As many of my closest friends and family know, I am struggling to lose weight. Early in 2007, I was on track to drop a decent amount of weight per week. When the summer heat wave hit, I became demotivated.

Now, I need your help. I need your help in keeping me on track. I need your help in getting some weight off of my knees so they'll stop hurting. I need your help in remembering to bicycle, not just on my nights off, but motivating me to ride to work, no matter the weather.

I need your help.

I need all of my friends and readers to become motivators for me on traineo. See http://dygituljunky.traineo.com/ to track my progress and help me out. You can also add an RSS feed (http://dygituljunky.traineo.com/dygituljunky.xml)

This post is dated 2009-01-01, the date of my goal of weighing 90 kg (200 lb). This was really posted on 2007-12-01 and, as of this date, I have 30 kg (65 lb) to go. (2.2 kg = 1 lb.)

Thank you all, in advance.

Now that the iPhone 3G is out and I've had a chance to review other users' experiences with the device, I have some concerns/quibbles.

First:
- No user-replaceable battery. The Treo 600 lacked this; Palm fixed this deficiency on the Treo 650 & 680. Some of us talk too much, leave bluetooth running, read books (leaving the screen on for a long time, play music, etc. I must be able to replace my battery so that I can be like the bunny with a drum.
- No card slot. Sure the iPhone has either 8 or 16 GB of on-board memory. But how do I transfer data, sans computer, between my iPhone and other devices (still camera, video camera, computers other than my own, photo printer stations, etc). And the expansion card slot should be large enough that users with blunt fingers can handle the cards. A CF slot would be nice but I can see how the masses might not appreciate a phone large enough to accommodate it; in lieu of a CF slot, please incorporate an SD/MMC/SDIO/SDHC slot.
- Special sync cable required. Actually, the iPod docking port isn't bad (an understatement; it's the best dern docking port I've yet to use regularly). If Apple would make it an industry standard and allow other PDAs, media players, and such to use it, that would, IMHO, be a GOOD THING.
- No physical keyboard. On all of my test runs on the iPhone in stores, I just can't grow to like the touch keyboard. Include the keyboard in a slide-out so that I don't accidentally hit keys in my pocket.
- iTunes required. It's a good thing iTunes works really well.
- Apple blessing required for software. This is a deal-killer. I must be able to choose my own software from my own sources. It's my hardware, let me do what I want with it. If I want to use it as a cellular modem for my computer, I should be able to. If I want to run stuff on the Terminal, I should be able to (out of the box).
- AT&T required. Potential deal-killer. Sell ME the hardware, let me pick my provider. Provide the visual voice mail standards openly.
- 16 GB is the biggest available size (currently)?! Sheesh.
- Syncronize faster. Backing up every byte on every sync is a little much.

Related deficiencies:
- No iTunes for Linux. I swear I'd go broke on iTunes if I could get iTunes on my Ubuntu laptop.
- iTunes folders must be attached to the main computer, not on external drives? I should be able to use my iPod/iPhone as my main media storage AND be able to back up the device to an external hard drive. iTunes should be tolerant of removable drives for the iTunes Library.

Well, these are some of the things that are making me reconsider getting in line for an iPhone 3G. I am looking forward to the LiMO, Android, and ACCESS Linux Platform phones to see if they bring better options to the table.

Many of you, my friends, may remember me saying in the last six to twelve months that I did not intend to buy a new car once my little Escort Wagon gave up the ghost. The only caveat that I gave was that I might purchase a Jeep Wrangler down the line for towing a home improvement cargo trailer, taking road trips, and off-roading.

Some of you may have also noticed my twitter/facebook status updates stating that my car was dead. Here's what happened: I threw a rod (the cylinder rod metal gave up) and the rod went through the oil pan like the baby Alien hatching out of a host's stomach. According to my mechanic, I'll need a new or refurbished engine to get the car going again.

