The morning after

Still quite sore. I'm wearing a brace on my knee just for support. That and the pain.

I should mention that after the race, I came home and took a hot bath. It was either that, or the tons of Powerade and carbo gels that I had during the race, or the Powerade and apple I had after the race, or maybe the fact that I'd just run 26.2 miles, but I could not even stand to look at the eggs and bagel that Maria had made for me. I was this close to tossing the ol' cookies. I decided lying down was a much better idea. I slept off and on for a bit, got up, and viola, problem solved. Chowed down the cold eggs and bagel quite readily.

I'm including the picture Maria took of me after the race with the kids. Yes that's a grimace and not a smile. :)

Goals accomplished

My goals for the marathon were threefold:

1. don't die
2. finish
3. don't stop

All my goals were met: I'm typing to you live (I'm not a ghost), I finished (although the last 5 miles were just brutal), and I didn't stop (just slowed down for water/Powerade).

My unwritten goal was to beat 4 hours if possible, and I just squeaked by that one too: I did a 3:53:39, which was apparently good enough to place me 230th or so out of 1400 other guys 45-49. I'm pretty sore today, but that helped to ease the pain. More tomorrow.

Here I go...

0630 on the day of the marathon and I'm as ready as I'll ever be. Cold is pretty mild at this point so I'll hope it's not a factor. It's a little chilly out right now but I should be fine once I warm up. I shall report back this afternoon if I don't keel over. Later.

Marathon T-minus 4 days and counting?

I started training for the Marine Corps Marathon in early August--training consisting of running progressively longer runs once a week, other than that it was pretty much my standard running schedule of about 6 miles three times during the business week. Over the course of the training, I wondered what would happen if I got an injury: pulled something, twisted something, stuff like that. I made it to one week from the marathon without doing any such thing.

I'd forgotten about the possibility of getting sick.

Yes, one week before MCM 2005 and I started getting a scratchy throat. Always a bad sign. I started taking every bogus homeopathic cold remedy known to Trader Joe's: echinacea, zinc, vitamin C, you name it. It's Wednesday and I've switched over to tried and true methods of cold symptom containment: Sudafed Extreme Cold Formula, with a nice shot of Nyquil at night. I'm getting lots of rest and hoping to keep symptoms to a minimum. I imagine I'll still run the thing unless the cold takes a turn for the worse. We shall see.

But I don't WANT to buy a 360!

I mean, I really don't... but then good ol' J Allard has to go and say things that make sense, like "Anybody in my company who thought this was a bad idea to plug in Sony or Apple devices into [the 360], I ended that conversation pretty quickly. This is the right thing to do for consumers. Once they invest $500 in their digital media library, you can't ask them to go buy a 360 music player and a 360 digital camera, and a 360...NO! They got their stuff. They're going to want to plug it in. We're going to be open here, guys."

I'm still shocked that stuff like that can go on at Microsoft!

IGN: J Allard Gets Real

Note to myself on Prius aux in possibilities

I guess I could always pull this page up by Googling for "prius iPod" but even so I'll link to it from here so I can get at the page again. I may be considering the "expensive but fully-featured" AIC-100i. It'd be nifty to control playback from the steering wheel, and I found some online instructions that make it look kinda sorta easy.

How to Hook up an Ipod in a Prius - WikiHow

Another nice-looking Shuttle system

Reviewed at Anandtech. The slimness would let it fit right into a home theater system, but it seems that the Pentium M might not have the oomph to play back HDTV, at least not with MythTV and without XvMC support. Still, a very nice looking system. Will have to be on the lookout.

AnandTech: Shuttle XPC M1000 - HTPC Done Right?

46.5 MPG and counting

Still no idea how I'm going to jack my iPod into my Prius's sound system, but at least I can be comforted in the fact that my gas mileage is awesome. Looks like I'm going to get just over 400 miles per tank. Amazing.

I hate FM transmitters

Turns out that, for all its technological whizziness, the Prius lacks one little thing: a nice aux-in port for audio. Since I didn't spring for the navigation system, I didn't get the upgraded audio system. The standard audio system has a CD player but not a cassette... and the cassette adapter is definitely the way to go for playing your iPod in your car if you can. Audio quality is great and it's cheap.

Since I don't have a cassette or an aux-in, I had to go get an FM transmitter at ye olde Apple Store. I got a nice small one from Xtreme Mac called the AirPlay... lets you change the channel easily, unobtrusive, uses the iPod's battery. Now if it only sounded good. :-/ Using an FM frequency at the bottom end of the dial (87- to 88-ish), I get lots of interference and static. Using one at the top end (106- to 107-ish), I get a high-pitched whine if I turn it up enough to hear it.

I've looked into some third-party options, but I'll have to find out if the warranty will still be intact if I let my dealer install it. Lord knows if I installed it (a) the warranty would be voided, and (b) I would screw it up royally.

Mystery of the Gray Prius -- solved!

About two months ago I put a deposit down on a new Toyota Prius. I'd looked at all the colors and decided on the blue, although I kept seeing a gunmetal gray color one that I really liked. Going to the website, though, there was no gray choice. Hm.

Due to various roadblocks (including, but not limited to, Katrina, damage at the docks with a blue Prius, $3/gal gas driving up demand), delivery kept getting delayed. Finally, I heard that their October shipment was on its way, but that the blue model might not get here until the end of October, which was when my current car's registration expired. My salesperson said that they could get a green one a few days earlier. I didn't like the green color on the website, but I also didn't like not having a new car, so I said great, let's go for the green.

I went to get the car today. Guess what? IT'S GRAY! I have NO idea how this is considered green. I guess under the right lighting conditions--like maybe a giant green spotlight. Anyhow, all's well that ends well, as I like this color and (so far) I like the car. I'll post a pic when I can.

