Last year I climbed the CN Tower (which means going up the 1776+ stairs).  I never really told the story of what happened, but basically it was a difficult mental and physical test. I had to take quite a few rest stops on the way up to catch my breath. In the end, I had a lousy time of 44:56. I am sure I can do better.

How bad is 45 minutes?

http://www.wwf.ca/HowYouCanHelp/CNTowerClimb/2007/results/resultsPublic-overall.txt

I finished 4023 out of 4222 total climbers. Or 1911 out of 1964 male climbers. Oh my god.

One thing that slowed me, I'm sure, was climbing all the way to the top with a partner. Now my climbing partner is in better shape than I am, but she had more difficulty as we got to the top whereas I wanted to keep going.

Two people climbing together is not just as slow as the slowest member, its a lot slower when one person wants to stop and the other person doesn't. I changes the momentum, turns what could have been 20 minutes of intensity into 40 minutes of alternating intesity and rest, which is a different workout. I'm sure we both could have done a lot better if we just met at the top.

I'm planning to do it again this year. But I will climb solo and do it in under 30 minutes.

My account is temporarily unavailable? Why just me? It'd be fine if their whole site was down for maintenance, but they're saying "my account" is not available. Facebook hates me.

The U.S. election process has always struck me as a bit odd. Not sure if I can entirely explain what's specifically wrong with it, but there are a few symptoms:

• A U.S. Presidential election lasts about 2 years (18 months of non stop campaigning by the candidates) for a term that only lasts 4 years.
• An unpopular second-term President is considered a lame duck, and not much work gets done for 2 years.
• The job "President" has very little responsibility, but is for some reason worth spending hundreds of millions of dollars on getting.
• A successful politician (a U.S. Senator, say) is always fundraising. Every week, every month, every year he is in office, he's also trying to raise money for the next campaign. If some of those Senators spent as much time focusing on passing good laws as they did on fundraising, the U.S. would be much better off.
• The national job of President is fought "state by state". And candidates routinely drop out of the race if they don't do well in Iowa and New Hampshire, of all places.

So why is this so messed up? That's harder to pinpoint.

I think the design of Presidential elections - the delegate process - is partly to blame. Let me ask you this - what would happen if you gave the candidates 60 days to campaign and that's it. And at the end of 60 days, you held one giant national primary to elect the party representitive? The person with the most votes represents the party at the Presidential election.

Hey, you can even give people second and third choices so that votes for unelected candidates get shifted to a more viable candidate instead of getting wasted. That would be more democratic than this one primary per week nonsense.

And hey, while we`re at it, 60 days after the nation primary, you hold the national election. Again, most votes determines the winner.

Well, two things would happen. For one, every person in the country involved in party politics would have a say in the candidate chosen. As it is now, the early states tend to pick the one or two choices for the rest. And the second thing is it would take a LOT less money to be a Presidential candidate. As it is, Clinton has already spent $40 million on her campaign, Obama $45 million, Romney $53 million, Giuliani $30 million, McCain $28 million... And how many states primaries have been held? 7. Yes, out of 50 states, 7 primaries are over and $200 million has already been spent!

The other thing to consider, is how little say people really do have in electing the President. One of the startling things to me was the Gore-Bush election in 2000. Bush beat Gore by winning Florida - we all know that. But the vote counting came down to one or two precincts in Florida a few hundred disputed votes. Hanging chads. What to do about votes who had only indented the voting card but not punch a hole into it? And that decided the election. A few hundred votes in 1 or 2 specific places in Florida. Why weren't votes in other states challenged and recounted? Because even a 100,000 vote difference in California doesn't matter, but a 100 vote difference in Florida does!

That was a close election. But there needs to be a better way to count these things such that recounts don't dramatically change the outcome. One vote per person.

I used to like Lou Dobbs. Years and years ago however. This was back when he did the nightly business report on CNN, before he left CNN to found Space.com and before he came back to CNN.

And then something happened. Not sure if it was around the time of September 11th, 2001. But Lou Dobbs decided to take a anti-immigration stand - and his opinions could be counted on to contain a certain amount of Xenophobia (fear of non-Americans bascially). Now he wouldn't say he's anti-immigrant, that he's in fact anti-illegal immigrant. But if you add together his proposals for a stronger border, a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, shipping the illegals back home (he's opposed to amnesty), against giving health care and drivers licenses to illegal immigrants already here, anti-free trade, anti-H1B visa program, anti-China trade, and on and on...

He's as protectionist as it comes most times, and most economists will tell you that protectionist policies are actually against America's best interests most times.

So anyways, one thing I like about Lou is that he's not shy to place the blame at the feet of politicians (of any political party) who are shirking their responsibilty in Washington. Today's column on the impending (and probably unstoppable) economic disaster, however, is spot-on.

Well done Lou. I rarely agree with you lately. But no one (in an election year at least) wants to stand up and say the politicians took their eye off the ball the last 3-4 years and now our economy is in big trouble. They all would prefer to delay the bad news (even if it makes it worse) til 2009 when the next President has been decided. That's all their interested in dealing with this year - partisan politics.

