I got a suit! A Wetsuit that is!

So thats my new news in the world of my budding tri career (LOL). I got my first wetsuit. Its a Quintana Roo Ultrafull and its really nice. Really warm too. I was totally sweating as soon as I put it on. I got it used from a fellow triathlete and it was super cheap and the perfect size. SO im pretty jazzed. Open water here I come! The other thing im working on is my fit and form on the bike seen here



Still needs work but ive got time. I need to get my back flatter. Oh well.

Somebody is a daddy. Guess who??? w00t w00t

Ok no huge surprise here but im now a father! If there was ever a reason to give a w00t scream now is the time. All I can say is it ROCKS! My little girl is quite possibly the sweetest, cutest, most amazing baby that ever was. And no im not biased that just the truth and a simple fact. Well i could post tons of pics of her and talk all about her but then what would be the point of her having her own blog. SO if you have not checked it lately head on over to kaiya's blog to read lisa's birth story (my version is coming soon) and to see lots of cute pics of my little girl. JOY!

Go to her blog now. go NOW!!!!

I <3 my <3 rate monitor!

Ok ok I know everyone is not as geeky as me but in little net lingo and txt short speak <3 represents a heart. Just like a smiley flip it 90 degrees counter clockwise and OH WOW ITS A HEART! Its almost like one of those hidden 3d pictures but not. SO ne way its been about two weeks since I signed up for the Ironman and although I have been thinking about it non-stop I have put off posting anything about it. SO what am I doing? How am I preparing? Well my training plan is tentatively going to be like this:

phase 1: conditioning
phase 2: base, endurance
phase 3: power, speed, endurance

SO I thought I would take some time to talk about Phase 1 since thats where I am right now. Ive decided that if I really want to hit my time goal (somewhere in the 12 hour range) that I need to drop some weight. The marathon was a very good test of this. Had I been at my now target weight I think I could have gone a lot faster. However the marathon taught me this and then circumstances made this idea even harder. Ya see after the marathon I took like two weeks off (which was dumb) and then I got sick. Real sick. that scratched another 1.5 weeks. SO I went close to a month without doing practically anything. Plus with the house still torn up (its almost all back together fyi!!!!) I was eating Fast Food almost daily - YUCK! SO long story short I put on 10lbs after the marathon and was sitting at 150 which is just awefull since my target weight is 130!!! SO after two weeks of some great workouts in the Fat Burning zone - thanks <3 rate monitor I have dropped down to 145. Only 15 more to go! My goal is to be 130 by jan 1st. If that happens then I can start base. If not then I have to keep kicking it into overdrive until Im there or I might decide to go 125 not sure. I just have to see how im looking and feeling and what my body fat is at. I really need to go sub 10% I need to be more like a marathoner. long lean muscle little to no fat.

SO thats my current goal. Wish me luck!

Cheers!

Dancing with the Devil -- My two weeks with Vista RC1

Background:
Ok so I would not call myself a windows guy or a mac guy or a linux guy. Why??? Because I have to use all of these OS's throughout my day and I see strengths and weaknesses in all of them. I do however favor and feel most comfortable in a windows environment simply b/c that is where I spend most of my computing time.

The Challenge:
Install Vista RC1 (MS's long awaited new OS) on my laptop and take it for a spin

SO I have a laptop. I love this little piece of hardware. Its an Averatec and its amazing. What do I love so much about it. Its tiny! SO the basic specs are Intel Centrino proc at 1.2ghz 512mb ram and 80 gig hard drive. SO its not a screamer but its no slouch either.

The install:
RC1 took a surprisingly long time to install. Close to 2.5 hours. This really made me cringe and remember the old days of installing win 98. while the install was not difficult like win 98 could be it just took forever. However this could be attributed to the close to 2.5 gig install dvd that I created. How does that compare to XP you might ask? XP is a scrawny 500 mb install. SO with Vista your getting 4x's more Microsoft!!!!!

The experience:
With vista freshly installed I was really quite excited. I am considered a windows guy by my mac friends and have taken quite a bit of heat with the fact that xp has had no successor in well, far too long a time. SO I booted my little chiyo chan up and waited, and waited, and waited some more. I couldn't believe how long it took to boot but I guess that goes along with an os install that takes 2.5 gigs of space. OK so now its up. Now were cooking gravy without the lumps! At first glance Vista does look very nice. Very polished and shiny. However I'm not one for pretty looks or cute animations. I'm a user who prefers performance and features over well, eye candy. I started to navigate around and found some interesting features that I have to say I liked. In the control panel area Vista includes a ton of really good apps to show you whats going on with your pc and to help diagnose any issues. I really did like these and saw one that I found interesting. I forget the name of it but it basically assesses your system and gives it a vista experience score. It checks several things like processor, RAM, Video card, and what not and takes the lowest of these and thats your score. My laptop scored a 1. This is the first big indicator for me that Vista is not only going to be a pain (more later) but its going to force your hand into getting new hardware. However my laptop is less than a year old and flys! with xp. SO my first thought was whats the point of this score? Is it merely there to mock me? However bill thought I might ask this question and put a handy little link under the score that says "what does this score mean" I clicked on the link and was horrified by the answer. It basically came down to this. Microsoft will start scoring software based on minimum specs and will use this to "help" the average consumer choose software for their system. Example. I want to buy Halo 3 for vista. Hmm it says it requires a Vista experience score of 9.5 and my computer only has a 4. I guess I cant buy it. I see the flip side on a tech support line going something like this. " SO your running outlook in vista and you cant send messages. Whats your vista experience score. 3. hmm theres your problem outlook requires a 4 clickkkkkkkkkkkkkkk. SO yeah that makes me cringe again.

SO Ive done a lot of bashing but what did I like? Oh wait theres more bashing!

Ram. Simply put Vista is a RAM hog. This was one of the first things I checked as I feel xp is horrible at managing memory and allowing processes to go into a zombie state and just leave chunks of memory in use that should be free. I had high hopes for vista and memory management. What did I find. Vista freaking took it all! I think the OS required around 250-300 mg of ram to run and then vista cached the rest of it. Thats right vista took it all. All my memory to hold onto and do with as it pleased. I really did not like that and it did not inspire warm fuzzies.

Ok so really what did I like. Well vista comes standard with IE7!! now you can have a browser that supports a cool new feature called tabs!!!! Oh and it also comes with Win Media 11 the better more stable less wonky version of win media. Some other features I liked were explorer has been improved and has some automated features that makes navigating a bit easier or and quite possibly the biggest surprise to me was that they have not only held onto the command prompt (which I was wondering if they would ditch it) but they actually improved it! I couldn't believe it but it now has tab auto completion on commands and directory trees!

The final Verdict:
I'm super duper not impressed.

Explanation:
For being the next version of windows I feel that its minimum specs are a bit too bloated. I dont think I have ever had a video card that would qualify for vistas minimum and I see this only driving the price of the average consumer pc up. I cant imagine what it would take to get a good score in vista but It seems to me it would be a high end gaming rig and those are usually in the 3-4 thousand dollar range. This is not an OS for the people, its an OS for the elite. I guess MS logic is that since they only come out with a new version every what 5 years that they need to make sure it doesn't have hardware to support it for a few years and that when hardware is finally coming out thats affordable and that runs the OS well they can release their new version and screw everyone all over again. Ok Ok I know I have not really even touched on what I thought of running it on a day to day basis. I would like to make a note that I ran the vista upgrade advisor and my laptop passed. Like I said its not blazing but its no slouch either. SO vista gave me the OK to install. Boot ups were a nightmare and reminded me of 98 with 5 min+ boot up times. Shutdowns were the same way and I just cant understand why it takes so long to kill processes and shut a computer down. Granted I realize if had a better score say a 5 or 6 these could be dramatically better.

I do have 2 major gripes.

1.) Windows defender. I found no way to turn this off (realize I didnt spend that much time with it) Windows defender is the ultimate in protect your computer from anything even windows programs. It was about as ridiculous as this. start - programs - games - solitaire DEFENDER comes to the rescue informing you that solitaire is an executable and could damage your machine. Did I really intend to open this potentially malicious software! Seriously it pops up whenever you try to do anything and it got old real fast.

2.) my second gripe and what led to the downfall of vista on my little chiyo chan (I'm re-installing xp as I type this) was that it kept crashing. Anytime I would open an app it would die within 4 seconds of it opening. My laptop became completely unusable. Thats right the OS remained stable (whatever) but I could not open any apps. RUBBISH!

Final Thoughts:
Get excited kids because windows vista is coming and it finally includes lots of great software and features that you have loved in other competitors software and operating systems for the past 5 years!

Cheers!

It's ON!

