Summertime Slowdown

This is a slow time of year.  I guess the lazy days of summer are aptly named.  For one, school is out, so instead of school busses in the morning and kids rushing home or to their school-year extra-curricular activities you see kids shooting hoops in their driveways or spending the day at the neighborhood pool.

Rush-hour traffic seems better too.  People go on vacation, or change the time they drive into work since their kids are home for the summer or something… whatever causes the decrease in traffic snarls, I love it!  The television networks are between seasons on all of their big shows, and the only major professional sport that’s going is Major League Baseball.

In a month or so football will be gearing up, families will be returning home from the beach or the mountains or wherever they’ve been all summer.  School supplies will go on sale… the whole thing winds back up to full speed and starts the cycle all over again.  But for now, I’m enjoying the lazy days of summer.

Posturing

I have had an on-and-off-again problem with my neck for most of the past year.  Out of nowhere it will just be really sore and stiff.  It’s not like I’m middle aged, I’m only 30.  But I cannot seem to shake this problem no matter what I’ve tried.

The first thing I did was to get a Tempur-Pedic pillow, which really has helped a lot.  But while my neck pain seems to be less frequent, it still manages to annoy me from time to time.

Well, today I think I’ve figured it out.  It has to do with the way I sit at my desk at work.  My dual monitors are so low on my desk that I end up slouching down to get to a comfortable level for my eyes, but at the expense of the rest of my body.  No wonder I get neck and headaches all the time…  I am slouching down in my chair and bending my neck forward to get in line with my monitors.  So, I am sitting up straight by locking my chair in position and I am going to boost my displays up a few inches.  Let’s hope this works.

This has caused me to think about posture in general… and how Americans are a bunch of hunched-over fat blobs.  I am trying to keep my neck, shoulder blades, hips and knees in the same plane, but it’s harder than I thought it would be.  In order to make this natural you have to strengthen your abs and the rhomboid muscles in your back.  This improved posture requires extra self-awareness for me because I am 6′5″ tall so I tend to naturally slump over to be on more of a level of friends and family and coworkers as I interact with them.  Imagine what it would be like if all of the slumped over people you see every day at the grocery store, gym or the mall were paying attention to their posture…  if you pay attention when you’re out and about in public you will be surprised at how many of us struggle with this!

An old friend moves on…

Last week I was confronted with the loathsome decision to euthanize my cat, Dierker.  While I rationalized it completely at the time, and I knew that Dierker was suffering and miserable, it unleashed a flood of emotions that I was not expecting once the decision had been made.

When I got home from work that evening I realized he wasn’t there.  He would never be there again.  I had never greeted Dierker at the door like I do my wife or son or even our stupid dog, Lucy.  But the fact that Dierker was not physically there still got to me and  I began to reflect on our life together.  I adopted Dierker in the fall of 1999 while I was beginning my junior year of college.  While roommates came and went, and friends moved on to other cities and new lives, Dierker and I were still together.

A friend of mine pointed out to me last week that Dierker lived a full life and got to taste a little bit of everything along the way.  He had some wild times in college, then moved on to the more serious life of the working man.  He settled down with me when Rachel and I were married, and even got to experience a new addition to our family when Brantley was born.

In all, Dierker and I spent a few months shy of 10 years together.  That’s one third of my life up to this point.  When I look back it doesn’t seem like that long, but I am left feeling like I took Dierker for granted as part of my life that was always there.  When I picked his remains up at the vet’s office yesterday and was driving home, I felt this morbid parallel to the first time I brought Dierker home from the SPCA when I had adopted him.  He managed to claw his way out of his little cardboard carrier that day and was under my feed and climbing up in my lap while I tried to drive somewhat safely along the freeway with my new companion.  Dierker would not be escaping his box this time around, and that cold reality still doesn’t sit all that well.  Farewell, old friend…

Joe The Plumber & Sarah Palin

Can these two go away for awhile?  Seriously.  Sam errr Joe the Plumber has now looked for a multi-million dollar book deal, traveled to Gaza as a “war correspondant” for Pajama TV and now he’s providing strategy to Republican congressional aides.  I mean, come on.  This guy is not qualified for any of these things, and frankly he is just seeking publicity for himself so he can become some kind of folk hero to the Joe-The-Plumber-Tito-The-Builder set.  GO AWAY!

Same goes for Sarah Palin.  She has done nothing but travel to national events in order to keep her face in the public eye so she can supposedly lead her party in 2012.  Did she forget that she was elected to serve the people of her home state of Alaska first and foremost?  Did she not get the hint that the American people sent her when they overwhelmingly voted for the Democratic ticket in the 2008 presidential race?  Enough already.  Go be a governor for a while and then worry about your personal ambitions.  If I were an Alaskan I’d be asking Sarah “what have you done for me lately Madam Governor?”

