jimmypribble.com/blog

I worked on the site structure today and now all of the pages except for the home page are being managed by WordPress. The pages are empty, but I’ll get some content back up soon. I also changed the main menu, adding an about item and eliminating the archives item, which could be confused with the blog archives. I also eliminated the redundant menu in the sidebar, added an RSS feed button, and fixed the feed links in the footer. I know - yawn. Sorry, slow day here at the jimmypribble.com offices.

Today’s Workout: 2 x 30 minutes on the home treadmill. The first 30 minute leg ended with a random power failure, which is common out here just past the city limits. The treadmill stopped cold and I almost went through the wall. Maybe I should put a UPS on the treadmill for safety. Anyway, the second 30 minute leg was 4 mph at a 3% grade, which amounted to 300 calories burned (or so the NordicTrack says). Naturally, I was listening to the latest edition of Trance Tuesday.

jimmy 

So, what happened between November 2005 and May 2006? Well, in no particular order, here is some of the stuff that happened. In every almost every case, I fully intended to write about the event…but didn’t. Over the next couple of weeks, I might go back and expand on these things, but if I don’t, I have at least logged them into my blog so that I can release them and move on.

• 11.30.05 - Saw The Spazmatics at Cedar Street on a Wednesday night with Janea, Debbie, and another friend of theirs, whose name escapes me. The band was fantastic and we had a great time dancing to their perfectly rendered 80’s covers. Our fun was only hampered by the fire-code-busting crowd, made worse when they went into a star-struck frenzy trying to rub elbows with Matthew McConaughey and a wasted Lance Armstrong, who for better or worse was standing right next to us at the back of the dance floor. Debbie spoke with him at length, but I never got a full report of the exchange other than she was being a protective mother hen to the hapless lad. He also had protective help from his tall blonde arm-candy (ahem, pre Cheryl Crow break-up), who at one point popped me on the back of the head and demanded, “Down in front!” I turned around to look at the pair, the girl looking quite pleased with herself and Mr. Armstrong looking a little dazed and unsure of his position. I made a dozen quick calculations before finally blustering something incredulous, yet benign enough to diffuse the situation. Meanwhile, the girls were having their own problems with guys dry-humping them on the dance floor. It was almost too crowded to avoid some contact, but some guys were going way too far. [old man] I don’t know if it was that particular night/crowd/venue or if that is the way things are now, but it was very uncool. [/old man]
• In December, Mrs. Pribble and I took a cruise to the Western Carribean. It’s probably too late for a full write-up, but I have a partial write-up and some photos which I will publish separately soon.
• In March, I went to Florida to see my first professional road race - the 12 Hours of Sebring. A very thorough write-up of this event is coming very soon.
• In April, we did the Cypress Valley Canopy Tour for Peyton’s birthday. Not inexpensive, but very fun for most of us. Afterwards, we went to Peyton’s mom’s house in Johnson City for one of the best home-cooked meals I have ever had - homemade fried chicken, homemade baked macaroni and cheese, green beans, sweet tea - all perfect southern standards - really, I can’t talk about it anymore. If I ever run away from home, that’s where I’m going. Anyway, I found myself sitting next to a fella that I had never met before - David Williams, the husband of a friend of Peyton’s. To be honest, for most of the meal, I was concentrating on the meal and not really participating all that much in the conversation at the table. Then at some point, possibly during my third helping of macaroni and cheese, I heard David say something about freediving. I almost dropped my fork. “Excuse me, did you say ‘freediving?’” He had. I had stumbled upon a freediver. How difficult is that? Well, let me explain it like this - he told me that he was a member of the South Texas Freedivers Association. “How many members do you have?” I asked. “About six.” So, what is freediving and why do I care? I’ll explain in an upcoming post.
• Mrs. Pribble and I decided to cut off our cable a few weeks ago. I’ll pause while Rob gathers himself together. We have been subsisting on network TV, PBS, and DVD releases of TV shows, which is a far better way to watch a series. The quality is better, it’s more efficient because there are no commercials, and of course you can cram an entire series into just a couple of weeks and then get on with your life. The down side is that we have to wait for the DVD releases, which is agonizing. We also have to avoid commercials and spoilers. I just finished watching the series finale of Alias and I kept having to close my ears and eyes to the Lost commercials. Anyway, when Alias first came out, I thought it was brilliant. It pushed all the right buttons with me. But, a victim of its own success, it was left to wither on the vine by its creator, while he went off and…well, created Lost. Alias jumped the shark for me during the third season and I haven’t watched it since, but I owed it to myself to see how they finished. My favorite character has always been Sydney’s dad Jack, so even though most of the episode was rather meh, I was pleased when Jack came through at the end with a perfect coda. So long, Jack - you were the coolest.

Today’s Workout: 30 minutes on one of the brand new bikes at the gym, chest, shoulders.

jimmy

I had a day off on Friday because I worked at my company’s annual convention in Grapevine last week. Anyway, I spent most of the day working on my track car in the garage. At one point, I looked up from what I was doing to see a roadrunner running down the middle of my street being chased by a mockingbird. The mockingbird was swooping down back and forth swatting the roadrunner on its behind. This continued as they ran towards my house, then past my house, and finally down the street beyond where I could see them. I really appreciate living in a neighborhood where one might see a roadrunner being chased by a mockingbird.

