• The lack of coffee in my existence right now is appalling. I’m trying yerba mate, but it’s not quite the same. #
• I am determined to have a better rest of the day than I have had so far. I might daven when I get a moment to breathe… it usually helps. #

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• Trying to get a handle on this verification process is like trying to catch an eel bare-handed… it’s damn slippery. #
• Overheard @work just now: "Okay, I’ve had enough of Jeff’s crap. Blanket party, right now." I am amused. #

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• Sat behind an Orthodox guy on the bus today. I wished him a good holiday. He didn’t quite know what to make of my tzitzit. They never do. #
• Off to get ready for my silly Jira presentation. But first, a Miryam break. Mmm, Miryam. #
• In my presentation/meeting listening to the conslutant. #
• I dislike running meetings. I’m always afraid I’m going to do something wildly inappropriate by accident, like light someone on fire. #

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I have an hour until I can get the hell out of here — generally work, specifically this meeting. I was responsible for hosting this meeting and had to “present”, which was really more like me answering the conslutant’s questions. It was still pretty uncomfortable. But that’s okay, because I’m getting out of here soon and very soon. I think we’re going to the Purim celebration at Nevei Kodesh tonight, but this has not been confirmed. Not that it matters, because I will not be here, in a meeting, suppressing the urge to leap on the conference table and proclaim, “Cheese is God!” or something equally ridiculous.
It’s not my fault. I’m not fit for human society, really.

• @saundo Going to flush yourself down the toilet? #
• @manuka What’s Flock? #

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I’m testing out Postie, which lets me post by e-mail. It’s pretty neato.

• foobar #

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• New King’s X album, "XV", to be released 20 May in the US. w00t! Can’t wait. #
• The boss is out for the rest of the week on jury duty. It must be driving him batshit not to be here; he’s a control freak, bless his heart. #

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I think i know what’s happening with my bike.

For the past few weeks (weeks!), I’ve been having an endless shitload of trouble getting around on the bike, especially when it’s cold. Recall my post from December, wherein I observed:

What happens is I’ll be pedaling along, hit the shift lever, and immediately my pedaling loses all resistance. I don’t know if that makes any sense. It feels like instead of pushing against something when I pedal I’m spinning in thin air, like there’s no chain attached to the pedals.

Well, it’s not just happening while shifting any more… it’s happening while just pedaling down the road. A lot. Especially when it’s cold. It has caused much cursing in the last couple of weeks.

After doing some Googling, going over to Sheldon Brown’s site, and inspecting my chain, I’ve pieced together what’s happening. I think.

Sheldon Brown gives a technique for measuring chain and sprocket wear:

The normal technique is to measure a one-foot length, placing an inch mark of the ruler exactly in the middle of one rivet, then looking at the corresponding rivet 12 complete links away. On a new, unworn chain, this rivet will also line up exactly with an inch mark. With a worn chain, the rivet will be past the inch mark.

Sheldon says when you measure the chain and count links, there should be less than 1/16″ difference between the end of your ruler and the rivet of the 12th link you’re measuring. More than 1/8″ difference is bad and indicates that your chain and sprockets are worn beyond repair.

I have 1/4″ difference.

So, clearly, my chain and sprockets are worn out and need replacing. The chain slips the most when it’s cold. I think this is because the components are *so* worn out that the metal contracts just enough in the cold that the chain can’t grab the sprocket teeth on the back cassette, and therefore the crank spins freely. This is not very useful when, say, you’re crossing an intersection while a car waits behind you to turn right. Oy. At least I know what’s wrong with the thing and I can do something about it now.

So I need to get down to Derailer and see if I can con someone into helping me replace the damn chain and cassette. It may be worth looking into how much new components would be, actually, but I really don’t want to spend the money. So far this bike has cost me $10 for a basic set of lights. I like that and I’d like to keep it that way as long as possible.

While I’m waiting for CentOS to install on my puppet test box for the 289387th time this month, I’m taking a minute to think out loud about social networking.

