N75

I have had my N75 for a few weeks now, and thought it was worth mentioning.

My very first mobile phone was from Sprint. I had used AMPS devices; bagphones abounded, and I even have a friend's long-abandoned Moto Dynasty in the museum above my desk. They were horrible. And being the nerd I was, I decided I liked CDMA, so waited for Sprint. I lived in Westport, and the Sprint store was walking distance, so I got one the week before they actually advertised availability: "so, you guys are open now?" "no, not really, but come in anyway." Hence, the 0455 number. Including all test devices and employee phones, I am #455 in the MSA.

Anyway, I have long known I was totally out of the loop on other interfaces. I only recently became aware that even companies like Motorola bend to Sprint's will a little, so even that interface is changing (3rd softkey on a RAZR?) when on Sprint. To get the experience, I need to change. Sprint made it easy, by insisting on signing me up for a THREE year contract when I get converted off the employee plan. So, I rushed out and got something. I settled on the N75 because its S60 (Symbian) but is still basically a phone.

But seriously, the possibility of a true featurephone seems really compelling. I sorta hate PDA-phones (my inherent dislike comes out in my iPhone commentary. My phone has to:

• Have a good radio. Strong, clear, interference-free. An antenna reasonably free from coupling and reasonably polarity-independent.


• Have reasonable battery life. Preferably all weekend. Willing to disable features to get this when I need it, but it needs to be possible.


• Make phone calls at the drop of a hat.


• Work with gloves, etc. No bare-finger interfaces. Haven't seen a touchscreen I'd want to use to exclusion, but it might happen.

Everything else is a bonus, as long as it doesn't intrude on these basics.

Overall, I think the N75 is about 75% of the way there. Really compelling product, which I am therefore starting to use for all sorts of non-phone enterprises. I read gmail on it all the time. I respond a couple times a week. I am starting to take photos with it, semi-seriously. I use the Opera browser a lot, for info I would previously have had to wait to find when I get home. Actually, I even pull it out and browse when I could go into the next room and get one of the several laptops we always have about.

The customization of apps is unbeatable. The ATTifying of the Nokia browser is lame as hell. Its really only used as a stepstone to download stuff now. The gmail app and some other things are unbeatable. Replacing the calculator is just nuts though. Never thought of a phone like that. Really, its a computer. Even has the ability to switch apps without abandoning. Which is really cool when you get it into your head. Data storage is pretty normal as well. Compare this to getting a KRZR to read ringtones off the SDcard.

If you think I am indeed addicted to my portable computer, note that the N800 sits on its kickstand on a shelf by the TV most of the time, instead.

That said, the N75 does have some downsides:

• Battery is not as good as it should be. Not great, but it should be better.


• Memory is too small. I run out. But a lot of this is AT&T's fault for leaving the music store running all the time.


• Yup, its got the AT&T overlay. Screams and animates at startup and shutdown, insists on saying their name on the greeting, has the stupid music app always open, and some other stuff. I may unlock and run the Nokia updater, which purportedly makes it a straight Nokia phone.


• No GPS. I go back and forth on this. Sure, I want it, but you could say its a pricey feature. If it wasn't in all sorts of $0 consumer phones purely for e911 purposes. Today, I find it inexcusable that this does not have a GPS. I use maps almost never as a result, and it makes me sad.


• Widgets are not widgets. They are just apps. The idle screen is too idle. I want the main menu on the idle screen, and I want portlet-like smart widgets. Apps can stay running, so why can't I get a count of new gmails on the idle screen?

More will be said about this, I am sure, in the context of additional thoughts on mobiles in the coming years.

P.S. Alison has the KRZR, so I still know how that works. The PM325 basically died, though. Anyone need one for spares?

Oh yeah, that was battery

Had to go to Olathe for jury duty today. Full experience, selected for a trial and everything. We finished, so I can say whatever I want about it. Mostly, though, it was just interesting. While we were warned that its not like TV, it really was quite a bit like TV. Maybe not crappy show like CSI, but -- considering the much smaller magnitude of the crime -- a lot like Murder One, or something. Some random notes:

