3 hours ago
Thursday, November 5, 2009
PowderHOARS
Here is a link for a quick lesson in Colorado's snowpack issues. Tonight is the premiere of Powderwhores, in Boulder, at Avery tap house 8PM. See you there!
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Fashion Police!
Monday morning I evacuated a full-size trash bag of clothes I don't wear to charity. I felt proud of reducing my stuff factor. Monday night I was razzing my brother for delaying mounting his new skis with bindings. He would have to wait, spend an extra 2 hour drive to and from home, and make a couple more phone calls, all because his bindings were the wrong color. I razzed him by exclaiming "somebody call the fashion police". Tuesday after work I hastily pedaled in the sunset to Longmont where I was early for my bee keeper class. To pass the time I chatted in a park with my parents and then rejected the warmth of a crowded brewery for reading under a lighted, chilly bridge underpass. I was chilled and my cell phone battery was getting low after talking to the rents, and daylight savings just happened. It seemed too logical a time to go secure a wrist watch from nearby Wall-Mart before I lost track of time and missed class at 7pm. I've been meaning to do just that for some time anyways.
I was pep talking myself, go in, buy the dorky looking old-reliable casio wrist watch, and get the heck outta there. The problem was I really didn't have a warm or lit there to get to, Hover road in Longmont is no place to hang out, and I had an appointment there in less than one hour. May as well spend that time passing judgement (shopping) in Wal-mart. BLING-Acrylic knit winer beanie hats with a brim were on sale for $5, and BLING-a robust looking pair of wrap-style sunglasses caught my eye. BLANG-I needed a snack to make it through class and home. So I have a useful watch and can of almonds, and some fashionable, not so useful spare chinese hat and spare cheap chinese sunglasses, which amount to more junk for me to move around, lose track of, or eventually give to charity. Quality
I was pep talking myself, go in, buy the dorky looking old-reliable casio wrist watch, and get the heck outta there. The problem was I really didn't have a warm or lit there to get to, Hover road in Longmont is no place to hang out, and I had an appointment there in less than one hour. May as well spend that time passing judgement (shopping) in Wal-mart. BLING-Acrylic knit winer beanie hats with a brim were on sale for $5, and BLING-a robust looking pair of wrap-style sunglasses caught my eye. BLANG-I needed a snack to make it through class and home. So I have a useful watch and can of almonds, and some fashionable, not so useful spare chinese hat and spare cheap chinese sunglasses, which amount to more junk for me to move around, lose track of, or eventually give to charity. Quality
Friday, October 30, 2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
CDOT: "Chain law in effect"
Since I can't get out and ski in the mountains until saturday, I've been tinkering around with tire chains for my baloon tire beach cruser bicycle. 
I did some measuring, some circle math, some hardware store stooping about, and produced an elegant looking baloon tire bicycle chain system.
The 21 short (3.75") chain segments were secured to the tire's sidewalls with two 1/16" thick cables, 4 ferrules (used to make attachment loops in cable ends) two custom turnbuckles, and 40PSI tire pressure. If the installation process was easy or elegant, I may have recommend the design for others. 
The 21 short (3.75") chain segments were secured to the tire's sidewalls with two 1/16" thick cables, 4 ferrules (used to make attachment loops in cable ends) two custom turnbuckles, and 40PSI tire pressure. If the installation process was easy or elegant, I may have recommend the design for others. 
It's amazing the traction the chain provides while climbing on slippery hills! It was a blast bombing around wintry gunbarrel tonight. My chain provided adequate stop-go traction in snow, and didn't significantly take away from rubber on pavement grippage. I wonder if I could have pedalded through the deeper areas with a chain up front keeping the slick tire from slipping freely about.
What's next? spiral chain wrap on the front tire.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Fall Cleaning
There's this expression called "spring cleaning". It's a feeling people get when they are tired of looking at their indoors mess all winter, and need to clean it up. That time for me seems to be fall. I'm feeling like my life is messy right now and I have a total lack of focus and hence motivation. Now that I'm financially stable, I find myself amidst an excess of life-complicating stuff. I feel as though I'm too busy moving stuff around to appreciate it, and I reminisce about the old days when I showed up in Boulder poor, and couldn't be stuck with much stuff; I couldn't bother choosing which parts I wanted to put on my bikes/skis, a $5 dollar wool sweater at the thrift store was a budgetary blessing. I miss that vigor in life. And I'm going to take this space to reflect on it and get to the root. I think it's the survival instinct I'm clinging to. Being poor is all about surviving with what you've got.
The largest contributor to having too much stuff is consumerism and shopping. Enthusiastic shoppers are always bragging about how little they paid for their stuff. The fun part for most shoppers is: surviving with what you've got, the got being a number, a budget. When your budget is less critical, shopping seems to be less interesting (fun). I had to buy a truck for work last year, and it was not that much fun. I shopped until I met the budget, but it wasn't my money, I had more important work tasks to complete, and it was a dull endeavor.