Well I did it. I took the plunge. I joined roughly 2000 other athletes in signing up for what is going to be the most difficult and challenging race of my life. I was really worried that I would not get a spot. Registration fills in a matter of hours and many people try and dont make it. Registration started at noon and at 12:05 I was at a computer trying to get a spot. I only had about 3 screens on the web to fill out but it took me close to 25 min just to sign up. The lag was that bad b/c the site was being hammered that hard. Yesterday I was flying pretty high. Today I think im a little more grounded. Im thinking through the next year and the full weight of what signing up for an ironman means. Its funny Lisa had a dream last night where I finished an Ironman and WOW does she have high expectations. In her dream I didnt win my age group but I might as well have for where she had me. SO she asks me as Im leaving for work "SO how long do you think it will take you?" I calmly replied 12-15 hours is what im hoping for. Lets just think about that. 12-15 hours. Thats a long time to be doing anything! SO like I said I have a lot to consider and plan for but I think its going to be good. I already have some ideas and am working on some ways to help finance this whole "experiance" If they come through it will be the difference between taking a road trip in a caddy vs a yugo so I'm very hopefull they come through. But I guess I just want to say one more thing and thats a big Thank you to Lisa. She knows this is a big commitment on my part and that its going to mean time away from her and Kaiya but she also knows how much this means to me and how much I need to do this (thats another post entirely) and shes being really supportive of me. SO thanks so much sweetie. I love you so much and thanks for supporting me in this. Your the best!

Cheers!

I made the evening news!!!!

Ok I dont know how long this link will be active and I was not even going to put it up but lisa was like "you need to put that on your blog" SO here we are with my 5 seconds of fame.

http://www.whiotv.com/video/10155231/index.html

cheers

PROGRESS!!!!! - like oh my gosh!

Yeah so I'm like totally fighting acting like a little kid on x-mas morning but its like sooo super cool. Work on the house started this week and wow are they moving fast. SO whats like happened. Well they came on tuesday and did a bit of prep and remounted the vanity in the downstairs bath so its now a fully functional bath again! And their is running water downstairs!!!! Wed. Saw the arrival of our cabinets (actually they came in on tuesday and they picked them up late tuesday afternoon) at our house!!!! Most of them were put into place but not really mounted. SO what did I walk into today????

Can you say some floor!!!!


This shot is from the back door towards the front. They laid almost all the living room floor today! Im so buzzing!



This shot is from the front door back. Basically the same as the last shot just from the other side of the room.


Heres my kitchen. Still a bit of work to be done but they are jamming on the floor right now and then are going to finish the small details of the cabinets and make sure they work all nice and spiff.


Heres a shot from the garage door out to the living room. Its like wow it almost looks done. Notice none of the kick plates are in and the countertop is not actually anchored save for one or two screws.


Heres the other side of the kitchen. Still lots to be done but hey im so excited right now that stuff is getting done.


Ok yeah well I thought I would throw this last one in since some might wonder??? Hey Chris wheres all the stuff that is usually downstairs. Well here it is. My garage has been overrun for the past two months and I long for the day I get it back.

SO whats left to be done??? Well the floor has to be finished and they think they might be mostly done if not done with that by tommrow. I think they are a wee bit optimistic but they say they are coming at 7:30 and the only thing they are doing is the floor so who know!

Cabinets need to be finished and their are quite a few little details that need to be done with that. I think that will be a lot of little adjust this move that type of work.

clean up

Move back in!

Its conceivable that all the work will be done within the next week or by next weekend which makes me ohhhh soooo happy. Also I have made the appointment for the guy to come and measure for our new countertop so I will meet with him on tuesday and see how that goes. After that its supposedly 3 weeks till the countertop is in and then the house will again be done and put back together again.

SO w00t!!!

Cheers!

ankle update

Thanks for all the concern. To answer questions:

"what did the doctor say?" -- Nothing!! I did not go to a doctor. I have rolled my ankle before and this was not as bad as other times. Probably a light sprane. All a doctor would do would be to wrap it and tell me to ice it and stay off of it. I am an expert at wrapping ankles and I know how to ice and staying off of it is "yeah duh" SO I have just been taking it easy. Thankfully my job allows me to sit most of the day and I have been wearing clogs instead of my normal boots to allow my ankle some room to heal and not be agitated.

"hows the ankle" -- The ankle is doing well. I am wearing normal boots again and although their is still some residual swelling it feels basically fine now. Im still keeping off of it and dont think I will work it until maybe saturday and that will probably be a bike ride not a run.

"massive gaming time!!" - I wish!

"Road obstacles FTW!" - Oh jason how right you are. The road obstacle was the hands down winner that day!

My Big Fat Swollen Ankle

Yup thats right I suffered an Injury yesterday during a normal Lunch Time run. I was crossing a street and foolishly was looking out for cars and not so much for little acorns or whatever the heck it was that I hit. All i know is it was rather big and very round and when I landed on it my left ankle rolled quite severly and It hurt like the dickens. I almost fell but managed to keep myself up right and just took a second to catch my bearings. I looked down and it was already starting to swell so I knew that was not good. SO I got to walk the last mile of my 5 mile run back to the office where I promptly iced my ankle for about an hour. What I had not realized at the time was that I seem to have also pulled something in my knee as that is hurting quite a bit as well.

Hooray for physical fitness!

So im kinda bumming today as I had taken a pretty big amount of time off since the marathon and was going to hit it hard starting this week. Now those plans are a bit gone and im just trying to keep my weight off my ankle and knee and let it get all healed up! Oh well. Thats life.

Cheers!

Why my life at times sucks and also why I hate lowes!

Ok so in the midst of all the wonderfull crap with my house my thermostat just died. Yup stopped working. This was about two weeks ago and I tried a number of things like stripping the wires back a few inches and re-wiring the thermostat (i had it disconected for painting) That didnt work. SO i eventually realized that my thermostat runs directly off of my Furnace. Who knew! And that my furnace in turn also had no power. SO I went for the obvious and checked the breaker. Nope that was good so why no power. Well I kept looking at it but was getting no where so I brought home a volt meter and started testing different areas. I could tell that power was getting to the furnace from the house wiring but it was getting stopped somewhere. SO I started unplugging things and testing for electricity. Well buried under many wires and other things I finally found what I was looking for. A blown fuse. Eureka! Thats an easy fix! or so I thought. I looked at the fuse and its a normal blade type fuse like you usually see in a car. SO I went out to my car to look and see if I had a spare in my fuse kit that would work. Nope. All the new blade fuses are much smaller and higher amps. Psst you can tell the amps by the number on the fuse. Mine was a 3 and most of the ones in the care were in the 15-30 range. SO I thought ok this must be lower and for home HVAC use. SO last night a trip to lowes was in order. Well I got there and im looking at the fuses and I cant find anything even close to what I have in my hand. SO I of course make the mistake of asking for help. The conversation went something like this.....

me: excuse me
lowes: yeah
me: im looking for a fuse
lowes: a what? (spoken as if the word fuse was new to him)
me: A FUSE (yes perhaps louder will convey the meaning of the word fuse!)

I then proceed to hold up the fuse

lowes: we dont sell car fuses
me: this isnt a car fuse
lowes: it sure looks like one to me
me: well it came from my furnace
lowes: ive never seen a fuse like that in a furnace

at this point im just in shock that im arguing with the guy from lowes as to weather or not the fuse came from a furnace and not a car? Im like wt? Its not like car fuses are used to make meth and house fuses are ok so if I pull the ol 1 - 2 switch-a-roo on the lowes guy I can make some smack.

He continues to insist that its a car fuse and tells me to go to autozone. Im like whatever so lisa and I leave and head for home depot. While the gentleman their was more helpfull and not arguing with me he again felt that it was also an auto fuse and was surprised that it came from a furnace. I explained my furnace was only 5 years old so I did not feel this was a particularly large order for home depot. The gentleman agreed and appologized for not having the fuse and again also suggested autozone.

Brief side note -- people at lowes are ignorant and mean. people at home depot are nice and friendly

SO seeing as best buy was right next door to home depot and auto zone was a few miles down the road I thought. Hey maybe they will have it. guess what. They didnt. guess what he said. yup autozone. SO after 3 stores I went to auto zone and bought a nice 4 pack of the fuse I needed.

SO something that should have been simple and easy ended up a long, annoying, and frustrating journey. Now if this were a rare occasion that would be one thing. But this ladies and gentlemen this is what its like to be Chris Knodel. HOO AHHH!

Cheers!

Insert Title Here

Ok I couldnt think of anything to call this update and I was tired of using "quick update" for a title so there ya go. SO whats up??? Well last week I was in Columbus all week in Training taking RH033 which is the first level "power user" Red Hat Linux training class. It was a good class but im so glad that I dont have to do that everyday. 8 hours of classwork in the same content area with roughly 3 labs a day is just too much. Especially for 4 days. SO thats over.

I guess I will just break things out like I normally do.

House:
No real progress. Worked on the guest room most of saturday fixing / re-painting the walls. Was not expecting to have to do this but thats life right. But now that room is back to working order and Lisa and I were able to re-claim Kaiya's room and move all the junk out of her room into the guest room closet. Which makes Lisa much happier than she was before. And that my friends is a very very good thing ^_^ Still have not heard when to expect the cabinets to be in or any other work to start!!!!! Which is just freakin awesome!

