Chris Knodel.net

Coffman YMCA Triathlon

2009-05-11T06:06:00.002-05:00

Ok so here is a quick race report for my Peeps!

I felt really good at this race and like I really did as good as I could seeing as I had been sick the two weeks prior and really trained very very little. SO on to the Race Report.

Race was this past saturday 5/9/09 and the weahter was pretty nice. Low 60's and overcast in the morning but then the clouds cleared out and the sun came out and it got a LOT nicer.

Swim - 300m's in a pool - Time 00:6:21

The Swim was HILLARIOUS! It was so crowded that you could barely move and it was the most relaxed and easy swim I have ever had. Barely had to try to at all since the current from the previous 150+ swimmers had the water moving pretty nicely on its own. I just kinda jumped in for the ride. My right goggle filled with water a couple of times but I was able to stand up and walk a bit 2x's and adjust till they were right. Yes it was that crowded that in the shallow end you could walk and not impede anyone. LOL! The other funny thing that happened half way through the swim was I saw a timing chip floating towards me so I did the respectable thing and grabbed it and then when I got to the end of that lap tossed it on the pool deck. I just saved someone $30-50 in lost timing chip fees! Finished the swim and like I said. I was not even winded. Didnt feel like I had even swum at all. Next year im going to seed myself much higher so that I can get pulled along faster and maybe get a swim PR!

T1 - 00:01:11

T1 was pretty uneventfull. Still getting used to my new shoes and I would like to be able to leave them on the bike as that would crush my T1 time but i have not gotten to really practice that so not going to try it in a race.

Bike - 11 miles - 00:33:41 - 19.6mph avg!!!

The bike felt really good. I went out strong as I noticed we had a tail wind to start which would mean a head wind on the way back. SO I took advantage of that. My Computer has been giving me issues lately and decided it just didnt want to work on race day. I smacked it around, pushed buttons, even removed it and reseated it but nope would not pick up speed. (however when I got home and took my bike off the rack and wheeled it into the garage guess what started working??? GRRRRR) so I thinks its new computer time. NEway. The other issue I had was my anti splash thingy in my profile aero drink bottle has died as its gotten really moldy and so I threw it away. WOW does that really limit the splashing. I think I lost half the water out of my bottle by it splashing on me so that was kinda annoying. All in all it was a really good ride. I only got passed by two people and did a LOT of passing. One thing I love about racing is how its the one time you have the road to yourself. I loved blowing through some major intersections with cars being stopped by police and just tearing through them! I felt wicked fast on the bike and it was a lot of fun!

T2 - 00:00:47

I am typically able to produce what I consider to be lightning fast T2 times and this was no exception. In and out in a jiffy with no issues. I do not think I could have done it much faster!

Run - 00:26:18 - 8:29 pace

The run. Sigh...this has been my achilles so far this season and I know why. I have not done any brick workouts and hopefully I can start getting out to ceasars soon to work on that. I just dont have any legs when I get to the run and both my last three races have resulted in an upset stomach once I started running so I need to work out that issue. Other than that the course was pretty cool. Out and back loop through settlers walk sub division so we were on the road and it was pretty much closed off to us. There were a couple of pretty good hills that I was NOT expecting but I managed. I was making good use of my watch and my goal was sub 01:10:00 and with one mile down I had 20 minutes left till the hour 10 mark so I felt like I just needed to keep a good pace and push as hard as I could but felt like my goal was definitly within reach. As I came up the last hill and was about 500 yards from the finish chute I finally saw my girls! (they got there about 15 min earlier as Kaiya decided to sleep in LOL) Its always such a huge boost emotionally to see them and was a great way to finish!

Final recap and numbers:

Total time

01:08:18 w00t w00t made my goal!!!!!!!! That time gave me a place of 11 out of 26 for my Age Group and 53 out of 231 overall so not too shabby. SO im really happy with how I did and feel like it was a really good race for me considering the cold and all.

Cheers mates!

Bikes I lust for!

2009-05-04T08:39:00.002-05:00

Ok so as promised here are the bikes currently on Sparky's drool worthy "fo sur ain neva gonna happen!" Dream list
Here we have the BMC Time machine. Leading the charge in the OH MY GOSH YOU SPENT HOW MUCH ON A BICYCLE category these are just beautifull pieces of Art. Totally custom hand made to your measurments and hurting your wallet in the neighborhood of $20k+ the time machine is about as extravagent as you can get. However for me I could never own this bike as I feel like if you are going to own a bike that is nicer and cost more than virtually every pro rider out there you need to have the legs to back it up and I just dont have those.
Cervelo P3 -- The big brother to the P2c in my last post and still quite affordable (all things considered). You can build up one of these for less than 5 grand and you would be riding a bike that most of the pros would be happy with. Considered by many to be the second fastes bike around (behind its newer sibling the P4) this little cherry can be guaranteed an appearance at virtually any race in the World. So what do I like? The design works. Its proven and the guys at cervelo dont believe in marking up their product outrageously so its still approachable by many of the masses.
Look 596 -- This bike is another in the Art category to me. I just love the design of the frame and the "broken" top tube. Integrated bayonet fork and stem round out the sexy on this bute. This is just a sheer head turner but again if your gonna ride a look 596 you gotta have some legs. Big time!
Guru Crono -- I have loved the concept of this bike for a loooong time. Guru is a great custom frame maker and for around $8-10k (depending on the parts group) you can get one of the few fully custom made aero carbon frames available. What is also cool to me is the way guru goes the extra mile in the finishing touches. Lets face it you can have the most amazing and aero bike in the world but if its ugly it loses a lot. Case in point for me the Cervelo P4 and why that didnt make my list! Your options for paint and sticker are virtually limitless with the crono and I just really love the way its put together.
Argon 18 E-114 -- Ok last but certainly not least. If I could pick from anything on the list it would proably be this bike. I think the price tag comes in the $4-6k range depending on parts and I just think the look of this bike is AMAZING.

Well I hope you all enjoyed that.

Cheers!

bikes I swoon for!

2009-04-30T07:02:00.007-05:00

Ok so first off I want to say that I do love my bike ALOT! Its comfy and its fast but unfortunately it lacks a little bit of sexy which I know should not matter but oh my gosh it does sooo much. My issue with my bike is that well. Its not very pretty. ITs a softride but not the pretty softrides with the single beam. Mine is a softride lite and here is a stock pic of it. Plus mine is showing its age. Its probably close to 8 years old and since the company is out of business when the beam fails (which it will) im outta luck. And knowing me its going to break during a race. On top of that its not very stiff in the bottom bracket and this is the worst climbing bike I have ever owned. Good thing I live in flat Ohio!

So it just kinda looks like a franken bike to me. Tubes everywhere and not very fluid. I guess what im saying is the bike doesnt really "look fast"

Ok enough of that onto the wish list. Please note that all of these bikes are in the category of what I would consider to be realistic options for bikes. They are all considered to be just a smidge above "entry-level pricing" SO nothing on here is top of the line.

SO first up we have the Quintana Roo Seduza!

Ok things I love aobut this bike. I love the color scheme and graphics. QR changed up their decals a year or so ago and I love the new look. QR has a solid geometry built around the needs of a triathlete and well yeah I just love everything about the bike. Even the stock wheels which would make great aero training wheels. Oh and did I mention its CARBON!!!!

Next up Cervelo P2c:

Ok what else can I say but this -- Chrissie Wellington has won Kona twice on this exact same rig! thats a pretty big statement. This bike just oozes all kinds of sexy. It's one of the few bikes that can claim to be built from the wind tunnel and it shows. Everything about the bike is designed around it being as fast as possible. The current paint / colour scheme is not my favorite but the component selection and build of the bike leaves absolutely nothing to be desired. Only drawback is the size that I should be on would not fit my current race wheels. BOO! That and the fact that like everyone in creation seems to ride cervelo makes it look a bit like your just a follower of a current trend.

Next up Cannondale Slice Hi-Mod 5:

This is Cannondale's entry level spec Tri-bike. What I like about it is that the only thing that is entry level about it is the parts kit and thats still a pretty good parts kit. The frame is the same frame that (we all assume) Chrissie Wellington will be riding to her 3rd Kona Victory this year. I have always been a fan of Cannondale and purposely picked shops to work out that sold cannondale in hopes that I could eventually buy one. I have owned two cannondales in my life and both have met with very sad demises of which was not Cannondales fault. In general I love Cannondale as a company and love the way they build stuff. I would really be open to giving this bike a chance and you do not see many of them around thats for sure!

Lastly the Argon18 E-112:

Ok from a looks standpoint this is my favorite bike of the bunch. I LOVE Argon18 and the bikes they make and think this is just all kinds of pretty. This is the most expensive of the bunch that I have shared today and that does not include the sweet zipps that are in the pic. This bike wins major style points and the relative obscurity of the brand helps make it stand out in the crowd and I know if I owned this bike I would turn a lot of heads. Those heads would more than likely be passing me but hey they would still be thinking "why did I get a cervelo when I could have gotten that!"

SO maybe in a few years I will make the upgrade or perhaps my bike will break and then I will be "forced" to buy a new ride.

Tune in again soon for my next post "Outrageously Priced Bikes I LUST for!"

cheers!

Its spring which means race time!

2009-04-28T06:47:00.002-05:00

SO here I am at the finish of the Miami U. Tri!

It was a good season opener in that I realize some things I need to work on. My goal this year is speed, which means most of my workouts have been very different from the past. Since I have such limited time for training and I get plenty of recovery time im just trying to attack every workout that I can and go as hard as I can. SO heres my wee race report:

Got to Miami at 6am on the dot. Breezed through registration and got my transition area set up. It was pretty cold - about 32 at the time and I was wondering if this race was such a good idea. I had been suffering from some Stomach issues for the past week and almost scrubbed the race but could not bear the thought of wasting the money on the entry fee so I went. They had a bit of a snafu over the timing chips so I had to wait till I basically started the swim to get my chip. not real happy about that one. SO anyway I did some warm ups in the pool and that helped with some nerve issues then I just kinda chilled out for awhile. I brought my mp3 player and had queued up some good tunes and just really relaxed and watched the shuffle around me. Im really happy with my pre-race routine. Felt great.

Swim: The pool at miami is AWESOME but we do not get along. I dont know why but I hate swimming in that pool. Like years past I seated myself way in the back knowing that I would rather be passing than being passed. Also the tail end of the swim is ALWAYS less congested so less bottlenecks to slow you down. I felt like I was flying through the swim. Very calm and very relaxed and just kept picking off people left and right. For the most part everyone was hugging the lane on the right so I just stayed left and more or less had open water the whole time! Got out of the pool and checked my watch 8:13 - slow by many standards but a PR for me by over a minute in that pool. Guess my swimming has been helping!

T1 - ungh one of the things I hate about the miami race is how cold it ALWAYS is. I had decided via my primary sponsors recomendation to wear my long sleeve top that I bought from finishing IMFL. Its a great top very warm and very comfortable. However I really struggled getting it on and gave up a TON of time in T1 b/c of it.

Bike: I ran out of T1 and hopped on the bike and started to crank away. B/c of where I was sitting in the swim I was again picking off people left and right. Mostly mtn bikes and older road bikes so I knew this was mostly the first timer crowd. I felt pretty good through most of the bike but did notice some cramping in my calves which I attribute to the cold weather. I hate cold weather. About two weeks ago I got a new pair of Tri-specific bike shoes. They are Pearls and I really like them but I need to practice getting out of them more. It took me way to long to get my feet out SO thats something I need to work on and get faster with.

T2 came into t2 and hopped off the bike and well first time ever but I lost a shoe! so I had to run back and grab that. DOH! into transition I racked my bike - off with my helmet then on with the runners....I said on with the runners....what the!!!! I put like TONS of body glide all around the opening of these fricking things.....why wont my foot go in.....man my feet are numb....oh come on why wont my foot go in my shoe.....finally. In short not the best t2 for me.

Run: ungh got out on the run and was feeling the affects of the cold even more. Calves were really cramping and my stomach issues from the week prior started to hit. I just kept thinking "Man am I happy this is only 3 miles." Ran easy for the first mile and then on mile 2 I started to try to pick up the pace. Just focused on whoever was in front of me and tried to pick them off. I think I probably negative split each mile in the run but it was still really slow.

Finish!!!! w00t w00t I finished in a time of 1:21:?? This was a bit outside of my sub 1:10 goal but im thinking that is perhaps unrealistic. Next years goal is 1:15. SO anyway I was 192 out of 652 people who signed up. Not to shabby for the season opener.

SO what else is new. Well im racing again in about 1.5 weeks and again Im really excited about that. Its a local race for me (like 5 minutes away!) and it will be warm!!! so excited. SO look back for a race update then.

Oh and coming soon will be my post about bikes I swoon for!

Cheers!

Race Schedule and some other things

2009-03-11T06:29:00.003-05:00

Thats right Im making the jump back into Ironman racing but with a twist. Due to the amount of time it took to do a full ironman and the general lack of a race within close proximity I have decided (with my primary sponsors consent!) to sign up for Ironman Steelhead 70.3. For those of you not so in the know the 70.3 is a clever way of saying "half Ironman" since a full is 140.6 miles. It will be in Michigan on August 1st and hopefully Rich and Becki will be able to come watch me as well! In fact anyone who wants to come cheer me on and see what all this fuss is about just let me know. I would love to have the support!

Hopefully with the distance being shorter it will be a lot easier to accomodate the training required while still attempting to be competitive. My training for IMFL was really focused around being able to go at a comfortable pace for a very very long time. Comfortable in many ways translates to slow. For the Half im going to focus this year on speed. I WANT to get faster. My swim is picking up and in many ways im not so worried about it. The swim for steelhead is in lake michigan with the current and is wetsuit legal. Knowing what I know now about drafting on the swim, how much faster I swim with a wetsuit, annnnnd that I will be swiming with a current makes me think im going to be puting up my fastest swim time of my life! The bike. My initial goal is to be able to do the bike in under 3 hours. Its only 56 miles so if I can maintain something in the low 20's then I will be golden. But wait theres more! The run. This is my biggest worry. How to still have speed for the run. I cant go so hard on the bike that im toast for the run. I want to post a 2 hour half marathon, which means i would be booking it pretty fast. We shall see. Whats likely 45 min swim. 3.5 hour bike 3 hour run. That would put me around 7 hours. I want to go under 6 and would prefer under 5:30. So thats that!

What else -- Oh yeah other races
I might possibly do the miami U tri although I hate how cold it is at that race. Its really just a smidge to early in the year to be racing outside. I have always been cold when I do that race and I really like that race but just dont know. Still on the fence with this one but I better make up my mind as its in about a month

Springboro Y Tri -- w00t w00t so excited for this race as I feel like its in my backyard and will not require me to get up at some awful hour and drag my butt to a race. Thats in may and im really excited for that.

Wright Pat Tuesday duathlon series -- This one is a bit on the fence. I have only been able to work it out to race this once in the past 2 years due to schedule conflicts. There are like 5 or 6 races in the series and I hope to be able to do at least a couple of them.

Wheelie Fun Race Series -- I just found out last night that Bob is trying to put on a little wed. night race series over at ceasars and im so geeked about that! I hope to be able to do whatever he has planned.

So after a bit of a sabatical last year it looks like this year is really shaping up to be a good year of racing for me. Im most excited about the tues / wed night club races. If I can make those work I could race 5-8 times without it really costing much and just for fun which is what its all really about anyway.

Other than that things are going ok. I was sick last week for a couple of days and Lisa has been sick since Sunday so its been a weird week. Work is work and I keep trudging along. But I feel like I have a lot to look forward too with the summer approaching.

Oh before I forget in exactly 1.5 weeks Lisa, Kaiya and me leave for ORLANDO baby!!!! Yes a much needed week of R&R is coming!

Cheers!

sup??

2009-01-22T07:27:00.002-05:00

SO yes my blogging has been sporadic at best of late and well yeah sorry I guess! SO here is a wee update on whats going on with me. (yes of course my patented bulleted list is to follow!)

Work - All things considered not bad. I have a job and it pays well and I have no real fear of losing my job despite the fact that the national economy is in the toilet. For that I am thankful. I have several HUGE projects I am working on and of course they all have converged at once! Yippee!

Home - My parents are visiting from scotland this week so that is always fun. Lisa and Kaiya are amazing and thanks to some available Baby sitting I think Lisa and I are going on a date tonight! First one in months!

Fitness - I am on the cheerios lower your cholesterol diet and have been so for about 2 months. I think its working well and I am down 10lbs!!! w00t w00t I need to reschedule my cholesterol screening and pray for some good results! I am teaching twice a week at the Y (cycling and boot camp) and LOVING it. I also think that I will be doing a half iron man this year as my big race. There is one up in Michigan called steel head and I think thats the race for me. I have 7 months till the race which should be plenty of time to really get ready for it so im starting to get excited.

Gaming - Playing fable 2. dont like it much - sticking with it to see if it gets better. wishing upon a star it gets better. Its really fable 1 save two things. Now you have a dog and you can also be a girl. Other than that it feels IDENTICAL. Something that is so far missing from the game - ARMOR???? seriously how can you have an action adventure game were your romping through the hills fighting hordes of badies in nothing but hotpants and a vest???

