These are the times...

I was at my mom's house the other day and she told me about something on the news that got us talking. The story was regarding an inmate on death row (Lawrence Reynolds) swallowed a bunch of pills in an attempt to commit suicide. While I find it unfortunate for him to be so down on himself, I don't understand a lot of things logic that took place when they brought him back to life. They saved his life so that they could put him back into a cell and kill him another way at a later date... Best yet, I just saw on the news tonight that there is now an extensive (and expensive) investigation going on to determine how he got access to the pills, and who should be held responsible.

The whole story struck me as being "rather funny" at first, but it has pushed over into "just crazy" now. :)

Especially this:

Reynolds' execution has been rescheduled for...

Hi, I'm a Mac

Jennifer and I broke down and got ourselves some MacBooks. She got a standard MacBook for her photo taking, Facebooking, eBaying, and CraigsListing. We got all the photo's moved over to her machine, since she's the one that manages the pictures. They sync up to our Time Capsule so we have a pretty solid backup solution now. She switched from Picasa to iPhoto and she seems to like it. Other than that, she mainly uses Safari for everything else...

I on the other hand got a MacBook Pro, and it acts as my new development machine. Already, I'm loving it. It took a while to get used to the new keyboard setup, but I'm getting better each day. As a programmer, I rely very heavily on key combination's, and the Mac keyboard is quite a bit different from what I'm used to (to say the least). I installed Windows 7 on a second partition through BootCamp. I then purchased a license for Parallels 5.0, and run my BootCamp partition through a virtual machine. My Windows 7 setup has everything needed to be a full blown development machine. I have SQL Server 2008 with Analysis Services, Visual Studio 2008, Office 2007, SubVersion, Total Commander, Daemon Tools, Paint.NET, Reflector, ReSharper, etc...

Aside from my Windows VM, I also installed Ubuntu on a separate VM so that I can play around with MySQL and learn the basics of Linux. My goal is to use it as a database server while I play with with Ruby on Rails. I'm using SSH for the first time in my life, and it's quite the learning curve for me. I'm forcing myself to to keep my Terminal.app console on my Mac open. I'm also forcing myself to NOT install TextMate and learn VI. I think it's safe to say that I've been spoiled with Visual Studio's IDE for waaaaaay too long. :)

Also, I purchased a family pack license of the iWorks suite and I'm really liking it so far. Numbers has some pretty cool functionality in it. I especially like how you can add multiple tables on a blank canvas and size them independently. The summary feature is slick too; it allows me to highlight a range of cells, and drag / drop one of the summary values into a new cell to build a separate table of summaries however I see fit. The presentation options are much better than Excel in my opinion, and it's much easier to get a spreadsheet into a "report mode" using Numbers than Excel as well... again, in my opinion.

Of course, the girls really like the Photo Booth app. Of all the things this Mac can do, they ONLY want to play with Photo Booth. Both Jennifer's and My MacBook are polluted with pictures of little warped kid faces. :)

Pilot Mountain Payback - Canceled

The Pilot Mountain Payback Marathon has been canceled due to trail conditions. In all honesty, I haven't been training that well lately, so it's kind of a relief for me. I was anxious to get out on the trails and push to the finish line. However I knew it was going to hurt real bad. I had no doubt I'd finish, but I did fear that I would be in dead-last place. Between the weather and my schedule, I've been in a deep deep funk. I was so far off of my training schedule, that I decided to just go to the race and get into a zen state until I crossed the finish line. I was prepared to let this race teach me a lesson. As it turned out, I got lucky this time.

The race has been rescheduled for April 10th, but I'm not going to be attending it. Instead, I'll be helping my buddy, Rob, prepare for his Mohican 50K race. This is going to be my first volunteering job at a race and I'm looking forward to it big time!

My new goal is to focus on barefoot running all spring and summer. My Vibram Five Fingers are on their way to my house as we speak, and I can't wait to get them. I actually tried my first barefoot run the other night on the treadmill and... let's just say I have a long way to go.

My training is officially back on schedule.

Barefoot Running

I think I'm going to give this a try very soon.

Let me first state that I don't get foot or leg pains when I run. I'm just slow, and a bit overweight. However, I'm always open to improve my running form, as I've been running for +3 years now and it seems as though I've gotten slower over the years. Last time I ran, I tried using the Chi Running technique of "falling forward". Basically this allowed me to shorten my gait and I focused on a slight forward lean the entire run. I was amazed at how much faster I could run with less effort. Instantly, I knew that I'd been running wrong for too long and needed to open my eyes to different techniques if I was going to run my sub-4 hour marathon this year.

