My First 10K

Sunday was the 32nd running of the Classic 10K race and it was also the first 10K race I've competed in. I've participated in the Classic's companion Rowley 5K race twice before this so it wasn't my first road race, but I'd still consider myself novice in the running world.

Training

Leading up to the race day I've been trying to stick to a somewhat regular running schedule. I would run every other or every third day depending on the weather. During the week I ran maintenance runs between 2-3 miles before work. I was just trying to build endurance into the muscles I don't regularly use on a daily basis.

On the past few weekends I've tried to run longer and longer distances. I started with 4 miles. Then 4.5, 5, and 5.5 miles. Each run was a bit more challenging, but I was able to push myself to the distance I hoped to reach.

The Unknown

Despite all of the training runs I knew there were a few things I wouldn't be able to prepare for. Even though I had worked myself up to 5.5 miles, there was still that last mile I had yet to experience. Granted, if I felt fatigued, but able to continue on at 5.5 miles then I should be able to survive that last mile - even if I had to walk a lot of it.

Another unknown was the course itself. I have been training by running laps on an outdoor track near my house. It doesn't make for terribly interesting running, but what it lacks in amusement, it makes up for in consistency. I had clocked myself running 2:45 laps over and and over again. So I knew I could anticipate to run about 10:30 - 11 per mile and therefore around 70 minutes over 6.4 miles. But I didn't know what the course was going to be like. Were the hills going to destroy me? Was I going to be thrown off at some point by a confusing turn?

Finally Race Day!

It started out just as I had planned. The day before I ate light and stuck to simple carbs. I had read that was easier on the body to digest. The night before - plenty of water. The morning of the race I had an energy bar another glass of water. Fueled up and ready to go!

I made my way to the race start. One of the luxuries about this particular race is that it practically starts and ends in my back yard. I could hear the announcers from my house. In fact, the race route encompassed my house making it rather difficult to leave if I wasn't running! 

Anyway, I made my way to the race start with plenty of time to watch the Rowley 5K runners take off. I had run this race before, but I had never seen it start from this angle. I was just off the starting line, facing the runners who were stretching out and shaking their limbs in anticipation. The National Anthem was sung and the starting pistol fired. The runners were off!

Once the 5K runners cleared out, I found a quiet place to stretch and gather my thoughts. I went for a very brief jog up a hill and down again. I waited for an hour or so to pass.

And I'm Off...

As the runners took their places I noticed signs along the road. "6:00 Milers Start Here." "8:00 Milers Start Here." "10:00 Milers and Walkers Start Here" That was depressing. I was roped into the same crowd as walkers. I scowled and took my place near the very back of the pack. I didn't know until later that those signs are all rubbish and no one else seemed to pay attention to them.

Just before the start I bumped into one of my neighbors. We shared some words of encouragement and wished each other luck. The starting pistol snapped and "we were off." By "we were off" I of course mean I waited 30 seconds for the mass of runners in front of me to start moving so that I could begin. It's just like driving a car ... even once the light turns green you still have to wait for all of the drivers in front of you. Eventually the traffic started moving and we took our first steps. The race had started!

I passed by a number of neighbors spectating and my wife and daughter - all cheering us on. It was a really nice feeling to see everyone come out. Throughout the race there were a lot of people watching on. Some were on the sidewalks with signs and bells. Others just watched from their porches or second floor windows. It was just great to feel that kind of support while running - something the outdoor track definitely lacked.

I'll skip ahead a bit...

The Finish Line

As I got closer to the end I realized that I still had a fair amount of energy left in the tank. It was definitely more than I had expected. I was smiling at spectators cheering us on, cracking jokes with other nearby runners, and even gave the event photographer a big thumbs up! It was clear to me I wasn't hurting half as bad as I expected to be.

The course route ends with a dramatic finish. It pours onto an outdoor running track (hey, I've seen one of these before!) where the stands were filled with people. As I entered the stadium, they called out my name on the PA system and I saw myself on the jumbo screen across the field. What a thrill! I came around the back straight and started to pick up my pace. I saw Anne and Emma, who had moved down to field level, on the final turn and sprinted to the finish line recording a time of 64:35! I had finished comfortably faster than I hoped! Wahoo!