Training:
SO what now that the marathon is over??? Some of you might be wondering that? Well I have one more race for the year and thats the ghosts and goblins 5k near the end of the month. ITs a 5k so its the first race im doing this year where im not worried about finishing and actuallly thinking. Hmmmm how fast can I do this in. Ideally I would love to go under 20 min. But that would mean sub 7's for the whole thing. Dont know if I can squeek that. I would at least like to go under 24. I think last year I was 26 something and I feel a lot stronger than I did last year so we shall see. Im going to focus on a lot of speed work over the next couple of weeks SO we shall see. And hey its only 3.1 miles. Thats nothing so i think if I dont cross the line feeling like I have to spew It means I didnt run hard enough!

Gaming:
Finished Xenosaga 3 last night and alls I gots to say is WOW. SO good. I have often complained about video games having dissapointing endings. Its like you put all this time into a game and you are treated to all of about 5 min of post boss fight wrap up. And its almost always (read always is) a total let down. Not this game! OMG Can you say close to 1.5 hours of post boss fight cut scenes and FMV. Its like wow I finished the game and now I get close to a full length movie to wrap the loose ends of the game up. Very Very satisfying. Total play time right now is 71.5 hours and we still have a couple of small things we want to wrap up.

Official Results

Ok they have finally posted the official results from the marathon so here they are:

My official time was 5 hours 3 min flat which gives me an avg mile pace of 11:38

Overall I was 986 out of 1383 finishers!

In my age group (25-29) I was 72 out of 85 runners

The winners time was 2 Hours 31 min and 46 sec.
The last place time was 8 Hours 11 min and 1 sec.

SO I was most certainly not first, but most definitely not last, and that's ok with me!

Cheers!

Man was that a long day!

Well if you have been following my blog you know that yesterday was the day of my marathon. And as promised here are some pics from it. But wait you have to read all the way to the bottom before I reveal my finish time!

So here I am at the start. Its about 15 min before the race began and im gearing up. One thing that was a really nice touch with this race is that for the full marathoners and only the full marathoners we got our names on our bibs. SO check it out it actually says Chris on it. If I had known it was going to be like that I probably would have put Sparky!

Were now about 5 min from the start and im getting in some last minute stretching. Notice my sunglasses. They stayed right there till about mile 17 when the sun finaly came out. All in all it was a perfect day to run a marathon with the sky mostly overcast and the temps in the low 70's

WOW and its over! If only it felt that quick in real life. If you look at the clock it says 5hours 4 min but my official time will be a little lower than that as I was in the back of the starting group so it took me a few minutes to get to the start line. However they still have not posted official times yet so I dont know my official end time but Im thinking some somewhere in the 5:02 ish area. I would have liked to break 5 hours but their really isnt that much of a difference between 4:59 and 5:02 so im ok with that.

Well heres one more pic of me shaking hands with one of the race directors. All over it was a great event. The aid stations were awesome and very frequent (every mile!!!!) and all the volunteers were up beat and wonderfull. I think im spoiled now when it comes to marathons! Well as soon as I get official times and my official ranking I will post them. Also I should be getting some other photos from the group the marathon had taking pics. Should be some good in course photos and a good finish photo of me coming down the final .2 SO look forward to that. Other than that I am totally sore today but in good spirits. Im one more step closer to being ready for my ironman in 07 now!

Cheers!

A post with media - GET OUT!

Ok so the marathon is tomorrow but im keeping my mind off of it by picking out some tunes to load on the ipod for pre race prep. This is one I will definitely have on there. If you keep up with Trance music then you have probably heard of Gabriel and Dresden if you don't. Well this is a track that was already appearing on "best of" lists for 2005 even though it was not released until 2006 officially. This is sure to be one of the defining stand out tracks again this year SO without further ado enjoy the video for "Tracking Treasure Down"





Lastly just for grins and giggles while driving with Lisa yesterday we spotted this sign. Seriously zero photoshoping or altering going on here. Enjoy!



Hopefully next post will be a marathon wrap up with pics

Cheers!

updatage

Ok first off I guess I will give a quick wrap up of things going on right now.

Marathon is in 3 days. Thats right saturday I will run my first marathon and my feelings on this change daily. some days I have a good workout and I think "man no sweat." Then other days when I have a not so good workout I think "aw crap this is gonna suck big time." SO how has this week been??? Its been in the aw suck category as my body has decided to revolt against me and my lack of sleep over the past 6 months or so and finally say "hey were not gonna take it." That coupled with the fact that since we have no means to prepare food ive been eating out dinner every night and you get a great combo of poor nutrition and lack of sleep. Which I think is the what runners world suggests for your first marathon. SO neway Ive just been focusing on rest this week. Thats right easy workouts and lots of rest. Hope that will make the difference come saturday. Hope to have pics up and my time by monday. But who knows maybe sooner.

House stuff -- Well the cabs were ordered and thats about it. t-5 weeks and counting till something starts happening in my house.

Ok I have not talked about gaming stuff in awhile but I read something that I just have to write about. SO if you dont like the game parts of my updates you are free to stop reading as thats all thats coming.

Ok We all know that the x360 is doing really well in the US and everywhere else in the world except for Japan. I read this morning that for the year the x360 is still trailing behind the gamecube in # of units sold for japan. OUCH thats gotta hurt. SO thats point #1. Point #2 is that we all know that the Wii and the ps3 are coming out soon. However the launch details of both of those are becoming very curious. Heres the contrast.

Nintendo -- Dude can you say BUZZ! Everything is coming up roses for nintendo and I think I am seeing for the first time a company that knows how to do a launch. They are remaining tight lipped until the absolute last minute and that is just building so much excitment over the Wii. the low price - the launch titles - the control scheme - everything is coming together for the Wii and I think for once Nintendo could be right in what they have been saying all along. Its not about the polygon counts or the rendering or the shaders or the power of the system its about the experiance playing the games that will sell consoles and games. SO with the big N's worldwide conferences getting ready to happen over the next couple of days I feel I can say pretty confidently that everyone will be happy with the news and that the buzz is only going to grow for the little system they call Wii

Sony -- WOW what a contrast. 2 years ago we saw Ken Kutaragi playing with ducks "in real time" in the bath tub and and that was supposed to be only the beggining. However it seems that over the last year the hype has simply been diminishing as more negative news comes out from sony. I swear I dont feel like they have had a single good thing to say about ps3 this year. And this is their launch year!!! First we had E3 which everyone couldnt wait to get good news from sony on. Well what did we get. 1st up was the "take out a second mortgage on your house" price tag. Then came the news that of the two versions going to be sold the cheaper was significantly scaled down in terms of ports and what not and that you could not upgrade it to be the same as the more expensive option. A major faux paux in my opinion. Now within the last few weeks is the announcement that they cant make their projected shipping qty's and they are reducing their expected shipments by like 75%, ignorning europe entirely till they catch up makes me very very skeptical about Sony in this gen. Sure Sony's got Fanboys and Fangirls and that counts for a lot. Ive been saying for the past year Sony could slap a "playstation" sticker on just about anything with the promise of Final Fantasy accesories and it would sell. Think the PS3 toilet with a chocobo theme for the little ones. However when Ken Kutaragi makes statements like this to reuters "If you asked me if Sony's strength in hardware was in decline, right now I guess I would have to say that might be true." DANG I really have to start thinking that they are on their way to a low point.

SO whats my point in all this. Simple I think the big N is going to become just that. The Big N again. I think this generation of conoles is going to see the Wii as #1 with x360 and PS3 fighting it out for second globally. And I just dont know if Sony can hang on at this point. X360 is already well established globally and has a large fanbase in America and Europe. PS3 can really only guarantee to own one market which is japan and the japanese gaming market is in the toilet right now. The big thing in japan is not home consoles but the DS Lite. Can the ps3 really compete with that? Can it compete with the x360 in America if we only see 400k units this x-mas with 80% of them costing 600+ tax. (thats 640.00 for me to buy a ps3 and I still dont have a single new game to play on it!) I feel bad in a way but maybe it will force some of the developers who have been rather snooty towards american hardware to cross platform develop. Yeah im looking at you Square Enix. How about we see FF13 for both x360 and ps3. That would be the nail in the coffin of the ps3 if that ever happened.

Well I have ranted long enough on things game related.

Cheers!

Sleep? Whats that?

Ok so I dont know how many of you know this but appearantly I just dont get to sleep anymore. I think its a combo of everything - work - house - family issues - but regardless im just not sleeping anymore. like its 2:30am saturday morning. At 1am I just woke up and could not get back to sleep. SO here I am. I am dead tired but not sleepy. I just dont know what else to do but its really wearing on me.

Quick house update

Well here is the sitch.

The good news:
1. All our cabinets but one are in stock and essentially ready for delivery
2. Our Floor has been ordered and shipped and I think will be here this week

The bad news:
The cabinet that is not in stock will take 5-6 weeks to arrive once ordered.

The worse news:
The floor cant be installed until all the cabinets are in.