Tonight, I got an email from an old buddy who linked me to a study on barefoot running. I read the study and it has opened my eyes. I've heard a lot about barefoot running, and actually suggested barefoot running it to him a few months back. He stated he was having very bad shin splints, and a few of my running buddies have resorted to barefoot running as a way to avoid various running injuries and get back in touch with their caveman roots. I had no experience with it myself, and I was merely suggesting it to him in passing. To my surprise, he took my (untested) advise and has become a very big advocate of barefoot running. It seems to have fixed his shin splints.

Here is a nice video that shows some of the benefits of barefoot running:



So if you see me out running with no shoes this spring, you'll know why. :)

Running in 2010

Well, I'm still running. I'm just not running as much these last few weeks; though, again, I am running. I did a long 16 miler 2 weeks ago, down to Dillon State Park and back. I pretty much took a whole week off that next week. This last week, me and a buddy ran 10 miles at Dillon State Park, and this weekend I'm scheduled for a 15 miler somewhere... Probably at Dillon again since it's so close. Unfortunately, I don't have any record of these events since my SportTracks data went with the Toshiba, and my BuckeyeOutdoors updates went with my SportTracks data. I hope to have this issue fixed sometime this week so that I can pummel my twitter followers with my workouts when I upload them all. :)

My last two weeks have really been hit and miss. My work schedule picked up a lot recently as we're approaching a hard deadline, and it got me into a horrible sleeping / working / family schedule. Needless-to-say, my running schedule got shot in that mix. I didn't feel like running in the dark in single digit temperatures for no good reason. It has taken me a few days, but I'm trying to get back to the first shift schedule so I can get back to some normal activities rather than just coding all the time. Oddly, I still feel like the night time is my best time to zone out on work, so it's still a struggle.

This year is kind of a bummer year for some of my favorite ultra races too. As some of you know, Mohican State Park is one of my favorite place to run. I was really looking forward to the Mohican 100 this year, because the 50 miler beat me bad last year. They are redoing the course for this years race and I wanted to be a part of the "new course". As it turns out, we'll be taking a (long overdue) vacation to Maine that very week! I'll take that trade off anyday! However, it was pretty heart wrenching when I found out that I'd be missing my chance to beat the 50 miler. I do plan to come back to next year's run with a vengeance.

Also, my buddy, Rob, just announced that his Mohican 50k race has sold out. Way to go, Rob! More money for that killer softball team! :) This means that I won't be attending that one either. So far I only have one race scheduled for this year, and it's in 3 weeks: Pilot Mountain Payback Trail Marathon. I'm considering keeping it a low key year and only run at my own leisure til I decide to attempt my 4 hour marathon (which I will do).

Perhaps a Mohican fun run is in my near future... Rob? Nick? Kim? Mark? Anybody?

It Ain't Personal

Facebook is a great application, really. However, it has it's side effects here and there. I get friend requests from random people from time to time. If I don't know the person, I'm not at all ashamed of clicking the "Ignore" button. Sometimes it's a legitimate person that I actually knew as a child though, but have forgotten over the years. In such a case, I'll send them a message asking them to remind me how I know them. For example, there is one name that keeps coming up as a friend request, and I keep clicking "Ignore". Each time I click Ignore, it comes back a day or two later. I know the name, but can't quite remember how I know the name. I finally sent a response back and asked them to help me remember. Perhaps it would be easier to just include this information on the 2nd or 3rd or 4th attempt to become my "Friend" on Facebook...(?) Kind of awkward IMO.

Anyway, a funny thing happened at dinner tonight with my family. It all started a few months back. This one lady, who was about 5 - 10 years older than me, kept sending me friend requests. I kept ignoring them. I had no idea who she was. I recognized a few of the people that we had in common, but I didn't even really know them that well either. Anyway, I ignored her requests about 6 or 7 times, before I finally blocked her from sending anymore requests to me. She was starting to weird me out. She had more than 500 "friends" on Facebook, so I couldn't understand why it was so important for me to accept her invitation...

Fast forward to this evening when Jennifer and I took the girls out to the Texas Roadhouse. We were sitting at the table having a good time and this exact lady walk right by our table. Amazingly she didn't even know who I was. Hmm, perhaps it's because I didn't know her!

Luxury for a Princess

Sorry Mother Nature, but we bought an SUV this weekend.

Jennifer and I paid off our Honda Odyssey last year. Rather than putting a little more money into it and driving the wheels off of it, we decided to just get a whole new vehicle all together and start from scratch.

We retired the minivan because we really needed something that was made to pull a popup camper. We've used our Odyssey to pull our camper all over (Georgia, Tennessee, Michigan, South Carolina, Ohio, :P, etc..). The bottom line is that they just weren't made to do this, and it was only a matter of time before our transmission blew up on us.