Life in general - I hate this time of year in Ohio with the cold and the snow and the below zero temps so if anyone wants to give me a job in hawaii or some place warmer I wouldnt mind! All things considered though im doing ok so far this winter. Jan. is almost over and that mostly leaves feb before things start warming up a bit.

Well thats all for now.

cheers!

Per request a new post

2008-12-17T11:37:00.002-05:00

Ok so like yeah I know i have fallen off the face of the earth is seems. SO whats up with me.

Work - continues to be the bright ray of sunshine that blinds you in the eyes and causes you to crash your car into a dump truck of manure, thus blinding you and making you stinky. ^_^ is that enough? Should I go on??? Lets not.

Home - K-bear is the bomb. She's just amazing and i love that she gives hugs now. Its just like the coolest. Lisa is as always right up there too. I think I have the best set of girls on the planet. I cant speak for the rest of the family but im getting really excited about X-mas! I got lisa the most amazing <----> and decided that if I was going to get <----> that I would have to add <----> and <----> to it so that it all flowed well. And after that it was just natural to add <---->. SO needless to say im really excited to give Lisa her presents. Kaiya is in love with all things monkeys right now, maybe climbing IS in her future, so im going to try to pick up some curious george stuff for her, maybe today. She still doesnt really know its Christmas or what that means but if you head over to her blog you can see a pic of her decorating a tree! Priceless!

Video Games - Over the past few months lisa and I polished off Lost Odyssey which was I have to say my favorite RPG since FFVII which is a big deal for me to say. It was really well done, Great story, great combat system. And tons of fun. After that we got through Lego Indiana jones. I was skeptical of it since I had already played two lego games. Just wondered if it would feel fresh or more of the same. They really localized it to the indy franchise and make it a lot of fun. GOOD JOB! Next up in the que is silent hill homecoming. I have heard a lot of mixed reviews of it but at this point how can Lisa and I NOT play a silent hill game? We have played all the other ones that I can get my hands on (stupid japanese only cell phone games) so its a must.

Fitness - Well I have been teaching on avg two classes a week now. Spin on Wed. and Boot Camp on Thursdays and Im having a lot of fun with it. In fact I need to wrap this up so that I can go teach spin! It also looks like I will be taking the plunge into being a race director as I have gotten the backing of the downtown YMCA (my home Y) to host an Indoor Triathlon. Should be TONS of fun and I think it will work out really well. Will be a little bit of work as right now im trying to drum up some sponsorship schwag. Today im going to hit some bike stores and see if they will donate water bottles and maybe some other stuff. Who knows but it should be a lot of fun. Im trying to eat better and workout at least 4x's a week and so far after 2 months i have seen zero difference. I'm quite frustrated but I'm going to stick with it. I want to do a couple half ironmans next year and I need to lose a little bit of weight if I want to be able to go faster than I currently am.

Well I hope this gives you guys your "fix"

cheers!

LIKE OH MY GOSH I CANT BELIEVE IT

2008-10-15T10:48:00.003-05:00

Ok so I am totally wanting to make the switch to apple at work but there have been 3 factors that have prevented that from happening.

1.) the person who signs off on purchases HATES anything that is apple. I dont even think he would use an ipod. Yeah I know its dumb.

2.) I run and love my dual 17" displays and would not want to go back to a single display setup

3.) until 5 min ago I thought the only mac that could do dual displays was the mac pro which at a starting price of 2799 is cost prohibitive at almost 3x's the cost of a new dell.

Well I had this idea of how cool it would be if the IMAC's let you do a video out to a second or even third monitor. With a price tag of around 1300 for a 20" it would be a tough sell but one I thought I could pull off. I then got this super gushy feeling as the image of 17" 20" 17" displays danced in my head. SO much desktop real estate!!!! SO I decided to see if the apple store had a chat function to talk to a sales person. IT did and here is what I found out.

T: Hi, my name is Tomeca F. Welcome to Apple!
Good morning.
Would you like help with your shopping?

me:Hi Tomeca my name is Chris
I had a bit of a configuration question
im currently primarily a windows user that runs a dual monitor setup

T:I'm happy to assist with that.

Me:I LOVE MY DUAL MONITORS
the only real option I have seen in replicating this is the mac pro
or can you take an imac and use the video out to connect to another monitor
if so what is the limit

T:One moment while I research that for you.
Neither one support 2 displays.

Me:really
so the only mac that supports multiple displays is the mac pro

T:No.
It doesn't either.

Me:are you sure
b/c it lets you buy two displays in the apple store
for the Mac Pro
and it shows dual DVI ports on the back of it

T:That is what took me so long, I was double checking.

Me: "All Mac Pro graphics cards support two Apple displays, each up to 30 inches."

T:That is the older one.

Me:really
so the new ones dont support that out of the box
WOW

T:That is what my supervisor checked and found out.

Mr:ouch
so what do people do who want to run a dual or more display setup?

T:I don't know.

Me:hmm
well thank you very much

T:You're welcome.

Me:have a nice day

T:You too!
Thank you for visiting the Apple Store. We appreciate your business.
Thank you for choosing the Apple Store. If you have any additional questions, please chat us again.

Like WOW. She has to be Wrong. I think I might have to pay a visit to the apple store in November when I am in C'bus and see what the Genius bar comes up with.

sup sup

2008-07-22T12:30:00.003-05:00

Ok so I know that I am not a great blogger but oh well sue me. SO what have I been up to you might ask???? WEll since you asked here is the return of the long missed Chris "Sparky" Knodel bulleted list!!!!

Work:
oi nutter - thats all I can say. I am slammed, perhaps bammed, but there has been no thank you ma'am. I am in effect drowning in work. Most of which requires me to break things that can only be broken off hours which means in light of all that will follow (keep reading) I am having major schedule issues. Oh happy day!

Life:
oi nutter - again all I can say. Here is whats on our plate right now. Kaiya is still in therapy twice a week. Lisa is getting more night meetings as her schools construction projects take shape and well that just seems to be more the nature of her job. I know its not quite once a week yet but its starting to feel that way. Kaiya is in swim lessons on mon and wed night and thats fun but just adds more to the mix. And finally a sign went in our front yard yesterday proclaiming to the world that our house is officially for sale. It makes me sad. I like this house. Oh well lets here it for stupied attachments to innanimate objects.

Training:
Im starting to feel like I cant call myself a triathlete anymore. I feel like you have to race or ride your bike to be able to make that claim and so far I have done neither. I was exclusivly riding the mtn bike to get ready for my race this saturday which I was totally looking forward too. Oh did I mention it got cancelled? SO MAD. neway so no more races on the horizon. I think im going to sign up for the Air Force Marathon again. Almost just so that I have a longish race this year. Although I have to tell you a marathon doesnt even seem that long anymore. Im in a swimming stroke class and thats going well. Im debating on joining a masters swim team this fall/winter and trying to convince lisa that she should join with me. I think that would be a lot of fun.

gaming:
Lisa and I finished up Silent Hill Origins which was really freaky cool. It totally played like a port from a handheld (which it was) but it was still good none-the-less. Now we are playing Lost Odyssey. Giddy squeel of school girl delight its soo pretty and so far the story has some pretty good depth. Also lisa is digging on it which means we actually get to play it. Just picked up lego indiana jones so we will probably hit that when losy odyssey completes.

me:
Im inserting a seperate column. The last few months - like since january really have been pretty rough for me. My doctor was trying something new in my thyroid treatment which was the addition of another med. Over the past few months it served to only do 2 things for me. 1 - caused me to gain quite a bit of weight (15lbs) annnnnndddd 2 - caused me to be, in general, a jerk to be around. So after some consulting with my doctor:

me: this sucks what should I do
doc: lets add another med (which would make 3 total)
me: how bout I say screw this new one im on and go back to the way things were before.
doc:well.....or you could stop taking med 2 and start taking med 3
me: orrrrrrr I could go off #2 say whatever to #3 and just go back to the way I was.
doc: hmmm ok we can try that I guess.
me: :-)

SO after a nightmarish 2 weeks of hell on earth that was weening and withdrawel of med #2 I am feeling a lot better. I think I have mellowed quite a bit and dont quite feel like I want to rip someones throat out and shove it down their neck everytime they ask for something. ^_^

so thats me.

cheers!

One ring, I mean remote, to rule them all!

2008-06-25T07:12:00.003-05:00

Ok so like its been a long time pet peeve of mine to have like a thousand remote controls floating all over the place in the living room. I have tried some so-called "universal" remotes in the past and have always been dissapointed. It seems like they are really only capable of turning on "most" devices changing the channel and volume and thats about it. There is little to no ability to use or add the special functions on your original remote and that has always caused me to abandon whatever I had purchased to help me out. Well I finally decided to invest a little in a REAL UNIVERSAL remote. I got a Logitech Harmony 550 and although I have not used it yet the setup was a breeze. Its all run via software on your pc or mac and what I really like about it is that you set up activities on the remote. What that means is that with the press of one button on the remote it will launch the activity that I want to do. SO for example if I press the "watch TV" hotkey the remote will:

turn on the tv and set it to channel 3

turn on my DTV box

and then use the channel up and down buttons for the DTV box and the volume up and down for the TV.

or say I push the xbo x360 softkey. that will:

turn on the tv and set it to component 1

turn on the surround sound system and set it to av 1

turn on the xbox 360

Its soooo freaking cool and totally customizable.

Im soo geeked to be giving this a try and like I said if the set up is any indicator of how it will work this is going to rawk the sox off paris hilton

cheers

What did we think was going to happen???

2008-05-20T05:41:00.002-05:00

Ok so im not typically very political or very much interested in what the media thinks I should care about but I have been getting more and more interested in the current state of the US economy as of late. Mostly b/c of the reactions and the finger pointing that is going on and the fact that I think most of it is absurd. SO lets take a stroll through my observations about the two big buzz topics that are going on right now.

First up - The housing market
Ok so like 6-8 years ago I think it was don rumsfeld (sp) went on what I can only call a power trip and abuse of authority and started cutting the federal interest rate in an attempt to boost the economy. Now in general I am all for a little relief when it comes to interest rates but it just seemed to me like he was out of control at the time. It seemed like every other week he was cutting the rate again and again. Why? Instant gratification (this will be a recurring theme) Yes by slashing the interest rate Rumsfeld was able to create the appearance almost instantly that he was doing a good job. However slashing interest rates doesnt change outwardly how much $$ people have only how much they think they can have in terms of credit available and the risk (interest) involved in repayment. SO its no surprise that with the interest rates falling like the current US dollar that people were going out in droves buying up all sorts of things. Cars, Houses, boats, tons of big ticket items. Well I remember when Lisa and I purchased our house. It was a wonderfull and opportunistic time and we got a smashing great interest rate for our mortgage and are still very happy with that. However at the time we were "told" by the realty chick that we could afford a house that was significantly more than we purchased. We crunched the #'s and disagreed yet she kept pushing for us to buy more or live beyone our means now and figure it out later (again instant gratification) We declined and bought what we felt we could afford -AT THE TIME!- WOW what a novel concept. We rejected the notion of an Adjustable rate mortgage to get more than we could afford and went a more humble route. Why is all this interesting? Lisa and I have Zero worries about forclosure right now. Not b/c we are wealthy beyond imagination but b/c we live within our means which seems to be a concept most americans can not or refuse to grasp. We are actually thinking about capitalizing on the current forclosure crisis and snatching up a swanky house just b/c of how cheap everything is right now. So again I ask what did everyone expect was going to happen. You let the american population make irresponsible decisions and aprove them for loans that are by any logical calculation unrealisitc and then cry about it when the rates hit the fan. I have even heard reports that people are suing their mortgage company in an attempt to not lose their homes. I have no idea why anyone would think they could win an argument like that, I mean it would be like suing McDonalds b/c you only ate their food and got fat.....oh wait......never mind......

Next up the Gas Crisis (insert spooky boogy man like sounds here)
Ok im going to try to keep this simple so that everyone understands. Oil is a commodity not a right. I just want to establish that right from the get go. SO lets have a lesson in supply and demand. Lets say we have two boys Chris and Tim. (yes I know original names) Well lets say Tim is in the basement of his house and discovers that the previous owners left a box of baseball cards in the basement. Tim takes the time to salvage the cards and clean them up package them in nice little wrappers to preserve them and keep the dirt out. SO now Timmmy is like any kid and he wants to buy toys and candy and what not. Well Timmy aint got no job but he does have these baseball cards so he goes to Chris and asks if he wants to buy any of them. Chris isnt into baseball cards but realizes they have an inherrant value and so he says ok I will give you a quarter a card. Timmy is like Yo these are like totally vintage and billy across the street will give me like a dollar a card and so Chris is like fine go sell to Billy. But billy doesnt have any money so Timmy sells the cards to Chris for a long time one at a time at a quarter a card. Well one day Billy comes into some money and realizes that the cards Timmy is selling are very valuable and offers Timmy his dollar a card option again. But this time hes got money. Now Chris starts to panic b/c hes been buying those cards at a quarter and stockpilling or reselling them for more. SO he counters the dollar with 1.50 and so on and so on.

let me spell it out.
Chris = The US
Timmy = The middle Easy
Billy = The rest of the world -specifically china
The baseball cards = oil

Its simple supply and demand and is one of the most basic economical concepts around. Supply stays constant (if we are lucky) and as demand increased so does price. Lisa and I have been telling people for years to stop complaining about gas that was $1.50 a gallon stating that over in europe and the rest of the world - even canada - the price of petrol was 2- 3x's+ more than the US. Why should we assume this was going to last? SO we did what we do best. We were the #1 consumer so we got the best price. Now however China wants as much as we get and they are willing to pay for it. SO we have to pay too. Again oil is a commodity not a right. (another concept americans seem to have issues grasping)

SO again like with the housing market we are blaming everyone we can think of but ourselves. We are blaming big oil companies and their astronomical profits, which if you take the time to look at are at roughly the same percentage of profit as when gas was a lot cheaper. It only sounds like more b/c gas costs more. but it costs them more too.

We blame the President. Please. The presidential seat currently is in my opinion almost powerless to make any real changes quickly and has to be approved by so many other peopl that if you really think that the prez is the reason gas is so high then you would have to blame every single politician in the country and it would have to be the largest conspiracy in the history of the world and is highly unlikely b/c it screws them over as much as it does us.

We blame the opec for not pumping more, inflating the price and generally doing what we would be doing if we were in their shoes but arent so its wrong. Seriously. Think about it. Say that the US could swap with the middle east in terms of being the world supplier of Oil. Do you really think we would be taking a sympathetic ear to developing nations? Do you think we would be setting a fixed price and then increasing production so that supply met or exceeded demand in an effort to stablelize the global economy. ORRR do you think we would be laughing all the way to the bank as we bragged about how awesome we were. I think if the shoe were on our foot we would be doing the same thing.

SO who else can we blame. I dont know and I dont care I want to drive a car that has the aerodynamic efficiency of a block of wood and gets 10 mpg city and 12 mpg highway. Why? B/c im american dangit and I desere it and I want whats coming to me right now!

SO those are my thoughts on the current economic crisis in america and why I feel that its our fault. All of it. We should have seen what was coming as it was the only logical end to this scenario but we chose to keep our heads burried in the sand and assume it would all work out. Well its not and things are going to be a bit tougher for those who assumed their poor choices would never catch up with them.

cheers!

Some movie reivews

2008-04-29T06:44:00.003-05:00

Well lisa and I go through periods where we rent a bunch of movies and then basically we stop for a few months and then go back and watch the stuff we have missed. Its a nice little system that I think works well for us! SO anyway we have been watching quite a few movies lately and despite the fact that I have enjoyed most of them I typically see no reason to post my thoughts on any of them. Well I have two that I would like to discuss this morning. One because it was so good I just have to give props to it and another that was so bad it must be punished!!!

First up Alien Vs. Predator - Requiem

Im almost speechless at how bad this movie was. To date I have seen all the predator movies (more than once) and all the alien movies (more than once) so I feel I have a pretty good grip on both franchises. However This movie decided that even though it was "supposedly" building on all that came before it was going to throw the baby out with the bath water and do whatever the heck they wanted to with the characters. In fact in what was supposed to be one of the more dramatic moments that tugged on your heartstrings (the whole down being blown off the map) I broke out in laughter at the absurdety of the whole thing. The characters were flat and had allusions to back stories that were never developed. The predator that was supposed to act as a galactic clean up man was in effect easily distracted by shiny metal objects and did a crappy job of what he was sent to do. The ultimate weapon /warrior of the movie - the alien predator hybrid of whom im still trying to figure out came into existance (this makes no sense people!!!) was no more effective than a regular standalone predator or alien and therefore was really quite pointless except that some writter some where was like "hey wouldnt it be cool if we crossed and alien WITH a predator!!! that would be flippin sweet!!!!" Finally the ending was about as random as you can get. First we get the few survivors not being quarantined but being helped out as if they were just some hikers lost in the woods and then in one of the greatest whiplash moments ever recorded in movie history we are taken to a scene in some obscure office that is quite possibly the biggest rip on the x-files ever with one exception. The x-files was confusing but made sense, This scene was just random and confusing and left both lisa and me with are jaws dropping going "the heck was that about????" The only redeeming thing I can say about the movie is that in the end it did stop and that is a good thing.

