Please Give Blood

It's that time again. I gave blood yesterday so now it's your turn. Save a life and sign up on the Red Cross web site today!

Website Changes

I'm changing web server hosting for my GlacialWanderer website. I'm changing from Yahoo to Dreamhost because Dreamhost is cheaper and has better options/service. The only thing it should affect on this blog is that the pictures might not load for a few days since I store them on my GlacialWanderer site. Hopefully everything will go soothly. If you have problems that last more than a week let me know and I'll look into it.

The Bad Side of Biofuels

I've read a bunch of little blurbs about the hazards of ethanol based fuel in the past, but I thought this article summed up the points pretty well. You should check it out.

After doing that here is another article about more details on how ethanol based fuels are increasing the cost of food.

Now I'm not a proponent of corn based foods, but I do think that it's ridiculous to have poor people starving because wealthy people want gas for their cars. Gas that makes them feel like they're helping the environment even though it's likely that many biofuels are hurting the environment (note that some future alternative biofuel sources may be environmentally friendly).

I think the American government should move its corn subsidies to more healthy foods (read fruits and vegetables). Then poorer Americans could afford healthier diets. How common is corn in our diets? Most soda is basically liquid corn sugar. Most processed foods have corn sugars added (the iconic twinkie is made of mostly processed corn). Seriously look at the labels of the food you're buying and if you don't buy mostly whole unprocessed foods you will find that corn is in most things. Most animals raised for meat are fed corn so even the prices of beef/chicken/pork are lowered by the subsidies our government gives for growing corn.

Arg! This whole topic gets me depressed. I think I'll go and eat some cantaloupe for breakfast. That will cheer me up!

Gold at Sharper Edge

Another weekend. Another skating competition. Another gold medal! I'm so good it's scary.

P.S. I hope everyone realizes I'm not being arrogant with these sorts of posts. It's more about sarcasms with a healthy dose of cynicism. Just posting the facts is boring (for me if not for you).

Toe Loop

Ya!!! I did my first full revolution jump today while practicing at the rink. The toe loop takes off from a right back outside edge, with an assist from the left toe pick, turns one full revolution, and lands on the right back outside edge.

It wasn't a pretty toe loop, but I did it. I rock!

My Little Brother

Most of you know I volunteered at Big Brothers Big Sisters, which is a child mentoring non-profit organization. It took a few months of background checks, but I finally got to see my little brother this past Thursday. On Thursday we just has a short time together so we went to a park and played a little Frisbee. I think he’s better at throwing a Frisbee than I am. It was entertaining to me how much energy this kid has got. We ran to the car. Then we ran from the car to a good spot in the park. Then we ran around with the Frisbee. Then we ran back to the car. Then we ran from the car to his house. Not a single step of walking anywhere.

On Sunday I took him ice skating. Unlike Frisbee I was better at this one than he was, but he had a blast. After that we did a little bit of geocaching. After skating around for an hour and running around finding a geocache he was finally tired out so I gave him a piggy back ride to the car. Great times were had by all.

Hiking

This past weekend I went hiking at Purgatory Chasm with my buddy Eric. It’s one of my favorite places to hike because there are all these cool rocks to jump around on and little caves to explore. Thanks for coming with me Eric!

Navin Skating Show Pictures

There was a photographer at the show last week and he took a bunch of pictures. You can browse his pictures at http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/2796875.

Navin Skating Show

Last time I told you about skating it was about a competition. This time it's about my first show, which was at the Navin skating rink. I performed both a solo routine and a routine with a group of adults. Both of these routines went great. I think my favorite routine of the show was a pirate routine put on by three fairly high level skaters that I know. Not only was it good skating, but they were dressed up as pirates. I LOVE PIRATES!!! I seriously contemplated ways of becoming a pirate during college (a good pirate mind you). Maybe I'll write about this pirate fetish of mine in another post someday.

I had an awesome time at the show. It was even more fun than my competition a few weeks ago. After thinking about it I believe the truck loads of fun came from hanging and chatting with all my skating friends. A secondary source in the total fun factor was the fun derived from actually performing. It surprised me that this was the case since I tend to have more fun from doing than socializing, but it seems that this time was an exception.

Yar, ye better be having a good week or I be making ye landlubbers walk the plank.

Pictures from a Hike

Skating Pictures

Here are some skating pictures from my first skating competition. It was at the Nashoba Valley Olymipia rink.

Some of the pictures are ones I took of my coach's daughter, and some of pictures of me. I'll let you figure out which are which.

Click here for the pictures!

Travel Troubles

I had to fly out to Minneapolis for my deposition this past Sunday. I bought the tickets through a travel website at work on Friday. They weren’t very good tickets because they had a large layover, but since they were bought on such short notice I figured that I would just have to deal with it. It turned out there was more wrong with those tickets than I first thought.

I arrived at the Boston airport Sunday about an hour before my flight and walked up the United eticket kiosk. It gave me some error message about not being able to find my ticket. I went and asked the help desk what the problem was? It took her about a minute to realize my ticket said that I had United Airline tickets through American Airlines. The American Airlines part was in small print so we had both missed it. She said I needed to go to terminal B to get my tickets. I rushed over to terminal B only to find that I really needed to go to Terminal A. At Terminal A the people could only print out the first leg of my trip. They weren’t sure why the second leg wouldn’t print, but told me that I could get my next ticket once I landed it Washington and had more time. With that advice I rushed off and got on my plane a few minutes before it left.

I flew into Regan National Airport in Washington DC and stopped by a help desk to try and get my ticket printed for the flight to Minneapolis. When they said I had to go to the other airport, my jaw just about hit the floor. It turned out that while both of the airports listed on my ticket were called “Washington” I was flying into Regan National and out of Dulles. After recovering from that shock I took a 45 minute shuttle to Dulles and got on my flight. I sure didn’t expect to drive by the Washington monument when I woke up on Sunday.

The moral of this story is that I’ll be checking my flights more carefully in the future. The consolation prize was that the flight back was much easier. And that’s a good thing, because my brain felt like a pile of mush after a day long deposition. The lawyers told me not to talk about the deposition so I can’t really say much more on that topic, but I will say that it sucked. I’m just gad it’s over.