But Universal is hypocritical.

What a bunch of typical media double talk, do as we say, not as we do. 

All over Sunday Night Football, NBC is touting their “greenness”, and how are they patting themselves on the back for being so eco friendly, they are sending people all over the planet.

As I see it, if they are so concerned about the environment, they wouldn’t be increasing their carbon foot by sending their talking heads all over the world. I’m pretty sure that when these people travel, they don’t travel alone.

They are sending a crew to Australia to cover the fact that there is a drought there, come on isn’t there any qualified broadcasters in Australia that they could use. Then a crew has to got to Iceland, and another to Kenya, and yet another to somewhere in the middle of the ocean.

I just gotta believe that there are qualified english speaking reporters near all the locations they’ll be reporting from, so why not reduce the impact on the planet and use those resources, but I guess there is no real impact, because I’m willing to bet they bought some of those snazzy magic carbon credits for al gore…

22.95 miles according to Google Earth. This time, I took a more direct route and it turned out to be much more pleasant and reasonable. 8.83 miles from my house to the oceanfront, one-way. Then I went south to Rudee inlet, stopped for pictures, then North to 40th street (where the boardwalk ends) and back to 31st and back home. The weather was great, my legs held up. No dangerous moments to recall. A nice trip. I’m going to upload some pics to my new web site at http://www.vblife.net as soon as it goes “live”.

I had to sell my kayak last year in order to make a bill payment.  That’s life.  But I still miss paddling on the water around here.  Virginia Beach and the surrounding area is like an artery system of waterways, creeks, rivers, lakes, ponds, and the wide open Atlantic ocean.  A really great site, probably the best site, for getting a broad, yet focused cross-section of kayaking around here is KayakVB.com.  The Trip Reports section is always good.  The links to gear, info, clubs, and launch sites is fantastic, especially if you’re interested in kayaking.  Even if you’re not, check it out.

Saturday. From my house, to the Virginia Beach oceanfront, by way of Holland Road, and Dam Neck Road, and General Booth Blvd, over the Rudee Inlet bridge, over to Atlantic, and up the boardwalk to 24th street. Then back along the same path. 13.86 miles each way (as carefully measured using Google Earth), comes to about 27.6 total bikage distance. Nice word, huh. Bikage. I just invented that. The best part is that I’m not sore today. My legs are little wobbly, but they work!

The bad part was the “events” going on at the boardwalk. Oh boy. How do I describe this… Ok, here goes:

4×4 monster truck expo from 1st street to about 12th street. Wall to wall 400lb rednecks, along with their 400lb family members. I saw the entire demographic of future diabetes patients in one place! How lucky was I? Then (yes, there’s more!) there was an American Indian thing, a Boy Scout jamboree-type thing, and some sort of quasi 400 year celebration of James Town (at the beach?). Toss all that in a blender and you have what I had to navigate (slowly). Picture this: Four (yes 4) 300+ lb family members on ONE 4-seater quad-bike, struggling to make down the bike path along the boardwalk. Then picture me trying to pass them with other similar groups coming the opposite direction. Yes. It was painful to endure. But somehow I survived.

I have nothing against obese people. My mother was obese.  However, you would NEVER catch my mom stuffing her face with ice cream, hot dogs, beer and more hot dogs.  She ate very healthy, but not fattening foods.  These people at the 4×4 event looked like they were competing for the Eat Yourself to Death contest.  Obesity is one of the prime factors that led to my mother’s premature death by congestive heart failure.  I’m not following that path.  I’m taking the best path I can.  A 27.6 mile path.

I’m writing two project plans at once, answering a legal matter for my brother (yes, an attorney, I have to admit we have one in our family.  Don’t hate me), watching the O’s battling the Indians (2-2 in the bottom of the 9th), proofing a beta copy of a Microsoft product manual, listening to Bozzio/Levin/Stevens on my iPod, typing a blog AND waiting for my cell to ring so I can jump out of my chair, land in my shoes and deftly grab my keys as I slide out the front door to pick up my son from a birthday party (smooth as a cat landing on all fours no doubt).  Man, it either means I’m cool or several brain-damaged.  Probably the latter.

The latest repost on Ze Frank (1/25/07) “Pretty Princess” is HYSTERICAL!  OMG!  Just when I had given up on finding new talent in this world, along comes Ze.  I highly recommend him.  Warning: Swallow your food before watching.  Not because it’s going to be gross, but because you’re likely to blow it through your nose laughing.

WSUS 3.0 rocks by the way.  Yes, it’s FINALLY “OUT”!  I’ve been testing it since Alpha, then Beta, then Gamma, no wait, that’s RC.  Those poor Greeks.  They never had a chance to fix that third letter did they?  One of the project plans I’m writing right now is one on how to upgrade our WSUS 2.0 environment to 3.0.  It’s going to be FUN.  Can you believe I just said that?  Hell no.  You didn’t.  It will though.  WSUS is one of few server apps that’s actually a breeze to setup and fun to use.  Not messy and ugly like MOM or SMS.  Yes.  As much as I’ve loved SMS over the years, I have to say she is a high-maintenance partner.  Great features, long hours sitting beside her telling her how pretty she looks, how thin she looks, etc.  System Center 2007 will be a little better, but still a ways off from what I envision it could be.  SCE is more like it, but alas, economic factors have caged that beast in the same way SBS was caged.  Can’t play in our “enterprise” playground, not allowed.

Anyhow, the O’s had their submarine pitcher on the mound last inning, which is always weird to watch.  Sort of like watching someone with a palsy attack in front a stadium of people.  As weird as it is though, most sub-pitchers I’ve seen rarely make that much of a difference unless they’re pulled out in a pinch for a specific batter.  General/liberal use of them doesn’t work.  Oh well. My 2cents (my blog too, heh).

Back to reading and marking up.  Oh yeah, the phone is due for a ring any second now…