Rest and recovery today. I took a little jog around the block before dinner; legs are a bit stiff but everything is behaving well.

Varia picked up the new Prince of Persia game and spent the past few hours repeatedly sending the handsome prince plummeting to his death. It’s a lovely game with smooth animation and elegant art. Told as a narrated story, the narrator apologetically intervenes after a death plunge: “No, no, that’s not how it happened. I really didn’t fall. Let me back up the story a bit…”

There is one extra tidbit today that came out of my travel. In one of the airport restrooms during my trip, I saw one of the strangest pieces of graffiti I have ever laid eyes upon: “I am in love with Hillary Clinton, but am afraid to tell her.” Indeed.

I’m at the airport, and the lack of wireless access is killing me. Sitting in the food court, I’m drinking a decidedly terible cup of coffee and eating a very sweet cinnabon, which is strangely satisfying.

So far, this has been a pretty long day of travel. I’ve been in transit since 11:00, which on the East Coast at least is 6 hours ago. The dread Thanksgiving Travel Rush hasn’t really made itself manifest to me; it took me all of five minutes to check in and make it through it security, and all of my flights have been smooth.

This PowerBook has a particular feature that I hadn’t entirely expected; it draws attention. It is very difficult to keep a low profile while sitting behind 15 inches of sleek, ultra-styled aluminum. For one such as myself who has developed the practice of being unobtrusive into an art, it is most unsettling. I am certain that I take the technologically literate oasis of Cambridge-Somerville for granted, where even someone walking around with computers strapped to their body like a cyborg would barely warrant a passing glance.

For most of the trip I’ve been engrossed in Tomas H. O’Connor’s history of Boston, The Hub. Boston is an old city, and has a very twisty and multifaceted story to it. I’ve enjoyed watching its construction and development from a few shacks and a cow pasture to the strange cosmopolitan place that it is today.

I am particularly taken by the Useful Knowledge Society, co-founded by one of my very distant ancestors Nathan Hale. I cannot think of a better reason to form a society, with the possible exception of the Useless Knowledge Society.

More topical perhaps is the strong resentment to the War of 1812 that the ruling elite of Boston held; their polemic against James Madison (”Jimmy’s War”) is hauntingly similar to what’s been in the papers in the past few months. I suppose that underneath it all we as humans don’t really change, and appreciate history books such as this one that bring into view the conflict that all important events and decisions had. History was and is not a series of unaminous agreements after another, but a constant process of struggle and discourse.

Enough nattering about historical development. My coffee has been put of its misery and it is time for me to amble back to the gate for boarding. I will post this when I get back to a welcoming wireless access point, and will backdate the time to the particular flavor of now I am presently experiencing.

Tomorrow I face the full brunt of holiday travel, the trip’s centerpiece being a four hour layover in Chicago. It will be good to be home and back with Varia.

It’s been a good trip, but it was one overshadowed by the race. I couldn’t do too much in the days before as I was preserving my strength, and couldn’t do too much after, as I was recovering it. My hosts have been very generous. Between the pre-race expo, getting up with me at 5am on Thanksgiving day to drive me to the race start (and being there at the finish) they have put up with my strange hobby admirably.

The company has been excellent and a few fantastic meals were had, including a sumptuous meal at the MF Sushibar.

If I had been able to stay uninjured, I would be running down Peachtree Avenue. As things are, I am back at my host’s home, having run the half marathon in a respectable 1:51 by my timing.

The race itself was a grand experience. Unlike the 10 mile race in September, this was a big event, with thousands of runners. As rosy-fingered dawn broke, we began running, moving from the suburbs into downtown Atlanta and finishing at Turner field under the Olympic rings. The course was interesting, and most importantly I felt great. As the miles passed I felt myself getting stronger. As I approached the finish line, the announcer called my name: “Jeffrey Radcliffe, from Somerville, Maine.” Well, can’t have it all.

I wish that getting to the race was as easy. After cutting back on training because of the ankle, I was demoralized. The weather turned cold, the light dark. Getting out the door became harder and harder. Soon I was demoralized and afraid that I wouldn’t even be able to finish the 13 mile race. There were a lot of times I wanted to give up.

I didn’t give up. I finished with strength, and I think it is the boost I need to keep running for the rest of the winter. It is my hope that this time next year I will still be running.

I’m in Atlanta.

Most of the day was spent in transit; being the holidays, instead of flying direct I went through Chicago, tripling transit time.

Tomorrow is the marathon registration expo, and Thursday the half-marathon.

