Pressed for time yesterday, I acquired dinner via McDonald’s drive-thru and headed home.  Once there, I sat upon the couch, lounging too far back for civilized man, and consumed a double quarter pounder with cheese.

Inspecting the packaging, I noticed that this little sandwich packed 740 calories all on its own.

This got me to thinking about obesity in general, which led me to ruminate on why it is our bodies are so unable to properly handle the excess material we now consume.  And that led me to state: God does not exist.

Here’s how I got there!

It is quite clear that the human body is not able to recognize when there is no scarcity of food resources and is especially unable to trigger greater amounts of caloric evacuation when the body continues to ingest food while there is no exertion generally involved.

My thought is that this is because the body has not yet reprogrammed itself for our current fat, happy state.  It has been evolved over millennia with the idea that the consumption of food follows scarcity and exertion, that the body has to engage in physical work in order to acquire food.  It is also geared towards the idea that there might be a lengthy period of time between meals depending on whether or not food acquisition is successful.

So how does this negate the existence of God?  Pretty easily, actually.  If God had created us so perfectly, then wouldn’t our bodies have started off with the ability to adjust caloric retention in the face of increased consumption?  Adam & Eve were, after all, “born” in paradise where they wanted for nothing.  Adam didn’t have to lift a finger to get some grub.  Heck, the animals walked right up to him and, apparently, apples were plentiful.  But of course, he liked them apples and got kicked out at which point God made him horrifically mortal.

So for the time they were in paradise, Adam & Eve, supposedly, were not fatties even though hunting and gathering wasn’t really a concern shared in Genesis.  Besides, a perfect creator is perfectly capable of building a creature that doesn’t just suddenly get chubby every time he sits around too long.  Unless he’s looking to punish that creature for being a schlub.

Anyway, out of paradise, stuff changes.  Eve has to have labor pains and everybody goes mortal.  But only sort of mortal.  They still get to live hundreds of years, so God has essentially changed the DNA of his creations in order to rough them up a bit.  And then he does it again when he decides even that hundreds of years is way too much.

But, so far, no mention of letting them get fat.  If obesity isn’t a punishment from God, then why would he have created us in a way that would lend itself to our eventual fattening?  Does God get fat?  I mean, really, he just sits around all day listening to people, probably eating Kentucky Fried (mashed potatoes and gravy are as close to the Rapture as one can get).

And I just kept thinking about this.  The omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being must have purposefully created us to get fat!  What a jerk!  Somewhere in his grand design, he said, “Man, if these cats ever get lazy, I’m gonna make it so they just balloon up and spawn a plus size clothing market.”  Otherwise, why not engineer us so that we always stay thin?

After the rush of sodium and grease worked its way through my system, I stopped thinking about this topic, but when faced with the choice between the idea that our bodies have not yet evolved to take into account an abundant food supply and a sedentary existence versus the idea that an invisible guy made us to get fat in order to punish our success in being lazy, I decided to go with the one that at least seemed plausible.

And since I ruled out the involvement of a deity, well, I just threw the baby out with the bathwater and concluded (as I always do) that it’s easier to believe he doesn’t exist at all than to believe he’s a putz.

About a week ago, Brandy and I took a look at a house for sale that had a very appealing location.  We’re passing on it because the house needs far too much work.

But during the showing, I was talking with the realtor and mentioned some of the challenges we would face in the house because we have a son in a wheelchair.

As soon as I said “our son is in a wheelchair”, he interrupted me to say, “Oh, I’m so sorry!”

This happens frequently, and I get it - people just don’t know how to react to that info.  So I’m here to help.  Here’s a quick guide towards an appropriate reaction:

- If “in a wheelchair” is said in the middle of a sentence and is said matter-of-factly, that means the speaker is cool with it and does not need your empathy. Don’t interrupt, and don’t evoke pity.

- If “in a wheelchair” is at the end of a sentence and is said with some emotion while being followed by a dramatic pause, go ahead with the sorry.  The speaker is looking for it.

- If “in a wheelchair” is yelled while the speaker is pounding on your car window, it means you parked too close to the van accessible space and the driver can’t get the wheelchair ramp down and get his son out of the car because you park like an idiot.  No sorry required, just move your ass.

