Ok, so I've been feeling really bad lately. Late last week my brother Brian, who's a paramedic, checked my blood pressure and it was about 210/130. I went to the emergency room the next day and it was still 180/120. I went to a doctor for the first time in about 3 years today and he started me on a drug called Lisinopril. I'm also weighing 316 lbs today, which is a new record for me. Time to lose it. I'll be posting my weight loss results here, so stay tuned. I'll be doing the Atkin's Diet for now until I drop about 30 or 40 lbs. An exercise program will also soon be announced.

Who says the Internet never gave us anything useful? Now you can cat-proof your computer with the amazing PawSense software.

Ok, I love visual illusions, especially ones like this one which can be done over a computer. To help prove it to yourself, save the image and open it in Microsoft Paint. Copy a small section from each of the two squares and paste them off to the side.

I went to see The Two Towers last night at the IMAX screen here in Nashville. It was absolutely amazing. I was numb at the end of it, and not just because it was 3 hours long. Seeing it at the IMAX was nice. It wasn't in the large format, but the screen is in really good shape and the sound system is awesome. Of course, my only problem with the film is that now I have to wait a year to see the next one. Well, they could also put a short intermission somewhere in there. Even if it was just a 60 second stand up and stretch break.

As my faithful readers know, I recently took the plunge and bought a house. I've always had a habit of sending in a little extra on any payments that I have, and for the first mortgage payment I sent in a whopping extra 10 bucks. I wasn't sure how much that would save me in the long run, but I finally found a tool that lets you simulate a mortgage. It's a shareware program called Mortgage Wizard Plus. Using it, I was able to figure out that sending in an extra 10 dollars every month will cut 9 payments off the 360 payments in the loan. Saves over 4000 dollars or so in the long run. Now if I could just pay off Falkner-Mynutt before they send their goons after me...

Here's the web site of one of my favorite skeptics, James Randi. He's been waging a non-stop battle against ignorance and rip off artists for quite some time now. Here's my favorite quote from his web site:

Herewith the 3000-year history of alternative medicine in 30 seconds:

1000 BCE: "Eat this root."

100 CE: "That root's heathen, don't eat it. Say this prayer."

1800 CE: "That prayer is superstition, don't say it. Drink this snake-oil."

1900 CE: "That snake-oil is phony, don't drink it. Take this pill."

2002 CE: "That pill is artificial, don't take it. Eat this root.

Ok, I realize that professional sports have basically been "family-ized" in the last few years, as opposed to the days when I was a kid when it was mostly men and their sons watching them. Eventually it can just get a little silly. Take NFL football. It's 22 men beating the hell out of each other for several hours! It's a violent game. It's supposed to be a violent game! Sure there are such things as dirty hits, but everyone out there in a uniform knows this when they go into it, or you would think they would. This article talks about the recent Packers-Vikings game. Brett Favre's quote at the end of the article pretty much sums up my feelings on this one.

Here's something very cool that I want to do to my house someday. I want to be able to interact with my house basically the way they do on Star Trek (yes, it's sadly cliched and geeky.) Using MisterHouse, it looks like you could get pretty close to it. If I could just hook it all up to a small robot that would shock the cats when they're chewing on our loaf of bread or breaking Christmas tree ornaments, it would be perfect. I guess I could take the cheap route and shoot the cats, though.