Jim’s Brain Online

Posted by Jim at March 15th, 2007

I’m training for a race. There’s not much to be said about that other than that it results in me running.

A lot.

Most recently, I’ve spent my time on the track inside the YMCA. There are a few hassles associated with that, but it does beat running in 2 degree weather.

Just recently though, it’s become possible to run outside. I’m thinking specifically of this Tuesday when the temperature reached 69 degrees. Awed by the melting snow and the warm weather, I donned my shorts, t-shirt and shoes to go out and do six miles. I walked a couple times, but overall had a good run.

I was amazed by the number of people outside, some of them grilling.

I overheard a couple people talking about me. I’m not saying they were talking about me personally because I don’t know these people at all. They were talking about my clothes.

I’m not aware that my clothes are worth talking about. I favor clothes that don’t stand out. In this case, the shorts were black and the shirt was gray (dating from my class’ high school graduation party). The shorts were short, but no shorter than most running shorts and certainly covered more than the Speedo I wore on the high school swim team.

Still as I passed, I heard a couple (amused sounding) women say:

“Look at those shorts!”

And later…

“Work it!”

Posted by Jim at March 10th, 2007

My wife plays music instruments (flute, piano and voice). I do too (bass guitar, trumpet, a small amount of piano, and voice), but unlike her I haven’t done much playing lately. I’m thinking I’d like to buy a new amp one of these days and then I’d at least be able to practice bass, but I haven’t yet. I’m also tempted to try to buy a bass Chapman Stick.

But back to the main point… My wife actually plays things regularly and thus bought a metronome recently.

For those of you who have forgotten, a metronome keeps an inhumanly steady beat, helping a musician learn how to play with the correct rhythm.

Unlike the metronomes I remember, it’s electronic and has a digital readout. What I find particularly odd is that the metronome never stops running. You just choose to have the sound off or on. Any time you look at the lcd, however, you will always find it on.

That’s when it works correctly.

When it doesn’t work correctly, the sound doesn’t stop either. You continually listen to a high pitch followed by three lower pitches (at least with 4/4 time) and it never stops. Even when you press the sound button, it stays on or stops briefly, but then just turns itself on again for no good reason.

Thus I spent much of this afternoon suddenly hearing…

High pitch
Low pitch
Low pitch
Low pitch

… in perfect 4/4 time. At the moment it started, I would run toward the metronome, press the “sound” button, hoping that the sound would end immediately.

It seldom did.

More often than not, I would press all the buttons on the stupid thing and it might for some random reason decide to briefly stop.

It would start again shortly thereafter.

After a few hours of random metronome noise I began to consider taking outside and placing it on the porch. Beating it with a hammer or taking it back to the store where Kristen bought it sounded like good alternate ideas.

Late in the afternoon, it occurred to Kristen to open the thing up and pull out the battery. Once we put the battery back in, the problems ceased entirely. Thus, it’s fixed.

For now.

Posted by Jim at March 6th, 2007

I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I got interested in Ruby on Rails late in 2005.

I messed around with it a bit, got an extensive hosting account with a Rails friendly provider (for my business), and then stopped doing much with it. This isn’t because it’s not interesting or I came to dislike Ruby on Rails, but rather because I got sick of not knowing ruby.

Though I imagine it would have been possible to just push through and teach myself ruby and Rails simultaneously, I decided that I’d be happier if I just concentrated on learning ruby for a bit–and that’s where I am now.

I’m thinking that I might post exercises that I’ve done online for everyone’s entertainment and criticism. We’ll see if that happens though. I’m not completely sure if I want to leave a permanent record of clueless coding online.

Posted by Jim at March 2nd, 2007

In a move worthy of some sort of gross out comedy, a local couple recieved body parts wrapped in plastic in their mail. Police are concerned that more body parts may be destined for other unsuspecting people.

Where, I wonder, does a person order body parts by mail? Do they have catalogs? Can you order them on Amazon.com? For that matter, I like to think that if I sent body parts by mail for a living I would be pretty careful about where they were sent.

For those of you with more interest I direct you to a local television station:

Body parts by mail…