James Pearl Thinks Blogging is Dead

rick81721

Lothar
PA does seem to have the ability to have good venues that allow good parking/courses near to highways. There's no breweries/businesses around here that can support a cross race on their premises as businesses around here don't have fields like they do in PA. I do a few of the PA races as they're just so easy to get to off 78.

If I'm around here in October I'll do this ride:

https://oktoberfestride.com
 

pooriggy

Well-Known Member
Team MTBNJ Halter's
NYC has millions of people. There isn't enough people in NYC bored enough on the weekends to go to Mountain Creek for skiing to keep the place from going bankrupt every 10 years?
Lol, that's like...why don't people who live in NJ honeymoon at the Poconos. If you live in NYC you can afford to go upstate or out west.
I get the fact that NJ life is hectic and yeah, maybe folks are too frazzled from work all week to think about dedicating a fair amount of time to training/ racing. Whatever it is, people are leaving racing, which is normal but the issue is that they aren't being replaced by new people. Folks like Capers and Bard moved
on and have different commitments or have been there, done that, next. It seems like there is a lot riding on NICA to develop a feeder program for local racing. I know this is not the primary goal of NICA, but even if it's a secondary effect it sure would be the boost the local scene needs.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
If you were to force me to pick an all-time favorite show it would have to be Northern Exposure. I absolutely loved that show and I think that A) it is a shame that no service streams it and B) I think it gets less credit than it deserves for what it was. I always felt it was a solid show that made you think, feel good, and made you feel that maybe there is some hope for the human condition. Never have I seen a show before nor since that's made me want to live in a place like that one has. I loved the characters. It was so well cast. Just everything about it was great.

Having said that I've never watched all the episodes. I should make that a priority in my life at some point, maybe this winter. I didn't get to see the series end. But then I wasn't a big fan of the newer characters. At the end, Rob Morrow left for other things and one of those things was eventually Numbers, though I guess it was Numb3ers because, well, #becauseCute or something. Or maybe l4me. I guess the show did ok but I never watched it. Those actors will forever be the people they were cast on that show. To me.

Anyway, All of this because I started with the word Numbers. Let's talk about Numbers. Oh, and I'm going to throw random pictures in here today. This was the sunrise yesterday:

A253D722-4AAF-4AC3-8533-EA9F24377A0E.jpeg

Numb3rs, V1: Like I said, I have never seen the show. Did anyone ever watch this? Is it any good?

Here's me running up the run-up yesterday. These pics are courtesy of @seanrunnette:

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Numbers, V2: I posted on the other thread in response to @jShort that the CrossResults numbers kind of piss me off. But I'm stepping away from that and going with the @pooriggy approach of "fuck that noise" because what do they know? Here's what I can say for sure. I've done 4 races this year and the one yesterday was by far my best. Races #2 and #3 I was DFL yet got better CR numbers for them. Basically what the calculations say is this: If you had literally suffered a heart attack and been taken to the hospital before Hippo or HPCX #1 ended, you would be ranked higher than you did yesterday, even though you almost beat a guy with a 330 ranking. Here's the thing. These bullshit numbers are used by race promoters to seed where your race starts. So we are slaves to this garbage.

Incidentally, my USAC ranking for the event yesterday was my best of the year. I'm glad someone is getting this right. It's hard to believe USAC is doing something better than someone else but there you go.

At the end of the day, I was there yesterday for the racing, not the points.

Coming down the same hill, previous to the run-up:

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Numbers, V3: Attendance of NJ cross races. Not sure who said it but it's in the thread somewhere: "The PA CX scene just seems to have a bigger crowd. I'm not sure why NJ is suffering."

NJ is suffering because PA is raising their game and NJ is not. When I started this sport PA was a side show, and NJ was good-not-great. PA has slowly made their events better and better, while NJ seems to be mired in repeatability. I've said it before but I think the class structure is screwed in NJ. I personally prefer to travel 200 miles to race NoHo and come in 62/77 than to stay local and come in 9/10 or even 7/10. I think the men's classes are now suffering the same fate as the women's classes have in various disciplines and that is a lack of critical mass.

What NJ race is "an event" like some of these others are? Read Jeremy's post - Sly Fox is an event. How many of the NJ races can qualify as events? Mercer used to be one but that's long gone. I'm sure it can be done and I would love to try it one day. But I don't think that time is now. I believe that so much work needs to be done to fix NJ that it needs to be a sort of concerted effort and the NJ scene needs to circle the wagons and come up with an approach. I think one huge factor is course design and another is the class structure.

