Running Journal, Wednesday, 2007-02-28

Running Journal, Wednesday, 2007-02-28
Resting heart rate: n/a (forgot)
Body Mass Index (BMI): (kilograms/(meters^2))
Weather: n/a
Temp: n/a
Time: 21:00-21:55
Terrain: flat
Comments: Watched the Sharks play the Predators this evening. Relaxed in the hot tub. Ugh. x_x
Exercise Time: 55 minutes
Goal Time: n/a
Distance (running): 7.38 km (4.58 mi)
Total Running Distance For Year: 241.73 km (150.01 mi)
Weight (after exercise):
Any irregular feelings, aches, pains, heart rate, and so forth?: head cold, sore throat
Foods eaten today:

Fortune

When I logged into my QEMU virtual GNU/Linux machine today my fortune read, You have taken yourself too seriously. I was wearing Groucho Glasses at the time I read it! Confused.

Shaving

Still shaving using the wet shaving method. Currently using:

• Merkur "Hefty Classic" Safety Razor
• Vulfix #2234 Super Badger Shaving Brush
• Ceramic Shaving Mug
  
• William's Mug Shaving Soap (~$2) Gave up on the Trumpers shaving cream since it costs $30.
• Walgreens Platinum Chrome Stainless Steel Blades (~$5 for 10 blades)
  
• Black Suede aftershave cream, an unexpected present from my grandmother two years ago that I'm trying. Gave up on the Trumpers skin food since it costs $24.
  

Have noticed room for improvement over the past year or so. The data available overwhelms me, so I think I'll note some things here and try them out over time:

• Variant of the four-pass shave
• Five blade sample pack: Merkur -> Israeli -> Derby -> Gillette -> Feather
• Post for beginner wet shavers
• Add some glycerin to the mix
• Pre-shave balm
  

Typical prep is showering, soaking the brush in warm water, lathering up, one pass north-south shave, second pass south-west to north-east or south-north. Learned that's apparently the cause of my discomfort and I've been probably putting too much pressure on the blade. Will try the four-pass shave tomorrow.

Blog Birthday

Came and went. Happy one-year birthday on Feb. 4.

Generations

Confusing:

• Consciousness Revolution
• Generation X
  
• MTV Generation
• Boomerang Generation
• Baby Busters
  

Who comes up with these labels?

Running Journal, Monday, 2007-02-26

Running Journal, Monday, 2007-02-26
Resting heart rate: n/a (forgot)
Body Mass Index (BMI): (kilograms/(meters^2)) 22.732
Weather: n/a
Temp: n/a
Time: 20:45-21:40
Terrain: flat
Comments: Dawn observes the only thing running these past few days has been my nose. ;) Today I woke up after a day or two of shedding water and realized my weight was down to 77.0 kg (169.79 lbs). I haven't weight that since high school, I'd imagine. So there's some concern right now that I watch my weight and ensure it doesn't drop too low. Tonight though I go to a BMI calculator that says a BMI of 18.5 and below indicates one is underweight. To get to 18.5, I'd have to lose 30 lbs. x_x I can't even imagine myself at 142 lbs. So that removed some worry from my mind. Tonight I came to the conclusion that running at the gym doesn't compare to the outdoors. I haven't done my 23 mile run yet that I missed on Sunday due to illness. Right now I'm thinking of lining it up for Wednesday and taking Tuesday off. Happily I think I'm on the tail-end of this cold. I'm going to conservatively say I'll be healthy again by Friday, hopefully 100% by Wednesday but these things tend to have a long-tail sometimes.
Exercise Time: 55 minutes
Goal Time: n/a
Distance (running): 7.38 km (4.58 mi)
Total Running Distance For Year: 234.35 km (145.43 mi)
Weight (after exercise): 77.8 kg (171.55 lbs), 17% body fat
Any irregular feelings, aches, pains, heart rate, and so forth?: head cold, sore throat
Foods eaten today: cereal and soy milk, grilled cheese, tomato soup, tater tots, potato gnocchi with mushroom marinara sauce

Like, T-Totally

Mr. Stallman jestingly called himself a teetotaler on Friday evening when he requested a mug and boiling water for the tea he brought. Writing up a blog post this evening from my notes, Dawn and I looked up the word on dictionary.com.

