My gym just replaced all the water coolers with these:

Yes, it does indeed have a hot water option. Because, you know, it’s always useful to have hot water when you’re at the gym.

Socks are one of the most frustrating pieces of clothing ever invented. What makes them particularly frustrating is the need to be used in pairs, which necessitates the need to find two equivalent items in the morning, when I’m usually half awake and can barely see anyway. They are somewhat unique in this regard. Shoes also requiring matched pairs, but it never seems to be much of an issue: since they don’t get washed, they can easily be stored together.

Socks are a different story. I often find that a pair ends up split between two loads of laundry, leaving me searching in vain for a companion to my selection. Other times, as in the picture above, one member of the pair develops holes while the other remains intact (why is this? it’s not like I use one foot more than the other!). I keep the undamaged sock out of the often vain hope that there’s another pair in my drawer somewhere. The reality is that it will most likely serve as a decoy during my morning rummage.

I’ve tried a few approaches to this problem. At one point, the strategy was to buy only one type of sock, so there would always be a match. This only really works if you get rid of all your other similar-but-not-quite-the-same socks and buy a whole boatload at once. Whenever I do this, however, I inevitably need to replace a pair at some point and can’t find the same model. My most recent strategy is an algorithmic approach – take the first acceptable sock out of the drawer and search stepwise until a match is found, removing each sock as it is encountered.

Usually this ends with a pile of unmatched socks on the floor and a great deal of wasted energy.

Is any ARRA money going to solving this problem?

I’ve long since made the jump from Apple’s Aperture to Lightroom. For the most part, I think it’s been worth it. Lightroom is considerably faster and I seem to get better results from my editing. However, I still find Aperture had a better system of organizing photos and I preferred the interface. What it really needs is some evidence of ongoing development, which I’m just not seeing. My hope is that 3.0 is dependent on Snow Leopard, which won’t be out until this summer. I’m still interested in giving it another look.

“Snap.”

There really aren’t that many situations where “snap” is a good sound. Come to think of it, I can’t think of any. It’s certainly not something you want to hear coming from your lower back while you are standing in the gym in a semi-seated position with a loaded barbell on your back.

If you talk to people who are serious about weightlifting, most will enthusiastically extoll the many virtues of the squat. But those people were nowhere to be found yesterday morning while I crouched awkwardly trying to calm my fears of imminent paralysis.

Everything seemed surprisingly intact. At first. I slowly rose up and returned the weight to its resting place before confirming that my legs could still move. Having just (nearly) recovered from a wrist injury acquired nearly six months earlier, I recognized that plowing onward would probably not be a good idea. But, I mean, I couldn’t just stop my workout. The squat was my first exercise, after all. As I made my way around the gym and completed most of my routine, I found my back slowly tightening, pulling me into a clumsy position with my chest hyperextended. I tried my best to avoid looking like a peacock. I thought I was having moderate success at achieving a normal gate, but several passerbys shot me sympathetic glances on my way to the office.

“Why would you ever do squats?” asked Bill, back at the office. “The only people who do squats are bodybuilders. And you’re not trying to be a bodybuilder.”

I gave him my “whatchu talkin’ about Willis?” look, but he didn’t seem to notice, and instead continued to rail against the squat. I was still mulling the question over why Bill would assume I wasn’t close to fulfilling my bodybuilding dreams when he tossed over a couple tablets of ibuprofen. I muttered my thanks and shuffled back to my desk. “Not trying to be a bodybuilder…I’ll show him!” I thought, straightening up with pride…when a sharp pull in my lumbar region reminded me that I needed to find some water to swallow these tablets.

Well it’s one day later and I’m much better, really. I can almost get out of bed in less than a minute if I don’t make any sudden movements. I can feel myself getting stronger already.

Watch out, Bill.

• AKI from PTLD at conference = need for more coffee http://twitpic.com/1nzid #
• Downloading the Safari 4 public beta #
• Oh yeah, chocolate peanut butter for lunch today. http://twitpic.com/1o1cl #
• “every American…wants this country to succeed”…a dig at Rush? #
• Bobby Jindal is kind of annoying #

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In college, I tried to take a course called “Thinking About Thinking.” In addition to the appeal of the intriguing title, it was taught by such academic celebrities as Stephen Jay Gould, Alan Dershowitz, and another, less famous professor whose name I can’t remember. I went to the first lecture or two, but it was quite a popular course and evidently I didn’t get into the course. At least, it’s not my transcript so I assume I didn’t make the lottery.

