From Niralth

1.) The first bite of an excellent meal
2.) Walking out of the office, after a really productive day of work
3.) Listening to someone talk about something they’re really passionate about.
4.) Creative collaboration
5.) Swimming
6.) Having my dog walk up, climb up on the couch, and curl up next to me
7.) When Ei-Nyung’s home before I am, and she greets me on the porch
8.) Sitting around with good friends, doing nothing
9.) Sitting around with good friends, doing something
10.) The “Eureka” moment, when a problem that you’ve been struggling with suddenly has an incredibly elegant, non-obvious solution.

Been watching a variety of competitive reality TV recently, from Hell’s Kitchen (my favorite of the bunch) to So You Think You Can Dance, and Rockstar: Supernova, which are two of Ei-Nyung’s many addictions. The thing that’s really occurred to me recently is that a lot of the contestants on a lot of these reality shows, even when you get down to the last 10 contestants, are *obviously* never going to win. Either they don’t have the talent to do so, or they’re simply not a right fit for the contest, in a situation like Rockstar. On Rockstar, it’s so clear that there’s maybe two people in the running, at the *most*. On Hell’s Kitchen, the same thing – for the judging process to have any integrity, there’s honestly only maybe two people who could *possibly* win.

But for some reason, you often hear the fodder talking smack about how they’re gonna win it all, and it’s strange – I wonder if I were in that situation, if I were a generic college folk rocker, trying out to be the lead singer for a metal band, if I’d just go, “You know, maybe this isn’t the right thing for me,” and finish the competition without saying, “I’m AWESOME, and if you don’t realize it, you’re a LOSER!”

*shrugs*

Maybe I wouldn’t know. Maybe I wouldn’t care, because really, if what your goal is is stardom, you just need people to remember you. And a whole lot more people are going to remember Sara, from psychobitch from Hell’s Kitchen, than her meek, quiet competitor Maribel, who will fade from the public’s consciousness in a matter of … who?

Still – It’s just weird to see people who are so, so obviously out of their league competing for something – it’s almost boring to watch, because you know that for the next five weeks, nothing of consequence is going to happen…

Ah, well. Whatever.

Currently, the song I’m listening to the most is Sweetness, by Fischerspooner. It’s sort of weird, because a lot of the parts of it are relatively … I dunno, “obvious” seems to be the word that comes to mind. The bassline’s basically an arpeggiator, and the beats are really straightforward sounding 808-y electro drums. But there’s something undeniably catchy about it, and even though it’s not necessarily technically interesting, there are a lot of really appealing sounds in the song, coupled with a distorted, highly effected vocal track that just … works. Apparently, their big “hit” was a song called Emerge, which is also good, but not nearly as… compelling to listen to. Sweetness just as a depth to the layers of sound, and there’s always something you can focus on, and all the different tracks work so well together.

Wacky stuff.

I love the Ariel Atom, but realize I’ll probably never be able to get one. Same goes for the Lotus Elise. There are practical considerations to be made, which sucks, but whatever.

Still, all that aside, if I had $80K, I’d buy a car from here

http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php?js_enabled=1

without a second thought.

An electric car that goes 250 miles on a charge, 0-60 in 4 seconds flat, and looks like THAT?

Sign me up.

* The Prestige
* Children of Men
* The Fountain
* Renaissance
* The Science of Sleep

So, made the ride home in about 35 minutes. Took a slightly longer, but flatter route home, and it was pretty quick. Given that I’m currently absolute crap on the hills, this was probably actually a faster route overall. Yeah, the last uphill to the house is murder on me right now, but at least I made it to the top.

I think maybe the saddle I’ve got is ok, the problem right now is that it’s pushed too far forward, and because the wider part of it is hitting the insides of my thighs, it’s quite uncomfortable. I think this is easily fixed by just pulling it back a bit. Right now, the riding position is *so* far forward that a lot of my weight is sitting on my hands. The other problem is that for some idiot reason, I’ve got GripShift-length handlebar padding, which puts the transition from padding to no padding right in the middle of my hand, coincidentally exactly where the DS’s corners hit my palms, and makes my hands go numb. Which is good, I suppose, since I’m putting a lot of my body weight on ’em. Whee.

So, definitely got some adjusting to do, but it’s actually really nice to be able to ride to work. I’m hoping that I can make this a MWF thing, though I’d suspect that if I can do MW then that’s as much as I can currently hope for. T/TH are currently YMCA evenings, so that would get me up to 4 workouts a week again (we fell of the boat after the honeymoon, and have currently only been going 2-3 times a week).

Honestly, if I can force myself to cycle to work even marginally regularly, this’ll go a huge way towards getting me back in shape.

I wish I could muster up that sort of positive feeling about work, but it’s just not there right now. It doesn’t feel like a challenge. Hopefully that’ll change soon, but damn…

Biked in to work today. That’s the first time in about six years I’ve actually ridden my bike, which is incredibly pathetic. It’s an old Cannondale Super-V, which I got while I was in college, after my Slingshot got stolen. It’s a neat bike – turned out to be one of the better implementations of early dual suspension, but has been surpassed in about every way between say, ’97 and now.

Still, it’s a surprisingly good-looking bike, and with a couple tweaks, I think it’ll be fine as a commuter ride. It *definitely* needs a new seat. It’s got a Selle Italia Flite Ti, and holy crap, it’s hard. Not one of the newer style saddles that takes pressure off the sensitive bits, either. Not really all that comfortable. I even have a hard time imagining it was *ever* comfortable… but I suppose there was a time when I was used to it.

The ride to work’s not bad – about 4 miles, mostly flat, with one hill near the start. On the way home, it’ll be a slight uphill incline with a nasty hill right at the end. But hey, whatever. Should be fun.

If the makers of Forza 2 for the 360 have any sense, they’ll include Top Gear’s test track as one of the courses in the game.

I’m pretty sure I first heard of this at Chuck’s blog, but Sci-Fi has the pilot of The Amazing Screw-on Head on their website. It’s quite interesting. I wouldn’t have thought Mike Mignola’s visual style would translate at all to animation, but there’s something about it that just looks … right. It’s appropriately weird, the voice acting’s really good, and the whole manner of storytelling works really well. There’s a “video phone,” for instance, that’s entirely mechanical, and the effect is surprisingly good.

http://www.scifi.com/amazingscrewonhead/

I just got a rejection letter … from the place I was hired at a month ago.

Now, that’s maybe the weirdest thing that’s happened all week.