Oh my. I think this blog needs some Female Influence. No offense, Martin. Your 'Windows Server 2003 with IIS 6' and 'Response Write FormatDateTime( Now(), 2)' is very impressive but you need to sit down. Good grief, what does that even mean? Ouch.

Anyway, for all you NORMAL EARTHLINGS: you're welcome.

While I wait for my meds to kick in on the inflamed knee, I've decided to jump back into the Bikram Yoga. I don't know why. I hate myself? Maybe that's it. I think because it's the easiest access and most familiar of the yoga studios in my area. I've been debating going to Santosha Yoga in Madison Park but I missed their beginner session, at least until next go 'round in March. So, let's sweat our brains out, ya'll!

I haven't been doing much (read:any) exercising in the last month and a half so suffice to say, I'm Rusty. But Sweet Pickles, I didn't think I needed a tetanus shot.

I had to get psyched to go to class. I was pumped around noon on Monday, hydrating, looking forward to the strenuous concentration that class would surely bring but quickly lost my focus around 6 when I finally got home. And was hungry. You aren't supposed to eat before class. Empty stomach is best. 105 degree heat & twisting yourself into a Fisherman's Knot tends to curdle anything in the guts. Go figure.

I entered. I picked my place in the front cause it actually helps me to see myself in the mirror. I smelled the smell. The carpet-sweat, warm yeast smell. The one I'd been complaining to Martin about ever since I admitted I was thinking about going to class again. "It's the SMELL! I can't abide!" It's not BO, it's slow-simmered lycra bodysuit with crystal rock deodorant stick. It's not rank. Like, "Whoa, who's got the funky sweatsocks?" It's a damply-aged internal brew. It permeates your yoga mat and towel. It's insidious. A sweaty, sweaty, smell. Dog Carpet. It's dog carpet. That's the best I can do.

Slowly, it all became very familiar. Taking my cleansing breaths at the beginning of class, I immediately wanted to leave. Just like every other time - huzzah! I hung in for about 4 asanas and then felt the room spinning and had to lay down on my towel. I took great pride in being the first to hit the deck because not 5 seconds later, 6 others laid down, too. Holding out, not wanting to be the first loser. I have no problem being a loser. I learned that Loser Lesson the hard way in 2000 in Tai Chi class at Naropa University. Remind me to tell that story later. Fun times. No, I'd rather swallow my pride than faint, thankyouverymuch. I realized the place I had laid my towel was near an air vent that, when I laid down with my head near it, was blowing sweet cool air straight from baby Jesus. A tiny rogue force in the face of the satanic heat poaching my body . Would it be wrong to press my face against this vent? To french kiss this vent? Oh, whatever. I got up, did a few more poses and then had to lay back down again. A little closer to the vent this time. I repeated this ridiculousness for the rest of class. At least until we got to the non-standing portion. Where at least, I figured, I was already on the floor. Not much harm in that.

I just could not hang today. True, I hadn't been to class for over 6 months. I bought the 5-class punch card so I have at least 4 more to go. I have to find my motivation even if it's financial.

That's what my friend's doctor just told him. Tony C (that's my friend) is going to need to have his hip replaced.

Now other than reading about Floyd Landis and his hip, I know next to nothing about this procedure and it sounds at best pretty damn scary and confusing. Tony was told he's going to have the  procedure in May and then it's six months of recovery.

ASIDE - imagine walking into your doctor's office and having him drop this bomb. That's exactly how it went down. "Your hip has to go, we can schedule the procedure in May." No segue, no sugar coating, just the short,sharp heart punch.

Now I must be one of the luckiest people around because other than my back - which I'm only now starting to realize is a lifelong deal - I have never had to take six months to recover from anything. Most of my friends have all broken bones, had a concussion, you name it. But me? I complain when I can't exercise for more than one week. Just ask Shelley what it's like when we go on a vacation. And when I say 'vacation' I of course mean travel to exotic locations and do stuff like hike for a week on one of the hardest trails in the world or ride a week long mountain bike stage race. Even when we went to Kauai last spring I was still whining about sitting around as much as we did. Man, I must suck to vacation with.

But enough about me, this is about Tony; and his hip. Here is what the doctor told him he was going to get:

http://www.biomet.com/hcp/prodpage.cfm?s=090F&p=0D03

With features like, "maximizes ROM", and, "One piece cobalt chrome design", how can you go wrong? Wait, what about this one here, "Simple Instrumentation". Huh...?! In this day and age you need to not only know how to shop for a car and a house but for your frigging hip! Nothing like sweating that decision. Jesus.

