My mother took me to one recently and she bought a pair of shoes that according to her “she can’t live without.”  And that’s apparently the overwhelming opinion of many people who own these shoes.  Great.

But the thing that enticed me about the Walking Company was the digital foot reader.  Told you your size (in European obviously), pressure areas on the soles of your feet, and recommended insoles for your shoes.  This was cool!  I guess I’m a 42 in European.  Which is contrary to what I was told at other shoe stores but that’s for another post (Vibram Five Fingers!  I’m still waiting for them to offer my size!).

Working at Apple keeps me on my feet all day.  My current tennis shoes were not cutting it.  They were fine but my feet hurt at the end of the day.  I was looking for something that I could stand in all day and it would take the toll of the work and not my feet.  So having seen my mother shop at the Walking Company and knowing that Payless or some outlet store was not going to give me the kind of attention I wanted, I chose to go to the Walking Company.

They measured my feet and I told the lady what I wanted in a shoe and she brought out about 1/2 a dozen shoes.  But first, she wanted me to try these insoles.  Here’s where I think the scam happened.  

She told me to stand up, take my shoes off, and put my arms out in front of me.  She then said that she was going to push on my arms and I was to try to keep my balance.  She pushed and I toppled forward.

Then she placed the insoles (without shoes) on the floor, told me to stand on them, and she repeated the pushing on my arms.  Amazingly I kept my balance.  I was genuinely stunned by how balanced I suddenly was.    So stunned that a voice in the back of my head was incredibly skeptical.

How could a pair of insoles change the way you balance yourself?  I totally understand that the feet are incredibly complex machines and simple changes in the way we sit, stand, and walk can have profound effects on our well being.  But seriously?

I would love to put this little “demonstration” of the insoles to a test.  Is it the insoles that change you or the knowing what’s coming the second time she pushes on your arms?

When she first pushed on my arms I didn’t know how hard she was going to push, how far down was she going to go, or how much resistance I was to put up.  The second time around I knew more information.  I knew how hard, how far, and how much resistance I needed.  But the introduction of the insoles was the only physical variable we changed.  The only tangible evidence of better balance, distribution of weight, and overall “better well being.”

I can’t test this on Dani or myself.  We’re tainted.  And you can’t test someone twice.  If you try the insoles first, then you can’t try without.  And vice versa.  What I would love is to get a couple hundred people and do a blind study.  But I don’t have the cash for that many insoles (everyone is a different size and those insoles are expensive!!) or that many test subjects.

I’ll just have to be skeptical until someone who does have the time, money and resources tests this theory out.

If you think I’m completely wrong and that the insoles do actually change you in a real way, let me know what kind of data you have.  I’m anxious to hear some counter arguments.

By the way, I did purchase the insoles and a new pair of shoes.  They are incredibly comfortable and the shoes were well worth the price.  My feet don’t hurt as bad when I get home.  I’m also exercising a lot more now so that might have something to do with it.  ???

But do I really need one?  Probably not.
But here’s an interesting fact.  I have a new laptop.  A Toshiba Satellite A505-S6040.  It’s only a few months old.  When I unplugged it to work off the battery so I could type this post and sit with Dani on the couch, I checked the battery life out and it had 41 minutes left off of 91%.  This is ridiculous.

Granted a low battery is not a good reason to buy an iPad.  But a 10 hour battery is awfully enticing.

Above all of that, having a device that is only 10″ and only weighs a little over a pound would be really nice.  My laptop is big.  I mean a laptop with a 16″ screen is not an overly portable computer.  (Btw, 49% = 21 minutes of battery life.  WTF?)

I think the user friendliness, portability, and extreme battery life makes the iPad a must have.  And now that the iPad 2 is out, I really want it!!

But can I afford it?  I could.  But I really can’t.  There are other things I should be spending my money on.  The iPad is only going to provide convenience for me, nothing extremely practical or life changing.

There are other tablets out there.  The Motorola Xoom looks nice.  Honeycomb, stronger specs, more abilities (sd card, hdmi out, flash).
But the reviews I’ve read have been overwhelmingly disappointing.  ”Still feels like it’s in beta.”  That’s what I’ve heard almost everyone say.  I think I’ll stay away until something better comes along.  Like say…the iPad.  Plus the iPad is cheaper compared to the Xoom.

I’ll say this.  If I can get my discount from Apple, then I’ll probably buy one.  How exciting!

Nutrisystem is not so bad.  So far.  We get a months worth of food in the mail which is really cool.  You get to go thru all of this food and plan out what you’re going to have for the remainder of the month.  And Dani was right.  It is a lot of food.  The only real thing you’re changing it how much you eat in one sitting.  Portion control.

My opinion of the whole thing is positive.  I feel like this is a great idea and well worth the cost.  They take the guess work out of eating.  Very handy.   It’s nice to wake up and have breakfast all ready for you.

