fine whine

So the Threadless ten dollar sale has ended. My shirt order has already arrived (and probably everybody else's* too) and, well, that's about it for the week. I inteded to write at least one thing, but I guess I'll parlay it into an entry for this week. I don't feel like backdating any this time around; I just don't have anything timely to mention (in retrospect, as it would be).

* Thank you to everyone who used my referral link. I earned a good portion of the next shirt I'll order during the next sale. There'll be another one in the next few months, I suspect. Thanks again.

Threadless* is doing their irregularly scheduled ten dollar t-shirt sale again. Shipping starts at $5.50 and the shirts rock. The sale ends this Wednesday, but all the cool stuff will sell out well before then. Such as this one.

Since the site's getting somewhat hammered, I recommend using the stock chart for the sizes you wear.

* Note that the link contains a secret tracking code for me, so that if you order, I get some small pittance of credit. I've been saving up, so I bought myself this shirt for less than the price of shipping. Thanks to all who have used my link, and thanks to anyone else who does so today or tomorrow.

Just as I was pondering the fact that I didn't see very many interesting vanity plates lately*, I found two, marginally connected, that struck my fancy.

The first was   EA71NN  . Sound advice, it seemed to me. Eating out is rather expensive, unless you eat cheap food.

Hence the second plate, probably issued from the same office (certainly the same city**):   EA78AT  . I don't know what the going rate for bat meat is these days, but it can't be too pricey.

* In a similar vein, I thought, tangentially, that I'm not seeing Honda Odysseys everywhere; upon which I was met with two almost immediately on the other side of the road. Observation changes the subject.

** There are only so many readable variations of the EA series, but there are certainly enough of the plates rolling around, around here. I've mentioned one I'd seen many a time, a while back. I'm not in that neighborhood very often anymore, and I do miss it. The area, not the car.

Some twenty-one or twenty-two nights ago* I began a low-impact workout regimen: I walked (or jogged, trudged or strolled) on the treadmill every night, burning twenty-five more calories each night than I had done the night before.

My total, as of the ones I burn tonight, is 6,900 calories.

On one hand, that seems like a big number (especially since I didn't do it on one hand, but two feet) but on the other, that's just over three and a half times the recommended total daily intake of calories.

But either way, it's more than none.

Back when we first had the 'mill there were a number of nights I'd do a good thousand or thousand and a half during a movie, but those were not consecutive nights, and many, many more nights when I could say "I've been on the treadmill" it was because I hopped on for a second or two. After a month, I even stopped doing that.

Last month I tried a similar experiment with less sustainable numbers: I doubled the calories every day, starting with three. I only made it through a week, but the intervals were unreasonable anyway.

I realize I can't keep adding 25 a day for the long term, but I haven't yet hit that point where I didn't think I could do just that little bit more the next night. 25 out of 575 isn't all that much, after all, and thus 25 out of 600, and 700, and so on...

* Counting the days back to February 20th is tougher when I count many of the hours past midnight (i.e. the next day) as still that day. Maybe I should just say "Three Mondays ago..." and be done with it.

I've wondered this before, but the idea resurfaced as I watched The Apple Dumpling Gang: For being so-called 'family entertainment', Disney movies don't show many of the generally-accepted 'standard' family: mom, dad, 2.5 kids, etc. Gang's about three orphans, and it's not the only film that comes to mind about kids raised by other relatives, foster parents, or animated creatures*. I realize there's a point to be made about amking do with what one has, but still this pheomenon strikes me as a bit odd.

* In fact, the only Disney film we could think of, in ten minutes or so, containing a mom, dad, and their kids was 101 Dalmations, and they're not even people.

I'm not finished with my bracket programming by a long stretch. There's no way to save the page, it's still gigantic, and frankly I'd much rather play with it than fix it.

I find interesting connections between the contenders. Sometimes the two share stars (I've battled over both Tim Robbins and Dustin Hoffman*, among others) or themes, or sometimes just the year they were released, but no matter which two are randomly picked, it's still fun to pick one over the other.

With that, I can add this to my ever-expanding list of programming projects I've begun and abandoned. The script that grabs the first titles, even, is among them. I've intended for some time to have all sorts of interesting lists and polls and links created from the movies I've seen and want to see, but so far have only been able to grab the raw data and effectively sit on it.

But I don't intend to give up on this yet. Maybe I'll dub it the 'bracketeer' and devote a directory of my site for it, for anyone to come and pick from the movies I've seen, or even enter a new list to rank--basketball teams, crayon colors, anything. It's just a matter of further cleaning up the code, and making it easier to use.

Hmmm, the bracketeer. I like the ring of that, I think.

* Wag the dog beat Stray dogs.