Month: March 2008

  • ING Georgia Half Marathon

    Jenn and I ran the ING Georgia Half Marathon today in lovely, cold, wet, windy Atlanta. Despite the weather and the hilly course, we both broke our personal records at the Half distance. I had wondered if I was going to be able to because my first half marathon was in Tulsa and was an exceptionally flat course. This was not flat. I turned in a 1:55:21, which comfortably beat my goal of 2 hours, and was 8 minutes faster than my previous PR 1:03:20. I’m happy with that. We even had a support crew this year!1

    My Splits, for those who are still reading:

    Mile 0-1 – 9:13
    Mile 1-2 – 8:57.5*
    Mile 2-3 – 8:57.5*
    Mile 3-4 – 8:46
    Mile 4-5 – 8:33
    Mile 5-6 – 8:36.175*
    Mile 6-7 – 8:36.175*
    Mile 7-8 – 8:36.5*
    Mile 8-9 – 8:36.5*
    Mile 9-10 – 8:49
    Mile 10-11 – 9:15
    Mile 11-12 – 8:50
    Mile 12-13 – 8:40
    Mile 13-13.1 – 0:52
    * Where I missed a mile post and divided the time between the miles

    Total Time: 1:55:21
    Pace: 8:48 per mile

    You can tell where things got a bit unpleasant. From mile 8 to 10.5, there were some long uphills, and I’d run a bit too fast out of the gate; they ate me up. The last three miles were a struggle to stay on a pace and just bring it home. Thankfully, at mile 10 I knew that barring crazy circumstances I was going to break 2 hours, so I didn’t feel bad backing off a tad.

    This was a tough race for me. This is the first time in a while that I’ve trained with a specific time goal in mind, plus the weather was chilly and wet. Cool is fine, but this was on the cold side of cool. I nearly froze my butt off waiting to pick up my gear bag after the race, and on the walk back to the car.

    It was a good race. I’m not sure I’d do it again. I wasn’t psyched about the organization:

    • We never managed to get into our correct starting corral because of the jam of people. We ended up being in #3 when we were supposed to be in #4 (me) and #5 (Jenn).
    • Gear check was smooth; gear pickup was anything but. If they hadn’t thrown organization out the window at the end and allowed atletes to come in and find their bags, I’m sure some people would still be there.
    • My biggest beef was the ending trough. They pulled us into centennial park between fencing so that people could stand and cheer, but the fencing was only about 10 feet wide so there’s no safe opportunity for the last minute surges that racers like. I suppose I can just take that into account and make sure to surge before I get to the park, but I still don’t like it.
    • They made no attempt to clear the way for the lead marathoners at the finish. The last bit through the park was filled with 2:15 half-marathoner’s when the first man came through. He was forced to dodge and weave through the much slower pack. That would have annoyed the crap out of me.

    Lest you think it was all doom and gloom, the race course chosen for the Half was a nice one. I wasn’t paying as much attention as I could have because I was concentrating on pushing the pace, but it was scenic tour of Atlanta and East Fulton County.

    Overall, it was a satisfactory race, with me accomplishing the goals I set. The weather could have been better, but it wasn’t by any means terrible. There’s still some tweaking the organizers should accomplish and we’ll see what they manage next year.

    1: Many thanks to our friends Scott and Courtney Turnbull for driving us to the race, cheering in multiple locations, then hanging around in the windy chill while we collected out stuff. It’s always nice to have someone rooting for you!

  • Flight Check-in Woes

    I learned today that Delta is following other airlines’ lead and has started charging for a second checked bag. $25 is the nominal fee. My response? What will this do to check in lines?

    Honestly, I don’t really object to the airlines charging us more for carrying more luggage. If they need to do that to stay in business, then that’s what they’ll do. Of course, it might lead me to airlines that don’t charge that extra bit, but it’s all part of the consumer selection model.

    What I strenuously object to are the waits that this is going to throw in at the baggage check in counter. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay that extra $25 when I purchase the ticket, so I might be showing up at the airport and need to pay for a second bag. This is going to add time and hassle to an already hassleful exercise. Blah!

    It’s amusing to me that 5 hours is my cut off right now for what is too close to fly to. If it’s five hours or less by car, I’m driving.

  • On a Personal Note…

    Today marked several things, two of which I’ll mention:

    One, I ran farther than I’ve ever run before (at one time). I mentioned this last fall, but I’m training for another half marathon and today I ran 13.3 miles. Very exciting, for me, at least.

    Two, we went to see Doomsday at the theater today. Ugh, double ugh. I honestly have nothing good to say about it. I suppose I can state that it was gratuitously bloody, but that’s not a plus in my book. They randomly blew up a little bunny rabbit! Seriously, the movie was a bad compilation of several others including Road Warrior, Aliens, and Escape from New York. Do not see this movie at full, or any price. You have been warned.

