It's an Abomination! I mean "Obama Nation"

Well it happened-- our brothers and sisters have voted for a government controlled entirely by democrats.

Though they will likely not gain my vote, I do truly want to wish the best to the party whose principles I disagree with. I will not sit here and hope for more terrorist attacks so that I can rub it in their face. I will still hope for a swift recovery to our struggling economy, though a continued decline would be fuel for the conservative fire. This land is their land just as it is mine and I do believe that we all want what is best for it.

If there is one good thing that I hope will come from this more than anything it is this: I hope that the GOP will take this is a message that what they are is not wanted by the people they want to govern. A government is by the people and for the people and it is only good when the people want it. The GOP has principles that I agree with, but they have not been acting on those principles for quite some time. It is my hope that they ask themselves what they are if they are not wanted, and they emerge anew in the spirit of their core principles.

On Wednesday November 5, 2008 I left for work, and the sun still rose, cars still worked, there was still gas at the pumps, and I arrived at work to find that I still had a job... Perhaps we will survive the next 2 years after all.

Political Pons? I hope not

I'm starting to get really sick of the propiganda being shoved down my throat in this election.  I think that the media knows that on average we all want to sound informed-- We just don't want to work hard to be informed. 

I have had many of my friends tring to promote propiganda as fact in the past few weeks.  When I hear something new I say things like, "wow I'll need to look that one up", and they are always confident and don't back pedal on the issue.  What I find more often than not is that the are accurately repeating the propiganda that is being feed to them, but they are never checking their facts or even checking to make sure that it passes a basic smell test.  They are listening to either extreme liberal or extreme conserrvative media and are, for some reason, assuming that the information is accurate because it fits into their arsonal so well. 

Unfortunaly, it is proving to be completely inaccurate most of the time.  These are smart people who end up trusting the media that favors their party, and end up looking quite sheepish because of it.  

You are more than a sheep.  You are the best educated nation in history.  Take your current beliefs and run them through the wringer!  Make sure that you are not just a pon being controlled by the media.  Question everything, assume that everything is a lie until you prove otherwise to yourself, and don't put your education to waste.  Help our nation be the best possible by working a little bit today to ensure a better future for our nation.

**Unrelated** Also: Marathon Training Update:(3.84 mi, 8:42/mi)

Nutrition Fact overkill?

Has anyone else ever noticed that bottled water has nutrition facts listed? It seems really funny to me.

Nutrition Facts:
Calories:0
Total Fat:0
Sodium:0
...etc..

I suppose in a world where they market cool-aid as a water replacement by naming it "vitamin water", maybe it is appropriate to list nutrition facts on things labeled "water". One way or another I thought it was thoroughly funny to see.

Another funny one was the ingredient label on a box of raisins that I ate the other day...

Ingredients:
Raisins

Also: Marathon Training Update: (3 mi, 27min)

Rock and Roll Marathon

How hard is it to train for a marathon? I have no idea, but I'll let you know.

I ran in a half marathon 2 years ago, and that was hard enough. I didn't have a ton of time to train for it, but I thought I had enough time. When it was all done, I had accomplished my goal, but felt pretty beat up. My knees were in pretty bad shape, and my ankle was pretty beat up.

A few weeks after the race, I had quietly decided that running might be too hard on my body, and I probably didn't have a future in it.

Now, two years later, I find myself pre-registered for the full marathon after a spontaneous urge to sign up. My plans this time around are to train more steadily and less aggressively. I wanted to start off very slowly to give my body a chance to build all the primary and supporting muscle to take some of the pressure off my joints. I'm hoping that this plan will leave me with less injury, and even more success.

I'll keep you posted on my training on this blog. Here is the first run.


The Race is Jan 18, 2009. If anyone wants to join me just let me know.

Caffine Junky

Last night, after a long day of work, I was numbing out to a little crime TV. Near the end of the show the writers must have realized that the plot was a little too boring, so they threw in the classic "My Partner is secretly addicted to pain killers" sub-plot to spice things up. Seeing this was a little pathetic, but it's not particularly worthy of a blog entry. But the series of thoughts that went through my head after probably are.

As I watched the drama unfold, I started to think about how I might present myself to my colleagues at work. From time to time I certainly look as stung out as this alleged pill popper detective did. I got to thinking how sometimes I react in a stronger way than would seem necessary to some scenarios. I also realized that I do get impatient like our pill popping detective, and I do become easily flustered and when I'm in rare-form I even fly off the handle over seemingly insignificant things.

These thoughts all got me thinking maybe I am a junky, but if I'm a junky what's my juice? Coffee and/or stress! I'm not sure whether it's the poison of the stress or of the coffee, but I don't always look entirely healthy from 8:00-5:00.

Today, I am going to start limiting my coffee fix to one cup in the morning... Just to wake me up a little bit. Lets see if this simple change can make a difference in my day. :-)

Are you a junky? If so, what is your juice?

My MOP!!! dabbling in video editing

On Wednesday my buddy Logan asked, "why does every nerd on the internet know how to make a lightsaber fight?".

It was a good question... Making a lightsaber fight video is probably something that every nerd out there has thought about at one time or another. I'm positive it's crossed my mind before. So I decided this was probably a good time to give it a try.

Once I installed all the right software, it was really quite easy to do. I only spent 30 minutes actually editing the video (after hours of setting up software). with another 30 minutes you could really make a pretty good looking video, but since this was just a proof-of-concept, this is where I stopped:




It's not exactly star wars quality, but it's almost UHF quality

Thanks to Logan Swapp for the idea and Kevin Gay for help with some of the resources :-p






...for those who don't get the reference it turns out that youtube has everything, so here is the reference :-p

A Breath of Fresh Air

I decided to take off the friday before last to do a hike. My PTO was building up and I was really starting to feel a little need for a day away from the office. When I dropped off my PTO form, my boss asked where I was going to hike, and asked if I'd rather join him on another canyoneering trip into the Jug.

The Jug is a slot canyon carved into granite by the Salome Creek. It's just on the other side of four peak from phoenix, right near Roosevelt Lake. It's a little hard to get to, but it's quite a fun hike.

I took my Blackberry Pearl running Trimble Outdoors, and I collected a GPS log for the trip. (Don't worry, I didn't check my email)

Here's what I collected:

Though this hike has it's tough spots, it's really more like a day on the lazy river. We filled out packs with dry bags, and just floated for probably 50% of the hike.

The other 50% was either hiking through the desert to get to and from the Jug, or jumping from rock to rock between baths in the canyon.

My boss, Rich Rudow, straddling the creek

There was one spot where we had to either rappel or jump. I'm not much of a jumper... and it's always fun to use some climbing gear, so we rappelled it.

The Rappel

It was a great trip, and I really had a good time getting out of the office for a day.