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The Virginia Tech football team during a practice outside Lane Stadium. Trust me, they look bigger in person. Posted by Picasa

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Music to My Ears

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I'm listening less and less to music these days and more to the spoken contributions of journalists, authors and plain ol' folk on podcasts and the public airwaves. I'm lucky. I have both an iPod with plenty of playlists and my old Rio Cali that has an excellent antennae to pick up radio stations while I run. This morning I was so engrossed in this personal essay from the "This I Believe" series on NPR, that I failed to notice the flashing red lights on the fire engines heading out of a station in front of me. It made me think of home, and it made me think of hard times. It also made the five miles of hills fly by. From NPR. org: The Art of Being a Neighbor P.S. Even though I'm not a big fan of hockey, I gotta give it up for my alma mater, Boston University, for winning last night's come-from-behind, Disney-movie-like national championship victory over Miami (Ohio).
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I Leave You With This

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There's this social media post some guy put up on Instagram. I almost scrolled past it, but I'm glad I didn't. It asked what question we should ask ourselves when we die. In retrospect, ChatGPT's response was basically pulling from Eastern philosophy, but, still, I couldn't stop thinking about it in the hours and days since I first heard it. Here's a partial transcript I cribbed using -- what else? -- AI. Some guy set up the prompt, which was long and convoluted. The following picks it up from there.  Some guy : I'm assuming most people would ask, 'Where am I going? What's next?' Something like that. Is that a good question?  ChatGPT : No, because they don't matter. Some guy : W hy don't they matter?  ChatGPT : If there's a heaven or hell or some next phase, you're likely already heading there. Asking won't change your destination. It's a wasted question.  Some guy : That's a good point. Um, what about 'Did I do en...
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Return to Bay 2 Breakers

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In the end, I ended up running about half of the 12k Bay 2 Breakers course. Of the roughly 4 miles we ran, I’d trained for to do just .25 of them. My race entry predated my farewell to  running . And despite landing in a fast corral, I was told there are plenty who choose it to avoid all the naked people and start walking after a very short spurt. In my mind, we’d show up a little before the race start, run at a good clip for a quarter mile and then walk it off.    That didn’t happen.   A long wait while hurling tortillas Parking can be hard to come by in downtown San Francisco. And public transportation can be cumbersome if traveling from another part of the Bay Area, though a ferry will get you within easy reach of starting corrals.  We opted to take a shuttle from a Mill Valley Park ‘n Ride to the start. (“We” being me, my daughter and son-in-law, who are B2B regulars.) Similar shuttles operated from Emeryville in East Bay and Millbrae to the south. This...
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