Lee's Blog

Running in 2008

2009-02-03T15:16:00.003-05:00

It's been a while since I posted on this blog (I've been busy on my so-called "professional" blog), but I wanted to share my year of running for 2008. Of course, it's now early February and this would have been more appropriate in early January, but, I guess, I missed my window of opportunity.

I've been using a Nike+ for almost 2 and a half years now, so 2008 was my first full calendar year using it, and it provided me with excellent motivation to "get out and run", I'll say! Because I've been using that, I also have a much more comprehensive view of what my running was like for the year.

According to the "2008 rundown" that the Nike+ website provides, my year looked something like:

I ran on a total of 235 days, covering 2,685,599 steps and just a bit over 1390 miles.
Monday was my favorite day to run during the week
My longest run was on October 19th (when I ran two legs of the Detroit Marathon)
I burned 178,370 calories (yet I did not seem to lose any weight that I can tell - I must have eaten quite a lot more, too!)
I "saved" 89.5 gallons of gas (not sure what that's supposed to mean, though)

In addition to those stats, I also ran probably about 10 road races. I was shooting for one a month but didn't make that goal. Of those races, 6 were 5K races, 2 were 10K races, 1 was a 2 mile race and then I ran in a relay team in the Detroit Marathon (my leg was the first leg - about 7.25 miles - and I ran along with a team mate in the second leg - another 5.5).

In those road races, I had personal bests in all distances. That's always gratifying, especially as I'm quite a bit older than my last stint of "significant" running (when I was in college).

Speaking of the Detroit Marathon - I also managed to pull together 2 relay teams (9 other runners) to take part, which is almost a more satisfying achievement than all of the running on my own. My run there also gave me the confidence to run a half marathon - I'm shooting for the Martian Marathon in early April to do that.

Looking forward to 2009 - One goal I have is to run even farther this year. Maybe I can hit 1500 miles?? I've also joined a number of new challenges on the Nike+ web site:

One challenge is to run 2009 KM in 2009 (I did more than that in 2008, so hopefully it's not too much of a stretch)
Another is to race "across America". Basically, run 3,260 miles. Currently, I'm 16th out of 343 participants. I figure that should take me at least into early next year.
Another even more ambitious challenge is the "Run around the Earth" - run 24,902 miles. I'm currently 32nd of 672 participants there. This one is definitely a multi-year challenge - if (and that's a big if) I can keep running any where near what I have this past year, it's still going to be, what, 15-20 years to run that far.

I also am hoping to continue PR-ing in my road races this year. I just ran the Super Bowl 5K this past Sunday and managed a new PR in the 5K, which was very cool.

I'm definitely looking forward hopefully to another good year in running, but time will tell.

I'm mentioned in a book I didn't even know about

2008-10-28T08:13:00.004-04:00

I recently was "Googling" myself to see if / how my professional blog might be visible and came across a book titled, "Integrated Management Systems" about total quality management initiatives in companies. It turns out there is a chapter on a previous employer of mine (Synetics) and in that chapter, it mentions my name and an initiative I led within Synetics.

Who knew?

Run Fit 5K

2008-05-01T11:41:00.003-04:00

So I ran in the Run Fit 5K last night in Novi. A good race (I've run the course a few times - I remember the first time, I was shocked at the large hill you go up toward the end of the race) and beautiful weather combined to make for a pleasant evening.

My daughter competed in the "Kids Dash" and managed to take first place. Of course, it was for kids up to 9 and she's nine and also tall, so she was about a head taller than anyone else, which helped her, I think. But, regardless, Hurrah for her!

My son competed in the Mile Run and managed a third place - his goal was 9 minutes, which I thought was conservative and he ran an 8:10 (or thereabouts). Hurrah for him!

Both kids brought home a medal, which is always fun.

In the 5K, I was thinking leading up to it that A) my summer goal this year would be to run under 22 minutes. Not all that fast in the grand scheme of things, but certainly a challenge for me. For last night, I was thinking maybe a more conservative 23 minute goal.

The race started out well - I felt good and loose. I crossed the first mile at about 6:40! I was quite surprised, needless to say. The course seemed very accurate - pretty much at each mile marker, my Garmin "beeped" the mile lap, so I knew it was pretty legitimate!. I crossed the two mile mark at about 13:40 - just under 7 minutes again! I'm still feeling good at this point but I know I'm facing that tough hill that comes right after that point.

I make it up that hill feeling OK and trying to do the math in my head, "How fast do I have to do this last 1.1 miles to finish under 22 minutes?? Hmm... I think that's 1.1 miles in a bit over 8 minutes, which I think means about a 7:15 mile, right?"

With about a half mile to go, I had a runner pass me and I thought, "No way, buddy!" so I picked up my pace and kept on trucking. Still feeling good!

I cross the line and see.... I ran a 21:34! Wow - Not only did I better my evening's goal but I've already beat my goal for the summer road race season! That's (well) over a minute faster than the other fastest 5K I've run any time in the last 15+ years. Woo hoo!

The only downer is that I now have to set myself another goal for the summer! Can I get under 21 minutes?? We'll see!

So my family likes to count the # of runners I finish behind (gives the kids something to do). They tell me I was 33rd overall. I knew the age group awards go 5 deep in each 5-year bracket for each gender. I figure statistically I'm likely to get an award (which turned out to be coffee mugs).

I wait through all of the female age groups and most of the male (yeah, yeah, waiting for the 40-44 bracket...) and they get to my group. Turns out that my group had something like 3 people run under 17 minutes! Holy cow! I did not get an age group award, but I did realize that my age group was probably the most competitive of any of them! Yikes. Good on them! (And, I did not need or want a coffee mug anyway - don't drink coffee....)

But I am left with the great feeling of having run a great (for me) race and setting myself up with a good summer to look forward to.

Athletics since January

2008-04-29T21:28:00.002-04:00

My last post prior to today was about the start of my soccer team's first indoor session of the year. Well, that season did *not* go so well. We finished with 1 victory, 1 tie and 6 losses. After the success of our last season (we finished 7-1), we were pushed up a division, which hurt. At the same time, we lost some of our players, which hurt.

So we're now two games from the end of our second session for the year and are now 4-2, having been pushed back down to the third division since the second season. Our game this past Sunday was a victory, but only in name - the other team forfeited due to lack of players; we scrimmaged (giving them two of our players) and the rest of the team just could not get it together. I think it ended something like 7-1 or some crap like that. :-(

In other athletic news - I've only run one road race so far this year (since the Belle Isle Fun Run on New Years Eve), which was the Super Bowl 5K - it was a slightly long course by both my Nike+ and my Garmin, but I felt very good and thought I had a good race.

Tomorrow I run a second race for the year - another one associated with Running Fit in Novi - The Run Fit 5K. I'm looking at another 4 in the next 6 weeks or so, so things are picking up.

I also think I've managed to pull together two teams for the Detroit Marathon relays this next October, which I'm happy about!

Lastly - as for general running - January was a slow start - not so much because of the weather but because of the house flood, hotel, etc., situation. I finally settled into things (running at the office several days a week to juggle schedules) and have managed to rack about 375 miles this year so far! I'm in a challenge on the Nike+ site to run 1,000 miles in the 2008 calendar year - I think I'm well ahead of pace right now, but it's a good goal for me!