We test drove a couple of fun vehicles, including a Chevy Avalanche, a Ford F150, and looked at some other vehicles, but settled on a 2003 Ford Expedition. Jennifer found it on the internet and just had to have it:


It's an Eddie Bauer Edition, which means it has heated leather seats, a moon roof, 3rd row seating, a 6 disk CD changer, heated leather seats, a tow package, running boards, a utility rack, and heated leather seats. The kids like it because it has rear controls for the radio and air. Best yet, almost everything can be managed from the collage of buttons on the steering wheel (volume, radio stations, cabin temperature, fan speed, etc..). I'm sure a lot of this is standard with most of todays model vehicles, but it's the nicest thing we've ever owned.


Next stop: Maine!

Codemash v2.0.1.0

This post is long overdue... oh yeah, and long itself. :P Basically, everything below could be summed up into one word: Codemashkickedass!

I attended CodeMash this month and it was a blazing success (yet again). This has become a nationally recognized event, bringing in A+ keynote speakers from all over. The inaugural event back in 2006 brought out The Gu himself for crying out loud! Each year seems to out-do the year before, and this year was no different. I mean, last year, I played GuitarHero with Scott Hanselman!! This year was very laid back for me, and I'm already excited for next years event. I actually plan to continue my attendance to CodeMash each year until I get out of the computer business and move to Maui to become a full time surfer. (yeah right)

Ironically this was a very low-key year for me. I've been at every Codemash so far, and this was the first one that I attended as a .NET developer desperately wanting to learn something new. Usually I just go to see what I can learn, but with no real goals of getting my mind blown. I used to mainly get excited about going to meet up with all my geek friends. I've never really taken the sessions for granted before, but the last few years I'd always run around with my entourage and just kind of "be there". However this year it was just me, and I was set to learn a lot of stuff; I was on a mission to learn Ruby.

Wednesday
I woke up at 4am and packed my drumset into the car (more on this later) and headed up to Kalahari Resort for the 8:30 am check-in and a nice breakfast before the 9 am Precompiler sessions start.

Test Driven Development - Leon Gersing
For the Precompiler session this year, I attended Leon Gersing's - Test Driven Development session. This was a very (, very, very) cool session where Leon actually got requirements from Jim Holmes (The Codemash President) for a "session scoring system". It was Leon's job to lead a (large) group of willing developers to build this system from Concept to Completion in one day. It seemed impossible as the session started and Leon was very casual in getting everybody setup with the tools needed for the day.

I literally sat down in the 2nd row knowing zero about Ruby, Rails, Git, or GitHub.com... and what the hell is a Ruby Gem?! :) Leon used a rendition of Scrum, and that, I did know. I was on a team that implemented scrum at my last company, and it proved to be a very successful approach to managing epic projects.

Leon was awesome in his role as the Iteration Manager. He encouraged all of us to be "courageous" and just be real. If you didn't know something, speak up and let everybody know. There's no shame in not knowing something. I actually used it a few times in order to get all the tools installed on my machine. I felt as though everyone around me was leaps and bounds ahead of me as I struggled to understand simple concepts like installing gems and understanding the what Ruby was and what Rails was.

I sat through the morning part of the session, but decided to move onto another session after lunch (no hard feelings Leon). :) I was simply in over my head without knowing Ruby or Rails. The team I was in had good knowledge of these technologies and I felt like I was (1) slowing them down and (2) learning nothing as they pushed forward without keeping me in the loop. No blame, just the facts. I plan to learn Ruby on my own within the next few months. I've heard too many good things about it to not give it an honest effort.

Advanced Presentation Patterns - Jeremy D. Miller
At lunch I actually sat next to Jeremy D. Miller (Mr. Code Better, himself). I was sitting with some other people and he sat down next to me. I had no idea who he was so I (of course) introduced myself only to find out it was him shortly thereafter. I've read his blog in the past and have known his name for quite some time. It was cool to shot the breeze with him, if only for a minute or two. After I finished eating, I actually decided to attend his session after lunch on a whim. It was standing room only, so I stood in the back and watched as he discussed different concepts for building robust user interfaces that allowed full control over the hosting UI dialog in regards to adding buttons, menus, and mapping navigation between windows. It was pretty informative, and I took some intense notes as he showcased some pretty complex user interfaces concepts with simple enterprise architecture models.

After this session, I went upstairs and decided to take a little nap. Again, I woke up at 4 am, and it was now approaching 5:30. After a short 1-2 hour nap, I woke up and took an intense 4 mile run on the treadmill and then headed out for a quick bite of dinner. Precompiler day was over.

Thursday
The keynote was awesome! Mary Poppendieck gave a great presentation outlining the 5 Habits of a Successful Lean Organization:

• Purpose
• Passion
• Persistence
• Pride
• Profit

She showcased the attributes associated with teams and business that have succeeded. And gave detailed specifications and examples on how they succeed. For example, on thing that stuck out for me in the 'Passion' section was to hire and enable passionate people. When people are in a position to do what they love to do, they will exceed and spread excitement to those around them. Ironically, she showed how open source projects tend to be successful by nature due to the fact that the people involved are passionate about what they're doing... even though they aren't getting paid. I could go on about this keynote as I took a lot of notes and really enjoyed her keynote.

