johan's Journal

Last Saturday, i skated over to the Draughthouse, had a couple of beers, and headed home relatively early (like 01:00). Like usual, i went through the asylum grounds, and emerged near the bus stop at 43rd and Guadalupe. I waited until it was clear, and then started across Guadalupe. I was watching the surface of the street pretty carefully, looking for the bit of detritus that would stop one of the board's wheels, sending me to the ground, and so i noticed this odd, grey lump about the size of an apple sitting in the turn lane. As i got within a foot of it, i realized it was a bird -- a mourning dove. And it was alive, sitting in the turn lane in the middle of Guadalupe, on a night forecasted to be near freezing.

So i picked it up in my gloved hands. It fluttered a bit, and i stood still, and softly stroked it along the back with a finger. It calmed down and closed its eyes. When you hold a bird like this, you realize what amazing creatures they are. They are soft, and light, and so very, very delicate. So wondrous they take your breath away. I waited for some traffic to clear, and finished crossing the street. I carried it home in one hand, up against my coat, walking, so as not to upset it by skating.

Of course, it was not well. A wild bird won't just let you pick it up if it's healthy. But it had no signs of injury, so i stroked it a bit, which it seemed to not mind and i thought about what to do.

I decided to put it in a box with an old shirt, and put it in my closet (with the computers) because that was the warmest place in the house. Then i looked up Austin Wildlife Rescue on the 'net and read about how to proceed. They recommend the same sort of care, and i called their number and left a message about the bird. Then i went to sleep.

When i awoke in the morning, the poor bird had passed, and so i took it outside and buried it on the East-ish side of my house, where it'd get some morning Sun.

Of course this made me feel sad for a good chunk of the day. I had known the bird wasn't well, but i had hoped it might survive, nonetheless. It seemed too "perfect" that i had been passing at exactly the right time, on exactly the right form of transportation to see and pick up the bird.

But i'm still glad i was able to remove the poor bird from the road, so it died somewhere safe and warm rather than in the middle of the street on a cold night. And the experience has shed some light on a few different ideas i've been digesting for some time.

For many years, i've always been somewhat fascinated with coincidences, and trying to diving what they might mean. At times it's bordered on the obsessive. Long ago, Douglas Adams spoke at UT, and during the question and answer period, someone asked something like, "You seem to write a lot about coincidences in your books... i've noticed these, too. What do they mean?" He smiled, and nodded, and said something like, "Yes, i do, and i have absolutely no idea what the mean. But aren't they wonderful?" I recall being a little disappointed by this answer, because like the questioner, i was hoping for a more "expository" answer.

A few months ago i read Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle by Jung. In it was the key to not being disappointed by Adams' response. These coincidental events that seem to defy probability are linked, but not in a causal way -- there may be meaning in them, but it is not a causal meaning.

Naturally, i wonder if there was something else i could have done to help the dove. And then i wonder what was the "reason" the evening's random sequence of events put me in just the right place at the right time to save this bird, if in fact, it could not be saved.

Holding the dove also reminded me of the last time i can remember holding a living bird. I was probably about 10 years old, and it was almost certainly a bird i had just shot. When i lived in Laredo at age 10, hunting Mourning Doves was a big deal, and i was introduced to the "sport" of hunting them. A rather gruesome fact of the matter is that most of the doves that are shot do not die when they are hit. The small shotgun pellets will injure and cripple the bird, but are seldom immediately fatal. So what you are supposed to do as a hunter is find the injured bird you shot, pick it up, and break its neck.

And so this is what holding that bird reminded me of. In "Hollywood story-like" symmetry, one might expect that i would save the bird and it would recover and fly away. And for an (ethical) vegetarian like me, this might in some small way make up for the previous killing.

However, this is where i think i understand a little better now. There is really no "meaning" here, other than what i (or another observer) might ascribe to the events. And that meaning would exist, though only in our own minds (and perhaps the mind of the dove, as long as it was alive).

But in terms of some ultimate, cosmic significance, i don't think there is really anything. The dove and i are infinitesimally small and irrelevant entities in the Universe. Of course, it was the right thing to do to try to prolong the dove's life, and to reduce its suffering. This is just the "Golden Rule".

