Remembrances of Tom Purdue

How I spent my Sunday

tompurdue — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 20:41:00 GMT

I spent my Sunday in excruciating pain and hypothermia. It was awesome.

I've done "mud runs" before, but the Tough Mudder is said to be the hardest of them. It's certainly the most difficult one I've done: 21 obstacles over 12 miles of up-and-down muddy terrain. The bag containing my muddy clothes weighed over 15 pounds at the end of the day.

Some of the obstacles are physically difficult: scaling a ten-foot wall (or an eight-foot overhang, though I cheated a bit on that), climbing a hay bale, leaping muddy barriers while hip-deep in water.

Many others are about facing what might be painful: hands and knees through a ditch(gloves helped; my knees are scraped up but it's really not that bad), mild electric shocks (uncomfortable but not exactly painful), leaping over a fire into a water pit (hey, I was already soaked at that point), jumping 15 feet down into water (an obstacle which apparently killed somebody, the first death in the history of the event, though the articles are unclear about just what happened). I'm rather proud of how I faced these, with a reckless disregard and a rather touching trust that the challenges were unlikely to be permanently damaging. I loved flinging myself headlong down a slip-and-slide, not realizing until the last instant that it ended with a four-foot drop.

The most physically painful one, of which they are gleefully proud, is the Arctic Enema: a quick dip in a dumpster full of ice water, which you must duck your head under. As with most painful things on the course, what it really needs is the awareness that the pain isn't going to kill you and will be over soon. If you think before leaping, you're screwed. If you just jump in, everything else is about just getting out, and your mind is so focused on it that it literally didn't hurt until I got out. It took a moment to re-orient myself, but I didn't even take the mylar blanket they offered: the day was still warmish at that point and I ran myself warm.

That was early on. Towards the end of the day, exhaustion combined with being cold and wet, and I whiffed several of the last obstacles. I made no real progress on the monkey bars (which plunged me into even more water, and from the constant splashing, nobody else was making much progress, either). I climbed to the top of the net of the "Pirate Booty" obstacle, but my legs were starting to cramp from electrolyte depletion, and since the idea of falling 20 feet to the ground didn't appeal I decided that discretion was the better part of valor.

The final obstacle was designed as an exercise in pain: running through a field of electrified wires (hooked up, I suspect, to an electric fence source). The effect is more "unpleasant" than "painful", but having gotten zapped once, I fell to the ground and couldn't motivate myself to get up and get zapped again, so I finished on hands and knees.

My knees are pretty scraped up, in fact, but that's OK. I'm incredibly proud of this. I'd do it every weekend, if I could: the obstacles make running more interesting. I'm sore in places I never get sore, which is great: I've worked out things that I don't usually work.

tompurdue — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 23:13:58 GMT

I really hate to let my cynicism get the best of me, but I am very slightly worried about a downside to the recent acceleration of the shift in favor of gay marriage. It makes it easier for conservative members of the court to justify an argument of the form "It's unfair, but we're going to defer to the legislature, because as conservatives that's what we do [except when we don't]. After all, public opinion shifts means that you can deal with it legislatively, right?"

Except that our legislature is deeply broken. We've got many checks and balances in the system, to protect the minority, but taken as a group and combined with a bias to inaction, it means that a fairly small minority can block almost anything. A change has to jump through many, many hoops: a majority in the House, a super-majority in the Senate, surviving a veto threat from the President, and then again surviving the Supreme Court. The only way to achieve anything involves trumping all of those at once.

Despite a recent poll showing 58% approval for same-sex marriage, there's no way that translates into 60% of Senators voting to overturn DOMA. Not today, not a decade from now. Maybe two decades from now. And justice delayed is justice denied.

tompurdue — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 19:31:39 GMT

I caught the first episode of Game of Thrones last night. Thus far, I'm not impressed.

The visuals are all quite lovely, and you could put Sean Bean's face on anything and it will become more interesting. But I found the story so far very blah. There were more mutilations in the first fifteen minutes than I ever really needs to see, and while I really don't have any objection to boobies, I'd really like to avoid having the director come on screen and say, "Look! Boobies! You like boobies, right?"

OK, that didn't actually happen, but it sure felt like that. Look, if I want boobies, I'll download some. Tell me a story. And the story here felt very rote. "Oh, look, it's all sort-of-medievalish-or-something." I got minor amusement from the fact that there were different costuming styles in the different places, but it didn't feel organic. I didn't feel any history to them.

I know that it's hard to really judge a series from its first episode, while they're still figuring out what they're going to do. I gather it's gonna get all wheels-within-wheels, and that would be nice. I'm always hoping to find a TV series worth watching in that precious region where it's neither stupid or dull.

