Assorted Issues for the Month of May

My Web Logging Status

I recently mentioned that I'm busy at work, so I won't be updating this web log regularly through the summer. I'm thinking either two or three sloppy posts a week, or one really well-written post like this one.

Leadville Status

I got my Leadville packet in the mail. In the past, this has been a moment of great excitement. When I've seen the packet in the mail, I dropped the rest of the mail on the floor, shouted something loud and incomprehensible, and tinkled in my shorts a little bit. This time, it's different. I got the Leadville packet on Monday and still haven't opened it. It's just sitting there on the coffee table.

I don't know why I haven't opened the packet yet. Do I look like a psychologist? I'm sure one contributing factor has been the fact that I've had two nasty sicknesses this year -- bronchitis and a cold that kept me off the bike for two weeks. Another factor is my fat suit. I weigh the exact same amount that I weighed in January. I'm 182 pounds. Last year, I weighed 172 pounds for Leadville, and I missed the 12-hour mark by 25 minutes. Gulp. Yet another factor is the memory of last year's race. The whole experience was great, but the race itself was torture for the final eight hours. Do I really want to go through that again, only this time fatter, older, and slower?

AWOL Family

Wendy has an interesting job in which she gets paid half a salary year-round for working 26 weeks a year. She has some time off, so she took the boys to Indiana to visit her family. I'm swamped at work (see above), so I couldn't go. She and Kim drove the boys down to the Memphis area so the boys could spend time with their grandparents, uncles, and cousins from Wendy's side of the family. One of Wendy's brothers is a henpecked born-again christian who is married to a mean, 240-pound battle axe who allows children in her care to be scalded with hot water. The other brother is going through a nasty divorce. Here's how sad their situation is -- the extended family is working hard to get the children into a day care environment to improve the quality of their lives. It's pretty sad when a Mississippi day care facility is seen as a cure-all.

For the last two weeks, I've had the house to myself.

Nerdy Tech Talk

I'm allowed only one computer at work now, so I had to choose between a Mac and a PC. If it weren't for the fact that I need to use a Windows-only writing setup, it would have been a no-brainer -- Mac. I ordered the Mac anyway, and used a program called VMware Fusion to install a version of Windows that runs in a separate window on the Mac. I was skeptical at first, but I'm sold on it now. If you make it fill the screen, you can't tell you're using a Mac machine. My Mac has 4G of RAM, which is more than enough memory.

Here's what I love the most about this setup. When I installed everything I needed in Windows, I took a snapshot. You know how Windows machines get bloated after a year or two, and they run slower and take three times as long to start up? On the Mac, that's not going to happen. Instead of reinstalling Windows, I can just revert to my snapshot, install updates, and take another snapshot. For what I need to do, Windows works better on a Mac than on a PC. How do you like them apples?