The Evil Eyebrow

Category: Personal

  • Happy Winter Solstice!

    Well, perhaps a better title would be “Happy Northern Hemisphere Winter Solstice” as I know there’s a few hits on this blog coming from south of the line.

    This is another day where we celebrate our annual free trip around the Sun by noting important celestial events. Specifically that the Sun will be at its farthest point below the ecliptic today. Right now as a matter of fact. 1747 GMT or 12:47 Eastern Standard Time.

    So bundle up, all ye northerns and be happy this solstice day. If get really motivated tonight, maybe I’ll go build a bonfire.

  • Writing

    quill array with knife and test paper by studentofrhythm

    Do you enjoy writing? I do. I find it soothing to arrange a sentence to explain my message, whatever that message happens to be.

    By no means do I consider myself an expert. I know that I’m wordy and verbose and break some of the cardinal rules such as “write with nouns and verbs” (rather than “write with awesome nouns and superlatively cool verbs”). I think I’m proficient and reasonably understandable. It helps that I spend a good portion of my daily work life in the writing of various corporate documentae. These may not be Tolstoy, but they force me to write coherent sentences and paragraphs, all of which eventually contribute to a document of one type or another.

    Add to that my blogging behavior. Again, this isn’t high literature but it is writing and the more you write, the better you write. As I saw on Merlin Mann’s blog the other day:

    The Top 1 Behaviors of Successful Writers: They Write

    This is good advice and the thrust of Merlin’s message was that if you boil down the writing advice columns and the author productivity interviews, you eventually end up with that one nugget of info. Just write.

    Everybody is talking about writing this month because it’s NaNoWriMo1, but we should be talking about it all the time (or writing about it, or waving about it). Writing well is a critical skill in the online world. Just as people draw associations between accent and education, the presentation of your written words will have an impact on how people view your abilities. In a knowledge economy where you are forced to interface with clients and collaborators through online textual means, your writing can set you apart or set you aside.

    As an aside, this is one of the complaints I’ve heard about Google Wave (beta). If you are involved in a wave with someone, they can see you typing—actually typing, character by character—including all your deletes and rewordings and edits. While that might be a new paradigm, I for one am not ready for people to view the sausage making that is my writing process. Google says the feature to turn that off is coming.

    So what to do? How should you improve your writing: Should you listen to the advice of NaNoWriMo and just write write write without stopping for edits or rework? Sometimes I do that. I recently compiled a document2 by doing a stream of consciousness dump onto a text file for about an hour and then piecing it together into a coherent whole. I threw out about half of what I wrote, but it allowed me to “fill the corners” and catch all the detail that I wanted without my brain having to worry about how well the document sounded.

    Should you outline? Some do. I don’t. I don’t believe in outlining. Outlining isn’t writing; outlining is planning and sometimes it’s easier to outline after the document is complete. In other words, you finish a draft and then realize there’s a heading topic missing so you go back and fill it in or reposition your existing text to cover the gap. I have outlined to set tasks for a team of people who were working the same item, but it’s an exception for me.

    Should you do writing practice? Some do. I don’t see the point. Fiction authors may disagree with me here. They will probably state that doing writing exercises helps to develop their various voices. I won’t argue the point. I don’t write much fiction so I’m hardly an expert. My opinion is that you might as well practice writing while producing real content. Sure, the things you’re generating right now might suck, but everyone has to go through that phase. There’s no reason to hide it. Any reasonable person will recognize that sometimes you just can’t be Shakespeare.

    As another aside, I can’t count the number of times I’ve read a document that I wrote some amount of time before and thought, “Who wrote this piece of shit? Oh, right. I did.”

    The only other thing to do if you want to write, and write well, is to read. Important writing people will say “read the classics” or “read big books” but given the quality of writing available that is out on the web nowadays I say, “read”. Although I will draw the line and emphasize that you shouldn’t read the comments on YouTube.