D cruising a corner:

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Numbers, V4: I rode my bike today for TWO hours and watched The Man in the High Castle. I'll roll out the rest of Season 1 but I'm not sure I'll keep going. Who am I kidding? I probably will. What the hell else am I going to do while riding inside all winter? I broke one of my Innsbruck KOMs by a minute+. Previous best 25:34 and 24:17 today. I felt like I should do some work today because I'll be off the bike tomorrow. I did the other side of the hill but I didn't hammer it. Between yesterday and today I feel like I got a good back-to-back workout set in. Today is all about driving the mule. I am the mule. And the driver, as it turns out.

Ripping up some food truck poutine, YES POUTINE AT A CROSS RACE AND YOU WONDER WHAT OTHER VENUES ARE DOING RIGHT?!?!

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Numbers, V5: Tomorrow I will leave the house around 5:30am and come back around 10:30pm. So that number is 17 hours out of the house for this stupid trip to North Carolina. I asked @pearl if he wanted to get together in the afternoon and he said he has to paint pottery or something. I am going to spend a decent amount of time on this trip going through my book putting some things together that I hadn't done earlier. I finished the first edit pass but that's incomplete. Depending how much energy I have I may go back to the earlier chapters and finish up what I did not do yet. I also need to add a lot in the first few chapters for the sake of setting things up better. I also downloaded The Big Sick on my phone and I may just watch that on the plane instead.

Tonight I made French onion soup:

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Pearl

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING
I also noticed the cross results scores trending the wrong direction; i think because of the 234 race being gone. 300 used to be my goal for a race, that was a win for me. Now 330 is the new cat 3 winning score. Not sure why.
 

Patrick

Overthinking the draft from the basement already
Staff member
I liked numbers, but the nerd is strong with this one. It isn't deep, or remarkable. Just good logic/deduction.
 

JimN

Captain Wildcat
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Numb3rs, V1: Like I said, I have never seen the show. Did anyone ever watch this? Is it any good?

I liked numbers, but the nerd is strong with this one. It isn't deep, or remarkable. Just good logic/deduction.

I watched the entire series when it was on and thought it was really good. Gimmicky at times, but an interesting take on crime dramas.
 

ChrisG

Unapologetic Lifer for Rock and Roll
If you were to force me to pick an all-time favorite show it would have to be Northern Exposure. I absolutely loved that show and I think that A) it is a shame that no service streams it and B) I think it gets less credit than it deserves for what it was. I always felt it was a solid show that made you think, feel good, and made you feel that maybe there is some hope for the human condition. Never have I seen a show before nor since that's made me want to live in a place like that one has. I loved the characters. It was so well cast. Just everything about it was great.
Mrs. G and I were huge fans of this show, for much of the same reasons you cite for yourself.

Forgive me if we've gone down this road already, but did you watch Fringe when it was on? Another of my all-time favorites, that I didn't see through to the end; they moved it to Friday 10PM in the middle of season 4, and who the fuck watches TV during that time slot?
 

JimN

Captain Wildcat
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Forgive me if we've gone down this road already, but did you watch Fringe when it was on? Another of my all-time favorites, that I didn't see through to the end;

I was also a big fan of Fringe, but it got pretty weird toward the end, which is saying something.

they moved it to Friday 10PM in the middle of season 4, and who the fuck watches TV during that time slot?

Who the fuck watches live TV? :p
 

Santapez

Well-Known Member
Team MTBNJ Halter's
but did you watch Fringe when it was on? Another of my all-time favorites, that I didn't see through to the end; they moved it to Friday 10PM in the middle of season 4, and who the fuck watches TV during that time slot?

If I missed the last season I'd look back more favorably on that series.

It's like the X-Files but not 90s cheesy.
 

qclabrat

Well-Known Member
The.

The Chinese do not have articles. They Do not say "the Chinese" but instead say Chinese person. Or really China person. Zhong guo ren. Breaking that down, it actually translates like this: Middle country person. Zhong means middle, which is from way-forever back when, at the point they named the country. Of course it makes sense that it was "middle country" because you, the royal YOU, as the subject, are the middle of everything. So China literally translates to Middle Country: Zhong Guo. Ren means person. Chinese person. There is no article. No a/an/the in this language.

