Not much

Boy, I use that title a lot - though, not enough for my tastes. After being woken yesterday about work, today has gone really well. No calls form work, didn't have to do a thing - it's nice for a change. The weather has been rather dreary, so neither Jana or I have felt like doing anything. I've watched a couple movies (since I have that working on my laptop now), played some music and been lazy - though I did some exercise earlier.

The only odd thing to report is that I have felt weird lately - not at all myself. At work I can't concentrate (messing-up) on the stuff that I should be able to do with my eyes closed. At home I feel more lethargic then I feel I should. All of this is broken by periods of feeling great (thinking that everything is great) only to find that something wasn't right after all. I just can't get it together - and it's hard to get it together when you can't focus long enough to do so... but I have no choice (and I would not choose any other choice even if I had one) - I have to get it together. But how? You know, I think it's time I made a doctors appointment.

Dvorak

Okay, here is the deal, I prefer to type in the Dvorak keyboard layout - it's just easier and quicker (once you get used to it). A couple problems with this though:
1) Work computers are not normally setup to use this layout - though you can normally change that if you are the only one using the computer.
2) In Linux (the version that I use), it is difficult to tell what layout you are using - if you are also using the US QWERTY layout - the few times I do. I'm hoping the ever helpful Linux community can help with this one.
3) In Windows if you start out with the US QWERTY layout then you have to change each separate program use dvorak (it doesn't change on the whole system).
Despite these few problems, I still prefer to use Dvorak, it even came in handy when I hurt one of my arms and had to type with one hand (it has layouts for people who have the use of one hand versus two. Plus it's fun to say.

Happy one month

Well, It's a bit late, but happy one month of blogging to this blog.
Not much going on in life right now. I finally got into the Yahoo Mail Beta (only been trying since I first heard about it) - of course anyone can get into now that it's a public beta. It's a good interface, runs well. I like it much better then the new Live Mail (Hotmail). The Yahoo interface is cleaner, easier to read, and much easier to use - plus half the screen isn't taken up with an ad (though I fixed that with the use of Adblock). As for which webmail I prefer to use, despite all the nice enhancements that have been made to Yahoo and Hotmail, I'm still sticking with my Gmail account. Gmail doesn't have as fancy of an interface (which is important to some people), but it is faster then either of the other two, I can use POP and SMTP access with it, plus I prefer the way it organizes the emails.

Now onto the question of the day, this one is borough to you by all the restaurants that Jana and I go to after normal dinning hours. Really this is a simple question, but one that I just can't answer. First a little background on this. Whenever Jana and I go to get something to eat after normal business hours (from about 10pm to 4:30am), if we go to a restaurant that has both smoking and nonsmoking sections, then Jana and I are usally the only ones in the nonsmoking section, while there can be two or three tables of people in the smoking. Why is that? If I recall correctly, about 75% of the US population does not smoke, but I seem to run into more smokers then nonsmokers, especially at night. Anyone have any ideas why?

Only one more day

Well, I only have one more day left of work, then I'm off for two whole days - maybe I will turn off my phone. I wasn't feeling too well the last couple of days, something weird with my arm, and I think I caught something. I've been feeling better today - feels good.
Now that I'm feeling better, and my arm doesn't hurt every two seconds, I think it is time to get back into the exercise habit. I need to get my body in shape so that I can get my mind there as well. Baby steps, but steps none the less.
Not much going on at work, computer went to down, took me three hours to get the OS back up - but I lost half my files. Of course the problem happened because of a bad backup - so I didn't even have a good backup to get my files from. I'm happy that my address book, calendar and task list were all backed up on a separate service then the one my company uses.
I'm looking forward to tomorrow night - freedom for two days!! Woohoo!!

Two part posting

Okay, todays post is a two parter (maybe three, I haven't decided yet) .

Part 1 - Sports
Okay, I know this is going to be sensitive one - so I'm going to do it first. Now please keep in mind I don't follow pro sports, I actually rather hate them, so this post is going to be a rant from that perspective. You have been warned, if you don't like that point of view, then I would not suggest reading on.
Now today was a big day in Iowa - a football (American) game; today was the day that the two major Iowa colleges played a game against each other. Not a big deal, and not something that I would normally rant about - but there is more. Since Wednesday, that has been all the talk, and starting Thursday I saw people in businesses wearing shirts to reflect which college they supported (I mean the employees). Friday that is almost all I saw, that and cars with an ever increasing number of stickers and flags on them. Today that is all anyone wanted to watch on the TV.
I don't understand this obsession with football, pregame shows, postgame shows, clothing, complete car makeovers, multiple TV stations only about that, and the such. People seem to spend way too much time worshiping a *game*. At least here in Iowa, that's how it is.
Today the satalite at work was having some problems due to some bad weather. Apparently peoples only complaint about it was - they could not watch their football game. Now I want everyone to take a step back, look how people treat this game, and
TE###33333333333333####################FW@gvbbbbbbbbbbbb (that's from the cat) tell me that it is not an obsession, and that people don't spend wholly too much time and energy on it.

Part 2 - Homework
I came across an interesting article today, it reflected a thought that I had when I was in school and even after I left school. The article was about the amount of homework that schools give to children. It's just way too much. In high school I was normally up till about 2:30am doing homework, only to get up at 5am, so that I had enough time to finish my homework before school started; granted I was taking more classes then most, but if you cut it down to a normal class load, it was still too much homework. I want everyone to look back on when they were in school, did homework want to make you go back to school, or to live a life of learning? If your answer was "yes", then I bet you are in the minority. Homework is tedious and normally rather pointless (at least to the extreams that it is given). Take the many many hours I spent on spelling words for class - I still can't do it, I use spell check or a dictionary to make sure words are correct.
How about, instead of giving children hours of pointless, frustrating work, why let them have more choices in how they learn? If you give them the option to learn what they want to learn - and relate the other subjects to that - then you will have sparked their interest and the desire to learn, wouldn't that be worth the extra costs? Maybe someone needs to start a school that does just that...
Here is the link to the article:
The Myth about Homework I also saw a book by the same title in Barnes and Nobel tonight.

Part 3 - I guess it was going to be three subjects after all
Never mind, it's hard to type with a cat in your lap.