Bolt Camp Shelter

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted, but there’s no reason to bore either of us with an explanation. Acknowledgement is sufficient.

I think what I will be doing for the summer, though, is posting brief recaps of trips, whether it’s camping or whatever, because experiences are important, fun to share, and fun to read about. A lot like politics. Er, wait….

This particular trip ended up being a bit different than we had originally planned. Jen and I had made a general plan to hike the Lewis River Traverse over July 2nd and 3rd. As the time for the trip approached, though, we realized that we hadn’t lined up care for the dogs, Sebastian, our Pit/Lab mix, and Belle, the Chihuahua. This isn’t a big deal and we last-minute the dog situation all the time, but this time it didn’t work out. So we needed to make an adjustment.

After talking through what we were each trying to get out of the trip, we identified the following goals. Jen: go running, spend time together, spend time with the dogs, read. Dave: sleep outside, disconnect from electronics, read.

Based on these goals, we decided to make life a little simpler to accomodate the dogs and to aim for the Bolt Camp Shelter, about 2.5 miles into the hike, and to set up a basecamp there that we could operate from. We’d spend a night or two and then hike out. Not great training for my PCT hike in 2019, but sometimes fun is fun and we don’t need to devote every waking moment to preparing for another.

As we hiked in, we were relieved to see that there were a few good open campspots available on the way in to Bolt Camp Shelter (BCS) from Curly Creek trailhead. The information I had read said that this place was pretty remote and unused, which I thought was important given the holiday weekend. There were quite a few other hikers around, but few enough that you knew when you were alone and when someone else was approaching. My thought was that if someone was already at the BCS we could have some other options. Luckily, we were the first-come and therefore the first-served at BCS.

I had brought my new “Colorado Flag” hammock by Kammok, and after inspecting the shelter carefully we decided that it was structurally sound enough to be our swinging spot. I’m a huge fan of the hammock and will definitely be bringing it along for my more “camping” (i.e., less “hiking” and being on the move) trips. With a puffy for a pillow, this is an ideal reading setup.

Happily, the fire threat is low and I felt comfortable getting a small fire going.

Campfire is my TV

Jen went running the first afternoon and I did camp chores and read. That night I slept well, although Belle was crawling all over Jen making it hard for her to sleep. Sebastian slept tied up to a tree outside the tent on my tarp, and didn’t make a sound all night.

I woke up early and while Jen slept in I started a new fire, filtered water, etc. I made breakfast and Jen woke up to join me. I have been reading this book called Behave by Robert Sapolsky which is great and fascinating, but is not a casual read. Lots of information comes at you 100 mph and as a result it’s not a book you can read for hours on end. Jen had just finished a book in two trips called The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel, so I thought I would give that a try. It is an incredible book about a hermit in the woods of Maine who lived without human contact for 27 years. I read the entire thing that day.

Rocks integrated to root system

While I was tearing through the book Jen got in another run. While she was out Belle and I took a hike a couple of miles north. On the way, I saw the underside of a tree root structure that was cool… the area is really gravelly and the tree had grown around the gravel, integrating it into its root structure. The tree this root system supports was probably about 50-60 feet tall, impossible to show in pictures.

On the way back Belle made me carry her, for a half mile or so, but when I put her back down so that I could have footing on the mud she was revved up and wanted to lead the whole way back. I spent the day doing camp chores like filtering water and tending the fire and reading. Ideal.

When Jen got back we decided that spending a second night would put too much strain on our Tuesday July 4th because we have a number of errands to run and etc. We packed up camp late in the day (around supper time) and hiked out with the dogs.

What My Dyson Taught Me About Cognitive Bias

The purchase

Jen and I moved into our house about seven years ago.  My previous apartment had hard wood floors, so I didn’t need a vacuum cleaner and didn’t own one.  My new, wonderful, highly mortgaged home, purchased near the height of the housing bubble, however, contained what we’ll put politely “champagne” colored carpets in almost every room.  A less discriminating individual may refer to them as pink, but such a brute would never be allowed in my new, highly mortgaged, house.

