What d'ya know... I was doing it wrong

I've been wondering why, when I've been doing as much physical stuff as I have, I still couldn't run 2 miles. Just a simple out and back.

Mystery answered.

I borrowed Chris' heart rate monitor for a jog. Started going out, was maybe 200m out. Looked at heart rate monitor: 170. Hmm... That's the upper end of my "workout" range. But I was barely feeling it, like I normally do when I go running. But, I followed the exercise via heart monitor advice and slowed down a tad so that my heart was staying around 160. It almost felt uncomfortable to run that slow. My leg muscles felt completely underused. I felt like I was barely using my lungs and heart.

Get to my turnaround point, roughly a mile out, and I realize that I can still run. When I'd been running before, I was completely exhausted by this point. It was a struggle to take each step. When I got to about a quarter mile left, I decided to let my legs "run". I sped up, brought my knees higher, etc. After a few blocks of that, I checked the HRM: 195. No wonder I hadn't been able to keep it up if that was what it took to run at that speed right now. I was just hurting my heart instead of building it up. I finished my run and stretched out. I realized that for the first time in weeks I was still able to function after the workout.

So, I bit the bullet and bought an HRM. I need to get my heart stronger. And because my legs are stronger than the rest of me, I cannot trust "how I feel". I've probably been doing this for years. It explains why it took me forever to improve my cardio shape and why I slipped out of shape so easily. I've been pushing myself too hard too fast. And I never realized it.

Foreign Travel

This is just funny.

Filling out the notice for foreign travel, I notice this rule:

12. Don't respond to sexual overtures.

That'll make for a great honeymoon.... Sorry dear, work forbids me from having sex until we're back in the U.S. of A.

Ray

I just saw the movie Ray. That is one good film. I'm not a big Ray Charles fan, although I do know a couple of his songs... Georgia on My Mind, Hit the Road Jack, I Got A Woman, What'd I Say... but this was just a fantastic movie. Great acting, amazing recreation of the 50s and 60s of the South... I found it interesting how much of a womanizer he was. I wish that there had been a little bit more of the motivations of his wife.

Wedding things grow closer

I just realized that its the end of August. It seems like just last weekend my parents were in town, although that was almost a month ago.

I need to meet with Jim about what exactly will take place in the ceremony, although it will probably just be a simple, standard Presbyterian one. The vows are fairly simple (done twice):

Reverend: Do you, _______, take _______ to be your wife/husband? Do you promise to love, honor, cherish and protect her/him, forsaking all others and holding only unto her/him?
Bride & Groom: I do

None of the annoying obey stuff (like I would say that anyways), and really shorter than a lot of the other denominations. But I have to figure out what readings / poems I would like. I want to tone down the mention of god, but I realize that since it is a nominally religious ceremony it will be mentioned.

Sometime in the next 5 weeks I have to go to New Jersey for pre-Cana so we can get Catholic dispensation for the wedding. Not that there's going to be a priest at the wedding, but because it makes Chris' mother happy. And I really don't want to start off by pissing off my MIL.

The only "traditional" parts of the wedding are going to be the ceremony section (relatively speaking), the first dance, and the father/daughter - in combo with mother/son. Its sort of a tradition, but I like this one: the anniversary dance. That's the one where everyone who's married dances and as they hit the 'anniversary' (the DJ/band leader calls it out) they step off the dance floor. The last couple on the dance floor gets the bride's bouquet.

My wedding coordinator was telling me about some of the other customs. For those I've heard of, I see no point in doing them. For others that I've never heard or (shoving cake into each other's faces???? WTH???) they're not allowed.

I'm also working on the 'banned pieces' list:
Pachelbel's Canon [I'm so sick of this piece I never want to hear it again]
Chicken Dance
Hokey Pokey
Celebration
Electric Slide

And the special dance list:
Tonight (Bernstein/Sondheim)... I think, haven't completely decided.. for first dance.. if I can find a version that's just the duet. I just love that musical.
What a Wonderful World (Armstrong) for father/daughter mother/son....

Idiosyncrasies

OK Mary Anne....

