This evening, for the first time in a very long time, I went ice skating.

Despite growing up in Minnesota, I can recall going ice skating on just two previous occasions. For the first(?) episode, I vaguely recall going ice skating at an arena in Brooklyn Park (or was it Brooklyn Center?) when I was very young. To be precise, I remember being in the arena, but I don’t recall the actual event of skating; the memory is merely a faint whisper.

The second time was on the frozen lake at my dad’s house. Ancillary events date this milestone to no earlier than 1992. I remember my dad snow-blowing the snow off of the ice. I remember trying to skate but not meeting with much success, and I remember that my sister was there too. After that one attempt, I don’t think I ever tried skating on the lake again. I regret not taking advantage of that opportunity, not the least reason being that I would be a much better skater now.

It is said that you are never more than 500 meters from a station on the Paris metro. I think the same is true for ice arenas in the Twin Cities, if one includes outdoor arenas. Indoor arenas are slightly more rare; they exist at a 1000-meter interval. Being that the Twin Cities has been abnormally warm this autumn, I chose to patronize the latter.

At $2.50 per session, public skating at the indoor arena was an affordable diversion. The demographics were skewed strongly towards youth; the median age was perhaps 16, but the mean age was maybe 10. I paid my admission, put on my skates, and, leaving caution to the wind, stepped on the ice.

Now, just because I haven’t ice skated much doesn’t mean that don’t know how to skate. A few years ago, I decided that I should learn how to rollerblade, so I got a pair of inline skates and, through trial and error, figured it out. I even played roller hockey in the summer of 2003. Granted, I’m not good at skating, but I’m at least skilled enough to not make a complete fool of myself. Or so I thought.

Just kidding! I didn’t make a fool of myself. Nonetheless, skating on ice was rather more difficult than skating on pavement. All of the little kids were skating circles around me; in some fairly annoying cases, they did so quite literally. My inexperience on ice and limited skating practice did little to help the situation. However, this being America, I needed a scapegoat. I found one in my skates.

I knew going into this adventure that my skates might cause me some problems. Like I mentioned in a previous post, I am going to start playing ice hockey. In fact, I start one week from today. Since I didn’t have any ice skates, I went out and bought new ones. But these are no ordinary skates. No, these are goal skates.

The important thing to note is that a goal skate is quite different from a normal hockey skate. The boot is lower on the ankle. The blade is closer to the bottom of the foot. The blade itself is longer, flatter (larger “radius”), and generally duller (larger “hollow”). Oh yeah, and it has that big white plastic cowling. All of these things combine to provide a different skating experience than one would find with a normal player hockey skate; namely, turning is harder, and it’s more difficult to go fast; these truths are what somewhat hindered me tonight. The advantages are that it is much more stable and much better suited to preventing pucks from going into the goal; these truths are why I bought the skates.

So, why goalie? Simple: it looks like fun, and I’ve wanted to do it for a while. I’m not getting any younger, so now is the time!

Yet to be seen is how my skating will be affected when the leg pads are added to the equation. If the added difficulty in walking is any indication, there will be some a significant challenge come ice time.

But, as I’m finding, life gets boring without challenges!

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On a completely unrelated (though perhaps more important) note, BonnevilleClub got press! Current Bonneville owners found this article in their latest edition of Pontiac Performance, the GM magazine for Pontiac owners. Awesome! Hat’s off to my tireless administrators and staff whose dedication and hard work continue to make the site as useful, friendly, and popular as it is. The numbers back up the claim: the forum has over 3000 users and a post count of over 280,000. Over the past 12 months, the server has transferred 270GB for BonnevilleClub. In the same time period, these users visited the site a total of 1.8 million times, creating a total hit (server access) count of 45.1 million. Wow!

A couple of days ago, I read a neat article about the fingerprint all color laser printers and copiers leave when printing. Invisible to the unaided eye under normal light, these markings uniquely identify the printer that manifested the printout. If one combines that data with customer records from the printer manufacturer, one may trace a printout to a particular person or company. Privacy concerns aside, I think it’s a neat technology.

The secret lies not in special inks or complicated obfuscation; rather, it depends on the human eye’s inability to resolve very small yellow dots on a field of white. These dots are spread across the entire page, from edge to edge. They form a pattern that resembles Braille, albeit significantly smaller. I don’t have instruments that can accurately measure the dots, but I estimate that they are 100 microns in diameter with an average pitch of several millimeters. But wait… how can I see them at all?