That should cover most of the scenarios in which one would have to deal with a sudden revelation of disability.  If you encounter any others and find yourself at a loss for an appropriate response, please feel free to consult me for further guidance.

Come on.  It’s 2009. I can’t believe I actually found this on a web site.

Somebody recently asked me if I was insane because I’m doing too much webmaster stuff.  I’m co-webmaster of the site at work.  I’m webmaster for RBR.  I’ve got all my own sites (this, Prebble Family, BikeAble, A Bike For Gareth). And now I’m working on the CRBC web site.

Well, if you take a look around at all those things, you’ll find that most are suffering from inattention.

The RBR site, for which I am now being paid, gets regular updates. I try to post new blog entries there once a week if not more frequently, and there are usually product updates to post as the 2009 prices roll in.

The Prebble Family site is a ghost town. Nothing is getting posted there these days. Part of that, I’m sure, is that at the end of a day playing and fighting with the kids, the last thing on my mind is writing about the kids. This is a bit of a disservice to the family, since good things are happening all the time (like Gareth’s continued use of his IntelliKeys system), but I just never think to update the blog.

A Bike For Gareth is only as active as my rides with Gareth, so that blog essentially goes offline for entire seasons. Eventually, I will collapse that site altogether and roll the informational pieces into BikeAble.

And as for BikeAble, the site that has not seen a content update since last May, I have ideas for lots of stories that never get written. I even have a guy in California interested in coming on board. For right now, though, that site continues to suffer my unwillingness to sit down and write structured articles.

The CRBC site is a new project. Fortunately, I’m just the technologist for that one. I’m helping them get set up with a CMS, set down the rules and structure, but once it’s up and running, other folks will be responsible for content. So that’s an easy one.

Unfortunately, the site at work is the one that most discourages me while at the same time being the one I have to devote my entire day to managing. My day job drives me to work on sites for other people so I can work on sites that are intended to be engaging. What a shame.

Speaking of, got to get back to it. But at least I managed to update this site in the meantime.

I learned a valuable lesson today.  When heading out for a bike ride during a Winter thaw, take a trike.

I started at Spring Creek and hit the bike path that heads out along 322, thinking that the warm weather that so effectively melted the ice and snow around our home would have done wonders for the bike paths.  For the most part, it did.  But there were still a number of patches that were pure ice.

Since I try not to be stupid, I actually did dismount to walk past sketchy areas.  There just happened to be one area that didn’t look bad enough to worry about.  As luck would have it, that was the area where my tires slid out from under me and sent me sliding on my posterior into the grass and muck to the side of the path.

Nothing hurt other than my pride.  My underseat steering took most of the fall and required a quick adjustment.  I did try to continue on, but the path got progressively worse from that point.

So I gave it up and rode back to Spring Creek park.

And next time, I’ll take my trike.

Had an enjoyable birthday over the weekend.  Got some good gifts - new Carrie Fisher book, Tomb Raider: Underworld, MiB Blu-Ray, Sarah Silverman Program Season 1.  Got some bad gifts - several hundred dollars charged against my Visa debit card by someone who stole my card info.

What’s sort of sad is that the only thing that tipped off my bank is that a credit card company in Israel faxed my bank looking for authorization for a charge.  Whoever has my number tried to get a virtual Visa at WWWCard.  WWWCard thought it was fishy and sent the fax.  

With that, I sat down with a rep at the bank and went through my weekend transactions.  Two meals and groceries were valid, but multiple charges for $124, $170, $90, and $55.55 at Home Depot in Bend, OR were invalid.

The tip-off was instant - almost all the invalid charges had 0 cents.  Who buys anything anywhere and doesn’t have a few cents tacked on for tax or shipping or psychological pricing (9.99 isn’t 10)?

For now, we’ve nuked the initial $124 charge, had me sign the legal docs, and shredded my debit card.  I’ll see tomorrow whether or not all the other fraudulent charges go through.  If they do, I’ll have a whole lot more paperwork to fill.

