Good Luck Barack!

I'm still not on the Barack Obama bandwagon-- but then again last week I was still on the fence about the Cardinals, and look at me now. GO CARDS!

I don't have a lot to say on the matter, except that I really do wish Mr. Obama good luck. He has a clean slate in my mind and I hope that he has a successful presidency and leads this great county into a successful future.

I hope that over the years our new president will accomplish victories so great that I will have no choice but to jump onto his bandwagon.

Good luck tomorrow as you celebrate your first day as the President of the United States.

It's an Abomination! I mean "Obama Nation"

Well it happened-- our brothers and sisters have voted for a government controlled entirely by democrats.

Though they will likely not gain my vote, I do truly want to wish the best to the party whose principles I disagree with. I will not sit here and hope for more terrorist attacks so that I can rub it in their face. I will still hope for a swift recovery to our struggling economy, though a continued decline would be fuel for the conservative fire. This land is their land just as it is mine and I do believe that we all want what is best for it.

If there is one good thing that I hope will come from this more than anything it is this: I hope that the GOP will take this is a message that what they are is not wanted by the people they want to govern. A government is by the people and for the people and it is only good when the people want it. The GOP has principles that I agree with, but they have not been acting on those principles for quite some time. It is my hope that they ask themselves what they are if they are not wanted, and they emerge anew in the spirit of their core principles.

On Wednesday November 5, 2008 I left for work, and the sun still rose, cars still worked, there was still gas at the pumps, and I arrived at work to find that I still had a job... Perhaps we will survive the next 2 years after all.

Political Pons? I hope not

I'm starting to get really sick of the propiganda being shoved down my throat in this election.  I think that the media knows that on average we all want to sound informed-- We just don't want to work hard to be informed. 

I have had many of my friends tring to promote propiganda as fact in the past few weeks.  When I hear something new I say things like, "wow I'll need to look that one up", and they are always confident and don't back pedal on the issue.  What I find more often than not is that the are accurately repeating the propiganda that is being feed to them, but they are never checking their facts or even checking to make sure that it passes a basic smell test.  They are listening to either extreme liberal or extreme conserrvative media and are, for some reason, assuming that the information is accurate because it fits into their arsonal so well. 

Unfortunaly, it is proving to be completely inaccurate most of the time.  These are smart people who end up trusting the media that favors their party, and end up looking quite sheepish because of it.  

You are more than a sheep.  You are the best educated nation in history.  Take your current beliefs and run them through the wringer!  Make sure that you are not just a pon being controlled by the media.  Question everything, assume that everything is a lie until you prove otherwise to yourself, and don't put your education to waste.  Help our nation be the best possible by working a little bit today to ensure a better future for our nation.

**Unrelated** Also: Marathon Training Update:(3.84 mi, 8:42/mi)

Nutrition Fact overkill?

Has anyone else ever noticed that bottled water has nutrition facts listed? It seems really funny to me.

Nutrition Facts:
Calories:0
Total Fat:0
Sodium:0
...etc..

I suppose in a world where they market cool-aid as a water replacement by naming it "vitamin water", maybe it is appropriate to list nutrition facts on things labeled "water". One way or another I thought it was thoroughly funny to see.

Another funny one was the ingredient label on a box of raisins that I ate the other day...

Ingredients:
Raisins

Also: Marathon Training Update: (3 mi, 27min)

Rock and Roll Marathon

How hard is it to train for a marathon? I have no idea, but I'll let you know.

I ran in a half marathon 2 years ago, and that was hard enough. I didn't have a ton of time to train for it, but I thought I had enough time. When it was all done, I had accomplished my goal, but felt pretty beat up. My knees were in pretty bad shape, and my ankle was pretty beat up.

A few weeks after the race, I had quietly decided that running might be too hard on my body, and I probably didn't have a future in it.

Now, two years later, I find myself pre-registered for the full marathon after a spontaneous urge to sign up. My plans this time around are to train more steadily and less aggressively. I wanted to start off very slowly to give my body a chance to build all the primary and supporting muscle to take some of the pressure off my joints. I'm hoping that this plan will leave me with less injury, and even more success.

I'll keep you posted on my training on this blog. Here is the first run.


The Race is Jan 18, 2009. If anyone wants to join me just let me know.

