Europe and Biking

Couple things to mention here:

Drumcorps
Only 3 more Bushwacker shows for me. I kinda can't wait till that ends. Although, I am surprisingly learning A TON about how different people work. It's actually sort of exciting. Not exciting enough to be valuable, but definitely something to reflect on.

Biking
So I rode my bike home
from work(approximate map) 2 times this week. That was sweet. I've been sitting here watching my bike at work but the weather was too hot to take a trail I've never done. I'll post the gps data when I get around to it. I'm stoked about that. It was a great ride. The way I see it, I'm essentially combining the commute and my ride time. So in the time it takes me to do a 1.5 hour ride AND get home, I've done a 2.5 hour ride. Plus there is no downtime like when I get home for changing into bike stuff and all that. Its a pretty good system. I'd like to do morning and evening but that is a whole new set of challenges. Plus, 70 miles in 2 straight days on a bike makes me feel like I just got out of prison. I'm not up to 60 a day like some people . So that was fun.

Europe
I bought a ticket to Iceland yesterday. That's fun. So Kathy and I will be flying to Iceland on Friday Oct 13 (scary date). We'll hang there for awhile. I guess hiking is big there. So that, and whatever else you can do there. I'm stoked to get some gps run data from other countries.

So anyway, then we head to London a few days later to hang with Kathy's rents on her Mom's Bday. That'll rule. Check out Big Ben and traffic circles and what not. Then its off to France and Spain for some (very) short backpacking/hostel living. So I'm stoked. Hopefully I can run at least 1 time in each country we visit. Then I'll have maps from cool places. That'll be fun.

Ipod
I've been using my Ipod like woah. Apparently I can have it at work as long as I don't have the cables. So that rules. I'm beginning to like that thing. I got some accessories for it. I got a Car Charger and an FM Transmitter. I got the charger but not the transmitter. I guess I"m stoked about never having to have cd's in my car ever again. But I guess that is the whole point of these things. SON!

Speed reading
One other thing. I went to a Bday happy hour and was talking to some dude from TSS. He was talking about books he read. He listed off a few recent ones. I was like "So what you have like a summer reading quota". He was like, "Nah, I did that all this weekend". I was like "". So he got this book and he said it worked. So I got it too. He said there are drills and things you need to do. He also said that retention was through the roof.

So I'm stoked. I'll do my drills on the metro in the morning. I'll be a superhero before long.


I think that is all.

Long ride home in the hot weather

So tomorrow in the 100 degree weather, I'm gonna try a long ride home from work. I hope it doesn't suck to have stuff on my back in that weather. My bag might be kinda full with work clothes...Or I could just leave some at work. I dunno. I'll figure it out.

So here it is. I hope I don't die.

Short update

Not too much to report really.

1) I fell in love with Filet Mignon.
2) Bushwackers is still the same old thing. We are getting DESTROYED in drums.
3) I fixed my map thing is working for IE. However, now it doesn't work on the Linux system I have at home. Ugh. Oh well There were a few runs in there where the gps was on a bad setting. Wes, I don't know if you have tried the "less smooting" option. But that sucks unless you are going in a ton of straight lines. I have removed some of the extra laps on the actual device and I haven't updated them yet on the server. Soon.
4) With the runs, i'm up to 5.5+ miles per run. The last runs I've had were awesome. Take a look at July 25th and July 27th. Its a cool place to run. Right by the airport and almost to the monuments. My goal is to be able to run around all of the monuments. Or at least the ones on the mall. Stoked!

I think that is about it.

ical and todo lists

My old working pal Karthik told me about this site Remember The Milk back when I was working in Herndon and I've been hooked on it ever since. It is a TODO list built on an AJAX style front end. I totally dig it. I think I dig the whole AJAX feel more than the actual functionality.

That's not entirely true. I find that I am pretty much bound to TODO lists. As soon as I couldn't bring my PDA into work I became less productive. When I was in school I ALWAYS had a todo list on my PDA and I was happy because I was always getting things done. Anyway, RTM is a great little TODO app. You can use the ical feed in a whole bunch of different mac products and google products for an overload of reminders. I'm pretty pleased with that. I'd recommend that everyone try using it for a few weeks to see if you can boost productivity at all.

As for ical, I'm starting to get a little more into that on my mac. I've been using Google Calendar for quite some time and the integration to ical using ical was pretty seamless. So that is fun. I feel like I am getting more productive as a result of that.

I'm trying to get more into my mac and use some of the features that are unique to that type of machine. The automator thing seems like a good thing, but then again, it also just feels like a script front end. Oh well.

The athletic tracker is fun to play with. I'm working on putting a better run selection thing on it. I was throwing around the idea of using google calendar as a storage facility for runs but that will be a pain I think.

Oh...one of my lists on RTM is "things to do when drumcorps is over". So yeah, that should explain how that is going. :(

I start taking the metro to work everyday starting tomorrow. That will give me tons of time to watch movies and or read books and stuff. That'll be fun. I'm excited about that.