I’m sure I’ll have something more to allow tomorrow once I’ve recovered.

I was up at 1am for four hours of unscheduled productivity. Around 5 I fell asleep for a few hours of vivid and unsettling dreams, heavily featuring Jesus as a piggy bank. Feel free to make a Jesus Saves joke here.

Sitting now my office desk, the only thing standing between myself and complete insanity is coffee. Lots of coffee. Rivers, lakes and oceans of coffee. To hold this flood of cofee, I brought my plastic coffee tankard from home; decorated with a hipster managing the impressive feat of drinking coffee, playing the bongos, and looking as if he had just achieved enlightenment all at once, it is both large, functional, and inspirational.

As I’m going to be out of town over Thanksgiving, and as it seemed like the right thing to do, V and I bought and decorated our Christmas tree today.

It is lovely.

Every Friday we get a big green box full of organic fruits and vegetables. Part of the fun is that once we open the box we can decide what to do with it; this has led to some deviation from our typical repertoire and has dramatically spiced up our culinary life.

This week’s cornucopia included a red cabbage. When I thought of the red cabbage, I think rotkraut, a dish I had many a time in Austria. But rotkraut is the side dish to end all side dishes; it needs a meal to go around it. A very Germanic sort of a meal.

An so we are currently in the process of creating a large Austro-Germanic dinner. Rotkraut, Bratwurst, Kartofflepuffern (a variation on potato pancakes), some thick crusty bread, and of course, German beer. And to end it all, some decadent apple struedel.

Movies were the order of the day yesterday. After making some impromptu guacamole soft taco/tostada hybrid (the tostadaco?), we indulged in an impromptu cyberpunk/fantasy hybrid of the Animatrix and the first 2 hours of The Two Towers extended edition.

Animatrix brings me to the end of my personal Matrix experience, at least for now. I’m told that there is a lot of “important” material in the video game, but I am not wild about that idea, especially in light of the Lord of the Rings game I bought about this time last year. It started out fine, and it was entertaining to play as Aragorn, but it grew very frustrating. I think that, like the Matrix, you have to experience it for yourself to truly feel my pain, but I will attempt a dramatic rendition of the turning point in the game for me.

This little play in all likelihood will capture my immense frustration playing the game about as well as the game captured the sweeping epic of the first two films. At any rate, I don’t want to torture myself with poor AI and ridiculous plot contrivances to get a glimpse of a few more minutes of “important” content.

I really liked what I saw of The Two Towers. The content they added made the film flow much better, and added a lot of the richness that makes Tolkein’s world so wonderful.

This is an unabashed rant, forged in my (presently) black and merciless heart. Read more if you dare.

I believe I made my last trip to the Cambridge Apple Store yesterday. As I picked up my monitor, technicians couldn’t find a problem and suggested I bring my computer and display into the store for further testing. There followed a heated discussion

I was angry, then depressed, and now I am weary. My desire to have a functional computer has, at this point, turned into a endless loop. I have a serious problem at home, and make a more than reasonable effort to document the problem and aid with their inquiries. I am rebuffed with an attitude of “show me or it’s not a problem.”

Yet it is a problem, and in this interaction I am not the technician but the customer, and I tire of attempting to devise unit tests for them. I tire of moving computer equipment back and forth, and most of all I am tired of being treated line a moron.

“Show me or it’s not a problem” is not a useful support paradigm, and it certainly isn’t quality customer service. Combined with unwillingness to help along with extreme customer disdain and distrust, it is going to earn them a letter of complaint or two.

The apparent ineptitude of the Cambridge Apple Store’s technicians is made all the more clear after dealings with Apple’s product specialists. I have had three dealings with them, and I have noticed a few things. The first is that they listen to what I have to say, and use that information. The second is that they genuinely think about the problem, and suggest various tests to eliminate possible problems. Instead of sending me home packing and telling me to come up with some sort of unit test on my own, the product specialists work with me to find the problem.

Yesterday after I got home the display acted up after a few hours. I knew it would. I placed a call to a product specialist and half an hour later he had gathered quite a bit of information from me and had posited that the quality of the power input from the wall socket might be contributing at some level. He suggested I purchase a power regulated UPS, which I did (and it will be arriving later this week). In addition, he escalated the monitor issue to engineering, and I will hear back from them with a further course of action in a few days.

