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Jane will be doing a sprint triathlon this weekend in Martinsville, WV as a final prep for the Mini-Mussel sprint in Geneva on July 10th. I’m still behind on training due to work, travel, and other issues. This weekend is a 60 mile bike and a 2 hour run for me. Should be the last long training session before the Musselman half-ironman July 11th.  We have quite a contingency coming up to the race with a couple folks joining us at the house we rented for the weekend.  Will be a great time.  Let’s hope the weather cooperates!

Stop whining. We’ve been really busy lately and then the server crashed and I had to rebuild everything. Now I’m whining- it’s contagious! Updates will be forthcoming I promise. Between training, racing, and everyday stuff that happens around here there is a plethora of stuff I can be adding. The pool is open, school is almost out, and I’m not ready for the 70.3 race in July. There’s your update. The photo gallery is now updated as well!

I am going into the Army for a day in the “Augusta in Army Boots” program.  I’ll be teamed up with a soldier for 24 hours and will get to experience what a soldier goes through.  I will get my own M-16 A2 for the duration and i will also get familiar with larger weapons and perhaps a rocket launcher.  HOW COOL IS THAT!? We will get specific combat training and then we will spend the rest of the time on a mission.  From what I have seen and heard it will be a hostage extraction in the middle of the night.  Should be a good time.  I’m looking forward to it.  Hu-ahh!  (click on the boots to read an article about the program)

So we all ran the “Freeze your Gizzard 5k”…Well, not all of us.  Jane ran the 5k race with a couple of our friends.   Sean and I ran the 1 mile “fun run”.  The weather was much more cooperative this year.  Last year is was in the teens.  This year the sun was out and it was in the 40’s.   At the end of the race Sean got his shiny medal and doughnuts!  We have another runner in the family.  See the pictures in the gallery.

Gian Acorn2009-Bumpass VA. 1:31:00

This weekend was the “Giant Acorn” sprint triathlon on Bumpass, VA.  I did this last year with Jane and had a blast.  This year Jane was the photographer and I was the participant.  I beat last year’s time by 9 seconds.  BFD!  My swim and bike were faster this year by my transition times were really high and my run was longer.  It’s just running from this point on.  Next year I should have a better bike so se’ll see what happens.

The team of crazies!

Okay, I’m not crazy enough to run all of it by myself.  I ran as part of a team in the Ragnar Relay race.  Two vans, twelve people, thirty two hours, and two hundred miles cut into thirty six segments.  Each runner gets assigned three different segments varying in length from three to ten miles and varying in difficulty.  I was assigned slot #9 which meant I ran segment 9, 21, and 33.  The distances and difficulty were 10.2 miles very hard; 3.2 miles easy; and 7.1 miles very hard.  There were 160 relay teams total.  We all had a blast and worked very hard.  We laughed even harder.  Jane was a volunteer at stop 18.  I caught up with her somewhere around midnight.  Click on the picture to the left to go to the race website.  The race bible spells out everything we had to endure.  Check out the pictures in the gallery.

So after agonizing over whether or not to keep the old ford on life support we decided to put it down. On average it cost us $300 a month in oil, parts, and labor to keep the old thing running. We used that formula to calculate what we can afford to replace it with. Cash for Clunkers gave us $3500 towards a new vehicle and the dealership gave us $1 for the van. Yes, one dollar. Turns out that’s all a 9 year old minivan with 185,000 miles with an electrical problem and a drinking problem (oil) is worth. It was a good vehicle and only left us stranded once for a brief period of time. After 9 years and 42 days of decent service we replaced it with an economical midsize car. It’s a KIA Rondo. Kinda cute, kinda not. It gets great mileage and has 3 rows of seats to keep the warring factions in their respective territories on long trips. There’s nothing worse than a tribal turf war while motoring down the interstate. “Daaaaaad, he’s touching me!”.

Go Vikes!

Jake has started football and is on the vikings this year.  One small injury during practice last night but it looks like we are on the way to another great season.  Lets see if we can keep the bones unbroken this year!  We can only hope.  School starts right after Labor Day and Sean will be in the 1st grade…ALL DAY!

All okay!

What a complete pain in the butt!  After many attempts at bringing up the remote site I was finally successful.  I won’t bore you with the details of how many time I corrupted the database at BOTH the source AND the destination.  I at least had a backup that I was able to restore too.  Due to how the site was configured, it was always getting its info from the system here.  If I changed it at the hosting site, it stopped working!  Too many references to the wrong IP address.  It took several iterations to get it going.

Now the probing/scanning/attacking bastards can hit somebody else’s network.  I’m done!

