The half marathon is 6 days away. I've set the bar fairly low in an attempt to totally impress myself. In other words, my whole life philosophy. However, this weekend I felt excellent out on my long run Sunday despite freezing my nibs off and running for my life from a Ted Bundy look-alike (I think it was all that Thanksgiving Reading I did. Nothing like boning up on "The Stranger Beside Me" tucked all warm and tidy in your isolated cabin in the woods). I feel a touch of a sore throat coming on but my remedy for that will be total denial. Lots of juice, a vitamin and denial, people. That's the ticket. After all this, there is no way in H -E - double hockey sticks that I'm not going to claw my way across the finish line. There's going to be running Elvis' for crapsake. Elvi. Running. Can you even imagine the amount of chaffing that scenario entails? All the Bodyglide in the world is not enough. Lord love'em. And I will be there. If a wig-sporting, jumpsuit and jogging shoe wearing Elvis impersonator can do it, so can I.

Today while at the gym I saw him again. He's about 50 something years old and in pretty good shape really but...

• He always wears these hilarious black Tommy Bahama Fisherman Sandals instead of tennis shoes.

• All his shirts are really tight... Not so hot especially when your waist is not exactly like that of the Bowflex spokesperson.
• Although not a requirement for self-obsessed old gym prima dona, this guy is really, really hairy and obviously pretty proud of it based on the tight, v-neck shirts he wears.
• He spends as much time fixing his hair in the mirror as he does working out.
• His hair style of choice is classic John Travolta meaning it's HUGE, is incapable of existing without a blow dryer and requires lots of maintenance. Thank goodness he's up to that task.
• His hair, he keeps making sure every one is perfectly in place...
• Since it's all about him, of course he never re-racks his weights.
• Since it's all about how much you can lift, his form is atrocious.
• Since it's about chest and arms, well, he never does much of anything else. In fact, come to think of it, chest and arms are ALL I ever see him do.
• What's with the hair...? Enough already. You're at the gym and it's 5:30 in the morning! Who cares?
• He tans massively. Obsessively. Ridiculously. Two words: leather man. Two more: it's winter. Two more: nut bag.

About the only missing characteristic is an overpowering cologne but I have not been close enough to smell anything. That's a good thing I'm thinking.

Forget that plastic, wildly inaccurate, hard to calibrate pedometer you are carrying around - just remember where you went and then look up the distance on Gmaps Pedometer when you're done!

All it takes is a couple of clicks (or a few hundred if you went a really long distance) and bingo - you have your distance. Actually, you only have to plot half of your walk/run if you go for and out-and-back route.

You can even export the route as an external link which you can send to your friends to share.

The only bummer is you can only zoom in as far as Google Maps will let you so your route might not be exactly the same as the distance you traveled. But pretty damn close I'll wager.

Nice.

I am always needing to paste in code on my training diary and now it's super easy with the Text Template plug-in. You can name your templates and save them locally and anytime you want to use them there they are.

Nice.

I just found out that going to San Juan Island for Thanksgiving is a family tradition that started in 1970! Oh man, I had no idea... And you know, I can't readily think of a year that we have missed.

Some history - Bill used to have a position in the Department of Oceanography at the University of WA and this department owns the Friday Harbor Laboratories so it was an easy in. My parents liked it so much we kept coming and now it's 2007.

Here are the pictures.

This batch was taken on 22 November and are mostly of the four of us on the beach out by the American camp. The last couple of years Lucca has taken to building these enormous teeter totters. Two years ago we discovered that you can balance a board across one end of the teeter and markedly increase the danger factor. Of course that is now also a tradition.

On 23 November we went to the Westcott Bay Sculpture Park up by Roche Harbor. This place is pretty spectacular! Not only is it huge and does it contain about 100 sculptures but some of them are really interesting. One theme seems to moving parts. When the wind blows these movable pieces do some amazing things. And no material is off limits it seems, we saw pieces made of the traditional bronze, marble and granite and also pieces made of string and flags and even a bridge. I recommend you check it out.

Ever do something really stupid, realize it's really stupid and keep right on doing it? Right, me neither.

So here we are enjoying pretty much the only family tradition we have - going to Friday Harbor for Thanksgiving. This place is a research lab and along with cabins and apartments and a cafeteria and a dock and research vassals and and even row boats you can use and a day care facility now this place has Internet access. It used to be you had to go to the library and fire up one of the computers there but now they have wireless networks as well, two even. This morning I got online no problem; now I can't.

So what do I do? I keep trying. And waiting. And trying again.

The access points I was seeing this morning are not showing up at the moment and seeing as it's a holiday, they might just be turned off. But I keep sitting here, pretending to read magazine and stuff but really I keep clicking the refresh button on my wireless radio.

It's a sad state of affairs.

Oh I brought books. And I tried to build a fire (but I failed and Lucca had to take over), but what I really want is to [insert some lame reason here] online.

