I just found this, which is a pretty neat calorie counter for hundreds of different activities. I found out that I burned 463 calories last night playing basketball for 45 minutes, while I'll burn about 1100 callories sitting at my desk at work for 8 hours. Interesting enough, I'll burn about 230 calories typing all my e-mail today. No wonder I am so hungry at lunch time.

Jason found this page which shows pictures of abandoned bikes in NYC. I've always wondered about bikes like that. When I was at school, there always seemed to be a lot of them on campus. I wonder just how it happens that a bike becomes abandoned. Does one forget it? Walk all the way back to the dorm, and realize that they had thier bike this morning when they left, but for some reason don't have it now? Does one get distracted by something and forget that there is a bike they own? I don't get it. I can almost understand forgeting a crappy bike, but sometimes there would be a $700 Mongoose that was "forgotten."

This pic is my favorite. Like the author of the page states, it almost looks like it has wheels.

This article in Slate examines why John Kerry is so popular in NH. I can tell you why. NH does not have a NBC, FOX, UPN, WB or CBS affiliate. The majority (read: the southern third) of NH watches Boston stations. I've watched him for years while sitting in front of my TV in a central NH home. I have seen him run for Senate numorous times, and have seen a particular picture of him in the sun, in a helmet, in front of a gun boat (which I have been unable to locate in google images) so many times that it has been burned into my brain.

Kerry is a good man, and I would probably vote for him if I wasn't in MA where everyone already will. If Edwards is still in it when the MA primary comes around, he gets my vote.

I found this page this morning after a discussion with Jason last night. It is amazing to me how poorly some people get along with thier in-laws, not that I currently have the best relationship with my in-laws to be. Some mother's, esp, are out for blood. I can't believe that the bond between a mother and son or daughter can be so severely threatened by an SO. It is almost like some mothers want to take thier kids right back into thier wombs, so they once again have complete and total control over thier lives. It's a rather frightening thought, actually.

Slate is running a series of journals this week by one of thier reporters up in NH. He is spending his time cross country skiing and talking politics. Yesterday's report was about Joe Lieberman. I've always had trouble with Lieberman because when he gets up there and speaks he has lost my attention by the end of the first sentence. He is dead boring and doesn't make me want to root for him at all. The author of the journal piece put it best:

The fifth difference is energy. Simply stated, Lieberman doesn't show any. He's as passionate as your accountant, relating his criticisms of Bush in the tone of a grandfather rocking a baby to sleep.

And that, boys and girls, is why Sen. Joe Lieberman won't win the nomonation, let alone the primary. I think it would be very interesting to have a Jewish man as president, just not this one.

It turns out there was a .small earthquake. very close to, if not in, my home town of Hopkinton, NH. From what the article says, they are pretty common in the area, and I remember a couple small tremmors as I was growing up.

The best line, though, of the whole article is the following:

No presidential candidates were in the affected area.

Which, at this time in an election year, is pretty hard to believe. I guess today was a seacoast, lakes region or White Mt. day for everyone.

This article is from this morning's edition of CNN. It details the fact that Dick Gephardt, due to his 4th place finish in Iowa, is going to step out of the democratic primary. The best line was a subjective comment by the author of the piece:

"Gephardt seemed resigned to his fate during the speech -- which at times seemed like part of a memorial service."

I read that, and my first thought was: I guess he has resigned. And my second thought was: Why? He still got 11% of the vote and this is only the first of 50 primaries. So I poked around a bit and found this site. Wholy shit. Bill Clinton only got 2.8% of the vote in 1992. 2.8%! Uncommitted got 11.9%! And John McCain only got 5% in 2000, and he stuck with it for at least a few more primaries. But I guess Gephardt is feeling that since he is getting so little love (compared to the top 3 candidiates) in the midwest (his home state is MO) that he doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell once he gets to NH, esp. with two New Englanders in the race. So long Representative Gephardt. It's too bad, he is such a great speaker.

Today is Martin Luther King Jr Day. And I don't have the day off from work. It reminds me when I was in about 7th grade up in NH and there was a petition circulating in the hallway to make it a day off for us. At that point in time in NH, MLK Day was known as Civil Rights Day (which seems more appropriate to me, since MLK wasn't the only person who fought and died for the Civil Rights Movement), and almost no one had the day off. I thought now it was standard to take the day. I guess I am wrong

In general, seems pretty rediculous to have a so called "national holiday" where business still goes on as usual. We should follow the Europeans. On thier holidays everything shuts down. Some one told me never go to Europe during Auguest, as the whole place is shut down for summer holiday. Lucky bastards.

This collection of The lamest press releases of the 2004 campaign is great. My favorites:

• SHARPTON WAY AHEAD WITH AFRICAN-AMERICAN VOTERS ACCORDING TO NEW GALLUP POLL
  New York—According to a special analysis of likely Democratic voters conducted for the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service (NNPA) by the Gallup Organization, Reverend Al Sharpton is the Democrat most favored to win Democratic Nomination for President among black voters.
  
• Students for Bush Successfully Launch
  ANN ARBOR, Mich.—More than 150 Bush supporters participated in a pre-game rally organized by Bush-Cheney '04 and Michigan Students for Bush in an event designed to engage young people in presidential politics.
  