To top it off his doctor told him his other hip is about 10-15 years away from needing replacement as well. Nice. Ever had your wisdom teeth out? Any other really fun procedure? Now imagine having to look forward to that procedure again. Kinda puts everything else into perspective.

I've done this a few times now but I wanted to write it all down so that I would have a reference guide. There are instructions available on the dasBlog web site but I think mine are a little more complete.

To level the playing field I need to make some assumptions. I'm assuming that you are performing a clean/fresh install of dasBlog 2.0 on a Windows Server 2003 computer running IIS 6 and that IIS is setup in the default mode and not in Isolation Mode. It's also assumed that you have the .NET framework 2.0 installed on the server and that you have enabled ASP.NET 2.0 for the site you want to use dasBlog in. Also, I prefer NOT to run the 'automatic' VBS script and to do the install manually. Lastly, it's assumed that you already have a web site configured with a unique host header and that you want this blog to be located at mysite.com/blog. Here goes.

• Download the latest version of dasBlog from here:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=127624

• Unzip the files to any directory and then copy the dasblogce folder to the root of your site.
• Give the NETWORK SERVICE account the Modify permission on the content, siteconfig, and logs subdirectories of dasblogce.
• Go to the SiteConfig directory in dasblogce and open the site.config file. In that file you will need to change some settings. The most important change is to set the <Root> value to the proper URL for your weblog so per my example here you would change it to http://www.mysite.com/blog/. If you are experienced enough to add another host header to your site and you control DNS for your domain then you can make this anything you like. You can also change the <NotificationEMailAddress> to your email address, the <Title> to whatever you want the title of your blog to be, the <Contact> to your email address and the <Copyright> to your name.
• Open Internet Information Services Manager and create a virtual directory called "blog" for your site. Point it to the dasblogce directory. Make sure the permission are Read and Run scripts. Now go to the properties of this virtual directory and add the default document "default.aspx" and move it to the top of the list.
• Open siteSecurity.config in the same directory and set up your own account with a proper password. You will want to edit the first <User> that has the role of admin. Change <Name> to whatever you want your login name to be, change <Password> to whatever you want your password to be, change <DisplayName> to your name and change <EmailAddress> to your email address.
• Now fire up a browser and go to your blog. The first visit will take a couple of seconds but it will load after it performs the initial configuration.

The rest is all customization. The first thing you will want to do is pick a theme. If you find one you love, great! Or you can find one that is close and customize it. More on that later.

I see said the blind man to his deaf friend... whatever. I always thought that joke was kind of like getting hit over the head with a blunt object anyway. The point (which is totally unrelated to this intro) is that we are frequently blind to the truth when it's staring us right in the face.

Andy (one of my co-workers) recently underwent some disaster training here at the UW. This means he is now qualified to wear a dayglo hat on his head, a whistle around his neck and carry a clipboard so he can check off the names of people that died in the earthquake and were not able to run out of the building. During this training he was given an emergency preparedness kit which contained among other things some matches, a flashlight, a first aid kit and this energy bar. Yesterday he noticed it was past the expiration date and was going to toss it but I intercepted it. That's right, no food bar is too stale for Martin "let me shove that in my mouth and to hell with the consequences" Criminale.

Now I know it's silly but I usually associate energy bars with a healthy lifestyle meaning that they are relatively good for you. Most have a good ratio of carbohydrate to protein and fat and some are vitamin fortified as well. This bar blows that theory out of the water.

First of all,check out the name, "New Millennium Energy Bar". It sounds either like something that is really new or something that is supposed to last through the millennium. I'm thinking it's the later. And they vacuum pack this thing like it's going to need to survive some sort of crash test or break the underwater submersion record for a food bar:

Can you see how tight the wrapper is around the bar? And that's no ultra thin Mylar like PowerBar uses, no sir. I could use those edges to scrape the frost off of my windshield. Enough foreplay, let's open this thing up.

Wow, that doesn't look anything like any energy bar I have ever seen... Why, it looks like a cookie; shortbread actually. So I took a bite and while I was chewing I turned it over and read the ingredients.

Damn, it is shortbread.

Nutrition Facts: Calories 409, Protein 8g, Carbohydrates 53g, Fat 19g.

