"Back when the Internet was brand-new, the paint wasn't even dry when governments and special interest groups started putting up fences, and trying to control citizen's online activities. I don't know what I loathe more, this pathological busybody-ness and control-freak interference in our lives, or the near-ruination of this fabulous invention by spammers and marketers. I think it all springs from the same root cause, which is a total disregard and disrespect for other people, and a willingess to exploit them for any purpose. What's the difference between a spammer, a marketer, a government censor, and a vandal?

None.

"

From Editor's Note: Freedom is Not Embarrassing

When the anniversary of Tiananmen Square rolled around, the Chinese Govt shut down Twitter because they didn't want it to be used to help organize any form of demonstration or protest. When the govt, our Govt, got caught trying to use DCS1000, or should I say Carnivore, with a free pass from the Clinton admin, things got ugly. The list goes on but I think you get the point. So here are today's questions.

1. How much monitoring do you think your govt is currently doing online?

2. Do you think the internet will eventually be changed into a more controlled enviroment once the right people make the right "decisions"?

3. Do you agree with the above author and their opinions?

4. If govt agencies can't even get something so simple as a sugar replacement right will a "new" internet be needed?

Category: Entertainment | Permalink | 1 comments

Well, it was nice while it lasted. Yesterday saw temps in the upper 70s and sun. Mind you it was after a dense morning fog and evening rain but hey, take it when you can get it. So here is another riveting garden update.

The overall look of the garden is good because things are getting larger but flower wise and actual veggie growth wise, very little is growing when compared to last year. Here is the garden at the end of June. As you can see very little is going on in the middle row and that's the peppers. I've lost one pea plant and one cuke plant so that explains the spaces in the trellis.

Lettuce continues to grow well and maybe too well. I purposely followed the successive planting rules and it still didn't work. I now have all this ready to eat lettuce all at once. Oh well better luck in the fall. pic of lettuce row.

My wife the other day asked how my corn was doing and that got us talking about quantity. I speculated that I might have around 20-30 plants growing. Lucy asked how many each stalk may produce and I said around 2 to 3. This was the first time I had ever grown corn so I basically just dumped a bunch of it, of two different kinds, into the back area and hoped for the best. I did the same thing last year with the bean plants and ended up with too much too fast. But if you don't know what will grow you tend to go over board to make sure. So as Lucy and I did the math it occured to me that I should take a walk out to the garden and actually count the stalks. I returned to inform Lucy that I didn't have 20-30 stalks. She replied, "well that's good....that's good right?"

"No, we have 70." Stay tuned folks, I may be going into business selling corn at the local farmers market.

When I took this picture of the snow peas the only thing I saw was flowers. There were only 4 but they were rather colourfully so I may taste some snow peas in the near future. Today I noticed two pods growing so I hope they make it.

Strawberries are pretty much great to taste if I can get to them before the slugs do. They burst with flavor and juice unlike anything you'll ever get from a supermarket. Alot of the plants have sent out shoots which means I may double my plants next year without spending a dime. Sweet!!

I have also uploaded some pics of the few tomatoes we have growing but they are so green and given our weather pattern may never vine ripen. The one thing that has worked great is my cover crop. As you can see from the overall garden picture, I have nice lush "grass" all around. I also have Hairy Vetch all around the garden which the local bee population absolutely loves. At any one time you can find a half a dozen bees doing their thing with the Vetch. At the same time they have been working the little flowers that I have, almost immediately. Simply put, once the rain stops for even a second, the bees come out and go nuts. From now on I will always have Vetch growing. Everyone wins.

That brings me to my final subject, our orchard. As you can see, at this moment in time it's not so much and orchard as it is two peach trees.

When the rain clears, year right, I'll be rocking the border for a pathway from our driveway to the front gate of our garden. Inside the path will be black mulch and eventually some form of stepping stones. Everywhere else in the garden will be your typical red mulch to keep the weed issue somewhat under control since I won't be mowing within the orchard itself.

