news 6 Comments

Un-American

Al Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is dead.

I’m not sure how to react to my reaction. Yes, I understand that he killed innocent people. And I do realize that he was an important ringleader in terrorist activities in Iraq.

But I just can’t make myself happy about someone’s death, no matter how many people they themselves have killed.

I felt the same way when Saddam Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay, were killed by the military. I just can’t be jubilant about another human being’s death. Maybe this makes me un-American. Maybe this makes me a goddamn hippie, or a left-wing nutjob, or something worse. I just can’t make myself say about anyone, “I’m glad they’re dead.”

Of course, none of my friends or family were victims of Al-Zarqawi. Were I in that situation, I’ll grant that my reaction may have been different. I honestly can’t say for sure.

Even if I hadn’t had an initial reaction of not-happiness, I would have been made even more not-happy — no, make that “disgusted” — when the media began showing images of Al-Zarqawi’s bloated corpse. Honestly, that was unnecessary. The one main identification image was bad enough, with his eyes closed and his face all slack in death. But then I saw another, worse image, even more disturbing, showing his swollen lips and protruding tongue… that just took the cake for me.

There’s a line of decency to be observed here. I’ve seen too many REAL CORPSES on the news lately, without any advance warning of graphic content. I doubt that the media would be so casual about showing the corpses of American soldiers on national television.

I could go into a full-blown rant, but I think it’s probably best if I just end here and go to bed.

drumcorps 5 Comments

Making Things Difficult

So, I finally decided it’s time to get off my ass and work on the LSM page again. Figured I’d start with installing phpBB, the standard generic PHP-based forum. Simple to configure, free… can’t go wrong. Right?

Well, I came across a problem. LSM’s hosting only allows one SQL database. That spot is currently being used by my home-grown content management system, which is kind of important. So… now I get to figure out how to write a forum FROM SCRATCH. Or at least steal appropriate someone’s code.

I’d just gotten myself all excited over figuring out how I might make an alumni database work. Now this… this is a little more daunting. I don’t doubt that it’s possible, but I also don’t doubt that it’ll be buggy as hell. I just hate to disappoint. Shout-out to all web geeks: any help here? Where can I find my holy grail of forum code?

I guess the bright side is that my users a.) will be able to access the forum with their site login, and b.) will *have* to sign up if they want access to the member forums!

Update, 6/9/06: Thanks to Sheryl’s and Dan’s patient explanations, I now have a brand-spankin’ new forum installed on the LSM site! Now all I have to do is write a post about how to sign up, how to play nice, etc; add a forum link to the main site; and email the board of directors so they can be my guinea pigs to test the thing. 🙂

humor 2 Comments

Tonight’s Wrong Number

9pm: *ring*

me: “hello?”
man: “hi. i’d like to speak to an officer?”
me: … o_O
man: “is this the minneapolis police department?”
me: “no, it isn’t.”
man: “oh, i’m sorry!”
me: “that’s ok.”
man & me (unison): “bye.”

WTF?

Google says the Minneapolis Police Dept’s number is (763) 525-6215. That’s only vaguely close to our number — the prefix is similar, and the two’s in the same position. Weird.

recipes 4 Comments

Peanut Butter Chicken

This is a very interesting recipe. Especially with my substitutions.

The recipe called for:
* 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
* 1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast halves – cut into 1 inch cubes
* 1 medium onion, sliced
* 7 fresh mushrooms, sliced
* 1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes
* 1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes with juice
* 3/4 cup chicken stock
* 3/4 cup smooth peanut butter
* salt and pepper to taste

I had no onion, so I just did without. I substituted canned mushrooms for fresh. I substituted chunky salsa (medium) for diced tomatoes. I substituted chunky PB for smooth.

I could tell that the salsa added some heat to the dish that was probably never intended, and the person who created this would probably smack me or something if they saw how I massacred their original recipe. Still, it was pretty good. I’ll have to get the real ingredients and try it again sometime to share with Aaron. (I don’t like to inflict my cooking attempts on him the first time I ever make a given dish.)

Does anybody know if peanut oil (particularly Chinese peanut oil) is expensive? I’d like to try cooking the chicken in peanut oil next time, to get the peanut flavor going on even more.

Yep… I think I like it.

running 1 Comment

Interval Training?

I’m feeling pretty good right about now.

Eariler today, I told Sheryl over e-mail: “Now, yesterday I did my Push workout again, for the first time in a couple of weeks. And y’know what I’m going to do tonight when I get home? I’m going to change clothes, feed the cat, and drive to Wildwood armed with some water and my iPod. Then I’m going to walk-jog the shortest trail. Cardio is my biggest obstacle, and I’m going to just DO IT already. Maybe I’ll find jogging fun. (Never did before, but there’s a first time for everything.)”

