Help me get my photo of Amy’s Burning Mercedes up on Fail Blog.  All you have to do is click through on the picture below and vote for it. 

moar funny pictures

And yes – that really is Amy’s old Mercedes on fire in our driveway.  Oops.

Last year I did an obsessive experiment.  Every morning, as one of the tabs in my browser (then Firefox, now Chrome) during my daily information routine, I opened up a clever application called Daytum.  In it, I tracked four things: the number of miles I ran, the number of books I read, the number of segments I flew on which airline, and where I slept.  Following is the summary and some commentary.

I had a disappointing running year.  I usually cover over 1,000 miles / year.  I lost about four months this year to either injuries (silly ones) or a cold (I had a multi-month bacterial infection that took a while to figure out and nail.)  Also, I didn’t run any marathons which, while a bummer, was something I expected would happen sometime on my question for 50 marathons by the time I’m 50 years old.  So – 2009 will be known henceforth as “the lost year for Feld Running.”  My goal in 2010 is six marathons and 1500 miles.  And I’ll be tracking it obsessively with other software.

I typically read one or two books a week so 78 seems about the amount for a typical year.  I always find the categories interesting – I read less SciFi this year than normal (I’d expect it to be on par with Mental Floss).  The business books read are higher because I’m getting so many in the mail as “pre-release” or “review” copies so I’m trying to at least read some of them.  No different goals for 2010 – just “read what’s in front of me that looks interesting from my infinite pile of books.”

Airplane travel in 2009 was totally fubared.  I eventually decided to try to stop flying United and shift as much travel as I could to Southwest.  I expect the ratios to be very different in 2010.  I also took way too many short trips in 2009 and have decided to completely change my travel rhythm in 2010.  Specifically, I’m only going to travel every other week – my goal in 2010 is to spend every other week in Boulder.  Now, I know there will be exceptions, but I’ve already scheduled out my weeks in Boulder for the year so all I have to do now is be disciplined about scheduling.

I was fascinated to see the distribution of “where I slept in 2009.”  I expected Eldorado Springs (my main house) to be at the top, but I also expected Keystone (my mountain house) to be ahead of Boulder (my city condo).  The business travel is as expected – San Francisco, Boston, New York, Seattle, and LA.  Vacations and weeks off the grid were San Diego (tennis), Mexico and Nassau (beach), and Santa Fe.  The balance are short trips for specific things.  The one think that I will not do in 2010 is “30,000 Feet” – I’m completely done with redeyes.  And – no Alaska in 2009 – I expect I’ll spend 31 days there in 2010.

In 2010, I’m going to track an entirely different set of data – namely, all of my health and fitness data as part of my exploration around the idea of “human instrumentation.”  I’m currently using a Zeo, Withings Scale, BodyMedia BodyBug, a Fitbit, and a Garmin 305.  Look for more on this soon.  And – if you make a device that tracks anything about the human being, drop me a line – I’m interested in talking to you.

Speaking of brilliant photographs, my mom sent me two yesterday.  The first one is her dressed in PJ’s reciting “Twas the Night Before Christmas” to her kindergarten class.  I remember having to sing Christmas Carols as a kid but I stopped in seventh grade when I started declaring to my teachers “I’m Jewish – I don’t have to do this.”  But kindergarten was probably fair game.

The second was her class picture from kindergarten. 

I love looking at these old photographs, especially in digital form.  In addition to being photogenic, my mother has integrated photography into her art.  Regularly readers of this blog probably know that my mom is an artist (see a nice collection of her work on line at Studio 7310) but you might not know that she is a master with a camera and Photoshop.  If you are into photography, take a look at two of her exhibitions: Faces and Places (4/5/08 – 5/3/08 at the Mesquite Art Center) and Near and Far (9/4/04 – 10/1/04 at 416westgallery).

Sorry – I couldn’t help myself.  I doubt this will be repeated anytime soon.

I know it’s a little self-referential for me to put this on my blog, but it is my blog after all.

I’ll start with the lesson that I learned: Always make sure your license plate matches your registration and insurance forms that you keep in your car and that these are the same as the information the DMV has in their database.

Here’s the story.  I was driving home last night around 10:30pm on the road to Eldorado Canyon.  I drive this road hundreds of times a year and have trouble staying at the speed limit, especially when it’s late, no one is out, and I’m in a mellow happy mood.  I was listening to the XM Chill station (my favorite radio station) and reflecting on the day. 