Caffine Junky

Last night, after a long day of work, I was numbing out to a little crime TV. Near the end of the show the writers must have realized that the plot was a little too boring, so they threw in the classic "My Partner is secretly addicted to pain killers" sub-plot to spice things up. Seeing this was a little pathetic, but it's not particularly worthy of a blog entry. But the series of thoughts that went through my head after probably are.

As I watched the drama unfold, I started to think about how I might present myself to my colleagues at work. From time to time I certainly look as stung out as this alleged pill popper detective did. I got to thinking how sometimes I react in a stronger way than would seem necessary to some scenarios. I also realized that I do get impatient like our pill popping detective, and I do become easily flustered and when I'm in rare-form I even fly off the handle over seemingly insignificant things.

These thoughts all got me thinking maybe I am a junky, but if I'm a junky what's my juice? Coffee and/or stress! I'm not sure whether it's the poison of the stress or of the coffee, but I don't always look entirely healthy from 8:00-5:00.

Today, I am going to start limiting my coffee fix to one cup in the morning... Just to wake me up a little bit. Lets see if this simple change can make a difference in my day. :-)

Are you a junky? If so, what is your juice?

My MOP!!! dabbling in video editing

On Wednesday my buddy Logan asked, "why does every nerd on the internet know how to make a lightsaber fight?".

It was a good question... Making a lightsaber fight video is probably something that every nerd out there has thought about at one time or another. I'm positive it's crossed my mind before. So I decided this was probably a good time to give it a try.

Once I installed all the right software, it was really quite easy to do. I only spent 30 minutes actually editing the video (after hours of setting up software). with another 30 minutes you could really make a pretty good looking video, but since this was just a proof-of-concept, this is where I stopped:




It's not exactly star wars quality, but it's almost UHF quality

Thanks to Logan Swapp for the idea and Kevin Gay for help with some of the resources :-p






...for those who don't get the reference it turns out that youtube has everything, so here is the reference :-p

A Breath of Fresh Air

I decided to take off the friday before last to do a hike. My PTO was building up and I was really starting to feel a little need for a day away from the office. When I dropped off my PTO form, my boss asked where I was going to hike, and asked if I'd rather join him on another canyoneering trip into the Jug.

The Jug is a slot canyon carved into granite by the Salome Creek. It's just on the other side of four peak from phoenix, right near Roosevelt Lake. It's a little hard to get to, but it's quite a fun hike.

I took my Blackberry Pearl running Trimble Outdoors, and I collected a GPS log for the trip. (Don't worry, I didn't check my email)

Here's what I collected:

Though this hike has it's tough spots, it's really more like a day on the lazy river. We filled out packs with dry bags, and just floated for probably 50% of the hike.

The other 50% was either hiking through the desert to get to and from the Jug, or jumping from rock to rock between baths in the canyon.

My boss, Rich Rudow, straddling the creek

There was one spot where we had to either rappel or jump. I'm not much of a jumper... and it's always fun to use some climbing gear, so we rappelled it.

The Rappel

It was a great trip, and I really had a good time getting out of the office for a day.

First Impression vs Last Impression

You always hear people talk about the importance of the First Impression. It's true that the first impression is important, and it's significantly more important when it's the only interaction you ever have, but recently I've come to doubt the importance of the first impression.

I've know many people that I didn't like at first, and whom I am now very good friends with. Likewise, I have had many people that I have interacted with wonderfully for years, and whom I can no longer get along with at all. Did this first impression really weigh as much as I thought it would? I don't think so. Maybe I'm just a weirdo, with a short memory, but I certainly think that the last interaction I had with someone weighs a lot more in my overall impression of that person.

To me, you are the weighted average of my feelings about all of our interactions, with the highest weight on the most recent. You can always earn a good impression, regardless of interaction in the past.

