Yesterday I finally got off my lazy arse and I rode my bike to work. I had been saying for weeks that I was going to start doing it, so it's about darn time. The ride in is a 2.5 mile trip with lots of hills. By the time I got to work, I felt pretty shaky, but proud that I'd made it. The wife and I had been training for it for a few weeks, so I was glad it worked.

I had forgotten how much fun it is to ride a bike. Even when you have to dodge the millions of poorly flying cicadas, it's still a great time. I wasn't sure how the ride home would be. I'd been working hard all day and I'd already ridden 2.5 miles that morning. Yet actually the ride home was even easier, and that much exercise is really rewarding. The energy boost exercise gives you is also great. I had been thinking that by the time I got home I would be exhausted, but I still felt pretty pumped. So I vacuumed and cleaned the apartment.

Then I sat around like a big fat lazy slug for the rest of the evening because I could. I'd done my exercise for the day.

We also had a huge thunderstorm roll.through last night. I love those. I loved living up in Boston, but they don't get near as many powerful afternoon thunderstorms as I'd been used to from living in the midwest and mid-atlantic. So being back down here has been great for a gigantic weather nerd like me. When I lived in Ohio, we used to watch the big thunderstorms roll in from the horizon. My dad and I used to go outside and look at all the churning clouds overhead.

So these past few months down here have been great, especially now that it's getting warmer and more afternoon thunderstorms are popping up. Last night's was awesome. The lightning was hitting so close that the thunder was shaking the entire apartment complex. The windows rattled and car alarms were going off. I enjoy turning off the lights when the storms hit too, just so I can see the big bolts of lightning. I'm either outside when a storm is coming close, or pressed up against the window -- looking for the tower clouds and first signs that the rain is coming.

That reminds me of the storm we drove through this past weekend. We were on our way back to Ohio and hit this major line of storms in West Virginia (coincidentally enough, they started right as we passed a sign on I-68 that said "Be careful: This stretch of highway is prone to adverse weather conditions"). It was a torrential downpour, which was really scary to drive in, but being in the passenger seat, I could enjoy the fantastic lightning storm that was also going on. The lightning was mostly jumping from cloud to cloud rather than hitting the ground, so it was beautiful.

I wouldn't choose to drive through that kind of weather, though. Man, that was scary. We were on this windy mountainous interstate road while this insane downpour was blinding us. Not fun. But we made it.

Yesterday, as my loving wife and I were walking home from church, I dared her to pick up one of the many cicadas on the ground -- thinking that she would never do it.

But she did.

Then she ran after me, holding the gigantic bug by a wing while it buzzed and flapped. And I, of course, screamed like a little girl and ran away.

I think more sentences should start out with the phrase "With a little help from a crowbar,..."

Cicadas

Many of you have probably heard about these critters by now, but maybe those of you who don’t live in the affected areas aren’t familiar with the periodical cicada. This year marks the arrival of the 17-year cicadas, Brood X (ten), the biggest cicadas out there.

These little buggers end up being about 1.5” long. They’re big, and they’re loud. And this week, they finally started their mass emergence.

I’ve had to live through a cicada invasion before, but not Brood X. They were still large, annoying, and very plentiful. I was in college, and I remember people talking about it before it happened. They were saying there’d be millions of them, it would look like the trunks of the trees were moving, and the sound would be deafening. I laughed it off, thinking that cicadas came out every year, so why would this one be any different?

I was wrong. By mid-spring, billions of the things were everywhere. The shells were all over, layers of dead cicadas were all over the ground and would crunch whenever you walked on them.

And cicadas are not the Thunderbirds of the bug aviation world. They’re notoriously bad flyers, so they’ll just fly into your face or into hair. Which will freak you out. I remember walking across campus and seeing people just randomly spasming as a cicada would fly into them. I’d laugh, but then one would fly into my face and jerk around like a fool, too. There was no winning.

Until they all died, which was about six weeks later. More layers of crunchy, squished cicadas covered the ground.

So all that makes me nervous about this outbreak. But then again, the excitement around the Brood X outbreak has turned me into an entomological nerd. I’ve been studying up on my cicada knowledge. I even bought a cicada t-shirt. It’s awesome.

In any case, Brood X has now emerged in our region. Yesterday I was walking home from work and something flew into the side of my head. When I turned my head, I saw a couple shells on a nearby tree. How exciting! I thought. They were finally here. Then I looked closer at the shells, and got completely grossed out. As cool as these things are, the “ickiness factor” (as my boss calls it) is really high. Here is one of my cicada shell pictures.

There weren’t a ton of them out yet around my neighborhood, so I was all excited that they would appear last night. They’re supposed to pretty much appear overnight, as the little nymphs that have been living underground for 17 years will crawl out, climb up a tree, shed the shell, and become a big huge loud flying nuisance. Fortunately they don’t bite. That would push me over the edge.

And here are some more gross pictures (scroll down).

Anyway, I was hoping they’d show up last night, so at 10:30 I went out on our porch and shined my flashlight on the nearby trees to see if any were crawling out yet. No luck. But, it did again prove that I’m a huge dork.

So, now comes the waiting period until they start becoming deafening. The male cicadas sing to attract the ladies. Think of it as six weeks of bad cicada karaoke.

I called my dad yesterday to warn him about mowing the lawn. Apparently, some machinery noise is close to the frequency of the male cicada, so then the lady cicadas will start dive-bombing the noise-making apparatus. I told dad he should probably carry a tennis racket around on the lawn mower with him so he can swat at the 10 million lady cicadas that will think the lawn mower is a huge, sexy, crooning male cicada.

