Raam Dev

Hello, future.

Wang Laboratories

When I was very young, my dad worked at a place called Wang Laboratories, as a technical writer. I'm not positive on the exact date, but I must have been around 2 or 3 years old, so 1984 or 85. My earliest memories are of my mom bringing my dad lunch and the three of us sitting in the car, in an empty corner of the huge parking lot. Wang was located in Lowell, in three buildings commonly known as "The Wang Towers" (now owned by Cross Point). In 1992 Wang filed for bankruptcy and the towers were foreclosed on. The towers that originally cost $60 million to build, sold for $525,000. Two of the houses I own are worth more than that! The original Wang owners would have bought the towers back at the foreclosure, but they didn't think it would foreclose at such a low price and they missed their chance. Anyway, a few years later Wang got back on its feet and by 1999 they $3.5 billion in annual revenues. They were then bought by Getronics N.V. of The Netherlands, a $1.5 billion network services company active only in certain parts of Europe. This allowed Getronics to expand into an international company.

The Wang Towers

OK, so big deal. What's so interesting? Well, I worked at Getronics for over a year doing 3rd shift Level 1 phone support for an international bank called Deutsche Bank. You can see a few pictures of my desk at Getronics in this post. What I realized while reading the Wikipedia page on Wang, is that although I didn't work in the Wang Towers, I basically worked at the same company as my dad; 18 years later at what used to be Wang!

Island of the Dead

Hart Island in the Long Island Sound, New York, where over 700,000 burials have taken place is probably the most densely packed cemetery in America. The majority of the dead bodies are unclaimed or unknown babies. The first body was buried there in 1869, when the body of a 24 year old woman was left unclaimed. Check out the Google Sightseeing page for Island of the Dead, and also take a look at the ground level photo-tour taken in 2000 by a group of historians. The island is not open to the public, so this was a rare opportunity. It's pretty spooky looking at the pictures. With over 700,000 dead bodies lying in the ground, you almost feel like you can expect to find ghosts in the pictures.

Large E-Mail Attachments

I click the "Send and Receive" button on my email client and expect it pause for a second or two and respond by either displaying the new messages or tell me that there are no new messages. Instead, I press the button and wait, and wait, and wait... "Has my email client frozen? Did my Internet connection die? Is there a problem with my mail server?" I press stop, and then "Send and Receive". Same thing. I open my web browser and type www.google.com -- it loads fine. OK, so my Internet connection is fine. Then why the hell... Oh, that's why. Someone sent me an email with a huge file attachment and the computer was just taking a long time to download it.

I don't understand why people think they can send a 10MB file attachment through the email. Sure, you can do it and the email client probably won't complain unless the mail server rejects it for it's size or times out before the upload is finished. With the advent of webmail clients, large file attachments are no problem. The file attachment is simply displayed as a link that allows you to download the attachment at will. When you open an email through a webmail application, the email content is displayed and the file attachment remains on the server, no big-file-downloading necessary. However, for those of us who still use email clients, such as myself, big file attachments can be very annoying.

So what's a good solution to this problem? Obviously if you need to send a big file through the email, then you need to get it sent one way or another. The best solution is to upload the file somewhere and then provide a link to the file in your email. If you already have a website hosted somewhere, you can probably upload the file to your website using an FTP client. If you don't know how to do that, then it would be easier to upload the file using a file upload service such as SaveFile.com.

SaveFile.com allows you to upload a file without even registering for their service. The file can be as large as 60MB, and you can upload an unlimited number of files. If you use the non-registration method of uploading a file, you will be provided with a link to the file after it has been uploaded. You can paste this link in your email, or send it to your friends/co-workers through an Instant Message. The file will automatically be deleted from SaveFile.com if there is no download activity for 30 days. With the non-registration method of uploading files, the only way to retrieve links to previous file uploads is to use their "Recover my links" feature, which is based on the IP address of the person who uploaded the file. If you have a broadband connection, chances are that your IP address will remain the same for quite awhile (forever, if you have a static IP). If your IP address matches the IP address you had when you uploaded the file, then the link to that file will be displayed. Ingenious way of recovering something that was submitted without registration. 🙂

To summarize, if an email file attachment is going to be over 1MB, please upload the file and insert a link to the file in your email! For people with purely webmail clients, it saves space. For those with real email clients, it saves time and the headaches of waiting!

