It's gotta be the shoes
Yesterday I picked up the pair of shoes in which I will run the New York City Marathon.

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This makes me sick...
This is why I was fat. I can't believe I used to eat this way... Although the Guinness Chocolate Pudding does sound good.

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Beavertown Fall Classic 5K
Saturday morning was the third(?) annual Beavertown 5K. I had been training with a group of people for the two months leading up to the race. We registered as a team for the event, the Beavertown Runners.

I set out with the goal of finally breaking 20 minutes. With Philly so close I decided the PR wasn't worth risking an injury and I'd slow down if something felt off.

I didn't slow down. I finished in 6th place overall with a new PR of 19:51. The team rankings were determined by each team's top 3 finishers and, in our category, the Beavertown Runners took first.

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Countdown
Only 23 days remain until the New York City Half Marathon. Much like every other race, I don't feel prepared for it. But the race I feel the most unprepared for are usualy the ones I get a PR.

I feel like I should be training harder. I'm averaging between 50 and 60 miles per week and I don't think it's enough. The Philadelphia Marathon is only 120 days away. And as of today I still haven't run anything over 20 miles.

So the plan for tomorrow morning is to run more than that. I decided months ago that I'd run at least a marathon distance by the end of July. Tomorrow I plan run 27 miles. I have a 2.7 mile loop planned out and I'm going to run it 10 times. I imagine it will quite boring for a while in the middle, but it will certainly be a challenge by the end.

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DMC Houston
It looks like the DeLorean needs some non-trivial work done on it. The mechanic I had taken it to found an issue he's not equipped to deal with. My first call was to DMC Houston where I talked to Stephen.

He was friendly and incredibly knowledgeable. He said he'd work with me and Dave at their facility in Chicago to figure out what the extent of the work would be and the best way to approach it. Odds are the car is going to have to be shipped to Chicago for a few weeks.

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Lincoln Park Triathlon
This Summer Lincoln Park will hold its first triathlon. More information can be found at www.lincolnparktriathlon.com.

If you're not quite interested in racing it, we're looking for volunteers to help out that day.

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WPLJ's NYC Half Marathon Themed Phone Scam
Yesterday Scott and Todd aired a phone scam related to the NYC Half Marathon. It's available here for now if you haven't heard it.

I was a little disappointed in the way the guy from the running store responded. He struck me as the kind of guy that looks down on the back-of-the-pack plodders. They're out there doing their best just like the elites and everyone in between; they deserve respect too.

Other than that, it was a rather funny phone scam; one of the best I've heard in a while.

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I wasn't born this way; I made myself.
I heard that Lady Gaga song on the radio the other day, you know the one that sounds like the Madonna song, and it got me thinking. On the surface it seems to contain a very positive message about accepting yourself because you were "Born This Way." You were born like this, you were made this way, there's nothing you can do about it so be happy with it.

I disagree. Sure, when we're born we're stuck with the genetic material passed on to us by our lineage. But we're more than that, what we are, what we become, is so much more than how we were born. And this made me think about the Incubus song, "Make Yourself." I find the message of that song to be much more positive. While the song has an overt "them vs. you" context, the general theme is one of taking responsibility for yourself and what you become.

Was I born the way I am today? Judging from the direction my life took in the first twenty-six years, and comparing it to the last three years, the answer is no. I was born heavy, weighing in over nine pounds. I grew into a heavy kid. I was always sad and lonely as a kid. I had few friends. I rarely went outside. I never played sports. I watched a lot of TV. I ate a lot. I got heavier. I got sadder. I got lonelier. But I was born this way, right? I should have just accepted it, right?

While I was born heavy, I didn't have to stay that way. It was my own choices that made me into the depressed, obese misanthrope I was. Despite my claims that I was born that way, genetically predisposed to those conditions, I really made myself that way.

And then I decided to change that. I took responsibility for my life. I started exercising. I ran. I ate healthier. I lost weight. I had better relationships with my friends. I started making new friends. I became happier.

Just as I had made myself into what I was, I made myself into what I am today. The key to this change was taking personal responsibility for myself. No longer did I use the excuse of being born that way. I knew I was like that because of my decisions and my actions. I knew through my decisions and my actions I could change. And I did. I made myself.