Wow. My Europe trip was an absolute blast. I was traveling with a co-worker who has been overseas often so I was comfortable being in a foreign country. We landed in Frankfurt and I was amazed at how easy it is to travel to another country! I won’t go into detail, but I thought there would be long lines, lots of questions, luggage search, and a Ceasaresque thumbs-up/thumbs-down from the customs officials as to whether you could enter the country. Nope. De-plane, get your bags, stamp the passport, get the rental car. Really? All my angst for that? We arrived Thursday morning at 7:30 and we had meetings starting at 10. (Thank god I slept on the plane..a little) Needed a shower, change of clothes, and the opportunity to brush my teeth. To early for check-in at the hotel…great…can I at LEAST get a TIC-TAC? Had to shower at the gym inside the hotel and get on the way. 2:30pm hit me like a freight train. It was our 3rd meeting of the day and were were north of Heidelburg where we were staying. Dinner and beer (not really in that order) and then time to get some rest. The next day was a trade show in Veisbaden and then we were off to spend the weekend in Paris. More angst as I am the driver so my co-worker can get some calls made and have some computer time. The car was a German version of the new Passat. This was an awesome automobile! It’s been years since I’ve driven a stick-shift and I was making my coworker carsick trying to get the hang of it. I was expecting to stop at all the border crossings in similar fashion to crossing the US into Canada. I have my passport ready to hand to the guards at the border. No guards. Just whizzing past the border at 140km/h. Really? That easy? Why is Canada so difficult? Do they not like us as much as France like Germany? Oh? Perhaps that explains the ease at which the Germans were able to take the country in WWII. Have they not learned anything? The only difficulty in getting to Paris was toll related. I have yet to use my credit card so i am not sure if it works in Europe. No better way to find out than on the highway to Paris with a bunch of angry Germans behind me. (They aren’t really angry, they just sound like it when they speak). My card worked! Just not everywhere. Important safety tip. Always carry some cash. My card always refused to work at the expensive places. Good thing my coworker had a card that would work. I loved Paris. Perhaps the single most beautiful place I’ve ever been. I can’t wait to go back. I was able to speak the native language, albeit like a 4 year old, to get what I needed. Let me clarify some misconceptions about France. I have been told that the French dislike Americans. I found the French to be very polite, friendly, and welcoming. Parisians on the other hand, are assholes. If I make a grammatical error while trying to speak your language; smile, nod that you understand, and correct me if possible. Do not scoff at me and walk away laughing and mumbling under your breath. I know you understood me. You brought me exactly what I ordered. . What I meant to say was “I’d like the sea bass and a small bottle of wine please. I hear the white bordeaux is good”. What I obviously said was “I am an american pig. Please mock me and spit in my food”. A simple mix up I’m sure. I want my money back on that Berlitz CD. All told, by the time we had to leave Paris I had managed 8 hours of sleep for the weekend. There’s a lot to do in that city. Belgium on Sunday night to have dinner with some customers in Mons. There is a tradition in Mons that revolves around rubbing the brass monkey in the town square for good luck. I had to do that right? Can’t insult the local traditions. After a great dinner and some crystal-weizen (Amazing Belgian beer) I rubbed the monkey (left handed, of course, it’s tradition) for good luck. I found a 5 Euro bill that evening. Okay, so there is something about that myth. I read about the monkey and the tradition the next morning. Go ahead and google it. To my dismay I read a troubling statistic that many have urinated on the monkey. Eeeew. Not sure what kind of luck that brings but if you are a fan of karma I’m sure one of the monkey-pissers is missing $5 euro! One of the high points of the trip was having to drive from Belgium to Stuttgart on Monday night. I was the driver again because I really like driving the autobahn. We made the trip in just over 5 hours. Top speed was just over 220km/h. (somewhere in the area of 138-140mph) What a blast. Most of my coworkers were continuing on to Croatia Friday night or had left earlier in the day Friday. I was left to my own devices for Friday night and was left a rental car (a Ford?!) to get me back to Frankfurt Saturday morning. I have come to the conclusion that everybody speak English with the exception of those people that you really need to communicate with. I had to refuel the car in Heidelburg early Saturday morning. I could not get the pump to work. (directions in German and I could not figure out their pictograms) I needed to explain to the attendant that I could not get the pump to work and they need to see if my credit card works before I start pumping anyway. I may need to get to an ATM before I pump. “No sprachen English”! What? Are you shitting me? The only person in 10 days that understands zero English is the one person I really need right now. I was relegated to pantomime and making up words that I thought he would understand. “Gazs pumpen nicht fukken wurken” is what I said while pointing to the car out by the pump. She came out to see what I was trying to communicate. She tried to talk to me and we both laughed because we were failing miserably. She squeezed the handle like I had done 4-5 times except this time it started dispensing diesel like it was supposed to. Gas is expensive in Europe. Really expensive. Thank goodness my card worked. Not sure how I would have communicated “Wait, I’ll be right back” in German. I decided not to ask for directions to Frankfurt. I managed to find my way through town and back to the autobahn. I turned in the rental car and made it (eventually) to the United counter for check-in. Perhaps a few signs in the airport would be nice. They have some of the best engineered cars in the world and have incredible chocolates, beer, (and lets not forget the incredible confection that is the Gummi Bear!) but for some reason they can’t put a few signs around the airport to let you know where you are. They only tell you where you need to be. I burned a solid hour at the airport trying to find my gate. Everybody in the big cities speaks some form of English. What a help that is! I made it to the gate, onto the plane, into my seat (6C, there’s nothing like flying while lying down!) and 9 hours later I was well rested, well fed, and was happy to be back home. The one thing I can say about the Europeans is that they are efficient! Just about everything was tuned to a specific purpose. The trains, the taxi, the hotels, museums, security, even the meals were efficient portions. Nothing too big, garish, or extensive. Everything was just enough. Compare and contrast to landing at Dulles and trying to get your bags and get through customs. It took forever to pull up to the gate when we landed because there wasn’t anybody to guide us in or drive the jetway. Were they not expecting us? The signs all said that our bags would be on carousel 3, the announcement stated our bags would be on carousel 4, the baggage handlers stated the bags from United always show up on carousel 2, and after 45 minutes of waiting our bags rolled out on carousel 6. Ahhhh! Validation that I was home in the good ol’ USA.