Aggressive stupidity

Many people seem to think I invented the term "aggressive stupidity." Today's Quote of the Day attributes it to one Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who lived from 1749 - 1832. The best I can do is dedicate myself to a precise definition. When I come up with one, I'll let you know.

Monster Smart

So, I found some pictures of a monster truck based on the Smart car. If you look closely, you'll notice that it even has a wind-up key in the left rear wheel well.

Is it weird that I want one of these?

QOTD

My Google home page has a "quote of the day" feature. Todays:

"If God had wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates."
-- Jay Leno

Yay for Burlington

We had to do some laundry at the laundromat yesterday. The dryer at our place was on the fritz (again) and our landlord is being his typically helpful self in getting it fixed (nine days and counting). But that's another rant.

The point of this post is that I accidentally left a nearly new box of fabric softener sheets at the laundromat when I was done. It's the hugest size we could find, but even so it's only worth about $6. I didn't even realize I had forgotten it until several hours later. We headed back over to the laundromat on the way to the grocery store, as much out of curiosity as anything. I guarantee if we had done something like that in Scarborough, it would have been gone in five minutes, just out of sheer principle. It doesn't matter how much something is worth, the "troubled youth" out there will steal it just because it isn't bolted to the floor, even if all they intend to do is pull the sheets out and scatter them all over the parking lot. However, in Burlington, our box of dryer sheets was sitting right where I left it. I don't think anyone even used any sheets out of it, and it looked like nobody so much as bothered to move it to the side so they could use the table it was on. They probably figured I had left it there to reserve the table, and respected that.

As I'm sure you guessed (by the fact that I'm bothering to talk about it), I was quite impressed.

Why dogs hate their owners

They're called Doggles. Why would anyone do something this silly, you ask? Well, there are two reasons. One is protection from flying debris when he sticks his head out of the window of the truck. The other is UV protection, which will be particularly important in Colorado at 12,000 feet.

I just couldn't resist the urge to blog about the Doggles. Just don't call me a "Doggle blogger." That sounds vaguely unwholesome.

Gym again

I made it over to the gym again this morning. Nothing particularly noteworthy, mostly I just want a record for myself. I moved from the bike up to the elliptical cross-trainer and did some upper body weights. I'm still battling the clock in the morning, and mostly losing. I'm going to get serious about my idea of heading over there in the evening. In fact, I'll plan it right now. Unless something else comes up to prevent me from doing so, I'm going to go back over there tomorrow (Tuesday) after work.

Back to the gym

Well, I managed to make it back to the gym this morning. A week and a half between workouts, clearly that's not going to cut it. Today I did the same time at a higher setting on the bike, plus got back on some of the other machines that I didn't do last time. I remember these machines being a lot easier than they were this morning. It seems I have been away for a while.

I'm going to have to figure out a better schedule for when to work out. I didn't get to the gym this morning until around 9:15, then after working out and showering I got to the office for 10:45, so I have to stay here until 7:15. Norah and I are trying to stick to an "early to bed, early to rise" schedule in preparation for our drive out to Colorado. Saturday evening we realized that we're going to need to start adjusting our sleeping schedules for the trip. We want to try to get up around 3:00 AM each morning while we're traveling so we can get where we're going before the weather turns too hot each day. That also means we're going to need to be getting to bed earlier. We have five weeks to adjust to the early schedule. Currently we're aiming to be in bed by 9:00 PM and up by 5:00 AM. We're not quite there yet, but we are doing better than our standard midnight bedtime during the week and 2:00 AM on weekends. We have to hit the 9:00 bedtime pretty quickly, because then we have to start bringing it back a half hour at a time if we want to hit our target for the trip.

It's going to be pretty difficult to be in bed by 9:00 when I have to work until 7:15. Add time to drive home, eat dinner, walk the dog, etc. and it gets past bedtime really quickly. Obviously I really need to work on the "getting my butt out the door in the morning" phase of the day. I'm thinking I might shift my workouts to the evening after work. That's what I used to do when I was working with the personal trainer, just because it was the only time I could get an appointment with him. It might make more sense to tire myself out with a workout just before going to bed, as opposed to tiring myself out just before going to the office.

August came early this year

The news this morning said the temperature is forecast to hit 34° C today (that's 93° F) with a humidex of 42° C (that's 107° F). The government has issued heat and smog advisories, which is a polite way of saying "don't bother trying to breathe today."

I hate humidity. I'd rather have 120° desert heat than this oppressive soup that Toronto calls air. You can't run, you can't hide, you can't sit in the shade, you can't spray yourself with water because all that does is makes it more humid. The only thing you can do is run the air conditioner, which gets really expensive really quickly, and is apparently going to lead to another blackout like the one we had in 2003.

