Ideas are a burdensome thing. It's human nature to feel that something we thought of - an insight into the world - is an important thing and somehow unique, so we horde our ideas. We grow them, we ponder them, and then, after a brief amount of time, we forget them. With every idea conceived, played with, and then abandoned, there's a feeling of failure. One's inner voice pesters, suggesting that, with just a bit more time, or a bit more gumption, the idea could be implemented and developed and could save the world (or at least make one's life a little bit better). Still, there's no time for all of that, and most ideas just fall by the wayside.

I'm plagued by ideas that never go anywhere. Yet they are nowhere to be found when I actually need them. When given an opportunity to actually put some ideas to practice (and to make money doing so), I draw nothing but blanks. I simply can't remember any of the supposedly brilliant ideas I've had over time. The level of brilliance becomes doubtful, and my confidence in my memory deteriorates. 

There's a common belief in the start-up community that ideas are worthless. You can and should share them since most people will simply acknowledge the idea's awesomeness (or, more heartbreakingly, dismiss it), in almost the same moment as they forget about it. It's the passion to implement that makes an idea become powerful, and that passion typically comes along with the envisioning. Despite the obvious truth behind this, there persists a niggling feeling that sharing an idea somehow gives other people the opportunity to steal your idea and to get there first with the implementation.

So I don't share, and I forget.

So the idea of the moment is to keep track of my ideas using a less transient form of storage. My feeble memory has proven it can't be trusted with the task. This definitely will save the world (or at least make my life a little bit better).

An excellent idea, indeed. I should do something about it.

Maybe.

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Reston, VA

This "DEMOCRACY" sign kind of looks like you'd find it in an old insane asylum.

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A fun little shot with the nearly empty glass of 90 Minute IPA (from Dogfish Head):

I think I like this take better, although the word "people" isn't quite visible:

After a bit of encouragement from a friend, I took this (admittedly, better) picture:

Then paying around with the bokeh by shooting through the center hole on a CD gave this trippy effect:

Now... that's enough of THAT.

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My ride-to-be yesterday started off pretty poorly, with a broken bike lock. The picture is actually from after I was unable to unlock my bike and had to steal it while a couple of cops watched. The theft was pretty blatant, as I ultimately lifted the bike and chain up as high as I could (I was grabbing the bottom of the tires) over the pole that it was chained to. I'm just lucky I chained it up to a pretty stupid spot (a tall post with no top) - otherwise I might have been stuck there a lot longer.

The cops, including the one who arrived just as I was lifting the bike over the top, said and did absolutely nothing. I guess that's a good thing.

Despite an hour wasted trying to unlock my bike, going back home, finding my Dremmel, and cutting through the lock, the ride turned out to be an awesome one.

For one, it turns out there's a pretty decent set of (paved, but shady and sweeping) trails to get me up to the W&OD trail and where I normally start mountain biking from:  It'll add 6 miles or so to my loop, but it'll save me from having to drive, so it seems worth it.

Even better, is yesterday's ride ended up being 40 miles of mixed mountain bike trails and paved trails/road. Previously (this time around) the best I'd done was 20 miles. Not bad for being back on a bike for only two months after over 10 years of non-riding!

The entire route:

There's a whole network of trails throughout Fairfax County. It's definitely something to keep in mind when the area starts to get you down...

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from Chipotle, of course

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Now that Gwyneth is riding all over the place, the focus is on getting Audrey comfortable on two wheels. It can't be easy being the younger of two by only a year; peoples' expectations are high, and it's easy for everyone to forget how much younger you are. Luckily Audrey overcomes this pretty readily. She might lack in stamina, and she complains when she gets tired, but when she really wants something she figures it out.

Like with Gwyneth, we started her off with just coasting. She's tiny, though, and it's hard for her to walk with the pedals on the bike. So we removed them.

After a few trips to a local parking lot, she went from nothing to coasting downhill:

Of course, she gets tired, and frustrated, but it's best to just leave her alone and let her stew.

Eventually she's back on the bike and coasting again.