Therefore we are looking at a good 6-7 weeks till the cabs are finished and the floor is in which makes it mid to late october. And that my friends totally stinks because yeah I miss my 1st floor and although it will be nice to have a partially finished kitchen again with no dining room and living room we will still be spending 90% of our time at home in the sitting room.

Cheers!

new pics

Ok here is the latest batch of pics. It looks like we will only need to have our bottom cabinets replaced and that it will not be a special order so that is nice in that it should only take a few weeks to schedule and get them in. Then next up would be the floor and that is still up in the air a bit. More to come on that. Finally we are thinking about changing out counter top and that would be a special order but I dont think that would really impact things very much. We meet with the contractor next monday to discuss the plan and maybe start setting some dates. But in the mean time enjoy these pics of what used to be my kitchen!





Cheers!

And they are outta here!

Cabs are out pics to come. Its kinda funny when you walk into your living room and it looks like your kitchen and your kitchen looks very very empty. I still dont know whats happening in terms of which cabs get replaced or not but I hope to know soon. Also Im starting to get some info on the flooring and im very very hopefull that sometime next week (earlier than later) I will get a check from state farm so that I can get my floor back.

Oh I know I have not mentioned this in awhile but yes I am still training albeit not like I would prefer. Consistency is the key and lately I have been sporadic at best. I workout maybe 3-4 xs a week instead of a solid 6 with a rest day. This might not sound so bad but I really feel like im just maintaining my current level of fitness and not increasing at all and well yeah I have this little race coming up in a month that is 26.2 miles long and I dont feel ready for it. The farthest I have run so far is 10.5 and that was last saturday. Im hoping to do 11 or 12 tommorow and then 14-15 next sat. After that if I could pull off an 18 miler that would be really quite wonderfull. than I could start tapering down to lead up to the big day. If I can pull 18 then I will feel pretty good about the marathon. Otherwise im going to be pretty nervous. SO thats just one more chapter in what many people think of as "The book of stupid things Chris does."

Cheers!

HA HA HA

Ok after some major acts of FUBAR things have been progressing very slowly with the house. Oh I do have to give a shout out for the boy scout troop at my church. They heard we needed help and I swear they sent like 50 boy scouts to my house and they were just packing up everything they could find. They really did save me a TON of time so thanks again boy scouts. Oh and Thanks Luke again for mowing my grass your a lifesaver! SO back to all things FUBAR! SO tuesday my cabs and vinyl were supposed to get ripped out but no. Everyone who came thought everybody else was going to do everything. ITs so the american way. SO long story short. Heres the update on where things are

Vinyle is gone
bottom cabs come out tommorow morning

Carpet sample is back from ITL so I have a value for that but no value for pad or the vinyle yet... just playing the waiting game.

Cabs -- so far cant be matched -- what does that mean you ask? well if they cant be matched then they ALL have to be replaced. IF thats the case we are looking at roughly 2-3 months till things are put back together again. Fun.

After the cabs are out you can expect some pics with the vinyle and cabs out.

Cheers!

pics of damage

Since a pic is worth a thousand words im just going to throw these up.

And it just keeps getting better

Well the guys from servicemaster came yesterday to help me evaluate whether or not I was going to need to file a claim with state farm. HA HA HA after being there for literally 5 min they said - "File you claim." I was like seriously????? And he replied Our job is going to cost around 2,000 just to dry everything out and that doesnt include fixing or replacing anything. SO let me give you a quick rundown of what all is ruined.

-- Carpet -- most of it has been cut out already -- eeekk
-- baseboards
-- my walls up to about 8" high in the low spots and 3-4' in the high spots
-- my kitchen cabinets

Whats still on the iffy list
-- all my vinyl.

SO whats happening now? The cleanup crew left 7 industrial fans and 2 very large dehumidifiers to help dry out my walls and see how much they can salvage. They come back today to take some more readings and I think they will know if the vinyle is gone today. SO big day for the house!! he he anyway thats whats up with me.

Cheers!

Snakes on a plane.

Yeah thats all I can say. "snakes on a plane...." Why is that you might ask? B/c the last two days have been ab-so-freaking-lutely crazy. Let me break it down for y'all

August 9th 7:10am
I walk down stairs to leave for work and am troubled by an unfamiliar sound that is EXTREMLY loud. as I come around the corner I am greeted by what is a pretty terrifying thing for any homeowner (i.e. sucker) to behold. What was it? Well to be frank it was roughly 1/2" of standing water on my kitchen floor and a large area of my carpet that was very very squishy. I can now make out the sound and its the sound of massive amounts of rushing water coming from my mechanical closet. I open the doors and I swear it was like that scene in the second ring movie where the mom opens the door to the bathroom and water is everywhere in the room. Everywhere and you just cant figure out where the water is coming from. SO I just stood there for probably 10 sec. in shock. Just staring at all this water thats well everywhere. Finally I was able to figure out where the water was coming from so I start trying to shut some of the valves to get the water off. I finally get the water off and there I am. Soaking wet and looking at toshi's food dish floating across the kitchen floor. I walked upstairs and told lisa that I wasnt going to work today and briefed her on the sitch. I went back downstairs and started to try and clean things up. Fast forward to about 10:30 when the floor is close to pretty much dry and I start making my way to find the replacement tank I need. Meanwhile lisa went to grampas and got the wet/dry vac and the carpet wet vac and was pulling gallons and gallons of water out of the carpet. I think 15 gallons was our best estimate at one point. And ya know what. thats a whole lotta water and the carpet is still really wet. SO around noonish I roll back into the house and start working on getting this tank installed. I had been warned to get good wrenches and to make sure the pvc was supported well so that it didnt break. Now you know I wouldnt be talking about this if it had gone smoothly! HA! yeah I was screwing it in BY HAND and the piece it screws into cracked!!!!! ARGGGGG I was 1/4 turn to far which means I was a 1/4 turn past being done. SO then I had to cut the pvc out go to lowes and buy pvc to re-create this jacked up joint the builder put in. I think it came as a big surprise to me that I actually got the right pieces and got it all glued together and working - With no leaks!!!!! SO its about 3:30pm now and I am wiped out. The kitchen is dry but the carpet despite lisa putting a smackdown on it is still really wet. SO that was it for the day. The high side of this is that I was able to get the whole thing fixed for roughly 55 bucks. Versus what a plumber would have charged to come out and fix it for me. SO thats good. SO that ends that day.

August 10th:
Ok so today the carpet is still pretty wet and Lisa was talking to a co-worker and he basically told her we should call our insurance company and find out what we should do b/c if their is bad enough water damage there is a good chance for things like mold or walls being weekend and what not. SO we talked and I was like ok. SO today at 4pm im meeting a guy to get an estimate of what the damage is from our catastrophe yesterday. Worst case scenario its really expensive and we turn a claim into insurance and are out our deductible plus we get the added bonus of getting a 10% per year surcharge for the next 3 years. SO yea! Dont you love insurance. Something that penalizes you when you use it. ITs AWESOME!

SO im leaving work early today to meet with the guy and i will let you guys know whats going to happen. On the good side if all the floors are ruined it might be a good time to upgrade! who knows.

Cheers!

Back from Daytona

Well last night @ about 11:15pm lisa and I got back from our vacation so I thought I would give a quick wrap up of how things went.

Sunday: Sara took us to the airport and we got out on time and with a bonus. We got bumped to business class without having to pay for it which meant swanky seats, better snacks, and we got to sit together which was not going to happen with out previous seats. We got into Orlando early, like 10am and made our way to Hertz rental car where we were surprised by what we got. I was expecting a Ford Focus or something like that which although I dont like focus' very much im fine with them and thats what I was expecting. However we got a Red Pontiac Vibe which made lisa very happy as she likes Fun red cars on vacation and I was excited to get to drive a car I had not driven previously. My final thoughts are I was pretty impressed with the vibe and only had one minor complaint about it that is really nothing at all. SO we made the 1.5 hour drive to Daytona and got to our Condo which was not ready for us yet. SO we walked around a bit and sat and read and around 2ish we got into our room which was FANTASTICKY. The condo was larger than our first apartment and better equipped too. It had a bedroom with TV and king size bed. A huge bathroom, kitchen, and living room with another tv. A balcony that overlooked the ocean and man it was just really nice. SO the room was a major hit! After we got unpacked Lisa and I were both really feeling wiped out so we just chilled in the room and watched the movie Gattaca (one of my personal favs) and then I made dinner and I think we just sat on our balcony and read.

Monday: First real day out in the Sun having fun! Got some good laying out time and just hung out around the pool and ocean. Walked around to some of the local shops and what not. Also went grocery shopping for food for the week at publix. I miss publix its like the best grocery store ever.

Tuesday: Again started the day out right by laying out and chilling by the pool. Around noonish we made our way up to St. Augestine and hit the two outlet malls there and WOW they were huge. Much much bigger than I remember so we were their for a really long time. We got taco bell for dinner and when we got back I think we went and did some more reading by the pool in the coolness of the evening.

