apple juice

Further solidifying my place as one of the stranger people at my place of employment… I rolled up to work today on my mountain bike. I was the only person in the building of about 300 employees that rode to work today. The trip from my garage to work took 14 minutes. This is quite amazing because it takes me 10 minutes door to door to drive there in my car.

And the car, why was I not driving it to work today? Well, I dropped off my car yesterday at Park Place VW for it’s routine 20,000 mile service. There was no estimate of time needed to complete the car, but I assumed (you should never assume) that it would be done by the end of the day, or at least I could call in the mid-afternoon and find out the status.

Well, long story short, I didn’t hear from them and couldn’t get ahold of the service person I spoke with. Got a ride home last night from a friend, and I biked to work this morning.

I biked to work on principle basically, as another co-worker put it, so I could tell the dealership, “I had to ride my bike to work today!”. On the other hand, I enjoyed riding my bike in. I just need to give my self ten more minutes for a slightly more leisurely ride, and remember to pack a lunch and I’ll be ready to go. Anyone want to take me to lunch today?

A couple weeks ago I had a lunchtime conversation with another co-worker about riding my bike around when I was studying abroad in Sweden. In the town where I lived, Lulea, you could ride your bike everywhere. It was almost as if the town was designed for it. Not only that, but the population there is on the same order as Rochester (~70,000 vs. ~90,000) We wondered about the lack of bike trails, and general friendliness towards bikers in this country. We solved nothing and simply shook our fists at the Rochester Urban Planner, (if there is one… if not they should hire me as a consultant… I’m a master at SimCity).

It’s happened to me, and I’ve heard stories from friends and family about getting honked at, swerved at, cursed at and generally harrassed while riding their bikes around towns. Why do people have to be like that? I don’t understand. I know that around Minneapolis they have bike lanes on many of the streets, but as my brother says, you’re risking death anytime you venture into one.

So I biked to work today… will I tomorrow? Sure I’d like to, but if I have my car back, I won’t guarantee it. The weather is getting cold!

With Cable TV at M.I.T., Who Needs Napster?

So the M.I.T. system, using the analog campus cable system, simply bypasses the Internet and digital distribution, and takes advantage of the relatively less-restrictive licensing that the industry makes available to radio stations and others for the analog transmission.

What’s ironic is that prior to this analog distribution… someone is controlling the playlist through the internet…

At some point, hopefully our lawmakers will realize that copyright law needs to be completely rewritten. It was written for a different era.

And hopefully, the lawmakers won’t be writing the new copyright laws in one room while taking checks from the RIAA in the other room.

We can hope, can’t we?

Well, “the weekend of the rake” is fast approaching. As I stood outside this morning when I let Yeti out, I could hear the leaves dropping on the ground like giant snowflakes.

The weekend of the rake is fast approaching. We have some additional issues to deal with this year that weren’t a problem the last time around:

• We have a dog now, with associated droppings around the yard.
• We no longer have a truck, so all of the leaves will have to be transported in the back of my Golf.

We’ll see how it goes. I’m pegging this sunday as the day…

Howard Dean, Elections 2004 and the Democratic Party (washingtonpost.com)

The nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute last week provided some evidence supporting Rosenberg’s view. “What is also different about 2003 is the emergence of a well-financed candidate — Howard Dean — who depends on large donors ($1,000 or more) for only 22 percent of individual contributions and gets 54 percent from small donors (less than $200),” the institute found.

In contrast, President Bush, who has raised $83.9 million, collected 85 percent of it in contributions of $1,000 or more and 10 percent in gifts of less than $200. For other major Democratic candidates, the percentages of large and small contributions were: retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, 45 percent to 35 percent; Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), 88 to 1; Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.), 78 to 8; Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), 77 to 11; and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), 78 to 6.

(Emphasis above is mine) Interesting article…

Little blew it

Joe Torre, on the other hand, knew when to take his starting pitcher out of the game.

We could have a Red Sox/Cubs World Series. But thanks to stupid, stupid decisions (indecisions) by both of their managers, we have Yankees, Marlins. Booooooorrrring

Why in the world did Prior pitch so deep into those games? What was Grady Little thinking leaving Pedro in there?

Ugh. Damn Yankees.

Watch the TV ratings plummet.

Cubs vs. Red Sox…. now that’s what I’m talking about.

For all my Windows using friends and relatives out there who I have not yet converted (I’ll get you my pretties), Apple today released iTunes for Windows.

iTunes lets you access the world famous iTunes Music Store, where you can download songs for 99 cents each. No monthly fees, burn them to CDs, stick them on iPods. You own them.

The interface is worlds ahead of Musicmatch and Winamp, and iPod syncing with iTunes is a quick affair, unlike the complete library copy tha Musicmatch performs everytime you sync.

So go out and download it today!