The only thing worse than humidity is humidity with pollution. There are no clouds, but visibility is down to a mile or so just because of all the garbage in the air, which the enviro-Nazis would have you believe is because of cars ("OH NOES!!! CARS ARE TEH EVIL!!!11!!!one!!!!!"). Never mind that the government micro-manages every gram of exhaust that comes out of everyone's cars but as far as I can tell they're not actually interested in doing anything about huge industrial polluters. It seems that huge corporations make campaign contributions and have lots of expensive lawyers, which average citizens don't. It's easier for politicians to keep up good appearances by making it look like they're doing something about the environment by going after the easy targets instead the actual root of the problem.

Sorry, the weather is making me just a wee bit crabby. It helps to vent these frustrations. Really. A bit.

Call Mulder

It's time for curbside recycling pickup today. I noticed that virtually every house on our street ran out of laundry detergent simultaneously. Orange Tide bottles in every bin. Coincidence? I think not!

Back to the gym

I guess for most people this wouldn't be particularly newsworthy. Or maybe it would. Being a card-carrying computer and math nerd, I've always felt profoundly out of place in any sort of physical activity setting, even as a kid. I suffered through every second of gym class, hated all kinds of sports, and never could figure out how any of those weird torture devices in the exercise room were supposed to work. Every kid's sports movie you've ever seen has the one awkard kid who carries a calculator everywhere, wears thick-framed glasses, gets straight A's in every subject but gym, and he can't even hold on to a ball, much less throw it straight. That was me, except I never wore glasses. Nor did I have any interest in sports or exercise, I was perfectly willing to let other segments of the population take care of that activity.

And that was my stand on the whole exercise issue until 2004 when Norah convinced me that we really needed to join a gym. We got a personal training package along with our new member startups so we could figure out what exactly we were doing. For a while, I was doing pretty well with it. I learned what parts of the body the various torture devices were designed to be used on. I learned about heart rate and warm up and cool down. I learned that I had these things called "muscles" and a few suggestions about stretching them. Believe it or not, I actually do have some muscles... somewhere. They certainly hurt after I've subjected myself to the torture devices for a while.

After I had used up my allotment of personal training sessions, I didn't want to pay for an extension, so I decided I knew enough to try it on my own without injuring myself (much). I actually kept up with it fairly well for a while. Then, as usually happens with these things, I sort of stopped going. The excuses were too easy to find, and I still think going to the gym is one of the least pleasant experiences there is, short of going to the dentist. But, darn it, the gym is good for me.

I always had good intentions of going over. It's been a recurring event on my calendar every week for the last eight months. But I was always too busy, didn't have time, was late for work, didn't have the energy, had too much knee pain, and so on.

This morning I finally got fed up with the excuses. I've realized that our base camp in Colorado is at about 7500 feet above sea level, and a lot of the 4x4 trails I've been looking at are up around 14,000 feet. Unless I want to pass out, I had better get my heart and lungs working at something over two percent of their capacity. I know it's only seven weeks until we leave, and I probably won't be able to get that much accomplished in that time. The thought does motivate me to get myself over there, so I'm sticking with it. So, despite the fact that I was still too busy, didn't have time, was late for work, didn't have the energy, and still had some amount of knee pain, I just drove myself over and did some exercise. And I didn't get in to work until almost 11:00. Fortunately for me I have a pretty cushy desk job where it doesn't matter too much if I drag in at that time and stay until 7:30 to make up for it. Mostly what the boss cares about is how many hours I work in a week, not so much about what time of day I work them. Good thing.

What I actually accomplished today in terms of strength training or cardiovascular fitness probably adds up to "not much". I think today was more about breaking through the psychological barriers I've put in my own way. Since I haven't been in a long time, I didn't want to overdo it and strain something. I did, however, manage to actually see the inside of the gym, I got myself on an exercise bike, picked up a couple of heavy objects and set them back down again, got my muscles stretched out a bit, and knocked some of the rust off of my joints.

So why am I bothering to talk so much about this? Public accountability. I am now serving notice to the entire Intahrnehtwebbahn that I intend to get my butt off the couch and over to the gym at least twice per week. Maybe even three times. I'll post here whenever I manage to do so. Knowing there's a record of my efforts will help me keep myself in gear.

I hope.

w.bloggar

Well, I was looking for an offline blog post editor. I think I might have found one. The first few I looked at were fairly expensive, but w.bloggar is free as in beer, which is good enough for my purposes. I'm writing this post with it as a test to see how well it works.

The idea is to use this on our laptops as we're heading across the country so we can compose posts as we go, then upload them all at night once we can get connected to the net. It'll be interesting to see how it works out.

Busy for a while

Well, it looks like we're going to be quite busy for the next couple of months, even more so than normal. The DML decided to have a National Meet this summer, and we volunteered to be on the organizing committee. Two months to go until we leave. (eek!)

There's a separate blog set up for all meet related information. I intend to do a better job keeping that one updated than I've been doing with this one. This blog is mostly for myself whenever I feel like posting something, but for the meet blog I really want to keep up to date on all of the effort that's going in to preparing for this meet, and it will stand as our record of everything that's happening as we're at the meet. Well, as much as time allows, anyway. We're going to be camping in the mountains, so logging on to the net and writing blog posts might not be highest on our list of things to do.