Well that's all for now and as you can see, no forced speling erors in an atempt at a bad joke. All misssssspellingsss today are puurelly unintentshual.

Category: Gardening | Permalink | 2 comments

Download: mp3
Show Notes via Del.icio.us
Featured artists: Sirio - Witch Hunting; The Enth - Change the World; PeerGynt Lobogris - Crazy Driver; Morgeous Garvin - Sunday Coma; 7 Months - New Age; Fractals - Past Within the Future. Please send all feedback to atrfeedback@gmail.com.
Enjoy

Category: Entertainment | Permalink | 0 comments

Just to warn you this will not be a big entry, only a quick update.

Given all the rain our area has gotten, and technically continues to get on a smaller scale, the garden is doing ok. My pepper plants are finally starting to grow at a rate that may actually produce something before fall arrives. How much is another story.

I've had salad after salad filled with freshly picked Romain, Simpson Elite and Arugula lettuce that has been out of this world. So much so the other day while making a sandwich I decided to add lettuce. So I went out and picked some. The cool factor was off the scale.

The strawberries have really taken one for the team. Tonight we had our 7th berry of the year thanks to the slugs. With all the rain this year, the slugs have been an issue. Unless I'm picking the berries right as they turn red I'll find holes in them where the slugs have feasted. When we do get them at the right time, eating them is like eating a whole new fruit. What you buy at the supermarket is beyond blah and tasteless when compared to what I've had.

Simply put, when you have all those wonderful flavors traveling through you mouth all the time any effort put forth for the garden becomes quite worth it.

Next time I'll have pictures and more goings ons.

Till then, God Bless.

Category: Gardening | Permalink | 1 comments

From the beginning of time Fire has played a huge role in man's existence. Great stories have been written about it from Prometheus giving fire to mortals against Zeus' wish, to Icarus' wax wings and flying too close to the Sun. There are many more but let's not spoil the questions. ;-)

1. What is your favorite Fire Story. And no it doesn't have to be Greek Mythology based. ;-)

2. Do you know how to build a camp fire?

3. Do you know how to create fire w/o matches or a lighter? If yes what method do you prefer or are best at?

4. Once you have a fire going what do you like to cook on it?

BTW, this was written outside on our back deck with a nice fire going in our outdoor chimney.

Link to photo of our chimney

Enjoy.

Category: Entertainment | Permalink | 3 comments

Tom Merrit of CNET/Buzz Out Loud fame (Congrats on the 1000th ep btw) has posted an excellent how-to regarding the NoScript add-on. As he explains Clickjacking, malware and cross site scripting attacks are becoming all too common. His suggestion is to install NoScript as a way to add an additional layer of security.

For those of you unaware of the above various security risks I've included some links to EWeek, Cnet, ZDNet and BoulderAU. I even found a decent walk through on securing your Firefox browser at 5starSupport. Please keep in mind that we are not talking about the seedy part of the internet. As CNet points out:

"The ads have been spotted on MSNBC.com, Newsweek.com, and Digg.com, and victims have reported on numerous forums and blogs that they appear to be fake alerts that a virus has been detected on the computer and offer to clean it up, according to antivirus vendor Sophos. "

These are some pretty respected sites with the likes of MSNBC and Newsweek showing up. It should also be noted that Flashblock, another firefox add on, has been mentioned as another layer of protection.

As always if I hear something else out there I will be sure to blog about it. Now get out there and surf that web.....safely.

God Bless.

Category: Technology | Permalink | 3 locked comments

Part 1

As you know the president is rated after his first 100 days. My season is not 100 days old but that doesn't mean I can't rate myself so far. Last year at this same very time, I had completed three 5K races. Making this comparison even better, the three races I have done, are the same exact ones as last year. So let's compare the numbers.

Before I comment it should be pointed out that last years Day of Port race was beyond hot after some rather mild weather. Everyone's times were slower due to the immense heat and humidity so that bit of data and difference margin are a bit skewed.

