My favorite reaction to my deciding to run a marathon has to be my older brother, who after a moment’s thought, came up with what he described as an equivalent scenario:
“Hey, I’ve discovered that sticking your finger into a socket isn’t actually lethal!”
“I’ve decided that I’m going to do that for ten minutes every day!”
“I’m trying to work up to two hours…”
..Wow, has it been that long?
Have you ever tried to keep a journal? You do really well for a little while, but then you get a little busy for a little while. Then you decide to go back to your journal, so you open it up, and… you haven’t written in 6 months. Or a year.
Nuts.
At any rate, I’ve decided to run a marathon. No, I don’t know what I was thinking when I signed up, but I am rather excited about it. I’ll be running the Ogden Marathon in Utah on May 16th–I hear it’s a very nice marathon to run, without very much difficult terrain.
I’m using Hal Higdon’s Marathon Training Guide (novice 1 schedule). It’s a lot of running, but even with the cold weather, I’ve found that I rather enjoy running. When it’s really cold outside I run on the treadmill (and, yes, I watch the documentaries found on the extended versions of “Lord of the Rings” when I do–they are really quite interesting).
I’ve been reading the Old Testament, and have just started into 1 Kings; where Solomon sees God in a dream and asks for wisdom.
I never realized that what Solomon was asking for was help in fulfilling his calling as a judge over God’s people. I had never thought of Solomon as being someone who felt completely inadequate in the position in which he was placed before, but that’s the impression that I got reading it this time.
I don’t know why that surprised me, since both Saul and David have similar feelings of inadequacy. The stories of the first threee kings of Israel are really tragic, as each one has such promise; each one is supported by God and given help and understanding to make them equal to the task; and yet each one ends up rejecting God.
…anyway that was random, but hey, that’s what this blog is, right?
While I’m on the subject, one of my favorite people from the Bible is Samuel. I’m not really sure why he’s my favorite, but part of it is 1 Sam 3:19 – “And Samuel grew and the Lord was with him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground.”
What I like so much about this is that it is different from what I often consider prophets from doing. Prophets teach people the things that God instructs them to teach (for example, Mosiah 3:23). But this shows it from a very different perspective: Samuel doing his best to teach the people and God supporting him. That doesn’t mean that Samuel doesn’t teach the will of the Lord, or that he can make up his own rules or anything like that. It does mean that God doesn’t spell out every word that Samuel is supposed to teach. It means that it is often up to Samuel to decide what topic to teach, and when and how it is to be presented. But as long as he does his best, God will support him.
It’s not “OK, Samuel, I’ve written your next talk; here’s what you’re going to say.” Instead it’s “Samuel, I’ve taught you My gospel, now you need to teach it to others. Do your best and I’ll help you and support you in your calling.”
I set up my Outlook Program to recieve the Daily Dilbert cartoon, which is done via RSS feed. I have really enjoyed those. It helps each day to start work with a Dilbert. Yeah, some of them are dumb, but a lot of them are hilarious.
What is an RSS Feed?
An RSS Feed is simply a standardized format for publishing information, especially if it’s frequently updated. It is used a lot by News sites, blogs, and the like. You can view an RSS Feed in a feed reader and see a headline and/or description (or a comic). I’ve attached not only Dilbert, but some of my favorite blog sites to Outlook via RSS feeds, so that when they are updated, I get a copy of the new entry in Outlook. Obviously, there’s a whole lot more to it than that (most of which I’m not familiar with), but that’s the basic idea. There are tons of different ways to view RSS Feeds. Outlook works for me, so I haven’t really looked into other methods.
How to add Dilbert RSS feeds to Outlook 2007:
If you have the actuall RSS URL, then steps 4-8 can be used to add any RSS Feed to Outlook.
I mentioned that I had an mp3 player for running. One problem was that I’ve been using iTunes for some time, and my mp3 player doesn’t accept the default itunes format (.m4a). So I needed to re-copy those songs as either .wma (Windows Media format) or mp3’s.
Now, I don’t like to lose quality too much. As far as copying music to your computer is concerned, the standard metric for the song’s quality is the bit rate (how often the sound wave is sampled). In general, the higher the bit rate, the better quality the music is, but the larger the file becomes. A 64Kbps bit rate–64,000 bits/second–is a standard quality. Music that is streamed over the internet will usually be low-quality, since the smaller file-size allows for the music to be transferred faster.
So the next question is how to get high-quality mp3’s from your CD’s? Here are some freebies that I’ve looked at:
Windows Media Player can be configured to create mp3’s, and allows for high-quarlity bit rates. Windows Media Player will let you encode into mp3’s at 128, 192, 156, or 320 Kbps.
Exact Audio Copy can do similar, but adds an extra feature: Variable Bit Rate encoding (VBR). The idea behind this is that the mp3 encoder will determine what quality is needed for a given small section of the music and set the bit rate for that small section. This allows you to get high-quality music and save a little more space. The problem with this program is that the setup is more involved, rather than working out of the box.
iTunes also lets you configure your format choices, and so you can choose to have iTunes copy songs in mp3 format. I was pleased to note that they also have an option for variable bit rate (VBR) encoding, but on top of that, you can set a minimum bit rate. So when you’re copying your music to mp3, the bit rate won’t go below the threshold that you set.