Ingredients: Wheat flour, Vegetable shortening, Cane and Corn Sugars, Dried Coconut, Corn Starch, Corn Syrup, Natural Flavors.

The firs thing that I noticed was that it contained 409 calories...?! What other energy bar has that many? Then I saw that it contained fully 2/3 of your daily recommended intake of fat. Ah... now things are a little more clear. This is an 'energy' bar in the sense that is supposed to keep you alive, not in the sense that it is supposed to be good quality fuel when you are sweatin' to the oldies on your indoor trainer or trying to set a new PR at the local century. Nope, this is all about how to pack the most fuel into the smallest package and keep it dirt cheap at the same time. The solution? Flour and shortening. Nice.

Lastly I had to check out the company that makes these things, S.O.S. Food Lab, Inc. Yikes! Prepare yourself for full-on FrontPage web site hell. Does that rainbow colored, arching text remind you of Microsoft Publisher...? Oh yes, it does.

So what did this thing taste like? Just like cherry flavored shortbread. And did I eat it all? Of course. I hate myself.

So I like to write my dates in the format of day-month-year, is that so bad? It must be the Euro half of my heritage showing its face. Or just that I want to be difficult/different - who knows.

Anyway, with the help of a co-worker (Naasir) I figured out how to do this in ASP. Here is the code:

And here is the Microsoft KB article that showed me how:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306044

Now I can do stuff like always have a current copyright date in the footer which appears at the bottom of all my web pages.

I just got an email from a good friend of mine who is trying to lose a little weight and get a little fitter and he was asking me this question:

"I understand that it is important (was going to say imperative) that protein be ingested within 20-25 minutes of working out. Have you heard such a thing?"

This kind of question proves just how effective all the marketing hype that we drown in on a daily basis really is. Before I continue I probably need to preface this by admitting that I'm not studying to be a nutritionist on the side or anything but here is what I know.

When you exercise your body uses glycogen. Glycogen is the fuel inside of your muscles and is made when your body assimilates and process anything you eat. Your muscles can't use straight up carbohydrates or protein or fat, your body has to break this stuff down and turn it into glycogen first.

There is a 'window of opportunity' after you exercise that your body will absorb new muscle glycogen much for quickly than if you wait. That window is about 30-45 minutes depending on who you talk to. Bottom line is you are supposed to consume something that is easily absorbed pretty quickly after you work out if you want to work out again in the near future and not feel toasted.

ASIDE – if you are not going to work out hard again within the next day or two, it probably does not matter much what you do. Your body will replace all the lost muscle glycogen in time but it might take a couple of days for you to be fully stocked up again.

So, what will your body absorb the fastest? People used to think it was pure carbohydrate but now it's common knowledge that a 4:1 ratio of carbohydrate to protein is absorbed the quickest. That's why drinks like Endurox R4 and such all use this ratio. If you only consume carbohydrate it will help a lot but not as much as if you eat/drink something with this ratio. Pure protein and pure fat are both broken down and absorbed MUCH more slowly than pure carbohydrate.

All this protein, protein, protein hype is one of my pet peeves... You see this in magazines, in ads for products, at stores like GNC and in the gyms. And it's mostly all wrong.

ANOTHER ASIDE - stores like GNC (General Nutrition Centers, Inc.) should probably really be called something like BOGUS (Buy Our Generally-overpriced Unproven Shit).

YET ANOTHER ASIDE – if you go chugging a lot of recovery drinks after working out that's great for your muscles but be careful to not add them to your total caloric intake. If your drink is 500 calories, you will need to trim 500 calories from your dinner or somewhere else. Otherwise you will not lose weight. That's probably pretty obvious but I see so many people drinking their meal replacement shakes and then eating lunch! Hello?!

So take Dr. Martin's advice and remember, carbohydrate is much more important for muscle recovery than protein. We all need protein but most people that get caught up in this craze and start taking loads of supplements end up getting too much and then it's just extra calories you don’t need. And ANY extra calories you don't need – no matter if they come from protein or carbohydrate or fat – will get turned into fat.

Class dismissed.

Really, really damn fast. Check this:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/road.php?id=road/2008/jan08/qatar08/qatar082

On a flat, windy day of the second stage of the 7th Tour of Qatar the peloton (not just the leaders!) averaged 55 kph. For those of you that were not around for the half-assed attempt the US made to go Metric many years ago, that's over 34 mph. THIRTY FOUR.

Oh sure you say, "Anyone can do that when you are getting sucked along in the pack." Wrong.