• Way more attention is paid to the jury than I expected. Not just the lawyers facing the jury when giving arguments, but if any raise their hand, or even look ike they are straining to hear, attention is paid immediately.
• We outnumbered the rest of the courtroom. Zero observers, and only one lawyer per side. The 12-year-old testifying was confused when asked to search the courtroom for the defendant; he got lost in the pile of people to his left.
• The arrangement changed. During voir dire the tables were in a different arrangement, then they moved them for the trial. Not sure why. Our courtroom was unusually classically-shaped. Tall rectangles of stone and wood. A lot of others (you can see in from the hallway) are much more human-scale, and arranged in this circle shape.
• Objections just like TV. "Relevance? This is a criminal threat case, your honor." My favorite: This is when the tables are still such that the state is to the judge's right. So one time the prosecutor stands and opens his mouth (I could not divine what that was just said he objected to) and the judge just waved him back down without even looking. Classic.
• Speaking of which, everyone is poker faced. We are especially not to give anything away. But the prosecutor routinely had a "what the hell is he thinking" look when the defense atty did something odd. He was youngish, and way less smooth and prepared sounding when presenting anything. Overall, very disorganized presentation, and not easy to follow a thread.
• During voir dire, they ask all sorts of odd questions. Oh, like 36 people go into the courtroom, and 24 are seated and asked questions. Then the whole for-cause and the discretionary dismissals (when we get dismissed, its all at once, and he reads the names of the empaneled jury, none of this one-at-a-time stuff like the few shows with this part). Anyway later the topics about which they ask mostly came up but at the time most seemed irrelvant. Have you ever used the services of a limousine driver? And the defense attorney starts getting each person's story in order. After three, the judge asks if its really necessary, and it can be sped up by asking everyone at once. By which he means, do this actually. He was like this the whole time. Keeping everything going, and trying not to let anyone get away with anything. "I'll allow, but get on with it." Again, very TV-like, really.
• One more funny judge story. He deferred someone for some lame illness. She has to come back later. When someone asked, a few questions later, how long the trial would take, he told us a day, or so. "and that woman I dismissed a little while ago will probably get some medical malpractice suit that lasts six weeks. So you are pretty lucky."
• Most witnesses were on for 5 minutes. One took forever. At least 19 hours. A... Mystic. Which was weird in so many ways, especially as the defense guy kept trying to pursue it in some odd way that kept getting shot down. She was a horrible witness, and after a bit insisted she could not understand english, so they had to get a translator. Then, she would answer before the translator was done. It was painful. As this was the one named victim, the prosecutor cared a lot about it, and excused her during closing statement as "She's...a bit of a character. But you cannot consider that..." etc. Hilarious.
• No exhibits, no physical evidence. Nothing. Not a bit. To the point, it was a little confusing. I suspect this is because its a realtively minor case, and they are too busy to even get phone records (though they were referred to by the lawyers, not evidence though) but it was sorta odd to just have people muttering through conflicting testimony.
• The instructions are quite lengthy, read to us, and given in paper. 16 points, each on their own piece of paper. And, suprising me, they are not totally boilerplate. They are made up at the moment, derived from the law and existing forms, but there is arguing about what it says exactly. We could hear arguing (loudly!) from the judges chambers about the language.
• As it turns out, this mattered. We, eventually (took 3 hours to decide. Not a slam dunk at all!) settled on this one decision of battery. That there was some threshold of intent, and therefore this was not a battery. When we asked a question, there was no useful response, so we had to do it on our own. Anyway, afterwards, the judge comes in and we can ask questions freely. He was very open and honest and nice. When this question came up, he says "Oh, yeah. That was battery." Without the slightest hesitation. He was suprised we found him innocent on that count (guilty on another, btw) and its because he insisted on simplyfying the language for us. If he'd left in the phrase the prosecutor wanted, we might have parsed it right and convicted on that also.
• The language for the other one -- criminal threat -- had this addendum of "terrorizing" with a defintion. Terribly confusing, and the judge said he hates how that law is written. No end of trouble with people understanding it.
• The accused was basically charged with threatening some people, and sorta roughing up a kid. Unrelated, but on the same day so tried together. Gut feeling from the evidence is that he's a control-freak jerkoff of a guy. When the guilty verdict was read he looked like we were totally at fault, and he'd kick our ass if he could. Just for a moment. Didn't say anything, but he sure didn't look disbelieving or remorseful. I am not one to agonize and have sleepless nights, but that look sure would help if I did. He's guilty as hell.

All in all, it was really not a big hassle, and was really interesting. I highly suggest it.

Another example...

