Archive for December, 2006

davewalkswpedometer

Stats since I started this on September 4, 2006:

Average daily miles: 2.89
Total days: 109
Total miles: 315 (almost enough to get from here to…consults Google maps…Gatlinburg, TN)

By days of the week
Mo: 2.62
Tu: 2.76
We: 2.75
Th: 3.00
Fr: 3.12
Sa: 3.20
Su: 2.75

By month:
Sep: 2.85
Oct: 2.99
Nov: 2.89
Dec: 2.79

Need to step things up over the next week. My first month should be my worst month. The initial goal was to get to 10,000 steps a day, which works out to about four miles. I’ve only done that a few times.

Now for the massive geekiness of this…I was tracking this in a plain text Google notebook. I just transferred the data to an Excel spreadsheet. Now I’m going to stick it in Remedy, as the start of my long-imagined goal of having one place to track everything.

Tags: health, stats
Category health |

Oddball

The Oddball segment on Countdown with Keith Olbermann uses as its theme “Sabre Dance” by Aram Khachaturian. Just thought I’d share that. I had been wondering for the longest time who composed that music. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, head to the iTunes store or similar website and listen. It’s one of those pieces everyone has heard that you’d find on a Classical Music for Dummies CD.

Category music, television |

Finding a Faith

I’m sorry to anyone who suggested I look into the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster for dismissing the faith out of hand without having done any investigation into its beliefs. That was wholly ignorant and disrespectful.

Tags: religion
Category Uncategorized |

Congratulations! You’ve beaten out Mahmoud Ahmadinejad!

(With apologies to Bill Maher)

NEW RULE:
When Time Magazine selects its “Person of the Year,” it must choose a singular actual human being. Over 20 years ago, they named a “Machine of the Year,” the personal computer. A couple of years ago, “The American Soldier” was the Person of the Year. Time has another copout in 2006.

Personally, I thought Suri Cruise had a big year that went largely unnoticed.

Category media |

Me and the best part of my 31st year

Me and the best part of my 31st year
Originally uploaded by toastie97.

I’m spending my birthday night by myself, with the exception of the animals, and try as I might to make the best of it, I’m only so good at such challenges. I did take this picture, though, and that makes me happy, even if Herman doesn’t look particularly thrilled in this shot. It’s quite difficult to take a picture of you and your dog without any help.

Tags: pets, speeding
Category herman, pets, pics |

My Pathology

For the public record (for now):

If I set rules for myself, I break them.
If I give myself reminders, I ignore them.
If I set goals for myself, I procrastinate until there’s no chance to achieve them.

Sounds like you don’t love yourself.

No shit. What’s your point?

You must love yourself before you can expect others to love you.

That’s why I have pets. They don’t give a shit how I feel about myself; they love me anyway.

Tags: tmi
Category Uncategorized |

Holy crap, Peter Boyle has died

Best known for playing Ray’s dad Frank on Everybody Loves Raymond (one of the very few TV comedies to ever get a consistent audible laugh out of me) and the monster in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein

Category death, television |

Pimping my cube

I just realized that the panels in my cube are easily interchangable I have two whiteboard panels that I have to (sigh) get up to write on. So I switched one of them with the non-functioning, utterly useless fabric panel to the right of my monitor.

Not that I ever use my whiteboard.

My sense has always been that people who use their whiteboards a lot are a helluva lot more organized and productive than I am. Then again, some people, upon inspection, may be found to be keeping the same stuff on there from one month to the next just to make it seem like they’re organized and productive.

Tags: work
Category Uncategorized |

Rhetorical questions

Why do most people only care that kids don’t have toys around Christmas?
Why do most people only want to feed the hungry around Christmas?
Why do most people only socialize with all of their workplace colleagues around Christmas?
Why do most people only send cards expressing well wishes to all of their friends around Christmas?

Someone ought to make a movie in which, for some sinister reason*, there is no Christmas, but humanity is so much better off for it, because people realize that all of the positive things that happen at Christmas (ok, maybe not socializing with your coworkers) could actually happen anytime, that they didn’t need Christmas to bring out the best in themselves. (The sequel will deal with everyone renouncing their faith).

*Some potential sinister reasons:
- Santa’s sleigh finally obeys the laws of physics and is obliterated, along with sleigh, reindeer, and gifts, upon take-off from the North Pole.
- Some of Santa’s lewd IM’s to children who have been naughty are discovered.
- Santa’s pre-Christmas goodwill mission to China is marred when Chinese officials mistake Santa’s reindeer for dogs and kill them.
- Global warming melts the North Pole. Santa, Mrs. Klaus, all of the reindeer, and most of the elves drown. The two surviving elves escape the devastation, only to be eaten by starving polar bears. Despite the elf flesh and endless supply of Coca-Cola, the polar bears still starve to death, which has seemingly nothing to do with the story, but results in a massive campaign by Coca-Cola to reverse global warming and genetically engineer a new species of polar bear. (In the third installment of the trilogy, the new polar bears are viewed by some as a sign that Jesus is returning, resulting in a global war between the Polar Bear Christians and the Antitheists).

This blog entry is an improper use of my organization’s internet capabilities. Therefore, I shall end this post and head home…

Tags: religion
Category Uncategorized |

Electability

Dennis Kucinich’s announcement that he’ll make another run at the nomination had me pondering the question of electability. As mentioned before, the general consensus of those who don’t absolutely love Hillary is that she’s unelectable. I understand why many think this, but when I think of unelectable, I think of Kucinich, or at least I did three years ago. I was high on Howard Dean, whom many thought was unelectable, and I’d argue that if Dean was able to get his message out in a two-man race with Bush, he’d have just as good a chance as anyone. I’d add that my own views were probably best-aligned with Kucinich, but he was truly unelectable, and I wanted to back a guy who at least had a shot.

Interestingly enough, I think if Dean has not had his scream and gone on to win the nomination, he would have had a very good chance of defeating Bush. A lot of people who wanted to vote out Bush didn’t vote for Kerry because they didn’t know where Kerry stood on issues. Kerry’s nuanced arguments went over the heads of a lot of these people, and they didn’t feel comfortable with him. Dean is blunt about things. He may not be likable to some, but back in 2004, people didn’t care so much for a guy they’d want to have a beer with; they just wanted someone whom they believed would truly fight for them. John Kerry didn’t convey that when we’d wind down by going wind-surfing off Martha’s Vineyard.

And this brings me to my point…Kucinich in ’08? Why not? I don’t think most Americans are as afraid of the label of “liberal” as much as the right-wing would like us to believe. When it comes right down to it, *anyone* whom the Democrats nominate in ’08 is electable, in my opinion, simply because the nominee will be running against a Republican nominee. So many Americans who don’t pay attention to politics will feel as if the previous eight years were so awful under Bush that they’ll want to vote for whoever *isn’t* the Republican. I’ve heard so many people say that the Democrats have to run a moderate to have a chance in ’08. How about just running someone who obviously has courage in his convictions, who doesn’t follow scripts, who doesn’t need to consult with an elite corps of advisors before every public act?

Am I being too idealistic? I’m not saying that Kucinich has much of a chance of winning the nomination. I’m more wondering if electability really ought to be considered when supporting a party candidate.

Tags: dennis kucinich, election 2008, politics
Category politics |