The balance is there, and she's trying to pedal without pedals, so she asked for her pedals back on again. Of course, pedals make it easier to fall...

... and hurt yourself...

But they also let you go fast and go far!

By the end of the two hours, Audrey was able to pedal pretty far by herself, and she'll be zooming along without any help just like her sister before we know it.

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I spent some time recently going back over some of my favorite photos trying to pick out ones that didn't quite make the cut and see if I could salvage them. I think these turned out pretty well - the use of B&W helps a lot. All of these are from the same weekend (last Thanksgiving). 

I especially like how this one turned out:

Compressing the levels significantly and filtering out some of the background noise helped turn a pretty good picture into an great one. The sensor noise (which gets emphasized during the processing) seems to work really well for the picture, too.

The previous one was originally posted without much processing.  I definitely like the end result of the more processed photo.

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Given that all four of us are riding bikes now, we needed some way to store them. We don't have a garage, so hanging on the wall was our most reasonable option. It's a little crowded in that corner, but it actually looks pretty good.

These are the Delta Leonardo Da Vinci Wall Rack [REI] (also at Amazon). They work reasonably well, although getting the mountain bikes on them is a little tricky.

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Finally I managed to make the bank representative understand that I knew how to type the security answers into the website and that I was typing them in correctly.  So she went off to talk with Tech Support. When she returned she explained to me that I had used special characters in the security answers, and the system allows me to do that. However, "I shouldn't do that", because it breaks things. Just use subversive security questions like these:

Gfvk!Sm!z@RVOZP!O-=`

5hi,=xPQnmel}<'0Lgt6

m5:!oiwoeF9{S.G>twnO

RKD`W#,'2C;6V{C6VJ8p

@%4%{7\N?Y.QoJv`E[ 0

Your account will be so secure that nobody can log on.

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This is a hand-me-down copy of Clan of the Cave Bear - an embodiment of both the argument for and the argument against e-books. What once was a smell that brought me back to browsing libraries and used book store shelves for hours at a time with great delight in the information and stories filling the walls from floor to ceiling, has become a visceral stench of age and decay. Old books now smell musty and make my nose tickle. They are bulky and don't hold up very well to the ages, a fact the copious amounts of packing tape holding the binding together are a testament to. And still, for an e-book to last as long as this book would likely be just short of a miracle. The companies over burden their books with copy protection and rights limiting software designed to lock you into a single device, although they claim it's to protect the artists' profits. What are the chances that Amazon and Barnes and Noble will be around in 25 years to support your digital purchases? This book has stood the test of time (and the ones surrounding it are still respectably aged when considering the life times of digital files).

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Despite the hundreds of positive reviews surrounding the new Star Trek movie I didn’t watch it tonight expecting to see a good movie.  I didn’t have expectations of failure (although I wouldn’t be surprised given the franchise’s history), the quality of the movie was simply irrelevant.  I wasn’t going to see the movie, I was going to pay respect to an institution that has been with me for as long as I can remember.

Like so many geeks my age, I grew up watching Star Trek.  For my family it was a weekly tradition to catch new episodes as they aired and I remember being annoyed at football season (which often displaced episodes) and being downright pissed when George Bush (senior, not junior) interrupted the show with his boring speeches.  In retrospect this was far better than the later Bush who annoyed my simply by talking, but my younger mind didn’t understand those things.  Star Trek was an important part of my life, and I remember our weekly episodes with my father with as much fondness as our shopping trips and the rare chance to get dinner from the hot case at the deli they entailed.

Our family had the the entire Original Series on VHS and most of the Next Generation episodes as well.  Columbia House would ship them to us every so often and seeing that package in the mail was a definite high point for me.  I remember the cost of the subscription being an issue and I remember that it seemed important to continue even when we were living a modest lifestyle.  The franchise is embedded into my consciousness in a way that matches so few other things.

So from all of that, I should be identified as a trekker (trekkie, Star Trek enthusiast, take your pick), but I’m not.  The entire franchise produced an absurdly small amount of really good material for the amount of air time it earned.  The Next Generation and The Original Series both were full of boring lectures and poorly developed characters and plot holes the size of very large things.  The science was horrible and there was absolutely no continuity.  Despite the impact it had on my childhood, I don’t feel comfortable identifying with it.