So hopefully the dove suffered a little less, and perhaps so, too, do i. (As the Dalai Lama says on the Wikipedia entry for the Golden Rule, "If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.")

I guess i more clearly realize that in these situations where the right course is clear, that the "Why" of it seems to matter a lot less than the "How" of it.

Went out to Loop 360, out 71 to 620 and discovered there's this weird Mall place where the play music outside. I got a bagel, a croissant, and some lemonade at the Panera, came back 71 to 360, took it around to the Mopac feeder and rode North back into town, then Barton Springs, Riverside, Lavaca, etc.

Trip odometer: 72.8 km
Max speed : 65.1 km/hr
Moving time : 2:51
Moving avg : 20.5 km/hr

Not bad for all the city riding.

I think 17C (~63F) is the perfect temperature for me to ride in. Felt good the whole way, especially coming back down 71. A Good ride.

Initial fuel: 3 eggs, scrambled, with garlic and some chopped tomatoes, plus two pieces of toast, about 2 hours before the ride. The about 7 chocolate cookies just before the ride.

Sometimes Nanabozho's lessons are not at all painful but equally enlightening. Tonight i had a late dinner at the Parlor, sitting at the bar, between two men (strangers to each other) who had the same first name and were born on exactly the same day (today, 1961), within 100 miles of each other. I looked at both of their driver's licenses as the independent verifier of such strangeness, because one of the guys was blind.

But it gets better.

It's a busy Friday night, and there were no cabs to be had. So i volunteered to give the blind soon-to-be birthday boy a ride to his next destination: a stripper bar.

Being myself, i did not go in. But i will try to more fully understand these lessons Nanabozho sends my way, because they are preferable to the painful ones, like when i put a nail through my big toe.

For several years, at home, i'd been listening to digital music in FLAC format with Amarok on a NetBSD desktop. (I didn't rip my CD collection into iTunes, because ALAC is Apple's proprietary (lossless) format, and i don't like my data being (ultimately) controlled by someone else. And i'm not going to rip into a lossy format like MP3... CDs are bad enough as it is.))

But with the move to the new house, the computer table, monitors, and NetBSD desktop were relegated to a powerless existence in the closet -- something had to give when i lost 100 sq. feet of interior space. So i became a laptop person, and now i spend my home computing time at my kitchen counter, perched on a stool. (Which sounds incredibly uncomfortable, but i have been OK with it so far, which is sort of odd.)

Since moving to the new place, my method of playing music was using Firefly on the (linux-based) NetGear (nee Infrant) file server appliance to convert (on demand) the FLAC music into MP3-format and stream it to iTunes on my trusty old Pismo (Macintosh PowerBook G3... circa 2000), which is plugged into some amplified speakers.

But the Pismo's headphone jack has been flakey for awhile, again: broken solder joint. I repaired it once before, but it takes around 3 hours to totally disassemble the Pismo to get at the jack... pretty much all the parts have to be removed. A few months ago, i could sometimes wiggle it into full, buzz-free stereo, but no more. Best i can get now is one channel and no buzz. (Though i can get buzz in both channels, but that drowns out the music.) And even with MP3 quality sound, this is less than ideal.

So, time for a new way to play music. My audiophile-ish friend, Eric, has had a Squeezebox for several years and likes it (he was probably also who first told me about the FLAC format, come to think od it), so i did a little research and bought a Squeezebox Duet for about $380 from Crutchfield.

It's two main parts: a "controller" and a "receiver," the latter is the player. So you run an OpenSource perl script streaming server on your Mac or whatever -- in my case a Netgear file server appliance. Then hook the receiver up to a set of powered speakers like your stereo, and use the controller (or a web browser, too) to tell the receiver to play. What's interesting (to me) is that the communication between the controller, receiver and streaming server is happening via Wireless networking: 802.11.

So i can play anything from the 200 GB of FLAC i've ripped, or i can play Internet radio stations, or Podcasts, even. (Right now i'm listening to a podcast of Polyhymnia's Sunday sunrise set from Burning Flipside 2008.)

