Oh, Kindle....why are you tasking me?

Turns out, there’s a way to reboot the Kindle Touch beyond holding the power button down till it blinks (which evidently is a fake reboot).

To hard reboot the Kindle Touch:

Press the Menu button. Press Settings. After the Settings menu appears, press the Menu button again. Then press Restart.

If your Kindle is particularly depressed and you can’t get to the Menu, try holding down the power button to fake reboot, then try again. You could also try resetting to factory default — although it always pains me greatly to have to do that to a device.

Hopefully, this is just a firmware problem that will be fixed in the next go-round.

New Yard

We blew the big bucks from savings, tore up the weeds that had been pretending to be a lawn and had a landscaper (EWG Dirt Cheap) come in and create something native, environmentally responsible, and easier to take care of. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Losing Weight

This is another case where the pics could speak for themselves, but I want to add that Gary Taubes Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It and Good Calories, Bad Calories were a huge inspiration to me, since they talked loud science over the chattering of all the weight-loss pundits trying to sell me cardboard shakes and awkward spring-loaded pulley machines.

I feel better and I find it easier to control what I eat. More, I learned to skip the health article headlines and dig deeper into the results to figure out what the latest scientific study is really trying to tell me.

Disney Anniversary Party

My wife, Natasha, celebrated her 20th anniversary of working for Disney this year. We’ve been to a few of the big anniversary parties over the years as guests of my parents, and they were lavish affairs with great food, but they always felt kind of big-company stodgy.

This year’s party seemed to be created entirely with us in mind. Apologies to the rest of you that had to attend our destiny. Held in Disney’s Hollywood Studios (nee Disney-MGM Studios), our “home” park over the years. The triumphant return of the blisteringly brilliant Adventurers Club cast (as well as the rest of the Pleasure Island cast). A massive fireworks show. Free drinks, colonel! It took me back to the heady, Eisnerized Disney Decade around the time we started.

Ultimately, Natasha had a wonderful time and I was happy to come along for the ride highlighting the best of our time there. I’m hoping for a similar experience when I turn 20 in mouse years next year.

Star Tours: The Adventures Continue

I would have been excited about the reboot of the Star Wars ride at Disney regardless, but it came with so many bonus prizes! My buddy, Bree Starlighter, made it big as the intergalactic PR princess for the Star Tours company.

Star Wars Weekends, which I had been worrying would go the way of every Death Star, absolutely jumped to hyperspace this year.

Anthony Daniels performed a heartfelt one man/one droid show about the wonderful blessing it is to be See-Threepio.

James Arnold Taylor (Obi-Wan from The Clone Wars) rocked his own stage show that managed not only to show off his own incredible talent but to inspire the audience to find its own.

All that, and did I mention the attraction is awesome, too?

(Side note: if you’re not watching The Clone Wars and you say you’re a Star Wars fan, you’re not…really…)

Ships and Dip 4

You know it’s going to be an absolutely incredible cruise when you get back from the lifeboat drill and there are spaces in the front row of the sail-away concert just waiting for you.

It only got better when I got stopped by Mike Evin, who recognized me from my Facebook page and wanted to thank me for all the nice posts about him. (Seriously, if you’re not listening to Mike’s music, you’re missing out. And definitely get the chance to see a live show – Mike is an awesome performer whose musical passion just reaches out and grabs the audience.) If only I would have remembered to get my picture taken with him! I guess I was a little bit star-struck.

Now, when do I sign up for the next one?

Being Part-time

Back in August of 2010, after much personal deliberation and discussion with Natasha (which, for her part, was mostly, “Really, you need to do this”) I decided to go part-time at my “real” job and spend some time rediscovering bits and pieces of myself that had been missing for a while, subsumed by corporate culture and technology. I started work on a novel. I stopped working on said novel to struggle through a short story. I completed a draft of possibly the worst science fiction novel ever written during National Novel Writing Month. I rediscovered the joy of making things in my brain, and I keep learning every day about the things that hold me back and how to kick them to the curb. I am so lucky to be able to do this, and I am looking forward to my future.