"If you really want to live, why not try and make yourself?"

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Lincoln Park Triathlon
This Summer Lincoln Park will hold its first triathlon. More information can be found at www.lincolnparktriathlon.com.

If you're not quite interested in racing it, we're looking for volunteers to help out that day.

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Ninth Runniversary
Yesterday was my ninth runniversary. Like my first day running, I ran on the treadmill while listening to Broken. Unlike the first time, I only listened to it once, and covered 4.48 miles during the duration of the EP, thanking God every step of the way.

I'm confident in knowing that the bone in my ankle has healed completely now; however, I'm still rebuilding the muscle in that ankle and the rest of that leg. There was significant atrophy during the early phases of recovery. Slowly as it may be, I am making progress, and I am thankful for that.

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Volunteers Needed
The Lincoln Park Triathlon needs volunteers. If you'd like to help out, please visit www.lincolnparktriathlon.com/volunteers for more information.

This event isn't possible without the help of volunteers. If you or anyone you know would be interested in helping, please contact us.

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Optical Illusion
I saw this today. I thought it was interesting.

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WTF?
I'm used to guitarists mocking the bass and bassists. It doesn't bother me too much. But this... This irritated me. A lot.
Today at work there was a group of people talking about Rock Band and Guitar Hero 3. None of them actually know how to play intstruments but they claim to be great at these games. They seem to believe this entitles them mock bassists.

• "Oh man, bass is so easy. It's the guitar that's the hard part. Yeah, I'm on expert on the guitar."
• "Yeah, bass is so stupid."
• "So It's me, my brother, and my sister. I play guitar, he's on drums, and my sister sings."
  "what about bass?"
  "My friend just got Guitar Hero 3. I'll make him play bass."
  [Both laugh]
• After making statements indicating this person believes he actually is better than Tom Morello, "After you make Tom Morello or Slash your bitch, they play bass for you."

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chdir(2)
So today at work another developer many years my senior, with many more years experience than I, came to me with a Unixy problem.
"When I have a program, how can I have it so the current working directory for all processes it starts isn't the one that it started in?"
"chdir."
"No, I want so that if this process starts something like ls, when ls stats 'dot' I want 'dot' to be the directory that process wants it to be, not the directory that process was started from."
After about 15 minutes of me suggesting chdir while he said that's not what he wanted but then describing chdir, I finally wrote something along the lines of the following

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
  system("/bin/pwd");
  system("/bin/ls");
  chdir("/tmp");
  system("/bin/pwd");
  system("/bin/ls");
  chdir("/etc");
  system("/bin/pwd");
  system("/bin/ls");
  chdir("/");
  system("/bin/pwd");
  system("/bin/ls");
  return 0;
}

I compiled that, ran it, showed him the output. He said, "Yeah, that's what I want to do."
I showed him the code.
"chdir does that?"

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Alpha
Due to the power failure, there was the loss of several hours of work. Last night I installed FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE on an old DEC AlphaStation 200 I have. I had started building a new, smaller kernel for it around 23:30 last night. It had not completed by the time of the power outage. I have restarted that build.
Any one reading this would reasonably ask, "Why are you not as confused/angry/annoyed with a compile that was not finished in 7 hours as you were about one that took 3 hours?"
The answer is simple. This AlphaStation is powered by a 100MHz DEC Alpha EV4 CPU and has 64MB of RAM. To the best of my knowledge, DEC made this machine around 1994 or 1995. I expected the build to take a long time; the machine is around a dozen years old.

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How long does it take to build a linux kernel?
It has been a number of years since I built a linux kernel. Slackware 9.1 was the last GNU/Linux distro I used before switching back to BSD. Tonight I put together a machine from some old parts (1.2GHz celeron with 256KB cache, 256MB RAM, 20GB hard drive) and installed Slackware 12. I customized a kernel configuration and attempted to build it. I don't remember the 2.4 kernel taking as long to build as this 2.6 kernel. It took nearly two hours. Granted, this machine is fairly old, but 2 hours? After I complete the tasks for which I needed this setup, I'm going to install an older Slackware with the 2.4 kernel and build that. I may also install FreeBSD and NetBSD and build their kernels. I'd like to get an idea how long it takes to compile other kernels on this rig.

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