Just in case the commenter comes back and finds his comment deleted, I did not intentionally delete the comment just because it was critical of something I wrote. In fact I have never deleted a legit comment on this blog, even the ones calling me a douchebag/fag/tard/etc. I was flipping through the “New comments” pane hitting ‘Mark as spam’ on all the spammers and accidentally the whole legit comment

What the comment said was basically that comparing a 2005 M5 to a brand new car isn’t the proper way to “reset the bar”, and that the Pontiac G8 in the commercial versus the 550 is actually the G8 GT, not the G8 GXP.

While this does change the atmosphere of the G8 v/s BMW 550 argument, it still doesn’t come out in Pontiac’s favor.

The G8 GT *is* better priced, nearly $20k cheaper. And the 0-60/quarter mile numbers are in a dead heat with a BMW 550. However, Pontiac still has just wasted a colossal amount of money trying to go after a market that has no interest in its products.

A person shopping for a $45k-$55k luxury car is not going to cross shop for a $35k-$45k sports car and vice versa. The BMW 550 ( and 5 series in general minus the M5 ) is not even sports minded, and has never been regarded as “sporty”. The 5 series was to fill the gap between sports racer 3 series types and 7 series executive types. What came out was a luxury saloon that would respond at the gas pedal.

Even resetting the argument back to G8 GT versus 550 in terms of engineering puts the BMW miles ahead of the G8 GT.

The GT has the same huge engine with the same absurd power loss. Instead of the 6.2L ‘vette engine that the GXP got, the GT has a 6L that can only push out ~310hp to the wheels versus the 550’s 4.8L that is pushing out ~325 at the wheels. Honestly if they want to declare this as an engineering victory, that 6L behemoth should be running all over the smaller 4.8L in the BMW.

Instead you get performance numbers that are equal, and in most cases slightly in favor of the 550 ( 5.1 0-60 for the BMW versus 5.3 for the GT ).

And in the number that counts, skidpad rating, the 550 pulls around 0.03-0.04 more g than the GT.

But all these numbers mean nothing. The cold hard fact is that Pontiac shoved money into the G8 and an advertising program that went after a superior car and car company, and was promptly skewered in the market. The G8 was one of the worst selling investments in Pontiac history, and production has been cut by 97% as Pontiac starts to pull out the lifeboats. The G8, much like Pontiac, makes a lotta noise, and brings nothing to back it up.

Zed Shaw created an international company called, naturally given Zed Shaw’s ego, Zed Shaw International Inc. The company’s sole purpose was to create ebook PDFs, print and sell them to developers. He had approached Andy, Chris and I to get TehDev articles for reprint, and arranged for us all to fly to HQ in Europe.

Oh yeah, one weird thing about this dream was that Chris actually was my co-worker Steven.

For some odd reason that I can’t remember, Chris/Steven and I ended up missing the flight. Andy called from the plane and let me know that it would be making a touch-an-go stop at the next airport, so we went racing down this four lane highway with the plane right above the car.

Suddenly the plane nosedives and tries to make an emergancy landing on the highway right in front of us. Unfortunately they land a bit too hard, the tires go flying off the plane and it skids across eight lanes of traffic, killing all kinds of people.

As the police show up, Zed Shaw comes to the wreckage and presents evidence that Andy, Chris/Steven and I sabotaged the plane. Chris/Steven is deported to China ( where Steven actually is from ) and is publicly executed for helping crash the plane.

I was sent to a “camp” for adults where all you do is play shotgun tag with these odd, painful barrel clip shotguns.

While hanging out in the camp, I get a package from Andy containing some chipsets, a Skype phone and a soldering gun. The instructions inside told me to activate the phone and save the boards.

After activating the phone, Andy called and told me what he had found out. Apparently Zed Shaw sabotaged the plane and set us up to take the fall so he could gank all our TehDev articles and not have to pay for them. He also wanted us out of the way because we were all superior programmers. Sweet.

The flaw in his plan was that while he was able to make Chris/Steven and I miss the flight, Andy had gotten on and was presumed dead. Being the super genius that he is, Andy had spent the time in hiding, building…. A TIME MACHINE. Sweeeeeet.