What's Next?

So I've finished my first 10K. Now what? I think the first thing to do is repeat that a few times and get more comfortable with the 6.4 mile distance. Eventually, I think I'd like to work up to 10 miles. It seems like a lot further though.

Ken Shelton Photography

research project

Now that Anne and I are returning back toward our home roots, we’ve begun a very important research project. See, the home turf pizzeria used to be Roma Pizza for years upon years. That was our joint. It was amazing pizza. They closed shop a few months ago – we can’t figure out why.

So part of us moving back to Middletown is determining our new pizza place. We started our research project last night at Colandrea Pizza King. I used to have their pizza when I was a kid and quite frankly I was surprised they’ve survived so long. However, I think they make a very strong entry into our research project.

I had two slices of pizza with sausage and Anne ordered two slices with mozzarella cheese. My two came out with heaping stacks of sliced sausage on top. It was very filling; I might have only needed one slice. Anne said hers was quite good as well. The only negative point for Colandrea’s was the price. Four slices and two drinks cost $14.50! Not what I call a cheap meal. However pizza is very important so if this turns out to be the winner of our research project, our wallets will simply have to be ready!

closing jitters

We didn’t close last week as we had hoped. To make a long story short, the necessary work wasn’t completed in time to beat the seller’s lawyer’s vacation. So now we have a scheduled closing date for the day after his return: June 20.

Anne and I are becoming very anxious. It’s only a short time away, but we’ve been living in boxes for over a month now. I believe we have over 70 packed boxes! I’ve also been recruiting help. If you’re interested in helping please let me know! I even recruited some of the scout families to help out!

My dad and I were talking on the phone last night. He’s had a chance to see the house twice now and we’ve come to the conclusion that some of the bushes and trees are encroaching on the house. Somehow when he offered to cut down the (what I consider to be) large pine tree touching the back of the house, I gasped. I’ve never had to decide if a tree should be cut down! That’s something homeowners do! It was an awkward discussion that I think we’ll have to continue once I can see that tree again.

Closing next week?

We got an unexpected phone call from the seller of the house we’re buying. Apparently our meeting last week convinced her to move along on the closing date. We could be closing as soon as next week!

It sounds like a lot of things will be left behind in the house and some cleaning will be necessary. I’ll take that trade-off compared to getting into the house later and it being cleaner.

I had a number of family members, friends, and colleagues volunteer their services recently. Now I’m hoping that people are actually interested in helping out! We’ll probably hold a painting party sometime after closing. And I’m not sure if we’ll stick to our original moving weekend (June 21-22) or push it out a week.

One thing I've been asked a few times because I'm the resident computer expert of the family is how to print a screen when no printing option seems available. I may be subverting some systems that are not supposed to be printed, but this trick should work when Ctrl + P fails us.

1. Open the window you'd like to print and make sure it's the active window.
2. Press Alt + Print Screen
3. Press Start key (sometimes called Win key) + R (alternatively you can use the desktop Start button and then click Run)
4. Type "mspaint" and press enter
5. Once Paint has loaded, press Ctrl + V
6. Manipulate, print, and/or save your image

Scouting blog

It's been a long while (again) since my last post. Unfortunately I don't have much to say except to plug another experiment in my life. I've started another blog geared specifically toward my adventures in Boy Scouting. You're all welcome to take the jump with me to Scouting Ahead; however, I realize that most could care less. And that's one of the great motivations for the addition of a new blog rather than continuing the Boy Scouts category. I suspect that the few readers I do have are more interested in the often random events in my life and care less about the Scouting. My other reason for splitting the two aspects of my life digitally is to allow me to brand the Scouting blog for Scouters interested in reading about Scouting (not my latest party or random event) .I will continue to keep this blog as alive as ever (if you call that alive).

first Eagle Scout on my watch

I'm pretty happy right now because I just got back from my first Eagle Scout Board of Review. The young man became the first Eagle Scout while I've been an active adult leader. It makes me proud to know that I've had some influence in his success.

And it just occurred to me that I should probably include this little tidbit: I'm going to become the next Scoutmaster for our troop. I'm really excited and want to hit the ground running when I start in a few weeks so I've been compiling things to say and do for use later on.

