One of those days

I know I promised to stay positive around here, but I can't help myself. The last couple of days have felt like... Well, the best description is a quote from the movie Dogma. I'll let the picture speak for me.



Here's a fun truth: there is always going to be negative forces coming at you. Someone will always have a differing opinion. Someone will always think you are wrong. Someone will always try to make themselves feel more important/better/powerful than you. Why? Because by and large, people are typically motivated by protecting their own self interests.

Are there exceptions to that statement? Of course. There are tons of people that are nice, honest, and don't always think about themselves first. Am I one of those people? Meh, jury is still out on that one.

So when I have those days, like recent events this week at work, how should I react? Should I strike back and fight fire with fire? Should I "rise" above the shit and pretend like it doesn't bother me? Or do I honestly stop for a moment and look at it for what it is: fake negativity.

See, work is just work. Despite anything else that has changed for me over the years, I still view work as simply a means to an end. People are going to come to work, and do whatever they do, based on their own personal motivations. Maybe they sit and browse web sites in their cube, maybe they work hard, or maybe they just suck at their job. Whatever it might be, it doesn't really matter in the end. Because a job is just a job.

It's ironic to hear myself say those words out loud, when I once heard them said to me, by a supervisor I had come to hate, when I informed him why I was quitting my first job. There is probably some deeper meaning there, but I don't have time to contemplate it. Megan is upstairs alone, getting into trouble I'm sure.

The Race that Never Was

4 years ago, I ran my first ever "race" event, at the insistence of a good friend. I ran that Get in Gear in 53:28. It's interesting to go back and read that post and think about my mind set at the time. Also to read how hard it was, and to think about how far I've come with running.

As I've said before, I had set a goal for myself this year of breaking the 45 minute mark. I knew I could do it, because my very last run last year (half marathon) was virtually at that pace. And sure enough, I was able to achieve and blow away my goal. Here were my split times:

1 - 6:58
2 - 6:50
3 - 6:51
4 - 6:54
5 - 6:57
6 - 7:00
.2 - 2:04

Total time: 43:38, average pace: 6:54 min/mile. A few weird things about the run this year. For starters, I started right up front this year. Meaning, I could see the elite runner start, see the tape lines, and also see all the weirdness that happens up there. You have this small group of runners that wish they were elites, pushing foward, trying to sneak in. Meanwhile, officials are trying to keep them back. In the end, a bunch snuck through and just started at the same time. Weird?

The other crazy thing that happened was as I passed each mile marker. The person calling out the times as I passed each marker, yelled the following: "7:01!" , "14:02!", "21:03!"... I don't think there was anyone at mile 4, but then sure enough, at mile 5: "35:05!".

Needless to say, there is a sad thing about this entire event. I run the best 10k in my life, probably my first ever personal record that won't be an "easy" one to beat, and what happens? My official time is not posted on the web site. All results are in, and I'm not on them. What is that about? I signed up the day after the race opened. My bib number was 160, and I was wearing my damn chip. No official time. Is there a refund? I want my money back.

Where did April go?

Just a combination of factors making this month fly by, work being the biggest factor. For whatever reason, it's hardly bothering me that much. Maybe it's just the bigger thoughts about baby Casey arriving any day now that are keeping me occupied. We haven't done a whole lot of planning, but I guess we figure we know what to expect this time around, so we aren't worried. As long as Andrea gets her hospital bags ready to go and we have a solid plan for what to do with Megan, I think we will be fine.

I've been enjoying the weather, the outdoor running season has begun full swing. Been running some fast paces lately in preperation for the Get in Gear 10k this weekend. I'm hoping the good weather of this week holds out long enough to last through Saturday morning.

Megan has been doing awesome, enjoying school and all the other activities Andrea plans for her. She started swimming lessons a few weeks ago, which she has really enjoyed. She needs to work on putting her face under water, but follows other directions well.

Looking forward to the start of the summer movie season with X-men coming up soon. Here is the full list of movies I'm dying to see in 2009:

May 1st: X-Men Origins: Wolverine
May 8th: Star Trek
May 21st: Terminator Salvation
June 24th: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
July 15th: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Aug 7th: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

There are a few comedies this year I'd also like to see, but they end up lower on the priority list. The above list are the ones I will see for sure, no matter what, even if Casey is born that weekend! (the 3 in May) Although this list might not compare to 2007, The Year of the Movie, it's still good list.

Adventures in Viruses

For a long time, I've prided myself on my lack of ever getting a computer virus. Not that it's super common to get one, but I've never purchased anti virus software or gone out of my way to setup personal firewalls, etc. The most I've ever done is run Spybot, which apparently has been good enough. Until now.

I came home Thursday night and sat down to launch World of Warcraft only to be presented with a very strange error message. Couple googles later, and I was already in panic mode. Few more checks and it was clear I had a pretty bad virus. Task Manager disabled, registry editing disabled, and generally negative behavior on most applications.