...of desktop computer mentality causing short-circuits in design. A Predator B crashed in april of last year while flying for Customs & Border Protection in Arizona. The accident report is very interesting:

The condition lever, which is installed in both the PPO-1 and PPO-2 consoles, serves a different function depending on whether the station is being used by the payload operator or by the pilot. In the payload operator configuration, the lever is used to control the iris of the camera. Moving the lever forward increases the iris opening, moving the lever to the middle position locks the camera's iris setting, and moving the lever aft decreases the opening. In the pilot configuration, the lever is used to control the engine fuel valve and the propeller feather servo. When in the pilot configuration, the lever has a linear analog range from 0 to 100 percent, which is divided into thirds: "normal," "shutdown," and "feather/shutdown."

Without reading the report you can probably guess the accident is the result of switching consoles (due to some software issue with the first, I gather) and not following procedures correctly, so the engine was commanded to turn off. Here's another good example:

Warning Signals There is an audible warning when an engine failure occurs. However, the same tone is used for every warning... ...The avionics technician stated that he heard the warning, but thought it was activating because they lost the Iridium satellite.

And, apparently, there is no really useful visible signal of any sort. Naturally, FAA found the accident to be the pilot's fault, but I have to place a lot of the blame on the design of the system. I never buy poor training or poor procedure for such egregious design faults. Its not like 80 years of accident investigations have taught us nothing about aircraft control design and layout. This was totally predictable. Here's another one, about software design instead of human factors, but it proves the point as well. The aircraft is controlled mostly thru a C-band radio. If you loose signal (which happens if you are out of line-of-sight) an Iridium satellite comm channel can be used. When the engine power was lost, the aircraft dropped out of range of the primary radio.

However, when the fuel was cut off to the engine and the UA began shedding electrical equipment to conserve battery power, the Iridium system was one of the items that was shed. The UA is also equipped with an auto-ignition system, but this system will not work unless the Iridium system is operable.

Who decided that the only backup control channel should be turned off? This is like (on a manned aircraft) turning off the backup hydraulics. All of this, I think, is exactly inline with many of my rants about somehow forgetting good design principles just because its a computer, and everything is new.

Pantone... phones!

While searching out info in foreign markets for [a new client] I ran across this:


http://mb.softbank.jp/mb/en/product/3g/812sh/ Note the logo and TM. Not "many colors" but actually Pantone color. No idea what it means, but they are awful nice colors.

Be enviro today...

...just do it interestingly. Its: And so half the blogs I read are full of this. My problem is that none of this is new. When I was in a Boy Scout troop in the early 80s we were still encouraged to toss trash out the window. I did not, which was making something of a stand, believe it or not, though it was in the wind that maybe pouring used motor oil on fish was a bad thing. Several posts on different blogs and forums (fora?) in the last few weeks are admonishing us to turn off computers when not in use. Fine. As soon as I am not using one I'll get right on that. I wonder how many of these people have their air conditioning on though? I don't.

Okay, the one that really grates on me is "try switching to CFLs." Look at the light to the right. Its a bulky, odd, modular compact fluorescent. Why so weird? Cause its one of a batch I bought 19 years ago! Westlake sold scads of these ABCO bases and tubes back then even. Good luck finding them anywhere else in 1988. Yes, they do work. A different model I had back then was on continuously (barring power outages) for about 15 years. Do we universally use them? No. Don't work well with dimmers, and we use a lot of dimmers for both the atmosphere we want to project and to reduce consumption. Its trivially easy to figure out how much power lights use a different current levels. Especially with a meter, but you can guess about levels of dimming also.

No that note, enough griping. To get in the spirit of the day, I'll be productive. Look at the triangle of arrows. Reduce is done with turning off stuff, or using lower-consumption items, or just consuming less crap. Its really not a sacrifice to not take a plastic bag when buying just a single item. Reducing the total energy costs by using local products is now starting to become pseudo-plausible. Recycle is the inappropriate over-branded one. See, its even on the recycling bin. Everyone knows what's involved in this, but its really not the one and only answer. Remanufacturing items (like metals or paper) is relatively wasteful still. My favorite is reuse. Keep that scrap lumber and make a bird house. Turn leaves into much for your garden bed. Keep food containers and use them over (even if just for the shop or garden). But don't forget that even things like selling your old items on eBay (or buying someone else's) to get some last scrap of value instead of throwing them away, are in the right mindset.

Your account cannot be validated

Okay, this one I have to post. I still have Sprint service, and I am ordering a replacement iPod for Alison, when I have to call in to confirm something. Dial:

Your account cannot be validated, please call Customer Solutions...

