In my never ending attempt to punish my body and hate my knees I’ve been training to what I hope will amount to another full marathon this year.  Along the way I figured it would be a good idea to give a half marathon another shot.  If you’ve never been to Pittsburgh, I recommend you do, it’s called the city of bridges for a reason and running through its neighborhoods and streets is a very unique experience.

The morning of the race, we arrived with a little under 30 minutes to spare, which was not good.  I really didn’t get a good warm up run in and stretched out just a bit.  It was a cloudy day with chance of thunderstorms.  Which was an issues, since the race could get called off if there was lighting… the chances of getting hit by lighting are incredibly small, but I digress.

The race began promptly at 7:30 AM, but since I was so far back in the pack I didn’t cross the starting line until about 10 minutes after the gun went off.  The first couple of miles are always torture.  It’s really a free for all, you never hit your stride as you’re on the lookout for all other runners, ensuring you don’t step on someone or someone doesn’t elbow you as they are trying to squeeze by you.  At bout mile 5 is when the seas start to part and you really get to focus on what you came here to do.  The unfortunate part is that you hit the half way point before you know it.  For me this is the hardest part as I always feel that I’ve spent too much energy trying to make it through the pack that I start to run out of gas around mile 9.  Oh well, that’s what training is there for, right?  At the end of the day it was a great day for a race even though the rain was coming down pretty hard.  Final time below.

My only complaints about this event are the lack of Goo.  All they had for the runners was water and Gatorade, glad I packed some beans, but I was banking on some Goo to break up the monotony.  Second, I didn’t see any post race beer, not saying this is imperative, but I love me a beer or three after pounding out a 13 miler.  And finally, I should have used more lube.  Yes, my armpits were red and tender and it had everything to do with the huge amounts of water that came down on me while running.

~david

This week I received a text message from an “Unknown sender” and it read:

“This is an automated message from Franklin Bank.Your ATM card has been suspended.To reactivate call urgent at 866-545-2647″

Being the curious little monkey that I am, I just had to call it. So, the first thing I did was find a phone which did not display an external caller ID (ANI). After finding a phone I called the number above. I was greeted by an automated voice asking for my credit car number, my expiration number, and my 4 digit pin. I entered random information. After it was trying to verify my information, it asked for it again. However, this time it said it could not verify my account at this time and to call customer service representative… however it didn’t provide me with a number.

This is a scam, although I must say a some what ingenious scam. First, there’s an automated voice which answers the call, this can’t be tracked to any one person which might throw of a caller because of an accent or tone of voice. Second, is very similar to text messages received from various financial institutions. Finally, they have a toll free number which they provide for you to “activate you call”. Pretty cool, huh?

I think I’ll set something similar up at my home and even have it go to a web service to verify the credit card number is of the correct format just to say I can. :-)

~david

I’m out here to do a presentation and this place is absolutely beautiful. The sun is out and shining brightly, while the temperature is in the mid 30s. I’m staying at this beautiful resort called the Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort and the place is immense with a lot of great things to do and see. The room I have, while it takes around 10 minutes to walk to it, has an amazing view of the mountains. Here are two pictures I took.

And another:

One thing I also love is the fact that gardens here consist of rocks, sand, and some shrubs. My type of gardening.

~david

The last few months my Sprint bill had been in the multiple of hundreds of dollars. Usually above $300, so I finally decided to switch to their everything plan. $99 dollars + tax for all the calling, texting, and web is an excellent price and I will take full advantage of it. However, it just so happens that I have a corporate discount of 23%. Now, if you do the math, that would be a savings of at least $23 every single month! Yes, doesn’t that rock, simply everything plan for $77 + tax? However, I received my first bill today and the awesome savings came to a total of $0.18. Yes, that cents… 18 cents.

I picked up the phone and got in contact with Sprint (who btw has changed their IVR and gotten rid of ASR). The wonderful agent I spoke with, Christina, informed me that “since the simply everything plan is already so discounted, no further discounts can be applied towards it”. Well, isn’t that grand? In the long run, I will pay less, however I will miss that 23% discount. :(

~david

It has been a long while since I’ve had any time to breath. While I enjoy the non-stop days and nights of working all day and rocking all night… well rocking perhaps not, but sleeping yes, it is nice to just take a break. A break where you can just sit, relax, and exhale. This past week my currently project reached a major milestone. Even though we had multi-week delays, we were still able to come through and deliver. At the end of the day, when under the gun, we all realize that sleep is over rated and not really necessary. Now that this date is behind us, we can all go back and ensure everything is configured correctly and ready for production, which comes around in March of 2009. Here are some pics from my last week.

The answer is 7.

I want this sheep!

No relations.

~david

So, my hotel in downtown Columbus used to be a bank. Here is a picture of where breakfast is served. The whole place is really nice and if you’re ever in Columbus, I highly recommend it.

~david

I was done with my last project and was only supposed to do remote support for a few weeks. However, some issues starting popping up and I was flown in to help smooth things out. We came in on Monday and by Wednesday things were really bad. However, the customer had discovered some bad hardware and bad router configs which needed to be changed. Come Thursday morning we didn’t have much going on. Funny how everyone blames the phone system when the network fails, but packets are packets and if the pipe breaks not just your voice will spill out. Regardless, Thursday was a pretty slow day and the everyone was in good spirits, including the customer. The customer PM likes to draw and she made portraits of us all, here is mine. I have to say, I like it a lot.

~david

david

So, I was doing my weekly backup of my work laptop and noticed that I have close to 10 gig worth of stuff in My Documents folder. Looking a little closer, the breakdown is as follows.

2.0 gigs worth of email.
3.5 gigs worth of Cisco related documentation/training materials.
2.0 gigs worth of customer related data.
1.5 gigs worth of random personal stuff.
1.0 gig worth of random files which I should probably clean up.

Needless to say, I think it’s time for some spring cleaning.

~david

One great thing about having a job which requires 100% travel is having the chance to take in the sights and sounds of the city that you’re in. This time, in Omaha, Ne, it was the 2008 College World Series. Unfortunately, Texas A&M didn’t make it and Rice was kicked out early, but overall it was a lot of fun. Specially when it is free. :-) A very nice lady gave us four tickets and all we had to do was pay for parking.

Some pics:

After the final out:

So, there are a few things which I just need to vent about.

Airports which charge independently for internet access. Most major airports if not all, have an agreement with T-Mobile or some other major company which provides internet access, but no. There are still some airports, e.g. OMA, which refuses to get on board with this century.

Hotels which charge for internet access. You’re charging me close to $200/night, but you still have to nickle and dime us on internet access? I’m not asking you for a OC48 speeds, heck I would be happy with just a connection that doesn’t drop every other packet.

Yes, I have a cast. Yes, I have two broken bones in my wrist. Yes, I know you will have to swap my cast, palms, and fingers for explosive materials. No, it doesn’t matter that we go through this procedure every week twice a week. I understand it’s your job.

I own about 8 belts, but none can be operated with one hand… actually are there any belts which only require one hand? Why hasn’t Velcro made a killing in this market?

Expenses. I don’t think I’m alone on this one. Really wish there was an easier way.

I’m done, I’m actually a pretty happy person, but like to mix it up every once in a while.

~david