Sunny's Journal

: sunnywiz; May 4th, 21:16

The Last time I really ran was December of last year.

Backstory

Insert story here about physical therapy, knee, IT band, core muscles, shoulder muscles being out of whack, reluctance to run, skipping the triple crown that I had registered for...

Especially mention have tons of friends ask me how my running is going (and feeling ashamed of it not happening)...

Wondering when I see a runner on a road.. do I feel envy as I once did? Many of them, their faces screwed up in misery and pain.

Who am I as a runner? Am I a 30 minute 5k, or a 26 minute 5k? Will I ever be a 23? will I be a 26.1? So much looking forward, pressure on myself.. self definition.

Today

I ran today. Up to the church and back, just over 2-ish miles. In something minutes, plus or minus 5.

I enjoyed 95% of it.

Nothing really hurts. My feet sting a little -- I ran barefoot. Which means I had to run slowly, and pay a LOT of attention to how I was landing. It was a complete joy to cut into people's yards and feel cold squishy grass under my feet, and smooth concrete of driveways.. fresh asphalt was good too, but old asphalt was prickly.

The 5% i did not enjoy is when I put my Vibram Bikila's on. I could no longer feel the road, I started landing much harder, and I noticed it in my vision - every time I landed, the whole world "shuddered" as though my eyeballs were shuddering. So they came back off. This was at about the turn-around point.

July?

I was inspired to go run by a coworker who posted a link to the Louisville Color Run. Surely I can do that.. the point of that one is to get splatted with color.. similar to Holi, the festival of color, which I never ever got to experience (was never in India). (But i heard about it, a lot. It was one of the things I feel I missed out on.)

Its in July. That's two months from now. So back into running un-shoes I go..

Sierra Leone, 1978

2nd Grade or 1st Grade.
There's a race.
I run the race.
I come in dead last.
I'm pissed off.
Walking home, I ask somebody if we can have a little private race.
I give it my best best best shot
I cannot beat him.
If I can't beat them, why play?
I release the path of being physically active and doing sports.

Two years ago

I start running.
I'm not sure I can even do it.
I do it.
I get faster.
How fast can I go?
I push myself.
Best was 25:56 for a 5K, i forget if it was Anthem'11 or Weathermen'10.
I Have to do better
I injure myself in fall 13.1 2011.
I try to recover for the January season.
See the backstory above.

Who Am I?

I can't try to define myself by how good I am, because that leaves me open to what I am not.

Here's what I can say:

I am easily a 33 minute 5k runner, 10-11 minutes/mile.
I am easily a 5-8 mile runner.

With lots of effort and training, I can be a 9:00 or 8:45 m/m runner, I could get up to mini-marathon lengths.
But I'm not doing that right now.

What Am I Going to Do?

Possible choice #1: No matter what, enjoy the run.
Possible choice #2: Don't go fast. I cannot outrun my ego, so I'm not going to test it.
Possible choice #3: Love on everybody and be happy to be there.

I think I can LIVE! with this. (LIVE! and let live.)

I will give it a shot.

Tags: running

Why would I ever read a Technical Book?

: sunnywiz; April 7th, 23:03

Current Mood:: accomplished

When I was in college, I used to laugh at the "technical books" section of the bookstore in the mall. Well, actually I didn't, because at the time, I would go there exculsively to drool over all the science fiction books.. $3.50 or so each.. that I could not afford, as I was living on ramen noodles and cans of peas, because that's all I could afford. (link)

Then, when I became a ~~working stiff~~ paid professional, I would go to the technical books section and laugh, because.. I knew all that stuff. There was a lot less to know in the early 1990's, and there was a lot of stuff "beneath me" (Dbase II, FoxPro, etc). (I was cool, I was porting apps from Clipper S87 to 6.0, and nothing came even close to the beauty of LPC)

In the late 1990's, I would sneer, because I was a close-minded anti-microsoft pro-linux-perl guy, and I really did not want to know MFC. I did, however, buy and own the Perl Cookbook, which opened my mind to the amazing ways to hack things into place to get things done. I used that book a LOT. (The next year, i got sent to C# class because they had an extra spot, and I have changed my mind about Microsoft) actually, I would say that Microsoft changed, and no longer annoyed me. C# was almost as awesome as LPC. (link)

For a while, in 2006 - when I found myself facing unemployment (it lasted all of about 2 weeks), i found myself browsing technical books, lamenting: so much to learn, what shall I learn? I ended up gravitating towards unit testing and Asp.Net WebForms, which I learned almost entirely via google, not from a book. Thank you .Net Rocks and http://www.hanselminutes.com/ for the pointers! In this case, the dead-tree books did not do anything for me, and being unemployed, I felt I shouldn't be spending $$$ if stuff was available on the internet for free.

