At least my fingers don't hurt

I've successfully eased back into a few days of an exercisie regiment, but my muscles are feeling it. Two days ago, my 8 year old daughter was kind enough to help me out by telling me to drop and give her 20, then do 18 sit-ups, participate in a brief run between the kitchen, dining room, living room, and back, and finally end with side stretches and bending down to touch my toes. We then made our way to the Y where I dropped her off in the kid's gym and made my way to the adult's fitness center. Yesterday we eased it a bit by heading to the Y again and taking a casual swim in the indoor pool.

Since it's New Year's Eve, the Y is closing within an hour and I'll have to forego heading back to the gym. (Oh darn the luck! :) ) Anyway, the first few days of my exercising has been successful, not overwelming, and I'm actually not as sore as I could be. The trick will be to find a routine when I head back to work next week and then begin my next quarter on my PhD.

Yeah, this is going to leave a mark.

I've decided to join the national campaign of "Oh my gosh how much did I eat over this holiday? I need to exercise!" For most, and unfortunately that includes me, history shows this is an agressive two week campaign that innocently tapers to a slow-down to accomodate for important things in life, like work and school, and then dramatically falls off all burners to be replaced by TV, e-mail, web-surfing, and anything else that can fill the guilt of not exercising. But even if it's another failed attempt at "getting into shape", I need to do something to convice myself I'm not getting older or getting fat, I'm just experiencing a temporary aging anomoly that can easily be corrected.

Tonight I started rationally and decided to see if I can jog to the end of my street and back without having an ambulance bring me home. As I was dressing through the minor giggles of my wife imagining various scenarios of how I will need to call for help, she suggested I bring the dog. "Good idea, honey!" Underdressed in thin sweats, I bravely venture into the 33 degree dark outside with the dog, where no one will recognize me, and we begin to slowly run. As expected, this was a rude introduction into the need to shape up. Between the overly excited dog pulling as hard as she could, and the lack of under-coating in my attire, I had a bad dream sensation of not runing fast enough while being chased inside a sub-zero freezer. But my determination kept me going, it started to feel less cold, my breathing felt good, and I was begining to feel like this was going work. No way is this going to suddenly stop like my attempt at blogging did. But fate speaks to you before it acts, and before I realized what was happening, the abrupt stop came true. The dog was tangled around one leg while running on the other side of a mailbox, experienced a face-full of mailbox post, and I nearly super-fly'd the sidewalk. Then breathing became difficult, legs were starting to feel pain, hands were numb from the cold, and I wasn't even at the stop sign only a tenth of a mile away. We successfully made it to the stop sign and then ran back, but it is now clear to me that I need to take this much more seriously than I thought. I'll see if I can use blogging about my attempt to get in shape as my motivation to keep exercising, and try a new beginning once again.

More to come. (I hope!)

Grid Computing and you...

Grid Computing is a computer term that you might have seen or heard mentioned in the news. Grid Computing is where a client can send a massive computing assignment over the internet and the assignment is broken into chunks and distributed among multiple computers which compute their part of the assignment simultaneously. As assignment chunks are completed, they are passed back to be collected as the final answer. The final answer may be the end result, or it may result in additional studies. This computing methodology is used by large research and industry firms, universities, and government agencies. The point of doing this is because multiple computers working together can get an answer to a large problem faster than one really fast computer is likely to do on its own.

But what does this have to do with any of us? If you’re interested in ways you can help discover new drugs, better our understanding of future climate change, investigate outer space, research mathematical theory, or even search for extra-terrestrial life, the Berkeley University of California has created software that can enable you to participate in volunteer grid computing to research a common good. There are many projects in which you can donate the computing power of your PC, without sacrificing the PC for your own use. You see, the majority of your computer CPU processing (90-99%) is spent waiting for you to give it something to do. The Berkely software (BOINC) fills this unused computing time by computing research data instead of letting the CPU idly wait. When you later use your computer, the software halts until you're done, and then continues again when you are no longer using the CPU.

While I’m sleeping, eating, watching TV, and at work, my computer is actively computing research data for new drugs, physics, discoveries of outer space, and even searches for extra-terrestrial life. By downloading the BOINC software from the Berkely University of California, you can participate in research projects that can benefit from your computer, and still use the computer for what you want to do.

