ralphworldesign

on two wheels…

ralph — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 14:08:36 +0000

My youngest daughter Sofia can now ride a two wheeler! At 6 years old, she beat both her older sisters by a year. VIVA SOFIA!

undecided…

ralph — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 13:40:12 +0000

I’m not sure, but I think I’ll have to eventually join Facebook. On the plus side it seems to be an easy way to stay in touch with friends and family. It might also help career-wise to try and develop some simple apps for the platform. I don’t know - from what I read on my wife’s page, it looks like most people’s posts are complaints, which is kind of a drag being that I don’t really care how long you had to wait in line at Walmart because the cashier was on her cellphone. Nor do I care for the (apparently) irony-free posts by people at the supermarket complaining about how there are too many people at the supermarket, or the posts warning you about email spam that then instruct you to “FORWARD THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!” because “THIS IS NOT A HOAX!”. Nor do I care to participate in the high level (OBAMA RULZ! BUSH DROOLZ! / BUSH RULZ! OBAMA DROOLZ!) political discourse that frequently appears. I’ll probably just join and confine my posts to tv, movies, books, and music.

17.8

ralph — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:37:55 +0000

I finally ran from my house to my parent’s house this weekend, a total of 17.8 miles. Took me a little over 3 hours, which puts me on pace for a marathon time of 4:15 - 4:30 if I decide to go ahead and give it a shot. Here’s the conversation between my mom and dad after I arrived:

Mom: Ralph just ran here from his house.

Dad: What?

Mom: RALPH JUST RAN HERE FROM HIS HOUSE!

Dad: from Deptford?

Mom: yes.

Dad: What?

Mom: YES - FROM DEPTFORD!

Dad (to me): How far is that?

Me: A little over 17 miles.

Dad: Oh, yeah? I ran almost 20 miles when I was younger.

Further investigation revealed that Dad’s 20 mile figure was arrived at by concluding that running around the airfield at Guantanamo Bay naval base “4 or 5 times or so” constituted “almost 20 miles”. I don’t know the exact dimensions of the Gitmo airfield but lets just say that Dad’s 20 mile figure remains in dispute. Also, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t lining up for too many long distances at 51 years old. I think I would’ve remembered that. Regardless, his disputed “almost 20 miles” family record is going down - I’m running a marathon next season. And I know there’s no way anyone in my family’s done 26.2.

self discovery (superhero edition)

ralph — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 16:38:11 +0000

I just realized something. All my favorite superheroes as a kid embodied some aspect of my self-image. I was a good student so I liked Batman because he was smart. I was a small kid so I liked the Atom. I was pretty fast so I liked the Flash. And I was/am severely nearsighted so I liked Daredevil (he’s blind). I must have identified with their abilities or something. Weird that I never saw that before.

can’t we get a nickname?

ralph — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 17:47:56 +0000

One of my favorite things about the World Cup is the cool nicknames for the various national teams. Brazil - the Seleção (the Select). Italy - the Azzuri (Sky Blues). Slovenia - the Green Dragons. England - the Three Lions. Australia - the Socceroos. Germany - Die Mannschaft (the Team). Japan - the Blue Samurai. South Korea - the Red Devils. The Lions of Cameroon. The Black Stars of Ghana…

Then we get to the US. I don’t think we even have an accepted nickname. I haven’t heard the announcers refer to our team as anything but the US. I’ve seen them referred to as ‘the Yanks’ in print, but other than that - no nickname. I’m throwing my support behind… ‘the Stars and Stripes’. It’s not too long and it’s more representative of the entire country than ‘the Yanks’. I’m convinced that the absence of a good nickname is what’s keeping us from becoming a major soccer power.

cool map of migration patterns in the US

ralph — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 16:08:55 +0000

Forbes has a great infographic showing migration patterns at the county level in the US. The data is from 2008. Looks like everyone from Gloucester County NJ is retiring to Arizona or Florida. Clever use of color as an indicator - red for outbound, black for inbound. Makes it easy to tell at a glance whether there’s a net influx or outflow of people. I’m a sucker for this stuff.

event ID 51 error - solved

ralph — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 16:03:25 +0000

Hooked up a new backup drive to my home pc and started getting a bunch of “Event ID - 51 - An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\D during a paging operation” errors. Kind of tough to debug but here’s how I figured out what was going on:

1. Right clicked on “My Computer” and chose “Manage” from the pop up menu. Then clicked on “Disk Management” to determine which drive was Harddisk1. This is where I discovered it was the new backup drive that was causing the errors.

2. The error seemed to be popping up every hour or so, so I figured it might be related to power-saver or sleep mode or something. I then went into the disk utilities for the new backup drive and disabled power saving mode.

3. Voila - the error disappeared.

Just for background, the drive was a Seagate 500gb FreeAgent external USB drive. It was working fine even with the errors, but it was driving me nuts trying to figure out the source of the problem.

rock star

ralph — Mon, 24 May 2010 16:12:52 +0000

Had a chance to play guitar with some friends this past weekend. There is nothing quite like playing electric guitar nice and loud. Especially when joined by such excellent musicians. Though I feel goofy about playing in front of people at this point in my life, the act of making music is still pure joy. Sure, it sounds a little half-assed and ragged - but isn’t that what makes the best rock and roll? I love to play. I could do without the audience, but I really love to play.

creating life…

ralph — Mon, 24 May 2010 15:56:39 +0000

This is simultaneously mind-blowing and terrifying. It sounds like the beginning of an apocalyptic sci-fi movie.

dare I attempt it?

ralph — Fri, 14 May 2010 10:21:40 +0000

Should I put my funk bona-fides on the line and register for a semester in Professor Bootsy Collins’ Funk University? I’m tempted but a little worried that my funkulosity (funkulousness? funkafiediness?) will be found lacking.