THE PEOPLE MUST HAVE THEIR DAN MILLER

So, as I mentioned over in my 2007 Tour de Madeira report, Ron Paul had a 100% lead in the political signs in Madeira OH. (I am in the unique position to report that fact, given that I toured every house in a 4 hour period. Though I guess I could have missed someone with a very long driveway? Or I’m sure hundreds of Romney or Huckabee supporters happened to put their signs up after I had already biked by. But I digress…)

Anyway, while driving to the Y this morning, I happened to notice another sign for Ron Paul over on Thomas. So that puts it at Ron Paul 4, everyone else 0. The only other political signs I’ve seen (not in Madeira) are at the corner of Kenwood and Kugler Mill - 2 signs that are also for Ron Paul.

So it shall be interesting to see how this shakes out. I still think he’s an underdog but I do think that he will do much better than many people think, especially in libertarian-leaning states like NH or WY.

Ah…. the 1000 mile man… Sounds much better than a One Minute Man…

So, as was first outlined here and then further commented upon here, here, here, here and
here, I had a goal for 2007 of 1000 miles of exercise.

Thanks mostly to the Tour de Madeira, I entered today (”the last day” as indicated by my children) at a very respectable 985.2 miles.

I headed off to the YMCA where I got in a nice 14.48 miles in 45 minutes. 14.48 miles, you might ask? But Dan, that would only put you at 999.68 miles for the year? Surely you’re not going to skate by on mere roundage?

Fear not, gentle reader. I had been dared (by Carey as opposed to Kerry) to do my final exercising for the year backwards. So for my final 8/10 of a mile, I ran backwards around the block. Well, ran and walked backwards. I don’t know if any of you have ever attempted to run backwards but it is HARD! I did manage to avoid being hit, hitting anything, or falling down, though there were some close calls. Mostly with me narrowly missing parked cars. I’m not sure if the hardest part is balancing / looking where you’re going, or the fact that it exercises completely different muscles (the front of your thighs mostly is what burned for me). It took me 11:27 to do that 8/10 of a mile, and if anyone wants to try suggesting that those 8/10 of a mile should count negative, you can first run 8/10 of a mile backwards yourself, and then BIIIIIIIIIITE ME

So the final totals for the year were 1,000.5 miles, in 75 hours, 6 minutes and 8 seconds (just above 3 days).

I have decided for various reasons to set my 2008 goal as a time-based one. The main reason is that a distance-based goal lends itself to the selection of such exercises that have high distance / time coefficients (i.e. biking). And while biking is fun, I would like to do other things (run / swim mostly) while this will also allow me to do weight training and/or re-join Carolyn at step aerobics, should the mood strike. I guess I could even count Dance Dance Revolution if I’m feelin frisky

I set the 2008 goal at 4 days. As I’ve told this to various folks, some have said that it is too high, and some have said that it’s not enough. That’s how I know it’s perfect! The other nice thing about 4 days is that it divides itself up nicely. 1 day a quarter, or 8 hours a month. That would be 4 days at 30 minutes a day, though I may go for more. We shall see.

So, you may remember back in September, I decided to not watch TV on Sundays. I joked about how as a “reward”, God should let me win my fantasy football league.

Now, with the season nearly over, I thought I would report. I did not watch TV football on Sundays, though I did watch parts of maybe 3-4 Sunday night games on the Internet. I also watched the last 5 minutes or so of the Browns Bills game a few weeks ago, justified by the fact that I “got to” watch it because I went to 5 hours of church that day

And yes, I did win my fantasy football championship (the Super Bowl was last Sunday in Week 16). I agonized going in as to who to start, at RB particularly. My 2 starters for most of the season had been Joseph Addai and Brandon Jacobs (since Travis Henry started sucking and Larry Johnson was ineffective / injured). Jacobs hadn’t done that great the past few weeks and Fred Taylor had gone nuts, so I decided to start Taylor against Oakland (worst rushing defense in the NFL). With the Colts having clinched their seed, I was worried how much Addai would play so I decided to start Jacobs over Addai.

Then I watched Addai score a 1st quarter touchdown. And Aaron Stecker (also on my bench) score 2 early touchdowns (taking them away from my quarterback Drew Brees who also plays for Stecker’s Saints). Oh and Kevin Curtis (WR on my bench) recovered a fumble in the endzone for 6 points.

In the end though, it didn’t really matter. Jacobs came back with 143 yards and 2 TDs and Taylor had 111 and a score, but I could have started anyone and still won as my opponent came through with the worst performance of any time of the entire year. I won 100.53 to 41.38 for my 2nd Super Bowl win in 3 years.

I know nobody cares but hey, since this is my journal, I’m sure my great-grandchildren who are playing some sort of bionic fantasy football through their earpiece brain implants will want to know how life was back in the DAY.

