Another 3-Day

Well I haven't even finished fundraising for this year yet and it is still 98 days until I walk this year but I have aleady registered for next year. Next year will be my 5th 3-Day and I will be walking in my 3rd City. I have walked two years in Chicago, I will have walked two years in San Diego, and next year I will be walking in Minneapolis/St. Paul. The group that I am walking with decided that it's a little expensive to do longer trips each year so we are going to stick with something closer to home next year. The Twin Cities is a comfortable 6 hour drive from Milwaukee so I won't have any airfare next year. That will be good. I have also heard good things about the Twin Cities 3-Day so I am looking forward to walking in another city.

 

Missing Chicago

This weekend was the Susan G. Komen 3 Day for the cure in Chicago. I had registered to walk in Chicago with my team but changed cities earlier this summer. This year has been a bad year with heat and humidity for me and my allergies so I decided that I was better off with walking in San Diego again this year. I don't miss the heat in Chicago but i did miss seeing my teammates there this weekend. I ended up having to work this weekend so I didn't even get to go down for Dinner or to cheer the team on. It looks like they had decent weather and they raised about $4.5 Million dollars for the fight against Breast Cancer. Nice job Chicago. Can't wait to see some of the team in San Diego in November.

Promoting Drupal

Drupal is a Open Source Content Management System that I started working with a couple of years ago. I originally started looking at it because I wanted to update my Church website off of a static Dreamweaver based website to something that would be easier for multiple people to update. I have since used it to develop this simple blog website as well as a couple of smaller websites for local groups. My sites are still pretty simple and I am constantly learning better ways to accomplish things using Drupal and it keeps getting better with new revisions.

The learning curve for Drupal is quite steep because it is very powerful but once you get started there are so many things that you can do with it. Drupal.org has a large community that does a pretty good job of answering questions for those that have taken the time to do some basic research.

One of the drawbacks with Drupal is it has not had as much exposure in the past as other CMS's like Wordpress. Drupal is working on that but needs more support. Recently Drupal was setting up a booth at OSCON to get more exposure. They asked for donations from the Drupal Community to help cover the costs of the booth. They had a target of $2500 and came up a bit short so they may not have been as successful as they would have liked. I find it a bit amazing that with all the people that are using and developing Drupal that they could not raise such a small amount. If the Drupal community wants to see Drupal succeed we need to do a better job of supporting efforts like this to get Drupal more exposure.

Drupal is a great CMS but it needs more than just the developers to help it grow. For those of us that are not developers or programmers that use Drupal we need to do our part to help it grow in other ways. That means that more of us have to be willing to donate when we can to help get the word out.

AYOP - A New Experience

I spent most of this week at Notre Dame University attending AYOP. AYOP stands for America's Youth on Parade and it is the premiere event for Baton Twirlers and Flag Corps. My daughters were competing in some twirling and some flag corp events. This was a new experience since all of the competitions that I had previously attended were much smaller. There were kids here from all over the country and different parts of Canada.

There were some very talented groups in attendance. The groups ranged from very large to very small and every where in between. With different events every day, it was pretty chaotic most days but the girls had a good time and learned more about an activity that they enjoy.

My wife had to work this week so I was a solo dad at AYOP and that was a challenge. The girls have to have different outfits and hairstyles for their different events. I am very grateful to the mothers of other members of our corp that took pity on me and helped with the girls hair throughout the week. The families in our Corp do a really nice job of helping each other out and I really appreciate their help this week.

My girls are already looking forward to next year.

 

Little Training But Lots to Do

I have not been getting much training lately as I have been running my daughters to their practices and activities since school let out. The activities are fun but I will be glad in a couple weeks when the competitions are over and we can relax a bit more for the rest of the summer. I will finally be able to get back to my training also. I am not walking until November so I have plenty of time to train but I do miss my walking. I find it to be relaxing.

I also have plenty of other things to work on this summer. I am working on upgrading several websites and there are so many things I want to make better as I have learned so much since I first rolled out the sites.

