Archive for June 23rd, 2008

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

The Seal vs. The Green Speech

I had to laugh when I read this report on John McCain’s blog today.

Michael Goldfarb, one of McCain’s staffers, tries to paint as bias the media’s focus on McCain’s disasterous speech in front of a green backdrop on the night that Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination.

The Republican party is trying to make a huge deal out of Obama’s artistic modification of the presidential seal (dare I say a mash-up?), despite using a variety of similar seals for its fundraising efforts.

The media made a big deal out of McCain’s speech because its poor comparison to Obama’s speech that same night made it newsworthy. The graphic design of a prop is simply not worth the airtime.

Besides, the seal is a pretty nice redesign. That “Verro Possumus” is Latin for “Yes, We Can.”

The green screen, however, is just Republican for “Doesn’t stand a chance.”

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Monday, June 23rd, 2008

McCain’s Campaign Gets Creative With Video Game

John McCain’s campaign got quite creative today with the release of this year’s first official presidential video game. Pork Invaders, shown above, is a remake of the classic Space Invaders, where a user shoots vetoes at legions of scary pigs.

The graphics, sound and gameplay are all pretty mediocre, but mildly addicting nonetheless.

For a campaign that has yet to show a whole lot of Internet savvy, this is a huge step in the right direction — showing some out of the box thinking and even a bit of humor. The fact that the game is both embeddable (as above) and Facebook-compatible scores extra points for the Arizona senator.

While I applaud the effort and creativity, I hope Barack Obama’s campaign comes back with a game that blows this one out of the water — it wouldn’t be that difficult.

Maybe a “Wolfenstein 3-D” remake in Guantanamo?

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Monday, June 23rd, 2008

CGM: Day 4, the Ice Cream Problem

It’s Day 4 with the CGM and my questionable sensor actually seems to be working.

I have found it to be really amazing to watch the graphs of my blood sugar and how they differ depending on my food intake — always smooth, but with differing peaks and slopes.

Today’s challenge? The Diddy Riese ice cream sandwich I ate for lunch today. Usually I’m a pretty healthy eater, but after an early flight to LA and a late breakfast after getting into town, a scoop of cookies and cream squeezed between two freshly-baked cookies sounded like just what I needed.

I took an good amount of insulin for the carbs and even extended 60 percent of the bolus over the next hour and a half to try to deal with the ice cream.

But my blood sugar curve kept rising — for the next four hours! It’s finally on its way back down now, but the slow climb clearly illustrated how much fat was in the ice cream (and how far I really need to run to work it off).

I’m hoping that when I finally start to pull my CGM numbers off my pump that I can actually learn from all of these experiences (and mistakes) and come up with a dosing plan that can survive an attack of the Diddy.

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