Updates for April 2008

2008-04-29T21:21:00.003-04:00

So, it's been, what, 3 months since I posted? What have I been up to?

Well, as I mentioned in one of my last posts, we had some issues with the house on New Years Eve and we ended up spending 3 months (yes, 3 months!) in a hotel. A hotel about 10 miles from the house. A hotel with one "high speed" internet connection (which, during the evening, was about as high speed as a 2400 baud modem). A hotel with only about 15 channels and NO TiVo! Oh, the humanity.

Well, we're back in the house now, the re-construction is almost all done (just a few bits and pieces remaining), we've been compensated for part of the living expenses for which the insurance company owes us (luckily, the contractor is billing the chunk of work the insurance company pays for directly to them and the hotel was direct charged to the insurance company) and we're almost back to normal.

It was a drag of an experience and not one that I want to repeat any time soon, I'll say.

What I had to keep telling myself was, "You're getting a new kitchen for about 70% off, You're getting a new kitchen for about 70% off, You're getting a new kitchen for about 70% off..."

The new kitchen is great (though I'm still getting used to the re-arrangement) and the changes in the dining room (we paid extra for those plus a good chunk of the changes in the kitchen) are great.

Plus, we have TiVo again - and not just any TiVo - we finally have been able to hook up and use my wife's new HD TiVo, which can record two things at once! Sweet, sweet Tivo. In just the living room now we can record 3 separate things (including the older TiVo there). Woo hoo!

I'll post separately on other news.

A new season of indoor soccer starts

2008-01-07T00:33:00.000-05:00

Well, I never did close out on my last season of indoor soccer here, did I? My last post on soccer was providing some updates on our improvement as a team. The season after I posted about there (that would be "S3" - i.e., session 3 for winter 2007), my team actually won the division! We finished with a 7-1 record, with the only loss being our first game, and with a victory over a team that hadn't lost in over two full seasons! It was great. We didn't have a huge offensive output but the team played a very tight defense. To put in terms of the table from my last post, the Average Joes averaged 5.13 goals/game and our opponents averaged 2.13. Sweet :-)

Tonight, we started our first indoor season as the Average Joes for this year. We skipped the first session (November-December) because a number of us were injured. Some of the guys played together on other teams, but the Average Joes held off.

Our game tonight ended up with close loss - 7-9 - to a team that had a couple of phenomenally good offensive players. Now, the shocking thing is, I actually scored 4 (maybe 5) goals (I say it that way because the fifth goal seemed to be an own goal by the other team, but my own team insisted I take credit for it as I was standing right next to the guy)! I couldn't believe it, to be honest (and still don't). Just had some great passing and I managed to get myself into the right place a few critical times, I guess.

My knee (which if you know me, has been bothering me since my outdoor season) didn't bug me during the game, which was a great thing. I'm hoping it doesn't start bothering me any time soon.

This will obviously impact my running, but I'm still hoping to get in 4 or so runs on average a week. Of course, our recent plumbing disaster has also put a (temporary) crimp in running.

More plumbing woes

2008-01-06T09:30:00.000-05:00

An update on my house's plumbing situation: First, the insurance company finally called us back - on Friday, though! It took them over three days to get back to us on a problem that was going to get more and more expensive the longer it took to get started on a "real" cleanup. Idiots...

So the first contractors finally showed up Friday about mid-day. It was the "remediation company". Apparently their responsibility is to assess the water damage and then perform the water cleanup. The contractor started his investigation, thinking it wasn't too bad (we *had* cleaned up quite a lot in three days, you know?), but later on said, "Well, this is much worse than I thought." Duh....

The net was: The floor in the bathroom upstairs (tile) will likely need to be removed, the cabinet pulled out; the floor just outside of that bathroom will need to be dried out with their special drier; the carpet there will probably need to be replaced; unbeknown to us, the water had also made its way into the floor in my daughter's room so that will need to be dried out. On the first floor of the house: the linoleum will need to be removed; the soffets will need to be removed; the cabinets (at least some of the) will need to be removed and probably replaced; the sub-floor will probably need to be replaced; the floor in the toy room and family room will need to be dried and the carpets replaced; we will have to have the ductwork all cleaned to ensure moisture is removed.

Looks like we will be staying in a hotel at least for about a week while this goes on because there will be no access to the kitchen. My hope is that the hotel stay will only be necessary during the clean up and not the construction.

As for the construction - that will be separate contractor. It's still not clear how this all works in terms of identifying the cost and approving.

We also need to put together a list of the items destroyed by the flood for reimbursement. That's going to be a big part of today.

In the midst of all of this, I haven't managed to get in a run since my road race on Monday :-(. My soccer team has their first game of the session tonight, which I'm planning to try to play even with my bum knee (which hasn't been bugging me as much for the last few weeks!).

Plumbing pain

2008-01-03T08:53:00.000-05:00

So as I posted the other day, the family and I ran the Belle Isle Fun Run on New Years' Eve. A good start to the day of partying, right???...

That night, we all went to our friends' house for a New Years Eve party - mostly eating, drinking and playing video games (lots of Guitar Hero among the kids and the parents).

We left and drove home through a minor snow storm at about 1AM...

My son and I were the first two to walk from the garage into the house - he opened the door in front of me and I was right behind. As soon as he opened the door, I could hear a sound I did not like at all - the sound of a LOT of running water with splashing.

We walk in and there's a veritable waterfall coming out of the light fixture over the kitchen table right onto the table and, from there, it splashed all over the kitchen. Realizing it was obviously coming from the second floor, I ran upstairs and found that one of the supply lines under the sink at the top of the stairs had apparently broken.

The water had flooded that bathroom floor, seeped into the carpet right outside of that bathroom and made its way down to the first floor (the kitchen is right under that bathroom). It was coming out of the light fixture over the kitchen table and also the one over the sink. From the sink, it made its way onto the floor in that area and seeped into the carpet in the dining room (which we really use as a toy room). From the kitchen table, it made its way into the carpet of the family room... At this point, that's 5 rooms affected so far...

So the family starts cleaning up the water as best as we can - the kids' initial reaction of, "Oh my god, what's going on??!!" quickly transitioned into a heroic effort to help my wife and I clean up (yay, kids!)

I realize that the basement needs to be checked so I go down and find... Water everywhere. Oh goodness...

So we finally get the kids to bed at about 2AM after they've immensely helped with the cleanup and we really start to dig into the basement. We finally feel like we have the bulk of the water cleaned up by about 5AM and decide that we need to get some sleep so we head to bed, where neither of us can sleep but we each got about 45 minutes in. The prime problem we had at this point was that the furnace (which had gotten damp but which didn't seem to be otherwise that affected) would not stay on; we could hear it light but it would then not start the blower. By the time we got up again, it was 54 degrees in the house. I turned off the thermostat for a while and turned it back on and the furnace finally did come on. Yeah! At least something good!

So we get to spend New Years Day trying the best we can to clean up the mess. Luckily, we have incredible neighbors and they sprang into action with us to help figure out what to do about the carpets and what we needed to rent in terms of equipment to help with the drying.