However, given the price, I can’t see this as a long term option.  What I want to get out of this is a new way of looking at food.  Learning to live with smaller portions and being happy with eating less at once.  I can have 3 meals and 2 snacks a day but they have to be much smaller than the gigantic serving sizes American establishments think we need.

It will be an interesting month.  I’m also trying to walk/run at least 20 minutes a day.  We have a $1000 treadmill (Thank you BetteJo!) sitting in our apartment.  Might as well use it.

I’ll update more as the month progresses and we’ll see how the Nutrisystem diet plays out.

She’s a really good cook with little confidence in her cooking.  I wish she would trust me when I tell her that I love the dishes she makes.

I’ll admit, her speciality is dessert.  She claims she can make dessert out of most anything.  And she’s right.
One of my favorites was “Poor Man’s Baklava” which consists of saltine crackers, almond butter, and honey.  She’s incredibly creative and resourceful. Another fav is microwave cake in a mug.  

But the other night, she decided to make chocolate covered oranges.  I’ve had orange flavored chocolate and I believe I’ve had chocolate covered orange peel.  But never chocolate covered oranges.   Uncooked and full of juice.

Here’s how they turned out:
They weren’t half bad.

A little weird.  The combination of citrus juice and chocolate.  But these are clementine seedless oranges.  So they’re sweet and very delish!

I keep a box of these on hand all thru the winter.  I’ll eat 4 or 5 in one sitting. Love them!

And really, I’ll never turn up my nose to chocolate.

Dani is incredibly creative and that’s one of the reasons I love her so much!  Chocolate covered oranges.  Only her.

Let’s recap what the base of the experiment is:

Supposedly this will work. I don't think it will.

- Mentos
- Ice cube tray
- Diet Coke
- Unsuspecting soda drinker

Pour water into ice cube tray.  Pop a few Mentos in there.  Wait for ice cube to freeze.
Pour Diet Coke for your  soda drinker, pop in Mentos ice cubes and wait.
According to this graphic, ensuing eruption should happen soon.

My thoughts on this are that it’s bullshit!

So I decided to back up my hypothesis with some science and trial and error.  In my previous post, we didn’t get much reaction.  Funny part was when we put unfrozen Mentos into a glass of Diet Coke and got very little reaction.  Just so everyone is on the same page, let’s take a look at what happens to Diet Coke reacting to the introduction of Mentos.

This is called nucleation and it’s so much more violent than the last time because of the shape of the 20oz bottle causes the release of CO2 to bottle neck and erupt with much more force.

Onward!  We changed how we froze the Mentos this time around.  Last time we just threw some Mentos into tap water and chucked into the freezer.  This time, we froze the mentos (put them in the freezer) first.  We also let the ice cubes form for about an hour before we introduced the two.  Idea being that the faster the ice forms around the Mentos, the less time the water has to eat away at the sugar coating of the Mentos.

This is what we got.

Still a gooey sugary mess.

These were the two good ones.

Incredibly, I did get two that were completely in ice cube form.  We may have some success!  So let’s check out what happens when we put these ice cubes into a glass of Diet Coke.

Because we’re essentially watching ice melt, I time lapsed the video so that it’s not sooo boring. Here’s what happened.

Just as I thought, nothing.  Not only did the Mentos not react but the ice changed the flavor of the Diet Coke.  It gave it a strong mint flavor.  Any unsuspecting person with Mentos ice cubes in their drink is going to notice a difference in flavor almost immediately.

So overall, the idea of pranking someone like this is a great idea but it’s next to impossible.  I’m still waiting to see what kind of ingenuity the Mythbusters whip out on this one.

So far the journey from PC to Mac has been pretty awesome!  I’ve pretty much figured out how to do everything on a Mac that I can on a PC.  Plus I’ve come to find that image processing is sooooo much easier and robust on a Mac than a PC.  iPhoto and iMovie are awesome programs!

Anyway, I digress.  Google Chrome for Mac has a neat feature.  Chrome for Windows has the same feature but I think it looks nicer and works better on Mac.

If you try searching for a word or phrase in Google Chrome by pressing ⌘ F, it tells you how many hits there are for that particular search are on the page.  It also highlights all of the searched words. Nothing new.

But now, they highlight where on the page those words lay in the scroll bar on the right.  As shown in the picture by the red arrows.

I went to Wikipedia’s page for Mac OS X and searched the word “operating”.  Wanted a word that would show up a lot but not too much (such as Mac or X).  All of those yellow lines in the scroll bar are where the word “operating” lies on the page.

This is especially useful if you’re looking for a word that only comes up twice or three times on the page.  Instead of scouring the entire page for that one highlighted word, you can get in a much more general ball park by scrolling to the little yellow line.

Obviously I feel that this feature is so neat and will save me so much time that I felt the need to blog about it.

Hope it enriches your life as much as it will mine.

