The Other Don Kelly

It’s coming down like it did 20 years ago, almost to the day — “it” being the snow, and it’s been dumping here since last night around 9:00. I just came in from a second shoveling of our sidewalk and porch, and I’d guess that we already got 24″, though it’s also very windy too, and straight snow depth is hard to tell because of all the drifts. I haven’t even tried digging the cars out yet.

(The papers have all been talking about the “Blizzard of ’96”  lately, and contrasting it with this winter, which has been snow free and relatively warm up until today. Well, we got our party…)

Today has mostly been sitting here, playing Internet radio and playing with the computer, and occasionally shoveling. We may try snowshoeing tonight, or cross-country skiing later (or tomorrow), though the snow seems like the wrong consistency. We shall see — tomorrow is pretty much going to be “Winter Wonderland” time; going out right now seems too much like work.

Just kicking back on a Sunday afternoon, playing with the computer and brewing beer…

As you may know from my post at the old place, some changes are in the air for this new year — and for the record, I did give my notice at work, on my first day back from Christmas break, negotiating a deal where I would be laid off at the end of February (thus getting severance pay, which is not insignificant) — but there have been a few other changes I made over the winter break:

Computer Upgrade: The operating system on my laptop was Ubuntu 10.04, which was so old it was completely unsupported. This was basically because I didn’t like the newer Ubuntu window/desktop setup, so I procrastinated and procrastinated, until the software on my machine was obsolete, and my only upgrade option was a complete re-installation of a more modern system, which would mean all sorts of headaches. But the time finally came, headache or no, and I started getting ready to make the move.

The one good thing about a complete re-installation was that I no longer constrained (by simplified upgrade convenience) to stay with Ubuntu. There are all sorts of Linux distributions out there, including one based on Ubuntu called Linux Mint, which purports to keep the user interface more like the older ones, even while using the new underlying architecture. Long story short, I installed the latest Mint system.

I’ll fill out the longer story later in other posts, but so far I’m pretty happy with the new system, even though there have been a lot of growing pains and I’m still having my frustrations.

Biking Goals (An “Uh-Oh Moment”): My friend Renee did the Shenandoah 100 last year, and had a blast doing it. She knew that I’d done similar things in the past, so prior to her race she asked me for advice, tips etc, and then came back after the race aglow with war stories, and said “we should totally do the Wilderness 101 together next year.” All this enthusiasm already had me going “hmmmmm…” and Anne was also like “you should do it,” so I am going to race the Wilderness 101 this summer.

The decision to do this was made a few months ago, but the training regimen I put in place only began in earnest at the start of the year. Given the fact that I DNF’ed the last time I raced the W101 (in 2009), and my strength/fitness/endurance/etc has only gone down since then, I have a lot of work to do, even though my only real goal is to finish. I just finished two weeks of easy rides on the Lehigh Towpath, and I already feel both exhausted and like I am falling behind. Welcome back to the rat race, Mr. Kelly…