My wife called AAA about noon on New Years Day and now, almost 48 hours later they still have not called back or had any contact whatsoever! I am extremely angry about this at this point - we need some help figuring out what we need to do next to deal with this problem.

Of course, on top of this all, I've been battling with a cold of some sort since Monday evening as well. What joy...

Belle Isle Fun Run

2007-12-31T18:00:00.001-05:00

Well, today I ran the 38th annual Belle Isle 4 Mile Fun Run and the kids (along with a couple of the neighbor kids) ran the 1 Mile kid run as well.

It was a nice day for a run (considering the date) - about 32 degrees at race time (3PM for the kids, 4PM for the 4 mile run), overcast and no real wind to speak of.

My son ran a very excellent 7:35 in the mile, which was much better than his goal and he came in 10th overall, so that was awesome!

My daughter ran with her two friends, one of whom wasn't feeling very good, so they didn't have a good time but they enjoyed the run (and I *love* the fact that my daughter is willing and able to do this - I can't even imagine having done a 1 mile run when I was her age!)

I ran a very satisfying 29:27 for myself - about a 7:21 pace, so I was very happy with that. Based on my ForeRunner, I ran a 7:14 first mile, then a 7:26, 7:27 and finished with a 7:22. Very nice and even. I am very, very happy with my performance today.

Now the next road race will likely be the Super Bowl Sunday run I ran a few years ago. Not sure when that will be, though.

My new professional blog

2007-12-30T19:28:00.000-05:00

I've started a new blog in my own domain (leeromero.org) with the intent of it being a more professionally-focused blog where I will write about my experiences in and thoughts about the area in which I work.

Check it out!

Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas (to me!)

2007-12-30T09:55:00.000-05:00

I recently celebrated a birthday and, as a personal celebration of sorts, managed to get in a 9 mile run on my birthday. Happy birthday to me! :-) That was the longest run I've had since, I think, about 1990.

I entered Christmas week thinking my recent run (pun intended) of good weeks might be at risk due to the holiday, family, etc. I did "miss" a run for the week (running only 4 times instead of what's become my recent norm of 5 runs) but, with my 9 mile run, two 6+ mile runs and a 5.5 mile run yesterday (at my wife's fitness club), I put in just under 27 miles on the week, which was another "longest week" for me - my 10th week in a row of getting longer. Obviously, that's always an indication of "quality" but I have been so happy about my runs of late.

As for Christmas - among other cool running-related items, my wife bought me a Garmin ForeRunner 305 - a running watch with a built-in GPS locator! I was stunned as I didn't even know such things existed. Now I'll have the most anal-retentively analyzed runs of anyone who really isn't all that good at running. Running with both the NikePlus and the ForeRunner, I can at least have a couple of ways to know how long I'm running.

I was so excited about the ForeRunner, I had to go out on Christmas Day for a run and put in just over six miles. I also realized (duh...) that the ForeRunner doesn't work so well on a treadmill :-)

Tomorrow, I'm hoping to do a local road race - the 38th Annual Belle Isle New Year's Eve Family Run Run / Walk. It's a 4 mile run that also features a 1 mile run for the kids to take part in (and all kids get trophies, which is what's motivating them to want to take part). We'll see how that works out.

The last week in Running

2007-12-18T09:05:00.000-05:00

Last week saw an increase in use of the treadmill and a decrease in motivation. Man, it seems much harder this year to do the runs on the treadmill than it has in past years.

Last Sunday, though, I did get out for my new longest run (well, longest since my long-ago college days when I ran much more than I do now)! I ran a bit over 8.5 miles last Sunday on a nice route around the "big square" as I named the route in my Nike+ web site. I happen to live in an area broken into nicely sized squares, each 1 mile on a side. For a number of years, my "long run" each time I did it was to do the single such square I live next to - a bit over a 4 mile run. Last Sunday, I did the outer perimeter of four of those plus a bit more. It was a great run and I was so happy to be outside!

This Sunday I did my long run on the treadmill and it was a real challenge getting to 7 miles :-(.

I continue to mentally struggle with the odd behavior of my Nike+ on the treadmill - since I calibrated it, it seems that it still tracks about 10-15 seconds / mile slow on the treadmill, though on the other hand it seems like it tracks about 10 seconds fast outside. That means when I'm on the treadmill trying to maintain a pace that I am happy with, I'm probably running about 15-20 seconds faster per mile than I would be to achieve the same feeling outside.

Anyway - last week was another "longest week" for me - 25.96 miles - and my 8th such week in a row (the last time I didn't set a recent personal best for long week was the week just before the Detroit Marathon where I rested toward the end of the week).

My Kids - the smart ones in the family!

2007-12-09T22:54:00.000-05:00

My son came home Friday with his trimester report card and did a great job this term - He had 3 A's and 3 A+'s for the trimester! Great job for him!

He also got all "O's" for behavior, which means that he's earned himself a field trip to see a movie with the other "all O's".

My daughter hasn't yet gotten her report card, but I know she also is as capable. Of course, her (elementary) school is soon going to transition to a grading system where anyone with a 70%+ average will receive a "P" (performing). There is apparently no higher rating. How motivating for the more capable kids, huh? As I like to say - they propagate the cult of mediocrity - No one can stand out and no one's accomplishments are to be individually celebrated.

A Dark Week in Running

2007-12-09T22:47:00.000-05:00

So, this last week I had to continue doing most of my running on my treadmill. Dark and dreary in the basement (well, not all that dark, but boring to look at!).

I also continued to be annoyed by the discrepancy between the treadmill and my iPod. As I mentioned last week, I took a mile last Sunday to calibrate it, but it doesn't seem to have affected it much - it's still off. But, on the positive side of things, despite having to run most of the days on the treadmill, I did manage to get outside Friday and run a bit over 6 miles. It was good. I also ended up with yet another weekly high for me on the Nike+ - just about 25.85 miles, up from about 25.1 a week earlier.

Today, I managed to get out just about noon for my weekly long run - though I'd heard that we were due for some sleet and freezing rain. Luckily, I think I got out early enough to avoid that, though there was a bit of snow about. I got in a very good 8.55 mile run, which is my longest on the Nike+. Yeah! I also felt very good, though the last mile was a bit tiring!

5K, Templars and Treadmills

2007-12-02T20:23:00.000-05:00

Well, I ran the Reindeer Run 5K yesterday and it was a good time (and I had a good time). It was a pretty chilly 18 degrees at race time. I managed to get pretty close to the front - I think there were probably about 500-600 people in it as it seemed pretty large, so I didn't want to get "stuck "as I did at the start of the Turkey Trot.

I managed a pretty decent race and, most importantly, accelerated into the last mile, so I feel like the numerous longer runs have really helped in that regard.

In other news, yesterday I finished The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury. A decent read but it sure did feel like a first novel (I think it was Khoury's first). I thought the end was a bit of a cop out after the way the "mystery" of what the characters were looking for was revealed.