Wednesday: Well it seemed that all the walking from the day before was a little too much for Lisa as her foot was really hurting her. SO we decided that wednesday was just going to be a chill day. A do nothing day. SO we spent like all day by the pool. I laid out most of the morning and early afternoon then joined lisa in her covered "safe" zone for more reading. Why was she in a covered safe zone. well it turns out that its not good for pregnant woman to significantly alter their body temp very much. Even a few degrees can be hard on the baby inside so lisa was hiding from the sun most of the vacation. However today that backfired. A small building was basically blocking the sun from Lisa where she was sitting however as best we can guess the suns rays were bouncing off the beach and reflecting off our books so that we both got more sun than we had anticipated that afternoon. Lisa got burned pretty good and I got rather crispy myself which is really rare. However we both felt safe and out of the sun so Lisa had no sunscreen on and I had not re-applied since the morning. Live and learn, the sun IS out to get me.

Thursday: I think we pretty much just stayed inside most of the morning as lisa was not too keen on getting any more sun for a little while and I was fine with that as well. Also her foot was still not feeling that great. However this was also great b/c we just snuggled up on the sofa and watched TV. We did some walking around in the afternoon. We went venturing for a place to eat dinner and went to Bennigans and it was pretty good. Then we went to see "The Devil Wears Prada" which I thought was pretty good and lisa liked it too. Whats awesome is that the movie theater is on the beach about a block down from our hotel so we walked back to the condo on the beach after the movie and that was nice and romantic.

Friday: Another Slight hiatus from the sun. We decided to do some more local shopping and drive around a bit. Tried to finish up souvenier shopping and then went to this little italian place we used to go to when we lived in daytona. Its called the italian villiage and oh my gosh. They have amazing calzones there but they were a bit different from when we used to get them. The difference is they are about 3xs the size they used to be. They could have easily lasted 3 meals each for us but after two we were out of time and had to throw away the remainder. : ( very very sad.

Saturday: slept in and then hit the pool deck for one more great day of kicking back and takin names. In the evening we got dressed up a bit and played some mini golf and then on impulse went to denny's (does anyone ever go to denny's not on an impulse???) so this was pretty funny as our waiter totally forgot about us or I guess I should say decided to ignore us b/c the cooks were yelling at him to pick up our food and bring it to us -- but he just kept walking by them and doing other things. Finally another waitress noticed us both eyeing our food in the warming racks and asked if we needed anything. We explained and she got us our food. Then my drink became empty but still no visit from our server since he took our order so I went up to the counter and asked for a refill. Needless to say their was no tip given that night and I even explained why to the girl checking us out so that it was understood. SO we get back and decided to go for a walk on the beach. We heard that every saturday night they have fireworks off the pier (which is about .5 miles from our hotel) and I kid you not. We walked out on the beach got our toes wet and BANG! they started going off! We had no idea when they were supposed to happen but we just happened to be there at the right time. So that was really pretty to see fireworks over the ocean.

Sunday: Ok I love our current church but the PCA as a whole can be iffy and in florida it can be downright bonkers so i was not really looking forward to church. We decided not to go to the church I went to while at school and opted for the other PCA church. WOW had it changed and for the better. SO church was really nice. Then we scooted back to the condo and hung out on the deck till about 3:30 but not before getting one more walk in on the beach. After that we got down to orlando fine and checked in and all was going well until a pretty big storm hit orlando and delayed everything by about an hour. SO we got in later than we would have wanted but it was still a good time.

SO to sum up we had an amazing time and we totally needed this. It was just 1 solid week of "chill" and we both just kept commenting on how relaxed we felt and just how laid back it all was. SO I can't complain about a thing it was just total wonderfullness and was a great last vacation before Kaiya comes in november.

Cheers!

7 days without sleep makes one (very freaking tired) weak

(if you have not checked out the v2.0 blog go there now!)

Ok yeah so I just dont sleep anymore which combined with me ramping up my training efforts is leading to, well, not so good results. I am wiped and I was making jokes this morning that were in retrospect not very funny but at the time I thought they were hilarious. SO I think vacation is coming at a good time. I just want to sleep through the night again. Last night consisted of us going to be around 10:30pm (which is not usual) and then around 1am I got up b/c I had been having a dream that my sweet pregnant wife desired a chocolate chip cookie. Silly me I actually got out of bed and started to go get her one when I realized -- you fool! we have no cookies! -- and that was the start of another restless night. I think I woke up every hour on the hour if not more until my alarm went off. SO not a very restfull night of sleep thats for sure. SO how is training now that I am commited to a marathon? Well im still trying to split things up between my 3 major disciplines and I am finding that I feel as though I am just kinda spinning my wheels. I need to formulate more of a plan and actually stick with it. I need to have workouts scheduled so that I dont just show up at the gym and go hmm I think ill do this or that today. I think that will help me achieve my goals better than the haphazard means I have been using so far. Other than that I am sore. I am running more now that I have in a long time in anticipation of the marathon and just trying to be smart to ward off injury which would be a bad thing. Other than that its really freaking hot which I like but the humidity is officially much much worse here than in florida so I feel I can complain about it. Its pretty nasty.

Other items of noteworthyness:
Lisa and I leave for vacation this sunday morning and are headed for Daytona Beach where we are going to take advantage of our newly acquired TIME SHARE. lol so that should be nice. We are both feeling burnt mentally and physically and if im going to feel burnt I want to at least be tan dangit! SO it should be a good time. We dont have much planned right now but we do hope to go snorkeling perhaps and just take it easy. Maybe some midnight walks on the beach would be nice as well! anyway we will be there for a week and im bringing my little ps1 and hope to get to play a lot of chrono cross as I like that game alot. Should be a really good time and I will be there in just a few days!!!!!!!!

Trying to think of what else is cool or what not. Oh yeah I have another race set for the end of september. This event is a team tri and the honorable Daniel Hickey has agreed to be my race partner. I fear his youthfull vigor will squash my seasoned veteraness and he will kick my butt, however thats ok b/c its a really neat event that starts with a 3 mile canoe in a two man boat (hence why its a team event) then a 20 mile bike and a 5 k run. My bike is far superior than anything dan will get to ride but he is a much stronger run then me (and I will have just run a marathon 2 weeks earlier) so Im expecting him to be the fast one even if I drop him on the bike I think he will either catch or more likely pass me on the run. But just the nature of this event is going to be fun. SO look for more details later on that.

well I have some work to do so
Cheers!

Taking the plunge

Well I did it. I signed up for the Air Force Marathon today and now I have a few months to train and get back into marathon shape. Im pretty excited for a couple of reasons.

1. Ive been dying to do a long course race and this should take me somewhere around 3.5 - 4.5 hours to complete and although it will just be one event its a good mental booster b/c once I complete a marathon it will not be this impossible task.

2. This is my chance to stick it to the man, and the man in this case is the Air Force. Ya see ever since I was a wee lad I had one dream. Go to the Air Force Academy - become a fighter pilot - and finnaly fly the biggest fastest hunk of junk on the planet -- The space shuttle. Thats right kids my dream since I was little was to be a shuttle pilot. SO anyway long story short the airforce said I was not good enough for them b/c of regulations that were written in the 40's and are in many ways no longer applicable. SO here is my chance to show the Air Force that I am in fact good enough and that I am not the cripple they made me out to be.

Yes I know that not a single person hosting the event has any idea about this or even cares they are just happy that I am running in it. But for me its just a little personal score to settle.

Cheers!

Skankware

Since labeling things _______ ware seems to be all the rage right now I have come up with my own and that is Skankware. My definition:

Any piece of software that seems attractive enough to buy, however once purchased, does nothing but bring your system down and leave you with all sorts of nasty viruses that you cant get rid of.

Example: AOL is total skankware.

alias terms could also be ho-ware.

Im thinking about actually submiting this to Wikipedia as they have no definition for Skankware currently.

cheers!

Whats up?

Ok well its been a little while since my last post and I dont have a whole lot to say so I will try to be brief and since I know everyone misses my bulleted lists of updates they are back again today! SCORE!

Training -- Sucks! been busy this week and only trained 2xs so far. Might do a brick tonight not sure but I need to either today or tommorow. Might have a race on tuesday 2mile run, 10 mile bike, 2 mile run so short and sweet.

Work -- Has been very hectic and thats all I feel like saying. Oh I got my new contract which means raise and more bragging rights so WOOT. side note I discovered where the term "woot" came from today. It originated from old dungeon crawler games and was the shortened version of "wow loot." hence WOOT!

Games -- totally wrapped up in oblivion and having the best time with it. Such a great game and well worth the cost of admission.

Baby stuff -- go see my baby page I posted today as well.

Life in general -- Vacation has been booked! w00t w00t!!!! Lisa and I will be going to Daytona the last week of july for vacation and using our time share which is super duper cool and we are totally excited about it. Its bitter sweet as its out last vacation without kids which is exciting on both sides of the coin. SO needless to say we are both very jazzed.

Well thats about it for now but I hope everyone is doing well.

Cheers!

Ok i know its been awhile....

