Angeles National Forest Fire

Here's the impressive scene from outside my window:

I guess in reality you can't see too much but I guess that's the point.  There's a lot of smoke.  Yesterday I could actually see the mountains and the flames coming over the ridge.  Now that the mountains are obscured it's hard to tell just how far the fire got.

Gamers are fat and have more poor mental health days (in Seattle)

"Investigators from the CDC, Emory University and Andrews University analyzed survey data from 552 adults in the Seattle-Tacoma area, according to the study, published in the October issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The hypothesis was that male video-game players have a higher body mass index — the measure of a person’s weight in relation to their height — and women have “a greater number of poor mental health days” versus nonplayers, said Dr. James B. Weaver III of the CDC’s National Center for Health Marketing. The hypothesis was correct, he said."

Whew, I'm glad Dr. Weaver III settled that.  Everyone loves a good conclusive study.  

Why do you think they hypothesized about the men's BMI and the women's mental health?  Only Dr. Weaver knows for sure (actually, it just turned out that the data didn't support a BMI difference for women or a mental health difference for men).  Another interesting thing Dr. Weaver stated was that women use video games as a "digital self-medication" but if that's the case, then the egg must come before the chicken and the only conclusion is that women are finding video games as a way to cope with depression.  Would he prefer actual medication to self-medication?

Reading beyond the mainstream articles for more details turned out additional caveats.  The survey to gather data was performed only online, where 18% of the population requested voluntarily responded, of which an impressive 44.3% classified themselves as video game players.  I don't believe that's representative of the population in general, especially considering the number of consoles sold by the major manufacturers.

Pushup Challenge Conclusion: 612

I certainly had a pushup filled Sunday.  I've included some graphs that document my suffering but the grand total for the experiment was 612.  The second graph shows my quick degradation around 9:30 after many easy sets of 25.  I knew then that the rest of the day would be a challenge.  I took some rest periods in between and the recovery helped, but not by much or for very long before I was back to coasting at 9-12 pushup sets.  And yes, today I am sore.

Pushup Endurance Challenge

Over the course of a day, how many pushups can I do?  The day will be Sunday, 8/23.  The guesses:

Kristin: 700
Gabby: 500
Brandon: 457
Loddie: 365
Erik: 150 (he's betting I hurt myself and Loddie has to put me down)

A quick BING search turned up that people in the military have easily worked up to 1,000-2,000/day because they make you do X pushups every time you enter/leave a room and it can add up.  We shall see!

Squirrel Fight!

MSNBC teased me with this picture.  When I clicked it to see a larger version I had to go through 68 pictures in their "10 years of Pictures" slideshow, many of which were graphic and depressing, so I'm just going to post this one by itself for everyone to enjoy...  Squirrel Fight!

Nature is about Life and Death

Unfortunately my rat passed away last night.  Since she lived for three days I know she was trying her best and I'm sad that she passed but these things happen.  Death is a part of life.  Here are some pictures of the rat and the hawk.

Conflicted Feelings

A life is at stake.  I didn't mean to get involved but in accidentally saving a life I put myself in a terrible personal dilemma.

I was walking home Wednesday and saw a hawk in someone's front yard.  I stopped to look at it and after a few minutes it got nervous and flew up into a tree.  What I then noticed was a rat, which was the source of the hawk's attention before I came along.

If you started from the top you've probably already guessed that the rat was alive, but it wasn't doing well.  All it was really doing was gasping for air.  I left immediately because the hawk was still in the tree and I was crossing my fingers that it would go finish what it started.  I visited half an hour later... none of the players had moved, until the hawk flew away.  Three hours later... the rat had moved but it was clearly still badly hurt.  I brought it some bread and moved her to a more sheltered location for the night.

The next morning the rat was still hanging on.  It was a little more active but hadn't moved very much.  The bread didn't show any signs of being eaten.  I'm horribly conflicted about what's in the best interest for the rat. Does it have the will to live, to survive?  Is it in pain?  If it starved, would that be a preferable way to go or should I go against my feelings and do something about it?  In my life there have been a lot of rescues, but all were much more clear cut in 12 hours.

If it's still alive I'd like to take it in and do as much as possible to help feed it even if it doesn't have much longer to live.  I'm not sure that's really a reasonable option but I can't think of many other choices.

UPS Delivery Problem

Train Derailment?  I'd say that's a pretty valid reason for my package being late but really?

Additional Questions:
Will my 360 be ok?
Shouldn't there be !!!'s after TRAIN DERAILMENT?
When are they going to deliver my box of broken plastic and metal if not today... tomorrow?

Dead 360

What is technically the fourth Xbox 360 to be in my possession was sent to Texas to be "repaired" last Monday, and was received on Thursday.  I'm very curious how long the "Repair in Progress" period will take because my experience will all prior consoles is that I got someone's refurbished console and not my repaired original.  If this were the general policy then I would assume that they'd simply plug it in, see that it was dead, and grab a box from their mountain of previously repaired units.  I remember a long time ago hoping that I could somehow get an upgrade and receive one of the newer units with HDMI, and while I don't find that likely, I'll still cross my fingers.  Microsoft, you do kinda owe me because the 1 free month of live I get with every xbox repair has hardly compensated the near 4 months of total downtime you've forced due to the horribly overheating hardware.

Black Widow

Even with an out-of-focus cameraphone picture the red hourglass is obvious.  I spied this black beauty out in the open next to the sidewalk on my walk home.  Stay safe (the black widow, not the pedestrians).

One way to deal with unemployment

Unemployed former student sues college for $70k tuition after not being able to find a job after graduating.  Claims the career services center at the school hasn't helped her find a job.  Let's all cross our fingers that this goes class-action so that all colleges will be held accountable for the failures of students who have graduated in the past.

Maybe if our society gets litigious enough then colleges will worry about who they hand diplomas to.  I also have to wonder if somehow the companies who haven't been hiring this lady have also wronged her in some way by not being profitable enough to hire extra workers in this recession or by not having low enough standards to employ her.  It's something to think about.