Right now I’m using iTunes to copy my CD’s to mp3’s. I’m using the VBR encoding with a minimum bit rate of 192Kbps.
I’m a programmer. A professional geek. I work on a computer all day every day, and some extra just to maintain a firm control on my nerdness…
What the heck am I doing trying to do a half-marathon!?!?
I don’t know, but overall it was pretty fun.
fun!
fun?
It all started with my sister, who got me and a number of my siblings to run the 5K. And it was actually kind of fun. It was really hard, but I enjoyed the challenge, and I got a decent time. A few weeks later I found myself running a 10K with the group. I had run a couple times between then, but I hadn’t really trined for it.
It was actually king of fun. Really hard, but I enjoyed the challenge, and again I got a decent time.
So then my sister said we should run a half-marathon!? I hadn’t really considered it before, but I had done pretty well on the half-marathon, so I figured I would go ahead and do it. So I went and got some running shoes and other supplies. I eventually got an mp3 player (unfortunately, not enough funds for a nice ipod). And for a few weeks I trained pretty regularly. After that I only had time to make a few runs, but I was rather nervous going into the marathon.
So we had to get up at a completely unholy hour (4:30 AM!) so that I could get to the finish point. From there we were bussed to the start point. The bus went uphill… and more uphill… and… more… uphill…
nuts.
Well, our little group found each other and eventually the race started. There were a fairly large number of people and we were near the back of the crowd, so once the race started, we kind of… stood there… We eventually started, and we were running downhill.
It didn’t turn out to be too bad. I found my mp3 player to be very helpful (they allowed them in this race–I understand that for more serious runs they are not). My choice of music was probably very different than what one would expect (see my comments on soundtracks below–I also enjoyed Dvorak’s 9th Symphony).
The pack I got for my bottle had proved to be useless – it kept sliding up to my stomach and bouncing around – so I carried my water bottle. That turned out to be less than usefull. I ended up ditching the bottle about a mile from the end when it was still half full (oops).
The other fun part was when my mp3 player died. I really noticed that. All of a sudden the running was a lot harder. Fortunately it was only about 3 miles from the end.
As it turned out, the half-marathon was easier than the 5K and 10K. I suspect it may have to do with the fact that I actually trained for this one. I was quite pleased at my time, 1:54 for 13 miles, but I think what I was most pleased about as far as running was to find that I generally kept my wind – I’ve always had a very short wind, but for virtually the whole race I was breathing just fine.
I also really enjoyed that it was something of a family event. It was really neat to cheer each other on, and see them come in once I had come in.
A while back my family had a camping trip that was rather fun, and I was excited to post about it in my blog. Unfortunately, I realized that this blog is public (on purpose–I’m sure there are lots of people that wish to discuss their favorite movie music composers).
At any rate, I decided to create an additional private blog (invitation only). It will be used for posts that have somewhat more sensitive information on it (family pictures, etc). When I post to one blog, I’ll try to make note of it in the other.
If you have not received and invitation to my private blog, and would like one, first check your email. Then if you still haven’t received an invitation, send me an email.
So Rossanne is the one who does the finances in our family (I’m not sure why, but that seems to be pretty universal that the wife ends up with that chore–I guess us guys are just too lazy).
Anyway, when I changed jobs to DigitalBridge, I got a significant raise, and so I thought we would have more money. I was really surprised to find that instead we were struggling more than ever.
It turns out Rosanne has been putting all the extra money into getting us out of debt. She had told me she was working on paying off our loans, but I had not realized how much. It is amazing how much we have paid off! We just recently paid off my car, and we are making a ton of progress on my student loans. Her goal is to have all our debts paid off except the mortgage by the end of the year.
I really did not think that would be possible, but so far it looks like we’re going to be able to do it (and now that I’m not spending lots of money on extra stuff, we might be able to live within our means). I am really blessed to have such a wonderful wife.
So apparently Ada really likes peas (oh well, nobody’s perfect).
Ada was in her chair and Rosanne put a bunch of peas on her tray, and she kept eating them as best she could, with only moderate success:
She has also discovered that even though she only has one mouth she does have two hands, so she can perform the above process twice as fast. Needless to say there were a lot of peas to clean up when she was done.
So, having a yard is both a blessing and a curse (as everyone who has a yard knows). We’ve spent a fair amount of time and money on ours recently, what with the usual fixing sprinklers (a new tradition in my life that makes me wonder about whether sprinklers or irrigation is better), fertilizing, planting flowers, etc.
One of the big projects we just finished was to take out a bunch of ivy in the back corner of our yard, and then to grind down the three or four stumps in the yard (as well as the 5 or 6 stumps we found in the ivy patch). Rosanne’s parents rented the grinder for their house, and then brought it up to ours and helped us grind ours down as well.
And, our fence is in really poor condition, so replacing one side of it is another project coming up really soon. I’m looking forward to that one.
On top of that, there is the weeding, the mowing, the weed-wipping, the trimming, the spraying, etc. etc. that takes tons of time and effort.
However…
Then you look out at your yard, and it actually looks really nice, and it is so neat! Earlier this year a couple decorative trees that we have were in full bloom–two of them had white blossoms, and two had purple (flowering plum trees, I think). They looked really pretty! (sorry, I didn’t think to take a picture). And then you see how much better your yard looks because of your efforts. For me I have to say that having a yard is worth the effort (so far–that could change).