My vacation

tompurdue — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 21:43:48 GMT

A quick timeline summary of my latest vacation to England (with a side trip to Rome):

Sunday afternoon: get dropped off at Dulles
Sunday evening: Flight to Heathrow. Row to self: big win, but little sleep.

Monday morning: Arrive at Heathrow.
Monday, 10 AM: Make it to spiffy high-end hotel between Trafalgar Square and Embankment Station.
11 AM: Gordon's Wine Bar, a charming cellar dating back to Henry VIII, where wine barrels were stored when the Thames came right up to that point.
1 PM: Climbed St. Paul's Cathedral. Reduced to tears by the Fire Watch Memorial. So many people worked so hard while the entire area was literally reduced to rubble. As long as St. Paul's could be seen through the smoke, people found hope.

7 PM. Got some sleep. Jaki got none.

Tuesday
1 AM: get up. Overpriced taxi to Victoria Station. Wait two hours at station.
3 AM: Bus to Stansted
4 AM: Wait two hours at Stansted
6 AM: Plane to Rome. Note that we still haven't slept substantially since Saturday night.
10 AM: Arrive in Rome. Bus to Roma Termini. Walk to Hotel.
11 AM: hotel also very spiffy. We have a porch to ourselves. With kumquat trees.
Afternoon: bum around Rome. Fountain of Trevi, some old museum, enough art to choke an ox, Spanish Steps.
Old church built on top of an older church built on top of a Roman vila.
Climb and extensively explore Palatine Hill (Augustine's house, Livia's house, Temple of Cybele, etc.)
Went by a restaurant called Da Alfredo e Ada, which we'd wanted to eat at because they just cook whatever they feel like. Found it was closed. Checked that it was open tomorrow.
Note: GPS phone huge, huge bonus. But paper map also necesary, as (a) many street names were omitted from downloaded Google map, and (b) it's apparently really hard to get a GPS signal on a phone in an alley.
Found by accident a total of 7 out of 13 obelisks in Rome
Midnight: Finally get some actual sleep.

Wednesday: Up. Check out of hotel in a combination of English, Italian, and (for some reason) French.
9 AM: And helped some guy at the train station in Spanish.
10 AM: Vatican Museum. Lots of Greek and Etruscan stuff. Plus Sistine Chapel. Verdict: Gay. Really, really gay.
1 PM: After a frantic rush, including an unnecessary line to get into St. Paul's, we managed to find the Vatican Necropolis. This was intensely cool. The Vatican was originally a cemetary, where St. Peter was martyred. Constantine built the original Vatican on top of Peter's grave in the 4th century; current Vatican built on top of that in the 15th. Saw many 1st century Roman graves, including what is quite probably the grave of St. Peter himself. Plus the "grotto", which is the nicest grotto I've ever seen, where the Popes are buried.
2:30: Quick spin through St. Peter's itself. Yeah, yeah, incredible collection of the greatest artistic genius of the Renaissance. Whatever, after seeing Peter's grave.
3:00: Discover that Alfredo e Ada is closed, because I misread "1700" as "1500". More bumming around Rome, but we never did get to the old Roman area south of the train station. Next time.
5:00: Reverse course: bus to the plane to the bus to a long midnight walk back to the hotel. (Bonus: UK security wanted to see Jaki's plane ticket home, for some reason. And she wouldn't have had it if she hadn't saved a copy to her phone).
Midnight: arrive back at hotel and actually sleep in it.
More later.

Yay

tompurdue — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:17:43 GMT

So happy to break out this image again:

"It is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married" -- Barack Obama

tompurdue — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 19:37:16 GMT

The news today is that Justice Kennedy seems skeptical of the individual mandate, and that's the ball game.

I'd meant to post on this yesterday, about how I'd steeled myself for that months ago. It was in response to a New York Times poll suggesting that most people don't want it anyway. I deleted the post for dropping the f-bomb too many times.

I'm trying to reach equanimity about it. Yeah, the nation is going to be worse for it. Yeah, hatred and fear have defeated any chance of being better than we are. There will never be another health care law; that one existed only due to a perfect storm of events that will never occur again.

In the end, the Obama experiment is already over, and answered in the negative, regardless of this decision. Will America come together around a centrist President? No, no they won't. Americans claim they want centrism, but they won't actually turn out to vote for it. It's the extremists who turn out, and the legislature will end up pandering to them. There's no point in trying to attract centrists. Even if they win an office as important as the Presidency, there won't be a sufficient number of them to pass any legislation.