Ok I know its been awhile but I've seriously been pretty busy. But ok here are some pics from a few weekends ago when lisa sara and I went to MI to see Rich, Beck, and Ash. Here you will notice Sara and me on the quads. This was a ton of fun and something that we will have to do again. Just in case you cant tell Sara is on the right and I am on the left. And yes just in case you were wondering we did take these fine machines off some sweet jumps!



Here we see Rich and future moto crosser Ash kicking it two up style on a quad. Ash loves riding with her daddy and its probably good that she was there with him to keep him in line as he latter admitted to me he thought he was riding with a broken or bruised rib from a trampoline stunt the night before. You so crazy!



So there ya go some quad pics. SO what else is new. Well work has been pretty busy and I am very tired. We have been working hard on getting things ready for scout (check scouts blog if you have not recently) and I have just been trying to keep my head above water. Now I know some of you are thinking -- hey what happened to all that training you were doing? Are you still racing? Well yes and no and yes I guess. My problem is finding events that I can do which limits me to saturdays instead of the day most events are on which is sunday. This knocks me out of about 90% of the events that are taking place close to me and schedule conflicts take care of another 5% so as you can see that leaves next to nothing for me to do. I do however have a duathlon on the 27th of this month that I plan on doing.

2 mile run
10 mile bike
2 mile run

SO thats all thats on the hopper at the moment. However I am making future plans which include the air force marathon this year and the florida IronMan next year. Thats right im signing up (or at least trying to) for an iron man. More details when I actually get confirmation which wont happen till november. SO my big race is over a year away but thats how much time it takes to plan and prepare for something like this. SO im glad im taking my time.

Gaming: Playing oblivion still (love it!) I finished the fighters guild and am now working through the assasins guild which is a lot of fun. I might take on the main quest sometime soon. Just not sure. Other than that playing burnout for 360 which rocks! and after watching ringu zero last night I want to play fatal frame 3. SO we will have to set that up and go with it soon.

Well thats all for now.

Cheers!

W00T W00T!!!!

Ok I have launched a second blog. No this one is not dying this one is very very much alive. However this new site is dedicated to scout. Who's scout you say? Scouts my baby which means Lisa is pregnant! Yes it is an exciting time however this is not the venue for such topics as I have set up an entire site just to document the pregnancy SO bounce on over there and check often as I have lots of stuff to put on there so I will be posting frequently to both.

http://v2-0.blogspot.com/

You go now!

Cheers!

Quick Update!!!!

Well the unthinkable has happend. My po-dunk town has crawled out from under the rock that it was under and discovered a little thing called DSL. Yes thats right DSL is finally available in my area and on Monday night I ordered it!!! Im so jazzed and we got a killer deal so thats cool as well. It will be so nice to have net at the house so that we dont have to run to panera at like 8pm b/c lisa has to send an e-mail or check on something for work. Also I got wireless gear coming so that should be pretty cool as well. I will finally have a nice little home net and yes I know like surround sound this stuff has been available for like ever but hey not in my area so there. Also its pretty cool since lisa, sara, and me all have wireless laptops so the wireless part will be nice and the main tower will be hard wired in so thats set as well. The only component I dont have quite figured out yet is the xbox 360. Not sure what to get to make that work and its a low priority to lisa which means I either need to get it online for free or dirt cheap. SO thats whats up with me. On the family side my folks should be in scotland right now. If you didnt know they just moved their to be missionaries for 3-5 years. Still waiting on my e-mail from them to say they got their ok but that should be coming. Well thats all for now.

cheers!

All faith is now lost in humanity

Ok a few months ago I happened upon a trailer for a movie that at the time I thought was a spoof on the crappiness that is modern day hollywood. The name of the movie was of course "snakes on a plane" The trailer (watch it now) Just seemed to campy to me and the idea too ubsurd to be an actual movie and from the original site I found it on seemed like someone with some time on their hands and some vid editing software made a really campy trailer for a really out their movie starring Mr. Samuel L. Jackson. Much to my shagrin (yeah I said shagrin) i discovered this morning that its an actual movie and its actually coming out this august and it actually looks so bad that it might be worth watching. Here is the story. Mr Jackson is like an fbi agent or something like that transfering a guy to prison I think on this plane. Or the guy is a witness it doesnt really matter in any event the bad people of the world want this guy dead so their plot is to release like 100 deadly snakes on a plane (hence the movie title) and figure that the ensuing havoc will kill the mark as well as everyone else and any trace of their plot. WOW. dude lets all just say it for a second

deep breath

"snakes on a plane"

I just cant say it without laughing. SO anyway i have no faith in hollywood anymore, not that I really did to begin with but hey yeah thats my thoughts on snakes on a plane.

In Other movie news I have seen two movies recently that were rather good. first up was silent hill -- which up until the ending I absolutely loved and then the other was Final Fantasy VII: Advent children Which I also absolutely loved. These two movies can be summed up in two words:

FAN SERVICE!!!!

OK not the creepy hentai type of fan service but like "dude you people have been loyal to (insert franchise here) and even though we said we would never do anything like this here ya go enjoy!" If you have never played Silent Hill 1 or 2 then you can still really enjoy the movie but a lot of it just wont have the same kick for you as it did for lisa and me. As far as Final Fantasy 7 goes if you have never played the game then like I wouldnt bother watching the movie. Yes its that simple. Unless you are watching it simply to be wowed by the absolutely breathtaking and life like CG it will be a waste of time. Heres why. Their is little story development at all. Why you might ask???? Hmm maybe its b/c its the continuation of a game that already had a huge story to it and they figure that 90% of the people watching the movie would have played the game at least once through and know the story very well. I will give an example of why I think its a waste if you have not played the game. the movie is pretty long like 1.5 hours and in the last like 20 min we are treated to the whole gang from the original game as they rush in to help cloud in the final fight. However they dont try to tell you who any of these people are. Why? B/c they assume you already know. IF you were just watching the movie I think you would be really confused as to who all these new characters were and I dont even think they said their names at all. But I loved FF7 the game and loved the movie! Thanks Squenix!!!!

Cheers!

Sup

Ok since some people have requested a new post here we go! Things have been pretty slow in that I feel like all im doing is working which is kinda blah since its so nice outside. SO what am I working on at work.

Web Caches. These things are on their last leg and need a lot of babying. Also our web filter which keeps all the kiddies from getting to pr0n is not working so well and needs some attention. On top of that I have a whole host of other things that needs to get done so there ya go. Although I have discovered something. If I plan to work on a big project one day guess what happens that day? A major outage or catastrophe and that keeps me from doing what I planned. However if I dont plan on doing anything the network stays pretty quiet. Are you getting my correlation? SO I have to tell you that most days I feel like if I dont plan on doing that much of anything im actually doing more for the network than if I were to plan on tackling a major project. Funny how life works.

SO whats up with training and races?

Well I had a race last week that I missed for a couple of reasons one being really crappy weather but I will do the next one I thinks in a month or so. Other than that the race calendar is very very quiet. 90% or races are on sunday so that rules out a large group of opportunities for me. There was an international / olympic distance tri that I wanted to do but its on the 27th of may and lisa and I are going up to michigan that weekend so that one is out which leaves only 1 other major race for the rest of the year. Its on july 15th and oh yeah did I mention that its a half ironman. Just in case you dont know what that means let me break it down for you

1.2 mile lake swim
56 miles on the bike
13.1 miles on the run course.

thats 70.3 miles covered in one event. I would be lying if I didnt say that scares the crap out of me. Thats so long and this race has time cut offs for each course so if you cant make it to the cut off you get yanked from the race. :( that would not be cool. The other drawback is that its really expensive. The entry fee alone is around $170.00 plus we would have to get a hotel room the night before so it would be a pricey event. SO I told lisa its up to her. If she says yes then I really really need to get my butt in gear and start working harder to make this happen. If she says no then I will just focus on some of these little races at wright patt and maybe some of the time trials there as well. SO we shall see. Oh had my first longer run of the year yesterday. 5.5 miles! Felt alright but got really dehydrated.

SO hows things at home? Well Since lisa has not been feeling well lately ive taken on the majority of the house work on top of what I already was doing. SO Saturday I spent all day on the yard mowing, raking, weeding, mulching, etc etc. SO im still sore from that. Last night she had a meeting so I worked on laundry and still have some left to put away. And tonight I will work on cleaning the house as it totally needs it.

Gaming life in Franklin -- Still finding some time to play. Lisa and I have been working through Champions and Dang thats a long game which is kinda rare for the hack and slash dungeon crawler. I really like this one and I like my character. Im a dark elf shadow night named aerylyn and I have this super cool spell that summons a skeleton warrior to help out in fights. We call him skully and he rocks. SO we have been playing that quite a bit. Other than that Im still working on oblivion and will be for a really long time. Almost done with thieves guild quest line which has been a lot of fun. However im currently getting spanked and think I may need to adjust the difficulty slider a bit to make this more fair. No im not a wuss but I cant handle 3-5 enchanted beasts and a high level wizard all at the same time. Its just too much.

SO thats whats up with that.

Cheers!