And because it's 802.11 as opposed to the trad. infrared, the controller works from different rooms -- no need for line of sight. And it will control multiple receivers. So $150 or so buy another receiver, which i think can operate in sync or independent. I may buy another... i was listening to This American Life while taking a bath earlier, and i realized that speakers in the bathroom would be good, if i'm to properly honor Douglas Adams' (supposed) predilection for spending large amounts of time in the bath.

And to top it all of, Logitech has taken a very open source approach to at least part of this, encouraging inde development. And i can enable a root ssh login on the handheld controller, and login to it. Which sort of freaks me out -- when i started logging into Unix machines, they were often the size of a refrigerator... sometimes several refrigerators if you counted the storage. And now they weigh only slightly more than my cellphone, fit in my hand, and have wireless networking built-in.

So anyway, of course the first command when i get logged in is "dmesg" in the hopes that i will find out what type of CPU they chose when they designed it. As it turns out, it's an S3C2412. Which i google, and find is made by Samsung. Which leads me to a sales pamphlet, containing this colorful marketing image, which i just cannot help but find rather humorously bizarre and sexist.

First, Samsung is a Korean company, but the two people in the photo look very Northern European to me. That's the bizarre part. They're standing somewhere rural, in the woods, and the woman is holding what's probably supposed to be a GPS device and the guy is pointing the direction they are facing. Which is the sexist part. If she's holding the device then presumably she knows how to work it, and therefore how to read it, and therefore, she knows which damn direction she's facing, and so she doesn't need this goon to hold his arm out like, "THIS WAY!" Like she can operate a handheld GPS device, but somehow cannot comprehend that the direction the device tells her she is facing is... well... is the direction she is facing.

I cannot figure out what else this picture is supposed to be saying. She's holding the thing that tells them where they are, and the guy is pointing, which is totally unnecessary, and actually pretty insulting (and amusing, when you think about just how stupid it is).

Putting on my once-was-an-English-major interpretive hat, i guess the subtext is that if you are a geeky, Northern European engineer project manager, who's selecting which chip to use in your company's new GPS device, you should pick this one, because it comes with a cute blonde (also Northern European) woman. A woman who is apparently smart enough to work a device that tells her which way she wants to walk, but nevertheless she will be paralyzed with doubt and indecision unless you are there to hold your big hairy arm up and point, just to make sure she understands what the device she is controlling is telling her.

So never fear, dude, you haven't been totally replaced by machines yet, and can still feel worthwhile doing one other semi-useful thing, besides opening jars that is.

It's funny where the Internet takes me.

Back at the original subject: i really like the Squeezebox, despite two short comings:

1) It has an album shuffle mode, but i don't think a way to say "next album."

2) It does not come with a cute, blonde Northern European woman who's loads smarter than me and owns a device to lead us to safety, but pretends she needs me to point out the obvious, so i can still think that i'm In Charge.

I saw a falling star a litle while ago, about 05:40. I was sitting on the porch, i guess looking East, which is intersting, because if the Earth is rotating that direction, then this was falling in the same direction the Earth turns, not against it. It was pobably just a moving across the sky in a heading slightly north of East. Regardless, it was the brightest falling star i've ever seen -- without a doubt. And i've seen a lot of falling stars in my life -- i've gone out and stared at the sky during many incarnations of both the Leonid and Persiod meteor showers. And what i saw just now was much bigger, much brighter, and different in color. It had a distinct, greenish hue, at least sometimes. And it was big. I couldn't see much of a tail, because it's pretty bright here, in the city, but the body was quite bright, and... odd. Satellite re-entering? Alien space craft? Sign that my not-so-random thoughts of the moment have some potential?

I had a great visit with my Aunt and Uncle in Vermont (and New Hampshite) 28 Jul - 2 Aug. Flew in and out of Manchester, NH, and rented a car -- just couldn't find a more reasonable (time balanced against money) way to get from Manchester to around Dartmouth. On the way up, i'm pretty sure Ralph Nader was on my Austin -> BWI flight. I don't think many guys like that fly Southwest, so gotta give him props there. The weather was awesome -- lows around 56F, highs around 84F. It rained a bit, but nothing too heavy. The people were friendly, the microbrews and local cheese were yummy, and the little i saw of countryside was gorgeous. I hear the winters can be a bit chilly, though (lows as low as -10F) and real estate is not cheap. Some pictures. Ooo and the Manchester airport has free WiFI!