Obama may well win reelection in the fall despite this, but I honestly can't imagine why he'd want to. There's more to the Presidency than legislation; it's arguably the least of a President's duties. But it's the most visible, and this isn't really about Obama anyway. It's about what we want as a country, and the answer, apparently, is "to stop the other guys from winning," regardless of whether it's good for the country or not.

I actually don't care all that much about health care legislation. I don't like health care, and to be blunt, if I ever need a lot of health care, I'd just as soon let it kill me instead. I don't see this as about me, but rather about us. And apparently, there isn't an "us". Or rather, an "us" and a "them", and I'm going to always be "them". The only way to cope with that will simply stop wanting there to be an us.

tompurdue — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 18:24:03 GMT

Here's the thing: sluts use condoms.

Conservatives are spaztastic about birth control pills because they seem to think it promotes sleeping around. But birth control pills provide only birth control, not death control. Ya know what's even scarier than an unintended pregnancy? AIDS.

Birth control pills are what women in committed, long-term relationships use. Married women use birth control pills. Girls who are sleeping around use condoms, which provide both birth control and death control. Even those who are on the pill also use condoms.

The pill serves many other purposes that have nothing to do with sleeping around. Arguing about birth control pills is just the wrong argument. If you really want to stop fornication, you go after the condoms. And then you can make it abundantly clear that you're not interested in personal responsibility. You just hate sex.

Piratz Tavern story makes it to the Washington Post

tompurdue — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 01:15:18 GMT

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/bar-rescue-gets-the-boot-in-silver-spring-after-piratz-tavern-renovation-goes-bust/2012/03/14/gIQAu9NpCS_story.html

Jon Taffer would say Tracy and Juciano Rebelo had a crisis of a different sort: They had a crisis of confidence. He notes that moments after the unveiling of Corporate Bar and Grill on Feb. 18, a staff member told him that, “In the morning these [customers] are going to be welcomed by a pirate.” What’s more, he says, the owners did not open for lunch immediately after the makeover. “How can you say lunch works if you’re not open for lunch?” he asks.
Plain and simple, the TV host thinks it’s lunacy to revert to a concept that didn’t work financially for the owners in the first place. “They’re out in left field,” Taffer says. “I think they’re a bunch of fools.”

Advice for Limbaugh advertisters: ignore my boycott

tompurdue — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 17:03:14 GMT

To all you companies advertising on Limbaugh: I am boycotting you. I will never buy your product. The key word here is never. I am not going to start patronizing you if you pull your advertising now.

By supporting Limbaugh, every, you were a hateful piece of shit. If you imagine that you are less of a hateful piece of shit by deciding that this latest scandal is the last straw, then you are also a stupid piece of shit. You knew that he was this hateful all along. The best you can possibly claim for yourself is that you were so mind-bogglingly idiotic that you weren't aware who your target demographic was, and were so desperate for customers that you would use any advertising medium that hit it. And you're no less stupid today than you were yesterday.

So I'm boycotting you, but this isn't one of those "win me back" boycotts. You can't fix this. You helped make the political discourse in America today so irretrievably poisonous. Limbaugh told everybody who would listen that I was stupid, that I was racist, that I hated America, that nearly every woman I've ever known is a slut, and then he took a break to advertise for your product. He can't take back what he said: people believed him, and now they despise me.

Until those people stop despising me, I'm not going to purchase any of your products. And since that's not going to happen any time in the foreseeable future, you might as well carry on advertising. You've made your bed, and we're all lying in it.

Finally get to use this for my home state

tompurdue — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 00:18:00 GMT

tompurdue — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 19:28:26 GMT

Grumpiness of the weekend: an episode of Phineas and Ferb (Disney Channel kid's show) misquoted Shakespeare: "What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here" was changed to "What flaxen homespuns...". Sounds like somebody at Disney got nervous about "hemp". "Flax" scans, at least, and probably nobody noticed but me... but I noticed.

tompurdue — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:41:47 GMT

Thanks to whimmydiddle, who pointed out that I hadn't yet posted this for yet another resounding defeat for Prop 8!

But think of this more as pre-celebrating for both Washington State
and (more speculatively) Illinois.

We'll drag the nation into the 21st century kicking and screaming if we have to.

tompurdue — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:13:46 GMT

Today, my alarm clock went off. It was an alarm I set three-and-a-half years ago, to check this prediction:

My opinion: the name "Sarah Palin" will be used in 2012 exclusively by page 8 news reports asking, "Remember when everybody was convinced Sarah Palin was going to be important? Whatever happened to that?"

http://shadowcaptain.livejournal.com/818750.html?nc=2

The date: November 8, 2008, four days after the election. I suppose it's not quite true, but it's pretty darn close.

