Ran today and Monday, both days at just after 7 AM and it was about 30°. I never used to run in the cold but I got some new thermal gear and that’s working out pretty well. Still cold but bearable. Very much enjoy running outside again. The treadmill was getting very tedious even though I was just walking for 20 minutes.
I’ve been using RunKeeper but I also have Runtastic Pro. I haven’t tried runtastic yet but I like run keeper a lot.
I was all set to go buy one when work decided they’d supply it. Yay for not spending money but boo for not having the one I want and for it not being mine.
It’s a great gadget though. I love the location based reminders.
via Whatever – RIP, Harry Harrison.
Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat and Deathworld series were two huge favorites of my growing up. I loved that while Slippery Jim DiGriz and Jason dinAlt were often outclassed in muscle or firepower they were never outclassed in brains. They were clever and looked for outside-the-box solutions (though that wasn’t a term I knew back then). I will forever be grateful to Harry for teaching a young punk that you didn’t have to be the biggest or toughest to get ahead, brains count too.
The IGM Forum has some really interesting stuff. Below each poll you can look through the responses from each economist and see where they included links, etc.
The U.S. Economic Policy Debate Is a Sham – Bloomberg.
Watching Democrats and Republicans hash out their differences in the public arena, it’s easy to get the impression that there’s a deep disagreement among reasonable people about how to manage the U.S. economy.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
In reality, there’s remarkable consensus among mainstream economists, including those from the left and right, on most major macroeconomic issues. The debate in Washington about economic policy is phony. It’s manufactured. And it’s entirely political.
Why I Don’t Just Admit I Am A Democrat
I think my political views are pretty similar to Scalzi’s. I frakking hate the current Republican party as they seem completely willing to drive the country off the cliff if they don’t get their way.
If they’d return to sanity I might be willing to vote for some of them as I’m not a big fan of the Democrats.
Educational Technology Guy: 10 Tech Skills Every Student Should Have.
Here’s the list, plus an 11th, he has more info AND he includes links to resources. These are also necessary skills for the workplace.
1. Internet Search
2. Office Suite Skills
3. Self learning of tech and where to go for help
4. Typing – yes, typing.
5. Social Media
6. Netiquette – Internet/Email/Social Media etiquette
7. Security and Safety
8. Hardware basics and troubleshooting
9. Backup data
10. Finding apps and software
11. Copyright and Citing Sources
Schneier on Security – Petition the U.S. Government to Force the TSA to Follow the Law.
Please proceed to petitions.whitehouse.gov and sign the petition to require that the TSA follow the law.
Pretty please.
2012-07-08: Start date is probably late as I was very turned off by the use of liberal buzzwords in the intro and set it aside for a bit. I think i”m on chapter two and I like the book. Despite the buzzwords that annoyed me the book seems pretty neutral though the authors aren’t hiding their leanings.
I do think the title question is extremely relevant today. The conservative answer seems to be “making the rich, richer” and that’s not acceptable. The liberal answer is probably “helping the poor” and that’s fine as long as the poor are also willing to help themselves. My answer would be something like “providing a good living for as many people as possible” with a strong emphasis on “good” where good is a quality of life assessment, not an income number.
2012-07-08: I’m about half way through this, it’ very good but I’m not sure where it’s going. It’s vignettes of different characters, some of whom need to be fed slowly into a wood chipper, and it skips forward rather than being a constant narrative. In similar to World War Z but much more up-close-and-personal rather than the documentary feel of WWZ.
The quote below is Robert Kennedy in 1968 but I was only two then and just read it for the first time today in the book What’s the Economy For, Anyway?
Too much and for too long, we seem to have surrendered personal excellence and community value in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over eight hundred billion dollars a year, but that GNP — if we judge the United States of America by that — that GNP counts air pollution and cigarette advertising and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and it counts nuclear warheads, and armored cars for the police to fight riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
This looks handy: Atlanta Downtown Events Calendar.
And it led me to look for something north of Atlanta with limited luck…
North Georgia Events
North Atlanta Trade Center
Later I was listening to the Sleepy Man Banjo Boys album I bought yesterday and that led me to search for JD Crowe and learned that he’s retiring this year so I checked his tour schedule and he’ll be in Bremen, GA in a few weeks. That caused me to go search for other bluegrass festivals in GA.
Just found the search window still open and noticed this one.
Decatur Barbeque, Blues, & Bluegrass Festival
and then these…
Hey, look! This one is about books!
Decatur Book Festival (The web site sucks though. Who has a monitor that wide?)