As an environmentally conscious individual, I'm often overly careful while shopping for something. I'll feel bad if I waste or landfill stuff, and I want to be satisfied with purchases. This was relatively easy when I was poor, because most things I could afford were on their way to waste, and I could do little harm to my conscience by using that stuff. Now, I'm finding myself spending so much time thinking about purchases, researching products, and it takes time away from life. There's a survival instinct resurfacing to make the most of what time I have, and there's a tendency to give up, to fold and let evil US consumer culture free up my time.
Money is fonney. Everybody wants to survive. In the western world this usually means aquiring money, and how effective you are at aquiring money determines your ability to survive. This is often the case for for the non-human natural world, if you just replace money with energy. In 8th grade I learned about two forms of Darwinism: In second period Biology I learned about natural selection and in 4th period social studies I learned about social darwinism. Later on in the working life I gatherd that money is time. In physics class I gathered that time is energy. (E=MC^2, C being speed of light, which is time dependent, and squaring this value means time takes a huge priority in the math). The theory of social darwinism is mathematically sound....BUT, it still doesn't sit well with me and many other humans.
I've been struggling with this for most of my adult life, because I'm American, every man/woman was created equal, getting rich quick is not cool, and it feels unjust and un-called for. Social darwinism may work on a small scale, and who knows, maybe in early 20th century capitalism, it was true. There are more people now, who are much more connected to one-another. One person is so much smaller and less significant now than in previous generations. A person's survival relies much more upon other people and much less upon individual traits. I gather that being extremely rich in modern times, means you are significantly better at taking/extracting your time/energy/money from your surrounding envrionment. In modern times, your environment is increasingly other people, and social darwinism is increasingly social cannibalism.
Since middle adolescence I've been fearful of being rich. Today sane people justly think I'm crazy/masachistic for not geting after that $60k chemical engineer salary. I have to explain that I'm not ready for the responsibility, and I get frustrated that the responsibility part needs further explanation. I've always been afraid that being rich would encourage me doing harm to others for preserving my own excessive interests and that life would run away from me. Money is power, and power is responibility. Responsibility is a bitch. For me the balance is not a question of how much money I want, but how much responsibility my conscience can tolerate.
The largest contributor to having too much stuff is consumerism and shopping. Enthusiastic shoppers are always bragging about how little they paid for their stuff. The fun part for most shoppers is: surviving with what you've got, the got being a number, a budget. When your budget is less critical, shopping seems to be less interesting (fun). I had to buy a truck for work last year, and it was not that much fun. I shopped until I met the budget, but it wasn't my money, I had more important work tasks to complete, and it was a dull endeavor.
As an environmentally conscious individual, I'm often overly careful while shopping for something. I'll feel bad if I waste or landfill stuff, and I want to be satisfied with purchases. This was relatively easy when I was poor, because most things I could afford were on their way to waste, and I could do little harm to my conscience by using that stuff. Now, I'm finding myself spending so much time thinking about purchases, researching products, and it takes time away from life. There's a survival instinct resurfacing to make the most of what time I have, and there's a tendency to give up, to fold and let evil US consumer culture free up my time.
Money is fonney. Everybody wants to survive. In the western world this usually means aquiring money, and how effective you are at aquiring money determines your ability to survive. This is often the case for for the non-human natural world, if you just replace money with energy. In 8th grade I learned about two forms of Darwinism: In second period Biology I learned about natural selection and in 4th period social studies I learned about social darwinism. Later on in the working life I gatherd that money is time. In physics class I gathered that time is energy. (E=MC^2, C being speed of light, which is time dependent, and squaring this value means time takes a huge priority in the math). The theory of social darwinism is mathematically sound....BUT, it still doesn't sit well with me and many other humans.
I've been struggling with this for most of my adult life, because I'm American, every man/woman was created equal, getting rich quick is not cool, and it feels unjust and un-called for. Social darwinism may work on a small scale, and who knows, maybe in early 20th century capitalism, it was true. There are more people now, who are much more connected to one-another. One person is so much smaller and less significant now than in previous generations. A person's survival relies much more upon other people and much less upon individual traits. I gather that being extremely rich in modern times, means you are significantly better at taking/extracting your time/energy/money from your surrounding envrionment. In modern times, your environment is increasingly other people, and social darwinism is increasingly social cannibalism.
Since middle adolescence I've been fearful of being rich. Today sane people justly think I'm crazy/masachistic for not geting after that $60k chemical engineer salary. I have to explain that I'm not ready for the responsibility, and I get frustrated that the responsibility part needs further explanation. I've always been afraid that being rich would encourage me doing harm to others for preserving my own excessive interests and that life would run away from me. Money is power, and power is responibility. Responsibility is a bitch. For me the balance is not a question of how much money I want, but how much responsibility my conscience can tolerate.
Monday, October 12, 2009
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