What Makes Ruby Different - Joe O'Brien, Mark Peabody, and Leon Gersing
After the keynote, I headed over to "What Makes Ruby Different" where the EdgeCase guys showcased various aspects to the Ruby language and concepts that let Ruby stand out from the other languages. It was very informative and I learned quite a bit. They showed how a few lines of Ruby code can go a long way, and showed the different approaches of the same concepts in other languages. While the other languages were purposefully "ceremonial" to drive home some key points, I did gain a lot of respect for the Ruby language.

After this session, I got a few things done and then sat with Josh Holmes at lunch while we watched Hank Janssen give a keynote about open source technologies that Microsoft is working on. It was very informative and I learned that Microsoft is actually giving a lot of attention to this area, even though they are known for avoiding it. The ecoustics were difficult at times and we had a hard time hearing at times, but the slides really painted the pictures pretty well.

Ruby and Rails for the .NET Developer - Matt Yoho
Following lunch, I attended the Ruby and Rails for the .NET Developer. It was a toss up between this session and Powershell: Ten Things You Need to Know - by Hester and Lerch. I was happy that I attended the Ruby session, for I learned even more great things about Ruby. For example in Ruby, when you connect to a database, the language itself is so descriptive that you can query data simply by calling it in "english" like method calls. For example if I'm querying a table and want to find a row by a certain column, I simply say:
(note: ignore my syntax ignorance)

def rowByUser = db.find_by_username();
def rowsByState = db.find_by_state();

I don't have to actually create these methods to query the database by user name and by state. In .NET there is a lot of extra work that we (as .NET developers) have to do in order to make these two calls work. Not with Ruby! Rails does this automatically!! That is cool!

Vendor Sessions
For the vendor session, I attended the Telerik Code Ninja session where they showed some cool little coding tricks.

Refactoring the Programmer - Joe O'Brien
This was an awesome session. I'd introduced myself to Joe earlier in the day during lunch break or something and he is a very humble person. I've seen him at Codemash in previous years and have attended sessions of his before. I have actually followed him on Twitter for sometime now and he is just an all around great guy. This session was about getting developers to stay on top of their game and keep their skills sharp. This is something that I have to keep reminding myself actually, for I tend to get comfortable in my current skill set and have to force myself to really explore new things around me.

Joe was hilarious, for his session was another one of those sessions that was standing room only. Best yet, he didn't have his projector adapter (ie. "dongle" (ie. my wife's favorite geek word)) and therefore was forced to do his presentation with no over head display. It was just him and his scotch (?) in front of ~100 geeks. He nailed it! He kept it humorous and interesting, and best of all he provided some great advise for everyone in the room. He left everybody with 4 great books to check out and read:

• Passionate Programmer - Chad Fowler
  
• Pragmatic Thinking and Learning - Andrew Hunt
  
• Pragmatic Programmer - Andrew Hunt
  
• Apprenticeship Patterns - Dave Hoover
  

... these are all in my Amazon wishlist (hint hint).

Vendor Sessions
After Joe's session, I walked around and talked to a lot of the vendors. I remember being there as a vendor myself, and recall how frustrating it was to see people walk by the booth all day long but never stop. I stopped at every single booth and gave them my undivided attention for as much time as they needed to really explain their product to me. Of course, I gathered some t-shirts and drink tickets too. ;)

Ruby and Rails for the .NET Developer - Matt Yoho
After walking around the vendor booths, I headed over to see some of the cool things that Ruby has to offer for me. Unfortunately I only had about 15 minutes to spare and (honestly) I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open at this point. :( It wasn't the information that was making me tired, it was my brain that was making me tired. I tried to focus, but found myself slipping in and out of consciousness here. Sorry Matt, I'm sure it was a great session; I came in late, but... never really showed up I guess.

Dinner and Jam
From here, I stumbled out into the hall and got some dinner. After dinner, I headed up to my room and gathered my drumset. Upon gathering everything, I quickly realized that I HAD NO CYMBALS!! I had packed everything except for my cymbal bag. This is what I get for rushing out of the house at 4am I guess. It sucks that I packed all the big / bulky stuff, but forgot the one consolidated peice of equipment in the basement. I couldn't believe it... I had brought a set of toms with a bass petal. :( Luckily Grag Malcolm had brought his drumsticks! Otherwise, we would have been playing hand drums (yeah, my drumsticks were in the cymbal bag).

Regardless, I set up the drums and decided to go mingle instead. I caught up with some fun friends and we all played euchre for the remainder of the night and drank a lot of booze. Fun was had by all! Unfortunately, I didn't get to see one second of Enter the Haggis. I'm kicking myself for that!! :(

Friday
Woke up at 7am sharp and then headed back up to my room to change and workout for the first round of sessions. After that, I went back to the sessions and got into some cool content.

