Vimeo has a system outage where videos spent hrs waiting for conversion, and at the same time, as part of their default coding they fill their available space with a promo for their enhanced service. Seems reasonable.
Posts from Vimeo’s support staff explain the issue and diffuse concerns of a conspiracy:
We had a network glitch earlier that caused a lot of videos to be
delayed. We've since patched it up and resumed encoding. All your
videos should be available in the next few hours!
Trust us we are not intentionally causes errors for our free members,
the technical difficulties that began last night have been affecting
both free and Plus members.
No need to reupload. We are powering up our systems to run through the
backlog of files that accumulated due to this glitch. We have your
files though and are working on running through them all.
We have an outage, on the other hand, and get pressured from Senators and Attorney Generals to remove an integration feature that helps users. StubHub continues to do what they want, accept pre-listings, and not offer the kind of guarantees to customers that we can.
Jason and I are both the youngest of two siblings, and I have always wondered if there was anything to all the theorizing and pontificating that people spout about birth order. I couldn’t tell that there was a helluva lotta difference between the way my parents treated my sister and me, so it didn’t really seem like a big deal.
Now that I have a second child, I may be changing my mind. I absolutely treat Alana differently than I treated G. It’s not that I am disinterested, per se, just less interested. It’s more of a ho-hum experience, like, yeah, I remember that she should be doing X about now, I guess everything’s OK. Compare that to our experience with G, where I knew what the milestones were for everything, and anxiously awaited G’s arrival at each of these important life events:
Some examples:
With G: “Look! she can hold hold up her head! Let’s get a video!
With Alana: “Seems like she has been holding up her head for awhile now…wonder when that started happening?”
With G: “She smiled at me! Get the camera!”
With Alana: “Look! She’s gassy! Watch out or she’ll puke on you!”
With G: “She’s watching her mobile! Get the camera!”
With Alana: “She’s watching her mobile! Maybe that will distract her for awhile so I can shower!”
So maybe oldest kids do grow up to be self absorbed egomaniacs and youngest kids become serial killers cause their parents don’t love them enough. This absolutely explains why youngest kids never have baby pictures of themselves.
Beckie has gone back to work, so I’ve been home with Alana every other day. It seems she is starting to recognize me, and not in a good way. The look she gives me is like this:
or kinda more like this
Up til about 2 weeks ago, Alana thought there were only 2 things in the world: her mouth, and the boobs. Then came her butt. Then came the Mommy attached to the boobs. Then along came this great big giant scary giant who has no boobs and doesn’t hold her much except to put a bottle in her mouth and clean her butt. So I get the look.
We struggle.
I try to soothe her, but she is demanding. I work to conform, but she is fussy. I must go above and beyond, and perhaps she will be satisfied with me.
You can do 90% and mostly satisfy a baby; you can strive for 100% and be tragically disappointed. How can such a little meatpod hold you to such a high standard?
There was a thread not long ago on MTBR attempting to categorize the trails in Phoenix. PaulB put the final list at the top of the thread. Differences of opinion abound like a pack of drunk philosophy majors throwing down with some wannabe alpha-geek Jews on break from the Yeshiva, but its a damn fine list.
Pretty much everything black I can ride it all, more often than not without spills or bloodshed, and have a mighty fine time doing it. I’ve hit this level over the last 2 years as riding the Heckler has taken me up a notch. Its hard to separate the rider from the bike’s geometry, suspension, travel, thru axle, and tire width. A well-suited utensil has enabled me to learn technique with some margin for error, and build confidence while building muscle memory. I know now its the rider first, I rode up 24th to Telegraph and back down last week with a friend riding a hard-tail 26 incher. I can do better on the Blur or the Hei Hei than 2 yrs ago, but see no real point in trying. Its too much fun when you have have the right $3k tool for the challenge, and the help from the bike mixed with confidence in my skills puts me in a very very happy place.
Double blacks are a different story. They are fun to attempt, and fun to have ridden, but they mostly make me shit my pants and ball up in fear leading up to doing them, and shrivel up immediately afterewards when the fear escapes from the little lead-lined box I stick it in during the actual move.
This vid (courtesy of jean-louey) was from last weekend, my first time riding Viejo down the south face of South Mountain. Right after Lynette finishes her run, you can see me turn purposely up the hill for my bike. It was a puzzle to unlock with nerve and skill. I was calm for the attempt, and after it was over my pulse pounded in my head and I had a wave of euphoria, then I promptly ate shit twice on far easier moves and wallowed through the rest of the descent as all that angst rushed out of me like air out of a balloon. Except for where I got a switchback further down none of the rest of our group did, and the pattern repeated itself as I bailed staring down the toothy slot the switchback led into.
Sometimes I wonder if stuff like this is worth riding, given the emotional rollercoaster is causes. Technical riding is all about progression, so it becomes hardwired to try to take the next step and the next step and the next. But lots of it is not worth trying, the penalty for failure not worth the rush. The trick is finding that sweet spot where skill and fun and challenge come together without injury. Staring down some of these moves, I think I will never get them, but I thought that about the Spine and 24th Street at first. Last week I was on the rock fin in the hardest s-curve on 24th and there was an offleash yip dog right in the step-down I needed to take. No problem, I put out my foot, avoided the dog, said hey to the hiker, and finished my ride. It was easy, but it wasn’t a year ago, and it kinda wasn’t fun then, but it has become so. I can only hope that these next hard moves will also become so with practice. If not, what is the point? I must trust my progression.
