You have kids and you want to increase your fitness level?

Go play with them.

Because of the crazy power-to-weight ratio that kids have, no adult can even hope to keep up with them. You'll burn 10 times the energy that they do, just trying to keep pace.

Climb trees. Play soccer. Chase them around the park. Throw a frisbee or a football back and forth. Ride bikes.

Your kids will love it, you'll love it, and you'll be more fit than you've ever been!

"Truly ridiculous" is anything you can't bike without reaching your personal "I'm gonna die now" limit. For me, I'd set that at about an hour of riding, which would let me acheive the average commute distance on a good day (26km/16mi). But it's a personal choice. Obviously, as the distance increases, the extra time required to bike it instead of driving it increases as well.

I totally understand the stones it takes to join the cars on the road. My route has no bike lanes at all, and is along the biggest, busiest roads in a city of 350,000 people. But I've been riding my bike around town for 15 years now, so I'm pretty inured to the horrific driving that goes on around me. On the other hand, you are correct, I'm not from the US (rather, from that cold neighbour to the North), so at the very least, I don't have to worry about being shot to death when some jackass behind me gets pissed off that I've slowed him down.

If you are going to try this, there are three things I highly recommend:

One - get a rear-view mirror. It's invaluable when you want to change lanes, and for keeping an eye on the cars behind you that might cut you off at that right turn ahead.

Two - practice vehicular cycling, and take the lane (ride in the middle) when it's necessary to do so for your safety. Vehicular cycling means that your actions are predictable to the cars around you.

Three - if you're really having problems, either mount a camera on your helmet, or mount something that looks like a camera on your helmet. I was astounded by how much more room I was given when people thought they were being recorded.

As far as temperatures, I'm one of the lucky few that experiences days as hot as 100F (39C) in the summer, and -30F (-33C) in the winter. I get both extremes! I am fortunate enough to have a shower provided at my workplace, and I recognize that.

I've heard other work-from-homers say that including a morning commute helps them separate their work from their not-work time at home. They'll leave through the front door, go for a 20 minute walk (you could do a 20 minute bike ride), then come in the back door and go straight to their office.

At the end of the day, out through the back door, 20 minute bike ride, in through the front.

I like what they do for my water & gas bills. They're just not that satisfying to use.

So my solution is doubly good. I get nice, satisfying, high-pressure water with little risk of running out of hot water. And I don't have to pay for it :)

I actually ride a recumbent with hard, skinny tires as soon as the snow has melted. My personal best of 17 minutes occurred because I managed to hit almost all green lights on the way home. A faster bike won't speed me up that much :)

In the winter, on a singlespeed mountain bike (well, actually a 15-speed, but the gears stop working after the first week of salt & slush), it takes closer to 30 minutes to complete the ride.

Unless you've got a truly ridiculous commute, you can probably bike to work without taking much more time than driving. I've got a 7km commute that takes 15 mintues in rush-hour traffic. I can ride it in 20 (17 minutes is my personal best).

It takes an additional 15 minutes at work to shower and change, but that's 15 minutes that I'm not spending showering at home. All told, I get 40 minutes of exercise in a day with a net time loss of only 10 minutes. AND! I use the hot water at work (free!), where they don't have those horrible low-flow showerheads.

Maybe the members of the committee that proposed this can all just stick their fingers in the holes in the dike. That'll stop the problem, right?

Embarrassingly, that actually sounds like a porno flick.

Given that the cost to appeal this is $35, one can clearly show financial harm. If you have _not_ downloaded the file in question, cannot you take the accuser to court for a clear case of defamation?

RTFA - median internet usage numbers in the US are 5.8GB/mo. This plan is cheaper for those users than _any_ other plan out there right now.

If they can steal 50% of all internet customers from other service providers, to the benefit of those customers, it will be disruptive.

You know, I don't really care about the rates for shipping packages compared to other couriers. What I DO care about, though, is brokerage fees.

I live in Canada, and just about anyone that sells anything I want online ships it from the US. Most couriers will charge $50 or more in brokerage fees on any package with a value of less than a hundred bucks. And that's on top of the taxes and duty that is collected by the government.

I bought a $70 seat for my bicycle. When it arrived at my door, the man from UPS wanted $63 in brokerage fees, duty, and taxes. After three days of arguing with UPS, I got them to drop the $50 brokerage fee as a "one-time goodwill offer." Damn right it was a one-time offer. I'm never accepting UPS as a shipping method ever again. I insist on USPS every time I order from the states now.

My understanding is that the USPS and Canada Post have a reciprocity agreement, where they'll handle the customs brokerage for each other. I'll still get charged the duties and taxes where applicable, but the most I've ever seen as a straight-up "fee" for doing the paperwork was five dollars. And honestly, most of the time they don't even try to collect the taxes and duty.

For years, there has been someone in our building who just leaves tubs of candy at the entrance to his cubicle, and invites all to partake. Recently, I found the broken cookie store. They get all of the factory seconds from the local Dare (cookie) factory, and put them into 13lb boxes, which they sell for $15.

I buy the boxes two at a time, and leave them open and inviting on the desk next to mine, which is currently unoccupied. Two boxes tends to last about three weeks. So, for ten bucks a week, I have made myself indispensible in this office. I even have the executive vice president stopping in every now and again for a free cookie.

I'm going to have to go with "Online Service" simply because I don't really have any critical data that I store on my personal computer.

I've got webmail. I use Google Docs because I don't have to worry about paying the Microsoft tax, and because it's really easy to collaborate with it. I've got a dropbox, because I work on other files in many different places.

Just about the only real data that I store on my home computer is the media files that I torrent. And truthfully, if I need to replace those again, it's just a matter of re-downloading them.

Pretty much constantly. I ignore the update request for a couple of days, then finally have the time to run it. Five minutes later, it wants another update.

I've given up now, and only update when things that require Java stop working.

No kidding. I'm doing ~1200km (not including running around) and I'm not even leaving Southern Ontario.

That's about 750 miles, for the metric-impaired.

I disagree completely. Weapons like tazers and pepper spray should be used to subdue threatening individuals where, if you did not have tazers or pepper spray, you WOULD resort to potentially lethal force.

Would these cops have pulled a gun on her, and shot her if she didn't comply? Yes? Fine, then I'm okay with the tazer being used. No? Don't take the fucking electric gun out of your pocket then.

The truth is, these tools are not classified as "non-lethal" weapons. They are "less-lethal" weapons. Every time one of them is used, there is the potential that the victim will DIE. If the person is not doing something worth KILLING them about, DO NOT USE A TAZER.