I did buy some technical books in 2008 to read on vacation - wow, that was a rousing success. (Not). I hardly picked them up. A waste of $100+. (Patterns and Practises in C#, something else). They're still too expensive, when all of that knowledge is available for relatively free on the internet.

So, i repeat the question:

Why would I ever buy a technical book?

My answer:

I bought one two nights ago. I wanted to know about how to use EF Code First - I couldn't sleep - I bought the book on my iPad Kindle - and I read it, cover to cover, in about 45 minutes. And my lightbulb was born.

Here is what is different:

I have a very specific application, for which I might need the technology. This is not "reading for fun", but rather, reading to get a specific job done.
I don't know enough about the technology to know what to search for. (searching online only gave me introductory examples, nothing with real meat.)
I'm approaching it not as "a ton of money spent for a dead paperweight that I'll never look at again", but rather as a fairly inexpensive class briefing me in a specific subject which i can refer back to later. Most of these books cost me less than an hour's work, after taxes. (I am a professional, and I need to know as much as possible, as quickly as possible, to give my client the kind of service that I want to give them.)
I have an e-reader. on my iPad, and pretty soon, on an e-ink device. I can archive with impunity, without killing bookshelves.

And thus, I'm sold. Here's what I choose to read up on for my current client, to ensure I'm giving them the best that I can:

PostgresSQL (done) (pdf, free)
EF CodeFirst (done) ($10)
EF (general)
Asp.Net MVC 3 +/- Razor
Dependency Injection (Structuremap vs Unity)

Whee!

Tags: tech

Nook vs Kindle

: sunnywiz; April 7th, 22:11

Current Mood:: mischievous

Ever since I read Scott Hanselman's praises of a Kindle, I've wanted one.

However, my wife is a Nook Girl. She wants me to buy a nook so that Barnes and Nobles won't go out of business, so that she can have a place to go when .. that need arises.

So, I have to honestly compare them. No matter how much of a ~~screaming fan girl~~ ~~believer of pontificous pontifications~~ ~~dreamy star struck hanslefan~~ impulse buyer I am, i must ~~give the illusion of~~ honestly investigate the Nook. And so.. here goes.

http://www.kindlevsnookreviews.com/

Done.

Here's what I'm interested in for my new device:

a) http://lifehacker.com/5727813/how-to-send-web-articles-directly-to-your-kindle-via-instapaper
b) E-ink display - to read technical books on.
c) http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/09/how-to-do-almost-everything-with-a-kindle-3/

Nowhere in here have I been able to fit in "why do I want a Kindle with a Keyboard". Reading up about it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle) it turns out that the Kindle 3 is the only one with a keyboard.. The fourth generation (Available for free with my summit gift card!) does a better job of multiple file formats, but I would loose the keyboard. More discussion here. I guess I can let go of the keyboard. And I can always get a keyboard for my iPad.

The current Kindle does NOT have an SD-card - only the original had that.

So.. the reason(s) I would go for a Nook is:

a) My woman will like me more (this is important, y'all) (j/k, she thinks I'm cute)
b) http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/barnes_noble_nook_e-reader_surprise_feature_free_reading_in_stores_14998.asp. I could just head over to B&N and read an entire technical book for free.
c) Could put an SD card with stuff into the nook.
d) possibly rooting the nook to make an e-ink tablet.

Dang. i am so undecided.

Tags: kindle

CodePaLousa 2012 Review Part 1

: sunnywiz; March 20th, 22:31

This last weekend, I attended CodePaLousa. At the end of it, it seemed IMPERATIVE that I write down some kind of a post so I could straighten all the information flashing through my head. Today, 3 days after.. it doesn't seem as important. Yet.. i'm sure it was important.. so I'll try.

Thursday Session #1: Functional Testing@aJimHomes
Selenium, Webdriver
Setting up repeatable data for tests at this level

My take away
I knew more than I thought i did.
Page objects pattern - http://code.google.com/p/selenium/wiki/PageObjects

Session #2:
I split this between OData (meh, i knew this already) and TDD Kata (meh, knew this already).

Keynote #1: "The Next Generation of Dinosaurs" @BillyHollis
Cobol & Mainframe guys were very good in their ecosystem - small ram, linear thinking. (Fortran Equivalences = perfect for then). Then the ecosystem changed.
Currently, we are in an ecosystem. Its probably changing. Are we dinosaurs?
Barriers to entry in current market are unsustainable - if "to do it right" == "TDD" + "SOA" + blah + bleh +yarborough.