Go ahead and give your computer something to do…

Learn more at http://boinc.berkely.edu/

My Smummer

Earlier today my wife sent an Internet e-mail with pictures of smart car conversions. You can see the pictures at (http://bored-night.com/index.php/Funny/New-Body-Kits-for-your-Smart-Car.html); although they were probably originated elsewhere.

Hook, line, and sinker, I was duped! After opening the e-mail and looking at the pictures, I probably had a 20 minute discussion, with my cube neighbor, about which “Smart Car Kit” would be the coolest to buy. Without any regard to the fact that it was an Internet e-mail, I immediately assumed the pictures were real and was ready to trade in my car for a smart car and find a conversion kit. Luckily the office smart-ass clued me in that I was being the office dumb-ass and asked if I ever heard of Photoshop.

Since I can't really buy one of these, I decided I would create my own dream smart car, called the "Smummer". It's not the first miniature Hummer on the web, but it's mine. After web searching other miniatured cars, I've discovered there is a lot of this on the web. I hope that the auto industry is looking at this and considering it as a potential market. I can imagine that many people would purchase one if it was cost effective, gasoline efficient, and had some reasonable level of safety for the driver. I certainly would buy one! Driving in the city would not only be fun, but something I would look forward to.

If you are curious how this is done, there are a lot of "how to" tutorials for miniaturizing a car. I'll give "ajrichar" a thank you for his tutorial at (http://www.diecastxchange.com/forum1/index.php?s=510abb5ac47049ca544158061d5f21f2&showtopic=42533&pid=548188&st=0). It's easy once you know how, and provided you have Photoshop. There are many sites where you can find these pictures. Here are some more pictures of miniatures (http://www.photoshoptalent.com/photoshop-picture/48da6e08ecccc/Evens-smarter-smartcar.html).

Fraternal Orders

Im not much of a social fraternal order person. I went to a college that had no fraternities, I find the Freemasons a little scary (although this is only one of many fraternal orders), and I’m not really looking for reasons to hang out with the guys. But a few weeks back I was at my Catholic church, attending Mass, and there was a brief announcement asking for any men interested in joining the Knights of Columbus. I asked one of the members about the organization and thought it would be a good thing to sign up and begin helping out around the church. I was informed I needed to apply and be “approved” before I was allowed to join. A few weeks later I was told that I was approved and I could become a first degree Knight by attending the next first degree meeting. First degree? Ok… My sponsor picked me up at the church on a Sunday night, drove me into the city telling me about the various activities the Knights perform, then says, “Oh, and don’t let the initiation freak you out.” Suddenly my not so quick spider senses started tingling and I asked, “What do you mean?” He explained that no one is allowed in the meeting place unless they are a Knight, and he can’t tell me what happens during the meeting because I’m not yet a Knight, “But there’s nothing to worry about.” Long story short, each minute after arriving I gained more realization that my care-free jump into a club for the church has landed me into something I should have taken a more in-depth look into. I went through the secret initiation, swearing secrecy about what goes on in the meeting, and came out a little bothered and curious if the theatrical nature of the initiation was really all that necessary. I best do my research before I go for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th degree.

I was later curious to learn more about fraternal orders, so I did a typical web search and discovered there are many orders in existence. Most of the web sites I found were mason, with others being mason-like. But then I found the Fraternal Order of Moai (http://www.fraternalorderofmoai.org/). The navigation of the site is a bit out of the ordinary, but the web master did well by throwing out the book of web heuristics and making the site fun to use. But I was not only fascinated with the creativity of the website, I was amazed there could exist a fraternal order dedicated to Tiki culture and Polynesian pop era. I guess a basic club wasn’t enough?? I never knew there could be so much about the two tiki torches I have in my back yard. The core values of this fraternal order are, “Good Works, Fellowship, Spirit, Presence, Preservation, and Celebration”. So far so good. The Gumbo Limbo Chapter of this order "celebrates the tiki lifestyle while raising money for local animal charities.” Ok, I’m a bit apprehensive about my next Knights of Columbus meeting, but I’m all about the initiation process for this order! “With this Mai Tai, Tiki Daquiri, Coconut Rice, Blackened Chicken, and tiki torch, do you swear to abide by the laws of the Tiki Lounge? Can I get a ‘OH YEAH!’?” If I could go back in time, THIS would be the fraternity I would have started at college. The order is open to men and women, half our school parties involved some tiki, bikini, or anything else that looked beach like and required less clothes, and the order would have been a big hit! Add a few good deeds with animal activists and our order would have been well established and on its way to success.

