reality tv, pintday style

Jesus, Ev makes me laugh, and KJ makes me think (and the roles are toally interchangeable). I am very lucky in that I get to post my drivel alongside the stuff that comes out of Ev and Kjell’s brain (yes, this is an intentional grammatical error). Ev’s the tounge-and-cheek one, and Kjell’s the methodical, maniacal, and “jesus christ how can you be so fucking stupid?” one. And again, the roles are totally interchangeable, it just seems to work out this way a lot.

On Reality TV as Ev sees it:

The black-flies-and-bikinis episode will likely remain as one of the funniest and most ill-advised moments in reality-TV history. Naturally, those that liked it, liked it a lot.

The visual of Maritimers in bikinis covered in black flies and bites is appalling and yet scarily funny all at the same time. I am sad to say, I’d fall squarely into the “like it a lot” category.

Thanks guys, you make my Tuesdays 🙂

dear ipod/itunes dev team

For a Christmas firmware update for the iPod, I would love to see the following:

  • stand alone Party Shuffle on the iPod itself. All relevant info is stored on the iPod datastores, so it shouldn’t be that big a deal… right?
  • fix the clicker settings so they’re saved on the 4th gen iPods. Resetting them everytime the iPod goes into deep sleep is annoying
  • keep the headphone jack enabled when connected to iTunes. I actually like using the iTunes UI to control the iPod, but still listen through the iPod itself
  • fix itunes so that it ejects the ipod on an XP system hibernate or shutdown. I’m tired of being told to run chkdsk and losing info because iTunes insists on keeping files open when they’re not actually being used, and munging them on a shutdown.

Thanks for your consideration and remember, November is the deadline.

what it’s all about

I was watching ESPN’s Sports Center (I’m in the US, so they spell it all funny), and one of the highlights was a girls little league team winning a 1-0 game to advance in their World Series. As the winning run was scored, the team understandably went a little nuts. There was much celebration, with everyone except for one individual rushing out on the field to maul the runner.

That one individual was, of course, the one adult on the team: the coach. Instead of immediately joining in the celebration and congratulating the hitter, runner, and his team, he did what pretty much anyone who knows there are cameras around would do: he mugged for those cameras. Fists clenched, arms raised in the air, he immediately turned in the general direction of the camera, pumped his fists, and yelled what was pretty obviously “YEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!”.

Nice. Classy. Gamesmanship defined.

I can only hope that he wasn’t mugging for the camera, and that the object of his orangutan impression was a wife or other family member sitting along the baseline near the cameras. I don’t think that was the case, as the cameras were along the baseline in the outfield, which isn’t typically where fans sit. While they only showed him for five seconds or so, it sure didn’t look like he was heading out to join his team in short order.

Yay team. And yay coach, for showing us all what’s really important these days.

plantar fasciitis relief

I have high arches. My dress shoes, which I’ve had to wear for the last two months, do not. I’ve also been running again, which puts more strain on the same area. As a result, my right foot hurts. Specifically, my right foot has a mild case of plantar fasciitis.

I’ve been stretching it out three times a day for the last week or so, and it’s considerably better than it was. It’s not stopping me from running, nor is it affecting my stride (that I can see, anyways). A friend of mine suggested a modification of the “rolling” stretch, where you roll the bottom of your foot over a golf ball or weight bar, and it’s really helped out.

Take a half-litre (16oz) bottle of water (long and skinny, not short and fat). Dump 50mL (1oz) out into the sink, on your significant other, in a plant, wherever. Throw the bottle and remaining water in the freezer. Let stand overnight until frozen solid. Remove from freezer, and roll your foot back and forth over the bottle, applying downward pressure for 3-5 minutes. Do this three times a day; just make sure you don’t do it immediately after waking up.

The diameter of the bottle is near-perfect for stretching out that big pad of fibres along the bottom of your feet, and the ice helps keep inflammation down while you stretch it out. It seems to help more than the golf-ball or weight bar roll.

Highly recommended, but I’m not a doctor, so make sure you consult one of those first before trying.

forward and back do distract

I have always loved ThinkPads. They’re certainly not as sexy as some of the other laptops out there, but they’re generally well thought out and hard to kill. I recently got a loaded T42 to use for work, and have spent the last couple weeks moving over from my Vaio S260 and aging Ti. *sniff* It isn’t brand-spanking new, but it certainly meets all my needs.

