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Thursday, April 29, 2004

The Difference Between Republicans and Democrats

A Republican and a Democrat were walking down the street when they came to a homeless person. The Republican gave the homeless person his business card and told him to come to his business for a job. He then took twenty dollars out of his pocket and gave it to the homeless person.

The Democrat was very impressed, and when they came to another homeless person, he decided to help. He walked over to the homeless person and gave him directions to the welfare office. He then reached into the Republican's pocket and got out twenty dollars. He kept 15 for administrative fees and gave the homeless person five.

Now you understand the difference between Republicans and Democrats.

Monday, April 26, 2004

Saw Angela 'Bay' Buchanan speak

Ok short post today since it's late and I'm tired. The CRs (College Republicans) had Angela Buchanan come speak tonight at the campus. She spoke about why feminism is bad and also about the problems associated with abortion. The speech was excellent but the turnout was a bit low.

Anyhoo, I'll look at the pictures and post them tomarrow along with a more detailed post about Bay Buchanan and the speech. I guess I can add another person to the list of famous people I've had the honor of meeting and getting a picture with.

That'd be David Horowitz, Fred Barnes and now Angela Buchanan. Not exactly super big name stars but still, they're famous and I've meet them!

Sunday, April 25, 2004

Week 2 Day 8

Well I'm into this fitness thing now. Everything seems to be doing pretty well being the first real week. No pains or soreness to report. I think now that I'm into a routine the joints are wearing into place or something. The first few days I ran my right knee was killing me but now it's just fine. Well honestly, it's a bit stiff in the morning but once I'm up and moving it's ok.

So here's my end of week report.

Running is going fine. I'm doing a ten minute walk to warm up, a ten minute run/jog and a ten minute cool down. Doing it only 4 days a week is probably about right I believe. The day off between lets me rest my legs but more important it gives my mind a change to relax so I feel good and actually want to go run. I think if I ran every day I would be more tired and in my mind I would give myself time off. That would just start a domino effect and I would be likely to start by skipping a day then two then more and more days. As a result I'd end up just giving up and stop running completely.

My ab exercises are doing well. The crunches and oblique twists are easy to do and I can feel the burn after doing them. The reverse crunches on the other hand are very hard to do. I just don't have the muscles built up yet and so I have troubles doing a proper reverse crunch. I try my hardest though and with time it will become easier. My gut still looks the same though but I know it's only week one. With time it will improve. Ok, I have to admit I've been kind of bad in doing my ab exercises. Both Monday and Friday I skipped doing them. But I forced myself to do them the next morning before I went out and ran.

My pectoral, triceps and biceps exercises are fine. Chest flys and pushups are easy exercises and work very well for targeting the pectorals. Bicep curls and triceps dips as the names imply target the triceps and biceps. Again no real visible changes yet but with time they will get toned and shape up nicely.

On the weight front thing are doing excellent. I weighted myself this morning and the scale said 177.5 pounds. That means I meet and exceeded my goal of 178 pounds for week one. I'm very happy with this because honestly I wasn't eating too well the first half of the week. I binged a bit on ice cream Monday and Tuesday having big sundaes. Beef and Noodles on top of mashed potatoes one night. Plus on Saturday I ate a big breakfast after running. I was just so hungry I went overboard and ate a huge bowl of Chex cereal (it's high fiber though), two Bob Evans mini sausage sandwiches and Kellogg's Pop Tarts. I'm rather surprised I meet my goal. I can only assume that my metabolism has increased since I started exercising so my body is burning more calories. Actually, now that I think about it, it's probabbly because my girlfriend and I went ice skating last night. We skated for almost 2 whole hours. We were crusing too and most of the time were doing laps around people. So our little two hour aerobic exercise probabbly helped me burn the extra weight off me.

So, that's the week in review. I'm feeling pretty good about the schedule I designed and the level of the workouts. I'm thinking I might up the rep levels on the biceps and triceps exercises just because I'm not really feeling I'm working them to their full potential. Although, that's probably because I'm only using like five pound weights for the bicep curls. Either I'll find something heavier to do the bicep curls with or I'll up the reps. I'm just not sure which yet. Either way I'll have to adjust the triceps dips to match the workout level of the biceps.

See you next week.

Saturday, April 24, 2004

Democrat or Republican?

A salesman was traveling between towns and got a flat tire in the middle of nowhere. Checking the spare, he found that it was flat, too. His only option was to flag down a passing motorist and get a ride to the nearest town.

The first vehicle to stop was an old man in a pickup truck. He yelled out the window to the salesman, "Need a lift?" "Yes, I do," replied the salesman.

"Are you a Democrat or Republican?" asked the old man. "A Republican," replied the salesman. "Get screwed!" yelled the old man as he sped off.

The next vehicle to stop rolled down the window and asked the same question, to which the salesman gave the same answer, "Republican." The driver gave him the finger and drove off.

The salesman thought it over, and decided that maybe he should change his approach, since there appeared to be few Republicans in this area.

The next car to stop was a red convertible driven by a beautiful blonde. She smiled seductively and asked him if he were a Democrat or Republican. "Democrat!" shouted the salesman. "Hop in!" replied the blonde.

Driving down the road, he can't help but stare at the gorgeous woman in the seat next to him - the wind blowing through her hair, perfect breasts, and a short skirt that continues to ride higher and higher up her thighs.

Finally, he yells "STOP THE CAR! STOP THE CAR!" She slams on the brakes, and, as soon as the car stops, he jumps out. "What's the matter?" she asks.

