Tried something new this morning, that sounded (and went) well in theory, but in practice, it turned out to be not so good. Recently I've been unable to get to some of my evening runs, so in an attempt to get at least one in today I tried a "before work and shower at work" run.
I should preface this with the fact that Megan decided to have a melt down last night between 2:30am and 3am. After 30 minutes of letting her try to go back to sleep on her own, I finally broke and went down stairs. We slept on the couch together for 30 minutes, and I put her back to bed. So I'm already coming off a broken night of sleep.
I got up shortly after 5am, parked at work by 5:55 and running shortly after that. It was still completely back out, and of course, my only long sleeve running apparel is all black. Very safe... I was in stealth mode! No one even knew I was running, even me. Anyway, the run went very well all things considered. I felt great, the cold air was nice, and the shower after was really not that bad. By the time I was sitting at my desk, I had cooled off and didn't have any "shower didn't take" issues.
The bad part was around 10am when my body said "Hey dumb ass, I'm tired, what were you thinking?" I fought it as best I could, but it was pretty rough. I really don't think I will attempt that again unless absolutely neccessary.
In other news, and I'm sure this contributed to my tiredness, I'm kicking coffee for awhile (again). Might be kind of hard the first couple days, but I'm going to stick it out. At least 10 full days with no coffee, and I will reevaulate after. I'm sure your wondering why no coffee, and I honestly don't know. Sometimes I just have to mix it up.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Monday, September 24, 2007
Up Note
Ended the weekend with some fun stuff. As I had mentioned previously, there was a good chance I would make it to the Renaissance Festival this weekend. I went with my brother, sister in law, and one other friend on Sunday morning. It was a great time due to a couple of new experiences this year.
I started the day out with a bike ride over to my brothers apartment. The idea was so that I could actually enjoy a few beers at the Ren fest this year. (little did I know how hot the day was going to get). After arriving to the fair, when I went to snap my first picture of the day, I was greeted with a "Replace Batteries" message. No photographic evidence of my fair visit this year. After that we headed straight to food, as my brother was coming of a 10 hour work shift and really needed to eat. We all had bread soup bowl to start the morning.
Then we did some shop browsing, making me wish I just had money to blow on fancy artistic items. We also hit up a weapon shop, where I lifted up a huge 2-handed sword (or "Claymore"). This thing was huge, I estimated it at around 15-20 lbs worth of steel. Turns out I was really close, as it was 14 pounds.
Caught a show after that, that my brother ended up being part of. He got pulled up to the stage and had to act out various funny acts as directed by the puppeteer, Ded Bob. He did a great job, and gave it his all. At one point the puppeteer guy just started laughing at him and said "You're awesome". I wish I had got pictures! I then enjoyed my first beer, since you know, they can't start selling it before 10am.
We then played a little King of the Log competition, which my brother just smoked everyone. You stand on a log and smack each other with heavy burlap sacks filled with hay. He was a brick house! No one could even knock him off the log once, although I came close one time... maybe. Then more food (potato skins and cheese curds), more beer, more shows (Puke and Snot). More beer, more food (chicken croissant sandwich), and finally JOUSTING!
The last "new" thing that happened this year, was when the King actually talked to us! As we were walking around, the King & Queen and their procession came by. I was standing next to Scott and said we should bow to the King. As he walked by we were bowing to him, and he said something along the lines of "Very good my loyal subjects." Things like that always make me want to go all out some year and be all involved with what makes the Ren Fest fun.
In other news... I was caught for my cheating I posted about earlier. My account was suspended for 3 hours. Granted it wasn't much of a punishment, considering it was suspended from 4am to 7am, and I didn't even notice. But on the flip side, I'm glad I was caught. And the best part is, they are fixing some of these issues this this week. Hopefully it will make every ones gaming experience (my own included) more fun.
I started the day out with a bike ride over to my brothers apartment. The idea was so that I could actually enjoy a few beers at the Ren fest this year. (little did I know how hot the day was going to get). After arriving to the fair, when I went to snap my first picture of the day, I was greeted with a "Replace Batteries" message. No photographic evidence of my fair visit this year. After that we headed straight to food, as my brother was coming of a 10 hour work shift and really needed to eat. We all had bread soup bowl to start the morning.
