I’m loving life with my treadmill desk.  It’s hard to imagine all those hours I spent sitting before.

After 2 months of honing my typing-while-walking skills, I’m up to 1.8 mph, and averaging 8 miles a day.

It’s pretty awesome.

-Nick

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Didn’t make it.  On the one hand, I didn’t do a good enough job convincing myself my arbitrary prohibition mattered.  On the other hand, I’m just weak.

-Nick

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The Great Wall was even cooler than expected (and it was expected to be awesome), because in the late afternoon, we had the whole place to ourselves.

With the setting sun and the rolling hills, it was pretty magical.

Despite the vast length of the wall, it’s track record as a defensive monument was spotty.  Apparently some traitorous (or just scared) guard opened the gate for Genghis Khan.

Well worth the trip.

Did You Know?

The Great Wall is not “the only man-made structure visible from space.”  (Consider the fact that any two-lane highway is wider.)  But if you zoom in far enough on Google Earth, you can see it.

-Nick

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Bryn and I returned safe and sound from our China trip.  Came down with a little bug toward the end but seem to be on the mend now.

We got an amazing deal through TravelZoo with a company called China Spree.  Like, airfare, hotel, meals, and the whole week’s worth of tours were less than the published price of just the flight.  It was too good to pass up, but we were slightly worried it was some sort of scam.  Turns out China Spree exceeded all expectations.  The only catch was it’s freezing in Beijing in January.

I was wary of being part of a tour group as we normally like to explore on our own.

I could learn to love it.

You just show up and everything is taken care of!  Kind of takes the adventure out of it, but I suppose that’s ok when time is limited.

Beijing First Impressions

Air China

I was pleasantly surprised by the leg room on Air China.  Especially given the general disregard for personal space everywhere else, this was a nice bonus.

Air You Can’t See Through

According to the US Embassy, the air quality during our first day in Beijing included readings of:

• “Hazardous”
• “Beyond Index” (off the charts?)
• “Very Unhealthy”

Thankfully it cleared up a bit after that, and eventually reached “Unhealthy”, “Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups,” “Moderate”, and even “Good”.

It looks like fog, but you only wish it was water vapor you were breathing in.

The cars were coated in a thick layer of atmospheric nast.  One study found the lung cancer rate in Beijing up 60% over the last 10 years, even while the smoking rate remained flat.

Chairman Mao

The communist leader gets much better treatment in Chinese histories.  We’re more familiar with the horrific stories of his mass-murdering millions of his own citizens.

Our tour guide explained that her parents were Mao-supporters, but also acknowledged his track record was probably “50-50″ at best.

In the West, the true hero of modern China is Deng Xiaoping, whose economic reforms lifted hundreds of millions from poverty.

Euro-Centric Education

In visiting China, you realize how little you know about the world’s most populous country.  In school, it’s all Egypt and Mesopotamia, then on to Greece and Rome.  There’s a short mention about Eastern civilizations in India and China, but the most they cover is typically the invention of gunpowder.

And Marco Polo makes a visit.

Facebook is Banned

A national firewall (“The Great Firewall”) prevents access to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WordPress, and more.  The communist party still fears open access to information (as a threat to their legitimacy?).

Socialism or Communism?

Interestingly, our guide kept referring to China as a socialist country. PotAYto PotAHto right?

-Nick

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Giving up alcohol for a month might be tough, especially with all the delicious Christmas beers I brought home. But I think I’m overdue for a little detox.

I really don’t have a problem with a drink or two or ten every now and then.  It’s more about proving to myself I don’t need it, rather than any holier-than-thou self deprivation.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

-Nick

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Happy New Year!

Sorry for the outage, apparently there were some database issues over the holidays at Bluehost.  As a result I lost all my search engine rankings for the site, so hopefully those come back now that it’s fixed.  Thankfully the site isn’t moneymaker, otherwise that would be really bad.

There are some things I’d like to get done this year.  Maybe posting them publicly will make me more accountable.

Side note: goals are different from resolutions, in that goals are “SMART‘.

1. Cook Dinner Once a Week

I’ve been super spoiled by Bryn’s cooking for the last few years.  It’s time I start helping out more.

2. End the Year With 10% Less Stuff

“What you own owns you.”  So true.  This has led to an inventory project, to be discussed later.

3. Figure Out What To Do With Our Townhouse (and do it)

I’ve made some poor financial decisions, but buying property in 2007 was BY FAR the worst.  According to Zillow, we are $135k underwater.  I really like it here, and after almost 5 years it feels like home.  But continuing down this futile and money-wasting path is the opposite of smart.

4. Generate $1000 a Month in Passive Income

I’ll define “passive income” as requiring less than 4-hours of work a week, like a certain book.  Capital gains from investments don’t count, but dividends and interest do.  I have until the end of the year to make this happen, and have a LONG way to go.

I think I’ll try a series of month-long personal “challenges” as well.  Go vegetarian for a month?  Spend a full month traveling?