Other than a passing though of "wouldn't it be cool to convert the dead car to electric," I haven't once considered repairing or replacing the car.

So what now? A monthly MARTA Breeze Card (www.itsmarta.com) costs $52.50 for thirty days. My gas tank held 10 gallons and I used about 20 gallons per month. With current prices at roughly $4.00/gal, I was paying about $80.00/mo in gas alone. On top of the gas costs, the registration, insurance, and maintenance added up to a total car bill of somewhere around $200-$250 per month.

On the flip side, my brother and I just performed some much needed repair and upgrades on my bicycle to the tune of about $230 in parts alone but those parts should last more than a year or two. I owe him a trade in labor even though he loves tinkering with bikes :-P.

Per month, I have already saved about $150 to $200 (on a tiny, low-insurance-rate car on which I owed no money to anyone). Were I to purchase a new car, the car expenses would go up (a Jeep Wrangler is less efficient, costs more in insurance, costs more to register, and would have about a $600/month car payment, not to mention all of accessories I would have (*wink*) to purchase and install). The offset in the expenses for the first month to month and a half was spent to get my two wheels under me in a solid way and to buy into MARTA for the first month of travel.

My social destinations are all within cycling distance (shorter in Atlanta summers due to the heat and humidity). My best friends live about 8.5 km (5.5 mi) away by my preferred route, my best drinking buddy lives about 11.5 km (7.5 mi) away. Family is near enough to the drinking buddy or on the way to his house that I can use the same distance figures. Work is about 14.5 km (9 mi) away and my preferred LBS is just about at work (there is one very close to my house but he seems to use slightly lower quality suppliers).

MARTA has improved the routing in my area. I can now get off of one bus and directly onto another (I don't have to ride a train from one station to another to catch the second bus, the second bus now terminates at the same station as the two routes nearest my house).

Finally, if I absolutely need to get around in private motor vehicle (for IKEA, hardware store, pet store, etc., runs and travel outside of DeKalb and Fulton counties), I have several options. I will be joining Flexcar through my employer and I can borrow a family member's car. For longer road trips, I can rent a car from one of the standard car rental companies.

Here I am, a new member of the truly carfree community.

I will be investing in a Bikes At Work trailer or a similar heavy-duty cargo trailer and a second grocery pannier sometime in the near future to further eliminate borrowed-car trips. It's too bad that the grocery delivery companies like the current Peapod, Simon Delivers, and Amazon Fresh services were such a flop in Atlanta at the end of the dot com era; they would be mighty convenient for heavy-grocery purchases, now.

I also need to invest in a dog trailer to get my dog to Stone Mountain Park with me for walks around the mountain.

One of the leftovers of a completely patriarchal society is a naming convention that gives the bride her groom's family name and their children the father's family name. Some families have taken to hyphenating the bride's family name with the groom's (Ms. Smith marries Mr. Jones and becomes Mrs. Smith-Jones).

Well, this doesn't quite follow the idea of feminism, i.e. true equality. A significant number of people keep the groom and bride's family names unchanged after the wedding (Mr. Jones and Mrs. Smith). A very small handful have taken to changing both the groom and bride's names (Mr. and Mrs. Jones-Smith).

It is an extrapolation of the final example which I propose as a full feminist naming convention:
- Mr. Jones becomes Mr. Jones-Smith (or Mr. Jones-wed-Smith)
- Ms. Smith becomes Mrs. Smith-Jones (or Mrs. Smith-wed-Jones)
- The male children get family name Jones-Smith (but NOT Jones-wed-Smith)
- The female children get the family name Smith-Jones (but NOT Smith-wed-Jones)

This could quickly get too long so a naming convention of this sort has to pick which part of a name to pass on.
- When a male Jones-Smith child marries, for example, a Washington or Washington-Franklin, that male then becomes Jones-Washington (or Jones-wed-Washington). Their male children get Jones-Washington and their female children get Washington-Jones. (The sons pass the original patriarchal name).
- When a female Smith-Jones child marries, for example, a Franklin or Franklin-Washington, that female then becomes Smith-Franklin (or Smith-wed-Franklin). Their male children Franklin-Smith and their female children get Smith-Franklin. (The daughters pass the original matriarchal name).