One of my many first impressions:

When I was 13 I moved to a new school. On the first day of school, in my first ever Spanish class, I made an awkward first impression. The teacher asked me, in front of the whole class, if I wanted to stay in the 8th grade class or move down to the 7th grade class. I kind of locked up and didn't know what to say. I didn't really want to move down to the 7th grade class, but I didn't know if I would be able to catch up to this class, so I just sat there with a goofy look on my face, unable to respond. This was my first impression on the entire class. Years later, some of my friends were talking about that moment, and I realized that for many of them, that was my first impression. It wasn't a good one, and it certainly isn't what they think of when they think of me. But there it was. Not very glorious, but of little consequence. :)

Another important first impression:

One day, I joined some friends on a trip to the river. On the way, we ran into another group of people with a common friend. We decided to float down the river together, after all: the more the better. For some reason there was one girl that really caught my eye. I had the cliche feeling where you have butterflies in your stomach, and you are totally afraid to interact. I played it pretty cool, I didn't lock up... I just had a series of those moments where you catch each other's eye in the right way, and you just have a quick moment where you are communicating a lot without saying much. Little did I know, she had mistaken me for the long term boyfriend of another person in the group I was with, and kept thinking to herself, "Eww, her boyfriend is a making eyes at me... what a perv". Long story short. I am going to marry her on January 11th, and if she loves me half as much as I feel like she does, or half as much as I love her, then the first impression was totally irrelevant.

Requirements for Success

It has been a while since I've blogged about anything, and it's been even longer since I've emo-blogged. :) So here's one that is about as emo as they come.

Failure is defined as a lack of success.
Success is defined as an event that accomplishes its intended purpose.
In order to accomplish an intended purpose, you must have one.
...and in order to know that it has been accomplished, you must first know what it is.
A Person who is a failure is a person with a record of failing

In brief, it is impossible to succeed without identifying a purpose, and if you don't succeed, then you fail. And if you have a record of failing, then you are a failure. And even though "Failure" is just a word, we sure know that we don't want to be one.

With this line of reasoning, the message is clear:

You must identify a purpose. Only then can you accomplish it. And only in accomplishing it can you be successful.

Maybe that purpose is as simple as have fun, or make money, or maybe its quite complex. but if we at least identify why we are doing things, then we can identify how successful we are in accomplishing that purpose. Then we can know that we are successful, and that we are not failures.

Let there be Light

Since the day I bought my house, there has aways been this funny rattle every time you open or close my front door. The rattle was quickly diagnosed as coming from the light fixture on the exterior wall outside the door. The light fixture had taken years of abuse, been heavily weathered, and painted by the lazy last owner. it also had a tendency to flicker from time to time, which makes the house seem really ghetto.

I decided it was time to replace the fixture, so I went out and bought a new one, which only cost around $30.00 at home depot. While I was there, I also bought a new fixture for the back porch for $15. The back porch was mounted fine, but had stopped working a month ago, and you could get it to work for a little bit by un-mounting it and shaking it. I had verified that the wiring coming from the house was fine, so decided that I would just try replacing the fixture there too.

I got home and replace the back porch fixture very quickly and painlessly. It looked great. When I unmounted the front fixture, it was a different story. It had been poorly installed years ago because the box was too close to some of the trim on the house, and the fixture wouldn't fit over it. So instead of fixing the problem, they mounted it to the siding with a short wood screw. If you've ever played with the sidin on these houses, you know it's like thick cardboard, and that was all that was holding this thing up. (well that and the wiring :-p ) This resulted in a very poor mount, that allowed the fixture to rattle when there was the slightest vibration in the wall. It also allowed for pests to move into the electrical box. I had to remove their nests before I installed the new stuff :-/

To achieve the desired mount, I decided to remove a small section of the trim, using a dremel, so that the fixture would fit on the box correctly. It took a little extra time, but the fixture is mounted very solid, and it no longer rattles when you open and close the door.

If you look at the brown paint, that's where the old fixture was. The new brass that you see is a mount that I'm using with the new fixture. you can see where I cut out a round section of the trim to fit the fixture better.

If you look closely, you can see one old hole where the screw ripped out of the siding, and one newer hole where they repeated the same mistake a second time :)... ERRR

Here is the final result... all I have to do is touch up the paint, which will happen in the fall:

Suicide Lane Junkies

Perhaps it is the nature of my drive home, or maybe the conditions I observe exist everywhere, but the drivers that I observe day in and day out seem notoriously bad.

I take the surface streets home because I work less than six miles from home, but because of the mountainous terrain, the traffic conditions are always crowded, and usually people get antsy when they are stuck in one place for too long. To make matters worse, the neighborhoods that I drive through are largely populated with people of bellow average income. Which, regardless of it's merit, I associate with wreckless driving.