I give it -4 out of 5 sparks

Next up Appleseed - Ex Machina

Ok I hope you are still reading b/c this movie is a must see. Yes its anime and I realize that a lot of people think that anything that is not live action is for kids. Ok yes disney movies are for kids. But that does not mean anime is. Anime is totally different and this particular anime is FREAKING AWESOME. I am going to be quite a bit more brief about this movie vs the one above as I dont want to spoil anything. However I will say this. Its gorgeous absolutly gorgeous. The characters are so well done and the action sequences are some of the most intense and well done that I have seen in a long time. There were several scenes that reminded me a bit of the first matrix - you know the one that didnt suck - but they were even more intense and more well done. Ah the beauty of anime. The only other thing I can say is this. I had a friend over to watch it last week and I told laura that we were going to watch it. I said you should watch it but you wont b/c its animated. But if you gave it a chance you will like it. She looked at the box smiled and bailed. SO I watched it with my friend Robb and we were both just blown away. SO much that I decided to watch it again on saturday during a prolonged car trip. no I was not driving. Well laura was in the van as well and out of boredom and nothing else to entertain her picked up the headphones and watched it. final verdict. She loved it too. What else can I say. Oh yeah I think im going to buy it as well as the 2004 appleseed movie.

I give it 4 out of 5 sparks ****

quick bullet - time - updates

Job - sucks
Lisa - rocks
Kaiya - rocks but is teething and that is really really pitifull
gaming - still working on Eternal Sonata but closing in on the end.
training - adequate. Im teaching spinning and a boot camp aerobics class now! no races on the hoizon

thats about it
cheers!

Disaster Averted

2008-04-08T08:55:00.003-05:00

Well we got some really crappy news on friday night. Skybus tanked. Why did that suck for us? Did I own 50% share in the company and therefore lost millions???? Did I show up for work at columbus airport only to find my company was closed and my job vapor? No nothing drastically severe like that. However I did have my 4 round trip plane tickets become vapor in the space of a few hours and a couple of PR crafted e-mails. what really sucks is that our vacation is supposed to be next week and so getting notified that your airline tanked a week before you were set to leave totally bites. SO Lisa and I talked about it and talked and decided we were not going to go. That the cost of new tickets would be prohibitive as we are trying to pay some stuff off. However on Sunday night we were both still pretty bummed about not going on vacation anymore and we talked again and decided to bite the bullet and just go. I think we both need this week off a lot and with no other means of rest on the horizon this week had become very important to both of us. SO the good news is we are still going to Daytona. The bad news is - its costing us a whole lot more than we had planned. But in the grand scheme mental health is worth more than what those tix cost us so I think we made the right call. SO vacation is back on!

SO that means that in 5 days I will be at the beach with my babies and they will both be in bikinis and I will be very very happy.

Cheers!

you say hello and I say goodbye!

2008-03-11T09:45:00.003-05:00

Well after running windows Vista ultimate for roughly a year now I doing something that is becoming less and less uncommon. Thats right im downgrading (upgrading if you ask me) back to Windows XP. Why am I doing this. Let me sum up a few reasons.

My machines is pretty beefy with an intel pentium D proc and over 3 gigs of ram. I have a nice video card. Dual 17" displays two optical drives ( a cd burner and a dvd burner). And its current age is 2 years old. SO its no slouch and in genreal. However....

compared to an xp machine with lower specs or both proc and ram it takes me over a minute longer to boot than a lesser xp machine.

1.) I am using over 2 gigs of ram most of the time and am having issues with not enough free RAM

2.) My hard drive has become bloated to the point where I only have 2.5 gigs free of space. Vista seems to consume my hdd. just last week I cleared out a lot of stuff that I no longer needed and some stuff that I would have liked to keep but decided it was not critical and could be replaced. This got me to around 14-16 gigs of free space. Well now in the space of a week im back down to 2.5. When I search my drive I can find nothing that should be consuming this space. And when I went through my computer and backed up the files I wanted to keep including all my media I was only at around 17 gigs? SO where is the other 60?????

3.) Microsoft programs often crash while using Vista. This includes IE7 office 2007, even notepad crashed on me this morning. FREAKING NOTEPAD?????

4.) Vista ultimate is the biggest piece of skank ware I have seen yet. (if you dont know what skank ware is look for my wiki on it coming soon!!) I cant believe they charge more for this version. The only usable extra I have seen from it that I tried out was a crappy little texas hold em game. Thats it. Windows dream scene, which I did not plan to use but was excited to see, wont run on a dual monitor system like mine. there goes another feature. Oh and Aero often randomly turns itself off.

5.) programs hang all the time. ALL THE TIME.

6.) The sidebar is perhaps THE most pathetic attempt at copying something from apple. Their are like no real usable gadgets and they dont work as well as widgets do.

7.) It takes forever to do anything. I was trying to edit a photo awhile back and my machine kept crashing while doing a more complex editing option. Well after spending an hour trying I got fed up and decided to try it on my laptop. Ok if you have not seen my laptop its a mobile centrino proc with 512 of ram. it literally took me 30 seconds start to finish to do the edit I was trying to do!!!

8.) The security features serve only one purpose. ANNOYANCE! I only ever saw false positives from all the built in agents and the only person they stopped from accessing my machine was me.

9.) the last straw. today I was trying to upgrade to the newest version of Anti-Virus I have and it took me over an hour to uninstall the old version. Then it took a couple of re-boots before I could install the new ver. All in all took me about 1.5 hours to do. Brian in the next cube over. Same thing 5 minutes.

I am officially disgusted by this piece of garbage that Microsoft released.

Portal is the ROCKAGE!

2008-03-07T09:21:00.002-05:00

Ok so I was talking to a couple of friends and had mentioned letting them borrow the orange box but before I could let it go for a small period of time I had to give portal a try. I have to say that this little concept game is one of the best games I have played in years. The aperture portal gun is simply brilliant and the physics behind the game are flawless. Any game that takes you a good couple of levels to really get your mind around what the heck you are actually doing, and not because of poor design, but because the concept is so new and fresh, is just so awesome. The levels are so well done and they scale in difficulty brilliantly. By the last couple of levels I could come up with a concept of what I would have to do pretty quickly but then the idea of "how the heck am I gonna pull that off" comes into play and makes each level a great challenge. I think whats also great about portal is that although it is totally linear, b/c of the portal system many levels have a number of different ways of reaching the goal. After beating Portal I went online and started to watch vids of how other people played levels and was really surprised at how different they were from my experience. Some did better others did worse but we all got through it. Other areas of note. The narration makes the game what it is. I wont go into too much details but this game has replaced my all time favorite line from a video game. Before this it was from the second nights of the old republic. There is a scene where you meet a new jedi named jolie and in the course of the conversation you have the option of saying "I hate you old man" to him. That used to be my favorite line. Now replaced with "oh come on we had fun didnt we? Like that time you thought I was going to murder you in the fire - that was fun right?"

SO anyway if you have a 360 you need to buy the orange box. Not only is it the best deal in video game history - 5 games for $60 bucks but it includes portal. Did I mention portal rocks. If you dont feel like you can put out the coin for the game then at least go rent it. Portal takes about 4-5 hours on your first play through so its easy to get through with a rental.

BTW -- Portal rocks!

Cheers!

Somedays I feel like people can see right through me.

2008-02-08T11:49:00.001-05:00

Oh wow I guess somedays people can see right through you and today is one of those days. I have been having a bit of pain in my right femur over the last month or so, so my doc suggested I go in and get some slides done just to be safe. I still have not heard the results yet but I will put the slides up here for your viewing pleasure!

Here we can see a nice cross section of my right femur. What is most interesting is if you blow up the picture you can see the shadows of where the screws used to be. Im not sure if this is quite normal or not but I have to say im not terribly thrilled about it. If you look in the top left of the slide you will see a little dot under the R. thats approximately where my bone is hurting. Oh Joy!

the hip bone is connected to the femur bone!

Here is a nice dead on straight shot that shows how much metal is still left in what is essentially my knee. Again I didnt realize it was this much and am not too happy about that. although it does help to explain my my knee hurts so much sometimes.

Well there ya go. A little up close and maybe too personal look into my leg.

Cheers!

new phone on its way!!!!!!

2008-01-31T21:34:00.000-05:00

well im super jazzed b/c this morning i placed the order for my new phone. its a xv 6800 by htc and it will have a full qwerty keyboard wifi and win mobile 6. so it should be pretty cool and i am hoping that its here by sat b/c i have been waiting a month for this. more when i get the phone!

cheers

Vista sp1 rc1

2008-01-29T08:05:00.000-05:00

so yeah right now im instaling sp1 for vista. why? b/c it cant suck any worse than vista does right now. so for the next hour or so my pc is unusable so im blogging from chiyo right now. Hopefully i will get my pc back soon and it will be working better.

Happy belated birthday to me

2008-01-25T23:56:00.000-05:00

ok so i guess not quite yet but at the end of this week i will be finally getting my new mobil an i cant wait!!!!! if i get what i want it will me a new era of blogging for me as the phone i want runs win mobile 6 and has wifi so that means i can start to really utilize things like blogs and twitter more often. b/c i often have like 5 or10 min to kill and i am discovering that wifi is rather ubiquitous. So lets hope for a good late b-day for me!

10957 days without colour

2007-12-31T09:09:00.000-05:00

I came acrossed this video today and it really spoke to me. Im feeling a bit more melancholy than usual and I think it has to do with the fact that in two days I will no longer be in my 20's and im less than thrilled about that. I have also come to another couple of conclusions over the past few days.

1.) I hate my grandfather wolf. - yikes! WOWZA! how can I say that?? Well I never met the guy (that I remember) and despite being an abusive alchoholic of a father and husband he only gave me two things. The first is the reason I shave my head. The second is a world without colour. Man I hate that guy.

2.) I have also grown to strongly dislike Shinobu Ishihara. If you have ever looked into a circle of coloured dots and seen a number you can thank him. If however you have ever looked into a circle of colured dots and seen only coloured dots you can thank him for helping to ruin your life.

Im thinking of designing a t-shirt to express my disgust for his lifes work and my rejection of his test. I have not been able to come up with a good idea though. I definitely want the text to all be in Japanese so I will be looking for help on this from those good with the jp speak. My basic idea is a test plate with some text like "dont label me" "you ruined my life" " you have crippled me" " I will hate you till the ends of the earth" that type of thing. but it should be clever and right now im just in angst mode so im not happy with what I am thinking thus far.

cheers!

Some random fun

2007-11-15T18:00:00.001-05:00

Now that the ironman is over everyone keeps asking "what next???" Maybe we will give this a try

I AM AN IRONMAN!!!!!!!

2007-11-04T10:57:00.000-05:00

Well its Sunday morning and I can finally say that I am an IRONMAN! The race was the longest thing I have ever done in my life and it was more pain and suffering than I think I have ever been through. But its over and im pretty psyched that I finished. Total time of 15:38:17. CRAP THATS A LONG TIME!

Well im going to give some brief highlights. I got to my bike to check the tires on race morning and the rear was flat again. SO I pumped it up and put 140psi in it so that it would have a bit extra. I figured that I would probably have to add air at some point on the bike course but that it would hold in general. I got everything else set up and went to go put on my wetsuit. I got to the start and seeded my self exactly where I wanted to be. all the way in the back on the inside. I wanted to swim as little as possible so I did not want to be far off to the right like a lot of people do. My thought was that if I was one of the last into the water I wouldnt impede anyone.

The Swim:
Things started really well and I felt great. The water temp was perfect and things were going pretty well. The swim for an ironman is nicknamed "the wash cycle" b/c thats what the ocean looks like when you drop 2300 people in it all swimming in the same direction. I got beat up quite a bit and had a really hard time finding open water to swim in. I made it out of the first lap in 43 minutes and was just so excited to be on track for my time goal of an hour 30. I got back in the ocean and just had a great second lap. The water was a lot clearer and I got to draft off of quite a few guys and that made my 2nd swim lap just as fast as my first but with less effort and thats pretty good to me. I got out of the water at 1:30 on the money and felt great

Out of the water onto the timing mat and then to the wetsuit strippers. WOW that was funny. Two guys told me to lay down and whooosh my wetsuit was off. At least they could have bought me a drink first!

T1 12:04

SO I come out of the water and I got my wetsuit and they hand me my t1 bag and im into the changing tent. I actually managed to find a seat! I quickly get all my gear on and my wetsuit and stuff is lying on the ground. I start stuffing it into the bag and a volunteer yells "let me do that you just get going!!!! SO out of the tent and they start calling my number for someone to get my bike. They kinda dropped the ball on this one as I was not supposed to have to go to my rack to get my bike but I basically did and when I got there I grabbed my bike and the first thing I did was check the rear tire. Which was dead flat. DOH. SO I ran to the mechanical tent and spent the next 8 min watching them change my tire out. So my t1 time sucked big time

The Bike 7:02:57

Well after the mechanical issue I was off and feeling really good. I was glued to my heart rate monitor and was sure to not go outside of my target zone. In the beginning I was being passed by a lot of people and just kept telling myself to ride this thing smart and to listen to my body.
Which I did. I was riding really solidly and was surprised at my pace which was around 17-18 mph. I just kept picking off mile markers and was having a total blast. At this point I was loving racing the ironman and was just having the most fun ever! I even came up with a little song that I kept singing to myself on the bike. It went like this

I love my softride it is really great
it smooths out the rough roads that other bikers hate!

I saw a lot of crap on the bike course that really surprised me. Bottles still in their cages. I saw one bike just on the side of the road and a ton of tubes and tires and stuff that people had not secured properly to their bikes that fell off. Well around mile 70 things started to go downhill for me. First my computer just stopped registering at all. I dont know why. I pulled over at the next stop and checked and everything was aligned properly but it just no longer was working. SO that stunk as I no longer has any clue how fast I was going. Then the first major issue of the day happened. I started to have an asthma attack on the bike. I had my inhaler with me and took a couple of puffs while riding but it just took too long be effective and I was really hurting. I was barely able to take a breath without my lungs hurting and burning and it just made the last 50 miles or so of the bike miserable. I still ended up avg like 15ish mph but had I not had breathing issues I could have maintained my original speed.

T2 7:22

I got off the bike and back into the change tent which was much less crowded this time and I just took a second to sit there and take it all in. At this point I was still not breathing all that well and my right knee was really hurting quite a bit. For those of you not in the know. I still have a rather large screw in my knee from when I broke my femur and it usually only hurts when I go long in workouts like the ironman. SO I was off the bike and not looking forward to the run at all. I got my socks and shoes on, put on my hat and headed out the door. I stopped to hit the port o potty and also to put sunscreen on. My neck and shoulders were pretty burned by this time as well despite putting sunscreen on before racing and re-applying once during the bike.