Lets hear it for sound! Surround Style!

Ok well im not proud of this but I have been the owner of a surround sound home theater system for the better part of 2 years now. Well ok thats not what Im ashamed of, what im ashamed of is that fact that for one reason or another I have never been able to hook up the rear channel speakers so I have never had the joy of the "surround sound." That all changed last night as I hooked up the 3 rear speakers (no Im not confused my sytem is a 6.1 setup) as well as the optical input from the 360. SO now I have surround sound for my movies and for my 360!!!!!! Ok so I popped in Oblivion and WOW. My TV has pretty good speakers but this is just freaking cool! At one point I was standing outside in the rain (this is in game people) and I could hear rain drops all around me. IT was AWESOME!!!!! I cant wait to get into some better situations like caves where i will be able to tell where people are by the sounds they are making. SO in short captain obvious says "hey boys and girls surround sound kicks regular stereo sounds butt!"

Cheers!

Same ol Same ol

That pretty much sums it up. I dont have that much to say about things as this past week has been pretty slow. I recovered well from the Tri and will more than likely do arace next tuesday. 2 mile run 10 mile bike and then another 2 mile run. Its at wright patt and will work very well for me to go there after work. SO thats cool. SO I need to spend more time on my bike. On a side note though I have now swam a mile straight in the pool without stopping. And then I did it again yesterday! SO thats pretty cool. Other than that lisa and I started playing Champions of Norath return to arms (thanks jason!) and Im still playing oblivion. Thats about it. Oh I am getting totally excited about silent hill which opens this weekend!!!! I think lisa and I will go see it on saturday maybe at the lebanon theater! Should be cool!

Cheers!

Im still ALIVE!!!!

Well the tri is over now and I feel pretty good. Here is my post race wrap-up!!!!

Winning time for the whole event was 1:02:32 my time was 1:26:51 which gave me a finishing place of 99th overall and 11th in my age group out of roughly 300 participants. So its not too shabby a finish for my first tri in 7 years. Yes 7 years. SO here is the tour in pictures. Also I would suggest clicking on some of the pics for a better view. Enjoy!


Here I am at the start of the swim. If you look close you can see me in the lane on the far left all the way at the top crouching down getting ready to enter the water. Yup thats me with all kinds of ambition and oh guess what I just realized??? I forgot to use my inhaler at all. Yes its at this moment that I realize that breathing is going to be an issue for the next hour and a half. IF you look really closely you can see an expression on my face that basically means "oh crap im an idiot!"


Ok just keep looking for the purple swim cap b/c thats me. They totally botched the swim start and really didnt release people well. This can be seen by the fact that their are 6 swimmers in this shot including me. This is not the way it was supposed to be. And as a result I got pretty beat up in the water.



Here I am a few meters later coming to the wall and getting sandwiched by a couple of other swimmers. The one on the left im trying to pass and the one on my right is trying to pass me. This was just not working.



Here I am basically stuck because their are too many people around me and I cant get under the rope to get to the next lane. However it is a good pic of me treading water waiting for a path to clear. If I look annoyed its b/c I was.


This is a great shot of a guy I just passed trying to swim over me. WOW that was fun.



Ok so the swim is over and here I am coming off the bike. IT was soooo freaking cold that I could not feel my fingers at all. My second transition was awefull almost 4 min in the transition area b/c I couldnt do anything. I had to get sara to unbuckle my helmet b/c I couldnt do it and some random guy saw me struggling to get my shoes on and offered to tie them for me. IF he had not done that I would not have made it out of the transition. To look at the pic you wouldnt know that it was like 28 degrees outside but it was. I just wasnt prepared for the cold.


Ok here I am at roughly mile 3 of the run (a 5k is 3.1 miles) I felt surprisingly good during the run and really cranked it out despite being really tired and thanks sara those gloves totally helped me feel better. I loved the run course it snaked throughout the miami campus and was really fast. SO that was a great way to finish.


Speaking of finishing heres the line. WOOT! I did it!!!! SO thats the tri in pictures. All in all im happy with my finish. It was my first in a long time and a good learning experiance. Also it helped me identify my weak link which is the bike right now and I feel I can improve that quite a bit. like a lot. SO thats cool. Im already pumped for the next event which I have not found yet but am totally looking now. Again thanks to everyone who has supported me in this process through gear help or just a kind word or even those few who came and froze their booties off to watch me. Thanks everyone your great!

Cheers!!!

Last day before race

Well its friday and that means the race is tommorow!!! I am excited and scared all at the same time. SO what kind of pre race prep am I doing you might ask? Well their is tons to do actually.

First thing this morning I checked the weather forcast for oxford OH on race day. The outlook is not so good. Between 8-10am the high temp is supposed to be 35-37ish and factoring in winds of roughly 15 mph (yikes) gives me a feel good temperature of about 27-29. WOW do I wish that was in celsius and not farenheit. SO its going to be really really cold. This is really throwing a wrench in my works b/c right now my race clothing is all designed around hot weather and keeping me cool SO I might have to alter it some as my top right now is a ultra cool sleeveless singlet. I will either have to put a jacket on to keep my chest warm or swith to a long sleeved cold weather jersey which I will not like in the run at all. SO I have that to think about. Next up I started to work on my pre-race checklist which I will list for your viewing pleasure. After I printed out draft one my first thought was "dang thats a lot of crap to take." SO here it is.

Misc. Clothing
º Post Race Clothing
º Singlet
º Tri-Shorts

Swim Items
º Cap
º Goggles
º Spare Goggles
º swimmers Ear

Bike Items
º Cycling Shoes
º Floor Pump
º Helmet
º Socks
º Spare Tube
º Sunglasses
º Tire Levers
º Water Bottles
º Wrench Set/Tools

Run Items
º Running Shoes

Everything Else
º Camera
º Champion Chip
º Directions to Race
º Energy Bars
º Energy Drink
º Garbage Bag
º Race Number Belt
º Towel for Transition Area
º Transition Bag
º Walkman/CD Player/Ipod
º Water
º Wrist Watch

Its amazing how much gear you need just to do one event. I guess its not that bad though if you think about the fact that its really 3 events crammed into 1.

SO what do I have left to do today.

1. Stay hydrated. - Im only drinking water and gatorade today
2. light workout - im thinking a nice 30 minute easy spin on bike
3. Shave my head - my hair is soo long
3. Shave my legs - yeah i do that.
4. Mount my bike computer - yeah I still have not done this
5. get my gear together and packed
6. final tune-up on bike - get my gears working like butter!
7. good night of rest - i have a feeling this is not going to happen.

I will probably make a final weather check but I doubt its going to make that much of a difference and thats that. Well for everyone who has been following me on this wish me luck and I hope I have some good news when I post again.

Cheers!

3 days to go

Hi every-o-n-e todays blog topic is brought to you courtesy of my inhaler. When the going gets tough the tough shoot meds in aerosol form directly into their lungs so that they can breath easier! Albuterol ask for it by name!

SO seriously ive got 3 days left till the tri and things are picking up. I ran 2 miles hard yesterday at lunch and basically did a run to failure type of run. Why you might ask? B/C thats how I plan for the last two miles of this tri to go. Mile 1 of the run will be recovery and transition from the bike. Then mile 1.5 will be fast (I hope) and then the last .5 will be, if I can, an all out sprint from my old days of running 800's in track. Of course this is just a plan and subject to my bodies approval.

After I got back from work I made it out on the bike for the first time and yeah im sore today but not as bad as I thought I would be and the bike is running like a dream. Shifts really well and my aero tuck is surpsingly comfortable. I can totally hold it for 30-40 min.

Today I did another timed 400m swim. All I gotta say is I needed some good news and I got it today -- 7:32 for my 400m!!!! I tried swimming it two ways. One more power and flailing about and one more calm and slower strokes but better form. Well in true Knodel fashion flailing about won as my better form time was 8:50. SO I feel good knowing how it is that I am going to be swimming this sat. I also feel goood that if nothing else I have dropped my time by like 1.5 min since I started swimming a month ago -- not to shabby.

Now onto what I know about the race. Well a lot of info has been e-mailed in the last day or so and one peice is the current participant list. right now their are roughly 240 people signed up with registration closing friday night. Out of those 240 that I know of currently their are 13 guys in my age group which is 25-29! SO thats pretty cool and to my surprise I am right with most of them in the swim time and even on the lower end. Hopefully I will have the hootzpuh to keep up a solid pace throughout this whole thing and who knows maybe I will make the top 3 in my age group. That would be pretty cool.

Dont know if I will get out on the bike today although I really really need to. Their is always the indoor trainer which totally sucks but what else can I do. I still need to get some more actual bike miles in so that I can do my final tune up maybe tommorow night to have my bike in tip top shape for sat.

I hope this is not all that boring for most of you and I should have quite a few good pictures after the weekend so that you guys can see what all my hard work got me!

Cheers!!

Best Quest Ever!