How different are we?

It's amazing how you can tell the subtle differences between people from different regions of the same area. The train station I use in Boston (North Station) couldn't extend more than a 100 mile radius from Boston itself, and yet the people getting on the train to Newburyport can be distinguished from the people getting on the train to Lowell, or any other train for that matter. They dress, look, and have a similar general persona to them depending on where they're from.

How unique is one person from another? How much are we the same? If I can notice subtle differences between people living a few hundred miles from each other, then how entirely different are people living ten thousand miles apart? And I'm not just talking about appearance and social behavior, but biologically too. Different climates, diets, and daily routines create entirely different human beings. We digest food differently, we have different allergies, our skin reacts differently to the sun, we tolerate different bacteria and virus infections, and even our brains develop differently. You could almost say one human is alien to another human on the opposite side of the planet!

Promoted to Software Engineer at Aerva!

This Friday will mark my 5th month working at Aerva. It's amazing that much time has already passed. I feel that I've adjusted and settled into my new job nicely, making some great friends along the way. The programming project I started, and have been working on, is by far my biggest project to date. I'm learning a ton of new things along the way and the prospects for this company are exciting. I'm not learning as much Linux related technology as I'd hoped for, but the programming experience makes up for that.

Today I was given a good size raise and promoted from Junior Engineer to the Software Engineer / Support Services Manager position, woohoo! I'm going to become a lot more involved in the support side of things at Aerva, which will of course require extensive knowledge of the software and hardware aspects of Aerva's product, AerChannel. I feel as if I've been "on call" for tech support issues my whole life, so adjusting to this role should be a breeze. The technical side of things will require time and effort, but I'm sure it will be a learning experience.

I'm still on my 20 hour limit, but hopefully by the end of this year, or early next year, I'll be working at Aerva full-time. I still haven't decided whether renting an apartment or buying a house is the better choice for moving to Cambridge. I suppose if I can find a place that's cheap enough, renting makes more sense; it would remove all the time and responsibility that comes with owning a house. I already own three houses, and I know first hand, its no walk in the park.

Delayed once again!

Two weeks ago, I took a week off from my workout regiment to let my body recover from a cold. Then last week, I was excited to be starting an entirely new routine. Unfortunately, I was unexpectedly busy on Monday, so I missed my workout. "No problem, I'll just do it on Tuesday." Tuesday came, I pulled a muscle in my back, but worked out anyway. There was a little pain and discomfort, but otherwise it was great. I need a day's rest in between workouts, so the next workout was on Thursday. But Thursday turned out to be extra busy as well, and then I went camping over the weekend. I did as much intensive mountain biking as possible over the weekend, and looked forward to starting my workouts fresh on Monday. Monday morning I woke up, sat down in the chair in front of my computer, as I do every morning, and suddenly felt a sharp pain above my right shoulder blade. Great. I couldn't even move my arms or neck in any direction without feeling extreme pain. So I went to my chiropractor, twice. He helped, but I was still unable to look over my shoulder. So once again, no workout. It's now Tuesday evening and my back feels better, but still sensitive. I have a craving to workout, but I'm giving my body time to rest.

I'm on a strictly vegan diet this week, which means no dairy and obviously, no meat. I'm also off coffee for the entire week (replaced with green tea). I've been coffee-free since Monday morning. The caffeine headaches have been kicking in, and combining those with the extreme ache in my neck and back, today was by far the hardest day physically. I've also had a weird allergic reaction the past few days, possibly caused by whatever moved in my back. Red, itchy eyes and a tingling nose. Oh and a pimple on my forehead that won't go away! OK, I think that's it.