If I hadn't forgotten about this until today, I might have actually worried about it. It wasn't that long ago that will-she-or-won't-she was front page news. By then, it was hard to imagine why she was being taken seriously, and with the very-slightly-less stupid Michelle Bachmann in the race, she seemed redundant, as well as yesterday's news.

Really, though, I'm just here to either admire the Internet, or deplore the fact that I can set an alarm for three years hence and still be here to notice it when it goes off.

tompurdue — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:41:41 GMT

Birthdays are kind of odd things. There's no real magic associated with the orbital similarity to the day on which I was born.

However, there is a theory that there's a limit on how many people we can know closely. It's called Dunbar's Number, though it seems odd to talk about a "number" whose value you have little idea of. It's generally thought to be around 150.

And perhaps that's what birthdays are really all about. Birthdays are one way to say, "Today is yours. Today is the day I single you out in particular, among all of the other 150 or so of my acquaintances who are close enough for 'happy birthday' to be something other than a hollow stock phrase."

The day itself is arbitrary, but if your circle is around 150 people, then once every 365 days is a pretty good frequency to acknowledge a person as special. If it were more frequent, then "happy birthday" would lose that symbolic meaning. There would be too many people on any given day, every day. With only 150 out of 365, most days aren't anybody's, and that's good. It highlights the ones that do. You get some doubling, but not all that much.

If Dunbar's Number were much higher, we'd have to choose some other, longer period for the equivalent of birthdays. But once every 365 days is about right; it leaves enough of a trace for you to feel loved and not forgotten. It's a good interval for a reminder, independent of orbital dynamics.

So, if it's your desire to wish me "happy birthday", then do so below. The above tells you what I think it means. And despite the nerdy, dry tone, those of you who know me well enough to wish me "happy birthday" know just how much that means to me.

Looking for a Droid game

tompurdue — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 20:13:30 GMT

I got myself into the 21st century with a used Droid. I'm not sure I'm crazy about owning a smart phone (fragile, expensive, needs to be charged every day, harder to use for making calls), but I'm going to give it a try.

One thing it should be used for is killing a few minutes at a time with a game. Minutes, or even seconds; imagine something to do while stuck at a traffic light.

Solitare is good, but I'm kind of over it. Tetris is a bit too "fast"; it's hard to abandon a game in the middle. Scrabble is good, but is there a good inexpensive app?

Ideally, I'd like something novel and clever. Puzzles are good, but I'm really not looking for something too challenging.

No, I don't want to play Angry Birds. I don't even know what Angry Birds is but I know I don't want to get involved.

tompurdue — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 19:08:15 GMT

Tomorow's Annapolis Half Marathon has a beer tent.

The race begins at 7 AM. I aim to be done by 8:35 AM. I will certainly be done well before 9 AM.

Beer... apparently, it's what's for breakfast.

Got chem?

tompurdue — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 20:57:42 GMT

I'm looking for a chemistry set, preferably with plastic beakers, to help dress a scene with a mad scientist in my next play (Pericles) for the Rude Mechanicals. If you have something that you can loan us, I'd be really grateful.

tompurdue — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 19:27:31 GMT

From a web site I'm trying to sign up for:

Your password needs to be at least six characters, and no more than 8
characters. It may only contain letters and numbers and it must contain
at least one number.

Thanks, guys. That pretty much guarantees that none of my regular passwords will work, and that no scheme for making up passwords is going to fit. I've already forgotten the password I threw at you.

Something I actually hate less over time

tompurdue — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 18:30:49 GMT

Not watching the news gives me a very odd perspective on the news. The more news I watch, the more things I hate. And I'm not just talking about "dislike" passing as "hate" here. I mean the number of things that I would destroy by force if I could get away with it.

Still, I eventually hear about things anyway. Hell, despite avoiding the news, I do get a newspaper (because I support the existence of newspapers). Whatever damn-fool idiocy was going to make me angry gets a chance to make me angry anyway.

Which means that I took an instant dislike to those morons protesting in New York. The second thing I heard about them was their whiny calls that nobody in the media was reporting on them. This was clearly a lie, because the first thing I had heard about them was their existence. If I knew you existed, it means the media were reporting on you. And whiny lies are not a good way to get me to like you.

Still, they've managed to present an unusual trend. A week ago, I would have happily dropped napalm on them. This week, I merely despise them.

This heartwarming turn of events brought about by everybody else's idiocies, which I can't manage to avoid, either. The media is reporting on them, primarily by repeating each other: "Oh, they don't have a message. They're disorganized. They don't have any plan."