Ok I almost wrote a post that was going to basically say I was hosed in my current game of oblivion Oh yeah and just in case anyone was confused --

The elder scrolls IV Oblivion is the 4th game in a series of Role Playing computer games made by Bethesda Softworks. I am currently playing this game on my xbox 360 and anyone who reads this post should know that I am not speaking about myself but my character in the game. SO no I have not personally been turned into a vampire and no I have not gone wandering around the country side killing other vampires and stealing gems from magicians. This is in the game people!

-- end disclaimer--

Ok so when I played morrowind (the game before this one) I basically made the decision that I would not go back on a save. Basically if I made a bad decision that was life and I should not use a previous save to get me out of a bind b/c thats not real life. SO that being said last week while playing I was turned into a vampire (in the game people in the game) This might sound cool at first as you get tons of status bonuses however the down side is that if you dont feed everynight you become a crispy critter in the day light -- ANNNNNDDDD since shops are only open during the day as well as most everything else in the world this makes life really hard. also makes it hard to travel as you can only travel a night. SO I set out to find a cure for vampirism. This quest ended up really being a lot of fun and a total struggle all at the same time. However last night I finished it and I had a real sense of actual accomplishment and like I had cured myself and that it actually mattered. This is a really rare feeling in a video game but it does matter b/c now I can go anywhere and do anything again without fear of burning up while outside. Also this quest has got one of the best glitches in the game attached to it and that is at the end of the quest you get a reward of 500 gold. which is a lot of gold in the game for one quest so far. Well the glitch is that as long as you keep asking about the reward you keep getting it. SOOOOO in about 45 min time I went from having roughly 640 gold to 1.5 million gold. In short. Im set for money for the rest of the game which is a really nice feeling and im no longer a vampire which means that people will once again talk to me and that the vampire hunter that was on my tail will have to find someone else to hunt now! Yes the game is that deep and that cool.

Back to reality. 4 training days left till T-day. today I plan to swim and then get on my bike after work. I think I need to try to ride everyday this week even friday regardless of the weather b/c as luke pointed out yesterday the weather might not be ideal on sat. and I will not be able to use that excuse in the race. Tommorow I will probably set up my transition area in my garage and then do a brick with a transtion to start working on that. Time is running out and hopefully I will be better prepared then I feel right now.

Cheers!

1 week to go

Well its one week to go and I am not feeling as good about things with the Tri as I had hoped I would be at this point. SO I think my focus is shifting a little bit although im having problems getting my mind around the concept of "just doing it for fun and not caring about time" that just does not work for me. I mean I enjoy doing this type of thing but not really while its happening. Its like 5 min before the start or even the night before I feel like an idiot and resolve to not sign up for anything else again. Then as soon as I cross the line its like whens the next one. SO who knows. although I think I am going to still keep my original goal of 1 hour 20 min im becoming less confident that I can hit that. Here are my primary concerns

1. really bad swim workout today - just couldnt get breath cycle down - 400M felt really hard today.

2. I still have not ridden my bike more than just around the block. (this is really bad)

3. I never thought I was going to do anything sparktekular in the run to begin with and now its shaping up to be my strongest leg of the event. This does not make me happy since I anticipated it being my weakest section and I dont feel that I have made big improvements in the run.

4. transistions. WOW still have not practiced this but I need to.

I originally thought I would do a longer brick tommorow like a 10 mile bike and a 3 mile run. Now with the swim feeling worse im thinking I will bike to the Y (7miles) swim (8-1000M) then bike back (7 miles) That should be a pretty good workout if I can make it. Mostly dependant on the weather.

Wish me luck!

Cheers!

Brief Update

Well Chris, Kerry and Jenny are up for the week and we are having a blast with them. That pretty much sums up whats going on. I have not had much time to train at all which is not good but thats life ya know. Also my hopes of an Ironman I fear are waning. I was diagnosed with excersice induced asthma a number of years ago but I can honestly say it has never been a real factor to me. However with my increased cardio load that I have been putting on myself I am really struggling to breath comfortably not only while working out but just in day to day life. Also I had my first non-excercise related asthma attack on monday. I woke up with a great deal of pain in my lungs and a feeling that I just could not get any air into my lungs. SO I have been to the doc and got a new inhaler. Hopefully that will help some although I need to get into the habit of using it more often. Even now Im feeling short of breath. SO April 8th is still on the horizon but I dont know whats going to happen with a longer distance. Death is not my ultimate goal in all this so just be thinking of me. I just pray that I can get this back under control.

Cheers!

...and then I fell into Oblivion....

Well it happened this past sunday I got the automated call from gamestop that my pre-order of The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion would be in and ready for me to purchase on monday!!! I was soooo excited as this has been one of the biggest games I have been looking forward to for the xbox 360 and one of the big reasons I wanted to get a 360 in the first place. Unfortunately I have gotten this game during one of the worst weeks possible in that We are doing major "spring cleaning" and so most of my time is consumed by chores around the house. In fact I took a personal day off of work yesterday and spent most of the day cleaning and doing chores. This is how my week is pretty much going to look leading up to the weekend when Chris, Kerry, and Jenny!!! arrive. (side note. Chris you may want to extend your vacation b/c once you see oblivion well yeah your going to want to stick around longer! and kerry im sorry for whatever impulses chris leaves our house with ^_^ ) SO anyway I did get to play for a few hours tuesday morning and WOW thats all I can say. The intro is awesome. I started playing around 8 am and I did not finish the "intro" stuff till about 10. I then ran around a little bit and killed some wild dogs and started to make my way on my first quest. SO why did it take so long? whats so wow about it? If you care read on if you dont thanks for coming by and I will catch you next time.

Why the intro takes so long and the WOW factor.

First off let me say that I have NEVER played a game that gave you so much control over how your character physically looks. Im not talking armor, hairstyles or tatoos im talking full on control of how your character looks. Oblivion uses a series of slider bars to allow you to customize every feature of a persons face. I have to say that there are at least 30 aspects of the face you can change. That combined with the like 6-8 character classes and that each one can be either male or female and you can spend a TON of time creating your character. I spent probably a good I dunno 45 min on mine. I had a pretty specific idea of what I was going to pick and what she, yes she, would look like. I picked a female wood elf b/c I like elves and high elves are tooo pretentious and dark elves, well lets just face it dark elves just look mean all the time and are not very pretty so I chose a nice wood elf. My only complaint of a characteristic I could not change was the ears. I had a very specific Idea of how I wanted the ears to be and seeing as it was an elf ears play a big part in the appearance and that was not something that I could change. however im still not complaining b/c aside from all the physical facial changes that could be made you also can choose hair style and color. skin color, age, and complexion. SO there are a TON of ways to customize your character and I feel like oblivion has made good on the promises of fable in that I doubt you will find many people playing a character that looks like another one. Now if you dont want to spend the time you can take the defualt or you can hit the random button and it will randomly assign attributes and create a unique character. ITs soooo cool. I still think that I will probably grab a pic of myself and see if I can recreate myself into the game as a playable character. It seems very very possible to me. SO to anyone who says their are no next gen games on the 360 I say phooey! Oblivion is definitly where its at.

Now onto the WOW

Ok like I said I just got started but so far the intro sequence with the NPC's was fantastic and the first dungeon you crawl through it a ton of fun. In Morrowind you basically got dropped off in the middle of a town and pretty much everyone experianced the same feeling for the first 5 min or so which was. ummm like what am I supposed to like ummm do??? Oblivion is totally diff. You hit the ground running and within the first minutes you have a weapon and you are fighting your way through rats and goblins. Collecting items casting magic and in general having a great time. The environments are fantastic and the lighting is amazing. Im not sure yet but while I was underground I had to use a torch for light and since torches are consumable I think the light it provided slowly diminished as the torch was wearing out. However you dont really notice since its soooo gradual your eyes get used to the lesser level of light. SO cool! SO then I finally made it out of the intro dungeon and out into the real world and well it was the middle of the night and it was soo dark I could hardly see anything. It was really overcast so the moon and stars provided little light and I didnt really feel like using all my torches up so I decided to use the wait feature and basically rest till morning. Well I awoke at dusk and got to see a sun rise which was pretty awesome and then I saw something that was just plain cool. Deer. yup I know this should not be that big a deal but animals in games are almost always hostile or they dont care that you are there. Well these deer were not like killer demon deer. They were normal deer out in the morning grazing and when I crested the hill they became aware of me and instantly took off. I gave chase and for a minute or so just enjoyed running after the deer and no I had no intention of killing them. but like I said it was just cool to see passive life in the world that reacted to me being there. Now onto my new best friend -- Mr. Compass. Ahh one of my big complaints with morrowind was sometimes it was hard to know where you were going. However thanks to the addition of the compass as soon as I was out of the dungeon I knew where I was going thanks to a little pointer arrow that is helping me along my way. SO thats really cool. SO far all my major complaints against morrowind have been fixed and that is really cool. I totally cant wait to play this more and hope to get a little bit of time with it tonight maybe. Otherwise it could be saturday till I get a chance to play it and that would just suck. But hey once I get the house spotless I should have some more time. I will post more thoughts as I play through.

cheers!