Category: general

Yahoo! has a funny story today about those Christmas letters you get from friends and relatives chronicling the past year. I’m of two minds about the practice–on the one hand, it’s nice to know what everyone’s up to, but on the other, as the article points out, they often seem like gloatfests. I sent a small letter with my Christmas cards last year…I’m not sure I’m going to do anything of the kind this year, simply because I’m so disorganized. I haven’t even bought cards yet (doing that today, hopefully).

What do you think of these “round robin” letters, readers? Have you ever gotten one? Have you ever written one?

Those are approximate because I paused the timer and odometer during the times I rode around looking for the trail, or stopped and walked for safety, while I was downtown.

Yes friends, I rode from the Savannah Rapids Pavilion all the way down to Broad Street, lost the trail, found it again, and continued on under a big overpass and past a rehabilitation clinic. This was Very Far, farther than I’ve gone before. I reset the odometer without checking the distance when I got to the point where I turned around, just past the clinic, so I’m not sure how much distance I covered. On the way back from there, though, taking essentially the same route (I ended up on Washington Road briefly, but that led me to an exit which led me to Eve Street which led me back to the trail), I covered 7.18 miles.

That doesn’t seem like very far, does it?

Why does it take so long to drive from where I live to downtown?

I want to look at a map.

Regardless, if I’d stayed on Broad Street, I would have come to 13th Street, and then I could have headed over to North Augusta and gotten on the Greeneway. Would that have been a hoot, or what?

I feel great. What a good workout. And I’ve been losing a pound a day for the past couple days, which I don’t mind at all. I figure today makes up for not exercising yesterday, so hopefully I’ll lose some more by tomorrow.

Yay!

He’s going to jail for 3 years, according to this article on Yahoo. A rather light punishment for killing an entire country, don’t you think?

See below for Yahoo’s headline as it appears right now, and apparently as it has appeared since 6:08 pm. Click that picture to see a full, unaltered screenshot.

You see, this is why editors are important!

Update 12/12 11:31 am: It’s still like that. You’d think someone would have noticed by now…

Yesterday was a little emotional, wasn’t it?

I’m better now. Yesterday was more productive than usual–the previous two days, I’d taken long naps in lieu of getting anything done. Too much sleep can be a bad thing.

This morning, after going to bed at 9:45 and getting up promptly at 5, I feel refreshed.

Yesterday’s schedule was interesting. I’m thinking of making it my regular routine. I got up, took my pills, got dressed, and ate my breakfast as usual. Work was typical; I left at 10. After piddling around for a couple hours at home, I went biking, and when I got home I took my first shower of the day. Then I planned this week’s dinner menus, and ran out to the grocery store to pick everything up. When I got home, Sean was there, and I started fixing dinner–a mixed greens and baked chicken salad, with a side of fettucine alfredo. While we were waiting for the chicken to cook, we snuggled in bed together.

After dinner, I got online and messed around some more, and cleaned up the dishes, and finally went to bed on time.

It was a good day. I got the grocery shopping done, I exercised, and I made dinner. Those last two are things I want to do every day, and the first should be weekly or biweekly. I’m not sure when or why I stopped doing my old routine, but this one seems comfortable. Taking a shower in the afternoon seems to revitalize me for the rest of the day, too.

I feel a little grubby this morning, though. Maybe I should do a sponge bath in the mornings, if I’m going to leave my shower for the afternoon.

Progesterone starts tomorrow. And, speaking of pills, I’ve decided to cut my multivitamins in half–that is, take half a pill a day, instead of a whole one. Getting too many minerals can be bad. I’m going to be eating more green food this next week (and hopefully permanently), and I don’t want to overdo it on anything.

So, after work today, I’ll be going biking again. I haven’t decided which trail I want to go to. If I go to the Greeneway, I may go to the Activities Center to park, instead of Martintown Road. That way, I’ll have a nice decline to ride down at the end of my workout. We’ll see. (At this point, I don’t want to try starting from the other end…though that may come in the future.)

I’m also wondering if I should try to start up my morning workout again. Maybe not as intense…maybe just some good stretching and warming up for the day. If I do that, of course, then I’ll have to shower afterwards, and I’d end up taking two showers a day. I guess I don’t mind being super-clean, but it just seems like a waste–plus, the more you shower, the less healthy your skin is, or so I understand anyway. So I’m not sure on that.

Creating a good schedule is hard now because of Sean’s new rotating shifts. One week he works 7 to 3, one week 1 to 10, and the other two weeks are his original 9 to 6. I need to stop and think about how I can break up the things I want/need to do to match that schedule…so that I can be home when he’s home, and so that I can get things done when he’s not.

And, finally, I need to decorate my Christmas tree, and organize my desks–computer, and “study”. The study desk is basically ready, but I need to get some junk out of it that I don’t need anymore, and put some supplies there so I can sit down and study Japanese whenever I want. My computer desk is just messy, as usual ;P

Oh. And I really should finish reading Getting Things Done…;P

Hai just linked me to “THE COOLEST SITE EVAR” (his words, but it’s true!). Look at that!!!

Anyone want me to try to translate it? ;P I know that at the end she’s saying “And with that, we’ve made it pretty”, but I’d have to screencap the other stuff to get an idea…I’m not so good with the listening comprehension ;_;

I’ve been reading this article all day (it’s long, and I’ve had other stuff to do):

ASIAN POP The Gadget Gap: Why does all the cool stuff come out in Asia first?