An Introduction to Functional Programming with Scheme - Michael J Norton
This was a bit over my head. I tried to get into it, but I went in knowing very little and left knowing just as much. I'm sure had I known some of the functional concepts that were being discussed ahead of time, I would have been able to keep up. I left early and mingled. :(

It was about this time where I'm getting fuzzy without my updated schedule list; a lot changed in the schedule that I"m going off of..

Pragmatic Keynote
I do recall the keynote by Andy Hunt, and he was AWESOME! I really do plan to get his books and catch up on all the great content I'm missing. He was a great keynote speaker as he really knew how to work the crowd and had everybody's undivided attention for his entire keynote. I took a lot of notes and really enjoyed the lunch break.

Analyze and Optimize your .NET Web Application - James Avery
I learned quite a lot in here. James demonstrated how to fine tune any ASP.NET application using a set of profiling tools. He started with the ever famous "Nerd Dinner" and found that it was calling the database countless times for simple lookups. He used tools like RedGate - Ants Profiler, SQL Profiler and some other tools to help him isolate the bottle necks. It was pretty interesting to say the least and I learned a thing or two. Great session James! :)

Raffle
I didn't win anything... again. Four years in a row, nothing. Oh well, it was fun to sit and watch others win in a weird way. Plus the CodeMash crew always works the crowd pretty well with shenanigans and cool giveaways. Simply a great event, CodeMash organizers!

If I didn't provide enough content for you in this single post, please read more here: http://groups.google.com/group/codemash/web/codemash-2010-bloggers

I'm LogMeIn Savvy

I just signed up for LogMeIn. This totally solves so many problems for me. Ever since my Toshiba died, I've been stressing out about getting my new laptop setup with all the software I need in order to attend CodeMash.

After a few minutes of stressing, I realized that I don't need to have everything installed on the new laptop. I can just use this computer while I'm away at the conference. The only downside to this little epiphany is that I have to have an internet connection to be productive. This causes problems when I fly, and when I'm at a location that doesn't have internet. I do know that CodeMash has had spotty wifi at times due to the mass amounts of geekery going on. However, that's ok, because I'll probably only be logged into my computer when I'm back at my room anyway. While I'm at sessions, I'll just have my man-purse to take notes, and will probably be developing in Notepad as I learn how to become a Ruby guru.

For those that haven't heard of LogMeIn, you should definitely check it out. It was blazing easy to setup and best of all, it is FREE! It took me about 5 minutes total to get setup; I created an account, installed a little application on my desktop, and then went upstairs to test it out from my laptop. Viola!

Technology kicks butt!!

The Toshiba Died Today

Back 2004, I got a new Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC for work. It was the cream of the crop in it's day.

I love this thing. It's been the most solid and reliable laptop I've ever seen anybody own; I've been proud to call it mine. It's gone everywhere with me. From west coast, to east coast. I took it to Russia with me, and it was my main development box while I was in France a few months ago. Every time I visit with my friends at coffee shops to code, it goes with me as well. Jennifer uses it exclusively in the house, and the girls even tinker on it from time to time to play WebKinz or draw in MS Paint. I can honestly say that it's been a solid member of the Hardbarger family.

Well, Jennifer was upstairs surfing on it this evening, and she got the blue screen of death. I tried a few things to see if I could find what might have happened, but to no avail. It's officially dead.

I'll always remember the good times we had together...

Next up: A MacBook!! :D

A Real 3 Year Old Conversation

Yesterday was Lizzie's 8th birthday. She's getting way too big! We had a little party here with cake and ice cream. There were lots of family and friends that came over and we all just had a great time. It's hard to believe that our oldest is already 8. These years are flying... I'm digressing, sorry.

Anyway, we were putting them to bed last night and Daizi started rambling to me while she was supposed to be getting ready for bed.

She said: Da-ee, Sissy birfday today and my birfday tomorrow.
I said: Your birthday is tomorrow?!
She said: Yeah!
I said: No, your birthday isn't until September...
She said: Tha's wha I told you!
I said: Oh...?

Yeah. She's 3. :)

Another Great Year Behind Us

Hope everybody had a great 2009. We did!

Not too much happened in 2009 that was ground breaking for us. We got a new dog. Got a new popup camper. Sold the truck. Paid off the van. Paid off the car. Girls are each a year older. Jen and I are each a year older. I ran some races. Visited France and Romania. Wrote some killer code in my basement. My sister had a baby. I lost some weight. I gained some weight. We lost some money. We earned some money. That's pretty much it... We had a good year.