And that’s exactly what I did. Saw Aaron off to work, changed clothes, fed the cat, set some brown rice to cooking and some chicken to thawing, gathered up my wallet and keys and iPod and a camera with five exposures left and $1 in change (for water), and drove off to Wildwood Metropark.

I found an excellent parking spot, close to the trailhead; however, I failed to note what time it was when I arrived. D’oh! Anyway, I loaded up with my wallet, keys (obviously, since I couldn’t leave them in the car, could I?) and iPod, and went to decide on a trail.

Wildwood has about six trails, ranging in distance from 0.6 miles to 3.1, I think. I decided to take the yellow Meadow Trail, which was 1.2 miles. I thought that was fair to start a walk-jog routine. And away I went.

I’d decided that, instead of looking at my watch constantly, I would start jogging when whatever song that was playing got to the first chorus. I’d jog/run/whatever for one minute, then walk until the first chorus of the next song. That seemed like a good compromise.

Until I got to a.) The Pixies, who have two-minute songs, and b.) another band with a six-minute instrumental. That threw off my jogging cycle mojo hardcore.

About that time, I took a wrong turn down what wasn’t the yellow trail, so I ended up on a paved path. S’ok — I still knew where I was going, but I didn’t know exactly what distance I’d be travelling anymore. Since my mojo was thrown off and my distance gauge was no longer valid (since I forgot to bring my pedometer), I just jogged when I felt like it. ‘Let’s jog the length of this fence’ or ‘Let’s jog to the tree’ or something like that.

“That’s nice and all,” you’re saying, “but how did it GO?”

Surprisingly well, actually.

My first jogging stint was right out of the gate. Walked down from the trailhead, got on the yellow trail, started jogging. I really enjoyed it, and didn’t want to stop after my minute was over — but I did, anyway. Then I realized that I was winded. Bad. I hadn’t noticed while I was jogging, and I wonder how long I could have jogged before my body spoke up.

My next stretch was a little harder, and slightly embarrassing. A guy probably five years younger than me was on the trail in front of me when it came time for me to break into a jog again, so I psyched myself up to pass him. My keys were jangling in my back pocket, but there was nothing to be done about that. I was sure I looked like a total dork with my keys on one ass-cheek and my wallet on the other. Oh. well.

Approached, no problem. Passed on the left, no problem.

Pants started to fall down. Problem.

I didn’t even consider stopping to pull them up and cinch in the drawstring. Nope. Not an option; this is my jog-time. Instead, I yanked up my workout pants as I ran, trying to run faster to get around the bend and out of sight. They just fell right back down. I was sure this guy could see my underwear at this point, and I tried to be funny by making a frustrated gesture to the world in general as I hiked them up again and successfully disappeared around the corner. Once my minute was up, I had run waaaay too fast and winded myself even worse than before. But I did pull up my drawers and tie the drawstring tight. Guess that’s why it’s there — to keep your pants up while you’re running with keys and wallet and iPod on your person.

All in all, I think I had about four or five jogging stints and spent somewhere just over 30 minutes with my walk-jog. Next time, I’ll be more careful with checking the time and staying on the right trail. And bringing my pedometer.

After the walk-jog, I went back to the car, fetched my change and my camera, bought a water from the vending machine, used up the last few exposures on the camera I was testing, then got back in the car and headed home.

When I got home, the rice was done, which tells me I was gone at least an hour. That’s good. Finished making dinner (Szechuan chicken) and divided it into thirds: one for dinner, one for tomorrow’s lunch, and one for Aaron when he gets home tonight. Yummy.

So, how do I feel? Well, my quads were already sore from yesterday’s workout, and they’re even more sore now. My ass is sore. Actually, come to think of it, just about everywhere is sore, between yesterday’s PUSH workout and today’s interval training (if you want to call it that).

But I feel GOOD.

I’ve still got the memory of that I’ve-been-breathing-hard feeling in the back of my throat and my upper lungs, and I feel like my heart rate is still a little elevated (not much, but enough that I notice).

If I can do this every Tuesday and Thursday, and do it with Aaron on Saturday or Sunday, and keep up with my M-W-F PUSH workouts, I think I’ll see results. At the very least, I’ll feel better, which is part of what this thing’s all about.

P.S. – Thank you to everyone who commented on my last post or sent me e-mail. I really appreciate having friends and acquaintances who step up to help and know how to motivate me. You guys are teh awesome! ^_^