So True

I got this forward today about You know you are a Californian if...... and I so many of these bullets are true.

1. Your coworker has 8 body piercings and none are visible.

2. You make over $300,000 and still can't afford a house.
- It's amazing how many BMW's, Corvettes and what not are in our parking garage. People can afford 60-70k for a car but can't afford a house.

3. You take a bus and are shocked at two people carrying on a
conversation in English.
So true, the diversity is unbelievable here.

4. Your child's 3rd-grade teacher has purple hair, a nose ring, and
is named Flower.

5. You can't remember . . is pot illegal?

6. You've been to a baby shower that has two mothers and a sperm
donor.

7. You have a very strong opinion about where your coffee beans
are grown, and you can taste the difference between Sumatran and Ethiopian.

8. You can't remember . . . is pot illegal?

9. A really great parking space can totally move you to tears.
I'd move this to numero uno. A free parking space will cause one to break out into pandemonium

10. Gas costs $1.00 per gallon more than anywhere else in the U.S.
Dam liberals

11. Unlike back home, the guy at 8:30 am at Starbucks wearing a
baseball cap and sunglasses who looks like George Clooney really IS George
Clooney.
Probably true in LA, not Silicon Valley. However, if you're into tech you'll see people like Kevin Rose from Digg or Steve Jobs hanging out

12. Your car insurance costs as much as your house payment.

13. You can't remember . . .is pot illegal?

14. It's barely sprinkling rain and there's a report on every news
station: "STORM WATCH."


15. You pass an elementary school playground and the children
are all busy with their cells or pagers.

16. It's barely sprinkling rain outside, so you leave for work an
hour early to avoid all the weather-related accidents.
haha kind of like the first snow in MN

17. HEY!!!! Is pot illegal????

18. Both you AND your dog have therapists, psychics, personal
trainers and cosmetic surgeons.

19. The Terminator is your Governor.
This would be weird if you're from any other state then MN.

20. If you drive illegally, they take your driver's license. If
you're here illegally, they want to give you one.

Fantasy Football

I play in a fantasy football keeper league in which we keep two players a from last years roster. Since Daunte Culpepper started for the Vikings way back in 2000, I've kept Daunte and Randy Moss. For the first few years I ranked close to the top in my league but generally fizzled at the end of the year along with the Vikes. Last year I had the #1 draft pick and I drafted as though I was rebuilding, so I drafted Reggie Bush and Joseph Addia. Both these guys split the carries last year with veterans so they didn't score that much. I ended up keeping them anyway hoping they'd carry the load this year. So far it looks to be paying off, especially now that Duece is hurt for New Orleans. I knew it was going to be tough to let Moss go now that he was with the Pats but for the most part running backs score more then receivers. So far so good as I've been in the top 2 or 3 in scoring each week with the help of Steve Smith who basically replaced Moss on my roster. Fantasy Football makes football interesting when my home team sucks as bad as the Vikes do.

Back to Ubuntu

About two weeks ago we bought a new computer after the wife got frustrated with Ubuntu. We got the new computer home and fired it up and it kept rebooting after an error message "The OS didn't install correctly and will restart". After a fresh install, registration and what not the computer was up and running. I tried installing a wireless USB card but it wasn't supported by Vista and I had it working but Vista was never stable after that. It kept freezing up and we had 3-4 blue screens of death. (I thought that was fixed, I never got one with XP) The wife was not at all pleased with this and she wasn't listening to my argument that it was the wireless card and not Vista. I thought I had it stable after reinstalling an updated driver but the wife claimed to still have issues with it so we ended up returning it yesterday.

Jen emailed a friend who owns a Mac and she talked Jen into wanting one. I told the tech at Fry's that we're thinking of getting a Mac and he said he's had a bunch of people return their new Vista machine for a Mac. I'm on the fence with getting a Mac, but at least with Apple moving to Intel processors I can fall back on running a dual boot system with Windows and/or Ubuntu.

My Electric Output

276 WATTS Body Battery Calculator - Find Out How Much Electricity Your Body is Producing

I discovered this web site via digg that calculates how much electricity one generates. Here are my numbers.

Your Body is Producing 276 Watts!
This is 38% MORE wattage than the average person

* You could light up 3 light bulbs
* You could power 69 iPods
* You could power 1 Xbox 360
* 4 of you would be needed to keep a refrigerator running

I wonder if one would burn calories while acting as a battery.

