Clayton’s Weblog

I took Paul to see Journey to the Center of the Earth this afternoon. I had forgotten it was in 3d until we were walking in and they handed us polarized 3d glasses. He seemed to really enjoy it, although I didn’t notice until the credits that he was dodging things coming out of the screen

Either I’m insanely lucky, or Etymotic ER6’s are incredibly well made.  I ran mine through the washing machine and then through the dryer (on high heat, for about an hour).  I had a horrible sinking feeling when I saw them fall on the floor when I was taking clothes out.  However, the net effect appears to be that the foam ear tips are cleaner.

I’m listening to Pandora through them on my laptop now, and they sound great as usual.

I noticed this morning when I uploaded 8 tracks to Motionbased that I’ve apparently passed the 1000 miles ridden point, almost 1100 miles. If I ride in 4 times a week on average, then I’ll come pretty close to 1500 miles for the first year of bike commuting to work.
I’ve also lost around 40-45 lb over those miles, although dieting had a lot to do with it. I’m definitely in better shape, and I definitely have a lot more defintion in my legs than I did before. I also have some really weird tan lines, especially on my feet since I usually wear sandals when riding.

Overall I’m pretty happy with bike commuting. It takes about twice as long to get to work (30min vs an hour, with showering), but it’s still a lot faster than going to the gym, plus it’s a lot cheaper overall.

So I noticed this CL ad on Saturday evening, and immediately mailed the seller to find out if it was still available, thinking it definitely wouldn’t be. She mailed me back this morning saying it was available, and I could come see it/buy it any time between 3pm, and 9pm, so I mailed her back asking for her address and making sure it’d be ok to be there at 3pm.

She mailed me and said 3pm was fine, and gave me her address, in NW DC (about 20-25mi from our house). I headed out around 2pm and managed to get parking around 2:45 a few blocks from her apt. I sat down on a bench a house or two down from her place to wait until 3pm. Around 2:50, I see a family wheeling a Burley trailer out. I initially figured it must be the seller but when they started loading it into their Honda Element, I had a sinking feeling and went up and rang the call button for the address the seller gave me. As you’ve probably guessed, she sold it immediately before I got there, even though I thought I had made an appointment with her.

Needless to say, I was pissed. These trailers sell for $300-350 new, and regularly sell for over $200 used, so a $75 price was insanely good. On top of that, I basically wasted a trip into DC.

So when I got home, I had the following email from the seller:

I’m terribly sorry. I had 2 Clayton’s scheduled to come at the same time! Please send your mailing address; I’d like to reimburse you for gas.

Obviously she feels bad that she screwed up, but we’re only talking about $6 in gas. The biggest cost is the two hours I wasted going out there and back, and the fact that I’m still looking for a trailer.

Well, and only 0.06% of the US population has the name Clayton. I’ve never met another person named Clayton.

So I’ve finally managed to get under, and stay under 180lb for a period of time. Back a few months ago, I managed to weigh in under 180 once or twice, but never could stay under. So I guess it’s official that I’ve lost about 40-45lb now. I think I still need to lose another 5-10lb, but I’m pretty close to where I’d like to be now after about a year of on and off weight loss.

Jeffery Veen quoted Nietzsche:

To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence. – Friedrich Nietzsche

And he goes on to argue that this is another way of looking at the old “users are stupid” adage. He says “Users aren’t stupid, they’re efficient,” and I largely agree.

However, this only works because users are generally providing value back, either in the form of payment, feedback, community, etc.

This also applies to the “people are stupid” adage, but not in nearly so positive a light. An “efficent” co-worker, or friend doesn’t necessarily provide value back to you. It’s frequently just as likely that they’re efficent only from their own perspective, and they find it much easier to ask me to do whatever task for them, regardless of how long it may take me to do it.
This is a good thing to keep in mind, especially in a work environment. It’s frequently not efficent for you to do things for other people even though they would love for you to. It may be more up front effort to teach them how to do something new, but if they’re going to be at your desk every other day asking for it, you need to ask yourself if that’s time-effective for either of you.

Sometimes when you tell people you’ll show them how, or point them to documentation, will think this is “putting them off”, and refuse to put in the effort to try for themselves, but I try to emphasize that I’ll be happy to help them with any problems they have, if they give it a try.

The flip side is that everyone can’t know how to do everything. There is a large gray area between the specialist and generalist, and both ends are gunuinely useful. Sometimes it does make sense for you to be the goto person for certain tasks, as long as there is some plan for when you’re not around.

I forgot to mention that I posted the log of my W&OD ride on Motionbased.  I also took some pictures of the Lucky Stone Quarry on my way through.

I took my first ride out on the W&OD this weekend and I managed to do 40 miles, which is about double what I’ve done in a single ride before. I started out in Herndon, around the 20 mile marker, and rode out to Paeonian Springs. I stopped at a small grocery there and had lunch, mostly because they have the only marked bathrooms between Leesburg and Purceville.

I really enjoyed the ride and I’ve not seen so many cyclists in one place before. It was something I expected, but still a different experience. I’d also heard that the trail gets pretty crowded on the weekend, and it was, but not to an extent where it at all a hassle. One nice thing compared to other multi-use paths I’ve been on in the past is that none of the pedestrians seem to get phased by bikes passing them at 15-20mph, and all of them seem to know to stay to the right side of the path. I’m guessing this is because the bikes outnumber the pedestrians by a large margin, so they learn quick, but it’s a nice change.

I was really wiped out for most of the day after the ride. I wasn’t sore (although I am a little today), but I mostly just wanted to take a nap.
I think it’d be nice to be able to get out and do this sort of thing every week or two.
I’m thinking next time I’d like to do mile 20 to mile 0 on the W&OD or maybe Mount Vernon trail.

Well, due to being sick with a cold pretty much the entire holidays, I did manage to not gain 10lb while visiting relatives. In fact at one point I was 195, but I think that’s mostly due to me being sick. I’ve managed to stay under 200 though.

Also, since I’d been sick and out of town, it’s been about 2.5 weeks since I last did any real exercising. So I got on the bike for about 25-30 min this morning, and as expected it I was a bit slower than normal, but it wasn’t particularly arduous or anything either.