EDIT: OK, here's the car with Anna doing her best Carol Merrill.

One of the best soundtracks ever

I bought Curtis Mayfield's "Superfly" a while back on the iTunes Music Store. I've always meant to get it as it has some amazing music on it. The big hits off it back in the day was "Freddie's Dead," but I remember listening to the radio and hoping that the title song would come up in the playlist rotation. Great song. Add "Little Child Runnin Wild" and "Pusherman" and you've got one of the best soundtracks ever... in my book, right up there with the score from 2001:A Space Odyssey and the Leone westerns.

A new deadline for digital TV?

Just saw this on Yahoo News... the Senate is looking to impose a new deadline for the analog-to-digital switchover. April 2009, eh? Very interesting. I wonder what kind of DRM junk is also hiding in this legislation... guess it's time to wander over to the EFF and see what they say about this...

US Senate draft digital TV bill sets move for 2009 - Yahoo! News

Mark Cuban on iTunes and downloadable TV shows

Interesting commentary by the HDTV gadfly Mark Cuban, on Apple and ABC providing shows like Lost and Night Stalker as $1.99 downloadable media. It's an interesting business model to consider... how many people will download a show like this? I wonder how many people have bought an episode of Lost so far since Apple's announcement. Frankly, I'd pay a little more to catch this past week's episode of My Name is Earl in high-definition, as apparently my HD reception of the local NBC affiliate was totally pooched, and thus so was my recording. (And I only live four friggin' miles from the tower! Grrr.)

So hopefully Apple will bring HD to the table soon. In the meantime, Cuban makes a persuasive argument for the networks to embrace this new model.

How Bob Iger Saved Network TV - Blog Maverick - www.blogmaverick.com _

A nice list of open source Mac-only utilities

Wanted to link to this article on NewsForge as it had a nice rundown of some Mac-specific open source software. In particular, I've needed a nice FTP client like Cyberduck for quite some time, on those occasions when I need to FTP from my Mac. The other utils looked nice too.

NewsForge | Using open source software on Mac OS X

New quiet Shuttle system coming

I'm a big Shuttle fan, so the fact that they're coming out with a new, very quiet, Pentium M-based system is very intriguing. Linked article is pretty slim on details, but it looks good and promises to be way quieter than the Shuttle I'm using right now. If it can play back HDTV, I'm there.

EDIT: here's a link directly to Shuttle's product page.

True confessions

Luckily my kids don't read this blog, don't know of its existence... well, for that matter, virtually no one else does either. So my secret is safe with you, oh my two or three readers.

I bought a Nintendo DS and a copy of Nintendogs.

I have a master plan to get the kids a DS for Christmas and their own copy of Nintendogs too. I have a feeling the CFO of the house may veto that plan. Anyhow, I'll figure something out. In the meantime, I'm trying to get my little Welsh Corgi (named Chauncey in honor of my old boss's dog) to do well in the obedience competition. Unfortunately I can't train him at home while the kids are up (for obvious reasons) and I can't train him after they're asleep (since they're voice commands and for some odd reason it bugs Maria for me to say "Chauncey, roll over" repeatedly while she's trying to sleep). So that leaves work, but my office has too much fan noise. What's a virtual dog owner to do?

I quite like the DS so far. It lasted quite a while on its battery charge while I cooled my heels waiting for my delayed flight back home. I also have Advance Wars: Dual Strike, and although I pretty much suck at the game, it's still fun.

Cool tech use in Army Ten Miler

Amidst all the complaints about the SNAFUd Army Ten Miler on the site's bulletin board, I found one set of posts that turned me on to a very cool use of the personal GPS units that some runners use to measure how far they've run. Check out this Google map of the course we ended up running, complete with mile markers and an optional measurement of calories burned! Hm, might have to get me one of them there things.

Asparagus ice cream

Watched one of the better "Iron Chef America" episodes I've seen to date. It was Masaharu Morimoto vs Michael Symon, and the secret ingredient was asparagus. Mmmm, asparagus. Everything looked quite good, but Iron Chef Morimoto deserved the decisive win. That maki he made was absolutely spectacular looking, and the fact that he made asparagus ice cream -- and that the judges liked it -- was amazing. (Speaking of the ice cream, I liked the new idea for the commentators to yell in mock fear "ICE CREAM MACHINE" whenever anyone cranks it up.)

The Army Eleven-point-two Miler

I haven't commented yet on the fiasco that was last Sunday's Army Ten Miler. First of all, it was supposed to be a training run for me in preparation for the Marine Corps Marathon. I was supposed to run 20 miles total, so I decided to run 10 miles before the race, and then the ten mile race. The ten miles before was uneventful other than trying to actually get to the correct Pentagon parking lot from the running path... one of the bomb-sniffing dog handlers kept saying "Stay! Stay! Stay!"--to his dog, not me-- and I kept wondering "what exactly is the dog going to do to me if he doesn't keep saying that?"

Anyhow, I did loops around the Pentagon parking lot until about 5 minutes before the 8AM race start, then jogged in place until we got to the starting line. Again, all fine, until we got to the turnoff for the 14th St. Bridge... and didn't turn off. Turns out the DC police spotted a suspicious package on the bridge at 8:05AM, weren't able to get it cleared, and the race organizers diverted the path to avoid the bridge. The second the course changed? No longer official. Big bummer for people who were trying to win, big annoyance to the rest of us.

Running the extra distance wasn't such a big deal for me, but not having any official time (they couldn't move the timing pads to the "new" finish line) was quite a drag. If I want to run 11.2 unofficial untimed miles, I can do that without 19,999 other people around me. This is the second year in a row where "security concerns" have interfered with this race, and it's getting old. It's something that has never happened with the Cherry Blossom Ten Miler, for instance.