I am the kind of person who will pay extra for quality, operating under the assumption that in the long run I’ll save money – instead of buying a new pair of shoes every six months I can buy a pair of Doc Marten’s or Red Wings that will last two years.  Sure, in the short term I pay more,  but by buying for quality when it makes sense to do so I consume less in the long term.

With this mindset I knew that I had only a few choices for the new vacuum, and the Dyson value proposition of a bag-less upright had me sold.  In addition to being one of the few bag-less uprights on the market at the time, the Dyson looked and worked so *different* than anything I had seen before that it was hard to compare to other vacuums.  Subsequently, Apple’s iPhone, Toyota’s Prius and BMW’s Mini Cooper have followed a similar model, introducing novel solutions to common problems, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.  I honestly didn’t even consider a different brand than Dyson.  Based on nothing more than a marketing campaign and a hefty price tag I considered my purchase to be totally congruent with my strategy of buying for quality.

My concerns mounted the moment that we brought the Dyson home.  The quality of the components on the Dyson are atrocious.  Vacuums are by and large plastic crap, but as plastic crap the Dyson is low-quality stuff.  The pieces snapped together perilously without screws or any kind of reinforcing connection.  The electrical cord frayed within the first few months of use.  The swiveling mechanism for the brush assembly was constantly going askew.  The brushes themselves were barely a mechanism.  I made a mistake, but it would take me more than a year to come to that conclusion because I was still invested in the purchase.

Marketing Hype

People who market things have it all over on people who buy things.  First and foremost, they have the time and resources to spend the majority of their energy thinking about what it takes to get someone to buy something.  They don’t stop there – they subdivide the science of selling into parts – how to get someone to buy something once, how to get someone to create a relationship with a product so that they’ll buy frequently, how to trade out one product for another.  There are as many varieties of selling as there are gradations of plastic crap.

In terms of resources, marketers know a lot about psychology.  But even better, they get a huge quantity of something that academics don’t (at least not without concerted effort) – data.  And unlike an academic, who attempts to explain why things happen or what data may mean about the systematic effects at work within their area of study – marketers only need to know what works and how much it works.  They are freed from introspection or causality because their scope is so much more limited.  Who cares if plasma TVs use far more electricity than other kinds, driving up their customers’ electric bills and adding pollution to the air?  Manufacturers know how to make them for a price that sells.  All other considerations are delegated to the consumer, the retailer, or elsewhere.

Consumers can get some insight into what the marketers know, though.  My favorite site on wikipedia is the list of cognitive biases.  This site is a treasure trove of information.  Peruse it now, if you’d like.  Print it out.  Hang it on your wall.

Looking down the list, we see some biases that are at work in my Dyson situation:

“Bandwagon effect – the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd behavior.

Choice-supportive bias – the tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were.

Confirmation bias – the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.

Loss aversion – "the disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it".

Outcome bias – the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.

Post-purchase rationalization – the tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was a good value

Selective perception – the tendency for expectations to affect perception.”

- Wikipedia

And that’s just to name a few.

For me, immediately after purchase I was convinced that I had made a good decision.  Dysons are expensive.  That means they work well.  I am a smart person.  I make good decisions. You get the picture.

But alas, the quality of the product was always low.  After a year, when the sting of the investment wore off, I began to become disillusioned. When the belt broke on the machine, and I realized what an incredible hassle it would be to fix myself, and how expensive it would be to have someone else fix it, I threw in the towel on Dyson.  Besides the belt there were numerous other problems and I just didn’t want to deal with them anymore.

A New Day

Before I replaced this vacuum, I utilized my consumerreports.org subscription to do some research.  I found that, just as I assumed, price is a poor absolute indicator of vacuum quality.  A Hoover WindTunnel, for example, was both extremely affordable and highly performing.  I evaluated it largely based on how well it cleans, the bagless feature, which was important to Jen, and it’s overall construction and quality.  I made a short list of similar candidates and headed to Sears.

The purchase experience at Sears was comical.  The sales person is obviously incented to sell particular brands by commission, and Hoovers were definitely not on that list.  She seemed to judge quality based on how often items are returned, which I’m sure coincides with a report that she pays close attention to, since it drives her commission.  She wasn’t sure about the Hoover we were looking at, because she hadn’t sold many, and she’d never had one returned.  During the course of the conversation we learned that she had only worked in the department (or possibly at Sears) for five weeks.  Viewing her as a source of information with only misinformation to supply, I moved forward with my plan.