    Now that I’ve pontificated on that topic, I must go and practice my preaching. Talking Traffic has been woefully neglected. I plan to have several episodes ready to go before I start recording again so that I may keep a more regular schedule.

    1: I decided to keep track during NaNoWriMo of how much writing I do on a normal basis. I’m abusing NaNoWriMo’s interface to keep up with my progress even though I’m not novelizing.

    2: My use of the term “document” in this posting is of a general nature. While I’m alluding to corporate writing in some cases, my “documents” include blog postings, corporate memoranda, emails, love letters, twitter tweets and forum postings,etc.

  • Post Ironman: What I'm Looking Forward To

    During the Ironman training and especially in late summer and early fall I put away a lot of the things I like to do, and even some of the things I’m supposed to be doing anyway, in order to devote time to training. A discussion on my Ironman training and it’s effects upon me is forthcoming, but let me digress to what I’m not most looking forward to, and how it illustrates my depressingly domestic attitudes:

    • Keeping up with the house. Holy crap you would not believe what the yard looks like. I’m glad we have tolerant neighbors. Additionally, the general state of cleanliness inside our home has suffered. This will now be addressed!
    • Actually blogging again. You’ll probably have noticed an uptick in the number of posts here that are more than just “look at this cool video”. I now have things to talk about and time to talk about them.
    • Talking Traffic revitalization. It was last spring that I last put up a podcast. This will be addressed soon.
    • Reading/Hiking/Sleeping/Cooking/Hanging Out/Having Sex. All of these items were either reduced or eliminated over the last several months. No more!
    • Home maintenance. Jenn and I are probably going to make an effort to sell this house come the spring time. We’ve got lots of things to do to the interior between now and then. None of which I had the energy for over the past little while.

    It’s just so sad that I’m really looking forward to cleaning the house this weekend.

  • DNF

    D. N. F.

    Those three letters are a bugaboo of the multisport community. Some people—driven people—look on those three letters as a symbol of failure; a mark of something wrong. To be branded DNF in the race results is shameful and deeply injurious to some (so I’ve read).

    I do not agree that the DNF that will appear by my name in the Florida Ironman results places any special weight on my character. Truly, I am disappointed that I couldn’t do the race but while I am disappointed, it’s not a disappointment if you can see the subtle difference.

    Let’s look at what I’ve lost by not completing this Ironman:

    • I’m not an “Ironman”
    • I’m out the entry fee

    Yeah, that’s about it. And if you want to get technical, I probably recouped the entry fee by not showing up in Florida and spending four days in a hotel eating food and drinking beer. So, that second one is a wash. That leaves the first. I may not be an “Ironman” in the sense that I’ve completed a 140.6 mile full-distance triathlon, but I’m confident enough in myself and my training program that I would have finished except for the timing of that pesky injury.

    Now let’s look at what I have not lost:

    • One year of dedicated training which will serve as an excellent base of condition for the next race season
    • The best shape I’ve ever been in. Ask my wife and see if she disagrees. I’m stronger, fitter, musclier than ever before. The only thing I’m not “…er” than is “fast”, and I weighed 40 pounds less in high school when I was running cross country.
    • Equipment that I purchased for this race that isn’t going to sit around gathering dust, I promise
    • The mental capacity to push through a program of training like I did. With one brief exception1 I’ve never been this focused on one thing before. This had pros and cons. That’s another post, though.
    • The ability to walk for a few weeks. I’ve pulled this particular set of back muscles before. The typical healing time is two weeks. I had six days. While I might have been able to push through to the end of the race, I don’t believe it would have been a good thing. Remember what the most important part of my training regimen is. (psst: It’s racing and living injury-free)

    There’s no arguing that I did things this year that I would not have done had it not been for my training. I spent money I wouldn’t have and I put aside hobbies and opportunties because my weekends were taken up with time swimming, biking and running. Looking back, though, I really can’t say that this was a bad thing. I learned, I grew and now I can move on to my winter rest period knowing that I did my best, even if I didn’t complete the race.

