Remember the Yip Yips?

Thanks goes to my friend Brandon for linking to a YouTube clip of the classic Yip Yips. Definitely brings back memories from childhood...

Blue Eyes? Then apparently we are related!

USA Today had an interesting article recently (another copy of the article ran here). Research published in the journal Human Genetics found that every person with blue eyes descends from just one "founder", an ancestor whose genes mutated 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.

I have blue eyes -- so if you do too, then we are apparently distant relatives.

A Test for Right Brain, Left Brain Dominance?

Here is something interesting... a personal test for right-brain vs left-brain dominance. (Thanks to Rational Jenn for the link.)

Susan saw this first, showed it to me, and asked if I saw the woman as spinning clockwise or counter-clockwise. When I said clockwise, she said "What!!? No way!". According to this test, that means I am right-brain dominant. Susan saw it the other way, so that means she is left-brain dominant.

While I question some of the distinctions listed on that page (uses logic vs. uses feeling -- I use logic heavily!), there is some similarity between myself and what this page indicates are right-brain attributes. Most notably accurate for me I think are: big-picture oriented, present and future, philosophy and religion (obviously philosophy for me), spatial perception, presents possibilities. Some of the items in the left-brain functions list are definitely stronger in Susan than I, and overall the "left" list is more accurate of Susan and the "right" list is more accurate of me I would say -- so that is at least in line with the results of this test. But it isn't dead-on of course -- since Susan is a philosophy professor (right-brain list item), and I am considered very logical and am a writer both at work and for pleasure (both left-brain list items).

My First Race: Chase Corporate Challenge

I've been a jogger/runner for many years now, going back to my college years in the early 1990s. I do it mostly for exercise, and also because I find it pleasureable and a good way to clear my head -- and sometimes do some really good thinking. In fact, I find that some of my best ideas arise while running. From April - November I try to run 3-4 miles, several times a week. It is always weather and schedule dependent. I think the longest I have ever run is 6 or 8 miles, many years ago.

I had never been in an official race, until last night when I participated in the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge, a 3.5 mile charity race here in Rochester, NY. Several people from work were a part of it, even though we didn't have an official company team with a tent, etc. It was a hot and humid night, but overall I'm glad I participated, and I plan to do so again next year.

It was a very interesting experience, not least because of the huge number of people involved. There were over 10,000 people crammed onto the RIT campus (apparently a record for this event in Rochester). With so many people lined up and involved in the race, the first 5 minutes or so was stop-and-go traffic at best: standing, walking a bit, standing, and so on. And all but the very fastest runners were asked to start well behind the official starting line. I'm sure all of this is standard procedure for such large races, but it means your "time" for the race is not all that meaningful really. I finished in 34 minutes, 10 seconds -- but I'm sure I lost about 5 minutes because of the craziness of the beginning of the race. I didn't push myself at all during the race, so I'm fine with that result. Of course, the top man came in at just under 17 minutes, and the winning woman at just over 20 minutes, so I was just an average joe jogging along.

Something else I found fascinating, which again I'm sure is quite normal for these kinds of races, was the noise and chaos of the two water stations they had setup during the race. With thousands of plastic cups being dispensed, the noise of them hitting the ground, and then being trampled repeatedly, was rather strange. I don't envy the groundspeople who will be cleaning up those messes! I also found it rather difficult to actually drink the water in such cups -- no wonder people often just toss it on their faces or over their heads to cool off.

You can read about the event in our local paper here, and there are a few other articles linked from that page, plus a 17-photo gallery too. The race included various local politicians and other well-known folks, perhaps most notably Rochester Mayor Robert Duffy -- who is actually a serious runner from what I understand (I think he was taking it easy during this event). See also the longer writeup at the Chase CC website.

Goodbye Eudora... Hello Outlook 2007

After 10+ years using Eudora Pro as my email client application, I'm finally moving on. Like so many people, I'm going to be using Outlook. In fact, as of this weekend, I am now switched over to the new Outlook 2007. The reasons for this are several:

1. Eudora hasn't had much in the way of new features added to it in a long time. While I've long liked the program (obviously!), it seems to be falling further and further behind. And as Qualcomm recently decided to stop developing the app and selling it, and instead turn it into an Open Source app, well, I'm not sure whether that will be a good thing for it or not. Afterall, there are already some good open-source/free email clients out there.
2. While I considering going to web-based email, like gmail or hotmail or Yahoo! mail, I wanted loads of features. While those are getting better all the time, they don't compare to a good client app yet.
3. I already had Outlook 2007, since I bought Office 2007 Professional shortly after it was released, as an upgrade for us from the increasingly ancient Office 2000. So starting to use Outlook at this point would only cost me some time to switchover, not any additional money.
4. I like the new interface that Office 2007 provides, with the ribbon and so on. Even though Outlook is a hybrid and still uses the old-style menus interface for the main screen, I wanted to use an email client that uses the new interface for at least some things -- as I really like and will be getting more and more accustomed to it going forward through Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access use.

