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I failed miserably at my 4 week plan. Everything started out so well, and then I missed one day, then it was Amy’s birthday (yeah I’ll try to get away with blaming someone else for my mistake), then we moved, then the holiday parties came up and so on and so on.
It did provide extra motivation to make it to the gym, its just that once I failed for the first time, it became a slippery slope downhill.
Bad news sports fans, I missed a day. I had a buddy in town visiting last night and I wanted to hang with him instead of ditching him to hit the gym. There’s still hope though, if I work out on Thursday, instead of taking a day off like originally planned, I can still get in my 5 nights of exercise for the week. The problem is that I have plans that night and may not have time. We’ll see. Either way I’m re-adjusting my schedule to try to make up for it and hopefully it will work out.
I’ve never felt so guilty for missing the gym before….
Nothing gets me in the Christmas mood more than pictures of Santa…unless of course you’re looking at some of those crazy Santa pictures that I brought up last year. If that’s the case then I should re-state my position; nothing scare me more than pictures of Santa.
Enjoy!!
Revisit “Stay Away From Me Santa!“
Today is the first day of the second week of my four week exercise program. If you’re just joining us, I started this experiment of blogging about my exercise routine in an effort to use “public shame” 
as motivation to keep me on course towards getting more exercise during the holiday season. Every day I post whether or not I made reached my goal for that day of hitting the gym. If I don’t make it? Well I get to put a nice big shameful “X” on the chart.
So far things have gone well, I hit all of my goals for last week and I have today off. Below is my planned schedule for this week. As I mentioned earlier, a successful first week, usually gives me an excuse to slack off the next week so this should be interesting to see how I respond.
Google Maps for your phone has a new beta feature called My Location that been released that can determine your approximate location, EVEN IF YOU DON’T HAVE A GPS PHONE! Without getting technical, it can triangulate your position using the different cell phone towers to get an idea where you are. A lot of you may have heard about this with some of the 911 technology for cell phones. And if you have a GPS phone? Even better, it can determine your exact location.
So no more endless typing into your cell phone where you are and what you are looking for. Just hit “0″ on your keypad and let the application do the work for you. Since it’s in beta, not all phones are supported.
The Google Help Page offers the following phones as currently supported, I have an SE phone but, alas, I’m not lucky enough to try it out yet.
Anyone have a chance to test it out? Please let me know what you think.
Just came back from the gym today so week one is officially in the books. Look for week two’s plan tomorrow (I’m calling Sunday a rest day anyway).
Well, I may not be keeping up with the daily posts but I am happy to report that the streak continues. After taking Wednesday off I made it to the gym on Thursday and did my cardio on Friday. It was a switch from the original plan but I figured that putting the cardio in between two gym days might be a good strategy.
As long as I make the gym again today, I will have completed my entire goal for week one. Not as bad as I thought in terms of sticking to it but I’ve found in the past that it’s the next week coming up that usually makes it difficult. After a successful week of exercising, it can be easy to use that as an excuse to take it easy during the second week. We’ll see though.
Day two in my four week series about sticking to an exercise program. I’m actually surprised at the motivation I’ve already seen from blogging about this. I don’t expect a lot of people to follow these posts but just the fact that I’ve made an announcement to do this gives me a certain level of motivation. Knowing that if I don’t go to the gym, I have to publicly post that I failed for that day is enough to cause me to go.
Day one and day two…check it off the list.
So tomorrow I get a day off. I think I’ll catch up on Heroes.
I once heard that if you try to quit smoking, you should tell anyone and everyone who will listen. The reason being that it’s harder to have a set back if there are others watching you. Plus the constant, “How’s the quitting smoking thing going?” keeps you on your toes. Well, since it’s the holiday season and since I tend to eat like there’s no tomorrow during the holiday season, I’m enlisting my online audience to keep me motivated. I’m not quitting smoking this time (already quit) but I am trying to get more exercise and stick to it. So for the next four weeks I will be posting daily updates to whether or not I’m reaching my weekly goals in the form of this chart:
As you can see, the first week has already started and since I was a slacker on Sunday, I’m making my first day at the gym tonight. Hopefully by tomorrow you will see a nice big, blue check mark next to “Monday.” If not, well feel free to ask, “How’s the whole exercise thing going?” in my comments sections.