The run 6:45:33

As I was exiting the transition zone I look over to see my wonderful support crew of Iron spectators and boy did I need to see some familiar faces. SO who was there to support me? Lisa and Kaiya, Laura, Sara and Sue, And Chris and Kerry Wright. It was awesome to have so many people there watching and I really needed them. SO as im exiting I hear "Your a silly sausage" and " Its bumper to bumper on the rainbow bridge" Which I know sounds really random but it made sense to me and it made me smile which is exactly what I needed at the time. I ran probably the first mile and then I had to start walking. I was just in too much pain with my knee and I just could not breath. Plus the more I tried to use my inhaler the sicker to my stomach I got. At this point I had not eaten anything in about an hour and had, had very little liquid. I realized I was getting dehydrated and I needed calories and food. SO I started taking cola at the aid stations and cookies when they had them. Ahh cookies and coke! The combo that saved my ironman. I dont think I have ever wanted to quite something so much in my life as I wanted to quit right then. I was about mile 2, walking, in lots of pain, and the thought of another 24.2 miles just seemed like too much. It seemed impossible. But then I started to think about a conversation that lisa and I had a few weeks before. She asked if I had ever not finished a race and I said no. I have always finished a race and I have never dropped out. At that point I said to myself I am not going to let this race beat me. I am tougher and stronger than this race and I will beat this race it will not beat me. I then realized what the ironman was to me. It was not a race for time. It was not a shot at a spot for kona or an age group win. It was about me beating myself. Overcoming my physical limitations and finishing despite the fact that I probably shouldn't be able too. So then I shifted the focus inward. I told myself I couldnt run with my knee hurting AND not being able to breath but if I could overcome one of those I could run again. I knew I could not do much about my knee. I mean there is a big hunk of metal in there I cant change that. SO I started talking to my asthma. I told it that I would not let it beat me. Not this time. I told myself I was stronger than my asthma that I could do this without breathing and that if I had to I would. SO I kept walking and just told myself that every step was a step closer to the finish and that if I had to walk the whole thing I had enough time to do that. SO I kept walking and I made it to the turn around and that felt really good. It was starting to get dark and it was getting colder so I put my arm warmers back on and that helped a TON. I had talked to my bro Rich the day before and he had told me that whenever he was doing a run and felt like he couldnt go any farther that he would sing psalms in in his head and that always helped. SO I started singing the one he suggested (cant remember the #) and 119x I also sang be thou my vision to myself as thats a special one to lisa and me. About mile 8 I realized I was breathing pretty well and that my knee was no longer hurting that much. SO I started to run. I decided I wanted to finish this loop and run to the next turn around. I wanted Lisa and Kaiya to see my running and not walking. SO I actually ran the next 4 miles and kept a pretty good pace. Then the psychological warfare started. With about 1 mile till the turn around is also the finish and spectators dont know if you are on lap 1 or 2 so they all assumed lap 2. SO for like 15 min all I heard was good job your almost done. That was really hard knowing that I had another 13 miles to walk/run and that I wanted to be done so bad. I wanted to be on my second loop and I didnt want to be going back out into the cold dark night. Plus at this point I was close enough to hear mike reilly telling people they were ironmen and I wanted to be there. I wanted to cut the course and just run it in. Skip the last 13 miles. I figured hey I will cross the line get my pics and my medal. They will say im an ironman and give me my medal. It will be awhile till they figure out I skipped half the marathon. But I didnt do that. I saw lisa and she said hows it going. I replied "this sucks" I told her I was in a lot of pain and I didnt want to keep going. They all started to tell me I was almost done and not to think about how much I had left but how much I had already done. I really cant thank my family and friends enough for helping me get through this. SO I made the turn around and started my way back out into the night. I made another deal with myself. Walk a mile run a mile. Well that didnt happen I walked 1 ran a half and then ended up walking the rest. I was right back to where I was before. Burning and cramping in my lungs and my knee hurt so bad. I just kept thinking about the turn around and trying to make it there. Before I knew it I was there and I decided I wanted to try to be at 15 hours with 3 miles to go. I figured I could walk three miles in an hour and if I didnt I would still be in the low 16's. Well I was walking a lot faster than I thought I would be able too. 15 min miles so 4mph. Before I knew it I was at 15 hours with a little over 2 to go. I realized that I would finish in 15 hours if I just kept going. Those last two miles were really hard. I was so tired and just so worn out I wanted to just collapse on the side of the road and lay down. I remember thinking that I coulndnt stop for anything b/c I didnt think I would be able to start again if I stopped. SO I just kept going. As I approached the line I realized this was it. I was almost done. I had been walking with this really sweet girl and she said she was going to run the last bit in b/c she didnt want her family and friends to see her walking. She was also a first timer and we both agreed doing ironmans was really stupid and this was the last one for both of us. I let her go on ahead and kept walking content to walk across the line. But then as I got close I decided I wanted to try to run. SO I did. I got to the finish stretch and all the spectators were cheering and I no longer noticed that I couldnt breath or that my knee hurt. I just was so in the moment. I heard them say Chris 29 from franklin ohio YOU ARE AN IRONMAN!!!!

Post race:

SO I really thought as soon as I crossed the line I was going to just collapse but I didnt. I was ok. I could still walk a bit but much slower than before and I just went looking for my ultimate finish prize. A hug from Lisa and Kaiya!!!! After I found them I went for my post race massage and then to the food tent to eat some victory pizza.

SO the big question is do I think I want to do this again? HECK NO! That sucked and was too long. I think I am more suited for olympic and half iron distance but at least I can say I am an Ironman now and nobody can take that from me ever!

Again thanks to all my fam and friends who have supported me over what has been one of the longest most stressfull years of my life. You have all been super great and I love you all so much. Thanks for making this possible and for helping me fulfill a dream of mine that I have had for a long time.

Sorry no pics yet I have not gotten any but when I do I will post em.

Cheers!

Its almost time.

2007-10-30T07:03:00.000-05:00

Well its tuesday morning and I swear I feel like im back in HS waiting on the last day of class before summer break. I just want to get out of Dayton and on the way down to Panama City Beach (PCB). Real quick reminder that anyone who wants to can keep track of me on race day via the Ironman website. You should just need to navigate to the Ironmanlive link and that should do it. I would link direct here but it wont be active till Saturday so this is the best I can do right now. Again my race number is #358 and you should be able to use that or my name to find out where I am. Lastly for anyone wanting to invest a wee bit more time they will have a live webcast going all day long with cameras set up at key points of interest. Mostly this includes the exit of transition and the finish line. SOOOO that means anyone on the net should be able to watch me finish if they want to. right now I think I will be finishing in the 13-15 hour range which puts me around 8-10pm CDT or 9 -11 EST.

Last minute prep is going ok. I am starting to stress a bit over all that has to be done before I leave and just worrying that I am going to forget something crucially important like my bike helmet or my bike! I realized last week that I had a tire issue so I went to the shop last night and my coach helped me swap out my tire and mount my spare. That went really well and I was feeling really good about it until this morning when I went out to the garage and the tire was totally flat. I had a 160psi (yes you read that right) in that tire and it was totally flat this morning and that shouldnt be. SO I pumped it up again this morning and we will see how it is when I get home today. Im hoping that its a temp / press change thing but that seems a bit drastic to me. SO im not happy about that. Also I have been trying to get arm warmers for like a month now and my coach finally got some and I forget them at the shop. DOH! SO lisa is going to pick them up for me or I might be making another trip out to the shop to buy a new rear tire. DOUBLE DOH! SO outside of the mechanical issues on the bike things are looking good. Im totally immersed in my taper right now and its driving me crazy! I just want to go out and workout and push hard but heres my schedule for the week

sunday - off
monday - off
tuesday - off
wednesday - 30 min easy ride
thursday - light swim in ocean
friday - 30 min easy run, light swim in ocean
saturday - BIG RACE DAY!

SO yeah im going a bit nuts since im used to working out for like an hour each day and now im just doing nothing. But I know this is very important as its time for my body to recover a bit from the training and re-energize!

Well I think thats it. I dont know if I will blog again before the race. I might who knows take some pre-race pics of the expo and what not and throw a quick post up, we shall see.

Real quick I just want to say thanks to everyone who has supported my journey here. The support from all my friends and family has been really great and despite being told "im totally crazy" more times than I can remember I know everyone is really excited for me with this. I cant believe its almost here. This has been one crazy long year filled with many ups and downs. Im just so thankfull that I am getting this opportunity and that I am healthy and injury free.

See you guys at the finish!
Cheers

Bring on the Taper! +Take a # please!

2007-10-23T06:10:00.000-05:00

I have my race number!!!! I am number 358! SO know you guys can track me online during the race!!!!

Well I did my "mega" workout this past saturday and WOW it was a total test of both physical and mental toughness. I went 5 hours on the bike and 2 hours of running, but its a little more interesting than that. Since I was going for a 7 hour workout and it does not get light here till 8am right now I did not want to start that late as it would put me finishing around 3pm and that would just take up to much of the day. SO I got my butt out of bed and on the indoor trainer at 5am. OITS! I can officially say that is too early to start working out. SO yeah I did 5 hours on the indoor trainer which my coach says that every hour on a trainer is like 1.5 hours on the road. SO that means my bike effort was equivalent to 7.5 hours of riding which is way longer than I project to be riding in the ironman so that is pretty darn cool. But WOW was that boring. I watched a TON of anime on my laptop and that is the only thing that kept me sane. Also I am officially sick and tired of gels, bars, and sports drinks. YUCK! SO that was pretty tough to just get through. I was getting so antsy by the end of the bike. I just wanted to get off that darn thing. SO I went for the run and I have to say my legs feel so fresh off the bike. I love riding a steep 78-80 degree seat angle, it makes a huge difference. SO I decided that I wanted to bonk on the run and test my mental toughness some more so I didnt bring any water or gels or anything. About an hour in I did in fact bonk and I pushed through it and kept running for the whole 2 hours. Do I think I could have kept running for another 3. Probably not but I do plan to keep eating and drinking on the run in the ironman and I do not plan to bonk. But if I do I am prepared.

SO all in all things are going well. Its 10 days to go and I just want to get there. I still have to much to do to pack and prepare and I just got my new wheels in yesterday so I have to get them mounted and take them for a few spins to get used to them. I have a 4.5 hour workout this saturday so that should be a good time for me to get a feel for them and break them in.

Well thats all for now
Cheers!

Im almost there!

2007-10-18T06:31:00.000-05:00

Well things really feel like they are coming together for me and my first Ironman Experiance. I will in no way be doing anything "Amazing" by other athletes standards but I think this is going to be a really good experience for me. Im really getting excited about doing this event which I have to say is really surprising me b/c a month ago I was in sheer terror about the whole thing. Now im so excited its like X-mas!!!!! SO let me give some highlights of what all has been happening:

Last weekends workout went really well. Despite terribly crappy weather 37 degrees at the start of my bike ride and me with little cold weather clothing I managed to still maintain 15 mph avg for the 3 hour bike and put in a solid 45 miles. Had it been warmer I could have gone a lot faster! Then my coach wanted me to run 4 5k's and negative split them.

5k #1
I started on the first 5k and it was purely awful. My feet were so frozen it was a good 2 miles into the run before I could even feel them so that 5k was pretty rough. A little bit of walking and stopping to try and stretch out my frozen muscles in an attempt to get them warmed up.
time of 38:50ish

5k#2
by this time my feet and legs were back in business and I was just fighting to not run faster. Really watched the HR and tried to stay in control and keep myself in zone 2 which is the zone I will spend most of the Ironman in. I felt great during this 5k and ended up with a time of like 38:30ish first negative split!!!!

5k#3
I decided that if I was going to negative split I needed to step up to zone 3 and turn off my heart rate monitors beep function and just ignore the fact that I was out of my "ideal" zone. I instantly picked up the pace and felt really good. I couldnt believe that I was actually accelerating after biking 45 miles and already running 6 but I was. I went entirely to fast and ended up running a 32:30ish for the 3rd 5k. WOW for super negative split

5k#4
I tried to keep up the pace of the last 5k but I just couldnt do it. By this time I was in the upper limits of zone 5 which is not where you want to be. I realized I really blew myself out in the last 5k and should have toned it down a bit. I could not get my heart rate to settle back down to even zone 4 so the last 5k was really hard but I kept running through it and just pushed through. end time of like 38:10ish -- not a negative split but more inline with what I need to be running.

SO yesterday I went and saw my coach and for the first time he was excited with my results!!! This is how our mtgs usually go.

Coach: Ok so how are your workouts going?
me: well I have gotten a few in but have missed these.

Coach: I cant believe you think your going to do an ironman. Do you realize how underprepared you are. Im sorry but your going to die out there. Do you have a good life insurance plan? Man you are going to be hurting bad I hope your ready for a long painfull day. Hey your about the same size as my wife. Can she have your bike when you die from being so out of shape.
me: ummm I dont....know....I guess.....maybe

SO yeah they are usually pretty depressing and he usually tells me there is no way I will make any of my current time goals and that im going to have a tough time even finishing. But after this past weekends workout he was really getting excited. He was all like WOW your going to do this and we did some figuring and if I can keep up the paces that im shooting for I might just be able to break 14 hours which would be sooooooo amazing. Im still thinking 14-15 is where I will be but if I can transition well I think sub 14 is a real possibility. Provided I have a great day and nothing goes wrong. But hey this is ironman racing what could possibly go wrong!

On another note my wheel situation has resolved itself in quite a wonderfull way. PRAISE THE LORD!!!! Here is the quick rundown. I put basically an SOS message on a tri forum that I frequent (ok I live there) sometimes and got a reply. What I have been offered is a pair of carbon fiber tri spoke wheels that retail for $1500 for the pair. Oh but it gets better. I asked the guy if they came with tyres. Long story about why that is important but it is. He said let me check. Oh yeah they come with Continental Competition tyres. I know that doesnt mean anything to any of you but they go for $85 a tyre. yes for 1. SO thats $170 worth of amazing hand made german rubber. SO thats a grand total of $1670 worth of wheels for the bargain price of $200 yes you heard me right. 2 to the 0 to the big ol 0 SO im sooo excited and I have wanted carbon tri spokes forever!!! SO this is really like the coolest thing ever for me.

Well thats about it. I will probably post again after my next workout. ITs a mega workout. 5 hour bike (on the trainer ZZZZZZ) 2 hour run.

Cheers!

T - 24 days and counting!

2007-10-09T13:33:00.000-05:00

Well its a little over 24 days till the ironman and I have to admit Im starting to get pretty excited. I watched a video clip this morning from the 1986 ironman and it really helped to put some things in perspective. People have been racing this distance for years without all the high tech gear that we have today. Back then they did it on bananas and water. There were no specially formulated energy drinks, no powerbars, no gu, just normal people making a go of it. I feel that is a pretty good description of me. Just a normal guy making a go of it. SO I wanted to take some time to reflect on the past year. I have realistically done maybe 40% of the training I would have liked to have done. What does that mean? Well it means this is not going to be easy for me. It means I will more than likely be closer to the 15 hour mark of my 13-15 hour time goal. It means this is going to hurt. Im going to feel very alone and Im going to want to quit this more than I have ever wanted to quit anything in my life. But I wont. The Ironman means so much to me. Its a dream I have had for at least the past 10 years and is really symbolic of a lot of things to me. Its a journey that has been going on for a long time and it will be really nice to arrive at the destination. I have read a lot of stuff on positive visualization and I have to say I think its working. About a month ago I was feeling down right freaked out and like there was no way I was going to finish but I have since spent a lot of time just thinking about what its going to be like to be out on the course, how im going to feel and what im going to be focusing on to get to the finish. I think its working and I think I owe some of that to me feeling better about things. I also am starting to realize that I dont have as much to prove as I thought I did. I am not only an athlete but I am a long distance tri-athlete and im learning that my body is really well suited for that. If I had the time and a few less severe injuries in my past I think I could have actually been something maybe not so special but competitive. And im ok with that.

SO in 24 days I will be more than likely somewhere between the bike and the run and thinking about how cool it is that Im doing this. Im going to be hurting, hungry (sick of gels and bars), tired, but most of all I hope im really happy. But the coolest part of the day is going to be when I cross the line and get my congratulations hug and kiss from Lisa and Kaiya!

this is going to be soooo freaking awesome!!!!!

WDW race report wrap up! ~BONK!~

2007-09-28T06:04:00.000-05:00

Well im back and as promised I have Pics from the race! w00t w00t! Ok so I know you all are wondering how did it all go? Well let me tell you. I think this distance could really suit me well for racing and hey maybe if I got real good I could get an olympic spot some day since this is technically the olympic distance for tris -- LOL can you say pipe dream! neway on to the race report.

About a week before the race Disney released information that had most of us a bit concerned. It seems there is this killer amoeba that lives in lakes and it seems this little bugger loves to swim up the nose of unsuspecting swimmers and then it proceeds to eat away at your brain and spinal chord until well to be blunt your dead. The total time for this little guy to work his magic is roughly 3-5 days from first contact. Now your saying why am I bringing this up. Well it turns out that the lake we were swimming in meet all the criteria to be optimal for this little bugger to thrive and well yeah when they tested the lake he was there. YIKES! so what did disney do??? they suggested we all wear noseplugs and provided pretty nice noseplugs at the swim start. They also allowed everyone the option to bail out of the swim however their time would not be counted in awards. SO that was a bit of a scare but the closer we got to the race the less "ideal" the lake became and I actually heard volunteers saying they were testing the lake everyday just to be sure that the lake was in acceptable levels and safe to swim in.

SO at 7:50am I along with 61 other people in my age group ran into the water with noseplugs on! I do not feel like a very strong swimmer so I really kinda seeded myself near the back of the back b/c I really didnt want to get in anyones way and I really didnt want to get swum over. Boy was I wrong! It turns out compared to the people there I was not that bad of a swimmer and passed a TON of people in the swim. I still dont think im a good swimmer I just think I was more prepared for the distance then a lot of the guys. I was really surprised how many people were having to take a break before we even got to the turn around in the lake. In general I was really happy with my swim. I stayed very calm kept my heart rate down and just swam at my pace. My ability to sight in the water still sucks big time but thats ok with me. I got through it and I feel good about my swim.

Swim Time = 37:44

T1 sucked big time. I swear we had to run like a 1/4 mile just to get into transition and once there they had all the age groups racked together so you were climbing over tons of people just to get to your gear. These were some of my slowest transitions ever and the course and layout had a lot to do with that.

T1 Time = 3:57

The Bike -- Ok heres a shot near the end where I am looking all aero and studly. I was super duper scared of the bike, not for the distance but b/c I was doing something that you just dont do in Triathlon. I was running new untested gear for the first time in a race. YIKES! So what was new??? Oh only my wheels - nothing major there. Also I got a visor for my helmet and opted to try that over sunglasses. I liked it and the wheels worked great!