I've been surprised at the amount of muscle mass I have retained, despite not working out for two weeks. I suppose it's due to the fact that I've been eating a good amount of calories, and with the right ratios of fat/carbs/protein. I've created a daily routine for workouts/yoga:

Monday - Sunday (7 days a week)

  • Morning
      • 30 min Yoga
      20 min aerobic (rowing, running, biking)
  • Evening
      • 30 min Yoga
      20 min aerobic (rowing, running, biking)

Monday, Wednesday, Friday (3 days a week)

  • Evening
      • 60 min weight workout

I'll post updates on my progress. The yoga and aerobic part of this regiment I will start tomorrow, however the weight workouts will start Monday, September 4th. Please post any comments or suggestions on this routine. Any advice you have to offer would be much appreciated!

August Camping Trip #2

Friday night we stayed at a hotel in Waterville Valley. I had lots of work to do for Aerva and I knew I wouldn't be as comfortable using my laptop in the tent. Meera, Thea and Ravi came up a bit late to camp out in Littleton, so they were starting the fire late and Ravi had started cooking. Around 9:30pm I received a call from Meera asking if I had the key to my Dad's hut. She said they "heard" a bear and all ran to the car. They wanted the key so they could sleep in the hut, safe from any big scary... *cough*noises. The hotel was about an hour away from their camp site, 2 hours round trip, but we went anyway. I did a lot of driving that day, at least 6 or 7 hours total.

The next day we went mountain biking on the Notch trail. My brother unfortunately did not have a bike (that's my bike he's on in the picture), so he had to run to keep up with us. Everyone was stopping for a break at every hill, so eventually I gave up waiting and went ahead alone. Very nice trail for biking. We only rode along a 1.5 mile stretch of the 9 mile trail, so I'll have to revisit it to ride the entire length.

Saturday night we camped out in Littleton. It was a bit chilly, and I was amazed to see some trees already turning color. I knew that autumn comes early up North, but not this early! I took a couple of 30" exposure pictures using my Nikon D50. They didn't come out quite as nice as I'd hoped, but still worth showing.

Why?

Everyday I ask that question and I never come up with an answer. I'm sure it's a question that has been asked for as long as the word existed (?) but still, there must be a reason to it all. Everything needs a reason, right? Or does it? Are some things just the way they are and that's that? Are things supposed to appear misleading so that we're forced to ask a question? Action seems to be an answer in and of itself. An answer to what? I don't know, but it seems to be an answer. Most often, questions are asked when action is not present. So take action, and there is no room for question.

But wait a second. How can we take the correct course of action without raising the proper questions? Will we question our actions before we make them only to later realize that the correct course of action was to do nothing at all? Had that option even occurred to us at the time of questioning? Or were we too busy figuring out what action to take?

If all that exists is the question, the action, and the result, then we would no doubt fail to make the correct choices 50% of the time. So what prevents that? Our ability to learn from the results of our questions and actions prevents it. But how does learning from the results really help us if we don't even know the true effects of the results until much later? If we have no idea how many different possibilities can arise from the question and action combinations, then how can we make an educated interpretation of their results?

It makes more sense to agree that we really don't know anything and to accept that there is no way to figure everything out, if everything we believe exists really even exists at all... which leads us back to the beginning:

Why?

The Way I See It #141

"I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stumped by this for many years. And then I realized, you just say, "Hi." They may ignore you. Or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word."

-- Augusten Burroughs
Author of Running with Scissors.

Being an anti-social, keep-to-himself kind of guy, this quote was eye opening to say the least.

