Welcome To Earth David

Yesterday I took a drive out to Long Cane Park and took a walk in the rain. Actually it wasn’t really raining… It was more like drizzling. Earlier in the day I had recieved Chamblee54’s comment on my cellphone about walking and listening to the world around you instead of listening to music on an mp3 player and that is what I did. It was really nice to hear the raindrops falling on my umbrella as well as the tree frogs, birds chirping, fish jumping in the water out on the lake, some swimmers out in the water throwing frisbee and enjoying a light rainy evening and seeing the sun settle down behind a thick blanket of rain clouds. I didn’t push myself too hard as I was too busy enjoying the scenery around the lake. I walked a total of 2.71 miles and 6,627 steps.

Today is supposed to be laundry day, but I think I’m going to put off laundry until later this evening because I think I am going to go back out to the lake again today and get a good long walk in before my off time is over, and I may not feel like getting out for a walk tomorrow after work.

I borrowed this picture from this website, and I hope they don’t get mad, but I do want to thank them because they are the only one’s online I could find who had a picture of this exact radio boom box. It is 4:15 a.m. and I am having a major flashback to my late teen / early 20’s all because of a comment I responded to a short while ago regarding music players. I got to thinking about a particular boom box I owned before and during a short time I was in the army and I am laying here in bed looking at this picture of the model D 8300 by Magnavox wishing I still had my bright yellow radio that I loved so much. This was my BOOM BOOM haha…. at least that’s what I called it back in the 80’s. I think the year I bought this was in 1987 or 1988. I remember saving every penny I could get my hands on so that I could buy this double cassette deck boom box. It had a shoulder strap and I used to carry this big thing everywhere. My favorite cassette to listen to on this thing was Taylor Dayne’s first album release. It was a clear cassette and I would just sit sometimes and listen to her sing and watch the little spindles in the cassette turn. I remember walking to my friends house down the street with this thing strapped over my shoulder and my music blaring from it. I miss that so much! I thought I was cool walking with this thing. I don’t remember what happened to my boom box… Maybe I gave it away. Maybe it stopped working and I had to throw it away. Who knows? But there is one thing I know and that is I absolutely loved this boom box. This boom box was available in yellow or black. As stated earlier, I owned a yellow one because it looked better than the black one I thought. I remember the first time I saw this boom box in the store. It’s bright yellow color and it’s design really caught my eye. It was definitely the most awesome boom box I had ever owned. It was pretty loud I should say for it’s size. I have found a black one on ebay, and I am thinking about bidding on it, but I am seriously looking for a yellow one like this one in the picture. I would love to have another one to be able to plug in my mp3 player to it and listen to all the new music I love now on something so old that I loved when I was younger. Ok I’m gonna cry myself to sleep now cuz I really am missing my boom boom.

Before I go to bed… here is something I think is really cool. Does anyone remember the JVC Kaboom Boxes? Well JVC has brought it back again and it is updated. It now plays mp3 cd’s. This is the JVC RV-NB1. Add this to my want list.

UPDATE 07/14/08: A reader has submitted this cool picture of his D8300 boombox. Check out the bumblebee stickers and the cassette tapes. Very cool picture. Thanks John!!!

I went for a walk this evening around 10:00 p.m. There was a storm brewing and I was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to walk very long before I’d have to get out of the rain. I was able to walk 3.07 miles with 7,512 steps counted before the rain started to fall. I would have liked to walk more but I didn’t care to get wet while I was carrying my mp3 player and my cellphone. It was a nice walk and the air outside wasn’t too hot. I think I may go walking after sunset more often this summer. It is much cooler that way.

Songs I heard during this exercise:

1. Madonna - Sidewalk Talk (Discotec Remix)
2. DJ Tecnick - Club Attack (1998 Club Hits Megamix)
3. Savage Garden - To The Moon and Back (Almighty Transensual Mix)
4. Yes - Owner Of A Lonely Heart (808 State Remix)
5. Rushroom - Don’t Give Up (Rob Mayth Remix)
6. Armin Van Heldon - My My My (Original Mix)
7. Level 42 - Lessons In Love (Shep Pettibone Remix)
8. Destiny’s Child - No No No (Wyclef Jean Mix)
9. Ferry Corsten - It’s Time (Freestyle Mix)
10. Rockell - The Dance (Hex Dez Club Mix)