My goals for this year is to blog more. Limit my Facebook usage to a minimum, since it's a total time-suck when I'm on my computer; sorry to all my Facebook friends. I am also shooting for a sub-4 hour marathon this year. In order to do this, I'm gonna have to train smarter and eat smarter. My fastest marathon was 4:27 and I was in pretty decent running shape at the time. I've already started my training regiment and diet (somewhat). I'm eating every 2 hours no matter what and I'm not stuffing myself anymore. I'm also trying to run more tempo runs rather than just "slow and easy" like I did last year. I'm down 7 lbs since the week before Christmas (not bad), but I need to lose another 20 lbs or so more before I can attack a sub 4 hr marathon.

Oh yeah!! Jen and I are taking the girls to Maine this summer on a 2 week camping trip. We've already starting to save for it, and we're all VERY excited about it. I've always wanted to go to Maine, and we're finally going to do it.

Anyway, like I said, I'm hoping to get back into blogging more regularly. These last two months have been pretty chaotic with work and everything else, so I've not put too much effort or stress into posting my thoughts, since they're mostly around what I need to do to be productive and blogging doesn't fall in that category. :)

Here's to 2010!

Motorized barstool sells for $1,125 on eBay

Finally, an end to the bar stool saga: Motorized barstool sells for $1,125 on eBay

Vonn "Skeeter" Watson stands by one of the
motorized barstools he built. The motorized barstool
that launched Newark into national headlines
sold on eBay Sunday evening for $1,125 - Eric George

I remember seeing this on the national news a few months ago, shortly after my old boss sent me a link to it. He always thought I was from a hill-jack town and this story sealed the deal for him (I'm sure). Anyway, I forgot all about it and it was rather funny to see the image of the guy with his creation smiling in front of a 'Skeeters' sign on my Google News feed this morning. :)

Enjoy Issam...

The Meaning of Kay

Jennifer and I were putting our girls to bed tonight and the house always get goofy around this time of night. It's always fun to just let the girls say and do crazy things before going to sleep. I've had Lizzie jump on my back while I was kissing Jazzy goodnight before, and they always seem to try and trick us by making us guess what side of the bed their head is on. Of course, they think it's hilarious when we try to kiss their feet.

Anyway, tonight as we were having a goofy conversation with Jazzy, and we were telling her how we came up with her full name. At one point, Jennifer said: "Do you know how you got your middle name?"

Jazzy just laughed and said: "Because, every kiss begins with Kay!" :)

Maybe our kids watch too much TV?

Coffee Fail

Jen and I use those big jugs of water for our drinking water, because our well water is... how you say?... not so good.

This morning we had just enough for one more pot of coffee (maybe two). I was so excited to have fresh coffee this morning that I cleaned out the coffee pot, filled it with the last bit of water and poured into the trusty Bunn. I closed the lid and waited patiently for 3 full minutes as my masterpiece was filling in the glass pot... Oddly, it looked like lightweight tea and had very little aroma to it.

I forgot the key ingredient: The Coffee.

Luckily I had enough water for one more pot. It's brewing now...

Trees for a Change

A friend sent me a cool gift idea. Her friend started a company to replenish the number of trees that have been devastated by wildfires. Here is a link if you can't think of that special gift for your loved one: http://www.treesforachange.com/index.html

• Trees for a Change gift trees are planted in U.S. National Forests to replace trees destroyed by wildfire, disease or insects.
• Since 2004, the U.S. has seen an extreme number of wildfires, leaving record numbers of acres devastated.
• The Forest Service has recently identified over one million acres of National Forest land that is in desperate need of reforestation.
• Our trees are planted and cared for by Forest Service tree experts who specialize in reforestation. They choose which National Forests can benefit the most from our program.
• Planting only tree species that are native to the surrounding area optimizes growing conditions and ensures that each tree has a healthy beginning.
• Your tree gift will grow to restore habitat and food for wildlife, provide clean air, prevent soil erosion and add beauty to our National Forests for many future generations.
• Trees are the earth's longest-living organisms. The average tree in one year is able to absorb ten pounds of pollutants from the air and convert 330 pounds of carbon dioxide into oxygen.
• Trees for a Change Tree Gifts are a wonderful and generous way to celebrate or memorialize someone special. A tree planted right now will benefit all the inhabitants of our planet for years and years to come. One Tree Gift really can change the world!

I could definitely see the value in this and would LOVE IT if you got me one. :)

Newark Bully Hits Girl for Not Listening to ICP

Some girl gets punched in the face because she doesn't like ICP. I think the video speaks for itself:



All of the kids in this video need to be dealt with. Not just the kid that hit the girl.

Global Warming in Your Face

It amazes me how unseasonably warm it is these days. I've only had my wood burner working about 5 times this year. Yesterday, I wore a t-shirt outside to visit a friend, and today I was just outside and it's 50*F. It's late November!!?? I remember playing in the snow as a kid around this time with layers of clothes on.

I think I'm going to break down and put Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth on my Netflix queue so that I can really understand the severity of these temperatures.

I guess what I'm trying to say is "Get outside and enjoy the weather before the blizzard sets in." I'm getting ready to take my run in shorts and a hooded sweatshirt... again, it's late November.

