Category Archives: Uncategorized

My 5k Run in the Snowstorm

Some say that you can’t call yourself a runner until you’ve actually run in a race. I’m happy to say that on March 8th, 2008 I accomplished that feat by running the Slainte Irish Pub St. Patrick’s Day Road Race.

This wasn’t your everyday run however, as you can see from the picture below, there was a bit of a snowstorm going on around us!

The snow on race day
A look at the snow outside before the race

It definitely wasn’t the warmest I’ve been while out for a run, but as you can tell from our faces in the picture below, we were doing ok.

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Joe, Dorothy and I ready to go

The route was pretty good, we started just off Concession Street, ran along the mountain brow and then made our way down the Jolly Cut. The whole time down I was telling Joe how nice it would be to have one of those x-games head mounted cameras, that way there would be some evidence for how much snow was coming down.

Considering the weather I was pretty happy with my results, my goal was to not be the last person to cross the line and I beat that by about 50, sweet!

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Joe and I busting for the finish, notice the snow!

The best part about the whole day was the hot Irish stew and beer waiting for us at the pub just over the finish line. Definitely helped us get warmed up quick!

For those thinking about entering this race, go for it! It’s a lot of fun and from what I could tell everybody had a fantastic time. I’ll see you there again next year for sure!

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The three of us at the finish line, we made it!

I’ve Moved to a New Host

After a year of nearly constant frustration with my previous web hosting company I have decided to switch. If you are seeing this page that means that the DNS updates are nearly complete.

You may also notice that the site is a bit different, during the host migration I decided to switch from PostNuke to WordPress since most of what I do is blogging anyway and PostNuke seems to have fallen quite a bit away from the competition on that front.

I’ve migrated most of the stories that actually mattered from the old site, and there will be plenty more to come in the near future.

Check back soon for much more frequent updates.

Wally

Getting things done…

Wow, what a busy holiday season that was! Always is this time of year, Christmas, the New Year, my birthday and anniversary all within a two week span. There was so much going on that it is all very overwhelming and exhausting. Even after the holidays it felt like no matter how hard I worked nothing seemed to get done.

Finally I have been able to start digging myself out from underneath the pile. Many of the things that have been on my todo list for months have suddenly been completed, plus many more recent items. Here’s the plan I have been following to keep it going:

  • Keep a detailed list of everything that I need to do
  • Get rid of anything on the list that doesn’t actually matter
  • Finish things before I move on to the next, don’t leave items @ 90% complete
  • When something is finished, put it away so that it’s out of my mind
  • Re-prioritize my to do list often in achievable chunks, starting the whole process over again

The results have been good, as I get caught up, my head feels more clear and I’m actually able to get things done even faster. This week I’ve scratched 3 times as much stuff off of my lists as I have in previous weeks, and we all know how good it feels to get out that marker and cross something off our list. I no longer feel like I’m buried under a pile of stuff.

So give it a try if you like, let me know how you make out.

Am I turning into an Apple fan?

I’m not even sure how they did it, but Apple is definitely doing something right. I have always been against Apple and their Macs because of application compatibility and the fact that being a .Net programmer, the Mac platform isn’t really available to me.

Lately though, I’ve been finding myself more and more interested in what Apple is doing and some of the new products they are releasing. I even watched the Developer Conference keynote awhile back and found myself getting very excited about what they will be offering, much in the way that I did when I started seeing Vista webcasts.

Even more scary, I find myself seriously considering getting a Macbook Pro or a Mac Pro for my next notebook/laptop. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I can run Windows / Linux etc. on it, I don’t know…

So, kudos to you guys Apple, you’ve caught my attention.

MCTS Studying taking longer than I thought

I’ve been working my way through the MCTS 70-536 study guide since I picked it up back in July. It has been pretty slow progress so far, currently I am in the early stages of chapter 4. I definitely haven’t had a chance to spend as much time on it as I originally thought I would.

Overall the training kit is pretty good, I’ve learned about some interesting and useful features of the .Net Framework, specifically the cryptography, compression and isolated storage sections. I do like how the book is layed out, with nice short lessons that you could read through in 15-20 minutes followed by a lab or two and some review questions. At the end of each chapter you are given a series of schenarios where you can apply the concepts from the preceeding chapter, although sometimes they are worded in a way that you don’t really know what they’re asking, kind of like real world development I suppose…

Already I’ve learned some things that I would like to put to use with the PHP Time Tracker client program so I can’t complain. Now that the summer is behind us I’m hoping that I’ll be able to spend some more time on getting through this stuff and writing some exams.

We’ll see how that goes…