Blake's Vox

All future blogging will be posted on my Wordpress site: www.blakestar.net  but in the spirit of the perma-web, I'll be keeping my few VOX posts live here so long as my account is active.

Since the soul man was laid to rest I've watched this video several times; accidentally reloading it again today. I'm blogging it here to remind myself of his contributions to the human record. I find him inspiring for his long and often bumpy public career.

I was in my hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana recently, where in recent years national chains like Chili's, On the Border, and Starbucks have been setting up shop on the south side of town. Over the last ten years this has been a *huge* development for a town that was nearly forgotten after the oil bust and abandoned by scads (including me) for the nearby thriving cities of Houston, Dallas and Austin and beyond. The town only began to show signs of life in the nineties as casinos installed fake boats for gambling and entertainment on the Red River.

The recent big news, however, and the reason for this post is news of none other than Whole Foods coming to town! Now, that mi amigos got my attention! As a resolute gourmand, a sometimes chef de maison, and craft beer aficionado, I fear nothing more than being stranded in a small town with access to traditional grocery chains whose names are unspeakable (as they deserve no Google juice!)

I can only hope that the bright minds at Whole Foods HQ in Austin have done their homework like Starbucks and the rest who've pulled the trigger on Shreveport expansion. As Shreveport rediscovers its mojo, I'm sure the people will find their way to Whole Foods where they will self-educate themselves on the benefits and delight of buying fresh foods and many products sold from specialty producers.

Are my MacBook issues finally resolved with the two recent firmware updates? First SMC and now EFI... sounds like Windows to me argh! I'm ready to get back to the trouble free sleep and run world of Mac use. I'd guess these sleep and kernal panic issues haven't been such a bother to swtichers who faced more dire and regular disturbances.

I've never taken my machine into the Apple Store because I couldn't part with it for even a day! And reading about Matt's experience never gave me much hope that they could fix it either.

Macbook firmware update

So, what's wrong with this picture? It looks a bit more like the population distribution of Australia than a map of the USA.

Picture 10

Come on Apple give me an excuse to get to Austin!

I never muched liked running more than 100 yards and was always dumbfounded by distance runners. They must be super-heroes or from a different planet I thought! I'm certainly no distance runner - yet, but as you may have guessed from recent posts, I'm taken with the Nike+ add-on for iPod Nano. At $30 (USD), it a real deal; especially if it keeps my body fat in check, endorphins pumping, helps lower my resting heart rate and keeps most of my health care dollars away from Big Pharma! (having an HSA, health savings account, has turned me into a conscious consumer).

The one thing the iPod+Nike setup does NOT help with - at least directly - is lacing up my running sneaks and getting out the door for what I know is going to be a tough run. That's where NikePlus.com comes in with friendly competition between buddies or total strangers (see nikeplus forums for scads of open competitions).

Picture 9

As you can see, no one besides Alisha (competition organizer) is exactly setting the world on fire but just knowing that I'm logging runs and miles against this challenge is doing loads for my motivation. I've not another "pre-Turkey 15 mile" goal going with my wife. She said that was pretty sneaky of me suggesting I was making her run.

I plan for my next distance addition to be 3 miles which will get me in order for some remaining fall 5K runs in north Texas. If you post a challenge let me know.