I worked from home today, and edited pretty much all day and all night.
At E-Ching and David’s Chinese New Year party yesterday, I had a conversation with another of their friends named John, about how in Disney World in January, we were asked to put our finger in one scanner while our ticket was being scanned in another.
I just assumed, and really didn’t like the idea, that they were taking my fingerprint. After our discussion yesterday, I googled the practice, where to my surprise I found that they are not taking the standard fingerprint (which is good news), but “recording onto tickets the geometry and shape of visitors’ fingers to prevent ticket fraud or resale, as an alternative to time-consuming photo identification checks.”
| “It’s essentially a technology upgrade,” said Kim Prunty, spokeswoman for Walt Disney World. The new scanner, like the old finger geometry scanner, “takes an image, identifies a series of points, measures the distance between those points, and turns it into a numerical value.”
She added, “To call it a fingerprint is a little bit of a stretch.” |
Here is the article—Walt Disney World: The Government’s Tomorrowland?—in its entirety if you’re interested in further details.
While working out, I keep seeing commercials—on the gazillion TVs strung across the place—for the show Lost.
Though I haven’t had a television for (coming up in March, who’s counting) six years, I have heard of this show, basically just knowing that it is wildly popular.
What I don’t understand, from the several commercials that I’ve seen for it, is how the people on this island restock the ammunition to fire the many guns that always seem to be going off in these previews.
Actually, I don’t even know where they are lost. For some reason, I’m assuming it’s an island somewhere, but perhaps it just the history of the three-hour tour gone bad that’s clouding my vision. Perhaps they’re on some planet where ammunition grows wild.
I know my dad, a 30-year veteran of the Unites States Marine Corps, would at the very least grunt at this, and at the very worst, go ballistic over it. Berkeley vs. the Marines: The city of Berkeley, California, told the Marines that their recruiting office was not welcome there. It is rather hard to believe.
Juxtaposed to that, for comic relief—an excerpt from a friend of mine’s blog with this exchange while buying a cup of coffee at his local McDonald’s:
| Little girl behind the counter asked, “Do you want sugar and cream?”
I said, “Yes.” She asked, “How much of each?” I told her, “Sweeter than Rupaul and lighter than Beyoncé.” She said, “You know dat ain’t right?” |
I spoke with my parents today for the first time in probably a month-and-a-half. My dad sounded great, which is very unusual, and very welcome.
My mom said, “I was just thinking about you guys in church yesterday. ‘Here I am praying for my kids, and I haven’t talked to them in so long.'”
I asked her if she’s doing anything for her birthday (coming up on March 1st), and she said, “Nah, we’re too old to do anything for our birthdays anymore. We’re going to go out for some filet mignon on Valentine’s Day, as that’ll be 60 years since the day your father and I met each other.”
This is news to me; I had no idea they met on Valentine’s Day, and I had no idea that they evidently dated for 4-5 years before they got married, because they’ll be celebrating their 55th wedding anniversary in September. Surely, they had some nooky with each other during all that time. [Don’t call me Shirley, and don’t make me think about my parents having sex.]
I went to the gym late tonight—at 8:45. I was going to do an hour’s worth of the elliptical as usual, but decided to stop after 30 minutes, since I’m going to be back there tomorrow morning at 7:30 to meet Kevin (av8rdude). It’s Free Bagel day!
Today’s workout statistics:
Type |
Duration |
Burned |
|
|---|---|---|---|
|
Elliptical |
30 |
555 |
10.9 |
Yay! As stated in yesterday’s entry: “A healthy 50-year-old man should have a capacity of at least 9.2 METs.”
Watch me up and have a stroke tomorrow.