Etc. Huh. That's odd. Since I am SURE I have not been hotlined. See, a couple weeks ago I got a txt that said I was about to be, so I called and they said I hadn't paid. I sure hadn't, because I only pay when they actually send me bills. Care rep admitted the cutover to ebilling was all jacked up, so a bunch of people didn't get bills, and the way the bug goes, no way to tell who it affected! So, when I mention it, I get a 7 day grace period to pay.

So, that's paid, and there is therefore no way I have crossed another bill threshold and exceeded the time. Plus, no "please pay" txt or impossibly offensive Finance call (had that in the past also). So, I check the website to see:

Yup, it looks hotlined to me. So I call. And start getting annoyed again. Why do I have to say what I want ("advocate" works to get me somewhere)? If hotlined, I am supposed to go straight to the person who demands payment. When I get a person, after a short hold, they ask what I need? I am hotlined.

Essentially: "No, you aren't."

Huh? Its true. Won't agonize you with the whole conversation (really, the rep was nice, but it was weird) but the short version is my account was "temporarily suspended" with no reason, no notes, nothing else outstanding, and she looked around for while. Nothing much to it, just unlocked it and it instantly is available.

I asked an ex coworker still there (who does a lot of UX work with billing and care). He sees all the crazy stuff, and he'd never heard of anyone being randomly just locked, but indeed, the billing systems are out-of-control huge and complex, so do random stuff sometimes.

Location is not (just) maps

This entry is also posted at the Little Springs company blog. If you feel compelled to comment, I'd do it over there as its quite a bit better read. A year ago (almost to the day) Barbara was mentioning that all mashups seem to be about maps, and I feel not much has changed since then. Instead of using all the neat and ever more common location technologies to simply display maps with more info and prettier visualizations, I'd like to see everyone start thinking about making the whole phone more contextually sensitive. Location services should be one of the primary methods of being aware of the user and what they are doing.

Appropriate behavior

As phones continue to grow in ubiquity and power, I believe admonitions to turn them off will fade (or simply be more and more ignored, as is already happening in many places). While I might well have scanned a poster in the lobby of a theater, and be searching about something on a pre-movie slideshow, the device should be able to use its location awareness to not loudly beep at me. Better yet would be an awareness (maybe based on linking up payment schemes) that I am in a particular movie. Push advertising — or a response to my query — about a related product should just simply wait till the film I am in is done.

Appropriate information

Here, even more than above, "appropriate" means "relevant." Information presented should always be contextually relevant, and the phone should have enough information to present this information instead of always offering the average, lowest-common-denominator guess. Lets say by combining location, bluetooth gazing and audible cues, the phone detects I am in a bookstore, not walking down the street outside anymore. Now when I take a photo of a book or poster (or if we must, the associated 2D barcode) the info presented should be where they are in the store, how many are in stock, and maybe a sales guy gets paged to come find me. A link to buy from Amazon or a map to the nearest bookstore is just going to annoy me, besides offering zero value.

More appropriate maps

Maps have an implies contextual nature simply because we all can be placed within them. Therefore interactive maps are still generally fascinating and relevant-looking. But why do I have to launch one tool to get weather, one to get traffic, another to get directions and so on? Someday every user is going to figure this out, and demand more from their phones. Why can't the device can use context information of time of day, messaging, calls in progress, location and maybe bluetooth (depending on the car) to determine that not only am I in the car, but probably heading home from work? After I drive this a few times, it can recall how I normally go home without my ever actually entering in a route. And what does it do with that? Tell me about traffic conditions, or weather. Remind me about the changing season, so I will be driving directly into the sun most of the way. If you need to monetize it more, tell me about the best prices on gas, or the sale at the grocery store I often stop at on the way home. There are dozens more ways I can think of now that location and other awareness modes can increase the ways your phone can behave more appropriately. Offer up your own ideas below. Or just go off, and build them.

What happened to the dream of hypermedia?