Then we did some shop browsing, making me wish I just had money to blow on fancy artistic items. We also hit up a weapon shop, where I lifted up a huge 2-handed sword (or "Claymore"). This thing was huge, I estimated it at around 15-20 lbs worth of steel. Turns out I was really close, as it was 14 pounds.
Caught a show after that, that my brother ended up being part of. He got pulled up to the stage and had to act out various funny acts as directed by the puppeteer, Ded Bob. He did a great job, and gave it his all. At one point the puppeteer guy just started laughing at him and said "You're awesome". I wish I had got pictures! I then enjoyed my first beer, since you know, they can't start selling it before 10am.
We then played a little King of the Log competition, which my brother just smoked everyone. You stand on a log and smack each other with heavy burlap sacks filled with hay. He was a brick house! No one could even knock him off the log once, although I came close one time... maybe. Then more food (potato skins and cheese curds), more beer, more shows (Puke and Snot). More beer, more food (chicken croissant sandwich), and finally JOUSTING!
The last "new" thing that happened this year, was when the King actually talked to us! As we were walking around, the King & Queen and their procession came by. I was standing next to Scott and said we should bow to the King. As he walked by we were bowing to him, and he said something along the lines of "Very good my loyal subjects." Things like that always make me want to go all out some year and be all involved with what makes the Ren Fest fun.
In other news... I was caught for my cheating I posted about earlier. My account was suspended for 3 hours. Granted it wasn't much of a punishment, considering it was suspended from 4am to 7am, and I didn't even notice. But on the flip side, I'm glad I was caught. And the best part is, they are fixing some of these issues this this week. Hopefully it will make every ones gaming experience (my own included) more fun.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
New Low
Today's post is all about World of Warcraft, so if your not interested, move along!
I've never really used my blog as a confessional, but I feel I need to come clean on something. Cleanse my conscience... or at least admit my guilt. Last night, I did something I previously considered a horrible thing to do: I became an AFK BOT. It worked better then I thought it would... and the possibly the worst part? I enjoyed it.
AFK BOT? What is that you ask? Allow me to explain. AFK BOT (short for, Away from keyboard, robot) is the process where by, my character in World of Warcraft gains points or "improves" while I'm not even there. Through the wonders of computer automation, I get to gain certain benefits while not even playing (in this case, while I'm sleeping).
So now you must be thinking, "Shawn, you must be really smart to somehow make your computer play video games for you while you aren't even there!" Well, not exactly. A couple Google searches and 7 lines of "coding" is all it took to get it setup. A properly motivated 12 year old could figure out how to do it.
So why then, is this such a bad thing? For starters, it's cheating. Trying to argue any else would be simply semantics. No matter how you try to justify it, it's still wrong. In the same way a hacker tries to say that it's okay if he breaks into someones bank account just to "see if he can do it." Just because he might not actually take the money, it's still wrong. It's a way to improve your character at an artificially faster rate. Through this means, I could technically have my character "playing" 24 hours a day if I wanted to.
More importantly, through this process, I am directly taking away from other peoples enjoyment of the game. The way it works is, my character gains points due to the work of other people actually playing. So in effect, I ruin there game just to benefit my character while they are doing all the work to gain the points. My character just sits there not helping.
Needless to say, they are going to be addressing this problem soon. And I'm actually glad they will be. What it came down to for me, is that, I want to enjoy the game but I can't if no one else is playing either. This thing that I'm doing isn't new, and in fact, a higher percentage of people use this method over anything else in order to get free points. Until then... I'm hooked on being able to get points while I sleep. It will allow me to enjoy the game faster and not have to spend so much time playing WoW on the weekends.
I've never really used my blog as a confessional, but I feel I need to come clean on something. Cleanse my conscience... or at least admit my guilt. Last night, I did something I previously considered a horrible thing to do: I became an AFK BOT. It worked better then I thought it would... and the possibly the worst part? I enjoyed it.