Apparently, some evidence exists that Kentuckians used the phrase T-totally:

...(T-totally "totally," not in an abstinence sense, is recorded in Kentucky dialect from 1832 and is possibly older in Irish-Eng.).

For example, "The perfume from those fleurs t-totally fills the house." (fleurs == flowers)

Others:

1832 “[Kentucky backwoodsman says] These Mingoes . . . ought to be essentially, and particularly, and TEE-TOTALLY obflisticated off of the face of the whole yearth.”—‘Legends of West Philidelphia by Judge Jas. Hall, page 38

1836 “I hope I may be TEE-TOTALLY ruinated, if I'd take eight hundred dollars for him.”—‘The Clockmaker’ (1837) by Haliburton, xix., page 195

1840 “A man in Bedlam is a very useless member of society, and a TEE-TOTAL non-productive.”— Olla Podrida (Diary on the Continent) by Marryat

The Mingos in question, of course, being the tribe forcefully relocated first to Ohio, then to Oklahoma. :P

Apparently it's still in use, though slightly archaic:

Nalo, "teetotally" is used here in Kentucky (a bit east of AY-thens and Ver-SALES), as in "I teetotally don't care at all to do that," meaning "I am totally willing to do that." It's not used often; it's used a little self-consciously as slightly archaic; but it still exists, while in the rest of the world "teetotaller" is the only surviving instance.

Google Stickies at UC-Berkeley

I discovered two of these stickies (click for high-res version) on the doors to the men's bathroom at UC-Berkeley's Soda Hall Friday evening and another two over the sinks inside. How strange. I collected the two over the sinks to see if I might figure out the story behind them.

Text #1:

1 916 599 5330
*heart* Steph

Response (automated): Unfortunately, the system cannot process your entries. Please try again later. Goodbye.

Text #2:

CALL me sexy
*heart* Katie
818 497 1372

Response (automated): Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice-mail system as 818-497-1372 is not available. Please leave a message after the beep....

The header reads Google and the footer reads www.google.com/jobs/students.html. I thought it might represent a guerrilla recruiting technique. Dawn thinks it might be girls with job fair stickies having fun. The 818 area code represents San Fernando Valley, California - West from Glendale and the 916 area code represents Sacramento. I think the bogus numbers rules out recruiters. Note: If you look closely at the second one you can faintly see the text Gelateria Naia and NYC Marathon I wrote on the back (it's not part of the original sticky).

Richard Stallman UC-Berkeley EECS Talk: "The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System"

Dawn and I visited UC-Berkeley again on Friday, February 23 to attend this second talk by Richard Stallman.

Abstract (from Internet):

Richard Stallman will speak about the goals and philosophy of the Free Software Movement, and the status and history the GNU operating system, which in combination with the kernel Linux is now used by tens of millions of users world-wide.

Rough outline of the talk (my notes, transcribing his thoughts, without comment):

• Four Freedoms
• Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
• Freedom 1: The freedom to study and modify the program.
• Freedom 2: The freedom to copy the program so you can help your neighbor.
• Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
• Use free software all of the time, not just part of the time
• Result of four freedoms is democracy
  
• Proprietary, Custom, and Free software
• Proprietary software is choosing your master; free software means no master
• Custom software not distributed; custom for a particular purpose
• Proprietary software shouldn't be developed at all. It's an attack on society and betrays community
• History of Free Software Movement
• Reached ideas in 1983, at which time he had some fame as the creator of Emacs, but relatively unknown outside that community
  
• Describes himself as selected by circumstance, and he thought he had a moral obligation to do something where others were not in his position
• Product of hacker culture
• Hackers: defined as using intelligence in a playful spirit
• History of GNU
• Started in 1983, based off of UNIX, though he had no practical experience with it at the time
• No enemies at first. People laughed him off and then forgot about it since the project to replace UNIX seemed so big.
• Naming of GNU
• Hacker culture of 1970's frequently used humorous recursive acronyms to give credit to original program when porting it. For example, ZWEI stands for "ZWIE Was EINE Initially."
• Mr. Stallman decided he wanted to honor UNIX with the name, and came up with the "Not UNIX" (NU) part of the acronym first.
• He then began plugging in letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, G. He enjoyed the word GNU on several levels. First, because he found it humorous (because the 'g' is normally silent); second, because it represented a pun on the word "new."
  
