Cycling Love

The only word to describe last week is cycling. Wednesday afternoon Will, Sarah, Alex, Jesse and I packed into Will's car and headed up to Rome to watch the circuit finish of the 2nd stage of the Tour de Georgia. It was a lot of fun... between all the fun people there and being so close to all the action, it was my favorite day of cycling watching to date.

Until Friday. Thursday night I decided to go up to Dalton with Reuben and Chet to volunteer at the Dalton start the next day. We again spent a ton of time in traffic. We spent the night at Chet's parent's house and got up early the next day. The first few hours were spent setting up barricades then draping then with banners (under the careful supervision of asinine I will micro-manage everything I'm ordinarily a salesman but right now I'm on a powertrip guy). Following that we had some breakfast and got to the most exciting part: holding bikes while the riders signed it. I was amazed, not only by the bikes but by all the cyclists as well. I was totally reliving my starstruck teenager days. We watched the Dalton start, which included a parade lap and the riders leaving across the bridge. We then hopped into the car and hurried to try to catch them climbing up Fort Mountain, but they beat us there so we headed onto Ellijay, where we watched them pass by and have lunch. We then went to Wolf Pen and watched them climb the mountain.

Friday was awesome because of how close we were to everything and because we got to follow them around. I felt like a groupie, but I'm alright with that.

Early Saturday morning (after Will called to wake me up because I overslept) I packed into the van with the other guys on the Cycling team and headed to Auburn for the last race (conference championships) of the season. Since I hadn't done any real riding in about a month due to the ankle, I dropped out of both the road race and the crit but had an awesome time watching anyway. A few of the guys had really awesome sprint finishes and I don't think I've ever laughed that much in 2 days. Between all the moonings and the pink polo pop-collar crit, it was one of the most fun few days I've ever spent... until the van broke down 55 miles south of the city. And even then, they guys were really entertaining, which helped the time pass.

Why I love the GT Cycling Team.

Only 1 Year Left

Last week I was in the process of filling out the application for Tech's Dual Degree Program... and now I'm not. I realized last week that I will finish my masters degree next May, and the thought of staying in school for another year and a half after that was just simply not appealing. I know, the time will pass quickly and if it's something that I really want, I should do it. But, I don't know that it would give me that much more access to what I want to do, on top of the fact that I barely have the motivation to finish this degree... or even this semester.

So, May 2007... the end of school. After that I plan on taking a few months to have the vacation that I've been waiting to have since before college started. Now accepting suggestions for things to do and places to visit.

Who knows, maybe I'll get one later in life. Like after I make a couple of babies.

The Age of Intolerance

I read several things today that really upset me and made me just outright mad... and scared. I'm scared of the direction that we're headed in and what will happen if people don't start standing up to those who seem to be trying to take away the rights that this country is supposed to protect.

I'm talking about hearing and reading on the news all day about states who want to establish official religions, of schools kicking students out because of their sexual preferences, and of students suing for the right to harass people that are different from them. Not to mention thousands turned violent because someone, who isn't a member of their religion, broke one of the rules of their religion. Maybe only the bad stuff does get reported, or the only ones who get heard are the loud, crazy ones. In either case, it's disturbing that some of this is even an issue.

I was also bothered after reading one of my favorite blogs ever, where the writer keeps receiving insulting e-mail and comments from those who disagree.

Let's get things straight. Your rights end when they start infringing upon mine. And vice versa. Sure, you have a right to disagree with homosexuality. But your right ends the second you start abusing a homosexual. There is a marked difference between saying you disagree with something and insulting someone because they're different. How disgusting is it that I'm even associated with a person (by going to the same school) who is suing for their right to be mean? Is that the same as burning some embassies because someone completely unrelated to you drew a picture that you think is bad?

Plus, show me the passages in the Bible that deal with homosexuality. Last I checked, it isn't dealt with in the 10 commandments (but adultery is... I'd like to see some statistics on super conservative christians and adultery). AND, show me where Christ teaches to hate someone because they are different or because they disagree with you. Is it just me, or didn't he try to teach the exact opposite?

It's people like that that make me want to distance myself from organized religion. Read here. On the other hand, there are those inspiring people like my dear roomie who refuse to judge others. Too bad tolerance doesn't get good media coverage.

And another thing. That whole first amendment, it means that Dooce is allowed to write about her family life and not have to read insulting emails from people who can't help but take everything seriously. It's one thing to email her and say "hey, i disagree"... it's another to send insults.

Different is not bad. And I'm sticking with that.

A few of my favorite (most useful) things

Will and I were having a conversation about Flickr and how awesome it is and it got me to thinking about all the new programs/technologies/applications that I enjoy that just make computing great (definitely magnified by the fact that I'm doing these things on a mac, but I'll save my favorite mac things for another time).