New Year's Resolutions - two years later

It's just getting to be too late to talk about new year's resolutions. That must mean it's about time for me to start writing about them. I picked up Guitar Hero 3 which has been totally addictive and is pushing into all sorts of productivity time including blog writing.

So I've been meaning to write this entry for a few days now. In doing so, I figured I'd look back and see if I've written about the topic before. It turns out, I have! I think I did a damn good job of it too! It leaves me very little to say except to instruct you all to go and read that post instead of this one.

In all seriousness, my feelings toward a new year hasn't changed. Yet as I read last year's resolutions my resolutions from two years ago I realized that I've pretty much failed on most of them. Yes, I did indeed have the best damn wedding possible. But I've fallen short of the mark on the others - some quite considerably. I'd like to attribute these failures to factors such as the list being too long or too lofty, but there's not much truth to that.

This reminds me of a Scrubs episode I was watching just last night. Turk and Carla were having marital issues (communication - not sex) and she was spending a few nights with Elliot. Kelso, on a dare from Cox, was actually attempting to treat a patient. The patient was a large woman who seemed to know exactly what Kelso was going to say because she had one of those "internet phones." She insisted on having a gastric bypass instead of dieting and exercise, despite Kelso's recommendation to do so. Getting to the point, as Turk is about to take the patient to surgery Kelso barges into the room (he literally knocks the door off it's hinges) and Cox-ishly explains to the patient that she's not going to have the gastric bypass. His crutch was that she was avoiding doing the right thing, the hard thing, because she might fail and there would be no one to blame but herself. Turk, of course, overhearing all of this rushes to Carla and the light little piano music comes in and all is well in the thirty minute tv world.

The point, and I have one for once, is that Kelso's message is true for many things in life. And one of those things is new year's resolutions.

Without any further delay or soapboxing, here are my resolutions of 2008:

• Soda be gone. I have given up on soda. There's nothing to be gained in all that sugar, carbonation, and caffeine.
• Farewell french fries. I really don't like them most of the time anyway.
• Gossip and revel in misery less. I've gotten mean! If I'm going to be a Scout leader, I should be following the "A Scout is kind" point of the law.
• Read more. I'm still trudging slowly through Harry Potter (book 2). But the list of books I'm interested in reading is growing by the month. Must keep reading!

And since I was so inspired by 2007 2006's resolutions I'll be borrowing:

• Get back into the gym and get back to eating well
• Continue to shrink that to-do list! I'm doing pretty well on this one.
• Clearer communication. I have made almost no progress toward speaking in full & coherent sentences with proper enunciation.

Do you have any resolutions (or stock in them in the first place)?

trying out ruby

Last weekend was a slow weekend. It was really nice for a change. On Friday, Jason (from work) sent me a link to some demos of ruby on rails. He had been talking about ruby off and on for some time now - usually in the capacity of comparing developers.

I didn't want to be the kind of developer who had nothing to offer to a discussion about C# vs Ruby any longer, so I decided to heed his suggestion and spend some time with Ruby. So I spent nearly all weekend with Ruby and what have I got to say? Not much aside from a superficial evaluation.

I spent a lot of time getting the environment squared away. The actual Ruby on Rails install was simple. However I tried to configure it to work with Microsoft SQL Express. This was a bad idea. The reason this is a bad idea is the same reason the RoR motto is "convention over configuration." When you install RoR, you can see clearly that it plays well with MySql. Instead of going with the flow, I decided to travel upstream for several hours. Just like my analogy, I didn't get far. Right. So. Install MySql and things work like a charm.

Once I got the environment settled, it was time to get down to work. RoR installs with a small, super-powered notepad clone with some syntax highlighting. It's pleasant if you're into painful and tedious opening and closing of files. Otherwise I recommend an IDE I discovered, Aptana Studio, where I was able to start making sense of things.

So what amazingly stunning web sites did I produce? I walked through the tutorials I found online and attempted to apply them to the concepts I've been considering for my side project, ScoutOffice. Let's just say I'm not rushing out to become a Ruby developer. I'm still struggling with getting the relationships between various models right.