This reminds me, I should look to see if there's any software (other than a text editor) that'll allow me to compose blog posts offline and quickly upload them next time I'm connected. That'd help out considerably.

Anyway, if you want to keep up with what I'm doing for the meet, be sure to read that blog.

Pierre says...

"Pardon me sir, but have you seen my legs?"

A new look

Before and after comparison. I didn't think I'd ever do this, but I thought I'd give it a try. I'll say one thing, it'll definitely keep the hair out of my eyes.

The squirrel is gone

Last night when I got home, I did a little "squirrel scene investigation" and determined that the squirrel had somehow gotten in to our place through the laundry room. There's open access from that room to the space above our ceiling, so that made sense.

I decided that the easiest place to trap him would be right back in the laundry room. We have a Havahart live trap, so I set it up and baited it with some pieces of bread with almond extract on them. We hadn't heard any squirrel noises, and we were a bit concerned that he might have gotten trapped someplace inside our walls.

I checked the trap first thing in the morning, and there was nothing. I checked again a couple of hours later, and there was the squirrel. Almond extract works quite well. We're pretty certain it's the same squirrel. There's always a chance that we might have attracted a second one to come in from outside, but I didn't see any signs of that. I think this one got in around the dryer vent hose. We're going to try to get our landlord, Mr. Useless, to put some kind of screen over the vent to keep animals out. If a squirrel got in, then mice can get in even easier. I'd do it myself, only it's in a concrete wall, and I don't feel like spending money on hardware that will properly mount in concrete. It's not my house, and not my responsibility to spend my money upgrading or maintaining it.

Getting this fixed is going to be much more difficult than getting rid of the squirrel was.

Squirrel Wars

I got a call from Norah at work. Apparently we have a squirrel loose in the space between our ceiling and the floor above. Last summer we had a couple of birds in the laundry room, then in the fall we had yellow jackets, now a squirrel? I like nature well enough, but this is ridiculous. Unfortunately we haven't been able to figure out how all this wildlife is getting inside, and our landlord is being his typically unhelpful self.

Getting rid of this squirrel is going to be interesting.

Slashdot | RIAA Sues Woman Who Has Never Used a Computer

Slashdot | RIAA Sues Woman Who Has Never Used a Computer

Good to see the recording industry is continuing their incredibly stupid war against their own customers. The sooner the record companies go out of business, the better. Their entire business model is obsolete now, they desperately need to die off. They used to be a necessary to handle the physical distribution of records, now they've become little more than a mafia trying to intimidate people in to doing business with them or else.

Need I say more?

I got a page a day desk calendar for Christmas called "The 365 Stupidest Things Ever Said (TM)". Here's today's item.

On Integrity, Senatorial

Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition... to the early use of military by the US against Iraq.... On January 11, I voted in favor of a resolution that would have insisted that economic sanctions be given more time to work and against a resolution giving the president the immediate authority to go to war.

January 22, 1991, letter from Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) to a constituent

Thank you for contacting me to express your support for the actions of President Bush in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. From the outset of the invasion, I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush's response to the crises and the policy goals he has established with our military deployment in the Persian Gulf.

January 31, 1991, letter from Senator John Kerry to the same constituent

Planning for the DML meet

Looks like this is going to be at least three days pulling the trailer.

Driving directions from Jon's

Ideally we'd meet up with people from points further east around Jon's place, then make it near Chicago to meet up with Josh and maybe Tom (depending on his plans). Or, we might be going it alone, I'm not sure if anyone else is going to want to poke along at the 60 mph that I do with the trailer. One good thing about the trailer is that we won't need motel rooms, just a place where we'll be allowed to park the trailer overnight.

Trip journal

Unfortunately, Norah and I came down sick with some kind of flu or chest cold right as we were getting back from our big trip. I had great ideas about using this blog as a daily journal of our trip as we were going, which obviously didn't happen. With everything else that was going on, I never seemed to find time to sit down and type it all up.

What I do want to do is go back and fill in the details after the fact. This site used to allow for changing the date of a post. I'm not sure yet if I want to do that or not. It will make more sense if things are listed on the days they actually happened, but it will also make it more difficult for anyone to find the new posts. Either way, I would like to get some of the things from our trip recorded here, mostly just for ourselves more than anything. Several times this year when we were home, I noticed that many of us in the family were trying to remember things that had happened in past years, either exactly what had happened, or when it happened, or who was there. I realized that things like this are the reason for keeping some kind of journal. We've got one here, might as well use it.

Way to go

Time named Battlestar Galactica the best television of 2005. I couldn't agree more. It's nice to see that they can appreciate a quality show even if it's set in space and has robots.
TIME.com: Best of 2005: Television -- Page 1