First up: a Dry January — going the full month without alcohol.

What are your goals for 2012?

-Nick

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Last week I got the idea I wanted a treadmill desk.  They’re kind of trendy right now and apparently sitting like I do for extended periods of time isn’t super healthy.  Bryn sent me a link to this blog post and it looked do-able.  After a couple craiglist acquisitions and a strenuous battle with the stairs, I was in business.

That was the easy part.  When it came to the question of what to do next to actually build the thing, I wasn’t sure where to start.  (Not handy, remember?)  Thankfully my engineer wife jumped right in.

It was determined a cutout needed to me made to fit the desk part over the treadmill control panel.  Here she is creating a carefully measured posterboard template of the hole.

After testing the template, we were ready to cut.  Only one problem — no power tools.  It was Simon to the rescue!  We interrupted Mr Handyman from his far-more-ambitious Pergola-building-project to help with our desktop-cutout.

Using an impressive array of power tools (well, impressive to us — really only a small fraction of his collection), we soon had put a hole in a perfectly good desk.  He even let me help, and not just for the picture :)

I made some nerd joke about how this isn’t the kind of router I normally work with.

After that, it was routine Ikea allen-wrench construction.  I knew I was hanging onto that 10-year-old monitor for a reason.

It’s kind of addicting to see how many calories you can rack up just walking and doing my normal work.  So far this week I’ve set it to 1 mph for a leisurely stroll.  I’m embarrassed to admit I was definitely sore the first couple days.   Just standing for a length of time I’d normally sit is a challenge.  I’m doing 3-5 miles a day, and hope to improve on that as time goes by.

Productivity is up 17%.

-Nick

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Bryn and I have been sitting on a gift certificate for indoor skydiving at iFly ever since our wedding.  We finally got around to using it last Friday — thanks Christy & Brian!

The set-up is basically a vertical wind-tunnel, with wind up to 180 mph to simulate a real free fall.  It doesn’t really compare with the adrenaline rush of the real thing (WA, 2005, 2006), but was still pretty fun.  You get more actual airtime, and your risk of dying is significantly lower.

But I was actually pretty nervous to get in the chamber.  Why?  The release form specifically asks if you’ve had a shoulder dislocation in the past.  I usually just skip over the medical questions for these types of activities, but that was a very specific and very recent incident to be asking about.  To make matters worse, when I owned up to the fact I indeed had such an injury, the front desk staff strongly advised against my flying.

Well with a month left of free health insurance, I figured I’d give it a shot anyway, and it turned out to not be a problem at all.  I think if we advanced beyond the beginner wind-speed or started doing stunts with sudden changes in resistance it would have hurt more, but thankfully we did not and there were no repeat dislocations.

Here’s Bryn flying:

Good form.

It was pretty cool.  I think if you wanted to get into doing flying stunts and stuff, this would be a great place to practice.  After each group went through, the instructors had a minute or two to showoff and it was fun to watch.

-Nick

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1. Happy and healthy family
2. Great friends
3. Still self-employed
4. Not commuting to Nevada
5. Passport stamps, current and future
6. Huskies going bowling
7. Snow in the mountains
8. Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoe shoppers
9. Blog readers

Happy Thanksgiving!  What are you thankful for this year?

-Nick

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You know how everyone looks like a goof riding a Segway?  Turns out they don’t care, because it’s awesome.  We played tourist in SF last weekend, thanks to Bryn and her savvy Groupon-ing.

Look, no hands!

Along the route we learned some interesting trivia, some of which was even new to semi-locals like us.

• In a period of 8 months in 1849, San Francisco’s population grew from 500 people to over 100,000.
• Upon arriving in port, ship captains could lose their entire crew to gold fever.  To recruit new crewmembers, they would go to the taverns and restaurants and look for big guys eating with their elbows on the table, which apparently was a habit of sailors to keep their meal in one place on a rough sea.  The captains would get these former sailors good and drunk and essentially kidnap them to work on the ship.  Eventually people caught on and mothers began to warn their children to keep their elbows off the table.
• Much of the Embarcadero and Fisherman’s Wharf area is built on fill and abandoned ships.
• Because of this, the name of the now-landlocked neighborhood of North Beach makes much more sense.
• Joe DiMaggio grew up and learned to play baseball in North Beach.  He and Marilyn Monroe got married at City Hall, just like us.
• Domingo Ghirardelli and Levi Strauss were buddies.
• In a time before OSHA and harnesses, several workers building the Golden Gate bridge fell to their deaths, so eventually they put up a safety net.  The net saved 17 more.
• No Great Whites have been spotted in San Francisco Bay in over 50 years.  They prefer the saltier water beyond the Golden Gate.
• Pier 39 is the 3rd most visited tourist attraction in the US, behind Disneyworld and Times Square.
• The seal lions didn’t start lounging there until after the 1989 earthquake.

I fact-checked none of this.

-Nick

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