I have a little “downtime” today and one of the longstanding missions has been undertaken. I am exploring Twitter today.
I am not a Twitter hater, though i do not foresee it being terribly useful in my personal life. I expect that most of the common objections one may have about the function of Twitter can be handled through a judicious use of settings and options.
I decided to check it out (and have been meaning to do so) for business purposes. Like many other forms of social media, i do believe that this can be a great tool if used properly. Given that i do not know what my next job will entail, and that loads of IT experience and expertise are a large part of my sellable skill set, i thought it would be good to become more familiar with this tech in advance of needing to be able to effectively implement it for a client.
I am listed under my name, gmail address, and/or the handle “guthluc”.
Your input and shared experience are most welcome!
I ran 1.8 miles, pace 9’17”. It was a nice experience to be back out there. The weather was confusing. We had a lovely bright and sunny day in the 40s that could even feel like 50 when the wind died down. As soon as i was dressing to run, clouds rolled in and blocked the sun. I dressed warm and was fine half the run and hot the rest. Them’s the breaks.
The shuffle feature worked out well for me today with a dash of T-Rex to start things off, into Soundgarden 4th of July, into Fugazi Faucet Squared. I was hoping to get to 2 miles today, but i did make it all the way back into my neighborhood. Not too shabby after an unintentional break.
When i uploaded to nike i decided to check back in with the goals section. It is actually kinda neat. I only have two data points since establishing the goals, but it tells me at a glance how i am doing comparatively. I am only one run behind, though almost 3.5 miles behind. The pace goal may also be tough to meet – but if i keep up with the conditioning, i might make it. If not, i will keep striving for it. As a refresher, the pace goal is 1 mile, under 9′ pace, 4 times, by March 20.
We shall call her Lil' Agnes
In other news, i had a great experience at REI today. I came to REI late, mostly because they were never located nearby. But after doing some outfitting there last summer, i am converted. I took leaky Big Agnes with me and a clerk and i inspected it together and agreed that it was the valve. I did not have my receipt, but they found the purchase through my member number. They did not have any more of the same model, but they did have a similar product by Thermarest. I was initially bummed as the Thermarest was an additional 40 beans. But, i have been on the floor for two nights and wanted that streak to end. If i don’t like it, i can take this with me to another REI on my next NOVA trip and exchange it there and get my loot back. That’s good service!
After many hours of creation, my dad and i finished editing my new, four page resume tonight. I have sent it out to the necessary parties and am excited about the next steps. The finished product is actually pretty good. I like it better than the one-pager by far. I will change out what is on the RAI website and make this one downloadable as well, but i do not have the mental energy for that tonight. If you are burning with curiosity, let me know and i will put it in your hot little hands!
Perhaps i shall have some more time and energy to write tomorrow.
I do have several substantive posts either brewing in my head or shaping up in outline form – but have not had/used the time to get that stuff down. Brief highlights follow…
I had an awesome meeting in the DC region with a family friend high up in “Big Consulting Firm”. I got some excellent practical advice on the job hunt in general and pursuing a job with this company. Also got some great intel on other good possibilities with firms that we know are hiring right now. This firm wants a fairly exhaustive long form resume, so i have spent the past few days turning my one-pager into a 4 pager. Final edits to happen momentarily and then get sent out.
I may have to position myself somewhere in NOVA/DC for a week or so to be more prepared/available for meetings, and i have some things in the works for that – though input an/or floor space is appreciated.
Speaking of floor space, Big Agnes has an undetectable leak somewhere 🙁 It has been getting worse the past week and Thursday, when i woke up at 4 to get ready for the trip to DC, my back was killing me. She is less than a year old. She has been backpacking twice and spent a grand total of 2 nights in use in the woods. She has acted as my portable mattress for about two weeks. I cannot find the receipt, but hopefully i can still get some help at REI. That trip will happen today after the resume edits.
Big Agnes looking after some of my books
Another time sucker – i found where you can play the Original Legend of Zelda online! I loved this game and spent many many hours playing it with my dad back when it came out around 1986. But i think the Nintendo folks have a Microsoft bias even in online gaming! I have not gotten the game to load in Chrome. I can play in Firefox, but the graphics are just jerky enough to get you occasionally killed. It works very well in Seamonkey. But – in all of these, the java applet mechanism that allows you to save your game and quit your browser and come back in later – that does not quite work out. I can see a java screen flash momentarily with the save code, but it goes away very quickly and i have not been able to actually recover a prior game. I tried just leaving the game on pause. This worked out well on the overnight in Seamonkey. (The Mac still goes to sleep and manages the power well.) I have not tried Safari yet – but i might, just as an experiment.
