Steve’s TV show death count for this season now stands at five.
The roster: Smith, Daybreak, Justice (which I’m not disappointed about due to bad acting and some lousy plots), Vanished (also not disappointed about since the acting was so bad, but with only four episodes left, why not finish it?), and now Drive. See the TV Guide story on Drive.
It’s too bad I can’t get those hours of my life back. 
DAMMIT!!!!!!!!
I was right. One of those instances where I hate being right. The course was short by about 390 feet, or thanks to Kevin G using me as an example on the message board (see the thread), I ran about a 19:24 - four seconds off a PR.
OK. I feel a little better now getting that out of my system. Time to move on. Grrr… [fade out]
A short boring race report, since it was only a 5K.
The early morning temperatures weren’t looking good for Karen and Victoria to come with me, but things warmed up a bit as the sun came up and I convinced them to come out. We brought Daisy with us, but it was more of a treat for her since she got to see large spaces of grass and many, many people. I missed this race last year since I was getting married that day (yes, today, April 22, is my anniversary), but the field has definitely grown. Enough so that a chip time is needed; normally local 5Ks are small enough that it’s not necessary.
I went through a fairly normal warmup and didn’t feel too much one way or the other - decidedly neutral since I had not really raced since November. Plus, my running schedule had been sporadic at best all winter and the recent mid-April cold snap wasn’t helping me any. I went out behind a large group of people who clearly didn’t belong that far forward; another drawback to charity-related races - too many people too far forward who get in the way. And no, there’s no kind way to put that.
Anyway, mile 1 flew by in 5:51. A bit of history: when I have noticed myself starting that fast, I would slow down on purpose since I knew I couldn’t hold that pace for the entire 5K. This time, I didn’t purposely slow down since I was feeling pretty good. It’s just that it didn’t seem like a 5:51 mile; I wasn’t working as hard as I thought I should have been to hit that number. Another thing that always got me on the out and back course is slowing down heading into the U-turn and then getting back on pace where I was before. I always managed to mess that up by not getting back to my original pace. But, Mile 2 in 6:00. I must have been doing something right.
I was trying to concentrate on staying close to the people in front of me. At least they had writing on their shirts so I could focus on that. Mile 3 (yes, there was a marker there) in 6:19. Holy cow, I could PR! I hit the line at 18:57, good for a 23 second PR!
The first thought after was: was that right? Could I have possibly PR’ed? Was the course short? The reasons for my skepticism were that: (1) I hadn’t been putting in the workouts that would result in a PR; winter runs were purely maintenance and I haven’t done any speed work in a long time and (2) I didn’t think I could PR by that much! I figured it would be a 5-10 second drop and I welcomed any incremental improvement.
I’m still really excited by this. Now I need to take that (whatever the heck “that” might be) over to Broad Street in two weeks and see if I can PR there (previous best, 1:06:10 in 2002). I’m going to need some help with that, so if there’s anyone who’s looking to run a 6:30 pace (or slightly faster) for Broad Street, please let me know.
20070083467 Partial encryption techniques for media data 
(22 pages)
Partial encryption still makes a media file useless to a potential thief, as the encrypted portion affects the whole file; e.g., you can’t play a partially encrypted song without it being interrupted. Plus, partial encryption is faster to decrypt.
20070080945 Mouse having a button-less panning and scrolling switch (18 pages)
Mouse that has different modes of operation based on how it is held by the user. These claims are related to switching operation modes of the mouse based on the user’s hand position. See discussion of a related issued patent.
20070080938 Method and apparatus for use of rotational user inputs (17 pages)
Scrolling through lists on an iPod. Claims are directed to a device and method that allows rotational input (i.e., the scroll wheel on an iPod). (Priority to February 25, 2002.)
20070080936 Method and apparatus for accelerated scrolling (26 pages)
Scrolling through lists on an iPod. Claims are directed to scrolling through portions of a data set. (Priority to February 25, 2002.)
20070080823 Techniques for pairing remote controllers with host devices (20 pages)
Pairing the Apple Remote with a computer. In general terms, only the paired remote can control the computer.
Just wondering why none of the characters, even the minor ones (like the briefly seen and quickly discarded Nicki and Paolo (who?)), are nihilists. Why hasn’t anyone just completely lost it (no pun intended) and gone ape-shit nuts and started destroying everything and then commit suicide? Or something like that? Yes, I know that wouldn’t be very Disney-like, but so what? Isn’t odd that all of the survivors seem, for the most part, to have adjusted to living on the island? I’ll discount Locke who obviously never wants to leave. Maybe we’ll see tonight; though I doubt that very much.
We got a puppy about a week and a half ago. Her name is Daisy Mae. She is a miniature pinscher mix (mixed with what, we don’t know).
Anyway, from time to time (mostly after coming in from going to the bathroom), she gets the “puppy crazies” where she runs around like a loon for a few minutes. Tonight, she went into the spare bedroom and got under the bed. She was barking her head off, darting out from under the bed for a second, and then going back. It took Karen and I a few minutes to finally drag her out from under there.
I use Akismet to block comment spam on here, and I always do a quick review of the comments ID’ed as spam just in case something relevant just stuck in there (it happened once, so I’ll take the time waste and quickly scroll through the list). Tonight I noticed that most of the comment spam was about insurance products. How lame. I can’t even attract a good level of porn-related spam. 
7,203,778 Method and system for notifying clients of a specific change in a data processing system (12 pages)
Method and system for USB device notification.
Title: Graphical user interface for computers having variable size icons
Patent application publication number: 20070079255 (12 pages)
Publication date: April 5, 2007
Filing date: December 8, 2006 (priority to January 5, 2000)
AIPW Summary: This is a divisional of another application (this link won’t show you the actual application; just that it exists), which should be issuing in a few weeks. (Note: This link might not work. I noticed an issue with it; something funky with accessing file histories at the USPTO.) The earlier application was filed prior to the time the USPTO started publishing applications, which is why it was not published (and why you can’t look at a copy electronically just yet). From a brief look at the file history of that case (which I’ll review in more detail once the patent issues), it went through the ringer to get issued.
This application is about resizing icons in a GUI based on a user’s preference or predetermined characteristics. Resizing an icon based on its importance makes the icon’s importance clearer than using labels. For example, Figure 3 shows folders that increase in size based on the number of items in the folder. Figure 4 shows an application icon larger than the other icons; this change is based on user preferences. Figure 5 shows an example of a data structure that can be used to track information about the icons shown on the screen, including the sizes of the icons. By using different values in the data structure, the different icon sizes can be represented, such as predetermined sizes, user-designated relative sizes, or user-designated absolute sizes (see paragraphs 0036-0038).
When displaying the icons, they are sorted based on the characteristic to be applied. The maximum and minimum characteristic values are located and those values are used to base the sizes of the largest and smallest icons. Any other icons with similar characteristics are scaled to fit between the maximum and minimum sizes based on the characteristic value. This permits dynamic resizing of icons based on the underlying characteristics. (See paragraphs 0041-0043.) Based on the icon sizes, the gap between the icons is calculated (paragraphs 0045-0046).
The claims cover assigning relative sizes to the icons based on an underlying object characteristic, such as number of items assigned to an object (e.g., folders) or memory used by the object.
20070079027 Audio status information for a portable electronic device (16 pages)
Audio feeback for user interface actions while using an iPod.
20070076378 Thermal contact arrangement (14 pages)
A thermal contact arrangement between a processor and a heat sink.
20070076254 Centralized queue in network printing systems (11 pages)
A method for reserving a spot in a printer queue without sending the actual print job over the network with the print request.