Mike Says Meh|The blog of Mike Kauspedas | Hosting by www.gearhost.com

As I clipped my foot into my right pedal at the beginning of my mid week training ride, I had a meh-like epiphany. It’s not something as dramatic as learning the meaning of life, more like the meaning of Mike. What I realized was, I’m happy. More than happy actually, I’m content. After saying this to myself I did what any normal man in my position would do, avoided the dog and person walking it, and questioned whether or not I was truly content.

First things first, what is “content”? I think it’s different for each person. Some people might be content with all the material possessions they could want, some might be content never working again, some might be content being alone. For me, it’s a little of everything. A culmination of all the small things in life that make one big happy Mike pie.

Being a man, or maybe it doesn’t matter, the first thing I thought of was my wife Grace. Grace is beautiful, thoughtful, likes many of the same things I like, and we get along. As with any relationship, it isn’t perfect. But content isn’t perfect. When I became really enthusiastic about cycling, so did she. She watched my favorite sci fi shows and loves them with the same passion I do. Grace even plays video games with me. There are some limits, she doesn’t ride with me, nor does she like road bikes in general, except on TV. Hell, she even got into baseball. Basically, Grace enjoys all my passions, which come and go like the weather. I am also very fickle. Point being, it isn’t perfect, but it’s enough to make satisfied. Content must also be satisfaction. Satisfaction, is as simple as drinking a good glass of scotch or eating a good dinner. It won’t be perfect, there will be some small thing left to desire, but you will feel good or full or both.

Knowing I had a great wife was the first small step towards proving my contentment to myself. Cycling was the next thing I thought of, after all, I was doing all my thinking while riding. At first I thought, how does cycling fit into my contentment? Which I quickly answered, it is my passion, and every man should have a passion to fill the moments in life where boredom and doldrums would normally take over. Passion also provides those needed accomplishments, however small and meaningless, to make a man feel truly happy with himself. Men are prideful creatures and we need to do and accomplish things. For me, losing weight, then getting in shape, and now becoming a faster and better cyclist became my accomplishments. There are others in the workplace, or with school, but these are the accomplishments that are meaningful diretly to me.

Wife and passion are all fine and dandy, but what about stuff? Material possessions I mean. Ah, I have those as well. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not Mr. Money Bags with everything a man could possibly desire, but I have everything that would make me content. Two good bikes, HDTV, Xbox, PC, Macbook, so tech is taken care of, a comfortable couch, food that I like eating, and cars I enjoy driving. Could I have better and nicer things? Certainly. Like I said, none of this “stuff” is great or the best. Contentment doesn’t have to be the best, because contentment has nothing to do with perfection. Content is a little of compromise, or fitting your needs.

I also have no major financial issues. There are definitely some things I am working on, but I make enough money to live comfortably and afford the things I want or need. My job has a good median between stress and more relaxed days. I’m not pushing 80 hours a week every week, nor am I sliding by with just 40. I also happen to really enjoy what I do.

Grace and I can afford to, and do, vacation where we want. We both have jobs that provide us with good PTO, and we make enough money to save and spend it each year on trips. Anyway, I’m starting to ramble on about too many little things.

Oh, and to top it all off I have a great dog.

Content is simply being happy, and being happy consistently. I have no real complaints, only annoyances. There are no major issues with my life, just some outside factors that I can chose how they will effect me. If I died tomorrow, I would enter the after life with few regrets. Perhaps this is simply growing up. Maybe now I’m old enough to realize I have a good a life, and I have nothing to complain about. Everything else is just jealousy. A nicer car passes me or a cyclist drops me. Ultimately those are things I can strive for anyway. But for now, I am content with what I have and who I am.

In ten years, I think I will look back, and claim these as my golden years. Within the next ten years, I’ll probably have a kid, have to buy a house, and relinquish some of the stuff I cherish, and cut back on my passions. But for now, as I realize it, I can truly enjoy this time I have, and move onto the next phase of life.

And, love, using, commas.

It’s true, I can’t find one and I spent a whole 30 seconds looking on google. I even clicked to the third page of links!

