So yeah, I’m 30. No head of grey hair, no infinite wisdom, but I feel alright. I feel, well, like a guy who’s lived a bit, who’s got some experience under his belt, but who also has a lot to look forward to.

I also move up a bracket in foot races, so I’m competing in the 30-39 category. It’s like getting discount tickets at the theaters! As added bonus, if I were transported to ancient Rome, and somehow were made a citizen, I’d be eligible to run for Tribune.

If I’m not supposed to trust anyone over 30, that means that this is the last day I can trust myself. There’s something deeply poetic about that.

In any case I’m spending my last day as a care-free twentysomething working.

This weekend is about getting older, and looking back and then looking forward. Well, it’s also about working a lot, but I’m glossing over that.

I was interested to see what the Internet Archive had stored for tinctoris.com, and the results are interesting. It’s nice to see how the feel of the site has slowly evolved, but not lost its identity. Maybe a few more grey hairs.

I love it when crunch time gets even crunchier™. I’ve got a huge list of things to do, but the good news is that the list is well defined, and it’s getting smaller all the time.

Aware of the time-sensitive nature of things, my ISP decided that today would be a great time to flake out. Since my work requires a net connection, I’ve been forced to other locations where I can work without 98% packet loss. The question now is, when I go home, will I be able to get online? I have a conference call at 9pm, so if the answer is no (away team Varia is going to let me know when she gets home from her own action packed work experience), I’ll be here late. Fortunately, there is free coffee.

On the way to a meeting downtown today I picked up a burrito from Anna’s. Arriving a few minutes early I plopped down under a shade tree in the Boston Common to eat. A few minutes later I noticed a man staring longingly at my lunch. He came forward and introduced himself as Antonio from El Salvador; his English was broken, but between one thing and another and my magnificently rusty Spanish we had a talk. Antonio told me about his family in Texas and his recently deceased mother in El Salvador. After a few minutes, he fished out a bottle of liquor from under his shirt and offered it to me.

It was clear that Antonio was down on his luck; his face was worn and resigned. I offered my burrito (which I’d only taken a few bites of at this point) to him, and his eyes lit up. “Are you sure?” he asked. I nodded. He ate with relish, thanked me and wandered off.

Still working; code is in its last throes; move along.

Have I mentioned it’s hot?

I’m glad I don’t have to code like this every day, or I don’t know how much I’d like myself.

I’ve waited a bit to write about my anniversary present, a medium SuperPro Courier Bag from Bailey Works, because I’ve wanted to do some testing first. By testing I mean carrying stuff around. I I’ve been jumping at the opportunity to fetch items. I’ve hauled groceries, sandwiches, my laptop and sundry other books, cameras. I know I could run across the street to get some bread, but you know, why don’t I just nip down to the shop a mile or two away and grab it there instead?

The SuperPro is a monster. This bag has been refined and polished, approaching a pure form of bag-ness. There’s nothing on it that doesn’t have some functional purpose. It might not look like much, but it’s not concerned with that. It’s all about function and screw everything else, and that gives it its own kind of style.

It might be a medium, but there is no doubt — the bag is big. The website says it can hold 46 beer cans, and I believe it. It also balances very well, thanks to the length of the bag and the various ways of loosening and tightening the shoulder strap. There’s a big cushy pad on the strap right where it goes over the shoulder, which makes carrying heavy loads much nicer. I can’t stress the joy of stability; dashing through traffic is not a time when you want to have your bag slip to one side. It is aggressively water resistant as well, though I haven’t been lucky enough to be caught out in the rain yet.

Does it have pockets? Why yes it does! Not as many pockets as I’ve had in some of my other bags, but the pockets are bigger. I’m still figuring out what to put where.

Oi, work continues to be brutal. One more week until things cool down again.

I took a break this afternoon to enjoy the weather and rode down to the Charles River for, well, more riding. It was one of those days where I was very proud to be living in Boston; such a weird mix of a place.

I stopped by the Diesel for a coffee this morning, and was sitting at the counter when I heard familiar music cutting through the usual cafe noise. It was unmistakable:

Someone was using the first few patterns from Terry Riley’s In C for a ringtone! I am impressed.

I’ve written before about improvising; sometimes it’s the only way for me to work through something especially tricky. I put Elegy together early last month when I was in that mindspace, and now is as good a time as any to share it. Simple chords over a drone, very early Baroque in aesthetic.

Elegy (download, 2.9 MB)

There are only a few days a year that I regret not having an air conditioner, and today is one of them. Fortunately there are places to flee — today I’m at the Diesel Cafe as a temporary refugee.

My birthday present from V came on the scene a few days early. There was long discussion about what I wanted, which has lasted weeks; I’m hard to shop for, so I’ve heard.* Finally, the thought popped into my head – what about another bike?

Bicycles are like shoes, it seems. The Beast is something like a pair of Doc Martin’s – strong, heavy, passable in just about every situation, though perhaps not totally appropriate. A new bike could be more like some running shoes, a bit lighter, sleeker, less utilitarian. And yes, something I could show up to a group ride with and not feel like the Jebidiah the Bicycle Pariah.

So I ended up with a road bike as a birthday present. I had a long talk with the folks at Wheelworks about my requirements, and our price range – this baby needs to be able to handle my commute (I’m not willing to sacrifice that much utility), and I ended up riding out with a new silver Specialized Allez. Definitely near the bottom of the line, but just what I’m looking for. It’s a different riding experience for sure.

The Beast stays in the stables and comes out if I need to haul stuff or the weather is bad; he gets some fenders as soon as I can afford them. I’m also keen on a fixed gear bike, but that is a long term project. Robb described the fixed as the most UNIXy of bicycles; how can you resist that?

The metaphysical question of why I’m so focused on cycling, and on a broader level with the more physical components of living. I think that in large part it’s to provide balance to the increasingly mental nature of my work, but there’s more to it than that. With luck I’ll learn more.

*My grandfather is even harder to shop for. The safest gift is any movie with Harrison Ford in it (except for Blade Runner). The family sighed in relief when he finally got a DVD player as we could replace the Harrison Ford VHS tapes with Harrison Ford DVDs.

Neck deep in my own little work quagmire, but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, we’ve turned the corner, etc.

I went ahead and read the newest Harry Potter book just so I could view web pages without being prepared to avert mine eyes at a moment’s notice for fear of spoilers. Not ideal timing, but there are things one must do to remain a good citizen of the Internets.

There’s a story , long told in my family, in which my father, unshaven and scruffy in the middle of a motorcycle tour, is asked by a complete stranger if he would watch her daughter while she ran an errand.

This sort of approachability seems to be genetic. Over the past three or four days I’ve been stopped at least four times, asked about how to get somewhere. Fortunately I’ve been able to answer most of them. No “watch my baby” yet.

The amusing thing for me is that with my tuft of bright blue hair, I feel a lot less respectable than I have as of late — then again, perhaps I look like a local. I do wonder what it would take to counterbalance the familial “ask me questions, I know what I’m doing!” trait.