RenigadeCineTrax

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Our Ride This Morning...

So this morning we went on a bike ride to Pocahontas Park. It was Jeff, Mark and I. We had to do an early ride as I have to work tonight. We got there around 8.15am and proceeded to go to the trail. We went down some nice trails that lead us to the main trailhead. On the way, I was going fast down one of the hills and I tried to scratch my nose. Boy was that a mistake!!

My wheel turned to the left and I kept on flying down the hill. It was almost like I was sliding into home plate!! My right forearm is all scratched and my left knee is all torn up. I was bleeding and had a trail of blood all the way to my sock. The bad part about all of this is that I was not trying to do an obstacle! It was just a wide open road. I am sore, but my pride was hurt more than anything. We decided to continue with the ride as planed. I was not going to let a wreck keep me from getting my exercise and fun for the day.

Mark and Jeff both now have Clip-Ins and Egg Beaters for their bikes; so needless to say, I was not the only one that had a few accidents today. Mark was the next one and Jeff followed in wrecking. Jeff’s knee was as bad as mine. Mark did not get bumped as bad as we did, but he did take a few spills.

That is a pic of me going in a little creek that runs across the trail that we were riding today. We rode on Lake View 1 and 2. Mark and I did these before and we did about 12 miles but we got lost and had to ride over the dirt roads in the park to get back. We were a bit smarter this morning and found our way to the car.

All in all, it was a very good morning ride with us doing 9 miles and 970 feet of elevation changes. We did the ride in a total of about 2.5 hours.

This pic is me going over what would be considered a normal obstacle in the parks that we ride in. These are present in all of the parks that we ride. Some of them a re bigger than this, but most are about this size. I will post on Tuesday all the GPS data of these new trails that we rode today.

I went home and cleaned up, doctored myself and then got some much needed rest!

What is your opinion?

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Today...

I took the night off and we are away to Bush Gardens!!!

What is your opinion?

Friday, June 15, 2007

Another Recovery Memory...

It was back in 2002 when I first tried to get clean. I remember going to several NA meetings and I thought that I liked them. So after a month or so, I asked a person to be my sponsor. His name was Wes or Officer Wes as he is known.

We decided to meet on the next after at a local cafe to discuss The 12 Steps and how I was going to go threw them with him. He gave me his number and told me that if I needed to talk or call him in a weak moment for me to do so no matter what time it was. That is what a sponsor is supposed to do for your information.

I thought that I was doing well and he and I proceeded to work me through the first 3 steps and we would meet regularly at his house or at the cafe. Then came that dreadful day after I had 3 months of sobriety that I had the dreaded "R" word...Relapse! For you see, that can happen if you do not totally put you whole body into the program of recovery. It happened because I still thought that I could drink and get away with it. I could not. For I thought that even though I new alcohol was not my problem, I could still drink like I was ok. For just placing one altering chemical into my body restarted the mental, physical craving that happened to me when I would ingest and use cocaine. Even though alcohol is legal, it is still a drug, plain and simple.

So if you are out there in Recovery land, do not delude yourself by think that you can drink but no do drugs. IT WILL NOT HAPPEN.

Also so as to not piss anyone off about the anonymity issue, I called him to ask if I could use his name in this blog post. He was most grateful to let me do it...

What is your opinion?

Some more FREE Music...

Several months ago i posted about an artist named VXC or if you will VXCasualty. One in the same. He has a few more new tunes for your download. His record lable is called LSDXM.

"Vxcasualty is an experimental trance project with psychedelic and ambient elements produced using Propellerhead Software's Reason" - Last.FM

New Music:
Mothra Organica is a directory with new music.
vxc&dysphor - untitl..> is also new.
http://vxc.lsdxm.com/demonology_EP_2007/
Index of /02-07/earthbound direct link to directory.

These are direct links to these tracks.
http://vxc.lsdxm.com/gateway_drug.mp3
http://vxc.lsdxm.com/brain%20floss.mp3
vxc - now, then!.mp3
vxc - friable.mp3

These are his old links:
vxc - 5-meo-wtf/
vxc - shadowcaster/
vxc - singles/
vxc - synapse/

What is your opinion?