As occasionally happens, I noticed flashing red and blue lights in my rear view mirror.  After the initial exclamation of “fuck” and a brief adrenaline rush, I slowed to a stop and pulled over to the side of the road.  As I sat in my Range Rover, I pondered how excruciatingly bright the policeman’s floodlights were. 

The policeman marched up to my car.  As I’ve been through this drill before I handed him my drivers license, registration, and insurance form.  He asked if I knew why he had pulled me over.  I suppressed the sarcastic thought that immediately rolled through my head and said “I imagine I was going too fast.”  He asked if I knew how fast I was going.  I replied “I have no idea.”  He asked me where I was going.  I responded “home – I live about three miles from here.”  He asked if there was anything he should know. I pondered this for a second and said, “No.  I’m just heading home from dinner.  I didn’t have anything to drink if that’s what you are asking.” (I hadn’t).  He took this in stride and said “Just checking – I clocked you going 63 in a 45.”  In an effort to be cute, cuddly, and charming, I replied “I have no excuse for that – I just wasn’t paying attention.”

He took my documents and went back to his car.  Fifteen minutes later I was wondering what he was working on when he came out of his car and approached mine very purposefully.  He asked, “Is this your car.”  I responded, “Yes?”  He said, “The license plate is registered to a 1990 Blue Ford Pickup truck.  Do you own one of those?”  My first response was going to be no, but then I realized we do own a 1990-ish Blue Ford Pickup truck that we use to plow our road (I never drive it because Amy doesn’t allow me to plow.)  I explained this to the officer.  He then asked, very directly, “Are you sure.” 

At this point, I was really perplexed.  I looked him directly in the eye (there hadn’t been much eye contact up to this point because the flashlight he was shining in my face was excessively bright) and said “Yes.  I’d be happy to call my wife Amy who is at our house to confirm.”  He noticeably relaxed and said, “Ok – let me tell you what’s going on.”

He started by explaining that in most situations at this point I’d be in the back of his police car handcuffed on my way to jail after having a gun drawn on me and told to get out of the car and put my hands on my head.  He saw the shocked look on my face and told me not to worry – that he’d decided the car I was in wasn’t stolen based on the documentation and my answers to his questions.  Apparently the license plate on my car was for a 1990 Blue Ford Pickup.  And while the registration number for the Range Rover had a similar license plate, it was off by one letter.  Luckily, both cars were registered to Amy (my wife) instead of me and my drivers license had the same address on it. 

He said when he first brought up the DMV data, he almost arrested me since my “1990 Blue Ford Pickup” had turned into a “2007 Black Range Rover” which is a normal type of stolen car scenario.  The only thing that stopped him from doing this was that he noticed my address was Eldorado Springs, which matched the small town in which he had pulled me over.  Since this didn’t match the stolen car scenario, he dug deeper (hence the 15 minutes) and ultimately decided that I probably hadn’t stolen the car, but instead either had the wrong license plate on it or the DMV had made an error.  Apparently I answered his questions consistently enough that he was comfortable that I wasn’t a car thief.

By this point he wanted to make sure he explained the problem clearly enough so he escorted me to his car and showed me the DMV record he had pulled up.  I wasn’t processing much of what he was saying at this point since I was just happy to get whatever ticket he was going to give me.  I also realized Amy was probably getting worried since I was now at least 30 minutes later than I said I would be so when I got back to my car I sent her a quick email.

A few minutes later my new friend the policeman came by with a ticket (yes – after all that – he gave me a ticket.)  He was almost apologetic about the ticket at this point, but said he felt compelled to give it to me since I was speeding.  Being in no mood to argue, I thanked him for the ticket and also thanked him for doing the extra bit of research that kept me out of jail.

Not surprisingly, it took me a while to fall asleep when I finally got home.  This morning we are trying to figure out if it’s a license plate error or a DMV error (it appears to be a DMV error.)  Hopefully I don’t have to visit a special part of hell to get this resolved.

They seem to be having a very nice day.

Good thing the coyote didn’t catch them.

I stayed at my parents’ house in Dallas on Tuesday night.  My mom has been going through a “clean all the shit out of the house” routine and keeps dumping piles of old stuff on me.  This trip, I got my high school prom album and my bar mitzvah album.  Following is my high school prom picture.