Pain, Pain, Go Away

On Saturday I was throwing a ball with my brother, and when I woke up on Sunday morning, my arm hurt like hell. Then while driving yesterday, I moved something in my back and practically paralyzed my neck and back. I can't look over my shoulder without feeling sharp shooting pains throughout my neck and back. That's when I realized how much I need to start doing yoga. All the weight lifting that I'm doing is ruining my body because I'm not stretching enough. This morning when I woke up, my abs and arms hurt as if I had spent 2 hours working out. I guess throwing the ball and mountain biking on Saturday was more physically demanding than I thought. This morning while driving, the shooting pain through my arm and neck was so bad I had to stop at the pharmacy and grab some Advil. I popped three pills, 600mg of ibuprofen. After another 20 minutes of teeth griding pain, the Advil finally kicked in. Ibuprofen also helps with swelling of muscle tissue, so it will help the rest of my sore muscles relax. I'm not the type to pop pills to relieve pain, so when I do pop'em you know the pain is bad. Pain is, after all, weakness leaving the body. 🙂

My friend Tom wants to rent one of the apartments I have available, so I gave him a copy of the keys, my last copy, and asked him to make a couple extra copies so I have a spare. I told him to bring them back that same day because I need keys to get into the apartments. It's been more than 2 weeks and I haven't seen him. I had to climb through the second story window of one of the apartments this morning to unlock the door for Steve Stairs, the contractor doing some work for me. Tom, I need those keys.

I measured my upper arms the other day: 15.2". That's an inch bigger than the previous time I measured them a few months ago. My brother said the size increase is noticeable, though I can't tell the difference. I completed my previous routine for 6 weeks (it's been 7 weeks since I started it, but I took a one week break to recover when I got sick). Last week, I stopped taking all my supplements (Creatine, L-Glutamine, Amino Acids, Chromium Picolinate, Lipo-6 (fat burner), and CLA), except my multi-vitamin (GNC MegaMen Sport). I usually cycle on and off supplements to clean my system out and to reduce the chances that my body will adapt to them. I'm going to start a new workout routine today. I'll be sure to post the workout once I figure out what weights I'm using.

The move of my web hosting business (akmai.net) to it's own dedicated server went about as smoothly as I'd expected. A few hitches here and there were expected, and LiquidWeb's tech support was extremely helpful in resolving any issues I had. All of the domains I'm hosting feel a lot more snappy now that they have a ton of free resources available to them.

I had planned to spend the weekend camping alone and working on some programming projects, but it turned out that my sister and Thea had already planned to go camping, in the same spot as me. Then my dad called and said he and my mom were going to stop by and might spend the night. So I went up with Sitha, and the "alone time" turned into a 7 person family affair (my brother Ravi was also there for a short while). Theres nothing wrong with camping with the family; it was fun. Very rarely do we get the whole family in one spot, what to talk of camping in one spot, so it was a rare moment. I took a few pictures of a toad I found jumping around in the field we were camping in. The weather held up for Saturday, however by 9pm it was raining and by 10pm it was pouring. When I zipped up the tent, I didn't close it all the way (maybe 1/2" opening). I woke up to the bottom of my sleeping bag in a puddle of water. We had to pack everything up in the pouring rain, which is never fun, but it's all apart of the camping experience. 🙂

I found two very interesting articles, both on wikihow.com, and both provide very useful information:

http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Six-Pack-Abs
http://www.wikihow.com/Live-a-Long-Life

I plan to see the year 2100, so the latter is of particular use to me.

Why technology hasn't killed the newspaper

News today is not much different than news 100 years ago, however the methods and speed at which news is published has changed dramatically. Today, news is almost instant. When the tsunami hit South Eastern Asia in 2004, killing 200,000+ people, cell phone users were sending text message warnings to people in other countries that the tsunami had not reached yet. They were even texting people inland informing them to run because the water is coming. Pictures and videos taken by people with their cell phones and camcorders started hitting the Internet within hours; even before any of the big news stations had anything to report. I saw videos and pictures on the Internet that were "breaking news" the following day on CNN.

Technology has given us the ability to publish news almost instantly, allowing us to read up-to-the-minute news online. However the newspaper will be around for a long time. Why? Because people don't have easy-to-read access to news when they're in the train, on the subway, on a plane, and for some, when they're at home. I see the same newspaper get passed around amongst half a dozen people on the train. People leave it on the seat to give the next passenger something to read; and to curb boredom, satisfy their curiosity, or just catch up on recent news, people will pick up the paper and browse through it; even if it's a day or two old.

