So, over Memorial Day weekend I went bike shopping. Talk about choices. I started at Champaign Cycle. They carry Trek’s, Gary Fisher’s, and Klein’s. The guy that I initially talked to was very helpful. He asked what I was going to use the bike for, and then, amazingly enough, started me off on the cheapest bikes. I told him how much I was looking to spend, and then he brought me around to those. Unfortunately Saturdays (especially good weather weekends), are probably the busiest days for bike shops. Needless to say, the guy that initially started helping me got bogged down with another customer as I took out the Trek 8000 for a ride. I then asked the other guy what exactly going to the 8500 got me. Obviously the components change, but how much does that really change the feel of the bike? So, he told me to go for a ride on it and see. For one, shifting was obviously smoother. Granted, if I took it someplace other than a sidewalk, I could probably tell more of a difference, but the shifting alone was enough. Now, as nice as the shifting was, it was priced a little more than I wanted to spend.
I told them I’d have to think about it, and then headed over to Durst Cycle. Now, they sell Cannondale’s, Schwinn’s, and Giant’s. So, I head in, and the place is packed. It takes me forever to get any help over by the Cannondales. Finally, after 10-20 minutes of standing around, a guy helps me out. I tell him about how much I want to spend, what some of the components are on the Trek I’m looking at, and he points me to the Cannondale F600 and the Giant XTC 1. The Cannondale felt like a good bike, comparable to the Trek. However the Giant felt cheap and flimsy. They didn’t have any of the F600’s in stock in my size and color. So, the sales guy took down my name and number and said he’d call Cannondale on Tuesday and then let me know (also on Tuesday).
So now I take about 30 minutes to cool off on the bike browsing and head over to a friends and ride his Cannondale with him. It’s a nice bike, nothing to complain about. The bike of his that I rode was more of an easy-rider bike than I was looking for. So, I then headed back to Champaign Cycle to talk about upgrading the brakes to disc brakes. The guy gave me some numbers, but told me he wasn’t very informative about what’s good and what’s bad. Instead he said to come by on Tuesday and talk to Brandon about them.
Tuesday rolls around, and I head in to talk to Brandon about disc brakes over my lunch hour. He gives me the general low down, and then I did some of my own research. I didn’t want to say yay or nay to them because I was still waiting to hear back from Durst.
Needless to say I didn’t hear back from Durst. Talk about crappy service. Granted I’m not laying down huge amounts of money, but still nothing to sneeze about. So, today after still not hearing back from Durst, I again went in to Champaign Cycle during my lunch hour and ordered my bike. Unfortunately they don’t have the 2004 Trek 8000 in my size in stock, so I need to wait a few more days. They did, however, have the 2003 version in my size in stock. I elected not to grab that one because it was only discounted $50 and it doesn’t have the necessary hubs and wheels to upgrade to disc brakes in the future.
I’m so excited for it to come.
At the Fitness Center, the treadmills that they have, have heartrate monitors. It’s always fun to see what my heartrate is like after my runs. Now, there’s a chart on it for how high your heartrate should be depending on what age you are. For people around 20 60% I believe is 120bmp, and 100% should be 200bpm. Now, after running my normal 2 miles, I grabbed the sensor to find that my heartrate was 77bpm. Now, I’m thinking to myself, this seems a wee bit low, so I let go of it, wait a few seconds, then grab it again. 81bpm. Obviously I have a busted machine, so I brush it off and go lift.
After lifting, I come back to the same machine and walk a little to cool off. I grab the heart rate monitor as soon as I jump on though. 110bpm. It’s quite scarey that lifting accelerates my heart that much more than running for 2 miles. Now, it’s not that I’m not working while I’m running, by the time I’m done I’m sweating. It just seemed very weird last night…
So, I went to the fitness center a little earlier today to do my normal run and lifting regiment. I happened to jump on a treadmill with under 1 minute left in the Illinois, Ohio State game. I find it hilarious how excited people get about things that happen on the TV. It’s right up there with people who, when referring to a sports team, use the pronoun “we.” I’ve noticed that many people from Chicago have this affliction, but then again, it could be just the number of Chicago people slummin in the corn field. I find it equally hilarious that I work for the athletics dept, and I couldn’t care. How many of these people screaming at the TV wouldn’t just love to have a job working with all these people?
I don’t really have much else to talk about right now. I just found that quite funny today.
Well, yesterday I got my center channel and rears from the ebay auction. Weehaw, now I’m just waiting on 200’ of 12 guage speaker wire that I ordered from partsexpress. Apparantly it shipped today, and since they’re only in OH, I figure it may be here tomorrow or Wednesday. I also recieved my valentines day gift today (a little late, but I’ll forgive you Colleen). I ended up getting an Arc’teryx RT 45. I’m definitely glad I went with the bigger size, because the bag doesn’t poof out that much, so there isn’t that much space. It will work great as a day pack when I start heading down South in the spring though. Plus, it’s waterproof, which I like a lot. It’s going to be fun getting gear to fill it :)
I’ve been going to the gym and climbing regularily, which I love. It actually hurts to type on the keyboard right now because I just got back from the climbing gym not more than an hour ago. One of the guy’s that works there, Arie, really likes to try and kill me. I guess it’s my own fault though, since I try to keep up. I sometimes scare myself on what I can keep up with though.