After getting the vacuum home and getting it put together I can attest that in terms of quality of construction it’s far superior to the Dyson.  It also performs its primary function very well – it gets the carpets (and the hardwoods for that matter) very clean.  It has kind of a cool feature where the cord unwinds from its base, and retracts when a pedal is depressed. In terms of price, it sells for about a third of what I paid for the Dyson seven years ago.  My only complaint a month after is that the cord is too short.  It needs to be moved around outlets a lot, which is a pain.

Lingering Doubts

But, my friends, our brains are very powerful and our biases are strong.  Despite my experience, I still have lingering doubts.  For one, the fact that the Hoover was literally cheap makes it hard for me not to see as figuratively cheap.  It’s also cheap plastic crap – almost all vacuums are – and although I know that the construction of this particular cheap plastic crap is better than the Dyson’s I can’t help but have doubts.

I was at a friend’s house and noticed that he had the same Hoover vacuum I had just bought.  My friend, however, is exactly the kind of person who would never put the amount of effort into his purchase decision that I did into mine, let alone spend an hour writing a blog post about it.  He basically lucked into the same decision I made, assuming that you agree that I made a good decision.  The lack of value in scarcity in this instance drives down my sense of value in the Hoover.

So I am stuck with my cognitive biases, as I suspect we all are.  The difficulty with such a rich system of biases is that knowing you have them, there’s very little you can do to change them.  You can address them one at a time, but accommodating for all of them is very difficult.  Awareness is helpful to some degree, but at the end of the day we are made how we are made.

Thanksgiving '09

For Thanksgiving this year we spent the evening with Jen's sister Annie, her boyfriend Chris, and his mom Rhonda.  We had a great meal, we brought salmon for me and made mashed potatoes, apple pie, green bean casserole, and we brought hummus and crackers.  Annie took care of the turkey, which was gigantic, and made pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, and salad.  I'm sure there was more, but that's what I can remember right now.  The kids enjoyed themselves and it was great for everyone to have a chance to hang out.

 

The next day we went to Fort Stevens for some yurt camping.  We brought along Annie's daughter Jasmine and Andrew's friend Frank.  The first night we got ourselves warm in the yurt and watched a movie.  Saturday we went swimming at the Astoria Aquatic Center and the kids played a lot of tag with glowsticks we bought them.  Sunday we went to the Peter Iresdale shipwreck and stopped by the outlet mall at Seaside.  We had a great time and the kids did a great job.

 

The yurts typically have a set of bunk beds and a futon.  The kids slept on the bunk beds and we tried the futon.  Turns out that because of the way it gets folded up it had a huge ridge down the middle that made it impossible to sleep on.  The second night we folded it into a couch and slept a lot better.

Non-Working Sundays

I've gotten into a terrible habit of working over the weekend during the last few months and I'm trying to break myself of it.  Originally I was just trying to get a jump on the week but unfortunately I started to add work into that time-slot and as time went on it just ended up being a way that I could increase the time I had available to work.  Well, no more.

The only problem is that since I decided to stop working during the weekends I feel guilty Sunday nights, when I feel like I should be panicking.  So I've decided that instead I'm going to try to get into the habit of updating the blog and keeping in touch with my friends & family.

In terms of running I'm trying something a little different now.  My friend Adam let me borrow a book called Daniels' Running Formula.  Prior to this I'd been doing training off of Hal Higdon's website, but I'd like to increase my speed and I wasn't finding that simply jumping up from Novice programs to intermediate programs was really doing anything for me.  What I really hated was the speedwork in the Higdon program.

The great thing about the Daniels book is that he talks a lot about the physiological aspects of running, such as how the body systems respond to different training and why runners do different kinds of training.  He explains some running concepts that someone like me, who came to running as an adult, wouldn't have had an opportunity to learn.

