The dead hard drive

The iMac has been getting pretty sluggish lately, and here I thought it was safari. Trying to clean it up, I noticed iTunes wasn't playing a particular song I like. That got me into a 'that song is not authorized' 'this computer is authorized' loop. Then I tried updating iTunes and that was it. Checked permissions and found a mess. Tried to fix that and got the fatal 'invalid node structure'.

I dropped it off at the apple store on the way home. As soon as I told him the story he said it was time to replace the hard drive. He did the same diagnostic, and got the same result. A new hard drive is almost twice the size of the dead one, and only a couple hundred dollars. Right now I'm all calm because there is a back up. It's worked before.

That means I'm blogging on the iPad, so I won't have as much to say, and there won't be comments. The iPad hates doing blog comments.

My legs still felt great all afternoon after yesterday's excellent run. It wasn't quite the mythical runners high you guys all talk about, but it was easily the nicest run this year, and that includes the Bermuda beach runs.

The swim today was happy-making too. My stroke is coming back, and my arms aren't protesting as much.

The brutal activity was ballroom dance again. Mambo, or Samba. One of them, and I can't tell them apart, and I can't hear the beat of the music even with my ear glasses. The foxtrot they do is quite different than the foxtrot I know. It's almost harder to do a different version of a known dance, than to learn a new dance. This is harder on my knees and legs than running is. Only 11 more classes. I can make it. I hope.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The great cat de-spooring

Although we do have great cats, as distinguished from big cats, though one of them is pretty big for a house cat, it's actually the de-spooring that was great. As in a huge effort. Hours worth. Here's me after a small part of de-spooring the actual cat, after Linda had spent some time on the furniture. You can't even see all the cat fur on my shorts. I should use that material like a chamois, it would probably work better than a comb.

Here he is, despondent after all the fur he placed so carefully in our house, has been vacuumed and sticky rollered up. Cat paw buffering quilts washed. Slip covers washed. All that hard cat work, washed away. It would be worthy of an entry in the sad cat diaries. He's probably sent the entry off already.

Here she is, sleeping off the rigours of socializing so much. She was a much admired cat today.

We had hoped to play some croquet today, but the rain washed away those plans. Maybe next year.

No fitness today, unless you count the diminishing weight bicep curl.
Maybe some writing tonight, I think I've figured out how to rewrite a scene for more action and suspense.

Naaco truck love

The swim is coming along. Up to 500 m, just over 10 minutes. Slow. At least my arms aren't falling off.  Oddly enough the pool is still mostly empty. That can't last much longer. There was another 20 minutes of kick and pull, and some pitiful intervals. My inner shark is in hiding for fear his shark buddies will make fun of him hanging out with me. Or something.

I've been meaning to try the Naaco truck ever since the Calgary food trucks burst onto the scene. Somehow it's never worked out till now. There was a Sundown Chowdown at Calgary Farmer's Market this evening. There was rain threatening so we decided to get there early, do some other shopping, and move it along.

Here's some of the trucks, including Fiasco Gelato with another awesome selection of gelato. Sometimes choosing between them is really hard, and I've had some excellent meals from the trucks. You can see the storm building in the background, but Calgarians love their food trucks, and won't let the possibility of rain get in the way of a good time.

Buried at the far end is the Naaco Truck.

And here it is!

I had the beef vindaloo, sort of a pile of beef, with lots of veggies and yummy sauce, on an open pita. Did I say it was yummy? Linda had the chipolte chickpeas, and really liked it. Both were very fresh, tasty and zingy, without being an assault on your taste buds. It was just the right amount of food.

Maybe next year I'll have to make it a goal to get something from each of the trucks during the summer. I'd thought of that earlier this year, but never did anything with it. Such a task would require a bit of planning and organization, to say nothing of food truck stalking. Trying to bag the elusive ones that don't show up so much could be hard. Maybe they're shy, though that's hard to believe.