So I guess it's pretty obvious, I'm about 1minute faster and to say that I am surprised would be the understatement of the year. To say that I'm happy with my results so far is a different matter. If you remember I had a case of Achilles Tendinitis which luckily my acupuncturist was able to subdue. But the fact remains, I lost a lot of base training. When I look at my split times from all the races it's pretty clear I lack endurance. Every race has me fade in mile three. For Sunday's race my first mile was a 6:19 and to be perfectly honest I could have gone faster. So as far as I'm concerned, my leg speed is where it needs to be. Problem is endurance is not something you can just build over night. It's not like speed work where you can affect change after a few track workouts. Endurance is a slow process normally reserved for off season. At least for me it is given I am now knee deep in totally preparing for my triathlons.

So what am I going to do. Actually for triathlon season nothing. Knowing that you're a minute faster then last year in the run is pretty cool and not something I'm use to. Problem is the weather around here has been absolutely abysmal. I haven't ridden in almost two weeks and I fear that I will give away the time I have gained in the run. What I really need is for this none stop rainy weather pattern to break and allow me to get my typical three rides a week in. With the bike I know I have the endurance but I have yet to do any real speed work. It's funny, because this is how it always is with triathlons. The sport is this ever shifting balance of three sports all while trying to make use of the little time you have.

To end, it all comes down to the weather. If it clears I should be able to match lasts years bike times which should make me around a minute faster if the run holds. If this current weather pattern continues to hang around the bike may turn into my slowest leg. Stay tuned this should be fun to watch.

Part 2

I've had enough people ask me what I think about it so I guess it's time to blog about it.

Running with headphones

With almost everyone and their grandmother owning some form of audio player the obvious reaction, or maybe I should say result, is taking them with you on a run. I think for training they can serve a small purpose but now people are racing with them. For me this is both cheating and unsafe. Ok maybe cheating is a bit strong, How about being helped greatly at setting a pace? When people first started using them they would just throw anything on them and go. Then people started to realize that picking the right song could in fact help you set a pace. How you say? Easy, back in the day some watches came with a pacer. Running next to someone who had one was one of the most annoying places to be. See the pacer would beep at some frequency which equated to pace. When the watch beeped, one of your feet was supposed to hit the ground. Problem was if you were taller then the person that pace didn't work for you but you had to actually work to avoid syncing up with it which meant it messed up your pace. Luckily some races banned them as a unfair aid and thankfully they fell out of fashion.

Well it appears that audio players are the new pacers.

Want to run a 7:30 mile, no problem there are sites that will help you determine which song has the proper beat for you. That means once again people no longer have to think and feel what a certain pace is, they just hit the select button and mindlessly follow along. Some will argue that knowing what to run and actually running it is two very different things. Well I saw first hand how one person was pretty much programming their race.

When the gun went off they started to count in an effort to match their steps to the song. Once there they started to run a near perfect cadence. At the 2mile mark they picked a slower song ( it was loud enough to hear) which helped them settle into a slower pace. When the end of the race came the next argument came right to the forefront. This past Sunday's race has two races, 10K and 5K run at the same time. It turns out the audio driven racer missed the split and ended up doing the 5K when they signed up for the 10K. See with music and button clicking they didn't pay attention and missed some vital information. They also cut me off not once but twice because they couldn't hear me, or anyone else for that matter.

So as far as I'm concern, any form of audio player should be banned from the races. Want to use them while training, that's your decision but when it comes to racing, go it alone. As an aside, I was once told that if it weren't for the player they would never run because they hate it so much. So why run at all? There are plenty of other things you can do to stay in shape, why do something you don't enjoy?

As always thanks for reading.

Category: Sports | Permalink | 0 locked comments

1. How many different addresses have you had over the course of your life?

2. How many wallets, purses, pocketbooks, money clips (pick one and go with it) have you had?

3. How many cars have you owned?

4. How many credit cards have you owned? Or just currently if you can't remember totals.

5. How many watches have you owned?

6. How many different user_names have you used?

Enjoy.

