 7 is where it falls completely apart.
I propose a new rule. From now on, TV series should only have 5 seasons. All shows should be put out of there misery in a reasonable fashion.
One of the hazards of dieting, and the process of losing weight is the inevitable plateaus that you will encounter. They are frustrating as hell. You know that you are not going overboard on the calories, and you are doing your exercise, but the needle doesn’t budge.
I had been stalled at 214#’s for almost 2 weeks. It was frustrating, particularly because I picked up the intensity of my exercising, doing more and longer bicycle rides. Hell, even my tracking program was telling me that something was broken.
Fortunately, I broke through that plateau, and am now down to 212#’s. That marks a milestone. Since I started in mid April, 9 weeks ago (roughly), I am down 20#’s. I am almost half way to my goal. Woo hoo!
A while back, I had a quick review of my first impressions of Android (recap: I had bought a Nexus 7 primarily to test a website I maintain for that form factor). Being a long fan of Apple and iOS, I was cautious in my review.
At the end of that review, I committed to putting my iPad down, and living with the Nexus-7 day to day to give it a fair shake. Here are some interim observations:
I am reasonably satisfied with the Nexus 7, but I am not a gamer, and I am not a hacker. I am just using it in the manner which Google made it. (ok, Asus, but Google was responsible for the design and software). Since it was a lot less expensive than the iPad, it is a good value.
But I still like iOS devices better. Probably not going to switch to Android across the board.
Yesterday, on a lark, we visited the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM). I wasn’t sure what I expected. Perhaps exhibits of seminal instruments, and artist histories (they do have that), but I was blown away.
First, it is in a gorgeous building, with fabulous architecture, and a well thought out plan. We started on the second floor, in the Africa region, and was completely fascinated. There are included headsets that come alive when you get near a station. All around the museum there are rolling video displays of the history and origins of various instruments, and how they were used in folk or court music.
And there are LOTS of musical instruments on display. Many are old, some are newer recreations, but the attention to detail, and the care with which the exhibits are curated is top notch. As I mentioned, we started in the Africa region (the cradle of civilization), moving through the middle east and then to Asia, the pacific islands (and Australia/NZ), and into Latin America. We spent three hours, and were blown away, and we didn’t even get to the US and European halls (for a different day, me thinks).
Then on the first floor there are two halls worthy of spending time. The Artists area, that has some selected icons. First up is Dick Dale, the king of surf guitar. Yep, you know I was groovin’ to that (I learned something, he was a southpaw, but played a right handed guitar upside down. Way cool). Also of note is Andy Summers of the Police, Roy Orbison, a LARGE display of Elvis Presley, and a display of Steve Vai’s triple neck guitar he used on the G3 tour in 2004.
The other room is a “hands on” room where you can play with some instruments. The price of admission is worth it to play with a Theramin. Fun and awesome. They also had a few guitars (horrible intonation, and action, but for people to mess with I guess that is OK), and lots of percussion stuff to play with.
I will certainly return many times, to understand the wholeness. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was awesome and inspiring. Music is something that binds humans, and listening to the primitive bowed or plucked string instruments of the various countries in Africa, as well as some virtuoso quality lute music was just humbling.
Highly recommended if you get to Phoenix with an afternoon to burn.
(Oh, and there is a piano in the main lobby that people can just play. Clearly some people kept up their lessons.)
One of the problems with how well integrated and how smooth moving from an old, tired Mac to a new machine is that a lot of old cruft gets carried along. For the most part, since you typically upgrade to a faster, with more memory system, it isn’t a big deal to carry a lot of baggage.
Additionally, it is really easy to migrate and bring all your old programs, data and other items to the new system. The net result is that after 2 or 3 upgrade cycles, you have built up a lot of cruft on your system. While I don’t advocate deleting data, and I consider all my photos to be must haves, if you are like me, you probably have installed many programs on a whim to try out, but never used them after installing them. This is a good time to clean that up.
The motivation is simple, in a week or so, my new MacBook Air will arrive, and with it a 256G SSD on board. My current MacBook Pro has a 240G boot SSD, and a whopping 750G spinning disk where the data files are stored. There is about 400G of stuff on that drive, and that isn’t including my video collection (another couple hundred gigs parked on my Drobo).