AFK BOT? What is that you ask? Allow me to explain. AFK BOT (short for, Away from keyboard, robot) is the process where by, my character in World of Warcraft gains points or "improves" while I'm not even there. Through the wonders of computer automation, I get to gain certain benefits while not even playing (in this case, while I'm sleeping).
So now you must be thinking, "Shawn, you must be really smart to somehow make your computer play video games for you while you aren't even there!" Well, not exactly. A couple Google searches and 7 lines of "coding" is all it took to get it setup. A properly motivated 12 year old could figure out how to do it.
So why then, is this such a bad thing? For starters, it's cheating. Trying to argue any else would be simply semantics. No matter how you try to justify it, it's still wrong. In the same way a hacker tries to say that it's okay if he breaks into someones bank account just to "see if he can do it." Just because he might not actually take the money, it's still wrong. It's a way to improve your character at an artificially faster rate. Through this means, I could technically have my character "playing" 24 hours a day if I wanted to.
More importantly, through this process, I am directly taking away from other peoples enjoyment of the game. The way it works is, my character gains points due to the work of other people actually playing. So in effect, I ruin there game just to benefit my character while they are doing all the work to gain the points. My character just sits there not helping.
Needless to say, they are going to be addressing this problem soon. And I'm actually glad they will be. What it came down to for me, is that, I want to enjoy the game but I can't if no one else is playing either. This thing that I'm doing isn't new, and in fact, a higher percentage of people use this method over anything else in order to get free points. Until then... I'm hooked on being able to get points while I sleep. It will allow me to enjoy the game faster and not have to spend so much time playing WoW on the weekends.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Heavy Rain, Hot Temps
Only one of those things actually refer to the weather... Some pretty scary driving home conditions tonight. Flash flood warnings in a couple places around the Twin Cities. The rain might stick around for a few days, which could suck for this weekend. There is a chance I might get out to the Ren Fest on Sunday and it will probably be DAMN muddy. Oh well, I'm willing to risk it!
In other news, we had a minor Megan scare yesterday. Sunday night she fell asleep cuddling with Andrea on the couch way earlier then normal. (like 8pm?) She woke up the next morning and was very warm. Andrea eventually was able to get a temp from her of 103. It seemed to get better as the day progressed, so it might have been nothing big. Today she seems totally fine, with no visible temperature. Hopefully it's not another ear infection.
So we had our annual security debriefing at work this week. Basically an hour boring presentation about how we shouldn't write our passwords on post-it notes in our cube or let random people into the building if they ask nicely. Every year they try to spruce up these meetings by having a "theme"... This year was a pirates theme. Now, in general pirates are a good thing, but they went with the "Pirates of the Caribbean" theme. This included life size cardboard cut outs of Keira Knightley... Let's just say, she got around. I think she ended up in like 3 or 4 different cubes.
At the actual meeting, I won a contest by yelling out "Ahoy, Captain!" at the appropriate moment. Got a free gift card to Applebees, so I guess I can't complain. My brother asked if we wanted to go out tonight, so hey, sometimes things just work out.
In other news, we had a minor Megan scare yesterday. Sunday night she fell asleep cuddling with Andrea on the couch way earlier then normal. (like 8pm?) She woke up the next morning and was very warm. Andrea eventually was able to get a temp from her of 103. It seemed to get better as the day progressed, so it might have been nothing big. Today she seems totally fine, with no visible temperature. Hopefully it's not another ear infection.
So we had our annual security debriefing at work this week. Basically an hour boring presentation about how we shouldn't write our passwords on post-it notes in our cube or let random people into the building if they ask nicely. Every year they try to spruce up these meetings by having a "theme"... This year was a pirates theme. Now, in general pirates are a good thing, but they went with the "Pirates of the Caribbean" theme. This included life size cardboard cut outs of Keira Knightley... Let's just say, she got around. I think she ended up in like 3 or 4 different cubes.