Cast your mind back, to the days before the internet even, when anything was possible. Hypermedia (by whatever name) was going to link all information to all other information. Don't understand a phrase? Just click and look it up. A reference to a scene in a movie? Just click and see the clip. But with all the interactive sites, and widgets and plugins and flash players and everything, I have had this experience maybe half a dozen times. A way to get close is the best Wikipedia has to offer. Clicking about their universe can be very enlightening in these cases. Its often much worse than this, with broken links, or a page with hardly any links at all, or stoppages due to digital media protection. I was thinking of this in the car while listening to an NPR story on rockabilly. NPR does a good job with this. They offer (after a brief delay) plain-text transcriptions of the story, a podcast of the whole show as aired, and a bunch of links to listen to related stories and some of the music referred to in it. But how often am I disappointed? Weekend shows are often distributed by others, with restrictions including a total inability to download them. Much of the music in the story is unavailable for listening at all. And its not really hyper. Music is not linkable from inside the audio story. I think similar thoughts when using my PVR. On the off chance I accidentally see an ad, and want to pursue it, I have to transcribe it, sucking it in with my eyeballs and keying it somewhere else, probably on another machine entirely. This is true even for an ad for another show, where I have to search on the PVR, then type in the name of the other show. The systems are still glorified VCRs, with little or no awareness of the content (except the CCI-byte... hmm, again, no hurdles to getting DRM in place...) And why should this be? I am really not sure. Its trivially easy to come up with ways to monetize these sorts of interactions. Want me to watch the show? Auto-pop the search field with the ad info. Want me to buy your music? Let me listen to it stream, and link to an online store (or amazon if I must buy the CD). All in all, much more believable as a revenue stream than most internet technologies I see floating about.

Design DVD

I subscribe to some of the netflix rss feeds, including the new releases one. Why do you think I have 1200 disks spread over half a dozen queues? So much neat stuff comes out. Anyway, I saw this Design disk (or, on netflix and couldn't resist. Got it and pushed to the top of the queue.

It was really neat, and very interesting for any designer, despite focusing on dimensional products. While they were all produced by the same people, in the same style, each product was a free-standing segment, so I'll briefly cover them each that way. The DS19, turns out to be the epitome of the Citroen, the one that I suspect all Americans hate, with the rear axle way at the back. But its still really interesting seeing how Flaminio Bertoni changed stodgy designs, and more or less invented some of the modern auto methods of modeling cars in clay, for example. Nice addressing of function, not just form, and problem solving (like chopping off the back of the car to fit it into typical garages, then hiding the odd shapes with lighting enclosures) and even production troubles. This one had no talking heads, presumably because all the designers are long dead, but it does ask for a bit of trust to the narrator.

The choice of the Bubble Club sofa and chair baffled me. Its as cool as cool can get, but iconic? Cheap? Maybe its just a U.S. problem. Did I forget to mention this is a French DVD? English language track works fine, and its beautiful, but the cultural references are sorta remote, and well, its a French film. Minor nudity, believe it or not. Anyway, Starck himself talking about the genesis of the Bubble Club is great. He even draws for us to explain things; I love seeing other people who cannot bring themselves to describe things without drawing.

The Bic pen segment was nothing special. Partly because no designer was involved. A bunch of engineers were set to task by Marcel Bich and that's it. Needed more exploration of why it looks like this, and how that's helped. Instead, it was treated as a marketing phenomenon in many ways, and didn't fit in like the others.

Akari lamps. I particularly enjoyed that I watched this on a TV flanked by two of the more organically-shaped ones. I always knew these as Noguchi lamps, as I learned about them in design school, so attributed them directly to the designer. Nice background on him, including some old interview footage where he talks directly about design emerging from sculpture. I'd always gotten a very simple and slightly cut-down version of the lamp-creation myth, but this went into some detail about revitalizing the lamp industry by making a modern design, which is good (interesting) in that it's about making a product that meets the needs of customers, the need for the manufacturer to be able to make it (and make money) and the overall needs of the economy to have good products and employ workers. Really outstanding footage (and description) of the manufacturing process. Apparently, they are all hand-made still.

The Hoover 150. Henry Dreyfus, of many other objects, like the model 500 phone and many Singer sewing machines, did well partly because he worked with the engineers and manufacturing side, so could make things actually work. Overall lots of discussion of the streamline style, with some nice socio-economic tie-ins, and fantasy designs as well as other real products. Nice cutaways and diagrams to show off how the previous model was mechanically very similar, and Dreyfus in large measure just improved it by encasing it, using new metallurgy to lighten it, and so on. Nice coverage of anthropometrics as well, since he was a trend-setter and had to make his own "average" man and women models (Joe and Josephine). The iMac suprised me. Sure, its clear and everything, but I still have an iMac DV in the other room, so it feels too proximate to judge in the sense of these other 50-70 year old items. I'm even using an original iMac keyboard at work every day. Yet, they do an okay placing it in the bio-design movement and cover why it is designed this way, and how this matters.