• Completion of GNU took ten years. Had finished everything but the kernel when Linus Torvalds adopted the GPL in 1992. GNU began development on a kernel in 1990 but Mr. Stallman says there's nothing to recommend it.
• Today GNU/Linux has well-funded enemies
  
• Copyleft
• GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux
• Open Source
• Dislikes the term Open Source because it focuses on practical values rather than ethical values.
• Defines those who label themselves apolitical as adopting a philosophy for shallow and practical reasons, while missing the most important bits. He names Linus as one person adopting this label.
• "Value Added Programs" -- recommends calling them "Freedom Subtracted Packages" instead
• Patent Law -- apparently one study found 283 US patents in GNU/Linux
• Employment
• Mr. Stallman claims that of all the jobs in IT, 10% of development is on proprietary code with the majority of the rest on custom code.
• Dismisses idea that rejection of proprietary code will impact the IT development market
• Schools
• Not only a place for learning, but a place for moral education
• Advocates teaching children four freedoms by using free software instead of teaching children proprietary software
• Saint IGNUcious
  
• Dons robes and pulls out old disc platter as halo and recites Church of Emacs bit.
• Questions and answers last about 50 minutes. Talk ended at 19:35 (140 min)
  

One-liners:

• "You can only distribute the video in OGG-Theora format...." -- Mr. Stallman before the talk to a student organizing the event. The EECS department seems to distribute by default in WMV format
  
• "You can't distribute those here." -- in reaction to seeing a student with a stack of distros for distribution at the event which did not meet the FSF's definition of free software
  
• "I'm a teetotaler" -- in response to pre-talk request for mug and boiling water for tea he brought with him
• "Te quiero siempre" -- Mr. Stallman says this to waitresses in Spanish-speaking countries (apparently means both "I want tea, please" and "I want you, please.")
• "When the US has a problem it doesn't try to solve it; it imposes the problem on the rest of the world" -- in regards to DMCA.
• "Using the word pirate doesn't make any sense because it equates helping neighbors with attacking ships": In reference to the use of the label pirate to describe people who share software in violation of the licensing agreement.
• "The US government is a violent terrorist organization."
• "We can't make ourselves perfect but we can respect freedom" -- talking about freedom and four freedoms
  
• "It's not like it's Bush who's drowning" -- As part of explaining his realization of the moral circumstance available to him in 1983, he said that it was like seeing someone drowning and you have to help them. He then followed this with "It's not like it's Bush who's drowning." He then mentions he can't swim anyway.
• "I decided I had to do GNU because of moral circumstance, or die trying...of old age, most likely" -- regarding his decision in 1983 to begin the GNU project
• "You have to start when you don't know whether you can win. Otherwise you miss opportunities. You can't start when the end is in sight." -- on starting GNU in 1983 and the enormous amount of code to be written
  
• "Proprietary software means you choose your master. Freedom means you have no master."
• "Escape from proprietary developers; escape to the real world; escape to the free world and live in freedom"
• "Freedom can easily get lost. That's the reason for the GPL"
• "School should be a place where students are expected to share software. Little Jimmy, if you bring software to school you have to bring enough for everyone."
• (As Saint IGNUcius doing his Church of Emacs bit) "vi vi vi, while being the sign of the beast, is not evil. It can, however, be considered a penance."
  

Recommendations:

• Web sites:
  
• badvista.org
  
• defectivebydesign.org
• bluraysucks.com
• audio-video.gnu.org
• Free software distros:
  
• Ututo
• Blag
• gNewSense

If anyone wants to watch the video of the talk, I believe the UC-Berkeley EECS department plans to post it to the EECS department homepage sometime within seven days:

• Link: http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/ (under section EECS Colloquium)
• For an example video, see the Feb 16 talk by Yoram Bresler
  

