Name Changed To Protect The Jerkstores

Hooray for impromptu mountain climbing!  

Nono...you mean the other one.

Oh yeah...BOOOOOOOO!!!

So, today's Sametime Status is brought to you courtesy of my mildly overstated pain and suffering.  As you're probably aware, I'm an engineer by trade, not a professional mountain climber.  That said, there are some large hills in the Greater Jeremy Area which are somewhat generously called mountains.  On occasion, some of my friends and I will get together to climb (read: mostly walk uphill, with some small measure of scrambling involved) one of them.  On a nice day in the summer, with appropriate attire and footwear, with water and snacks, it's a rather pleasant experience, if tiring.  On an unseasonably warm December day while wearing jeans and a long sleeved shirt and sneakers, with wet leaves covering the path, it's not great.  One might go so far as to say it sucks.  

I would be one of those Ones.  

So, what prompted my impromptu journey up a mountain which, for strictly Blag purposes, we'll call "Mount Jerkstore"?  A slight miscommunication and a lack of attentiveness.  I participated in a puzzle-based land race over the weekend.  It was fun and mentally stimulating, to be sure.  One of the clues made mention of climbing Mount Jerkstore, at the base of which is a staircase to get you the first 10 stories or so up.  The puzzle, which I can't be bothered to look up, involved finding your team's ribbon "at the top."  One of the race organizers also made mention over the phone (to another team, so I was only involved peripherally) that in one of the race's events, "you'll be climbing Mount Jerkstore."  My teammate and I had resolved ourselves to the fact that we'd be climbing to the top of the mountain to find our ribbon.  Up we went.  

At the top of Mount Jerkstore, there is a lovely scenic overlook of towns and a river and pretty much everything else, since you're at the top of a freakin' mountain.  What there was not was a collection of team ribbons.  We looked.  After a while of scratching our heads, we placed a call to the race organizers to ask about the rough location of the ribbons.  We'd achieved the difficult part of scaling Mount Jerkstore, so giving away the ribbon location seemed to be within the spirit of the competition.  

As it turns out, the ribbons were located at the top of the staircase, some 90 or so stories down.  

We did not win the race. 

This Is What I Think About

There’s something far too entertaining about throwing rocks into a body of water

Today, Jeremy will take you on a trip through his mind.  Careful...it's a bumpy ride.

 So not long ago, I had the opportunity to take a bike ride next to something called a Lake.  Growing up near one of the Great Lakes, I wouldn't exactly call this thing near my bike path a "Lake," since it's WAY too small and covered in moss and lily pads, but the people who named it got a little overzealous, so they called it a Lake.  That's beside the point.  

I took a break from my biking to toss a couple rocks into the lake, which I find more entertaining than I probably should.  In this particular instance, the bike path is on a former railroad bed, so there are lots and lots of smallish stones which are great for light tossing and make an amusing little splash and causing nearby frogs to jump around.  No, I was not aiming for, not did I hit any of the aforementioned frogs.  While being amused by my little game of "Throw Stuff Into A Lake," I thought of the fun variations on throwing rocks into water that I like to play.  Here they are, in no particular order:

There's your standard, "Pick up a nearby rock and toss it into the water."  The simplest and purest form of the sport.  You can add difficulty to it by either trying to ht something in the water (A stick or lily pad, for example), or by throwing the rock as far as you can just to see how far you can throw a rock.  

A classic is, of course, stone skipping, or skimming.  You take a flat stone and throw it side-armed near the water so that it bounces off the surface and keeps right on going.  This is a great game to play with friends, because you can compare number of skips and distance in a whimsical competition.  For an interesting variation, try to skip a stone for height instead of distance....see how high you can get it to bounce off the water.  

For those who like bubble wrap, but crumple it all up at once instead of popping the bubbles individually, might I suggest the "Handful of pebbles" method.  As you might think, you grab a handful of small stones or sand and toss it into the air.  The dozens and potentially hundreds of little impacts over the surface of the water make for seconds of fun.  

If you have a bridge or dock nearby, you can play a variation whereby you find the largest rock you can maneuver adequately and heave it into the water.  If your water is deep enough, the sound and splash made by a huge boulder are quite impressive.  

Finally, there's what is perhaps my favorite game, the stone-throwing equivalent of the Olympic high-dive.   You take a stone similar to one you'd use for stone skipping, and instead of throwing it low and far, throw it as far up into the air as you can or feel like.  The air resistance during the rock's flight will straighten it out into a near-perfect vertical line during its descent.  When it hits the water, it will be absorbed with a strangely satisfying "THIP" sound and virtually no splash at all.  

There you go, folks...now off you go to your nearest body of water.  Have fun, everybody!

I don't need this in the morning

What’s the word for being better at the gym than somebody?


"In Better Shape"?


Nah...that's not quite what I'm going for here. You can have people who are in pretty good shape who absolutely suck at the gym. Conversely, some of the most out of shape people are the ones who are the best at gymming. What I'm really trying to say here is...gym people suck.


Wow...actually didn't see a rant coming here. Twist ending Blag!


I'd specifically like to call out "that guy" who goes to the same gym I do. I have no idea who he is, what he does, or if he's even a good guy. All I know is, he sucks at the gym, and I totally kick his butt at it. Near as I can tell, the main part of his workout at the gym is sitting in the locker room telling people what he's going to do for his workout...in bizarrely descriptive detail. He'll sit there and say, "Yeah...I'm gonna go run 6 miles" or "I'm going to go do 100 situps now...yeah...100 situps." to whoever he thinks is paying attention.

I'm not going to sit here and doubt his ability to run 6 miles or do 100 situps, or claim that I'm better than him at these things or in better shape than he is. I can't run 6 miles...I'll be perfectly honest about that. I can do 100 situps, but there are things I find more important at the gym. What I am going to doubt is if he ever does any of these things. I've never seen it. I've never seen this guy do anything more than walking at a mildly brisk pace on a treadmill. No situps, no weights, no machines, no running, no cycling, no elliptical thing...just treadmill walking.

I'm totally better than that.