All I've got to say is thank goodness the MS Ride is in June this year and not May… because if it was, I probably would have to relegate myself to doing the 30 mile route. Let's see, a little more than a month and a half to whip myself into shape to do the metric century — doable, I hope. It's not like I've been sedentary all winter, I've been riding Cass a lot, so my cardiovascular fitness should be a little higher than couch potato level.

So! First ride of the season was last (last) Sunday, as I was away in Utah visiting my parents for the past week. I'm having a bit of an issue plotting out routes that won't destroy my knees with steep hills, which means much of North Arlington, McLean, and Potomac (all which have great biking) are out for a few weeks. Similarly, I've decided that I need to be cautious of where in South Arlington I go, because the drivers there are generally not as mindful as the ones above Route 50 are. DC is limited to weekends, and I've found the risk of getting doored goes up by about 60%. Plus that whole biker getting run over by a garbage truck last year… yeah.

That being said, I think I'm going to actually have to relegate myself to using some of the bike trails until I'm strong enough to tackle the leg 'n lung burners near the barn in Potomac. (Probably might want to stay off River Road if I don't want to get humiliated by the local racers that train there, too. )

Anyway, I managed to plot out a route that worked pretty well — fairly low traffic, not too too many turns, and I only got lost disoriented once. Not a killer workout, but good enough to get the legs workin' again. (And remind me I need to clean my chain.) I think I got around 14-15 miles on my cyclometer thanks to some missed turns, but hey, who cares… I went biking!

(I know, I'm really bad at coming up with good blog post titles.)

Hopefully anyone reading this entry will do me a favor and bookmark this blog. My friend Nadine is campaigning for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Man & Woman of the Year, and I am really proud of her for stepping up to the challenge! If there is anyone more deserving of this title, it's Nadine, so please support her in her efforts to help the millions affected by leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma, and Hodgkin's disease.

There are some great fundraising events coming up, so bookmark or add her blog to your RSS feed, and get involved!

The 2009 MS Ride is being held at the beginning of June this year, which gives me a little less than three months to prepare. Last year I considered upping my personal challenge to do the full century, but at the time I wasn't doing my other type of riding: horse.

With Cass back in in the picture, I actually (well, hopefully, barring any significant injuries to either him or myself) might have the chance to compete consistently this year… something I've been trying to do for the past 3 years. The fact that Cass is a much more suitable partner for me than Cody ever was has been a motivation to challenge myself and work harder at becoming a better rider. I really, really want(ed) to compete at Rubicon, but it's on the same weekend as the MS ride. Granted, the metric century is only on Saturday, so technically I can compete Sunday, but I'm not sure if my body can handle that amount of stress.

Right now, my two bikes are sitting in my living room, waiting to have their tires pumped and hit the road. However, I've been avoiding them for three reasons: one, the roads here in Arlington are still covered in salt ; two, I can't make the time; and three, it's still just a little bit cold here.

In a month or so, I won't have an excuse based on temperature or lack of daylight hours. Somehow I need to figure out how to fit Cass and biking in the same day a few times a week. I can [bike] ride in the morning (which would mean getting up at 5 AM or so), go to work, ride Cass after work, and then collapse from exhaustion… but the main concern I have is riding that early in the morning. The alternative is to ride solely on the bike trails, but I have an aversion to them mainly because people on bikes can be more dangerous than cars. The other option is to ride my bike after work and then ride Cass, because we have lights in our ring and I can ride after dark.

I need to be Superwoman, if only for two months…

Jesus and Satan were having an ongoing argument about who managed to get the most out of his computer. This had been going on for days and God was tired of hearing all of the bickering. God said, "Cool it. I am going to set up a test that will run two hours and I will judge who does the better job."

So down they sat at the keyboards and typed away. They moused away.

They did spreadsheets,
They wrote reports.
They sent faxes.
They sent out e-mail.
They sent out e-mail with attachments.
They downloaded.
They did some genealogy reports.
They made cards.
They did every known job.

But just a few minutes before the two hours were up lightening flashed across the sky. The thunder rolled and the rains came down hard. And, of course, the electricity went off.

Satan was upset. He fumed and fussed and he ranted and raved, all to no avail. The electricity stayed off. But after a bit the rains stopped and the electricity came back on.