    1: Studying for the Principles and Practice examination for my PE license was this intensive, but much shorter.

  • Work work work

    Whiteboard WindowsToday’s goals:

    • Finish writing the draft of a grant application (for work)
    • Clean up the drywall dust from some contractor operations (for home)
    • Drink coffee (well under way)
    • Run 8 miles (later)
    • Possibly socialize (if we’re lucky)
    • Spend time with my wife (if I’m lucky)
    • Not spend 10 hours glued to my computer watching Ironman coverage (shouldn’t be hard. Race was yesterday)

    Good luck, me.

  • Song Eviction

    It’s a sad day.

    Very sad. Several songs had to be evicted from my running mix. They are:

    Bad Moon Rising – CCR
    Flower – Moby

    But I added:

    Mirilou – Dick Dale & his Del Tones

  • Katie and Brian Waters

    Congratulations to Katie and Brian Waters on their wedding yesterday. Good luck in Pennsylvania!

    Wedding!

  • 24 Character Winner!

    Road ID

    I have declared a winner to the 24 Character Joke Contest…but I’m not going to tell you who it is. I need to make and ship the cookies, first.

  • 2009 Peachtree City Triathlon

    North Atlanta Multisport Club (a few at least)

    Another race has come and gone. This one holds a special place in my heart because it was my first triathlon back in 2007. I ran this race last year, but didn’t have the opportunity to improve my time because I was injured.

    Let’s get the important stuff over first:

    Thanks to Sharon and David for coming out to cheer us on! It was a blast to have you there.

    Times:
    Bill: 1:12:35 which is a 10 minute improvement over 2007 (1:22:56)
    Jenn: 1:41:31 which is a minute and a half improvement over 2008 (1:42:55)

    Time breakdowns later. Right now let’s talk about…weeds!

    You may recall from last year I spoke of the forest of lake weed that had grown up in Drake Lake. I even posted a representative photo at the top of the entry to visually describe what it was like swimming last year.

    This year, we’d been told by the race director that they had brought in some carp to eat the weeds as they grew; that there wouldn’t be any at all during race day. I withheld judgment, given the floating mats of lake weed I got to plunge through last year.

    Happily, the lake was clean as could be (of weeds). Not a one came out to clog up my goggles, or get in my face, or cling to me as I rose from the deeps like the creature from the black lagoon. Well done guys!

    The race day weather was great. Partly cloudy and mid 70’s. High humidity though (I’ve been fantasizing about the first day that is cool and low humidity around here). Everybody was friendly and the volunteers were great, as always.

    Swim start was the usual confused muddle as we filed to the start line by twos. We were set loose at about 3 second intervals to head into the water at which point I’d already moved up five slots. A lot of people who do this race don’t hit the water running. I end up passing people before I’m even really into the water. You gotta do the high-legged run into the lake, guys, and then dive for it. Seconds count!

    Swim ExitThe third-mile swim was good—weed free as mentioned—and I came out in advance of my 9 minute target. I ran through transition, put on my helmet, glasses and shoes and was off on the bike course.

    I had a (slightly) amusing scene when I had to pull over off my bike right outside of the transition area. I called a volunteer over (“A little help!”) to hold my bike while I adjusted my timing strap which was flopping around1. She came over very tentatively and asked over her shoulder, “Can I do that?” Yes, you can.

    The bike course was normal, some shifting through ups and downs as we passed along the first couple miles and then just grinding through the course. It is not a technically challenging ride, with only a few sharp turns. I wondered if I were going to receive a drafting penalty during the first mile because I got caught up in a group of good riders that was being paced by a race marshal. I made an effort to show I wasn’t drafting even though I refused to drop off the group (it was very congested at this point). Thankfully I did not get a penalty.