SO I decided that I would do the first 20 on the bike easy and then crank it up after that. Well the first part of the bike was awesome and I felt like I was barely working yet I was avg 21mph which is smoking for me! My strategy turned out to be a good one as around the 21 mile mark we really nosed into a head wind and I needed fresh legs to be able to maintain the pace I had been going. And I had those fresh legs. I had an absolute blast on the bike! The course was very very fast and despite it being pretty crowded and a lot (I mean a TON) of unexperienced riders on the course it was just so much fun. I really started hard into my nutrition plan on the bike and was taking in a gel every 30 as well as lots of water and endurance energy drink. I felt like I was really doing well and then something happened around mile 31. My legs started to get cold. Now you might be wondering how that would be possible. The temps were in the upper 90's with 100% humidity. And my legs were getting cold??? Your saying to yourself, now sparky that doesnt make any sense???? Well let me tell you something. The human body is pretty cool and when you get really dehydrated (like severely dehydrated) your mind tricks your body into thinking its cold, why???? So that you stop sweating and conserve water. SO I knew that was a bad thing and kept trying to rehydrate in the last few minutes on the bike but I knew that this was bad and that it was going to be hard to recover and get rehydrated on the run. As I entered the dismount shoot for T2 I sat up off the aero bars and got a nasty cramp in my tummy. Turns out my stomach was pretty unhappy with me too and that was just the beggining.

Bike Time = 1:50:44

T2 Time = 2:09

Onto the run. WOW things went from bad to worse very very quickly. I was glad the photographer was close to the run start b/c I still had enough in me to run hard for the photo and get a good "action" shot.

You would think from this photo that I was feeling really good and going really hard. Well I wasnt. I think I started walking as soon as I passed the camera guy and I ended up walking most of the first loop. How come you ask? Well I felt like total and utter crap. My stomach had claimed mutiny on me and I discovered that I could no longer even take in water without getting sick. I decided I really needed to focus and regroup. I hate walking during a run and it a real big issue for me to be able to stop running and start walking. However this is really a "ego thing" and not a "whats best for me thing" so I re-evaluated and changed my goal for the day from finishing under 3:30 to finishing without ending up in the medical tent. The run was two 3.1 mile loops and the first one was just awful I felt so sick and just like I couldnt move and I was getting more dehydrated. My legs started cramping pretty badly and I was so hot I just wanted to be done with the whole thing. After the end of the first loop I saw my two coaches. Bob yelled out "pick it up and try to run the second loop faster than the first one" I thought to myself "well since I have walked most of the first loop I dont think thats going to be too hard"

So after getting myself settled down and composing myself I decided two things. 1.) I wasnt going to try to drink anything else for the rest of the race. And 2.) I was going to try to run the whole second loop. Well I took a 2 very small sips of water and did run most of the second loop. I was slow but I was moving faster than walking. Below is probably my favorite pic of the bunch. I really like how I look in this pic and I think it really captures how I was feeling and how determined I was to finish this race. Side note. At this point in time I was freezing and had goos e bumps all over my body. What fun it is to race!

SO I got to mile 5 looked down at my watch and figured out I had roughly 20 minutes to finish under 4 hours. This gave me a new goal and one I felt I could achieve. I at least wanted the first number in my time to be a 3. A 4 was unacceptable. SO I kicked it in and ran the whole last 1.2 miles and ran through the finisher chute and was soooo happy to be done with that race.

Run Time = 81:06

Total Time = 3:55:38

Age group place = 35 out of 61
overall place = N/A

SO what happened to me that really threw the wrench in my race? Well I spoke with my coach afterwards and we feel that b/c of the extreme heat and humidity in the start of the bike that I probably lost more salt than I was used to losing and in a very short period of time. Salt is really important in your bodies ability to retain and process water and once you become deficient in it well you see what happened to me. SO it was a good learning experience and one Im taking with me in a month to IMFL. I think I will have some salt tablets or something to try to help avoid this again.

SO that was my race. I want to give a big shout out to Hannah Rumping who is the big reason I did this race. After the race Lisa asked me if I thought about her at all while I was racing and I said "yeah actually I did a lot" I really struggled in the run and just wanted to quit so badly but I kept thinking about hannah and how strong she has been and that if she had quit on herself she would not be with us anymore. She really was the strength I needed to finish and was such a great motivivation to finish strong. SO thanks so much hannah your awesome!

well its about a month till ironman so look for that race report too!

cheers!

SO ive been like ummm busy and stuff.

2007-09-18T10:46:00.000-05:00

Ok the last month or so has been really hectic and I have not gotten to blog nearly enough and I know Lisa keeps saying "I need to update Kaiya's blog" We really do have lots to post. TONS of cute pics and even some new super cute video clips of her. Shes growing up so fast but I will leave that to lisa and her update that I promise is coming soon.

Well im like I dunno 43 or 42 days from Ironman Florida and depending on the day you catch me will depend on my response. Most days im pretty freaked out but some days I feel pretty ok about it. I have been getting some longer 5+ hour workouts in and thats helping to boost the confidence but I still need to get to the 7+ hour range to really have the confidence to push through this behemoth of an event. I have really been working on dialing in my nutrition and thats going well. Here is a little lesson for anyone who cares. While exercise the human body can only take in about 400 cal/hour. Yet I will be burning roughly 800-1000 cal/hour so its very important that I take in enough calories so as to avoid the dreaded "Bonk." Racing Ironman is not like most races its a very delicate balance of basically keeping your body just a little bit ahead of the bonk and maintaining that level of energy for the whole event. SO my plan right now is a energy gel every 30 min which gives me 200 calories and then half a bottle or about 10 ounces of powerbar endurance sports drink. Which will give me about another 200 calories or 400 for the hour. SO thats the plan.

SO thats the big thing on my mind but another thing I got going on is another race this weekend. My Team in Training race has finally come and I leave for Florida on friday morning with lisa and kaiya to go down to disney and race. This will be the longest race I have done in awhile and should be a pretty good warm up for my Ironman. My coach wants me to race this all out but im not really sure how to do that. I know how to all out a sprint Tri but the disney tri is like 3xs longer than the longest sprint I have done so if I go all out im going to burn out before the finish. SO im going to have to try to balance and find a pace somewhere between the sprints I have done and the pace I am using in training for the Ironman. The distances for the race are .9 mile swim (in killer amoeba infested waters, im not even joking) Then a 35 mile bike followed by a 6 mile run. Thats pretty long but im shooting for a time of 3 to 3.5 hours. We shall see how I hold up. SO wish me luck. Im totally stressing over my bike. I had to give it up last week to be shipped down and its just feels so wrong to not have it.

Theoretically next week I will have a post up with lots of pics from the race as well as my results.

cheers!

Simpsonized!

2007-08-07T10:35:00.001-05:00

Here is a little bit of fun for everyone. Burger King is running this thing that "simpsonizes" you and it works so so but it lets you tweak stuff a little bit more if they didn't quite get it right. Not as good as the mini wii stuff but not bad. SO here is Lisa and Me as Simpsons characters.

Shifting to a harder gear...maybe

2007-07-23T13:42:00.000-05:00

Well I have taken a bit of a hiatus from posting lately and I just spent a few moments reading back over the posts I did in july of 2005 and 2006. WOW I couldnt believe how long ago some events happened and it just got me thinking. This whole blog thing is pretty cool. It not only provides up dates for friends and family but it also gives me the ability to look back on my life and remember what was going on at any given point over the past years since I started this. If you know me you know my memory is not the greatest so its nice to have something available to help me remember. SO on to the posting!

SO what is up with me??? Well since last posting in june (sorry its been so long) I have traveled to CA for the first time to see Tim Kochendarfer and meet his family. That was really cool. Highlights of the trip include:

1. Seeing the giant redwoods. I honestly thought this day trip was going to be gay but I went along and WOW was I wrong

2. Pismo beach. Running on Pismo beach is the bomb bizzle. I got to do a nice easy 4-5 mile run with Tim on the beach. WOW did this bring back memories as we used to run together A LOT! but have not in many years.

3. Disneyland. Ok the whole disney thing doesnt mean as much to me as it does to lisa but I gotta tell you. Seeing Kaiya's face during small world made it all worthwhile.

4. watching tims kids try to kill each other and realizing if I have more thats whats in store for me.

5. hearing Tim say "hey we need to buy a house out here b/c this is the spot that would be perfect" roughly every 1/2 hour of time spent in the car. (which was close to 24 hours)

SO that was cali and as neat as it was I actually missed Ohio when we got back. thats not to say that I still want to live in ohio im merely stating that I like ohio better than cali.

This month I FINALLY met with my coach and have spent the last week doing heart rate max and avg tests so that I can get my zones properly set up. Oh the fun! Im feeling better about this Ironman thing, well at least today I am! LOL NEway I should start having structured workouts designed for me and that is really really great. Plus that my coach says a lot of nice encouraging things which I think I really need to hear right now. Im a little over 3 months out and I cant believe it. In like 3 months im going to be getting ready to drive down to FL and compete in one of the hardest single day sporting events in the world.

Work. BOOO HISS for work. Im still "transitioning" and well it kinda blows. Plus that I just found out today one of the co-workers I really like and who has made being here a bit better has taken another job and will be gone in two weeks. BOOO HISSSS on Andy.

Gaming - well I am playing games a lot right now with lisa which is totally cool but they are not the conventional games like you would think. Im playing on XBOX live Arcade a lot now. Uno, Settlers of Catan, and Carcasonne are the games we are playing the most and they are nice 15 min distractions. Well catan is like an hour but you get the point. whats also been nice is hooking up with friends and family on live and playing games with them. I really like the online features modern consoles like the xbox are not only offering but really supporting well so that its a great experience to play in.

Training - well it could be going better but I hope that changes soon. I have felt lost and without direction and now with a coach I hope both of those go away and that I start to get back on track. I am just really lacking the volume that I need right now and its just hard to juggle work, family, and training. Lisa has been a champ though and lets me have saturday morning to go off to the park and swim, bike ,run. thanks honey!

Well I think thats it for now. I dont like the post I just made b/c I feel like I just glazed over a whole month and I could probably write a few short novels about stuff recently but just dont have the time. I will try to invest some more time into this and even if its something short post a bit more regularly.

cheers!

Happy Fathers Day to me!

2007-06-27T07:42:00.001-05:00

Ok I know Fathers day was a couple of weeks ago but I didn't really get my big fathers day present till yesterday so I was waiting to post. What did I get??? Something I have been asking for, for months. A night out with my girl Lisa. We have not gone on a date or just had some time for ourselves since december and thats really too long. SO for fathers day lisa arranged a fantastic date for us. It started with me getting to pick where we went to dinner. I chose Perkins which has a ton of benefits. First off they have like the best chicken sandwich on the planet. 2nd only old people eat at perkins so they are usually quiet and not full of rowdy roughians. and "C" most perkins are on the verge of going out of business which means that it doesnt matter what time you show up there you are seated instantly and if you know what you want like lisa and I do you get your food within about 15 minutes of arriving at the restaurant. SO its a good time. Next we went for a couples massage and I gotta tell you - WOW - that was awesome. I got a 60 minute sweedish massage and all I can say is God bless the sweeds. It was amazing and I purposely worked out extra hard yesterday knowing that I was going to get things worked on later that night. After that we went for a bit of ice cream at graeters and that was really nice too. Mocha chip = big time yummage. SO that was the major part of my fathers day present from lisa but wait theres more. She got me the "in training" shirt for my ironman which I have wanted since about January and she also booked me another massage in July which I have to tell you is really going to help the body deal with the training. SO thanks honey last night was really special. SO after the date we came home and played a match of settlers of catan online and just barely lost. I swear we had 9 points and the winner had 10. As we finished our last turn I looked at lisa and said the next guy is our only competition and unless he wins on this turn the game is ours on our next. SO thats cool and we are getting a lot better at it. I think we might get our first win soon!

Training stuff -- Oi! I kind of had a bit of a hiatus which is not good. I got really sick for about two weeks and just could not train consistently and the workouts I did get in were absolute WIC. But im back in the saddle again and trying to get back into it. Im trying to convince myself that waking up an hour early in the morning to run is a good idea but so far my mind has not agreed at 6am when the alarm goes off and so I go back to sleep. I really need to start ramping up the volume but I just dont know where the time to do it is going to come from. OH OH OH big news on the Ironman front. We have secured our lodging and its at the host hotel which is the ROXORS!!!!!!! This is going to be so freaking awesome as we have a condo now that is close to 1400 sqft for the week and Im litterally going to be able to walk out the condo in my wetsuit onto the beach and be at the start. Lisa made the comment. "does that mean we can watch the swim from the balcony?" and I said yuppers. SO im really excited and the place is AMAZING. Truly spectacular.

what else is up. hmm not a whole lot else but hey thats ok.

cheers

Updatage

2007-06-07T09:14:00.000-05:00

Well its been a bit of time since I posted anything on here so I thought I would give a quick update.

Training stuffs:
I went to Wheelie Fun last night and got my professional bike fit done. All I can say is wow! I thought my coach Bob was going to do the fit but instead it was this really nice lady named Kathleen. She's learning the ways of bob and I was a good learning experience for her since she had never fit someone to a softride. She was a really neat lady who has done 14 yes count them 14 Ironmans! OMG!!! And 11 of them were on the big island! She has also won her age group at least once in Kona and that means she knows her stuff. She also did Florida so I got to talk to her a bit about that but since she makes her living by coaching triathletes for Ironman I tried to respect that and not be a nuisance. SO onto the fit. I really wish I had gotten the chance to take before and after pics b/c their is a quite a big difference. I thought my back was flat before but it was not and now its really flat. Both Kathleen and Bob were really excited with how well my fit turned out and how well it translated to my bike. w00t! And I have not spent a lot of time on the saddle yet but so far its so much more comfortable than it was before. SO what does all this mean???? It means im going to be able to go faster, longer, and with more comfort than I was before. SO im pretty jazzed. I still have not had time to talk with Bob about my training schedule and just feel a bit lost right now. I know I need to be doing more but im just not sure what. And my motivation has been sapped a bit lately. Hopefully that will turn around soon.

Life at home:
Life at home is good. I love my lisa so much and I love my kaiya bear too. Right now the girls are having a bit of a break from me and are in Boston with Sue and Sara. SO I have been a bit of a bachelor this week but miss them a lot and cant wait for them to get back.

Gaming:
Im a bit dissapointed as I thought I was going to get a lot of time to game this week but due to a deacons meeting on tuesday that just has not happened. Oh well I am still playing FF XII and will be for some time. I also picked up burnout again and have been enjoying that.

Well thats about all that worth mentioning.

cheers!

Im on a Team again!

2007-05-24T14:47:00.001-05:00

Yes the joys and delights of being on an organized team are once again upon me. SO what does this mean?? It means 7am workouts in a freezing lake! Thats what it means. Seriously though I have Joined Team In Training (TNT) to compete in the Walt Disney World Triathlon. This is an olympic+ distance event that I will be competing in for a little girl I know named Hannah who was diagnosed with leukemia just a few months ago. I will have a static link in my links section soon but if you cant wait go

HERE

to find out all about it and maybe throw some coin my way!

Thanks everyone!

Cheers!

Taking a Breather

2007-05-21T13:52:00.000-05:00

Well Sunday is typically my off day of training and then I go back to hitting it pretty hard with a 60 min or roughly 6 mile run on monday. Well today I said meh to that run! I had a really good workout on Sat. That was a brick workout and consisted of a 20 mile bike followed by a 3 mile run. Plus I have a small race tommorow night 2 mile run 10 mile bike 2 mile run that I am going to really push myself on. SO today I decided I needed a breather. I am back to not sleeping well again - Hooray for sleep depravation! And that coupled with a few other things leads me to think that taking another day off isnt such a bad idea. SO Im taking it easy today. Im gonna mow some grass so im not totally dormant or slouching on the couch but im definitly taking a rest. Oh I got my new helmet in the mail today!

I got the white one and its super cool! It fits really well and I think it will help me go just a smidge faster as it has less drag then my previous helmet. You might be surprised to find out that an aero helmet can have as much of an impact on aerodynamics as your wheels! SO its a good cheap investment in speed. And it looks cool too! And again anything that helps me go a smidge faster and means I will be on the bike less in florida is worth the money to me. Now if only I could find that spare $500 for wheels I would be in AWESOME shape. Well thats about it for me. I was just excited about having a bit of energy and about my new helmet.

cheers!

Can I get some BASE with a side of LSD

2007-05-14T10:22:00.000-05:00

Ok ok yeah Im being punny. whoops I did it again. Anyway the phase of Ironman Training im in right now is considered to be base training or slowly getting my body to understand what I want it to do before I start trying to make it realize I want it to do all this faster as well. Oh goodie! And the best way to build base is Long Slow Distance or LSD workouts. SO yeah thats what I have been doing and I gotta tell you im starting to feel the effects. My endurance is definitely increasing but my little cutie Kaiya got me sick last week and that is really sapping my energy as well as ive not been sleeping well again so its monday morning, its 11:40 and im supposed to go for another 6 mile run and im just like ungh so tired. I just want to crawl into bed and go to sleep. I think this is what truly makes someone an Ironman. Its not just the event and the day its all the crap you sacrifice to get there. Well since im not doing anythign else productive I think im going to strap on my shoes and get out there. At least its nice outside!

Other things of note - Mothers day went really well I think I nailed that holiday very very well. Thanks Sue for the contribution to the Bling I know it means so much to Lisa and it will be a very special thing for her for a really really long time. SO thanks again.

Well thats about it for me. My job still has not changed much I have been given a few small tasks but its still business as usual. I'm still playing FF 12 and really enjoying it. Such a good game. Thats about it.

Cheers!