Great wishes for all of you! Hope you have a wonderful 2012 and find all the things you’re looking for…

1. Writing is Work

Let’s say it again, together…writing is WORK. It’s not art. You don’t sit around staring into space, waiting for inspiration until suddenly the muse comes along and writes the pages for you. You sit down and pound out horrible words. If you’re not typing or scribbling, you’re not writing. It’s also not writing down ideas about what you would write in a notebook, which I used to do a lot. It’s writing those ideas as scenes in their horrible Frankenstein-ed-ness. Which brings me to point 2.

2. Word Count is King

It’s not about how good the words are, it’s about that you finished them. It’s not going to come out better later. You’re not going to have that sudden, brilliant inspiration. The hole gets dug by getting out the shovel and sweating. And you know what…

3. The More You Write, The Easier It Gets

When I started, I would piddle around, check my email and various social networks, wander the Internet looking for inspiration, do just about anything to avoid actually starting. By the mid-point, when I sat down, I found it really easy to start cranking out words, because it started to cease to matter that they be perfect. Exercise is the same way for me – as long as I keep doing it, I find it easy to keep doing it. But when I stop for a day or two, it starts to feel less good, and I have to remind myself how good I feel when I finish for me to really want to get started again.

4. We’ll Fix It In Post

But what’s the point of pounding the keyboard like an infinite number of monkeys, hoping to churn out Shakespeare accidentally, if all I have to show for it, in the end, is a lousy discovery draft? Have you ever watched the bonus content that comes with a movie? A movie isn’t created when the scriptwriter writes the screenplay. A movie isn’t created by actors speaking lines in front of the cameras. A movie is mostly created in the editing room, where all of the pieces come together. Same thing with a book. The discovery draft is your screenplay, your outline. As you move forward, each draft is another step where you shape and improve. Writing isn’t really about writing…it’s about editing.

5. Writing Takes Time

I kept thinking 2,000 or so words a day wouldn’t take long. Ultimately, it ended up taking me about 45 minutes on the best days. You do the math…I’m a writer. A real novel is going to take several drafts and usually be longer than 50,000 words. A novel takes a while to finish, and I’m finding, personally, I get bored with it after a while, worn out from running the course. Like a marathon runner, I think I need to train with shorter things. I think I’m going to work on some short stories, so I can have something I finished, and I shipped.

6. Planning / Outlining Is A Good Place To Start

This one’s controversial, but I found for me, I had easier writing days when I had thought about the shape the story needed to take. Some writers say they don’t do this, but I suspect they do – they just do it in their drafting process. For me, I found that if I took a couple of minutes during the day, I could write down exactly the things that needed to happen next. It’s a story – it has a certain, predictable shape, which is why we all enjoy guessing where a story is going next. When I took the time to just write down a couple of sentences during the day about where the next 2,000 words were going, I found it a lot easier to write them later.

7. Deadlines Are The Greatest Thing Ever

I never would have finished my Nanowrimo manuscript if I didn’t take the deadlines seriously. Like Douglas Adams’ famous quote – “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” But I took Nanowrimo seriously, and it paid off. I found time to write when normally I would have insisted I didn’t have time or I was too tired or that TV show required all of my attention. And in the end, I finished. FINISHED! Something I think we all need more of in our lives – the satisfaction of completion.

Dave and Buster’s is basically the giant collision of a restaurant/bar, a video arcade, and the Jersey shore. The food there is about Chili’s level – not bad, not spectacular. I thought my build your own chicken tacos was pretty good; Natasha found her fried shrimp to be about equivalent to dive bar food. I haven’t sampled the specialty booze yet, but given the number of variations on the Long Island Iced Tea available, I will definitely be visiting during happy hour at some point. Service was fast and good.

The bar has some rather innovative tables that have beer taps built in. You get to pay before you pump so you can set your limit. Seems party friendly, if you ask me.

The gaming area has a collection of the expected coin-op games, basketball hoop things, and skeeball mashed up with a lot of gambling-lite type things like coin drops and variations on roulette type things. The prices on the games vary, but our $12 each basically bought us about an hour of gaming. Other than the arcade games, most everything you play earns you tickets based on your success, which you can redeem for prizes.