Just call me “Handy Danny.

Now before you laugh, let me point out that my level of handiness is very low. So even minor achievements are something to be celebrated in the Miller household.

Before leaving for our Christmas trip, I installed a new headlight on our van. It was somewhat hard to do. Even though I had instructions from our owner’s manual, the lights themselves were just really hard to get to. I hesitated pulling very hard on them because I wasn’t sure I had the right part and didn’t want to break anything.

I got fairly frustrated, but then I thought of certain people who I know that tend to get frustrated and quit at things and how it frustrates me to see them quit at things that I think they *could* do, if they kept at it. So I kept going and in a “life lesson for all of us” (&copy 2007), I managed to pull the lightbulb out of its socket.

Only to find that I had pulled out the right one. Errr the wrong one. Errr the one on the right, which was the wrong one (i.e. the one that was still working).

In any case I got it all taken care of finally and didn’t even have to yell at anyone. Carolyn will have to report whether or not “the tongue flick” came into play.

Then last night I braved the demon bugs of our basement and flipped a breaker switch. A week or two ago some of our electrical outlets in the kitchen and the outside light stopped working. We wondered if maybe it was a breaker but neither of us really knew what we were doing. So anyways we went down there to investigate last night, and as usually is the case with things like this, it was laughably easy. The breakers were actually already labeled and the one marked “Kitchen - GFCI” looked different than all the others.

I was actually wondering if we needed to replace it or something, because when I tried to move it to “ON” it wouldn’t go. But Carolyn just turned it off and then back on, at which point it worked and then our lights and outlets started working.

So….. go us.

So, as Carolyn pointed out over here, VeggieTales sure has some catchy songs.

We had a little trip to Virginia for Christmas, and VeggieTales were definitely on the menu of our portable DVD player. Here’s one song that I really like.

It’s called “The SUV song”. Here’s a quote from the lyrics

Both: Oh you and me in our sport utility vehicles crusin to 7-11 for a bag of frito lays. Oh you and me in our sport Utility Vehicles we’ll slam into 4 wheel and pick up a dozen eggs and if there ever was a snow
Girl- A really really deep snow
Larry: And if everyone was stuck but us
Girl- We’d be the ones not stuck
Larry: then we could be the heroes
Girl- We could be the heroes
Both- we could be the herooooooos
Girl- We would push them and pull them
Larry: push them and pull them
Both- Push them and pull them right out of the snow

Good times….good times…

One of the things that I like about VeggieTales is all the non-kid related humor. Like the kids like this song for its catchiness and such but they have no idea about the whole SUV-mocking part. I think this is a mark of really good shows. I remember watching Tiny Toon adventures as a teenager and thinking about how “clever” I was because I picked up on all these “hidden” jokes that my younger brothers didn’t. Looking back, I bet there were even more jokes that *I* didn’t get.

I successfully ran the Tour de Madeira 2007 yesterday. Full recap over at Every Whatever

With the 52 miles I did on Saturday, that gives me a new weekly record (102.8 miles), and also puts me at 952.5 miles for the year, meaning I need to do just 47.5 miles the rest of the year to snag the record.

My tentative plan is to do a 15-20 mile workout at the Y tomorrow, then one 10-15 miler while I’m on vacation, and finish it off New Year’s Eve after we get back.

Active.com - you are dead to me.

For a few years I have been using CoolRunning.com as my exercise logger. For the past few months I have seen notices that they would be migrating their data over to Active.com.

The “transition” was this past weekend and boy did it go badly. Much of the data did not transfer over. Actually NONE of the data transferred over automatically and there was a process you could initiate to transfer your data over, but when I did that only about half the data came over.

I was not alone either - the messageboards were flooded with coolrunning refugees talking about how Active.com had screwed them up. In addition to the data migration problems, the logger didn’t have all the features that we were accustomed to at CR. I mean, I know migrations and change can be a big deal, but this was ridiculous.

In one of the threads, someone posted how to get your data out of CoolRunning and there were various other sites proposed to accept us poor refugees. I think I have settled on RunningAhead.com and I will let you know how it goes. Maybe if you’re lucky I’ll update my blogger template to point to a link there instead of the old one that goes to CoolRunning

So I was heading up to the Y this morning to work out. I actually got out a little earlier than I normally do because I wanted to swing by our new house to take some pictures of the tree that they chopped down last week.

So then I was heading up to the Y when the light in front of me turned yellow. I thought I could make it so I continued onward. Either I was further than I thought, or the yellow was shorter, but the light was awful red as I went under it.