1. I always have some sort of tune running through my head. I only consider it 'stuck' if I can't change the channel & its annoying me.
2. Ever since my teeth started chipping (due to stress grinding) I can't stop paying attention to them. I'll pick at them or very deliberately run my tongue over the worse ones.
3. I assume people dislike me until proven otherwise. I'm working on changing this, but its tough.
4. I have a tendency of following a very convoluted train of internal thought. I'll be talking to someone about topic X (lets say 'ice cream'). That will, after about 5 jumps, remind me that I need to get my passport renewed.
[ logic train - ice cream is in freezer, freezer in kitchen, kitchen needs to be cleaned, when cleaning I should find that postcard my friend sent me, the postcard was from South America, I'd like to visit South America, I can't visit South America because my passport is expired, I should get my passport renewed ]
5. If I don't finish a book in 2 days, it is likely I will never finish it.

Skipping the tagging thing

Still Futzing with the Computer

So, I was wrong that I was done patching the computer. I got home last night and discovered that it had downloaded SP2. OK, install. Play a game on the computer after it reboots. Oh look, another batch of updates need to be installed. OK, install them. Reboot. Hey look, its downloading more patches.

So, I have now patched the computer 5 separate times (multiple updates each patch). That's insane. I still don't know if its done.

At least I was able to finally sync my PDA to the computer again. My vindigo listings were way out of date (April, I think).

Why Installing Windows Sucks

I'm finally finishing up the repair of my broken Windows 2000 / gaming box. All I had for legal disks was XP Pro, so that's running on the box now.

I work with computers all day long, all week long, and usually for fun. So why does it take me ~10 hours to install Windows on a fairly standard PC and still not have it working completely? Yes, it takes me days when I install gentoo on my linux boxes, but that's because I'm COMPILING every last little bit of code *and* I have to download every single bit and byte of code.

All of this wouldn't have happened if there was a way to fix the "old" box short of actually reformatting the hard drive. But, I tried everything and all that did was cause it to blue screen faster. So, I finally had finished copying all the old data on my windows drives onto my linux server. I plugged the hard drives back in and went to boot up the box. No BIOS. How the hell did I manage to screw up the BIOS? So, I went to the Internet and it turns out that when I plugged the hard drives back in, I must have messed something up. I check all the parameters and yup, there's a jumper missing. So I put the jumper on.

Reboot.

and BSOD and Reboot... and BSOD and Reboot.... ad nauseum.

Why isn't the machine picking up that I have a CD-ROM to boot from and why am I still not getting the BIOS info? Apparently, when I took out the old hard drives, I had unplugged the CD-ROM drive. Whee. Plug in the CD-ROM. Reboot. Yay. There's a BIOS. And I can now tell it to boot from CD-ROM.

Reboot. Format C: drive (the one which was BSOD otherwise). Start installation of XP. Its happily copying files, so I leave it alone and go mess around on the computer in the other room. Windows had told me it would be ~40 minutes total install time.

Come back 30 minutes later and its still at 40 minutes. There was a little prompt I needed to fill in. Fill in the prompts. Wait a little bit. No more prompts? Ok, back to the other machine. Come back 30 minutes later again, and there's a prompt.

Why can't it just ask for all the prompt stuff at once so that I can go on and do something else while its copying? I shouldn't have to babysit an install like that.

So, I suck it up and babysit the install. The rest of it goes ok. Find the CD of my video card, install that. Properties seem to work ok. Go to windows update - 3 installs. (that's it???) Install those. Reboot. Install Firefox. Find CD for sound card. Install sound card. Oops.... that didn't work so well. After letting it sit, apparently hung, for 2.5 hours while I was trying to set up some other non-standard stuff, I finally killed it. Tomorrow I will try to install from a downloaded web driver instead. I think there was a conflict. However, this means I have no sound. Which isn't particularly good for a gaming box.

Just because I didn't trust the original Windows Update, I go back and click on custom instead of express. 27 updates. That sounds *closer* to the right number, but still a little bit on the low side. Install them. Reboot.

BTW - I found the client which will allow me to use NFS mounts inside windows. I'm sick of the annoying configuration of samba shares, and its much harder to make a samba share on linux than it is to make an NFS share. However, its a 222 MB download, so its taking a while. I also installed Zone Alarm for my firewall and AVG for my virus protection. Commercial ware for free for home users. Yay.

My next task, after getting the sound working, is to figure out why my mouse is squeaking. Only real mice should squeak. This is just annoying.