Sure, people can read the news on their cell phones, but how many people actually do that? The screens are too small, network connectivity isn't perfect (especially when traveling), and its just easier to pick up a paper or magazine. Until the technology exists to create very readable, large, light weight, roll up screens that are built into cell phones, people will continue reading the newspaper and glancing through magazines. Am I saying this a bad thing? No, it's just an observation I made today on the train into work. So I grabbed my laptop and wrote this post! 🙂

Another two weeks of rent free living

My lawyer called me today in reference to George Demasse, the tenant that has not paid a single dollar of rent for the past 12 months. He said that George went to the court to get a Stay, basicly something that will allow him to keep living there. The judge gave him until the 31st of this month. My lawyer said he doesn't think the judge will give him any more extensions because of how much money he owes me. So after the 31st, the sheriff will come and kick him out himself.

What's another two weeks when it's been 12 months? I'll tell you what two weeks is; it's $500 worth of rent.

A missing procedure for DNS changes

If you noticed the error message on my blog during the past few hours, you may be wondering what that's all about. Well, I'm moving my web hosting company, akmai.net to it's own dedicated server. I have been coding a support site for Aerva and they agreed to host it with my hosting company. We worked out a deal so that I can purchase a dedicated server and Aerva would pick up the tab on the extra expense. In return, I provide Aerva's support site with all the bandwidth and space they need. My web hosting business went from making a profit to just breaking even, but now that I have a dedicated server, I can offer more hosting packages at better prices and hopefully pick up a few more clients. Here's the specs on the new server for anyone who's interested:

    Pentium 4 3.0Ghz DUAL CORE
    2GB RAM
    Two 120 GB SATA hard drives (one for backup)
    1600 GB of monthly bandwidth

Oh, back to why my blog has been out of service. I figured since I was only moving from one account type (VPS1) to another (dedicated server) within the same web host (LiquidWeb) that I wouldn't need to change any DNS or nameserver addresses. Well, come to find out, I needed to update the IP addresses for my two nameservers, ns1.akmai.net and ns2.akmai.net. So I put in a request with my registrar to have the IPs updated, and a few hours later received a reply informing me the update had been submitted. Due to the nature of the Domain Name System (DNS), updates across the entire Internet run rather slow... sometimes a few days slow. You would think with all the incredibly fast Internet connections available around the world that DNS updates would be nearly instantaneous!

Now I wouldn't really mind the DNS updates running slow if it didn't cause major problems with web hosts. I host over 20 domains, and all of those domains are set to use my two nameservers (ns1 and ns2.akmai.net). When I change my nameserver IP addresses to point to a new server, I have no way of knowing when all of the computers around the world are going to get the new information, and therefore point to the new server. So, on Sunday, the tech at LiquidWeb copied over all the accounts from my old VPS1 server to the new dedicated server. That's great, but for now anyone uploading new files to their domain, or making changes to their databases (as is the case for a forum, or blog) will be making those changes on the old server. Suddenly, a few days later, their computer will recognize the new nameserver IP address and start pointing their domain to the new server... which contains all the data as of Sunday! That means everything that changed between Sunday and whenever the nameserver change comes into effect, is lost! They won't see any emails, blog posts, forum posts, or files that were changed since Sunday. That is unacceptable! To make things worse, if they make a change to their domain after their domain is pointing to the new server, but before I copy over their account again to restore the missing data, then there wont be any easy way to restore the missing data from the days in between. There isn't any easy way to simply "merge" the missing data with the current data; I need to actually replace the data.

Lucky for me, most of my clients are people with personal domains, not business crucial, high-traffic domains (although I do have several important business domains, so it's still an issue).

So what do I think should be done about this? Well, something on the web host level could be done. The web host could set their internal DNS to point the new IP addresses to the old server. Then after a few days, when we're sure the DNS has propagated through the system and everyone's computers have the newly updated nameserver info, we pick a good time, late at night for example, to lock all the domains from having any changes made to them. Then we copy over all accounts, databases, and data over to the new server, have the web host switch their DNS to point those new nameserver addresses to the new server, and unlock all the domains. Instantly, everyone will be accessing the domains on the new server. Problem solved.