There is, however, one new “feature” that drives me mental. IBM/Lenovo have added “Forward” and “Back” keys. These keys are used as substitutes/shortcuts for clicking on the “forward” or “back” with whatever browser you happen to be using. Decent idea, but the execution has gone horribly awry.

If you do any alphanumeric entry in a web browser (say an app, or a blog tool, or any web-based form), you will hate these keys. Because of the limited space available, and the probable thinking of “hey, these are nav keys”, some idiot engineer/designer put these keys right by the cursor keys. In order to make all these keys fit, they’re half-size, which leads to more frequent miss-keying.

So, say you’re editing something like a post, and you want to use the cursor keys to move back to an arbitrary spot to edit. You reach for the key, but stab the “back” key instead. At best you curse and hit forward to get back to where you were, at worst you lose everything you’ve typed. Do this a few times in one day and start to hate your keyboard.

Thankfully, there is a way to disable this less-than-useful addition to the keyboard. Here’s how you do it, because it’s less-than-intuitive:

  • Start the “Keyboard Customizer” application, located within the “Access IBM” group.
  • Select the “Key Sensitivity” tab (of course! disabling them is the same as making them less sensitive… or something.)
  • Uncheck the “Enable Broswer Keys” checkbox in the lower left-hand corner of the dialog tab.
  • Click on “Apply” and then close the dialog.

Evilness banished. Alternatively, you can leave them enabled, and just adjust the sliders so you have to hold the keys down for a little longer than a normal keypress to function (this is where the sensitivity part comes in). That’d probably solve the miss-keying problem equally well, but I just disabled them, as I have no intention of using them. My mouse has fwd and back buttons, which are more intuitive (to me, anyways).

Your mileage may vary, so do whatever the heck you want.

westward, ho!

So.

Tickets are booked (thank you TD Visa). Pintdays have been reserved. The wife (no, not mine) has been consulted. Siblings (and fam) have been notified. I’m all set.

I will be in Vancouver and Seattle for the first time in six years this November by way of Calgary. I’m sooooo looking forward to it, in spite of that 42-kilometre obstacle halfway through.

Hide your ceramic spikes!

freecycle

On coop’s recommendation, I gave the local Freecycle group a try. I had a couple things that I didn’t expect to get any money for, and were taking up space, so made them available on the groups. All the items found new homes within 24 hours, and two of the three folks wrote follow-ups, which was nice.

The process was dead easy, and my one (very minor) complaint is that people are great about reading “offer” posts, not so great about reading the “taken” posts. Either that, or they respond immediately to the offer and then read the rest of the list. Again, a minor nit, and I’m glad things found a new home outside of the trash pile so quickly.

6k, the hard way

For the past year I’ve had an excuse not to run. I tore the shit out of my soleus, followed it up with straining all my extensors and landing on my back for the better part of a month, and promptly severely sprained my ankle after getting off said back. During that time I’ve run on and off, but it’s always been a far cry from the 25k Sunday long, slows I was doing.

I’m back on track, but am finding I get to go through all the crap I had gone through a couple years ago when I started. It’s a struggle, and pretty much all the aches and pains stem from a loss of flexibility because I’ve been sitting on my (now fat) ass for so long. My ITB flares up once in a while, and I’ve got a swell case of plantar fasciitis so, things hurt a little.

Last night was the first run in a long, long time that felt good. It was only 6km, but it was a nice, late run after sundown where the humidity and temperatures had been reduced significantly from the day (I’m a cold weather person – heat doth suck). I also have a kick-ass running partner in Sylvie, and it’s good to be able to rattle off all the excuses of why we’re going to suck before going for the run. In any event, we ran a slow, 40-minute 6km, but it was an excellent, slow, 40-minute 6km.

I feel like I’m back. What took so long?

well, that’s a relief

At the start of the summer, I was averaging +6 for a round at the Jacques Cartier disc golf course. On one of said rounds, I threw my Pro Tee-bird into the Ottawa river on the first hole. This round kicked off 5 consecutive rounds in the double-digits, including one of +17, which is about what I shot when I first started playing.

Part of the blame I’ll put on learning two new discs, fatigue, and buggered up balance from eating poorly the last few months, but mostly I missed the disc that is (presumably) sitting in the muck somewhere. It consistently went (close enough to) where I wanted it to, which gives a person a surprising amount of confidence. The news discs, not so much.

I finally got fed up of going to the Ultimate Disc Golf store only to find it closed, and badgered the guy at the CD counter to let me in and poke around. I found one Pro Tee-Bird (they’re no longer made), and snapped it up. I then met up with James and shot a +8. I feel better now.

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