---

Oh yeah, and all invitations for whom I have addresses are compiled, but my father wants me to change the directions card. Whee. Is "just past" a half mile? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on your point of view. And is it worth the time and money it will take to fix that? *sigh*

Computer Pervasiveness in Learning

Ok, I use computers every day. I use them for research. I used them for research way back when. I used them in class in grad school. Yet these kinds of things drive me nuts.
Deciding whether to buy your student a laptop

The example of a good way to use a laptop if you're a middle-school kid, is if you're planning for a science fair and putting data into Excel. Y'know what? I bet graph paper works just as well, since middle schoolers are unlikely to be using Excel for complicated formulas, at least until after the data is collected. And beyond that? I remember middle school. It was difficult for a lot of kids I knew to keep their bikes from being stolen, lost, broken. And bikes are a lot hardier than a laptop. Don't they have enough to cart back and forth to school without adding on a 5-10 pound laptop? And if they're just using it at home, that's why there's desktops.

Why people think we should force computers on kids is beyond me. Use them, yes. Learn how they work, yes. Do everything on them? HELL NO. Kids need to develop motor skills. Computers don't do that. Kids need to learn how to interact with others. Computers don't do that (except via distance). Kids need to learn the basics - how to read, how to write (and none of the l33t h4x0r crap they pull now... I even see my coworkers do it occasionally and it drives me absolutely nuts), logic (geometry), math, curiosity for the real world, not curiosity for the website.

I'm thinking more and more about designing that software I've been thinking about for 3+ years. I can make a great case for it. I can write the code (basically). And it would help parents get their kids OFF the computer and into the real world - and the parents too... god knows I could use it.

TotL.net Human Virus Scanner

TotL.net Human Virus Scanner

I don't normally post these, but this one was fantastic.

---

Human Virus Scanner

The virus that have infected you will be show here along with thier cures, if known.
Viruses you suffer from:

Linux
Install the latest version of Microsoft Windows. Learn to love it.

Junkfood
Eat some real food. Something which you can identify the source of every ingredient, not the point of manufacture.

Religion
Read "God's Debris" by Scott Adams (yes, the Dilbert guy)

Windows
Try MacOS X. It's based on UNIX, it has a smoother UI than Windows and it doesn't suck.
As an extra feature the boxes look nice.

vi
Escape Meta Alt Control Shift.

Free BSD
The GPL isn't that bad really. Adopt a penguin at the zoo.

Politics
Stop caring!

X11
I hear Mac OS 10 Aqua is nice at this time of year.

Conspiracy Theory
Face it, the elected government is in control. Actually that's quite scary.

Environmentalism
Consume more stuff! It's easier to buy new stuff than to recycle.

Macintosh
Use a mouse with more than one button.

Viruses you might suffer from:

USA (70%)
Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves! [repeat]

Industrial (70%)
Everyone likes folk. No, really. Maybe you should listen to the Incredible String Band.

Gaming (70%)
Life is not a game. Roll 3D6. On a 4 or more go out and do something with your life.

British (90%)
No need for cure. Benign virus.

UNIX (90%)
Anything this old must be obselete. Go and install a nice modern operating system. I hear MSDOS has come a long way lately.

Sci-fi (70%)
Stop wearing the stick-on ears.

Discordia (70%)
Buy a suit. Invest your money. Eat hotdog buns on a friday.

Brand Names (95%)
Having a well-known name doesn't make it good.

Computer Games (60%)
Stop staring at the screen and get some fresh air. You should see a doctor about the RSI in your thumbs.

Hippyism (60%)
Free love is passe and potentially dangerous, and patchouli smells like cat piss.

---

RSS feeds

I'm starting to look into RSS feeds. Particularly since I can pull them into my personalized google homepage, it will make seeing what's going on really useful. I am noticing that with a couple of blgos the rss feeds seem to be slow. So, when I visit the person's blog, there's 3-4 entries in the past 24 hours. The RSS feed to Google only picks up one of them, even though I have it set to more. I'm trying it out with this blog as well, to see what it displays. Theoretically, the feed is trazomc.blogspot.com/atom.xml but so far Google can't find it.

We'll see what happens with this.

Expanding the defintion of abortion

I'm a bit late on this, but...

Luckily the governor states that he will veto this, and it doesn't have the votes to override the veto. But, the legislature wants to outlaw proscribing contraceptives - or allowing the advertising thereof - on the University of Wisconsin campuses.
JS Online: Pill ban at UW moves ahead

I like how its limited to the UW campuses. Why not the other colleges and universities around the state? Marquette gets a free pass? Maybe it was sponsored by those trying to get more people to go to the private universities in an effort to claim that the public universities are obsolete and can then end funding them.

But really, they are just one step from claiming that the existence of condoms, along with other contraceptives, causes pregnancy and STDs. And therefore making them illegal will stop people from getting pregnant. Or having sex.

HA.

Where's the beer... I need to drown my sorrows.