Then some shopping for goodies. Yum Bakery. High Country Bison which is now being turned into chili. Lots of fruit. The hand made ice cream we love. The market was a bit quieter than normal.

The short work week zoomed by with hardly any time spent on the novel, other than things chugging over in my brain. Plus Beakerhead is coming up soon, and that will take time too. Expect to see a bunch of photos out of that.

The introduction to Borg life

So, a couple days with my new ear glasses. Feeling lost already? Read this to catch up.

Meetings at work are much better, even in the horrible room with the really loud ventilation. I can actually hear people now. It makes me wonder what I've missed.

Normally I don't have music on my phone; I keep the room for photos and stuff. I've been playing music into my ears at work for a while, but being wireless is awesome! I've yanked the earbuds out several times as I turn to scribble something on my whiteboard. Now I can do that no problem. I can even go to the small kitchen to top up on water and 4 times out of 5 the music carries on.

I can even carry on a conversation with the music going, because I tend to play it quite softly. Acoustic and classical sounds much better than through ear buds. Rock not so good. Yes, I'm hearing more stuff even in familiar music. Only two people have noticed, my office roomie and my buddy Lori I had lunch with the other day. If you know Lori D, send good thoughts to Regina on Sunday, she is doing the marathon.

For tonight's run I wanted to get the phone slaved to the ear glasses, and experiment a bit. It didn't work at first, but then I tried again and the bluetooth hooked up and started playing music. Nice. Then Linda called me. Without touching the phone the music dimmed, I answered the call, and chatted. She had no trouble hearing me, and I had none hearing her.

The acid test was taking it for  a run. There was a bit of breakup when I had it in my back pocket, but it was about the same carrying it. Not sure why. The music dimmed obediently for the Runmeter announcements every K. Hearing them up till now was totally dependent on ambient noise. Almost anything would drown it out. Now it goes into my ears and life is good. They don't move at all.

In order to make the bluetooth work there is a receiver to wear. It's the biggest thing of all, and is suggested to wear as a lanyard. I wear it under my shirt and it works fine. It didn't bounce around during the run at all. I wonder how it will deal with getting sweaty. I may have to find or make a little bag for it.

I'm still getting the volume controls sorted out, and getting used to having them in my ear canals. I'm glad I've warmed up with the ear buds. A couple times I've had to take them out, and scratch and tug at my ear. It tickles a little bit sometimes.

The most annoying thing so far is the muted sleigh bells I hear if something brushes against the top of the ear part. I'm not sure if that's normal, or if there is an adjustment that can take that out. Here's what one of them looks like.

Wed I swam in the morning, then water ran with Katie. I got a bit further swimming, but the water feel was very erratic. A couple laps felt good, but the last couple were slow and floppy. It will take a while to come around.

The run started clunky, very clunky, and gradually improved. Toward the end it was feeling pretty good. The main idea was to just get out and do it. 4K, 27 minutes. Hot and humid for Calgary, so I'm a sweaty unit once I got home.

Even the cats are hot. Here is Curtis being very languid.

First step to being Borg

Humans view prosthetics with varying degrees of alarm. At the moment, eye glasses are considered normal, though with the advancement of eye surgery they become an anachronism. Until very recently, prosthetics to replace a limb have been feeble replacements of of the functionality offered by our limbs, and there is still a long way to go.

For a long time hearing aids were almost worse than poor hearing. Linda's mom often complained that it didn't work very well. In fact, hearing aids have a bit of a bad rap in our society. For some reason people don't like the idea of wearing them. Maybe because there is the association with old age and senility.

I've known for some time that my hearing had degenerated. One day I woke up with tinnitus. It was after a work function at Shanks that was effing loud. At the time I didn't think much of the ringing in my ears. I'd had it before after rock concerts and other noisy experiences. Then it didn't go away. After a while I got it checked out and found out there is no cure. It didn't bother me much; I mainly thought of it as a bit of hiss on the soundtrack of my life.

