three things meme

[totient]

Last time the three things meme came up I concluded that my most interesting things are more "three unusual things I have done with people who don't happen to read my LJ" than three things I'd done on my own. But on reflection there are some things I think I can put down which won't be quite as much a function of which social circles read this blog. So...

Three things I've done that I'd be surprised if any of my friends (on LJ or otherwise) had:

• Made an astronomical observation with an optical telescope of >5m aperture
  
• Gone on a >1000km bike ride Edit: Finished last in a multi-day bike race
  
• Competed in a motorsport by writing a computer program

Comments

[coraline]

i know multiple people who have biked across the united states (including ceelove and moominmolly...)

http://intrepidheroines.net/

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

Does this mean he has to drink now? ;)

[coraline]

i dunno, but it might be a fun drinking game :)

i think kirkcudbright might have done it as well, though i'm not sure... and also my friends wavyarms and badoingdoing and chmrr, though i don't think he knows any of them :)

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

Oh, and kirkcudbright, of course! Adding "solo, unsupported" to the bike ride doesn't help there.

I was the red lantern in a six-day stage race, though; that's perhaps a little less usual.

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

I think frobzwiththingz also biked across the US (or at least began the trip).

[frotz.livejournal.com]

It's nowhere near the sophistication of your software, but early in my TSD career I replaced our tables with a linux laptop and a bunch of code that took a correction factor and on-the-fly pauses and CAS changes and continually displayed ideal mileage.

The software per se worked well, but dealing with an entire laptop was a cumbersome pain.

(I'm not sure if it counts vs. your third point or not, though. As for your first, which big telescope? Am I reading this right that it was an actual eyeball obervation and not CCD? If so, I'm really curious what you were up to. (It's not out of the question that I can coordinate with SAO people I know for a "put an eyepiece on the MMT and impress people" session (and maybe also for Palomar if I'm lucky, though at least tourist time on their 60" is easily doable), but it's not like they have much slack time.))

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

Palomar, in the pre-CCD days, using a vacuum-tube photomultiplier not eyeballs.

[wereterrier.livejournal.com]

Curiously, I was dropping by here because deguspice said you were a road rally person.

I have a co-worker who used to do that someplace else (I don't know where) and was looking for local contacts. May I give him either this journal URL or an email address for you?

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

Sure, feel free to send either pointer.