Also on Friday, Mrs. Pribble brought home her new treadmill - a NordicTrack C2300. With quite a lot of effort, we managed to unload this 300 lbs. machine from her 4Runner and get it into the house. Except for maneuvering it into place, assembly was straightforward and fairly easy. It’s a very nice machine and seems sturdy enough. I have used it twice in two days, but plan on using it on days that I don’t go to the gym. I also use a treadmill at the gym, so over the course of the next few weeks, I hope to compare our home machine to the professional units. This also leads me to the first of two commitments:

1. Within reason, I will go through one program (30 minutes) on the new treadmill on any day that I don’t go to the gym.

2. I will make a blog entry every day for the next 20 days, starting yesterday (hey, I’m not stupid). In about 20 days, Mrs. Pribble and I will be going out of town with some friends and I won’t be able to make any entries that weekend.

Today, I entered all of my old blog pages through WordPress and edited their timestamps, so that they are now annotated and archived correctly. If you ever wanted to comment on any of my old stories, you may now do so. Also, Mrs. Pribble (who is a programmer by trade) talked me into using WordPress to manage all of my site content, so I will continue the migration process over the next couple of weeks. She’s a smart cookie, so I better listen to her.

Now Playing: Hide and Seek - Imogen Heap

Nothing but a beautiful voice and a vocoder. Soulful, harmonic, space-age a cappella.

Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
Mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cutouts
Speak no feeling, no, I don’t believe you
You don’t care a bit, you don’t care a bit

Joy of joys, I’m up late tonight working on the latest version of the site and listening to tranceportal.org’s Trance Tuesday, which is a three hour mix of glorious trance music podcast every Tuesday. Free. Three hours of free music once a week. Plus most of the 25 podcasts are archived on transportal.org, which is 60+ hours of music! Mrs. Pribble and I have long been legitimate, now purchasing our online music through iTunes, but I have continued to swipe electronica from eMule because of its limited availability through legitimate channels and because of the difficulties in finding the specific music I want. I’m in ecstasy!

Listening to this music makes me want go out right now (midnight), find an underground after-hours club, drop some methylenedioxymethamphetamine, and then dance it off for hours until the sun comes up. The only problem with that plan is that I’m already a little sleepy, I haven’t done drugs in years (and besides, X causes severe long-term depression and I don’t need any more help with that), I wouldn’t even begin to know where to go to find an underground club, and I’m almost 40 years old, so you know - inappropriate. I guess I’ll just keep working on the site and I’ll listen to more of this music tomorrow, when I’m on the treadmill. Love to dance, though - love to dance.

Anyway, the biggest change in the website is that I will now be using WordPress blogging software for my blog, rather than coding each page by hand. This will make posting and archiving much easier and it will allow comments and other features that my earlier blog didn’t have. I’m still trying to decide if I should use WordPress to manage all of the pages in my site, or just the blog. In the meantime, I am trying to get the blog page to integrate properly into the site. The site looks fine on Internet Explorer, but looks terrible in Firefox. Graphically, I haven’t done much different with the site. I moved the menu bar so that it is easier to read. Otherwise, I am still stuck on the same black, white, grey, and red color scheme, which I think can do no wrong on the web (or in print). Maybe the v.2.0. will look different. Frankly, I think it’s more important that I write more content and the main change in the site should make it easier for me to do that.

jimmy

I have had a pretty full Halloweekend, so far. On Saturday night, Kim and I got together with our Bible study group, had dinner and watched scary movies. We started with The Changeling, an excellent, 70’s-era haunted house flick starring George C. Scott and followed that with one of my new favorites 28 Days Later. After church on Sunday, I went to Mat’s house and he, Dave, and I played his new Call of Cthulu game and then watched The Grudge.

I never really had time this year to prepare a proper Halloween costume, so on Monday I simply raided my closet for a just barely serviceable costume, just like I have done for the past several years. This year, I’m “Mr. Stuck-in-the-80’s.” Wow. What a stretch. I’m basically wearing my ordinary clothes circa 1984: Levi 501 jeans, a thin leather belt, a pink Polo pullover, an unconstructed blazer, with shoulder pads and multiple lapel pins (”I’m the one your mother warned you about”), and black loafers over white socks. I have a bandana around one wrist and a black Swatch on the other. I spiked my hair and am wearing an earring. Anyway, this costume won’t win me any contests, but it’s brilliant in it’s own way. First of all, it was free and easy to put together. It is enough of a costume to qualify for the participant’s prize of free movie passes at my office costume contest. And finally, my office has a somewhat conservative dress code, yet here I sit in jeans, mussed hair and an earring, so I feel like I’m stickin’ it to the man! This is fun, but next year I really need to swing for the fence and try to win or place in the Halloween costume contest. The best costume I ever did was Edward Scissorhands. I think I could make it even better. Maybe Ken could help me with version 2.0 of the scissorhands. We’ll see.