Daniel R.

I'm finally feeling like I'm returning to the real world after a multiple day buildup and long weekend spent watching prodigious amounts of television while battling the worst cold I've had in a long time. I frequently suspect that when I over extend myself too much my body fights back and lets a cold in since it knows that will slow me down. Well it worked. I'm completely off my training schedule as even biking to work brings out coughing fits, but thankfully I've still got over a month to get back into the swing of things. Besides generally being lackadaisical when responding to email my hermit nature over the past week only exacerbated the problem. Very tempting to just hit delete all and try an inbox zero.

Tags: email life

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As most of the regular readers of this blog know my big vacation for this year is going to be a trek in Nepal. I've been training for awhile now doing a bunch of different conditioning. I started off with cardiovascular on my bike trainer and doing the stairs at Harvard Stadium. I then rediscovered the beauty of hiking in the Blue Hills after a less than ideal hike up Monadnock. This weekend I returned to Monadnock for a much more enjoyable hike and then ventured up into the White Mountains.

Continue reading "My Kneecaps Hurt" »

Tags: hiking

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan starts off strong but with each major section gets less informative and more autobiographical. This isn't to say that the later sections don't have worthwhile material, it's just that what material they do have is harder to find and not as thought provoking. I suspect if the book had started off with his tales of novice hunting and mushroom gathering I wouldn't have read the rest of it.

The writing style of each major section does match its theme. Which is why I may have found the Industrial (scientific) section the most interesting, while the Pastoral (pseudoscience) less so, and the Personal (new age) a chore to read. Despite the major differences in the quality of the material the book does prompt one to consider where your food comes from.

Continue reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma" »

Tags: book food

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 7:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's hard to believe that it has been almost a month since I finished Sarah Vowell's "The Partly Cloudy Patriot". I know I've had some free time but it is only now that I'm getting around to jotting down my thoughts. This was a lighter read than most and as such it didn't generate as many notes, which has always been my primary motivation for writing about the books I read. I've lost track of the number of times I've done a Google search for something only to end up on my blog having forgotten I'd written down some thought a couple of years ago. Now back to the book. Overall I enjoyed the book but frequently found her writing to come off as whiny.

Continue reading "The Partly Cloudy Patriot" »

Tags: books obama

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some of the first hints about Flex 4 have been posted to the Adobe Open Source site. Great to see the future development of the Flex platform starting off this open.

Tags: flex oss

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 7:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)