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Breaking Runners Knee : How I defeated Iliotibial band syndrome

2011-12-13T06:39:00.000-08:00

I've spent the past year and a half struggling with Iliotibial Band Syndrome (ITBS). It developed soon after I began participating in sprint distance triathlons.

I'd put the blame on a combination of over-training and a very weakly structured stretching routine.

Initially ITBS materialized as severe localized pain to my outer patella.

For more on ITBS check Wikipedia.

For Liability Purposes Please read the following Statement.

I am not a medical professional, nor claim to be. I claim no liability in the event you attempt these techniques and they either do not work for you are seem to worsen your condition. Seek professional medical advice from a doctor or orthopedist prior to any change in physical regiment. The information posted on this blog has been distributed through the blog for "the common good" and to further the exploration of potential solutions for Iliotibial Band Syndrome.

A Short and sweet solution

I recommend the combined use of pilates bands and a foam roller to tackle ITBS. The issue I experienced is related to under-developed hip flexors. My working assumption is that the lack of strength in my hip flexors caused a tightening of my ITB. Since the ITB has an attachment point on the outer patella, this explains the pain.

Technique:

Pilates bands should be tightened around your ankles such that you can execute a "side leg raise".

The side leg raise is the exercise being conducted by the guy in this video. Note, I use the pilates bands should be around my ankles.

I believe that by adding resistance to the side leg raise better strengthens the hip flexors, thus solving a possible underlying issue to ITBS.

The Journey

I started the journey by using an IT strap with RICE.

The IT strap and RICE worked for a couple of weeks but the pain persisted after training. The pain then manifested itself as, what I can only call, "general knee pain".

I could hardly walk up and down stairs. My roomates described the experience of watching me go up and downstairs to that of an 80 year old man that needs a knee replacement surgery.

Something had to be done. I scheduled an appointment with an orthopedist, but it was going to be 3 weeks before the appointment; I returned to the internet.

After typing in a couple of queries that described my pain, all sources strongly recommended using a foam roller to conduct self-myofascial release (SMR). I quickly acquired one. The benefits were instant relief with a gradual return of the pain after, roughly 4 hours.

During my appointment with the orthopedist, I placed my self-diagnosis on the table. The doctor asked some addition questions and did some flexibility tests and confirmed my diagnosis. He gave me a topical cream and some stretches to do. I was told that if this didn't work an MRI would be required next, followed by a cortisone shot, and finally knee surgery.

This seemed like an excessive progression of solutions in an attempt to manage pain. I did what I was told, and it seemed to be ok for a little while. The post-run pain returned. It was at this time that I had decided the attention seemed to be on the knee itself instead of the parts of my body that could also be causing the pain.

Continued SMR with the foam roller took care of the pain during exercise. After a run, the pain would return after 4-5 hours. Additional research into SMR lead me to a series of youtube videos featuring chiropractors. This video was the best of the batch. My use of the foam roller was woefully inappropriate. After modifying the technique, pain relief worked but again, for a couple of hours the pain would return when I was sitting at the office.

For some reason, pain building while sitting lead me to re-examine the problem. Some literature about the "kinetic chain" lead to a conclusion that the problem was really rooted some place else. This entire time, I've been focusing on mitigating symptoms not the underlying cause.

Returning to Wikipedia I examined the Illiotibial tract. Something above the ITB was causing it to tighten and pull on the bones outside of my patella.

Moving my attention upward, it seemed the problem was based up around the hips. Other advice columnists recommended using yoga as an option. After reviewing some of the exercises yoga proponents claimed worked, it looked like improving and strengthening the "core" (hips) was a key component to success.

While examining yoga products at Target, I noticed pilates bands. Instantly, I decided this was the route to take. After using the bands for a week or two, along with SMR, I decided to conduct a "test run". The run consisted of a 9 minute mile pace for 40 minutes. It worked.

I currently enjoy the ability to both run and bike without any type of debilitating knee pain.

