Found in a bag of nacho cheese Goldfish crackers, officially known as Kick It Up a Nacho flavor:
Yes, it’s a giant blob of nacho cheese stuff that somehow never got broken down. There was actually a second smaller blob as well, but it got sent off to cheese blob heaven before this picture was taken. I’m both intrigued and terrified at the thought of breaking the blob apart to see if anything is inside.
This squirrel is clearly up to no good.
Inukshuk on Brunette River.
Fungus in the forest.
Run 599
Average pace: 5:53/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Start: 1:01 pm
Distance: 5:03 km
Time: 29:40
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 13-5ºC
Humidity: 54%
Wind: nil to light
BPM: 174
Weight: 164.2 pounds
Total distance to date: 4575 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone 8
I decided to try something different today and deliberately start slower, to see if I would have more energy for the latter part of the run. This did not work, as my whole run was slow instead. But it did work in one way–the third km, where I normally slow down, was actually my fastest–but it was still slow, just edging the pace of my last run by one second at 5:42/km.
My first km was 5:55/km, which is sort of appalling. and my BPM was still way up, to 174 this time, so I’m essentially achieving the opposite of what any rational person would expect, working harder and achieving less.
The only real plus side is I didn’t experience any actual issues during the run.
The trail was crowded, too. I started by gingerly jogging past a horse on the Avalon Trail. Horses are generally fine, but when you pass by one you realize just how big they are and I’d prefer they remain calm as I go by, given this size. Also on the Avalon Trail was the most horse poop I’ve ever seen. I actually had to navigate it like an obstacle course. It was weird.
And perhaps because it was sunny and I started a bit late, the trail was jammed with people. No real issues encountered, but I had to stay alert to avoid collisions and ensnaring myself in dog leashes (but thanks for leashing your dogs, dog people!)
A parks worker had one of their putt-putt cars on the Cottonwood trail, but I couldn’t quite see what he was doing, as he was behind it. Then I saw a large branch topple horizontally onto the trail. Oh. It may have been broken and become a hazard. He was slicing it up with a chainsaw stick (I’m sure it has an official name, but this is at least accurate regarding its appearance).
Not too far after him I encountered a crusty old man on a bike who was riding more like a 20-something meth addict. I wonder if the parks worker with the chainsaw stick had a word with it. Or cut his tires to ribbons.
The other frustrating part of the run was the GPS in the iPhone. Again, it seemed to be giving inaccurate results. I started well ahead of the 0K marker (which, if you’re running clockwise, is actually the 10.3 km marker, too) and despite taking no shortcuts, still had to run past the 5K marker to actually hit 5K. I had covered nearly 5.4 km at that point, so this is hardly a small discrepancy. It’s bad enough to have a slow run, it’s worse when it gets dragged out unnecessarily. 😛
Maybe I really will try with just the watch one of these runs to get a proper comparison. It was so off today I actually had a thought to start looking at a dedicated sport watch again.
Overall, a continuation of a disappointing trend. Hopefully things will improve soon™.
This weekend, other than eating almost-turkey on Thanksgiving, I will begin mulling over the primary candidate for next month’s contest, which is:
Time Enough? (working title) A Stage 4 cancer victim acquires an object/device that lets him slip through time. He tries to use this to rid himself of his cancer.
I’ll also be doing a final look over all of my various and zany ideas, to see if something else grabs me like that girl’s hand at the end of Carrie. If nothing does, I’ll spend next week doing an outline on Time Enough? and see how that goes. If it founders, I’ll spend another week looking at other ideas, pick one and outline that one in the fourth week of October. If that one founders as well I will spend November writing 50,000 words of haiku (that’s 2,941 haikus).
While I am still well ahead of where I’d be at this time in years past, I must admit to feeling a bit nervous with 26 days before the writing begins. But still reasonably confident I can do this.
Reasonably.
Strangely happy scarecrow.
Mateguas Island: A Novel of Horror and Suspense by Linda Watkins
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
I should note that this is not a review of the full book, so keep that in mind, as I only made it 20% of the way through before abandoning it.
It is rare that I pick up a book and then not finish it. I will usually push to the end just for the sense of completion, but I could not keep going here.
The last few years I’ve been taking advantage of sales to explore new authors and I’ve found a few new favorites, some I’ve enjoyed but don’t necessarily feel compelled to keep following and a few that I’ve made a point to never investigate again.