Running Journal, Friday, 2007-02-23

Running Journal, Friday, 2007-02-23
Resting heart rate: 59 bpm (mid-day, 60-second test)
Body Mass Index (BMI): (kilograms/(meters^2))
Weather: n/a
Temp: n/a
Time:
Terrain: flat
Comments: Was going to run but coming down with a head cold again so I chose to rest this evening. Ugh. I'm getting all the illnesses now that I'm in the student population again.
Exercise Time:
Goal Time: n/a
Distance (running):
Total Running Distance For Year:
Weight (after exercise):
Any irregular feelings, aches, pains, heart rate, and so forth?:
Foods eaten today: cereal and soy milk, orange juice, banana, Vicini's Pizza, cinnamon bread, Velveeta cheese, fig bars, bagel

Running Journal, Thursday, 2007-02-22

Running Journal, Thursday, 2007-02-22
Resting heart rate: n/a (forgot)
Body Mass Index (BMI): (kilograms/(meters^2)) 23.083
Weather: n/a
Temp: n/a
Time: 22:40-23:10
Terrain: flat
Comments: Late night tonight due to classes. Late night became light night as we both felt tired after a long day at school and grocery shopping, so we went for 30 minutes on the cycles. I watched the Citrus Heights City Council meeting and got a look at our fearless municipal leaders for the first time. Before that I watched part of the Nevada State of the State address by Republican Governor Jim Gibbons, until the closed captioning inexplicably stopped. We wanted to use the hot tub but a sign on the door to the pool area said the pool closes at 10:00PM Mon-Thurs. This left us confused because we've often gone to the hot tub late in the evening. Perhaps they've decided to begin enforcing it. We were under the assumption the hot tub closed 30 minutes before the gym closed. Perhaps we've been wrong this entire time? A review of our times at the gym the past two weeks shows times past ten. ;) We decided to try the sauna for the first time. It felt awkward because we were talking quietly in a close space with two other male strangers. We stayed for ten minutes and left.
Exercise Time: 30 minutes
Goal Time: n/a
Distance (cycling): n/a (forgot to record)
Total Running Distance For Year: 226.97 km (140.85 mi)
Weight (after exercise): 79.0 kg (174.195 lbs), 16% body fat
Any irregular feelings, aches, pains, heart rate, and so forth?: Kneecaps felt loose (for lack of a better word) at beginning of exercise as I pedaled, but this went away within one minute.
Foods eaten today: cereal and soy milk, crumpets with jam, orange juice, home-made stuffing, apple, mushroom turnovers, cheese pizza, chocolate truffles, Powerbar

Richard Stallman UC-Berkeley EECS Talk: "Copyright vs. Community in the Age of Computer Networks"

Arrival commentary (skip if only interested in talk below):

Leaving our car at a public parking structure on Center Street, we walked east to Shattuck and waited about one block north for the UC-Berkley Perimeter Bear Shuttle ('P' Bus). The bus arrived at 3:50PM, two minutes behind schedule. We discovered at this point that the shuttle costs $1/person without proper identification (we had exactly enough for the trip up, happily). It carried us up the hill to the Cory Hall stop, with Soda Hall facing us across the street.

Soda Hall's Coca-Cola bottle-colored tile base and multi-hued green tile upper reminds one immediately of the effervescent nature of it's namesake (/poetic ;). As we left the bus stop, we noticed a student walking in front of us with a backpack sporting a small circle-slash-RIAA button. "Let's follow him," I remarked to Dawn, "He'll take us right to where we want to go." And he did. We walked down the hill along Hearst for about 50 feet and then into a courtyard between Soda Hall and another hall to the east. We entered the building through the side entrance and a greeter motioned us inside a 75-seat auditorium. Since we arrived right at 4:00PM, the scheduled start time, we got seats four rows back, but dead center.

As we waited, we overheard a conversation between the man to my right and his female friend behind me. She mentioned that Mr. Stallman's visit to the campus in 2006 represented his first visit in 25 years. Apparently (her assertion) he visited in 1981 and found the campus too "crazy."

The talk started at 4:15PM, by which time the room had filled completely with mostly male students, some sitting in the two aisles. Mr. Stallman wore an orange knit shirt with khakis, and a two-inch silver button with the words "Impeach God" on the front. His full-frontal beard extended down to the base of his neck, and his hair reached past his shoulders.

Abstract (from internet):

Copyright developed in the age of the printing press, and was designed to fit with the system of centralized copying imposed by theprinting press. But the copyright system does not fit well with computer networks, and only draconian punishments can enforce it.

