Ways to get my Life in Shape

I spent a lot of time thinking this past week on ways to whip my life into shape. Not that I see anything fundamentally wrong with it, there's just a few things that I'd like to change I feel would overall be an improvement. This list is more for my benefit than anyone elses', but I thought I'd share so when people ask me about why I'm doing certain things I can point them here instead of explaining myself again.

1. Only 1 hour of entertainment TV a night, with not watching any the nights the following shows aren't on: BSG, Heroes, Lost, The Office, and My Name is Earl. See 6 for information programming.
   
2. I will limit myself, regardless of weeknight or weekend, to two drinks.
3. On work nights I will go to sleep by 11pm and wake up at 6am.
   
4. When commuting on the bus to work, I will listen to news/podcasts in the morning and read the paper or a book in the evening.
5. I will walk the 10 blocks home from the Mission bus stop.
6. Each weeknight I will do a regiment of weights while watching Countdown and then run at least 10 blocks.
7. All meals will be home made or store bought, fast food will only be allowed once a month.
8. Everyday I will review my bank accounts online.
9. No soda. Period.
10. I will clean my room the first of each month.

There we have it, not very strict or demanding, but I actually want to enjoy living my life. These I feel will cap some of the bad habits I have (ie listening to all my podcasts the beginning of the week and then getting bored at the end) and focus myself on moderation. I should probably add in to read at least one Buddhist proverb a day to keep myself focused to, as well as review this list daily. If you have any suggestions that you feel will help me stick to these or any I should add, please let me know.

Olbermann Profiled on CBS

Awesome CBS profile on Keith, summary on Crooks and Liars:

The Average Age of a Digger

Since becoming aware of Digg a few years ago I've always had mixed feelings about it and it's users. The site itself is very well put together technically, offers a ton of almost real-time up-to-date links, and was created by Kevin Rose whom I feel is a good spokesman for my generation online. The one thing that never sat well with me though were the comments on submitted stories. After reading Slashdot for almost ten years and being exposed to a exceptional moderation system, reading Digg's lead something to be desired. At first I thought it was simplistic up/down style moderation, letting drivel like "dugg!" through and me actually having to see it, but gradually I came to realize it was something else: age.

The average Digger to me, from the way they write to the insights they express, has always appeared to be in the under 18 category. I'm not judging them on their grammar or spelling, but with Slashdot whenever I read an insightful or interesting comment there's just this sense that it was written by a knowledgeable adult. Digg have never had that, comments are usually only a sentence or two, and rarely link to other sources. I still read Digg daily to get interesting links, but only rarely do I venture into the comments for fear that I may somehow get sucked into some comment abyss. Today though, I finally have solid evidence that these comments, and in fact most of Digg, are run by people under the age of 18. That evidence is Pokemon.

The top story for today in Gaming (although it has the most out of any digg section) is "Catch Mew-FINALLY!". Now the phrasing of the title aside, I saw this an immediately thought to myself "WTF is Mew?" Like Jason Mewes? Or something like the flu? As I ventured into the linked page I learned Mew was some type of Pokemon creature that you apparently could only capture by using a cheat device like The Gameshark or something else. So how does this solidify my belief in diggers being not of legal age? Well the Pokemon games (Yellow/Red/Blue) they mention weren't released until 1999, when I was 18 years old. At that age I missed the whole Pokemon craze, but remember the age group that was playing it then, 6-10 years old. Making them at most 16 and at least 12 today.

Now the story itself was technically interesting , but then I saw the comment count was up to 200+ (a rarity for most stories, even the popular ones) with the majority of them reminiscing about playing the game in their "youth". I don't mean to rag on these kids, since I did the same thing about old NES and Atari games when I was their age, it just proves to me why I've always felt Digg was wrong for me. I'll still continue to visit Digg, but I don't plan to really participate in it since the comment moderation and digging of stories will most likely be judged by the generation below me.

Xfce Desktop on Etch

Last week I decided to make the jump from Debian Sarge to Etch on my home media server. The upgrade was for the most part painless, although there were a few snags I hit that I will explain in more detail in another post. For now though I wanted to post a nice screen shot of my new Xfce desktop:


On the left is the main app panel featuring: xterm, K3b, VMware, GAIM, Grip, XMMS, DVD::RIP, Iceweasel (aka Firefox), and Konqueror. Finally the little mouse with the X is the Xfce application menu, then hardware temperature sensors (a little high actually) and system load information. The top panel is running six virtual desktops with a taskbar on the right side. The app that is currently running is DVD::RIP in GUI mode making an Xvid video out of the Talladega Nights DVD I recently purchased.