Author: Jon

A Perfect Storm of Laziness

In 2018, I biked 3,213 miles. About two thirds of that was on the longtail cargo bike, and much of THAT was hauling the kids as the three of us bumped up against the weight limit of the bike. I was in pretty fantastic shape for a guy who had just turned 40.

Enter 2019. March 8th, I tore my Achilles. It wouldn’t be until July 5th that I rode a bike again. In the meantime, the kids were growing and growing and I was really no longer able to haul both of them for any distance, even if they wanted me to, which they increasingly did not. Then 2020 came around and COVID took away most of my motivation to bike – who wants to ride somewhere when you can’t go inside?

My strategy to deal with all of this and keep my fitness level was to pretend it wasn’t happening, and this clearly isn’t working. I’ve tried nothing, and it isn’t working.

I’ve always been pretty good about keeping up with fitness so long as it didn’t take any real time out of my day. Now that I have to work at it, it’s not going so well.

Maybe don’t run five year old scripts without testing

So maybe in the future I should remind myself that mindlessly running a script you haven’t touched in 5+ years without bothering to back up your old blog is not exactly a smart decision. I think I’ve gotten things maybe 75% fixed, but it’s likely that the URLs aren’t the same as they used to be, so any old links from old blogs are probably dead. Good thing no one writes or reads blogs anymore.

Anyway, thinking of getting back into blogging again. I like to write. I’m not terrible at it, even if the bulk of the content on this blog suggests otherwise. It’s a great time to be blogging since no one cares about the medium anymore. Maybe I’ll have these auto-post to Instagram so the kids will see it and ignore it there instead of ignoring it here.

Did we learn nothing?

I have to admit that I watch very little TV these days. What I do watch is usually through our Roku, which I love. But I can’t help seeing these articles on putting Roku hardware into tvs, I can’t help thinking about TVs with built in VHS. Media players are always obsolete faster than TVs. Even the whole concept of a “smart TV” is kind of silly. I get it from a marketing perspective, but I really can’t understand what consumer would want this.

I’m in the New York Times!

I’m quoted in an article in the New York Times about [family biking] (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/23/style/families-ditch-cars-for-cargo-bikes.html?smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0 “Families Ditch Cars for Cargo Bikes”). Full disclosure – the author has kids at our kids’ school, and we’ve talked before about bikes, so it’s not like someone randomly found me and realized I was awesome or anything like that.

And I was in the Washington Post earlier this year, though purely by chance, and not in the online edition. A photographer got a picture of me taking the girls home from school and it was used in an article about DC charter schools because I happened to be passing by one when he snapped the photo.

I’m trying to decide what paper would really complete the trifecta. The Boston Globe, to keep up the East Coast thing? The LA Times to really branch out? Maybe a Chicago paper? I’m pulling for LA because, really, how the heck would I get into an LA paper?

Also, a note on the article – the author is aware that there are only quotes from men. What she submitted had quotes from women, and they didn’t make the final. I can’t speak to why that is, and I’m honestly not sure whether it’s better that the NYT editor did it on purpose, or that they are just that clueless. Either way, it’s absurd to ingore the women who are embracing cargo bikes instead of minivans. Anecdotally, I know more women who do it than men.

Stuff is broken

Having some problems with Mynt, the static site generator that I use to update this site. It stopped working at some point since I last posted forever ago. I’ve fixed most of the issues but you’ll notice you can’t get to older posts, and the previous and next links don’t work.

Should have it all fixed shortly.

A Tumblr for “I’m totally going to start blogging again” posts

I’m going to try to start blogging again for the millionth time. I really do enjoy blogging, I just get distracted, and it’s tough to actually do it from work, which is where I tend to get the ideas for blog posts. This time you know I’m serious, though, because I set a reminder on my phone to start blogging agian.

Over/Under on posts before I forget about this again is three.

Oh, corporations, how I love thee

ESPN – Goodell made $44.2 million in ’12

Roger Goodell got paid $44 million dollars in 2012 to manage a non-profit with revenue of $10 billion. I won’t argue he’s not worth that, because I have no idea and don’t really care. But it shows how out of whack everything is.

It’s also a little annoying that everywhere you see this revenue number attached to “the NFL”, but it’s not clear whether they mean the NFL as in the non-profit corporation, or the for-profit (mostly) teams that make up the NFL. This is significant because that’s a huge amout of tax revenue that is or isn’t being paid.

Google Translate gets confused

I love Google Voice. I love that it transcribes my voicemails and doesn’t make me sign in to something to check them and make the notifications disappear. But sometimes a machine isn’t the best option for transcription.

Especially when the voicemail is from the kids’ school, and the Google Transcription Bots are trying to write Spanish words as English. Not translate them, mind you. Just take the words spoken in Spanish and assume that the speaker just doesn’t enunciate well.

Here are some of my favorite examples.

  • This is a belly will message if it’s a mint okay babe. Bye.
  • It’s A. M on the buttercup. If you’d like to know your screen, or you can is gonna be included in it.
  • Maybe doing the ship but as soon as the net for the end of the video, and I will be buzz been restored. If you if he didn’t seem just with him.
  • If the M on the political modicum of the red Vista such Idaho 849 and again it is.
  • In that way. I’ll talk to you on and she’s up on the above. But I thought the dash.
  • Cenegenics for the Candidacy little bit of Sadat, my knee and not anything they did in May, enough it to know if I’m in the checks for the picking the D payment and have a Today, Cuevas think that in new I love this mail order.
  • At this moment I have. Anyway, this is a binding that customer him on the but I’ll be talking to ask him on the letter that the Santa point.
  • Give me a cliff mean development it.
  • I just had a most man with a step by step.
  • I thought 008 if you’ll send it.
  • Ohh. I don’t know the picking that you can make a deal. Cos the moment.
  • My nephew coming to someone that I have a good morning Linda with my family is a system is hitting way.
  • This is a bilingual message if I’m looking on the bottom ecosystem on that I stuff the shuttle point hey, My this is the victim active you on my team.
  • I’m calling to inform you that my number is closed today, Tuesday, December 10th due to the bad weather.
  • I mean. Just give a call back in to put it together see if you have a system in this is gonna going to go to the C. P. S.
  • In point, dot, com vicinity but I just got an estimate on my team I also want to remind you of our school policy to follow. D. C. P. S. Decisions regarding kosher or delay to to weather conditions which aggressive talked in town.
  • Thank you for your touch.