John McCain unwittingly did his country a great disservice by unleashing these two clowns on the American public.

You Gaza Be Kidding Me…

This whole Israeli offensive into Gaza is really starting to bother me. First, let me say that I understand the basic history behind the US support for Israel. Without a serious power such as the US backing them up, they would have almost certainly been butchered by many of their neighbors in the Middle East.  But here’s where I have a problem with our relationship with Israel:  the simple fact that it is UNCONDITIONAL support.

Hamas may be launching rockets into Southern Israel “picking” a fight with the IDF, but since when is it ok to retaliate by bombing a UN-sanctioned school?  Or high-density residential areas?  Or mosques?  Simply stating that Hamas was supposedly using the aforementioned school as a staging site for rocket attacks is not a good enough reason.  Even if that is a totally true statement, you’re telling me that there is no way to root out the few individuals they seek without killing a bunch of innocent kids and teachers?

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict reminds me of junior high.  One kid picks on another kid and pokes him and punches him.  Then, when that kid finally flips out and punches the first kid they BOTH get sent to the principle’s office, and blame each other for what happened.  They both say they will stop fighting and get along, and are sent back to class.  Then fifteen minutes later the whole scenario repeats itself.

Giant Pretzel

My favorite thing about New York City has got to be the giant pretzels you can get from the hot dog carts.  Man, they are good.  There is a pretzel shop in just about every mall in America now, but their pretzels just don’t make the grade.  The pretzels in New York City are HUGE, and they have just the right balance of a crispy crust with a chewy center.  Mmmmmm…

That’s the App Store, not the Crap Store

Apple’s “App Store” for the iPhone and iPod touch  has spawned a new software development and delivery platform that has as much potential as any that’s come a long in years.  One thing I have noticed, however, is how many truly useless apps have popped up for sale on the App Store, most of them priced at 99¢… a tempting price even if you’re risking that your download will turn out to be total crap.

This has begun to create an unforseen problem: while the App store has now grown to include of 10,000 downloadable programs, the prevalence of this “crapware” has begun to squeeze out development of more complex and truly useful applications.  This week, Craig Hockenberry posted an open letter to Steve Jobs explaining this problem as it relates to his work as an iPhone developer at Iconfactory.  Edible Apple also posted some interesting charts and graphs relating to iPhone App sales.  Note the predominance of free and 99¢ apps, as well as that of Games…

It will be interesting to see if Apple does tweak the way programs are displayed and highlighted on the App store, and if this will aid in a sustained commitment from developers to create substantial, killer apps for the iPhone in the future.

This guy seriously needs a new hair style…

The most amazing thing to me about the whole Rod Blagojevich sentate seat scandal has got to be this guy’s hair. I mean, come on? Who actually has hair like this? The phrase “what was this guy thinking” comes to mind in many instances with Blagojevich, that’s for sure. What the hell did he think would happen if he tried to basically sell Obama’s vacated sentate seat? Why the hell did he act so arrogant and dare the feds to wiretap him just a day before they showed up at his front door? And finally, what in the hell is his wife doing letting him go out in public with that hair?!

Pirates of the… Arabian Sea??

Ok, so Rachel and I love going on cruises and all, but I would NOT be sailing on a vessel making a transit around Africa or out of the Red Sea or Persian Gulf.  I know there are some cool things to see over there, but honestly, given our current image around the world it might not be a good time to travel to this area.  Especially by ship.  I mean, the pirates off Somalia are attacking commerce-related vessels for ransom, don’t you think they’d love to have 500-2000 human beings to ransom instead of millions of dollars worth of cargo?

Exhibit A:

Somali Pirates Fire On US Cruise Ship In Hijack Attempt

I am all for world travel, but seriously, don’t go on a cruise in the Arabian Sea right now.  Just thinking…

Bayou Bucket

One of Houston’s best sporting events is the annual Bayou Bucket game between Rice and the University of Houston.  This year in particular, both teams had a crack at the conference title on the line, so the game had even more meaning than usual.  Today’s crowd was the biggest I have seen at a Rice home game in quite a while.  Two years ago for the Bayou Bucket game there was also a big crowd, but it was the first game of the season so it didn’t mean as much.  Rice held a slight advantage early, then really pulled away in the second half.  We won 56-42 but it really didn’t end up as close as that score would indicate.  Rice had lost three straight to U of H so today’s win was a long time coming!

What an exciting season for college football fans in Houston… U of H and Rice will both be representing the city in bowl games this year!