The brief return of snow put a kink in my renewed running. I was eager to go, but the roads were a little too slushy/icy. It looks good for today though! I have kept up with the daily stretching and at least once daily (though frequently twice daily) floor exercises. I have been increasing my reps as well. I am up to 18 push-ups, 55 crunches, 55 leg lifts, and 50 twisty crunches. I am still weighing in at 187.
Hope you all out there participating through the series of tubes are rocking out.
“Whatever you are, be a good one.” Abe Lincoln – via Mike Birbiglia
I have been playing with the scheduled release of blog posts and liking it. If you do not know, you can write entries and choose when they will be automatically published. This is awesome for me given that i go through droughts of not writing and then writing four or five posts at once. Now, i can spread those out. It is a little difficult to deal with both tense and timeline issues, but i think it is worth it. I released two or three posts via the scheduler Fri-Sun.
A little job news – one of the places i applied that i was excited about was the Apple Store at the local mall here in Millersville PA. They are revamping their Business Team (which is a great and necessary idea) and have some openings. It has been a week and i have heard nothing. I did go in the day after i applied online and spoke to one of the managers briefly just to verify that they were still looking as the post had been up since september. It was a nice chat and i left feeling positive.
There is an up and a down side. The up is that i do not really want to stay in Pennsylvania. I was serious when i applied and i would take the job if they offered it today, but i would want to learn and position myself to move before next winter. The down is that i do not understand why i did not get any contact. I felt like my package was good. Some of the folks in the store know me, a few managers, lots of floor staff, the Business guy, and the Regional manager. I am considering contacting my Business sales guy to try to set something up to find out what happened. Not so much to be begging for a job there, but to learn what was wrong to help me in the future. Did i make some gross error i am unaware of? Is it the pitfall i have found many times – overqualified? Is it the employer second guessing the applicant game of ‘he can’t really want this job, he’s been a CEO!’
The other facet of concern – I also applied for the same job in Georgetown as well as a job one rung up in the business division also in Georgetown. Those jobs i am very interested in, and i have a bud in Apple throwing a good word my way. Probably the Apple thing is not going to work out right now, but that is OK. I have some other consulting leads and am setting up meetings for this week (and next if necessary). I do plan to go into the Georgetown Apple store though while i am down NOVA way. I can probably make much more money consulting, but i imagine that i would be happier working at Apple.
State of the Blog – I believe it is about time to kick it back into gear with the move to a self-hosted blog. I did seriously slow down on that effort, but i hit an unusual wall. I could not make the self-hosted site work on the free space at godaddy. I read that many people had the same problem, and a few people made it work. That was only designed to be a temporary stage anyway, as it would include godaddy banners at the top of each page.
I have been working on a post about Malcolm X (and a little about Martin Luther King Jr.) and some decent ideas hit me while walking this morning and i used the voice memos thingy on the iPhone to capture them. I wanted to intersperse these voice clips with text in the entry, but you cannot upload mp3/m4a on a free blog hosted through wordpress. The upgrade package to be able to post audio is about $20.00 a year. Not bad, but if i have to pay, i would rather pay to host it myself and get the rest of the features that i am missing and the additional customization.
But – all that will have to wait until i get a new job. I refuse to spend money on my blog while under-employed!
The Malcolm entry is probably going to stay in draft form for now. It is too important to me to not craft it well, and that is going to take some more time, and i need to get back to other things.
For now let me just say that i hope we all take a minute to remember Malcolm today (he died on Feb 21, 1965). If you do not know much about Malcolm, i encourage you to learn. One of the best places to start is here!
Despite a return to colder weather and loads of wind, i nabbed another run late this afternoon.
1.7 miles – 9’15” pace
I did slow down going up the hill, but i made it up and made it almost back into the neighborhood.
While running, it was my breath that felt taxed near the end. My legs felt great. As soon as i switched to walking, my breath was fine and my legs began to burn a bit. But the cool-down walk and then stretch session calmed that down.
It is early to speculate, but i think that having a more dedicated and slightly more rigorous program is helping this time around. I must say that the music is definitely helping as well.
I do not expect that this will have an impact, but i did set some goals inside the nike+ online thingy where your numbers go. I just set the same goals there that i have in my head, but we’ll see.