And, today I hit the treadmill again after a few days back outside. Was planning to do a longer run (probably 7-8 miles) but got to 5 and was aggravated by the inaccuracy of my Nike+ on my treadmill, so at 5 I decided to try to calibrate my Nike+ with a mile run. I did that but didn't realize that mile didn't "count" for my runs. Stupid thing :-/ I was going to go another mile but was too irritated. Now I'll need to do a longer run during the week at some point.

Back outside (at least temporarily) and good runs!

2007-11-30T08:57:00.000-05:00

So, after hitting my treadmill Monday due to a combination of dark, cold and (mostly) bad weather, my last few runs have been back outside. It's always a bit off-putting to run in the dark, I'll say, but I still prefer that to the treadmill for some reason.

Tomorrow I am running in a 5K when the temperature is supposed to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 16-20 degrees. Brrr... In preparation, I did a shorter run last night and tried to push a bit and had a great run. Feeling good for tomorrow!

The kids are thinking of doing a 1K that is associated with the race, but we'll see how the cold effects that decision. :-)

Hit my treadmill for the first time in about 7 months

2007-11-26T21:20:00.000-05:00

Well, today was the first day since early last spring that I was forced to run on my treadmill this winter (well, late fall anyway). I've always much-preferred running outdoors, but when we flip to standard time from daylight-savings time (so it gets a lot darker earlier) and the sidewalks start to get slick, I end up needing to do my workouts in a safer, though much more boring, environment.

So down to the treadmill I go.

The interesting thing is that I had the treadmill set at a relatively-normal pace for myself, and it felt "right" compared to how I would feel outdoors, but my Nike+ was measuring it "short" - that is, it was measuring probably about 0.02-0.03 miles short each mile I ran and the pace reported by my Nike+ during the run was consistently about 10-15 seconds slower than the treadmill and my body were telling me I was going. Bummer.

I'll have to figure out if I need to calibrate the thing for my treadmill, I guess.

Longest Run Yet!

2007-11-25T15:53:00.000-05:00

Today I ran my longest run, yet (well, I should say the longest run since I was in college many years ago) - 8.32 miles. Not all that fast, I have to say, but I'm happy to have pushed myself to another personal best this week.

I'm planning to run a 5K next Saturday, so gotta get ready for that, now! :-)

Running a lot more these days

2007-11-23T17:05:00.000-05:00

So, I haven't posted much lately, but not for lack of things to write about in general.

One specific thing of note lately is that I've been running a lot more than I have in many years. What's changed? Well, for starters, I got a group of my friends together this year to do the Detroit Marathon in October as a relay team. I told them originally that, because I figured I was the most regular runner of the bunch, I'd volunteer to do the long leg - which was going to be about 7 miles. I've been a regular runner for years but always kind of stuck around the 3-4 miles/run about 3-4 times a week - so I'd normally do about 12-14 miles in any week.

I knew I had to start running more to get ready.

The second major thing that happened this year was that my wonderful wife and kids got me a Nike+! I'd seen ads for it for months and kept mentioning it to my wife and on Father's Day I got not only a Nike+ but also a new Apple iPod Nano to go with it to replace the 2nd generation iPod I'd killed earlier this year!

The Nike+ has had the most significant effect I can imagine on me and my running! It measures and times all of my runs and allows me to see a history of things, look at runs by week, month, etc. It's really a great product that I can't recommend enough to anyone who runs (I wish I knew more people who used one).

In October, I ran the Detroit Marathon Relay - a 7.4 mile leg that my Nike+ measured at about 7.53 miles - and every week since then, I've been doing one "long" run a week of at least 7.5 miles. My longest so far has been an 8.25 mile run a couple weeks back.

I've also been pushing myself to run longer weeks - the week of the Marathon, I ran a total of 20.42 miles and have been increasing each week a bit since, culminating this week in running a total of 24.28 miles (including the 10K I ran yesterday).

I've also added the Nike+ widget to my blog (did that months ago) so it's possible to always see my last five runs if you want.

All is not good, though. In June of this year, just days before I got my Nike+, I injured my knee playing in an outdoor soccer game. I finally got an MRI in September and it turns out I apparently tore a tendon. I still need to have that attended to, but the weird thing is that it doesn't really bother me while I run. Go figure...

Guidelines for a taxonomy

2007-11-23T12:44:00.000-05:00

Patrick Lambe recently posted some guidelines I had posted to the TaxoCoP to his own Organising Knowledge blog. I had been looking for others' insights on what might be good/bad or missing from these (or possibly unnecessary).

Ran the Detroit Turkey Trot 10K today!

2007-11-22T11:19:00.000-05:00

I had a great run today and I'm very happy for it!

Ran a 48:35 10K as Nike+ measured, and the course was 6.35 (where my time was 49:37). I'm very happy with the time as it's the first 10K I've run in many years.

Soccer updates

2007-03-19T09:12:00.000-04:00

Well, seeing how it's been so long since I've posted, I've played a few seasons with my soccer team.

Since I last posted, I played a full summer season with a house team at the Soccer Zone. Turns out that the summer seasons are quite a bit more competitive, probably because only the "hard core" teams play. We ended up playing against teams that were much better and lost all of our games.

Last fall, back with the regular team, we actually managed to win 2 games, which was a big improvement for us. Of course the team we beat was, um, not so very good and we beat the same team in both games that we won.

In my most recent season, which ended a week ago yesterday, we actually won 4 of our 8 games! It was quite an achievement for us and was a combination of getting a few new (better) players on the team and also a significant improvement for those of us (myself included) who are still learning to play.

We started the third session last night with a loss to the team that is pretty much the same team I played on the house team with last summer. We played better against them then we have, but still need to improve.

If you look at our performance over the last several seasons, here's the goal differential from our first season to our most recent full season:

W05-06 S2	Average - Team Score	1.25
	Average - Opponent Score	9.5
W05-06 S3	Average - Team Score	3.13
	Average - Opponent Score	6.5
W06-07 S1	Average - Team Score	3.13
	Average - Opponent Score	4.25
W06-07 S2	Average - Team Score	2.5
	Average - Opponent Score	3.38

As you can see, we've steadily improved our goal differential each season - from more than 8 in our first season (ouch!) to less than 1 in our most recent season!

What has Lee been reading for the last, oh... 7 months?

2007-03-17T09:30:00.000-04:00

So it's only been, what, 7 or 8 months since my last post, right? I'm sure you're wondering what on earth I've been reading, right?

Well, here you go!

I can't remember the order of everything, exactly, but I know when I last posted I was about to read Time's Eye. I ended up enjoying that book quite a bit.

