Football Epilogue

I'm laughing on the inside here. I love to laugh; even when it hurts and I can't breathe. For me, the funniest moments are akin to three-quarters of the jokes on "Family Guy" . A visualization to go with something mildly absurd. This has resulted in untimely giggles and stupid grins in the middle of classes and meetings. Such visualizations mesh well with stand-up comedy and times out with friends. It's not really a secret that laughter is "the best medicine". There are studies linking it to improving mental health among, reducing stress response , lowering blood pressure , providing pain relief  and helping the immune system . I have found that turning on some stand-up comedy on a drive home from a long day can really help my evening go smoothly. However, as with my opening sentence there are literally times when the laughing becomes a little debilitating. Hard laughing does result in my wheezing at times. I also have had instances of lig...

I was occupying some time checking out the social media and came across a plug for "The Rock Clock " . It is simply an alarm clock app that is supposed to help the user get up earlier. As early rising can be a struggle for me on occasion, I thought I would give it a try. The app is free from your preferred app distribution channel (App Store or Google Play). It is simple to use. The app first has you pick a goal, something you want to accomplish. A project. I wrote "get up early" (well duh, why else would I be doing this), but I suppose "go to the gym", "stretch", "beat my co-worker into the office", "minimize harassment from the cat wanting to be fed" or even a longer term goal such as "take over the world" (if you're going to go, go big) would also work. After the modest amount of goal setting and self delusion you can elect when you want to get up. You can pick a time or choose to get up when The Rock ge...

Check out this video of a human-like robot doing some box jumping and a back flip. I wonder if I can get my lego robotics kids to program the EV3 to do this?

Me trying not to throw my sister off of a balcony while "swing dancing" at my other sister's wedding reception at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. A few weeks back I wrote about taking introductory dance lessons by way of a Groupon for Fred Astaire dance studio . They ended up being enough fun that we signed up for a beginner package of lessons. In addition to the basic steps, some basic turns and such were taught (I know, lots of "basic" going on here). The gf and I are even finding time to practice outside of the lessons. There's something very intriguing about learning the steps, technique, etc. For me, it has the feeling of learning the footwork and technique in football. It's about taking proper steps and developing the muscle memory and the ability to do everything in time. Training the brain-body correlation is a welcome challenge. Lessons and practice are as much, if not more, mentally strenuous as they can be physically.  There is a...

Halloween has passed. The colder weather is officially here. In doing the outdoor winter preparations I took the tomato wires out of my garden. Upon stacking them upside-down they looked a lot like a Christmas tree to me. So instead of shrugging it off and continuing on with the winter prepping, I decided to try my luck at converting the wire into a lighted spiral tree. This was totally silly and totally a diversion from being actually productive, but hey, it was fun. Here's the route I took: Flip over tomato wire (t-wire) and tape the legs together.   I used blue painter's tape out of convenience. I may pay for that later. My tree frame in my kitchen. Please ignore the mess. Life is messy and so am I...to a point. Get rigid steel wire and spiral it around the tomato wire.   I used roughly one turn between each rung on the t-wire. I used zip ties to hold the skeleton together. Tape would also work, but the ties allowed me to adjust the wire to get th...

This post is a little overdue as the pumpkin carving was two weeks ago. However, sometimes I need to write something for my own reference. In this case I took a swag at baking pumpkin seeds and they came out rather good. They had just enough spice to notice and I was mildly impressed, so here goes the recipe. The obvious stuff: de-goop and rinse seeds post-pumpkin removal Brine: Put seeds in a bowl of water overnight with a tablespoon of salt and a heaping teaspoon of crushed red pepper. Stir and let sit overnight. Bake: Preheat oven to 275°F. Spray baking sheet with non-stick spray and spread seeds over the sheet with minimal water (use a slotted spoon) taking some of the red pepper with onto the sheet. Bake for about an hour until the seeds start to brown. Consume: allow to cool and eat, enjoy, etc. Simple I know, but I would forget if I didn't write it down. Oh, and in case you're curious, here are the pumpkin carving results for this year: My daughter...

This Tickled my Inner-Physicist :)