Clearly, some sacrifices must be made. I know that I am not going to be able to keep my iTunes library on the MBA. But, fortunately with iTunes match, and iCloud, I can stream my collection seamlessly. Besides, I have gone to using my Spotify premium account for most listening, something that will work well for my MBA.
Instead of moving my applications, I just decided to start from scratch. That way, I can install what is important to me, and by neglecting to re-install, I can keep my foot print to something reasonable.
I have gone to using Dropbox to sync and maintain all my “working” documents, so that they are available wherever I am at. My documents directory is going to be pretty bereft of files, but I view that as a good thing.
It is going to be a busy weekend, but I don’t mind. Tripping down memory lane, one file or program at a time.
Warning: I am going to write about extremely boring shit for a few posts.
When we moved to Arizona in 2003, we were moving to Tucson. A great place, lots of charm, but truly a no plan sort of place for how they let growth happen. Consequently, you had lots of little communities scattered all over without rhyme or reason. We lived on the far east side of town, in a fairly low density neighborhood. We lived at the end of a road, with a lot of open space around us. We liked it.
Then last year we moved to Chandler, a suburb in south-east Phoenix. It is everything that Tucson is not. Well planned, plenty of green space, well maintained cities, enough population density to support local businesses (stores, restaurants and the like). The sidewalks are paved, and there are street lights. Yes, it is hotter then hell here, but the myth that Tucson was 10F cooler is pretty much debunked (we both track each other quite closely).
But Phoenix is a big city, there is no denial of that fact.
Chandler is where Intel is located. The Kyrene school district is one of the best in the state (all that Intel tax money), and the neighborhoods are well groomed.
But, I experience something here at a scale that is astounding in this day and age. Direct door hanger marketing. Almost every day, I come home to find a pitch, coupons, or offerings of service. Landscapers trying to sell their services (lots and lots of them ply their trade here), Baskin Robbins trying to get people to have a treat, house cleaning services, even the local Auto Row has put hangers on the door. Sigh.
I thought that this primitive form of direct marketing had gone the way of the Do Do. Apparently not, as it is alive and well, flourishing here in SE Phoenix.
In Tucson we had very little of this. Maybe a couple times a year. Before that in San Jose, I don’t recall EVERY having a door tag on my condo or any place I rented or lived. (There probably were some, but not enough to be memorable.)
Well, I guess it is better than the crap that is Groupon.
Next up: The joys of shopping with extreme couponers.
This week, I was happy as a pig in a sty that I was able to run most of a 4 mile loop at lunch. Some people might think that is an odd position to be happy about, but it really is a big difference.
I have battled with plantar fasciitis for over 2 years. It has limited me to moderate walking, and lately bicycling for my exercise. While walking is rather pedestrian (ha ha), cycling is actually a pretty good workout. But it isn’t a “great” workout.
The reason why is pretty easy to figure out with my handy – dandy heart rate monitor.
Walking, 4 miles per hour pace, I burn about 560 calories in an hour. My heart rate rarely rises above 80 BPM. This is fairly moderate exertion by any measure (heightened by the beta blocker I take)
Cycling, 19 miles per hour pace, I burn about 1,100 calories per hour. Much better, and certainly a better workout. The monitor tells me that I average around a heart rate of 120 BPM. A pretty good aerobic workout, but again, it is affected by the medication I take.
Running. 6 mile per hour pace (very slow for me, but when I am in shape I can d0 8 minute miles easily). I burn about the same calories per distance as walking, but I go further in the same time. I burn about 900 calories in an hour. But the real benefit is my heart rate. I can overcome the beta blocker, and keep my heart rate between 130 – 145 BPM, a pretty good aerobic workout by any measure.
So, of the three primary avenues for me to exercise, running is clearly the winner in the aerobic sense, and pretty good burning of calories. Cycling’s benefit is that I can keep up a 19 mph pace for 2 – 3 hours, and burn a shedload of calories. Something that I enjoy.
But running has one other major benefit, the fact that when I am traveling, I can pretty much run ANYWHERE. If I get up early enough, I can do 5, 6, or even 7 miles before a day of work. All I need are shorts and shoes, and I am good to go!
BTW: Having a smartphone with a GPS and a bluetooth heart rate monitor makes tracking my progress easy, and VERY satisfying.