The others:

One of my favorites (yes, I'm a kid at heart): Peter and the Shadow Thieves by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. This is the second in a series of books that are essentially an alternate telling of the Peter Pan story. Very good and a pretty quick read. Another suggestion from my son.
Another recommendation from my son, which I felt was far too much like just a set up for a continuing series, though it was still fun, was Monster Blood Tattoo by D.M. Cornish.
Mammoth by John Varley. I've really enjoyed a lot of Varley's work in the past (I especially liked the Gaean Trilogy and Red Thunder). I also liked this one a lot. An interesting twist on time travel.
I've been traveling a lot more than normal in the last year, so I've read a few of what I think of as "airport crap" - books I normally wouldn't read but they are common in the airport bookstores and are usually a light read. Lately, that would include Tyrannosaur Canyon by Douglas Preston and Map of Bones by James Rollins. A few years ago, I read The Codex by Preston and didn't realize Tyrannosaur Canyon had the same characters until I was a hundred or so pages in. Whoops. I still enjoyed it in a this-is-kind-of-a-dumb-story kind of way. As for Map of Bones - it was so similar in structure to The DaVinci Code that I couldn't believe it. Still, a fun read and I enjoyed it enough to put a few other books by Rollins on my Amazon Wish List.
Next, a few "serious" sci-fi books: Darwin's Children by Greg Bear and Transcendent by Stephen Baxter. Darwin's Children was the second (I think) in a series about a set of mutations sweeping through the human population very quickly. An interesting read and I enjoyed it. Transcendent was the third in Baxter's "Destiny's Children" series, which have all been typical Baxter story lines - long term evolution and growth of humanity coupled with a more straight up "space" sci-fi component.
I've also returned to an author I haven't read in a very long time - David Eddings. I read a lot by him about 20 years or so ago and always enjoyed the books. I just read The Elder Gods which is book one in his series The Dreamers. A very light read (after some of the heavier stuff I've been reading), almost to the point of not being interested. The characters were all just a bit too stereotypical for me. Which doesn't mean I won't read the rest of the books now, of course :-)
For Christmas, I asked for Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz upon a recommendation from a co-worker. I really enjoyed the book, though it was another odd story - a man who could see dead people, but as the character says, "I do something about it!" A good build up over the course of the book to what you expect to be a really cataclysmic ending, which it almost is. An interesting twist, too, which seems obvious after the fact.
Last but certainly not least, is Lamb by Christopher Moore. This was suggested by the same co-worker who suggested Odd Thomas to me. I have to say that I have never laughed so hard reading a book in my life. I also thought Moore did a great job combining parts of biblical lore with some more historically-based parts of the story. I can not recommend this book enough for anyone who likes a good laugh and isn't easily offended by someone painting the life of Jesus in such a down-to-earth kind of way.

Hopefully, my next posting won't be quite so long in the future!

Wow, it's been a while since my last update, huh?

2006-07-23T11:30:00.000-04:00

It's been a long time since I've posted - so long that every time I thought about posting, I thought, "Gee, it's been so long, I don't think I can catch up!"

Well, here I am again, finally. I'm going to post a series of things with updates from the last few months.

First - my reading since my last post.

I finished The Mask of Atrues - It was quite an enjoyable, if not entirely unpredictable read. I'd recommend it for anyone who enjoys the genre.

My next read was Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds. I picked this up in the book store based on the description and some blurbs. I had high hopes - unfortunately, a bit too high. It was very (!) long and a lot of it didn't seem to be progressing the story. Not necessarily bad but I kept thinking, "When are we going to get to the exciting parts?" "When are we going to get to the mysterious reason the "Amarantin" (a race of aliens) were destroyed??? " Well, it turns out that we got there about 30 pages before the end of the 580+ book. Also, the captain of one of the space ships had some strange virus that forced his crew to keep him frozen. Descriptions and passages of the book about him took up WAY too much considering the relatively minor role he ends up having in the end.

Way too much build up with a payoff that just fizzled in my mind. Not recommended.

I finished that book on a trip and ended up picking up the 10th (!) book in the Terry Goodkind series about Richard Rahl. This has become another one of those (like Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books) that seems like it's never going to end. This one, at least, has some interesting reading. The book was Chainfire . I enjoyed it (like I've enjoyed all of these books - much lighter reading than the Jordan books and not *so many* characters that you can't remember who's who from one book to the next), but it was a bit long-winded in parts. Several sections of the book could have dropped pages without significant change in the story; for example, several places where Richard ponders some particular issue go on and on and on and on and on...

For fans, a must-read, though.

Next up, another one suggested by my son - Maximum Ride. This is a book by James Patterson, who I've never read but appeals to me in the if-I-needed-a-book-in-the-airport-I'd-buy-one kind of way. The book is targeted at a younger audience, and the writing style was very brisk - 2 page chapters with a page in between generally meant you'd move through pages about twice as fast as any other book. Still, I enjoyed it and, while I probably won't read the next one (my son is looking forward to it), I'd recommend it even if you don't have kids. For "tweens", I think it's a very good read.

Have just finished that book last night, I'm now about to start in on Time's Eye - by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter. I've read several books by Baxter - I've enjoyed them mostly but often find the endings not completely satisfactory. I haven't read anything by Clarke. I'll let you know how it goes!

April 2006 Reading!

2006-04-19T21:01:00.000-04:00

Been very busy late reading. In my last update on what I'm reading, I had just started reading The Big Over Easy: A Nursery Crime. I finished that about a week and a half ago and really enjoyed it. Jasper Fforde has a real funny and unique way of combining stories you know as "real" with the detective genre. I really enjoyed the murder-mystery about Humpty Dumpty in this and it kept me guessing. Highly recommended.

Since then, I've been reading a couple of recommendations from my son - first, Ulysses Moore: The Door to Time was entertaining but felt a LOT like it really should have been like the first quarter of a full book. Trying to stretch it out into a series like I haven't seen before...

The second, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, was a much better book and I really enjoyed the combination of the classic Greek mythology stories with a kid-oriented contemporary story line. It felt like it would really appear to a lot of kids for a lot of reasons. I'd recommend it to any 10 year old boy :-).

I'm just about to start a new book I picked up kind of at random at Border's this past weekend - I hadn't planned to get it, but picked up the paper back in the store and thought it looked interesting - it's titled The Mask of Atreus and from the blurb on the back sounds a whole lot like The DaVinci Code. We shall see.

April Catch Up

2006-04-19T20:49:00.000-04:00

Once again, it's been longer than it should have been since my last update.

Not quite as much going on as the last update, but some news of late:

I've played 2 soccer games with my team (we had Easter Sunday off). I managed to score a goal and had a beautiful assist in our April 2nd game. Unfortunately, they were both in the last 3 minutes of the game and we ended up losing 3-7 anyway :-(.
In our last game (against the best team in the League again for the second time this season), we had a great first half but due to a shortness in numbers of subs, we fell apart a bit during the second half. Still improving.
My daughter's U-9 soccer team has started practicing and they have their first game this Saturday. She's doing really well in practices (she seems to have been practicing dribbling in the off season when no one was watching or something) and I'm looking forward to the season for her.
My son's expressed interest (now that three of the four of us are playing soccer) in playing soccer again - he played one season when he was a kindergartener but since then hasn't been interested. He also has expressed interest in lacrosse (yikes!)
I went to the Middle School orientation for my son - who'll be going to middle school next year. Sounds scarey - they talked a lot about how much the kids change during this period and I'm not really looking forward to it.
Played a couple games for my GLWL season. Overall, having a crappy season. I lost the first of the two, but had a great comeback in the last turn of the game. I had a tie in my second of the two games (my third game of the season) but only because I again had a great last turn. I gotta get me a new general, I think.
My mother came to visit a few weeks ago - always good to see her and the kids were excited, as they were about my mother-in-law coming this past Sunday for Easter.
The scandal-of-the-week is that one of our favorite trees was chopped down without warning by the city. GRRRRRR... They claim it was an ash tree (it was maple) and it had the Ash Borer (it didn't). I'm so mad I can't even believe it!

