This week's fortune.

You are compassionate and understanding.

$100 for doing almost nothing.

Well, not exactly.

Remember when my luggage was lost in Italy? If not, see here. Well, I faxed in a claim to cover expenses incurred by not having my luggage for a few days to Alitalia when I returned home. When they sent me a letter asking for more information, I gave up the cause, as I either had not kept or did not get receipts from those purchases...plus I was too lazy to be bothered with filling out all the paperwork.

Anyway, they sent me a letter today saying that they're going to send me a check for $100. I never expected to see any money from them, as I thought there was no further action regarding my claim...especially since it's been a few months. Assuming I actually receive the check, THREE CHEERS FOR ALITALIA!

Fitness update.

I've long espoused the belief that the age of 25 years is when an athlete, or a man in general, is at his prime. As that is my current age, I feel that it's time for me to get in the best shape of my life...or at least since high school wrestling.

To that end, I began training for the Spirit of St. Louis 5K run in April last week. I guess a few months of playing soccer once or twice a week has gotten me on the right path, as it seems to be going fairly well so far. I ran a 7:05 mile a couple of days ago, which is faster than I can ever remember running a timed mile (but still over a minute above one of my life goals). The race is still over 10 weeks away, so I'm thinking about upgrading my target from sub-29:00 to sub-25:00. This would take some work, as it would shatter my personal best by over 4 minutes, but I still have plenty of time to prepare. Hopefully I don't burn out.

I've also seemed to have lost some weight, as I weighed in under 160 pounds earlier tonight. To be fair, this was after a soccer game followed by a 1.5 mile run, and before I ate dinner. However, it would still seem that I'm somewhere around 165, which is a weight I haven't seen in a while. This isn't too surprising considering I haven't lifted weights (I gain the most weight while I'm lifting) in almost 1.5 years. Too bad this also means that my once-threatening guns are fairly puny these days.

A grave injustince.

I often argue that people who get in trouble with the law must at least partly blame themselves for being in the situation. While I think this is probably true in this case, I still think that Genarlow Wilson has suffered a grave injustice. You can read more about his story here.

You may now call me Master Kenobe.

Earlier today I picked up a diploma which certifies that I earned a Masters degree in Computer Science. So I guess it's official now.

This week's fortune.

Ask advice from everyone, but act with your own mind.

Things I missed most about this last power outage.

1. Warmth
2. The Internet
3. DVD player
   
4. Light

Things I did NOT miss after the storm and aftermath was over...falling trees. Our electricity was out over 3 days, but at least half of that was due to the fact that one of our neighbor's trees fell on the power lines (the folks across the street had power restored a couple of days before our side did). Another tree fell onto our driveway, causing a little damage to the front edge of our roof, and missing Tina by millimeters.

Revamped music page...sort of...

I removed the Song of the Week sections, which I have neglected for a while, and added some charts from Last.fm which should update automatically as I listen to music. Check out the new page here.

Which phone?

I am in the market for a new cell phone to replace my antiquated little egg. I was pretty sure that I was going to get the Samsung SGH D900, a.k.a Black Carbon. That is, until Apple rocked my world, and the rest of the cell phone industry, with the iPhone. I'm pretty sure it's the best thing since sliced bread. So my quandary is: do I get the Black Carbon now, or wait until June for the iPhone? If you scroll down (unfortunately, my template is too narrow and changing its size messes up some previous posts...plus Blogger doesn't do the best job of HTML generation), you can see a head-to-head comparison of the two:

Category	Black Carbon	iPhone	Winner
Cool factor			iPhone
Cellular Networks	Quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), EDGE	Quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), EDGE	Push
Other Connectivity	Bluetooth	Wi-Fi (802.11b/g), Bluetooth 2.0, USB	iPhone
Display	2.1 in 240x320, 262K color TFT	3.5 in 320x480, 160 ppi	iPhone
Camera	3.0 megapixels	2.0 megapixels	Black Carbon
Music playback	AAC, MP3	AAC, MP3, Audible, Apple Lossless	Push
Video playback	?	H.264, MPEG-4	iPhone
Input	9 dedicated buttons, 2 soft buttons, flat number pad	1 hard button, touch screen	iPhone
Other features	Standard cell phone fare + document viewer, TV out	OS X	iPhone
Battery life	6.5 hrs talk	5 hrs talk/video/browsing, 16 hrs audio playback	Black Carbon
Size, weight	4.1 x 2.0 x 0.51 in/106 x 51 x 12.9 mm, 3.3 oz/85 g	4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 in/115 x 61 x 11.6 mm, 4.8 oz/135 g	Black Carbon
Storage	60 MB internal, microSD	4 GB or 8 GB internal	iPhone
Price	$400 (phone) + $75 (2 GB microSD card) = $475	$499 (4 GB) or $599 (8 GB)	Push
Availability	Now	June 2007	Black Carbon

Let me preface this by saying that I like Rex Grossman...

...but this picture is HILLARIOUS!



Thanks to Tommy Musick for forwarding that to me.

Proof that Christmas is actually Halloween.

Being the übernerd that I am, I found the following proof which I saw on a board at work humorous. The crux of the proof is that 25 in decimal numerals is equal to 31 in octal numerals (see the Wikipedia article on octals if you don't understand this). Since DEC(25) = OCT(31), one could argue that December 25 is October 31. Therefore, Christmas is Halloween.

This week's fortune.

Your enthusiasm inspires people.

The future crib.

Updates to follow...