RoboTastic

I think I have come across the most perfect diet yet. The only problem with it is that it can become expensive. Anyhow my new diet is based upon the vending machine down the hall from me. It is filled with tempting and fattening treats. Towards the end of the day the machine is extra tempting, and I find myself rounding up my spare change and seeing what I can get. I am generally hungry and looking for my snack… but I don’t really need to eat.

This is where the broken vending machine comes in! The plan is simple… Instead of the machine giving me tasty treats I request from it, it denies me and punishes me by keeping my money. Wonderful!

The worst case of this was last week. I am a big fan of Munchos. Big fan. Anyhow I go to buy one bag and it gets stuck halfway. Figuring I might as well try again and get an extra bag for tomorrow instead of leaving empty handed. Well that didn’t work out… Anyhow I got so pissed at the machine that completely forgot that I was hungry, and even if I was it didn’t matter because I didn’t have anymore singles…

Stupid Machine Diet!!!

The Tour of Hope DC Charity ride took place last Saturday. Or should have taken place. Unfortunately Tropical Storm Tammy decide to stop by and deliver 7+ inches of rain. It ended up still being a good experience, all be it a little soggy. The good news is that the ride raised over $1.4 million, and I helped collect $709 which I think is amazing!! Thank you to everyone who contributed!!

Ride Photos: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=b39fgtf.9369nttf&x=0&y=mnieq8

The Recap:
I woke up at 3am on Saturday in order to catch the bus to the start of the ride in Columbia, MD. It was pouring out and it had been raining for the past day. The rain wasn’t too bad though because it was 70 out. The bus left from the J.W. Marriott in Downtown DC so I biked down there. There roads were empty, so it was actually sort of fun, even though I got soaked. When I got down to the Marriott there were already about 500 people waiting to load up their bikes into a moving truck and hop on a bus to the start. There was coffee and pastries so it wasn’t too bad a wait.

The amazing thing about all of this is that people were not complaining, at all. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits. A lot of people were just happy to have a concrete way to help out, especially against something so random.

Once I got on the bus, I ended up sitting next to one of the riders from last years cross-country ride. For the entire bus ride he was telling great stories, about his ride, the people he meet and of course riding with Lance. The thing that amazed him the most was the kind of support they got while riding. School marching bands would setup and play from them as they rode by. Farmers would line up there tractors along the side of the road. His favorite time was when they had been bike through the night in Iowa. The sun had just come up and they were riding through the fields. As they got close to the edge of a town they could see a sea of yellow. An entire elementary school had come down to see them ride by. ( of course they stopped .

Anyhow to continue, by the time we had made it up to Columbia, MD we had all pretty much come to terms with the fact that we would be riding in the pouring rain for the next 4 hours. Also the bus had the AC on so I was near hypothermia with my wet clothes on… or at least it seemed. So we can see the tents for the start and are about to pull into the driveway when a lady comes on the bus and announces that the ride has been called off. A number of the roads we were going to use had been flooded and the local police had revoked the permits. Everyone was pretty disappointed but took it pretty well. So it is about 6:00AM and we head back to DC.

Sitting across the aisle were two ladies who had driven down from Minnesota for the ride, and took the news surprisingly well, considering. That was one thing that became apparent from the start, it is tough to complain because someone there had either done more to be there or been through worse. One of the ladies who had driven down lost both her grandmother and mother to breast cancer and had tested positive for the gene herself. Things like that make four hours in the rain not seem so bad.

I made it back to my place around 8:30 and took a long, warm shower. After breakfast I went back downtown to watch the cross country riders arrive. I got some photos of that and a rally afterwards. I also managed to get some photos of Lance but unfortunately I didn’t see Sheryl! Next time !! So basically I was really glad I was able to be a part of this and I want to thank everyone for there contributions that allowed for that. I would have been nice to be able to ride, but it was still a great experience.

The Photos:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=b39fgtf.9369nttf&x=0&y=mnieq8

Thanks!

-Luke Klein-Berndt

There are always those dishes that you put aside because they seem really tough, take a long time, and probably won’t come out all that well when you are done… or atleast that is how you have always imagined them. Anyhow I am working up a list of these dishes and hopefully I will give all of them atleast one try. I may not ended making something safe for human consumption, but I will atleast find out if they are really as tough as they seem.

• Quiche – Come on it is hard to spell, and probably even harder to cook
• Souffle – I am predicting mine will turn out like an omelete and not puff
• Popover – Not much too them, but seems like they would take skill and technique. I have neither!
• Crepe – I am imagining mine having the texture of shoe leather… and def not circular
• Meatloaf – Just seeams very adult like and stuff…
• Large Roast – Really, has anyone ever done this well?
• Custard – I am thinking scrambled eggs in warm milk…
• Merange – Come on, are there any easy dishes involving whipped egg whites?

There are many more things that scare me, but I should stop here. I don’t want to go on talking about things I will never… it is very unlike me. Besides I can always add to the list! Rock on ‘05!

ABC has a show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”. It is a reality show where they bring in a team of people and completly redo a house in 7 days or something along those lines. The show supposedly documents all of this, showing all the work that goes into and all.

Well, ABC has a new show this season, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, how’d they do that?”. This show documents all the work that goes into making a reality show. Now this strikes me as a little recursive… This is a Reality Show on the realities of making a Reality Show. A little weird right? Next there is going to be a show on deciding what programing choice go into scheduling a Reality Show on a Reality Show. You can see where this is going…

To some degree I think this reflects an increased in the How & Why as opposed to the What… One example of this would be America’s Test Kitchen, PBS most popular cooking show. Half of the show is spent explaining why certain choices where made in crafting a recipe. The shows focus is on why ingrediant and recipe choices were made. In a sense, it is a show that documents the process of crafting a recipe. I think we are as interested in the motivation for a descesion as we are the actaul descesion .

Here is how things become trendy. There are a bunch of things with lots of potential to become… and thats the problem, there are lots of things. In order for of these things to become cool, they have to gain momentum and exsposure. Once a thing gets picked up it will start gaining in coolness at a variable rate.

If the rate of coolness increase is not enough the thing will simply fizzle. It will not attract enough interest maintain it’s coolness and perpetuate itself. People wil get interested in other things, like basket weaving, and it will simply fizzle.

However if the rate of coolness increase is too great, the thing will peak and start a coolness descent. There is usaully a distinct tipping point refered to as the coolness peak. This peak is usaully associated with too much exsposure or a sudden increase in accesibility.

In order for a thing to have maintainable coolness it needs a moderate increase of coolness that is just enough to allow it to slowly perpetuate. It helps to have a small core following that slowly expands. Once a thing has been cool for a long enough amount of time it is becomes embed in the culture of a group, it gains the much sought after iconic status.

(This guide is a living document and will be added… Also many useless graphs will be added to make it look more offical.)

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