At the actual meeting, I won a contest by yelling out "Ahoy, Captain!" at the appropriate moment. Got a free gift card to Applebees, so I guess I can't complain. My brother asked if we wanted to go out tonight, so hey, sometimes things just work out.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Something New
Woke up to a 62 degree house this morning. Just a bit more cold then I can handle. I actually had to turn the heat on for a few minutes to warm things up. I suppose that means it is officially fall. It's supposed to warm up later in the afternoon, so my plan is to get a run in around noon. It will probably still be pretty cold, but it beats running indoors.
I have almost zero other plans this weekend. Maybe I should like, I dunno, work on my social life or something. Or instead, I could just get a hair cut this morning. That sounds like a good plan. Tomorrow, if the temp is good enough, maybe that last bike ride of the year.
Megan is on my lap now, watching me blog (and playing with remote controls). She is getting cuter every day. Her affection levels are through the roof sometimes. She gives such big hugs and kisses when I get home from work these days. There are honestly some days I skip my work out just to be home sooner and get those from her.
Andrea had a conversation with someone recently who had a child with the same eye problems as Megan. They waiting until their kid was 4 and finally got the surgery. After that, they had perfect vision, all wandering eye problems gone. The person said they wished they had just did the surgery right away instead of dealing with years of difficult patch. It made Andrea rethink about it some more...
Anyway, the whole point of this post was to share something new the Megan just learned how to do LAST NIGHT! Yes, for the first time in awhile, Megan learned a totally new skill last night, pretty much all by herself. She learned how to pedal! Enjoy this video clip of her mad skills.
I have almost zero other plans this weekend. Maybe I should like, I dunno, work on my social life or something. Or instead, I could just get a hair cut this morning. That sounds like a good plan. Tomorrow, if the temp is good enough, maybe that last bike ride of the year.
Megan is on my lap now, watching me blog (and playing with remote controls). She is getting cuter every day. Her affection levels are through the roof sometimes. She gives such big hugs and kisses when I get home from work these days. There are honestly some days I skip my work out just to be home sooner and get those from her.
Andrea had a conversation with someone recently who had a child with the same eye problems as Megan. They waiting until their kid was 4 and finally got the surgery. After that, they had perfect vision, all wandering eye problems gone. The person said they wished they had just did the surgery right away instead of dealing with years of difficult patch. It made Andrea rethink about it some more...
Anyway, the whole point of this post was to share something new the Megan just learned how to do LAST NIGHT! Yes, for the first time in awhile, Megan learned a totally new skill last night, pretty much all by herself. She learned how to pedal! Enjoy this video clip of her mad skills.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Abrupt End
Hopefully summer isn't quite over, but that's the thing about Minnesota. Sometimes you don't get much of a Fall, it just gets really cold really fast. Not that I'm complaining (yet). Today was awesome running conditions, and it looks like it will hold out the rest of this week at least. I even bought a long sleeve running shirt yesterday, the first ever!
I'm still a little disappointed about the lack of a bike trip these last two months of summer. I opted out of the St. Paul Bike Classic that I've done with Steve the last two years. Although I've been saying this for probably the last 3 weekends, I think this weekend might finally be the one.
In other news, Megan had her eye check up yesterday. The results were... inconclusive at best. I'm not sure how I feel about it all, other then I simply want to make sure we do the best possible things for Megan. The basic results were this: her near sight viewing has gotten better, and she has little to no problems focusing on close objects anymore. However, her far sightedness still has some eye wandering. The actual medical term for this is "intermittent exotropia" viewing distant objects. The main point being, for Megan it doesn't happen all the time (or even the majority) and that she is able to do some focusing on far away objects.
For this visit, Andrea actually saw the eye Doctor as opposed to the eye nurse specialist in all our previous visits. Again, the topic of surgery was brought up. The doctor indicated that for children with only intermittent problems, surgery has a much higher success rate (opposed to more serious cases of exotropia). Overall, she seemed to express that Megan was a prime candidate for eye surgery.