Category: Family | Permalink | 1 locked comments

Oh the many conversations I've had with a number of different web site maintainers about this very problem. They screamed up and down that blocking ads on their site was illegal, wrong, and some even went so far to say immoral. Personally I never bought any of their arguments for one second because all of their arguments were driven from their wallets.

Well here it is, in plain view for all to see the first step towards total proof of concept.

- IT: The Next Ad You Click May Be a Virus

So lets walk our way through this.

Mr User goes to a site and thinks, I'll let the ads run because the nice people at that site need to pay their bills. Lets say it's a site about watches. Mr User sees an ad about a really nice watch and decides to investigate. Why not he says, not only have I let the ads run but I'll even

click on one that is interesting. He then gets infected.

Result:

He gets annoyed and looks to prevent such things from ever happening again. So he looks into adblocking and flash blocking and stopping scripts from running. As he is securing HIS browser on HIS machine he starts to tell all his friends what happen. So they start doing the same to make sure they don't get caught.

BTW, please stop me at any time when you find anything illegal, wrong or immoral about anything the above fictitious users are doing.

At the same time this is going on, Mr Users is told by his ISP that his bandwidth is now being limited unless he is willing to pay some artificially inflated amount. He realizes that ads, flash and all of them, are part of his monthly bandwidth total.

Result #2

Mr User blocks anything he can for fear of getting infected and for going over his monthly bandwidth limits. Mr User then informs all his friends of the situation and they all start doing the same thing.

The moral of the story?

Adblocking, script blocking and flash blocking should now be a part of everyone's PC defense. Right along with your firewall, NAT, and virus protection should be the above listed items. Not doing so will only lead to bad things happening to your machine.

If you are a site owner, you have no one to blame but your fellow owners and the virus writers. IMHO, if you want to earn money I would do away with ads of any kinds because you know it's only going to get worse. The next step in this security arms race will be that you won't even need to click on the ad to get infected. Just letting it run will be enough for it to do damage. Like I said, get rid of the ads and go subscriptions. At least then you can guarantee your users a "safer" place to visit.

Oh an feel free to visit Falconportal.com at any time where there are no ads and the only script running is a javascript to make sure you filled in all the fields when leaving a comment for the blog. If you prefer not to let that script run, please feel free to block it. I totally understand. I wrote into my blog redundant checking on the server to make sure that the fields are filled in so you have no worries.

Happy Surfing.

Category: Technology | Permalink | 12 locked comments

Hello all. Wanted to make sure I didn't miss another week. ;-)

1. What is the one thing you do, (not counting sports) that you only do during the summer months?

2. When the summer comes do you spend more time outside, less time, or about the same?

3. For you, is summer the time when you take the most vacation time? If no explain? If yes about how much time to do take off?

4. Summer time and drive-in movie were once hand in hand. Unfortunately that is no longer the case. Have you ever been to one and what did you see?

5. What is the ultimate summer car?

Enjoy.

Category: Family | Permalink | 5 locked comments

If you read this blog enough you'll know I'm a big fan of Joe Satriani. I have a bunch of his cds, seen him live a couple times, blah blah...you get the idea. So when I heard he was forming a band with now ExVan Halen -Bassist Michael Anthony, and technically ex lead singer from Van Halen as well Sammy Hagar, my interest was truly peaked. To be honest I was never the biggest fan of Sammy Hagar's stuff even though he has a few fun songs like "I can't drive 55." For what ever reason he always reminded me of the older guy you knew, that so wanted to hang with the younger crowd. So he'd act like them and dress like them and .... again you get the point.

Well through the power of YouTube and the internet I've pretty much listened to their entire cd. Does it have songs that blow you away via Joe S. playing? No. Have they created a brand new unique sound that will break new ground? No. Are they radio friendly and seem to be "well supported" by the music industry? absolutely. This past week's Best Buy flyer had them pictured in every tv screen. Do I hope Joe Satriani finally gets to cash a big check for his efforts? I hope so. Will I run out and buy it on sale for the price of 9.99? Nope. Would I buy it in digital format for 4bucks from Amazon? No again.