May is catching up

2011-05-24T06:46:00.000-07:00

It was a strange semester. My professor was basically "checked out" the entire time. All in all, the last month+ of class consisted of guest speakers and we had no idea what was going on or where the professor was.

He recommended we get a book for the final that had no content on the final. I used matlab for all of 2 assignments. Which made that $100 investment worth it. Octave has poor support for image process. Sorry I said it but, that's the reality. I used my book on multiple view geometry for all of 1 month of the class.

As for the final, it consisted of 6 papers we never read or discussed the contents of in class. Still, you could dig up some of the solutions from electronic slides and notes, so I can't complain too much about that aspect of the final.

We were "sort of" assigned a final project with no due dates or much of anything else until myself, and I assume a couple others, pressed the TA for details on the project.

So the final project is due by August, if you opt into doing it and they may or may not go back and change your grade if they can. I kept those emails to show the dean in the event they most likely can't.

Since I already spent a week working on the project, b/c I could only assume it was due the 18th of May - the last day of class, I ended up having to stop when the "end of the summer" deadline was asserted and cram in work on my final exam.

I love that I gave up 11 years of military service to be actively engaged in this type of abuse for 3-4 years, part time, while I work full time. Grad school is so worth it!

People also wonder why there aren't more American kids in science and engineering, well read that entire experience above and that basically sums up 4 years of my undergraduate education and 2 in graduate school.

If America wants to get serious about science and engineering then we need to get rid of researchers who've been "saddled" with having to educate. I get the impression my professor wanted to teach a robotics course. Well the uni had no funding for robotics kits, so this is what students end up having to work with...

Oh yeah, all that without getting into that bit where non-engineers get compensated more than I ever will...that's icing on the cake.

If you're a science/engineering student and you are reading this, read my lips. You don't learn science and engineering b/c it'll make you money. If you want money go into finance, law, or business. You do science and engineering b/c it's challenging and you're smart enough to wing it.

National Education/Career gripes aside, on to the class project

I've been working on the project for said class that deals in single view geometry. The work has really caught my attention. It's required me to actually write some "real" OpenGL code.

I've built a nice collection of papers and code to go with all this work and it's been particularly pleasing and satisfying to develop. It's been a true learning experience, lots of trial and error and it's been fun considering how the geometry of a pin-hole camera interacts with a photo and the elements inside the photo.

Triathlon

The road to recovery has been harsh. I'm able to jog now for short distances (~2 miles) and my legs are getting stronger each week. I'm pretty confident now and have been taking on long hills in DC. I can't say a race is in the cards for the summer, but definitely in the fall with low expectations of performance.

I've been reading up on ITBS and this particular video was the most helpful.

I've been using the roller improperly for about 3 months. This particular video did the trick and I can feel a lot of improvement in my IT band. I'm having to "stop" less when applying the roller along the side of my leg. So I think my IT band has been loosening up. I did see a doctor but, the prescription I was given really wasn't doing the trick.

2 Months Ain't Enough
Vacation time is coming and I've some very tight schedules to hit. A bachelor's party in NYC next month, a multi-day hike on the Appalachian Trail, possible trip to the Caribbean, GRE's, programming projects (redoing the game in C++, phone apps), job applications, and I'd still like to get out to California sometime for more diving.

2 Months Ain't Enough.

March update

2011-03-30T09:16:00.001-07:00

School Days

Computer vision has proven to be an interesting course so far. The work load has been really chill for a couple weeks and we got a bomb-shell homework (~10 questions and we pick 5 to count toward a midterm grade) on Monday.

The first homework assignment was brutal. Mathematically, I wasn't prepared for the havoc it unleashed. I survived and knocked out the second assignment which was a lot more straight forward.

The content of the course is fantastic, the instruction seems adequate...it requires a pretty strong background in scientific computing/programming and a fair bit of Matlab experience. I've always been a sucker for visualization and this class has piqued a latent interest in vision and photography.

On that note, this link was incredible.