Meh

I bet I could make one with some careful dremel work to cut out holes for air flow.

My wife went on vacation this week without me. So the first thing I did was buy a new toy I’ve been wanting for a long time. Studio monitors. Now, some of you will think I’m crazy, what do I need studio monitors for? I’m not making music or even in the music biz. The reason is simple, I like well rounded audio. I hate too much bass and too much treble. I need full well rounded sound and studio monitors do that perfectly. They aren’t even that expensive, poorly made junk from logitec with big subwoofers are just as much if not more. With my new M-Audio AV40′s I get rich full bass the way it was meant to be heard. These speakers, to me, sound as close to wearing good cans without actually wearing them. My Senheiser HD 555 still sound spectacular but I don’t like wearing headphones all the time. Now I can listed to well balanced music and my wife yelling at me for buying new speakers.

I’ve played through a lot of different music so far and the best sounding is indie rock / folk rock. Something with a lot of guitar. Electronic sounds good but since it doesn’t have a lot of that mid range frequency its not as great. Then again that music was made for crappy speakers with big sub woofers. I’m listening to the Golden State soundtrack right now and it sounds amazing. Even in mp3 quality.

I have to have it now so I got mine from Microcenter, but you can find them cheaper online.

http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0256416

For the life of me I could not figure out why my ads went from tech/gluten to PSA. I read blogs and articles on how to re-index, add content, change settings etc to get them to go away. But the answer was in adsense help the whole time. A while ago I verified my account for payment, it wasn’t a big deal because honestly I get next to no visitors and had very little money from it. Anyway, it turns out there was a lot more verification to do, phone number, taxes, payment method. All of that is now done so hopefully the ads change here in the next few days. I was actually clicking on some of the gluten-free ones myself, that’s how I found Rheinlander Bakery in Arvada. Full of absolutely mouth watering gluten-free treats.

http://www.rheinlanderbakery.com/

I still don’t understand how adsense works but I don’t really care. Not enough people visit this blog anyway. Its mainly just to chronicle gluten-free stuff and tech stuff for web hosting.

Now to find a wordpress plugin to plague the 2 people that read this blog with ads …

I did it again. For some reason I have been incredibly accident prone lately. I took the dog out around 10pm on Saturday night. We usually run for short little sprints. Moya and I never go across Downing towards the country club, but that night I decided I’d take her over there so maybe she’d stop pulling so much every time we get close. She’s like me, hates taking the same route twice and loves going to new places. So I bolted with her across Downing. I slipped on a thin clear sheet of ice and slammed my face right into a curb. Fortunately I didn’t knock myself out and Moya came bouncing back to see what was wrong. She staid by my side until I figured out where my glasses were. For the 2 or 3 minutes I stood there collecting my senses, glasses, and trying to keep blood in a cab sat maybe 2 feet away. He sat there and watched me but never rolled the window down to ask if I needed help. When I got back to the tower I scared the shit out of some lady taking her dog out. Literally my face and hands were covered in blood. I mumbled it looked worse than it was and then got in the elevator. She never said a word.

When I walked into the apartment I told Grace I broke my glasses again. She said how in an annoyed voice and I walked into the office where she was playing WoW with my hand soaked in blood holding about 50 paper towels to the cut. Of course she freaked out and I told her I wasn’t going to the emergency room. My last experience was horrible and they hurt worse than the actual accident. Typical of my bloody injuries I could not look at it without wanting to vomit and then pass out. I knew I just had to wait and my nerves would calm. After about 2 hours of laying on the couch and reading Percy Jackson and the Olympians I took a look at it.