With the help of the book I've identified that the purpose of my training now should be to be to build a base of weekly mileage that will help me get my cardiovascular systems improved and avoid injury later down the line when I start doing more challenging workouts.  At the moment I'm running about 16 miles per week.  I run 5 times a week, with a long run of 4 miles on Sunday and 3 mile runs Tues, Wed, Thurs, and Sat.  I'll be doing this for the next two weeks, after which I'll increase my mileage.  I've started to suss out my plan here if you're interested.

As far as Halloween goes the kids were both with their other parents this weekend so yesterday Jen and I headed down to the beach to have a date night.  We brought our new/old little dog Jack along with us and he was absolutely adorable on the beach - so cute.

We decided to spoil the dogs and picked up a bounty for them at Petco on the way home.  I am now officially the kind of person who has a dog that needs a coat.  And I don't care at all.

Canvassing for Portland School Board

Today I donated some time in the afternoon to canvass for Scott Bailey, who is running for Portland Public School board, in the Westmoreland area of SE Portland.  This was in relation to the work I've been doing for Stand for Children.  I was actually on the committee that interviewed and then subsequently endorsed Scott.  It's been a pretty cool experience just to see this whole side of the process occur from beginning to end.
Canvassing is an inherently difficult task.  First off, almost everybody whose door you knock on thinks you're trying to sell them something.  It's amazing how many folks are closed off to what I was talking about before I ever opened my mouth. I know that I've been the same way in my life and I know there's some sort of karma at work there, although to my credit I remember being very excited when the last canvasser for Obama came to my door and the guy being a little taken aback by our enthusiasm.
It's been years since I've gone door to door for any candidate, and I was reminded that if nothing else an afternoon spent canvassing will reveal some pretty interesting stories. For example, some of the interesting stories from today:

• Elderly gentlemen who answered the door in his bath robe and boxer shorts.  There was gape-age.  I averted my eyes as I offered a flyer.
• After I got through my spiel a gentlemen in his forties asks me if I noticed the "No Solicitors" sign by his front door.  The following exchange occurs -

Homeowner: "See here?  It says no solicitors."
Me: "Well, I'm not selling anything.  I just want to share some information about the school board election."
Homeowner: "I am apolitical."
Me: "It's a non-partisan election"
Homeowner: "Get off my porch, jackass".
Door shuts.
Me (to self): "I'm going to mark you as hostile." (in a TAKE THAT manner)

• Lady starts shaking her head back and forth almost as soon as I start speaking.  She interrupts me to say "No."  I just barely got in "I'm here about the school board election" as she shut the door.

This is definitely the kind of thing that I see as a challenge for myself - way outside of my comfort zone - but I'm glad I did it.  I don't know if I could ever run for an office knowing how many doors I'd have to knock on in order to do so, but I'm proud of myself for getting out there to do it.
Oh, and also... if you live in Portland, vote for Scott Bailey for Portland School Board.  (Along with Martin Gonzalez and Trudy Sargent).

Dry, Itchy, Watery Eyes

My eyes have been bugging me for a couple of weeks now.  I think it's mostly because of the incredible amount of laptop and reading time I've been putting in, but especially recently I've been getting headaches and my eyes have been feeling puffy and dry. 

Today I finally broke down and went to see the optometrist.  Turns out I'm far-sighted, and I have astigmatism in both eyes.  I had been prescribed glasses about 10 years ago but stopped wearing them because I didn't like the frames (which made me look like an old lady).  Looks like since that time my eyes have gotten worse.  The doctor said I will need "progressive" lenses soon - which is really a code word for bifocals.  Blech.

In the meantime Jen helped me pick out some cool non-grandma frames and I'm very much looking forward to my glasses coming in so that I can see better and get rid of these headaches.  Here's a picture of the new glasses.  The ones I'm getting are this shape but have a cool kind of wrought-iron look thing going on. 

A canceled Marathon and the plan for moving forward

I can't believe I haven't updated the blog in all this time, but I think it's probably related a bit to the fact that the Marathon I'd been getting ready for during most of last year was canceled and Jen and I couldn't run it.  We had a freak set of snow storms right around Christmas here in the northwest.  The Marathon that we had signed up for was the Olympia Christmas Marathon, which was scheduled for just a couple of days before Christmas.