Let me cut to the chase and ask the 2 questions that will pretty much explain how I feel about their music.

1. Will I go back to Youtube to listen over and over like I have done with Dream Theater? No.

2. If I'm driving in the car and a song of theirs comes on will you change the station? Probably not.

I'm sorry but for many, many cds I listened to Joe play his guitar to be amazed. Now he's in a band and he's playing your basic 3 and 4 chord basic rock and roll progressions. (yawn)

I just told Lucy, if I were back in my 18-25s, had a girl friend, was hanging out with friends at the beach, this CD along with Van Halen's stuff would be on the boom box. Problem is I'm soon to be 42 and would rather listen to Joe Satriani's older stuff, Dream Theater, Miles Davis, Mozart, Dave Brubeck, or Eric Johnson.

Final word, No sale, but thanks for letting me listen.

Category: Entertainment | Permalink | 0 locked comments

Yeah yeah yeah I've missed how many TQs now? I've got them ready to go but I just haven't had the time or the awakeness (guessing that's not a real word) to get them posted. I also missed this weeks podcast as well. Bummer because there was tons to talk about but, I was barely awake.

I hate to say this but, I go through this every year. When the temps hit that oh so nice range of 55-75 I have such a hard time staying indoors. When the sun sets I want to light either the deck chimney or the tiki torches with citronella in them and hang on the deck. Ie. more outside time.

When I am inside I'm constantly looking to finds ways to spend less time indoors. For example I'm currently checking out TomBoy Notes. If it works as I hope it does, I may just use it to organize my notes for podcasting. It also has an export to HTML option which means I could send that file to my podcasting pal in the UK prior to the show.

Let's see what else is going on? Oh I have both strawberries and tomatoes growing, the arugula is almost done, and the spinach and broccoli are oh so close.

On the cycling front, I really need to get my other front wheel rebuilt. Most of the old spokes and nipples are frozen but the rim and hub are fine. So I bought new spokes (butted DT 14-15) and really need to set aside the time to get it started.

For those of you who enjoy this quiet time when I'm not trashing MS (they so bought out Asus) or the Fruit company (recently found out that you can't get Opera for their phone from the store. Stupid, lame and control freak dumb) it won't last. Once the temps go over the 90 mark I usually camp out under our deck awning with some iced green tea and my laptop. When that happens you'll be wishing it was either spring or fall again. BTW, have you seen the Palm PRE commercial? Very Well done. If I was ever to go the smart phone route I think it would come down to a phone with a keyboard which would mean an Android based G1/2 or a Palm PRE. And for those of you who think I might do it this year, you're wrong. I just prepaid for another year. Monthly rate of 8.33 + tax. Oh yeah baby, just what the doctor order. CHEAP. ;-)

Ok that's it. God Bless and thanks for reading.

p.s. BlueSwirly, if you're reading this, I sure hope you're running again. ;-)

Category: Family | Permalink | 1 locked comments

Well it wasn't pretty but we've got a garden.

A real, fully working (relatively) garden that is growing stuff. Here is the the picture showing all the seedlings that I started. As you can see we started the seeds in the free (ok we bought the dried fruit and kept the containers) plastic containers and then moved them to larger pots ranging from years past flower pots, to this year's bought -$1 a bowl- pot version from Ocean State Job Lot. The seeds them self came from Ocean State and were 40% off.

I have one snow pea seedling who is making a come back and hopefully will be ready for grounding by the end of the week. I also have another bean plant who like the pea, started slow but has surged as of late. Again my hope is to have them in ground by Sat or Sunday. Even though I planted 15 pepper plants (3 of each - Jalapeņo, Serrano, Big Dipper, California, and Chinese Heirloom) I will honestly be shocked to see them all make it. Last year showed me that I need to find a fast growing pepper plant given the short season here in New England. Hopefully one of them will prove to be the winner.

Let's look at the now fully loaded garden and point everything out. Starting from left to right, back to front. arugula, romaine, black Simpson elite lettuce, then carrots, spinach, broccoli and then green beans. I'll be dropping two more seeds into the ground to insure a staggered crop for the beans.