My take away
Yeah, i need to get familiar with programming in the google world.. writing gadgets, things like that .. without all the layers of .net architecture around me.
Things need to be simple and usable now to succeed.
Mobile is probably the meterorite that's taking out my ecosystem.

Friday Session 1: Best Practises for a Team of One @mjeaton
It was mostly aimed at single developers in a company - not my situation. We already do source control, bug tracking, etc.

But I did get:
Heard about Campfire for the first time here.
There is a Kalamazoo X Conference which deals with "Soft" (people) skills.
Business Driven Design (Given-When-Then) ways of representing requirements.
Tracking tasks: Moleskine, RTM, Hiveminder, AgileZen. OTHER than in your head.
Tracking Time: Harvest, Timesnapper, Pomodoros (all that I knew)

Session 2: Slicing Backlog Items Dr. Timothy Korson

I wish I could find the slidedeck for this!

What I scribbled down:
Sizing = 6-7 in a sprint
Vertical slices = a little at every level of architecture
Sunny day scenario first; what are the prerequisites for a sunny day scenario; each of those prerequisites = variability point.
User Role Options
Action Options
Object Options
Business Rule Options
Interface Options
Quality Attributes
Book: "Lean Architecture on Agile Systems" Jim Koplien
Sprint 0 = timeboxed architecture dive (too much vs too little)

Session 3: Developers Can't Design http://jenmyers.net/

This one left me feeling empty. It stated "things exist" -- but gave me nothing to sink my teeth into easily. So I wrote the presenter an email. More later if that pans out.
I exited quickly and caught up with another session, a guy I sat with at lunch:

Session 3.5: Intro to RavenDB @ReverentGeek

Chock full of fun knowledge, the Q&A caught me up on what I needed to know. Will definitely consider this in the future.

Session 4: Ruby's Object Model & Metaprogramming @superninjarobot

This was very deep - it went into the stuff that makes Ruby on Rails work (the method_missing stuff)
I had fun with it, it reminded me of LPMud's, and the fun stuff one did with /std/object instead of /std/object#43.
I couldn't find any links, but http://www.rpgmud.com/Development/lpc-1.htm might work

Session 5: CoffeeScript @dmohl

This was cute and fun and enjoyable. I don't know that I would ever use it.. unless i was writing objects in javascript, i would check it out.

Summary of first two days
My world didn't shatter and change yet.. that was to come on the third day. Its getting late, so I'm going to post this as it is now.. will do another post for the last day.

Health Reboot

: sunnywiz; February 25th, 14:51

Current Mood:: contemplative

I started this post while in Evansville for Q's soccer stuff.. and then, the whole family fell sick. As I write this, I've just had my first big meal since the illness, and wow, I'm bloated. Maybe not the best time to think about this... but hey, why not. Maybe I'll be realistic rather than optimistic.

Food

	BEST	Be Vewwy Caweful	NOT GOOD that i like
Breakfast In	Yogurt Plain and Fiber1 Green Monster Homemade Juice Milk	Yogurt with Fruit Dipping Sauces Cereal (Cheerios) and Milk	Waffles, Syrup Chocolate Fudge Poptarts Fruit Juices in quantity Bananas in quantity
Breakfast Out	Panera Apple	Panera Chocolate Chip Bagel with Plain Cream Cheese	IHOP/ CB Pancakes! Panera Pastries Donuts
Lunch In	Yogurt and Fiber1 Veggies and Cheese (String, Square, etc) Hummus	Frozen Microwave Meals Making Sandwiches (bread is my enemy)	?
Lunch Out	Jason's Deli (Salad bar) QDo'ba (naked, lite rice) Smashburger Veggie burger no bun, no fries	General TSO's from Yangkee Noodle? (don't eat the rice!) Jimmy Johns (careful on bread portions) Subway 6" (bread portions) Pita Pit Falafel Wrap	General Tso's from LingLing Beef Fried Rice (PFC)
Dinner In	Home Made Stir Fry (control the rice) Beef Crockpot Homemade Chicken Crockpot Homemade	Home Made Fried Rice (control the rice) Spagetti Portion Controlled anything, Mashed Potatoes on the side	Chili Mac Spagetti All Out and Breadsticks Hamburger Helper Sanfrancisco Treats Pizza
Dinner Out (too many to list)	Salad Salad Salad Soup Fajitas (ignore the tortillas and rice)	Fruit Salad Sandwich-based things	Pasta based things Rice based things
Beverages	Unsweet Tea Diet Sprite, Pepsi Coke Zero Water Minute Maid Lite Lemonade	There is no middle ground.	Coke Pepsi Sweet Tea Margaritas
Snackeroos	Peanuts, Cashews, Nuts	Popcorn (Quantity!)	Chocolate Chip Cookies Oreos Ice Cream Sundae Cornbread Froyo

