I almost passed out the first time I tried a deadlift. Then again from a slow jog for 2 minutes. Hopefully working out here will make me into some kind of super athlete when I get back :)

Very awesome. Though it sounded more doable to me before I tried exercising in Denver :S

It may not be as cold, but it's still a rough climb into some high altitude.

I'm not really sure how I feel about this issue, mainly because my sense of appropriate clothing for work has changed a great deal in the last couple of years. I used to wear a t-shirt and jeans every day, but that was because it was all I owned. When I started buying nicer clothes, I reserved them for other things. Now that the majority of my clothing (my summer clothing, anyway) is dressier than that, I feel comfortable wearing something dressy to work, because it feels like part of me.

You want the focus to be on the work you do, of course. I think as long as you can strike a balance between expressing yourself honestly and not distracting from the work you're doing, you are ok.

It was so easy when I had a uniform to wear every day.

I haven't experienced the degree of bias you have. The only time I've been harassed, I WAS wearing a uniform. I was also 17 and had no clue how to handle myself.

I don't have the numbers handy, but I read something a while back about people knowing less people 20 years ago than they tend to have set as "friends" today. That's knowing at all, not just being friends with.

People used to have to communicate by letter with people that were far away, it was time consuming and labor intensive. I had lost touch with a lot of people that I would likely never have heard from again if it weren't for Facebook, many of them are military and move around every year or two. I think it's wonderful, these are good people that I enjoy speaking to.

At the same time, friend spam is annoying. I know someone, I friend them, but I really don't need updates on what is going on in their life every 5 minutes. Nor do I share the same interests and values to the point that I want to join every organization that they do - I sometimes am completely the other way in values.

In the end, we are in new territory. The world is different than it used to be, it's bigger. Even though they're using it, I think people don't always realize that the rules have changed. The more friends we have, the less attention we have to give to the outlier friends if we want to give more attention to close friends. It may seem rude to someone that you don't acknowledge their latest comment, but it's just not possible to keep up with what everyone is doing, any more than it's possible to be up to date with the latest news of every country in the world.