No, I suppose I'm not a girly girl.

My lovely wife talked me into determining which Disney princess I am and posting the results on my blog.



Strong and spirited. You're no one's girly girl; actually you are very determined person with a strong sense of self. Never let go of that! The only thing that equals your sense of self is your family, but the traditions of society can always be bent to protect something or someone you love.

That description is actually fairly accurate, especially the part about my not being anyone's girly girl. :)

Now, you go take it, and embarrass yourself on your own blog.

Just me and Dev

Ah, nothing like a lovely 110+ degree Saturday afternoon to get some work done in the garage. In fixing up my trusty M3 for the resumption of daily driving, I had to install new oxygen sensors, do a front brake job, perform an oil change, and install a new performance exhaust system. Well, I suppose I didn't have to do that last bit. :)

It took quite a while and it was miserably hot, but I sure had fun hanging out in the garage with my fellow grease monkey, my son Devlin. He is getting to be old enough to actually help, which is really fun for both of us. He fetched me tools, learned how to use the impact wrench and air compressor, put the new oil filter on, held the funnel while I poured oil, and he even used his enormous muscles to raise the car a little bit with the floor jack ... before giving up and having me do the rest.

So here's a shout out to my favorite little (grease) monkey - love you Dev!

Geeks revolutionized baseball ... now politics?

If you're a baseball fan and haven't read Michael Lewis's Moneyball, shame on you. It's a great, quick read, and will change the way you look at the game forever. It follows the story of Oakland A's GM Billy Beane and his meteoric rise from a failure as a major league player to one of the top GMs in the game, all because he relied on complex statistical analysis rather than doing things the way they had always been done.

One of the coolest new websites in the political arena is fivethirtyeight.com (538 being the number of electors at stake in our wonderful country's horrifically goofy Electoral College). The genius behind the blog is Nate Silver, an economist and statistician that works for Baseball Prospectus. In the tradition of Bill James, he created an algorithm for predicting the success of baseball teams and players based on past performance. You can read about him in this Newsweek article.

With regards to politics, he did a phenomenal job of predicting the results of the Democratic primary contests by relying on demographic and census data, and weighting polls based on their historical accuracy. Anyway, if you have a close eye on the 2008 elections like I do, fivethirtyeight.com is a great site to keep bookmarked as we near Election Day. And bonus, Mr. Silver is an Obama guy like me. :)

If you tend to struggle like I do...

...then by all means read The Ultimate Weight Loss Guide. Twice. And maybe a third time just for good measure.

The article is relatively comprehensive and very informative, especially if you haven't done much research on weight loss, or keep getting suckered into fad diets. I actually found this article just today, but unknowingly I have been living most of it for a couple months now based on information I had pieced together from sources various and sundry. And as a result I'm down over 20 pounds since April 8th (the first day I started with The Daily Plate), and over 40 pounds total since roughly last August.

If you tend to struggle like I do, hopefully with the help of this guide and a few simple tools, you'll have the same success I have had. And hopefully I can continue to as well. :)