A couple days ago, I wrote a blog post mocking mother nature. Apparently, she lacks a sense of humor and has the time and will to punish my impatience. The day after, the temperature jumped from the low 60s to the mid 80s, as did the humidity. Then, last night, we got a crazy lightning/thunder/rain/cat/dog/shit storm that I have not seen the likes of which I have not seen in many years. Since the garage was occupied by boats and my sunroof has yet to be repaired, I had to put a bucket in the driver’s seat in my car, not before the seat was already soaked.
Look, I’m just saying that I didn’t know nature was that vindictive or read blogs.
I know that most people say they are worried about their health. They buy overpriced energy drinks and share unsanitary communal gym equipment when not shuttling the kids to soccer practice. Those people are the ones I like to call “armchair athletes.” They pretend to walk the walk because it’s fashionable and they have such low self-esteem they end up being as pretentious as possible about physical fitness in order to feel like they have shamed their friends into working out and they are making a positive contribution to society. Not true.
Now that I have gotten that character assassination of middle America soccer moms out of the way, I can get to the real topic at hand: me. For about a month now, I have been making a concerted effort to improve my physical and mental well-being. Why would I do this despite my self-professed perfection? I am trying to make myself better, stronger, faster so that I can feel better about myself. Increased self-esteem leads to increased confidence, which leads a better chance at a happier, more successful life. What am I doing?
I am improving my diet. This involved eliminating a few things from my diet. I also don’t like to “swear off” certain things. I prefer to simply focus on staying away from them. I have stopped drinking caffeinated drinks. If you know me, you know I used to be a complete Pepsi/Coke/Mountain Dew junkie. Now I am almost completely off the juice. (I like to call caffeine “the juice.”) This was a big deal. I even went through withdrawal to an extent. Crankiness, depression, and mood swings were all part of the deal, but they wore off after a few days. (I’ve been on the juice for a long time.)
I have also eliminated meat and become a vegetarian. This is not out of some kind of concern for the well-being of smaller, weaker, and tasty animals. This is about my own health. I am very thin, (115 lbs, 6ft) and I don’t need much to keep my body running. My body is generally good about telling me what to eat: lotsa grains and bread, fruits, veggies, and dairy. I didn’t really see the need to eat meat, which provides much more protein and fat than I really think I need. Plus, it makes me kinda nauseous and sluggish, which is not fun. Although I am worried primarily about my personal health, the large costs and and environmental impact associated with raising animals also played into this decision.
As a minor tangent, there seems to be some confusion on the part of my family about exactly what I meant when I said “no meat.” “Does that mean eggs?” “I thought you just meant red meat.” “So I guess no milk, then?” “How about chicken for dinner?” Wrong on all counts. To me, eggs count as meat, as do chicken and red meat. As for milk, I am still drinking milk and eating cheese and yogurt. Why? Because the good milk doesn’t have meat in it.
As another part of this spurt of fitness-consciousness, I have started exercising regularly. I figured it would be good to start at the end of April. I can have the entire warm season to work on this, when I’m unemployed and only doing summer school. I love riding my bike, but never really seemed to use it very much while school was in session. So, I am doing pretty well at meeting my goal of riding at least 10 miles a day. It gives me some much-needed activity and lets me catch up on my podcasts. However, if you plan on doing an all day trip, be sure to wear sunscreen. This is my own experience talking.
I have thought about running, but usually talk myself out of it. It would probably be a good habit to get into. My stamina is terrible. I was hoping to start this up at the beginning of May, but chose to stay in bed. Oh, well.
I you are interested in learning about this sort of self-improvement thing, I would head on over to Zen Habits. They have lots of resources and advice columns for people looking to improve their lives.
I know it’s passé to talk about the weather. It is the classical boring subject. Textbook elevator talk. However, I feel I must offer up my perspective on recent atmospheric conditions here in Indianapolis.
We can’t seem to reach the 70-degree mark on a regular basis and I have to say, this is both comforting and frustrating. I am sick of freezing my ass off whenever I ride my bike. Who’s with me? Who is ready for Indiana’s traditional skull-baking heat. I sure am. It is too cold for the end of May. High of 65 degrees after Memorial Day in Indiana? WTF?
At least it’s pleasant weather for bike riding. (Always look on the bright side of life.)
Over the last few months, I have been casually toying around with the Terminal utility in Mac OS X, which allows me to control my computer with a command line interface. Once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty fun! Here’s something simple you can try:
- Open your Applications folder, then open the Utilities folder.
- Launch Terminal
- Type the following:
cd Desktop
mkdir Craptopia
cd Craptopia
cat >Crap
This is a rather inelegant text file.
Please forgive how it looks.
Although, it is pretty kickass that I'm using UNIX!
- Return one more line after finishing the last sentence and press Ctrl-D.
- Want to read what you typed? Type:
cat Crap
Congratulations! You have just created a folder on your desktop and put a small text file inside. Pretty cool, huh?
