A Random Pattern

You can check yourself - if the information is still up.  Here is the explanation:

http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2008/08/hack-olympics.html

Here are the caches:

Cache 1

Cache 2

Here are the screenshots, in case the caches get pulled:

So, sadly but not surprisingly, it does appear China is lying about the ages of at least one of their gymnasts.  I don’t care about the medal count, don’t really care about gymnastics, but I am sad that this cheating incident is being ignored by the Olympic commission at a time when drugs and cheating are such a huge issue.

Update: Fixed links, and want to note that now the IOC is investigating.  Let’s hope we can move on - all countries have athletes that have cheated at times, and there is the very good point that it is sad to see such young girls (whether the allegations are true or not) having to go through such a public trial.  Let’s hope the sports governing bodies do their job and the rest of us can get back to enjoying the stories, performances, and successes of the Olympics.

Our two-year old, Selah, has been praying this way for probably a year now.  We don’t know why she says “Jesus God” instead of “Dear God” or “Dear Jesus” - probably just got the two confused and decided to cover her bases.  She also ends each prayer the same way - “Jesus God, Amen”.

Last night she caught me by surprise, though.  I asked if both the girls wanted to pray.  Selah said no (sometimes they are too tired or otherwise don’t want to pray, and we’ve never made an issue of it).  However, just after I finished praying (and before Tessa could start), Selah jumped in with this:

“Jesus God, help me ‘cuz I don’t want to pray.”

She then prayed on for a minute or two about a book we read and some other things before asking me for a drink of water.  Not sure where she got that from, but I suppose she has the right idea. 

Today my wife made cupcakes with the kids.  Later, as we were eating dinner, we played a word game.  We would ask each person for a word they like, and then ask them to define the word.

Tessa picked “bug”, and it was quite a challenge for her to “define” the word.  She came up with “tiny”, “animal”, “has legs”, “some of them fly”, and “alive”.

The adults then picked “village”, “ambidextrous”, and “herbivore”.

Selah finally decided on her word: cupcake.  We asked what cupcake means, and she had the answer ready:

“It means when I eat all my dinner”.

We’ve taught them well. 

You’re going to have to make a trade.  Accept it, internalize it, and move on to the next step: what are you willing to trade?

Some ideas (you only need to work in one of these):

• Drink water instead of soda.  This works for me by supplementing with Gatorade or juice whenever I get bored with the water - and I feel much better.  In fact, soda no longer even tastes good or appeals to me.  I used to drink at least 1-liter of Mountain Dew a day, so you can change this.
• Cut down on the coffee in some significant way.  Again, water is a good thing to have handy when you need a drink.
• Add in one vegetable to your dinner every night.  Or one meal of the day.  Maybe buy a bag of carrot sticks and add them to your lunch.  Try to eat the veggies first - this will get them out of the way, and help fill you up, while you can end the meal with something that leaves a nice taste.
• To complement your exercise regime (you did read Part 1, right?), add some fruit to your diet.  It makes a great mid-afternoon snack.  If you can’t fit that in because of your work schedule, then you need to decide what’s more important to you, your crazy work or your life.

The bottom line is: find something in your regular diet (the things you eat and drink every day) that you are willing to give up or trade in.  If you can’t find something, then you’re willing to be fat and unhealthy.  Maybe you can have less bread with your meals, or less condiments.  Maybe you eliminate some of your sauces, such as the mayonnaise, from your fridge.  Maybe you commit to eat out less, or eat some of those pre-made “healthy choice” meals a couple times a week.

Whatever it is, find something that works for you and is a real change to your regular diet.  This isn’t “going on a diet”, this is “I’m going to change my lifestyle and eat better”.  You’ve only got to make one change now, and stick with it.

So, is getting healthy still important to you?  If it’s important enough to read my rambling, it is important enough for you to spend 5 minutes figuring out what you are going to change in your life.  Get to it!

If you came here from a search engine looking for an undiscovered “magic” diet that will trim you down in weeks….

you’re going to be disappointed. Not because this won’t work, but because it will require changes you aren’t willing to make. Yes, I know you’ll eat cucumbers and tofu for a month, or puree all your food and drink it for two weeks - there’s nothing you wouldn’t do, right? If that’s really true, this’ll be a breeze for you.

All you need to do to get in shape is change your life, in a couple specific ways. Here’s the plan:

1. Change how you spend your time. Decide on something to give up every day so you have 30 minutes for exercise.
2. Change something you eat or drink. By change I mean eliminate or replace with something healthy.