That's about it for now.

More later (and hopefully sooner!)

Busy night!

2006-03-30T00:20:00.000-05:00

Tonight, I got home from work a bit after five in order to be able to go for my regular run before a 6 o'clock conference call. Ran about 3 miles and then sat through the conference call all sweaty :-/

Then at 7, I had soccer practice - it was a good session and I just need to continue practicing dribbling the ball! Legs tired at this point, though!

Got home from there and found out my neighbor (he of the mighty home improvement prowess) wanted to see "V for Vendetta" at a 9:55 showing - so we went and I thought it was great! By this point, after sitting for two hours in a theater chair, though, my legs have locked up! :-)

Tomorrow, we have the "Dad's Dinner" for my kids' school - an annual fund raiser for the PTA. Busy, busy, busy!

Reading these days...

2006-03-27T21:56:00.000-05:00

I (finally) finished Broken Angels this past weekend and have now started the latest book I have by Jasper Fforde - The Big Over Easy : A Nursery Crime. So far, I'm really enjoying the new book - same silly kind of plot lines as the Thursday Next books but now about nursery rhymes!

As for Broken Angels - I did not like it as much as the previous storey in the Takeshi Kovacs series (Altered Carbon). Where Altered Carbon was an interesting combination of the "hard-nosed detective" book and a sci-fi storyline about being able to download yourself into other bodies, Broken Angels was about the same main character but primarily focused on hard-to-decipher plots around trying to claim an alien species artifact. A slow read...

Here's hoping that The Big Over Easy is a step up!

Catching up!

2006-03-27T20:59:00.000-05:00

Holy cow, it's been a long time since I posted!

What's new? I'm glad you asked...

Some highlights:

Soccer - My first season came to an end a few weeks ago - we ended up finishing a perfect 0-8 on the season. Doh! We have continued to improve, which is great. We also picked up a new player who is unbelievably good - rumor has it that he plays semi-pro or something. Unfortunately, he hasn't yet pulled us to a victory. Last week, we managed our first tie, though, which was awesome! I thought we all played very well, which was great. We have a practice this week, which will be our third and I'm looking forward to it.

Cub Scouts - My son finished his Cub Scout years and graduated to Boy Scouts. We had his Blue and Gold banquet, where he received his Arrow of Light, which was a great achievement for him and I am very, very proud of him!

Boy Scouts - With his graduation, my son immediately moved into Boy Scouts. He joined a local troop and has attended 3 weekly meetings and has also (just this past week) gone on his very first Boy Scout weekend outing! Very busy and it's costing us a fortune between the uniform and the cost for the weekend! Yikes!

Brownies - My daughter has been to regular Brownie meetings - she's really enjoying that and I'm glad she's into it. We bought a bunch of Girl Scout cookies in February, needless to say.

First Communion - My daughter is also preparing for her First Communion, which she'll be celebrating in May. Big doings for her! This past weekend (while my son was away at Boy Scout camp), my wife and I took her to buy her dress. She's got a very pretty dress now and a nice veil to go with it.

Detroit Pistons Game - A few weeks ago, we all went to a Detroit Pistons game. My kids' school had an assembly about 2 months ago where one of the Pistons' assistant coaches came and talked to the kids and the kids got free tickets. We had to buy tickets for me and my wife, but it was still pretty cheap. The game itself was exciting - the Pistons were down by 11 at one point but managed to pull back to a win. The "show" was also pretty fun - I liked the giant flaming torches that they brought out before the game for the intro of the players.

Roller Skating - Let's see... Two weeks ago, the kids had their monthly outing to one of the local roller skating rinks. I am surprised how much they and their friends from school are into skating! I thought it was no longer cool. Go figure.

Plumbing! - My god, I hate plumbing. Lately, it seems like we have all sorts of problems. We had our entry way redone a few months ago and when the toilet in the downstairs bathroom was put back in place (the downstairs bathroom was re-tiled), we had to do some adjustment to the innards. No big deal. Then, a few weeks ago, I discovered we had a leak in the outflow pipe from the kitchen sink! Luckily, my neighbor is brilliant with home improvement work and was able to help me and also teach me a thing or two. Just this weekend, the toilet off the master bedroom started making an odd noise that sounded like air escaping out of it. I figured that the innards just needed to be replaced (I'd done that in this same toilet about 3 or 4 years ago). On Sunday, I turned off the inflow valve and found that it wouldn't shut off! argh! A brief call to my savior, er..., neighbor gave me his insight (need a new inflow valve) and some direction on what to get. He then called back a few minutes later to say he was already on the way to Home Depot, so he'd pick up what I needed. Whew! He later on came over and helped me with the whole job! Woo hoo! Got to love the handy neighbor, I say :-)

Anniversary - Last, but certainly not least, my wife and I celebrated our 14th anniversary. My wife and I had a great night out (our neighbors ended up taking my daughter while my son had an overnight at a friend's house). I just managed to get my wife a reasonably nice anniversary present - a new digital camera. I hope she likes it!

The EVILs of DVDs and their "user interfaces"

2006-02-19T21:11:00.000-05:00

My wife and I are big into electronic entertainment. For a long time, we've had a variety of different devices. Yes, we even have a laser-disc player. And... We have 3 (yes, three!) TiVos; all networked together.

We bought our first DVD player about 5 years ago. We got it when we found out that The Matrix was not ever going to come out on laser disc.

At first, the nifty way that DVD players could provide a user interface seemed interesting. You would have a menu of sorts (feels like a web interface) that guided you through a variety of things - from settings for viewing to the DVD (does anyone ever really use those??) to special features to alternate versions and so on.

Another thing that you have with DVDs (like all video entertainment - laser discs and video tapes as well) are the various warning messages - you know what I mean - the FBI warnings, blah blah blah.

Lately, I've noticed a nasty trend with these things...

Sometimes when you first put the disc into your player and sometimes when you push "Play" on the movie, you see those warnings. All fine and good, right? Well more and more often, I find that I can neither skip over those warnings nor fast forward over them! You're trapped into watching them!

Now, I am not an expert in user interface design but one thing I will tell you is that people hate feeling like they have no control over their experience!

Yet that's exactly what these people are doing. "You're going to shut up, sit down and read this or else, buddy!" is what they're telling us!

I also find the same kind of thing with the usually ridiculously-long "intros" before you get to the menu. "Gee - look at the cool graphics and gee-whiz animation we can make.... No, we're not going to let you skip over this, you moron!"

While I've seen these on DVDs from even the "early days" of the format, it seems like it's getting worse.

With the warning messages, I'm sure it's just a case of them feeling like we need to take our medication... As if we haven't seen and ignored it a million times before, people! When you fly regularly, do you really think you're going to listen to any of the pre-flight 'training' message?? No! When you watch DVDs all the time, do you really think you're going to read that stupid warning again??!??! NO!