Shorpy is a blog about old photos and what life a hundred years ago was like: How people looked and what they did for a living, back when not having a job usually meant not eating…… hmmmm isn’t that the way it is now….. except if you don’t have a job you don’t drive anywhere either because the freakin’ gas prices are so damn high! But anyway, about this photo blog. I have to say that this is one of the most interesting photo blog’s I’ve ever come across. I really got into this website today. At this very minute as I am posting this I am only on page 50 out of over 470 pages. So far I have seen some really awesome pictures depicting life in America from decades ago. The pictures on this website really make you appreciate all of the wonderful things we have today as compared to yesterday. Take some time out to go visit this website. It is an adventurous journey back to real life during times that most all of us in existence now have only ever read about or seen in a movie.

I’m starting something new here. It’s my new fitness journal. Something to motivate me more to work out and try to get in better shape and also something to give me something else to write about. I was orginally going to do this as a walking journal but at some point in the future I want to get into some weight training and maybe start riding my bike again and I didn’t want to have different categories set up to write about each different activity and so since each of those activities fall under fitness then I thought it better suited just to write everything under the fitness category. I can keep a seperate walking journal on a different page seperated from my blog to keep up with how many miles I walk.

I’ve got some awesome news to start this off with. Today I broke my summer walking record. You are not going to believe this. Today I walked an incredible 8.20 miles with 20,048 steps recorded on my pedometer. If my calculations are correct then I burned 680 calories. I think that is the farthest I have ever walked since I got out of the army years ago, and what is more incredible is that just a few weeks ago I was in the hospital emergency room with a busted knee. I pushed myself hard out there today. I really want to lose a few pounds. I’m not fat, but I could stand to lose a few pounds. Tomorrow, I probably won’t walk so far… that is if I do go walk at all. Those 8 miles really wore me out today.

If any of you are interested in learning about the benefits of walking for health and fitness you can check out Walking at About.com

This is week #4 in Monday Muscle Madness. This is my weekly photo post focusing on healthy, well defined men with muscular bodies. Here is this weeks work out inspiration. A surfer ready to tackle the waves. Surfing must be a really tough sport and quite physically draining to give those guys the lean bodies they get from doing it. I have never surfed before myself but I always wanted to try it out. Unfortunately I don’t live near a beach that has waves worth putting a surf board in the water for, and I don’t swim very well so I would probably be too afraid to try it anyway.

An update to my recent knee injury: My knee has pretty much healed up. It is still a little swollen but not bad. I am walking just as normally as I was before now and I am getting back into my physical activities again. I have started walking routinely again. I am back to walking 6 miles at a time when I walk for weight loss purposes which is what I’m about to go do when I finish writing this post.

I am still wanting to get into some weight training and I have been thinking about getting rid of some furniture in my living room so that I can make room for a weight bench. Well I’m off to go take my walk now. I won’t lose any weight sitting here on my ass!

While surfing Gizmodo this morning I discovered two websites that now give you the technology to stream live video from your cellphone to the internet. How cool is this? Check these sites below.

1. Qik
2. Comvu

I think this is just totally amazing. I never thought about the possiblity of being able to do this with your phone. I am really amazed by this. Qik is currently best suited for Nokia phones, however they do seem to be working on moving onto Windows Mobile phones as well. Comvu seems to be suited well for windows smartphones at this time, and if I read correctly you are able to record and save your live streams to your phone and then stream them later incase your out somewhere with poor signal reception.

If you love funny videos then you should click this link and prepare to have a good time laughing at the funny videos. I’d like to thank Model_City_All_Star for sending me that link. I had a great time watching, although I had seen a few on tv when I was growing up. Funny stuff 4 real

Ever since I switched over to Wordpress I have been searching for the perfect dark theme template for my blog. Today as I was reading Large Tony’s Blog, I clicked over to Dannation and saw that he is using a template called Black Letterhead which is designed by Ulysses Ronquillo. You can see a demo of the template here. I think I’ll be working on switching over to this theme over the next couple of weeks. I really admire the way Dannation modified the template with a header image at the top and I may try to do something similar…. not that I want to copy his blog or anything like that.

