yet another reason to move to the West Coast

one of my favorite Austin restaurants is closing and being replaced by yet another Mexican restaurant. I am getting sick and tired of the downtown condo/Dallas types fucking up this city. Santa Cruz, Oakland, or Portland are all sounding more and more fantastic. Although it is nice living close to downtown, I am finding fewer and fewer reasons to go there. The very small list of favorite restaurants has gotten even smaller.

The Great Skua

nice instrumental song.

riding more and avoiding the heat

I think this is the third straight week of 100-degree plus weather down in Austin, so riding in the early morning and riding more mountain bike than road, are the best ways to avoid the heat this summer. I have gotten up twice this week for 6:30 AM greenbelt SS and mt. bonnel road rides -- it is still in the 80's, but there is a slight breeze and I dont feel beaten down by the sun after a few hours. I also went to Walnut Creek for an evening ride -- there is enough tree cover there to make it bearable -- the trails were great, I discovered a new-to-me section of singletrack. However, it took 45 minutes to drive the 12 miles up there, the traffic is fucking awful. I pray I never have to do a North -South Austin commute again.
My goal is to ride about 10 hours a week for the next few weeks and then try bumping it up to 12 through the end of October. So far I have gotten roughly 6 hours this week. A short ride tommorrow and a 2 1/2 to 3-hour ride Sunday should do the trick.

revelations

I just finished watching the semi-finale for Battlestar Galactica. Saul giving himself up as a Cylon to save the fleet was heart-wrenching. He has become the most developed and sympathetic character in the series, more human than human. The coordinates for earth suddenly popping up in the ghost Viper's nav computer was a bit too deus ex machina, but it is becoming clearer and clearer that someone is pulling the strings from afar. Finding earth as a post-apocalyptic wasteland came as no surprise to me. I still hold my theory stands that everyone is a Cylon -- the cycle of Cylon rebelling and destroying their creators/ becoming "human" and forgetting their Cylon origin/creating Cylon children. It is still unclear to me whether humans/Cylons began on Kobol or on Earth. I like the idea that humans initially created Cylons on earth before FTL drives were created as their expeditionary explorers to find and settle new worlds for mankind. Perhaps Kobol was the first colony founded by the Cylons, and they made a decision there to become human and forget their synthesized origins and begin the cycle there.

the slip

I downloaded the latest NIN release, The Slip, earlier this week and have finally gotten around to listening to it in detail. There are some great songs on it -- "Head Down" is my current favorite. Ghosts I-IV was a nice album, but for me it never amounted to more than fun background music. The Slip has real songs on it, more traditional structures and guitar/vocal parts, and what sounds like real drums. I am still a sucker for simple hard rock, so I imagine I will still be listening to this later in the year.

danskin

girlfriend finished her first triathlon today and she did au-some!

Lost Finale

forgot to post about this last week. Lost Finale? Excellent. It went down very closely to what I expected, I knew the island would be moved in time and space, but I was thrown off that the mechanism did indeed appear to be a frozen donkey wheel, pretty sneaky and hidden in plain sight since the finale was announced to be "The Frozen Donkey Wheel" last year.

The dark matter hint in the Marvin Candle video still gives credence to my many worlds theory, but there is not much to back that up concretely with anything other than the duplicate bunnies in the Candle Orchid video released last year. I was hoping to a flashback to the aircraft from last year, but I did not get it. I still suspect the aircraft on the bottom of the ocean really does have the dead "original" Flight 815.

As for Locke being in the coffin, my theory last year was it was either Michael or Locke, (who else could it have been?) and it became clear halfway through the season that Michael would be making a heroic sacrifice to redeem himself. But why did the island let Locke die? If it was not done with him, as it does not seem to be with Jack or any of the Oceanic 6, or Ben or it would not let him die..hmm. Could the Locke in the coffin be a duplicate generated when the island moved? Or maybe the original? One who actually survived the crash into the ocean? At minimum, the Locke character will not really die but will exist in flashbacks for the next two seasons. And he will probably be back in the "Zombie Season" -- which I though was a joke when Damon mentioned it on the podcasts, but now I am paying attention to thanks to the donkey wheel..

remodel architect?

pretty sensible and experienced guy. Stuff looks good.

a diesel a4 avant and..

THIS, please..

many universe theory in Lost

I dont know whether there will actually be a giant frozen donkey wheel under the island tonight, but I am starting to think Damon and Carl have the quantum many universe theory as a key structural element of their story. The revelation earlier this season that there is a Oceanic Flight 815 jet at the bottom of the ocean has many both in the show and watching the show believing it is a fake. Perhaps it is real. Perhaps the island forced a quantum singularity where one possible outcome of the jet crashed into the ocean, and the other crashed into the island...
I think evidence pointing to this will be the big reveal tonight.

last night's lost

pretty good episode, but it was a bit of a tease -- not much happened on island time, it seemed like most of the episode was spent in the flash-forward, where we find out when Jack learns his sister is Claire, and we find Hugo learning the island wont let him go as the numbers still appear. The episode had a few comedic moments, such as the "voices" leading to a surprise party, and the 15-year old saltines, all made me chuckle. I was under the mistaken impression that last night was the season finale, so I was miffed when the episode ended suddenly. So...two weeks until the 2-hr finale.

