Settlers of Catan

Settlers of Catan is the hot new boardgame. I read about it in Wired magazine (here) and it's time to buy.

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Complain to Gain - Assertiveness is good

We all know this. There are sayings, e.g. "The squeaky wheel gets the grease." "Stand up for yourself," "Fight for your rights." It is nice to see some reinforcement of this though. Here are a couple of recent examples from my family. Not long ago, we went to a restaurant in Dublin, California called Stacey's at Waterford. (Scott Adams of Dilbert fame is one of the owners). During the course of a very pleasant meal, everyone had basically finished but one. The waitress came to remove the plates and took all but the one plate. Etiquette 101 says not to do this because the slow eater in the bunch then feels rushed. After we got home, my wife called the restaurant back to point this out to the manager (we did not want to make a fuss at the restaurant). We weren't looking for anything, but at the end, the manager ended up sending us a coupon for money off on our next visit. This worked for us, because we got some cash equivalent, and it worked for them...
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Health and Diet Update June 08

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Here is my current weight loss progress. It has been going great, but in early May I hit a bit of a plateau, so I decided to shock my system with a PSMF diet as outlined in the Rapid Fat Loss Handbook . You can see from the chart that it restarted my weight loss and I hit 200 in the first week of June. I am now tapering off that diet and I will work towards a more moderate loss of about 0.5 - 1 lb per week while working harder on my fitness regimen. I hope to get down to about 180 by the end of the year. I think a good target weight range for me is 180 to 185 lbs. I had a physical about a month ago and had a lot of good news. My blood pressure had been in the high range, pushing hypertension for several years. It was in the 140-150 over 90-100 range. In early May it was 124/70. That is darn close to good on the systolic and the lowest diastolic I have ever had. I also did the full blood workup and those results were very encouraging too. My triglycerides, which had been extremely hig...
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Anthropogenic Global Warming

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I will call people who believe in anthropogenic global warming (AGW), warmists, those who are less certain, denialists. I hope it insults both sides equally. My BS degree is in earth science. I work for an oil company. I believe in the scientific method. I believe that government has a legitimate role to play in society. I am not a Neanderthal. I have biases. Some may think that because I work for an oil company, I desperately want to see the warmists fail. Look, I'm too close to retirement for anything that happens now to have an effect on my personal earnings or career, so I don't think that comes into play. And by the way, I live on this planet. If humans are doing something to damage the planet, I want it to stop. I want us to take action to fix and reverse the harm. I may be retiring within fifteen years, but I hope to live a lot longer than that, and I want my kids to inherit a good place. I have read a lot about the science, politics, and economics of the CO2/glob...
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