• You have never had the likes of the Quick Step team riding you into the gutter because you can't get into their echelon.
• This stage was 137.5 km (85 miles) long. When was the last time you even averaged 25 mph for more than a few miles.
• This was the average. That means at times the speed was much higher.

Unbelievable.

I wonder how many bags of potato chips I could buy if I sold all my bikes. 'Cuz that's what I feel like I'd be pretty good at right now - getting fat.

Every year I think it would be a neat thing to post an all-inclusive calendar of cycling events that interest me. My first iteration was lame to say the least... But it slowly got better and in 2006 I settled on a format that I thought would stand the test of time. I 'borrowed' this look from OBRA and ended up liking it so much that I used it for the WSBA calendar as well.

But, since I'm no professional coder my calendar is 100 percent manual when it comes to updates and revisions. Not so good. And it has to be completely overhauled every year when January 1 no longer falls on a Saturday or whatever day of the week it was last year.

Enter Google Calendar.

Now my ride calendar looks like this. I love it. You can opt to view just road races, track races, social rides, holidays, whatever you want. I can now also create recurring events, easily link to Google Maps and people can add this stuff to their Google Calendar if they have one.

Outsourcing like it's going out of style - I love it.

Green Lake has historically been a haven to milfoil, ducks, migrating Canada geese, really bad pick-up basketball, English Premier League wannabes and these days, now that it's way too crowded to ride around the lake, it's also apparently the freaking dog walking capitol of the universe.

The other day Shelley and I went out for a leisurely stroll to enjoy a rare moment of Seattle winter sun and after seeing dog after dog pass us by we wondered how many we would encounter on our one lap around the lake. I blurted out, "40 dogs!" but Shelley, after giving this some careful thought said, "I think 25." So, coffee in hand we took off to walk and count.

Oh. My. God.

I had no idea... and how long has Martin lived in Seattle? The best thing is that part and parcel with being the dog walking capitol of the universe Green Lake has now also become the dog shit capitol of the universe. It seemed like every few (okay, maybe hundred) feet or so I was swerving left or right to avoid stepping in another pile. To be technically accurate, they weren't piles, they were just smears as someone else had already beaten me to it. At one point I even saw an elderly couple that were both stopping to scrape the soles of their shoes off on some piece of wood. Blech... Nothing quite as fun as finishing a brisk walk, getting back into your car (with carpeted interior of course) and realizing - too late - that you stepped in dog shit.

Which brings up the things I love about some dog owners. And in case you were wondering, I have previously had two dogs; now I know I can't offer them the quality of life they deserve.

• Ever watch the Dog Whisperer? You know, the show where Cesar Millan tells all these folks that they should stop treating their dogs like people? There was no shortage of owners being led around the lake by their dogs all the while talking to them in English telling them stuff like, "No!" Nice.
• If you can't control your dog with your voice, what are you doing taking it to such a crowded place? Likewise, if your dog does not like crowds, can you please put this trait ahead of your need to chat on the phone while ignoring the fact that there is a 60 lb animal bouncing all over the path in an effort to avoid (or attack - take your pick) everything that passes you by?
• If you have to carry your dog because it's too small to keep up, maybe you should leave it at home. It will get enough exercise just running to the door when you arrive every evening. It's resting heartrate is probably already 200 bpm; don't push it.
• When it comes to dog clothing, who decides if the dog really needs this or not? Did your dog tell you that it was cold? And who managed to upsell you from the cotton or wool horse blanket style garment to the Gortex shell with more pit zips, vents and technology than what was used to summit Everest 20  years ago?

ASIDE - check this out, for the obscenely devoted dog owner and homemaker with way too much time on their hands you can even get patterns and sew your own creations.

Animals, I love them, really. But they aren't people, people. And clean up after them, please.

How long until the next neat-o thing appears on the Internet? Oh wait, it's already here...

I first heard about MapMyRide from my friend Brian and I gotta say, this is cool. Not only can you 'map' your road or off-road ride, you can apparently also save you ride and let others search them, use them, etc., etc. A two wheel ride share if you will.

As cool as this is I'm really bummed that this service never uses a secure, encrypted (HTTPS) connection when asking you to create your profile, sign in, anything. In this day and age that seems unconscionable. Oh well, it won't stop tons of folks from entering all kinds of personal data I'm sure. :(

After checking it out and seeing that they use Google maps, I wonder how different it is from Gmaps Pedometer.