To see the dots, all one needs is a blue light source, such as found in any of a multitude of modern LED keychains. Print something from a color laser printer then shine the blue light on the page. Thousands of little dots will spring from the page as if by magic!

Similar techniques protect against counterfeiting. Modern money has patterns embedded so that newer copiers, printers, and photo software will not copy/print/manipulate images of currency. Check out an example of the so-called “Eurion Constellation,” then try to find it on one of the new US 20s.



Very clever!

Traffic was great this morning, mainly due to its absence. Except for a slight slow-down near the exasperating 694/Snelling quagmire (Minnesotans know what I’m talking about), the river of cars flowed at about 75mph. I was at work in 18 minutes.

The 5‘s thermometer indicated 38 degrees, the rising sun was bright, and the world was bursting with the crisp optimism of a new day. Beautiful. Unfortunately, I was able to see the sunrise and feel the brisk morning air and note the light traffic because I was going to work, where I work in a climate-controlled, artificially lit building. It is very much the antithesis of the natural world. Ah well. C’est la vie.

I wish that I could convince myself to get up earlier to enjoy all of it, perhaps by going for a run. At night, I set my alarm clock slightly early so that I’ll have time in the morning to do exercise, but when morning comes, it never works out according to plan. Damn you, snooze button! I should make it a goal to get back into a routine of morning exercise.

Every so often, I write about my goals for the coming season. After writing them here, I usually go on to complete a majority of them. I like that system, particularly because it allows me to track everything quite easily (as does this blog in general). In addition to the exercise goal, here’s what I plan to accomplish this winter:

• Snowboard at least a half-dozen times in Minnesota and take a trip out West once. It sounds like the trip to British Columbia’s Whistler-Blackcomb might be happening in February. It would be a bit more expensive than going to Colorado, but I think the benefits outweigh the costs.
• Learn to juggle three balls. This has been on my list for a while, but for the first time, I might be getting close to realizing its completion. I’m really close to being able to juggle consistently. Unfortunately, I’m still losing control after a cycle or two. I know what I’m doing wrong; I just need to make myself do the correct thing.
• Learn to play ice hockey. This, too, has been on my to-do list for quite some time. In the summer of 2003, I learned to play roller hockey, but I never expanded on it nor went back to it in 2004. However, that’s going to change this winter. I’m lucky enough to live in Minnesota, which fashions itself “The State of Hockey.” As such, there is an organization in the Twin Cities that caters to adult recreational hockey players. Part of that organization is a program to teach novice hockey players how to play. It starts in two and a half weeks and runs through March. I’m excited about it!
• Set up an LLC or Type-S corporation. I’ve begun to delve into the world of business. I’ve done some consulting and own some web sites that could potentially expose me to legal liability were something to go wrong. I’d like to avoid that, and incorporation seems to be the answer. An added incentive to incorporation is that it would give me more clout when conducting business; people seem more willing to take a corporation seriously than a sole proprietorship.
• Learn to read and write French. I like France, and when I go back, I want to be able to understand what’s going on around me. Note that I didn’t say that I want to speak French; for that, I think the only viable option would be have significant interaction with a good French speaker. Since I don’t live in Quebec, that probably means taking some courses at the University — an expensive endeavor. Instead, I plan to learn from books. I imagine that comprehending the written word would be sufficient for my purposes: almost everybody in France will (begrudgingly) speak English, but most of the signs, menus, and papers are written exclusively in French. My goal is to be able to understand the language well enough to get my news from Le Monde.

Will I see these causes through to fruition? Only time will tell, but I’ll strive to make the answer “yes.”

Last night, memories of Gumby, the bendable green-clay character, sprung into my head. I know what triggered the interest — somebody’s avatar on a forum I visit is a picture of Gumby — but I’m not sure why I paid heed to it.



I did some research, which meant meandering the stream of the World Wide Web with my guide Google at my side. I found a site with plot summaries from apparently all of the episodes. Reading them brought back recollections from childhood. They also reminded me just how crazy the Gumby Adventures show was.



Gumby premiered on the Howdy Doody Show in the 1950s and, despite some lulls in popularity, never completely faded from the public eye. Gumby enjoyed resurgences in the 1960s and 1980s, and he even had his own movie in 1995. Here at the office, we have a bendable Gumby figure that we play around with. He’s currently hanging from the ceiling doing… well, I’m not sure.