Yesterday I went to the fitness center and did my usual routine. Yesterday happened to be the midarms, legs and abs day. Needless to say the Jacks pizza I had before I left didn’t sit with me too well. I definitely think it’s because of the abs workout. I hate feeling nauseated while not at home. Well, at least I made it home before worshipping the porcelain god. It was definitely one of those times where I knew I didn’t have the flu or anything, because as soon as it was over, I felt fine. Needless to say, when I went climbing today, I didn’t eat anything before hand :)
Ack, I hate getting sick like that. I hate the way it feels like I have a sore throat afterwards. The scratchiness causes my mouth to salivate more than normal, and I just hate it. I guess I’d never be a good bulimic, or is it anorexic, or both. I always forget.
Anyways, my fingers are really getting sensitive, so I’m going to eat ice cream or something.
Yeah, I know it’s been awhile since I posted last, but I have excuses. Lots of excuses, bwahahahah. Let’s see, Monday I went climbing, Tuesday Colleen and I went to look at packs at Champaign Surplus and there was a climbing meeting, Wednesday we went climbing again, and Thursday we met her dad in Springfield for dinner. See, I told you I got mad excuses!
Anyways, on to the title. So, I went and worked out tonight (actually I just got home before I started posting this), and as I was driving home at night, it felt like I was missing something. Of course, the reason I’m sharing this with all of you is because I’m not quite sure what it is. It just feels like there’s something missing. I go to work, come home and either go climbing, go workout, or sit on the couch. I then go to bed, and then rinse and repeat. I’ve been trying to find hobbies to get into (e.g. marine fish aquariums), but who knows if that will fix my void. Maybe if I could go outside and do stuff. However, being isolated in the middle of a corn field can allow you to do only so much. Or maybe it’s the lack of a group of friends that I can call up and go do stuff with.
Works been decent, but I’d hardly call it fufilling. I’m pretty much just doing the same stuff over and over. I really need to take my MCP test, but I’m not a fan of tests. For the most part I’m ready for it, I just need to get motivated, put 2-3 days of review in, and go take it. I wish there was some way in which people (read, employers) could see that I know the material without having to take a stupid test. I mean, so many people that just user braindumps take the tests anyways that the waters are so diluted. I really want to get on the ball with the getting my MCSE over and done with. It’s not that I don’t find the material interesting, it’s just that reading about it is the worst. Now, when I was having DNS problems on my home network, it was great to go to a book, read about it and then implement the fix (or try to at least). However, just reading the book to read and take a test defeats the whole purpose. It just plain sucks. I just need to keep telling myself, once I get my MCSE, I’ll go back and get my master’s. I don’t know what yet, but it will definitely be something technology related, because LAS is a joke (no offense LAS people, but it is to me).
Maybe that will cure my hunger, but I doubt it.
Sunday I’m going to meet the guy that I won the speakers off ebay, somewhere in the middle of IL at a walmart. Should be a good time. I need to measure Colleen’s car to ensure that they’ll fit, otherwise, I’m going to have to take my truck, and I really don’t want to do that, since they may bang around in the back. I can’t wait to get them and try em out.
Man, the apt reeks of bacon. I must remember to do the bacon in the oven instead of on the stove. Our stupid hood over the stove vents back out into the room, instead of outside (who thought of that, I don’t know…). Needless to say, it was a nice smog fest. And I wonder why we don’t have batteries in the fire alarm. Oh yeah, if we cook anything on the stove it goes off…
This is going to be a pretty short update because I don’t have a lot of control of my arms, and I want to start testing for what could become the new rebelpeon.com.
Well, Colleen and I finally got our subscription to the fitness center. This is why I can’t really feel my arms. I probably did a little too much for the first time back in, oh, about a year of lifting. It felt so good though, that I just couldn’t stop. I can definitely tell that climbing has increased my upper body strength because I was actually able to lift more now than I was a year ago. I’m definitely looking forward to getting into a routine between the fitness center and climbing. So far, I’m thinking Mon & Weds I’ll climb, and I’ll workout Tues & Thurs. That leaves me with the weekend free to (hopefully soon) start climbing down south. Man, it feels good to be pumped again. Hopefully the feeling won’t wear off, and I’ll be able to keep this up for awhile.
In website related news, I implemented a comments system on test.rebelpeon.com. It actually works fairly well, but there are a few things that bother me about it. First of all, the number of comments doesn’t update until you refresh the page. And second of all, I haven’t figured out a way to put the title (which in my case is the date) of the entry in the comments. Feel free to try and break it, or test it out as you see fit. I don’t think it’s going to last. I’m going to bring up a test server and try out MovableType instead of beating my head in with fixing those 2 problems (which I’ve been doing for the last few days). It seems to be promising. Hopefully, I can use it in place of my current blog technique, but still be able to customize it enough that it doesn’t look like all the other database driven sites. What I really want to do, is just have the database part, essentially, the text that I’m writing here, and the rest of my site (what surrounds my blog) by whatever I want. I think with the way that I’m currently doing it with iframes, may allow me to. That would be the coolest. However, MovableType needs MySQL to function. Yet another fun thing to play with. From what I heard, it’s not too bad. I mean Nick installed it for his forums, so it can’t be that bad. ;)
Off to work on new possibilities…