The X-wed-Y/Y-wed-X version of the name is reserved for the bride and groom to show affiliation that their affiliation is a chosen one, if they choose to use it, rather than the name passed on by their own parents. The X-wed-Y/Y-wed-X version would be reserved specifically for the referring to the individual (the bride or the groom), or the bride and groom as a pair (see the next paragraph). The X-Y and Y-X versions of their family name are the names that they pass on to their children.

The only leftover of the patriarchal naming convention that I suggest is as follows: if a friend for family member is referring to the family as a whole, including children, by a version of the family name, I suggest that the friend use the groom-bride version of the name (not the groom-wed-bride version). For example, I could say that the Jones-Smiths are my neighbors. When introducing the bride and groom as a pair, the speaker could say that the couple are Mr. and Mrs. Jones-Smith or Mr. and Mrs. Jones-wed-Smith because the speaker is referring to the people as a both individuals and as a group of two.

Rest in Peace. You were an inspiration to far more people than you could have ever known. And enjoy the great cycling road in the sky.

I'm sorry I never got around to saying "thank you" to you personally.

---

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/

http://bikehugger.com/2008/02/sheldon_brown_stories.htm

http://bicycledesign.blogspot.com/2008/02/rest-in-peace-sheldon.html

http://clevercycles.com/?p=218

http://commutebybike.com/2008/02/04/sheldon-brown-rip/

I hope you give the SWAT team an excuse to send you on an express trip to BURN IN HELL!

The two patriots you killed were trying to earn an extra buck for their kids, you asshole cowards.

Please, please give the SWAT team every excuse they need, without, of course, hurting any one else or stealing any other parents from their children.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/16/officers.killed/index.html

Could the adventures seriously be over? So far, it seems so!

Today I installed Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna on my laptop and all of the woes that I have had in the past seem to be solved in this version.

I wiped out all of my old install, ran the installer, supplied the windows driver for the wireless network card when I was prompted, and turned off the tap-to-click function on my touchpad, all without entering anything on the command line.

(Since I previously had trouble with the drivers on my laptop, I had those saved to a flash drive.)

Is Linux really this close to primetime? It really only needs a couple of more refinements in the installation process in order to make it easy for people who've never heard of "root" or "swap space."

So, for now, it seems that the the Adventures in Linux Compatibility have come to a gloriously easy ending.

See Parts 1, 2, and 3.

For a while, this blog and this LJ account served as my primary social networking medium. The other big ones, facebook, myspace, and Yahoo, all had their problems and all seemed too simple (not feature-rich enough).

Of those sites, facebook now seems spectacular and I've gone sorta crazy with it. On the other hand, I hate myspace (but use it anyway, for those few friends who don't/won't use facebook).

So if you have facebook (and you really know me), please add me to your friend list. If you have myspace (and not facebook), add me.

One of the main reasons I hate myspace is that they have so much friend request spam. Make sure you turn on the CAPTCHAs on the friend request and message pages so you don't get so much spam.

The other main reason I hate myspace is the music which so many people embed into their web pages; it's auto-play and there's nowhere that I've found to turn off auto-play when you log in.

I am going to continue this blog but it's not my main medium for keeping up with my friends. facebook and, unfortunately, myspace have won that function, facebook because of the quantity of users and featureset and myspace as the backup.

It's strange what things we can become attached to...

Just now, a microwave oven that has been feeding my family for about 20 years died. It simply stopped supplying electricity to the fan, light, and emitter. This microwave is so big that my grandmother used to cook Thanksgiving turkeys in it.

I'll see if I can salvage or repair it, but I doubt it.