Saying goodbye to my beloved Outdoor Sportif jacket

In 1996, I went backpacking in the Great Smoky Mountains with my future spouse.  Since I had no equipment, this entailed a trip to the local Army Surplus store to get long underwear, a backpack, and a jacket.  The jacket I found was an Outdoor Sportif with colors I loved:

... and it has served well as my rain jacket and winter shell for 22 years.  It has a single interior pocket, in which I usually put my car and house key:


In addition to the usual exterior pockets at the sides, it also has an exterior chest pocket in which I typically put phone, wallet, and sunglasses



The interesting thing about this pocket is that it's outside the zipper, so I can get at the contents without breaking my heat seal, but it's inside a set of velcro tabs that help to secure the contents of the pocket.




The main negative is that the hood tended to come off in any amount of wind, so it was not a great rain jacket.  Also, after many years of continuous winter use in cold climates, it was wearing down and I've been looking to replace it.  

During early searches, Burton's Hover and Swash came closest among retail jackets to what I was looking for, but the pockets (and colors) aren't quite right.  Then I looked into having a custom jacket made, and while the people I talked to did some excellent work, the pockets in the custom jackets were secured with velcro, and I really like zippers.  

Finally, this fall I discovered Fjällräven and their Keb jacket.  Even better, I got one of the orange/grey ones.  I'm missing the purple-y royal blue on the Sportif, but the Keb has pretty good features to compensate.  

Holiday Catalogs are Dead, Long Live the Holiday Catalog

Now that the JC Penney catalog and Sears catalog are ghosts of Christmases Past, Amazon is filling the void with its own "A Holiday of Play" catalog. The cover simultaneously tries to:

1. play down the Amazon name (which reminds us that it was one of the forces that destroyed brick-and-mortar)
2. evoke a "happier time" when we had simpler toys and made our best toys out of cardboard boxes (and apparently, TiVo?  those antennae, paired with the smiles below look a lot more like TiVo symbol than the rabbit ears of actual TV) 
3. place that Amazon symbol prominently on the box to remind us you get boxes delivered to your door for free when you order from Amazon!

The catalog itself is kinda skimpy in comparison to the 600-page heyday of Penney's and Sears.  All this would be by-the-by... however, the catalog contains no prices.  Now, this may be because of the ever-changing natures of prices online, but it raises my hackles a bit as a possible ploy to create desire for items before revealing their price.

Today is the 25th anniversary of Nolan Ryan beating up Robin Ventura

Lest it be forgotten, it's time to remind everyone that 25 years ago today, Nolan Ryan (in the final year of a career known for being a wild pitcher) hit Robin Ventura with a pitch, and Ventura decided to charge the mound.

The YouTube video is titled "Nolan Ryan fight Robin Ventura", but really Ventura just gets punched in the face repeatedly by a guy old enough to be his dad.

Apparently this has been a popular subject recently, googling "nolan ryan beats up robin ventura" reveals yearly posts about it in the run-up to the 25th anniversary.

Colchester triathlon 2018: Leroy says send a picture

Official results are in, and I've updated my spreadsheet that has all the individual results from the last 8 races (2014 canceled due to storms the morning of).

During the race I thought I had pretty good swim/bike splits (self-seeded too low on the swim and passed a few people), but the shocker is that this was a personal best on the run (it didn't feel that way during the race).  I'm still a shit runner (128/219 participants) and that's the avenue for improvement next year, but getting under 1:20:00 overall was fantastic.




Also, VTSportsImages has their photos up!

The best shots of me from this year are Baywatching in my farmer's tan with some other competitors.  This is technically part of the swim, since we haven't crossed the line between the swim and the transition area yet.  



,You'll note that, unlike the others, I leave my goggles on until I reach my bike in the transition area, because they're prescription goggles.

Colchester triathlon 2018: new rules, and try not to step on the clams

From the 2016 tri, no longer allowed... but look at that form!

One of the changes this year was that, near the end of the swim leg, once you crossed the pink buoys, you were required to stop swimming and wade in.  I guess they didn't want a mix of people wading and people swimming until they were in a couple feet of water?  Maybe there are dangers that aren't apparent to me, but...










...one of the reasons why I liked to swim as long as possible is that I'm faster swimming than wading.  The other is that Mallets Bay has a lot of clams, or zebra mussels, or something, and while Colchester Parks and Rec did a great job clearing away as many as they could, I still sliced my foot open on one while wading in.

Colchester triathlon 2018 playlist

The goal this year was to finish before Bono sings, and while the official results aren't in yet, I almost finished before Laurie was done singing.

0:00:00  TLC - Creep
0:04:28  Coolio - Gangsta's Paradise
0:08:30  Technotronic - Pump Up the Jam
Finish swim (during Pump Up the Jam)
0:13:54  Snap! - Rhythm Is A Dancer
0:17:35  R.E.M. - Harborcoat
0:21:28  Weezer - Surf Wax America
0:24:34  pill - mars meteorite
0:29:07  Bananarama - Every Shade of Blue
0:33:20  Eiffel 65 - Blue (Da Ba Dee)
0:36:59  Matt Sweetman - Watermelon Hills
0:42:06  Elton John & Ru Paul - Don't Go Breaking My Heart 
0:47:06  The Cranberries - Salvation
0:49:27  Blink 182 - All The Small Things
0:52:14  Weezer - Dope Nose
0:54:31  20 Fingers - Lick it
Finish bike
0:58:42  The Go-Go's - Vacation
1:01:41  Lipps Inc. - Funkytown
1:05:36  Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)
1:10:28  Laurie Anderson - O Superman
1:18:53  Michelle Shocked - Anchorage
Finish race
1:22:19  U2 - New Year's Day
1:27:54  Ramones - I Wanna Be Sedated
1:30:20

The 20th anniversary of the usenet post that changed my life

[Google groups link]  I remembered incorrectly that Bob Gruen had sent it, but he was obviously the one I wrote to.  Three years later, I was telecommuting from VT.

Vergil in Averno; Avram Davidson; 1987

This edition of adventures in bad editing:

Armin, all eyes at the work of sorting the jewel-stone, and at the show of the sparkles themselves, seemed to have heard nor seen nothing of this brief scene.

Page 39 of the 1987 Doubleday hardcover.  This is a shame, because there's a nice bit higher up the page.  Vergil has spent this evening talking to a man, who tells him of the blind jeweler of Averno, and soon the two are beating on the jeweler's door at a late hour.

At the exact moment his outburst ceased, one half of the upper half of the door (they were not notably trusting in Averno) was opened; there stood a man with a lamp in his hand and in the other he held a polished plate to magnify and reflect the light.  "Come now, Messer Armin," said this one, "is all this clamor and commotion needed?  Will not morning--"

Armin (at last! the man's name!  Vergil had had a sort of shyness in asking to begin with, and then the longer the time had passed without his being told it . . . ah well: "Armin."  So.) [...]

From the perspective of someone who is bad with names, this beautifully captures the embarrassment of not knowing, and eventual release of discomfort when a name is finally revealed.

But... "[He] seemed to have heard nor seen nothing".  I had been struggling to engage with the story up to this point, and so this provided the excuse not to continue.