Man did it look cool. I put a huge gash above my left eye. I mean huge as in flesh showing and stuff. What happened was my glasses hit the curb first and then moved above my eye and cut a huge gash. My brand new glasses by the way. Then I bled all over my nice North Face jacket and brand new new balance running shoes. When it rains it pours I guess. I never thought it was that bad because head wounds bleed like crazy. I thought I just made a little scrape, maybe worthy of stitches but if it wasn’t that bad I wasn’t going to the emergency room to deal with f’n needles and burning saline solution. Unfortunately this was pretty f’n horrible and the bleeding still hadn’t stopped. Grace took me in and of course I got stung with a thousand needles and then they burned me with the f’n saline solution when they cleaned it out. At one point the doctor was numbing an area the nurse forgot (that was burning from the cleaning) and his syringe exploded. I’m not kidding. Numbing medication burst everywhere. In my eye, my mouth, my face, Grace, the doc. And he left the needle half stuck in my wound while he scrambled for another. Yes, they have to stick these f’n needles in the actual wound to numb it so they can sow it shut.

Needless to say I’m going to try and be more careful. Today I am incredibly sore and I can’t open the eye. I did manage a shower though so at least I’m clean

*Warning*, the pics below are f’n awesome.

Here’s some pics from the 17th floor of my apt in Denver. At Country Club Tower.Just north of wash park.

I added some more pics after the snow.

wtf?

I just saw this ad on a blog I frequent. The ad is for a site that gets married men and women together for affairs.

Here are some pictures of 10 Lined June Bugs or as I like to call them Buzz Buzz!

Last week on Thursday I chopped a bit of my finger tip off. Maybe I should back up. For a while now I’ve been more and more interested in cooking and every other month I take a stab at it. My most recent stab was some pan seared grouper with a mango salsa. In my forays into cooking I bought a decent set of knives that included a chef’s knife. I had the chef’s knife out and was going to town on some roasted peppers and went right through the tip of my left ring finger.

My immediate reaction was to curse and shake my hand. It felt like I jammed it, not like I’d cut it. Shaking it spurt blood all over the kitchen. I realized I cut it pretty deep so I ran it under some water which hurt more and made me realize some of it was gone. That’s when my wife Grace lost it. I stayed pretty calm and told her to find me a towel or something and I flung it on and applied pressure. Then Grace rushed me to the emergency room with me telling her to slow down because I wasn’t in mortal danger.

We ended up at Denver Health downtown, the closest hospital. I waited 5 hours in the trauma ward (no joke, trauma) and after they stopped rushing people in from motorcycle accidents and assaults I finally asked someone if they could stitch my finger up. The stitching and cleaning was the worst part. I’ve never felt that burn before, holy f’n shit did it hurt. The nurse gave me some pretty painful numbing shots and before waiting for it to get number she started cleaning it. And all she did was squirt some sterile water on it. Albeit on my open finger tip. She finally stopped and left with a hellish cackle so her boss could come and try to cause more pain. haha! The finger was numb.

In between all this I realized I don’t like the inside of my finger. At one point I was sitting in the nurses office answering questions and all of a sudden I got queasy and then almost fainted. I had no idea how to handle it. I just said, “I feel faint.” And then I couldn’t see shit and the nurse told me to put my head between my legs because I was a big pussy. I did it one more time when the doc was stitching me but I had enough control to make it through. She gave me some bs about my heart rate lowering and no oxygen to the brain but I what she really meant was I was a dickless excuse for a man and shouldn’t have even come to the emergency room. Then she spat in my open wound.

Hey, how about some pictures?

All cleaned and full of burning

the bit I cut off

stitched

Bandaged up

I bought a little Sansa Clip to replace my iphone as an mp3 player. Not that I still don’t use the iphone but sometimes its just too big. Like on bike rides, working out, jogging, and that sort of stuff. So I found a well reviewed tiny ipod shuffle killing mp3 player. Get this, it has a screen and buttons! I don’t understand why Apple would get rid of those. Sometimes trying to be revolutionary is just taking a step back, or idiotic.

Anyway, I use my macbook to sync my iphone and it has the playlists I want. So I searched for a way to sync my sansa clip with the playlists in itunes, well actually just export them. But what I found was incredible. And free! All you have to do is follow the instructions in the guide below.

http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=clip&thread.id=3744

Thanks to the guy who wrote that and the script. Man, it couldn’t be easier.Here’s a picture of the little guy, and I mean little. It was only $40 too and 4GB.

Sansa Clip 4GB