5K Walk Run

Today at work we had a 5K Walk Run. I ran it in just under 23 minutes. I was shocked at my time since my goal was 27 minutes (approx 9 minute miles). I placed about 20th overall which I didn't think was to bad. I didn't know what to expect since I haven't run a race since 9th grade. On a normal run I don't push myself at all. Even though I said I wasn't going to let other runners effect my time I totally caved after the race started. I used the first half mile to warm up and then started eyeing people in front of me to catch. I didn't get passed after that. Towards the end I swapped positions with this guy, after passing him he must have thought "I can take this guy" then ran past me. I let him go for about 30 seconds and then blew past him. Before I knew it Chad was waiting about 100 yards from the finish. I had no clue the finish was that close since we ran past it a couple times already, so I sprinted the last 100 yards passing about 10 people in the process. Chad placed 10th overall and 3rd in his age group with a time of 17 minutes, Joe placed in the top 20 and 5th in the 30-39 age group with a time of 21.

This was a great experience to get before the Rock-n-Roll marathon coming up. I know that no matter how hard I try not to let it, other runners will affect my pace so I'll have to take that into account so I don't die at the end of the race.

Up with the Yo-Yo

So I haven't been paying that much attention to my weight lately. I figure it probably hasn't changed much since I've been working out pretty regularly. Yesterday I stepped on the scale and I was 210lbs. How the heck did I gain 15ish pounds in less then a month. I guess a bowl of ice cream here an there will do the trick. Now it's back to the dieting and hard-core working out to get down again. (What to do with the three left over quarts of ice cream in the freezer) I hate being old, when I was 18 I could eat a huge serving of ice cream everyday, sometimes twice a day, and not gain a pound.

I signed up for the San Jose Rock and Roll 1/2 marathon. Hopefully training for it will help with some weight loss motivation.

F/A-22

Just an interesting tid-bit I got in an email. Some co-workers have seen the assembly line of the F-22, how cool would that be. Make sure to click on the link at the end to watch the video. It's awesome


The New F/A-22

Fast (super-cruise*) and stealthy, and integrated avionics are cool, but what's really impressive is the F/A-22s low speed stability and maneuverability. In the late 40s and to early 60s aeronautical engineers were going nuts on how to shape intakes to handle both subsonic and super-sonic air flows, without stagnation or compressor stalls. Supersonic in itself was a big challenge because you had to use shock waves to slow the intake air mass to sub-sonic before it hit the compressor blades, or they would stall. The engineers figured it out, but the solution was keeping a lot of air going in the front end to make sure the all hot air kept going out the back end. As you watch this Mach 2 airplane suspend motionless in air and do tail slides, be aware of the truly amazing performance of the engines and intakes.

Some used to think the Su-27 / Su-31 "Cobra" maneuver was the epitome of 3rd to 4th generation fighter maneuverability. That snap maneuver doesn't hold a candle to what this two-dimensional vectored-thrust fighter with fat independent horizontal stabs can do at low speed. There must be far more tricks up its sleeve in the high subsonic dogfight speed range.

ACC (Air Combat Command) recently approved the Raptor's new DEMO profile. This was the first show. The F/A-22 can sustain supersonic flight without the use of fuel-gulping afterburners.

The video is about 5 minutes long but the last 30-40 seconds are priceless.

Weekend Recap - Great America and Kids Discovery

I had lab Thursday night to Friday morning 10pm-6am so that put a damper on the three day weekend. Friday I was pretty much shot for the day. We did manage to take Hayley to the mall for some play time and Jen and I got our eyes checked. I'm still have between 20/20 and 30/20 eye site. Not bad considering I had really bad eyes growing up, so bad that I had bi-focals in 6th grade.

Saturday we wore Hayley out at Great America. She rode a couple rides and then spent about two hours on the kid playground going down slides and climbing ropes. She's getting really good at climbing compared to the last time we were there.

Yesterday we hit the Discovery Museum in San Jose. Hayley played so hard that she ended up taking a 3 hour nap which pretty much wrapped up the day. We finished the day by getting some groceries at Costco. That place is almost as bad as sitting in rush hour, there are so many friggen shoppers in there. Every checkout line is 15 deep. Hey Costco, add some checkout stands!!! I can't believe people keep going back to that place.

Cloudy Days

I looked at the sky in shock that it was actually cloudy at mid-day. Although it's cloudy sometimes in the morning, it quickly burns off and there's rarely a cloud in the sky. I started to wonder if the rainy season is soon to set in until someone mentioned the clouds are from the forest fire that's about 20 miles from here. So far the fire has burned 27,000 acres of land. That's crazy to think. It's a little over whelming to think that this fire is causing the sky to look like major overcast. Fires are a side effect of living with the best weather one could ask for in a summer.