As for those introductory bits - it feels like the "artists" that are responsible for the take themselves a bit too seriously or something and feel like, "Well, we're in a position to force these people to watch this, so we will!"

Blech. It's getting to the point where I dread those things.

Of course, I don't have long to wait before yet another format comes along that makes us replace all of our movies yet again because it will be "better" than what we have now and then the format will stop being sold, and then machines will slowly stop being sold and then they'll stop servicing the machines. "Oh, wow, you have a DVD player??? Man, those are sooo old!"

I should just stick to reading, right? :-)

Soccer game number 6!

2006-02-19T21:00:00.000-05:00

Tonight, my soccer team (the Average Joes - mostly fathers of kids who now go to or previously went to my kids' elementary school) played the sixth game of our first season.

We lost...

Again...

Not too surprising - it was against the team in first place in our division and the same team who, um... to be polite, beat us 15-2 in our very first game. However, we played a lot (!) better tonight. We "only" lost 7-0 and only gave up 1 goal in the entire second half. A much better showing than we've put forward before.

I played 6 or 7 shifts - my first was about 10 minutes long in the first half as forward. I've found that forward is one of the least taxing positions on the team because (unfortunately) the ball tends to spend most of its time in the other end of the field. I try to stay about midfield so that I can be somewhat ready when we recover the ball (typically when our goalie makes a stop - and tonight he made a lot of them!) to receive the ball downfield.

I've found (or perhaps confirmed) tonight that my major weaknesses are still lack of experience with dribbling and lack of knowing the techniques to really kick the ball hard. The latter came to light when I had a couple breakaway plays going downfield and couldn't put enough oomph behind the ball to feel like the shots on goal (OK - "shots near goal" ;-) ) had any chance of getting past the goalie. I've got to practice, practice, practice!

We have two more games left and then our next season will be starting just a week or two after the last game. I'm hoping we continue to improve. It'd be nice to feel like we're at least being competitive in a game.

GLWL Season soon to start up

2006-02-14T23:08:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned a while ago, the Great Lakes Warhammer League sign ups for our Winter 2006 season have come to a close and I have been busy putting together the Divisions and the schedule for the season.

We ended up with 79 players this season for a total of 12 distinct divisions. We have an even number of players in all but one of our divisions as of now, so that's worked out nicely.

Because we play a 5 game season, the ideal is to have 6 players in a Division so that each player plays each other member of their division once. Unfortunately, due to geographies, we've ended up with 5 of our divisions having more than 6 players, which makes more some challenging scheduling decisions because some players will end up not playing against each other and some players (at the moment, only in that "odd" division in Toledo) end up having BYEs built into their schedule when others in the same division don't.

In any event, I'm looking to have the schedule finished up and published to the members by no later than tomorrow and we're looking forward to starting the season at the end of this month!

Looking forward to another season of challenging games, myself!

Cub Scouts: The end of the road for my son

2006-02-14T22:47:00.000-05:00

This past weekend marked the end of a long journey with my son through Cub Scouting as we marked the last of our Den meetings. A sad day and yet a happy one in that he now looks forward to joining a local Boy Scout troop and starting his journey toward the Eagle award.

My son joined Cub Scouts in first grade - I remember the day he came home from school that year very (!) excited about joining the Cub Scouts. The Cub master at the time apparently really talked a good story.

In first grade, the parents all shared some level of responsibility for managing the meetings, though we did have a Den Leader responsible for tracking things.

In second and third grade, it became more of just the Den Leader running the meetings and the Den Leader asked me to be the assistant Den Leader and I agreed to do that. We spent a year meeting primarily at his house and then a year meeting at my son's school for our meetings.

In fourth grade, the Den Leader for my son's Den took over as Cub Master for the entire pack and then asked me to take over as Den Leader. It took a lot of thought on my part because I knew that 4th and 5th grade (when the boys are Webelos) was where the activity gets more intense in terms of real scouting activities (camping, etc.) and the time investment concerned me (not to mention that I'm personally not all that interested in camping!)

I decided to take on the job and the first year had an assistant who helped a lot with running things and then this year, he decided that he would take on Cub Master next year (because the current one - the one who was my son's Den Leader - will be leaving the pack as his sons move on to Boy Scouts as well) and so he didn't have time, so 5th grade has been just me.

Last fall, I spent a lot of time working hard with the boys to help them earn their Arrow of Light awards - the highest achievement you can earn as a Cub Scout. The boys finished their work by December and since then we've been able to take a more relaxed perspective in our recent Den meetings.

These have included a Bowling outing, climbing on the rock wall at a local sporting goods store (both my son and I made it all the way to the top as did 2 of the other 4 Cub Scouts!), and playing laser tag this past weekend. It's been fun.

So, anyway - in a few weeks, we will hold the Cub Scout pack's Blue and Gold Banquet, which will be where the boys receive their final awards, including their Arrow of Light and then have their Crossing Over ceremony when they will formally graduate to Boy Scout status!

I am very proud of my son and his hard work and look forward to his continuing as a Scout going forward!

Current Reading...

2006-02-10T11:44:00.000-05:00

So I finished Something Rotten this week while travelling and have now started the next book on my stack - Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan. This is a sequel to Altered Carbon which was an interesting combination of science fiction and a detective story.

The basic "hook" is that the story takes place in the 25th century and humans can download themselves into "stacks" (never really described all that well - but essentially digitizing your "self" and storing it in a computer) and then you can be downloaded into another body. Makes for some interesting moral situations.

I enjoyed Something Rotten - it contains some interesting surprises for readers of the series (which I won't divulge here) and more general time-travelling, book-entering, croquet-playing silliness.

Still on the road...

2006-02-08T23:47:00.000-05:00

I had my god-awful flight yesterday to Utah - up at 4:28 in the morning to get the airport for a 6:30 flight and arriving on location in my destination at about 1:45PM MST (3:45PM EST). Then 4 hours of meetings. Yuck.

Meetings yesterday were good - some unexpected potential changes in plans for a project I'm working on that still have me spinning a bit but I had the opportunity to have dinner with my team from work, which was great. Today I spent a good chunk of the day discussing requirements for our project and assessing a potential alternative solution against those requirements. I spent several hours in the late afternoon and evening with my team again discussing overall roadmap for the year and we're still over-reaching, I think.

For dinner, we went to Tucano's - a Brazilian place that is pretty good. Tomorrow is more meetings, this time with my manager and the rest of the group we fall in and then some other meetings with folks that I haven't yet scheduled. A return to the airport for a flight back at 7:15PM MST (getting in just before 1AM EST). Another long day...

I'm also still wondering what happened with my Soccer team's game last night! The standings have not been posted as of a few minutes ago (about 27 hours after the game!!!) so I don't know what happened. Anxiously awaiting that news!! How long does that take!??

Looking at Plone, though. An interesting content management tool.

Also, trying to figure out how to analyze the detailed search term reports I receive for our search engine to be able to see the "Forest for the trees" - i.e., step back from the specific search terms used by users and see the general themes of what they're looking for. A tough nut to crack, it seems.

On the road again...

