It’s been about a week since I last put out a podcast. I wanted to do one today. After all, I’d hate to think that some of my subscribers would be disappointed by the lack of my cheerful “Welcome to Brainwagon Radio!” appearing on their personal mobile listening device.

But there is a problem with podcasting. You can’t lie as easily.

Today, I’m tired and I’m grumpy. I don’t really know why. I’m not really worried about it. I know I’ll break out of it soon. When I’m tired and grumpy, it’s still possible to do some text blogging: scan my personal blogrolls, look for harmless, goofy stuff to post, and just post it.

But when you are podcasting, you have to lie convincingly. Nobody is going to tune in repeatedly to listen to someone who sounds depressed unless you pay them $120 an hour. Lying convincingly is a skill I don’t possess in any great measure, and to even attempt it takes more energy than I’m likely to be able to muster.

But tomorrow dawns a new day. I’ve got my usual Weight Watchers weigh in, and then, who knows? I hope everyone is doing well, and soon the dulcet tones of my deep voice will be booming over the Internet. Until then, take it easy.

I ran a mile today. A real mile, at a real run. I probably last did that at age 25. It probably doesn’t mean much to anyone but me, but I think I should view it as quite an achievement.

One of my New Years’s goals is to actually run a 10K race in 2005. When I was in graduate school I could do one in just under 50 minutes. If I can get to the point where I can hold a 12 minute mile pace in 2005, I’ll consider it miraculous, but very cool.

I could spend the day stewing over my laptop, my broken ipod, the mixer, or going to the store to buy a new microphone or maybe even a new laptop. Or I could hop in the car and go off to Muir Beach with my wife instead.

Hmmm.

It doesn’t seem like a hard question when I write it down.

Back with beach pictures later.

Welcome to 2005! Hope everyone has had a pleasant holiday and is ready to get back to the serious work that we all have: namely surfing the web and listening to my brainwagon radio podcasts. 🙂 We are back to traditional brainwagon blue, no more christmas decorations.

I’m still a couple of days away from getting my new podcast setup finalized, but rest assured, I should be back shortly with new episodes, better quality, but the same old ranting that you’ve come to expect.

Hope everyone is safe and happy.

Yesterday was one of those days.

You know the kind I mean. Nothing earth-shatteringly dramatic happened. Nobody had a stroke, or was poisoned or shot. My house didn’t burn down. I wasn’t fired from my job. But yesterday sucked.

It began innocently enough. I had scheduled the Safelite glass guys to come out and repair the small window in the back of my son’s car. The one who just got this big star tatooed on his shoulder (the son, not the car). While we don’t know what happened to it, it look like somebody hit it with a pellet gun (the car window, not my son’s shoulder). They (Safelite) assigned me a four hour window (8-12) to come out and fix it.

You know how this works, don’t you? They of course show up 5 minutes after 12, and they don’t have the right window part because (despite my explaining it to them three separate times on the phone) they didn’t get it right.

Oh, the only reason I’m home? Because my wife had an appointment that conflicted. Guess what? Her appointment cancelled on her, and had copied her phone number wrong, so they couldn’t tell her. Sigh.

I munch down some left over chinese food and head to work.

When I get there, a big meeting is going on. Ed Catmull and John Lasseter are addressing everyone at Pixar, and people look nervous. I imagine the worst: Steve Job’s health? Bad news? Well, turned out to be news with long term upside, but given our stock hit today, maybe short short term downside.

The rest of the work day went without incident, although my back hurts alot.

I get home, and the instant I see my wife, I can see she’s had some bad news which I won’t detail here, but it sucked.

So, we decide to go out and exercise at 24 hour fitness. Worked up a good sweat. Her mood seemed to have improved. We stop at the store to pick up some sodas and food. She misses seeing a post in the dark rain and dings her precious Jeep up. Sigh. Nothing major, but will require somebody to pull the fender out and maybe replace one of the plastic pieces that wrap the bottom of the driver’s side door panel.

Yesterday sucked. I’ve got my fingers crossed for today.

If anyone can recommend a body repair place for reasonable prices in the Oakland-Berkeley-Pinole-Concord area, drop me an email and you will have my thanks. Hell, if you own such a place, do a good job, and I’ll even plug your business here where it will undoubtably be read by tens of people. We are talking potential dollars of increased business, folks.

Oh, why the biorhythm chart on the right? When I was probably ten or twelve, I was fascinated by such things. I outgrew it, mostly because of an increasing observation that science was a more reliable way to learn about how the world works. Still, even if I was the most irrational person imaginable, days like yesterday would serve as strong counterexamples to the theory of biorhythms.

To my great relief (and no doubt, the great pleasure of my wife) I found her missing wedding ring. Apparently it slipped off while she was folding clothes, because I found it between two folded shirts in my drawer.

I think it is definitely time for either resizing or replacement of these rings. Both of us have lost enough weight that our old rings slip off way too easily. But I am ecstatic that I found this ring. It totally turns around a day which was not starting well (my wife’s car has a flat tire). All is well.

Imagine the following.

You are home all day, sick from work. You don’t go anywhere special, or do anything outside your home. Yet, at the end of the day, you look down at your hand and to your horror, discover that your wedding ring has slipped off your finger sometime during the day! Eek!

Well, it’s not quite that dire. I didn’t lose my wedding ring.

My wife did.

They say that lost items are always in the last place you look. So, the question is: where is the last place you would look for a missing ring?

Well, I wanted nothing more than to spend the day relaxing around the home, but my wife conned me into going over to the Legion of Honor Museum in Golden Gate Park to see their new exhibition: The Courtly Art of the Maya. Despite the fact that we arrived fairly late because of horrendous traffic, we quickly reviewed the 130 artifacts. I must admit to a certain fascination with Mesoamerican history: at one time I thought it would be fun to try to teach myself the system of Mayan hieroglyphics. As is typical of most of my grandious endeavors, that ended with the purchase and reading of several books, but without any real knowledge sticking. Still, I remain fascinated by the Mayan culture, and this exhibition of Mayan art was quite impressive and beautiful. I urge anyone in the Bay Area to drop in and see it.

Books on the subject that I recommend:

• Mayan Script: A Civilization and Its Writing, by Longhena and Frongia
• Breaking the Maya Code by Michael Coe

You can also download images of Mayan glyphs here.

Spent the other day at the Oakland Zoo. I finally got some decent pictures of one of the female lions using my Nikon 4300 and zooming in. The photo on the right is cropped from the resulting 3.8 megapixel picture, and has its saturation boosted to make the image a bit more colorful.