I'm no hacker expert, nor am I that versed in manual combat of viruses. I tried a few things, eventually found ways to get into both my task manager and registry. Both were pretty fruitless efforts. This virus was very strong and keeping itself alive, and keeping me from doing anything that might even give me a chance. It completely destroyed the Safe Boot portion of the registry, so that wasn't even an option. (I tried a manual restore of the Safe Boot registry, and it worked... but the virus was resident even in Safe Boot)

I ended up buying Norton Antivirus, which I sort of wish I hadn't. It was a giant waste of time, (and money?) as this virus laughed at Norton. Eventually Norton was detecting it's own files as infected. It was quite clear I only had one option left: Reformat.

So, 48 hours and 2 reformats later, I'm finally back up and running. World of Warcraft is currently at about 50% installed. The experience was interesting, especially when I ended up in a Norton Antivirus chatroom with some random dude from India, who then proceeded to say they could fix all my virus problems for the low low fee of $99.99. Yeah, I passed on that.

After all was said and done, we really only lost ONE thing, and it's my fault for not backing it up. Andrea had been recording our spending habits for the past year and a half on this one excel file. In my haste of backing things up the first night, it was the one big thing I missed. Hopefully it won't dissuade her from keeping it going in the future, as I think it was very useful for us.

Blog titles are overrated

When I mentioned not having any cold symptoms, I had no idea that the next time I would be posting is after just starting to get over those symptoms. Basically the day after my last post I finally got sick. I don't know why I thought I might avoid it. I'll blame wishful thinking.

So last week was sort of tough. I'm not gonna whine about it, just state the facts. I had to put in over 50 hours of work, which was basically working until 9-10pm Tue-Thur. Nothing really more to say about it, other then, well, it was tough. Andrea and Megan were real troopers and both helped to make the hours I had to work from home bareable. Despite the fact that they were buying pizza and/or subs every night for people on-site, I never stuck around for that and worked the extra hours from home.

As if the added work hours weren't enough to keep me busy last week, I was also attempting to get ready for a Dungeons and Dragons session as well. Somehow I found some time to do that, although not a lot. The session was a lot of fun, but I'm getting a little worried that the system is too combat oriented. That isn't actually a bad thing if everyone enjoys that aspect of gaming, and for the most part it seems like everyone does. As long as I weave an interesting story around the combat sessions, people have a good time. So that's all that matters really.

Coming up this week are hopefully my first series of outdoor runs (aside from the silly 30 degree race in March). I have to prep for this years Get In Gear 10k. I have a serious goal of hitting the 45 minute mark, which I feel short of last year by 17 seconds. I know 17 seconds doesn't sound like a lot, but at that pace, it is huge. I'll keep everyone posted on that, and in the meantime, hope for some good weather on April 25th!

Didn't win the lottery... but!

Apparently there is an appliance virus going around our neighborhood. Last night our neighbors called us up to ask if they could cook a couple frozen pizzas in our oven, because theirs wasn't working. I said sure, if we could come over and dry a load of laundry! Never thought I'd be swapping appliance use.

The good news however, is that today the dryer repair guy came and was able to fix our dryer for free under the service plan we have! Almost as good as winning the lottery. But seriously, it's good to finally have all the appliances working again.

The weekend was pretty mellow like I thought it would be. The coolest thing was just a visit to the Zoo Megan and I did. We visited the Farm Babies, which honestly was just a visit to the Farm Animals. We did see one baby cow, but Megan was too busy playing on the tractor to notice. She did like the baby chicks, and said those were her favorite.

Megan and Andrea are still getting over some pretty bad colds they got after coming back from vacation. It's been a rough week during the nights with Megan. Her inability to breath causes her to wake herself up and subsequently, us. Last night was the worst, as she had such a bad coughing fit she ended up throwing up in her bed. Hopefully they are on the up swing, as of now I have no real symptoms. Will I dodge this bullet?

Astronomical Odds

I know I promised no more negativity, but I just have to share this one. The night before we left on vacation, our washer blew up. Water coming out the bottom and all over the place. I even faked my handy man skills to verify it wasn't anything "simple" like a busted or leaking hose.

Long story short we replaced the washer last week after we got back from vacation. I'm 90% sure that the appliances we have are the originals that came when the house was built in 93, which would put the washer around 16 years old. That's actually typical life for a cheap washer. But then what happens? 2 days later, our dryer dies as well. The inside part stopped rotating.

What are the odds that both appliances just decide to break within a few days of each other? I don't know the exact percentages, but it has to be pretty small. Needless to say, I bought a couple lottery tickets today.

We do actually have some coverage on our dryer, so we will have someone come look at it on Monday (for free) and see if it is "fixable" for cheap. If it isn't (which I suspect it won't be) we already have another purchase lined up. Just lots more motivation to live here for a bunch more years, which became our plan sometime earlier this year anyway.

One funny thing about this whole thing was when I was cleaning the area under the washer before the new one arrived. I'm sweeping it up and I notice an item of clothing behind the dryer. I figured it was just something that had fallen back behind there, so I sweep it out only to discover it was a pair of women's underwear that definitely did not belong to Andrea. How long had that been there? Too funny.