I've been playing with GNU-GSL and CImg quite a bit and managed to implement the first homework assignment (affine rectification and metric rectification) for the vision course in C/C++.

This link has some particularly interesting material that my CImg/GSL excursions are taking a turn toward.

I'll see about getting the codes up on the CrisisTerp server and make them available for public download (GPL of course). I know there is some interest out there in this type of work.

I'll probably continue to fiddle with images for some time to come. Currently, stereoscopy and auto-sterescopy (like the Nintendo 3DS) are the most prominently placed.

So why bother with all this when there's OpenCV? I personally think the less a project utilizes customized data structures, the better all around product most free/open source libraries can be. It goes without saying, that writing the code yourself really gives a hefty understanding of how it all fits together.

Fitness

On that front, there's been progress. My knee issues have been isolated to that weird part of the leg above the knee but below your quadriceps. That area of my leg has to be massaged regularly or there is a consequence, acute mobility pain.

Lately, running on a treadmill and using an elliptical trainer have been alright. I'm up to 30 minutes of cardio on both systems and I've added in a bit of HIT training
.

After this overuse injury, I've managed to put on something like 15-20 lbs. It's annoying. Clothes from last year are fitting tight now or won't at all. I've been exploring the use of a fitness tracker to assist in my weight loss goals. It's called My Fitness Pal.

So far I've been impressed. It's on iPhone and Android and it's the first calorie/exercise tracker that has: a robust database of foods I typically eat, exercises I actually do, and the interface is smart phone friendly. It has a "ticker" for tracking your goals:

Created by MyFitnessPal - Free Calorie Counter

Not too shabby. There's also a blog and a bunch of social networking tomfoolery built into the system. Great for support network building or healthy competition.

Movies

I rented the last Predator movie, "Predators". It wasn't great but it wasn't horrible. Though, my inner movie goer is getting tired of these story telling re-treads going on in the action/scifi movie business. It's as if they are all out of ideas or b/c they stopped caring and people continue to just go see bad action/scifi.

Music

Last Sunday, I saw the Omar Rodriguez Lopez Group @ the 930 club. The show was great. The opener was a band his younger brothers put together called Zechs Marquise. Zechs had a great show that was loaded with energy. ORLG was great too, a bit too abstract for my taste at times. I found the last 3-4 songs (hard to tell b/c they all sort of transition into one another) very tight and well structured. I picked up the Zechs Marquise album and would recommend giving it a try and some support.

I really like the current exploration of 70's style prog-rock that's been getting some resurgence. Bands like Earthless, ORLG, Mars Volta, and Zechs Marquise are making great music and it's nice to hear something I can get into that has an edge.

Computer Vision

2011-02-23T13:29:00.000-08:00

This semester I selected a course on image processing and it's turned into quite a mathematical challenge. Computer vision. It's fun but it's also really pushing my particularly weak sauce college math skills. There's the leveraging of abstract algebraic structures, linear algebra, signal processing...I could go on but, honestly for a deeper look I'd say read the book.

Recovery

Recovery is still a very slow process. Stretching and foam roller therapy are working well, but, the results seem to last for 4 hours or while I'm passed out sleeping. Having said that, I'm at least starting to feel like my running legs are coming back and cycling doesn't seem like it's a distant memory.

Games

We hit a road block with our Bullet/Panda3d code and I'm on the hook to get it working on Win32 since it looks like it's not a problem on GNU/Linux. On GNU/Linux it's rendering nicely, on Win32 3d objects aren't being rendered or stored in the physics engine.

ARG

I came up with an idea for an Alternate Reality Game. For Android/iOS. I basically boiled down to the following frameworks:

Tornado
MongoDB

It should be a heck of a lot of fun, but at the moment, I'm looking into keeping it *very simple* since there are a ton of "moving parts". In any case, I'm moonlighting this on top of moonlighting the desktop game and moonlighting my homework, so we'll see how all this pans out.

ct

Recovery

2011-01-25T13:24:00.001-08:00

Having ended last year on a physically dark note, I'm proud to say that my body is in full recovery mode - minus a cold this week.

