More Efficient Font?

Helvetica. There's a documentary about it. Perhaps the most famous font in the world. Some say that it's very efficient, yet I find that capital I and lowercase L look too much alike. 6 and 8 are hard to distinguish from a distance. It's not so aesthetically pleasing...just blends into the background. Some say that this last feature makes it efficient. It imparts only the necessary information and allows people to gather this info fast.

Turns out that one way in which it's not super efficient is ink usage. Check out this article about how much ink is used by fonts. They use pens, but I'm sure it's roughly the same in your printer.

Pick #174

Mary Chapin Carpenter - "Passionate Kisses" from Come On Come On

I've been on a country music kick lately. I made a Pandora station seeded with Alabama (then added some later) and it's the good '80s style country music that I grew up with. There are some songs played on Pandora that I forgot existed or haven't heard in a long time. ¡Viva el internet!

Soda Powered Phone

The future is coming...check out this phone.

100 Mile Club

You can go to the Leach Center's website and get some info about the 100 mile club. Basically, it's for people who want to swim 100 miles in the Leach pool. You write down how far you swim at the end of every session and their staff tabulate the data. Participants who reach the 100 mile mark are given a T-shirt.

The deadline to finish the 100 miles for this year is April 16th. I just started participating earlier this week, so I doubt I'll get in all 100 miles by April. I do want to do it next year, starting in the fall semester though. I don't normally keep track of how far I swim. I log all my running miles and I think it'd be kinda cool if someone else kept track of my swimming.

Dinner Club

Last week I decided that it would be cool to start a dinner club where each member takes a turn hosting a dinner at their house and the other members show up to dine. The host is determined by some sort of rotation. I made a couple phone calls and found some people who were interested in joining. Last Thursday I made dinner at my house and we decided that Sundays would work better for many of the people in the group. Micah cooked yesterday and Jamie has this coming week. The idea is to have a regular social gathering where we can try foods that we might not otherwise think of making ourselves. For instance, Micah made delicious lamb chops...I never cook lamb. I hope it continues to be a success.

If you're interested in joining, hit me up.

Krispy Kreme Challenge Race Report

Yesterday, I ran FSU's first Krispy Kreme Challenge to benefit the Student United Way. It started at 1pm at Westcott, ran around campus to the stadium where challengers consumed 12 doughnuts ("slackers" only had to eat one), then around campus again to finish at Westcott. The course was supposed to be 2 miles to doughnuts, then 2 miles back, but it was definitely short. I led the race for the first 3/4 mile and I was 5th into the doughnut area. My plan was to run 6 minute miles to get doughnuts and 10 minute miles back, leaving me 28 minutes to eat doughnuts because there was a 1 hour time limit on the course. My personal goals were to break 1 hour and not puke (both goals were met!).

I ran to doughnuts in 9:12, ate them in 20:08, and ran back in 15:07 (overall time 44:28). I thought I was going to puke about 1/4 mile from the doughnut area and actually stood over a trash can for a few seconds waiting for it to happen. Only one person passed me running on the way back to the finish. I passed lots of people. The course was well marked, but there was a little confusion because there had been another race on campus that morning. I heard a few people made wrong turns because there weren't volunteers at the intersections with poor marking (hmm...that sounds familiar).

In the morning I ate a banana, hoping to be hungry for the doughnut eating. That kinda worked...I ate the first 9 doughnuts without much of a problem, but it was terrible trying to get the next 3 down. I was able to keep them down during the race, but I started to feel like puking again after the race. I ended up going to my office and using some mouth wash to get the sugary feeling out of my mouth. That helped a lot. I didn't eat much the rest of the day...just a bag of popcorn around 6pm because I wanted something salty and didn't have pretzels, and a really tiny plate of whatever Andrew made for dinner.

Ironman Matt Miller won 2nd overall in the challenger division, finishing under 30 minutes! To give him even more credit, he was really close behind the 1st place guy, but that guy puked, making Matt the overall-non-puking winner!

Overall, I'd have to say that it was very well organized for a first year event. There were about 250 people this year and they want to double that for next year.

p.s. there's a great writeup about the race as a whole (in other words, not just my race) on Trouble Afoot.

Pick #173

Reba McEntire - "Little Rock"