Being the innovative intellectual blogger that I am, I decided to take the professors’ idea to the next level. That’s right, I am blogging about blogging. Perhaps you guessed that’s where this was going because of the title of the post.

I’ve been posting to infobhan for years now, I’m always tempted to abandon it for some easier-to-consume format. At one extreme is Twitter: it’s great for a quick thought or comment, forcing me to distill my thoughts into 140-character soundbytes, but it can’t replace the sheer joy I get from rambling on this site. I’ve dabbled into Facebook – it succeeds in bundling social networking services into a neat package, but ultimately seems to be creating it’s own microcosm of the internet and lacks the flexibility of more open, albeit more targeted, services like Flickr and Twitter. I thought about trying to simplify my posting with an integrated blogging system like Tumlbr, but I find I rarely actually read anyone’s Tumblog. While it seems appealing that you could capture both Twitter-length mini-messages with full blog posts, viewing these interspersed with random photos and links seems somewhat disjointed.

As I searched for the right platform, I asked myself the same question all bloggers ask themselves: why do I blog? The answer, of course, is a bastardization of this site’s tagline: I blog because I am. We blog to prove our existence, to contribute some proof that we are still alive and thinking. But this brings me to the nightmare that all bloggers have…what if no one is reading? It’s a fear that even I must confess to having from time to time. “How can that be?” you ask. “Surely a wise and experience blogger such as yourself must know that there is a wide audience reloading this page hourly in anticipation of your wise words.”

Well, those are comforting words. And yes, I know I am blessed with admiring fans. But fame can fade and I may be left one day with a dwindling audience and the need to ask myself if I should go on posting. Until that day, I hope you enjoy reading.

Today I turn one year older. People often act like it’s a big deal, but of course I’m just one day older than yesterday. Nonetheless, it’s a reminder of the fact that I am, indeed getting older. Of course I have other reminders of that. Like my wife, who frequently remarks at the number of grey hairs cropping up in my head.

A year is a long time. Much has changed in my day-to-day life. A year ago:

1. I was using a different computer
2. I was using a different phone
3. I was using a different camera
5. I had a different job
6. I had a different office
7. I had a different gym
8. I had a more valuable stock portfolio
9. I had fewer joint problems
10. I drank less coffee
11. I had a worker espresso machine

Surprisingly, even a few things changed outside of my personal world. A year ago:

1. W was still president
2. Hillary was the front-runner
3. Steve was still running Apple
4. Tim Russert was still running Meet the Press
5. It was very cold outside

I guess some things never change…

I’ve never been a big one for New Year’s resolutions. They carry a certain stigma, namely that they will be largely unobserved after a few weeks or months. What I’m concerned about is that I may inadvertently appear to be following the herd when in fact my activities have nothing to do with the new year.

Let’s face it, between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, many people overindulge in the holiday festivities and gain a few pounds. Then they resolve to lose weight and join a gym in January. Within a month or two they remember why they stopped going to the gym the previous time, and give up. Those of us who are more regular in our exercise patterns (“gym snobs”) scoff at these amateurs when they crowd OUR exercise facilities in the winter months. We give each other knowing glances, mocking these Nike-clad neophytes in their attempts to fit in.

This year, it’s not so simple. A series of injuries combined with an intense period of work responsibilities has kept me out of the gym for the past several weeks. Now that the schedule has cleared up and my injuries are at least stable, I’m ready to head back in. Unfortunately, the timing is such that my return will coincide with the seasonal migration of the unwashed masses.

I am faced with a dilemma: do I wait it out, sacrificing my own health and fitness so I can return unnoticed later in the season, or do I risk being mistaken for one of THEM.

Oh, the humanity…

I’m a big fan of myth-busting, and medical myth-busting is particularly satisfying. The British Medical Journal did a particularly good job with some popular medical myths. Take a look at Medical Myths and Festive Medical Myths.

Okay, so you know how the world of blogs is sometimes collectively referred to as “blogosphere?” How about referring to the current excitement surrounding soon-to-be-indicted Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich as the blagosphere?

Brilliant, just brilliant.