Ramblings.org http://ramblings.org Ramblings.org is a site devoted to the writing of one computer geek as he makes his way in the world. It will probably bore you. You've been warned. en-us Mon, 03 Nov 2008 13:24:40 EST http://ramblings.org/stuff/ramblings.xml RSS Writer 1.0 mreff@ramblings.org The Election http://ramblings.org/post.php?post=203 This sums up the election quite nicely.

]]> http://ramblings.org/post.php?post=203 Mon, 03 Nov 2008 13:11:40 EDT I like these guys http://ramblings.org/post.php?post=202 A couple of guys, one from MIT and the other from Harvard, are preparing to race in a mountain bike stage race next year. They don't yet know which crazy race they are going to enter, but they started a blog to chart their preparations. They are just getting started, but they wrote one thing so far that really stuck with me:

"Bike racing isn't about having a deathwish, or an ego, or needing an excuse to spend $5-10k on something shiny to impress your friends, it's about feeling alive--alive with real pain, real fear, the ecstatic joy of success and the devastation of defeat. It's about learning to appreciate the coffee shop and the hot cider because they're the polar opposite of everything you experience in racing. It's about having your life be more than a flatline of comfortable homogeneity that you trace from office to couch to restaurant until you get married, you have kids, you get old and you die. We race because we love life, and life is best experienced at its limits."

Well said.

]]> http://ramblings.org/post.php?post=202 Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:11:41 EDT Mtv did something right http://ramblings.org/post.php?post=201 It's been a long time since Mtv was good for anything. They started well. They even made it into the early 90's on solid footing. But then they stopped playing music videos...and that was a big mistake.

But they've taken a lot of the music videos they showed, and some that I'm pretty sure they never showed, and have put them online. The video quality is pretty good, too. There's plenty that I remember (sometimes that's not a good thing). And there is some stuff that I wish I appreciated back then.

They are some omissions; most notably they only include the short version of Metallica's video for "One." That short version should never have existed in the first place. Regardless of their latter day sins, that was a great song and video.

Go in! Explore! Remember why you loved music as a kid, and if you've lost that joy, keep exploring until you find it again.

]]> http://ramblings.org/post.php?post=201 Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:10:02 EDT Hangover http://ramblings.org/post.php?post=200 I'm still listening to The National. Yeah, my mood hasn't changed much.

I wrote this to a friend and I think it captures what being a Red Sox fan is like these days:

"On one level, I understand that I have no reason to gripe. The Red Sox have won two World Series this decade. They've made the playoffs consistently this decade. They made an improbable comeback even to make it past game 5. Losing that game 7 wasn't like the game 7 in 2003. That was a much different level of hurt.

"I think mostly I'm just feeling the aftereffects of all that adrenaline. Last night, my heart was pounding from the 6th inning on. I guess it just stinks that the party had to end. I'm just left with the hangover this morning."

There's no hair of the dog for this hangover.

]]> http://ramblings.org/post.php?post=200 Mon, 20 Oct 2008 11:10:32 EDT Changing of the Seasons http://ramblings.org/post.php?post=199 Well, another Autumn has arrived. A thrilling Red Sox playoff run has just ended, and I'm listening to The National (yeah, I'm in that kind of mood).

Despite the heartbreak of the Red Sox not winning another World Series (that's such a strange thing to say..."another" World Series), Fall is a really wonderful time to be in New England. Humidity, mosquitoes, and green leaves go by the wayside. Instead, the whole region explodes with brilliant color before November and December bring in the grey and the cold and inevitably, the snow.

What kind of world do we live in now, where scarecrows are cute and clowns are scary?

]]> http://ramblings.org/post.php?post=199 Mon, 20 Oct 2008 01:10:59 EDT