Changed the blog address

I’m horrible at picking blog names. I sit and sit and think and think about something witty. I finally impress myself enough to move ahead only to realize I was riding a “blog name” high and am not witty at all. There are people that are genetically engineered to come up with the slickest blog names. Laura has always wanted me to go with “Opinions Vary” from our favorite schlock film: Road House.

I’m going to stick with “Citizen Bloomington” from now on. Yeah, not all the content is going to be about Bloomington. But what if this sucker goes Hollywood someday? I’ll be throwing down down triple latte machiatos (whatever the hell those are) with Wilmer Valderrama and that dude from the “Transformers Movie” and “Indiana Jones versus The Aliens” at a Starbucks in Beverly Hills, all the while acknowledging my humble roots and the people who were jealous of my rise to the top. I just hope that George Lucas’ digital version of Me is less chunky and more hunky. (if audiences can handle it, that is)

So, I’ve strayed off topic. The blog name has changed, fool. Did you really need to read this to figure that out?

 

Early impressions of Giant Twist Hybrid Electric Bike

I’ll try and get a more complete review up in the next few days after I’ve had the chance to put my new bike through its paces, but I spent an hour this evening tooling around Bloomington on my new Giant Twist Hybrid Electric Bike. All I can say is: wow! Those hills that I’ve been bitching about to my wife the past few weeks: piece of cake. I got all the way to the office at an average speed of about 15 mph without breaking a shirt-soaking sweat or getting up off the seat to grind. That’s not to say that my legs didn’t do any work, but they weren’t completely paralyzed when I got home either. 

In general, I find that the 4th gear does everything I need, except if I’m starting in on a steep hill after a stop sign. There was only one spot where I really had to exert a lot of effort. (And it’s right where I was expecting to). On the north side of 10th Street there’s a bike path that runs along the street between the road and Tulip Tree Apartments. The path doesn’t have a ramp to get across the North Drive (to Hilltop Gardens), so you either 1) have to jump the curb, or 2) run into it and look like a chump. I opted for the second method and had to walk the bike up the curb, then start that 140% incline in first gear. But I still frickin’ did it. Bloomington City Planners: 0. Cyborg-Assisted Bicyclists: 1. 

I even got stopped by someone at the corner of 7th and Union that wanted to know more about the bike. He recognized it as an electric bike and said he had one, too. As I was riding off, he ran into a rant about how electric bikes are going to cure our dependency on foreign oil and end all wars. So, I rode back and listened to his crazy ramblings, all the while thinking: this is one cool dude who I totally want to hang out with on Thanksgiving. My bike has already made me a new friend. I’m going to have to give it some extra special electricity tonight.

 

Second iPhone 2.0 hard crash

My iPhone crashed hard on me again this afternoon. It gets into a state where it’s constantly booting. All I see is that demonic apple logo staring at me….not receiving phone calls, I might add. Holding the power and home buttons just cycles it back into the same state. ITunes doesn’t recognize it. The only way to fix it is to hook it up to the computer, hold the home and power buttons down, wait for a reboot cycle to complete back to the persistent apple logo, then release the power button (but not the home button). ITunes recognizes it and does a complete restore back to factory settings. Then you have to reactive and resynch.

I’ve been synching my applications back up for about an hour now. It’s horrifically slow.

A colleague had the same problem on Thursday. I think the commonality is that we’re all trying to do application updates over the air, rather than via iTunes and a USB cable. C’mon Apple. Fix this. It’s a nuisance when I have time to deal with it and have access to my laptop. It’s crippling if it were to happen when I’m traveling and actually need the phone.

The 2.1 software update had better fix this nastiness.

 

Breakfast in Franklin

Laura, Olivia and I had breakfast with my mom in downtown Franklin this morning. I spent a considerable amount of time the prior evening trying to track down a local restaurant to visit on Saturday morning for breakfast. Weekend breakfasts are a big ordeal for us, and we want to make sure we’re not going to Denny’s every time we visit my mom. We picked three potentials, but landed at the D & D Club. It’s really called the Don and Dona’s Club, but they shorten it for the benefit of us nerds, I’m sure. The food was about what you’d expect from any greasy spoon. There were American flags on the menu, and Fox News was on every channel, if you know what I mean. There was also a farmer-type fellow who spoke in the most indecipherable Indiana drawl I’ve yet encountered. I coudn’t understand anything other than every 7th or 8th word. The conversation went like this:

Trucker Hat: “….minutes….smile….pancake….beetle….Heh heh!”

Me: “uh-huh. Those homo fruitcakes are a group to watch out for, sir!”

So that was that.

We were interrupted by the waitress who delivered my biscuits and gravy on a heaping plate. It was more gravy than biscuit, to be honest. Too much for human consumption. I noticed a few sideways stares when I told my mom about the funny thing one of our friend’s 3-year old said at his birthday party a few weekends ago: “if George Bush and John McCain were to take a shower, they’d still stink”. We also talked about the recent New Yorker cover satirizing the Obama rumors, but I suspect the joke was lost on this crowd and they somehow would have thought the New Yorker was going conservative.

But we’ll be going back again. Who can refuse a pound and a half of gravy?

We decided to walk the breakfast off with a tour of downtown Franklin. It was blazingly hot, so we were all saying a little thanks to Best Buy and Walmart for helping destroy the downtown square. There just wasn’t much to see. A lawyer’s office here, a bar there. An antique store.

But what’s this? An honest to God pharmacy? Like, one that doesn’t start with “C” and end in “S”? Holy shit! There may be life here after all. Maybe this warrants another look. Wow! A children’s store!

The “Imagination Station” is a true gem. We took our 1 year-old in and she had a blast. Their toy selection was stellar (though, I didn’t see any automoblox, to my dismay). In the back, a woman was setting up a small room with a low-table and teeny chairs for a tea party. They have story-time. They have imaginative wall art. They have wooden toys. It was wonderful. I could have bought a lot more, but I want to make sure we pace ourselves and have an excuse to visit the next time we go to grandma’s house. It all makes me think that Olivia should get the larger room upstairs that we’re using for the den. When we checked out, they asked for my e-mail address so they could put me on announcements. I normally shun those lists, but even though Franklin is a good hours drive away, I had them add me. Perhaps we’ll run up there sometime when Olivia gets a bit older.

 

Trying out the iphone app

I’m testing out the iPhone interface to WordPress. I find myself disappointed that it doesn’t do horizontal orientation. I doubt I’ll be able to post very fast with this. For now, I’ll just be limited to short posts.