Despite my troubles and apparent inability to learn a language quickly, Ruby on Rails does have some interesting characteristics:

Drink the Kool-Aid. If you can swallow the quirky and debatable conventions Ruby on Rails prides itself on, it is truly amazing how quickly things can "just work." I was able to develop all CRUD actions within mere minutes provided I used MySql, named my data table as a plural, used an integer as the table primary key identity, and properly cased things. If you don't mind sacrificing a debate in best practices, this could be your language!

Ruby can make the bad web UI guys look really bad, really easily. It has this nifty scaffold feature which (I'm sure no real Ruby developer uses that) creates web forms for you on the fly. However the layout and style leaves a lot to be desired. That's great if you know how to modify those things easily. For those of us who struggle with Microsoft Paint, we're screwed. Ruby has a way of showing how bad one's UI skills a re in an instant.

So I have a pretty superficial opinion of Ruby on Rails at this point. It has a lot of merits, but I'm about to give up my day job. I do think I'll be revisiting it however and I haven't ruled it out as a possible avenue for ScoutOffice to go down.

ScoutOffice revisited

It's been four months since my (first?) update about ScoutOffice. It's really hit a snag which I'm trying to deal with but seems to be a large deal breaker. Let's see if I can explain this in English.

The BSA launched a software platform called ScoutNET in 1999. It was supposed to be revolutionary and answer our Scouting prayers and probably dispense candy to small children. It failed to do any of those things (I'm still waiting for my M&Ms). However it's still around. It manages to provide some level of backbone on a national level I guess. Councils can submit and request reports from it. Local units are supposed to be able to recharter with it. Yadda yadda.

From best I can tell, back in 1999 and 2000 the BSA allowed only four software vendors access (and subsequent certification) to a ScoutNET api which facilitates the communication between local units and their respective councils.

Since then, two of those vendors have stopped supporting their products leaving two to choose from.

My unit is slowly getting on the technology revolution (they think this Internet thing may be around for a while). And of course I want to gallop and sprint through and make cool stuff happen. I want to frolic (yes and perhaps prance) in the fun of writing software for them! But this stupid ScoutNET certification. /grumble

I've scoured the net trying to figure out what this api is. It looks like it's not publicly available. I'm currently grappling with the idea of writing something that simply imports/exports similarly to the remaining two certified vendors, but that's a hack and it's going to be painstakingly hard.

I just want to the BSA to get off their 1930s attitudes and catch up already.

connecting the theoretical and practical dots of leadership

Last weekend was our first ever "Suriviorman Weekend" for the Boy Scout troop. The wilderness survival event was inspired by the current television shows: Survivorman and Man vs Wild. It was an excellent success.

For our purposes the weekend was a scenario-based competition between patrols. We scored them on obvious categories such as shelter, food, and fire as well as less obvious ones like morale and teamwork.

When judging morale and teamwork, we were looking to see how a group of Scouts worked together. Did they look after each other and cooperate or did they bicker, fight, and hassle one another? Were they able to get done work quickly by coordinating tasks or was everyone fending for themselves? Reflecting now on the weekend, the judges saw an array of responses. One patrol managed to delegate responsibilities. Another did not fare as well since the oldest boys performed all the work leaving the youngest underutilized and bored.

It dawned on me while watching (from afar) these patrols work that we were witnessing differing leadership styles immerge on their own. Some Scouts were content to do all the work at the cost of morale and efficiency. Others had higher performance and were able to delegate, but required less than pleasant tones to motivate others.

So I've been considering the success of the weekend and what I witnessed. I was trying to diagnose how some patrols did better than others and I came across this article at Dumb Little Man. It was while reading the article that I had an epiphany - I understand what had happened: the Scouts were concentrating more on the tasks at hand than the bigger picture of wilderness  survival.

Our event lacked the emotional connection that would inspire Scouts to be good leaders. When the fire competition began, Scouts decided the best way to win that competition. They then choose the best food cooking methods that they believed would earn them the most points. The underlying problem is that there was no incentive to be a good leader - just a good enough leader.