I really don't know how I feel about that or what to think... I guess it's not something I have to worry about for now, because even if we started entertaining the possibility of surgery it would be until she was at least 4-5 years old. It's something you want to do earlier, but at the same time, you really want to exhaust other treatment (patching) and give the brain as much time as possible to correct itself. Most things you read about exotropia will tell you that time is on your side.
So anyway, that's been occupying my thoughts as of late. I love Megan so much, I would never want her to have to struggle with vision as she goes through life. Just thinking about that now gets me pretty teared up. Hopefully time will be on our side, and we won't have to go the surgery route.
I'm still a little disappointed about the lack of a bike trip these last two months of summer. I opted out of the St. Paul Bike Classic that I've done with Steve the last two years. Although I've been saying this for probably the last 3 weekends, I think this weekend might finally be the one.
In other news, Megan had her eye check up yesterday. The results were... inconclusive at best. I'm not sure how I feel about it all, other then I simply want to make sure we do the best possible things for Megan. The basic results were this: her near sight viewing has gotten better, and she has little to no problems focusing on close objects anymore. However, her far sightedness still has some eye wandering. The actual medical term for this is "intermittent exotropia" viewing distant objects. The main point being, for Megan it doesn't happen all the time (or even the majority) and that she is able to do some focusing on far away objects.
For this visit, Andrea actually saw the eye Doctor as opposed to the eye nurse specialist in all our previous visits. Again, the topic of surgery was brought up. The doctor indicated that for children with only intermittent problems, surgery has a much higher success rate (opposed to more serious cases of exotropia). Overall, she seemed to express that Megan was a prime candidate for eye surgery.
I really don't know how I feel about that or what to think... I guess it's not something I have to worry about for now, because even if we started entertaining the possibility of surgery it would be until she was at least 4-5 years old. It's something you want to do earlier, but at the same time, you really want to exhaust other treatment (patching) and give the brain as much time as possible to correct itself. Most things you read about exotropia will tell you that time is on your side.
So anyway, that's been occupying my thoughts as of late. I love Megan so much, I would never want her to have to struggle with vision as she goes through life. Just thinking about that now gets me pretty teared up. Hopefully time will be on our side, and we won't have to go the surgery route.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Useless emotion
This mornings run was COLD, but a great solid 9 miles. I wasn't really warmed up until after mile 5, but after that I was running with the wind and the sun was barely showing through the clouds. I definitely needed it, although I'm sad that the outdoor running is clearly coming to an end soon. Maybe this year, I'll actually try my hand at some seriously cold running. We shall see!
I've always considered anger to be the most useless of all human emotions. In no personal experience, have I ever felt like anger lead to any form of positive outcome. It seems like every other emotion can be clearly mapped to some biological or instinctual concept of human survival. So where does anger fall?
I don't deny that I'm an anger bottler. In fact, I could probably sell it in 6 packs at the grocery store. Andrea often laments at why I never seem to get mad at her. At work, it's important to me to try and keep an even keel in the face of horrible mismanagement. I just see nothing positive about expressing anger, when whatever it is you might be angry about, would be much better dealt with logically and constructively.
The only difference now, is that I have ONE outlet for anger: Running. A lot of my runs are spent deep in thought about all the things I might be pissed off about. Those thoughts are great fuel when you want to run harder, faster, longer. And by the time your run is over, you've used up all that fuel and it's like a big cloud gets pushed aside.
Anyway, yesterday Andrea, Megan and I attended the Target Children's Book Festival at the Hyland Lake Park reserve in Bloomington. A free event with all sorts of fun things for kids. In theory, it was a great time. And in fact, Megan did have a great time. It was however, a tad crowded. I guess free implies tons of people. But Megan didn't mind, and honestly didn't really care that we couldn't wait in line for stuff. She just ran around, saw a few things, and got to play in a large slide park. She was worn out by the time we came home and enjoyed a nice long nap.
Since I haven't posted any in a while, here are some recent cute pictures of Megan. The first is her obviously getting into trouble attempting to climb over the couch. She is constantly testing us, trying to get to places she knows she's not supposed to. The second one was just the cutest thing ever last night, we came down stairs and she wanted to bundle up with her blanket. Enjoy!