Blog on the net...

It always seams that I am trying to generate new traffic for my Blog by singing up on new free services. You can see all the badges that I have on the left side of my blog. It is a personal thing that I like to do. I could go the route of Ad-sense from Google, but I do not want to sell out and place advertising on my site. I could also do the pay-per-click but that is not what I am about. I have had over 4300 hits since I started actively promoting my site sometimes last December. Not bad figures if you ask me. The picture is a map of where people all over the world read my blog. I just think that it is neat when someone from India leaves me a comment on my blog. The internet is a wonderful tool that all should be able to enjoy!!

I do not under any circumstances condon censorship in any way, shape, or form!!

The internet should be kept free and clear off any and all censorship because no single country owns the internet. I know that there is a lot of that going on around the world like in China where FlickR is being banned from viewing because some pics got on there of the Tiananmen Square student demonstrations of 1989 and the China government has blocked the site.

This is much like the on going issue here in the USA about Net Neutrality. I for one have signed up to help save the internet and stop censorship of the internet. If you value reading this blog in a different country, you should also want to do so as it might get banned. They could ban the whole www.blogger.com service for all we know. That would piss off a bunch of people including me. Lets all just play nice together and enjoy the internet like it is supposed to be used for, free and with no censorship.

What is your opinion?

Stress Level...

With things like they are today, many people including myself are very stressed out. How do you deal with stress? Do you meditate, or walk, jog, or workout? I for one like to go mountain biking. It is great exercise and also a great way to blow off steam! There is nothing like going riding with my friends and doing about 8-10 miles in the great parks that are around the Richmond Metroplex.

I can tell when I get too stressed out. I get very edgy and snap at people for no or little reason. Little things piss me off and I do not like that. I am a high energy person to begin with, so being on the high side of that level is almost too much to deal with. With so much uncertainty in our lives, minor things tend to be as they say the straw that broke the camels back.

I think that when we focus or obsess on small issues that it tends to make them bigger than they actually are. I know that my wife often tells me to no obsess about an issue and it will not be that big. I understand what she is saying, but it is sometimes hard to do that.

At my job, we are contractors, actually we are sub-contractors. We have had 4 positions open up in the Automation department and we did interviews. I worried about them for a few weeks before they happened. I was able to land a job; the benefits are great and the total package would be much better than what I currently have. SO I had the interview over a week ago and now I am worrying about who is going to get the positions...

I hope that the stress level will subside next week when we find out who get the positions. So it would seam that life has many actions for me to stress over. It just depends which one I have to concentrate on at that moment. Tell me how do you deal with stress…

What is your opinion?

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Ubuntu Linux...

I have been test out this install of Linux for the last few days. It is called Ubuntu. So far, i am really impressed with this as i have messed with SUSE linux before, but did not like it. I run an all Windows network and as such have had no need to test this before. I just thought that it would be neat to try.

The first thing that impressed me was how easy it was to install!! It took only 15 minutes to do a complete install and if there were other applications that you want, just do an update and you will get them. The second thing that impressed me was the ability of Ubuntu to open up my widows network! It found both groups, the MS Home and Work Group. Secondly, it was able to open up the shared drives that i have on my network with no problem and to also xfer files from them to the Linux computer. We have a shared printer on our network. All the computers in the house can access it. So, i decided to try to add a printer to the Ubuntu box and it found the printer and installed it. I tried a test page and it worked like a charm. I guess that is why Dell is selling Laptops with Ubuntu installed on them.

The computer that i installed it on is an older computer with a 1ghz Celeron processor and 512mb ram. It has a 20gig and a 60gig set of Hard Drives in it as well. I will keep messing with this over the following months and let everyone know what i think. It is different as you have to use command line stuff alot, but also it has a wide array of software applications that are prepackaged as well. There are several different installs that you can do with it. I did the Desk Top Edition. I also found a Multimedia Package called Ubuntu Studio. I might upgrade this install, I just don't know. I will let everyone know if i do this as the desktop looks very nice.