Once we got a foot and a half or so of snow here in Portland Jen and I started to feel worried.  We would check the Marathon website incessantly, waiting for the bad news that finally appeared on the Friday before the Marathon.  The Marathon had been postponed for a week.

Even without the snow storm I was worried about the Marathon, since the whole experience was so new for me.  The training is kind of weird because you do these super long runs getting ready for the race, including a 20 mile run that I completed a couple of weeks before the race.  Then the schedule tells you to do a taper, where you drastically reduce the miles you're running leading up to the race.  At the time I finished the twenty miler I was feeling relatively confident, but as the miles eased up and I was having some trouble with my hip I was feeling less and less sure of my ability to do the race.

I tried to take the extra week of training in stride, but since this was my first marathon I began to feel more and more nervous.  Unfortunately, it was all for naught because the snow kept coming, and not melting, so much so that the Marathon was eventually canceled.  Jen and I ended up going to the bed and breakfast we had reserved anyhow, and it was a nice mini-vacation, but definitely a let down.

On the bright side, because I wasn't putting so many miles in I was able to start riding my bike to work again, which is a really great thing for my mental health.  Jen and I decided that we'll run the 15k Shamrock run in March, which we began training for.  As part of this training I'm incorporating some speed work, which is super hard, but I am starting to notice an improvement in my time already. 

During the marathon training I started using a tool called mapmyrun.com to track my mileage and training.  One of the features of mapmyrun is the ability to update my twitter feed with workout information. Since my twitter is set to update my facebook page, the workout information would show up there as well.  Since the marathon training was over I went ahead and turned this feature off, figuring that it this point it felt pretty narcissistic to let everyone know every time I went for a run. 

Narcissistic or not, though, I noticed that I was a lot less motivated to do the runs & etc without the updates on.  After a brief hiatus I went ahead and turned the updates back on.  Hopefully my followers on twitter & friends on facebook don't find this too annoying.  Think of it as your way of supporting me, because I do get a lot of motivation and support from the great comments I receive. 

And yes, we will be running a marathon... it looks like instead of being in Olympia during December, my first marathon will be on Sauvie Island on July 4th.  If all goes according to plan, our second marathon will be the Portland Marathon in September.

Lessons in Running II: The ego filter

One of the amazing things about running for a long ways, or probably doing anything kind of extraordinary, is the reaction you get when you tell other people what you are doing or planning to do.  It's truly amazing how human minds are put together to filter every piece of new information that we receive through our own filter.  Our brains are put together to respond to new information by parsing what that information means to us personally. 

When you're running a marathon you get to experience this all the time.  Here's how the conversation goes:

me: I'm getting ready to run a marathon later in the month.
them: Really? Where at?
me: In Olympia, it's just a little marathon on the Sunday before Christmas.
them: I can't run, I have bad knees.
me: ok.

A good percentage of people, upon learning about something another human is doing, have the involuntary reflex to either join them in that activity or to reject the possibility of joining them based on past accomplishment or personal obstacles.  The funny thing is that I never asked anybody else to run.  I just said that that's what I'm doing. 

I know a number of people reading this are probably recognizing that they've participated in this conversation with me.  I really don't intend any harm or shame in pointing this out, it's just an interesting aspect of how our human brains are put together.  It's almost an involuntary reflex.

So to address the issue directly, I must admit that I do feel in the dark recesses of my mind like many people *think* that they have bad knees or some other personal situation that keep them from running, but just have never really had a good first-hand experience of running. 

In the interest of full disclosure, I thought *I* couldn't run because of my knees before this year.

I know that in the past I've started running and made some bad assumptions that ended up causing me to give up on the whole thing before I really got out of the starting blocks, so to speak.  I would become inspired to run and put forth great energy to do so, but without prior knowledge on how to best get started I was doomed before I ever started. 

I would figure I would try to run a mile at 10 miles per hour, which seemed to be a pretty low baseline to start running.  I would start these self-directed programs without a good pair of running shoes, figuring my gym shoes would probably work until I met some kind of criteria for commitment that would make the trip to the fancy running store worth it.  I wouldn't have much more direction or much more of a plan than to run as far as I could until I felt tired and then walk until I felt like I could begin running again.