That’s it for me, though.  No more using debit cards online.  This is the second time in a year that I’ve had to replace my debit card, and it’s a pain.

Interesting note: they used my cell phone number as part of the transaction and got it wrong by one digit.  I’m pretty sure that the only place I’ve ever used that number for orders has been Nashbar (at least, that’s what my e-mail history would suggest).  I have to wonder if they’ve been compromised.

While I’m waiting for that Millennium Falcon pool to come out (and for the weather to be warm enough to use it), I guess I’ll just have to spend Spring with the boys flying some Star Wars kites.

An old Rob Hubbard tune just came up on my Zune - Crazy Comets - and it reminded me of the old (1986) Thrust Concert demo on the C=64 as they used Hubbard’s song in it.

That prompted me to search for info on Thrust Concert, which ultimately took me to Press Play On Tape.  I’m gonna have to check this out later.

We’re in furniture renewal mode these days. A new sofa and love seat were delivered this afternoon. Since they clash with our current living room furnishings, we’ve also purchased a new TV stand and end tables.

This means that it was time to clear some items out of the basement to make room for our old sofa. Mostly, I dumped three chairs that I had acquired from Target a year ago.  My goal at the time was to populate the room with enough chairs to enjoy killer games of Amplitude, but my largely anti-social nature kept such gatherings from ever happening.

Those chairs are on their way out, having been sold to a co-worker.  But I still craved a gaming chair.  My desk chair is not comfortable enough for long periods of time, and I’ve never been a fan of gaming from a couch (no idea why).  So it was time to find some new furniture.  I looked around at several local stores and did research online before ultimately purchasing the horrifically named X-Rocker Pedestal Wireless chair.  

Recliners are just too big, and typical game rockers are just too low.  This one looked like it would hit my Goldilocks sweet spot.  I didn’t really care about the wireless sound, but the swivel action, the recline, and the arms were all enticing features.  And Wal-Mart had a ton of them.

Got it home, busted it out, and had it put together in just a few minutes.  Taking it for a test drive with an episode of Doctor Who and a game of Viking proved it to be a very comfortable seat for my 209lb 5′8″ mass.  The only thing I didn’t like was that my head actually rested too far back, driving my line of sight to the top of my projector screen instead of holding it to the middle.  Backing off on the recline or getting a pillow will easily fix that.

The sound was something I had prepared to dismiss out of hand, but I actually do enjoy having it on.  A nice feature of the Xbox 360 is that it will simultaneously output digital and analog audio, so I was able to pump digital to my surround system while outputting analog to the chair, giving me a nice bit of added sound detail right in my earholes.

Now all I need to do is figure out how I can attach my Ace Combat flight stick to the chair arms, though for the sake of authenticity, I guess I should be figuring out how to mount the joystick between my legs.  I don’t think I could get used to that lack of symmetry.

I recently dumped a few photos of Collin on Flickr and have looked at them a number of times.  They’re insanely cute shots of him wearing a cowboy hat and themed shirt.  But as much as they make me smile, they also make me a bit sad.

Seeing Collin smiling, sitting up, rolling over, reaching, standing, eating, laughing, and babbling has been great fun.  There’s no denying that.  The problem is that I then contrast that with our experiences in Gareth’s infancy.  Doctors, nurses, therapists, monitors, mist tubing… unable to sit, stand, roll over, eat. 

At the time, I was so shellshocked by the whole situation that I don’t think I ever stopped to consider what we weren’t experiencing.  And, with time, I grew comfortable with the realization that I should just enjoy the things Gareth could do instead of wishing for the things he couldn’t.  

Now we have a kid who can do all those things, and I feel guilty taking pleasure in them.  I feel like every time I enjoy Collin’s development, I’m somehow discounting Gareth’s.  Every time I play with Collin, I have to wonder if I played the same with Gare.  And every time I take Collin’s picture, I feel like I need to swing around and snap a few of Gare to maintain balance in the universe.

At some point, soon, Collin will surpass Gareth physically.  It’s going to be a challenge finding a way to keep Gareth encouraged to work hard at achieving the things that will come easily to his little brother.

But I love both my boys.  We’ll figure it out.