To make matters worse, as I went through the intersection, I noticed the first car to my right was a police car. It wasn’t a regular car but one of those SUV types. As I pondered whether or not those kind of cars would do regular traffic stops and whether or not he was coming to get me, I looked up in my rear-view mirror and noticed that the car behind me had apparently been following “Marv’s Rule” (”If the guy in front of you can make it…. so can you”)

Sure enough, the policeman pulled out and nabbed the car behind me, as I skated away…mwahahaha

Then as I get to the Y, I scan in with my key-card and as I’m walking in to the locker room I thought I heard the lady at the front desk say “Dan Miller”. I thought “Hmm that’s weird” and then as I continued to walk in I continue to hear faint “Dan Miller”s. So I walk back out and there’s a guy saying that they are looking for Dan Miller. I indicated that was me and they said I had a phone call. Naturally I worry that somebody has died or something but it was just Carolyn, indicating that I had a dentist appointment uhhhh right now.

So I didn’t get to work out and I remain somewhere around 150 miles to goal with 13 days left (including today). Annoyingly my cycling log is being transferred to some other website so I have to wait for them to transfer over my data.

So as many of you loyal followers (all 3 of you) know, we got rid of our TV, then brought it back for limited-use. We still don’t have cable, which I think I like. One downside of that is missing some sporting events that I’d rather watch. I have been able to see some of them through what my friend Mike H once called “the seedier side of the Internet”, but last night I was out of luck for the 75th annual Skyline Chili Crosstown Shootout.

The Crosstown Shootout is an annual basketball game between the local universities of Cincinnati and Xavier. The rivalry is ummm heated :-). Bonus points for those of you looking to approximate my Google-Fu: Name the only pair of Division 1-A colleges that are closer together than UC and XU’s 3.3 miles apart!

Game was at 7 pm; so after getting back home from the kiddo’s piano lesson, I headed out to the YMCA to watch the game. I told the mrs. that I planned on staying for the whole game but if it was a blowout I might come home early. I didn’t know quite what to expect since this is one of those rivalry games where you “throw out the records”. Xavier was favored by 19 points but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. In 1996 and 1999 Xavier upset the Bearcats when UC was ranked #1 in the country. An unranked Xavier team also beat a ranked UC team in 2000, 2002 and 2004. Last year, on their way to one of their worst seasons in recent history (11-21), UC did manage to knock off a Xavier team that ended up 24-8.

I got there about 10 after and UC was up 5-2. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the TV that’s right in front of the bikes was not able to get ESPN2, so I had to crick my head to the left to see the TV that was over by the treadmills. I also chose to ride on an upright bike because the recumbents are in the front row and the angle would have been worse. This past Monday I also went at night to watch a little Monday Night Football and I was able to get the prime recumbent bike (front row all the way to the left) which is directly in front of the TV that is always on ESPN. I set the bike for an hour (that’s as long as you can go) and started a-pedalin. The game went back and forth with UC continuing their poor shooting ways but was able to play some pretty good defense and at halftime Xavier was up 4 thanks to a last-second junk 3-pointer.

My hour was up, so I got a drink (while not giving up my prime TV spot - well as prime as it got on a bike) and then busted back over and set my bike for another hour. I had also brought a book to read during halftime / commercials, so I got a few pages in.

The game continued - UC got up 5 at one point in the second half but gave it away and Xavier ended up winning 64-59. I ended up with 38.79 miles in 2 hours.

So, with respect to my goal of 1000 miles for the year, I am now at 704.1 miles cycling and 838.3 miles total. That leaves me 161.7 miles to go and 15 days to do it, or 10.78 per day. So you can make book on it folks - it’s getting done.

Yesterday while I was catching up on my lovely Google Reader feeds, I came across this post from friend and fellow ward-goer Jana Riess.

Jana is a book editor for Publishers Weekly as well as the author of several books, including Mormonism for Dummies and What would Buffy do. She is in a heated race for the coveted title of “Most Famous Person that I know”, along with vaunted minor league broadcaster Jim Tocco.

Although Jim would I’m sure like me to point out that in the very important category of “Number of Wikipedia pages”, the result is

Jim: 1
Jana: 0

Anyway, that was a very long-winded way to mention that in reading Jana’s blog yesterday she showed a picture of Britney Spears holding a book with Jesus on the cover and wanted to know what the name of the book was. She offered a $15 Amazon GC to the first person to get the right answer.

So off I set. Actually to be fair, my Google-fu is not even the most powerful of anyone I know. There are a few other people I’d say would be better. But nevertheless, my Google-fu is…significant. First off I did a search for britney spears jesus book. 2nd result gave me this and in the comments I found the right answer. A quick search on Amazon found the same cover and the gift card was mine.

I emailed Jana afterwards, thanking her for the GC, and telling her that in the future that she could just email me as I enjoy opportunities to practice my Google-fu, and that next time I wouldn’t even charge her!!

So, dear readers, what about it? Do you think you can stump me? Bring it on. If you post a quest in the comments I’ll give it a whirl. But be fair - it has to be somewhere on the Internet or it’s cheating.