Month: November 2009

Birds like Iphones

So while on my trip to b-town I decided birds like iphones. As an interesting anecdote while I had gone out for my 12mi run rhian decided to go get coffee and do the regular sunday morning rituals. While walking back and using google maps to direct her, a feathered friend decided to do its business with amazing accuracy on the iphone. Hence my thought that birds like iphones.

If you look at it, and if birds had the cognitive thought and the control to choose their targets they would be classified as being amazingly more accurate than most modern fighter planes , including predator drones. So why doesn’t the CIA take a look at that. They are hell-bent on using drones to eliminate single people targets , while trying minimize collateeral damage. Then why not use small toy planes mounted with single rounds of low caliber guns to eliminate them.

Seriously to consider a hellfire II missile with blast fragmentation, costs roughly $65,000 has a blast radius of over a 100meters all to eliminate 1 person. I am big fan of the philosiphy “use the right tool for the right job” , I think someone made a bad choice.

Boston trip

2 weeks before the philly marathon and I want to get away from it all. I want to get away from training, from the same environment, from work. So R and I decided to take an overdue trip to bean-town. On the one promise that this time I would not wear a yankees baseball cap throughout our trip.

We luckily got a great hotel by the harbor thanks to some co-workers. On sat morning we drove to bean-town taking detour to meetup with a couple of friends in hartford. By the time we got to boston it was 3pm and I was ready to crash. Took a quick nap and went out to visit some of the sites.

The one thing I have to question is why boston restaurants have absurdly long waits. We waited for a spot at neptune oyster bar for over 1 1/2 hrs. Seriously it is as if there is a shortage of space in boston to eat.

On sat I went for an early morning run and then met up with abbass for brunch

Colocation and server move

It’s been a well over 2 years since I visited our co-location. Can’t say I have missed it. So this Friday we had some urgent work that needed to be done in l3 and since I didn’t want to wait another week I decided to join one of our system admins to do it late Friday night.
Remind never to leave at 5 on a Friday to drive into NYC. The traffic on the gwb was brutal. By the time we got to the place it was 8. The work was fairly straightforward needed to move 2 servers and reconfigure 1. So by about 10 we were done. R had decided to join us for the trip to the city and while I was working had walked around.

Off and On Again

My training goes in waves, On again and off again. All of sudden at week 2 of a 3 week cycle I will lose interest in working out and will just need a break from everything. R blames it on the complete polar opposites I maintain where I workout for 20hrs for 2 weeks at a time and then drop to 5hrs. Just getting burnt out in the process.

So the plan from now to IM is to be consistent and to avoid these waves of training. Plan to train 10-20hrs and touch a couple of weeks with 25 but to maintain that as the threshold min.

Touristic 18miles

Last long run before the marathon. After a day of showing someone around nyc had to get my mind wrapped around the fact that I have to run 18mi. The first 3miles felt good I was just getting warmed up in the cold weather. As I ran into milford I was reminded that I could up the pace a bit but in a marathon it is always good to hold back.

After the turn back and finishing 9miles I needed to stop at a gas station to replace the gatorade bottle. I still felt strong , and I had finished a couple of FRS chewables. The second loop of milford beach was tough and tiring especially when I ran up the hill. After turning back into downtown milford I started having my GU that was enough to sustain me to the last 4 miles back to the apt.

In all 18 miles and I only had one portion where I had to slow down.