The problem with my approach was that I was trying to do far too much too soon.  Since I was out of shape I would get out of breath easily, and then I felt like I would need to stop. I felt terrible for not being able to run for farther and the whole enterprise would be kicked off in a state of failure and shame.  Not an inspiring place to begin a new routine.

So what did I do differently this time around?  Really I kind of lucked into figuring out a better way. 

I've tried off and on over the last few years to start running, usually linked to an attempt to quit smoking.  This time around was no different.  I quit smoking in July of 2007 and with that event came the same jittery nervous energy that always accompanied quitting smoking.  I was looking for an outlet for all that bottled-up crazy when I ran across a blog post on lifehacker about the Couch to 5K program.

I bought a nice pair of expensive shoes from the fancy running store and I've been jogging since. After the 5K program I moved on to a 10K program which had me running 3 days a week and now I'm nearly done training for a marathon. 

It's funny because this is not something that would probably have been possible for me if not for the internet.  It is this particular delivery method for the message that would get me active. More to the point, I can't think of any other way I would ever be able to successfully start running.  I'm that kind of self-directed, personal research biased, own-counsel-holding person who needed to read all of the information and educate myself before I was willing to give it a true go.

I do think that at least 80% of the people out there have the capability to run at some level.  It just takes knowing how to get started and how to manage the program so that we're not overdoing it right out of the box.  If you don't choose to run, that's fine too.  Just because I like broccoli doesn't mean the whole world has to eat broccoli, but let's recognize it as a choice.  The biggest lesson for me is to remember to congratulate others on their successes before I put my ego-filter on and go through the list of why I can't do the same thing.

Lessons in Running

Today I completed the longest run I'll have before the marathon - a 20 mile run that took me around my neighborhood in northeast Portland and then down to my work in downtown Portland and back. The route looks like this:




As I was running today I felt great. These long runs are
always a good time to think through what's been going on in my life and how I feel about different things. It's a weird Zen state that one enters into, very peaceful and objective. The Zen of the iPod.

As far as the run today went I made it in just over 4 hours, which is about on target for what I thought it would be. I anticipate finishing the marathon on 12/21 in just over 5 hours. Today at around mile 18 I got this great feeling like I could do anything, and for the first time I realized I would complete the marathon. I know it'll be fine now, and a euphoria came over my whole body.

Of course, when I got home I stretched and took a shower and then laid on the bed, at which point every muscle and tendon below my waist decided to form into tight little angry balls that are still hurting me now. But I'll be fine by tomorrow or the day after.

During my run I was inspired to post about the different strategies and life lessons that the marathon training has taught me. I want to get this down before I move on with my life and the insights I've had float off into the ether.

The thought I'd like to share with you now is this: no matter how bad you feel when you're running very long distances, don't stop or give up. Walk. It's amazing what walking can do for you.

Firstly, sore and cramped muscles that are rebelling are placated. Panic is avoided and rational thought is given the opportunity to return. Running creates a sense of other-worldliness in which
you are simultaneously both very aware and very separate from your body. By walking, you can focus on what you are feeling and what might be causing your problems.

Luckily, I've had a pretty healthy time of it as I trained for the
marathon, but I did have at least one occasion where I felt seriously ill during a run. (Never mind the time last May when I fell and broke my elbow - then got up and completed my run before going to urgent care.) Walking for a little while gave me the time and presence of mind to make a good choice (to call Jen to consult) and ultimately to end that run early. Likewise, during my 18 mile run I would have given up at mile 15 or so if I hadn't taken the time to walk about a mile or so until my muscles loosened up and the pain in my joints subsided, after which I easily completed the run.

I've always been pretty patient, but I think this lesson is also
helping me in my daily life. It's a good lesson that when
things aren't feeling right or a situation is calling for drastic
change, sometimes the best thing is to ease up on what's
occurring at the moment. Maybe not halt completely, but slow down and think through the inputs that I can observe and what hidden message might be escaping me in my haste to finish a task. I might indeed decide to bag my current course of action and take a completely different tact, or it might just be that I need a new emphasis in what I'm doing now. Either way, letting up can give me the breathing space to validate what I should do next.