True survival situations require the seven tips as discussed in the article. Morale will be affected by how well the leader motivates and inspires others to strive toward goals. And morale is one hell of an ally in tough situations - even more so than dry socks!

So how do you bridge the gap? I wish I knew! I can't drop the Scouts in a jungle just to see them actually have to work together (although that would be amusing). I think you can start with having a healthy discussion about the good and bad things that happened.

What do you think? How do you bring the emotional desire to perform good, high-leveled leadership to an event?

"Blog about Jott" ...A message I left myself.

I've been meaning to write about this topic and am just now getting to it. A few months ago, I had identified a problem in my life. I have a crappy memory. That's neither a new or startling revelation. I attempt to mitigate my crappy memory with to-do lists on scraps of paper files with limited success. The particular issue with that resolution is that I don't always have a pen, paper, or the ability to write something down (i.e. when driving).

So I had been thinking for a while that I needed some sort of device or service similar to a mini-cassette recorder. I, of course, did not want an actual mini-cassette recorder - yet another device to carry around. It would be ideal if it worked with my mobile phone since I'd have that just about everywhere.

I had been brewing about this problem for a few weeks. One evening I was began telling Anne about my idea that my cell phone would double as a simple voice recorder. She listened sleepily (she was just going to bed) to my idea and I went back Google Reader to do some reading. The very next post was Robert Scoble talking about Jott. I've dropped Scoble from the feed since then, but I've gotta give him cred (the "street" variety) for this one.

Here's how it works. I call Jott and it automatically records a message. It then transcribes my message to text and delivers it to email or mobile phones as a text message! I really like to send myself Jotts to keep track of reminders or mental notes. It even allows me to set up text message reminders and alerts.

Jott is currently free and in beta. I'm hoping those two are not linked because I'm getting hooked. So sign up and send me a Jott.

So what's the morale of this story? First, get Jott because it rocks. Second, next time Dave has a problem, don't wait to read about the solution! Make the solution yourself and perhaps change the world (or at least profit).

xkcd compiling shirt

I showed Anne this comic and she was quite unimpressed. I can't blame her really. It's not like I'd understand some comic about teaching. However I told her I wanted the shirt (second down) inspired by the comic and she knocked me! I do agree that geek shirts with random obscure and technical jargon isn't usually my style, but comon'... they're sword fighting!

Perhaps Santa or the birthday fairy will remember this since I don't think Anne was taking notes.

Test, test. Hello W...

Test, test. Hello World.
Click here to listen

Powered by Jott

ScoutNet .. err... I mean ScoutOffice

One of the current side projects I'm working on is developing a website for my Boy Scout Troop. Scouting is defiantly and dismally in the stone age. It's pretty depressing. So I started working on this website. I think it should cover both the public-facing aspects as well as be a record keeping tool.

I've actually started and stopped work on the project several times over the past few years. That's the thing about my side projects... they rarely make it to completion. It's a nice fad for a period of time, but the novelty eventually wears off and some new obsession takes its place. Hopefully I can be a little more committed to this one.

I would like to continue reporting my progress in my blog. Sort of a development diary. I love those YouTube videos that show someone's progress building a huge Lego structure over time. The closest approximation to that I can make (without opening the project source and having it make much less appeal to a reader) is here I suppose. Perhaps someday the project will merit its own site.

So one of the first things to conquer is the tool set. I've been fighting with them for a day or two. I have a few major requirements:

• stay legit (don't pirate),
• WYSIWYG (or at least the Cassini developers' web server) web form editing,
  
• and have the ability to unit test the most code possible.

I started with Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express. It covers the first two requirements. However it does not (or I have not found a way to) compile the site into dlls. What's the problem? You can't unit test a project that can't create dlls. At least that's how NUnit works. Perhaps there's another free .NET unit testing platform that can somehow negotiate web projects.

I fired up Microsoft Visual C# Developer Express. This would give me the first and third requirements. I was even able to publish the class library dlls into the web project! However it was really a sloppy mess and it didn't feel right.

