Lef to Right : Iain, Rich, Craig enjoy a post race “sports drink”

Last Sunday I completed the ATT Half Marathon (or Full Pikermi if you prefer). This series of posts is mostly for my own reference but if you’re interested you can read the rest here.

My personal goal was to finish in 1:50 minutes – the time of my last Half (2002?, Bristol). I managed to maintain a good pace for the first nine miles (sub 8.30 and even one sub 8 minute mile) but then basically ran out of energy and the last 4 miles were a struggle. I went pretty light on breakfast and a second Banana would probably have made all the difference. On my previous long runs – energy had never been a problem.

My official time was 1:57:01 – short of my goal but bearing in mind that just a couple of months ago I couldn’t even run 4 miles without stopping; I don’t think it was all that bad and shows that pretty much anyone can run a half with some dedication and a training plan.

This was the first ATT Marathon and I thought it was very well organized and as I’ve mentioned before – the ATT is a great place to run. My only criticism was the early start (7am) and the lack of parking meant that it wasn’t really possible for my family to cheer me across the line. Free beer and pizza after the race made up for the shortcoming though.

I plan to stick with the running – it’s by far the best way to keep fit, burn fat and clear your head. I plan to do the City of Oaks Half in November and maybe one other Half or 10k over the summer. You’ll likely find me on the ATT at least once a month for the longer runs.

I did consider doing a full marathon this year but I’m pretty sure I couldn’t do it without injuring my already knackered knees, feet and ankles. However, I am thinking pretty seriously about attempting a Triathlon this year – if anyone has advice on how to get started – let me know !

Well the running is going pretty well – I’m starting week 8 with a rest day after a long run yesterday (on the American Tobacco Trail) – I was scheduled to do 11 miles, aiming to do 12 and ended up doing 13.68. This made up for the previous week which was a complete wash-out in terms of mileage due to travel and picking up a nasty bug between Boston and Raleigh.

I have 2 more weeks and weather permitting should be able to get 2 more long runs in before I start tapering down before the run on March 21st – I’d like to diverge from my schedule and see if I can do 16-18 miles – if I can, then I’m going to sign up for the City of Oaks full marathon in November.

One last thing – if you run in the Cary / Raleigh area and haven’t already – make your next run the American Tobacco Trail – it’s mostly flat; it’s a nice even surface, great scenery and shaded from the sun – there are also mile markers to keep you motivated. It’s pretty much the perfect place to run IMO.

Yesterday I completed my fourth full week of training. It’s going pretty well – I’m still slightly ahead of plan in terms of distance and with yesterday’s 7-miler I made some good progress on pace as well. I’ve mostly been running on the hamster wheel in the gym due to cold weather and travel – but that has allowed me to get a better sense of my pace. Over the next 5 weeks I start to up the mileage and hopefully I can increase my speed sufficiently to maintain a constant time-investment as time is something I don’t have a surplus of. Yet again, I’ll be working my running schedule around my travel this week so will have to cram a lot of miles in at the weekend. I’ve also notice that I’m losing about 1lb a week – that cumulative advantage should help as I start on the longer runs.

Next week I’m hoping to squeeze in 16-18 miles and it looks like it will be warm enough to do most of those outside.

For what its worth, here’s my 10 week plan, it’s a variation of one I found here.

On the eve of the last day of the penultimate year of the first decade of the third millennium and continuing a tradition I started in 2005, here’s a quick summary of 2009 – ignoring everything between the peaks and troughs.

Best Moment

Aside from every 3 months when Red Hat announces another knockout quarter

My eight-year old daughter is absolutely racing through the Harry Potter books. She’s finished the first three and is just over half way through the forth (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire). After she’s finished with each book we watch the movie version. I’ve always been a big Sci-fi and Fantasy fan and it’s good to have an excuse to watch the Harry Potter movies and fantastic to see my daughter see the magic of books despite the lure of on-demand cable, movies, video games, the internet, etc.

Biggest Disappointment

This is a tough one – it’s a toss up between the right wing nut cases who maintain that this country’s problems only started the day Obama took office; and the TSA who are still punishing millions of innocent travelers every day with their ill-conceived knee-jerk reactions because they have consistently failed to improve air travel security. I can easily ignore the right wing nut cases – but I have to travel and comply with the TSA’s pointless and ineffective rules. So the TSA wins.

Best Application

My utilitarian ThinkPad semi-failed me over the summer so I used that as an excuse to flip back to using a Mac. I still use the ThinkPad as a desktop in my home office running Fedora but it is no longer portable. I’ve been using multiple machines for years (typically running OS/X and one or more flavours of Linux) and never found a nice simple way to share files until I found Dropbox. I use it all the time and now find it invaluable. [note to self - I should probably post some tips and ideas of how I use it at some point]. So Dropbox gets the top-spot. Runners up are MindNode (mind mapping) and Evernote (lists, notes, etc.). Note to personal productivity software developers – it’s no accident that all these apps. integrate with my iPhone.

I should also add; or repeat, as I’ve said it before – AR is going to be *big* – maybe this year enough people will be carrying a powerful smartphone to make 2010 the year of AR.

Best Book

I had high hopes for “And Another Thing”, Eoin Colfer – Book 6 of the HHGTTG “trilogy” but I think it was a mistake to try and replicate Douglas Adam’s style – that’s too high a bar for any author in my opinion. I’m currently wading through “Too Big to Fail”, Andrew Sorkin – an epic and well researched saga of the financial grey goo but I can’t count that as I won’t be finished with it this year. So I’d have to choose the “Omnivore’s Dilemma : A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan. The book didn’t change my life in a major way but it has made me a bit more selective about what I am wiling to put in my stomach.