The big reveal – i want to run at least every other day – so 14 times in 4 weeks. I want to be running a minimum of two miles – so 30 miles in 4 weeks. I want to run better than 9 minute miles – so 4 miles under 9 minute mile pace in 4 weeks.
Them’s the goals for now.
Back to the tunes. Today also started out with RPG “Right On”. This is the first track on the running playlist, so each run starts with it before the shuffle thingy kicks in. At least i think that is how it works, today is only the second time i have ever used shuffle. But i am ok with that. I love all the RPG songs, and this is one they played back in my era also.
I had to skip a few tracks (too slow – need to edit list) and then “Like Suicide” kicked in. Not just a good song, lots of great memories. I went to a show at American University in DC during the Superunknown tour around 94(?) with one of my good friends/love interests. Let’s just call her Marie. I was desperately hoping for them to play “4th of July”, which they did not but they did play “like suicide”. The “sad” songs always call to me. They do not make me feel sad, depressed, or suicidal or anything like that. They just resonate better with me. I think it may be similar to the Metal effect for me. People used to ask if playing loud angry metal made me extra aggressive. Truthfully it has the exact opposite effect on me. I left all that at the show and got filled with peace. Anyway – it was a great show and has many great memories attached to it.
Earlier in the day, my dad told me about an email from Emirates Air. He had qualified for one of a few free flights or some really nice upgrades, but they all expire on Feb 28th. The stuff on Emirates is all business related and we are partners and my pop is a nice guy, so we looked at the options together. Neither of us can use this before the 28th so we looked at the other ways to spend the miles. The cash equivalency is always poor, but you can get stuff you want for “free”. In 7-10 days, 2 iPod shuffles will arrive. My pop wants his for the gym and i will love to clip mine on for the running. Thanks Emirates!
Doin' the Shuffle
PS – i highly recommend that you go back and re-listen to Ratt! Both Out of the Cellar and Invasion of Your Privacy really stand the test of time!
It was beautiful, but i skipped the run yesterday in favor of a leg rest. I feel good, but a few of my leg muscles are a bit stiff. It was like this in the beginning back in October as well. Hopefully it will pass. I did of course still get in about 6 miles of dog walking.
Instead of the run, i doubled up on the floor exercises – morning and evening – 15 push-ups, 40 twisty crunches, 40 crunches, 40 leg lifts.
I also did three long stretching sessions to stay loose.
187 on the scale – already in better shape than this guy…
Yosemite - Valley Floor Loop - Spring 2009
But i could still climb…
Descent - Yosemite Falls - Spring 2009
Today i have a two and half mile walk and the morning session of stretching and exercise knocked out. Again with the 15/40/40/40. It is lovely outside, but quite windy. Should be a fun run afternoon…
As i have said – the numbers are not important of themselves. Even with the current state of flab, i am not in too bad of shape. I want to lose some of the extra cushion around the middle, and tighten up the legs, arms and buns.
I did hover around 197 over the winter, but i did not weigh often, nor under the same circumstances each time.
For the sake of geeky dedication to detail and fascination with data – i weighed myself after a shower, after morning exercises, and in the birthday suit on the 16th – 191. On the 17th after a shower, after the run, and in the B-day suit – 189.
I think i have 5-10 pounds of flab. I am about 6 feet tall, so even 200 or 210 could be fine depending on if that was muscle or fat. I expect that after a good season of exercise and running i will probably be about 185, but will have converted flab to muscle.
I quit eating meat in the Fall of 1993. I did the Vegan thing for about a year and a half 94-95. I am technically a lacto-ovov vegetarian since i eat of the cheese, eat of the breads made with milk and/or butter, and eat of the egg. My relationship with the egg comes and goes. There may be years at a time where i am turned off by eggs. And other years where i will have omelets or 2 eggs over easy every morning. (Eggs are really fun to cook.)
I have not had any milk to drink nor cook with since about 94, and I have avoided ice cream for the same period. I have not even purchased butter for my kitchens since about 2003.
I do still love the yogurt! I quit buying sour cream around 96 and just use yogurt. The few times i have had sour cream, i don’t even like it anymore.
I am largely at peace with my diet. I do have to pay attention to make sure i eat enough fruit. I just never got in the habit.
