I lead a pretty boring life as far as vices go. The trio pictured above are the only things keeping me from my goal of reaching my high school weight.

I talked with my friend and former co-worker Jake today for tips (see this post for why Jake is an expert in this field). His secret? CalorieKing Nutrition & Exercise Manager for Mac OS X

I downloaded the 7-day demo and entered in my items for today. Very interesting statistics and feedback on the nutrition of what I ate and drank and the effect that exercise has on weight trends. Not sure if I can keep up with the record-keeping aspect of it (I long ago stopped using Quicken for this reason), but it will be interesting to do it for one week anyway…

Got to cross item #8 off my Things to Do Before I Die list this past weekend:

Wade across the Mississippi headwaters with my kids.

We spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Itasca State Park in northern Minnesota, staying in the wonderful Itasca Suites near Douglas Lodge. Worth every penny…

We spent some time hiking around the south end of the lake on Friday, visiting the Old Timer’s Cabin and the Clubhouse. We then went to the headwaters for the classic wade across the Mississippi before taking a trip around Wilderness Drive to visit the large white and red pines. For dinner Friday, we ate at the Douglas Lodge dining room, which serves a mean Lake Itasca walleye.

After sleeping in Saturday morning, we rented bikes and rode from the bike shop back to the headwaters area for lunch. Colleen and kid one headed back to the rental area to switch to kayaks, while kid two and I rode our tandem/trailer bike on the 16 mile loop around the lake. Way too many hills, but spectacularly beautiful scenery (on par with 17-Mile Drive in Pebble Beach).

The kids went swimming for an hour before we went back to the room, cleaned up and hit the road for Lake George, Minnesota. I love the diners in small towns in rural Minnesota–friendly staff, huge portions and low prices. Our total for dinner for four at the Lake George Cafe was under $23.

On Sunday morning, I woke up early to run, but was still too sore from the bike ride to get out the door. Everyone woke up and packed the car to beat the 11AM check-out time. After another quick visit to the Old Timer’s Cabin (and the gift shop), we hit highway 71 and headed south. We stopped in Wadena for another great, cheap lunch at Larry’s Family Pizza ($15) before dodging rain storms and hitting heavy Sunday traffic on I-94 back to the metro area.

Loved everything about this trip and hope to go back again soon. Highly recommended.

Pictures posted in both the private and travel galleries.

Yesterday my wife Colleen defended her capstone/thesis project at the University of Minnesota and found out afterward that she is now officially done with her masters program in health journalism.

I know firsthand how hard it is to work full-time and go to school–but I never had two kids to deal with too for my degree. Colleen worked extremely hard for this and we are very, very proud of her.

After all the signatures were obtained and the form dropped off with the graduate office (just in time for an official July 31 graduation date), we visited the shoe tree on the west bank before heading to Al’s Breakfast for a celebration lunch.

Congrats!

Today was a hard-working (but fun) Father’s Day for me. The girls woke me up with breakfast in bed and a bunch of great gifts:

• A very cool London Eboy laptop cover for my Mac Book Pro
• Reinhold Messner’s book The Crystal Horizon
• Great arts and crafts items from kid one and two

I worked on laundry a bit (which Colleen went gung-ho on the rest of the day), starting cleaning my office, then worked on yard stuff for a few hours. The grass had grown a lot while I was in San Francisco and required frequent trips to the yard waste bin. I also decided to trim various trees and shrubs, which was going great until I pulled a muscle in my back.

We all had a late lunch at Raising Cane’s in Apple Valley, which may be my perfect fast food restaurant. The chicken they have is always perfect - white breast meat with no fat, tasty breading and an awesome dipping sauce. Their french fries are thin crinkles cooked perfectly and I love the Texas toast that comes with the value meals. Even the ice in the soda machine is great - little pellets that take forever to melt.

Spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on my backlog of magazines while watching the U.S. Open in HD. I can’t believe the USGA still does 18-hole Monday playoffs. The logistics must be terrible to plan for and budget.

