Misc

Last Saturday I participated in my first triathlon at Santee State Park. It was an "off-road" triathlon which consisted of 3 miles of trail running, 3 miles of lake kayaking, and 7 miles of mountain biking. They had lots of participants for the short and long races, and the weather was excellent. It was good mix of people, so I didn't feel intimidated just by being there. I was there more just to compete with myself anyway.

The race made for a good excuse to exercise during the winter. I did a little more activity right after Christmas, but I didn't really get into it until the last month. Then I spent extra time at the gym and also did some "mini" triathlons here in the neighborhood.

For the race, the running was tough; I should have trained more for that and run more on trails instead of roads and treadmills. I felt great kayaking, and passed several people, but my wide poly kayak was a barge compared to the sea kayaks and racing kayaks that some other folks had. The biking was harder than expected; I was pretty tired by then and you can't coast as much on a trail as you can on the road. But all in all, I was happy just to finish! And to not be last was a bit of a bonus. I came in 19th of 26.

Now you give it a "tri."

I hereby declare my candidacy for President of the United States. So please write my name in when you vote today. Why did I wait until today? My platform is procrastination. You can expect me to drag my feet on such projects as:

• Expanding offshore drilling
• Invading foreign countries with no reason, or made-up reasons
• Renewing spying on American citizens

In the immortal words of Mark Twain, "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."

And whatever you do, please don't vote for this guy!

Katie Reider, 1978 - 2008

Katie is part of my family, and it hurts so much that her fight had to end this way.

Keep her singing in your heart.

Peace.

Links: Details, More of the Story, Beautiful Photos of Katie

Please tell me why the credit/debit card producers cannot put a bit on their cards to let systems automatically determine if the card is a debit or credit card? What a waste of my time and the employee's time to ask me this question over and over again.

My 2003 Saturn Vue is for sale. Buy it!

Update 2008-01-26: Sold!

Apparently South Carolina is letting people vote online for the design of the new license plate. I think that's a neat idea, but I'm sort of disappointed with the three designs. Two of the designs feature a centered palmetto tree, just like the current one, but I like the current one better than either of those. The other design is the state flag tucked into the corner of the plate. It looks decent but I can see that one getting covered up by plate frames. My vote goes to the palmetto tree at sunrise/sunset, but I'd be happy to keep my current palmetto tree plate.

Update 2007-08-28: Looks like they picked the plate that I voted for (PDF warning). I still like the current plate better, and I don't care for the cheesy .com advertisement on the new plate. Plus, the new plate will aggravate SC Gamecock fans as it leans toward Clemson colors!

Today I was trying to figure out the chords in a song (Katie Reider's awesome "Slowing Down for the Silence"). I figured out a couple chords, but was having trouble guessing some of the others. So I whipped up this little web application. You tell it a chord in your song and it will tell you all the major keys where you can find that chord. Using that knowledge, you can try the other chords in the key and see if they fit the song you're playing. I'm pretty sure Katie's song is in D major.

Enjoy!

I wrote a song!

My oldest son loves to sing this song. It's dedicated to all the Carolina chickadees outside our windows. Here it is, complete with guitar chords:


It's not much, but maybe it'll lead to greater things!

Here's a goofy game you can play with Wikipedia. Try to get to the topic you want by starting from the Main Page. It only really works if you know a good bit about your subject, unless you're lucky enough for your topic to be directly linked from the Main Page!

For example, yesterday I thought I'd look at the page for Counting Crows, to see if they had a new album yet. I started at the Main Page. They don't keep a history of this page for some reason, but on March 17, there was a mention about the element Californium. I seemed to recall that element had something to do with the University of California at Berkeley. So I clicked into the element and sure enough, Berkeley is mentioned. I was pretty sure that was the school for the Cal. Bears football team, and I also recall seeing the Counting Crows lead singer Adam Duritz present at some of those games on TV. So I followed the link to Berkeley, and from there I tried the alumni list. Duritz is listed there as attending, but not graduating. That page also contains the direct link to Counting Crows, my goal. So I found the Counting Crows in four links from the Main Page.

Today I wanted to see the article on the Cincinnati Reds. The Main Page had Cosmonaut, which shares a page with Astronaut. From there, the List of Astronauts, then Neil Armstrong, then Univeristy of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, and finally the Reds.

Wikipedia is so linked up you could probably find any topic from the Main Page eventually. Extra points if you can do it without using "What Links Here" in the toolbox.

I recently added a Swedish translation to my FishTank calculator. I don't speak Swedish, but this summer I became interested in the Swedish band Kent from hearing them on Pandora. Check it out, it's good stuff. Through their music I've absorbed a tiny bit of the language. I found a referrer to this post on a Swedish aquarium forum and I decided to give a translation a try. There are lots of language tools on the web, and I made much use of this English-Swedish dictionary, some of the Swedish Wikipedia, and a little of online translators.

I'm sure there are errors in my translation, so feel free to correct me if you find one! I enjoy learning about other languages, so if you'd like to see FishTank in another language, let me know.