Keg for a Six-Pack

Well, I took a leap today and did something I've been thinking about and talking about for months. I've felt like a slug for quite some time, and it's not because I'm at an all time high in weight or anything like that. I'm just not getting enough exercise. Since I dropped out of university a couple of years ago, I haven't been riding my bike much, and since Angus died, I haven't even walked as much as I used to. I have do something before my muscles atrophy totally.

So today, I went to the Olympic Health Club, signed up for a year, and paid for 10 sessions with a Personal Trainer. I know myself well enough to know that I don't have the self-discipline to do it on my own, but if I've paid the money, and have the appointments made, I'll keep them. The Olympic Club is a pretty good facility in Ballard, with all the weights and machines, as well as a swimming pool and racquetball courts. My plan is to work out a couple of times a week with the Personal Trainer, play in a racquetball league, and go swimming once in awhile. And the club is within bicycling distance, so if it's not raining, I'll take my bike.

So my plan is to trade the current keg I have around my middle for a set of sixpack abs. I'll keep you posted.

This and That

As predicted in my last entry, I did not receive an email from the MS OneCare Help center. Bastards! Another annoying thing that OneCare did when in the restore mode was to restore dozens of files I'd deleted months ago. It didn't restore the files I wanted, but it did clutter up my desktop and a bunch of other files. So I had to spend more time going through and re-deleting garbage files. If I would have just manually entered the 150 names and addresses in my Contacts file, I would have saved a lot of time, effort, and aggravation.

I'm going to see The Golden Compass this afternoon. I just finished reading the book yesterday, and as fantasies go, it was pretty good. The book is set in something like an alternative Edwardian England, where zeppelins fly and gaslights are common, and where people's souls are visible companions in animal forms. The heroine, predictably, is a noble-born orphan girl with special powers who is destined to save the world in a battle with the forces of evil. I missed the whole Harry Potter frenzy, and I hadn't read a fantasy since I read The Lord of the Rings trilogy way back when in my misspent youth, so this was something new to me. I'm not sure it was good enough to make me want to read the other two books in the series, but maybe the movie will inspire me. I'll report back after I see the show.

Occasionally, when I feel the urge to get some exercise, or if I need a fix of Spam or some other pseudo-food not found at my local PCC, I take the 25 minute walk up to the QFC grocery store in Wallingford. The store is a couple of blocks away from a high school, so at noon or after school, the store is jammed with high school kids getting lunch or junk food or whatever. I was there around noon a couple of days ago, and was struck by the high percentage of African-Americans there. Generally speaking, there aren't a lot of blacks in this area, so I guess they get bussed in. The guys were all in their hoodies and baggy pants with the crotches down to their knees, which isn't surprising. What was surprising was that a lot of the guys were East-African immigrants who spoke the language of the streets but called their friends Abdul or Mohammed. (I assume they were East-African because they had that fine-featured look of Somalis or Ethiopians.) Those who study assimilation of immigrants might find something interesting going on here. Good or bad, I don't know, but certainly interesting.

The presidential primary races are interesting as well. Especially the Republican one. There is no clear front-runner. Guiliani is imploding; Romney is distrusted by all, and Thompson's high point in the polls was the day before he announced. Huckabee is rising, and though loved by the evangelical crowd, isn't going to make it because he doesn't have enough money to get past Iowa and New Hampshire. He is also loathed by the Republican establishment. That leaves McCain. He is loved by no one, but may be the least-disliked of them all. I'd put my money on McCain. On the Democratic side, it sure looks like Obama is surging, Hillary is fading, and Edwards is holding on. I'd put my money on Obama, but I wouldn't count Edwards out. I'm in Obama's camp, but I'd be happy with Edwards.