"I can't take it!" he replies. "I've only been a Democrat for five minutes and already I want to sleep with a woman I've only just met!"

Thursday, April 22, 2004

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

What's there to say... hmm... It's a great movie! Yup that should sum it all up pretty well. No seriously folks. It's not showing at every theater so you might have to look around to find it but it will be worth it.

The basic summary of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" goes something like this. Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) and Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) have a rather rocky relationship. After a rather nasty fight Joel goes to apologize at Clementine's job, she works at a book store, but she acts if she has no idea who he is. He learns from friends that she had him erased from her memories at this place called Lacuna. He goes to them and decides to have them erase her from his memories as well. After the procedure is started he begins to realize that he still lovers her and doesn't want to loose the memories.

The cool thing is 90 percent of the movie is played in reverse chronological order. It does that because we follow the procedure that erases memories from most recent to earliest. As a result you really don't get the whole picture until the end which I think is great. So many movies basically dump out everything on the floor within the first 20-30 minutes. You know everything and you just spend the rest of the movie being entertained by the pretty special effects till the hero(s) win.

Ok, sure anyone with a half a brain will know how this movie will end, I won't say it just to not spoil it, but the fact that they don't describe anything upfront and make you watch to see how the relationship unfolded is a wonderful change.

On the technical front the movie was impressive. It's no Lord of The Rings but there are plenty of little details there. Most of the movie takes place inside Joel's head so the little effects of things dissapering as the memories are erased is nicely done. Most people probably won't pay enough attention to notice them all and it's a shame. For example in one scene Joel is talking to Clementine in the bookstore. As they talk books on the shelves slowly lose their titles and change to blank white. Each time the camera would shift more and more would turn blank. Then when all were blank the entire room slowly darkened and this showed very nicely the idea of the memory disappearing.

I went with my girlfriend to see it. You know what folks, Weekend dating is overrated. I think catching a movie on a Wednesday night is way better. Why you may ask? Simply there's nobody at the theater! I think there were maybe 10 people total at the theater to see the movie. You get to feel like it's just the two of you there and that's much more romantic in my opinion. No being stuck next to some sweatty fat guy that managed to eat his entire jumbo popcorn before the previews are over, no moron that talks non-stop to his friends, no stupid parents bringing little children to an adult movie and then having the kids whine for two hours. It's pure bliss people!

Of course the downfall is being the middle of the week you can't stay out really late since you both have work or school in the morning. Then again being able to see each other in the middle of the weak is enough to make it worth it. For my girl and I we only see each other on the weekend and Tuesdays normally. Any extra time we get we have to take advantage of.

So enough of my ramblings already. Everyone go see the movie "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Then get your friends to go too. It's another one of those rare intelligent movies so don't pass it up. We have to let Hollywood know that it's not enough to just spend millions on special effects. We need good original stories that inspire and provoke the mind too!

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

MovableType 3.0 Beta

I got an email today welcoming me to the Moveable Type 3.0 Beta test. When I saw the signup form a few days ago I figured I'd apply just for the giggles.

I'm not really sure I want to upgrade this site to beta software. I just don't like the idea that I might wake up one morning and find everything is lost becuase of some bug. Plus ontop of that I've done a lot of work configuring and setting up background stuff for this site. From the front end it just looks like another MovableType weblog but on the backend I have a very complex configuration. Besides the major problem that mt-blacklist (a comment spam blocker) doesn't work with MT 3.0 I have a nightly backup script.

Every night I run a cron job that does several things:
1) closes all comments older than 14 days (execpt for those in the Tips and Tricks category)

2) Does a complete rebuild of the weblog (so the newly closed comment pages get updated)

3) targzips the entire archive directory

4) creates an export file of the blog (using the export blog trick found here: http://www.virtualvenus.org/archives/0309/create_an_export_blog.php )

5) targzips the export file

6) creates a dump of the mysql database

7) targzips the dump file

8) cleans up old files/etc

Then, I have my personal computer setup to auto-download the export and mysql dump files every morning. The backed-up archive directory gets downloaded every monday.

Most people would call this overkill to the extreme but for me I don't like to take chances. I've put in almost an entire year on this weblog so I'd hate to loose even a single days post.

So I think I'll hold off on upgrading this site for the time being. What I'll do is install MT 3.0 beta onto my freebsd test server and play around with it. I'll work on getting my nightly cycle to work with this new version. If I can get that working and after they release another beta or two and I'm sure it's safe then I'll upgrade this site.

There are suppose to be many new features that make MT 3.0 a lot better than 2.x that we all use now. I guess I'll just have to see.

Tuesday, April 20, 2004

Page 23

And now for something completely different.

1) Grab the nearest book.
2) Open the book to page 23.
3) Find the fifth sentence.
4) Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

quote:

---

Then there's the need for technical support--it's silly to expect English teachers to install and maintain the high school's file servers.

---

Ok normally I don't do these stupid trendy things but I'm so bored today when I saw this at another blog I decided I might as well do it. But don't expect me to do this all the time now!

By the way, that quote comes from Clifford Stoll's book "High-Tech Heretic: Reflections of a Computer Contrarian."

It was published in 1999 and deals mostly with topics on computers in the classroom. He does ramble off on a few other subjects though. It's on my reading list and I suggest everyone go read it. Cliff isn't some anti-technology wack job. He's a pioneer in the field and just posses some questions worth thinking about.