Will a power regulator solve my problem? Maybe. If it does, I am delighted. If not, it eliminates another unknown and takes us one step closer to a resolution. I am left wondering why, after half a dozen trips to the store with no problems found, the local technicians didn’t suggest this (or anything that might aid them in their unending quest for technical excellence).

Kudos to the product specialists, and boo to the Geniuses at the Cambridge Apple Store. I will turn to the former when I am looking to get my problems resolved, and to the latter when I am looking to lose faith in humanity.

In matters of living I tend toward piecemeal pragmatism. Situations arise and are managed with as much skill and knowledge is as available at the time. However, if I were required to subscribe to a more all-encompassing philosophy, it pains me to say that there are none in existence that would satisfy me. Only a new method of perceiving the world would do, and that method would be Wyngardianism.

Our Peter, Strong and Manly. Hallowed be thy name.

The fundamental premise of Wyngardianism is that Society Today is Weak and Decadent. Surely dozens of philosophies and religions are based on that! you say. This may be, but what makes Wyngardianism unique is its response to that.

To counter a weak and decadent society, the Wyngardian chooses to embrace instead a historical period that is not weak and decadent. The Romans (at the peak of their power, before they descended into weak decadence), the Vikings, or the Incas are good examples. Once the choice is made, all that remains to be done is to model one’s life after that period, including clothing and culture. Social events which encourage (non-decadent) debauchery and pits of any nature are a strong plus; a staunch Wyngardian would consider them essential.

Lest you think that this merely involves dressing up in costumes and throwing people into lion pits, let me reassure you that there is more to it than that. Wyngardianism has a mission, and that mission is to replace said weak and decadent society with the glowing example of whichever historical period one emulates. This involves plotting and scheming and as an additional bonus provides incentive to use the lion pits.

There arises a theoretical problem wherein two Wyngardian groups vie to replace society with culturally disparate alternatives, but this should be seen as an advantage as any altercation between, say, the Aztech empire and feudal Japan could only be entertaining.

While I’m not quite ready to abandon my own way of being to become a practicing Wyngardian, even I must admit the benefits are compelling. And should you happen to visit and see a full suit of plate armor in the closet, it’s just for decoration. Oh, and don’t stand in the Circle of Justice.

Did he ever return? No, he never returned,

And his fate is still unlearned,

He will ride forever ‘neath the streets of Boston,

He’s the man who never returned.

When I hear this, I hear two versions of the same song: The Kingston Trio’s M.T.A. and the slightly more modern Skinhead on the M.T.A. by the Dropkick Murphys. The latter uses a lot more “Oi! Oi! Oi!” and replaces phrases such as “man, get off the train, and sandwich” with “skinhead, punched in the brain, and grenade.”

Unlike the man or the skinhead, I am returned, though three days without a post seems like an eternity.

I had intended to write last night, but before I got to it I was dragged out by Orlando, not to return until the wee hours of today. I’m not used to being out at night, but a combination of excellent microbrew, turkish coffee, and generous company made the evening a very good one.

Christmas came a bit early yesterday as a shipment arrived from exotic Houston. Art from the gallery of bon vivant and starving artist Jin Wicked. Unpacking the box, we found what we had ordered; five black and white prints and the original of Ne plus ultra, which is now hanging in the studio, waiting for the rest of my decor to hurry up and provide a suitable environment for it.

Busy evening. I uploaded a wee little etude to the gallery entitled Furbelow, written after dinner tonight.

I had Bartok and Drum & Bass in my head while working, which I filtered through my what I like to think of as “wabi sabi” mode. This phrase came from a friend of mine’s ceramics teacher, describing the concept of balancing something through controlled asymmetry. As I use it, it becomes an intuitive process of shaving and bolstering time and texture.

I could talk a long time about the importance of ceramic techniques in my own music, and probably will later this week.

I debated putting this one up in the gallery because I think that it has some potential, and as such I’m a bit hesitant to show it off before it is fully gilded. But the desire to get it out in some form won over.

Structurally it is very simple, but I’m very pleased with the organic evolution of the piece, not to mention the interaction of elements.

Between the things that I’ve posted here and what I’m holding in reserve, I have enough to put together a small CD of electronic offerings.

The project I’m working on at work is in a weird state, after a round of discussions between my boss and his boss, which eventually filter up to (and back from) my boss’ boss’ boss’ boss. It’s typical stuff; priorities shifting, expectations greatly out of sync with reality, unreasonable requirements, and a touch of madness. And I thought academic politics were interesting! It is almost enough to make me create a version of Survival of Witless set in a technology company.

The Studio Display is still broken.