Next row are all the peppers and since I've already listed them I won't repeat myself. I'm using cages normally used for tomatoes but again, I'm cheap and if they work, why pay for something else.

Next row is the trellis row, as if you couldn't tell. Big Boy and then cherry tomatoes, then peas and beans, finishing off with two cucumber plants. If you look through the fence, you can see my lone zucchini plant which when fully grown will take up alot of space. So that's why at the moment it looks like it's out in the middle of no where.

The last row is the corn and sunflower row. If you've been following my twitter feed you'll know that our multiple days of heavy rain brought me a present in the way of slugs. Day 1 went to them and they ate mostly all of the newly formed sunflower seedlings. Day 2 I went hunting and let's say I seriously evened the score. Day 3 and Day 4 once gain did not go well for the slugs and if the birds hanging out on my trellis are any indication, now is not a good time to be a slug.

So where does that leave me? Well I'm now going to start mulching and get the drip irrigation set up. The rain water feed hose is nice but dangerous in the confined quarters of my garden. Not to mention it takes a while to get everything properly watered. Drip will allow me to water before I awake while keeping the ground pretty dry. This, along with the mulch I plan on using, should slow my weed growth down alot.

Tomorrow I'll start my second batch of compost tea. When it's done in about 48hours I'll use it as a foliar spray in the garden, as a ground soak for all the plants and what ever remains will be spread over the grass area in the front to help green it up.

Compared to last year I am well under budget yet have a much stronger start, with a larger variety of potential veggies.

Thanks for reading and God Bless.

Category: Gardening | Permalink | 1 locked comments

Whether you text by storm, or rub sticks together for smoke signals, like I do, you have to like the tenacity that Palm has been showing lately.

First they say Pre goodness will be spread to multiple carriers by announcing that in 6months Verizon and it's rather large support staff will also be selling the Pre.

Then they take a shot at mister iflashy and say you'll be able to sync with itunes out of the box. This will be great news until the company in charge of itunes pushes out an update that breaks this feature. But for about 48hrs, it's going to rock.

Let the games begin. Should be fun to watch.

Category: Technology | Permalink | 1 locked comments

So here is the deal. I signed up for the Farmers Almanac RSS feed as a way to gain additional knowledge about when to plant things for my garden. For example I got this one the other day:

"27-28 Most favorable for corn, cotton, okra, beans, peppers, eggplant, and other above ground crops. Plant seed beds and flower gardens.

"

But then I got one that suggested certain days for getting your hair cut. Huh? So I did alittle reading and found this:

"It's widely believed by many long-time Almanac followers that when the Moon occupies a particular place in the Zodiac each day at 7:00 a.m. EST, it can play an important role in achieving the best possible results for certain activities."

Which brings me to today's TQ's.

1. What is your Zodiac sign?

2. Do you read the Farmers Almanac? What do you think of it?

3. Do you agree or disagree that the moon's orbital location has an influence on us?

4. Taking it that next step do you think certain activities are better done on certain days?

Have fun

Category: Entertainment | Permalink | 2 locked comments

I know it's been a while but have you looked outside lately? It's beyond nice out there so I've been away from the pc alot more. So let's get to it.

1. Do you know how to change a flat tire? Have you ever actually done it? How long did it take you?

2. How many ways can you lace and tie your shoes?

3. Do you know how to make you're own tomato sauce? If yes please share your recipe.

4. Do you know how to create a stop animation film? If so how did you do it?

As you can see, all very simple in procedure but hard to master.

Enjoy.

Category: Entertainment | Permalink | 1 locked comments

Before I launch into my data filled post, let me point you to a certain swim coach by the name of Mat Luebbers. In one of his articles he accurately explains the importance of the swim for a triathlon. (Link) To be honest most people don't want to hear what he has to say. But one look at the man's resume and it's clear to see, he knows what he's talking about. Simple put, and this is my quick and dirty summary, to do well in a tri you need a decent swim to avoid ruining your race but having a great swim almost never equals victory/great results.

