The Kid is Back.

(In theory.)

Notes of Now

• Tom Jones' It's Not Unusual is blaring out of my speakers right now. 
• I just spent three straight hours cleaning my room -- and I'm still not done yet. Have to buy some 409 tomorrow...
• I'm thinking of starting a "diet" next week to see if a book I bought a while ago (The Abs Diet) should really have been sold as fiction. The book does not so much promote a diet but more advocates better eating habits. This visceral fat has me concerned, and is certainly not helping the cause of having a "Beach Ready Body" for Summer '09.
• Speaking of Summer '09, the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen trailer was released a few days ago attached to the Friday the 13th remake. It doesn't give away any plot points (although it's not hard to guess what it's gonna be about -- more Decepticons land on Earth and awesome robot batting action ensues), but looks to be an even more special effects laden adventure than the first. 
• Keith Urban's Making Memories of Us has replaced Tom Jones. If I recall correctly an article I read a while ago in Us magazine while waiting for a haircut, Keith Urban serenaded Nicole Kidman with this song on their wedding day. 
• Preliminary baseball practices have begun, with two now under my belt. It feels great to get out and field some fly balls -- hopefully the weather will continue to be cooperative on Sundays. 
• 
  "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!"
• While I still see Sheryl Swoops from time to time at the gym, I missed out on a Marcus Trufant sighting by mere minutes. Sheryl Swoop's contract option was not picked up for the upcoming season by the Storm, so whether she sticks around in the area or not remains to be seen. 
• Sources close to negotiations say Ken Griffey Jr. is going to Hotlanta to play for the Braves instead of coming back to the M's this coming year. If true, the only way I see Griffey coming back the following year is if the Mariners tank this next season as well. If the team somehow does surprisingly well, they probably won't have room on next year's roster for a nostalgic aging slugger -- even if he is Junior. For some good news, P Carlos Silva showed up at camp 30 pounds lighter. Whether that will correlate with a drop of number of losses and ERA is anyone's guess. 
• We finish off with Open Arms by the always appropriate Journey. 

Two Month Weigh-In

Approximately two months ago I joined a gym. Since then, I've made it there about 5 out of 7 days a week and often played a sport on at least one of those other two days. So how's it going?

I am up to approximately 174 pounds (about six pounds from where I started) which I'm assuming is all muscle growth. That said, I haven't really noticed much muscle size increase except for in my quads nor have I gained much definition. But I do feel my muscles are "harder" than they were before. Unfortunately, these harder muscles are still covered with a sizable layer of fat. I don't think my usual post-workout meal of a Taco Bell Cheesy Double Beef Burrito (89¢) helps any. And most importantly, I do not believe I have lost any of my dangerous visceral fat, which means it's time to really step up my diet and consider adding a more regular cardiovascular routine in.

I have gotten noticeably stronger. When I started I had trouble benching 95 pounds ten times, but that's now my warm-up. I've crossed the rubicon and can now get a few reps of 135 (45 lbs plates on each side), something I've never been able to do before. With proper warm-up I can now do a chin-up (yes, singular), but I can pop off a few dips. My proudest accomplishment yet is that I was able to squat two five rep sets of 205 lbs, up from struggling with 135 when I started. A huge milestone for me would be to be able to squat 2x my weight, so roughly 350 lbs. That would put me at just under what Jake Locker was able to do in High School. When I get to that point, I plan on racking the barbell and then take a victory lap around the free weight area.

With baseball season coming up I'll probably be starting to replace some days of strength training with plyometric exercises. I've never been able to consistently go to the gym for this long of a time, but the fact that I've made gains is motivation enough to keep me going -- well, that and the monthly membership fee. Maybe in a few years you'll see me pulling a semi-trick on ESPN... let's see how far I can take this.

NO-CB?

People often wonder if after all my trips to OCB I ever get tired of the delectable dishes, unlimited soft serve, questionable cleanliness, and colorful characters encountered there.


Nope.

Will Work for Skrilla

My work schedule is now 9:30AM to 6:30PM, Monday through Friday. Because they wanted an Operations Controller available from 2:30 to when the trucks usually came back to the yard (~6ish), my shift was changed from a normal 8:00-4:30 to what it is now. On one hand I get to sleep in, but on the other I get off work really really late. And I don't get 1.5 hours more sleep -- my mom used to drop me off on her way to work. Because now I have to catch the bus, I only get half an hour more of sleeping in time. Will this schedule work out better for me in the long run? Only time will tell.

