It’s FLASH VIDEO. You’re just doing this to be bastards.

That is all.

• Potholes are not just inconvenient. They hurt. Badly. And they have serious potential for danger.
• Sometimes, just when you think people are incredible dicks, they redeem themselves by thanking you or saying they’re sorry as you breeze by each other at a combined speed of around 30-40 mph.
• Long, easy graded hills are much worse than short, steep hills. Trust me.
• There is no escaping the bike ride home.
• if you’re going to make a mistake and look like a moron, Murphy’s Law states that it will happen in the middle of a busy intersection when the pedestrian lights are on and the hundreds of cars have nothing to do except watch you nearly faceplant.
• It isn’t actually as scary as you’d think, at least not here.
• Sometimes easy=monotonous, especially when you’re too tired to go really fast anyway.

It occurs to me that if I were cooler, I could’ve phrased this all more eloquently, a la…dammit. I can’t find the post. Anyway, it could’ve been more eloquent. Oh well. In the end, only my heart is eloquent, and my tongue is sorely lacking.

This widget rocks my socks. So much better than the old way. I highly recommend it.

I just upgraded my wordpress (a task I’ve been delaying for several months now) in less than 5 minutes. Freakin’ awesome.

AND it even checks for updates for your widgets! Amazing!

What this post is about is awesome circumstances.

My housemate/landlord Regina offered to help me find a bike that I could commute on. I decided I wanted a road bike because everybody always says they’re faster and easier to ride on roads. So I thought, ok, let’s do it.

Regina is a world class tri-athlete (I can say that because she qualified for the world championship in hawaii at the lake placid iron man two weeks ago), and has a bunch of friends who know a little something about bikes on the boston triathalon team.

Several of whom work at bike shops around.

So, she sent an email to the list asking about the best places to buy a used bike. One of her teammates wrote back, “fahgedaboudit, I got one for ya FREE”.

Not literally, but you get the idea. Turns out some guy turned in his bike to a bike shop for nothing when buying a newer, better bike, so they FIXED IT UP, for free, fit me for bike cleats, for free, and all I had to buy was the cleats and shoes.

Holy. Shit.

Needless to say, I’m taking these gentlemen and Regina out for dinner at the first opportunity.

I picked up the bike tonight and Regina took me down to a near by parking lot for a test drive.

Even without it being adjusted properly to my height, and even in a parking lot, all I can say is…holy shit. They’re not kidding about the road bikes. Faster, easier, smoother…it’s just a sweet sweet ride. I can’t wait to get it out on the road. I’m going to do a bit more practising, for things like sudden stops and riding a straight line whilst I’m looking elsewhere, but it’s exciting.

As for the fencing, I just discovered that there is a major fencing club within long walk distance of the house, and these guys, unlike the place up near work, are professionals. AND, they have open fencing for $10 a session, or free for members. Membership is 450/year, so I’d have to go 45 times…but I’m likely to do that over the course of a year, because it’s 7 days a week. I can go any night I want. So freaking awesome. I’m gonna try and get down there this week, or this weekend at the latest to check it out. I need to get a fencing bag and a new epee, though. I might just order those tonight.

Good times. :-)

(morons don’t the get internet..they won’t let me embed, but I can link? WTF?)

Anyway, I was also having a conversation with my dad a day or two ago.

We were talking about the second amendment and all the one line constitution conservatives, and he was laying out depth and context of the common law background of the amendment itself, when he had a slight issue with attention span…

Paraphrased:

“So, if you look back at the english common law, there is precedent for BOTH interpretati…OOO, a HUMMINGBIRD! NEAT!”

I fell down laughing. Especially for anyone familiar with Ctrl-alt-del, xkcd, or 8-bit theatre (and surely other geek webcomics), it was too prefectly comicesque.

Also, it’s 3 am, and I’m feeling very mellow and sad because I’m packing.

In a conversation I had yesterday, I pointed out to the guys in my office that the supreme court struck down DC’s gun law, that the argument that they made was reasonable, even if I don’t agree with it, and look! lots of liberals are saying the same thing…ergo trying to convince them that they won the whole gun battle, we don’t much care anymore (we have bigger fish to fry), so can they please stop not voting for democrats solely because “they wanna take our guns.”

Seriously, What. The. Fuck.

This turned into a major argument, where I had to repeat over and over again that I had no interest in gun control laws because they don’t work, but that I personally believe that the 2nd amendment only protects the right to form (and arm) well-regulated militias. But I’m not interested in taking away guns, because the cats out of the bag.

And all they can hear is “you want to take our guns! most important supreme court decision ever! you can’t pick and choose from the constitution!”

You can’t pick and choose from the constitution.

From the same people who are ok with getting rid of habeas corpus. From the same people who are ok with dropping with protections from unreasonable search and seizure. From the same folks who don’t understand that the judiciary’s constitutional job is to block the will of the people, expressed through the legislature, and prevent the majority from trampling on the constitution. From the same people who believe in the “unitary executive”. From the same folks who think that all of a sudden, the president has the right to make the budget and to make treaties and declare war.

These same people are telling me that I can’t pick and choose from the constitution because I think their argument that the constitution protects their individual right to bear arms is, while valid, not correct, that I, not they, cannot pick and choose from the constitution.

I am so mad I could spit.

Go. Read. It’s a long read, but it’s essential.

He lays out very clearly (though not terribly concisely) why this FISA fight is such a big deal.

This speech ought to be in front of every American. And every goddamn sell-out in congress, including Barack Obama, needs to hear it. In it’s entirety.

Every bit of it.

Old phone books are like super concentrated moving paper repositories. I’ve been able to get about 3-4 boxes out of one phonebook!

I got the idea from this lovely little prank, and it works great.

And now, at last, I have a reason to keep phone books.

It was a good trip. I got to meet some of her friends, see her house (which is very nice, I like it), and do a little sight-seeing.

But I will tell you this; the missions in san antonio pissed me off.

The funding and the parks are a joint project of the National Park Service and the Arch-diocese of San Antonio. And apparently, the National Park service ceded nearly all decision making authority about the content of the informational signs to the catholic church.

Churches, and evangelical churches in particular (I count catholics as evangelical), are particularly bad about ever admitting any fault. So, since they cannot admit the fact that they were culpable in committing atrocities, we are treated to several hours worth of putrid crap about how “the missionaries helped the Indians learn modern technology, and gave them faith and hope” and blah, Blah, BLAH.

Except for one video which is completely removed from the actual mission grounds, there are no mentions that maybe the indians weren’t that interested in converting. There’s no mention of the roving bands of soldiers and priests capturing indians and bringing them to the missions by force, because they were killing indians so fast that death rates exceeded birth rates. No mention on the grounds themselves of the indians slipping out to worship their actual gods. No mention of the escapes that sometimes caused priests and soldiers to chase indians for hundreds of miles to bring them back to the missions by force.

No, all of that is glossed over. Only the happy stuff makes it on the informational signs.

It made me sick.

Other than that, though, from a purely historical standpoint, the missions were really cool. It’s worth the walk if you’re ever in San Antone. Just don’t read the signs if you’ve had anything to eat…you’re likely to puke it all back up.