So, here goes (not necessarily in this order):

1. RSS Feeds

This is brilliant. Want to monitor 80 different news sites without having to check each individual one? Check. All your favorite blogs? Check. Newest Flickr photos? Check. Pollen trends for Atlanta? Yep, that too. In fact, these days I get irritated when a site doesn't offer an RSS feed. The other day I had to sign up for an email newsletter because a site I wanted (offering daily deals and tips) didn't have a feed. What a waste. But, monitoring feeds brings me to

2. Google Personalized Homepage

I have never really used an RSS reader. Before using Google, I used myyahoo. Google surpassed them. Who knows, maybe they're catching up, but so far I haven't had a reason to look back.

Email, news, craiglist, all my favorite blogs, flickr feeds and so much more. I monitor Reuters news, BBC news, Slate, huffingtonpost.com, dooce.com, flickr photos, del.icio.us feeds, Slashdot, digg and many many others. And now they're beginning to add more and more modules. It's awesome. I've actually had to read articles on how NOT to spend all your time in your rss reader. Because man is it easy to keep going back.

3. Blogging

What's a personalized homepage without a blog to monitor? A recent report on NPR said that there are thousands and thousands of blogs created every day. You can find just about anyone's perspective on just about anything. Not to mention keep up with friends. In my opinion, some of the best writing I read is done by bloggers.

4. Flickr

What's a blog without photos? I stumbled upon this over a year ago and it is awesome (back then it wasn't yet owned by yahoo...) It's extremely easy to upload photos and they can all be organized by tag or set or both. Flickr even records your camera data, the date you took it, the date you uploaded it, and many more. But what makes it so valuable beyond these features is the social aspect. No more emailing everyone the albums you've uploaded to *insert other service here.* You can comment on photos, mark them with notes, mark them as favorites, and save your friends to contacts so that you see their most recent every time. Better yet, all the photos are saved online, just in case.

5. Del.icio.us

What's one step beyond sharing photos? Social bookmarking. This is extremely useful and convenient. I discovered it through a link to Jen Lee's del.icio.us site (thanks Jen!) All of my bookmarks accesible everywhere, organized by tag. I also use this method to mark interesting articles for friends, which is really convenient since we just used to send emails full of links. Now I just monitor their del.icio.us feed of items tagged with my name.

6. Podcasts

I wasn't very big into podcasting initially, especially since I'm really bad about plugging my ipod in to update it (a dock might be useful for this purpose). However, recently NPR started offering more podcasts, specifically of their show Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, which I think is some of the best stuff on radio. I have since added about a gazillion more podcasts on my computer at work, which I listen to throughout the day.

7. Awesome websites

There are just a few websites that I particularly enjoy (that I feed to my homepage, of course), that I think are just either useful or cool or both.

wikipedia - who doesn't love it?

digg - you can really find some interesting stuff here

del.icio.us/popular - what everyone on del.icio.us is tagging

43folders.com - many useful tips for productivity, geared towards mac users

lifehacker.com - useful tips and info about anything you can imagine

craigslist - I'm going to find my mountain bike here

listible - want to know the top 10 of something? go here

NPR - need i say more?

Slate - gotta love it

BBC news - usually covers news about stuff here better than the news people here

macosxhints - because i'm obsessed with getting the most out of Snow White (this is just one of the many feeds i have regarding hints, software, and news about macs)

Media Matters for America - ever wonder how much mass media sucks or how wrong those people on tv are? here ya go

Two Weeks

The last time I was on my bike, let alone worked out at all, was two weeks ago today. Man does it suck. Why?

Because of this:
That happened on the 2nd night of the cruise, I was running to catch the elevator in evil flip flops (these pictures are from 3 or 4 days after, it had already begun to look much better). I rolled my ankle, the same way I had broken it almost exactly 4 years earlier. I was pretty upset: I kept thinking of all the bike riding I would be missing.

When I got back I went to the health center, where they told me (thankfully) that it wasn't fractured or broken. It continued to get better day by day, until the next Friday when I tried to ride my bike. It hadn't occurred to me that unclipping from the pedals was almost the same motion as how I hurt it.

Now, 5 days after that, I can fit my foot back into a shoe, but it is still pretty painful to walk and stairs are even more difficult. I'm anxious to get back to working out. I feel lazy, which I hate. It's still too early, but I'm hoping that if I take care of it well (fortunately I mostly just sit on my booty at work) I'll be able to go to spinning on Friday and ride on Saturday.

It was kinda sad to not ride in the UGA race (although I probably wouldn't have liked all the hills). I never intended on going to the race that is this weekend (I don't think going up a mountain would be fun... for me or the people who would have to wait around for me), so that leaves Auburn in a few weeks.

I may be cursed, last year I didn't make it past the Tech race either (bronchitis/pneumonia). I'm hoping to store my motivation right now so that I can get back on the bike and give it 110%.

The extra 10% comes from the steroids. :-)

I'm working on it, really!

I am still in the process of writing about Spring Break (it's taking longer cause I want to stick pictures in).

In other news, I have in my possession two of the best seats in the house to the next Nine Inch Nails concert here in Atlanta (June 7 at HiFi Buys Amphitheater), all made possible by my wonderful boyfriend. He gets a gazillion bonus points... to go with the gazillion more he already has for being my bitch when I am gimpy.