    Coming into T2, I did a flying dismount (after cursing the woman in front of me during the final approach, there’s about a 300 meter no-passing zone and she was going slooooowwwwww) and ran to my rack. I actually passed people going down the aisle, which was kind of cool. I was happy that my legs weren’t trashed like they were at Chattanooga. I’m not entirely sure why because I wasn’t holding back on the bike. Whatever. I was happy. A quick transition to run and off I went on the 5k course.

    The 5k course for this race has a bit of evilness at the very beginning. Within half a mile you’re doing these quick whoopdee do up and down little hills. Not a one is more than 10 feet high, but they’re steep on both sides. This is cruel on legs that aren’t yet ready for the run portion. Yes, I know. I can hear you saying, “Suck it up, wimp!” but I can still complain that it hurts.

    I pounded through the 5k at my best pace. About a half mile in, a guy (who’s number I did not get) passed me and I noticed that he was in my age group. I commented on that and he smiled and kept going. He ended up being my Rabbit for the remainder of the race. I kept him in sight as well as possible.

    My 5k strategy for triathlons is pretty simple: First mile, survive. Second mile, maintain and push a bit. Third point one mile, let it all hang out. I managed this well, and I pulled up with my Rabbit about a half mile from the end of the course. He had been leap-frogging with a teenage (18) year-old woman in a tri-suit. I pulled past them at this point and mentioned, nicely, not cruelly, that they better not let me win and both of them took off after me. We were running flat out across the Drake Lake bridge and past other people. Both of them hung in until we came to the last uphill before the turn into the finish chute. I honestly don’t know what happened to them, but I started sprinting with everything I had left (not much) and left them behind.

    Overall it was an excellent race for me. Obviously I crushed my former PR in this race, but the way I handled the various legs was just about perfect. I would have beat my former PR even without a good race; I’m in much better shape. I’m also back to the point where I was in High School with respect to “running through the pain”. I got out on the run course and thought to myself, “This hurts a lot, but it’s only for 20 minutes. You can put up with a lot for 20 minutes,” and off I went.

    Of course, this has a downside, as I commented to Jennifer after the race: I haven’t run a race in the past year where I wasn’t going all out, balls-to-the-wall. I haven’t been racing for the fun of it. It is fun, but I need to schedule a race where I’m out there just for the hell of it, relaxed and carefree.

    I had a great time and look forward to next year’s race.

    Time breakdowns:

    Swim (1/3 mile) 8:42 12th in my age group
    T1 1:50 21st in my age group
    Bike (13.9 miles) 37:39 28th in my age group
    T2 0:50 3rd in my age group
    Run (3.1 miles) 23:35 24th in my age group
    Total 1:12:35 18th in my age group

    I’m pretty psyched about these numbers. It’s not like this isn’t a competitive race. Some notable things:

    • The time difference between 12th and 8th in the swim is only 20 seconds. If I could knock off 40 seconds, that would’ve put me in 5th. That’s totally doable by next year.
    • T1 was very tightly bunched. I did it in 1:50 and was 21st. 10 seconds faster I would have been 8th. 10 seconds slower and I would have been 60th.
    • Not much to say about the bike, just that I getting sick of being passed going up hills.
    • T2 was spot on. Don’t think I could have done that any faster
    • Run times were great. Next year I’ll be working on my 5k times so this should come down.
    • 18th Position is awesome for me. That’s the top 15% of my age group. This qualifies me for age group nationals next year if I choose to go.

    Really Tired

    1: I almost always end up with a timing strap that is too big for my leg. Next time, I’m bringing a safety pin or a needle and thread and I’m tacking the loose end onto the strap. I lost 10 or so seconds on that, which would have moved me up in my age group!

  • Favorite Photo of Last Week

    Frivolity

    We went to Wisconsin to attend my second-cousin-once-removed’s wedding (hi Kristin!). This was one of the images I captured at the reception. More can be found at my flickr set