Sweet product warranty

Here's the amusing warranty from my new Skullcandy headphones I bought for running today.  I didn't see this until I got home, but now I'm confident I made a great choice.

LIMITED LIFETIME PRODUCT WARRANTY - Skullcandy is proud to provide the best product warranty in the industry.  If this product should fail in your lifetime, we will replace it at no charge.  If the product is damaged by aggressive music listeners sliding a rail, sliding down the emergency ramp of your aircraft, slammed in your locker, slammed in your car door, run over by a car, running into a wall, getting run out of town, mountain biking, road biking, sky diving, beating your boyfriend unmercifully, getting beat down by the man, blown up in an accidental experimentation with flammable substances, or damaged in any other every day experience, it means you are living your life the way we want our product used!  In these, or in any other damaging events, we will replace the product for a 50% discount from retail.  Love Skullcandy.

It's very cool when a company stands by its products, hopefully these will last longer than my last pair.  I do find it very interesting that a company can get away with writing "beating your boyfriend unmercifully".  Imagine the uproar if they switched boy with girl?

Don't Mess with Texas!

Texans sure are proud of their state, but with Rick Perry putting it in the spotlight and many in depth articles being written about its policies lately, I can only hope that our country learns from their mistakes and doesn't mess with Texas and Perry. The Boston Globe had an interesting (but long, read here) article today on the state of medical coverage and care in Texas.  Almost 1 out of 3 working age adults (32%) in Texas have no health insurance, compared to 7% in Mass and 22% in the US.  In addition, 16.8% of children 18 and under have no insurance.  Overall, Texas has the highest rate of uninsured people in the country (24.6%), a number which has grown by 35% in the 11 year tenure of Rick Perry.

So what is Texas doing about all of this?  Cutting funding and getting fatter!  According to the Globe article, in the last legislative session that ended in May, the state cut two thirds of the funding for women's health clinics and underfunded Medicaid by almost $4 billion, in addition to cutting hospital reimbursements.  With Texas trending to providing less preventative care and service availability and also getting more and more obese each year, things do not look good.

Runners are all a little crazy

I've recently struggled with what makes someone a "runner" and I know my friends and family have certainly wondered what would ever motivate someone to willingly put themselves through so much pain, but I think I'm starting to find some answers. I started running seriously about three years go, mostly as a great stress reliever and way to stay in shape for the other sports I enjoy. Over these three years I've slowly acquired some nice running gear (thank you South Boston Running Emporium and REI) and began to talk the runner's lingo, but was still hesitant to ever call myself a "runner".  I have generally stayed away from races because in my mind they took something that was peaceful and relaxing (an evening run down by the beach after a stressful day at work) and turned it into something that consisted of a lot of pain during and after the race.  So why mix something relaxing with a race that will only bring out my strong competitive tendencies and result in lots of pain?

This weekend I participated in the NH Reach the Beach team running relay race.  Essentially, teams of 4-12 runners run 200 miles from the mountains of NH to the Atlantic Ocean in around 24 hours of non-stop running, a pretty crazy idea if you ask me.  My team of 12 had a great time running and did far better than anticipated (17th out of 138 teams in our division!), but for me this race was meaningful because of what I learned:  what it means to be a "runner" and that I now am willing to consider myself one.

Unlike other sports I enjoy that have periods of rest and those with max exertion, running a race requires constant physical and mental exertion and in most cases lots of pain.  Somewhere in my 2nd leg (~7 miles long), as I struggled through the pain of an injury I've been battling lately, I found myself finding even more from within to keep pushing myself harder to get that next "kill" (passing another runner).  This strength didn't come from my teammates, the scoreboard, or the desire to impress anybody, but rather from the sick enjoyment I get from pushing my body to new extremes to see what it is capable of doing.  Our bodies are unbelievable machines and I'm slowly realizing that if I take care of it I can push myself harder than I would have ever thought possible.  The rush I get from fulfilling this inner desire is what makes races enjoyable and the pain tolerable.  In my eyes it is what turns someone who simply enjoys running into a "runner".  It also makes me aware of the fact that every runner (myself now included) is a little bit crazy.

Here's a shot I took from the race, just as the sun was rising after a long night of running and barely sleeping.  Definitely, this moment was one of the highlights of the race and summer 2011:

Upgrade your browser!!!

One of the applications I just delivered at work ran into a "performance issue" today, and in researching the explanation I came across this nifty little chart, courtesy of Microsoft.  High numbers are really, really bad and if you use sites like Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, or pretty much any other site popular today it probably would perform much better if you used Internet Explorer 9.0, Firefox 6, Google Chrome, or Safari instead of Internet Explorer 8.0. So, as a friendly reminder to any of you non-tech readers, go upgrade your browser!

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/benchmarks/sunspider/Default.html