Still, if you plop me in front of a The Next Generation episode I will watch it.  I’ll also know exactly which episode it is and everything about that episode within seconds.  I did have a communicator, tricorder, AND a uniform at one point.  Oh, and a tribble, although that was technically my dad’s.  I also follow Wil Wheaton’s blog and twitter.

So I don’t identify as a fan but I was compelled to watch this movie.  Even if the reviews had been universally horrible I would have watched it.

The scenes were Star Trek through and through with blatant nods to key elements from The Original Series down to a nice pan of the hull and the designation NCC-1701 (no bloody A, B, C, or D) painted across it.  The ship felt like the Enterprise as it would be if it were built today (ignoring NASA’s reliance on technology developed when the The Original Series was first aired), with bright large LCD displays and glass everywhere, without giving up the pipes and LEDs and switches that make it believable.

The characters were unmistakably younger versions of their Original Series counterparts to the point of being almost obnoxious about it.  Chekov’s accent was over the top and an obvious comedic gag, and, yes, we get it, Kirk was a hot-head.  Still, overall, the elements were there with characters like Bones and Sulu being spot on.  Kirk, especially, felt like Kirk with his various quirks showing through (like the way he sat when using the intercom).  The voice acting, thankfully, did not follow the famously Kirk style.  It was great to hear Majel Barrett in her role as the computer again.

So there was a lot of pandering, but that was expected.  A movie based on an institution this well ingrained can’t ignore the history of the franchise without significant backlash.  J. J. Abrams (and the writers, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman) got that exactly right.

It was a movie brilliantly done and it feels right.  It has moving drama (both my girlfriend and I shed tears for characters we barely knew just minutes in), awesome action, impressive fighting, and a pace that meant I didn’t feel bored once throughout the entire movie (a rarity for me).  They pull it off and you don’t even care that they kill off the entire future franchise and explain it all away with a time travel paradox.  Hey, that’s Star Trek, too.

So thank you to those who made it happen.  For tonight, at least, I am a Star Trek fan again.

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When I explained that I was wiring the Vi's house with network cable in preparation for my move, my friends expressed curiosity as to why I wouldn't just use wireless. There are some obvious reasons like not wanting to have to buy adapter cards for desktop computers. The most important reason, however, is that this area is wifi-hostile. Nothing stays connected consistently, even in the same room as the access port. It's not an access point problem (we've replaced the one already). Just look at the insanity:

This is the view just from my new (home) office.
(While I was typing this, 3 more APs popped up!)

We're exacerbating the issue by having two access points in the house (third floor and second floor). There's a chance one will even go on the first floor, although that's yet to be decided. The two APs (Miss Piggy, which is really WPA2 / AES, not WEP) are backbone-linked with cat-5e (should be 6, but I forgot to pre-order from Monoprice.). They both are WRT-54GL routers running Tomat. Because they share the same SSID and security information my devices roam seamlessly between the two. It's pretty damn cool.

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A good friend of mine has an incredibly clever shirt from a fundraiser by the Pecos, NM EMTs.  It's a great conversation starter and usually people think he's an EMT until they see the back.   Judging by the list, I'm definitely a potential supporter of my EMT community. The back:

PET THE ELK. FEED THE BEARS. CLIMB ON THE ROCKS. PASS ON THE DOUBLE LINE. LOOK AT THE SCENERY, INSTEAD OF THE ROAD. WE THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT. PECOS, NM EMTs

And the front:

The two bears, btw, are in front of an awesome coffee shop and cafe in the middle of nowhere, US, The Purple Fiddle.  Definitely worth checking out this large coffee shop with awesome food including a turkey dinner sandwich with all the fixings (turkey, gravey, cranberries, stuffing, mashed potatoes). The decoration is eclectic at best including advertisements on a safe: For refreshments they offer coffee and a good beer selection. For entertainment they have live music every weekend night: And a bit of a geeky humor:

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