Warning! Be very sure to be careful while in Terminal, as you can accidentally do some damage while you’re in there, so make sure all your commands are right. If something happens to your computer, I will deny responsibility and quietly walk away and pretend nothing happened.
Today, my mom bought a milk jug with a misprinted expiration date. Enjoy!
Ladies and gentlemen, we have indisputable proof that someone used Back to My Mac. Not only that, but used it to get her stolen computer back. Hot damn! Here’s a quote from the Boing Boing article:
The unnamed victim in question was able to use remote screen sharing to capture a picture of one alleged burglar via the machine’s built-in iSight camera, and copied photos on the computer that apparently were of the other alleged thief.
When I get a copy of Leopard, I am going to do my best to get Back to My Mac working. It seems like one of those features that is really cool once you get it working. Good job on getting the computer back!
I am so ready to go to Wisconsin and visit my aunt and uncle. My grandpa and I always have a good time up there and it is so nice there. Madison is a great town and I really like spending time there. In high school, I really wanted to go to University of Wisconsin at Madison because I liked the campus so much. In hindsight, staying at IUPUI was good for my from an academic perspective and I am really enjoying working on my Informatics degree, which I couldn’t have had the chance to work on at UW.
Anyway, I digress. Now that the Spring semester here is all over with, I am ready to pack up, throw my bike on the back of my car, and get on the road. Well, I guess I will just have to wait until late July! 🙂
I got a Twitter account on April 7th of this year. I thought it would be appropriate for me to write a brief review of the service after a month of use. I do not have much experience writing real reviews of products or services. So, here goes.
For those who are unaware, Twitter is a free online service that allows anyone to share what they are doing or thinking at any moment. Messages must be 160 characters or less, including spaces. If you want to post a long link, you can use a service like TinyURL. Also, they can “follow” others as well as send other Twitterers tweets and private messages. Like most other online services, Twitter can rapidly become addictive.
In addition to getting my free Twitter account, I also got a free Twitter client called Twitterrific. It sits on top of all of your application windows and is configurable and resizable. It will periodically update itself with new Tweets from the people you follow, including yourself. Also, you can write new Tweets in Twitteriffic and post them. It saves me lots of trouble when trying to post and read my Tweets.
Overall, I would recommend Twitter, Twitteriffic, and TinyURL, all working together to keep your friends updated on what you are doing. If you are even a little bit into social networking, microblogging, or the web, I would encourage you to check out these three services.
I am generally a pretty forgiving and understanding person. If someone does something to annoy me, I am usually eager to let it go. If some transgression against me occurs, I will voice my feelings and move on. However, when something small goes on for a while, I make the repeated mistake of letting it fester and annoy me. I decided that I had to let this one out somehow. So, here I am. Witness my display of passive aggression.
When I was in the shower today, I noticed something that I had noticed a few times before: a lone pubic hair clinging to the tile. In a shower, this is not to be unexpected. However, there was something peculiar about its placement. It was not where one would expect to find a pubic hair. It was not near the caulking where the tile starts and the tub ends. It was not even at genital-level. It was at eye-level. Initially, I did not think much of it. Then, as I often do, I began to question it. Why is there a pube that high up? Was he trying to climb to the top to see what was up there? Did someone have some kind of sick pube-pushing game on the tiling? Maybe what happened was it was launched there. NASA has been sending people into space for decades. Why wouldn’t a lone individual be able to launch their pubic hair three feet? Yes, that must be it! Rocket pubes! Someone in my family has been gifted with a miniature version of Cape fucking Canaveral above their naughty parts! “T-minus 3, 2, 1, blastoff!” The proud, brave pube lifts off from its home, soaring ever higher, until, until, SPLAT! It hits the tile at an altitude of 5.5 feet and gets stuck there. Seriously, that is nasty. If your pubes are launching themselves like little rocket ships, you need to get yourself checked out, because that is not healthy.
In other pubic hair/bathroom news, someone in my family does not use a washcloth. I know it’s not me, because I am there for my daily showers and I use one every single time. It is my belief and opinion that when sharing a home and a bar of soap with three other people, that one should pay the others a common courtesy and use a washcloth. You may be asking, “Well, Patrick, how can you tell someone is not using a washcloth and why is it such a big deal to you?” Because, my friends and colleagues, every single, fucking day, I find at least one medium-length, black, curly hair embedded in the bar of soap. In addition, no one in my family has such hair on their heads. So, I must assume it came from south of the border. Once the realization is made that one is trying to cleanse oneself with soap that is constantly covered with someone else’s pubic hair, the sanitation issues become readily apparent. I find this lack of hygienic courtesy to be troubling, not just in the sense that I am rubbing someone else’s pubes in my face on a daily basis, but that an adult would not see the need to keep their pubic hair out of the communal soap. That is very disturbing and upsetting.
Thank you for your time.
Patrick Proctor was here 