I am not exactly sure how you would translate the title of this post into Chinese. The. I title it as such, because the day went as a series of "the" elements. You will see what I mean below. I take notes through the day. I'm a notebook person. So today, the notes started with The this and The that, and it went from there. The The. Not sure how that band name would have translated into Chinese either.

And on to my day. One The at a time.

The rain. Man oh man, it was just miserable last night. I woke up several times in the middle of the night and it was dropping cats & dogs on the roof. I never had any real doubt that skipping today was the right call. But this would have sealed that decision if I had been harboring any reservations.

The scale. I woke up today feeling thinner than normal so I decided that I would wake up and weigh myself. I thought long and hard about this, because the last time I felt this way, I was disappointed in what it showed me. After going to the bathroom I decided to skip it. I feel better, and if it says I was 1 pound more than last time, what good would that do me? This is something that people who do not suffer from this shitty predilection to pack on pounds do not understand. After slaughtering myself for 15 weeks on the bike, I'm just afraid to get on it and have it say something god-awful, like 205.

The ride. I was up at 5:20 and on the bike before 6:00. After yesterday's race, today was just more pounding out of miles. I did 2:06 on the bike and while I was not paying much attention, I looked up and saw a big arrow on the screen that shows it's someone you follow. Sped up and saw @taylor185 in front of me and gave him kudos but wasn't going as fast as he was on the day, so I left him go and got back to my movie. Today's ride was just filling up the silo with corn. My analogy machine is broken.

The movie. Watched Dunkirk. The only reason I know what it Dunkirk is is (is is, I hate this grammatical construct even if it is acceptable by Merriam Webster) because I watched The Darkest Hour. It was a good movie, not great. It's a good trainer movie as you can let it roll as it rolls while you flip your attention back & forth as needed. Would recommend it.

The Kingdom Trail email. The trails are closed for mountain bikes as of sundown yesterday. It's sad when this day rolls around every year. Not that it's something I would do, but I could do it if I wanted to. I could just wake up one day and decide to drive to KT, ride for 4 hours, then drive home. Ok, it's a crazy day, but it's possible. Well, it was. Now it is not until next year. I look forward to the email reopening the trails.

The soccer. I took Simon to soccer which allowed D to go to the gym this morning. He had 2 games, first was a tie, second they won. We saw a really pretty red-orange tree on the way there, and talked about it the whole way from the tree to the field. As a side note, the total drive from our house to the field is about 1.1 miles. Maybe less. But I mean it was still a really pretty tree. On a related topic, I suggested to @pooriggy that he should buy some candles to ward off the imminent winter doldrums. Oh, and enjoy the trees.

The Chinese school. Dropped Julia off for 12:30 and picked her up at 2:30. Being the first Saturday of the month, the good vendor was there. Every week they rotate and today is the scallion pancake, dumpling, soup dumplings, wonton, and pork bun vendor. I spent $54 there today. This is the shit. I will tage @qclabrat just for this paragraph alone. First Saturday of the month, WRHS, 12:30-2:30. Best to go at 2:30. No lines and they bring so much stuff they have never come close to running out.

The editing. Finished up chapter 31 today. This was more well-written then some other ones. This makes me remember how some days were good, and others not so good. I think if (when) I do this again, I need to take more time writing the first pass. This editing process is too arduous. And frankly, it's nerve-wracking because I feel like I am constantly remembering possible contradictions that I need to go revisit to make sure I'm being consistent.

The laser show. Went to see a laser show at the RVCC planetarium. It's basically a light show on the round screen to music. We discussed taking them to see the Beatles or Pink Floyd show. But went with this general one instead. I think the kids liked it enough.

The movie. Second movie of the day. Watched Galaxy Quest with the family. Everyone really enjoyed it. This has been a double win thanks to @seanrunnette.

The writing. Here we are!

The plan for tomorrow. Ride in the morning, where I am hoping to get 2:25 to hit 14 hours on the week. After that D & Zac are going to the NICA ride and I will stay here with Simon and Julia and probably edit 32, maybe even 33? The chapters get a little shorter from here on out which may be easier or it may make them harder as they ended up thinner and may need a little bolstering. I think 1 of the last 8 in particular is ripe for a possible total rewrite. Also plan on going to the YMCA to swim, as noted yesterday. I may start my work week tomorrow night so I can pre-load as much as possible. I'm not looking forward to the next 7 work days.

