A bit sore this morning, not too bad in the leg muscles, no real pain, just some weakness there. Fortunately we don't have class again until Monday, so I have some recovery time. I may have injured my taint, however, so I'm walking a bit funny today. And I don't have any analgesics (no pun intended) here at work right now either. Ow.
I had a phone interview today for another position here in the University, it'd be working over in the Network Services division of our central IT division. Unlike any sane corporate IT place, IT within our University (and many others) is a decentralized affair. Many divisions, colleges, and departments have their own tech people, and they may provide redundant or conflicting services in many cases. This probably isn't the most efficient way to go about it, but a lot of the administrators like it, because if they have a problem, they have the power to do something about it, and they have people under their control. So, in any case, if I got the position, which would primarily involve running the backup system for the university (I think it's Veritas) and assisting with Active Directory administration tasks for our forest, I'd be moving out of here. I'm not so sure I really want the job so much, as it'd be more stressful, and in an environment with less creature comforts and machinery that isn't as nice as ours, but, there's the potential for a significant salary increase, and I'm all about the Benjamins. Hopefully I'll find out next week if I make it on to round two of the interviewing process, I heard that there were 65+ applicants for the position, just to show you that tech people are hurting for jobs in this economy too...
I had my first fitness class tonight, it's called "Schwinn Indoor Cycling" and I have it from 8-9 Monday and Wednesday nights. I made the unfortunate mistake of trying to keep up with the tanned and toned young ladies in my class right from the start, and wound up well on my way to a cardiac episode before my body convinced my brain that:
So, after I burned up my entire supply of ATP, and realized I still had 30 minutes of class left, and I had no idea how I could possibly make it through alive, I decided to start cutting the instructor's resistance changes in half, and to slow my pedaling rate by about one third. That let me catch my breath long enough to do the last 15 minutes or so of the class pretty well, and I didn't wind up dead.
There is one other guy in the class, a young black guy who may run marathons in his spare time. All I know is that he had the energy to be singing along with the dance music while biking, and all I could do at that point is gasp for air while trying not to fall off my bike.
One thing I have to get used to is the bikes have your toes locked into toe clips, and you can't just coast, your feet have to move with the wheel. That's all fine and good, until you have to stand up on the pedals in parts, I do that on my mountain bike all the time, but I usually pause my pedaling while I haul my carcass off the seat. You can't do that on these bikes, so I nearly tossed myself off the bike a few times. It's obviously going to take some practice. In the meantime, I'll make sure to keep myself in the back of the class, so at least the girls will only see my mirror image looking like an idiot, rather than the real me.
I talked to my friend Jeremy today, and we decided to rendezvous in Ames on Saturday, to watch Iowa State pummel the hell out of the UNI Panthers (hopefully). I haven't been to a football game for a couple of years, it should be fun, if we don't die of heat stroke. I didn't get to many games last year, since so many were televised, I didn't feel the need to attend. However, after ISU's pathetic display in the last 7 games of the season, I'm betting they won't be televised much this year.
Wow, how many stories about irrational religious zealotry can we have in the news on one day? I count four, Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and Catholics all seem capable of causing more than their fair share of strife...
But I have ever thought religion a concern purely between our God and our consciences, for which we were accountable to him, and not to the priests. I never told my own religion, nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change another's creed. I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives, and by this test, my dear Madam, I have been satisfied yours must be an excellent one, to have produced a life of such exemplary virtue and correctness. For it is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read. By the same test the world must judge me. But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They must have a positive, a declared assent to all their interested absurdities. My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolts those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there.
