A large and grey cloud scared me enough to not bike today. Breaking the habit caused me to feel depressed - a psychological paradigm for our obsession with routine.
Tonight, I discovered that the front-page free download on iTunes is Justice’s “D.A.N.C.E.” I was wildly excited to find this out. Wildly excited because I was first introduced to the band via the music video for the same song. Killer. I think I’m just a sucker for home-screened tees.
The weather is beginning to turn thunderstormey. Forecasts are typically early, giving you 10 or 12 hours of leeway, in case you need to roll your car windows up or bring the dog inside. Even though The Weather Channel had a 50% forecast for rain starting early this afternoon, I understood that to mean late tonight or by tomorrow afternoon. So, I cycled some, easy-going, just long enough to watch the road fly underneath my moving limbs. My only reprimand was the overcast sky, suggesting you just might should have listened to those weather people because I just might start raining any second. I told it to suck it up until I finished. It was an empty threat, I discovered.
Now, I wait on a pizza delivery. When I called, I asked for their specials on multiples of the same thing. I found out that 3 medium cheese pizzas - the only type I would have considered anyways - are reasonably priced. I just hope my refrigerator has enough room for the leftovers. I assume the fridge is currently still packed with chilled or frozen bagels (I stock up, seriously) and vegetables. But my penchant for reheated pizza will overcome such struggles. I. Love. Microwaved. Pizza. Call it a guilty pleasure, if you must.
This is a calm summer day, worthy of waiting on a pizza delivery, listening to some early Cash, watching the sun progressively get tired of dealing with the clouds and call it quits for another day.
Having a few tech support calls under my belt, so far all faculty-related, I am beginning to pool my patience resources. While I was in Tampa, I was surrounded by the most knowledgeable Mac geeks I have ever met, save two or three friends who have an exceptional geek status. In my conversations with a few of those Apple campus reps from the east coast region, we would probe the other’s comprehension of technologic understanding and ability to follow Mac rumors. A favorite friend-find of mine was Nathan. We would try and talk about something Mac-related and new but before one of us got ten words into a phrase the other would shake his head vigorously to signal that it was pointless to reiterate long-memorized rumors or facts. I perhaps have never met anyone else who so aggressively updates the MacRumors RSS as I do - the only thing keeping me from setting it as a homepage is my embarassment that such a shameful lust would find its way to the public internet. For all to see. Or read about. ..
Anyways. That type of interaction is something I need to forget about, and quickly. My tech support experience thus far suggests I should prepare to be as calm and encouraging and as patient as I can. And then maintain that for two hours. Luckily, though, I haven’t come across the angry people. They’re out there. Somewhere. Waiting for my bad day.
The good news is that my Apple stuff is beginning to trickle through the postal service systems. I really want those business cards. Hard. I think the bookstore wants them more, so they can send me all of the questions they loathe answering.
I have wondered if the reason I equate my campus rep predecessor, Nik, with patience is the tech support interaction support itself. It probably won’t take long to find out.
Though moving in the air at 500 mph is exhilarating on paper, the experience is often dampened by nothing-special cloud formations or the general overcast presence.Take-off and landing are the real fun: jet turbines pushing at almost maximum thrust, enormous angle of attacks on the wings as they curl to grab as much lift as possible, and 200some passengers (representing a wonderfully pure Bell cure for demographic) all experience an uncomfortable 1.5 g’s of acceleration.
Really. I love take-off.
Still, flight is a wonderful experience and makes me appreciate the science & engineering spirit capable of devising something like cambers, jet turbines, and the most mysterious plumbing arrangements known to man.
The contrast to the magnitude of FLIGHT is exemplified in my cycling. Cruising over the hills of Ellet Valley at an average 24 mph is nothing near the brute force required to achieve Mach 0.7. Yet, contrary to passenger flight, cycling grants you the experience of the changing winds, changing sun/shade ratio, and changing bug-in-air densities. And, on those serious climbs, you watch the road surface change - what appears to be generally smooth poking along in a car is actually pervious enough for a thin cycling tire to be bullied around.
Yesterday, at mile 17, I stopped for some water and half of a Clif bar. The scenery was agricultural and pasture-like, unusually green, too. The saturation of color from the green fields to the rich blue sky was flawless; I’m fairly certain the typical “Enhance” feature for digital photographs of this landscape would find itself twiddling its thumbs.
In the sky, some 30,000 above me, was a large jet, providing the natural contrails as an easy method to follow its past course. Here I was, on some Virginia back road, soaking evening sun, while my porous body provided salty water to cool my externals, which were fairly well becoming covered with gnats and road dust. A million thoughts flooded my mind at that moment: climate change, the domination of engineering civilizations, my baby nephew, living 10 years from now, more water and Clif bar.
Again, I looked at the jet liner, stretching my neck back more than was purely comfortable. While I balanced my bike with one hand, I took the other and waved. Thinking of this past weekend and my flights to and fro Tampa, I could only have hoped for the same treatment.
The region in which Virginia Tech sits, according to the demarcation of Apple Higher Ed, is sometimes called South and sometimes called Southeast. So, SXSE, if you don’t mind. To gather the region’s campus reps together, a Marriot in Tampa was chosen to host the whole hoopla.
A mere 24 hours of effective working time was available given the restrictions imposed by everyone’s flights. In fact, I only spent 30 hours in Tampa, myself. So the sessions and activities were as fast-paced as is practical. (For the record, the only appearance of Steve Jobs was a viewing of the D5: All Things Digital video interview with Walt Mossberg, from this past week - which I had already watched, twice.)
Safe to say, the highlight was the lavish food that was tossed our way. I had been to The Cheesecake Factory before, but not for a full meal. And this time, desserts were mandatory. I ordered Black Out cake - the richest, most-chocolatey cake ever to make contact with my lips. It was so dark as to blend in with the black to-go container it arrived in; the whipped cream appeared to either float above a chasm or bravely resist being sucked into the blackness itself. Each bite was an adventure, aging my internal organs by five years but granting me the pleasures of previously unbeknownst euphoria.
The food helped us cope with the sometimes unnecessarily quick trot of the entire weekend. It was impossible to fathom that, when Erika, the other VT rep, and I were leaving Tampa Saturday evening, we had only arrived Friday at lunch. Rocket-fast. I usually am not fan of the typecasted “networking” aspect of these training events, but it was seriously important to hear other’s comments and past gripes about internal issues. Hearing complaints about a job allow me to anticipate those situations and then respond to them with the experience of someone who has already wasted time because of them.
Anyways. Back to light work and heavy cycling in Blacksburg. Also, congrats to Nik & Tara for completing their from-Blacksburg move; thanks for setting me up so well while I queu for the ever-looming house down the street.