5k a day

Walking 5 kilometers (3.1 miles for the metrically-challenged) with a thousand strangers at ass-crack of dawn with a 20+ pound pack on my back was actually quite invigorating. Erin, Kai and I walked the annual Seasons 52 Park Avenue 5k this morning, somewhere in the neighborhood of 51 minutes. While it was quite different walking on brick-paved mansion-lined roads, compared to the relatively sterile gym setting we’re used to, it was a fun walk. Kai totally enjoyed it, and actually stayed awake the entire time. He was the hit of the race. I could have had an offensive expletive scribbled on my forehead in bold black ink and nobody would have noticed, since Kai was on my back.

Speaking of my back, we just bought the Snugli Cross-Terrain Framed Carrier, and wow is it nice. Walking Kai in the old carrier began to feel like eagle’s talons digging into my trapezoid muscles after a couple miles. This thing is so nice that it didn’t hurt at all. Much props to the Snugli people for saving my back and allowing me to be close to my boy.

The problem with him not sleeping on my back was that he got quite fussy at the post-race breakfast and we had to cut our stay short. I guess we know who’s really in charge.

Yesterday my friend Robin gave me her laptop to fix up. Amazingly enough, her brand-new laptop featuring the honor system-like security of Windows XP Home Edition and Internet Explorer 6, had managed to accumulate an amazing collection of spyware/malware/viruses/trojans/etc that made her computer completely unusable. I’ve spent the better part of the last two days cleaning it out. I’m about ready to wipe the thing clean and start over.

Check this who’s-who list of security software that I’ve run on her laptop: Norton Anti-Virus, Avira Anti-Vir, AVG Anti-Spyware, Norton Anti-Spyware, WinPatrol, HijackThis!, Ad-Aware, ewido anti-spyware, and counting. And yet, there is still some malicious software on her computer attempting to hijack her Internet Explorer and desktop and change her settings. Most of you know that my main computer is a Mac PowerBook laptop. I have no spyware or virus issues. Our second computer in the house is a Windows XP system. While it gets the occasional tracking cookie, it is virus-free and hassle-free, mostly because we use Firefox as our web browser exclusively. I cannot recommend this enough. If you use a Windows-based PC, please, please, please use Firefox.