ITB Syndrome

While not confirmed by a licensed and trained physician, it is my webmd based guess that the knee issues I have struggled with for months are due to ITB Syndrome. After a bit of research Saturday, I broke out my foam roller and used it along the length of the ITB.

It was a *really painful experience* and within 15 minutes I felt little pins and needles in my knee. Upon waking Sunday morning, I was surprised to discover my knee pain was completely gone. Healed...for a couple of hours. As I've continued to apply this method to the ITB, the pain is lessening and the duration of painless motion is also lengthening.

What does this mean? Well, I've strong hopes for a full recovery minus a surgical procedure. Jogging and light stationary cycling are back on the training agenda. I've a bit of fall/winter flab to burn off.

Ear Drums

I did have some issue this past fall with ear infections. I firmly believe it was related to not wearing ear protection during the DC Triathlon. The Potomac is a filthy river and I can only imagine what horrors made a home in my ear canals.

In December, the Ear specialist discovered a small hole in my ear drum. It was attributed to weak tissue from a series of tubes I had placed back there as a child. The drum has healed up, which puts swimming back on the table.

As I said, last year ended on a physically dark note.

New Semester

Computer Vision kicked off to a good start. We covered projective space and homography and some basics of linear algebra (dot products, cross products, and determinants). The expectation will be to utilize Matlab for the programming. A bit of a bummer for me, but that's how it goes.

Short Story

The short fictional piece has been brewing once again in the head space. More progress should be made on it soon as the story is starting to demand my attention. I'm not sure what I'll do with it. I may try to publish it through a scifi/fantasy short story publication or I may just post sections of it on this blog. We'll see.

Video Game(s)

More progress was made on the game this past weekend. I implemented my first Cg Shader to support texture splatting. It works like a champ as seen below:

texture splatted terrain Cg Shader using a 4 color channel map and 4 environmental textures

Combined with a functional AI, I should be closer to having a demo worked together for Surphaze to plug the player and physics into the demo. We'll see what the year brings but, so far, it's gotten off to a great start.

I've also started working on a smartphone live-action game that should be a hell of a lot of fun. More details will surface as I get the code put together.

You push the body, it soon pushes back

2010-12-10T07:20:00.001-08:00

After a somewhat lack-luster year of training. I've managed to develop patellar tendinitis. Not fun.

I've cut back pretty significantly on training for about 3 weeks. I've shifted back over to high intensity weight training. My knees feel stronger this week and I gathered up the courage to work on an elliptical trainer. Swimming is also on the agenda.

Semester

It's been a rough semester. My account at the university was hacked into two times (along with about 10 other people in the class) which resulted in some pretty "piss poor" performances on my homework assignments (I love how the systems get hacked into right before project due dates).

The midterm was so-so. The final project was somewhat interesting, but, overall I just really wasn't all that mentally intrigued by the subject matter.

The demon of expectations reared it head. I had an idea of what we'd be doing in the course and it turned out we ended up just reading papers. Not really what I'd call an engaging semester.

I'll be wrapping up a paper this afternoon for my final and that will be all she wrote.

Ideas

I've been plagued by ideas lately. There's a PTX LLVM project idea I'm considering working on when there's spare time. A lot of PTX-LLVM opensource code is floating out there - I started picking around with LLVM and was impressed with the density of the system.

The orthographic/dialect identification work really took off nicely and I'm considering writing a paper and extending the concept over into a morphological variation detection.

A data set change up is in order b/c the proprietary nature of the input data set I've played with at the office isn't really doing me any favors.

I've started digging into a personal finance book that I've meant to read about a year or two ago, along with a couple of other books I've been "meaning to read".

Master's of Doom has been an incredible. I'd recommend checking into it.

Tonight I'll be seeing Black Swan and Saturday I'll be road tripping up to Delware to visit the Dogfish Head brewery. Should be a great time.

