I’m a runner, and I have the medal to prove it.
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Archive for March, 2008
I’m a runner, and I have the medal to prove it.
I’ve been blogging a lot lately because for some reason I’m extremely nervous about running a half marathon this weekend and blogging helps to distract me from my thoughts about the race (which are mostly of the “oh, shit what did I get myself into” variety). Here are some random things going through my mind that aren’t running related:
- 95% of people who frequent internet message boards are either idiots or attention whores. The other 5% of us get banned for calling them such.
- If you have an opinion that is so inflammatory that you want to get it out there without owning it, no place is better than Craigslist Rants and Raves. God bless that site. Especially this week.
- Speaking of Craigslist, I finally wanted to get rid of my kid’s crib and put it out there on CL. I said in the title it was free. Then in THREE places within the ad I mentioned it was free. I literally got 25 e-mails about it within 10 minutes after placing the ad. FIFTEEN of them asked how much I wanted for the crib or asked if it was free.
- People on Craigslist are either hateful or idiots. There is no middle ground.
- The folks who got my crib — let me say that it wasn’t just a crib. It was substantial and looked something like this, meaning the person coming to get it needed a vehicle with some room — came in an old minivan with two kids strapped into car seats in the back. So they couldn’t remove the seats for more space. To be a dude, I also tossed in a mattress and a changing table. They left with baby furniture pieces slung precariously inches over very small childrens’ heads.
- Hateful or idiots.
- I’ve been playing Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii lately while my kid has been playing grown-up type sports and roleplaying games on the Xbox 360. Somehow I think that’s backwards.
- I’ve had an iMac for the better part of a month. I like it, but I still fail to see how OS X (10.5 Leopard) is superior to Windows (XP, even). The other day my iMac informed me of some software updates available for download, of which a 50MB security one was included. I thought Macs were born secure and live their lives that way. Why do I need a 50MB security update for mine?
- My favorite review titles for a Time Capsule, on the Apple site:
- “Slacker for Apple. Looks over function.”
- “Time Crapsule–Don’t Buy”
- “Time Capsule, not quite up to Apple standard.”
Re: that last one, I’m finding the “Apple standard” to actually be pretty low. But that’s just me.
- When did bowling become so freaking expensive?
- Ok, one tangentially-related running thing. Yesterday I was out in White Marsh returning my cable modem (because Veizon FiOS rules Comcast) and stopped off at the New Balance store on The Avenue. New Balance, is, mostly, a brand that produces running footwear and attire. I was checking out the clearance rack for a wind/water resistant jacket for next year. Some sales guy came over to help and when I told him what I was looking for in a jacket — namely, running functionality/performance — the first thing he said to me was, “Oh, so you’re looking for a jacket you can run in?”
Idiots aren’t only on Craigslist.
It’s been a long time and I doubt anyone cares, but I actually wrote a super-secret Behind The Cheese post today. And it’s real content and not dumb art reviews or anything. It’s nothing shocking, nor is it subversively talking shit about other bloggers, but it does deal with some family drama and it was just too long of a post for me to want to publish publicly. If you’re interested and remember how to log in, make sure you’re logged in and check out the post. It’ll appear under this post if you’re logged in correctly and have access to those posts. If you’re not registered and care, register here. If I deem you worthy I’ll up your access. If I don’t you’ll never know.
A few weeks ago I did a half marathon training run whose elevation profile looked like this:
It kicked my ass so royally I swore I’d never run that way again. Yesterday was my last long training run before a half marathon this weekend, and, unfortunately, unless I want to run on major thoroughfares and/or run laps I have no choice but to head down into “the valley.”
So while I was on the hook to go back toward that devil road, I took a different way out of the valley. It worked so well that the elevation profile for this run looks as such:
See the difference? Yeah, there’s isn’t much. I hate a valley.
(Actually, the difference is an incline of 170 ft/min vs. 283 ft/min, which is pretty significant, but still.)
This is straight from the “join” page at stopglobalwarming.org [emphasis mine]:
Global warming isn’t opinion. It’s a scientific reality. The science shows that human activity has made enormous impacts to our planet that affect our well-being and survival. We can however begin to make significant repairs to reverse those impacts — but only through immediate action. That’s why we urge you to join us and have your voice counted.
So why is NASA so confused about a plethora of data it has received from an army of robots deployed to see how oceans are reacting to this “crisis?” A really smart guy from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labortatory, Josh Willis, says that oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming. And according to the article linked above, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. And the fact is that the oceans have been found to not been warming at all, but instead cooling (a statistically insignificant amount, but still).
With all this confusion about what the oceans — which, remember, scientists say matters most when talking about global warming — Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research states:
“I suspect that we’ll able to put this [new information] together with a little bit more perspective and further analysis. But what this does is highlight some of the issues and send people back to the drawing board.”
Wait a second. Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research is a scientist. But the scientific debate about global warming is “over.” So why would any scientist need to go back to the drawing board to figure out what’s going on?
In related news, Maryland governor Martin O’Malley is pushing a “green” agenda that will cost Marylanders even more money than the $1.4 billion in tax and 70% power bill increases we’ve just suffered and will possibly drive even more business out of the state. But it’ll make the leftist hippies happy, and I guess that’s all that really matters.