Every day, I would wait patiently in traffic, as I watched hundreds of my fellow drivers breaking the law, and using the suicide lane in a manner that helps justify it's nick name. instead of waiting in traffic, until it was legal to enter a left turn lane, they would just drive 50mph down the suicide lane. This always made me cringe, especially when you would see others doing it, because they felt justified after seeing their peers doing it.

I was overjoyed when I saw that they had added some barricades to the suicide lane to prevent this. So much so, that I took my camera out to take a picture of it for the blog. But I had a hard time getting a shot of it, because so many people were driving around it, into oncoming traffic, to try to get home quicker. I switched to video mode for your entertainment.

Drive safe, And remember that you are accountable for your actions, not the idiots that you imitate.

Pine trees in the desert

Before I start, let me mention that I am guilty of what I'm about to rant about. I'm not trying to be a hypocrite, I'm just ranting :-p

So here it is: What's the deal with people trying to maintain mid-west yards in the desert? We should be afraid of running out of water, and we should stop dumping it on plants that shouldn't naturally live here anyway.

I have large trees, lush bushes, and a green grass in my yard, so I should be the last one to talk. When I was young, and slightly more ignorant, I thought it was great. It was so green. But over the years, I've been becoming more of a naturalist, and I'm starting to feel really guilty about it. A few months ago, I had some issues with my irrigation system, so I turned it off, and would only water manually, and that month, I used 19,000 gallons less water than most months! That is so much water.

We waste all this water on these plants, that grow like crazy, then we collect their droppings, and we trim them, and fill our landfills (or if we're lucky compost them) and the water just goes into the air as they decompose.

But worse than all other plants, (and here's where I really rant) is the PINE TREE.

My neighbor has pine trees in his back yard, and all year long, they shed needles. Pine needles are pretty unique. They are highly acidic, so they take really long to decompose, and they actually prevent other leaves from decomposing. They are also really thin, but quite strong, so they will fit perfectly through the baskets in your pool system, and proceed right into the pump where they, being as strong as they are, jam it up great.

Pine trees also drop pine cones. Pine cones are pretty, but they are also light enough to get sucked into my leaf hog, and strong enough to shred the fan that causes the suction :) So when I try to suck up the pine needles, I tend to wreck my leaf hog.

Last weekend, I decided that I had had just about enough of all these pine tree droppings, so I racked them all up, and sorted them out from all the rocks, that I wanted to keep in my rock garden, and filled the trash. Then I put the rest of them in a pile so I could throw them away after the trash was collected. Here is a quick photo of the second trash bin full of pine needles. Keep in mind that this is the second bin full of them, and this bin was completely empty when I started:



So if you are building, and you have the opportunity to make this choice without spending a ton of money, please consider keeping it natural. Plant plants that are native to the region, and avoid throwing away our water.

youtube.com vs brightcove.com

Ben recently pointed out that the quality of the video on youtube was less than ideal. I totally agree after watching them again.

When I watch them locally, the videos look pretty good. Especially when you consider they were taken from my point and shoot camera. So in the interest of a blog post, I thought I'd compare what I upload to youtube.com, with brightcove.com (a slower, less popular video service)

Here are the results:

Youtube.com (link)


Brightcove.com (link)

I think that there is actually quite a big difference in quality. The other thing that's worth noting is that with both of these services, there is a delay after you upload before you can view. And when I uploaded to birghtcove, it said:

We've got your video and are processing it to make it look great.
This might take a few hours, but we'll let you know by email when it's ready.

This was shocking. It didn't really take hours... but it did take a little longer than youtube (to the naked eye)

The other thing is that youtube seems to serve up their content faster. I guess you win some you loose some :-p

Enjoy!

**ALSO! the brightcove code doesn't render right in my firefox! WOW... They need to fix that ASAP, or they will fail big time :-p

***Thanks to Mikey from the Brightcove Team for noticing what was broken, and telling me how to fix it. This problem was more of my fault (or maybe bloggers fault: I'm not sure), and less of brightcove's.
Also, I did modify the code a little bit to make this window fit better in the blog...

Some Colorado Videos

I'm trying out You Tube to host some videos. from the recent Colorado hike. I'm not sure how much I like it, and it takes FOREVER to upload, but I think it's pretty decent.