Master's Swim Groups

2010-11-03T08:10:00.000-07:00

I've put sometime into a search for a master's swim group. I really need to focus on finding a solid work out routine and some coaching support in order to improve my technique.

While burning a couple of stray hours at home last weekend, I ran across this site:

http://ntcmastersswim.blogspot.com

It's a master's swim team that posts workouts via-vis a web blog format. I now have a bit of work around for developing a training plan but, I still lack that coaching staff.

I'm going to give the blog a shot for a month or so, and then look into the master's swim team bit if results fall short.

Back on the bike

I've been spending more time in the evenings spinning on the Cervelo. My routine is back up to 30-45 minute spin sessions.

After fiddling around with the Forerunner 305, I discovered some features that cater to interval training. It turns out, that's just what I needed. It's reinvigorated my training routine.

The intervals have a notional pace rider that "follows" you and it creates just the right environment for a productive spin session.

2011 aces

2011 is looking pretty packed for goals. Currently, I've been looking into the following events for "A" races:

DCTri
PHLYTRI
Nations Triathlon
Ironman 70.3 Pocono Mountains

I'm still building my "B" and "C" race listing. I'll be adding to this list, ASAP.

College Park Cares 5K

2010-09-29T12:44:00.000-07:00

I completed a 5K last weekend and considering the struggles I've had of late with the ear infection, I did really well.

If memory serves, 22 min 36 sec was the finish time and I ranked 23 overall. Again, not to shabby considering my triathlon race pace would like to be around 7 min miles for twice the distance.

I'll call it "a small victory".

Knee Pain

I've been held up quite a bit lately with some knee pain. I had a severe case of it back in July-August and I attributed it to cycling. I didn't do enough base building last winter and my mind has an expectation of my body that probably wasn't realistic. WebMD is telling me I've developed Runner's Knee.

I've reduced training volume significantly. I still can't just sit around and do nothing. So, I've also reduced intensity. Going slow has been a nice change. I'm still getting a solid work out, how ever slower, and it's providing me an opportunity to do base building along with making adjustments to my form and my equipment (shoes and cycling kit).

School Days

The current course I'm taking consists of some small programming projects and a lot of paper reading. It's not too bad and fits in well with my desire for more free time. I have pretty high expectations for myself and I've been applying the free time I do have to other pursuits (GRE, job surfing, and the game).

G-R-E...GRE...G-R-E...I must focus on thee.

Break-through

I managed to connect PandAI into the tech demo for the game project. I'm pretty stoked and both myself and Surphaze have been looking forward to not only finishing off the Bullet-python wrapper, but also the second tech demo (featuring moving things and a controllable player-character that can interact with them).

If I manage to get this thing running, minus bullet, we should be in pretty good form for a tech demo release to a select crowd of friends. I'm jonesing for some feedback.

Other projects

I've been playing a lot with OpenMP and truth-be-told, I've been nothing but impressed by the way it works. I've been playing with it at the office to speed up some matrix/vector processing and my eyes have been set to modifying some other software tools out there with OpenMP functionality. Some of it is financially based which should prove to be of particular interest to whomever is into that sort of thing.

I ran across an OpenMP-to-CUDA compiler the other day and it looks incredibly cool. When time permits, you can bet I'll be fiddling with it.

All's Well. It Ended Well.

2010-09-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

It was quite a dramatic weekend.

I managed to get an ear infection midweek and this culminated with my bowing out of the Nation's Triathlon. I was pretty pissed to be out of 100 bucks.

In the same token, I did attend my last dining in - my friend Bess joined me and we had a pretty good time chatting and sort of mixing it up with some of my military colleagues.

Friday, I wheeled around VA in a rental from DCA. I hit up went Ft. Belvoir to grab my shoulder rank for the dining out, and then Ft. Myer for my last military haircut.

After grabbing lunch with my friend Rachel and a visit to a doctor's office to scope out my swelling left ear (the pain was unbearable, I wasn't able to consume food), I dashed home, got dressed, and picked up Bess.

