It was a beautiful day, the sun beat down...

...I had the radio on, I was drivin'

On a recent day when the weather was gorgeous I was passed on the freeway by a couple motorcycles. The thought that immediately ran through my head was: "I should learn to ride a motorcycle, that looks like a lot of fun on a day like today."

I'm not talking some anemic Vespa or I'm-overcompensating-for-something chopper. Elphie is all about agility and would be in the market for something sleeker, say a Ducati. I've got over a dozen friends who ride motorcycles, so the social support network is already in place. There are many winding country roads that are bike friendly. And hey, it's another excuse to buy leather clothes.

But it only took about 10 seconds of seriously thinking about taking lessons before I remembered why I don't already know how to ride a motorcycle.

I'm afraid of speed.

Perhaps more accurately, I'm a control freak and in most cases speed feels out of control to me. No, the cruising speed of an airplane or driving 90 mph on a stretch of deserted desert highway doesn't faze me at all. But you'll never find me on a roller coaster, skydiving, or riding a motorcycle. At least, not without a significant amount of valium in my system. Think horse tranquilizer quantities.

So I should just get a convertible and put the top down on beautiful sunny days. If you'd like to contribute to the convertible fund (or just flat out get me one) you'll always get shotgun... (Let's just ignore the fact that there aren't any passenger seats in a coupe other than shotgun so you can just feel special about getting to sit next to me while we fly down the highway or cruise through the city on a sunny day.)

~Elphie

quitcherbitchen

The life of an international chinchilla smuggler is not always easy or predictable. Sometimes I am just too busy flitting through the seedy underworld of exotic pet trade to expatriate my furry leetle amigos and dodging customs agents to blog much. Its not like I can just FedEx them to their new homes around the world - though we all know I'd never use FedEx, they have no sense of humor.

While offline and transporting cargo, I am reading The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. If I'm going to mither on about identity here on the Hideaway, I should probably do a bit of organized reading on the topic. Surely there will be more soul-searching posts once I'm done feeding my brain.

In the meantime, a lot of interesting stuff has happened in the world. Dan Kaminsky has an interesting article about Net Neutrality on ComputerWorld that I highly recommend reading. Once you've read that, check out Adam Shostack's thoughts on how net neutrality impacts innovation. Adam, if you get someone to make chocolate toothpaste, I will soooooo buy some. HD Moore has announced July as the Month of Browser Bugs, I guess it is like the Year of the Dog for software. HD is a smart guy, and while I'm quite sure he is looking at all browsers, it does appear that Microsoft might have pissed him off a bit recently... whoops. surely unintentional, seeing as they've invited him to speak at not one but two of their hoity-toity BlueHat events...

There was something else interesting but I've temporarily forgotten what it was, and I've got to get back to the chinchillas. Another time...

~Elphie