Besides the time issue, the work itself is pretty interesting. Besides doing GIS stuff, I'm afternoon "Ops-Control" which means I man the radio at base in case any of the drivers have questions or problems. Luckily most of the real problems happen during the morning, and the biggest thing I end up doing is checking the traffic and telling drivers whether I-5 or 99 is the better way to get back. As can be seen from the pictures a few posts ago, I was able to ride along on a garbage truck for two days. It was kind of boring the first day as I was ordered to stay in the truck (I think part of it was because there was still a lot of snow on the ground, and they didn't want anything ridiculous happening to me), but on the second day I was able to jump out and assist at a condo complex. I was able to operate this giant claw that comes out of the bottom of a side-loading truck and grabs cans to empty em. It was awesome.

Last week I ran out of stuff to do (as opposed to now, where I have to manually geocode approximately 2000 addresses) and went around scrounging for work. It was suggested that I could spice up the day/route maps that were currently being used and I got right to work. I'm very proud of the resulting 44"x30" map:

Hrm... looks like the North arrow got messed up...

And a detailed look:

No more fun like that for a little while though, as like I said before I have thousands of addresses to manually geocode. That will probably be the main body of my work for the next few weeks, but it's OK -- I like mindless repetitive tasks.

Telephony

I'm eligible to upgrade my cellphone from AT&T in March, and it couldn't come too soon. While my current HTC 8525 has many capabilities, the Windows Mobile platform's limitations have been presented to me over the past year and a half of use. The two biggest things is the slide-out keyboard and unprecise accuracy on the touchscreen without a stylus. The slide-out keyboard was a great idea in design -- it keeps the screen free of a virtual keyboard and can be hidden when not in use. The problem, however, is that the phone has to switch to landscape mode for keyboard use. This would be fine except it sometimes takes f-o-r-ever for the software the make the switch (and then also back). The second is the need for a stylus to navigate some areas of the phone as opposed to using my finger. It gets irritating because I don't want to bust out a stylus just to hit one thing, but often I'm unable to select the correct option I want on the first try without it. Windows Mobile was built for stylus use, so many options are too small to access easily otherwise.

Sister got a Blackberry a little while ago and liking what I saw with it I was planning on getting the new 8900 Curve when it came out. RiM keeps it simple with a nice tactile keyboard in the front, easy access to multiple inboxes, a trackball system for menus and selection, and GPS for navigation. Then this year's CES (Consumer Electronic's Show) came around, and Palm introduced their new cellphone: the Pre. While I thought I had swore off slide-out keyboards and touchscreens, the Pre has made me rethink this stance. The phone can be described as an iPhone on steroids, combining the flash of Apple's product with innovation drawing from Palm's past of making devices that serve people instead of making things more complicated. I don't think I can explain the coolness of this new phone in text, so I'd suggest that if you have about a half our to kill check out Palm's Pre introduction at CES. If not, I'll try and outline some of the features here:

• Multi-application UI: You don't have to close out what you're doing to go to something else. Writing an e-mail and need to check something online? You don't have to save a draft, launch the web browser, search the web, close the web browser, and then go back to your draft. The best comparison I can make is the ALT-TAB feature in Windows, where you can move between open windows -- with any tab (card) you have open still running in the background. 
  
• "Synergy" feature combining many aspects of the mobile/web experience. 
  
1. Your contacts who have accounts in GMail, Outlook, and Facebook will be combined into one contact (no duplicates) with all their information desplayed under one name (and their photo pulled from Facebook). And this is done automatically -- no input needed from you. 
   
2. You can switch from chatting to someone on Facebook to sending them text messages seamlessly if they go offline -- from the same message thread. Chatting is done by contacts, not by program. Your AIM buddies, GTalk, Facebook, and text messages are combined into one chat thread with that person.
   
3. All your e-mail inboxes can be combined into one: "All Inbox", and by the same token all your calendars (Outlook, Google, Facebook events) are synced onto one calender -- overlapping events are shown next to each other. No having to switch inboxes or programs to read or respond to your e-mail.
   