Also, a warning for you in cicada regions who have pets that go outside. I heard an entomologist on the radio saying that to pets, a yard full of cicadas is like a yard full of chicken nuggets. Dogs and cats will eat them up. A few won’t hurt your pet, but watch their bug intake. Too much is too much.

I’ll keep you all posted on how we manage through the invasion,

In the meantime, here are my favorite cicada websites, which are chock-full of good information, photos, maps, recipes (yes, some people eat cicadas), and cicada merchanside:

Cicada Mania
Cicada Watch 2004

Enjoy!

Weekend Fun

My folks came to town this weekend for some rip-roarin’ good Maryland fun. I had the day off on Friday, so for our first task -- Mom and I introduced Dad to the fun that is Ikea.

He thought it was pretty amazing as well, although thankfully we didn’t spend an entire day there like the first time I went. Instead, we went in knowing what we were looking for (a desk hutch), let dad run around and look at things, pushed my mom up and down the home office section in a wheeled desk chair, raced the big shopping cart dollies in the self-serve furniture section (I won on style points because I would push mine, jump on, and then strike the George-Washington-crossing-the-Delaware pointing pose), and then found what we wanted and left.

Then it was off to Frederick, Maryland, for a fun tour of that lovely historic town. I do enjoy the city, it’s very old and has some great history. We had lunch at a diner that served really good hamburgers. Then we wandered around looking at old houses and rummaging through antique shops. From there we headed home.

Saturday we all went to Ellicott City, which is another nearby historic town. It’s full of antique shops as well, and a railroad museum. My dad loves trains, so we set him loose in there for a while. I think my favorite part of that museum was the caboose that they let you crawl around in. In the rail station, they had guys dressed up in civil war garb walking around and chatting with you about the museum’s history. I can now say that I’ve seen the first indoor water closet in Ellicott City. Phew! I thought I’d never be able to mark that one off my list of things to see and do during my lifetime.

That night we went on a ghost tour in the city, which was led by a hyperactive teen whose misuse of large words was hysterical. He was a great tour guide, though, with lots of energy and quirks. He had this funny habit of stopping to tell a story about a particular building, and once finished, he would just quickly dart off to the next destination without motioning us to follow him. You’d turn to look at the building he was talking about, then turn back to him – and he’d already be halfway down the block.

Sunday was Mother’s Day, so we took mom out to a nice restaurant and then lazed around the house all day.

So it was a nice weekend, all in all.

Fear the Worm

Friggin' computer viruses and internet worms. I hate them. And then I hate it that I also find them fascinating. But they're mostly fascinating when they affect other people's computers and not mine.

This weekend my home computer was eaten up by the newest worm, the W32 Sasser Worm. Bastard!

I turned on my computer to find an odd error message warning me that my computer's virtual memory was low. Odd, I thought, considering we just got this computer back in December -- so it's not very old.

I tried to sign on to the internet (yes, I use dial-up, call me lame but I really don't do enough online to warrant $50/month on DSL or cable broadband), but the computer was moving incredibly slowly. It was excruciating. So I knew something was up, something was wrong. My brief time as a systems administrator was about to come in handy again on the ol' home computer.

When I finally got the computer to sign on, I couldn't open any webpages. So I called my computer guru dad, and he said, "Sounds like you might have a worm."

Friggin' worms. So he helped me do some research (he would look up things on the internet since I couldn't get access), and we figured out that I had the new bug. What the W32 Sasser does, if you don't feel like wading through the minor techno-speak on Symantec, is chew up memory on your computer, thereby slowing down everything else you try to do.

With some more research, we discovered the wonders of Stinger. Stinger will search your entire computer for all viruses and worms, and delete anything it finds.

So my dad forwarded me a link to download Stinger, and I just had to figure out how to get online. So I used my brain and opened up the task bar and went to the processes section -- where I found several little bugs that were sucking up HUGE amounts of CPU usage. The main culprit was "avserve.exe," which is the main part of the worm. It was using up about 85% of the CPU on its own, but some of its underlings were using up the rest so our computer's CPU was almost 99% running. Friggin' worms.

I was able to end those processes, which instantly sped up and the computer and enabled me to get online and download Stinger. So the worm is gone now, and I'm currently perusing firewall and antivirus options for our computer. If anybody out there has any advice on good ones, please pass it on. I was looking at buying McAfee's Internet Security Suite or Norton's comparable package, but I read some reviews of those products on Amazon and man, people were ripping them. I have used Zone Alarm's free firewall in the past (on my old laptop that was stolen), and it worked great, so I'm considering one of their packages as well. One of the reviews also mentioned that if you only use dial-up, then Zone Alarm's free firewall, partnered with Norton's or McAfee's antivirus software, could be a good mix to prevent us from having problems like this in the future.

It would also help if Microsoft would suck less and stop releasing operating systems full of security holes and flaws, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Anyway, that's the plan now. I enjoy being a bit of a computer nerd, but I still hate those friggin' worms.

And beware to any of you out there with home computers that lack protection. I read a quote on MSNBC today saying that you could be online for a mere ten minutes and get infected with this thing. Crazy!

Worms are not passed around like viruses, you don't get them from downloading attachments or anything. They exploit unused ports on your computer without your knowing. You won't know you've got you til it starts making your computer go nuts. So beware, get a firewall!

Novice computer nerds unite!

Married Life

The wife was out of town all weekend. That means I sat around eating a poor diet and just generally being a gigantic slug.

I fear what would happen if she was out of town for a week or more. She would come home to find me stuck to the couch, the TV remote attached to one hand and various empty food containers around me.

Although I do clean when she's not around. So the couch/TV area would look horrible, but the rest of the apartment would be spotless.

So I guess if I was back to single life again, there would be an extensive period of horrible eating habits combined with a clean apartment until I fully re-adjusted.