Finished the day visiting with the neighbors, then running a quick 5K to end the day. Lots to do this week - I’ll try to post here more often this summer…

Another WWDC is history. This is always a highlight of the year for me: a great city and loads of professional development. My head is full of new ideas and things I want to work on this summer:

• Ruby on Rails
• Leopard Server upgrades in MN and LA
• Remote system administration, imaging and automation ideas
• Javascript and Ajax
• iPhone web development
• Cocoa and Xcode
• Graphic design and Illustrator

Yesterday was the beer bash in Yerba Buena Gardens and the surprise musical guest was Barenaked Ladies. I’m not a big fan of them, but they were funny, clued in to the audience and entertaining to watch. Plus they’re Canadian, which is always good in my book.

I’ve never seen so many nerds packed into one place. They did the same regional food stations as last year and the caterer was mostly able to keep pace with the hungry crowd. I had some Italian, Chinese and “All-American” finger foods, all of which were pretty good.

For lunch yesterday, I went to Lark Creek Steak in the Westfield Centre. This is one of the restaurants associated with Bradley Ogden, whose namesake restaurant in Las Vegas is one of my favorites in the whole world. I had the steakburger with sharp cheddar, fries and a shake. It was one of the best burgers I’ve ever had–so good.

Hanging around downtown until my Sun Country red eye later tonight. There are lots of people still at the convention center, even though the sessions are over (labs go until 6:30). I’m currently using the high-speed wireless to watch the live Tiger/Phil stream from the U.S. Open. Kung-Fu Panda is showing across the street, so I might go and catch me some animated JB too…

This conference always seems to go by so quickly. Check out my Twitter feed for all the sessions I’ve been attending. Very interesting stuff here this year. I wish I had more time to learn iPhone programming–there is a lot of money to made there. The shirts this year at the fake Company Store were awesome, so I picked up a couple.

In the food arena, I had lunch yesterday at an Irish pub called The Chieftain located right around the corner from Moscone. Had fish and chips that had a strong ale flavor - yum. Dinner was at Lori’s Diner, where I had a real cherry Coke with an open faced hot turkey sandwich. Food is definitely part of the reason I love San Francisco.

I ran five miles this morning before the sessions started, running from the hotel to Fisherman’s Wharf and back. They now have an In-N-Out Burger at the Wharf, along with all the other wonderful places. I really need to bring the kids here soon.

More good sessions today, with Dr. Paranoid from Pixar presenting again at lunch. I finished several lingering work projects yesterday during breaks and after dinner, so I might be able to go to the Design Awards and Stump the Experts tonight. Nerd fun.

What a week. After the Tapemark, I headed home, mowed the front lawn, grabbed a quick dinner, then drove to the airport to catch a flight to San Francisco for WWDC week.

The flight on Sun Country had some nice surprises. The flight was pretty crowded (130 people), but my row had about four inches of additional leg room–just as good as sitting in an exit row. Arrived right on time and the notoriously slow SFO luggage system had my bag out on the carousel right away.

A quick ride in a Toyota hybrid cab brought me to a new hotel–the Orchard Gardens Hotel on Bush Street. It’s a green hotel and the room is really nice: flat-screen HD TV, in-room wireless, Thymes toiletries and a really comfortable bed.

Today’s keynote at the Apple Worldwide Developer’s Conference was OK, but a little thin on substance. The new price point is nice, and I like the 3G and the GPS, but none of it is available yet and I was hoping for “one more thing.” There was some new stuff in the later sessions, but that is under NDA.

Walked down to Belden Place to have dinner tonight at Sam’s Grill and Seafood Restaurant. I ordered Alaskan Halibut and was a little disappointed. The cheese cake I had for desert was a little better, but I really hate places that charge $3 for a 10-ounce mini bottle of Coke with no refills. Always fun to sit outside in San Francisco, though.