The global corporations that profit from copyright are lobbying for draconian punishments, and to increase their copyright powers, while suppressing public access to technology. But if we seriously hope to serve the only legitimate purpose of copyright--to promote progress, for the benefit of the public--then we must make changes in the other direction.

Rough outline of the talk (my notes, transcribing his thoughts, without comment):

• Brief history of copyright law: from earliest copies thousands of years ago, through the middle ages, to the founding of the US, to the present day
• Purpose of copyright law: two main points -- 1) to advance the public good, and 2) it has to end
• History of contemporary restrictions to copyright and freedoms to copy: copyright no longer painless, easy to enforce, or beneficial.
• Power over public wielded in name of authors, and power over authors wielded in name of public
• Copyright causes problems for digital media and digital media causes problems for copyright
• Dig on Sonny Bono and Church of Scientology's efforts to enforce copyright to prevent dissemination of church teachings
• Overview of current DRM
• DMCA: open conspiracy among companies
• AACS: don't buy Blue-Ray/HD-DVD products until DRM removed
• E-books: companies have two-pronged approach to removing freedoms regarding reading material:
• Take away rights to copy via DMCA
• Migrate everyone to e-books
• E-paper
• Solutions
• Shorten copyright to ten years starting from the date of publication
• Most titles out-of-print within three years
• Publisher (in one case) would not admit book out-of-print because they'd have to turn over right-to-publish rights to the author
• Reform breadth of activities covered to expand freedoms: three main categories
• Pratical use (to do a job): recipes, software
• Certain parties views or thoughts: biographies
• Art and entertainment (things that impact how we look at or how we use): maintain diversity
• Establish compromise copyright system
• Taxes
• Involuntary: taxes on connect time to the internet, blank discs
• Voluntary: A button to send $1 to artist to support their works

One Liners:

• "GNU software forms the core of this thing people often call Linux."
• "How does extending copyright 20 years convince 1920's authors to make more?" -- in reference to Disney's successful 1998 extension of (then) 70-year copyright law to protect the characters portrayed in the 1928 cartoon "Steamboat Willie" from entering the public domain.
• "Like tomorrow, that never comes." In reference to Disney bit above.
• "Absurd length" -- in regards to how long copyright currently lasts
• "Time ain't money, when all you got is time" (Iowa-native Greg Brown's "Just a Bum," from his 1985 album "In the Dark With You" on the Red House label). I don't remember the context.
• "Corrupt discs" (instead of compact discs) because they don't follow standards
• "Of the people, by the flunkies, for the corporations." In reference to DRM/DMCA/AACS
• Hollywood movie studios produces "utter crap." Read "Save the Cat" by Blake Snyder to understand the process (ISBN-10: 1932907009; ISBN-13: 978-1932907001)
• "To attack sharing is to attack society"
• "I'm not for open source. The term open source is used to hush up the ethical ideals of the free software movement."

Mannerisms during pauses in talk:

• rubs nose
• drinks from water bottles
• clasps hands, look at knuckles
• Never says "uh" or "um"

Mr. Stallman handed out one-inch square GNU+Linux stickers and oval-FSF stickers after the event, and offered to sell lapel pins, a GNU hat, and key chains outside on the street afterward (since he couldn't do it in the auditorium per UC-Berkeley rules). I walked up afterward and asked him about his button, and he replied, "I started wearing it when they impeached Nixon. I figured, why stop at him, let's go all the way to the top!"

If anyone wants to watch the video of the talk, apparently the UC-Berkeley EECS department plans to post it to the EECS department homepage sometime within seven days:

• Link: http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/ (under section EECS Colloquium)
• For an example video, see the Feb 16 talk by Yoram Bresler (WMV format x_x).