: - (

2007-05-07T14:43:00.000-05:00

Ok so things have been a bit frustrating lately and thats partly the reason I have not posted. When all you have to say is bummer stuff I dont tend to like to dwell and thats what I feel like I am doing now. SO I will briefly put up the good stuff.

My first race of the year went really well. The weather was perfect and I felt really good. I shaved 9 min off my time last year and did the whole thing in like 1 hour and 18 minutes so I nailed one of my two goals. the other goal was a top 10 finish. well my age group this year was a lot larger and a lot more competitive and I was 20 out of 33. SO still not bad. I only have a few pics and they are only ok. We forgot Lisa's camera so she took a couple with her phone while taking care of Kaiya so they are ok but not like last year. I have them but just dont feel like posting them today. Maybe tommorow.

Now my frustrations!

Training is going ok but not as good as I would like. Im having a lot of issues making all my workouts and in general and getting maybe 60-75% of them in. I have not swam in over 2 weeks and yeah im just trying to get it all in but its really hard to juggle the training and work and family. I thought I had it down for the first couple of weeks b/c I shifted my work schedule from 7:30-4 to 6:30-3 and that made a world of difference and gave me a good block of time in the afternoon to get a second workout in. But I was told to go back to my other schedule and I have to say im still pretty annoyed by that for a number of reasons. SO thats been really frustrating. However I have made a solid effort to not miss the long workouts for the bike or the run. Each week I have a long bike and a long run and these are key workouts so at least that is good.

My other frustration is equipment. I started off the year with some ideas of some things I wanted to get to make the ironman easier on me. Now im finding that some of my neccesary items are no longer functional. Since I have gone back to training full time I discovered my bike pump no longer worked so I had to replace that. cant really make it through the year without a bike pump. Next my Heart Rate Monitor has crapped out on me and I have had to replace that. Those are not cheap by the way. But my whole training program is based around time excersising and heart rate zone so I cant really make it through the year with out it. And now lastly my helmet is starting to leave a lot to be desired. Besides being hmm oh I dont know 10 years old and probably in need of replacing anyone the interior padding has deteriorated and has exposed rusty metal grommets and hard plastic which is starting to cut into my head while riding. SO I feel like I need to replace the helmet now too. This is just starting to feel like one thing after another and is kind of getting annoying.

SO thats pretty much what im up to. Trying to maintain my training schedule and keep all my crap from breaking down while trying desperately to get my workouts in and I feel like im failing miserably.

Cheers!

Season Opener tommorow!

2007-04-20T06:06:00.000-05:00

Ok well its spring and the Tri season is officially upon us! My first race is tomorrow and for the most part I feel pretty good. Im doing the Miami University tri again and this year they have made some changes. First off they pushed it back 2 weeks. Last year is was april 8 and this year its the 21st. I think they realized it was too freaking cold to be racing that early in april in Ohio. Next they pushed back the start time from 7:30 to 8am. I think this is once again an attempt to squeeze out as much warmth as possible. Last year it was seriously 28 degrees when I came off the bike which would have been around 9:15. According to weather.com I should be able to expect temps around 49 degrees at 9am. SO thats a dramatic improvement of like 20+ degrees warmer which will make a huge difference and hopefully I will not have the transition issues I had last year. My final time last year was like 1:26:51 and I placed 11th in my age group. last fall I really wanted to focus on this race and try to win my age group. More on that later. Now I'm shooting for top 10. Im looking at the results from last year and I was just 20 seconds off of 10th place. Thats not that big of a gap to fill. Plus I think I will ROCK my transitions tommorow and I think I can grab close to 4 minutes just from transitions. First place was 1:06 min which I dont think I will be able to touch. My run is just not fast enough however I know the course now and I know what to expect. The bike course is really hilly and I have been focusing on Hill work (kinda) this season and I remember thinking last year that the run course just felt fast to me and I kept holding back not wanting to blow up. Well this year im rocking the run course too. I guess my general point is I have TONS of room for improvement over last year and I think this year race will be a good one for me.

Now on to some of the negative stuff. I know some people think oh this stuff is just easy what issues could you be having. Well heres my bulleted list of monkeys on my back for tomorrow.

1 - earlier in the year I spoke of weight loss that I was hoping to achieve. You may have noticed I have not mentioned that again. The reason is that I have found out its virtually impossible for me to lose weight over the winter time (thanks to my thyroid). I have stayed at a constant 145 without budge at all. well it goes up some days but never below. SO I am still 10 lbs from my 135 goal and 15 from my ultimate 130 goal. what does that mean? It means im still dragging around 10+ lbs of dead weight tomorrow that will slow me down.

2 - I have been having real issues swimming in pools lately. google "sinusitis" and thats basically whats happening to me. Its been awful and I have only been swimming 1 day a week because of it. SO my swimming has not improved as much as I would like.

3 - My Heart Rate monitor has decided that even though I <3 my <3 rate monitor it shares no love for me. It basically does 1 of 2 things. Either I cant pick up the signal so I get no reading at all or, and this is my favorite, I get some kind of echo I think and it says my heart rate is much higher than I know it is. For example I went for a run earlier this week with it. I started to jog and had gone half a block. According to my HRM my HR was 290 beats per minute. Lets just think about that for a second. SO long story short I need a new HRM. booo hisssss

4 - I got a new bike! Ok thats a good thing. Whats not a good thing is like last year I have made a major change to my bike and have had virtually no time to test it or ride it on anything but the trainer. SO im a bit nervous that my first real ride on it is going to be a race and im really nervous about having a mechanical that I have to deal with b/c in a sprint race that pretty much kills you.

5 - last night I went to take my bike out for a spin in the neighborhood to get a better feel for it and try to work out the kinks. Well I found one kink right off the bat and that is my bicycle pump has a whole in the tube that it uses to fill the tires with so the max I can get my air pressure to is 50 psi. Now for people not in the know that doesn't sound so bad. However my bike tire pressure is usually 120psi so 50 is unusable. SO I gotta get a new pump today and im not happy about that.

6 - I really have no clue what to wear tomorrow. I just dont know how cold its going to feel and am going to bring lots of choices which means my transition area will be a little clogged up.

SO in a nutshell thats what im facing tommorow. Im fatter than I was hoping to be. Im not as fit as I was hoping to be. But hey its the season opener and most people are probably in the same boat I'm in.

SO tune in next week for results and photos!

T-30 weeks and counting

2007-04-09T08:15:00.000-05:00

Well its 30 weeks till the Ironman and right now I feel like balsa wood man. I would be lying if I were to say the whole thing doesnt scare me. I mean c'mon lets think about this - 140.6 miles covered over Land (running), Sea (open water ocean swim), and I know its a stretch but Air (the bike, my body wont be touching the ground now will it!) and my goal is 12-13 hours. 12-13 hours!!!! OMG thats a freaking long time. thats like driving to florida long time and thats the optimistic side. It could very well take me roughly 15 hours to complete. 15 HOURS! Now thats a freakin long time. SO yeah at this point I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed about the whole thing. I know that I can do it and I know that even if I cant quite keep up my training that as long as I put a solid effort in I will finish but there is still so much of the unknown out there. SO many things can go wrong in that race. The Ironman is really different than anything else out there in a lot of ways. Many races that are open to the public most avg joes can enter and they wont win but they will at least finish. The ironman is a different beast altogether. This race demands respect or else it will spit you out and forget about you faster than you can say D-N-F. DNF is that horrible phrase that nobody likes to see next to their name on a results sheet. Did Not Finish. I think thats the fear of most first timers and thats what im facing now. Will I be able to actually train for this monster of a race? Will I be able to anticipate things that will go wrong? will I be prepared for them? What about the things I cant predict, will I be able to improvise, adapt, and overcome them? I know im not alone though. Right now there are at least a couple of hundred other people who for them, Ironman florida is their first race and they are just as scared as me. Right now they are obsessing over things like bike wheels and hydration racks. Trying to shave valuable minutes off the bike with the latest in aerodynamic wind cheating carbon fiber. Wondering what shoes to wear for the run and wondering if a wetsuit can really float the boat anchors that are my legs into a proper swim position.

SO todays the day that my training really kicks off. Today is my inaugural day where I can say I am actively training for an Ironman. Wish me luck!

Cheers!

Learning to Run Again

2007-03-15T06:50:00.000-05:00

SO ever since I broke the ol femur I have just never felt really "on" again with my running. I have felt really clunky and just like I was moving really unnaturally. In the past 3 years I have had a few runs I would consider good. Runs where I was able to settle into a very nice pace and maintain that for 3-5 miles. This however has not been the norm. Also back in my Cross Country days I got some pretty severe stress fractures in both my shins which still bother me a little bit even today. SO proper form and good shoes have always been on my mind especially with starting to train for the Florida Ironman. I am going to be doing a LOT of running over the next year and thats where I see my biggest opportunity for injury. Its just funny how things work out though. In the past I have tried to get the cushiest shoes I could possibly get. For years I ran only in Nike Air Max's which use Nike's air bed in both the heel and the forefoot. These are not cheap shoes but they felt the best to me. In the last couple of years since starting to run again I have been using the Nike shox system. These shoes use 4 elastomer pillars in the heel to act as shock absorbers that cushion then propel your foot forward again. I ran in about three pairs of those and thought that I really liked them. Heck I ran my marathon in them! However I always had a little beef with them in that they are super duper heavy. SO last fall I was at a store and found a pair of shoes by a company that makes running shoes for woman called Ryka. I was pretty impressed and did some research. They got Cushiest shoe of the year from runners world. SO I thought I would give them a try. What I found was that I couldnt run in them at all. My calves would just lock up and I believe now it was becuase of the nike shox shoes I had been running in. The heel on those is really high and it had totally changed the way I was running. For the worse I might add. SO I really didnt like that and started to ween myself off of the nike shox and back onto the ryka's. I was running mostly with them and that was working but I had a trip the nike outlet a few months ago and they had Nike Free's for dirt cheap. I thought I would give them a try. You see what makes Nike Free's different from other shoes is that they are made to mimic running barefoot. The sole is supper flexible and very thin. I thought they were kinda gimmicky but for the price I thought I would give them a try. WOW was I wrong. A gimmick they are not. SO I have been doing all my running pretty exclusively in them and have gotten up to 5+ miles in these almost barefoot like shoes. Oh yeah and you dont wear socks with them. I'm getting zero blisters! SO this concept of running barefoot was kinda sticking with me so I did a google search for barefoot running. WOW I couldnt believe what I found. TONS of people are throwing away their running shoes and going au natural. And whats weird is it makes sense to me. SO I have started to incorporate barefoot track work into my running workouts. Im up to maybe a 1/2 a mile so far which is not very much but it feels so good. You see to run barefoot is to completely go against the way running shoe companies (RSC) want you to run. RSC's want you to take long drawn out strides and land smack on your heel with your leg extended. Why do they want you to run like this? B/c it hurts! It hurts a lot. your ankles, knees, hips, back, just about everything. However if you run barefoot your heel never really hits the ground. You use your ankle and knee and hips to absorb the shock naturally when you land on your fore foot. SO tell me. what makes more sense to let the impact of your weight in forward motion be controlled by 1/2" of high density rubber foam or for that weight to be evenly distributed over three different pivot points in your body. I just cant believe it still. when I run using the "conventional" method im pulling 40 second laps on the indoor track. at 15 laps to a mile thats a 10 minute mile. Thats pathetically slow. But running barefoot im easily in the 30 second range for the same laps. Thats a 7.5 min mile! And its more comfortable and is requiring less effort to go faster. But heres the catch. Im discovering what many other people like me have discovered. That years of running in super cushy shoes have caused the muscles in my feet to atrophy. My feet are week and fragile and I have to take this barefoot thing slowly to build back up the muscles in my feet and avoid injury. SO how far will I go with this? I dont know. I have read about several people who have become barefoot marathoners. That the asphalt really isnt that bad. I am probably not going to go that far but I am really looking at alternative shoes. Im looking for shoes now that allow freedom of my toes which im discovering can really aid in balance and control while running. Im also looking at shoes that have primarily no heel cushion at all to them. I see now that the heel cushion is evil and even in my Nike Free's the heel is so big that I cant avoid landing on it and therefore it messes up my newfound stride. SO I'm really interested to see how this goes as men in my family have often been plagued by foot problems and have had to wear orthotics of some kind. Im starting to realize those are part of the problems as well. A stong foot and is an injury free foot. But thats a whole other rant ^_^ SO if you see me running barefoot dont ask me if I forgot my shoes, just try to keep up!

cheers!

If I could save time in a bottle...

2007-02-26T08:57:00.000-05:00

Ok I'm not a big Jim Croce fan and if it were not for Time life music collection commercials aired when I was a child I don't think I would even know about his music or who he was but that line has always stuck with me for some reason. SO yeah im sitting here on Monday morning and I just feel really overwhelmed with everything I have to do and whats really frustrating is that the "have to do's" are trumping the "want to do's." I wonder sometimes if this is what its like to be an adult. Do we really lose all say over what we do and where we go? Do we just become a slave to our lives and sit idly by and watch the years pass? I have been fighting that notion but I feel like I am losing that battle. It just seems like the older I get the more responsibilities I have to take on and the more people expect of me and that leaves little time for hobbies or activities I would like to do. I think I have really been noticing this with my training for the 07 Tri-season. I am still really excited about it and really looking forward to the various races I will be competing in but my expectations are starting to wane a bit. Back in Nov. If you asked me about the Miami University tri I would have told you that I thought I could place. Maybe even win my age group. Now I'm just hoping that the weather is nice and that I beat my time from last year. Or I could just be hitting my annual cold ohio weather funk. Lets give it up for seasonal depression! I'm so sick of the cold and just want it to get warmer. Oh well enough whining from me. SO whats going on with me???

Work. ugh. Things are super busy and I'm anxiously awaiting my new position.

Training. - Is going ok but the big news is I got a new bike!!! Its a kind of bike I have wanted for a really long time and its a size that will fit me! Its so tiny it rocks. Its a softride lite and when I get done updating the cockpit I will snap some pics and post them up. w00t for bicycles!

Family - Kaiya got her first cold last week and its still lingering. She has now gotten lisa sick and me slightly sick so thats fun too. She is about the most pathetic thing I have ever seen when she coughs and it makes me wonder how my parents ever handled my bronchitis and pneumonia filled childhood. However, and this is the cool part. Last night, for the first time ever, she giggled and then she laughed. Now im not talking a little laugh, im not even talking LOL kinda laugh. I'm talking about the full fledged ROTFLMAO kind of laugh which got lisa and I laughing which just egged her on and made her laugh even more. It was awesome. Whats even funnier is what triggered it all. Lisa looked at Kaiya and said "are we gonna see bobba fett?" and Kaiya just LOST IT!

Gaming - Lisa and I finished up both Lego star wars games and wow was the second better than the first. the first was a total letdown after playing the second one so if anyone out there has only played the first one. Get the second its so much better and so much more fun. Im still working on enchanted arms and thats cool and really picking up but I'm just DYING to play FF12 and just cant wait for it.

Well thats all for now - cheers!

spillin the beans

2007-02-06T11:34:00.000-05:00

Ok so yeah I was a bit vague in my last post but well I had to be. SO what was I reffering to. Well my job. Ok dont get me wrong I do like the place I work and for the most part things are pretty spiff but I have to tell you that when I signed on to this gig 6 years ago I didnt think I would still be doing essentially the same tasks today as I was when I was hired. SO yeah to say that I am burnt on this job is pretty accurate and im tired of feeling crispy! SO whats the change? Well they created a new position here called server specialist. Basically the position will revolve around maintianing all the various systems that we have here and keeping them up to date. As well as learning SQL and doing a TON of stuff with SQL. I actually kind of excited about the SQL part b/c its something I know nothing about. An uncharted area just waiting for me to explore and conquer. Also the big pull of the new position is it will get me out of purgatory or what most mortals refer to as first level phone support. sigh -- 6 years of that has taken more than 6 years off my life. From arguing with various Telco's why a T1 was down and if it was in fact their problem to actually getting into a yelling match with an in-duh-vidual over weather or not a T1 was 1.5 mb/s total bandwidth (the worlds viewpoint) or 1.5 mb full duplex therefore 3mb/s (his viewpoint) have left me jaded, bitter, and in general pretty unhappy. I pretty much cringe when the phone rings and the hair stands up on the back of my neck. Really how many times can a person hear "umm I think the internet is slow" before it kills a little piece of their soul. SO the good news is that at least in the near future that chapter of my life will be behind me and I can move on to brighter sunnier pastures. SO as exciting as this is it comes with a bit of a delay. I cant assume the new spot until my spot is filled and I have trained the new "person" SO it could be upwards of 4-6 months before any of this takes effect which stinks but at least their is hope on the horizon and as Lisa has said, shes happy I stuck up for myself and actually tried to change something instead of just being a doormat. Ok I paraphrased a bit but you guys get the point. SO thats the latest with me.

cheers!

Where are you?

