I almost died!

Well, almost is a relative term. (That means it should be divided by C² if you believe Einstein.) Now, if you'll just sit tight, I'll tell you the story, but it's MY story, so I'll tell it like I want. : )

Up this double high flight of stairs and around a couple corners is the advising center for computer engineers where I had an appointment. I ran all the way up the stairs with my heavy backpack on and my scooter in my hand, but at the top I forced my self to walk calmly and breathe normally. There was a security guard up there, but she was ignoring me.

On my way back down, I considered sliding down the rail, which is particularly free of obstructions on top. I had on another occasion decided against such an action, but maybe I was just being overly cautious at that time, so I had another look. The top rail did look particularly inviting, itself, but there was an annoying hand rail a little bit below and sitting at an awkward position which would not lend itself to steady sliding. So considering the geometry of the rails and the vector of gravity in relation to the hypothesized Jack-and-rails system, I decided that the distance between my body and the earth would present too great a risk for the proposed benefit of a possibly fun slide to the ground.

Walking down the stairs, I reached out and slid my hand on the top rail. It was very slick. The projected amount of friction deemed necessary to maintain safety in the sliding trip was missing! I'm sure that I would have been fine regardless, but I don't do these things unless I feel safe doing them anyway.

Cufflinks

You might say I like cufflinks. I have a few of them.
I've been wanting a cufflink box for a long time. I was using this cedar box for something else, but today I cut some strips of velour, rolled them up, and cut them to the right length for my box.I didn't know I was going to fill the box up. I also didn't know I was going to discover that I'm missing some studs. They may yet turn up though. I don't think they're really lost.

This was the Notice

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A Robot Jacked My Blog

Yesterday I felt the love of our future robot overlords. There was no blue screen of death involved and the maniacal monster of madness that is the monolithic and ubiquitous empire of nefarious evil did not rear its ugly head, but nevertheless, my blog went the way of all the digital earth, possibly to be revived at some ever-near but sempiternally invisible, unknowable date. The reason: spam. I've been accused of spamming the blogosphere and harsh immediate action was taken to redress my alleged offense against society. My writing may have been abrogated, but my speech continues.

No person actually accused me, but just Google's police-bots. They detected spam-like activity and decided that I was not human, so they tried to eliminate me. Fortunately I am too fleshy to be exterminated by such simple and digital means. I weigh a million time more than any computer program and I'm physically stronger!

My Run

This was a quick run at the end of a workout. I had pushed myself pretty hard and fast on the calisthenics, so I just did my minimum run.

Used Watch

I used my new watch yesterday. It occurred to me that if I just run the stop watch all day, then it will count my calories all day for me too.
It was a little bit disconcerting actually. I did eat breakfast before school. And I did work out, but at the end of the workout, I had only burned about 400 calories and I thought something like, "Well, if that's all I burn in a medium type workout, then I must not be using as many calories per day as I thought. I'm only going to burn around 2200 kcal today."
So in the early afternoon when I was getting hungry and I hadn't eaten since breakfast, I checked my watch and it said I had burned over 1600 calories already. I hadn't even done anything since breakfast! I thought something like "Man! I'm gunna die if I don't hurry up and eat something. I can't believe how many calories it takes just to continue living while I do nothing."
Fortunately, I had some Cliff bars and a Lara bar in my backpack, so I didn't die. I wished that I had a bottle of water in there too, because then I could have not-died in better style, but the empty bottle I had was starting to get a little gross, so I didn't want to fill it again.
I continued to not do anything active the rest of the day and I lived like I normally do with the exception of wearing my watch and the chest band. I also wore it to bed. It's amazing how many calories I burn while I sleep.
The watch also tells me continuously what my heart rate is. That was interesting because I thought I should have a heart rate of around 65 all day except when I exert myself. It turns out that 65 is only good for a resting and really doing nothing heart rate. An awake and moving around doing nothing heart rate for me is closer to 90. Before bed, while I read my scriptures etc I checked my watch a few times and my heart rate dropped below 50 sometimes.
So my calorie reading this morning was 3300 kcal. !!!!!!1 My metabolism is higher than I thought. I don't know how I cram that many calories into me every day. I also don't have any idea how many calories are in most foods, so I don't really have that much frame of reference to justify my surprise.

New Watch

A couple weeks ago I thought I had lost my watch and needed another one. So I started looking up watches on the internet, and I found one with a heart rate monitor within my price range. I thought it might be similar to Tamara's body bugg, but it's not. What it does do is monitor my heart rate. So I've been wearing it today under my shirt. In the picture it looks like I'm wearing it outside my shirt, but that's only because you wouldn't be able to see it otherwise. I actually wear it underneath where it can have contact with my skin.
If I start the stop watch while I run, then it will record my heart rate, so at the end I can see what my average heart rate was and max and min. It can also be set to a target heart rate and sound an alarm when I go to high or too low. So it doesn't tell me how many calories I've burned all day and graph it for me, but it does tell me how many I've burned total during the time that the stopwatch goes.