I'm Published

I received an email today from the managing editor of schmap guides letting me know that my picture of the KOIN building has been accepted as part of their application for their new iPhone app showing information about Portland.  You can see the picture I took right here.

How did this all come about?  This is actually a picture I took last May after Jen and I completed the Cinco De Mayo run in downtown Portland.  You may recall this picture of me enjoying a beer after the run.

When I uploaded these pictures to flickr I also did so under a creative commons license, stating that the picture may be used by anyone so long as they a) attribute the picture to me b) don't use it in a commercial manner and c) share the picture or any work resulting from the use of this picture under the same license.  By using creative commons one effectively says "hey, I've got some work here and I don't have any problem with others using it". 

In this instance, the folks at schmap then contacted me to let me know that they would like to use this work in a commercial product, and asked if I would be interested in submitting the picture for them to do so.  If I had wanted to I could have said "sorry, I want you to pay me $50 too."  This would have been my prerogative.  I didn't however, and I gave them permission to use the photo if they wished.  Thus, voila.  They have a free picture and I have a blog post.  The system worked just as intended.

If you don't already share your work using creative commons I'd encourage you to give it a thought.  Similarly, if you have need to use photography, music, or videos, I'd encourage you to seek work provided by creative commons license, and to follow the protocol for attributing per the license.  It's a great resource and many sites have built-in options for searching for creative commons content.

Linux off a USB stick

I've been thinking about the things that I have learned over the last few days.  Sometimes you go through times in your life when you're absorbing more of the information around you.  More open to the little lessons of life.

Firstly, I've learned that Ubuntu Ibex and Fedora 9 from a USB drive is a wonderful thing.  The distros are basically the same running Gnome, with one very important difference; the package managers.  Not long into my experience with Fedora I remembered exactly what was such a pain about it going all the way back to when it was redhat.  RPM hell.  Conflicting dependencies, inability to work around the rpm manager, the limited availability of apps, and the feeling that the good folks at RedHat are far more concerned about their enterprise server business than the desktop user experience. 

I am now happily back to Ubuntu. The add/remove programs app manager is a pleasure. As we speak I'm using Ubuntu off of a USB stick on my work laptop.  It's pretty sweet.  I've got a 4GB jump drive and I set up the other 3GB as a persistent overlay.  I'm becoming quite addicted to having my own computer setup wherever I go for whatever hardware I can get my hands on. 

The only limitation I've run into so far is that there doesn't seem to be a very good WYSIWYG blog editor for linux.  I'm open to suggestion if someone has something that they like, but all I've seen is blogtk and drivel.  They're both fine enough, but they are not WYSIWYG and for some reason I don't seem to able to add titles to posts in either one, which is ridiculous.  I'm very spoiled from using Microsoft Live Writer in windows.  I diss MS as much as anyone, but Live Writer is a killer app.  My normal course of action on a linux machine would be to run the app I like under Wine, but unfortunately Live Wrtier doesn't work in wine.  :(  Epic Fail.

Run Like Hell

I ran my second race on October 19th, 2008 at Oregon's Run Like Hell.  For both Jen and I this was our first half marathon.  The race is a really fun deal, it's themed around Halloween and a lot of people dress up in costumes.  You can see some great pics here.  There was a Donald Duck, a Minnie Mouse, a Disco team, and a group of ladies dressed as bees.  Of course, there was a queen bee too!

Jen and I didn't dress up - I was exclusively focused on finishing and Jen was trying to beat an 8:30/mile pace.  Thankfully, we both met our goal.  I finished slow, but finished.  Jen finished at 1:50:41 and came in with a 8:27 pace.

  

Running Update

We've targeted a specific marathon - the Christmas Marathon in Olympia WA on 2/21/08.  Everything is going good so far - I ran a 16 mile run on Sunday, which I must admit was really hard.  I learned that it's really important that I eat a piece of toast w/ peanut butter and a piece of fruit just about an hour before my run, and that gu works a lot better than mini snickers for during the run (even though I heard different advice from friends).  It was a rough run, I got really hungry after about 6 miles and my energy was quite drained by the end.  I had to walk a little bit around mile 14.  As I've learned, though, there are good days and bad days running and the best thing is to just get the miles in at this point.

