http://amaditalks.tumblr.com/post/13513981784/siri

It may make me sound materialistic to say I’m excited about new stuff, but John and I have been shopping and to be honest I am kind of excited by some of our new things.

First off, I’ve slowly started to acquire some new fitness equipment. I got a stability ball, some hand weights (3 lbs.), and three resistance bands. So far I like the resistance bands and weights, though I haven’t done much with the stability ball yet. That will come though. I think these new items will really help my strength training.

I finally went to a watch and jewelry repair shop to the get the battery changed in my stopwatch & heart rate monitor. Technically, this heart rate monitor isn’t new; I’ve had it for probably 3.5 or 4 years now, but I haven’t used it in at least 2 years, since the battery died. I didn’t have a screw-driver small enough to change the battery and didn’t even know what kind to get, so I kind of forgot about the poor little guy. But now that the watch part of the heart rate monitor is all powered up again, it feels like I got a new toy and I’m excited to start using it to time my runs, help calculate calories (a bit different then the calories burned estimates that this other website is giving me thus far…), etc.

John and I haven’t gotten any new games in a while, so we made a trip to GameStop. John got a few new Xbox 360 games, I think Fallout New Vegas, Final Fantasy XIII, and Assassin’s Creed. I got two games for the PSP (Pata-Pon 2 and Pata-Pon 3) as well as some new walking game for the Nintendo DS that I haven’t figured out yet. The game comes with two little pedometers, and then those connect to the DS where it collects the data and shows feedbacks on your steps, etc. I had wanted to get a pedometer, but making it more of a game seemed like an even better idea; I love games, and I love getting “points” and scores and things like that for my fitness, so this Nintendo DS walking game seemed right up my alley.

I also got a new bento box, and finally I have a microwaveable one! So that’s really awesome. I also ordered some elastic material (like the kind they have in waistbands) to make bands to keep my bento boxes together, since not all of my boxes came with one. I’ll probably need new chopsticks soon, and maybe an extra carrying case too, since my chopsticks keep disappearing somehow.

On a somewhat different note, but still related to shopping, I’ve noticed some changes in our grocery habits over the past month, and I like them. One, we’re shopping more often, which is a good thing for various reason, but the most important have to do with produce. Before, we would shop only once every 2 or 3 weeks, which was frustrating because either our produce would go bad before we could eat it, or we only bought enough produce to last us a few days (specifically so it wouldn’t go bad before we could eat it), but then we’d have no fresh produce for another 2 or so weeks. Also, it gets us to clean out the fridge more often. Things like that. I’ve also noticed us buying a lot more fruits, vegetables and fresh foods more often — though admittedly, that could also have to do with certain fruits being in season, and thus, on sale.

Anyway, happy about our recent purchases.

I finally got the Google apps on my BlackBerry  to work with my nachtimwald domain, yay!

Today I moved all my music to the Windows partition of my computer. I died just a little inside.

For a long time Rhythmbox had been having problems downloading and storing some of the podcasts I listen to, namely, some of the Scientific American ones. I decided a couples months ago to just download iTunes on Windows so that I could download and sync the problematic podcasts there. This was an okay system for a while, but then I started using Banshee, which happily was able to handle my podcasts. Unfortuantely, this solution didn’t last long because once I had updated my iPod software, Banshee couldn’t recognize the music anymore. It could reformat all of it, but then it showed up weird on my iPod and my podcasts couldn’t be found under the podcasts menu; I had to use the search function to find them. Further, when I would sync with iTunes on Windows again, it would freak out and not know how to deal with my iPod. So I switched back to Rhythmbox for the purpose of syncing music, Banshee for the purpose of downloading and listening to some of my podcasts while on my Ubuntu partition (but not syncing), and iTunes on Windows 7 for the purpose of downloading and syncing my Scientific American podcasts.

So John suggested that I simply move all my music to my Windows partition and just use iTunes whenever I wanted to sync my iPod. To listen to music while on my linux partition, I could have Rhythmbox and/or Banshee mount my Windows partition and then play from that music library. iTunes has no problem downloading any of the podcasts I subscribe to, so using iTunes alone should help me avoid the issues I was having with podcasts and with software compatibility issues I brought on myself by using multiple programs. Further, I can now listen to my music while on my Windows partition while I’m using SPSS (even though simply listening to my iPod while running my multiple regressions has always been good enough for me).

But now Steve Jobs has won; he wanted me using iTunes exclusively for my iPod all along, didn’t he? Bastard.

Yes, I am still alive and I still plan to update this blog. This poor little blog needs a new post though, and I need to set myself reminders to write. I’m not sure what to write about now, but I just felt the need to update, so my blog wouldn’t feel abandoned I guess, lol.

I just found and installed a cute new widget for the blog, “Now Reading.” I actually saw it on husband’s blog (john.nachtimwald.com) first, but I thought it might add to my blog too, so I copied him. On the right hand side, it’s the little part that shows books I’m currently reading, books I’ve read recently, and books I plan to read. I’ll try to remember to update that. It even has a section for ratings and reviews, so maybe I’ll do those for a few books. But reviews tend to be a lot of work, or if not that, they turn out poor or mediocre at best. And I’m quite lazy, and not a fantastic writer, so any reviews may well turn out to be lousy. But whatever, we’ll see what happens.

Right now, I’m reading Outliers (a.k.a., Outliers: The Story of Success) by Malcolm Gladwell. Well, I guess technically I’m still reading it. I’ve finished all the chapters and the intro and all of that, I’m just not done with the epilogue yet. I should have finished long ago — I read the last 3 chapters on Christmas Eve — but I haven’t been feeling well and headaches make it hard to read. But anyhow, basically I’m done with the book, so far the epilogue doesn’t contain any surprises or major points that weren’t already articulated in the actual chapters. And it is a good book. Since I began studying social psychology and the external forces that influence our own lives and decisions, I’ve started to realize that people don’t just get where they are through sheer talent alone. I’ve also noticed the lucky breaks and fortunate timing in my own life. That’s basically what Outliers is all about; how things about our culture and history, or even just timing and lucky opportunities, have been significant factors contributing to the success of extraordinary people and groups — the “outliers” of society. Even beyond intuitive influences of success (e.g., family background and economic status), this book highlighted some weird, arbitrary advantages that some “outliers” have had, for example, how lucky the greatest hockey players were to have been born early in the year, especially January, otherwise they may not have had the opportunity to become the great hockey players that they are today (read the book for explanation; I’m too lazy). Even if I wasn’t interested in the influence of external factors on success, I probably would have continued to read because the book also provides interesting tidbits of history on various successful people, such as Bill Joy, Bill Gates, and The Beatles. It wasn’t as statistical or research-oriented as I had expected, given the title, but as I was on break while I was reading it, I don’t really mind that so much.

And here I thought I was just going to write a quick update saying that I’ll make a real post later. Well, I do plan on making more posts soon, but I think I’ve written enough for now. Also, I’m getting a little dizzy and tired from staring at my computer for so long. I think I need to adjust the contrast. Adios.

–Tati