I watched the women's triathlon. I was amazed that they were showing it... well, they weren't really showing it... they showed a collection of quick clips of the cycling portion of the competition, mostly crashes, bicycles going down, riders tumbling along the pavement, shots of one of those riders weeping with frustration at being out of the competition. We got a few quick shots of the change from bike to running and then highlights of the ten kilometer run, concentrating of closeups of the lead five women (which included an American) intercut with shots of Michellie Jones (the favored Australian) sitting and standing on the steps of the opera house with a voice-over of her describing a dream of running the race and hearing the crowd chanting "Go Aussie! Go Aussie!" -- then back to highlights of the run -- I came very close to turning off the sound so I wouldn't have to hear the pretentious and annoying non-stop commentary. Gag! (It really was a great race -- the Swiss runner McMahon won, just a step or two ahead of Jones, beautiful competitive running -- but pretentious broadcaster babbling)

Every few minutes NBC displays a computer generated annimated graphic advising us "for more information logon to NBCOlympics.com" and I have to wonder... did nobody at NBC watch Starship Troopers? It is difficult to avoid laughing at them... at least the first few times... after that it gets annoying.

I saw a Nike commercial that was absolutely disgusting. It was almost two hours ago and I am still angry about it. I turned on the television and at first I thought I had the wrong channel because I seemed to be in the middle of one of those Texas Chainsaw Screaming Halloween on Friday the Thirteenth movies... a young blonde woman clad in running tights and a light colored sports bra was being chased by a man wearing a white plastic face mask and brandishing a chainsaw... it was night and he was chasing her through woods... on and on... this is not some quick fifteen second ad, it goes on and on... he is revving the chainsaw, vrrooom, vrrooom... she stumbles but catches her balance and keeps on running... and then he pauses, sets down the chainsaw, he is panting, winded, he can't keep up with her and she is running away from him... running into the distance as white letters appear on the screen -- Sports -- and then something like Keeping physically fit can save your life -- and then the Nike swoosh symbol. What the hell? Do they have an amusing commercial coming next that uses child abuse as a way to sell sneakers?

I swear I will never purchase another Nike product ever again. Those sick scumbag bastards will never get a single dime from me.

Yeah, it wasn't much of a week for working out... so how did I manage to lose two pounds? Well, not eating too much plus I was really very physically active all week. I was teaching a class this week and that means that instead of sitting in front of a computer all week I was standing in front of a class... not just standing, I pace around the room, I'm back and forth from lecturn to projection screen, pointing at stuff, quick, to the back of the room tracing the flow of program control on a diagram I have drawn on a white board, back up to the front, over to a white board on a side wall, drawing a diagram, over to my lecturn to type something into my computer, bring up a new display projected onto the big screen, quickly move in front of the screen, waving my arms, pointing at the display. I can walk for miles inside a classroom and burn many calories waving my arms around (can't help it, grew up in a mostly Italian neighborhood).

So, anyway, that's partly why I've not updated all week... just been too busy... I did manage to get in a run Monday just before dark. Tuesday I didn't leave work until seven p.m. (had a bunch of technical stuff I had to do, recreate a missing PROCLIB which then meant having to make changes to the JCL in some of the members of that library, etc. in order for my students to be able to compile their programs on Wednesday morning). That meant that I had left home at 7:30 in the morning and got home a bit past 7:30 at night. On Wednesday and Thursday I left around 6:30. I had finished teaching more than an hour earlier, but I still had administrative stuff to do, catch up on email, etc. When I get home I've got to cook dinner (which often means cleaning up the kitchen a bit before I can mess it up again with my dinner prep. And then, after dinner and after cleaning up, I crawl over to the computer and check email and read a few journals but I am way too damned tired to write up an entry... besides which there are other people in the family wanting to use this machine. (It's the one with the Internet connection... yes, I do want to set up a LAN and connect all the machines to our cable modem... and I'll get to it real soon now.)

I think I'm going to head off to bed soon. When I got up this morning I had a bad sinus headache (which is why I did not have a workout this morning) and the afternoon was taken up with running various errands... and I decided not to go for a run late in the day because I have a race in the morning. Nancy and I are going up to Providence for the Downtown 5k (I'm going to run the men's five k; Nancy's going to walk the women's five k.)

Oslo weather is on the sidebar because one week from right now I will be high over the Atlantic on my way to Norway.

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