Haven't been on the skateboard at all for the past week, and only for commuting a little the week before that. Morning of the 13th, skating the Mabel Davis bowl with longboarders C & E, i had to take a big step down the side of the pool (because staying on the board would have been Bad) and did something unpleasant to my right leg. Back of knee, top of calf... can't really figure out what it was. Of course i kept skating for another hour or so. Then i went and skated at Patterson for another hour or two. It hurt everytime i turned, though. Next day, i was limping... could not walk normally. :) But it mostly got better quickly. Tuesday, i could walk normally, though stairs were painful. It improved a bit more, but still really hurt to skate, so i decided i better take some time off. Life without skating now makes me grumpy(ier). I'm off to Vermont next week to visit my Aunt aunt and Uncle. Hopefully it'll all be better by the time i return.

Had some yummy Migas at Star Seeds about 05:15 (was the only customer there), and headed down to Mabel Davis about 06:00. There were a couple of gals skating long boards in the bowl. Asian guy i saw a week or two ago showed up, and skated around the park and then in the bowl after the gals took off. After he left i skated in the bowl for awhile. Eventually went over front side into the wall and split my lower lip open. I skated some more, other people started showing up, so i went over to the miniramp at Patterson around 07:30. Traffic sucked already, so i took surface streets. Had a good time on the miniramp. Backside 180 turns are still pretty crappy. Stepped off at one point and the board smashed into the inside of my right leg, just above the high top. (Maybe it hit the high top and rode up.) Leg is now scratched, bruised, and slightly swollen. I'm either in much better shape, or as Trent suggested, i'm learning which muscles to use -- i'm not really muscle sore and i skated for at least as long.

Hehehe i'm starting to sound like Mr. Pither from The Cycling Tour Monty Python episode. He's the character (played by Michael Palin) who's touring around on his bike. He invariably wrecks, and then annoys complete strangers by going into great detail about how the food he was carrying was damaged (or not).

So after about three weeks of skating, i've:

• cracked rib
• opened what feels like a 2" gash on the back of my head
• fallen on my left butt cheek so hard i thought i'd permanently damaged my spine
• so exhausted my hip flexors that i cannot cross my legs without picking them up with my hands
• so worn out my lower back that i'm walking around like a stooped over grandpa

It's great. :)

The first two i did at the ditch near my house. The last three i did at Mabel Davis. I went there Sunday evening and just watched. There are some very good skaters there -- they make it look easy. I went back when it'd be less crowded, about 12 hours later, ~06:30 Monday.

Another skate venue will open at Patterson park. Looks more like a half pipe rather than the bowl at Mabel.

So i was figuring this is my non-conscious brain's (cheaper than buying a red convertible) way of dealing with the "turning 40" (perhaps midlife) crisis. Ironically, it may turn out to actually be productive (especially in contrast with a convertible) in that i now feel much older (or, arguably, "my age"), at least physically. I'm in OK shape for someone my age, but i am not in the same shape as i was at 17 when i was skating a half-pipe. And its unlikely i'll ever have those reflexes again. But if i keep skating, i'll get to exercise all those muscles that bicycling does not, and maybe actually end up in better shape than otherwise. And by comparison to bicycling, skateboarding is far less efficient, so more calories burned! :)

Skating is also restoring some powers of concentration that had atrophied over the years. I can't skate (without falling on my head) if i'm letting thoughts about work or blondes* or whatever randomly pop into my mind. I just have to focus on what i'm doing and let all of that drop away. It's very meditative, in a sort of insane way. I think i've internalized the act of cycling so much that i think about other things while i do it, especially how not to get hit by cars. There's a very logical, cranial component to cycling, in dealing with the cars. When i'm skating in the ditch or park, i need to let my "animal" brain take over and deal with the balance, timing, and reflex issues, and that means ignoring the "rational" brain's chatter.

Pain, or fear of pain, turns out to really help me focus in this way.

*How i cracked the rib.