Many of my friends know that in a past life (aka High School in this entry) I was a rather serious runner. For four years I ran loops around the track at my high school nearly every day of the school year. I was relatively accomplished: a 2 year captain of the 200 person team, 2nd place in my league in the 400 meter sprint senior year, blah blah blah. I was relatively fast, and I think it was my work ethic that propelled me past others, not necessarily my god-given talent. But that’s for another entry altogether.

Yesterday I ran the mile at race pace for the first time in years. It was painful. My plan for running races is generally as follows:

1. Line up, wait for start
2. Run at a really fast pace, nearly as fast as possible
3. Slowly die out, realizing that I have nothing else to give at the end.

This method ensures that I always give full effort, and has worked for me in many cases. Yesterday, however, it hurt really bad. After doing a quick warm-down lap where I thought I could collapse at any moment, I went to the sideline and laid down. My head was spinning and I could do nothing but lay with my eyes closed.

I did this exact same thing after nearly every race in high school. It hurts really bad, but something about it feels so good. Leaving everything you’ve got on the track is a painful reward. I realized that I missed this feeling. It has been 6 years or so since I’ve felt it. I welcome it back, though, and am excited about the pain that my 6 minute mile will eventually bring.

So I’ve been ruminating about my website a lot lately. Most often these ruminations take place in my head, but I’m starting to move them out in to the world through conversations and sketches and thoughts in between. To be frank, I’ve grown bored of the design of my site. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with it in particular, it’s just that I’ve looked at it so much that it has become boring to me.

I’m not sure what I intend to do about that. I don’t really have the time to code a new site from scratch. I suppose I could just play with my stylesheets and change the look-and-feel to something new-ish, but I want to do so much more. Here are a list of things I’d like to do, in no particular order:

• Improve the visual layout, typography, and overall design of the site
• Make it easy for myself and others to add content (possibly via a wiki, but at least via some sort of commenting
• Convert my blog from MoveableType to WordPress – This is for a number of reasons, but mainly because I’ve been bothered by a lot of things in Moveable Type: lots of errors have popped up, and the Open-Sourceness of WordPress is quite inviting
• Make my blog more visible from my webpage – Right now my blog is simply a menu item…I would like it to stand out more, that might make my site more dynamic
• Give more visibility to all the other sites on my domain that I frequent: My Calendar, My Capstone Wiki, jMinder, etc.

This is a good list to start with. At least I can just look at it, at most I can act on it. There just seems to be so much else going on at the moment…gaaaar.

If you can think of anything else I might do to josh.ev9.org, or have any critique of the current one, please let me know.

I think I might be allergic to my room. Is that possible? Any time I wake up early in the morning and do a little work on my computer, I end up with an allergic reaction. I thought my allergies would go away in winter. Dignambamit.

“I’m not here to change you, graphically.”

-Me to Karen, on me designing a poster for her that just wasn’t quite right

Erik told me about this a while ago, but in case you missed it, check out the Million Dollar Homepage. Brilliant idea, and a quick way to make a million bucks! This kid can now go to any school he can afford…

I think I (and others) have made this announcement before…but it has come to my attention that the message may not have come across clearly.

The Planet Informatics site is open to everyone in the School of Informatics, and we encourage you to join us by allowing your blog posts to show up there. Contact Erik to have him set you up. Join in the fun! (it’s really fun 😉

Geek Test Results
You are 67.5% geeky.

Not bad. Maybe you spend a little too much time with your computer, but at least you have friends. You do have friends, right?

The current average score is: 32.66%

Fact: 17.45% of people who took this test claim to have attempted to build a robot.

Take the test

This post is directed at no one in particular, but should be understood by all.

Def·i·nite·ly

adv. – In a definite manner; with precision; precisely; determinately. (courtesy Answers.com)

There is a finite way to spell definite, remember that. We can get through this together, I’m here to help 😉

So today I took the shackles* off and ran on the indoor track again. It felt pretty good, though I feel like I may be coming down with some sort of sickness in my chest. I did a mile warmup, then decided to do some semi-timed mile runs. Two of them to be exact. They were only semi-timed because I wasn’t wearing a watch and the clock in the gym is a little off (plus the fact that I can’t tell time on an analog watch face ;-). Either way, I think the times were relatively accurate. The first mile was quick, done in 7:15, and the second was a bit tiring, up to 8:05. I feel good now though, and definitely not too tired to get some work done.

Now I want to set some goals for myself. I’ve been so wishy-washy with the idea of doing a triathalon…and I still haven’t found one that I really really want to do, so I’ll do a short-term goal just for the moment. I’d like to run a mile in 6:00 flat. That’s the goal. Perhaps I can go even faster. I think my PR (Personal Record) for the mile was senior year in high school, I believe the time was 4:59. I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to get back to that time…but for now I’ll just try to be a 6er, and then a sub 6er. Wish me luck!

*Shackles refers to the constraints that a treadmill is bound to have. On a treadmill I’m not actually running but being pulled by a machine at an ever so constant pace. When I run on a track, it is much easier to go at whatever pace I feel like going, sometimes faster than would be possible on a treadmill.

Yup, that is most definitely the sun!