Lets look at my Sharon Triathlon Times.

For what ever reason the people timing this race combine the first and second transitions with the bike time. So when you look at the numbers, the bike times really aren't a true indicator of how you did because if you had a slow transition, you get a slow bike time. Meaning your bike time could improve but your recorded time could be worse depending upon your transition. So I'm going to focus on the swim and run.

98 118/562 14/87 M3034 16:05 38:19 31:29 1:25:53 (S18.8%)

99 260/635 45/91 M3034 16:47 41:44 36:08 1:34:40 (S17%)

00 204/652 34/75 M3034 C 16:10 41:13 33:54 1:31:17 (S17.7%)

01 253/631 45/92 M3034 C 15:44 40:15 38:03 1:34:02 (S16.4%)

02 112/590 18/68 M3539 C 16:10 38:07 35:17 1:29:35 (S18.1%)

03 149/617 28/68 M3539 C 14:09 38:30 36:37 1:29:17 (S15.8%)

The first number is the year, the next is overall placing and total number that raced. Age group placing and totals, age group and Clydesdale if C is present. Then it's swim time, bike time w/both transitions, run time, total finishing time and % of swim to total time. A quick review clearly shows that as my run went my finishing time went. Fastest run equaled fastest overall time. In 03, the year after my 1/2 IronMan when I spent alot of time and effort on the swim, the run suffered greatly. Yes I was almost 2minutes faster out of the water but I gave that time back awful fast on the run by way of 5minutes. Keep this in mind because as a family man, I only have so much time to train. Meaning, when I work on something more, something else has to give because my training time during the week is pretty fixed.

Consider the amount of variation in times.

Swim 14.09 -> 16.47 = 2.38

Run 38.03 -> 31.29 = 6.74

Total 25.53 -> 34.40 = 8.87

So even though I spent tons of time improving my swim the most I could gain was about 2 1/2 minutes. Conversely, my overall times have a variance of 9minutes with the run variance being close to 7. Looking at the numbers it's plane to see what I should be working on, the run. In all the times I have looked at when the run goes well I finish well. If the swim goes well, it really doesn't matter because again, the run for me really is the critical portion of the race. Keep in mind do horrible in any leg of a race and your done.

But there is one point which most people miss which I already sorta brought up, training time to results. Most people don't have a 25yrd pool in their backyard but most people can just walk out their front door and start running. Most of my races are 5K runs. If I were to double that to 10K I would still only need about 50minutes to do a distance run. For me personally, swimming is at least a 2hr event because the pool is about 20-25minutes away. Most workouts last 45 to 1hr. When you look at it that way you start to ask, "two hours to improve the shortest section of the race?" Heck in that same amount of time I can go for a 25mile bike and a 5K run after.

In about 2months I'll see what this years results look like but so far my training changes have already started to pay off. Yesterday's 5K had me improve my recent personal run record by almost a minute ( PR is now 20:50). For the swim my 50 and 100yrd swim times are slightly faster then last year but the effort I'm putting in is so much less. I.e. my stroke count has dropped. Finally the bike, this year I have ramped up to longer distances much sooner with avg speeds being well over a mile an hour faster then past years.

So what did I do different?

1. Lost weight.

2. Concentrated on core strength by doing them before the weights.

3. Circuit Training for weights w/ no rest.

4. Dropped from 3 to 2 workouts for the swim yet kept total weekly distance the same.

5. Started tempo runs earlier.

To conclude, I'm just one person but this one person has a limited amount of time to spend training and so do alot of other triathletes. If anyone out there is just getting into the sport and wants some friendly advice, here it is. In my humble opinion, work on your run first, then your bike and then your swim. Simply put, get some advice and work on skills in the water. If you are coming out of the water in the top ten (or within a minute) of your age group, you're fine, go work on your bike and run. If you are the fastest on either the bike and/or run, you don't need my help because you're probably winning your age group easily.