The article states that Japan’s tech culture is driven by teenagers, boys and girls alike, rather than by business, which is what drives America’s tech culture. Here’s an interesting snippet:

The cell-phone craze was born soon after the launch of NTT DoCoMo’s wildly successful i-Mode wireless Internet service in 1999 gave rise to a phenomenon known as “keitai [mobile-phone] culture,” fed by a generation of kids known as oyayubisoku, or “thumb tribes,” whose handset addiction has shaped public health (as more and more “thumb princes and princesses” succumb to repetitive stress injuries); sexual mores (as enterprising schoolgirls subscribe to cell-phone “dating services,” where they are introduced to lonely and generous older men); media consumption (as magazine vendors and bookstores find that browsers now snap high-quality cell-cam pictures of articles they want to read rather than purchasing their products); and impulse commerce (as Japanese cell phones increasingly become equipped with “e-money” devices that allow them to be used to purchase small items).

Unlike in the United States, where consumer electronics is an overwhelmingly male-driven industry, the critical vector in the propagation of keitai culture was its embrace by adolescent girls. That this demographic drives the market is no coincidence. Like many Japanese marketers, NTT DoCoMo had determined that i-Mode would live and die based on whether teen fashion queens adopted the handsets as the season’s must-own accessories. A year and a half of aggressive marketing later, with 30 million active users, DoCoMo became the world’s largest Internet access provider, surpassing longtime leader America On-Line. More than 10 million of these users are young women.

“A couple of months ago, Newsweek Japan did a special issue that listed the 100 most influential Japanese people in history,” says Douglas Krone with a chuckle. “Along with ancient emperors, best-selling authors, inventors and scientists, they listed ‘Japanese Schoolgirls,’ because they’ve been so influential, inside of Japan and out.”

This perception of technology-as-fashion means that the coolness factor drives most technology purchases in Japan…which explains why they get all the cool stuff first.

Good article.

Famous Atheist Now Believes in God

At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.

[…]

Yet biologists’ investigation of DNA “has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved,” Flew says in the new video, “Has Science Discovered God?”

This bit is particularly interesting:

“I’m thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins,” he said. “It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose.”

I wonder how Christians will react to having their god described as a “cosmic Saddam Hussein”.

I don’t know how Eric Burns manages to write as much as he does. And everything he writes is good. For an example of something extraordinarily long and yet packed with thoughtful discussion, see his latest: Sacred hamburger: the role of our heroes in the decline of the newspaper comics page. (Whew, even that title is long…)

This is a logical, well-written, thoroughly researched piece, and it deserves the attention of everyone who is even remotely interested in comics. His conclusion may surprise you.

I have hurt two people recently, two people who are extraordinarily close to me, and who I would be devastated to lose. I hurt them because I’m selfish, and because I react emotionally without thinking.

This can’t go on. I can’t let it. And I won’t.

One of my coworker’s aunts is 84 years old, is suffering from Alzheimer’s, and is about to die. My coworker stays with her two days a week. Yesterday she was called to go see her, as the doctor said she didn’t have much time left. Somehow, the aunt has held on through the night and to this morning, but she could go at any time.

My coworker spoke about her aunt this morning. She said, “She has a way of making everyone feel like her favorite.” She said that her aunt has friends everywhere, that everyone who knows her calls her Aunt.

All I have ever wanted, seemingly, is to be Important. I mull over my own life constantly, worrying about whether or not I’m going to be rich and famous. I pester everyone else with my problems, then get irritated if they tell me about theirs. I give not out of a sense of kindness or a desire to help, but because I want to feel better about myself, or because I feel obligated. And I write people off easily, thinking that being bothered is the worst thing that can happen to me, and that I should only allow people who don’t irritate me or cause trouble for me to be around me. The very few exceptions I’ve made to this rule have mainly been family members. On the Internet, it has been especially easy for me to write people off.

I realized this morning that my coworker’s aunt was loved by many not for being rich and famous, but for being who she was. A beautiful person who cared about others, who made them feel special. She’s dying right now surrounded by people who love her. As my other coworker said, “What a wonderful way to die.”

If I become rich and famous, and if the cost is all my friendships, what will surround me when I die?

I realize that this isn’t black and white. I’m not completely Ebenezer Scrooge. I have been a good person–sometimes.

But sometimes isn’t good enough, especially if I spend the rest of the time hurting people I love.

It stops now.

and I’m also the suckiest person alive.

I mentioned the plight of Japan’s Crown Princess recently. Now I see an article indicating that she claims to be recovering.

“I’ve had some hard times, but I feel that my condition is gradually getting better,” she said. “It may still take some time before I can fully resume my official duties, but I want to work toward recovery so that I can quickly show myself in a healthy state.”

I wish her the best.

Just yesterday at work, Audrey was talking about how back in World War II, when someone committed a crime, they were offered the choice of going to jail, or joining the army. This morning, I see this headline on Japan Today:

Takebe suggests delinquents, potential criminals join SDF in Iraq

I’m not sure how you would determine that someone is going to commit a crime…that seems a little strange.

It’s weird.

I have been working in this office for as long as 2go-Box has been here. That’s been since February or something. And in all that time, I never noticed, until just now, that the stripes on the wallpaper alternate.

There’s an antique-looking beige “canvas” of sorts, and then there are these bold strips consisting of five stripes. The outermost stripes are red with a squarish curled Egyptian pattern in gold along them. The three inner stripes are alternately green and blue. I just now noticed that the pattern of green and blue alternates from bold strip to bold strip; first it’s green-blue-green, and then it’s blue-green-blue.

What state of mind am I usually in, that I never noticed this before, and what state of mind am I in now that let me notice it?

Heh.

Click here to get your secret Christmas name. I nabbed this from BT.

Me: I don’t have anything to be upset about right now!

Life: Oh, my bad. Here you go.