We made it over to Ft. McNair in time for the cash bar, met some people and after jumping into the main course, a familiar face from my past made her way to my table. It was my old ROTC buddy, Jennifer.

I met Jennifer at Clemson back in 2000 through a high school friend I was rooming with named Brandon. As it would turn out, she's still an Army nurse and happens to be married to an officer in my unit. He's a great guy, I've chatted with him a couple times after he transitioned into the unit from active duty.

A couple people stopped me to ask if this was, in fact, my last drill. I confirmed the rumor, and we chatted a bit about the why's and what's - I was a bit worried I had spent too much time with the troops and not enough with Bess (since she knew absolutely no one at the dining out).

After wards, we bounced over to Maddy's for a couple drinks (I seriously needed something to soothe my left jaw line). Bess called up a few people, we chatted for a bit, and I broke off for the night.

I woke up in pain a couple times during the night. The pressure in my ear canal was pure murder. By morning, I was in uniform and made my way into drill. After wrapping up Saturday, I got back to the house and met up with Jared and Bob - also old friends from Clemson.

Jared was participating in the Nation's Triathlon. Originally, I was supposed to be doing the event with him, but, my ear condition killed that plan and after catching up with them, I headed home for some sleep.

I tried to unwind but, the pain was still bothering me. I tweeted something about my ear and needing a good recommendation for an ER - I got a phone call from Mike, and he recommended an "urgent care facility". I've never heard of such a thing, and after explaining what that is, I headed to my PC and did some googling.

As it turns out, all the urgent care facilities in the DC area that are metro accessible are closed after 4 pm on the weekends. I was tempted to head to an ER, but decided to give it an hour before making the call.

I cracked open a Bill Hicks live performance DVD from my Netflix queue. The show was excellent, definitely what I've come to expect from the material I've seen Hicks run through on other collections and youtube.

After taking my mind off the pain for about 2 hours, I went to sleep.

The morning was a fast dash, in uniform, to Georgetown to pick up Bob and get him and myself to the Triathlon.

We made it in time to see Jared's age-group make their way to the river's side and into the water. The rain was pretty bad when we showed up but, eased off prior to the race commencing.

Jared had an excellent race. On the way to the cars, a guy who'd just finished the race came up to me and gave me a "thanks for your service", I was a bit startled by that; I usually avoid wearing my military stuff in public as that type of attention bothers me.

After we helped Jared get all of his racing equipment to his car, I jetted back up to my last drill.

It was a pretty somber event, I taught my last training class in uniform, said goodbye to my friends, signed out, dropped my car back off at DCA. On metro going home, an older couple walking by me gave me a "thanks for your service".

When I did get home, I changed, chilled before meeting up with some friends for dinner at a Moroccan place in Arlington.

I took Monday off. Spent most of the day watching movies, reading, and I managed to both find and wrangle a visit to an ear/nose/throat doctor. All signs were good on my end. No permanent damage, still some inflammation, and that about sums it up.

Still feels strange the lack-luster ending of my 11.5 years of military service, but, my drill weekends will now be spent down at my parent's house helping my mother caring for their house while my dad wraps up his adventures overseas.

It looks like I've traded one form of service for another. It might be less financially lucrative, but it pays in it's own ways.

Collisions

2010-09-03T05:46:00.001-07:00

Many things are coming to a head at once.

* Going to SoVA for the weekend to visit family
* The Nation's Triathlon is next weekend - yipe!
* My final drill as an officer in the Army is next weekend - out processing, etc
* My first and last dining out with the Army is next Friday - along with last minute uniform purchases here I come)

The Resignation

I've had mixed feelings about getting out of the service. 11.5 years of service is a long time. The time has been under contractual obligation (my enlisted contract from April 17th, 1999 and my Officer contract from December 18th, 2003).