While doing some reading I stumbled across sharpDevelop, a free and open developers' IDE. It said it offered WYSIWYG form development and the ability to compile web projects. I could sense my dreams coming true. Boy I was off! I run it for the first time and instantly feel like I'm using a horrible knock-off. It has integrated NUnit testing and some other nice features. However upon closer examination, I see it does not do web form development - it does windows form development. I merely dabble in ASP.NET. I need some WYSIWYG or Cassini action!

So back to the Web Dev/C# Dev I went. I fought with the solution and project files for a good while. I managed to get them into locations I can cope with. I have the web form editing and the unit testing. All is well with the world.

Two other issues presented themselves while working last night however. I needed to name the solution! Naming a solution often correlates to the name of the "product" itself. I really wanted to name it ScoutNet (a la Terminator movies) however BSA actually has a (really crappy) platform called that (don't worry - we're in no danger). With that name taken, the next best thing I could think of was ScoutOffice. It's only a matter of time before Microsoft comes knocking on my door (/eyes).

The other issue I found was a bit more technical. I started working on membership functionality first. I wanted to create new users. And I was trying to be slick and override the System.Web.Security.MembershipProvider since that's supposed to be an easy route to insta-membership functionality. It is pretty slick, but it requires I use the System.Web.Security.MembershipUser. Ok, so I make my user a child of that. But by doing so, I set up the dependency that all of my lower tier projects need System.Web. That's just not acceptable. So I guess I'll be writing the membership functionality by hand.

Since this is sort of the inaugural post regarding ScoutOffice, if there are any readers out there let me know what you think. If you have any features that you think would be cool to add pass them along.

referral incentive program

Nothing motivates coming out of "blogging retirement" like the notion of earning money by shamelessly promoting something. I guess we'll find out if anyone still has me on their feed readers!

My company is seeking some people to do some programming, and they're paying the current employees for anyone they hire as a referral. So if you happen to be reading this and you're looking for a job and one of these jobs are in your field of interest, let me know!

C# Developer or UI Designer

Renaissance Faire - picture

At the Renaissance Faire, Nate wound up getting taunted into paying to hit something with a large hammer. The carnie made some remark questioning his manhood and Nate wouldn't let that stand. He forked over his 2 bucks and gleefully smacked the 'thingie.' He didn't ring the bell, but he did manage to get into the "Knightly" category!

Of course the carnie started badgering me, but I was content to be called names and hold my $2 rather than be shown up by Nate.

RIT barbershop quartet

Some of the guys up at RIT are making local news for singing - and that's always of interest to me. Keep up the good work! I'll let RIT News & Events take it from here.

Renaissance Faire

The Renaissance Faire is an annual event that takes place in Tuxedo. It's a faire or park full of events, vendors, food, and games that come from the Renaissance era. I don't think Anne and I went last year, but she used to work there playing trumpet and I've been several times in previous years. This year we organized with Kevin, Tricia, Nate, Molly, Jen Bradshaw, Shannon, Dave, and Anne's sister Jen to go together. I want to show some pictures since there were several good ones, so I'll switch into Picasa and just caption the pictures.

Edit: Yarg! I can't do easy uploading with Picasa right now because my Blogger account is in the transitional beta stuff which - you guessed it - Picasa does not support right now! I'm not in the mood to monkey with uploading images via the web interface so for now you'll have to suffer knowing that there are pictures to be seen... but that you can't ... yet.

Scoble on a rampage

So Robert Scoble spent the good portion of yesterday going nuts with second-hand information regarding Microsoft's claim to "have the most blogs in service." Who cares?! He goes on to make about advertising dollars and corporate credibility in marketing for those advertising dollars. Ugh. Scoble even spends most of the afternoon cataloguing "real" blogs on Windows Live Spaces and how they don't meet the definition of a blog.

And of course when it was noted that he's clearly angry and not thinking clearly by readers more eloquent and quicker than I, Scoble gave it a good spin and kept on going.

I like Scoble a lot! He's on my reader list. I usually agree with him. And I'm not saying I need to in order to read or enjoy some one's stuff. But seriously? What's the point? This morning I wake up and he's plugging a Windows Live Space full of XP goodness. It just feels like a stunt or a sensational effort for an afternoon much like reporting I'd expect from television reporting and it just rubs me wrong -- until tomorrow when I link to Scoble with some fantastic thing he said.