Month: June 2004

Geeking at the Gym

I have a Compaq iPAQ 3970 PDA. It was given to me about a year and a half ago by SMU because we were going to write a PDA-based ticket writing software for the SMU police department. I wasn’t going to write the software, but as a web geek I was supposed to provide support and knowledge.

The project never got off the ground.

Now I use the PDA to be my Outlook calendar, contacts, and task list when I am not at the office. It’s incredibly useful for this.

My favorite use is a gym workout tracker. The PDA comes with a scaled down version of the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet program called Pocket Excel. After I use each exercise machine at the gym I jot down the weights I used and how many repetitions I managed into my spreadsheet. (Click on the spreadsheet to see how wimpy I really am.) Over time I will graph my workout results to see if I am improving.

Junk Food Junkie

I am such a junk food junkie.

I eat donuts at work about once a week when someone brings them. I eat pastries at Sunday school. I bought some soft drinks to help keep me awake during my summer class, but I’ve already drunk one at the desk. I have a stash of honey roasted salted peanuts because I get hungry in the late afternoon. Etc. Etc.

Maybe this is OK because there is almost no junk food at my house. Last night I was hungry towards 10:00 PM, and the only convenient thing to eat was Frosted Mini Spooners (a very good and inexpensive Malt-O-Meal knockoff of Kellogg’s Bite Sized Frosted Mini Wheats).

Oh, well. I think I am about 15 pounds below my high school weight, so it’s all good?

Counting spare change

Slow: do it by hand.

Stupid: use a Coinstar machine. These machines charge around 8 cents per dollar. That’s a whopping 8% tax just for the privilege of letting a machine do it for you.

Better: some bank branches have change counting machines that will count your money for free. Call around.

Best: just take your spare change with you next time you go to the store. Use the self-checkout isle, and cram coins into the machine until you paid your bill.

When I do self-checkout, I first empty out all my coins, then I use $1 bills, then $5 bills, etc. This way I am guaranteed that whatever change is returned is the lightest possible combination of currency.

Ronald Reagan

The world lost a great man on Saturday.

I had a poor knowledge of politics during Reagan’s presidency, but I have good memories of him. (My first memory of an American president was when my maternal grandmother expressed disenchantment with Jimmy Carter while he was on the TV.) I never understood Reagan well until my teenage years, well into Bush 1’s term.

I really liked this article: http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/ed_events/person.htm.

By the way, why is the web site for his California library hosted by the University of Texas at Austin and not by the National Archives?