Heading to the airport on the holidays usually brings thoughts of screaming babies, long delays and pictures of stranded passengers forced to endure a sleepless night on the floor or an empty terminal. Here’s one tip to help those traveling during the holiday months which is to check out FlightStats.com.
It’s a website that you can check flight information around delays, and even better, how long that security line is going to take to get through so you can plan to leave the house a little earlier if you need to. Plus you can set up alerts to be sent to your phone or email address if anything changes. It even tells you what gate your next flight is if you have a connection.
And the coolest thing is that all of this can be accessed through your cell phone which makes it nice when you don’t have access to your laptop or an Internet connection.
Check out FlightStats.com
We took a break from the smoke and stress from San Diego this weekend to hit San Fran. This was the first time Amy and I had been there and it was a great time. We will definitely go back again.
Check out some of the pictures of San Francisco.
Usually clear and sunny, the fires have made San Diego dark and smoky
Mark’s Daily Apple is a great site for tips about healthy eating. He’s even summed up his best posts from 2007 to make it easy for anyone to get started in learning more. Some of the topics include:
I present to you the Crazy Cat Lady action figure, complete with 6 additional cats…
Jott announced some new features today from their email sent out to beta users. If you haven’t used Jott before its a pretty simple but helpful concept. You call their toll-free number, after registering, and leave a voice message. That message is then transcribed into text to be emailed to yourself or someone else. It’s great for leaving yourself or others tasks, reminders, or communicating to groups. Below are some of the new features added:
Jott Links: Now you can update your blog, Twitter™, add to your 30 boxes™ to do list or send a message through Yahoo Groups™ - all with Jott! For example, when Jott asks you “Who do want to Jott” just say “Twitter”, speak your message and your update will appear in text on Twitter…
Jott Reminders: With the new Jott Reminders, Jott can remind you of important events 15 minutes before they start. Just say “Reminder” and Jott will ask you for the date, time, and subject. Now you can stop worrying about remembering those important appointments in your busy life.
Jott Folders: With Jott Folders you create preset categories for your Jotts to self. Set up folders for family, expenses, to-do list, or anything that you want. Then simply say the name of the folder the next time you leave a Jott and it’ll be waiting for you in that folder.
Personally I find this useful in the car or on the go. I can easily set a task or reminder and have it sitting in my inbox the next time I log onto my computer.
Link: Jott
There was a small one (4.0) this morning at 7:47am PT about 8 miles off the coast of San Diego.
I recently reported on a site that makes a South Park character of you, here’s another one for The Simpsons…does this look like me?
Link: Simpsonize Yourself!
I’ve got to admit that my secret wish is to know how to play the guitar. Unfortunately, given my job, a wedding coming up, trying to hit the gym more than once a week, and football season starting, there are higher priorities that take up my day. Truth be told, my desire to learn how to play the guitar isn’t nearly as strong and my wish to just know how to play it. Plus any dreams of becoming a rock star went out the window long ago so really, it would just be fun to be able to play some of my favorite songs.
Well there’s a new beta site out there that tries to help those of us that, like me, just want to know how to play a couple of songs. Songs are rated based upon difficulty and there’s video instructions on how to play. Granted, the song selection is limited right now but hopefully that will change.
Link: Now Play It
My recent Top 10 Cell Phone Applications post may be in line for some re-ordering. It seems there’s a new app that’s in beta right now called NuTsie which allows you to stream your iTunes music over your phone. NuTsie (which is an anagram of iTunes) allows you to listen to your iTunes collection by adding a small java based application onto your phone and completing a registration process which includes uploading your iTunes library to your phone. No, you don’t have to upload your songs, that’s a lot of data, instead iTunes has the ability to export your library list (in XML format) that you can then upload to NuTsie. They have most songs already on their servers and this process allows you to access the songs you already “own”, based upon the library list, through a stream over your phone. Its actually a lot easier to get started than it sounds and I found myself listening to music on my Sony Ericsson w810i in about 5 minutes. Be sure you have an unlimited data plan though or this could get expensive.
