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"It's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care." - Peter Gibbons (Office Space) I realized the pathetic level of cardiovascular shape I have achieved after just a short run last night. It amazes me how quickly it all slides. Éclair and I ran the block circuit in the neighborhood and I was so winded, I had to stop and walk once. Beer and Mexican food are a couple of my prime de-motivators. I live in the heart of real Hispanic culinary culture. I'm like an insect drawn to the ultraviolet bug lamp when I get around Mexican food. Homer Simpson with a donut. Nemo's Bruce with blood in the water. You get the idea. Anyhoo, I've decided to get back in shape. It sounds so trivial when you say it, but it is an unbelievable commitment of time in the rat race of Houstonian life. I was in GNC on Sunday morning browsing the aisles of variety. Shelves stacked upon shelves of every known or unknown flavor of organic or otherwise supplement, vitamin, or infomercial gimmickry. It was quite impressive. I picked out the stuff I wanted... a men's multivitamin without iron, a daily DHEA supplement, some milk thistle for my alcohol dented liver, some more of those Sean-and-Clayton-discovered-on-Sixth-Street orange chewy C's, etc. As I was reading the few bottles in my hand, I noticed they had a selection of pre-packaged vita-pack style doses as an alternative. I compared this and that and the other thing and found the one that most closely matched the stuff I had selected. I did some quick math and figured that it was a better fit for me to buy the pre-packaged combo, so I grabbed the one with the goods I was looking for and headed for the register. As the young lady was ringing me up, it was then I first noticed the "most closely matching" pack I had picked up was the "special formulated for men over 40". Fuck. So, with my 30% or so salt-n-peppa grey, I paid the youngster and headed for the car seeping with realism. I'm not a kid anymore. It's a love hate relationship. Yesterday, being Monday and prone to all the badness that CorpoHell can generate, wasn't altogether bad... just busy. I had three too many meetings and some unnecessary face time with my boss, but it wasn't bad. Just busy. I'm hoping that today will be smooth and stress free. I didn't sleep well last night. I woke up at 4:00 from a really weird dream about comparison shopping Compact Flash cards online, buying the wrong one, and then my struggle trying to correct my order. I may just need medication. I think this stems from my real life Compact Flash nightmare last Friday when I needed to take many more photos than I had storage and ended up offloading to my laptop in a dark ally in a seedy part of town several times with great discomfort. I opted for the METRO this morning because it was sprinkling outside. When the air is moist, Houstonians removed their brains, set them on the driveway, and beat them with a hammer. All common and uncommon sense is nonexistent on the wet roadways of Houston. Watching Houston drivers in the rain reminds me of when I visited my grandmother a couple of weeks ago and one of my uncle's chickens was eating a Styrofoam ice chest. Yeah, good analogy. So, I'm at the mercy of our highly qualified METRO staff today. At least they have cement barriers blocking off the one lane they have to stay in during the commute. I sat down on the bus and one of the patrons behind me set off some type of buzzer alarm when he scanned his ride card. He looked at the driver and said, "What does that mean?" to which the driver replied, "I have no clue. Go sit down." Awesome. I patched my Battlefield 1942 to v1.6 last night. I also downloaded the relatively new Beta 0.7 full install of Desert Combat. There is a big LAN party coming up in the first part of March and I'm almost certain it will be 99.5% Desert Combat. That game rocks. I suck at it. I rarely play games anymore. When I'm on my computer, my screen is in a monogamous relationship with Photoshop Creative Suite. I really wish CS had a native Linux port. I'm in serious need of a computer upgrade. I did some quick looking and it appears that I can build a dual 2.8GHz Pentium IV system for the same price as a single processor 3.4GHz Pentium IV system. Any increase in CPU clock would be good for me, but my main concern is RAM. I'm running half a gig now and I think that I need around 2 gig... at least. It's been a solid two years since I looked into building a new system, so this will be a healthy evolution in refreshing my street sense of what's out there. I would love a PowerMac G5, but they are cost prohibitive for me right now. It's not the hardware as much as it would be the software migration as well, but still... pricey. We'll see how it all works out. I have a laundry list of other commitments to address before I jump into tuning a system. Well, the magic chariot of METRO is approaching my stop. I'm a hop, skip, and a jump from a jumbotron coffee and the 60Hz hum of my rectangular cell. I sincerely wish all a fabulous day. Ciao.