God, I hate computers

Earlier this evening, I tried to import a bunch of email addresses from a spreadsheet into my Outlook contacts file. It should have been easy. There was even a menu selection in Outlook to do exactly that. Well, it didn't work as planned, but I'm a smart guy, so I spent a couple of hours trying to figure out how to do it, having to name ranges in the spreadsheet and all sorts of esoteric geeky stuff to try to avoid manually typing in 100 new contacts. When I finally found the combination to make this happen without error messages, I pushed the "continue" button, even though there was a warning that the process couldn't be stopped once started. I panicked when I saw my Outlook contacts disappear before my eyes, replaced by 58,000+ new blank contacts. I rebooted the computer to stop the process, thinking this was probably easily repairable since I have Microsoft OneCare, a virus, tuneup, backup program. Well, I tried to restore the files three or four times, using both Express and Custom settings, and every time the program told me that the files already existed. Well, they might exist, but I couldn't find them. I figured my 200+ contacts were just lost in the 58,000+ contacts, and I just couldn't find them. So I selected the whole Contact file, and then deleted it, making sure my contacts weren't there before trying to restore them again. OneCare came back after the restore process, and once again told me the files were already there!!! OK, I gave up. I tried to contact OneCare Help, and spent the next effing hour trying to figure out how to sign in for help!!! In the process, I did read a few postings in the forums about how the so-called Help Center was apparently designed to do anything but help. One reply from Microsoft agreed with some of the points that were made, but tried to justify it by saying that each help call cost an average of $10, so it wouldn't take long to eat up the profits on a $50 program. Well, a couple of points in response....if Microsift designed the program properly in the first place, so much help wouldn't be needed. The next point is that Microsoft has something like $50B in the cash on hand, so I don't have much sympathy for them crying poor. In any case, I finally did get an email off to the Help Center, and they've told me that I'll have an email reply within 24 hours. I'll believe it when I see it.

So including this rant, I've pissed away the entire evening screwing around with my computer when I had planned on curling up with The Golden Compass.

My next computer will definitely be a Mac. They might not be a whole lot better, but they've sure got great commercials.

Mormons

Mitt Romney gave his speech yesterday about religion and Mormons and politics and why he shouldn't be rejected because of his faith. As a result, it was really easy to find all kinds of videos showing how nutty these folks really are. I guess in the final analysis, Mormonism isn't much nuttier than most other religions, but it's well out of the mainstream religious nuttiness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy0d1HbItOo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur_xV9ztFvg&eurl=http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/

I especially got a chuckle out of this Aussie dude.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXOh4g_FLIM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV-a1vmZ6y8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsXzHLiHTOU&feature=related

There are lots more out there that are easy to find. Enjoy yourselves.

Guns and Germs and Whatever

Yesterday, I spent a rather enjoyable afternoon with one of my right-wing-whacko-gun-nut friends. We loaded up a couple of packsacks with guns and ammo and headed over to a shooting range where we proceeded to liberate a few hundred rounds of lead from their casings. Lee had everything from 22's to 45's in those packsacks, and like sampling wine, we worked our way up from the 22's to the more serious stuff. I was pretty pleased with my performance considering I hadn't fired a handgun in over 20 years, and even then it was only a few rounds. Lee was rather impressed with my performance considering the fact that I'm a godless-faggot-loving-commie-pinko-gun-hating bastard. And on top of all that, I'm Canadian! I told him that all Canadians can shoot like me, so if the US ever decides to invade Canada, they better not misunderestimate their foes. After the range, we went over to his place where we proceeded to liberate a couple of liters of wine from their bottles. How's that for an All-American afternoon of guns and booze?!

My travel plans have changed. The Caribbean adventure has been cancelled, replaced with two weeks in Croatia at the end of May and beginning of June. It's actually two separate charters, with one out of Kremik (near Split) and the following week out of Dubrovnik. I booked the second of two boats that will be traveling together. I think we can put together a great itinerary out of the two bases. From Kremik, we can head north to a bunch of desert or near desert islands, and from Dubrovnik we can stop at several medieval island towns. I loved the last trip to Croatia, and wished I could have stayed longer and seen more. It's a totally different experience than the BVI. The BVI is like Disneyland for sailors, with great winds, warm blue waters, great snorkelling, lovely beaches, and night clubs and restaurants at every stop. But don't expect to take in any local cultural experiences, because as near as I can tell, there are none. In Croatia, you can sail in gorgeous waters and lovely scenery, but at night you tie up at a 1000 year-old sea wall in a town with real people actually living and working there. There are Roman ruins everywhere. The Croats are actually interlopers who only showed up some hundreds of years ago. Before that, the area was under Venetian influence, and before that was very much Roman. Marco Polo was born in Korcula, a lovely town that I visited the last time I was there, and will be sure to do it again next year. Another thing I'll be looking for are spotted dogs. The last time I was on the Dalmation Coast, I was quite disappointed not seeing any Dalmations.