My girlfriend, whom I adore, is not quite a neo-Luddite, but she is a hippie girl who cares not even a little bit about the newest hot thing on the Internet, whatever that happens to be at the time. I admire this trait. It means we run in different circles when it comes to technology, since at this point I can safely say I’m never going offline, but we have enough overlap on the Internet that it doesn’t really affect things. The only exception to this is Facebook.

I recently opened a Facebook account to test a Facebook application that my company published. The app wasn’t working and I needed to get an “outside” view of it, so I popped open a Web browser window, ran through the account setup, tested my app, and all was well. Over lunch that day, out of curiosity, I started poking around Facebook to see what it was like. I’m not generally up on the latest social networking sites, mostly due to appalling lack of giving a shit, so I had no idea what to expect. (I have a MySpace page solely to keep up with my sister’s blog while she’s in Iraq; I don’t think that counts.) To my dismay, due to my not paying close attention when I went through the account setup, Facebook had sent a friend request to everyone in my address book who already has a Facebook account, so now everyone I know is pinging me on Facebook to say hi. Which would be fine if I were interested in utilizing Facebook as a new social networking utility, but… that wasn’t why I set up the account.

So anyway, I started poking around and seeing who I knew. I found out my brother has a Facebook account; I had no idea. (We don’t really speak.) I found out that a lot of people from chorus have accounts. I played around with a couple of apps, futzed around with my profile, uploaded a picture… the usual bullshit people do when they’re playing with a new toy. In no time at all I had 25 “friends”, mostly people I keep up with in real life, but a couple of people from high school as well, and now I have a “poke” from someone I don’t even know. It didn’t take long for it to get out of my control. I’ll be honest; I was enamored of Facebook for a few days. Social networking sites are not just a way to keep in touch with people; they’re also extremely self-indulgent. In a few clicks you can tell the world your mood, what music you’re hearing, what you’re doing at that very moment, the movies you like, how knowledgeable you are about any number of subjects, and your popularity rating (measured by how many “friends” you have). It’s easy to get seduced by the self-centric nature of these Web sites.

Back to my girlfriend. She Who Does Not Do the Internet (except a little) can’t stand MySpace, Facebook, or any site like them. And she got irritated that I had a Facebook account, because, she said, it’s hard enough to keep up with me online considering how little she likes to be online in the first place. She feels like she misses enough of my life while I’m online and at work and Facebook is just another thing that she doesn’t want to keep up with and that will scatter me all over the Internet even more than I am now.

It’s a good point, I have to say.

Not that I wasn’t already, but this set me to some serious thinking about the whole social networking site thing, specifically about this little Facebook world into which I’d somehow fallen. Honestly, as social networking sites go, Facebook isn’t bad. The interface is clean and easy to use, and the default privacy setting of a user’s profile is much better than at MySpace, which by default leaves profiles wide open for any manner of weirdos and creeps to see. But still… after thinking it over even for a few minutes, I realized I just… don’t get the point.

Really, I don’t. I understand that people want to keep up with each other. I get that it helps other people stay in touch. But the people with whom I want to stay in touch in other ways, like phone or e-mail or whatever… I already do that. Facebook doesn’t even have a blog feature that I can tell. For business networking, LinkedIn is much more appropriate than Facebook. All I have seen on Facebook so far is people poking each other, challenging each other to quizzes, throwing fish at each other, and trying to make each other into vampires. In other words, it’s the same pointless meme crap that populates 95% of the Web, all concentrated in one place. I have been trying for a couple of weeks now to figure out what Facebook offers that’s unique or useful, and, at least for me, I can’t see it.

I won’t even go into the social complications that come with “friending” people online when you’re not that close in real life. I have enough trouble remembering the rules for normal social interaction without throwing weird online communities into the mix.

So anyway, all this is just to say that I think I’m going to deactivate my Facebook account. Not because my girl doesn’t like it, and not because I want to avoid people from my real life, but because I just don’t… see the point. It’s a time-waster, and I have enough of those already in my life.

A really good article that talks about this same aspect of SNS is here. Enjoy the read.