• Non-intrusive notifications. I don't know how your phones work, but when I get a text message a big message pops and up disrupts (and sometimes destroys what I'm doing). If I get a phone call while composing a text message, chances are the message will be lost. In the Pre notifications (like incoming messages or phone calls) are displayed on a bar at the bottom of the screen. You can continue to work ignoring the incoming data, or you can click down to respond to the message/call bringing up a new card with your compose text message card running in the background until you're ready to continue. No more needed to hit "Dismiss".
• WebOS development platform that makes it easy for devlopers to create applications. Only HTML, CSS, and Java knowledge is needed (unlike C++ for Apple applcations). 
• Hardware standards I'm looking (GPS, 3G, Wifi, Bluetooth) and industry firsts: USB mass storage (the phone will be seen as a USB drive on your computer, allowing easy file transfer), and wireless charging. The Pre will be the first consumer cell phone that will offer inductive power charging -- no need to hook any wires up to the phone. Granted, my toothbrush has been sporting this technology for years, but it's nice that it's made it's way to higher-tech electronics. 

As you may or may not be able to tell, I'm every excited about this cellphone. I haven't seen this much innovation (or felt so strongly about a product) since I saw the MacWorld keynote where the iPhone was introduced. I didn't end up getting an iPhone because of some limitations (no copy/paste functionality, no removable battery, and the need to install iTunes) but the Pre might very well be my next phone. There is one major downside though: the Pre will only be available on Sprint. I've been with AT&T (then Cingular) for many many years, and haven't had any problems with the service since then. AT&T subscribers are the only people who seem to get reception at my house. I've never thought about jumping ship to another carrier, but if anything's going to do it, it'll be this phone. And it actually turns out that Sprint's phone + data plans cost less than what I'm currently paying (even with the 15% service discount I'm getting), so at least financially it'll be a little better. Either way I have some time before the phone launches and my contract ends, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the Pre can really do.

More information can be found at Palm's Pre official website.

Updates Updates Updates!

It's a New Year and I'm already behind in my blogging -- but I have oh so much stuff to write about! Work, celebrities, gadgets, oh my! I was debating writing a super-mega post that would rival the longest paper I crafted during college, but decided to spread them out over the next few days (maybe week) so as to not overwhelm you loyal readers.

So onto: My first Celebrity Sighting of 2009! Unlike my friend Howie, I don't go to the gym every single day and as such I miss some of the action that only Renton can bring. During one of our drives over to the gym, Howie turned to me as he suddenly remembered: "Guess who I saw at the gym last night?" I asked him if it was my mom, attempting to cut off any sort of quick jab, but he responded, "Sheryl Swoops!". For those uninformed in the matters of the only professional basketball team left in Seattle, Sheryl Swoops is a three-time WNBA MVP who signed with the Storm last season (a move that was overshadowed by the signing of Swin Cash -- probably due to Swin's much core-er name).

I thought that Howie must be mistaken, that no professional athlete(even a WNBA player) would lower themselves to play pickup games at a local gym. I mean, how could Howie know Sheryl Swoops if he saw her anyway? Perhaps he is a secretly rabid women's basketball fanatic... Either way we got to the gym and the first thing we checked was the gym: no Sheryl Swoops. I wasn't sure what to believe. But long story short[er], though successive visits to the gym it has been revealed that Sheryl Swoops does in fact play basketball with the former-high-school all-stars that also frequent the establishment. And she does not disappoint -- the first thing I saw the three time WNBA Defensive Player of the year do was block the crap out of some poor sap who thought he had an easy jumpshot.

She's been there the last five or six times I've gone, and I'm slowly trying to build up the courage to say hello. It would be bad ass to have a renowned professional athlete (again, as renown as a WNBA player can be) as a friend. Eventually I want to work up to having her block my shot -- then I can say I lost to the best. I only know of one other professional athlete who frequents my local gym, but Swoops is a lot less intimidating than a large black man who apparently plays 1st base in the Tampa Bay Rays Double-A organization. I don't bring a camera with me into the gym, so only a stock photo here (which might be better, as you can actually see who I'm talking about):

I get to see this live three-four times a week.