Today I sent a letter to the immigration folks trying to get my citizenship interview date of January 14th back. I wish this was all over with and that I wouldn't have to deal with that bureaucracy any more. Getting any answers or changes out of them is next to impossible. Oh well.

Holy Cow!!

I've been playing crib for something like 45 years, but yesterday I had a hand that I'd never seen before. No, it wasn't a perfect hand, but it was awfully close. 28 points!!! Caroline was my unlucky victim, and even though she fought back strongly, she couldn't overcome a 28 point hand, and ended up losing what turned out to be a very close game. Very cool!

Happy 60th Jerry!

Last night a whole bunch of friends and family celebrated Jerry's 60th. Now that he's a responsible senior citizen of 60, he'll have to refrain from the behavior he exhibited in the BVI earlier this year. He said it was sea sickness, but we all knew it was really the multiple Wrecks on the Rocks that he consumed so happily the night before. For those of you who don't know, a Wreck on the Rocks consists of 2 shots of rum (preferrably Pusser's), 1 shot of coconut Malibu rum, 1 shot of pineapple Malibu rum, and a 1/2 shot of lime cordial. I was going to have these blown up to life-size photos (you can click on them for a larger view), frame them, and give them to Jerry as a gift, but on second thought, I decided to give them to the whole world via the internet.

Happy Birthday Jerry!!

Have any of you been following the presidential primaries? I especially love the Republican battles and the reactions of my right-wing-whacko friends trying to defend any of the candidates. Giuliani is a three times married, East Coast almost liberal (at least in his social views), estranged from his kids, and has all sorts of skeletons in his closet. Today I heard a great description of him. Not that he's like Bush, but more like a cross between Cheney and Nixon. Romney is the biggest flipflopper of all time, making John Kerry look like a piker. McCain sold his soul to the devil, i.e., Bush, long ago to keep himself a viable conservative candidate. I liked him in 2000, but he's long past his best-before date. Huckabee is an interesting candidate. He's non-threatening and funny, and comes across as the compassionate conservative that Bush said he wanted to be. But I have an innate fear of any Bible-thumper who dismisses evolution and feels that big cities would be safer if everyone were carrying handguns. And yes, I heard him actually say that. Ron Paul is a bit of a monkey wrench who's thrown himself into the works. He gets lots of support from the younger libertarian crowd, but unfortuately, I don't think he has much of a chance. He at least is authentic, even when he espouses some of his whacko views, like wanting to go back to the gold standard.

I'm glad to see that Obama is finally moving up in the polls against Hillary. This morning he was leading her in Iowa and catching up with her in New Hampshire. I wonder why it took so long, but maybe he was smart enough not to peak too early. Now throw Oprah into the mix, and Hillary's inevitability is no longer so inevitable. I also like Edwards, who has the most populist campaign, but I don't think he's got much of a chance. Like McCain on the Republican side, I think he's had his one shot a the presidency. In terms of experience and qualifications, Richardson is head and shoulders above the candidates in either party, but his candidacy has never taken off. If he could somehow convince the 20 million Hispanics in the country that, in spite of his name and lack of an accent, he really is Hispanic, he might have a chance. I think he'd make a great VP, maybe with Obama.

No one can energize the GOP like Hillary, so I really hope that the first time I vote for a president, I don't have to hold my nose and vote for her. Just as Bush senior in '92 reminded a lot of women voters of their first husband, I think Hillary reminds a lot of men of their first wife. Hectoring, lecturing, humorless, power-hungry and conniving are all words that come to mind when I think about her. I really hope that Obama kicks her somewhat oversized butt!