I don't pretend to be an expert on DNS, or the Internet for that matter, but if anyone sees a problem with this solution I'd be interested to hear your argument. In fact, now that I look back, I realize this really isn't a problem with the Domain Name System, but rather with the procedures of web hosts. Don't get me wrong, LiquidWeb is an awesome web hosting company and their technical support staff is very helpful and knowledgeable. But of all the web host's I've been with, this problem with DNS has never been addressed by any of them. It's always "Wait 48 hours for the changes to take effect. Until then, all you can do is wait.". Even if this solution cannot be easily applied in the case of moving a domain from one web host to another, it should be easily addressed when moving a domain from one server to another inside the same web host.

House Hacking

Hacking your own house can be pretty fun. I don't want to incriminate myself on my own blog so I won't go into the details. I may not have any gas, but after 45 minutes, I do have hot water.

    The power of knowledge is not realized until that knowledge
    plays a key role in bridging an otherwise impossible gap.

I was having trouble displaying PNG images in Internet Explorer while cross-browser testing the programming work I'm doing for Aerva. A Google search later and I found this site providing the solution. Very useful if you've ever wondered why PNG images don't maintain their transparency in IE.

I removed the collapse categories plugin I had previously installed for the side bar. I found a page with information on how to use the wp_list_cats() function, which is apart of the standard WordPress installation, to format the category list in a much more useful way. Calling the function with particular options allows you to see all the categories in hierarchal fashion. I used the following options to display the categories as you see them on the right. Just edit your sidebar.php file inside your current theme's directory:

wp_list_cats('sort_column=name&optioncount=0&hierarchical=1')

I was tired of not having any light outside my back door at night, so I installed one today. $35 and an hour of running 14/2 wire from a junction box to the back door (yes, the door is dirty. rain + dirt + door = what you see below):

In retrospect, it really isn't that important

As a runner up to my previous post, From Bad to Worse, I must say that if I wasn't able to let go of the stress things like that cause, I don't know what I'd do with myself. By the time I arrived at the office in Cambridge, my head was really all over the place, thinking about what I was going to do about the gas. The programming work that I do requires my full attention, and generally nothing will get finished unless I can zone out everything else and concentrate entirely on what I'm working on. This mostly applies to programming, but I've noticed the same "singular concentration" requirement in other things I do (writing, and working out for example). The project I'm working on at Aerva needs to be finished this week, and I had results to show by the end of the day. So I knew I had no choice. I had work to finish regardless of what else was going on in my life. So I took a deep breath and let it go. I realized that no matter how significant your problem is, there's always someone out there who has it even worse.

When your list of problems seem endless, think about the moment. You're alive. Don't create your near future in your head using all the problems that formed in the past (even 30 seconds ago is the past). Deal with the problems at hand, and think of the future (the next minute is the future too) as a clean slate, a mold to which you can create anything you wish. Sure, current and past unresolved problems will have an effect on that future mold, but why think about what that mold might be? Some of your problems might resolve themselves. Unseen future circumstances will undoubtedly have an effect on the future as well, so leave the future to create itself when the time comes. Don't dwell upon it. Stress and worry comes from the prediction of an unhappy fate. Prevent your mind from predicting your fate and the stress and worry will cease to exist. You have the power to influence any part of your future. Believe in yourself and use that power.

From Bad to Worse

Yesterday I received a call from one of my tenants who told me the gas company was there and that they were shutting off the gas. I asked to speak to the gas technician who was there. He told me that they were turning off the gas for the first floor (George) who owes them a lot of money and hasn't paid his bills. I told him that George is being evicted, so that doesn't surprise me. I told them to make sure they turn off the correct meter and not the meter for the second/third floor. He said they are certain they turned off the correct meter.

