Phew. Garmin Edge is back alive.

Huge sigh of relief this morning when I got my Garmin Edge bike computer working again. About a week ago it stopped syncing to my computer. I've still been using it, but without a GPS track on my computer my workouts seem to not really count. Yea, I'm that much of a data geek.

Yesterday I bought a new USB-Mini-USB cable from Radio Shack. No dice.
I was particularly worried about it because I used it yesterday on my first open water swim practice and really wanted to see the tracks.
So I put some rubbing alcohol in a syringe, got out a magnifying glass, and carefully cleaned the contacts on the back of the device. Just squirt a little alcohol onto each one and carefully rub it a few times with the pointy end of the syringe. Squirt in a bit more alcohol once you're done and wipe it out with a scrap of cloth to clean the receptacle itself.

Plugged it back in and it worked. Now off to ride. Yay!

Also did an open water swim yesterday. Went okay. Had a problem with my hands freezing. Might try some new stuff today or tomorrow and will report on it then.

A Gentle Introduction

I've been thinking about making a new blog for way too long now. I wanted to document some of my past projects and interests and never got around to it. Don't want to let that happen again, so here we go.

I should note, too, that I used to "blog" back in the day. I don't think I ever called it a blog. That one was largely personal. This one will hopefully be more informative and actually useful to people.

So what can you expect to see here?

• Cycling and Triathlon, especially technical issues. Last summer/fall I built a fixed gear and wished I would have documented it online. At the moment I'm getting into triathlon, training with a power meter, tweaking my aerodynamics, open water swimming, and some other cycling/triathlon related issues.
• Computer stuff related to blogs themselves. I'm currently working on my masters thesis in the area of natural language processing using blogs. Specifically, I'm working on authorship attribution. Not sure how much of that will make it here, but hopefully I'll be able to write a bit about what I'm doing.
• Cooking. Since I started grad school and living on my own, I've discovered that I really love cooking. Again, not sure how much I'll actually write about here, but might try to document some of the dishes I make, perhaps even just for my own record keeping. I really love using fresh vegetables and other nice ingredients, often trying to utilize local California flavors.
• Photography, Art, Etc. Currently I'm working on building a home depot letterpress to do my wedding invitations. Probably going to the store this afternoon to get parts. I'm also trying hard to finish the USNA Yearbook, so I'll post some thoughts on that as well. I used to be more into photography and graphic design, so I might still post things related to that from time to time.
• Probably more. I tend to pick up new interests every few weeks, so it should be interesting to see what sort of schizophrenic blog I wind up with.

So yea, that's about it for now. I'm currently listening to Ultimate Fakebook for the first time in a long time and wanted to comment that "Open Up and Say Awesome" is about the best title for a record ever. Second only maybe to NOFX's "Punk in Drublic"

Hopefully I'm not too far off base in assuming that other people will have some interest in what I have to say. I'll probably try to optimize my tagging and such for search engines so people can actually find the information they want in the vast wasteland of the intraweb.