For years i have been looking to replace most of my leather items. Over the past 3 years, and with some help from friends, i knocked down the big three. I found great no-animal sandals from Birkis – a splinter company from Birkenstock. I found a great no-animal belt at REI. And my last lady friend gave me an awesome wallet made from Tyvek! Before Mexico, i also bought a small, velcro, no-animal wallet from EMS. The only downside to the Tyvek wallet is that after it expands to accommodate all your stuff, it does not snap back into shape and if you carry less than usual, items fall out. I did not want to have my 500 grocery store member cards and 6 bank/credit cards and all that other stuff along to Mexico.
One of the last two areas that have been nagging at my brain – cheese and vitamins. I have known all along that most of the inexpensive cheese i buy as well as the mainstream vitamins probably contain some kind of animal life. In both cases, probably sea creatures. Fish bits are used in lots of processed cheeses, and shellfish are used in many vitamins.
Cheese is going to take me a little longer to conquer. I know how, but it is more expensive, and i believe that it takes a committed household – something i do not have at the current time.
I have been taking Vitamins since i turned Veg. Exactly what i take varies, but generally it has been: Centrum, C, E, B Complex or just B12. About 6 years ago i started taking Calcium also. About one year ago i started taking Chondroitin/Glucosamine.
I did some research and settled on this set for my first transition:
Healthful Helpers
They are all Vegan. Glucosamine (Chondroitin has no non-animal counterparts, but this is formulated to work well without it), Multivitamin, C, and E. B complex and B12 in particular are very important to vegetarians/vegans, but the folks who make these know that and one multivitamin pill has over 100% of the daily recommended amount. The multivitamin also has loads of C and E, but i take extra C to help avoid sickness in the colder months and around other people. I take the extra E, sometimes twice a day, for my skin – particularly my hands.
Anyway, i am pleased to have crossed this bridge and we shall see whether or not i can tell a difference as time passes. This shipment should last 90 days.
I had a great run today. 1.59 miles. 9’28” pace. I felt like i could have gone further, but i made it up the hill without slowing down too much and decided to quit while i was ahead. Hopefully this will leave me cramp free tomorrow and ready to run again.
It was sunny and pleasant, about 60 degrees and i ran in shorts and a T. There were several other runners out there doing it and not a few nice looking ladies. Given that this is a little college town, with a high school almost on the campus, it would be wise to verify whether or not these gals could even drive – but i have always been a fan of nice scenery on a run.
I made a change for this running season – headphones! No i did not buy any more equipment, i just used my gear to add music to the mix and i think that helped me out. I stayed mentally loose instead of focusing only on the run and the pain and the pace.
I used my good ole (new-ish) Dr Dre in-ears. I slapped on my winter ear warmer thingy and that kept the gear secure. Which looked something like this:
Fashercise!
I made a “running” playlist, loaded that onto the old 120 GB iPod classic and set out with that just in my hand. About half a block in, i slipped the iPod down my shirt, and that worked great for cord management. I had no cord or road or footstep noise. I also slapped on the super light Ironman sunglasses i got before Mexico. My Nike+ gear still works fine.
The whole package (but i only ran with one iPod)
Back to the mentality – I enjoyed the ‘now’ of the run and was not trying to escape the experience. But having something else to help give my thoughts a nudge was nice. I followed thoughts brought on by the changing tunes. I am an album guy, but i did something i have never done before and would not ever do under other circumstances – i used “shuffle”.
So far, the “Running” playlist has albums by:
RPG – Ratt – Iron Maiden – Wolfmother (*Note – listen to “Dimension”) – the only two White Stripes tunes i like – T Rex – The Stooges – Soundgarden – Pixies – Nirvana – and Metallica
It kicked off with RPG “Right On”, then The Stooges “Gimme Danger”, into Nirvana’s “Nevermind”. I had a lot of thoughts of Richmond and being on the road with RPG through the first two tracks and then – with just the first notes of Nevermind, into my head pops, “Because i am crippled and i wanna listen to Nirvana!” Which was interesting since i just re-loaded the first four seasons of Friday Night Lights onto my computer to begin a re-watch in preparation for April 15th, the NBC premiere date for the final season.
Good times!
*Note – we stay spoiler free over here at The Bone of Contention so keep your direct tv season 5 secrets to yourself – for now 😉
I have been doing the stretching and floor exercises every day for a few days now and hope to keep that up. I have not made it into double sessions yet, but once a day is better than nothing. I shall run again soon. It is largely a weather thing, but today looks promising.
This morning – 15 push-ups, 40 twisty crunches, 45 regular crunches, and 35 leg lifts.
I want to get ready to hike something like this again –
