For a few brief moments, I ran alongside Darth Vader this morning.
Yes, really. A local retired Marine legally changed his name a year or two ago to Darth Vader. In 2015, he ran 13 half marathons and 18 Tough Mudders. He runs every race with an American flag, gas mask and backpack. He’s also dealt with leukemia and a bone marrow disorder (awaiting a transplant). Wore a brace on his lower left leg and I guess he needs a knee replacement.
We had a half and a 5K in town this morning. The two courses overlapped for the first 1/2 of the 5K and despite the 5K starting 15 minutes after the half, I caught up to Vader about a mile into the 5K (I didn’t know his backstory until 12 hours after my race finished).
He finished the half in 3:18, and he was next to last. He never goes out for speed, and he probably gets stopped a lot for handshakes on the course. But he goes out and races almost every weekend, and averages a half every month.
And here I am, bitching that I felt like I half-assed my 5K. I should just STFU.
It appears that not only are some of the birds picky about what they’re eating, they’re flinging the seed out of the feeder to get at the bits they like. But that gives me an idea on a different type of feed to try. Just have to remember which store I saw it at.
As much of a nuisance as the squirrels have been for digging in my flower beds last year, at least they’re fairly tidy eaters and it’s kind of amusing watching them hang upside down to get at the one feeder that has the fruit and nut mix.
It’s amazing what one crossover cable plugged into a computer can do to your network.
Background: I’ve been complaining for weeks that the network in my classroom is messed up, and that it’s the wiring. I’ve built a new domain, wiped all of the computers and installed from scratch, and tried a different switch, but the network is still slow and dropping packets like mad. I got my hands on a cable tester yesterday and tested the worst system’s cable and found out that it was a crossover cable, not a regular cable, so I replaced it. Today, the entire network is running better. I’m still going to test the rest of the cables as I find time, and I still want the backbone from the switch to the IDF changed from a Cat5 to Cat5e or Cat6, but still, the improvement is pretty amazing.
Interesting. Was it a homemade or crappy cable?
When I’ve seen switch specs that say auto-negotiation for x/=, I’ve always thought of it being used for uplink. I guess in theory, it should work for using a crossover, but good to know that isn’t necessarily the case in the real world.
Why is it that the only light my wife consistently turns off after she has finished is the one in the garage, and only when I am out and need it left on?
And no, she swears she doesn’t do it deliberately.
Is the laundry in the garage? Mine is, and I have had similar experience, even though the garage light switch is really inconveniently located - you have to know where it is and it is a stretch to reach from the vicinity of the doorway, and you have to be actually in the garage before it is remotely close enough to reach.
Are there any visions of the future that aren’t dystopian horror shows on the American Experiment?
Star Trek comes closest, but it doesn’t seem like distinctly American future.
Most of the time we’re looking at megacorp controlled governments (Anime, Demolition Man), the Americans/Japanese fault. Or America turns into a Theocracy (RAH), or an overpopulated dumbed down fortress state (Hmm, seems familiar). Even in near future movies like Independence Day the government knew all along and is bad.
Where is the American Dream in popular science fiction? The heroes often seem to integrate the American ideals, but they certainly didn’t learn those in the societies they came out of.
I know the Western story dynamic requires the hero to be flawed, which I assume covers the hero’s origin as well. But can’t we have a successful American future story? Go ahead and throw aliens at it and blow it up, but can we not be the bad guy, or the failure that started it all for a change? Or am I just in a bad mood today?
Or maybe I need to watch Space Above and Beyond again.
