To help out a podcast at my work that was doing a series on apps to help people be happier, healthier, wealthier and more productive, I volunteered to try out Pact for a month. And in honor of the New Year, I decided to write a review for Rampant Discourse. So here are my impressions after 4 weeks (and running) using Pact, the app that claims to let you “Earn…
As part of New Year’s Resolution Week at Rampant Discourse, I thought I would mention a few things I like that help lead to a healthier life and meet your healthy New Year’s resolutions. Hydro Flask I love ice cold water. Ever since I was a kid, I would fill my glass up to the very top with ice, leaving barely any room for water because I wanted to make sure that the water…
Well, the Xbox Fitness Challenge is over. Not entirely. In a bizarre decision from Microsoft, despite the official “sunset” date being on June 30, 2017, the Xbox Fitness team has discontinued two of its oldest, most varied and most substantive workout routines over 6 months early: Mossa and 10 Minute Solution. Together, they represent a total of 33 different routines containing workouts ranging from low-impact dance moves to weight-lifting; from…
Note: If you want to read more about the challenge kickoff, check out the Xbox Fitness Challenge Kickoff post. Now I know why people choose to start exercise and diet changes as New Year’s resolutions instead of kicking it off in November. I absolutely don’t want to make excuses, but here are the “challenges” that I faced sticking with my plan for November: The change of season means coming down with…
It’s been a few weeks since the election, and a few interesting narratives have seemed to pop up surrounding what, exactly, happened. I thought it might be interesting to dig into a few of them, and add a few more thoughts that I’ve had since the election. Note: The majority of data used below comes from CNN exit polls along with the Wikipedia articles on the results of the 2012 and…
I love my job, but my commute is less than ideal. It’s about an hour to and an hour from work. That’s a lot of time stuck behind the wheel of a car during the course of a week. I probably spend more time commuting each week than I spend doing anything else beyond sleeping and working. In fact, I estimate I’ve spent roughly 5% of my life commuting during the…
Apparently the hot new thing to protest the upcoming presidential administration is to donate to Planned Parenthood in Mike Pence’s name. Why? Because Planned Parenthood sends certifications to the donor’s address to thank them for their donation, so those certificates are getting sent to Mike Pence’s address. And Pence holds anti-abortion views and believes federal funds should be cut off to organizations such as Planned Parenthood. It’s clever. People get to…
Wow. It somehow seems fitting that in an election that has been unconventional in every way, it ends with a tremendous upset. If a lifelong Democrat who is on the record as being anti-gun, pro-choice and openly disdainful of members of the military can win the Republican nomination, why can’t that same person win the presidency by doing everything “wrong” and seemingly insulting every non-white, non-male group of people? It doesn’t…
For those who don’t know, Xbox Fitness was a free app that was launched with the Xbox One that took advantage of the system’s Kinect peripheral to track the user’s movements and grade how well they were following the exercises and provide helpful advice on how to improve. Users earned Fitness Points for each exercise done, and completing certain challenges rewarded users with stamps that helped them earn new fitness cards….
With the Trump campaign seemingly self-destructing before our eyes, it doesn’t seem necessary to sell a ticket of two successful Republican governors to conservatives looking for a better option. However, it might surprise people to know that polling has shown that the Gary Johnson campaign pulls support fairly evenly from Trump and Clinton. It shouldn’t be a surprise, though, as there are a number of liberal issues where Clinton is actually pretty conservative and where Gary…