Over the last couple of years I've noticed it has become much harder to pull voices out of background noise. So hard that often I don't bother. It would just get buried in the tinnitus. Then in a retirement book I read about people leaving hearing aids till it was too late, when even the best of them won't help. In some senses the brain can forget how to hear. I didn't want that to happen so I went for a hearing assessment.

Of course they want to sell hearing aids. (Why don't we call them ear glasses?) But I've taken these tests before, and I knew before it finished I wasn't hearing things I used to. The doctor showed me the graph. My hearing is normal in the low and into mid range. From there and higher frequencies it drops off big time. This is something ear glasses can help with, often quite dramatically.

I was fitted today, and holy crap! I never knew my car keys jingled against my leg when driving. I thought this keyboard was completely silent, but it's not, the space bar rattles a bit, and I've never heard it before. I'm looking forward to my first meeting at work. Lately I've found them a bit frustrating.

The bonus is that these ones come with a blue tooth receiver. I've already hooked my iphone and ipad to it. I can now play music at work directly into my ear glasses, no cord to get in my way. If the phone rings it will switch to that. I don't even need to take it out of my pocket, unless I want to see who's calling. As I read the manuals, I think I can persuade it to tell me who's calling, if the phone knows. I can put music on the phone, since I take that with me on runs, play the music into my ear glasses, and whenever Runmeter has an update it will dim the music for that, and switch back. I"m gathering it will cope with a phone call during a run as well. Not that anyone wants to hear me panting, some of them might get the wrong idea.

It's early days yet. The mechanism is tiny, and so far the ear piece for my eye glasses are jostling for space on top of my ear, and adding the sunglasses is a bit of a complication. When my hat rubs against the ear glasses there is a bit of a hollow rattling sound. But they didn't move even slightly during the run. The hearing doctor wears them during hot yoga. While they are water resistant, they are not water proof, so I can't wear them swimming.

So far, I'm impressed. My own voice sounds different. I might just have to go through my entire music collection and listen to it again. Just the bit I'm listening to now sounds quite different. It's not louder, it just seems more clear, and of course, there is more of the upper range sound. It's much more balanced.

I can easily see where the mechanisms will get smaller and smaller, to the point they are implanted permanently. Already there are contacts that can be worn for extended periods. People think nothing of having their phone remember things for them, look up things they don't know, or can't bring to mind at the moment. It's essentially a prosthetic for our brains. The phones are getting smaller too, to the point where the size limitation is the eyes and fingers that have to use it. Once they reliably figure out how to feed the visual output from the phone directly into our eye, implantation becomes an option.

There is lots of potential there. When people can phone each other just by asking their phone to, and nobody else hears the conversation, that's just the first step. Eventually things like group conference calls, and Webex seminars will happen entirely within our heads, and our implanted technology. How is that different than the Borg?

I mentioned going for a run. Just a short one, 4K, 27 minutes, with a bit of working fairly hard when I was warmed up.

I'm not sure what those big spikes are, I don't remember slowing down there. Overall it felt really good. My legs are a bit tired after, which is a huge change from feeling stressed or all pre-injury-achey.  Or maybe that's just the Borg inserting thoughts into my brain.

How about you? We're generally a healthy bunch, but what prosthetics do you use? Eye or ear glasses, dentures, artificial joints, pacemakers, artificial kidney or liver or heart, limbs, or what?

Floating, Yes. Actual swimming, somewhat

The Talisman pool is open, at last. It's a mood experience now. Normally it's brilliantly lighted, with additional sunshine coming in through the big windows of the training pool.

Now the lights are out on the competition pool. There are panels to herd you directly from the locker rooms to the training pool. It feels very unusual. They think the competition pool will open in another month, and in the mean time there won't be much solo lane swimming.

It was so nice to get back into the water. It's been more than two months for me. I was pleased to find that my stroke is rusty but serviceable, leading to lap times just a bit slower than what I'm used to. Just not very many laps. 250 m and my arms were ready to fall off. I switched to dolphin kick (with fins of course) and settled into 100 m kick, 100 m swim, alternating between front and back on the kick. That felt pretty good.