2006-02-06T21:08:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow, I head out of town for a few days for work. One of the god-awful crack-of-dawn flights out at 6:30, which means leaving the house about 4:45 which means getting up at 4:30 (and being completely ready to walk out the door after that excepting (of course) getting dressed). Yuck!

Just to make matters worse, I have a ridiculous connection in Atlanta for a trip to Salt Lake. Double yuck! I won't get to SLC until 12:15PM MST (about 9 and a half hours after I leave the house).

At the tail-end on Thursday, I get to leave SLC at 7:15PM on a flight that gets home at 12:50AM. A loooong week. I am looking forward to the purpose for the trip, though, believe it or not!

Unfortunately because of this trip, I'm going to miss this week's soccer game because it was rescheduled from Sunday night (SuperBowl Sunday) until tomorrow night. Doh!

SuperBowl 5K 2006

2006-02-05T16:26:00.000-05:00

So, this morning I woke up at about 6:45 wondering if the snowstorm we were anticipating last night had shown up - did we get the expected 4-7 inches of snow?? I was too lazy to get out of bed until I had to, so I didn't bother moving for 30 minutes.

I got up figuring either I'd find a good 6" and then NOT do the road race (instead going for a run on the treadmill and then get some more workout with shovelling) or I'd find nothing on the ground and go do the road race. Turned out that we got about an inch or two.

Soooo... I figured I'd go do the race! I called the store that was sponsoring it to make sure the snow wasn't going to stop the event (it didn't) and then got everyone ready to roll; my wife was determined that she was going to go spectate and so the kids were coming along.

The weather was pretty much a drag - cold (about 28 degrees) and windy (about a 15 degree wind chill) and, of course, it was starting to freezing rain/snow while we made the drive there. During the race, there was a pretty good headwind whenever we were going west - other than that, it didn't bother me too much.

The real challenge was the slushy/snowy roads! Getting a good footing was definitely a challenge.

The turnout for the race was surprisingly high - I'd guess about 200 people or so. Not huge but much larger than the race I ran last summer at the same location.

I ran a decent time for the conditions (a bit over 25 minutes); overall, the race was great fun. We ended up staying after for about 40 minutes waiting for the results, but the computer was apparently affected by the snow, so the results weren't available at that point and I decided to not wait. I'll look for them online.

In an odd coincidence, I ran into an old college friend of mine - Tim Gretkierewicz and his younger brother Matt! Very strange coincidence, I'll say. Tim lives in Ann Arbor (about 40 minutes from the race location) and was about the last person I'd be looking for at a road race. I haven't seen him in a couple years and haven't seen his brother, Matt, in about 14 years now! Got to catch up with them, though, which was cool.

My job and my son

2006-02-04T22:59:00.000-05:00

So, Friday, I had the opportunity to talk to my son's fifth grade class about my job and my career. I talked about what I do today (as manager of a team of people responsible for the knowledge infrastructure of my company) and also talked a bit about my career and my education. I stressed the importance of various aspects of my education (reading, writing and typing being key skills :-)).

The kids each had a form for the session that had several questions on it - when the kids started asking questions, I was thinking, "Gee, that's a good question!" and it took me a few questions before I realized they were getting them from the form and not their heads.

After chatting the night before with my son about the questions I expected - one of them being that I expected someone to ask me how much I made - it was, of course, my son that asked that question! The goofball! We'd joked at dinner the night before that I should answer, "I make one billion dollars!", so that the kids would go home and tell their parent, "You know how much Mr Romero makes!! He makes a billion dollars!" But, I just told them I make more than minimum wage and I make "enough".

Once the kids understood that I have (and do still, but very minimally these days) written computer programs in the past, they had a lot of questions about whether I could write a video game or not. I told them I theoretically could, but that it takes a lot (!) of work - way more than I have time to spend on or interest in.

Overall, it was a nice experience to meet my son's classmates (again, for most of them) and talk to them about jobs/careers and help get them interested in different things.

Road Race tomorrow!

2006-02-04T22:54:00.000-05:00

So tomorrow morning (February 5th), there's a local 5K road race - called the Superbowl 5k run by a local running store. I'm planning to run - it'd be my first "winter" road race (though this winter has been pretty darn un-wintery since about Christmas day with daily averages running about 10 degrees above normal throughout the month of January!) and also my first road race of 2006.

I like that the giveaway is a beer mug instead of the standard t-shirt (of which I have, it seems, about a hundred!). We'll see just how good the mug is tomorrow (if I make it). We are actually supposed to get some snow tonight, so if we get more than I care to deal with, I won't be running in the race tomorrow morning.

My normal Sunday night soccer game has been rescheduled (because of the Superbowl, believe it or not) which is why I'm even considering running this tomorrow. Of course, it was rescheduled for Tuesday (February 7th) when I'll be out of town for work. Darn!

Let's see how I do as a winter road racer

GLWL Season Sign ups Closing - Winter 2006 Season starting

2006-02-04T22:52:00.000-05:00

So today marks the end of the sign up period for the Winter 2006 season of the Great Lakes Warhammer League. As of now, we have 76 people signed up to play - about 20% down from last season's record (or near record) 95 people starting the season.

I expect a few more people in the next hour or so, but we'll see.

Recent readings

2006-02-02T21:51:00.000-05:00

Some recent readings (over the last 4 months or so)...

Currently, reading Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde.

I just finished American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer (recommended by my son)

State of Fear by Michael Crichton

Whiteout by Ken Follet (an airport purchase when I finished my previous book mid-trip)

Legend by David Gemmell

Exultant by Stephen Baxter
Coalescent by Stephen Baxter
Evolution by Stephen Baxter

Other things in the last year...

I read the Runelords books by David Farland earlier last year. Enjoyed those a lot.

Naked Empire by Terry Goodkind

About me (as of today)

2006-02-02T20:47:00.000-05:00

So, some more about me ...

I work for Novell. I am the manager of a small team of people dedicated to Novell's internal knowledge infrastructure. What does that mean? My team is responsible for a good number of internal repositories that are used by our employees, our internal search tools and various collaboration tools used by our employees such as an internal blogging tool, a wiki and internal mailing lists.

I've been doing this for about 5 years - first for Cambridge Technology Partners and then (after Novell acquired CTP) for Novell.

I've spoken externally about our content management solution (at the 2005 AIIM conference in May, 2005 in Philadelphia) and about how we've improved our internal search (at KM World in San Jose, CA in November 2005).

My background is in Computer Science and in my "previous life" I was a developer, senior developer and then software manager for a systems integrator building custom software solutions for a variety of customers.

Outside of work, I enjoy boardgames (you can find me on www.boardgamegeek.com) and I also am an avid player of Warhammer and I help run the largest League on the planet (and, yes, we've confirmed that to the best of our knowledge) for Warhammer - the Great Lakes Warhammer League. I also enjoy running and competing (well, taking part in) road races; recently I started playing in a 30+ Men's soccer league (my first experience in organized soccer ever and the first time I've played soccer since high school gym many years ago...).

Start of my blog

2006-02-02T20:40:00.000-05:00

I'm sure this is the same thing everyone posts with their first post, but this is my first post to get my blog started.

Hi everyone!