Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Weekly Short Stories: 1986 Science Fiction, Part 4
Tuesday, August 30, 2022
Enjoyed First Round Tennis from U.S. Open on ESPN
It was fun watching the action in the first round of the U.S. Open tennis tournament, held in Flushing Meadow, New York City and broadcast on ESPN and ESPN2. Although last year's spotlighted players Novak Djokovic and Ashleigh Barty were unavailable, the former being banned from entering the country because of his refusal to be vaccinated for Covid and the latter having retired earlier in the year, I was able to see some familiar faces play, including of course Serena Williams as she made her grand reappearance in a Grand Slam event after a long gap from injury and recovery. Williams, for whom I was rooting, surprised me by her play and defeated her first-round opponent, Danka Kovonić, in straight sets...still, I was taken aback at the excessive hype and crowd bias and felt a bit sorry for Danka being shoved into the background: she worked hard to get there, too. Stefanos Tsitsipas, a very talented and high-ranked but annoying player with his court antics, was upset in the first round as was Simona Halep. Top-seeded Daniil Medvedev advanced easily in his match...although to me it seems too grueling for the men to have to win three sets to advance while the women need only win two. Leylah Fernandez got in her first-round match and won...she made it to the Open finals last year against Emma Raducanu, the defending champ, who has yet to play. I also watched Nick Kyrgios advance...he's interesting with his emotional playing: maybe I'll follow him in the tournament instead of absent Novak, who last year had been trying for a Grand Slam sweep. And Rafael Nadal, returning after an abdominal tear forced him to withdraw from Wimbledon in July, has yet to play as well. Plus, there are many, many more players at this stage and I'm sure I'll get to know some "new" players. The crowd is always interesting, too...sometimes I think the folks in the stands are more interesting than the players on the court. I'm going to miss a lot of the tournament this year as I'll be at work more this time around but will catch up later on in the night...
Monday, August 29, 2022
Artemis I Moon Mission Launch Delayed Til Friday
Sunday, August 28, 2022
My #16 All-Time Favorite Album: Monster by R.E.M.
Saturday, August 27, 2022
U.S. Open in Tennis: 1st Round on ESPN Monday
Friday, August 26, 2022
Quote of the week...from Sheryl Sandberg
Thursday, August 25, 2022
Just Finished Reading Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb
Wednesday, August 24, 2022
Weekly Short Stories: 1986 Science Fiction, Part 3
Tuesday, August 23, 2022
Election Day Today for Florida Primary and Local Elections
Monday, August 22, 2022
Podcaster's Notion of "Being Yourself" Needs Slight Revision
Sunday, August 21, 2022
My #17 All-Time Favorite Album: Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd
Saturday, August 20, 2022
Today in Florida Early Voting Ended for 8/23 Primary Election
Friday, August 19, 2022
Quote of the Week...from Jonathan Frakes
I always enjoyed going into the holodeck. ---Jonathan Frakes
Thursday, August 18, 2022
Looking at Upcoming Running Races...and Some Missing Ones
I'm looking at upcoming distance running races in my local area in Gainesville and surrounding locales, so I decided to check out the Web to see what's up. I was surprised to discover that there's a 10K race this coming Saturday morning to be held on the paved Hawthorne Trail southeast of town with the starting and finishing line at Boulware Springs Park. I'm not interested in shorter distances than 10 K (6.2 miles) and think it might be fun to try this one out. The only problem is that I do get off from work at 10 the previous evening and would have preferred a Sunday race day instead. Oh well...
While checking out that upcoming race I also looked to see whether there was any hint of revival for three of my favorite races: the 10K Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot and the Five Points of Life Half-Marathon here in Gainesville and the Ocala Half-Marathon. All three events were halted in 2020 because of Covid and only the Five Points race resumed this past February...but even that one seems to not be scheduled. That's sad, but understandable, I suppose. It seems the general trend for races in these times is to hold them on outlying sites like parks and rails-to-trails courses where the overhead expenses may be lighter on the organizers. Earlier this year there was a very flexibly run race of multiple distances down in Ocala, completely contained on a looping 5K course inside a park...the distance options ranged from 5K all the way to 50 miles! But I can't seem to find any indication that its parent company, "Awesomesauce" is even still in existence...certainly no more races seem to be in the works for 2023. That's one thing that bugs me about the Internet, where you supposedly can get any information that you want. Well, that's clearly not true, for when someone decides to close shop on something...even if it's gone on for years...they usually just leaving you hanging with no information, wondering whatever the hell happened...