Well, fuck that. The Tea Party didn't have a message or a plan (unless you could "OBAMA STOP BEING TEH SOCHULIST" as a plan, which I don't). The media managed to give credibility to their idiocies just by treating them seriously, and they were morons. Not a single word out of their mouths was anything other than bullshit, and they went on to win an election.

There's still plenty of left-wing idiocy up in New York. But at least these are my useful idiots, and though they disgust me, they don't disgust me nearly as much as the morons who keep checking with Fox News every morning to find out what the talking points about them are.

I've given up on reason as a way to deal with politics. I am angry, and I grow angrier over time. The US was offered the only reasonable national politician in decades, and it smeared him. Even the ones who aren't morons have fanned themselves and said, "Well, my, they may be stupid, but I've got my reasons and they aren't stupid." Yes, yes you are, and I'm tired of reasoning with you.

It's nice to have some useful morons on my side.

My day

tompurdue — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 22:11:25 GMT

Print Pericles script
Realize that somehow printer has massively screwed up everything after page 4.
Print it again.
Find out that printer has again screwed up everything after page 4.
Print the pages from 4.
Discover that it screwed up everything after page 10.
...
Discover that it screwed up the last page.
Print last page.
Realize that you were going to take it to Kinko's to be duplicated, and that you can just email them the PDF instead.
Throw entire project into the recycling.

tompurdue — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 22:47:22 GMT

I finally did my chart for Pericles. I'm gonna need me 8 men and 4 women, at least.

If I don't get that, I can take another stab at reorganizing it. I can play one of the men's role. I might be able to squeeze out one more role by combining.

The other problem is that this play involves an absurd number of costumes. There are 35 roles (and that's after I chopped out a bunch). Even squeezing the actors down, I'm gonna need costumes. I've got a toolkit I can use to minimize costume changes (a "base costume" plus an accessory), but still... sheesh, I wasn't planning on this being a major project and it's gonna be one.

Welcome to the barrel.

Shock: something caught my eye on Etsy

tompurdue — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 19:25:49 GMT

I actually managed to find something at Etsy that would make a good Christmas present. Yay. Go me.

I always want to find something handmade and unique, something very personal, but there are a lot of "persons" in the world and finding just the right thing is incredibly hard.

As opposed to, say, this drawing of a naked woman holding a giant electric eel, a sure candidate for Regretsy:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/81204258/the-eel-signed-16x20-print?ref=sc_1

Whine

tompurdue — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 19:08:03 GMT

I just got a very faint admonishment, and I'm having a hard time shaking it off.

I took a class, and recorded it. Nothing obviously wrong, except that apparently some of the students felt inhibited from asking questions. They work for a very secretive industry.

I should just brush this off. I know I'm not going to abuse it. These people were all depressingly quiet even when they're not being recorded. (I swear, it's like an industry full of accountants.)

But I'm taking it hard. Gotta get my brain straight.

No storm damage

tompurdue — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 22:13:44 GMT

I have to post an entry, but just to say that there's nothing to say. Only momentary power outages, nothing broken.

There was some pretty high quality destruction in the vicinity, as I observed during my long run. There's a tree that absolutely shattered a power pole. If I can figure out how to get pictures off my (borrowed elderly) phone, I'll post some.

Power outages in Greenbelt meant that Meatster was without power for about 24 hours, but it is all fairly well packed and the freezer never opened. Certainly safe. Some things might have slightly defrosted, and thus slight texture damage on re-freezing. Actually, you all should consider that a loss: if it had been another 24 hours of power outage, I'd be doing a massive barbecue. As it is you'll have to wait for the next Meatster.

Still alive

tompurdue — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:29:31 GMT

I was in my office for the earthquake, which is about 100 feet up, in an old brick building. (At least, I thought it was brick. Turns out it's not that old; it's still a steel frame with brick facing. Which is good, since steel does a lot better with horizontal movement than masonry.)

The windows rattled and some paint flaked off, but nothing serious happened, not even an overturned chair. Still, I didn't want to be in the building if this turned out to presage something bigger, so I cleared out for the rest of the day and got in a lengthy run.

Runs are starting to get serious. Last night called for a two hour run. A few months ago that was a long weekend run; now it's a weeknight run with an even longer run on weekends. According to my schedule, this weekend is the biggest run of the year: three hours. After that, we scale back for racing season.

Next race: a 5k in College Park this weekend:
https://secure.getmeregistered.com/get_information.php?event_id=5029
I'm shooting for sub-20 minutes. The three hour run will have to be Sunday. Harrumph.

After that: the Annapolis half-marathon, in the middle of September. Between the pre-race taper and the post-race recovery, it all gets easier from this weekend.