I’m not really interested in joining, but as far as a fraternal order goes, this one seems cool.

The end of the world?

(Photograph from CERN web site) Today, September 10, 2008, in Geneva Switzerland, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle accelerator, threw its first proton in a 9 billion dollar, 17 mile, clock-wise circle. It’s a physicists dream toy race track with a really, REALLY technical thumb button to make it go. The next step is to make a proton go counter-clockwise. But making protons go in circles really isn’t interesting and definitely not worth the money spent. And what fun would this race track be without some collision? So, after a little tuning and a few more tests, physicist will make two lead protons go in opposite directions, as close to the speed of light as possible, and have them collide in the middle. I can hear it now, “Dr. Bob, why don’t you paint your proton blue? I’m painting mine red with teeth!” The purpose of the collision is to simulate the microsecond after the Big Bang, the physical process which we believe created the earth, to better understand how matter and planets are made. This collision is expected to be so intense that some scientists believe it has the potential of creating a black hole, which, in turn, might devour the earth. Now I understand why they want to do it. Who could resist?

I congratulate the European nuclear research scientists on their new accomplishment, and I hope we gain valuable scientific discovery from this. This project has been many years in the making, undergone a lot of criticism about its value versus the expense, and has a very interesting danger factor. If the goals of this project are met, we might discover additional dimensions, create anti-matter, and will certainly take our scientific studies to a new level. This project is the result of scientists who never stopped thinking BIG and believing in their abilities. Although I have no clue about the likelihood they will accidently create an earth-eating black hole, I personally believe CERN when they say that won’t happen. We’ll probably develop shiny space travel ships and intimidate the darker side of other life-friendly planets before we develop our first dangerous black hole. For now I say let em fly!!

Want to know more? Check out http://public.web.cern.ch/public/

I had the sun in my pocket!

The imagination of a child is refreshing. While typing last night’s rant about the voting process during the Republican National Convention, my six year old daughter, Cecelia, started yelling for me from her bedroom. Val had sent her to bed early because she was tired from a long day at school, so by the time she started calling for me I had a feeling she was in some state of sleep. Still, concerned to make sure she was all right, I rushed out of my chair and jutted through the dark house to find Val already in her bedroom, asking if she was ok. Cecelia was laughing and talking as if she was wide awake, like when she wants to share something funny she saw on TV. I walked into her room, sat next to her and Val and said, “Wow, she must really be tired, she’s still asleep. What was she laughing about?” Val responds, “Something about ‘I had the sun in my pocket!’” This was a welcomed change of mindset from my irritable rant, and it made me wonder why a dream like this was so funny to her. I guess if I were able to pull the sun out of the sky and put it in my pocket, I’d find it a bit funny as well and share it with someone. I was a little disappointed this morning when she wasn’t able to remember the dream and tell me why it was so funny. Even worse, the morning ‘tude came out, she insisted she doesn’t talk in her sleep, and then excused me from her room so she can get dressed.

It would be interesting to listen to the stories her sole tells her in the middle of the night. Part of growing up is losing the ability to think like a child and gaining the ability to think rationally like an adult. Starting a new job or project can be similar, where we have no clue what we are getting into, but have a wide-range of thoughts about how we’d like to add value. But as experience builds, we slowly lose new ideas and solidify our ability to get things done quickly. The quicker we get things done, the shorter our deadlines get, and new ideas become optional because time is short. We all find times when we say, “I didn’t think to do that” after someone else looks at the problem.

I’m glad I’ve started something new where I still have no clue about what I’m doing. Maybe it’s just the beginner’s blogging-bug, but I’m sorry I didn’t do this sooner to permanently note moments during earlier years with both Cecelia and my nine year old son, Michael. But I’m here now, and if I can keep myself interested in blogging, maybe I won’t lose the great moments of their future. I’m going to see how many other ways in my personal and professional life where I can put the sun into my pocket.