The Evil Eyebrow

Category: Personal

  • Meme Me Baby One More Time

    Through channels, I learned of an interesting meme. Use google image search to run your name and blog about the one that pops up. Unfortunately, when you have a thorough flickr presence and an unusual last name, you end up having all of your own images at the top of the list.

    Beer Glass

    I find it interesting that this beer glass has made such a name for itself. It’s popped up in several places.

    But, as I said, that’s boring. Let’s try my initials, WMR. Apparently WMR involves 2.59 grams of MAXI-MAG!

    That is also boring. Let’s try BR.

    Much better. Furries!

  • Butt Blasting your Ears

    I run. You probably know this.

    I usually run with my Ipod nano, listening to music. Some people listen to podcasts, but I’ve never really gotten in to doing that while running.

    Unless I’m on a long run, during which I carry a waist belt with a water bottle, I stick the nano in a pocket of my running shorts. This can cause serious aural harm if, for example, you throw the music player in your back pocket without turning the “hold” button on. Then, after five minutes, when you’ve sweat enough to get a nice sheen of electrolytic fluid (sweat) on the cloth that is touching the Ipod click wheel, BOOOM!, the volume jumps to eleven. I bet I look funny when I suddenly stop on the side of the road, scrabbling at my pocket.

    Oddly, it only ever turns the volume up. This has happened to me three times, and my butt never wants to listen to the music at a lower volume.

  • Running Milestone

    Exceptionally personal post. Do not pass go. Especially if you don’t want to hear me crowing about myself. Yay me!

    Jenn and I are running in the Tulsa Marathon before Turkey Day. We’re only running the half marathon, but the last time I was training up to long distances, I hit the 10 mile mark and had an injury. “Kapoof” and I didn’t run any farther than a 10k for 2.3 years.

    Then came last Sunday. I ran an 11.1 mile route, in training for the good ‘ol 13.1 to come on November 18, and I realized that this is the farthest I’ve ever run, in my entire life. I was a track person in high school, but I distinctly remember the longest run I did back then, and it was only 10 miles.

    So, go me! Of course, I’ve walked and/or hiked farther distances than that. I believe that the longest hike I’ve ever done was 16 miles, so I’ve got a bit to go to top that with my running. I also don’t plan to extend my distance running past the half-marathon point, as I’ll have other races to train for that will be shorter, but it’s nice to look at a milestone like this and know that I’ve reached it through hard work and dedication.

    And no injury!

  • Weird Dreams

    Someone who is into dream interpretation will have to help me.

    Recently (last couple or so years) I’ve been having a recurring dream. It is similar to the “I forgot my pants” dream, but it revolves around high school/college. I dream that it’s late in the semester and I have been skipping so many classes (usually math class for some reason) that I don’t know if I have time to catch up and pass the course. Then I wake up and realize that, duh, I’m out of college doofus, and I don’t need to worry about passing classes during my sleep.

    I usually blame this on latent procrastinatory tendencies, but the weird thing is (despite the evidence of friends who know me), I’ve mostly conquered my procrastination. I don’t do that anymore. So, it must be something else niggling my subconscious. Who knows.

    Whatever. It’s weird.

  • Things you See in the ER

    Last night, we had to spend some time in the veterinary emergency room. Our cat was exhibiting some distressing symptoms. Verdict is: Who knows. Maybe a stroke. Maybe a seizure (although apparently cats don’t get seizures like people do, the convulsions are symptomatic of something else, instead). Maybe a dislocated clot that caused her excessive pain. Maybe a brain tumor. No idea. We know it wasn’t hypertension because, despite the amount of noise she was making during the blood pressure test, she had perfectly normal pressure. Hopefully this is a one time thing, but we’ll watch her carefully for the next few weeks.

    But, that’s not what this post is about. We were in the ER last night about 1:30 AM when two big, burly guys come rolling in carrying their huntin’ dawgs. They were dressed in mudders and other clothing that indicated that they had just come from the hunt. Their dogs had both been bitten by a snake or snakes. They were justifiably concerned.

    My question: What were these guys hunting at night? With dogs? One of the dogs had a radio collar of some sort on. I imagine it was a tracker? I am excessively curious what they were doing. And, what self respecting snake is awake at night to bite those dogs?

    Curiouser and curiouser.

  • Dedication, Time, OCD

    Somedays I think my life would be easier if I were an obsessive-compulsive.*

    Let’s look at what I’m doing right now: Working a consultant engineering job, with its attendant time consumptions, busy putting in more personal exercise hours than I have since high-school, trying (and failing) to keep a bi-weekly podcast operation, trying (and not doing so well) to keep interesting content up on this blog, maintaining a house and yard, maintaining a spousely relationship, trying to catch up on my scrapbooking, trying to catch up on my reading, trying to keep up with my professional journals, trying to maintain friendship relations with people who don’t live near here, plus myriad other things. Ugh. There’s not enough time in the day. If I were OCD, I might have one or two of these that I MUST DO EVERY DAY, but as it is, I flit from one to the next as they catch my attention and must put in real effort to maintain a constant level of dedication to a project.

