Author: Lauren

Red bike on the Blue Ridge Parkway

Zen before breakfast

I found Zen! It happened on the bike this morning traveling south on the return leg to the house down Independence Parkway. My heart was steady at 55% of max. It’s a gentle downhill grade for a couple miles, and at 23 mph, the road spray coming off my front wheel was *just* clearing my helmet. The shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh of the tires over the wet pavement was the only sound to be...

Red bike on the parkway

My first century

Today, I rode 100 miles on my bicycle – actually, 101. I rolled out of the parking lot at XL Cycle Shop in Plano at 7:30 am with a group of dedicated crazy people – the official ride was canceled because of the cold weather and wind. As we rolled north out of the parking lot on Independence, I realized finally that I was going to do this thing! It was...

Lauren with the red Trek

New wheels

I’d planned to wait until I got down to 220 pounds, but I decided that a: 30 pounds lost was a huge milestone, b: 230 is a nice round number also, and c: the deal was too good to pass up. I spotted this Trek 1200 on Craig’s list this morning. I was afraid I was too late, as the ad had been posted last night, but I sent an e-mail....

Back to the stone ages of TV

Ok… so watching anything on a 46 inch rear projection DLP set is far from the stone ages, but the time has come to ditch cable. Ditch satellite. Ditch fiber to the premise. Customer service is king, they say, but it’s clear that the king is out to lunch. On the other hand, I’m fully convinced that there really is competition against the cable companies now. And I think that Netflix...

Customer service… Why bother?

Apparently, I’m not meant to watch television. I was terribly excited by Verizon’s FIOS TV service. Great picture quality. Competitive price. Then I called the customer service line to make a change. Heh. Soon I shall have to give up and build my own DVR and watch TV off an antenna. It took 45 minutes to get through to someone since I don’t have a Verizon phone line. I can’t even...

Ubuntu Circle of Friends

Dapper Drake… The next 24 hours

Well… I did it. I made it through a productive day of work with Ubuntu on my laptop. I may even try again another day. This article will be a little more technical (but probably not much more) than the tidbit that came out Sunday night. What’s missing? What’s great? Let’s find out… Let’s start with the what’s missing part… I’m a Microsoft Outlook addict. I have multiple accounts to make...

The trouble with e-mail

So… I saw Kelly Martin’s article on The Register sounding the death knell for e-mail. Not the first time I’ve heard it rung, and I sure hope not the last. E-mail is a great product – if you trust everyone using your network, or can discipline malcontents. Given the size and scope of the Internet, e-mail just doesn’t cut it. We need a system that authenticates senders. We need a system...

Remote threats

I’ll assume that by now you’ve been scared witless by the various adware, spyware and virus threats that have attempted to take over your PC in the past year. Some of you, no doubt, use Macs for the lure of safer surfing. You’ve doubtless learned by now that your laptop is in danger when you connect to public Wi-Fi hotspots (Why, Microsoft, won’t you allow us to automatically turn off exceptions...

US Visual Infrared Image

If NASA steps out

At dinner last night, Amanda asked me, “So, do you think NASA should be scrapped?” After a long, blank stare and a lot of blinking, I finally admitted I hadn’t thought about it. CPR skills come in handy at times like those, since I’m usually so opinionated. So, I thought about it. My internal philosophy seems to tell me that people are inherently good, government is inherently evil, and government programs...