9/17/08
My computer suffered a hiccup on Monday. I had installed Egoboo and SoulFu and was an idiot. Instead of letting the installs normally proceed, I thought I had to install Microsoft C++ whatever and it screwed up the tap-to-click functionality of my elderly laptop's touchpad.

Being marginally smarter than the average bear I decided I was going to uninstall the Microsoft crap and that proceeded to break Win2k. So I backed up everything possible, except for my hosts file (much to my regret), reinstalled Windows and realized I fucked up the installation prompting me to do it all over again.

Second time's a charm and I set up my computer to download Service Pack 4 (SP4) overnight. Unfortunately I didn't reset the power options to avoid powering anything down when the computer was left idle for any length of time. Twenty minutes after I went to bed, the internet connection failed and on Tuesday morning I had to begin the process to download SP4 one more time. Long story short, nearly everything's back to normal.

On Monday I discovered that there was snow on Pikes Peak. I'm sure there was snow on Sunday but I didn't go outside on Sunday. Oh wait, I might've but it was probably just to run an errand where I didn't pay any attention to the mountains.

The Federal Reserve has told investment bankers that they can borrow from other banks which are part of their own company. Supposedly this is a limited time deal, until early 2009, but it's still a scary development. Moreso in light of the fact that 9/16/08 was host to the biggest Russian stock market crash since 1998.

One of the things I'm trying to tell myself is that I'm not in control of this nonsense, I shouldn't give a shit about the situation since most of my finances aren't tied up with Lehman Brothers or AIG or any other of those shaky institutions. Just ride my bike, keep my head in the sand and take care of the cats. These are the most important things in my life.

For more than a week I eschewed cycling and drove my car which was a poor decision. Over those days I started spiralling downward and had a taste of the anxiety which plagued me last autumn.

Last Sunday night was spent arguing with myself over riding to work on Monday. Fortunately the cycling advocate won out, I rode on Monday morning and felt so much better about life and myself. Right now is definitely a part of my life where I need to take cycling seriously for the sake of my mental and physical and fiscal health.

Also on Monday afternoon I ended up spending $60 getting my bike fixed. Supposedly when a bike chain gets replaced, the cassette is supposed to be replaced as well to prevent wear and tear on the chain. Live and learn. And for some reason this has lowered my opinion of Criterium Bicycles. Of course I should say dealing with the repair guy at Criterium was less than stellar but the repercussions since having my chain replaced have been expensive and I wonder why the hell they didn't suggest also replacing the cassette in the first place along with the chain.

Anyway my bike rides like a champ and there's not going to be any more phantom shifting or chain slippage any time soon. Also I asked to have the old chain so when I get a chain breaker I can practice using the chain breaker.