Anyway, enjoy the Blue Moon tonight and have a healthy, prosperous and happy New Year.

Best Moment

If you have young kids you know that every moment is golden; that explains why I have over 20 GBs of digital photos. That aside – seeing the Democrat’s victory unfold was pretty uplifting.  It’s just a shame that Obama’s victory was more about the Bush administration’s utter incompetence. I have high hopes for Obama – but I think there’s little he can realistically achieve in a single term given the poor state that this country is in.

Biggest Dissapointment

That we still haven’t seen anyone adequately punished or held accountable for the securitized grey-goo. Hopefully we’re pasT the worst of the financial meltdown but we’re certainly not passed the last and many people will still be feeling the pain of the greed and mismanagement of a few for decades to come.

Best Blog

Most / all the blogs I read are work related and predictably I’m interested in the business of Open Source. There are typically two blogs I read every day; when combined pretty much guarantee coverage of everything that’s going on in Open Source – OStatic and Matt Asay’s C-NET blog. I have no idea how Matt writes so frequently without sacrificing quality. Also, according to Google Reader – I read pretty much everything Paul Kedrosky writes on his blog – Infectious Greed.

Best Technology

In the grand scheme of things, considering the world’s problems and how technology could be used to overcome them; Twitter is utterly, utterly pointless; but that’s also true for so much consumer tech. As far as I can tell – Twitter’s exit strategy is to get acquired (I’m guessing by Google) – and I think that’s great – I cannot imagine any long-term, sustainable business model. Twitter may be an IM or micro-blogging service but for me it’s a human powered content filter. I follow 200 or so people who I believe can do a good job of filtering out what’s happening. My tweeting is hopefully contributing in some small way to someone else’s news filtering. In that respect – it could be the underlying technology for the next generation of Google Reader and Google Alerts – so the Google exit makes sense.

The other tech. that continues to impress me is Word Press. The recent UI refactoring in 2.7 cleared up many of the navigation issues for me and there’s very little I can complain about. What really makes it is the ecosystem built around WP – the themes and plugins make it very attractive.

Worst Technology

YANSN (Yet Another Social Network) – it’s crap, it’s too late and no-one cares. We need a couple of rounds of consolidation and some unifying technologies / APIs to create one social-network or a connected web of social networks. We need more than one social network just like we need more than one web.

Mortgage Backed Securities. Some smart-arse PhD created an edifice of infinite growth but built it with wet sand instead of cement. Then they sold the method to a largely unregulated industry who just wanted taller edifices.

Best Book

This year I’ve managed to read (listen) to most of Neil Gaiman’s novels and short stories – it’s all good if you like some escapist fantasy. Talking of which – I also thoroughly enjoyed Neal Stephenson’s Anathem. But according to my Audible library – Thomas L. Friedman’s – The World is Flat was the only book a gave 5 stars – so it wins.

Best Film

I really haven’t watched too many films this year in fact only one stands out as being  memorable – Iron Man which was a lot of fun. I wish I’d managed to see W – next year maybe.

I was glad to see Star Wars make a come-back for yet another generation via the Clone Wars animated film and series – my 4 year-old son absolutely loves it; so does his Dad.

Anyway, happy new year to you all and thanks for reading.

The 1962 Chile and Italy game was played before the introduction of Red and Yellow cards so it’s difficult to compare how bad it really was compared to modern games. Interestingly the first ever player to get a Red Card was also from Chile – Carlos Cazsely – during the 1974 World Cup.

A little bit of research turned up the most Red Cards handed out in any game was in 1993 between Sportivo Ameliano and General Caballero in Paraguay. A total of 20 cards were handed out after a 10 minute scuffle – which ultimately caused the game to end early.

I only spent a little time working working with Don at Sun but I enjoyed every moment. He’s smart, passionate and above all posesses the honesty and integrity you just don’t see that often.

I wish Don and his loved ones strength, health and happiness for the future and look forward to catching up with him in the future so he can boast about how he beat cancer. I’ll enjoy every moment.

Later this year I would have been celebrating 9 years (9 YEARS !!) at Sun. I would, that is, if I hadn’t gone and got myself a new job elsewhere – which is precisely what I have done. So today I’m celebrating 8 years, 5 months and 8 days at Sun; and about 6 months at Forte before they were acquired. In a little over a week I’ll be starting a new exciting role – but more on that in a future post.

On the whole it’s been an exciting and fulfilling 8.5 years. I’ve been honoured to be part of things that have completely transformed the IT industry; worked with many super-smart, passionate people – many of whom will remain friends beyond my tenure at Sun. Sun is more than just your average company; more than just a stock symbol (or two) and I’ll admit there’s some sadness in leaving. But right now – my aspirations take me elsewhere.

I’ll be taking a short vacation with my family before I start my new job on April 7th. I will continue to work in the software business so our paths will cross no doubt; but if they don’t – please keep in touch. In an age of continuous, real-time social networking there really is no excuse. You can find out more about where I’m going and what I’m doing on this blog and all the usual hangouts on the Web (Twitter, FaceBook, Linkedin, Dopplr). As of March 28th – I’ll no longer have access to my Sun mail account but you can reach me with my personal email : sharps at softwhere dot org.

Best wishes to all my friends and ex-colleagues at Sun.