2007-01-26T10:27:00.000-05:00

Ok i know I have not posted in a bit but yeah ok whatever. SO whats been up with me lately? Well i'm going to be a bit vague on one area of my life but if you are sharp you might pick up on what im talking about.

begin rampant vagueness

Ok so have you ever been in one situation for a long time and started to feel like maybe it was not the best situation to be in anymore but you were just sticking it out? Did you ever get to the point where you started to try and change that sitch? Well I have and what funny is its making me realize just how much I dislike the current sitch im in. However an alternative prospect is on the horizon that would be, in my opinion, leaps and bounds better. I just want to get out of purgatory!

end rampant vagueness

Training:
Ok so Ironman !! w00t w00t! My training has take a hiatus this past week because I suffered what I think to be my first moderate injury of the season. Whats weird is its nothing of what I expected. I think I got chlorine or some kind of chemical poisoning from the pool I swim at. I felt awful for about 4 days, sneezing, majorly congested, with burning eyes and skin. Yes thats right my entire epidermis was experiencing a mild burning sensation for roughly a week. However yesterday I hoped back on the horse and did a nice 40 min run. Today I have a 45 min easy spin on the bike scheduled but I don't know if I will get to that. more on that later.

The Ironman Florida store finally updated their products for the year and this little baby is going to be added to my wardrobe very soon I hope.

Life at home!!!!:
Things at home are awesome. I always liked coming home before but now that I have Lisa and K-bear (he he he) its just so cool. I love my little girl so much and shes so gorgeous and just so amazing and everyday im just so amazed that she's real. Ok enough gushing so whats really up at home? Well Kaiya is really growing and we go for her 2 month appt on monday so look for updated height weight info on her blog either mon or tues. what else....hmm....Oh yeah we got another car! Kinda came out of the blue and its a really long story but we bought a 2003 ford focus ZTS sedan from my neighbor. I say bought but I should really say stole b/c he sold it to us for roughly half its value and im not kidding which is why we even got it. SO the current Knodel vehicle count is this:
1999 Mazda Miata - our date car ^_^
2005 Hyundai Tucson - Lisa's new ride (my old car)
2003 Ford Focus - My new ride
2000 Honda CBR F4 - my motorbike.
Yeah thats right so we now have 3 cars and a motorcycle and two drivers, although I think kaiya will be asking for the keys to the miata very soon! Right now we are not planning on getting rid of any of them but in the spring we will re-evaluate and might get rid of the bike. Just not sure. Other than that this weekend the fam is going down to Nashville to meet up with the wrights to have a fun filled weekend of hanging out telling old stories and just relaxing in general! The hotel says it has a fitness center so we shall see what that means. Im hoping for an bike and a treadmill that both work b/c then I will still be able to get my workouts in. Otherwise this weekend might be a wash. Well see.

Gaming:
right now im playing enchanted arms which I have to say finally at around the 20-25 hour mark the story started to pick up and get interesting. Man was that a slow starter. But so far its a good game and im not rushing it despite the fact that I have final fantasy 12 calling to me in my sleep. play meeee plaaaaayyyyy meeeeee!!!! LOL

Lisa and I also started Lego star wars the original trilogy and its GOBS of fun. Lets just say the best moment in videogame history is lego chewbacca jumping on the chest of a lego stormtrooper and ripping its arms off!!! It just makes me so happy to think about it!

Well thats all for now I thinks

Cheers!

Super busy

2007-01-08T15:44:00.000-05:00

Yeah I know so is everyone else but hey I dont want to hear it b/c Im actually taking 5 min to throw something up here even if it aint all that significant. SO how are things going? Well they have been pretty hectic as of late b/c of a certain little miss thing named Kaiya. I wouldnt say shes keeping us busy b/c that implies were doing things or accomplishing something. Im sure that time will come in the future but for now I would say shes keeping us pretty preoccupied. But its all good right! She is amazing and although she is fighting through a lot of the usual newborn crankiness it is usual and should be over soon enough. Let the good times Roll! SO what else is up with us. Well my mom has been with us up until today. I have to drive her halfway to Michigan today to exchange her with my bro. Side note #1 Michigan is actually pronounced Mi-chi-gan, its Cantonese in origin and I cant tell you what it means b/c its quite vulgar. Unlike Ohio which is japanese for good morning. Really which state would you rather live in??? Anyway so yeah get this Im bringing my bro my mom and a pack of real conies - sorry cincy folks conies arent mini hot dogs - and I doubt he has anything in return for me. The nerve of some people. SO anyway its a sad day since mom and dad got their psuedo permanant visa's for the UK they technically dont have to leave the uk till 2009. This is a huge deal for them but leaves a return trip to the states up in the air. hmmm what else. Oh yes I got a great book that I have been reading like crazy. Its called "be iron fit" and its a training program for the Ironman desinged around what a normal person could hope to achieve in terms of hours a week spent training. Its awesome and will be a amazing resource for me over the next year.

Gaming:
I got Enchanted Arms and Lego star wars 2 for my 360 and FF 12 for my ps2. So far I have started on Enchanted Arms and although a little light on story its a great first effort for a party system turn based combat RPG. which to this point has been non-existant on the 360. Im avoinding FF12 until im done with enchanted arms. Mostly b/c I really want to enjoy EA and I think if I reversed the order of play I wouldnt. FF12 is supposed to be amazing and the story utterly fantasic. SO I cant wait to start it but I am not rushing EA at all. Taking my time and enjoying it. Also hopefully lisa and I will get some star wars action soon b/c thats the first 2 person co-op game we have had in a long time. and it looks really fun too!

Training: My weight loss goals have not been as successfull as I had hoped over the holidays. although I did not put on any weight I did not lose any additional weight either since my workout schedule was very messed up. Hoping to get back on that horse starting this week and begin daily workouts again.

Well thats all for now.
Cheers!

I got a suit! A Wetsuit that is!

2006-12-15T11:35:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-04T19:03:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-11-16T08:40:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-09T07:27:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-11-06T09:02:00.000-05:00

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!!!!

2006-10-25T14:49:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-10-19T17:41:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-12T10:59:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-10T07:50:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-10-05T13:26:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-02T14:35:00.000-05:00

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

2006-09-18T10:51:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-09-17T14:04:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-09-15T09:56:00.000-05:00

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

2006-09-13T08:27:00.000-05:00

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?

2006-09-09T01:36:00.000-05:00

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

2006-09-05T08:48:00.000-05:00

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

2006-08-23T09:10:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-08-18T13:21:00.000-05:00

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

2006-08-17T09:48:00.000-05:00

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

2006-08-11T09:14:00.000-05:00

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

And it just keeps getting better

2006-08-11T06:43:00.000-05:00

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.

2006-08-10T13:33:00.000-05:00

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

2006-07-31T12:43:00.001-05:00

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

2006-07-20T13:40:00.000-05:00

(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

2006-07-12T09:54:00.000-05:00

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

2006-07-07T11:15:00.000-05:00

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?

2006-06-23T14:25:00.000-05:00

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....

2006-06-12T06:58:00.000-05:00

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!!!!

2006-05-25T18:02:00.000-05:00

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!!!!

2006-05-17T09:11:00.000-05:00

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

2006-05-05T09:54:00.000-05:00

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

2006-05-02T06:47:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-04-19T10:54:00.000-05:00

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

2006-04-18T08:34:00.000-05:00

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!!!!

2006-04-10T07:03:00.000-05:00

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

2006-04-07T09:31:00.000-05:00

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

2006-04-05T12:34:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-04-04T08:28:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-31T15:45:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-29T08:07:00.000-05:00

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....

2006-03-22T10:17:00.000-05:00

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!

WOOT!!!!

2006-03-15T15:44:00.000-05:00

Ok most of you know that my ipod's little drive crashed about a month ago and I decided I would attempt the repair as the cost of the repair is around 200-250 with all the shipping. I got my drive today and thanks to the help of Josh Highlands blog I was able to succesfully yank the old drive and put the new one in. I ran apple updater and then reloaded all my tunes. took less than an hour and I am so jazzed! Its nice to have my little workout buddy back and its been a lonely time without it. SO for anyone out there with an ipod I am now qualified to do drive and battery replacements as I could have yanked the battery while I was in there but mine is running just fine.

In other news I did a swim workout today and I swear I felt like I was sinking the whole time. It amazing how much your attitude can effect a workout. I had so much against me today it was not funny. first up I was feeling really really tired. Second im feeling kinda stressed about a number of things so my mind was not in it. Third there is usually nobody but old slow people in the pool at the Y and that was not the case today. In lane 1 was a girl who has obviously done a lot of swimming. Her form was unreal. It was like she was hardly trying and yet she seemed like she was floating on top of the water and effortlessly gliding over it. then lane 2 was me. I felt like the only part of my body out of the water were my head and shoulders. And I felt slow next to her. Then in lane 3 was a guy I have seen around before. Im pretty sure he does Tri's as well and his form was not as good as lane 1 girl but he was still a lot faster than me. Had a much better stroke and a lot more power behind his stroke than I do. Sigh so on both sides of me I had people reminding me how slow I was which was yet another mental downer. SO I did my full workout. 200 - 400 - 200 but I felt like crap through the whole thing and couldnt wait to get out of the pool.

SO I had some bad and some good. I choose think about the good today.

Cheers!

Things that alter time? A little primer on Transitions

2006-03-14T08:13:00.000-05:00

Ok so I think by now anyone who followes this blog knows that I am training for a Tri and yeah the amount that I am posting about it should be a pretty good indicator of how much time i am spending thinking and planning for it. Ya see I dont just want to finish. I want to race competitively. I feel that im in the shape right now that I could just do it today and finish in a somewhat respectible time. But like I said I dont want that. I want to win. Now im not dillusional and I dont think for a minute that I would actually win my age group although I would like a top 10 or even a top 5 finish. Just something I could be a little more proud of. SO that being said Im in talks with my sweetie about doing a half iron man in july. Yup their is one in Muncie Indiana which in case you were wondering is home to the national model aviation museum so I can tell from that its a happening town. SO the deal is to see how I fair in April before I commit to another race and thats fine with me. Its less than a month away now. SO to get back to the title of this post I have been spending a lot of time trying to figure out where I am at now in terms of how long it would take me to finish so that I can figure out what I need to do to make that time faster. Well so far I am only discovering things that are going to add time. The first one is the transitions. I totally forgot about these, probably b/c I dont like them! You see in a tri you have 5 total splits that factor into your time:

total swim time = time spent in pool
T1 = the first transition and the time it takes to get out of the pool and onto your bike
total bike time = time spent on the bike course
T2 = the second transition and is the time it takes to get off your bike and out to the run course
total run time = time spent on the run course.

Ya see most people dont realize that the clock never stops in a Tri. And you can lose a TON of time in the transitions. The first tri I did I was given the wrong start time and I showed up about 1/2 hour before the swim start! I had no time to prepare my transition area and b/c of that my T1 time was awefull as I was digging through my bag looking for shoes and sunglasses and things like that. Their is so much that goes into your transition plan and I really need to start practicing that as well. Im hoping for transition times under 2 min for both transitions. Ive been reading tips for how to make them go faster like dont plan on wearing socks b/c its hard to get socks on wet feet. Those are the type of things im evaluating to help make my transitions faster. but mostly I just need to practice. SO unfortunately what this means is optimistically I have just added another 4 minutes to my total time which may not seem like much but when you are thinking that you are around 1:18 min and want to go under 1:10 min and you realize you have to add 4 minutes to your total time it can be a bit of a downer.

SO other than that I have been playing pokemon fire red on the game boy thanks to steve. Its so nice to have the gameboy when lisa is doign something like beathing the final boss for xenosaga ep2 for like the 12th time and yeah im a little bored with that now so I can still snuggle up to her and play a game that I want to. SO thanks steve. Other than that last night I broke out morrowind and played it very briefly as I am anticipating oblivion. Cant wait! And we have started to play silent hill 2 again but we are starting with born from a wish which is a pretty good side story I think.

thats all for now
Cheers!

More adventures

2006-03-07T12:53:00.000-05:00

Well their has come a point in my life where I have realized WOW when I have kids they are going to love me b/c I will try and in most cases succeed at fixing anything. I would say one of my strenghts as a person is spelling. HAH gotcha you thought I was serious oh man to see the look on your face! It was priceless. NE way seriously though I really am good at problem solving and figuring out solutions to problems as they present themselves. This is one thing that made me a fanstastic bicycle mechanic and which helps me as a net engineer. However I rarely get to use a hammer to solve a network issue and in the world of bicycle maintinence in salty florida a hammer is your best friend. SUBMIT SUBMIT!!!! sorry. again to get back on track I was just thinking about the work I am doing on my bike and how many people have no clue how to do that and then I was thinking about the fact that I am going to attempt my own Ipod repair. The drive has been ordered and I intend to crack the case on my ipod and replace the drive. Most sane people wouldnt even consider the thought of doing that yet I feel I have a roughly 95% chance of success in this repair. I guess im either really good or really stupid. I guess its just kind of weird as you get older to look at the skillsets you have and how broad they may or may not have become. SO that was my introspective moment for the day! woot.

Training update. I have litterally gone insane in that I now think its a good idea to wake up between 6-6:10am instead of 6:50 so that I have time to swim in the morning before work. Why would I want to do this??? B/c it will free up my afternoon workout to be better split between cardio and weights. I have seriously lost my grip on reality. In short training is going well. I need to get my bike done. I need to spend time in the saddle and not on a excersize bike but the real thing. I need to get my aero tuck down and efficiant. At least its not a long race so I can stand being uncomfortable for 30 min if it makes me go faster.

Now if you have been paying attention at all you will notice I have not mentioned anything about the run. I have been running a lot over the winter and I am really worried about the run. I feel its my weakest segment of this tri and I still have a really bad taste in my mouth about running and over training in running. SO I have to balance my fear of injury with the reality that I need to spend some time actually running not just on an elliptical machine but time on the track.

Game update:
Lisa and I are still working on finishing xenosaga. We beat the game a long time ago but now we are trying to finish the game. SO what we are working on right now is stealing a rare item from the final boss (when you beat the game you get to go back to the point right before you beat the boss and save). we need to do it about 14 more times in order to complete a certain quest. SO that kinda sucks and takes about a 1/2 hour each time. The good side is we are getting really good at it so hopefully as our characters level and what not it will go faster.

I cant wait for Elder scrolls Oblivion! That game is going to be so awesome!!!

Aside from that I have more games to play than time to play them so it should be a good summer even though thats a usual drought in games.

Well thats all for now.
Cheers!

BOOO to barnes and nobles and starbucks!

2006-03-04T20:01:00.000-05:00

Ok so lisa needed to do some work tonight and as we still have no internet in the house we were forced to go out looking for a network to hop onto. First we headed to borders where we discovered they were closed b/c they were in the process of moving. Next we went to Barnes & Nobles where we discovered that you had to pay to hop onto their wlan. BOOOOO!!! I was also able to pick up the signal from the nearby starbucks where I discovered again you had to pay to use their net. BOOOOOOO! SO now we are at panera sipping coffee and using their free wlan. Its also doubly good b/c they have two great big comfy chairs by a gas fireplace so we are all nice and taosty warm. SO thats cool and this is a first for me as I have never gone somewhere and used a computer totally wireless. SO again I love my new little chiyo chan SHE ROCKS!!! Well thats all for now oh yeah wait I swam this morning and did a 8 min 20 sec for the 400 which means im getting faster after only 3 workouts! I really feel like im settling into a rythm faster and not struggling to breath as much. Well thats all for now.

Cheers!

Its not about the bike

2006-03-03T15:09:00.000-05:00

Ok kudos to anyone who can figure out where my title came from!

Anyway as the title says this post is not the promised upgrading the bike post as I have yet to recieve any of the goodies I ordered earlier in the week but I am hopefull that when I get home tonight there will be a nice box from nashbar and then my new adventure will begin. SO since im not talking about that heres a quick rundown of what I have done training wise this week:

Mon.
1.Swam 100, 400, 100
2. workedout with lisa did some lifting to help repair those muscles and then did maybe 20 min of cardio

Tues.
30 min on the bike followed directly by 5 min cool down on the tread mill. This was my first mini-brick and im glad I am doing them

Wed.
35 min on the elliptical machine. It was a great workout

Thurs.
1. Swim 100, 400, 100 I timed my 400 and was shocked at my time 8 min 50 seconds!!!!!!! This kills my 16 min projected time and I know feel good about doing the swim in under 10 min since my second time out I beat it by over a minute! WOOT WOOT WOOT!!!!

2. Out with lisa again. Lifted and did around 25 min of cardio between the treadmill and the ellip.

Fri.
30 on the bike and another 5min on the tread mill makes brick #2 I think this is going to be awesome for my transisitons and I might even write into a tri mag offering it as a tip because its so easy to do.

SO thats how training is going. I really feel great and I feel like im really doing things smart for a change. Most of what I am doing is zero impact on my body so besides some sore muscles which really are not that bad im virtually in no discomfort at all which is a really nice change for me.

Game updates:
Elder scrolls 4 has gone gold and will be in my hands on march 21st!!!!!!!!!! Im sooo excited I cant wait.

Other than that things are going. I have had a crazy day and a crazy week at work and the only reason I am writting this now is becuase I really do need a break and a chance for my mind to recover from the "chicken with its head cut off" state that I have been in this morning. SO thats about it for me for now.

Cheers!