Wednesday, August 17, 2022
Weekly Short Stories: 1986 Science Fiction, Part 2
Tuesday, August 16, 2022
Watching Baseball on TV, and a Suggestion to Make It Better
Monday, August 15, 2022
Enjoying Starbucks, Musing on Time Off and Language Study
Sunday, August 14, 2022
My #18 All-Time Favorite Album: In Rainbows by Radiohead
As I continue my weekly countdown of my own personal all-time favorite albums, I've arrived at #18: IN RAINBOWS by the British alternative rock band RADIOHEAD. Coming out in 2007, I was completely unaware of it until three years later when I decide to collect their albums to date and put them on my MP3 player...and then listen to them all in shuffle mode while on my long training runs. Radiohead is most widely known for their debut hit single Creep...not exactly one of my favorite songs, and it wouldn't be for a few more years until in early 1998 I finally began to see what a talented and creative group they were, with the release of their third album O.K. Computer and the single Karma Police. Fast forward nine years and In Rainbows is their seventh studio album. Radiohead has Thom Yorke as their high-pitched and cynical lead singer with Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Ed O'Brien and Philip Selway on backup instrumentals and vocals...the music and lyrics are a collaborative effort although Yorke and Jonny Greenwood reportedly play a large role in the creative process. I liked In Rainbows for the wide variety of forms in their songs. My favorite track is Faust Arp, a short piece that sounds a little like the Beatles' Dear Prudence with its musical background. Reckoner is another favorite, a mournful and soulful lounge act kind of song that has a Marvin Gaye sound to it...quite a different kind of Radiohead tune. All I Need is a slow-moving, deep love song. Faster-moving, very rhythmic pieces are the opening track 15 Step and Jigsaw Falling into Place. The album's closing track Videotape is probably the most "Goth" track, very somber and darkly beautiful. I also liked...a little less, admittedly, Weird Fishes/Arpeggi and House of Cards. And the remaining song, Nude, is tolerable although I didn't care for it...still, I'd never deliberately skip it, either. I think of Radiohead as the best rock band of this century...they're still together although they tend to space their albums pretty far apart these years and have their side projects. One of these is The Smile, with Thom Yorke teaming up with Jonny Greenwood and some other musicians to produce an album this year titled A Light for Attracting Attention: it sounds like a high-quality Radiohead album...
Next week: Album #17...
Saturday, August 13, 2022
Constellation of the Month: Lyra (the Lyre)
Friday, August 12, 2022
Quote of the Week...from Olivia Newton-John
Thursday, August 11, 2022
Early Voting Begins Saturday for August 23rd Primary Elections
Wednesday, August 10, 2022
Weekly Short Stories: 1986 Science Fiction, Part 1
Tuesday, August 9, 2022
Looking Forward to Gator Football...Kind Of
College football season will be starting back up soon...is this something you care about? I say this having lived in Gainesville, site of the University of Florida Gators, since 1977. As sports go, college football is interesting enough...but I don't get overwrought if UF loses a game although I usually root for them. By the way, I'm a University of Florida alumnus. But having said that, in spite of living for so long in the same city as my alma mater, it isn't football that has tied me to that institution over the years. It's their incredible medical system, from Shands Hospital where both of my children were born and the Cardiovascular Hospital where I had my open-heart surgery last July to their city-wide network of offices, after-hour clinics, emergency rooms, and labs...one of which is just across the street from my workplace. Both Melissa and I worked at Shands as well. On the other hand, the main campus of UF seems to be an isolated city-within-a-city that I have rarely visited over the decades, except to ride my bicycle through or as part of the Five Points Half-Marathon (I've run six of them). Now both my children work at the University of Florida in different capacities...UF has been good to my family, to say the least. But when it comes to football...or basketball or any other sport, I'm more than a little taken aback at the fanatical, sometimes ugly following I've seen from other Gators fans. Former football coach Dan Mullen even once suggested that UF "pack the Swamp" in the middle of the Covid pandemic, a scourge that killed a wonderful, retired married couple that I worked with for years. Enough is enough: root for your team, but don't let yourself get carried away...
Monday, August 8, 2022
Podcaster Lays Out His Simple Formula for Success
Sunday, August 7, 2022
My #19 All-Time Favorite Album: The Who Sell Out...by The Who, Naturally
Saturday, August 6, 2022
Radio, Vinyl, Cassette, CD & Streaming Forms for Music
The forms through which I have listened to music over the decades of my life have greatly changed. Part of this has to do with my money-making ability, nonexistent in my childhood and easy to come by later on, that enabled me to purchase albums and singles...the other part concerns the changing forms themselves. In the beginning, during the 1960s, I got most of my music straight from the radio, initially a portable family model that was usually tuned in to either WQAM/560 for music and WIOD/610 for talk. Then in the Christmas of 1964...I was eight...my sister and I each received our own little transistor radios, and I was inseparable from mine, that is when I wasn't at school. My parents liked to buy albums back then, all in the traditional vinyl format of course, and were partial to the Beatles...later they bought stuff from the Bee Gees, Byrds and the Mamas and Papas, among other favorites of theirs. When eight-track cartridges came out none of us used them...we skipped straight over to the innovation of cassette tapes: I bought quite a few of these in the 1980s and 90s and often recorded my favorite songs straight from the radio for my personal listening. Back in the 1990s I decided to explore the complete works of some of my favorite acts, and so I went through period of buying vinyl used albums (one of these I'm discussing tomorrow). For years they've all been lined up on a high shelf in one of our closets, never being played anymore although I don't have the heart to get rid of them. I guess in a way that's hoarding, which I intend to make a topic for a future article. It took me a while to adapt to compact discs when they began to be used, but to this day I prefer them to MP3s and streaming audio whenever I have access. Nowadays, though, it is easier to search my favorite albums and artists on YouTube and endure the necessary ads between each track...but when I find an album to my liking, I'll either go over to Amazon and purchase the CD or check it out when available from my local public library. Listening to CDs for me is completely tied in with driving...sometimes it takes a few listens to an album to really know which songs resonate with me. This summer I've discovered a number of good CDs that current acts have released and having been listening to them in my car...makes commuting with the never-ending construction and distracted/aggressive/impaired drivers easier to endure. I'm aware that there will always be newer ways for music to be conveyed...I'd just like to retain the choice as to which ones I get to use...