Thus the circuit boards with the phone. The schematic that was included allowed me to modify the phone in order to receive calls from Andy’s special headset when he went back in time. Back to the year 1946. Back in time in order to.. wait for it…

Kill Zed Shaw’s dad and cause Zed Shaw to not exist

From here the dream became awesome, and way too long to try and detail out. Basically Andy went back to 1946 and started setting traps for Zed Shaw’s dad to fall into. Unfortunately the first attempt took out a random stranger, who ended up being the father of the owner of my eye doctor office, which instantly caused my eyesight to worsen and made it impossible to see.

The second attempt he accidentally took out GW Bush’s grandfather and caused the entire US to change. The third attempt was the charm: setting a piano up 5 stories and dropping it on Zed Shaw’s dad. Mission Accomplished.

Chris/Steven instantly reappeared, I ended up suddenly on a golf course in Florida wearing coke-bottle glasses, and Andy became the millionaire owner of Andy’s International Inc.

Best. Dream. Evar.

Using military resources for a cheap photo-op. Scaring the pants off the public. Exploiting 9/11 imagery for self-aggrandizement. Keeping secrets and causing mass panic.
Um, can you imagine if a GOP administration did this?
Can you imagine?!

There are just no words. Apparently the last eight years are a happy void in her mind.

Michelle’s adorable readers shared their stories of heroics and oppression from the protests, like this gem from chotii:

Lots and lots and LOTS of cars honked and waved and thumbs-upped. The guys driving big rigs (garbage trucks, 18 wheelers, UPS-sized vans and so forth) seemed to be uniformly glad to honk their approval. Even one public bus driver did!

…

A lot of people tried to pretend we weren’t there. The people in hybrids and SmartCars seemed especially likely to try to make believe we didn’t exist.

OMG those hippies in hybrids and Smartcars, who are receiving tax breaks and spending less on gas, didn’t notice a couple of hundred people standing around on the sidewalks and parroting GOP rhetoric? Shame!

Of course the entire thing was non-partisan and just about taxes. It was covered evenly across media outlets and definitely was a grassroots campaign. /sarcasm

I mean, let’s look at how the media reported on the protests:

• Fox News Corporation — 133 mentions( Over Fox News and Fox Business )
• CNN — 36 mentions
• MSNBC — 32 mentions
• HLN — 24 mentions
• CNBC — 17 mentions

Definitely no hidden agenda there right?

Or let’s look at some of the corpor… sorry I mean lobbyist… wait, sorry I mean grassroots supporters of the Tea Parties and I’ll even use the Conservapedia.com definition (when available ) so I’m not accused of being an evil liberal!:

• American Family Association: The American Family Association or AFA is a non-profit conservative Christian organization that believes in protecting family values through consumer activism.
• Freedom Works: FreedomWorks is a conservative non-profit organization based in Washington D.C., United States.
• Americans For Prosperity (AFP) is a Washington D.C.-based political advocacy group which describes itself on its Web site as “… an organization of grassroots leaders who engage citizens in the name of limited government and free markets on the local, state and federal levels.”Who sponsors RightOnline, which helps show conservative bloggers how to harness the web to win people to their cause. Which, as a sidenote, nothing wrong with that.
• Sen David Vitter (R), who is sponsoring a bill to recognize the protests and declare April 15th as National Tax Protest Day. Yeah, seriously.

ThinkProgress has a list of the politicians who jumped on the opportunity to speak at the protests, and I’m happy to report that they are from both sides of the issues. Oh wait, nope, they’re all beltway Republicans. My bad.

But ThinkProgress is an evil liberal website, so I’m sure there were *some* Democrats in attendance that actually *are* upset by the stimulus plan and taxes.

As far as the attendance numbers, it was pretty good. No official headcount, but the estimates are around 500-1500 persons per protest, with ~2000 protests across the nation, putting the total around 1-3million people participating. Without discrediting the turnout, Fox News is calling it “Mission Accomplished” on the Fox Forum, Michelle Malkin calls it “MASSIVE” and “historical” in her posts.

