A Future Guitar Hero

 I was a bit surprised when I first let my 2 year old daughter play with my iPhone. After about 5 minutes of her watching me navigate, start and stop applications, and scroll through various photo albums she just got it. Now, a few months later she shows her grandmother how to make calls, check the weather, and explain why the phone just beeped at her!

Fast forward to the holidays when Haedyn and one of her good friends try out Guitar Hero. Strangely, though they didn't immediately jump to advanced mode, they really understood the basics from just quickly watching one of the adults utterly fail at trying to play.

I'm always amazed at just how quickly kids learn, and how their eyes are always open. They have been immersed in electronics since they were born, so it's no wonder that they instantly pick this up but their curiousity and willingness to constantly try new things is really inspiring.

What skis should I buy?

For the past couple of weeks I've been trying to figure out what skis to get. If I wanted anything else I would be able to quickly search through a couple of sites, gather a bunch of reviews, and make a quick decision. Skis. Not so much.

I've been looking for some fat skis which handle the deep, thick powder we find here in the NW. I've tried the K2 Pontoons though am not completely sold on the reverse camber. I've tried various other skis and nothing has really been exactly what I wanted. So, like when I want to buy any other product, I start looking around at various review sites.

The problem is that there aren't any good review sites. None, nada, zippo. Sure, I can go read about how some kid ripped off a 15' cliff with the skis I'm reading about on but nothing that helps me get closer to making my decision. If you know of a good site or place to find reviews let me know.

Fuel Economy Followup

Now of course that I've created a post saying that I can't find good information on gas mileage I finally find what I'm looking for.

Fuel Economy

We are probably about a year or two away from starting to look for a new car, and true to my obsessive/compulsive self I started thinking about the qualities I want our next car to have. Fuel efficient, room for 3 people and 2 dogs with some luggage, can get to the mountains for hiking or skiing, as well as some other attributes were added to my list.

I then started to think about each of those different qualities and found that I really didn't understand fuel efficiency. The method in which the EPA mileage is determined does not come close to reflecting the driving habits that we have living in a city. Basically our driving pattern consists of my wife driving our child 2 miles each way to our nanny which is right next to her firm. During the weekends we'll consistently ski, go to lacrosse games, or bicycle races, or more often than not to meet friends for brunch.

This driving pattern is hardly what the EPA expects from a "typical" driver, though is likely quite standard for those living and working in a city with sub par public transportation. I was then really surprised to find that when someone did try to put a stake in the ground to say what mileage their car would produce under these conditions, and found they were not allowed to show their literature at a car show. Apparently Chevy has been having similar troubles trying to get their Volt rated as well.

Until the EPA changes their standard or another standard emerges I guess that I'm just going to have to troll the internet looking for real-world mileage posts from current owners...

Even McCain voting for Obama

In a surprise move that shocked Republican insiders John McCain was caught "blue" handed putting his ballot into the Democrat bucket by an AP photographer earlier today.

Seriously though, I truly hope that we find a landslide victory for the Democrats tonight. Otherwise we will be plagued by months of legal battles regarding a potentially illegitimate victory. To be honest I was extremely disappointed in 2004 when more was not done about the election issues that year, and fully expect that the Republicans will not put with anything similar if there are serious issues this year.

Pre-Election Ride

We've been threatening that if Obama doesn't win in tomorrow's election that we are going to move out of the country. While originally that was an idle threat I'm not sure that I would really want to stick around to see four more years of what we have today, and the possibility that McCain may not make it through the term and Palin may take the reins. It would just be too disturbing to see the country I love go completely down the drain.

So on this evening's ride I was listening to Democracy Now and thinking about the election. This made for a really slow ride as you can see here:

Times Slowly Decreasing

I've never really been a fan of running. It's just too slow, I'm not very good at it, and I haven't in the past found any type of setting which made running enjoyable. That all changes about a month ago. I now join two friends on Saturday mornings to run around Greenlake. So now I'm just too slow and not very good at running as evidenced by our stats from this morning's run:



So now over the next couple of weeks I'm going to try to get my times down into the 7 mins/mile time range. Once I do I'll start adding some miles though not likely more than 6K total. Unless I find some profound interest in running I'm primarily doing it to keep weight off for volleyball and bicycle racing.