Friday, August 5, 2022
Quote of the Week...from Neil Armstrong
I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did. ---Neil Armstrong
Thursday, August 4, 2022
Podcasts Helpful for Self-Enlightenment, With Limitations
I don't think life has to be all that complicated, with myriad rules and regulation for daily living cluttering up one's mind at every moment. One of the things I like about the Mindset Mentor podcast I've been listening to is that its host, personal development coach Rob Dial, while putting out four different episodes each week on differing topics, comes back to repeat himself on what he considers as the most important principles for being effective and enjoying life. This past week, for example, his shows emphasized the importance of time over money, manifesting one's thoughts, mastering one's emotions, and purging in different areas of life...all areas I've heard him cover before. His suggestions, if accumulated over the course of weeks, can become a legalized set of rules if I allow it in spite of his presentation of I discern as a self-consistent and manageable philosophy for tackling life. Instead, I take the most important principles he espouses (that I agree with) and go from there, in small doses. No one source is my only source for information and enlightenment...I take it in from the people I'm around as well, and even fictional characters in the books I read and movies I watch. All of it, however, with an inner discernment for the truth and what is really important and what is not...each of us has to be the arbitrator of that for ourselves...
Wednesday, August 3, 2022
Weekly Short Stories: 1985 Science Fiction, Part 7
Tuesday, August 2, 2022
No Atlantic Cyclones Now, But Plenty of Awful Conditions Elsewhere
According to the National Hurricane Center based in Miami, Florida, no tropical cyclones are expected in the next five days. This fits into the pattern of a lack of Atlantic tropical storms or hurricanes in July, in spite of earlier named storms this year. In the meantime, during the past few weeks the United States mainland from coast to coast has been subjected to wave after wave of massive heat, some areas hit by 100+ degree temperatures on a repeated basis. Oregon, Minnesota, New England...these are supposed to be the places people visit in the summertime to escape the heat, not find it. And of course, the South and Southwest remain hot as always. On top of this, we're seeing terrible forest wildfires in northern California and tragic flooding in eastern Kentucky. But on August 2nd, there are crickets chirping over the Atlantic. Not that I'm complaining about the stymied advancement of alphabetized names in 2022...it's been a long, long time since I've rooted for a tropical storm to threaten my home area. Still, I recognize the seasonal threat is still out there although at this moment northern central Florida seems like the safest place to be, weatherwise. Don't worry, Weather Channel meteorologists, I'm confident that within a few weeks you'll get your Florida beach assignments to stand out there in front of the cameras and pretend to be bravely roughing it while the "natives" continue to nonchalantly go about their business in the background...
Monday, August 1, 2022
My July, 2022 Running and Walking Report
Since April I have been averaging about 300 miles of training runs per month, running each day...this continued on through July. I have been breaking up and spreading my runs over the course of the day, accounting for the high accumulated mileage. Still, one of my aims is to be ready when the weather cools in the fall and the north Florida area once again begins to hold longer-distance races...this won't happen until October, though. I have begun to regularly use my local gym (Gainesville Health and Fitness), focusing on the treadmill. I have been going there a couple of times per week, always after I get off from work at 10 pm. The place usually isn't as crowded at that time, although I have noticed that their indoor swimming pool always seems to be crowded. I avoided public races in July, skipping the July 4th 3-mile Melon Run at Westside Park as well as the weekly free 5K Saturday morning events at Depot Park...just not into public running right now. Speaking of public running, there seem to be a number of informal running groups in Gainesville where folks get together for training runs around various places...that's pretty cool. As for walking, it's been months since I have specifically set out just to walk. Instead, my job, which is pretty physically demanding, inherently entails much walking and I usually cover 4-6 miles each shift. I plan on continuing going to the gym, running indoors, and building up the mileage in August...