I watched Gumby on television in the early 1990s. I remember the show being broadcast at some insanely early hour, so my dad would videotape it for my later viewing. Of course, videotape is passé these days. Even if I knew where the tapes were, I don’t own a TV or a VCR, so I would be unable to play them. Fortunately, the movie companies, in their rabid thrust to release as much material as possible on DVD, have released nearly all television series on that new medium, including Gumby. I thought that I would go out and buy it.



I had to go grocery shopping anyway, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and patronize the local SuperTarget. The grocery part of that experience was fine. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that the Target electronics department is very similar to the Target automotive department: they carry everything except what you’re looking for. I wasn’t too surprised, so I did what any good consumerism-driven young American would do: I bought something else.



That impulse conciliatory purchase ended up being the Super Size Me DVD.



For those of you unfamiliar with the movie, it is an independent film about a guy who eats nothing but McDonalds food for one month. He considers it an experiment. The film follows him through the month, with numerous interview interludes. It’s a documentary yet quite entertaining.



<summary>



He starts the month very healthy, something that three doctors, a dietician, and a personal trainer corroborate. He feels good and upbeat. The rule is that he can eat only things that come from McDonalds — if it wasn’t purchased there, he can’t eat it. That means no vitamins, no fresh fruit, and a whole lot of fat and sugar. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Every day. For a month.



He reasons that, since lots of people seem to live on fast food, why can’t he? Furthermore, if he survives the month with no ill effects, that will show that the fast food is reasonably healthy, or at least not as dangerous as the trial lawyers assert.



Needless to say, his health takes a nosedive. He’s consuming nearly 5000 calories a day of greasy, sugary, nutrient-barren MickeyD’s. His doctors are horrified and implore him to stop what he’s doing. His liver becomes clogged with fat a la fois gras. He’s depressed and ill, with inexplicable sensations and aches.



At the end of the month, he finds out that he gained over 25 pounds. His blood tests indicate that his liver and kidneys are under extreme duress. His vegan-chef girlfriend puts him on an immediate detoxification diet — lots of vegetables, fruits, and water.



In the end, he survives, but it takes him almost a year to bring his body back to the way it was before the experiment.



</summary>



With all of that in mind, I took a look at my eating habits. Although I eschewed fast food while in college, the working world has pushed me back to the den of convenience. I avoid McDonalds — I literally feel sick after I eat there — much as I ignore its kin: Wendy’s, Burger King, and Hardees. Unfortunately, I’ve become fond of Qdoba, Chipotle, Quizno’s and Panera. In other words, I like the fast food places that don’t feel like fast food places. The upscale fast food, if you will. This is a problem for more than one reason.



Foremost, it’s expensive. Five dollars for a burrito or a sandwich? Yup, and sometimes more.



The real kicker, though, is how unhealthy those places are. Take Chipotle for example. My favorite burrito there is the vegetarian with black beans, mostly because it includes guacamole. Last night, I looked up the nutrition facts on that single burrito. I was blown away. That one burrito packs nearly 1300 calories, almost 60g of fat, and roughly 3900mg of sodium. To put that in perspective, one could eat three quarter-pounders and still be below those numbers. Incredible.



Needless to say, I’m looking for healthier (and cheaper) alternatives, while still maintaining high quality. The obvious solution, to bring a bag lunch, is a non-option, because I want to get away from my office building for that midday hour. Another solution would be to get something reasonable at Subway, and attractive option not only on price but also on convenience: there’s a Subway within walking distance. The third option, proffered by Jeff Fox in his book, “How to Become CEO,” is to skip lunch entirely; instead, use the time to exercise or do business.



Or maybe I should use my lunch hour to write incoherent entries for my blog about old television shows and fast food…

Here’s the obligatory election-day post.

It looks to be a tight race heading into the finish. Regardless of the outcome, it’s likely that there will be numerous legal fights over issues ranging from voter eligibility to fraud from electronic voting machines.

After voting, I plan to follow the election results and analysis. For that, I will turn to The Drudge Report and The Daily Show.

If you’re trying to predict the outcome, you might be interested in reading the last pre-election polls. A slightly more accurate predictor of the popular vote outcome is probably the Iowa Electronic Markets, which allows investors to buy futures for the outcome of the election. As it forces people to “put their money where their mouth is,” the market is rather accurate. The latest prices on the IEM Presidential Winner-Takes-All popular Vote Contest indicate a probability of a Bush victory at less than 1% better than a Kerry victory. The markets do not speak to the Electoral College outcome.



VOTE!