Sunday, January 24, 2010

catching up...

Well, maybe this won't be every day. I must admit, I didn't think about it much this week, and not, consciously, until earlier this evening.

Ran Tuesday and Thursday with ST, and they were good two-lappers around Green Lake. Nice weather, for late January, and good times, around 55 minutes.

N had his first guitar lesson on Thursday and he's making good progress on learning what he was given for homework. K wants a smaller guitar; she got out her full-size acoustic and thinks it is too big for her (which is probably correct).

The weekend runs were less than and more than I expected, respectively: Saturday's six miles were unexpectedly difficult, at least the first half, but rallied in the second half and finished strong. Nice chatting with Susie along the way. Sunday's eleven miles with Joan were great; we ran at a pace slower than my usual but faster than her usual and talked the entire way, around GL, down to the Burke-Gilman trail, up around UW and back through Ravenna. Finished before the rain kicked in, too.

Eric starts on the basement on Tuesday. We got more stuff cleared out of there late this afternoon, and it's in pretty good shape. Lots of dried-up latex paint to go to the curb on Tuesday with the trash.

Monday, January 18, 2010

monday, monday...

Yesterday's run - six miles, or two laps around Green Lake - was a little bit painful due to Saturday's stairway mishaps. I did it, though.

Today - a holiday - was a much better day. Felt much better than I did yesterday, and got a few house-related things done and spent time with the kids. Nate and Finn and I played a round of mini-golf in the afternoon.

Back to work tomorrow.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

ouch...

Started, as officially as one can, marathon training for an early May event - the Eugene Marathon with my friend Krista. She's raising the bar by setting her sights on a 4-hour finish. We'll see.

Five miles today, and six tomorrow. Today's route was hilly, tomorrow's will be flat.

Frustratingly, I slipped down not one but two flights of stairs today. Taking the compostables out this afternoon, I slipped on the steps on the north side of the house. It's been raining and so the stairs are slippery. Landed on my elbow. It'll be sore, but fine. Then early this evening, heading downstairs at Joy's house to see Sophie, having a sleepover with Miss V, I slipped on their basement stairs, landing on my backside.

We'll see how I feel in the morning. A bit of wine, a bit of Ibuprofen. I don't feel so bad right now.

Friday, January 15, 2010

what if we built a giant wooden badger?

Tonight we started the boy on his formal humor education, with a viewing of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." He didn't like the ending, but enjoyed the rest of it. Probably was distracted at the two of us reciting lines along with the movie. He'll be there soon enough.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

hmmm...

It's Thursday. Thought it was going to be an everyday thing. Let's not be too hard on ourselves, shall we?

Spent two days this week in the Sieg Hall machine room, a scene straight out of "Brazil" with its make-do cooling setup, since the main cooling unit's gone belly-up. Noisy, crowded, disorganized, but did good work over there, deploying ten new machines and readying almost twenty machines to be repurposed.

Didn't run on Tuesday -- too much rain -- but ran today and it felt pretty good. Started thinking about a training plan to get me to an early-May full marathon, either Vancouver or Eugene. Krista R. suggested Eugene, and it's supposed to be a flat and fast course. It'd be nice to run with her again; we ran, albeit briefly, at the Rock 'n Roll half marathon here last year.

Started making plans for Strawberry over Memorial Day weekend, too. Richard Thompson, Loudon Wainwright III, Crooked Still... those three, alone, are worth the trip.

Saturday, January 09, 2010

a 'normal' saturday... more or less

My first run of the new year with my running group, and it was really nice.

I've been experiencing some issues - a little pain, more soreness than anything - with my left knee, and after some online research, decided to pick up a knee strap.

It appears to be the right solution; my run today was pain-free.

I ran a little slower than usual, but I wasn't really concerned with my pace today; I wanted it to be a pain-free run. Running with JB, I found that she and I have many common musical interests.

Run: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/22024298.

Friday, January 08, 2010

a boy, a guitar

No, he's not playing yet, but 11YO Nathan would like to learn.

Was watching the recent episode of "Spectacle with Elvis Costello" which featured Richard Thompson, Alain Touissant, Nick Lowe and Levon Helm. Richard played Shoot Out The Lights and at the end of the first bit of Richard's guitar solo, Nathan said "THAT'S WHAT I WANT TO DO!"

