Author: splicer

A beau­ty can only ever be skin deep,
But if I’m hon­est that’s all I ever real­ly need.
–Love and Rock­ets, All In My Mind

I’ve often won­dered at the mean­ing of the lyric above. At first glance it sounds like an hon­est admis­sion of con­cern only with beau­ty: If I’m hon­est about it, all I real­ly want is some­one beautiful.

On the next read through anoth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty aris­es: per­haps instead of exter­nal needs, the line refers to one’s per­son­al aspi­ra­tions. If I … Read the rest

I guess all that hill work is pay­ing off. I ran a most­ly-flat 6.55 miles in 53:32. That’s creep­ing down toward the eight-minute mile zone. This rocks!

Except it did­n’t real­ly rock. Stu­pid iPod kept on being too finicky. Who­ev­er thought it was a good idea to base a portable dig­i­tal music play­er on a spin­ning disk should get a stern talk­ing-to. I think it needs to go in for repairs too, ’cause I get about … Read the rest

I’ve been look­ing for a new goal, a new mark to hit. I think I’ve found it:

http://www.runsf.com/

The US Half Marathon, San Fran­cis­co. It’s in a lit­tle under a month, so I have to stay focused. I’m stat­ing the goal right now: to com­plete the half-marathon in under two hours.

The longest dis­tance I’ve ever run before is 10.5 miles, so a half-marathon at 13.1 is a bit of a stretch, but it’s not over­ly ambi­tious. I’m … Read the rest

Well, one thing’s for sure: run­ning at night in an area with mod­er­ate auto­mo­bile traf­fic and no side­walks or street­lights is a bad idea. I don’t think I’m going to push my luck by try­ing that again, even though the view from Twin Peaks at night is stunning.

But I did my best time on that par­tic­u­lar 5k loop: 30:18. Made it a nice fast (con­sid­er­ing that’s a tremen­dous climb — five hun­dred feet if I … Read the rest

I woke up yes­ter­day morn­ing with a sud­den cramp­ing in my left calf. Despite a day’s worth of walk­ing, mas­sag­ing, and stretch­ing the leg, I still have a knot the size of a golf ball in my calf, and I’m walk­ing with a bit of a limp. I think this has ele­vat­ed itself to the lev­el of ‘sports injury’.

Try­ing to make sure I get enough potas­si­um and mag­ne­sium today. Ow.… Read the rest

Just to rub my nose in it, there is a 2BR avail­able in a build­ing I lived in back in col­lege. It’s a nice build­ing right on top of Nob Hill, and it used to be a rat-infest­ed fleatrap, but rumor has it that the own­er actu­al­ly lost the build­ing for repeat­ed code vio­la­tions. I always thought it could be real nice if they’d just fix it up a lit­tle bit and take a tiny bit of care, and … Read the rest

Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is not mea­sured in lines of code. I’ve writ­ten 15 lines of code today.

I’ve fixed prob­lems with three web­site tem­plates and made progress toward mak­ing the tem­plate sys­tem eas­i­er to maintain.

I found AND FIXED two bugs in our order­ing sys­tem that could cause cus­tomers to be able to order tours or cruis­es on days they weren’t real­ly avail­able. Also made it pos­si­ble to con­trol avail­abil­i­ty in years oth­er than 2004, which will come in handy as 2005… Read the rest

I’m try­ing to come up with a name for a sub­do­main for a web­site that will be used by our clients to admin­is­ter the orders that come in for their com­pa­nies. Since my com­pa­ny is all about San Fran­cis­co tourism, I like to name the servers for SF streets or oth­er SF triv­ia.… both is best. For exam­ple, our mailserv­er is geary, named for Geary Boule­vard which was itself named for John White Geary, the first Post­mas­ter of San Francisco.… Read the rest

Results are in from my recent run in the SFDSE Run­ners Potrero Hill Run. Turns out I came in 34^th over­all at 36:10 (not 36:20… I went back to look at the clock after­ward and just took the time down).

I know it takes work and com­mit­ment, but I’m so close in all these events to being in the top 50% that I find myself ask­ing, “why can’t I get up there?” In … Read the rest

Dif­fi­cult, painful race today. I did four miles that includ­ed a very steep hill on Ver­mont Street. It seemed like I’d nev­er catch my breath, but I plowed through and fin­ished aston­ish­ing­ly in 36:20. My goal had been a nine-minute mile pace but I gave that up pret­ty quick­ly after I felt how much my calves were hurt­ing. To come so close to my goal when I was afraid I was­n’t going to fin­ish at all is … Read the rest