So how do they get away with this without the RIAA coming after them? My guess, is in the way they distribute the music. Similar to streaming internet radio companies like Pandora or last.fm, they don’t give total control over the music to the users. You can upload your iTunes playlists and songs but the order is determined by NuTsie. If you’re used to streaming internet radio, this is no big deal.
I gotta say, I was really impressed and so far I love it but there are a few downsides to consider before you rush over to the website and sign up. First, it’s still in beta, which means there are occasional bugs and while it’s free for now, there may be a charge once it goes “live.” Also, at the time of writing this post, I wasn’t able to access the site, or run the application on my phone. Seems the secret is out. Finally, I believe they have a pretty large library of music but don’t expect that every song you own will be part of their library. That means if you have it on iTunes and they don’t, you still won’t be able to listen to it.
Now, for those geeks out there I ask, what happens if I add to my XML library file before uploading it….interesting?
I may have to watch this movie when it comes out…
I’m happy to announce that Amy and I are officially engaged. I asked her about half way through our European vacation which she thankfully said yes (otherwise the rest of the trip would have been really awkward). No news yet on a date or place.
You can also check out some recently posted pictures from the European vacation.
I recently upgraded my phone’s data plan to an unlimited data plan. Now the question is what are some of the coolest sites and applications out there that I can use for my mobile? Below is my top ten list:
10) TellMe - I’ve already covered TellMe By Mobile and so far its been pretty cool. This app installs onto your phone and you then speak the name of the business you are looking for into your phone. TellMe’s service will recognize your voice and return a list of businesses that meet your search. From there you can call the business or see its location on a map.
9) Opera Mini - The “mini” is about the file size, not about the functionality. This is a great browser replacement for anything on your phone. The browser connects to its own servers to access the net which actually optimize the sites you visit for a mobile display and to reduce data size for faster browsing.
Citibank Mobile - This one only works if you use Citibank but it’s all the functionality of the website, rolled into your phone. Check your balance, pay your bills, transfer money between accounts, all in the time it takes to open your laptop and wait for it to load up.
7) TuneUsIn.com - Looking for free ringtones or wallpaper? This site has a large database of great songs and pictures you can download directly to your phone…did I mention it’s free?
6) Google Maps - This application downloads to your phone and works just like the Google Maps we’ve all come to love. plus there’s real time traffic updates as well.
5) Surfline - Those of you by the beach will probably love this one. Surf reports and forecasts on your phone. Get the latest swell height, temperatures and even a live image before you hit the beach.
4) logabottle - Like wine? My problem is that I always forget what bottles I like or which ones I want to try. Why remember when I can check my own wine review database. Not only is this a great site on its own but the mobile access to my own reviews allows me to recall which wines I like while I’m browsing the aisles at the store.
3) Remember The Milk - This is another great site on its own. Its a web 2.0 to-do list which I use to manage my personal tasks. The nice thing is that my to-do’s aren’t limited to just my computer. Wherever I am I can see my tasks.
2) Netflix Mobile - Access your Netflix queue, search for movies to add and more.
1) Google Reader - There are plenty of reasons to use Google Reader. This is just one more reason.
Honorable Mention:
TagTag - Don’t like any of the WAP sites out there? Create your own and host it on TagTag’s website. Its mostly simple read-only functionality but its nice to use if you need a website to access easy to forget things like recipes, directions, birthdays, anything you need to remember while on the go.
Anything I missed?
If you are like me, you have more than one email account set up. In fact, I recommend that you have at least two email accounts. One primary account for emailing people, and one secondary account for when you need to sign up for something like a newsletter, registration, or when checking out with a purchase. That way companies that sell your email address to marketers are only selling your secondary account and not your main one.
I actually have 6 email accounts that I manage and it really starts to become a pain. One is for friends, one is for junk email, another is for newsletters and another still is for work. The others are legacy that I just haven’t been able to give up on yet.