  • David Weber Book for Sale

    I am a big fan of David Weber’s Honor Harrington Series, which is on book 11, with several side novels* and 4 short story anthologies.

    To the dismay of his Honor fans, Mr. Weber writes in other worlds than just that one. I think we’re on a two and a half year hiatus (something like that) since the last one was released. In the interim, rabid fans of his other work are slavering over another of his series, which has been getting most of his time. Book number two is being released in July, but if you’re really interested, you can go to ebay and bid on an Advance Readers Copy (ARC) of By Schism Rent Asunder which someone is selling. Current price, with one day left, $200.

    Crazy people. Mr. Weber’s books are good, and for genre readers they are a gold mine, but I don’t think they’ll ever be worth that much. And from the comments I’ve heard in various places, the people bidding on this book aren’t looking for a collectible, they merely want to read it 3 months early.

    Geeks with too much disposable income.

    3/16/08 Update: As of right now, the bidding is up to $270 with twelve hours to go. We’ll see what it does in the last 5 minutes.

    *Actually, in the Honor Harrington universe, the side novels are really parallel mainline novels that take a great deal of the political and other maneuvering out of the main novels and keep them to a reasonable page count.

  • Amusing Email Subject Lines

    I get email. Most of it is requested, thankfully. Some of the daily and/or alert emails I get come from NASA and the NY Times. Today I received emails that stacked up next to each other with these headlines:

    “Today’s Headlines: Spitzer Resigns in Sex Scandal and Turns His Attention to Healing His Family”
    “Spitzer Finds Organics and Water Where New Planets May Grow”

    That entertains me greatly.

    Spitzer is also the name of a space telescope, if you didn’t get the second reference.

  • Harry Potter 7 is to be Two Movies

    I saw on the newswire that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be broken up into two movies.

    “It was born out of purely creative reasons,” producer David Heyman told the Times. “Unlike every other book, you cannot remove elements of this book.”

    I call bullshit. There’s no reason they can’t perform the surgery on this movie that they’ve done on every other. The movie franchise only has the vaguest resemblance to the book storyline, so saying that they can’t remove elements is crap. It might be born of a desire to do the whole book, which I applaud, or it might be more for financial gain, which wouldn’t surprise me.

  • Fuck that Shit! CNN and Misrepresentational Journalism

    I hate journalists sometimes.

    For example, something that caught my eye: “Gosh Darn! Cussing Banned in California Town”

    The headline purports that some sort of legal act was passed to assign punishment to swearing. That is the generally accepted definition of the word “ban” when it comes to governments. I read the article because I was curious how they were going to get around the first amendment.

    No worries:

    …Mayor Michael Cacciotti said of his city’s proclamation designating the first week of March as No Cussing Week.

    A proclamation equals a non-binding resolution. No mention of “ban” in there. Implying that there is one is irresponsible journalism, in my opinion.

    The story is interesting, other than the headline. I recommend reading it. I’m all for people voluntarily pushing for civility in their neighborhoods, as long as they don’t impinge on the first amendment. In certain circumstances, blue language is useful and appropriate. In others, it’s not. Knowing the difference depends on what you’re doing and where you live.

    And saying f**k is such a cop-out. Don’t do it. I’ve mentioned that before.

  • Gary Gygax: 1938-2008

    If you are not a gamer, or related to a gamer, or you do not hang around with gamers, you may be unaware of Gary Gygax, one of the co-founders of Dungeons & Dragons. Gary Gygax wrote a great deal of the early D&D and Advanced D&D books, of which I own most. His name is prominently displayed on the covers and indirectly had enourmous impact on my childhood. A large set of my friends growing up were people I played D&D and Battletech with. While we would have probably found things to do without the gaming aspects, we bonded and throve inside the gaming world that we created. No romances bloomed that I’m aware of, but of the people from high school that I still talk to, 75% of them were friends that I gamed with.

    While I haven’t played any D&D in a long time (frankly, I haven’t gamed in a long time) the name Gary Gygax still pulls me back to middle school and high school game sessions, solving puzzles and killing monsters. He provided for us an environment where we could do whatever we want. His creation allowed us to explore fantasy realms that would have been unimaginable without the prompting of the game setting (I’m aware of the irony of the term “structured freedom”).

    It’s been years since I was involved in anything that Gary Gygax was directly related to. His association with D&D ended in the mid 80’s and since then his other projects have been things I wasn’t interested in. His creation of the original D&D is enough legacy, though, to pull me back and to make me remark on the passing of a man who has affected so many.

  • Bookshelves by Color

    I’m not this bored. Or artistic. Check out Chotda’s Rainbow Bookshelf.