Now get out there and hammer. ;-)

Category: Sports | Permalink | 0 locked comments

I usually don't get into emotional outbursts that some do but this particular one caught my eye because it addresses something I've been asking about for a while. Why is no one counting free downloads in some way? I know not every d/l gets installed but when you hear MS tout their 7 beta downloads they assume that same very thing. So if you are going to Assume that every person who downloads installs, then that leads us to our next point.

After more reading I finally got a reason from Ballmer himself why Linux is more of a threat to them then the fruit company.

href="http://www.osnews.com/stor/21035/Ballmer_Linux_Bigger_Competitor_than_Apple"

alt="I still ">

I still don't know if I'm convinced but at least the story linked within the one I just posted points out the Fruit company is not as high placed in the world market while Linux thrives everywhere. Fair enough but let me restate the obvious, MS is nervous.

When your number one competitor is Piracy, and your potential 3rd place is also free, you've got problems.

(evil laugh)

Category: Technology | Permalink | 0 locked comments

There is something about gardening, beyond the wonderful tasting fruits and veggies, that I have yet to define. Maybe I'll never do it. Or maybe it's just an excuse to stay outside all day. Who knows? But I do know one thing, the feeling of gratification is not something I can easily reproduce. Triathlons and Bike Centuries give me that same initial feeling but with gardening the lingering effects are that X factor.

Using today as the example, I cut the lawn. Yeah whatever, it looks nice blah blah blah. But more importantly I weed wacked the cover crop once again and and got my cold row planted. (if you'd like to follow along with pictures by all means head over to the garden photo group and have a look) That meant moving compost from our pile (we didn't have any last year so we bought some, now that I'm composting I shouldn't have to do that again) into the garden. I had to fill the wheel barrel and then scoop the compost into the roped off area multiple times. All was going well until I sorta caught my work boot on the string and ripped it. In the end it all worked out and I made it to the fun part of gardening; planting. The first thing in (furthest away in the picture) was Arugula, followed by Romaine Lettuce, Iceberg Lettuce and Simpson Elite lettuce. If all seeds germinate I'll definitely be thinning.

After picking Zack up from school I got back to work and added some spinach and broccoli. If you've done alittle gardening in your time you'll know that lettuce, arugula, broccoli and spinach are all cool weather plants. Meaning they don't grow well in the middle of summer with all the heat and if they do they don't taste good at all. Speaking of cool weather, the plastic cups (see picture) have peas and beans (first time with both so I'm trying a few out to see what works best for my area), more broccoli, cukes, lettuce, and on and on.

For those of you who love a good strawberry you'll see that I now have a very small patch. (Pictures again) I hadn't planned ahead for those plants so I had to come up with a place to put them and fast. During the initial installation I mixed in some compost to the dirt but I didn't put enough. We also had a ton of rain and it flooded the patch. So as a result I have been constantly adding more compost to help fortify the dirt. So far the plants have responded quite well so I might attempt to get more plants.

When the temps finally get above a certain level all the warm weather plants will go in. Jalapeņos, Serranos, Red and Green Peppers, Cukes, Beans, etc etc.

On this parting note, and as you can see in the pictures, the drip irrigation system arrived. I've never hooked up one of these systems before so needless to say I'm going to be doing some reading and carefully looking over what needs to be done.

Well that wraps up today's garden entry. Thanks for, HEY!!! wake up... I said thanks for reading. Geez it wasn't that bad. ;-)

Category: Gardening | Permalink | 0 locked comments

Last night my little guy, Joshua, was up for most of the night. That meant Daddy was up and that got me thinking about being sick.

1. What is the longest you have ever stayed in the hospital?

2. What is the longest period of time can you say with confidence that you were sick for?

3. What type of sick person are you? Grumpy, sleepy, etc etc.

4. What is the one behavior/act that you do that always gets you sick? (Ex: not wear the proper clothes in the winter, not get enough sleep, etc etc)

5. My grandmother on my father's side once put garlic in my brothers socks to help break a fever. Name a old family remedy that you used to or still use.

Take care AND be healthy

Category: Entertainment | Permalink | 2 locked comments