mellow johnnys

I checked out Mr. Armstrong's new bike shop during lunch today. No sign of any of the Olsen twins, very disappointing. Lots of Trek bikes, big surprise there, but they also carried Seven Cycles, Merckx, De Sola, as well. And they had a bunch of fixed gear and commuter bikes, from Swobo and Masi amongst others. Clothing -- Swobo, Rapha, were represented. They have a coffee bar there as well, with the workstands in the center, not much room to wrench. I forget to check out the showers, but it was a pretty nice store overall, a bit more competition for BSS is a good thing -- I noticed a few BSS employees had defected to the shop.

sinus..

..infection. I hate Austin allergies. Slacked off on my neti pot and now I have 2 weeks of antibiotics. !@%^&$*@?

7 years of hope mini's, time for a change...

I am tired of all the retraction problems I have had with my hope mini disc brakes. The nasty DOT4 fluid is no fun to work with, and although I have gotten used to the squeal sounds, I always seem to startle people not used to it. And the two-piece rotors? Hate 'em. Impossible to true, and they get out of true easily.

I am going to give magura a try..

the week in BSG and Lost

I am enjoying the fact that BSG and Lost are both showing new episodes at the same time, one night after the other other. It cannot get much better than that. Too bad it will end in another week. I believe BSG season 4 is being split into two 10-episode segments, so episode 10 is next week after last Friday's "Faith". I have no idea when the last 10 episodes will air. And Lost is winding up Season 4 and wont be back until next year. So this nice synchronicity will probably not happen again.
So theories..
-Locke is going to move the island but will pay a heavy price -- perhaps he will become trapped in the cabin?
-The weird switch on Keamy is a deadman's switch that will blow the freighter. It wont get triggered.
- Desmond will end up back on the island, much to his surprise.

And as for BSG, excellent episode on Friday, with the revelation that the final 5 are from earth, which dovetails with the
theory that everyone is a cylon. This also explains how Tigh existed before the "First" Cylon war. So my theory is:

- Kobal is the first settlement of cylons sent from earth.
(a) Cylons decide to forget they are synthetic and exist as humans.
-the "humans" re-create the cylons
-the cylons rebel and Kobal is destroyed
-the "humans" flee back towards earth
-the cylons cannot stay on Kobal, so they settle 12 other worlds.
-goto (a)

I am now doubting Roslin is the fifth, and I would be pissed if the fifth was a minor character, I think it is in fact the obvious choice -- Baltar - he is going to unite them all after Roslin dies.

I feel great!

battlestar galactica theory

pulling out my greek mythology expertise, there are 12 olympic gods and goddesses, there are known to be 12 cylon models.
The 12 olympic gods are:
zeus(m)
poseidon(m)
hades(m)
hestia(f)
hera(f)
ares(m)
athena(f)
apollo(m)
aphrodite(f)
hermes(m)
artimis(f)
hephaestus(m)
-----------
7 male, 5 female

the Cylon Models:
One/Brother Cavil(m)
Two/ Conoy(m)
Three / D'Anna(f)
Four / Simon (m)
Five / Aaron (m)
Six / Caprica (f)
Eight / Athena/Boomer (f)
and the final 4/5 :
Anders(m), Tyrol(m),Foster(f).Tigh(m)

which gives 7 male, 4 female. I am not sure if mapping the models directly to a god works very well, however the 7:5 ratio seems likely to be kept. So who could the final one be?

The possible ones are Thrace(f), Baltar(m), and the President(f). All three have visions, which is think is a key indicator. Thrace's apparent resurrection makes her seem highly likely, but I suspect she is a red herring, too obvious. And Baltar seems like a good suspect as well, but he is male, so he does not fit. My money's on the president, it would be a shocker. Thrace would be too obvious.

road riding in LA

I visited my friends Brendan and Meredith in LA this past weekend. Brendan, his friend Mark, and I did 65 mile ride that included a ride past one of Michael Eisner's estates, several other "compounds" (scientology ?), the pacific coast highway, and a return ride through some downright steep roads including Mullholand Drive. I am glad I was borrowing a cyclocross bike with low gearing -- I was spinning away at 32:28 quite a bit.

more DSLR

so the rumor mill states that the 5DmkII will come out in about 2 weeks, will have proper weather sealing. Hopefully it will have a better frame rate than the current 5d. The current 5d's poor sealing rules it out for me. So I think I am down to 5DMkII versus D300, assuming the 5DMkII is not terribly overpriced.

DSLR

Nikon vs Canon? Probably Canon. I like the controls on them better, however the D300 is an excellent camera. The Canon 5d is a lot cheaper these days, but I am curious to see what its imminent replacement will be in terms of price. I am spoiled by live preview on my Canon G9, it would be nice if the firmware and CPU on my DSLR were of comparable features. The Canon 40d seems to be at the right price point for me . The D300 seems to have better weather sealing though. hmmm. hmmm.