    Jenn complains of the exact same thing as what I just wrote; she’s got too much to do. I need to take the advice that I give her: “Just don’t do all of that.” Of course, I won’t give up on my spousely committments, nor can I give up on my professional committments. I have a serious time investment right now in my fitness that I will not allow to slacken, thusly everything else sort of slides. Especially the yard (boy, do I need to edge the lawn, it looks like grassy octopi are attacking our road and driveway). I’ve also been reading a lot less than I used to, which is a shame because there is so much good stuff out there.

    Probably the thing I could do that would most effectively give me time back would be to quit writing and reading blogs. That must take up at least an hour a day, and more on the weekends, plus my ~6 hours-per-two-weeks committement for the podcast. Or I could quit watching TV, but like the reading thing, there’s a lot of good stuff out there.

    Alas, at the moment I don’t see a whole lot that would be easy to scrub. And truthfully, despite the slightly whiny tone to this post, I’m not feeling stressed by my committments at the moment. I hearken back to the days in college when I really didn’t have any committments (besides my wife and the band) and smile. Now, it’s time to go and upload some photos to flickr!

    *CoverMyAss: I am in no way implying that behavioral disorders are good, or that I think people with OCD have it easy. This is a thought experiment and I’ll emphasize I don’t know anything about OCD that isn’t broadcast and sterotyped on national TV networks.

  • Favorite Photo of the Week

    Bill & Jenn Post Triathlon

    Successful Triathlon!

  • Busy Weekend

    This is more of a livejournal posting, but as I only use livejournal to keep up with what my friends are doing, voila!

    Saturday I spent all day working on the AT with the Georgia Appalachian Trail Club. It was supposed to be the “District Maintenance Month” wherein all the section overseers (I have section 3.8; 1.2 miles of fairly level stuff) of a particular district get together and fix anything big that needs fixing. Unfortunately, we only had three people for our district, so we ended up hauling wood chips in to the Stover Creek Privy. After that, I drove back over to Justus Creek and joined the rest of the club who were working on a trail relocation. This involves much digging/chopping/cutting/bending/working and I was exhausted when I got home. But! We had friends coming over, so no sleepy for Billy, instead stayed up ’til 11:30 or so.

    Sunday, I was the trip organizer for an ITE whitewater rafting trip. I wish I could post pictures, but I had to use one of those disposable waterproof cameras, and it’s being developed right now. We rafted the middle Ocoee in Tennessee with the Ocoee Adventure Center rafting guides. We had a blast, and now I’m doubly tired. Work will be very early tomorrow morning.

  • More Social Networking

    I learned about Twitter last spring, when it was mentioned during Podcamp Atlanta (which was a rockin’ good time). Twitter is an social networking protocol that lets you post a 140 character update about what you’re doing right now. For example, I posted this morning that I was “Developing traffic volume growth projections for a project” which is the first thing I’m doing today. You can see it there, over in the sidebar, under my picture. Perhaps later, I’ll post that I’m “eating lunch” or “becoming addicted to social networking.” The point is, that people who care can follow what you’re up to, as you choose to post it.

    At the moment, I’m unsure of the utility. I don’t know if any of my other friends are on Twitter (and Twitter doesn’t seem to have a search facility, but I haven’t thoroughly examined it yet), which would seriously reduce my dedication. I’ll keep you informed.

  • Splinter Blog/Podcast

    You may have noticed over the past few months that I’ve been alluding to a new project. That project is now live and in color. It is called Talking Traffic and is a podcast/blog site designed to bring some clarity to the confusion that often arises when I talk to people about what I do for a living.

    The reason for this is two-fold: One, I think it’s useful for people to know some of the basics behind transportation engineering, as the topic is often featured in the media and political debates. Two, maybe (just maybe) someone who listens to the podcast will come to one of the public information meetings I am present at as a consultant and I won’t have to ever-so-nicely disagree with them over a point of engineering. Instead of educating them there, I can educate them here (well, over at Talking Traffic)

    This blog, The Evil Eyebrow, will revert to being more of a personal endeavor, divorced partially from my professional life, which has been notably featured in the This Week in Traffic postings and other essays about infrastructure. Of course, I won’t be sending all of the random postings I do concerning highways, bridges, railroads, and airports to Talking Traffic; some of it won’t belong there. And you can expect to see some crossposting back and forth from both sites.

    Hopefully everyone who reads The Evil Eyebrow will enjoy both this site and the new one.