In terms of speed I'm still really slow.  The idea is to finish the marathon in December and then start working on speed - maybe dropping back down to 5k training plans and then building back up from there.  The shamrock has a 15k  which would be a good run next year.

Running Update

It's been quite a while since I've provided an update on my running situation so I thought I'd bring those interested up to speed.  As you may recall I started doing the cool running Couch to 5k program at the first of the year.  I completed that program and then went on to do the Hal Higdon Spring Training program, which prepares you to run a 10K.

I'm happy to report that I completed the HHST program and decided to go ahead and keep going with the Hal Higdon Novice Supreme program, which continues to the spring training program to a full marathon.  Today I completed week 14, which culminates with a 7 mile run.  The 7 miles went fine and although my thighs are plenty tired and sore tonight I didn't really have any problems energy-wise or with any kind of pain in my body during or after the run.  Again, this is the farthest distance I've ever run in my life, which is pretty neat.  I'm going to be bummed when I have to stop saying that.

I started riding my bike to work a few weeks ago and I think that the bike riding has actually helped me with the running.  Since I started I've cut my three-mile run by about 2 minutes.  It also helps because the ride adds about 550 calories to my daily calorie burn, so I'm hoping it will help me lose my tummy.  Up to this point it seems like my body has had no trouble adapting to the running while holding on to the stomach.

When I started running I worried the most about my ability to keep my breath, but surprisingly that's the last issue I have to worry about now.  I can run just about as far as I want to without worrying to much about my breathing.  The biggest limiting factor to how fast I can go is really my muscles.

Columbia Slough Trail

Today we went for a walk on what I think is called the Columbia Slough Trail, off of NE 33rd past the Oregon Food Bank.  It's an incredible place, as you walk along the wetlands by Marine Drive you're so near the airport that you can see the jets landing almost directly above you. 

The trail is a great mix of human activity and beauty.  It was a beautifully clear day (which was a nice change after the last week we've had of rain) and you could see across the airport towers to the enigmatic Mt Hood.  I was thinking about the other picture I got of Mt. Hood from Bigelow Canyon Wind Farm,  which is on the other side of the mountain.  I feel like Mt Hood is the mother of this part of the northwest, looking down on us all and observing our activity with care and patience.

Andrew brought his scooter and Brianna was on her bike and the trail is definitely a hit.  You always know you're doing something good when the kids ask if they can do it again.  I'm pretty impressed to - it'll be nice to have another place to jog besides my favorite track down the road where Whitaker Middle School used to be.

Oh My God, Whatever, Etc.

Here's me on guitar and singing one of my favorite Ryan Adams songs, Oh My God, Whatever, Etc.  Andrew's on harmony vocals and Brianna's on hand claps - her specialty.

Oh My God, Whatever, Etc.

AZA Interview

We again plumb the depths with this hard-hitting interview.  We cover the topics that are important to _you_.  Very special thanks to our sponser, da-da-da-da DA.

Interview with AZA

My Trip to the Wind Farm

In October I had a chance to go on the best field trip ever, Biglow Wind Farm.  Biglow is one of a bunch of wind farms being built in Sherman County Oregon, which is about two hours or so from Portland.  I got to go because of my work.

One thing you can't overstate is just how overwhelmingly massive these things are.  There really isn't a way to appreciate it unless you're right up there next to it.  We had a chance to drive up to one that was still being constructed and you can kind of get an idea just in relation to the people around it.

The Turbines are amazing.  The blades of the turbine rotate to make optimal use of the wind for generation, both on the hub (the thing the blades are connected to) and the base.  They are able to make up to 3 full 360 degree rotations before they need to unwrap the internal cables by turning back to their neutral position.  They are over 20 stories high and when those huge blades turn they're moving up to 130 mph at the tip.  I took this video which can give you kind of an inkling...

I got this picture of looking into the tower of a wind turbine while it was on the ground.  The ladder is held onto the side of the tower by strong magnets.

These things are just too cool...

And of course, the beautiful view of Mt. Hood.

If you're interested in the full set you can find it here.