The end. Porky Pig goes here.
Is there a schedule? Soup Dumpings are hard to find... I'd hit this up.
I've had more than my share, and even been to the birth place of them little buns. The best is the variety using hairy crab roe. Sounds nasty and if you're ever in Shanghai give it a try just not around here. There's actually a good alternative to make them at home and it not that far off from the local places. Link is below and you can find them in Asian Foods. Secret is the place them on a bed of Napa cabbage so they don't break when you pick them up with chopsticks. Also make sure to make the ginger and chinkiang vinegar. Maybe I'll make a batch or dumplings as hand outs for short track.

http://www.weichuanusa.com/minibun.html
 

Santapez

Well-Known Member
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Where can I get Soup Dumplings that are good around here?

Preferably closer than Soup Dumplings Plus in Fort Lee.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
4:45am. A notification from my phone sounds, waking me up from what is a relatively decent night of sleep. With alarms set for 5, 5:15, and 5:30 plus the one D set as a backup, I'm not worried about oversleeping. I awake to pouring rain which is what it is. I'm not too worried about rain ruining my day. I'll be in a plane, taxi, or University Tower all day so I really don't care what it does outside just so long as it doesn't affect me adversely. I rinse off, then head downstairs and get a coffee & slice of toast to cover me to the airport. Uber picks me up at 5:20 and Puneet drives me to the EWR while telling me all about his 10 day cruise in the Caribbean he just got done with. Airport security is of no notice which is fine by me. Flying at this time of day does cut into your sleep but makes the TSA experience a lot easier.

6:15am. I am sitting at my gate, C72, with my sesame bagel with lox spread and large coffee. We board at 7:10 which gives me enough time to drink my coffee and have to pee again just minutes after I get on the plane. I connect to the MiFi and start writing this, and some guy sits directly across from me instead of sitting at 1 of the 2 other seats at the table that are not 2 feet from me. He is eating some form of pastry that is basically a doughy element covered with 2-3" of sugar-glaze. This would have looked interesting to me at one time in my life but now it looks disgusting. An Asian woman sits behind him eating a sandwich that is roughly the size of her head. I use the bathroom right before the boarding starts and a man vomits into the sink in the bathroom. Probably not a great start to his day.

7:15am. I'm in my seat with 27 minutes until takeoff. I am cautiously optimistic this flight will board quickly and we'll be in the air ahead of schedule. The flight itself is 1:15 in the air which means there is a lot of fluff time built into the before/after of the trip. With any luck we'll be in the terminal by 9am on the other side. Schedule says 9:21 and my meeting starts at 11am. I have an aisle seat and a guy grabs the window in my row. As the plane fills up the passengers stop coming in and against all odds, our middle seat is not taken. Pilot says that it's going to be a bumpy ride at 26k feet because of the weather all the way down the east coast. I try to work on the book but the turbulence is minor, but persistent and annoying. I watch The Big Sick instead. It starts slow but picks up and by the time the plane lands I am definitely into the story. I have never been a Ray Romano fan but I really like him in this. Holly Hunter is also really good. It's a good story but it's not over yet, as we're now at the terminal.

10:30am. In the room, trying to setup my laptop to the overhead system which I let Tim (the Duke PM) try to do while I sit here and ignore it. Anyone who travels knows this can be a headache and today is no different. I drink the Starbucks coffee I picked up across the street before I got here. With almost an hour to spare I needed to fill it with something and a Starbucks coffee & banana do the trick. Tim is ultimately unsuccessful getting 2 different laptops working so he gives up and connects his. I just login to the system on his laptop then I look for compromising pictures I can use for bribery later. Unfortunately everyone can see what I'm doing. We sort of start the demo at 11:00.

2:00pm. And we are done. I was worried about this demo but in the end I guess I should rely on my ability to talk through pretty much anything from a technical perspective. I also have a bunch of industry experience at this point. So I can speak to whatever they want to talk about. The driver of this trip was supposed to be a demo of what we've built, which went pretty well by and large. One of my weak areas is that I go through demos too fast, and at the end sometimes the users say they are confused and I then tell all my friends I work with idiots. I did my best to slow it down and ask for feedback periodically. In all, it was a pretty productive & useful meeting here. I don't think that coming down here for 3 hour meetings is something I want to do very often. But it was a fairly productive trip all in all.