Check this one out:

In this video, I am making my way along the ridgeline of Mt Yale as it starts to hail on us above 14,000 ft. I had to put my camera away pretty quick because it's not waterproof, but you get the idea. This ridgeline is literally a straight drop on both sides, and though it's pretty timid here, you have to use all 4 limbs at times to stay on the face of the mountain, and the wet rocks don't help :)

I know that a friend had a water proof camera, I can't wait to see what he was able to record.

In this video, i just do a quick 360 from the top of Mt Huron, another 14ner in Colorado.

More videos on my youtube account.

Monsoon

I went outside yesterday afternoon to find that it was pouring rain. Normally I wouldn't care at all, except today I was supposed to help Katie move. and most stuff doesn't like to get wet :)

So after work, I decided I would swing by the store and pick up some trash bags, so that we could try to keep as much dry as possible. After 2 hours or being stuck in traffic, and going less than 3 miles total, I decided to park and walk the remaining half a mile to Safeway.

I found that the street was flooded up to my knees at some points, and entire roads had been shut down because of flooding: which explains the traffic :) I made it to the safeway only to find that they had no power, and closed early. I'll tell you what though: I haven't had a good excuse to play in a puddle for a long time, so it wasn't all bad.

For those of you who think my shoes are funny, I have one thing to say:

:-p

Here is a quick shot from rural and broadway:

Colorado

I spent the last week chilling in Colorado. I went backpacking for 5 days, and spent the weekend before and after in the city. The backpacking trip covered about 55 miles and over 12,000 ft vertical, and it was a blast.

Here is a quick photo from the trip:

Taken from Lake Ann Pass, Collegiate Peak Wilderness Area, CO
July 24, 2007

Here is a link to all the photos (there are way too many, and I have to sort through them still :-)

On a funny note, we took the bus to boulder, and spent the day hanging out there, when I saw something great for my brothers, Mike & Al. The two of them have been trying to make the perfect pizza, and I saw just the thing to help them get there... Guys you just need to build one of these:

Also, those are real Italians running it... so they might have a natural advantage.

Breaking in the Boots

I bought some new boots for the CDT hike, since I noticed the soles on my old ones were starting to wear through.

I used the opportunity to try out some different types of leg braces, and get a little more endurance training in before I ship out.

I tried two new leg braces. The one I found for my left knee worked great. It is a band that wraps around your leg just at the base of the knee cap. It holds the kneecap up so that it isn't rubbing on the tendon behind it all day long. I worked great.

The second kind I tried (on the right knee) was for the IT band (connecting your knee and thigh on the outside) It did nothing :-/ Maybe I was wearing it wrong, I'm not sure.

The hike was good though overall. I carried a 45lb pack to try to reproduce what we will be encountering, and I think it went pretty good. It was way hotter here than it will be in Colorado, but the altitude is much lower, so you win some, you loose some.

I was very lucky during this hike, and I hit a number of great views because of the clouds. I've included a few here.

The Wrath of the Mailman

For those of you who are following the mail man situation, here is a nice follow up. Yesterday, I gt home from work, and saw the wrath of the mailman!

This is not for the faint of heart... so please make your children close their eyes.

Here is is; The Wrath of the mail man!

Taken July 17, 2007
in front of my house

Ok, so maybe it was just the wind, or the garbage man set it down wrong, or whatever... but maybe it was the wrath of the mail man... So just in case, I decided to trim my bush this morning. I wouldn't want the mail man to get too ticked off, he does have a lot of power after all, imagine how much a mail man could hurt you... He could just throw away those tax documents, and bills, and before you know it you could be in a tough situation. Probably better to work with the system on this one :)

Geocaching Troubles :-/

I was testing out some new features that I'm working on with the Geocache Navigator, so I decided to try to find a cache at Lunch.

For those of you who aren't nerdy enough to know what Geocaching is (Good for you!), this might not make any sense :) For those of you who do, THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS

I was trying to find I'll trade ya! and I couldn't find it for the life of me. This is the second cache in two days that I have just not been able to find. I would like to blame the heat, but I don't think that would be fair :)

Here is the rough area of the cache... there are a few good places to hide one

I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be in with the palm trees. The hint was "Van Accessible"... and I think I figured out what that ment :)

but all I found was a bunch of liter. The last cache that I couldn't find was also surrounded by liter. I'm thinking that I didn't find them because there was so much trash around... like I didn't want to sift through all the trash to find the cache :) I really don't remember liter being a problem when geocaching before... Is it getting worse?