Anyway, Gmail offers a pretty cool solution that I just came across recently, although I believe its been around for a while now. Its under the “settings” section and its called “accounts.” You can add each email address that you have under a new “account” and after a quick verification, any email that you forward to your Gmail account, from the verified account, will be received. Now here’s the cool part, if you respond to one of those emails in Gmail, your “from” address is the same address as the original account. That means that I can respond to emails sent to my Yahoo account from my Gmail account and it will look like I responded from my Yahoo account without having to actually login. That makes it easy to still maintain and view my multiple email accounts in one inbox.
Plus, with a simple filter set up, I can route all of my other account emails into a separate tag, specifically set up for that account.
Thanks to Lifehacker for this tip.
The Cancer Project is offering a free PDF download of their Survivor’s Handbook. It’s 148 pages written by Neal D. Barnard, M.D., with the help of Jennifer Reilly, R.D. and covers food’s role in cancer prevention and survival. Cancer has touched just about everybody either directly or indirectly and this is something we all should read.
Download The Survivor’s Handbook
I don’t know why but for a while now, I’ve been into unique t-shirts. I’m talking about the kind that some people get, and others don’t. The kind that reference some obscure quote from a movie or some 80’s fad, or just something that’s clever. Believe it or not but there are a ton of websites out there that offer t-shirts like these for sale. There’s even a blog about t-shirts.
Some crack me up but I would never buy them. Others I have bought. Below are some of my favorites:
Have you heard about the massive decline in the bee population? Chances are if you have, then it’s probably quickly followed with a quote by Einstein. Supposedly the quote goes that , “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left.”
There’s some debate as to whether or not the statement was made by Einstein and also whether or not it’s true but it does seem odd that something like this is happening? What’s the reason? Is this truly a phenomenon to be concerned about or just a story that the media seems to be jumping on? One article seems to point to a fungus that may be the cause.
I spent the weekend in Vegas again. You’d have thought that I would have learned my lesson from last time but apparently not. I do have a good reason for going so soon after last month’s episode. Two of my cousins were celebrating their birthdays. In case you missed it, I had a surprise birthday party when I turned 30 and a bunch of my cousins came in to surprise me.
How much crap would I have gotten if I didn’t show up for their birthday party? A lot! Even so, I wanted to be there anyway because its always fun to hang out with them. I finally learned how to play craps (enough so I don’t feel like an idiot walking up to the table anymore) and I did manage to make the gossip websites. Yes, if you look really close, squint your eyes and spin around three times you may be able to make out my face (off in the distance) in the picture below.
Now….before you start to go down a bad path that includes questions like, “How did Pete find this picture?” and, “Why is Pete reading celebrity gossip websites about K-Fed and Nikki Hilton?” Let me preemptively say this. I did not find this website myself, it was emailed to me from someone else who knew we were at the same club.
But seriously, why are K-Fed and Nikki partying together? Aren’t Nikki and Paris supposed to be friends with Britney?
Dear Pete,
Earlier an email was sent regarding your dudchenko.com Google Apps account, notifying you that we are planning to conduct routine maintenance to Google Calendar between 8AM and 9PM PDT on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 (3PM GMT on April 26th to 4AM GMT on April 27th). We understand that maintaining the highest level of reliability and uptime is critical to your organization and to your end users. Thus, we want to provide you with additional information about the upgrade and explain in detail the impact it may have on your users — specifically, that only a subset of your users will be affected, and only for a few minutes each.
Why are we doing an upgrade?
We are updating some of our servers as we continue to improve Google Calendar. This is a normal maintenance update, and as with all updates we look to minimize the impact to our end users.
How will this impact my end users?
The impact to your users should be minimal. Only a subset of your users should be affected by the upgrade. These users may have trouble accessing their Google Calendars for a short period of time, generally less than 5-10 minutes each.
Will Google Calendar be down from 8AM to 9PM PDT?
No. This is the window of time that the maintenance upgrade will take place. During this time some users will experience issues accessing their calendar, but only for a short period of time each.
As always, we continuously look to improve our communication with our administrators. If you have any feedback or any additional questions regarding this maintenance upgrade, please feel free to contact the Google Apps Support team through the Google Apps Help center (http://www.google.com/support/a/).
Sincerely,
The Google Apps Team
Please do not reply directly to this message. Please contact us through the Google Apps Help Center (http://www.google.com/support/a/) if you have any questions.
