My plan was to get a few selections from a certain category of beer and just write down what I thought of each and which I like the best. Then I could compare the winners of each round with each other to get my favorites from each category. Then when I’m in the mood for a certain type of beer, I just get my favorite selections of that type. I think I’m going to do that still, but I’m going to use ratebeer.com instead of just writing something down.

I don’t have a lot of confidence in my ability to follow through, but we’ll see!

Instructions to fix this can be found here and are listed below for your convenience:

1.      Launch the Registry Editor
2.      Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
\CurrentVersion\Run
3.      Look for a key labeled ECenter.  It should have “C:\Dell\E-Center
\EULALauncher.exe” in the data field
4.      Delete this key
5.      Restart your computer

I also created a .reg file that will do this. You should be able to download the file and execute it to delete the appropriate registry value. I BARELY KNOW WHAT I’M DOING SO USE THIS FILE AT YOUR OWN RISK. Download the file here.

I hope this helps someone (and me in the future when I run into the problem again).

I came here tonight to post cute pictures of my dog sleeping in awkward positions. As I scrolled down the page to get to the link to write the post, the 2008 obesity map from a post back in July came on the screen. Something about it caught my eye. I stared at the map as my brain slowly clicked the pieces together.

I’ve spent more of my energy reading about and paying attention to the 2008 election than any previous one. One part of that is watching the polls every day and looking at maps where shades of blue and red become lighter and darker. As I looked at the obesity map, it struck me that it doesn’t look too different than the current 2008 electoral map. Let’s take a look.

Here’s the obesity map:

And here’s the 2008 electoral map prediction from Pollster.com as of October 20, 2008:

Now, I know it’s not perfect, but there definitely is some correlation:

• 90% of the ten most obese states are leaning Republican (MI, WV, AL, LA, AR, SC, TN, KY, OK)
• 80% of the ten least obese states are leaning Democrat (CO, HI, CT, MA, VT, RI, DC, NJ)
• 70% of the twenty most obese states are Republican, 20% Toss Up and 10% Democrat
• 75% of the twenty least obese states are Democrat, 10% Toss Up and 15% Republican

I don’t purport to imply that the correlation means anything, but it’s fun to think about.

The rest of the pictures are here.

These were our second and third climbs:

Here’s me making a sweet move on the second climb:

The rest of the pictures are here.

I say it’s because of all of the Ethiopian restaurants around here.

From here.

In January of 2007, we bought a new car, I planned, purchased supplies for and installed a dog kennel in our back yard (in MI obviously), we started getting heavily into wedding plans and I think I self diagnosed myself as bipolar or something. Also, Kuma was turning into a very good puller of me on a bike. This post was all over the place.

In March of 2007, I was inspired by a co-worker’s attempt at waking up at 5 AM (see here). I was proving to be fairly successful at getting up at 5 AM for a while. Some things that helped me were to disallow the snooze button entirely and to move the alarm into the bathroom. Also, preparing my clothes the night before helped me avoid that period of time where you figure out what to where which was also when I was dangerously tempted to just lie back down. I was fine as long as I was out of the bedroom area by the time my post-wake up adrenaline wore off.

In June of 2007, I decided that one of the best motivators to get me to work out was to limit my work out session to 30 minutes, regardless. So, I get in what I get in in 30 minutes instead. I’m boxed to a time limit instead of completing a certain set of exercises. That was liberating for me for some reason. I still do the time limit thing today.

In spring of 2007, I started counting the nutrition of EVERYTHING I ate. I counted calories, fat, protein, carbs, fiber and sugar. It was tedious but very fun. I stopped around mid-summer because wedding planning was hectic. I haven’t started again, but I still adhere to 4-5 meals a day and sticking to roughly the correct proportions of carbs, protein and fat in each meal.

In June of 2007, I also decided that the best way to get anything done that you really wanted to get done was to do the first preparation steps for the task at the time you’re thinking about how important it is for you to get it done.

In January of 2008, with the housing crisis hitting full steam and many of the brokerage firms losing money, I questioned how someone could let a brokerage that is losing so much money convince them that they’ll do any better with that person’s money.

In January of 2008, I also encountered my third canceled flight IN A ROW. I’ve been luckier since.

There you have it.