Apple just announced some interesting upgrades to the iPod Touch. Some new applications are now available for the iPod - including maps, email, weather, stock quotes, and a customizable home page. Unfortunately, the are planning to charge existing users $20 for the upgrade.

I don't think this is going to persuade people to stop hacking their iPods. Many of these applications already exist for the iPhone, and Apple is simply installing them on the iPod Touch as well. The binaries are identical, so they don't even need to recompile. It costs them nothing to do this - just add the applications into the iPod deployment package.

To an uninformed customer, like me I guess, it seems like they are simply trying to get another $20 from my pocket, for no discernable reason. It's not costing them $20 to develop and deliver these to me. It's just they've been holding them back from me. It's like a cover charge to a bar, where I've already paid $400 to be a member (to buy the iPod) and regularly pay for drinks (songs) anyways. So why this extra $20?

Add this to the already long list of reasons Apple is one of the most consumer unfriendly companies around. (With Sony of course.)

I wonder what a Zune is like?

It struck me the other day, as I was in my local Sony Store oogling the beautiful televisions, that I have mixed feelings towards Sony. I mostly hate them, but I do own all Sony stereo equipment, and when I redo my home theatre later this year it will probably be Sony as well.

Sony makes great products. No doubt, their products might cost more than the competition but you get what you pay for. You want the cheapest LCD around, buy Prima. But if you want something to show off to your friends and make them jealous, get a Sony.

But they are also one of the most consumer unfriendly companies around. While everyone has standardized on the SD flash memory format for cameras, Sony introduces the MemoryStick. So if I buy a Sony camera, I can't use all these cheap 2GB SD cards I have and instead have to buy expensive Sony-only cards. No thanks.

A few years ago I purchased a new camera, made by Konica Minolta. I liked that camera  a lot, except I lost the lens cap for it. Speaking with a camera store sales clerk some time later, I learned that Sony purchased some assets from Konica Minolta and that Konica Minolta would stop making cameras as a result. (So no, I could not buy a new lens cover for my camera.) Did Sony buy the Minolta technology just so that Minolta would get out of the camera business?

The lowlight was of course the famous (infamous) rootkit incident. Inserting a Sony Music CD into your computer actually modified Windows in such a way that made it easier for virus writers to hide viruses in your system. Inserting a music CD in your computer should not have to install software, let alone modify Windows. It should just play.

Sony was the company that brought the world BetaMax, and now they are the company behind Blu-Ray. I understand innovation, but I don't understand doing things to make life more difficult and confusing for your customers.

I suppose I should be thankful that Sony computers run Windows and not some proprietary operating system. I'm sure they would have done that if they could.

A CNN blogger at CES this year made the comment that Sony makes too many products.

"There will be 16 new Handycams, two new Walkman phones, a Blu-ray PC drive, a mainstream entry into the Alpha camera line, new Mylo models, some new Vaios, a bunch of new Bravias -- although I missed the exact number, apparently 10 of them are 1080p," Jongewaard said.

"How on earth can it be profitable to have this many different products?" she added.

That's another thing about Sony. They make something like 200,000 products. No exaggeration, it's that high. They seem a bit unfocused.

I'm currently both reading AND listening to the book The Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. I'll admit the title caught my attention on Amazon.com and bought it simply based on that, not knowing anything else about the book.

The book describes how the author was able to eliminate a ton of unnecessary stress from his life, and then outsource the rest in order to free himself to only work 4 hours per week to make the same (or more) income.

Is it possible or just a fairy-tale fantasy? There are some interesting concepts in this book. One is the 80/20 rule - which is not new. The theory is that 20% of your customers will contribute 80% of your income. (Or the flip side is 80% of your customers will only contribute 20% of your income.) So why not focus on the 20% of customers that pay your bills. Don't be afraid to fire customers who are giving you headaches and very little profits. Or those customers who you call every week and never order from you. Put them on autopilot and focus on the small number of great customers. Find out why they're so great, and then find a few more just like them.

Another interesting concept is the idea of elimination. Reduce the number of emails coming in. Ask people not to CC you on things you don't need to be involve in. Reduce the number of meetings. Delegate more things - your customer service staff should be empowered to make the customer happy without having to come to you to ask for small things. Create a FAQ for the most frequently asked questions. Reduce the drains on your time. Make people around you aware that you consider your time valuable and don't let them waste it with idle chit chat and stuff.

And finally, Ferriss recommends you outsource as much as you can. Get a virtual assistant for $4 an hour from India, and let them do the preliminary research you need to write that article, let them blog for you, let them do your business and personal errands that take a long time, even let them respond to your emails for you. Can you find 10 hours of week of tasks for someone else to do, for $40 a week? Are there things you'd rather be doing for 10 more hours a week (playing with your kids, sleeping, planning your next big project) that you'd pay $40 to free up? It's seductive to free up a lot of time for so little money.

Ferriss has a blog, and recently did an interesting interview with Robert Scoble. An interesting theory - one which I will be slowly putting to the test over the next couple of months.