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3:10pm. I am now at Namu, which is a Korean place I have eaten at twice before which is where I will get dinner before I head to the airport. It is also a really good coffee shop that, much to my surprise, is serving Counter Culture in the form of pourover coffee. This is a massive win. I have 2 hours to burn and I debated going into Durham to check out a place @Delish recommended but in the end I don't really have the time I need to do that. The meeting went on a bit longer than indicated above, but mostly in the form of dragging to get out of the room. The director thanked us profusely for coming and I think we did some good stuff today. Like it or not, I do well with this customer-facing role that I have managed to find myself in.

I have a bit of a like/dislike relationship with travel, which I think most people have. I don't want to say love/hate because those 2 emotions are too strong to use here. I don't love it, because who loves travel that is hindered by work? I love traveling as a concept, though many people fall into that category. So I am mostly ok with travel especially when it isn't too frequent, like it was in the first 6 months of the year. And for sure I don't hate it, not even the trips that take me to Oklahoma. In fact I think it could be argued that the work trips which send you places you would not otherwise go to are the best ones. They allow you to see an area of the world that you simply would never willingly choose to go to. But the dislike part of it would be that you're at the mercy of other people pretty much exclusively. I wanted to be done by 2:00 but in the end I was there until almost 3:00. It probably cut short plans of doing anything I wanted for myself. I guess I'm glad @pearl didn't trek down here to meet at 2:00.

5:00pm. I get an early dinner which is this Korean hybrid thing. Specifically, it is a bowl of waffle fries covered with spicy beef & kimchee and topped with a sunny-side up egg. It may sound good but it tastes incredibly good. Scratch that, beyond incredibly good. I would consider coming again next week just for this.

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6:40pm. I'm sitting in the waiting area of RDU airport for my 8:05 flight that is now delayed to 9:00. Apparently Newark has slowed down all incoming traffic so all the flights to EWR are delayed. If I am lucky, this will go off on time and I'll land just before 11:00 and hopefully get home around midnight to close out my 18.5 hour day. I personally think it is crazy to blow this much of a day for what amounts to a 4 hour meeting with the client. But this is what PS/Duke apparently wanted and at the end of the day, you have 40 hours of my time. Use if however you like. On the bright side, this pretty much guarantees I am off Friday so looks like a 3-day weekend for me.

I find a plug that works that I charge my laptop with. That is like finding a unicorn these days.

The time now drags. I chip away at some work on my book and some of the blog and just wish for the time to go faster. I have run out of steam on the day with ~5 hours left before I can go to sleep. I people watch a little bit but it's not very interesting. It's not like you can even guess what the random people are doing. "I bet that guy is waiting for his plane to take off." It gets old fast. I'm not even hungry enough to justify looking for ice cream.

7:45pm. I am sitting on a plane. On a lark I decided to walk up to the 8:10 gate and ask if they had any seats open. They guy, looking tired, says, "We have to stop doing this. They want to push off. What's your last name?" Then he proceeds to get me a 7th row aisle seat in Deluxe Economy for no additional charge. I guess my status has moved up from Total Loser to Mostly Loser so I get the switch for free. That's a score. I get on the flight, literally the past person on, and sit down. The pilot then says we'll be probably sitting in the runway for 20 minutes while Newark decides if they want to let us land there or not. Pilot says the flight will be 55 minutes in the air. I guess he's taking the direct route as compared to the 1:15 route we took this morning.

I watch the rest of The Big Sick. This is a good movie. This is a really good movie. The movie is over before we even take off because we are delayed yet again. You should watch this movie. I totally appreciate Ray Romano now. Funny that.

I then read a chapter of Britt-Marie Was Here, which is not as good as Ove. Don't buy this book. The captain informs us we have a tailwind which is why we are blazing home. We are in the air 20 minutes before we start to descend.

We land around 9:30 which is 1:20 earlier than we are supposed to land. That assumes the plane behind us was going to be only an hour delayed, which is probably not realistic. I'll take what I can get at this point. I am now hungry enough for ice cream. That's what I'll do when I get home. In the end I land at about the "right" time.

The Uber drive home is probably the best driver I've ever had, or about as good as it gets. Conversation was so good that if I could get him to take me to & from the airport every time I went, I would. Very nice way to end the trip.

10:35pm. I am home. Thanks for reading. I am going to enjoy my ice cream then go upstairs and go to bed. Tomorrow is another day. A day in which I will not be going to North Carolina.
 
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