Ramble On

There’s a lot of debate that always goes on about standards and whether they matter, and whether anyone gives a rip. Especially with the whole Jerry Springer Debate of the Internet - and by that I mean the whole messy debate about RSS vs. ATOM vs. giant mega egos vs. old emo hippies vs. users vs. developers vs. etc. etc.

But most people couldn’t give a rip, because well, RSS is good enough. Works fine in my aggregator.

Well standards do matter, and nowhere is that more apparent than the NCSU Gym. Yes, that’s right — the NCSU Gym.

For the last two weeks, I’ve been making use of the Gym’s elliptical machines - the ones that give you the “ski effect” of sorts.

I really like them, it’s more interesting than the bikes, and it hurts to run for 25 minutes, so it’s a good workout for me to use them.

Unfortunately I’ve used two different models. And between the two models, the way they measure distance and speed seems to be completely different. On one, I get 2.5 miles in 25 minutes - pretty consistently. On the other I get 3.0 miles in 25 minutes. Largely the same pace. And resistance level 10 means two different things on each different model. And the calories burned are different.

The workout is fine on both - and it works but just on that one machine. I cannot accurately guage the progress on one versus the other. And that’s disappointing to go from 2.5 miles to thinking you are progressing to 3.0 miles, but really aren’t because the machine just measures differently.

And that’s why standards matter. You can’t rightly compare and exchange data if the two machines don’t agree on the inputs and outputs.

But I can’t wait until we have something to highlight “this is what eXtension has the power to do…” ala flickr

you know, in spite of myself, sometimes I really believe in this stuff.

so the complaint embargo for Thursday is done too - that’s mostly Aaron’s fault for saying he was going to fix the faq.extension-slated-for-deprecation-any-day-now tool, which I had already fixed, but that wasn’t my complaint. My complaint was why I had to fix it in the first place and something about inabilities vis-a-vis typing URLs into a browser. But that’s neither here nor there.

So I’ve decided that Scott Adams is my blogisherpa. I don’t really have heroes - other than my Dad, and Lou Gehrig and Jackie Robinson, so I can’t really call him a hero. And I’m exorbitantly wary of following anyone and I rarely have much respect for authority, so I can’t really call him a leader, or a thought leader, or any other post-millenial buzzword bingo winners.

So he’s my blogisherpa. My guide to writing long rambly articles that almost don’t, but do seem to make sense. Like his timely advice about wedding costs or even better, giving voice to the theories of Ignorantselfishertarianism

New complaint - I just finished my McDonald’s coffee and apparently got the bottom of the pot. I was wondering why my coffee was grainy all of a sudden.