I get home later that evening, only to find the hot water tanks for the second and third floor not working. The tenants in the second and third floor call and tell me their gas stoves are not working. Great. The person who's been paying his bills (me) has no gas, while the person who owes all the money (George) still has his gas turned on. So I call the gas company. It's 10:30pm, so the customer service desk is closed. I speak to someone on the emergency desk. After explaining the situation she tells me she will send someone out and they will be here within a few hours. I told her to have them call my cell phone when they arrive so I can bring them into the basement to see the problem. My phone has bad reception in the basement, so rather than risk missing their call, I wait outside in front of my house for them to arrive. Midnight arrives, and still no one. I decide to call back and see if they really are coming tonight. This time I'm told there isn't even any service request entered in! She tells me that the emergency desk it only for gas leaks so she can't do anything for me, and to call back tomorrow morning at 7am and speak to a supervisor. I take a deep breath, and go inside to sleep.

The next morning, I wake up at 7am and call Keyspan. They tell me that the supervisors don't come in until 8am, so I need to call back after 8. I explain what the problem is and then I'm told that there's already a service request that was entered in last night. (?!) I head to the blvd and go for a 25 minute run.

At 8am I give Keyspan another call to speak to a supervisor. I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to speed up the response time for the service call. I'm told that I can't speak to a supervisor and that the most they can do for me is give me a voicemail to leave a message and a supervisor will call me back. Grrrr. So I leave a message.

9:30pm rolls by and finally I receive a call back from a supervisor. I explain my problem and she tells me she will call the dispatch office and have someone come out right away. So I pack my bag for work and sit outside in my truck waiting for Keyspan to show up. By 10:30am I decide I can't wait any longer. I put the key to my basement in a place where the gas technician could get it when he calls me. I drive to the train station and catch the 11:15 train to Boston.

While on the train, the gas technician calls and tells me he's there, but he has no idea what he's doing there. So I explain the situation to him and tell him where the key is. He says he will see what he can do and call me back in a few minutes.

An already bad situation gets worse. Thirty minutes later he calls me back. He says that he cannot turn the gas back on because the gas piping in the basement has not been inspected. He confirmed that the meters were crossed and wrote up a long explanation of the situation to enter in the gas company's computers. He said the customer service department needs to handle switching the meters on the accounts so the correct meter is linked to the correct account.

Deadly Food

What would happen if the makers of popular cleaning chemicals modified their products in such a way so that the chemicals tasted, and smelled, just like food? What if bleach smelled, and tasted, like cotton candy? Activists and health organizations would go crazy. Children and pets who don't know any better would get sick and start dying from chemical ingestion. You're probably thinking, "What a crazy thing to even suggest!".

Well, lets see: scientific studies have shown that it's a scientific fact that soda, donuts, cheese burgers, and other unnatural and unhealthy so called "foods", will kill you over time. Yet the better tasting and more appealing the food companies make their "products", the more money they make! The foods are shown to eventually lead to obesity and death and yet it's totally legal and OK for them to market and sell them!

Did you know that the food companies aren't even required to run any kind of trials to test the safety of a new food or product? The foods available on the market today are more dangerous for you than the chemicals and drugs in a pharmacy! Ingredients in foods should be as carefully inspected as chemicals are in new drugs and overly unhealthy foods should be outlawed.

I saw a box of donuts this morning. I wasn't offered any, but that's because everyone already knows I'll simply smile and say "No thank you.", turning away with my feeling of health and motivation still 100% intact. Then I thought, "How much would I need to be paid to eat a single donut?" $10? $25? $50? $100? I finally settled on $150, no less. Call me crazy? Well that's what the extra one hour of intense running, required to burn those calories, is worth to me.

It costs me hours of strenuous physical work to burn extra calories, but it costs me nothing to reject unhealthy food. Thats the way I see it whenever I'm presented with an unhealthy choice.

Don't eat something unhealthy and then ask yourself 15 minutes later "Why did I eat that? It was so unhealthy for me!". Ask yourself "Do I want to eat this?" before you eat it. Create the habit of reading how many calories are in something BEFORE you put it in your mouth, not 10 minutes later.

Eat healthy and don't be a hypocrite. It's your body, and it's your life.