Some nice historical computer overview. Not just "punchcards came from weaving" but newly-shot film of such looms, and other punchcard machines, as well as some neat stock footage of all sorts of old computer equipment and its use. Lots of stock is used in all of these segments, but its French stock, so I had seen about 1% of it before. Hence, fresher than you'd think. Johnathan Ive is way younger and more cool than I had thought. And, he's English. I always thought he was American for whatever reason. Lots of good talking head video of him here. Ive says its translucent because its a celebration of the material (not mentioned, but see Good Design), but he mostly went on and on about the translucency giving a lush external finish; the "surface" changes all the time, baed on angle, time of day, etc. He seems to not buy ("fairly specious argument") that if you can see inside its less terrifying. Which contradicts some of what the narrator just said, which is funny.

At Sprint, only 9 of 10 bad things are true

I've avoided saying much about my time at Sprint, even now that I've left; I still know people there, they are a client, etc. But, I am fine letting other people say it. Read Martin Geddes' list of 10 things Sprint did/does wrong. Okay, I'll comment a little. Number 5 is overstated. I've worked with some top-notch people at Sprint despite the locale. I'm surprised by the portability of today's workforce. And we built (or almost built) some great stuff. If anything, the issue is #6, preventing that workforce from doing the job they are paid to do. Despite my apparent pessimism, I have high hopes for things like WiMax. And, despite Sprint continuing to drop, I think the news of the Vonage settlement is nothing but good. Lawsuits are no way to run a company.

One more small step for location enabling

This entry is also posted at the Little Springs company blog. If you feel compelled to comment, I'd do it over there as its quite a bit better read. The WAP Review blog sums up what I was just saying the other week about LBS.

From a purely technical perspective, finding the user is as easy as it gets in terms of LBS technology. The government's E911 mandate means the carriers already have this technology in place. However the business, privacy and political barriers to being able share this data on a mobile network is another story.

But follows up with this news that:

One of those barriers has fallen. For the first time a US carrier has given users the ability to share their location with a third party mobile web site. Granted, the third party is Microsoft, but it's a start, ...

Note that the press release refer to GPS, as always, even though its pretty obviously (and seamlessly) using lower-precision methods when the satellites aren't visible. Its not the ubiquitous context-enabling technology I'd like to see, but it certainly sounds reasonably easy and better than you'd expect. Now, if Sprint would just open up like they claim they will for the WiMax product, and offer the same service without giant strategic partnerships, we'd all be better off. But its proof the carriers can do it anytime they want to. As long I'm on location technologies again, I wanted to mention Nokia's Point and Find. There's a useful video of this that I embedded on the work blog. It involved installing players as its an FLV, and I haven't gotten around to doing that stuff on the home server yet. They talk a lot about it essentially replacing QR codes (good!) but I like the part where its a location service: point at a building, and look for ATMs near "here." While this is clearly pretty new and edgy — and building a useful searchbase outside of the bay area will take forever — its good to see the principle applied of using whatever technology and information there is on the device, and in the environment to provide a better and more relevant experience. I'd also like to see services like this (and yes, I know there are others working on it also), like Akoo, and Shazam investigate always-scanning modes. I'll bet everyone will be paranoid about the technology, but if the device could be listening or looking and decide you are in a restaurant, vs. on the busy street 10 feet away, it could react much more appropriately in many ways.

200

When I left Sprint, lots of extra benefits got lost. One that freaks my mom and Alison out is life insurance. So, the last couple days has been futzing around with paperwork for that. Its suprisingly quick and convenient for the amount of stuff that has to be done. This morning, someone came by the house to take blood and so on. A sort of mini-physical. In high school, when I ran 1/4 miles under a minute, I weighed 185. Kept that thru much of college, then nudged upward. In the late 90s, as I became a lazy cube-monkey, I leveled off at 206. Exactly. It was weirdly precise, for years. Lately I have been more towards 215, and higher. Might not seem like a lot, but I am usually so consistent, it bugs me. Plus, I have joint issues and stuff, so I found it hard to work out well. So, after spending much of last year biking everywhere (like, to the office a couple days a week) I switched to running in January. Works great, and after a springtime injury, I got a physical therapist to give me more tips, exericises and the right insoles. Lately I am nudging against 25 miles a week. And it works great in general; I am not out of breath hiking around the woods for hours under load, for example. And today, when I get weighed and measured, I am back down to 200. Yea!