Oh how I miss Telnet!

Ok, for most of my friends, if I say telnet, they say “huh?”  Telnet.  Huh?  Telnet. Huh?Before the invention of the browser, the world wide web had to be accessed from the command line.  And oh how I used to love telnet-ing to servers around the world to do all kinds of uber-productive activities that ultimately resulted in the mapping of the human genome and other great discoveries.  Ok, I’m lying.  I played games.  I played multi-user dungeon type games affectionately known as MUD’s, the text-based forerunners to today’s massive multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPG’s)…Anyway, I’m not here to reminisce!  I’m here to link you to the most rad find of the day!  Watch Star Wars in ASCII!  The link will take you to a page that describes the beauty of the thing and then spells out how you do this (it’s really quite simple, open a DOS window on PC’s or the Terminal on Macs, you Linux users are already smart enough to figure it out (no offense to the rest of the lot)).Damn I love old school technology!

Been busy… but here’s what’s happenin’ in March

So I’ve been chuggin’ along with my little business and working hard on my data model.  What’s that?  Data model?  Yeah, yeah, so I’m a dork.  But it’s good stuff when you delve into it.  A bit scary when you don’t know if what you’re doing is the best way, especially given that there are tons of professionals out there who can whip this kind of work out in a couple of hours.  But so what?  I’m working on it, learning it, and fastly becoming a software designer in my own right!

Anyway, just thought I’d catch you up with work and life.  I’m still doing all my fitness stuff, 100 pushups a day, 50 crunches, 50 lunges.  It’s paying off.  All of these exercises are getting easier… so I’m having to increase the resistance and/or slow down the reps.  I don’t necessarily see the need to increase my reps at this point.

And I was a bit bummed that only one person responded to my pushup challenge.  You know what?  I guess I’m pretty psyched by that actually.  So big ups to you, Allice!  Meanwhile, another week passed by and I managed to do fifty this time!  From fourty-four to fifty.  Nice progress.  I’m sure it’ll slow down here soon.

Finally, I added one more thing to my list of daily chores.  Piano!  Gosh I miss my piano.   My whole first month back in Atlanta I didn’t even touch the thing.  But I’ve been playing regularly, and hopefully am practicing smarter than ever before.  My goal is to play Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini” within a year, the solo part, that is…  It’s 90 pages long, so I have my work cut out for me.  I basically get four days of practice for each page.

One last thing, I’m goin’ back to Cali tomorrow.  Right on!

Push-ups… How many can you do?

I do 100 push-ups per day. But after reading this article, I had to try as many as I could at one time, and of course, they only count if they are in good form. I managed forty-four! Time to practice this more! How many can you do?  Don’t guess.  Do it!

See why push-ups are so great according to the New York Times.

And here’s a chart from the Washington Post that you can use to gauge yourself if you start to practice them regularly. I ranked as Excellent. Where do you rank?

Random Thoughts on Energy

About a year or so ago, I was doing some energy evaluation in my household and ran across a neat little entry about the mechanical equivalent of electrical energy…Q:  What does it mean if a light bulb uses 60 watts?

A:  The watt is a unit of power, equivalent to the joule-per-second.  One joule is about the amount of energy it takes to raise a 12 ounce can of soda 1 foot.  A 60-watt lightbulb uses 60 joules-per-second, so the power it consumes could raise a 24-can case of soda 2.5 feet each second.  Most tables are about 2.5 feet above the floor.  Next time you leave a 60-watt lightbulb burning while you’re not in the room, imagine how tired you’d get lifting one case of soda onto a table every second for an hour or two. That’s the mechanical effort required at the generating plant to provide the 60 watts of power you’re wasting.

So the moral of the story is, turn off the lights when you aren’t using them!

Making a quick comparison to other household habits — you don’t leave the refrigerator door open when you aren’t in the kitchen, nor do you leave the water running when you aren’t about to immediately use it.  So why do we care so little about the lights???

Coincidence or Master Plan?

March 7th entry from Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey:

“Synergy means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It means that the relationship the parts have to each other is a part in and of itself. It is not only a part, but the most catalytic, the most empowering, the most unifying, and the most exciting part.

The creative process is also the most terrifying part because you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen or where it is going to lead. You don’t know what new dangers and challenges you’ll find. It takes an enormous amount of internal security to begin with the spirit of adventure, discovery, and creativity. Without doubt, you have to leave the comfort zone of base camp and confront an entirely new and unknown wilderness.”

Coincidence:  I have had this book by my bedside for months without picking it up, that is, except to move it from my California bedside to my Atlanta bedside.  Of all days to pick it up for a quick read before hitting the sack, I do so on the night of March 7th.

Master Plan:  This entry speaks so directly to what I’m currently feeling with my new company that it makes me nervous at how uncanny the universe is.  But I also feel a sense of relief because life is full of signs, you just have to pay attention to them as you pass by.  I’d like to believe this is one of those signs.