Unfortunately the latter is the case here. Mateguas Island feels like a project where someone misread what not to do in creative writing and did all of those things instead of avoiding them.
There are pages and pages of backstory for every character, even to the point that the first meeting between the wife and husband is played out in separate chapters from each character’s perspective. Exposition is lengthy and explicit, the characters thoughts are carefully laid out for the reader in detail, often bracketed by even more exposition. Motivations are not revealed through actions or dialogue, but through the author stating them.
On top of this, all of the characters are unlikable, either shrill and manipulative, or weak and fumbling, or “flawed” in ways that make you kind of hate them. And they are always so very transparent to themselves (through those endless internal monologues) and to everyone else. Maybe the big reveal later is all the characters have telepathy.
In the first 20% of the story, nothing happens. The “precocious” twins, who speak more like pod people than actual children, find a slim locked box. One of them has a vague bad dream. It rains. There is alleged tension in the relationship of the husband and wife, but the characters are so unpleasant I was hoping the mouth to Hell would open and swallow them up, but no such luck.
If the author had started the action a lot sooner I probably would have kept muddling through to see what happens, but after my 20% investment it was easy to close the book and not give a whit.
A fading flower of fall.
9to5Mac has an article speculating on a possible October event by Apple in which they might reveal updated iPad Pros. I noticed one error in the article and have corrected it below.
You may accuse me of being cynical, to which I would offer:
All of these products saw hefty price increases or were introduced at high prices.
You might counter with a few examples, like:
To which I would counter:
The rumored improvements to the iPad Pro seem to be extremely thin bezels and Face ID. I don’t find the bezels overly big now on my iPad Pro 10.5″, but sure, make them a littler slimmer if you insist, as it makes the display larger without bumping up the physical size of the unit. They’re also said to be adding Face ID. This also seems like a step backward. On the iPhone I rarely unlock it without also holding it up. I often unlock my iPad when it is laying flat on a desk, a situation that will not work with Face ID.
And that really seems to be about it. Neither of these will dramatically change what an iPad Pro (or any iPad) can do. It’ll still have the same OS, the same limited multitasking, the same everything else, just a little faster and shinier than before. And I fully expect this to cost at least $100-$150 more U.S. I would be willing to bet the iPad 10.5″, rumored to be morphing into an 11″ device with the slimmer bezels, will go from a base price of $869 Canadian to a starting price of $1099. Maybe more, especially if they dump the 64GB model and start at 256GB.
As the total sales volume of iPhone and iPad have flattened (or in the case on the Mac, declined significantly), Apple is shoring up its revenue by raising prices across the board, offering lower prices only where they are deliberately seeking to gain market share or to further justify price differentials between lines, as is the case with the iPad and iPad Pro (the iPad pricing can also be seen as Apple trying to make inroads to the education market and an attempt to shore up a shrinking iPad market). As I mentioned when the iPad Pro was first introduced, this is not sustainable, as Apple will reach a point where people will not buy. The danger there is if they go too far–even by just a little–they risk having sales plummet as people look elsewhere and begin removing themselves from the Apple ecosystem. This wouldn’t happen quickly, of course, but it has the potential to upend the company.
Mostly I don’t mind paying a premium price for a premium product, but I think Apple is starting to trade a little too much on the supposed Apple tax. They don’t need to make that much money. Some would say “let them charge what the market will bear” but the problem with that is a lot of people fundamentally lack common sense. Yes, that is cynical, but the evidence is abundant. I wish it weren’t.
If Apple raises the price of the iPad Pro 10.5/11 inch model by “only” $100 Canadian I will make a new post loudly proclaiming I AM WRONG AND ALSO A BAD PERSON.
It’s time for a list, specifically an October list! More specifically, several October lists!
What I expect in October:
What I have planned in October:
This is the first time I’ve hit 50+ posts in a single month. Sure, a bunch of the posts were photos, which feels a bit like cheating, but I still had to go outside to take the photos and all that junk, so there!
Speaking of, here’s a photo. When I went for my run yesterday at Burnaby Lake, I found they had done a clear-cut of the trees near the dam. I assume they were dying, damaged or dead. Or maybe they just hate trees. Anyway, these three are now giant stumps. There are several other ex-trees not far from these ones as well.
