Our last two children have been very slow to get their teeth. I am not saying I mind, the less I get bitten the better. But it is something that we have noticed, and compared to other kids his age, Alex is way behind in that regard. My wife was over at a friends house yesterday. Their youngest is a month or two younger than Big Al, but already has a pretty full set of teeth. I was just teasing, and said that it was because his father was a dentist (now in Orthodontic residency). The...

Subhuman Race By: Skid Row Year: 1995 Click here for the artist's site The late 80's saw a flourishing of glam and hair metal. For better or worse, a number of sissy acts who pretended to use electric guitars came into prominence and forever dirtied the world of metal. Acts like Poison, Motley Crue, and Slaughter capitalized on songs of hedonism and lasciviousness. And they did it all with pretty boy hair, and sometimes even pretty girl makeup. But while glam or hair met...

So in the month or so that I have earnestly been striving to improve my health I have stumbled upon a discovery. I have finally realized how to make it stick. I can't tell you the number of times I have started working out, and gone good for a week or two. Maybe even three. But then it starts to fall apart. And the reason is simple. I was forcing myself to make a change. And when you are forcing yourself to make a change on a daily basis, you just get tired of it. It becomes more ...

Ghost Reveries By: Opeth Year: 2005 Click here for the artists site With the release of "Blackwater Park" Opeth did something that has damaged the careers of many other bands: They released a perfect album. Other bands release what is often considered their greatest work and then spend the rest of their careers trying to recapture that moment. Opeth, wisely, refuses to do that. They have continued to evolve, to experiment, and to craft excellent music. Each new album sin...

This entry will serve as a master index of album reviews here at The Prog Geek. Here you will be able to find all reviews (organized alphabetically by artist, then chronologically by album release) with that albums objective score. I will make sure this stays up to date, and will be found in the sidebar. Agalloch: Ashes Against the Grain  Score: 10/10 Ayreon: The Human Equation Score: 10/10 Between the Buried and Me: Alaska  Score: 8/10 Dream Theater: Octavariu...

Well, as some know, my brother and I have been working on a music blog together called "Progged" . It has been a lot of fun, but to be 100% honest, not too many people stop by, as it can be tough to get much traffic on Blogger blogs unless you have already built up a following. However, I figure that, thank to the system over here at JU, we may get a bit more traffic and interest if we also blog here. So, I have decided that I will revive my old blog group "The Prog Geek" and we can...

I will count this week as a success. In fact, I will count it as a pretty big success. In short, down another 5 pounds, making it a total of 15 for the month of January. But other successes include: I ran 4.5 miles this morning, with a 3 mile split time that was 2 min 30 seconds faster than the 3 miles I ran last week. That was big. I like seeing those kinds of improvements. My pants continue to fit more loose: I can now take off my favorite pair of pants without even unbottoning or...

This week was a frustrating one. Even though I was exhausted I managed to exercise every day. In fact, exercise went very well. Considering that 3 weeks ago I had to force myself to run 5 minutes while on my long walks, the fact that I was able to run 3 continuous miles multiple times encourages me considerably. In fact, my wife and I are planning on doing a 5k together soon. Again, I was able to go up on the weight I was lifting. All good news. However, the frustration results from ...

White male. For many people, that label alone is enough them to hate me. Sticking a label on someone, placing them in a box, and reducing them to less than human makes the antipathy much easier to swallow. Sadly, I speak from personal experience, having been guilty on more than one occasion of reducing a human to a simple label. I felt much better about hating them. Fortunately, we are each multi-faceted beings. So if one label doesn't fit, we can use others. I have many myself: ...

Now that the match is over, and I have successfully secured my place of training for the next six years, I have a confession to make. I didn't do terribly well on step 1 of the USMLE (United States Medical Liscensing Exam), aka 'the boards". Oh, I passed, no question. And quite comfortably too. But I was not in the 99th percentile. There are lots of reasons I could toss out: um, 3 kids, our foster daughter chose that week to run away (for the first time, which was hands down the most...

So, my second full week is over. I am feeling good. I have noticed a definite rise in my stamina when I am working out, as well as a good increase in my maxes while lifting. That is promising. Also, I have dropped another 4.4 pounds, making it 9.4 pounds for the two weeks. One of the big things I wanted from this was to sleep better. Sadly, due to the stress of this past week, with the match and all, I slept terribly. Oh well. Hopefully that will change now that we know the results....

Well, the results are in. I matched!!! (Whew!) Come June, we will be moving to New Hampshire, so I can start residency at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center! Interestingly enough, this was the only interview my wife was able to come on. Cool place, great program and medical center. I can't even begin to tell you how relieved I am.

I love the StumbleUpon extension for Firefox. It is one of the world's greatest time wasters. While stumbling, I came across this little 'game', that is very cool. Clikety, click So far my largest chain reaction is 1290. What can you get?

Ugh, what a week it has been. Not bad, just tense. And this weekend is going to be the worst. Likely one of the most nerve-wracked of my life. I pretty much feel nauseous 24 hours a day these days. See, tomorrow night, at 12:01 am EST (just after midnight early Monday morning), the match results go out. I will be happy with anywhere I end up going. It is the thought of "maybe I didn't match" that is killing me. Urology is a very competitive field, with about 400 people applying th...

So our old desktop box has been acting very buggy lately. I knew it was time to do a clean format, and I was tired of old Windows98 on that machine, so I decided to give Linux a try. I was apprehensive, but thought it could be fun to try a little bit. I was very, very surprised. I have heard both the Linux fanatics and the naysayers, and generally sided with the naysayers. Nevertheless, having now given Linux a fair try I am quite impressed. I originally thought I would try Mepis, s...