Habits

BEST	GOOD	Questionable
Monitor blood sugars after meals Monitor morning blood pressure Log all food intake (FatSecret Calorie Counter) Go Vegetarian and Low Carb again Exercise ALL THE TIME	Monitor morning (fasting) sugars Some kind of exercising	Eating just before bed No exercise

Exercise Possibilities
Morning workouts vs getting to work at a reasonable time vs ability to wake up
Yoga (am)
Aqua fitness class (am)
Evening cooking dinners and house stuff vs Evening workouts
Pick up Soccer games on Fridays at Noon
Swim?
Martial arts? (TKD, Kenpo)
Jog treadmill
Jog outdoors with Liz's group
Jog outdoors with the NE YMCA Group
Jog outdoors by myself, Jog to/from work
Ride bike to/from work (work hours?)
Sign up for and participate in races
Stretching at night before bed
P90X

Okay, i'm going to have to reflect more on the exercise front.

Tags: health, workout

Xplane 10

: sunnywiz; February 17th, 17:55

Current Location:: US, Kentucky, Jeffersontown, Jefferson, S Hurstbourne Pkwy, 423

I have really been enjoying flying around in xplane 10.

Last night I flew from Des Moines to Louisville in a personal jet at 5000 ft using mostly VOR. At night. Beautiful lights. Landing was amazing. Although in reality, probably fatal.

Eh that's easy to correct... Just being impatient with the landings, not bleeding enough speed.

I hooked up my iPad as an "EFIS" app.. Used it to control the NAV radios and stuff. The computer monitor was mostly mouse looking out the windows.

There are a few things I want to do:

Take what would have been a 2 to 6 hr road trip and do it in a Cessna instead. Just to get a feel of how much faster it isn't. Like to Evansville or Columbus or Morgantown.

Take a 18 hr road trip in a personal jet. To see how awesome that is.

Do a totally IFR ATC guided flight. In bad weather.

Fly over my house. Done and done!

Fly VFR dead reckoning to somewhere I know. Like maybe Cincinnati.

Figure out how to use the damned Navaids.

Not crash a helicopter.

Yep, I have a list.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Tags: flying

Working Hard

: sunnywiz; February 2nd, 8:17

Current Location:: US, Kentucky, Jeffersontown, Jefferson, S Hurstbourne Pkwy, 407

I'm sitting at Panera waiting for a friend to show, reflecting on the last few weeks of work.

It feels like some of the hardest work I have done in a long time.

Yet, having achieved a milestone, it's also some of the most fulfilling work I have done in a long time.

I think the difference was the kind of pain. In the past with other organizations, what I faced was unrealistic expectations and context switching. Here there was just work, aiming to a goal.

Granted there are things to improve.

Principle 1: Integrate early, preferably without context switches

Principle 2: if A depends on B, stagger A to start only after B is halfway stable, + principle 1. OR, code A to a mock interface of B until B is halfway stable.

Principle 3: each integration point WILL take time and can be burned down.

Oo my friend is here. Posting.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Hanging up the Running Shoes

: sunnywiz; January 8th, 16:07

Current Mood:: accepting

For now, I am done with running.

HOLY SHITAKE MUSHROOMS BATMAN! ARE YOU SERIOUS?

Whoa doggy, hold on. It feels like the right thing to do. Horse before the cart, that kind of thing. Here's why:

- when I stopped running after the Half-Marathon last May, I started bicycle riding training for RAGBRAI.
- Definitely grew me some hamstring musles.
- Did not grow me any flexibility, did not work on any core muscles.
- After RAGBRAI, building up to run the Half Marathon in November, barely did any training.
- After the Half Marathon in November, injured something in my left knee.

CANCEL - race in early december
CANCEL - race on Jan 1st.

Well, that injury is turning out to be a lot to do with IT-bland flexibility, and Hamstring flexibility. And while that is slowly improving, work stuff has been crazy .. I've been holding a LOT of tension in my back.. to the point where my left Supraspinatus (?) pretty much blew out.. could not lift my left arm in front of myself. Not so good...

CANCEL - race on Jan 7th.