Hello Pete,
We wanted to inform you that we are planning to conduct routine maintenance to Google Calendar between 8AM and 9PM on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 . During this time, this service may be unavailable to some of your users. Please inform your users about this planned maintenance appropriately. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we work to improve Google Calendar.
If you have any questions, you can contact the Google Apps Support team through the Google Apps Help center (http://www.google.com/support/a/).
Sincerely,
The Google Apps Team
Please do not reply directly to this message. Please contact us through the Google Apps Help Center (http://www.google.com/support/a/) if you have any questions.
Quick quiz:
Who owns the Green Bay Packers (besides the Chicago Bears of course)?
Answer:
The fans do. A little over 111,000 people own shares of stock in the Packers.
Pretty interesting concept isn’t it? Its not one or two wealthy individuals, it was a bunch of fans that got together and bought shares of stock to share ownership in a team.
Want a chance to make history again? There’s a fan movement out there to buy the Chicago Cubs. With the Chicago Tribune (who currently owns the Cubs) being bought out, the Cubs are now up for sale. You can be part of that sale by donating to the “I want to buy the cubs” website. All proceeds go towards a bid to purchase the Chicago Cubs.
By the way, in case you are hesitant to donate to some “random site”, it’s managed by a friend of mine and she’s far more trustworthy than I am.
Goodyear is the world’s largest tire company and yet their flagship icon is a blimp. In other words, they choose to cruise the country through the air, rather than on the road, using their own tires. Isn’t that kind of like the Oscar Mayer using a hamburger-mobile instead of the weinermobile to drive around and promote hotdogs? The blimp does in fact have a tire on it, but I wouldn’t say it’s the focal point.
Here’s a tip fo those that use Google’s calendar. if you have a cell phone that supports SyncML or OMA (most newer phones do), you can set it up to automatically sync with your calendar using GooSync.
Syncing with your main Google Calendar is free but if you subscribe to more than one, you’ll need to pay for it.
I found this on Gizmodo the other day. Reef first offered bottle openers in their sandals, now they have the drinks themselves. The thought just seems a little nasty though. There’s something about pouring a drink from my shoe that doesn’t seem very appetizing.
Here’s the post after the trip…
All in all it was a good trip but a nagging cold made things tough. Next year we’re hitting the casinos in Europe.
Want to read a “before and after” post? Here’s the post before the trip…
I’m off to Vegas for the weekend and while I try to remain realistic about the trip, I think most people still fantasize about hitting it big and renting a personal jet to fly them back home (right…or am I the only one here?).
I know that’s not going to happen though so realistically I’m calling this trip a “win” as long as I don’t lose. If I lose a little, then I “break even” and if I lose a lot then I “lose.” So basically I’m going in with the mindset that a small loss is acceptable and therefore neither a win nor a loss in terms of the overall trip.
There are a number of things going on this weekend that should make it particularly exciting:
Look for some mobile pics to show up over the weekend as the madness ensues.
Don’t forget to change your clocks on today for daylight savings. This means that most of the clocks in my place will finally be correct again since I never got to changing them back in October…
You’ve probably heard about the new Microsoft OS called Vista that’s been release with minor success. The general word on the street seems to be it looks cool, but uness you really want to play with a new operating system, there’s no reason to upgrade yet.
My problem is that I really want to play with the new OS and I have a free copy (legally acquired) but upgrading is always a big deal. I leave it in your hands…
Strolling through Vons the other day (Vons is a grocery store for those that don’t have them) I was looking to grab some Coronas and limes. Having trouble finding the limes a store employee pointed them out and asked if they were perhaps being purchased for beers. I said that perhaps they were, and he proceeds to instruct me not only on the best way to cut the limes but he also recommended rolling the limes on a hard surface before cutting them to release some of the lime juice. Kind of like pre-squeezing the limes for some added flavor. Thanks Vons, I never really gave that much thought to the limes, but that’s a great tip!