I just realized that yesterday marked the 19th anniversary of my high school graduation. On June 2nd, 1989 I graduated from Beulah High School in Valley, Alabama. I was 18 years old that day. I remember the only person in my family who attended the graduation ceremony was my mother. My dad who at the the time had not yet adopted me, as sorry as he was for it, decided he would rather go hunting that night more than he would like to watch me receive my high school diploma. My two younger brothers weren’t at the ceremony either, but they were very young at the time still and I think they were with my grandmother or one of my aunts… I really can’t remember where they were exactly. We had the graduation ceremony on the football field and I remember the whole thing seemed to take forever. The speeches from the principle, the vice principle, the head coach, teachers, the band playing their songs, the hot June night air… I am so glad I don’t ever have to relive that day. All of the other guys and girls in my graduating class went to a graduation party after the ceremony. I was not invited. My mother took me out for dinner at a restaurant called Western Sizzlin’ which is still open almost 20 years later. After dinner my mother and I went home. Needless to say, if you couldn’t tell, I was not one of the popular kids in my school during my younger years. I would have loved to go to that party with everyone that night and as far as my dad not going to the ceremony…. well that wasn’t the only thing he missed out on because of his stupidity.

In the last 19 years I have only seen but just a few people I graduated high school with. In fact the last time I saw one of them, a girl named Crystal, was just a few weeks ago down at Theresa’s Cut-N-Corner where I get my hair cut. Her son was getting a hair cut, and she sat there the whole time and didn’t say one word to me. I don’t know if maybe she just didn’t recognize me or most likely she is still just as stuck up now as she was in high school. Oh well.

Whether you are a devout hardcore christian who believes that anything even resembling something that isn’t deemed “normal” or just someone who lives life to the fullest and doesn’t waste time hating on someone for who they are, I think everyone needs to read God Hates Homophobes.

Here is a qoute from the mission statement at godhateshomophobes.com:

You can be downright disgusted with two gay men kissing but as long as they’re not breaking into your house to do it then you need to chill out. If you see two men holding hands on the street and you feel ill then look away. It’s time we realize that not everything within our view is going to please us because in a tolerant society we get along with others as long as they are not directly hurting or harassing us. There are definitely some heterosexual couples I’ve seen kissing in public that I thought needed to have a blanket thrown over them because they were downright ugly but it’s something I understand I need to tolerate.

I copied that part of the statement because I too have seen many many ugly straight people who quite offended me in public. But seriously go read that site. Many of my same views about homophobic people are expressed on that website, although I have absolutely no affiliations with that website…. just to be clear on that. Oh yes, and one more thing… should anyone have any negative comments about this subject, or that website please take them there as that is what that website is for. Any negative comments left here will be deleted so don’t even waste your time. By the way, that website is written by a straight man who realized how stupid it is to hate someone for who they are. I wish more straight people would realize their stupidity.

Here is this weeks workout inspiration for you and for me. It’s time for me to go walk a few miles now…. since my knee has gotten better. I haven’t gone walking in two weeks now because of my knee injury. I found a cheap workout bench at Sam’s Club I am thinking about getting. It comes with the bench and 100lbs dumbell set. I think it would be a good set for me to start weight lifting with. I would have to clean out my living room though to make room for it which might mean getting rid of some furniture. I wish I lived closer to a gym.

Since I have not yet gotten around to writing my disclaimer I must add this to the post. I am in no way claiming this image as my own, nor do I have any intentions of violating any copyrights regarding this image. If you are the rightful owner and prefer not to have this picture on my site then please email me and I will remove it.

As many of you who’ve upgraded to the new WordPress 2.5 version have maybe noticed there is an option on the Plugins page which basically suggests that you can auto-upgrade a plugin. I would strongly suggest you do NOT use this function right now. First off, this is not a feature that is directly supported by plugin authors, it is a function that works outside of the plugin. So if something goes wrong there may be no way for any plugin author to help you fix the situation since the plugin itself did not do the action. Secondly it’s been acknowledged that this feature is really not very robust yet and may very well fail and hose your entire WordPress insall.

I would strongly suggest that you continue to download all plugins yourself and upload them to the server. In the case of AWSOM.org plugins they all upgrade themselves properly when you reactivate them, so it’s actually not really more difficult anyway.

I did not know about this. I guess this is something in the latest release of Wordpress that has not yet fully been fixed. I’m glad I read this over at AWSOM.org even though I only just started installing extra plugin’s a few days ago and haven’t yet had to upgrade any of them. Thanks to Harknell at AWSOM.org for this information.