That's interesting, it sounds like the USAF (I'm assuming you serve for) has a much tougher fitness test than the RAF one. The RAF basic fitness level is piss easy to meet.
I'm a little confused though, you need to run a quarter mile in 12 and a half minutes? That can't be right, do you mean a mile and a half (about 2.5km) in 12 and a half minutes?
You're totally right about the necessity of sleep. Sleep is definitely something I would benefit from having more of. When you exercise a lot, you need more sleep to recover and good rest is actually what you need more of to develop.
The problem is finding the time to sleep, work doesn't seem to be the best place!

What are you logging with each? I wonder if the blessed Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS with the heart rate monitor belt records much of what you are recording. But it's difficult to say without knowing what you are noting.

PS - good luck getting through the fitness test. For speeding up the pace over shorter distances, perhaps training with someone quicker than you might help. Weights can certainly help if targeted correctly, might I suggest a good fitness instructor who knows their plyometrics.

A: If I want to run say 6 miles I know what route/circuit will do that.
B: If I'm training for a race then I may want to reach a certain distance as part of that training.
C: It's really nice to know that even though I'm tired I've still done 10k or however far I've been. It can be a pick-me-up.

Some roads round here may date back to Roman times but oddly most streets, lanes and pathways don't have mile markers set up for the exact course I'm running. They only seem to do that when it's an organised race.

Ditto the Forerunner 205. I have one
I've used it since my Polar heart rate monitor died for the second time. The watch works well, uploading to your computer easily and the software is very good (not too much extra bumpf). It will export output straight to Google Earth (using understandable XML). I think they provide drivers for both Mac and Windows and the history can be exported very easily.

The only point I would make is that the Forerunner 205 obviously doesn't do anything indoors being only a GPS device, the 305 does as it has a heart rate monitor. A heart rate monitor would be more effective if the article submitter 'identity0' is doing a lot of work in the gym that he/she wants to record (foot pods can record indoors).

I run and feel good running.
I also want to know how far I've been and gone. I could draw the map on Google Earth or a paper map and get an approximation OR I could just read the distance and time off of the Garmin Forerunner on my arm to get the most accurate measurement.
The reason we want the records is so that we can work out which route will take me (or us) so far.

Having a goal, short and/or long term, is by far the best motivator to keep human beings going, whether you enjoy something or not. RPGs understand this with levelling up. Some of us just want to be the best we can be from ourselves - competitive yes, but humans *are* competitive beings.

Being competitive with others or setting goals for yourself is the most effective way to get something out of exercise. If I don't have a race coming up, even 6 months ahead, I lose motivation to get out there. I know I'm not alone in this. I don't think it is strange to want to run the next one quicker, I would find it strange to run for 6 years and not want to get any better during that time.

I agree going for a hike should be about the stroll and enjoying the outdoors. But a scientific exercise such as lifting weights without a plan of what you are trying to achieve is a pointless exercise that will end up with you wasting your time. The specific counting (kgs, reps, sets) is the whole idea.

Of course the other local secret we don't tell people is that Stonehenge isn't half as good as Avebury, about 30 miles North of Stonehenge. If anyone is going to have a look at stone circles and old mysterious things. I would say that the better place is the one with the pub in the middle - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avebury.

No perhaps not. It was difficult to guage how effective units were or not. As it didn't really matter how effective the units were being as they were walking towards machine guns.

That's interesting because the British did a similar thing in World War one and it proved to be a disaster. Men from the same communities were encouraged to join up together, in the same regiments, called "The Pals" I believe. The problem was that they were posted to the same parts of the front line. While they got to spend time with their close friends, they all went over the top together and thus an entire village could lose all of its men between the ages of 17-40 in the space of one minute.
This I guess is illustrative of something else that had changed in warfare by 1914.

Thanks, I think I see.
Is this just for civil proceedings or criminal ones? It just seems to me to be inherently unjust to have the outcome of a case be literally influenced by the location of the proceedings.

Thanks that does help. If I understand correctly elevation acts as the moderation, why doesn't this happen more often to prevent this court being such a troll haven? Or is it just that lots of patent lawyers remain (the sibling post by maroberts surmises)

PS I'm not saying that I beleive a single system should entriely govern 300 million people but if something is determined at the national level then the application of that should be consistent across the nation. Impossible I know but it seems this place is blatantly out of line with the rest of the country, perhaps even trying to be so. The federal authorities should at least be trying to prevent what we call here in Britain "a postcode lottery".

Can someone who is knowledgeable about patent law explain to me how one district in the US can be so appealing for this kind of ligitgation when another is not?
I was under the impression that patents are awarded federally, however it seems that the actions are being taken at a very specific locality which is widely considered more sympathetic than everywhere else, rather than a national or federal court.
This seems very strange to me, surely the legal position on a federal issue should be consistent across the nation. Or the verdicts across low level courts should be able to be 'moderated'.

And Microsoft didn't?
One would assume that M$ (only using the $ for relevance) found that it would be simpler and cheaper to just pay a (probably) small fee than spend years in court al la SCO. Therefore Blizzard probably would do the same, although this isn't core business to Microsoft but *is* to Blizzard so they might want to defend.
Perhaps it's because companies don't fight these claims often enough, that software patents continue to eat up our sanity.

It isn't closed yet. And anyway that probably hasn't been responded to because there is a much larger petition it will be superceeded by.

- Hate Christians while admiring odd religions you know little about? --> Hate is wrong the most ways, I like to keep an open mind to any religion or ideas and theory's that came forth from a non-religious perspective (atheist).

Pedantic I know, but aren't you really more agnostic than atheist?

No that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that *if* (as was the assertion of the op) someone in the government takes an action because a group of people have asked, the idea is considered a good one (again, as was the assertion). Then that sounds like an albeit small democratic action.

And don't be so naive to think that Labour is the first party to think PR first and therefore do as little as possible.

I'm well aware that the government pick and choose which petitions to respond to and I'm no New Labour supporter. One difference is that many other petitions would or could hurt the government's image and perhaps require more debate than a petition can provide (e.g. "impose sanctions on Isreal").
Read the comment I was replying to again. If some PR drone thought that, well then that's actually democracy at work.
Just becuase many of the things the government do aren't democratic, it doesn't mean that they can't do democratic things. Look at what happened - 1: the petition was raised, 2: many people signed it, 3: the government responded and in this case with compliance.

I don't for a minute think that the online petitions thing is much other than a chance to give people the 'impression' that we can get involved in desicion making. But the comment I was replying to was nothing other than pointless cynicism, when wouldn't something like this seem like point scoring to the op? I'm guessing never.

the number of times that considerably better-supported petitions have been ignored

Assuming "considerably better-supported" means twice as many votes. Only two closed petitions haven't had a response. Of all closed petitions with more votes, 7 haven't had a response - see the proof for yourself.