Busy Times

Have you ever been so busy that you just have to shut off all non-productive outlets... I am.

I haven't checked my blog roll in over a month. I've only written one blog entry, and I even had to force myself to do that. I just upload a month's worth of workouts, and pummeled my twitter followers with status updates. Last night I sat around with Jennifer and watched a quick 30 minute show about OSU vs. Michigan. The entire time I was watching it, I felt like I should have been working and I just wanted to get back to it. I've stood up some of my friends with plans that we'd made due to my busy schedule as well. I'm actually very anxious to be un-busy at the end of this year. I think I'll even take a short vacation and just stare at a wall for a few days to relax.

All of this coding has given me a bionic pinky finger. As a programmer and a ReSharper user, I find that my left pinky finger gets used A LOT with all of the [Shift] key combination's and [CTRL] key combination's.

2009 Bobcat Trail Marathon Race Report

This was the first year for the Bobcat Trail Marathon, at Burr Oak State Park. The weather was a perfect low 50's for a race start and hovered around 60 all day. The course was pretty tough with hills around every corner and some really cool technical spots. The aid stations were packed with extremely friendly and enthusiastic volunteers who cheered me on like I was winning the race at each stop. Even weeks before the race, the race directors kept all runners up to date with the latest information via emails. and they couldn't have picked a more beautiful place to have it. Everything about this race was top notch, and it was great to be part of the inaugural race day for such a great event. I will be back.

My race report starts on the Saturday afternoon before the race. As I mentioned in my last race report, Dan Brown was running this race with me again. It's his second marathon in 3 weeks... No I mean his second marathon... in 3 weeks. He ran his first marathon 3 weeks ago at the 30th Annual Columbus Marathon. Somehow, I suckered him into doing Bobcat with me 3 weeks later. I figured since he would have already been trained, he might as well... :) It worked and he ended up beating me by 20 some seconds. :) Way to go Dan!

He arrived at my house around 3pm on Saturday and I had my bags packed, ready to go. We had almost 2 hours of driving time ahead of us, so we didn't waste time. We put all of our stuff in the car, talked to Jen and the girls for a few minutes, and then we were headed south to Glouster, Ohio. The drive was very pretty and we just jammed to music with the windows down having a great time.

We arrived around 5:30 or so and got checked in. As soon as we checked in, we went down to get our race numbers and pick up our race packets. Packets were real good; we all got a nice technical t-shirt, some peanut butter granola samples and some power bars. Vertical Runner had a booth setup and I got a few things from them and purchased two big bags of the Crazy Monkey Baking stand (very good stuff).

Now it was time to figure out what to do for dinner. We headed back to the room and I checked my cell phone. Jennifer had called me and informed me that I left my RUNNING SHOES AT HOME ON THE TABLE!! I was wearing some cheap black crocks when she told me this...

Before panic was able to set in I remembered that Vertical Runner was setting up a shoe display to sell shoes for $20 a pair. What are the chances? :) I went down and bought a pair of New Balance 747's (glowing white) road shoes before we headed out for dinner. I was gonna look like the noob tomorrow morning, and I didn't care.

After I bought the shoes, Dan and I headed into Glouster to get some pizza at a local pizza parlor, named Little Italy and it was waaaay good. We watched the Buckeyes football game on the TV and chowed down on some pizza. After dinner we headed back, hung out for a while, got a quick beer at the bar, and then headed back to the room to crash.

Alarm
We woke up and got checked out before heading to the starting line. I saw Kim, and another local Dillon runner named Mike McCune (a good buddy to my good buddy, Mark). We were all just standing around waiting for the race to start. I was looking like a noob in my shiny new shoes. :) The RD's were talking to the crowd and explaining the course a bit and then the siren sounded for the race to begin at 8am sharp. We started running!

Mile 0 - 5
The race started out with a quick road section where we all run up a short hill, turn around, back down, and then we dipped into the woods for a quick trail loop. We then cam out of the woods onto a short road section again, and then dive into the woods where we stayed for most of the race. Upon entering the final entrance to the trail, there was a nice little farewell crowd that sent us on our way. From then on, it was just the sounds of crunching leaves below our feet...

Once into the woods we were welcomed with our scenery for the next few hours. It was a large calm lake with a few fishermen floating out on their bass boats. The sun was perfectly placed and it made for a perfect race morning.

Miles 5 - 10
These were more beautiful miles through the rolling hills. Right around here, Dan and I took a little detour into a swamp. We were just talking between ourselves as we came off of a trail at one point and were running along a short road section. As we were headed back towards another trail into the woods, our feet began to sink into the earth. After a few strides, our shoes had been totally engulved in sludgy mud up to our shins. We were running into a swamp. We knew that the trail was just ahead of us because we saw some runners up on the trails. However, we were apparently off course somehow and we needed to back track.