I have fond memories of playing coin drops at my school carnival and the Jersey Shore. A lawyer friend of my grandmother taught me how to win at the quarter drops. (Yes, lawyers always know how to drain the most money out of anything.) He advised me that if you put the quarters in your mouth and got them nice and wet and sticky before you dropped them in the machine, they tended to stick better to the platform in the machine and the other coins and wouldn’t slide on top of the other coins quite as much. Gross, yes, but I ended up winning $50 (and putting most of it back) at the carnival. (My first gambling lesson learned.) Unfortunately, as an adult, I didn’t really feel comfortable putting Dave and Buster’s coins in my mouth. Damn maturity!

In the end, if you’re not into playing some games and getting rewarded with some candy or a wicker finger trap, D&B isn’t for you. But for a date night or some time out with the kids, it’s a fun stop.

When I was a young pain in the ass, my mom used to cook eggs and bacon for breakfast a lot on weekends.  She would always cook up the bacon first, and it would leave this thick sludge of bacon grease in the pan. By that time, the delicious scent of the bacon would have carried me out of bed to the kitchen table, and I’d watch my mom crack a few eggs and toss them into the grease and scramble them for me.

I hated those brown, greasy, sort of lumpy eggs. One morning, I told my mom that as she set them in front of me.

“Can’t you clean the pan first? I hate eggs made in this gross bacon grease. I’m not going to eat these! They’re horrible. I mean look at them.”

I probably stuck my tongue out at them.

My mom said, “Fine! I’m not making you eggs anymore. I like my eggs this way. If you want them made differently, you can learn to do it yourself. You’re old enough.”

She probably should have added that I was being a stupid little snot. I don’t remember her saying that, but she should have. Because I was.

And that was the moment that started me off on one of my favorite hobbies – cooking.

I got my mom (and sometimes my dad) to show me how to make different things. I got to enjoy the light, fluffy eggs I really liked. I started making other things – cookies, hot dogs, burgers, tuna salad – exactly the way I liked it. I became a culinary artist, digging into the pantry and mixing up things with the maniacal verve of an evil scientist. And oddly enough, my mom liked my creations enough that eventually, I started helping with the cooking.

I’d find notes waiting for me when I got home from school.

“Keith, there’s some ground beef I put out to thaw. Can you mix it up the way you did the other night and start dinner around 4 or so? Thanks, Mom.”

I had developed a useful talent and a hobby I loved, thanks to my mom not putting up with me being a snot. So on this Mom’s Day, appreciate the lessons you learned because she wouldn’t put up with you. Sometimes you don’t appreciate the value of a good swift kick towards the edge of the nest.

I’m down 20 pounds since early February, when I started the program. I feel really positive about eating the way I do, except for the fact that most of my clothes are now falling off me, which means I had to spend some money on new pants and belts. I’m curious about my cholesterol numbers, but my physical isn’t for a few months thanks to how busy doctors are. Hopefully the numbers will be good. I certainly feel like the numbers will be better than they have been in the past.

On cholesterol, it’s interesting that Mr. Taubes published his cholesterol numbers on his blog today, as well as a description of what he eats. Take a peek and be surprised.

Taubes also has an article on sugars in the N.Y. Times that’s an interesting read.

For myself, I was so fascinated by the “Why We’re Fat” book, that I embarked on reading his Good Calories, Bad Calories book, which is 500 pages of history and science and is just as fascinating. I recommend it if you’re interested deeply in science and science history, since you get a detailed account of how digestion works, as well as a fascinating look at the politics of scientific studies. Seriously, science is not that far from religion in terms of how closed-minded it can make people.

And by the way, turkey pepperoni just sucks.

Infrequent Sex, Exercise May Raise Risk Of Heart Attack

Crank up the Enigma and the Barry White…it’s time to decrease my risk of heart attacks….

They seem to have lost the journalistic standards that made them one of my favorite sites back in my naive days of starry-eyed Internet newb-ness.

Take for example, one of today’s headlines:

“Exercise, Sex Can Boost Heart Attack Risk”

OMG! I must become a monk, take my vow of celibacy, and sit and meditate in a relaxed position all day!