Running Journal, Wednesday, 2007-02-21

Running Journal, Wednesday, 2007-02-21
Resting heart rate: 68 bpm (early afternoon)
Body Mass Index (BMI): (kilograms/(meters^2)) 23.083
Weather: n/a
Temp: n/a
Time: 21:15-21:55
Terrain: flat
Comments: Dawn and I drove back from the Bay Area this evening straight to the gym. I ran 40 minutes and watched a momma hippo and her baby on Animal Planet, then switched and caught a black and white movie (I searched but couldn't find the movie's name) where a woman's courted by eight suitors, and somehow she has to escape the police and meet her love. I switched finally to Law & Order: SVU (Protection, season three, episode 55). I immersed myself in the hot tub up to my neck this evening and it felt great. Three early-twenties males came into the hot tub and spread out all over and started telling jokes back and forth. I think it was their first time in the hot tub because they walked up in sneakers and hats and hoodies and made a big deal about how hot the water felt. I enjoyed their humor for the first five minutes. After about ten minutes though, after it seemed their initial excitement wore off, I sensed some tension in their jokes, like they didn't feel comfortable relaxing around one another in a close space. On the way home Dawn and I talked about it (she had noticed it too) and we came to the conclusion that the tension stemmed from insecurity (Dawn says she heard them say something homophobic). I felt irritation after sitting with them for a while because I wanted to have a conversation with Dawn. I realized on the way home that their jokes were really a demand for attention, and I think maybe they felt defensive/awkward when Dawn and I chose to not participate in their discussion. With complete strangers, it all felt weird.
Exercise Time: 40 minutes
Goal Time: n/a
Distance (running): 5.36 km (3.33 mi)
Total Running Distance For Year: 226.97 km (140.85 mi)
Weight (after exercise): 79.0 kg (174.195 lbs), 16% body fat
Any irregular feelings, aches, pains, heart rate, and so forth?: None
Foods eaten today: cereal and soy milk, crumpets with jam, orange juice, chinese fried rice, spring rolls, chow mein, bagel with Velveeta cheese

Eating small meals regularly

Dawn and I decided to try eating small meals regularly throughout the day instead of eating fewer smaller meals.

This is a big change for me. I come from a farming family. My father ate a big breakfast and a big supper, because that's the times he had a chance to eat. My mom often brought him lunch in the field, where they ate together at the tractor.

I'm searching for experiences. So far I found this idea which seems simple enough to make routine:

Maybe scheduling is the issue? Space your “MAJOR” meals apart enough so that your “MINOR” portions get an adequate gap, so you begin craving them. Try this:

(MAJOR) 6am Breakfast
(minor) 9am snack
(MAJOR) 12pm Lunch
(minor) 3pm snack
(MAJOR) 6pm Dinner
(minor) 9pm snack

Basically, every quarter of an analog watch is when you eat. That works out to 3 hour blocks, a natural interval to take a break. This forces me to stay on schedule b/c the last thing I want to do is to conscientiously count the hours.

The 06:00 breakfast might be a bit of a stretch these days.

Links:

Frugal Lunches
http://www.cleverdude.com/articles/finances/frugal-lunch-by-clever-dudette/

Running Journal, Tuesday, 2007-02-20

Running Journal, Tuesday, 2007-02-20
Resting heart rate: n/a (forgot)
Body Mass Index (BMI): (kilograms/(meters^2)) n/a (forgot)
Weather: n/a
Temp: n/a
Time: 21:05-22:00
Terrain: flat
Comments: Dawn and I exercised tonight at California Family Fitness in Orangevale after classes. I watched the second half of the movie Ray, starring Jamie Foxx. I choked up at the end when he broke free of heroin. The last fifteen minutes I felt tired. The first 30 minutes I used up energy with (what seems to be) an inefficient running stride which felt strong (and fun) but wore me out. I didn't know much about Ray Charles regarding his addiction and his decision to not play segregated clubs in Georgia in the 60's. His acceptance of the public apology from the Georgia legislature 20 years later also moved me. I felt tired this evening because I've spent the last two days studying for my first assembly exam at ARC. The juice is flowing with regards to introductory assembly ideas. I can convert at will between hex, binary, and decimal. I can do two's complement, write code, predict setting of flags, and so forth. Fun fun fun. :) I'll forget everything by Thursday class. ;)
Exercise Time: 55 minutes
Goal Time: n/a
Distance (running): 7.38 km (4.58 mi)
Total Running Distance For Year: 221.61 km (137.52 mi)
Weight (after exercise): n/a (forgot)
Any irregular feelings, aches, pains, heart rate, and so forth?: None
Foods eaten today: cereal and soy milk, low-fat mixed berry yogurt, Mr. Pickle's Bugs Bunny sandwich, peanut butter cookie, potato salad, Powerbar, home-made stuffing, jasmine rice with lentil soup, chocolate peanut butter cups

