Author Archives: gmcdavid

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About gmcdavid

Retired IT professional with a wide range of interests. Married. Three sons, two with autistic-spectrum disorders and the third being transgender with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. From Chicago but now living in the Twin Cities metro, Minnesota. Episcopalian. Carleton College (BA 1972, physics) and Stanford University (MS 1974, Applied Physics; MS 1976 Statistics).

Mercury in free fall

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I am not referring to the planet, although that is also (and always) true.

I posted before about the temperatures on December 15 and this past Tuesday.
This morning I saw a thermometer reading -22oF/-30oC.

However my car, a ’95 Ford Escort, was still able to start. There was a bus waiting at the Park-and-ride, and it stopped downtown across the street from a Skyway entrance. So my total exposure to the weather was probably under 5 minutes.

I just checked the forecast. It may be a full 17oF/9oC warmer when I go home!

Exercise and dance: Some numbers

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I wore my pedometer all day today. It has several scales on it, including calories used. Figuring that Playford and similar dances are basicly walking, I recorded the numbers before and after colgaffneyis dance session this evening. The pedometer reports that my walking today expended 665 calories. 99 of those were during dance. Furthermore, though I walked over 2300 steps during dance (not just dancing, but also the general hanging around), I was not active enough for a continuous period for any of those 2300+ to count as aerobic exercise. The pedometer reports that I managed 5543 aerobic steps today over a total of 40 minutes, which must have come from walking the skyway over lunch hour.

Yes, I know: All of these figures about calories and aerobic exercise are rough approximations. However, they are all I have got, and far more than I had before.