Implemented some Quickies for the blog. I’ll make it pretty later.

Picked up ??Echoes?? last night after hearing some tracks on XM and iTMS. The tracks range across a variety of genres, blending some dance/techno beats, funk, and 60’s-style Brit-rock (the Kinks come to mind.) I recommend it. Some very catchy tunes.

Good stuff!Highly entertaining. I hope to see these Shaolin guys at the next Olympics.

It’s like Jackie Chan meets The Matrix, with maybe some Jurassic Park thrown in for fun. Even a short dance routine–this movie has it all! The DVD comes with two version, the American and original Chinese. Not sure what the diff is; I checked out the American version first.

Oh, I’m also testing out the Amazon Wordpress plug-in.

Just a quick post: For 8/9/04 I did more walking/running. The bursts of running are getting longer so my shin muscles must be getting stronger! Is the shin muscle called the splint? Where does that term come from? Hmmm, no, that’s term for the injury. But I’m not sure if that’s really the problem I’m having. Shin splints are apparently due to overuse, strain and stress on the muscle/bone. I think I just have a sore muscle.

No I’m not dead and I haven’t given up! Still not back up to speed yet.

I went out in the evenings last week and did some walking/running. Mostly walking. I run for a little bit until by shin splints bother me too much then I stop and walk again. Apparently this is just something I have to build up to. Who knew this tiny little shin muscle would be so important? You can barely spot it amonst the bone!

Yesterday I weighed in at 278 at the gym. Guess it shows at least a minimal effort will at least maintain wait.

Well, if you visted the site late last night or today you might have seen my long “Catch-up” post. Unfortantely I was an idiot and deleted the entire thing my accident sometime today. If you somehow have it cached or in your RSS aggregator you will be my friend for life! (you could email it to “lfaren at gmail dot com”).

I don’t think Google cached it. I’m off to look other places. Doesn’t look like it’s in my Safari or Firefox cache files, either. Dammit!

Had a setback this past week, I’ve been slacking. Worked on a Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003 migration over the weekend and it’s been killing all my free time. I know that’s no excuse. Anyway, here’s an update:

Saturday I played rball with Mark. Then I went into work for Exchange hell that last about 4 days.

Sunday. Monday, Tuesday I didn’t no any real exercise. Argh. So I have a feeling I won’t experience much progress this week when I weigh-in.

Yesterday I played rball again with Mark and it was a really good game. We tied, 1-1, and didn’t have time to play a 3rd game. Some awesome volleys, got a really good workout. I also went out for a walk a little bit of jogging after I got home last night. So yesterday was a good day.

Hola, boys and girls, it is I.

Wednesday I went to the gym after work and did 15 minutes of intervals on the exercise bike followed by some deadlifts, dips and pullups in the weight room. Mark was also there and he showed by some wacky alternative exercises like the Crouching Tiger Hidden Military Press (this is my name for it) and new exercise to work the obliques.

Thursday I headed over to the gym over lunch and did another 15 minutes of intervals on the bike. I also went out for a 2 mile walk after work and used the ab-wheel afterwards.

Today I went over for my weekly weigh-in: 279. Only 2 pounds since last week but still a downward trend so I remain happy. I still feel like I’m just getting in the groove and have a lot more notches to kick it up. I also did 20 minutes on the elliptical machine upstairs.

After a crappy beginning of the week the weather finally seems to be shaping up here in Amish country. I’ll try to spend as much time outdoors as I can this weekend in between an Exchange 2003 migration. Yay.

Let’s hope so! This particular fad drives me crazy. The theory that the unchecked eating of foods that are bad for you can actually be good for you never made much sense to me (just me? sounds like common sense in my book). I think it appeals to the typical American “easy way out” mentality–path of least resistance.

Anyway, this MeFi thread includes a plethora of links showing that the hammer is falling on Atkins and people are starting to realize it. Could this be the end of Low cArby’s and low-carb (but no no-carb!) Coke?

Yes, please.

The biggest problem I have with my user base at work is the payload of spyware that gets installed on a (probably) daily basis. Some of this is caused by users gleefully clicking on any window that says “Click Here!”, just oh so happy to oblige. And of course there is the plethora of Internet Explorer security holes that appear at least once a week, just to keep me on my hotfix installing toes.

So today we have some new “extremely critical” vulnerabilities to IE that were just announced. Fantastic! Trustworthy Computing indeed. It’s gotten to the point where IE is the single largest malware vector into my company. The big target used to be Outlook and email worms/viruses. But between filtering out executables and virii at the gateway level, plus Outlook’s security patches those are mainly a non-issue. In fact I can’t even think of a large virus outbreak we’ve had since ILOVEYOU.

So I’ve reached the point where it’s just not worth the hassle and doesn’t make business sense to run IE. Between my time to fix spyware problems and users’ lost productivity while I perform said fixes, it ends up costing the company quite a bit of money. I’m sure someone out that has computed the tim and money lost, on average, to spyware infestations.

This means it’s time to install Firefox on the desktop. I’ve been using it on my own desktop for a while now and .9 version is really solid. I’ll need to keep IE around to run our local Siebel application but I’m sure I can figure out a way to restrict IE to intranet use only. I’ve just got to label the Firefox shortcut “The Internet” and the users will never be the wiser.

Now I just need to find out the easiest way to roll it out to a bunch of desktops without having to walk around to each person. yay.