Going off(ish) the grid

I used to get lost a lot, but now the magical iPhone in my pocket always knows where to send me. The magical iPhone in my pocket can tell me the weather, and give me messages from the wife and friends, it can show me movies and let me play games and give me news. I know the answer to any question, because once I take the magical iPhone out of my pocket, I have the entire internet at my whim. And if you believe I yam who I yam in part due to the magical iPhone in my pocket, doesn't that sort of make me a cyborg?

Tomorrow I'm planning to ditch the magical iPhone. We're headed to Maine to a semi-remote island, around five hours from home, and I'm going to attempt to go off(ish) the grid. The island has 332 residents and no restaurants, one store, one "tea room." I'm leaving my computer at home, and while I'm keeping the phone for emergencies (and, okay, weather), I'm moving email and Instagram and Facebook and games to the purgatory of the back pages, by Fandango and Flappy Bird. I'm going as off the grid as I reasonably can, spending a week reading physical paper books, writing with a pen and notebook. I'm going... analog. Hope it's a nice week for you until I return. Cheers.

Two days in the biking life

Once again, I determined a location made no sense to get to by any means other than bicycle. Last time that resulted in two dozen 15-minute rides, this time it was four hour-long adventures. Gorgeous days both times, with long stretches on a bike path along the Charles River. But halfway through trip number four, I was gassed. I knew an hour and a half in one sitting was okay but two hours was too much, and it turns out three hours in two days is okay,  four is too beaucoup. It's good to know the current limits of my constitution, I suppose.

As a biker, I'm exceptionally slow. I have a mountain bike with fat tires that make me feel invincible against dirt or grass or gravel or curbs, which come up more than I would have thought. But I have to work extra hard to pedal them on city streets. Also, I'm just a slow guy. So I get passed a lot, although I did pass someone else recently. But it hardly counts because she was a Hubway rider without a helmet.

In my pantheon of annoying bikers, the Hubway Rider Without Helmet is my least favorite. I'm generally in favor of the bike-sharing program, but I can't comprehend riding through Boston proper without a helmet. City biking, while not exactly extreme, does put you alongside monsters that could mangle you good. I find it unforgivably irresponsible to bike without a helmet, and I imagine the helmetless Hubway people grabbing their bikes thinking, "I had a bike when I was a kid, how hard could it be?"

Your hair is not that delicate, or wonderful. Just wear a helmet.

(Photo stolen from my Instagram)

The boomin' iced coffee setup

My summertime iced coffee setup is pretty sweet. Any time we have leftover coffee in the carafe after brewing for the morning, I add it to a pitcher in the fridge. Sometimes I'll brew a batch up just to add to our Strategic Iced Coffee Reserves. I know some people monkey with proportions on iced coffee to offset the watering down from ice cubes. But these people have clearly not used some of this excess to make coffee ice cubes. When they melt they inject more coffee, so the resulting beverage is just like my hot setup, just all Eskimo'd.

Sugar dissolves best in hot liquids, which is why my engineer father used to add it before the cream could cool it down. (He now takes it black.) Dunkin Donuts used to dissolve their iced coffee sugar in a bit hot coffee, or maybe they still do -- I now take "liquid sugar" in my DD iced coffee, which is just sugar syrup. But sugar syrup involved boiling and cooling water, so I use a trick I got from a bartending book: put confectioner's sugar and water into a jelly jar and shake the crap out of it.

The recipe: scoop powdered sugar into a spill-proof Contigo mug, add a shot of cold coffee, seal, and shake like a martini. Add coffee, cream, and coffee ice cubes. The Contigo keeps the ice unmelted for hours, enjoy the new summertime staple.

Throwback Thursday: A classic Urban Blah comic

Living in the cloud

My phone died recently, but aside from the cost of replacement, it was not painful because so little of my info is stored on the actual device. I live in the cloud, so I'm a lot less vulnerable to hardware failures. All my recent files, plus a lot of my archives, are on Google Drive. My to-do list is on Workflowy. My music is on Rhapsody (except for the stuff that isn't). My photos are on iCloud, and I'm planning to double up on Dropbox. A couple years ago, my work computer crashed and I just grabbed a random laptop and barely skipped a beat.

The cloud is idiot-proof, which is great for me since I'm an idiot. Now I can drop my phone in the toilet without incident! No more forgetting to email documents to myself, or losing flash drives. I still prefer Powerpoint to Google Presentation, but if I forget to close the file at home, it's not updated at school. But Google Drive saves with every keystroke. That's exactly the kind of idiot-proofing I need.

Plus, it's called The Cloud. I love clouds!

I might need to delete 2048 from my phone

The concept of 2048 is simple: combine 2's to make 4's, 4's to make 8's, bigger and bigger until you reach the 2048 tile or run out of space. It's two game-noises are deeply satisfying, and no matter how bad you are, games last a while. I quickly became obsessed. Eventually I googled strategies and found one I liked (biggest numbers on top, preferably in a corner) and I realized 2's aren't an annoyance, they're the raw materials -- every 2048 is made of a thousand 2s. I achieved the 2048 tile and put the game away.

A week later, I opened it back up, but it felt stupid playing a game I'd already beaten. But the game also featured challenges, which ask you to reach certain tiles within a set number of turns. I did 38 challenges, then discovered the regular game could still be fun post-2048. I could try to beat my high score, and shoot for 4096 tile. I've since reached 2048 six more times, including twice yesterday.

And I'm starting to wonder if I need to issue an edict similar to my years-ago Bejeweled ban. That was on my Palm Pilot, and my screen had squares etched into it by my stylus endlessly linking jewels. I got clean, but fell back off the wagon after downloading Bejeweled for iPhone. I had to go cold turkey to break that addiction, but I'm a recovering gamer and risks remain. It seems i'm in a relapse now with 2048. When I saw numbers combining when I tried to sleep, I took a break. But maybe, just to be safe,I should bury the app a few screens back, between American Airlines and Voice Memos, just to get to be in charge again.

My benevolent dictatorship

I briefly toyed with pursuing an International Relations major in college, so that was kind of my crew. I now have friends at the FBI, SEC, and with the Foreign Service. Souvenirs were purchased for me during a two-year stay in Uzbekistan. One IR friend once postulated that the best system of government is a benevolent dictatorship. You're the dictator, with absolute power, but you legitimately love your people and only want what's best for them.  In that regard, teaching is a benevolent dictatorship. I try my hardest to help them to grow as readers, writers, and human beings, but when Mr. Tobin is talking, you are not. We don't get much in the teaching game, but we do get the opportunity to rule unequivocally for a couple hours a day. Also summers off.

Party like it's 2005

Once upon a time, back when our emails were still at yahoo, there was a blog called Surgical Strikes. The term refers to a super-precise military operation, but I used it to describe my laser-focused stops for olive oil, milk. And that was the blog mantra: get in, get out, quick surgical strikes. Not sure about mantras for this current effort, but the name feels like a comfy blanket. So viva la 2.0, let's party like it's 2005.

I don't think people read blogs any more, but I have more to say than fits on Facebook, Twitter gets lost instantly into the ether, Tumblr is for kids. I want a place where I can write whatever I feel like, just 'cause. I know that's out of style, but I don't care. Blogging is fun. If that makes me a throwback, well, I've been called worse.