Archive for the 'thought' Category

Screw the Gym Membership, Buy Rocks.

rocks vs. gym

So many people spend a lot of money trying to lose weight, gain weight, get fit, gain muscle, lose fat, etc. I personally spend $30 bucks a month on a 24 Hour Fitness membership. I use it, but I know I’m one of few that does. I know a girl that spent $40 a month on a gym membership she didn’t use. For 3 years. Let’s do the math.

36 months x $40 a month = $1440

Her reasoning for keeping it: she MIGHT start going again and spent $200 to sign up initially. She said she’s went to the gym for about 2 months, 4 times a week. So:

9 weeks x 4 times per week = 36 visits

$1440 in monthly charges + $200 sign up fee / 36 visits = $45.56 per visit

So this girl paid more than her monthly bill per actual gym visit. And I know she’s not alone.

Now my idea: Many people are shifting to a non-gym workout regiment these days, some of the activities being:

Cardio-respiratory: walking, running, swimming, cycling, sports, etc
Muscular: swimming, sports, cycling, push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, etc

I know the guys here at db clay are doing push-ups sporadically throughout the workday. All of these exercises lack one pretty obvious thing - you don’t need machines to do them. At most you’re looking at investing in a bicycle, a pair of shoes, possibly a football/basketball/etc., maybe paying to go to the pool. But you these are usually one time fees.

They do lack one thing - weights. You can get the workout in else ware (notably swimming), but weights will help you bulk up, or gain muscle to lose fat. Body weight is great once you’re already fit, but if you’re looking for increased results you need to up the ante. So my thought is, instead of buying that membership to use machines/dumbbells four times a year, just buy rocks. I have a couple of reasons for suggesting this.

  1. Rocks are cheap.
  2. Rocks are heavy. (weight)
  3. You can control how much rocks weigh (get different sizes)
  4. Rocks are functional weight.

Why is functional weight important? Well to some it’s not, but I would much prefer to do something I may be doing in the future (doing chores, working outside, manly things, etc.) than doing bench press all day. Plus, lifting rocks works many muscle groups at the same time, stabilizers and major groups. So you’re getting a better workout, faster.

So get out there and get some rocks, they don’t require a membership and will always be there for you!

Some of My Favorite Web Tools

In this (seemingly) limitless internet, I have a set of tools I use every day to make my world much easier. They are neither particularly complex nor life-changing, more simple and intuitivee. Here they are in all their glory.

StumbleUpon Alerter - This little guy (developed by Moojj) has been a faithful companion in my eternal quest to be #1 on SU. It tracks all your discoveries and tells you how many thumbs and reviews they’ve gotten. We’ll get to #1 one day buddy…

Digg Alerter - Even more so than the SU alerter, this is a god send. Also developed by Moojj, this tool keeps me from checking digg every 3 minutes to see how my submissions are doing.

Social Media for Firefox - Far and away the most valuable social media tool our there. The fellas over at 97th Floor developed this genius tool that shows you how many diggs, stumbles, etc. a page or story has. If you don’t see the value in that, don’t bother downloading.

Yahoo Pipes - One of the most powerful feed tools on the web. This one is changing the way people use the web.

del.icio.us - Anything I love, I tag with delicious. Actually I take that back, anything I’m remotely interested in or could see myself interested in one day I tag with delicious.

myOpenID - myOpenID is a great place to manage your online identity. If you’re like me, you have about 70,000 accounts, user names, and passwords sowed all over the web. And you probably have a 7 page word document with all of those accounts. This eliminates you needing to reference that document every 7 seconds.

Open Letter To Stumbleupon

Dearest SU,

I love you. I really really do. I’ve been a top stumbler since December, and have been in love with almost everything about the site since well before that. BUT, that being said, I want you to do a few things for me:

Let me have more than 200 friends. - To be honest I’ve never understood the cap. At least let me “prove myself” by stumbling a certain number of pages, then let me have a million if I want them. Someone please enlighten me if they know the reasoning behind this, and believe in it. I have more than 200 people I know within the community at this point, and would love to be able to send them all pages I’m interested in.

Make “Education” a category - Or at least a tag for crap-sakes. Not “Educational”, but education. There are a lot of pages related to this that I find, and I feel a twinge of pain putting them under some other (less appropriate) category.

Give me a indication of online status from the send to page - I always want to share stuff with people online, and don’t want to go to my friends page to see if they’re online. And a friend filter would NOT hurt either.

I appreciate you SU, you mean a lot to me. You’ve been good to me, I’ve found a lot of really cool stuff because of you, but I want more. Call me a guy, call me a nerd, but I’m just trying to bring the best out of you.

After all this is over I think we should get an apartment together.

Love,
Brian (Brianreeder)

Why I’m So Excited “The Office” Is Back

dwight The short answer: this guy right here.

A bit longer of an answer: because it’s the best program on television. I am an avid fan of the origianl BBC version of “The Office” (if you haven’t seen it I have no respect for you) and believe very few remakes go as well as this one did. In a way, I like the NBC version better. By no means am I discounting the gut-wrenching bone-dry wildly awkward humor of the BBC Office. Believe me, the first time I saw it (given by my roommate Tyler as a Xmas present, gracias) I was howling. Even having seen each episode countless times, I still get that awkward feeling in the pit of my stomach when I watch. We all know that feeling, it’s the same one you get when you’re friends are dating and you’re all having dinner together and they’re mad at each other. The delicious pasta turns to dust in your mouth as the snide comments pour out of their mouths like slop to a trough. I digress. The better feature of NBC’s O-fess: Dwight Schrute. Mackenzie Crook did a stand up job in the BBC episodes, playing the awkward side kick to perfection. But, Rainn Wilson truly made Dwight his own. In every sense of the word he owns the role of the awkward-power-hungry-faithful-simpleton-farmer-ninja. After 4 seasons all I want is more.

The months of it’s absence were spent primarily in hibernation for me, coming out only for food and strong drink. It was a dark time in my life and I don’t want to talk about it. But, now that “The Office” is back, life can resume. Birds are again chirping, skunks are smelling, chipmunks are wondering if they left the gas on. And I- again- am my usual, hilarious, interesting, amazing self. So take strength in my jay-z-like return to humor, life, and daylight. It will be a good year.

My 3 Favorite Pictures from Costa Rica

Recently I was in Costa Rica. It was an amazing place, and I think I’ll be going back at some point. While I was there, I slacked on taking photos. Luckily all the 6 girls on the trip weren’t, but I still take a certain amount of pride in my own abilities and photos. Here are my favorite 3 that I took.

sunset

This was taken on the beach at Santa Teresa. It was my favorite place we stayed, for the food, the company, the sights, the relaxation.

killer animal attack

We almost got murdered by this beast driving by Lake Arenal. Wildlife abounded, but this traveler almost became lunch. Luckily the beast settled for Pringles.

palms in the jungle sun

We did a lot of driving our last couple days - but not stressful intense driving. More like laid-back-stop-and-take-a-picture-or-explore-whenever driving. The sights were incredible, the sunsets beyond description.

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