But wait, read on into the first sentence and you discover that the risk is “small and transient”. Then why report on it?! I guess page views are more important than alarming or confusing people about their health.

More and more I find headlines like that in my RSS feed from WebMD, and more and more when I click on them I find that kind of “World ending! Tune in at 11.” style of journalism. I guess health isn’t science anymore. It’s just a source of pumping out a lot of stories.

It’s enough to give me a heart attack.

Oddly enough, I got a nudge in the right direction by Paul Thurrott on his “Windows Weekly" podcast over on the TWiT network. He happened to mention that one of his new year’s resolutions was to lose weight. And he said it with the confidence of a practiced gunslinger facing down a kid with a spud gun.

What was his secret? He mentioned a book called “Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It” by a science writer named Gary Taubes. Since I’m addicted to the Kindle and eBooks now, and it was available there, I picked it up.

The book absolutely fascinated me for Taubes’ ability to tell the health establishment to go flip itself like a pancake. The food pyramid is wrong. The calories in/calories out method of maintaining weight is wrong. A lot of the advice we’re given about how to control cholesterol is wrong. I left the book trying to decide if it could be correct.

Thing is, this is actually the second book Taubes has written on the subject. His initial 500+ page treatise, “Good Calories, Bad Calories” was a book aimed squarely at the establishment, to challenge them with detailed science. “Why We Get Fat…” is the populist version. So it seemed like the science was really there, and it rang true to me, despite there being a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation about what Taubes’ point is. (It mostly has to do with carbs and insulin.)

Not having much to lose (or maybe too much to lose) I decided to give the science a try.

One of the appendixes in the book is the handout Duke University gives people that are embarking on their low starch / low sugar diet. So I’m following that plan now. In the first two weeks, I dropped 10 pounds (at least half of which is probably related to water retention). I’m just into the third week, so I’ll try to occasionally update about how things are going.

Definitely take a look at the book if you’re interested in the science of nutrition. It’s an interesting, challenging read. And let me know if you have any favorite ways of losing weight.

No, my air conditioning is fine, I just picked up a Microsoft Kinect, their new motion control device for the Xbox 360.

The first thing I did after I set it up was play the TRON: Legacy trailer…with my voice.

“Xbox…Play Trailer!”

BAM! High-def Tron goodness.

That was a “future soon” moment for me. I hate voice control. I don’t really like babbling commands at my phone. I can’t imagine dictating something I’m writing.  I make great use of Dial-A-Human. Yet, talking to the entertainment center in my living room felt very natural. After a week or so of playing with the Kinect voice control, I’m wishing it could do more things, especially since using your arms and hands to control the menus with gestures is still a bit fidgety.

Rumor has it Microsoft wants to bring this kind of gesture and voice control to computers. I’m hopeful about this because I hate touch screens. After five minutes of fiddling with my phone at lunch, my screen is as smudged as a Macy’s window during the holidays. Pizza grease and touch controls just don’t work well together. Kinect makes me want to wave my device in the air, like a Harry Potter wand, to control it. “Wingardium dial-my-mom-um!”)

Games is where Kinect really shines. Kinect Adventures, the game that comes with it, easily equals the fun of Wii Sports. You jump around, wave your arms, have fun, and get winded and yes, extremely sweaty. The fact that Kinect Adventures takes pictures of you being a silly ass that you can then post to the Internet is a bonus.

The virtual puppet rewards are really fun, too.

Since my wife uses the Wii to work out, I also picked up Your Shape: Fitness Evolved. Being able to follow along with a workout without having to hold a WiiMote, nunchuck, and some crazy fitness rubber band is a big bonus. Kinect gives you the ability to actually work out while holding weights.

It comes with an excellent  variety of workouts and some fun fitness games, though their confusing menu system makes it a bit difficult to find different things. While I like working out with it, I’m finding it’s kicking my butt and I can’t really create the custom wimp-ass workout I want to. How about I tell you how many lunges I want to do, Fitness Evolved?

Definitely some nice innovation here from the Microsoft folks. Looking forward to checking out some of the other games, as well as seeing what other neat hacks people come up with for the device.