I've always considered anger to be the most useless of all human emotions. In no personal experience, have I ever felt like anger lead to any form of positive outcome. It seems like every other emotion can be clearly mapped to some biological or instinctual concept of human survival. So where does anger fall?
I don't deny that I'm an anger bottler. In fact, I could probably sell it in 6 packs at the grocery store. Andrea often laments at why I never seem to get mad at her. At work, it's important to me to try and keep an even keel in the face of horrible mismanagement. I just see nothing positive about expressing anger, when whatever it is you might be angry about, would be much better dealt with logically and constructively.
The only difference now, is that I have ONE outlet for anger: Running. A lot of my runs are spent deep in thought about all the things I might be pissed off about. Those thoughts are great fuel when you want to run harder, faster, longer. And by the time your run is over, you've used up all that fuel and it's like a big cloud gets pushed aside.
Anyway, yesterday Andrea, Megan and I attended the Target Children's Book Festival at the Hyland Lake Park reserve in Bloomington. A free event with all sorts of fun things for kids. In theory, it was a great time. And in fact, Megan did have a great time. It was however, a tad crowded. I guess free implies tons of people. But Megan didn't mind, and honestly didn't really care that we couldn't wait in line for stuff. She just ran around, saw a few things, and got to play in a large slide park. She was worn out by the time we came home and enjoyed a nice long nap.
Since I haven't posted any in a while, here are some recent cute pictures of Megan. The first is her obviously getting into trouble attempting to climb over the couch. She is constantly testing us, trying to get to places she knows she's not supposed to. The second one was just the cutest thing ever last night, we came down stairs and she wanted to bundle up with her blanket. Enjoy!
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Quarter past Midnight
It's techincally Thursday, which means it's actually been a week between posts. My big thing was trying to get at least something up once a week, so here I find myself up way to late once again, blogging for no reason in particular. I'll blame Megan!
She has been staying up VERY late the last two nights. First, yesterday she didn't get a good nap in during the day and ended up really crabby when I got home, and obviously just exhausted. After dinner she practically fell asleep in her highchair. So after dinner, her and I laid down on our bed and napped for an hour. I got up, and let her sleep for another 30 minutes.... That was until 7:30pm. Needless to say, she was up late that night. Today, she ended up getting exhausted from various activities and fun stuff, so she slept from 2pm until 6pm!! Again this lead to another late night
We probably should be putting her down at an earlier time, at least by 10pm each night. This midnight stuff has to go... It's just bad news.
So tomorrow night, I am going to be doing my first work running club event. Should be fun, although if it is as hot out tomorrow night as it was tonight.... wheww, it's going to be rough. I finally updated my MP3 play list again. Threw out most of the current playlist, brought back some of the old playlist, and sprinkled a few new songs on top for good measure. It's funny, but it felt like the only reason I actually got a run in tonight was the fact that I was looking forward to listening to the new play list. Crazy what little changes like that can do to help your motivation.
Okay... off to bed I go.
She has been staying up VERY late the last two nights. First, yesterday she didn't get a good nap in during the day and ended up really crabby when I got home, and obviously just exhausted. After dinner she practically fell asleep in her highchair. So after dinner, her and I laid down on our bed and napped for an hour. I got up, and let her sleep for another 30 minutes.... That was until 7:30pm. Needless to say, she was up late that night. Today, she ended up getting exhausted from various activities and fun stuff, so she slept from 2pm until 6pm!! Again this lead to another late night
We probably should be putting her down at an earlier time, at least by 10pm each night. This midnight stuff has to go... It's just bad news.
So tomorrow night, I am going to be doing my first work running club event. Should be fun, although if it is as hot out tomorrow night as it was tonight.... wheww, it's going to be rough. I finally updated my MP3 play list again. Threw out most of the current playlist, brought back some of the old playlist, and sprinkled a few new songs on top for good measure. It's funny, but it felt like the only reason I actually got a run in tonight was the fact that I was looking forward to listening to the new play list. Crazy what little changes like that can do to help your motivation.
Okay... off to bed I go.
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