As we turned, we saw a spectator yelling that we had gone the wrong way. Oddly, she saw us turn down this way and she said nothing. We laughed it off, and made our way back to the road where we had to run up a few hundred yards before we could turn in. My white shoes looked were masked now and I looked like I knew what I was doing now. :)

After the mud incident, we got back into the woods and came to a nice aid station where we filled up on some PBJ's and fig bars. From the aid station we ran down a cool little dock area right next to the lake and it looked very tempting to just dive in. I didn't though... From the dock, we headed back into the woods. There were some cool hills through here with an area that opened up and looked like an old canal or something. We chugged along and eventually came out to a big Dam area with a very friendly aid station there to greet us. The sun was shining brightly and the views were awesome everywhere today. We stocked up on some calories and headed back into the woods.


Miles 10 - 15
These miles were very scenic. We stayed close to the lake most of the time. At one point we cam upon an incredible aid station. Dan had run ahead cause he had to refill on water and stuff, and when he got there, he told them my name. As I exited the woods, I heard everybody yelling "GO LUC!! WAY TO GO!!" It was a great welcome after hearing so much quietness in the woods. I could do nothing but smile and thank them all. They were great! We stocked up and moved along. From this aid station, we took a nice winding road around a bend and then were faced with a hill that went strait up. At the top of the hill, we crossed a road section and scaled down a very steep decline to another trail. We followed this trail for about a mile and then we headed up a another pretty steep incline to yet another aid station. I remembered how great it felt to have people chanting my name at the last aid station, so Dan and I told this aid station too look for Kimba in her bright orange t shirt and cheer her on. This aid station was great and then we headed on back down the hill and into the trees where we would stay for the remainder of the race.

Miles 15 - 20
In through this section, my feet were really starting to hurt. I had some nasty blisters on my right foot from these new shoes and my left knee was a bit tight when going down some of the steep hills. I didn't let either of them get to me, and I just focused on right foot, left foot. Dan and I separated out a bit and we listened to our iPods for a while. There were some really crazy hills through here. It seemed worse in my road shoes, because as I tried to position my feet on each a leaf covered rock, my feet would slip just enough to freak me out. Lesson learned.

We passed through another supportive aid station and stocked up on some food and drinks. There was a little river crossing where I dipped my feet into the cold water. It felt good on the blisters, and was a nice relief. This section we were heading towards was the low and flat section of the course. The scenery was totally different than the first half of the race, and it was very marshy. At one point we actually ran along a little wood plank for a few hundred yards. I snapped some pictures, but had to be careful because I was running as I was trying to snap them. I didn't want to slosh through the mud through here...


Miles 20 - 25
Through this section, I was pretty nauseous. I had kept up with my fuel and my water intake up to this point, but through here I was having a hard time thinking about putting anything else into my stomach. Every time I thought about taking a drink, it made my stomach even more sour. It reminded me of my later miles at the Mohican 50 Miler, and that wasn't a good feeling. I poured some water over my neck and that helped a bit... I struggled with it throughout the remainder of the race.

We had taken our time during this race, but it was to a point now that we were going to be missing the cut off to get our hooded sweatshirt. There was a 7 hour limit in order to get a free Bobcat Trail Marathon sweatshirt. I was getting pretty bummed about it and was about ready to give up and just shuffle / walk the rest of the way. I was spent anyway, and the trail just kept going and going. It didn't seem like the finish was anywhere near. We'd been in the woods for a long time at this point.

Miles 25 & 26.2
This is when the second wind came. We came around a corner and saw a sign that said "1 Mile To Go!". I looked at my watch and it was 2:45 pm. We had 15 minutes to finish this thing and get our sweatshirt. We got this!! I told Dan that I was ready to pick it up and finish this thing. We started running again. We gave it all we had for about a full minute and then we ran face first into a hill that went strait up. What little energy we had summoned had now been spent on this monstor of a hill.

I almost puked at the top, but was able to get get my breath and bring my heart rate back down. I poured 1/2 of what was left in my water bottle over my head and it helped too. We were now back onto the final road section down to the finish. It was downhill the rest of the way. We ran all the way to the finish! I crossed the finish line at 2:59:49. My official race time was:

• 6:59:50
  

I beat the clock by 11 seconds. :) It was a very slow marathon for me (my slowest), but it ended with a perfect finish!!

Here is an overhead view of today's run:


Post Race Meal
The post race meal was great, I'm sure. However my stomach just wasn't in it, so I donated my meal to Dan and he ate his and mine while I looked on. :) The race experience was simply amazing. I will remember this race for a long time and it felt great to finish strong. Even though I felt nauseous for the last 6 or so miles, I was happy that I ran the last mile as hard as I could and left nothing on the trail.

Oh and, congratulations Dan! Way to go on 2 successful marathons back to back. You are a machine, sir. :)