i don’t get it

So here’s a pic I posted yesterday, and it’s quickly becoming the most-viewed pic in my stream. I don’t get it at all. To me I just threw this one in there for the hell of it, it’s not posted to any groups, yet people are finding it, presumably because of it’s “interestingness”.

I don’t find it interesting at all, just as a way of identifying my pin pics with the game just in case anyone was confused. The pic itself is the plasma dot-matrix display showing the title screen for the pinball.

Ah well, so long as other people enjoy it, I suppose that’s the important thing. For my next trick, I’ll take a pic or two of the knobs on my stove and see what happens. 🙂

dominant

Pictures like this one make me realise how completely fucked up the airline industry got with the hub mentality. There’s no real competition here, as you can plainly see one airline dominates the entire field. Wanna leave Minnesota? Who ya gonna call?

It’s like that in any other hub (like, say, Denver), and really limits your available choices. Some of the bigger airports in places like NYC, LHR, and LAX are a lot better, and it shows as I can fly to London for a heck of a lot less money than Minnesota (although the odds of me wanting to pay to go to minne-fucking-apolis are slim, so in my case it’s a non-issue).

That leads to all the fun that comes with a monopoly, and for some reason our gummints continue to think that this is behaviour that should be publicly bailed out. Like any dominitrix, they’ve got you by the short and curlies, and you pay for the pleasure.

Whee.

(NB: this pic is pretty old. Northwest changed their livery a couple years bag, so a more recent photo probably wouldn’t illustrate the point of who’s #1 in MN as much)

8 weeks to live

Mnemonix, over on Flickr, has an interesting project he called 8 weeks to live. He visited his doctor, who told him he was overweight and had high cholesterol. His response was to do a u-turn as far as eating went, and drop 25 pounds in eight weeks. He didn’t quite make it, but the results are pretty damn impressive.

I know where he’s coming from, and have done a similar program in the past. My program was over four months and involved losing a little more than 45 pounds. I’ve had a number of problems getting my exercise routine kick-started over the last few months, ansd sticking with anything has been a challenge. The excuses have been varied and plentiful, but I think I’ve run out of them.

My back has been giving me serious grief up until very recently, I spend a ridiculous amount of time in front of the computer (which is easier than getting off my ass), and I like Guinness far too much. The back is fine, the computer use will drop pretty significantly after this month outside of work, and my Guinness consumption is around 3-4/week. So, I’m good to go, and can think of nothing I could use to rationalize to myself that I can’t.

While I have no intention of documenting a project like Mnemonix did, I am going to take his method and modify it a little. I’ve set up a program with a 4 week, 12 week, and 24 week goal. I’ll be documenting the process, but I won’t be sharing a whole lot with people. I may later, it depends on whether I succeed or fail, probably. I know I can do it, because I’ve done it before, and it really won’t take that long. My only knock on something like 8 weeks to live is that it’s very short-term. I’m hoping what I’ve come up with is better titled as “24 weeks to life”.

I love running, and I want to be where I was in May of 2003. At that point I was running over 60km a week, and I felt amazing. I’m happy to report that for the first time in almost two years, I’ve been running on-program for 3 weeks straight. It’s only 3 times a week now, but that’ll expand after Christmas.

So, Monday is the start of the 24 week program, with the end being the week of my 39th birthday.

Here comes the mountain… I think I may even be ready for it.

fantastic fourth

My sister had a little girl yesterday morning, bringing the number of nieces and nephews to four (two of each)! Meaghan Joyce Kealey was born December 3rd, 2006 at a civilised hour, and weighs in at 7lb 14oz. She decided to be a little different and come into the world feet-first, so was delivered via c-section. Other than not being thrilled about not moving a lot for a couple weeks, my sis is tired and happy, the delivery went just fine, and everyone else is doing well (although Matt’s kind of getting run off his feet by the sounds of it).

I see a trip to Calgary in the near future.

well, that was weird

For a variety of reasons I’m not a big fan of Christmas. I like seeing family and friends and whatnot, but the idea of Christmas itself is not a big deal for me, and I could do without it. Aside from a 2.5′ fibre-optic tree – which got tossed a few years back – I’ve never had a tree, nor the inclination to have one… until this week.

Since the start of the week I’ve had an impulse to buy a tree that just would not go away. It started to drive me nuts, so I broke down last night and got a tree and some ornaments. I wanted to get the Star Wars ornaments, but they really looked like crap so I resisted (although this would make a lovely center piece for dinner). I settled on some simple ones instead, and may liberate some of my ornaments from the family collection (the tree at my dad’s place falls over every year from the weight, so I’m betting a couple won’t be missed) in the next couple weeks.

So I have a nice little tree, with some pretty simple decorations. The only thing I refused to do was get the traditional angel; I’ll put my own spin on that one and will post a pic of the results. I have no idea why I’ve done this, because my feelings about Christmas really haven’t changed. I think I’ll lay some blame in my mom’s direction, as this is definitely her time of year.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I have zero interest in buying one of those ridiculous inflatable snow globes that the suburbanites with no competitive outlets seem to be buying a lot of these days.

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