Winter has always been a difficult time for running. Apart from the cold temperatures, the roads are messy and slippery, and daylight hours shrink to being dark when I go to work, and dark when I come home again. I used to not mind using treadmills, but my joints seem to disagree with me lately. Somehow I get more blisters and joint pain from running on something that I would have assumed absorbs more impact than pavement would. I have found a few nice tips from various articles that make running in the winter a little more comfortable. This is one of them:

10 TIPS FOR RUNNING IN THE COLD

I have found the layer-recommendation chart to be really accurate and useful.

I spent the first 22 years of my life being a devout theist; or more specifically, a deeply indoctrinated Mormon. I’m not going to go into the details right now, but just know that religion has played a big part in my life and the lives of those closest to me. My desire to post on the topic of theism should therefore be an obvious or likely one.

Thanks to many good influences in my life, I have gradually been able to unlearn the myriad superstitions and untie the blindfolds. Over the last couple years, I have finally found peace and comfort in calling myself an atheist, although I must admit that I stopped believing in the church of my upbringing about 8 years ago. “Atheist” has always been a much scorned word and label that has persistently been the target of unnecessary hate and violence. Indeed the Mormon leaders have felt it necessary to declare a “new battle … against atheism” (1996 President Gordon B. Hinckley). This is likely because “Atheism has always been hostile to religion”  (2009 Elder Oaks). The funny thing about the word atheism is that it is often given far too much meaning than it deserves. An atheist is someone who simply does not believe in a deity. To my own surprise, I found that it was not necessarily a truth claim or any kind of affirmative statement. An atheist does not necessarily claim that there is no God (no atheist that I have ever met or read would make such a claim); only that the atheist does not have reason to believe in one. I don’t believe in leprechauns either, but I could never say that I know they don’t exist.

After being able to see the world in a different, and much less narrow light, I find it more and more difficult to remain quiet about my views in order to not disturb others or hurt feelings. I am starting to agree with Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and the many other atheist writers and bloggers that I read. There is no reason to continue lending the outrageous amount of protection from criticism, to Religion.  Further than this, and my strong belief in the separation of church and state, I have found a lot of life-affirming happiness in leaving the dim world-view given by religious beliefs, and I would really love to share it with those that I care about. I wish someone had shared it with me at an earlier time in my life.

I can’t remember where I found this comic. If someone else knows, please kindly inform me.

For the sake of honesty, you should know that I’m a geek. I often get excited about new software and hardware releases. Firefox of course, is one of the best things to ever happen to Internet users. If you haven’t used it yet, I just don’t know what to say. You would have to be either really behind the times, or technologically inept. That said, there are also several other browsers that are great and have my recommendation as well (i.e. Opera and Chrome). It never hurts to have multiple browsers installed (I always do).

Now, the newest release of Firefox is purportedly 20% faster than the previous version 3.5, which was already pretty fast, especially when compared to Internet Explorer. From watching the new features video, Firefox has also now integrated one of its most popular add-ons, Personas, which is a visual theme editor that has thousands of options for changing the look of Firefox. Customization and great add-ons, like Firebug and Fire Gestures, are some of the reasons I’ve used Firefox so long, and why I will probably continue for a long time to come.