That must mean when the anti-war protests broke out in 2003 that Michelle, Fox, FreeRepublic et al were astounded by the 20 million persons in 800 cities across the WORLD protesting?

hahahaha yeah, sorry. When The anti-war protest happened in DC in 2007, FreeRepublic reported how “low” and “thin” their numbers were at 25,000 attendees. Which happens to be about 25 times the amount of tea-party goers that showed up in DC. 25,000 = thin, 1,000 = massive. If that is how they are with numbers, I don’t think any one of ‘em has a better idea on how to fix the economy.

Conclusion
Ok enough of the snark, in all seriousness, I am GLAD that so many people turned out and coordinated these events. I’m glad that a portion of the protesters had best interests at heart and are honestly upset about how our government has been run, not over the past three freakin months, but DECADES.

At the same time I’m ashamed that right-wing pundits and politicians had to overshadow the protests and turn them into same-old beltway Obama bashing, and equally ashamed of the simpletons that were at there to protest a man and not an errant idea, policy, or even entrenched system.

Regardless of political affiliation, American’s coming together and protesting is EXACTLY what this country was built on, and I hope to see more of it. I may not agree with the partisanship that the GOP and it’s guard dogs pushed on the protests, but I can agree with the sentiment and ideals that the protests stood for: that Americans are finally getting involved and will let their gov’t know when they aren’t happy.

Hopefully that’s something that people on both sides of the aisle can agree with.

For starters, if you are serious about losing weight or maintaining, I highly recommend signing up for a profile at Calorie Count. I’ve been looking for a site like that for months now, and was about to just give up and build it myself.

Basically you have a Food log and an Activity log. Each has a very handy search function that allows you to simply punch in what you ate ( or did ), and it will bring back calories, fat, etc in the food and calories burnt for the activities.

They even have a recipe analyzer to let you know just how healthy your concoctions are. I ran my M Yass Chili through the interface and got an A on the nutrition rating

When I was in college I used to be able to eat two Hungry Man meals a day and not gain a pound. I was weighing in around 145-150lbs in 2004 ( at a height of 6′ ).

After I got a real job and was able to afford food, and had a girlfriend that knew I was way too skinny and unhealthy, I started gaining weight. At first it was a good thing, but then I gained a bit too much and found myself at 234lbs in 2008.

Thanks to that recent bout of the flu, my stomach had a chance to shrink and I started listening to my “no more, Im full” alarm. At the end of March I was 223lbs thanks to a limited calorie intake and “light” activity.

I’m not afraid to admit it, I have a sedentary lifestyle. I work in an office, with a very expensive cushy chair, and I go home to either work in my home office in a cushy chair, or sit on the very cushy couch that we have.

This apparently burns about 70 calories an hour. Hell even drinking a glass of water will burn a few. But it doesn’t do much when you’re intaking 2000-2500 calories a day.

Since I do enjoy the videogames and my parents bought us a Wii Fit for Christmas, I decided to push activity into my life via the Wii Fit and a simple run on the treadmill. Right now I’m up to 20mins daily of moderate activities on the Wii ( that includes Fit and Sports ), and starting tomorrow I will add a quarter mile jog on the treadmill ( 4-5mph, nothing too intense ) three days a week.

The WiiFit activity alone has helped knock off 0.7-1lb per week for me. I figure if I add in the treadmill and gradually work up to a half, then full mile, that will put me at ~2.0lbs per week, which is the healthy limit for weight loss. Anything more and you will rebound and put it back on naturally.

The most important thing to remember is that it’s all just a game of numbers. According to my CalorieCount profile, I need to intake 1850 ( or less ) calories per day and burn 2650 in order to lose 2lbs per week. Amazingly I burn about 1400 calories a day naturally, just by moving around, walking in the office and working ( sitting at a computer and working burns around 80 per hour ). With WiiFit+Sports activity for 1 hour I can add ~350 burnt calories to that, and the treadmill will burn around 700-800 per hour.

My current goal for April 11th is 220lbs, with an overall goal of 185-190lbs.