Wife notes: Maybe my body is trying to tell me something?

We were sitting at Chick-Fil-A one fine Saturday morning (yesterday), and I said: I think I'm going to give up running for now. And I started crying.. tears of relief??

So, it seems I have been pushing myself hard. REALLY hard. Like, nothing that I do matters, I have to do more. As we went back to the car, and I saw the 13.1 sticker on my car, i realized .. oh my god, I DID do that. I brain-knew it, but i had not emotion-accepted it.

So, at this point, i'm pretty much cancelling everything going on in my life.. going back to the empty plate, so that the *right* pieces that are right for me right now can go back on the plate.

so,
CANCEL - remaining race of Polar bear grand prix
CANCEL - Triple crown of running (anybody want my entry)
CANCEL - KDF Half Marathon (I don't think i had registered)

I'm pretty sure that prior to picking up running again (in the future), there are other things I need to deal with:
a) diabetes
includes: pills, bloodwork, carb counting, nutrition
b) sense of order, sleep; meditation, journalling, getting square with myself and with God/HP
c) finances, time management - changing from eating out all the time to coming home, and M+I cooking at home.
d) recovery meetings - I've been skimping for a year.

Then, before I actually do running, listening to what my PT told me - I need to:
e) Swim (core muscles)
f) Yoga (restore flexibility)
g) Strength train (possibly)

So far, this week, i'm still struggling with a, b, c, and d. Not even going to try to add back e-g), let alone running.

As I type this, I can feel my knee just not being right .. its like the whole left side of my body has shrunk and shrivelled up. Calves, Hamstrings, Left button, Left shoulder, Left side of my neck. Its frigging annoying.

Anyhoo. That's where I am. Thanks for listening folks.

Tags: running, workout

Brain (& Life) Reboot

: sunnywiz; December 23rd, 2011

Current Mood:: tired

I am in the middle of my brain reboot. It goes something like this:

a) stay up really really late watching movies while my brain slows down and stops
b) sleep
c) wake up
d) start life over.

I've been running with my head down lately .. trying to keep a handle on work stuff, handling my part of a bunch of things at home. Haven't really popped my head up to see what's important, make real decisions, be excited about life.

But, today is the start of a 4-day weekend. While its true that its chock full of christmas stuff.. is it really christmas? feels like its the beginning of november .. its also a "slow the heck down and remember" moment.

What's important?

1. Running doesn't feel very important right now. Its probably more important that I get back on the wagon with checking blood sugars and eating healthy. Day after Christmas, I think.. not waiting for the new year.

2. I need to finish off this project for work. Its my first project at a new company, and its mostly cajoled into submission. As such, i'll be going in to work tomorrow to work on it.. jump start for next week.

3. There are some personal projects i'd like to be excited about working on..
- moving my basement desk around so that i get more room and can do a wallmount for one of my monitors.
- taking some video off a VCR onto DVD's for archival purposes

4. Running does show up, but only because i have a race on Jan 1st that I signed up for. I need to get to the gym 3 more times before new years - and try to run 5,7, and 9 miles respectively.

5. I need to get back to a normal schedule of going to recovery meetings.

6. And I am going to continue enjoying the company of my beautiful wife. That's one thing I had NOT let go of, and I intend to continue to hang on to this one.

Here's to a better tomorrow.. starting my life over, tomorrow.

Good night!

Tags: update

Sunday Night Routine

: sunnywiz; November 21st, 2011

Current Location:: United States, Kentucky,Oldham County, Floydsburg

I really enjoy my Sunday evening routine. It starts off with me leaving the house at about 645 and heading out towards the Beuchel area. There I stop at a Marathon gas station which usually has good prices and I also get a 16 ounce cup of decaf coffee. Then I head over about 3 blocks to the 730 Al-Anon meeting.

I don't know what it is but I really like this meeting. it reminds me of meetings back in Ames. It's simple common sense heartfelt folk and they like me too. I dare say it is probably my new home group.

Just before the meeting starts I head next door to the AA meeting and find one of my buddies there Gary and give him a big hug. He's a crotchety 65+ year old veteran who openly admits to being a doofus and I have known him since I moved to Louisville.

The meeting gets over at 8:30 and then I head out to the parking lot to make my phone calls. I call my mother and now also my brother. I don't use a phone very well for keeping in touch so by creating a routine it helps me.

Then I set back home for the 30 minute drive usually with loud music blaring. Lately it's been 80s music thanks to my friends on Spotify.

If this post looks weird it's because I dictated most of it using my phone.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Tags: recovery

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