Satan screamed, "I lost it all when the power went off. What am I going to do? What happened to Jesus' work?"

Jesus just sat and smiled. Again Satan asked about the work that Jesus had done. As Jesus turned his computer back on the screen glowed and when he pushed "print," it was all there.

"How did he do it?" Satan asked.

God smiled and said, "Jesus Saves."

So, smart person that I am, forgot to renew my web hosting in January. (Why I have it set on month-to-month, I don't know. Probably because I keep telling myself I'm going to shop around and find a better deal than GoDaddy, but I never end up doing that and end up renewing it monthly.) Usually they're pretty forgiving and will give you a week or two to cough up the cash and renew your bandwith. Unfortunately, if you let it sit for practically a month, they WILL delete your stuff. Like, all your stuff. Including your database that has 3+ years worth of blog posts (that no one else reads).

If I had half a brain, I would have remembered that joke and saved my crap like the good IT nerd that I am. Unfortunately, I don't, and I had to pay $$$ to get them to find a backup tape and restore my stuff.

Costly mistake, yes. But it's only a mistake if you make it once.

That being said… kids, back up your work. That way, if your account gets wiped clean because you were in Uzbekistan and weren't able to renew your account, you can easily restore your data using your own backup without having to pay out the nose to your hosting provider.

I've noticed that the post that has received the most reads/comments is the one I wrote around 3 years ago, titled eBay addict. In it, I lamented how addicting eBay is (particularly to a cheap frugal person like me), and how I need to start an "Ebay Addicts Anonymous" group.

I never realized that people can actually have an addiction to eBay. I wrote the post partly in jest, because anyone who knows me knows that I'm a bargain hunter. However, when the shopping/spending habit truly becomes an addiction, then it's no longer a joke.

That being said, I've found myself buying less things on eBay nowadays and have actually SOLD quite a few items. I have a few groundrules that I've set to prevent myself from getting sucked in to an auction.

1. Establish your spending limit. Obviously this is a catch-22, as it can backfire. If you enter in your max bid 3 days before the auction ends, someone could swoop in and bid $0.50 over that bid with 30 seconds to go and win the item. On the other hand, if you wait until the last minute and get in a bidding war, you find yourself saying, "Hey, it's only $2 more to win… $5 more…" etc etc etc, until you find you've won the item and spent $40 more than what you wanted to. So, that being said, I usually do a combination of the both. If it's an item I REALLY want, I tend to snipe but make myself do only ONE bid in the last 30 seconds, walk away, and if I've won, great. If not, there's always another time. The getting up and walking away is the hardest, because you know there's always someone else who may have the same plan as you.


2. Use the "save search" function. I'm always looking for one item that I need buy don't necessarily need to buy this second. Instead of searching every day, I do one search, save it, and eBay will e-mail me a list every day of the search results. You can even set the min/max cost so you won't get a message full of 200+ results in each e-mail.


3. Watch out for excessive shipping charges. I absolutely refuse to purchase from a seller who advertises an item for say, $1 (that normally costs $35) and then charges $25 for shipping. It's illegal by eBay standards to do this, as it circumvents paying a higher commission to eBay. (e.g., if you sell an item for $1, you pay a lower percentage of the original listing and selling price to eBay than if you sell an item for $20. eBay doesn't take a cut of shipping fees.) Even if it's still a better deal to purchase the $1 item and pay $25 shipping, I'd rather go buy it for $20 and pay $7 or $8 shipping since THAT seller is playing by the rules.


4. Never buy anything directly from Asia, especially electronics. It's just sketchy.

This last tip may or may not work against you. If you use Firefox, there's a great extension called myTimeZone for eBay. If you're like me and hate that the ending times are in Pacific Time Zone, this add-on will change the time to your local time. In addition, you can see bid updates in real time (rather than having to refresh), and the page displays a countdown timer with an audible alarm. Also, it allows you to sort listings by total price plus shipping, remove the "featured items" and "additional matching results" section at the top of search results.

myTimeZone MAY (kinda sorta) work to your addiction advantage, as I've found it's not synced to the eBay official time and can be 30+ seconds off. So, if it IS off, you can choose not to re-sync it when the dialog box pops up and thus make it seem like the auction has ended when there are really 25 seconds to go… and thus prevent you from doing any more auction snipping.

And that's all I have for today.