Lord knows I'll miss the people. Some of the most interesting and incredibly kind people I've met have been soldiers. Recently, I've been getting letters back from my comrades (senior officers and my junior enlisted soldiers) to the effect of, "we're going to miss you a lot".

I feel a bit selfish and guilty walking away. In the same token, I've served which, I guess, is more than most. I've fought hard to make this step happen, 2 letters to a senator and being stuck in a holding pattern 13 months of waiting for the Army to recognize my resignation...has been tough on my sense of progression and on the promises I've made to my family.

Sure, I could gut out another 8.5 years, it'd be tough. I wouldn't have as much control of my destiny. The monthly side-pay is nice. Having those weekends free to train for chores, triathlon, and programming assignments/study/test prep would be even better. Honestly, grad school's been my focus. I also see collisions between military career commitments and my civilian career goals.

Like most new chapters in life, this is scary terrain to negotiate. I'm leaving what my father calls the "comfortable blanket of military life". Something I've known for almost 30 years with a small bit of trepidation. There's a great bit of uncertainty. It's nothing like what my sister is experiencing with medical school, but, it's something.

Cliches that come to mind, "God hates a coward" and "Change is hard".

Other Beginnings and Preparations

The week has been pretty good. Got 3 miles of swim training in after work. Started up my class (CMSC714) for the semester and it's getting a nice, slow burn.

It's in parallel computing, a domain I've past familiarity, depth, and experience working. Should be hard, complicated, and fun.

The Game Begins!

I finally managed to get a demo of PandAI working with demo code from their site. I refactored most of it to work within the confines of the game. Audio and AI are working in tandem, so, I'll be working on a new demo and the next iteration of the code this coming week.

If I can get all of that work completed by Christmas, the only hold up for the game will be the Physics Engine (Bullet) we're gluing into Python. If we can get that knocked out and operational, we'll finally be able to start coding up game entities and working on content (art, music, etc).

The Livestrong Philly Century

2010-08-24T07:52:00.000-07:00

100 miles of Rain in a high gear

The LAF century was this past Sunday and I finished it! The event was pretty awesome. 6 thousand people were there, raising 3 million dollars, to ride distances between 20 and 100 miles. Lance Armstrong was present and, from what I hear, did the 45 mile distance.

Pennsylvania's rural countryside has humbled me with it's mountains. The ride was obviously physically taxing and intense. I'm still recovering and will probably modify this blog post a bit over the next couple of days.

A Recap

I traveled with a coworker and some of his friends up to Philly Saturday night. After getting our hotel room, we quickly decided to grab a couple beers and make tracks for dinner. I found out Pennsylvania has some pretty draconian alcohol laws that rival anything I have experienced in the south. Seriously, SC or GA could learn a thing or two from PA.

Apparently, you can't purchase beer at any place other than a bar or a "beer store". So, all local restaurants are BYOB. We stopped at a beer store and could only buy beer in cases (around 24 bottles a case). Later on, I found out bars sell 6 packs...go fig.

One case of Yuengling later, we took off to meet up with another coworker, his wife, and brother at a nearby tapas place. The entire group, around 8 people, ordered 3 to 4 tapas per person. In fine tapas dining tradition, we shared our food. Unfortunately, the waiter didn't give us an accurate description of how big our tapas plates were and we ended up over eating.

Sunday, Century Day

We got to the venue on time and split up to stage at our respective start points. Lance did a quick speech thanking participants, commenting on the excellent experiences he's had riding in PA and mentioned some other places LAF is hosting rides are still trying to catch up to the Philly ride's tradition of excellence. Yay Philly.

Out of the gate, I was able to break away and catch up to the pack following Lance. I stayed with them for about 10 miles. I also spent the first couple miles riding along side a guy that was dressed up in Radio Shack kit. I over heard him talking about being on the Tour de France, I haven't identified him yet, but that was an interesting thing that happened.

In any case, the ride was fine until I hit the first series of serious hills. This is where the trouble started.