My partner Seth just informed me that my fundamental essence hasn’t changed since I was 17.  There’s 40 pounds more of it, but at my core I’m pretty much the same. 

There are many things I love about my wife Amy, but I especially like her brain.  Over the holidays, she came up with the idea for having a year of living alphabetically.  As a writer, she spends a lot of time with words and – besides have one of the most amazing vocabularies I’ve ever encountered (I don’t every have to use the lookup feature on the kindle – I just should “Amy, what does “ossiferous” mean?) – she’s really good at not misusing dashes or having run-on sentences.

B is for Being.  The first part of this week is being brought to you by the letter B and Amy explores Buddha’s last words.  If Buddha was Yoda, he would have said “Best you do, there is not less or more” before he died.

Ahhh – that was a very nice vacation.  Q4 vacation is often around my birthday, so Amy whisked me away to Cabo for a week of being completely off the grid.  If you don’t follow me on Twitter, I was on a blogging vacation for a week before that because a distributed denial of service attack (what did I say, who did I piss off?) apparently took me off line for the previous week.

While the DDOS attack continues, things have been more stable since we’ve changed a bunch of config things.  Once we finish the move to a much more industrial strength hosting service, I hope the probably goes away entirely.  And – if it doesn’t, maybe I’ll just take another vacation from blogging.

In the mean time, I’m back, rested, and ready to blog again.  For what that’s worth.

With a nod to a line given to me from a recent television show that I enjoy, I’m declaring a jihad on my weight.

I’ve struggled with my weight for the past 15 years.  I was a skinny person until I hit 28.  At that point, something happened and I gained about 60 pounds.  At my peak, some of my friends referred to me as fat.  Eek.

I started running about seven years ago.  I lost about 20 of the pounds.  Some them went into muscle, some of them went away.  But a bunch of them hung around – mostly my belly and my ass.

In 2003, when I was training for the Chicago marathon, I dropped another 30 pounds.  None of my clothes fit; that was very satisfying.  I ran my fastest marathon by a wide margin.  I’m sure my cholesterol was a lot lower.  No one called me fat anymore.

Five years later, I feel semi-fat again.  I’m still running marathons, but those 30 pounds are back.  I’m 20 pounds off my peak, but no where near where I want to be.

Enough.  Starting today the weight comes off.  If you are having a meal with me, help me help myself.  Send the bread back.  Ask me if I’m sure I want another drink (one is plenty).  Remind me that I only have to eat half my food.  Notice all the vegetables that I’m eating.  Pat me on the head when I skip dessert.

Weight – you are going away.

I love it when my wife Amy blogs.  She’s an amazing writer and has a much wider range of intellectual interests than me.  I often refer to her as my personal CD-ROM; whenever I need information on something, I ask her.  I find her to be much more accurate and comprehensive than Wikipedia.

She put up a new Wordle this morning.  This is her tag cloud from delicious.

I love the juxtaposition of some of these topics, including Palin / feminism, ClimateChange / entrepreneurship / education, and ethics / science / corruption.

My mom must be cleaning out her attic.  She just sent me a pile of "old stuff" including a bunch of photos, my bar mitzvah speech, and some more stamps from my never ending stamp collection.

Me at age 8.75.  Note the excellent glasses (probably the same size as the ones I wear today) and my lack of tie. 

Age 12. I was an SVAA basketball star.  Man – that basketball is bigger than my head.  I was wearing contact lens (which I’ve since abandoned) by this point in time in my effort to look more sexy.  Pretty hard for a 12 year old.

Amy insists I’m the Good Knight so we’ll call this a good night for the Dark Knight.

Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

I love it when my dad writes about personal history on his blog.  He’s a great storyteller and is extremely articulate about living and growing up in a generation that seems very very far away from today, as well as very far away from the generation I grew up with.

His post titled Herald Tribune Fresh Air Fund Summer Camp 1950 made me smile an enormous smile.  I can totally see my scrawny 12 year old dad surrounded by these huge guys from the Red Hook District in Brooklyn, being scared shitless but keeping it all inside, and winning them all over on the ball field.

Love ya dad.

What a fun picture of me and Kevin Parent (now at Oblong) that someone found and gave me yesterday.  I was a sophomore at MIT and probably 19 (although maybe 18).  Oh to be 170 pounds again.

Can you name the statue?  Bonus points if you can name the location on the MIT campus.