So in recent weeks I've been cleaning up all my Eudora stuff, preparing for the switchover to Outlook. In doing so I've archived thousands of emails sent and received since 1997, and re-organized how I structure email folders and so on. Having done all of that upfront, the switch over has been relatively smooth.

With Outlook I plan to use a great many more features than I was able to get with Eudora. A while back I already started to use Outlook for RSS feeds for blog-reading. There too the tool I had been using, the web-based Newsgator site, served me well for a couple of years, but I decided I wanted to read blogs in the same tool that I read email -- so that was going to be Outlook.

I've already switched over all my Contacts data into Outlook too, info which had formerly been stored in a custom Access database I had designed. And I intend to start using Outlook's item categorization features, the Tasks feature, the To-Do Bar, and perhaps Calendaring. I doubt I'll use its Journal or Notes features, as I use Microsoft OneNote for that sort of thing already.

For long-time Outlook users, all of this "ho-hum" no doubt. But for someone who had been using Eudora for 10+ years, it has been a major switch-over! So far, so-good...

Snow in Spring and Weather Averages and Records

A severe storm current in Texas is making its way east, and will mix with colder air up here in the northern states to produce some more snow... or so the weather folks are predicting. As of now, it seems the worst of it will miss us here in Rochester, NY.

My increasing frustration with the cold weather we are still having in mid-April led me to wonder how abnormal this is. A quick Google search introduced me to the site WeatherBase, and then a search on Rochester, NY brings back this statistics page. From here I can say that so far we have definitely been below average for high temperatures this month (average high over the past 48 years in April in Rochester is 56 F, while we've been struggling to reach 40 F many days). The record in April is a whopping 93 F! Wow... I wouldn't have guessed that! We average 3.6 inches of snow in April, and that sounds about right. We even average 0.3 inches in May, a despairing thought.

Waiting for the Smell in the Air

I don't usually write "personal" blog postings... but this one verges on that I guess. I recently saw my first spring training baseball game on TV, and of course that was a great feeling. Then a few days ago the temperatures here in the Rochester, New York area rose into the 50s and even low 60s I think. I was able to go for an outdoor jog (just 3.5 miles) on one of those days, which was great, because I really need the exercise. And we actually had ample rain in recent days too.

But then last night winter weather returned, and this morning we have a good 5+ inches of fluffy snow and the temps are again well below freezing. So my spring joy is being delayed.

In particular, I am still waiting for that "ah, its wonderful" emotional moment (or series of moments) that I experience each spring. I grew up in this area, and I very much appreciate its change of seasons each year. Every spring as a child and adolescent I played baseball on a team (little league through varsity high-school) -- I was mostly a pitcher. Practices would start in early March (or even late February, albeit indoors). There was a certain smell in the air that I'd experience every year at that time. It was a combination of many things: the smell of spring rains, warmer air temperature, the smell of the dirt of the ballfield, the smell of the leather of baseball glove, the smell of fresh-cut (or at least revived and growing) green grass, and even the faint scents from flowers blooming or the leaves first coming out.

For me, it is what I get from my sense of smell during this time -- even more than the sense of touch of the warmer temperatures, or the sense of sight of the sun and grass -- that most triggers positive emotions of the season. And for me, it is very much tied up with baseball, and not just the weather as such. To a lesser extent I have a similar reaction, at some point in September, as the fall season starts to settle in: thoughts of something new (based on school starting for so many years), the start of the football season (I didn't play on a team, but we played lots of pickup games and of course I watched lots of pro and college football on TV as a kid). But given that the weather then is turning colder, not warmer, and that the changes in vegetation signal death (or at best hibernation) rather than renewed life, it just isn't the same for me as the birth of the spring season is. Plus as a kid baseball starting was far more important to me than football season or school starting!

Alas, those moments will be delayed a while longer this year... as I stare out my window at the falling snow.