Training update - Swimming

2006-02-27T12:22:00.000-05:00

Well I have a feeling that my blog is going to have a slight shift over the next month or so as I discuss the various things I am doing to train for my event in april. Just to refresh everyones memory its a 400m swim a 13 mile bike and 3 mile run. I feel pretty comfortable in both the bike and run seperatly but its when you put them together that things start to get hairy. Also the only thing I have done over the winter is lift and run so I am a little nervous about my muscles getting re-acclimated to the bike. And then their is the swim.

If you have ever watched pro-swimers you might for the briefest moment think. WOW maybe we are designed to spend some time in the water. Then again if you look at people like me and the rest of the world who dont fall into that 1% of the populace you would have this re-action. Oh my what is that hurt sick or dying thing doing thrashing around in the water. Well thats how I feel most of the time with the swim leg and I feel its my weakest area. However I am going to try and change that this time. How you might ask. Here are my primary workout goals

1. Spend a lot of time in the pool. At least 2 pool workouts a week till the tri.

2. Get back on the bike! I want to try and do some 20 milers before the race.

3. DO some brick workouts probably on my saturdays. (a brick workout is when you ride hard on the bike and then transition to a run just like in the race. Why is it called a brick workout??? b/c when you get off the bike and start running it feels like people are throwing bricks at you. ^_^ )

SO in the start of my training today with a good 5 weeks to go I decided to try and see just how much endurance I still have with swimming since I have not been in the water for like a year. Well I did a warm-up 100 and then I decided to just go for it and see if I could do a 400. Well I did it. I was not fast by any stretch but I did it and I still had energy left over which is how I wanted to feel. I then took a minute to catch my breath and did a cool down 100. this will probably be my workout this week then next week I will go to a 100 - 500 -100 then the following week I will do a 200 - 400 - 200 then the week after that 200 - 500 - 200 and after that I will have to see how I am doing. At that point I might stick with the distance and try to increase speed. or I might jump to a 200 - 600 - 200 b/c if I can swim that for like 2 weeks and feel pretty good then the 400 swim in the race should be like a cake walk which is what I want.

I think my end goal is going to be to come in under 1 hour 20 min. Heres how im breaking down my times

16 min in pool. ( i think this can come waaaay down)
40 min for the bike (this is going to depend on me and the course)
26 for the run. Now I know what you are thinking and yes I know if I add all those up its greater than 1 hours 20 min. Its actually 1:22:00 but I am hopefull that I can shave time off the swim and the bike. Their was a time I could do 10 miles in around 24 min on the bike and their was a time I could run a 5k in 18:00 pretty easily so I am hopefull that I can shave some time. I do not think I will be in any real "competitive" area in terms of finishing but you never know. Most people in my age group are healthy and dont have a bum leg but I have a lot of experiance and I know how to run properly and I know how to bike so who knows. Can we say cinderalla story????

Now I have to give a shout out to my sponsors!

My wife lisa for always believing in me and not telling me that I am too old for this type of thing or that it costs too much money. And also for not laughing at me when I get my race clothes!!!

Sterling Clay for letting me borrow of whole mess of goggles from him that are defecting in one way or the other and no longer good enough for him. However I have finnaly found goggles that dont leak for me which is like WAAAAHHHHHH so awesome. Now if I can just find a replacement strap

Bike nashbar for not being a very successfull mail order company and having lots of old stuff that was exactly what I wanted on closeout b/c most other people have moved on. I seriously ordered three things from them today and no other mail order or online companies had any of it at there prices so I LOVE YOU BIKE NASHBAR!!!!!!

My wife lisa for letting me pursue my dream of the ironman and again not telling me im too old or too fat or whatever and being supportive.

Stay tuned for my next update "The first transition -- making my bike work the way its supposed too."

Cheers!

The downside of Funk

2006-02-24T14:13:00.000-05:00

I think I am starting to feel the effects of the winter weather as it seems to not be able to make up its mind over if it should be warm (oh please please please stay warm) or if it should be frigidly cold. At least this winter was not as bad as last year and I think I shoveled my driveway maybe 2xs so thats not that bad. Im just totally ready for things to be warm again. I need this badly. Top 10 Reasons I strive for warmth:

1.) Possible beach vacation with my sweetie this year! If I ever get enough vacation time that is.

2.) Races are much more fun when its warm then when you are cold. Man I hope april is not cold

3.) Riding a motorcycle is more fun when its warm than when its cold

4.) I just enjoy being outside in general but not when its cold.

5.) I have a great pair of sandals that are just cyring out to me from my closet

6.) My tan is really fading and needs to be re-charged!

7.) Winter coats are bulky and just get in the way whenever you go some where

8.) My dogs are really really shaggy and need a haircut but If we get them one now they will freeze

9.) I want to get blizzards from dairy queen and not freeze to death while eating them

10.) and lastly Warm weather is the bomb bizzle.

SO there ya have it I think I have made a pretty good argument as to why it should instantly turn warm and no longer be cold. Oh well guess Im going to be waiting at least a few more weeks till we get a consistant warmup and hey think of me on april 8th as I jump out of the pool at around 8:15 am and hop on a bike soaking wet in what will probably be 40 degree weather!!!

Cheers!

My new laptop!!!!

2006-02-21T09:47:00.000-05:00

Well as promised I took a couple of pics of my new laptop and well I put a 360 controller with a couple of them for size reference. Just to clarify its an Averatec 1000 series laptop with a 10.6" widescreen and it weighs a scant 3.5 lbs with battery.

So there ya have it. And yes I did name it Chiyo chan and it rocks and I have to say I think it looks sweet next to the 360 controller. Well thats it for now. Oh yeah I signed up for a sprint triathlon in april. SO I now have some motivation to start training a little harder and to get some time in the pool. The distances are 400m swim -- 22 KM bike -- 5 KM run. Im really excited about it as im starting to not feel as weak as I have been in the past. Although my right leg is still much weaker than the left I am doing what I can to strengthen that and I can tell its making a difference.

Cheers!

I got it!!!!I

2006-02-19T14:09:00.000-05:00

Well it took a bit of time and a little convincing but I got my new laptop and am actually blogging wirelessly on it right this second. So this is my first wireless entry and my first entry from my new laptop. Pictures are coming maybe by tommorow I hope. Other big news is that my ipod is at this point officially dead. I have run several of the diagnostics and it passes most everything however occasionally the hard drive test fails and I get basically a fatal read error. SO it looks like the drive in it is toast and I am thinking now that perhaps the flash based mini and nano's are a better way to go then the hard drive based units as hard drives dont really like to be moved while they are spinning. well dinner calls but hey if anyone wants to get me a black ipod nano i wouldnt turn it down ^_^

cheers!!

And Friday makes 15

2006-02-07T10:16:00.000-05:00

yes not only was friday the 1st anniversary of my blog it was also the day that I was involved in my 15th yes thats a big one followed by a big fat five -- 15th car accident. And in the spirit of me and my life it had to be something unusual. SO as I was sitting at a red light In my (still brand new to me hyundai tucson) I was rear ended by a guy who just was not paying attention. He has totally jacked up my bumber and now I have to take my car to get repaired. Now you might be thinking hmm doesnt sound that bad. Well as I was pulling off the road to get things like insurance info and check damage the guy who hit me RAN. yes thats right he fled the scene. SO there I was all alone with a jacked up bumber waiting for the cops. SO that totally blew and I would write more but I need to restart my computer again b/c my ipod is totally not working. Do you hear that payton. this is at least the 3rd time that I have had to search through forums and look through stuff b/c my ipod just forgot what it was supposed to do as in it lost all my music and then no longer would sync with my pc. SO thats what I am doing now. Trying to resurect my ipod again.

Cheers!

1st Birthday Evuh!!!

2006-02-03T14:54:00.000-05:00

Thats right peoples today my blog is officially 1 year old! I cant believe I started this over a year ago and that I still regularly post to it and that my posts are probably longer than most people care to read! WOOT for me! SO thanks to everyone who stops by and reads and thanks also to all those who leave comments as they are always appreciated and help justify my poor existance in this thing we call INTERNET.

Ok so heres my funny thought of the day and it really shows the difference between being support and being an end user.

If you are an end user calling support you pray you dont get voicemail

If you are support calling an end user you pray you get their voicemail

Seriously im not joking. Most of the times I do callbacks I just sit and hope that they dont pick up the phone. SO anyway just a little something to think about.

Cheers and thanks again for reading!!!!

My shout out to RP missions

2006-02-02T15:42:00.000-05:00

Ok I got a question from Payton over what RP missions is and so I thought I would give a quick shout out to all my homies over in BEAVER FALLS!!!! yeah thats right theys be kickin it ollllll skool doing mission work the way its meant to be, overseas and out of yo comfort zone but with established churches so yo work aint in vain yo.

Ok more seriously RP missions is really awesome and proof that through God one person can make a dramatic difference and impact a large number of people. Matt Filbert is the head of RP missions and he does in a part time setting what most missionary organizations have a whole staff and buildings to accomplish. The amazing thing about this is that it totally keeps the cost of trips down since very little if any administrative costs are built into what you have to fundraise which is generally unheard of.

SO whats my connection to this whole thing?? Well lisa and I went on our first trip to scotland in 98. then we had a weee hiatus and came back with a vengeance to lead a team to Norhtern Ireland in 2002 and then we went to japan for matt in 2003. Also since 2001 we have been opening our house up as a geograpically neutral venue for the annual RP missions team leader training. Which is used as a way to help prepare people who might lead trips the following summer and answer any questions they might have.

SO in a nutshell thats RP missions.

Cheers!

Yeah im here so keep your nick knacks on!

2006-02-01T14:13:00.000-05:00

Ok yeah so I know I have not posted in a little bit, but im still not as bad as some people (coughlukecoughdennycough) so there. Well what has been up with me. Well a lot actually this past weekend we opened our house to what is now becoming an annual event which is The RP missions team leader training weekend. This is the 5th year that Lisa and I have opened our house up for this event and this was by far the largest turnout that we have had yet. At one point in time we had I think 22 people in our house and 18-19 spent the night on friday and saturday night. SO needless to say their were sleeping bags everywhere!!! It was a really good time and again Lisa and I are always Glad when the Lord give us the opportunity to use our house for him. Aside from preparing for that and getting the house ready for that we have also been preparing for the newest resident in the Knodel house and she arrived yesterday evening. Thats right Lisa's sister sara moved in with us last night and will be living with us for an undetermined amount of time. Were really excited to have here at home and pray that its a great experiance for her. Ok so thats life stuff what else. Oh yeah I have a request in for a new laptop!!! I have talked to a couple of people about it and until it gets the final approval im going to hold off on posting that much about it but I think it will be uber kewl and I have already come up with what I will name it if I get it -- Chiyo Chan -- SO if that works out then I will finnaly name my pc and give it the name of -- Sakaki San -- If you dont know what the significance of either of those names are I will give two clues. One they are from the same thing. two use google. Ok so hopefully I will get the approval on that and get to order it soon as my laptop is essentially worthless at the moment. what else is up oh yeah Saw the official Silent Hill Trailer the other day and WOW it looks like its capturing the spirit of the game in a great way so I am even more excited about april!!!!!! Oh and I was searching around the net some and found out they are also in pre-production for a fatal frame movie!!! Someone is paying attention! But for some reason us movie makers dont want to use Japanese actors for japanese roles. Think memoirs of a geisha which as I am reading had a mostly chinese cast and little japanese representation. Which is really dumb and reminds me of the old westerns where the indians were often whiter then the cowboys. Anyway guess I will end on a game update since I have not done one in awhile

Xbox 360
Still working on kameo (2 hours) and Perfect dark(2 hours) when I get time. I think we have played more hexic than either one of those games. I just need more time!!!

Xbox
DOA3 and DOAU are taking up my time here but I have not touched either in a month

PS2
Xenosaga 2 owns me right now and Lisa and I are playing that to death. However its good but no where near the caliber of the first one. I really hope they go back to some of the earlier mechanics for the 3rd and final game in the series - clocked time 35 hours

PSx
still kinda fiddling with FFIX when I get the time however I just picked up Chrono Cross (brand new mind you) and so I think after xenosaga im going to try to get lisa interested in that one so that I can play through it in a shorter period of time then say a year.

GBA
made a huge breakthrough in Legend of Zelda and now I feel really dumb. Also somebody coughstevencoughdennycough has still never let me borrow one of a thousand pokemon games that he has. SO someday I might play one of them as well.

Ok so there ya go that was a pretty long post that summed up everything thats pretty much going on with me. SO hope everyone is doing well and I will post again this week I promise.

Cheers!

a;ldjfaetihidadg;l;k ^_^

2006-01-23T13:02:00.000-05:00

Ok so yeah im back and wow i am wiped out. Totally annihilated is how I feel. SO much for vacation time. I joked with lisa that I think this whole thing is a consipiracy by my job to make me willingly forfeit vacation time b/c since I have worked for MDECA my vacation time has been either:

1. Impossible to use b/c of how we accrue it
2. used for something other than vacation
3. used on a vacation that blew goats.

That pretty much sums up my "productive" use of vacation time over the past 5.5 years. SO oh well I just continue to live at my desk and rot. Just kidding im not rotting im just tired and not in a the best of moods. Its funny though b/c I got a call today to do a job shadow for a kid in HS and im like ok Ill show him whats what. he he he. But seriously let me try to put together at least a couple of coherant thoughts. Ok Yes I am back from arizona. No gary it was not a retreat and their were no illegal or controlled substances also it was not Sara Baker. WOW guess what their is more than one girl named Sara in the world. Sorry not trying to be harsh its again the tired that is doing this. Anyway Oh and by the way the grass on my berm could still stand to be a little shorter so tell the horse to come back. Oh yeah and Steve let me just say that the prices your rec center charges are insane!!! can I say that one more time they are insane!!! like im looking at it and it would probably cost me more to come and climb at your joint then to go to a real gym. And sorry but most gyms are in the 10-15,000 sq ft range plus another 4-5k for bouldering. I seriously dont know what they are thinking. 30 bucks for a belay class then another 15 for a cert!!! who do they think they are????? Ive been climbing for 6 years now and you want me to take a written test! what so that you know I can write belay on and on belay. Sorry venting. Its just dumb thats all and I swear if I go and steve doesnt let me set a boulder problem im going to scream until he does. SO if you want to see Chris Sparky Knodel or Ruki or whatever you want to call me scream like a little girl till Im blue in the face and get my way just let me know and I will tell you when I am going to Steves wall. ^_^ but be forwarned you might have to skip paying a bill just to get in the door to see this oh so dramatic event.

Sorry I know I went off on a tangent but ya know. I guess I can always go outside for free and thats what I have been doing for the last year. Ok again trying to stray back to some type of coherant thought wave. The trip yesterday felt long. IT felt like we were traveling all day and I guess we really were. Left Sara around 9:45am and got to my house about 9pm so yeah that was a pretty freaking long time. However the flight was made nicer by two of my bestest friends. Mr Gameboy and Mix master Ipod. Ahh its so nice to be able to totally drown out everything around you and kinda forget that you are in a bullet shaped coffin traveling around 450 mph roughly 5 miles above anything safe to stand on. And when you think about the fact that the only thing keeping you in the air is the Bernoulli principle well my friends thats pretty scary. That and the fact that your pilot has a hmm 70% chance of being either: (woot 4 lists)

1. drunk
2. hungover
3. asleep
( i still dont know which is worse. Vote with your comment!)

Is also comforting. So needless to say physics held up and my arch nemisis gravity did not prevail therefore we landed safely in columbus last night and then made the drive back down to drizzly dayton. SO thats pretty much the update. This week is going to be INSANE IN THE MEMBRANE and so im really trying to catch up on rest at work before I go home b/c I think thats going to just as bad as work. Oh well I will try to post again this week something with a bit more perc to it.

Cheers!

More on whats up

2006-01-18T09:32:00.000-05:00

Well this post is going to be a little more umm I guess superficial as talk a little about what AZ has been like for me. Well first off It does not feel like I am in the dessert. It feels like im in some controlled and created disney reproduction of the dessert thats in say canada. I say this because its been pretty darn cold here and Im not just talking about at night b/c yes I realize the dessert is cold at night. Im talking about during the day when its getting up to the mid 50's. Not really dessert to me. SO anyway I think the scenery here is really pretty. If you know me then you know I adore mountains and the mountains here I think are really pretty. Also their is lots and lots of good rock around here which is driving me crazy. Im just feeling the itch to get my monkey skills on! ^_^ SO anyway I have gotten to go for one run so far here and It was a good 3.5-4 miler I think. It was really nice and came at the end of a day when I really really needed a run so that was cool. SO now I have run in the dessert. However luke I still kept my shirt on b/c it was that cold and it was during the sunset which was on one hand really pretty but on the other not conducive to tanning. SO I dont think you have to worry about that. We have been to a couple of the local eateries like taco bell / pizza hut (the greatest juxtiposition of a restuarant for me and lisa) and a local mexican place which every one seemed to think was really good. then last night we went to Tastee Freeze and got Ice Cream and I still need to go back and get a pic outside of it so that I can feel apart of that great john mellon cougar camp song. Well I think we are getting ready to shove off so just be in prayer for us the days are long and hard but they are really great at the same time. SO thats me signing off.

Cheers!