Put Your Finger in There, I Dare You

Sometimes people think the world is going to shit. Then you see a kick ass saw like this and you just know the future is a better place.

Sugarless Death, I mean Gum

I'm a regular gum chewer. The other day, for some reason, I looked at the ingredients on the side of my pack of gum. Highlighted in bold letters it said " PHENYLKETONURICS: CONTAINS PHENYLALANINE". So I'm like, WTF is this?

Then I look at the full list of ingredients and there's some other things that I'm wondering about: SORBITOL, GLYCEROL, ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, XYLITOL, MANNITOL, ASPARTAME, ACESULFAME K, BHT, BLUE 1.

So Kathleen looks around a little on Wiki and other places and it turns out PHENYLALANINE is some weird substance that some people can't process and it will kill them. Oh, great. And the main ingredient, SORBITOL, is a laxative that causes gas and loose stools. Great again. And ASPARTAME has something to do with cancer. At this point, I don't even want to know what the other ingredients do.

Well then I wondering, How is this possible? Every thing seems so strictly regulated in this country. How can the government/FDA allow these things to be sold if they really are harmful? And then I think about how you can also buy alcohol, tobacco, high fructose corn syrup, McDonalds... And they used to sell asbestos for all sorts of uses and encourage women to douche with Lysol . So I guess we can't just rely on the infinite wisdom of govt agencies or the endless compassion of big money hungry corporations to keep us healthy. I guess we do still have to think for ourselves. Damn it. Oh wait, I don't have to think for myself... I have KATHLEEN! Woo hoo!

Bombs Awaaaaayyyy

Here's Adam's (my bro) first sky dive (and first youtube upload). I was, unfortunately, out of town that weekend.

Locating Satellites

That's what the first thing this watch says when you turn it on.



It's a Garmin 305 that is on temp loan from my Aunt. She wants me to figure out how to operate the thing for her... It is a bit unintuitive, lots of menus, but mostly really freaking cool.

So it's a GPS unit and a heart rate monitor and a bunch of other stuff, too. It even tells time. It came in really useful already on my long run (18 miles) last Saturday. I was running w/ the ESR club and they were doing one lap on a loop thru Medina. After that lap was done, I had two more to go, but I hadn't really paid attention where to turn on the first time thru. This watch, however, had kept track of where I had gone and showed me a little map w/ the dotted line and pointed the way for me to go. I love this thing.

Here's something that cracks me up tho. It is huge. It looks like an old pager or garage door opener strapped to your wrist. The product pix supplied by the manufacturer only show the unit from one angle so you can't see it's girth until you've alread bought it.
They have a new unit coming out soon that has the antenna built into the wrist strap so it looks more like a regular watch.

The Easter Basket

I think this may be the first Easter in 35 years that I was not at my mom's house and thus the first year that I would have gone without an Easter basket. Kathleen stepped up, tho, and came thru nicely with a basket of her own making.

See that chocolate/carmel Cadbury egg in my hand? I used it right after this picture as a melted topping on our french toast. Mixed it w/ a little rasberry jam... Mmmm...

My Own At-At

Kathleen is always talking about getting a dog. I'd rather have one of these...

Boston Dynamics keeps working on their BigDog quadruped robot, which will
probably grow to be the future AT-AT of the Pentagon. Its evolution since the last time we saw it is nothing sort of mindblowing, and a bit spooky.
It looks like an actual biological quadruped. Seeing it climb through rubble, snow,
jumping over obstacles like a wild goat, and saving a near-fall on iced ground
at the last second (fast forward to the middle of the video) defies belief. It
feels so "animal" that I almost feel bad when they hit it to demonstrate how it
regains balance on its own.
The new version of the robot can now carry 340 pounds, which is almost triple the previous weight. It looks to me that that $10 million funding they got from Darpa has been put to good use.

Fart Club

Some friends and I have been training for a marathon and have calling ourselves "Team Brawndo" named after a fictional sports drink in the movie Idiocracy. We were going to wear Brawndo shirts during the race. Recently, however, a company has turned it into a real product, so that kinda sucks. Now we're trying to think of a new team name. This is the only thing we have so far.

Here's John's acount of how he came up with this name:

"The first time we went to the Park Pub, I called Shireesha to tell her where I was. Her response: "You're out with the guys at the Fart Club?""

Ben doesn't like it tho, so we'll see...