I exercise for about an hour 6 days a week. Usually I watch tv while I’m on the treadmill. Sometimes I play videogames. It’s possible I will be able to combine these activities shortly since a clever company appears to have invented the perfect exercise machine. It goes for about $600 and will hook up to my ps2. I hope sears carries these; I’ll be on the lookout for them so I can try one out. If it works in theory I can replace the weightlifting portion of my exercise with 20 minutes of Gran Turismo 3. Who says convergence is a meaningless buzzword! 😉

I keep forgetting to mention that I put up images from my trip to Seattle a couple of weeks ago. You can check them out in the image gallery. For some reason I took a host of images of the Seattle zoo and not many of the family, but there’s some interesting pics and as a bonus the world’s blurriest graduation photo ever. There’s also a few cool pics of our hike up Tiger Mountain and various shots of Seattle. So, check em out if you’re interested, and of course witty comments are encouraged.

Lest anyone think I’ve forgotten to finish the redesign, or am finished and left it in a state of ‘somewhat suck;’ I’m still working on it. No need to email me more reminders 😉 This weekend is a 3-day weekend so I’ll be spending some time on it. One of the things I’m going to add is more pictures to the randomly cycling ones on the top right – if you have something you’d like to suggest, send it along or post an url and I’ll get it in there.

Tomorrow is the day. After months of rumors, speculation, anxiety, and the departure of my boss (who I really liked), tomorrow we find out the reorg plan for IT here at Bowdoin, and which of us still have jobs after all is said and done. I’m very confident that I’ve made the cut since I was asked to re-think my job title and submit an updated one earlier this week, but I’m still uneasy. Partly because change is always difficult and it’s human nature to avoid it, and partly because some of the management and responsibility changes could go badly for me. So. Wish me luck. Tomorrow at 3 P.M. I’ll find out what the deal is.

Check out this excellent hi rez panorama of mars that folks have put together from the photos the new mars mission is sending back. Cool stuff, even if the place looks pretty damned inhospitable. You’ll need to have the quicktime plugin installed to view this.

Take a moment to look over This explanation of ‘Peak Oil,’ the moment in time when we have reached maximum efficiency in the production of oil, and what might happen afterwards. While I don’t necessarily agree with some of the assumptions in the piece, it is thought provoking. It also provides possible insight into the ‘lets get a foothold in the middle east’ policy we seem to be following these days.

MAN is it cold here. Today we hit a chilly high of -19 degrees, and it’s possible we will hit -40 tonight. This is the coldest I can remember it being in the last 5-6 years, and it’s possible we’ll break the all-time record tonight. A pipe is frozen in my house because of this, and my saturn’s heater can’t keep up with the cold. I let it warm up for 15 minutes or so before setting off, but by the time I get on the highway the engine temperature is down from where it started during the warmup. At least it’s starting though. This is projected to last through the end of next week right now, though we’ll get a brief respite on Sunday. I feel very sorry for the Patriots and Titans, who play tomorrow. If they’re lucky it will hit 0 😉

One of my new year’s resolutions might be obvious from the state of this website – I’m resolved to posting more frequently and in a more organized fashion to the site. The redesign was the first step along that path, as I keep mentioning there’s more to come.

The second one is even less interesting – I have a very wierd diet. I’ve come to rely entirely too much on cheese as a source of nutrition so I’ve resolved to eat at least half as much cheese as I have been. I haven’t quite figured out what to replace it with yet so it’s been a struggle so far but I’m sticking to it. Anyone have a suggestion for a good, healthy source of protein to replace the cheese with? Please don’t mention nuts, I am eating enough almonds for 10 people.

I happened across a notable quote today that I first encountered in college. It’s from Tom Robbins, and it goes like this:

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.

I love that line, being playful, rebellious, and hopelessly immature myself 😉

I found it on the sometimes amusing quotationspage.com

I’m back after three weeks and a day of vacation. All in all I had a great time. I spent a week in Seattle, spent several days on a redesign of this site, installed several new software packages on the server, upgraded several others, read 3 novels, watched at least 10 movies, and slept more than I have in months. Today it’s back to the grind, with a full work schedule due to the impending start of a new semester. I’ll start talking about some of the new stuff over the course of this week as time permits.