Supposedly this will work. I don't think it will.

My immediate thought was that this would never work!  Great idea in theory but in reality, can’t happen.

So I decided to take it upon myself and try out this little experiment. First, I needed supplies.

A 20oz bottle of Diet Coke and a pack of Mentos.

I have always heard that Diet Coke works the best but I cannot tell you why Diet Coke over Diet Pepsi or Diet Rite. *shrug*
Regular soda doesn’t work because the reaction needs aspartame in the mix in order to create foam at such a rapid rate.  Also, fruity Mentos have a wax coating that smooths out the surface and hinders the reaction all together. The whole process is very expertly explained by our good friends The Mythbusters.  That episode is worth seeking out.
They claim the whole reaction stems from nucleation.  Check out the links for more info.

Now we also needed to freeze some of our Mentos.  So while we’re waiting for those to freeze, let’s look at the desired reaction given no ice!  Just 4 mentos dropped into freshly opened Diet Coke in a glass.

The outcome does not bode well for the rest of the experiment.

Let’s take a look at our Mentos ice cubes.

This is what happens when you try to freeze mentos into ice cubes.

What we have is a very sticky gooey mess.

Just as I predicted, the water ate away at the sugar in the Mentos completely smoothing it out and giving us  essentially frozen ice water with chucks of Mentos.

As you can see, the Mentos sank to the bottom of the ice cube and some of them stuck to the tray.

That one ice cube still in the tray (top left) has 2 Mentos in it as well.  I just couldn’t get it out of the tray.

The ones that made it into ice were melted and gooey.

The ice cubes were of a different consistency than normal ice cubes.  The sugar from the Mentos made the cubes less stable and gritty.

Over all I think if you were to try this at a party and give someone Diet Coke with Mentos in the ice, they’d notice it pretty much right away.  The cubes themselves were sweet and discolored.  Plus, it’s hard not to notice Mentos floating around in your soda.

A great idea but completely impractical.

Now, I would love to know how the Mythbusters would try to replicate this.  Flash freezing Mentos into ice cubes, essentially not giving the Mentos any time to melt?  That’s the only way I can think that this might work!   Even then, it’s a long shot.

Every now and then though, Rue can’t help herself.  Especially if I’m a complete dumbass and leave my brand new hat within puppy reach.

I wore this hat for less than a week.

It was an awesome hat!  Had a mohawk made of yarn going down the middle.  Fur lining on the inside (I believe was rabbit).

On either side was what I thought to be at first a skull and crossbones.  But upon further inspection was a football helmet and crossbones.  Which did make the hat a touch less cooler but I still wore it.  It was warm and the mohawk made the hat.

But alas, Rue got a hold of it and she’s the reason we can’t have nice things.

I’ll continue showcasing her over the top destructions as they come along.  We’re constantly puppy-proofing our home but she still manages to find something nice to destroy.

So Shawn and I started discussing how high the plane actually is as it’s flying over I90.  I said that it was still a ways up there, like really high.  To be honest, I was thinking still over a mile in the sky. Shawn however said that it would be feasibly possible for someone to throw a baseball into the sky and hit the plane.

This conversation happened months ago.  It was still warm enough to ride with the top down on a Jeep.  But the thought of how high the actual planes are over I90 stuck with me.  I kept thinking about how high they were.  It was starting to bother me.  So I began searching for the answer.  Doesn’t hurt that my mother is an upper level high school math teacher with her masters and 18 years of teaching experience.

Let’s state what we know.

• A plane at any point in its final descent is exactly 90° above you.
• According to this website, the closest I90 gets to a runway at O’Hare is 2916 feet or .55 miles.
• According to Wikipedia,  the average final approach angle for an airplane is 3°.  More in different countries and cities.  Depends on topography and surrounding buildings and obstacles.  Since O’Hare is pretty isolated from skyscrapers and lays on relatively flat land, we can safely assume the average descent angle is 3°.

That gives us a triangle that looks like this:

We need to solve for X.

Now we to solve for X.

Which isn’t difficult.  We know all we need to know to find how high an airplane would be if it were flying over I90.

We just plug our numbers into this equation:  3(tan)*2916 = X

The answer is surprising!

X = 152 feet.

I’m amazed!  A plane making its final descent into O’Hare at its lowest point would be almost half a football field in the air.  That means someone with a decent arm would be able to hit an airplane over I90.

Now, when you bring logistics into the mix, then you need people like the Mythbusters to take care of that.  I’m just trying to prove that it’s possible.

As it turns out his mother, BetteJo, still has the box and uses it to store Christmas decorations.

The specs on the box are awesome!

This is old school Mac!

Look at those specs!!

Released in 1993 for a whooping $1600!!!!
Granted a new mac (iMac) will run around that price as well.  But with much more than a 25-MHz processor!

Check out this link for more info on the Performa 475!