This article on TSA’s blog was interesting because I’m finding myself in airports much more often these days. Since Saturday, if you show up at the airport without government-issued ID, you can either submit to additional screening or you won’t be allowed to fly:

We’re 48 hours into the new procedure and things have been smooth so far. Approximately 650 people have shown up to security checkpoints without ID and a total of 20 people have not been allowed to fly. That is .0005 percent of the approximately four million people that flew this weekend.

The article that you can read over at Evolution of Security, the official blog of the TSA goes on to cite Gilmore v. Gonzales, a court case where the passenger lost the battle when he claimed that “being required to show identification order to travel by plane inside the country is an unconstitutional restriction of his rights to travel, to petition government, and to speak anonymously.”

I’d read a blog, can’t remember where now, but the blogger had tried to travel without any form of ID aside from a Costco card or something. He was successful, mostly. Now he can, as long as he doesn’t mind spending a little time with security.

In the morning I interviewed JrMint for a GeekFit episode we’re putting out shortly. He was the model interviewee. Aside from a couple questions he just ran with it. We talked about his motivation, what got him started, and what’s going to keep him going after he hits his target weight. Good stuff!

In the afternoon I took the fitness to the great outdoors and met up with twitter’s world-famous @missburrows to walk the Columbia Tech path near Nautilus. That, rounded out with a couple laps around the spongy blue track at our starting point made for a pretty decent workout. I’m going to blame my sore core muscles, but I don’t even think she even broke a sweat. Next time we’ll have to jog the whole thing, right?

In the evening I went shopping with the lovely Ivy. Since I have 3 combination locks I no longer have the combination for, I decided to get myself one of those combo locks you set yourself. I almost got the password I wanted but ran out of letters. Ah well.

There’s a particularly awesome trainer at my local Ballys. Her physique reminds me of Demi Moore in 1997’s GI Jane. The sum of our interaction since 2005 has been a wave and a smile and the occasional, “are you still using this?” when she’s training someone out on the weight room floor.

Yesterday I was laying on my back doing my ab workout and she walked right over to me.

“Want a tip?” she asked, and walked over to grab one of the half-circle balance platforms and placed it under my feet.

I had been doing leg lifts and touching my heels all the way back to the ground before pulling them back up to my chest. She put the balance platform under my heels and it made a big difference. I wasn’t bouncing when I hit the floor any more and there was a lot more control in the motion.

I thanked her for the tidbit and we got to chatting about my struggle with losing weight, what kinds of things I’d been doing, and of course, the GeekFit Podcast. She was really nice about everything; said she’d noticed how hard I’d been working and that she remembered where I was when I started at Bally years ago.

It was a really nice bit of motivation and one that was perfectly timed with me heading to Chicago for 3 weeks this Sunday. I’m armed with my national gym membership, a reservation at an extended stay, and a determination to return either 6–8 lbs lighter or 1.5 – 2% lower in body fat. It’s going to be awesome.

Cross-posted to GeekFit.com.

On the professional front, my computer is up and running again. It turns out at some point I had jostled a power cord and un-jostled it and re-jostled it. My power supply was fine.

On the personal, Ivy and I had decided we (mostly me) were spending way too much eating out. Cutting back to Saturdays has doubled up as a pretty good savings as well as keeping me on the straight and narrow as far as intake goes. I only eat what I cook and we’ve made a concerted effort to keep mostly healthy food in the house.

This morning I’m going to Madison’s recital. You know the routine: show up at 10am, wait until 10:45am for the person you came to see, and then they’re done at 10:50am. You still have to sit there until everyone’s done. I smell a potential for optimization here folks.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

This morning I got an email from United announcing their new baggage policy. I’d heard some buzz on the news about this but until now I hadn’t seen any new policy.

By August 18^th, the first bag will cost $15 and the second bag will cost $25. Now’s a good time to try and cram as much into your carry-on as possible. I know we’ve got Operation: Cram Steve’s Crap Into One Bag running on a fold-out table in our dining room as we speak. I’ll post an inventory and some pictures as soon as we get it sorted out.

Yesterday my main computer just fell over. I was in the middle of an episode of Smallville and then *pyoooh* everything went black. Power supply, overheated mobo, who knows.

Today my work environment consists of my laptop with a gaming mouse plugged in, and a VGA run to one of my 22” monitors as a secondary display. I’m churning out the work, but it’s not optimal.

I talked to the manager at my Ballys and it looks like they have an upgrade path. Basically it’s going to be another 12 month contract, but after the dust settles my monthly charge for national coverage will go to $20. That’ll save me $90/year which will just about cover what I pay for towel service. I’ll probably set that up in the next week so I’ll have somewhere to work out when I’m traveling.

This morning I knocked out 45 minutes on the treadmill doing the hill program on level 8. I’m remembering how much more effective the last 15 minutes can be. 30 minutes is a good cardio workout, but the sweet spot is that 45 minute mark. Combine that with some interval training and the sweat pours. I followed up with some ab work—oh the pain!—followed by more stretching.

Ivy’s been doing the Wii Fit thing nightly and I’m really impressed with how that’s turning out. If I can get her to submit to a video I’ll post that here and on GeekFit. The yoga stuff is probably the most intriguing. If I could get a handful of those poses down I could really tear up a workout on the road without ever leaving the hotel room. I have noticed that the flooring in hotels leaves a lot to be desired. Maybe a nice portable mat. Hm, yes, that’d do the trick.

It’s already 9:30 and I’ve been letting my internal clock drift my waking time further and further. So, I’m going to head to sleep lest I start getting up at noon. Work doesn’t usually appreciate that. I know, I asked.

I keep forgetting to ping JrM|nt about an interview. I had mentioned having him call in, but now that I’ve got my skype call recording (thanks for the help there, Kimie) all sorted it might be easier for he and I to chat once a week about his progress and then splice it into the show. So, how about it?

Aaron Hockley paints a beautiful picture with bacon and other photographic goodness over at Another Blogger.

It’s been a while since I wrote a review, and I really have to get back on that. There are so many really good bits laying around and unless we write about them, they don’t get any love.

This site has been around for a while, but I’m steadily shocked when people say they’ve never heard of it. It dovetails with my post about GTD and clearing your mind of things that need to be done. Once you put your todo items in a place you know you’ll visit often enough, your brain stops randomly floating them for you to reconsider.

Remember The Milk, or RTM, as it’s affectionately called by yours truly, is a task list & reminder management system. You can create as many lists as you like and it supports all the trimmings we’ve come to call “minimum requirements”: tags; reminders via SMS, email, and messenger; keyboard shortcuts; and interaction with 3^rd party services.

The big selling point for me were the keyboard shortcuts. To create a new task, due tomorrow at 9am, with a few tags, the flow is easy: (t – new task)Check on Etrade verification deposits.(d - due date)tomorrow at 9am(s - tags)@online[enter]. They also offer Pro accounts that give you access to new features like MilkSync for BlackBerry and Windows Mobile.

The gym rocked this morning. I got up at 7:30, answered a couple work emails/IMs, and then headed out to the gym. 30m on the treadmill + stretching. I overuse the word “serene” in this bit of audio, but it really was.

( Click to Listen )