Nike + Apple = much more enjoyable and rewarding exercise!

Recently I decided to renew my efforts to exercise daily, motivated by a new program at work and repeated reminders from my better half about how important it is. I’m using an iPod nano and the very cool Apple + Nike Sport Kit to make the experience far more enjoyable.

Besides getting to listen to whatever suits my mood as I stride along a nice voice updates me with progress reports and congratulates me when I’m done. After I get home and cool down I just connect the Nano to my Macintosh and it automatically downloads the distance, time, and such and transfers it to the Nike Plus web site where I can track my exercise and compare my stats against the other people who have joined the Challenge.

It’s a great way to get immediate gratification and at the same time add some remote peer pressure for those times when there are plenty of more attractive options than strolling around on a hot, humid August night. So that I remain motivated as the time goes on I’ve decided to add a neat little widget to this blog that shares my latest stats with you in the sidebar. As you can tell, I’m no marathoner or sprinter, but I’m getting to listen to good music and greet the neighborhood cats that prowl the streets during my late evening walks.

Cookie opens her eyes and ponders her new world.

Cookie, our surprise kitten, recently turned five weeks old, which is the age that her Mother, Tootsie, came to live with us. Tootsie’s full name is of course “Tootsie Roll,” and we decided that her daughter needs a middle name, too. It didn’t take long to decide that “Cookie Dough” was a natural fit.

This kitten has obviously benefited from being the only diner at Mom’s since she’s grown almost daily. I don’t have a current picture handy so I’ll post this one that was taken when she was about 10 days old and had just opened her eyes.

New kitten Cookie and new Mom Tootsie pose for a picture on the day the kitten was born.

It’s been more than a long time since I’ve posted anything to Rancho Chase. Life has been hectic and time has been short.

I got a surprise call at work last Friday from my daughter who breathlessly shrieked “Daddy! Tootsie had a kitten!” about three times before I understood her. Even after I did I had to get confirmation from my wife that the news was real.

Sure enough our youngest black cat is now a Mother.

We adopted Tootsie (the new Mom) at 5 weeks of age from neighbors who rescued her from the side of the road after seeing her thrown from a car and crossing 2 lanes of traffic to safety.

The kitten is black, orange, and white, and our vet has advised that the chance of it being a female are about 99.9%. Alison has named the kitten “Cookie” and declared there’s no way anyone else can adopt it.

Tootsie first surprised us by being in the family way without our knowledge and now amazes us with her mothering skills and constant devotion to her baby. Prior to the kitten’s arrival Tootsie has always been aloof and wary, which we’ve been told may be due to not being with her Mother long enough to learn social skills.

If you are even a casual blogger you’ve invested a lot of time and thought into composing words and pictures you want to share. You may think that because you’ve published them to a remote server they are safe and secure and invulnerable to loss. Look closely at the terms of the agreements you have with your host and chances are you will discover that none of them will guarantee the safety of your data nor accept responsibility if it is lost. Things like redundant disk arrays and backup power generators reduce the likelihood of data loss, but if your blog is suddenly wiped clean and replaced with propaganda by a hacker from Turkey are you ready to restore it?

When Steve Jobs introduced Time Machine (the automatic backup feature of the Leopard operating system) he said that 26 percent of users ever back up any data at all, and less than four percent regularly back up their data using any kind of automated system. Since many bloggers publish their content on remote systems they believe are safe and secure from danger I suspect the percentage probably isn’t much higher for blog authors, even if collectively they may be considered more technically astute.

So when I discovered a beta testing opportunity with BlogBackupOnline I didn’t hesitate to give it a try. My blog writing is sporadic, rather than prolific, but I don’t want to imagine a situation where all of a sudden years of writing are gone. Having more than one blog is another complication when you consider how you are going to keep everything backed up.

Fortunately, BlogBackupOnline handles multiple blogs (even on different blogging services or software) with aplomb and in minutes you can configure an automatic backup of your content that includes pictures. Best of all, the service is free for up to 50 MB in content, with quite reasonable premium rates (49.95 a year) for more space and additional options. BlogBackupOnline includes helpful features like allowing you to export your backup files in case you want to migrate your blog to a new host or store a copy for safekeeping.

When I needed tech support for an issue I was having their email response was prompt, personalized (not a cut and paste answer from an FAQ), and solved my problem.

BlogBackupOnline is just now ending their beta test but continues to offer up to 50MB of backup space absolutely free, so if you haven’t set up automatic backups of your blog content, I encourage you to take advantage of their service now and get rid of that worry for good.