No Blisters

I have had issues with blisters every year that I walk the 3-Day. Last year in San Diego was my worst and this spring with my new shoes I have been getting some in places I had not previously. I used to use Body Glide on my feet every time I walked but that was not working very well. I must not have been putting enough on because I was still getting blisters. Well I decided to change tactics this past Sunday when I went out and so far the new strategy has been successful. Two walks and no blisters. Even with the 11 Miles on Sunday I was blister free. This time I used a strategy that I had heard others use but had not tried. I spread a generous layer of Vaseline on my feet wherever I knew I got hot spots or blisters. When I felt that it was wearing off, about 6-7 miles, I stopped and re-applied and it worked great so far. It felt a little strange at first when I started out but that did not last. Going to keep doing this all year and see if I can make it through the 3-Day with no blisters this year.

Summer Training

Well I decided to go out and get a decent length walk in today as I have been kind of busy and have not been walking as much as I would like lately. I guess I missed the part in the weather forecast where it said it was going to be this hot. I thought maybe we would get to about 80 so it would be good training. Turned out it was almost 80 by the time I left at 9:30 and it was pushing 90 by the time I finished my 11.2 miles today. I had almost forgotten how much I hate walking in this kind of heat. It was 90+ each day of my first 3-Day in 2007 and I almost passed out a couple times on day 1. Today I had to really make sure I was drinking enough Gatorade and I bought a bottle of cold water at a gas station just to have cold water to dump over my head and hat to cool me down a little. I missed the cooling stations that they have during the 3-Day. I usually take advantage of those to cool down in Chicago. That was one thing I didn't have to worry about last year in San Diego. The weather in San Diego was perfect and I much prefer walking in 65-70 than 85-95. I am waiting for them to announce the days for next year. I suspect that I may have a conflict with my Family Reunion and Chicago so next year it may be back to sunny San Diego.

I guess I better get used to it for now. Summer is just starting.

 

Mac Stuff

I have wanted to take a look at the iPad since it came out and finally got a chance to take a look at one today. It is an interesting device but I have decided that I will not be getting one. I can't justify having multiple devices with 3G accounts so I will have to stick with my iPhone for now. I am hoping that they will announce new iPhones and tethering this summer and that will make it easier to use my Macbook Pro when I am away from home. There are a couple of places I go with regularity that do not have any WIFI access and that limits what I can do when I am there. I still use my Macbook at my Desk more than away but it is nice to have the ability to take it with me as I go other places.

 

Geeks and God is Back

I had mentioned a couple days ago that I was very surprised to find that the Geeks and God Podcast is back on the air. The format is a little different than the past but it is still a great podcast worth listening to. The original hosts are no longer doing the podcast but they have very capable replacements. The hosts are now a group of about 5 or 6 guys that have been long time moderators on the Geeks and God Forums. They bring differing expertise to the table and so far the two episodes that I have listened to have been pretty good. They are now doing the podcast monthly instead of weekly but the format seems to be working well. it's not the weekly fix that I had been used to in the past but I am looking forward to the next podcast in May.

Blog Categories: 

Technology

Training and Stuff

Training for the 3-Day

Well the weather here in Wisconsin has been pretty hit and miss. We had some very awesome weather and things have kind of gotten cool again so I have not been walking as much. I did get a couple of good 10 Mile walks in the first two weekend of April but have been a little lax since then. I hope to get back to some longer walking this weekend but the weather may not cooperate and it may rain all weekend. We'll have to see what the temp is like. If it's not too cold I will do some training in the rain.

Podcasts

I don't listen to that many Podcasts with any regularity. I used to listen to Geeks and God every week and really looked forward to it but they stopped producing weekly Podcasts last fall as they are working on a new project. I was really surprised to see that there were a couple new podcasts when I checked out the site the other day. The original guys had a special podcast to publicize efforts to get more people so sponsor children through Compassion. They also were announcing that the Geeks and God Podcasts would be back on a Monthly basis with new hosts. The new hosts have all been active members of the Geeks and God Forums and I am really looking forward to checking out their podcasts as I have some spare time this week. Will let you know what I think.