Running Journal, Monday, 2007-02-19

Running Journal, Monday, 2007-02-19
Resting heart rate: 54 bpm (mid-morning)
Body Mass Index (BMI): (kilograms/(meters^2)) 23.258
Weather: n/a
Temp: n/a
Time: 20:13-20:58
Terrain: flat
Comments: Dawn and I exercised on elliptical machines this evening at California Family Fitness in Orangevale. We watched Deal or No Deal (season two, episode 86) the entire time on the closed-captioned televisions across the room. Afterward we sat in the hot tub for fifteen minutes. About half-way through the Monte Hall problem came into my head.
Elliptical Time: 45 minutes
Goal Time: n/a
Distance (elliptical): n/a (forgot)
Total Running Distance For Year: 214.23 km (132.94 mi)
Weight (after exercise): 79.6 kg (175.52 lbs), 17% body fat
Any irregular feelings, aches, pains, heart rate, and so forth?: None
Foods eaten today: cereal and soy milk, non-fat strawberry yogurt, vegetable lasagna, stuffing, orange juice, apple, chocolate peanut butter cups, fig bars, slices of cinnamon bread

GNU Assembler Documentation

Reading GNU assembler documentation this evening, and several bits of humor jumped out at me (emphasis mine):

• result, size and value are absolute expressions. This emits repeat copies of size bytes. Repeat may be zero or more. Size may be zero or more, but if it is more than 8, then it is deemed to have the value 8, compatible with other people's assemblers. The contents of each repeat bytes is taken from an 8-byte number. The highest order 4 bytes are zero. The lowest order 4 bytes are value rendered in the byte-order of an integer on the computer as is assembling for. Each size bytes in a repetition is taken from the lowest order size bytes of this number. Again, this bizarre behavior is compatible with other people's assemblers. Link
  
• Because as tries to assemble programs in one pass, new-lc may not be undefined. If you really detest this restriction we eagerly await a chance to share your improved assembler. Link

Believe me, this is funny stuff, relative to what I'm slogging through. ;)

Stallman to Speak At UC-Davis on Thursday

Ugh. x_x Dawn and I have classes on Thursday. We might see him talk at UC-Berkeley on Wednesday or Friday (traffic, double-ugh).

Radio Song

Heard this one today:

Garrison Keillor and Prudence Johnson's cover of the Rolling Stones' "As Tears Go By," from their 1965 album December's Children (And Everybody's) on the ABKCO label. Link: A Prairie Home Companion at around 39 minutes.

Running Journal, Sunday, 2007-02-18

Running Journal, Sunday, 2007-02-18
Resting heart rate: n/a (forgot)
Body Mass Index (BMI): (kilograms/(meters^2)) 22.907
Weather: n/a
Temp: n/a
Time: 19:30-21:00
Terrain: flat
Comments: Speedwork this evening at California Family Fitness in Orangevale. I ran five miles at 10:10 pace (the pace I'll be running between walk breaks in the marathon itself), then walked for five minutes in-between repeats. The PowerBar seemed to help with energy a lot and I finished feeling strong. I watched the end of the 1995 Gene Hackman vehicle, The Quick and the Dead (directed by Sam Raimi). After that I watched 30 minutes of The Simpsons (season 18, episode 391 (!), Springfield Up). Then I watched the end of Public Trust, Private Interests (Ethics in Government) from the 1988 PBS program Ethics In America (now called the Fred Friendly Seminars, I believe). The guy I react to with irritation when he sings was there on the elliptical machine. Seems really lonely. I give him credit for coming out each night and giving it all he's got, but it's no excuse for interrupting everyone else. :P Yikes, another low weight reading. :P
Running Time: 90 minutes
Goal Time: n/a
Distance (running): 8.05 km (5 mi)
Total Running Distance For Year: 214.23 km (132.94 mi)
Weight (after run): 78.4 kg (172.87 lbs), 16% body fat
Any irregular feelings, aches, pains, heart rate, and so forth?: None
Foods eaten today: cereal and soy milk, pineapple, Trader Joe's Mexican quiche (yum), chocolate peanut butter cups, Daim, cinnamon bread slice, Powerbar, mushroom, spinach, and garlic pizza, tater tots