That’s it! It really is that easy, I promise. The scariest part of the whole thing is “Change”. But you can do it, and it won’t be that bad. In fact, I think you only need to worry about point number one - exercise. If you can commit to that, you’ll find the rest to be easy.

Are you wondering why this would work? Why no bran flakes or fish-only? Why no carb-counting or points or formulatic hand-waving? Shoot, you could just take all the time you used to use planning and implementing a fad diet, and exercise instead - you’d be there, baby! This works because our main problem isn’t that we eat too much, or exercise too little.

Again, our main problem isn’t that we eat too much, or exercise too little. Our problem is that we don’t listen to our bodies. The reason you need to give up 30 minutes out of every day is so you can learn to listen to your body. The exercise is a nice conduit to this goal. I’m going to assert that if you are committed, and do this right, you won’t have to worry about anything else. Food? You’ll actually want to eat healthier, and eat less. Exercise? You’ll start enjoying it, wanting to do it. Time? You’ll actually look forward to your “exercise time”, a little peace and quiet where you can actually think.

In fact, you’ll become willing to fight for your exercise time. Which is good, because you’ll need to fight for it. You’ll need to fight hard to keep at it, 5-6 days a week, all year. There are two tips I can give you that might make this last challenge a little more doable.

1. Give up something in your own life. I know this is hard, but it’s going to be impossible if you don’t do it. This is a very hard lesson for me, as I like to “have my cake and eat it too”. But it is a simple fact that you only have 24 hours a day, so something’s gotta budge for you to have an extra 30 minutes. Oh, and taking that time out of your sleep - nice try. You’ve already done that with too many other things, it sure won’t work during the critical first 3 weeks of your new exercise lifestyle. I suggest you commit to giving up a single T.V. show that you now watch. If it’s that important, you can buy (or Netflix) the season DVD later to catch up.
2. Buy a Wii. Seriously, if you’re having trouble getting started, try the “Wii Sports” exercise regime. It will get your body moving, and help you find 30 minutes a day. You might not take my advice for your health, but if it’s fun….

And on that note, we’ll end today. I’m going to take my own advice, and let you know how it goes this time (after falling off the wagon this year). I’ll be putting more up on the Wii soon, so come back later this week.  I’ll also cover how to change what you eat in an effective way.

Don’t miss not seeing this awesome sight - a Ninja Parade!

On a related note, I considered being a Ninja for Halloween this year.  Don’t know if I’ll be able to find adequate supplies of throwing stars and katanas, but piano wire should work in a pinch.  Then again, the opposite extreme calls to me as well…

Leopard, the new operating system from Apple, goes on sale at 6 pm today.

If you’re still using Windows at home, and you want to do typical home-user things (photos, movies, music, web-surfing, email), Mac OS X is the best game in town right now.  Windows XP and Vista just don’t compare to the truly best-of-class consumer apps that Apple is providing lately.  Even better, Leopard now lets you run Windows side-by-side in case there are a few things you absolutely need on Windows.

From my point of view the absolute best feature for the average household?  The safety and security features.  You simply don’t have to worry about viruses and malware like you do with a Windows machine.  There’s the added advantage of not supporting the unethical Microsoft corporation, which has enjoyed (and abused) a monopoly for some time now.  Luckily it looks like those days are drawing to a close, as the market is already responding to the last several years of Apple innovation.

We’ve got one more day at the hospital, so Aria can stay under the “bily-lights”.  She’s a little jaundiced, so better safe than sorry.

Because of that, I’m going to relieve Grandma of kid-sitting.  She’s probably ready to take back her statement that she wouldn’t mind more kids. 

Ok, I’ll admit it: I’m too tired to think of a clever title. This post is about pictures and sleep - and some of the family meeting the baby.
Contrary to the pictures below, though, we are doing more than sleeping around here. At least that’s the story I’m sticking to. Head over to the gallery for a full selection of pictures from the last two days.

Aria Raine made her big debut at 5:32 a.m. She weighed in at 7 lbs 10 oz (just over half a stone, or 3.5 kilograms), and was 19 3/4 inches long (that’s 50 centimeters for you metric types ).

So far she likes to sleep, with a little singing and eating now and then. I should note that Mommy also is a fan of sleeping right now.

Thanks for all of you who are thinking about and praying for us.  Check my gallery for some quick pics.

If you’re a reader from the technical side - well, check back soon and I’ll have something interesting up. Maybe about a new site launch, even….