The first is one of those "no duh" things. (On a side note, I think that Sharpton is one of the most important candidates, even though he has little to no chance of the nomination, because he will speak his mind and get the other candidates to think.) The 2nd is just funny. Why in the world would Bush's campaign release info on such a meager showing of support? The idea that prior to a football game between Michigan and Ohio state the Bush-Cheney camp could only find 150 students to stand together and show support is pretty rediculous. Maybe next time they should offer some free food to get a better turn out.

Last night I finished reading Bringing Down the House. Overall, the story was good and the writing was horrible. I kept feeling that I was reading a thinly veiled management book that was used for demonstrating the fundamentals of lean manufacturing or some such thing (The Goal is a glaring example of this genre). The other thing was the author, who has seemed to do a bit of research on MIT made a couple glaring mistakes:

1. Students do not graduate "with honors" in the standard sense from MIT (I mentioned that the author kept saying a student in the book graduated with honors to a fellow MIT alum. Her response: "You can't do that."
   
2. The Harvard Bridge was referred to as the Mass Ave. Bridge (At least he didn't call it the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge)
   
3. The students referred to the Infinate as the Infinate Corridor (Something that was rarely done if a student was beyond his freshman year)
   

As I wrote in my reading journal, I am not surprised any more by the things that MIT students get involved in, so the story was just interesting as entertainment. I wish, though, that the kid who was being profiled had written it. I'm sure he could have done a much better job (since he's a graduate, he must have passed Phase II) then the author

I really love this Slate journal entry by a poet. The 4am musings are great. I know exactly what he means about "stewing in my own juices" instead of "turn[ing] on the lamp and read[ing]." I do the exact same thing when I can't get to sleep or if I am rudely woken up in the middle of the night. I am not sure what I hope to accomplish by yelling over and over again at the noise, person, or myself in my head. Maybe some sort of instant karma?

I also like the description of what a modern poet is:

• "Now, you might expect a poetic epiphany out of me at this point. Or failing that, to get drunk and/or make a fool of myself with an absurdly young woman. Isn't that what poets do? Not at all, at least not these days. Poets teach and drive Corollas with 150,000 miles on them and take their children to Suzuki violin lessons. If one of them succeeds in cornering you at a party, God forbid, he will probably tell you about his health plan and 401k. Even your accountant is more interesting, and presumably less neurotic and self-involved. This is not an entirely new phenomenon. Years and years ago the brilliant and iconoclastic old Bay Area poet and reprobate Kenneth Rexroth noted that "most poets are so square they have to walk around the block to turn over in bed.""
  

The idea that he puts forward, that poets are just like everyone else, is disterbing in some ways--I always like to think of writers, and poets esp. as being somewhat detached from modern life--but reassuring in others--even though I have a 8-5 job, and don't live in the bucolic wonder that I would like to I can still write poetry that means something, or is, at very least, good.

I think I just found the best free on-line dictionary at HyperDictionary.com. I used it twice so far today in solving the NYT crossword puzzles that are posted on Yahoo! In both cases they were words I had never heard of and both had definitions in Webster's 1913 dictionary.

I am curious if the 1913 Webster's dictionary is what HyperDictionary uses as its basis. I was also able to get the "WorldNet Dictionary" to come up on some subsequent searches.

This article on CNN is great. You always hear about how uptight New Englanders are, but I guess we aren't as uptight as those "cool" people on the west cost. Look at this list:

• MOST STRESSFUL CITIES
  
• 1. Tacoma
  
• 2. Miami
  
• 3. New Orleans
  
• 4. Las Vegas
  
• 5. New York
  
• 6. Portland
  
• 7. Mobile, Alabama
  
• 8. Stockton-Lodi, California
  
• 9. Detroit
  
• 10. Dallas
  

Of this list of 10 cities that are said to be the most stressful (based on "commute times, alcohol consumption and self-reported mental health" and "suicide, unemployment, theft and gloomy weather") only one is even on the eastern seaboard, and that is NYC. One! And there are three on the west cost! And six in warm climates! It looks like the secret to avoiding stress isn't calming down, it's living in New England. I knew there was a reason I didn't want to live anywhere else. I'd probably go crazy.

Sometimes I wonder if everyone else here at work has extreme lull points like I tend to every few days or so; times when I have nothing to do and end up reading The Onion, Slate, or, more recently, Pathetic Geek Stories. I hear people around me talking to other people all the time. Maybe that is what they do when they are dying of boredom and have no more e-mails to write or forms to fill out or actual work to do. Ah, well, I will always have others social incopetence (sp?) to comfort the fact that my cube is near no one else's, and that I am glad about that, but I still feel like I am missing out on something...

Well, I am trying this again. I have never been able to regularly keep a blog, but "since all my friends are doin' it" I figured I'd try again.

One thing I have pondered in coming back to the idea, is what place is it going to take in my life. I currently keep a journal every night, and have for about five and a half years. I also keep a reading journal since I have a terrible memory of the books I read and what I think about them. I am not looking to meet anyone on-line, since I already have done so successfully (thank you yahoo personals for costing nothing 3 years ago). So, I guess, your guess is as good as mine. Maybe it will fill some hole I never knew I had. It probably won't though.

Ah, the other thing is, I am not going to tell anyone I know about this, and see if anyone I know happens to run across it. I am curious about just how private you can keep what you post in such a public domane as the web.

Since I've taken about 15 minutes of work-time to do this, I should stop and get back to work.