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Our new car

After 6 years in our posession and 18 years on the road, we're nearing the end of life for Nikki's Saab 900 and are looking for something new(er).

The qualities that matter to us:

  1. Mr. Greg has to fit in it comfortably.
  2. Good gas mileage
  3. Good repair rating (above average rating from Consumer Reports)
  4. Crash safety
  5. Low price

This has led us to the Scions:
1. I know I fit in the XB fine, we'll see about the XA.
2. XB is rated at 31/35 (though I've seen tests from Money magazine and Edmunds that showed 37) and the XA is rated at 32/37 at EPA fuel efficiency ratings.

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Be Theo's Friend!

To paraphrase Jordan Fisher Smith from Nature Noir, people think of nature like a single beautiful chord that is played consistently over time when it's really a changing symphony full of interactions of different notes getting louder, quieter, higher, and lower and cycling through various melodies.

The same scientists who believe in evolution instead of divine creation are going to say that a few degrees per century is enough to kill everything and everyone?

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Lunch Rules

Azure (Connexxxo Exxo) Lunch Rules:

  • Tuesday is eat in day
  • Thursday is also eat in day
  • Friday is not really Friday. It is "F-Bomb Friday" and lunches are better
  • If Friday or Monday is a vacation day then all bets are off
  • Nephew in law is bullshit

Edit from 2006:New Lunch Rules: Use the Burrito Randomizer to figure out what I'm going to have then walk to Chipotle. Mmmm.

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Our first Triathlon

We did a triathlon. It hurt.

Sunday April 3rd was the Spineworks Triathlon in Colorado Springs. Nikki and I have been preparing on and off since November for a Triathlon and this was the first actual triathlon available in Colorado. It was the day after daylight savings time change and being in Colorado springs with registration from 7:00 to 7:45 we got up at 5:30 (which felt like 4:30). Blech.





It's a slightly different race since the swim is in the pool and is staggered. I shared lane 5 with a nice gentleman in the 8:20 wave. Nikki shared lane 3 with some nice ladies in the 9:00 wave. They have you dry off your arm and then write your swim time on your arm in sharpie. Once people are done swimming, they drive over to the bike/run area and get their gear organized for the bike-to-run transition which is "on the clock." Once everyone is ready, they start a great big clock on the starting line. As your swim time shows up on the clock, you start biking. That way everyone is in the right order and you know that if someone is in front of you...they are really in front of you. It also prevents bunching on the trail, which was about 4 feet wide.

The bike and run portions went about as well as can be expected. The race is in the foothills of the Rockies, so it was actually a really varied course. One big uphill and one big downhill on the loop with lots of little interesting sections along the way. The course does three loops of the bike section and 2 loops of the running section - and they are on the same trail for a little while, but you travel in opposite directions, so there weren't any collision problems.

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The best antivirus program

Clamwin is the best antivirus program - if you are at least somewhat technically savvy.

Version to use: .88

I have used all the most popular commercial anti-virus program and they are almost all resource intensive applications. They will all slow your computer and give you weird popups about stuff you don't care about.

The basic problem with current versions of clamwin is that they won't do "realtime" scanning. So, this is a problem for people who 1) open files/downloads/attachments without first scanning them to see if they are safe 2) use virus rich technologies like ActiveX, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, and Outlook Express.

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Help Cure Cancer

I'm a big fan of distributed computing projects. I think it's my Wyoming/Midwestern background of "Use it up, make it do, wear it out or do without" that makes me like the concept of using every last cycle of my CPUs. That, and the desire to help in finding a cure for Cancer/Alzheimers/Mad Cow, etc.

I use Folding@home on pretty much any machine I get my grubby little hands on. So far the team I created and which consists mostly of my machines has done enough folding to reach the "top 1000" contributors to folding. At that point, the folding@home website gives you a special "fast page" though I'm not really sure what value that provides. It's worthwhile to note that I created the team back when Nikki and I still didn't know what last name we were going to use, so it is "Addison" when it should probably be Knaddison. I'm working on getting it fixed...it's not easy.

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What kind of burrito am I going to have today - Burrito Randomizer to the Rescue

I really like burritos from Chipotle Mexican Grill.
One day I noticed their sign that said "Two things, thousands of ways"
which referred to "tacos and burritos" as the two things, but pointed
out that with their ingredients, the number of combinations is limited
mostly by your imagination. Thinking more on this and needing something
to do with PHP, I worked out this page with a lot of help from the PHP Cookbook (buy at Amazon).

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