Quite the happy parenting moment, I must say.

Up for a run in the morning, with new tights and a knee strap - we'll see if this helps.

Thursday, January 07, 2010

ah, thursday

Thursday has been the "stretching out" day for a while now around here.

A run in the morning - today it was clear and chilly - 34 degrees, by the 'Super Jock and Jill' sign - with ST, and the lake was dead still. DD has her violin lesson, we figure out where we're ordering in or visiting for supper... a relaxed evening.

Finally have 'barista' backed up and can rebuild it in the morning, while continuing with full backups and a demonstration of our video capture rigs at 10.

Oh, and I found a live recording of one of my favorite groups - Sphere - this evening. The Internets are a wonderful thing.

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

today's news...

Well, not really any news to report.

Work is settling in, I think, to the usual start-of-the-quarter, pre-SIGGRAPH submission level of tasks. Cleaned up the video capture machines this morning, and discovered that two of the four long DVI cables are broken (bent pins), and one of the two DVI gender changers is missing. Ordered new, they'll be here on Friday. Rebuilt a machine for one of the faculty, and started working the rebuild of another machine for one of the research labs.

A quiet evening at home; K is picking up a friend and co-worker from the airport. Up early in the morning to run again - no rain in the forecast, yippee!

missed one already!

It wasn't until about 2pm today that I realized that I hadn't posted anything last night.

I was tired. It had been a long, long day. Started with a 5:30am run with ST - our first in a couple of weeks, what with the holidays and all - and it felt great to be out there, even though it was misting the entire time.

Monday, January 04, 2010

first day back...

The first day of the new quarter was, well, anti-climactic. Most of the faculty members I support aren't teaching this quarter, and so there wasn't the typical "could you do this for me?" e-mails I usually get on day one. Not that there's not a lot on my place - au contraire! - but it's a little different this quarter.

This blog post caught my attention; it's interesting to read how much others think about the thoughts behind Pixar's movies. Some interesting commentary here, definitely. If you're curious, my very favorite is "The Incredibles," but there's not a bad one in the bunch. "Cars" gets the most criticism, but I enjoyed it. I've been fascinated with cars since I was a little kid, and this film spoke to me.


ST and I did not run this morning; it was raining steadily at 5am. We'll try again tomorrow.

Sunday, January 03, 2010

back to "normal"... whatever that is

Asleep at midnight, up at 5am thinking about work.

Convinced myself that the combination of Windows 7 and Adobe CS3 (I know, totally unsupported, but it's what I have to install) was why my installs yesterday weren't going well. Started working on an image that did not include CS3, thinking maybe it was interfering with the Sysprep process, but a colleague found a workaround that saved my bacon - turns out CS3 installs its own DNS responder service, which utterly confused Windows 7's networking. Uninstalling that made for smooth sailing today, with twenty-two machines upgraded. A long, long day - left the lab at 5pm - but a feeling of accomplishment.

Kids are back in school tomorrow, and I'm running in the morning - it'll be good to get back to some kind of a routine.

Saturday, January 02, 2010

time to pay the piper...

Made a good amount of progress today in preparing the instructional labs, but have LOTS more to do tomorrow and, I fear, on Monday. (Part of my responsibilities at work are setting up and maintaining two of the instructional labs in the department.)

Friday, January 01, 2010

2010: A Post a day?

The thought occurred to me that committing to a post every day for 2010 might be an interesting challenge. Let's give it a try, shall we?

The last couple of weeks have been filled with holidays and family, with my mom coming to visit for a week, and my brother, his son, and his son's girlfriend for five days. A whirlwind of meals, sightseeing and catching up in general ensued, but they're all finally back home today.

The downside to having all of that family visiting over the holidays was that the work I needed to be doing gets compressed into today, tomorrow, and Sunday, in preparation for Winter Quarter starting on Monday 04 January. Lots to do, but got a good start on it today.

Haven't been running much over the holidays; I'm giving my left knee a rest, and, to be honest, there's not been a lot of time to carve out time to run. I'll get back to it this coming week, though: I've committed to running two marathons in 2010, and so need to work on some mileage.