Okay, I love my bike(s). I have dreamed about them, resolved major moral dilemmas while riding them and asked girls out while on one. But no way would I ever consider going this far.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/glasgow_and_west/7095134.stm

Sadly, I used to be that guy... You know, the one that wears shorts way too long in the fall (or even the winter!) and who just can't roll with the seasons. It might be in the low 40s or even the upper 30s but they have on shorts.

Why? I wish I knew. Anyone who has traveled to Europe or most any other country will quickly discover that one sure-fire way to tell the tourists from the locals is to check what they are sporting below the waist. Shorts = tourist. All the time. I was in Rome, Italy once and it was quite warm, maybe 80 degrees and NO one had on shorts. Not even the college students, it's just not what you do.

America seems unique in these aspects; we all worried about being thin, tan and sporty. In other parts of the world it seems that people are accepted more for who they are. Not that there aren't divas in every country mind you, but if you had to paint with broad strokes America is freakville and any other place is normal. Don't we have the largest supplement and diet industry and don't we have the most obese people per capita? Freakville USA.

Anyway, there I am, walking to work a few days ago on the University of Washington campus. It's butt-ass [I love how you can put two words that mean the same thing together and it more clearly conveys the meaning] cold out, windy and here comes that guy. He's got on not only shorts but freakin' flip-flops. Oh sure, he has several layers covering his torso but what's with the shorts? You just know this guy never changes looks; ever. EVER. One outfit for all times, it's not only sensible but economical!

Not to be outdone buy this fashion-rutted guy, here comes an equally ignorant girl in the same outfit! You just know they are 1) freshman and 2) yet to have a real job.

Did I mention I used to be that guy...? Oh yes, I'm not getting off that easy. I recall one time when I was on a date in the middle of winter maybe 17 years ago, we went to get a beer and there was snow on the ground outside. What did I wear? Shorts. Jesus Christ.

I do not recall how I justified this outfit at the time, most likely I did not even think about it. And that's the problem - these people don't think. How many fashion faux pas could we avoid if we just stopped to think, even for a second. Is it so wrong to put on long pants if it's cold outside? Or if you are going to an event where it's not socially acceptable to wear jams?

You are either part of the problem or part of the solution.

I've got this closet. And it's filled with computers. I keep trying new shit and invariably stuff breaks; like right now.

I just setup a Windows Server 2003 machine and ran the Routing and Remote Access wizard which seemed simple enough but no - for some reason my DHCP server is now no longer handing out IP addresses.

So instead of sitting at the dining table chatting with Shelley and using a laptop on our wireless network I'm cloistered upstairs trying to figure this out. Poop.

Addendum:

Routing and Remote Access only breaks DHCP if you are a moron. Before I had the chance to configure my new server with a static IP address I updated it, patched it, etc. which required lots of reboots.

Turns out I only had 10 IP addresses in my DHCP scope and the duration of each lease was eight hours. So... that meant that my server hogged them all and there were no addresses left for the laptops.

After deleting all the old leases from the DHCP server the laptops we able to get on the network pronto.

Let me preface this rant by saying that I love CycleU. They perform a really great service for local riders and racers and provide invaluable coaching, training and skills classes. But... sometimes their customer service falls far short of what I think is reasonable to expect.

For about three years now they have had this indoor TT series. It's fantastic! The event is a 10 km CompuTrainer race and they have seven of these things lined up so when it's fully booked it's quite competitive to say the least. In the past when you finished a TT they would simply email you a spreadsheet of the results from the evening. This was super as you could compile your results as the year went on and also compare yourself to your friends, etc.

Then someone make a stink about privacy... I guess they thought someone else would get a competitive advantage or something if they saw all the results. When I heard this I was laughing. I mean I suppose it's feasible that this is true but c'mon; 99 percent of us here are just po-dunk local racers and I'll wager that there is not a thing anyone could do with this precious TT results knowledge that would affect the outcome of any local race. I guess I made a bit of a scene last year trying to argue FOR sending everyone's results to everyone but was shut down. Hard. "We take the privacy of our clients seriously" I was told.

So anyway, CycleU kowtowed to this user and started only sending me results for ME and not for anyone else. Now I had to email all my friends and share results the good old-fashioned way - by sending attachments. :(

After my first indoor TT this fall I was surprised that I got no results at all... When I inquired about this I was pointed to the CycleU blog and that results would be posted there. And guess what? everyone is listed!

Hello CycleU! Remember last year when you were all concerned about posting results from other people? Well now you are not only posting everyone's times but you are doing so in a format that is not very valuable to results geeks like me who want to track this kind of data and don't want to suffer through the manual data entry.

So my beef is:

1. I got no results.
2. I had to follow up to get my results.
3. The results are exactly what I wanted last year and could not get. Why the huge stink last year...?!
4. The format bites. You make me download an image? Argh...

Lastly - is there a link on the CycleU home page to their blog...? Only as of about today.

Why do people make stuff complicated? It's just an indoor TT and people want results. Sheesh. Why is it that so many bicycle industries are run by enthusiasts and not business people? I mean all the things CycleU does is great and these indoor TTs are great, where is that little bit of extra?