You know how most grocery store commercials show employees offering advice on how to cook turkeys or bake cakes? I never really clicked with those ads since I do neither. They should make a commercial showing an employee giving a customer advice on how to best drink Coronas with limes to target a different deographic. Perhaps a new tagline for Vons could be introduced:
“Vons, we’re not all ‘Betty Crocker’ here”
Now that’s a commercial that speaks to me…
The 1977 Star Wars parody Hardware Wars was hilarious as a kid but I never made the connection between Han Solo’s look-alike character, named Ham Salad, and football great Joe Namath. Perhaps this is the real reason he earned the nickname Broadway Joe!
See for yourself in the video:
For those that haven’t heard of Chumby, take note. In my opinion its a positive step in moving the Internet from an active to passive form of media. What do I mean by active and passive? I’m guessing for most of us, checking email, weather, sports scores, etc. involves logging into a computer and navigating to each site. We actively search for that information. Imagine waking up with this gadget next to your bed which has all that information ready for you already being displayed…passively displaying what you’re most interested in.
Goodbye laptop? Not at all, but this appears to be something to help pass important information without starting up a computer.
For now, Chumby isn’t for sale yet (early spring) but they do seem to offer the ability for developers out there to create their own programs to load and run, so for those technically inclined, you can customize Chumby to deliver whatever you want.
Have you heard of TellMe? If not, do this (I’ll wait)…pick up a phone and dial 1-800-555-TELL (8355). You’ll be greeted by an automated voice which will start to list some of their main menu items like stock quotes, movies, sports, etc. Just say the name of the item you’re interested and it will provide more information about that item or present you with more options to pick from. It’s all voice-activated and having used it for a number of years now, I must say its pretty darn good at recognizing my voice commands. In fact for those of you who subscribe to Cingular, they currently offer this service already.
I just recently found out that they’ve started a new beta program. For those of you that have a data plan on your cell phone, you can go to TellMe’s beta site and install a java app that will allow you to voice navigate their system to find local businesses. Its kind of like 411 and Google maps rolled into one (or so they say). You start out by installing a java app onto your phone (about 130Kb) and then after starting it up and using a “press to talk” command, you speak the city you want and the business type or name you’re looking for. It interprets your words and returns the results, allowing you to select a business or navigate further. Selecting a business allows you to see the phone number and address. From there you can click to call or click to see a map of the location to get directions.
I’ve had it for about an hour and haven’t played with the maps section yet but it does seem pretty interesting. Supposedly the voice recognition system hasn’t been completely configured yet so there may be some slight adjustments coming (remember, it’s still in beta) but for those of you who aren’t crazy about using your thumbs to type, this may be an alternative solutions. I think this product’s ultimate success however will be determined by it’s ability to handle directions and maps should a user want to actually find the location of the business they just looked up. A list of supposed phones is provided.
Anyone else using this yet? I’d love to hear some feedback.
The evening news out here is quite different from other parts of the country. For instance, we’re probably all familiar with the “teaser” scenario; where you’re watching an episode of 24 or Heros and right before the commercial brake ends and the show resumes, there’s a 5 second pitch on the latest news coming up that night. Something like, “Find out which stocks are on the rise, news at 10:00.”
Makes sense right? It’s supposed to grab your interest and make you want to tune in. The funny thing out here though is that it’s taken to an extreme. Instead of interesting teaser items, the promos I’ve seen are a little more aggressive. Items like “Sewage leaks make some tap water unsafe to drink, is your neighborhood affected? News at 10:00″ have seriously been shown.
Also there are random stories that I just can’t see being news elsewhere. They recently had a teaser for which porn stars won’t work under the new high definition DVD technology (sorry I missed the actual story since I didn’t tune in). And the one that kind of did it for me was the recent coverage to coincide to some recently cold weather here in San Diego. Yes, it does happen where the temperature drops below 70 and to help us San Diegans cope, the news gave us suggestions on where we might consider vacationing to get “somewhere warm.”
Perhaps its just me and my “back in my days…” attitude but I find it quite amusing to see the differences between here and Chicago for what makes the air at 10:00.
“Hey Pete, what’ya do over the weekend?”
Oh you know, just flew to New Orleans to watch the Saints play the Eagle in the first Saints playoff game in 40 years, just like any other weekend…(what a game!)