With her usual good timing my buddy Katie showed up for water running. I was happy to join her and give my arms a rest. We had a wonderful chat getting caught up. Overall I swam a bit less than 30 minutes, and water ran maybe an hour and 15 minutes or so. Once I got out on deck again I felt heavy.

Being in the water did a world of good for my legs, and for me in general. I've always liked being in the water. It's very soothing to feel it flow past your body, and it works your whole body in ways that running or biking don't. I'm looking forward to swimming lots over the fall as I try to get back into shape.

The rest of our day was a nice drive in the country to Dewinton and Black Diamond. I'm still cleaning up my blog from all the drool you guys left behind the description of the bison, so I won't discuss the chicken dinner tonight. It's been a wonderful long weekend here, 4 days of relaxing and puttering about. Hope yours was just as nice!

And yes, my blog roll has changed a bit. Thank you for noticing. My process as I discover blogs is to add them to an evaluation bookmark folder. After a while, if they stay current, and more importantly, continue to interest me, eventually they make the big time. Meaning my blog roll. There have been a few fitness blogs added, but there have also been some writing related blogs as well, and a couple of political blogs have probably snuck in. You can see the latest 25 shown, and more appear if you click the little show all button.

Some people break up their blog roll into different sections. One I follow has several sections. I've been musing about this for a while, and am interested in your feedback about this. Do you follow blogs by topic, and wish all the riffraff (as defined by you) would get sorted out of my blog? Do you like one longish list because it's easy to see when your favourite blog (after mine, of course) is updated? Feel free to comment.

A few have disappeared off the bottom. If someone hasn't updated for a long time, I assume they have moved on to other things that amuse them more. I wish them well, and hope they have fun. As the saying goes, so long and thanks for all the fish.

In a bit of foreshadowing, tomorrow my world changes. Look for an evocative blog title.

Bison. Tenderloin. Free Range Organic. BBQ

OK, you're drooling already, I get that, and I haven't even talked about the two different specialty marinades Linda made. Or her potato salad that I love, which is hard for me to say after a traumatic childhood incident. To say nothing of two kinds of specialty shop ice cream with fresh organic raspberries on top, eaten out on the patio in shady warmth.

Saturday we zoomed down Road to Nepal to get to the Millarville Farmer's Market to get a few things. There was a surprising number of bikes out, even though it was still early. I was missing the ride, but there is no way I'll be up for it this year, unless we get a really long Calgary summer. Like November long. My calves are still tender from the massage the other day. The rest of the day was quiet, with only mental struggles on the novel. I figured out how to resolve the temporal dispute between several of the bits, and am happily piecing more things together. The big question, which guy does Ceridwen pick? The bad boy/good boy that she can have, or the too good boy who she shouldn't fall for because of complicated circumstances?

Sunday is another beautiful perfect day out there. I got started on my run along with the heat of the day, and had a good solid run. 7 K, 47 minutes, one bottle of fluid with Nuun. Not quite as light and happy as the other day, but still good considering my (really really deep and firm) massage the other day. I was aiming for a fairly easy pace, and try to go a little longer. Lots of other people out running.

Long stretch after the run, then house chores. Then the BBQ, and good news!

Talisman pool is open!! Just the training pool, but still. Now to see if I still remember how to float. Tonight will be more novel struggles.

From here on it's photos for fun. I should make you guess what this is, but it's clouds from the other day.

Curtis, in a catnip haze. You can see some on his fur. Yes, we drug our cats. Don't judge us.

Leana posted a photo of her neat, tidy, well organized, efficient, beautiful bling wall. I am overcome with admiration. Oh, it's on Facebook, so no link. Sorry. Here is mine.

Yeah. With a side of this where I can see it on my bike trainer. More yeah. Some of hers are framed, even.

This is the potato salad before mixing. The cooking cognoscenti among you will recognize the ingredients.