So, if you have nothing to do on April 19th, then come join us and learn something. Even if you do have something to do, cancel it, and come anyway. This is a FREE event! That's right FREE!! So, take the day off, put on your jams, your tank top, and those worn out flip flops and come learn something. I know I'll be there!
My gym bag is missing. I'm convinced it was stolen out of my car while at work or something. Anyway, with my bag went a lot of stuff, including my Adidas Quatra Trail shoes, my iPod arm band, a $60 set of Sony ear buds, a pair of swimming goggles, lots of Shot Bloks, and other work out stuff (socks, shorts, pants, etc..).
Anyway, long story short... I went to the FrontRunner store last Friday night and got me a new pair of trail shoes! I tried on about 9 pair of shoes and the lady that was helping me knew her stuff!! She made all kinds of suggestions for me and I told her exactly what type of running I'll be doing this year (lots of trails and some roads). I took the family with me and of course, my girls were all suggesting shoes that "looked" cool (ie. colorful). It was fun!
So, after about 30 minutes of pacing back and forth in different shoes, I settled on the New Balance 908 trail shoe.
Here is what they look like brand new: Here is what they looked like the next day (<24 hours later):
Yeah... I got in trouble when I got home after that run!
Oh, if anybody has seen my gym bag, let me know. :)
Well, I've listened to it twice now and I gotta say that Scott and Issam (I refuse to link to you until you start blogging again! It's my way of kicking you in the butt...) did a great job representing the company. I'm very excited and pleased with the results of the interview. We've had lots of very encouraging emails from many users through email and forwarded to us from the .NET Rocks guys.
While listening to it, I actually learned how Data Dynamics got it's name too. I never knew that it was thought up on the show floor like that. I guess I never bothered to ask either, so... :)
Anyway, it was a great interview and I was very excited to hear all the hype behind Data Dynamics Analysis; this is the product I've been working with for the past 2+ years. It's almost out of beta! We're finalizing some of the marketing stuff and prettying up our site until then. I plan to do some "tips and tricks" on my blog in the coming months. We've also talked about having a public blog at Data Dynamics as well, so I'll be posting a lot of tips and tricks out there too when it's up and running.
If you haven't listened to the podcast yet... Stop blogging and listen to it! If you've not heard of .NET Rocks or Data Dynamics, then why not listen to the podcast and learn something... Especially for all my running friends that read this blog; what's a 55 minute podcast gonna hurt when you're on a 2-3 hour run? :)
Scott and Issam had an interview with Carl and Richard yesterday on .NET Rocks (aka: DNR). Amazingly it was posted today!?!
Download show 323 now! I'm listening to it now myself. Expect a follow up post soon. For now I just had to blog about it because its so cool to hear Scott and Issam talking on one of my favorite podcasts. Stay tuned... :)
I was uploading my Garmin maps into Google Earth and clicked on "Blackhand Rock" on the map and did a search. Surprisingly, I found a bunch of YouTube videos on Blackhand Gorge. One was titled "Haunted Blackhand Gorge"!? I don't believe a lick of this, but it's pretty well done:
I run here all the time and the only red eyes I see in the woods are from possums, deer, groundhogs, or bigfoot; no ghosts though! I do have to admit that it is pretty creepy at night time due to the dense woods and noisy animals. But honestly, there's nothing to be afraid of.
To get a sense of just how beautiful this place really is, here is video that somebody took while standing on one of the overlooks that is about 1/2 mile into the path, just off to the right:
There are many overlooks and one of the most beautiful overlooks is on Quarry Rim Trail that overlooks one of the natural rock quarry's. If you've never been to Blackhand Gorge, hopefully that last video will entice you to visit it. If you are more in the scary stuff, that's fine too; I know where the old Lock 15 is as well as the "spooky" tunnel. :) However, I've taken my girls through that tunnel numerous times and there's nothing scary about it...
Blackhand Gorge is the most BEAUTIFUL state nature preserve in the state IMO. Best of all, it's running distance from my house! I know because I run there all the time; like last Wednesday. It's (hands down) my favorite place to run. Here is a quick map of the entire nature preserve. All the dotted lines are the nature paths (aka: trails) that I run:
They are all cool in their own way, but Marie Hickey is my favorite and you can usually find me there on Tuesdays and Thursdays running through the woods. I typically do the entire "Blackhand Trail" on my Sunday long runs and throw in trails here and there to get in the desired mileage when needed. :) If you've never been to Blackhand Gorge, you need to visit it... FYI: Spring is coming and the leaves are going to be blooming soon. ;)
I'm officially Mac'n. I've had this MacBook Pro for some time now, but I've procrastinated for too long on getting all my stuff moved over to it. To be honest, I've just dreaded the whole process. I've been on this Tablet (Toshiba Portege m200) for almost 4 years now and have everything I need on it (and then some).
This week, I dedicated some major hours to getting it setup. At work I would have it setup on my desk and install all the apps I needed on it, while I did my "normal" work on the Tablet. When I was home, I just installed update after update for the Vista in between surfing the web inside OS X. I must say that I'm gonna miss my tablet (which I'm using now) and I know it will miss me too. Even though I don't use the pen too much anymore, I just know where all the keys are and can do anything on the keyboard without ever looking at it. I drive Jennifer crazy because I can fly on this thing. For example, right now, my fingers are going about 120 mph right now and it's nothing for me...
Aside from my mad tablet skills and relearning a whole new keyboard configuration, I gotta say that I'm pretty excited about the whole new get-up. James and Pilgrim helped me get setup with Boot Camp and Parallels. I'm basically running Vista on a separate partition through the Mac OS. With a couple of keystrokes I can switch from Mac to Vista without rebooting. Major props to Pilgrim and James for that, thanks guys! They helped me big time through that whole process. I told James at one point that I felt like that guy that had an empty cup and I was standing at the sink totally clueless as to how to fill my cup up (it was the only analogy I could think of, but hit the nail on the head). I was yelling his name every 2 minutes for silly questions; I felt like a total noob.
