Category: What?

Supercategory to hold miscellaneous subject categories

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My latest toy – a Withings

What’s a Withings you ask?

It’s an internet connected scale.

The scale is wirelessly connected to the internet with Wi-Fi. Everytime I weigh myself the scale connects to the internet and updates my weight and body fat content (it uses electrical impulses sent through my feet to measure my fat) on the Withings website and on my Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault accounts. It also sends a tweet out via my UncleLar twitter account which is connected to Facebook so my Facebook status is automatically updated too.

The Withings site also provides widgets which I can put on websites like this one to track my progress. Here’s how I’m doing so far (although I’ve only had the scale for a couple of days, I’m about a month into a campaign to lose a lb a week so I can get back down below 200 by around the end of September).

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THON 2010 – $7,838,054.36

My annual post in support of THON, Penn State’s student run Dance Marathon that raises money to fight pediatric cancer.

History of THON

2010 Promo

Love Belongs Here Promo

2010 THON Logo – Love Belongs Here

Here’s an absolutely cute video of Tucker Haas, a former Four Diamonds kid who has been cancer free for a couple of yars now, doing the Black Eyed Peas “Boom Boom Pow” before 10,000 or so kids at THON earlier this afternoon.

They just announced this year’s amount raised: $7,838,054.36

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New Year’s Eve 2009

If you checked out my previous post on New Year’s Eve, you’ll see that my attempt to do live video streaming didn’t work so well.

I was able to capture some halfway decent videos on my photo camera though. Here’s some of the videos I got at a couple of the bars I was in.

First some JR and Natalie videos from the Cafe 210. The videos are a little jumpy because I was zoomed in to try to prevent the lights from behind the band from overwhelming the camera sensors. For the most part I succeeded.

Van Morrison’s “Wild Nights”.

Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”

Tom Petty’s “Free Falling” — kind of funny because Natalie grabbed the camera out of my hands and briefly turned it around on me.

Roberta Flack (and the Fugees) “Killing Me Softly”

JR and Natalie ended their last set at 1:30 and Natalie (and I) rushed over to the Phyrst before they gave their 2:00 am last call. At the Phyrst, Natalie did a couple of songs with Maxwell Strait (she’s been filling in as the lead singer with them because their normal lead, Molly Countermine, has been out having her third child). Molly, Natalie, and the third woman on stage, Kate Twoey, also perform together as a trio called Pure Cane Sugar.

Aretha Franklin’s Chain of Fools

Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s “Four Dead in Ohio”

Needless to say – I’m having fun with my new camera.

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102 and counting

The Penn State women’s volleyball team racked up their record setting 102nd straight win and third straight national championship with an absolutely thrilling 5 set win over Texas in the title game on Saturday night. I also heard a rumor that they gained a new young fan from Montclair NJ.

Their championship match was one of the most compelling sporting events that I have ever watched. The girls started slow and dropped the first two sets of the match, marking the first time in the 100+ win streak that they had ever fallen behind 0-2. But they fought they way back, eventually winning the fifth set 15-13 in a set that had both teams trading points back and forth. I’ve heard from a bunch of people who just turned the game on for the novelty of the championship but were overwhelmed with the athleticism of the participants. They’re real believers now.

The match has become an instant ESPN classic and was already rebroadcast three times yesterday. It will also be shown again on Saturday at 10 pm EST Saturday (9 pm CST). It’s worth a view even though you know who won.

It’s hard to appreciate how tall and good these athletes are. I shared this photo with Gary yesterday. It shows PSU coach (and Fremd High grad) Russ Rose with his four first team All-Americans, from left to right Ariel Wilson, Megan Hodge, Coach Rose, Blair Brown, and Alisha Glass, at their All American Awards banquet Friday night. Russ is my size but he looks like a shrimp in this photo. The girls heights in order are: 6’3″, 6’3″, 6’5″, 6’0″.

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The Chicago Fall Clan may well be aware of this

but I suspect that this just might be new news for those of us outside the Windy City.

Last week, the Black Eyed Peas pulled off an incredible stunt for Oprah Winfrey’s block party kicking the fall season for her show. Ostensibly, Oprah was unaware that will.i.am of the Peas solicited the services of a flash mob to help create this 21,000 strong dance scene. It’s pretty neat.

While watching the girl dancing solo at the beginning of the song, I couldn’t help but think of another front row dancer in a video, specifically Courtney Cox performing in Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark video twenty five years ago.


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I know this is a little gimmicky…

but I sometimes wonder if some of our Congressional Senators/Representatives can even ID all of our 50 states much less draw a map of them. Smart of him to start out with his home state too.

A little behind the scenes research indicates that Franken had been doing this for years. I’ve found photos and videos of him doing it on at least two other occasions. I’ve also seen a claim that he first did this for an SNL skit back in the nineties when he was “lamenting” the poor budget that he had been given to do his political commentary stating that he was forced to draw his own political maps.