It's Not Always Sunny in Philly

Days prior to the race, I took my Cannondale into Conte's of Bethesda for a tune up. The technicians were aware of the issues I've had with my SRAM Rival shifter set since purchasing the bike.

The large and small cogs (high/low gears, respectively) haven't been shifting effectively. It's obviously the front derailleur wimping out on me.

Normally, I commute to work and school on my Cannondale Synapse ~60-80 miles a month. Staying in the high gear isn't too much of a problem for DC, but, hitting those hills in PA was brutal.

With my shifters sticking into gear, I stuck to it. After the first 45 miles, I had severely exhausted my quads.

Between the 45 mile marker and the 50 mile marker, was a very slowly ascending grade of hill side. I'll admit. The hill broke me. I had to prematurely unclip from my bike and take a breather before picking up and pushing up the hill.

I made it to the 50 mile marker and took a pretty long break as sheets of rain poured all around the rest area tents. Then it was off to the finish line!

Everyone loves an Arrogant Bastard

Throughout the course of the ride, the Arrogant Bastard Ale jersey I sported got a lot of positive feedback. A couple people asked where it was brewed, if I was going to nab one post race, that type of thing. At the end of my ride, the announcer also made a quick note of my jersey. Guess he's a fan of San Diego brew.

That about wraps her up

The distance was intense, but pile on a troubled shifter set and that sort of exponentially increased the "challenge". Descending at 35+ mph, combined with the shoddy technician work, I was a bit concerned for my safety.

Normally, I ride with a group in Haymarket, VA through Shenadoah Valley. So, I'm no stranger to this type of terrain. Considering the poor riding conditions, the hair pin turns, and large number of accidents I rolled by, I had some serious concerns about the safety of my equipment.

On the flip side, the right knee injury that I've been trying to best has finally been mastered! A bright bit of insight that hit me prior to the century. I've been under the impression for some months now that the right pedal on my Cannondale was too tight. Loosening up the clip prior to the ride spared my knee from the the pain that I've encountered after 10 or so miles on the Cannondale.

The ride is done and now I'm recovering in preparation for the Olympic distance at this year's Nations Triathlon.

Somethings get better, somethings make an unexpected, and sharp, decline

2010-08-18T08:19:00.000-07:00

The title this week is in reference to an incredibly inconvenient turn in the health of my right foot.

Monday, I was out jogging at noon and noticed a considerable amount of pain in my right knee. The pain has changed a little bit. It's below the knee cap and "shooting" down my shin. I also noticed some pain flaring up in my left knee.

I made an effort to change my foot strike and noticed the pain receding. It's time to change somethings. First off the shoes - they're pretty old. Second? Focus on changing how my foot strikes the ground. No more heel-to-toe.

Tuesday, I was out running in some newer shoes. I'm not a fan of these shoes...which is why they've been shelved for emergencies only. The shoes are bulky and designed more for comfort than physical endeavors at speeds higher than a walking pace. Fortunately, the modifications worked and I completed about 4 miles without any show-stopping annoyances or pain.

I got home from trivia at the Biergarten Haus and was treated to a light bit of pain in the nail bed of my right big toe.

I got up this morning and the nail bed was inflamed. It looks like it could be infected. It hurts to walk and I'm now gimping around DC.

Using a knife and a nail cleaning implement, I investigated the inflamed area and wasn't able to figure out what happened. It's probably a sliver or a piece of broken nail that wedged itself into a nice little space I can't get to with my tools.

I've improvised a bandage by dowsing a piece of toilet paper in alcohol and binding that paper to my toe with athletic tape. I'm hoping it'll do the trick until I get home tonight. I'll probably pick up some peroxide and more alcohol, dump them into a bucket, and soak my foot.

My major concern is the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) Livestrong Philly ride this weekend. I'll be cycling 100 miles for cancer research awareness and I need that foot in top form (or semi-top form) before I rock the distance.

On another note, one my soldiers from my OIF tour is in town for training. I'll be chilling with him tonight at a local micro pub and we might catch the Expendables with my roomie.

Swim Training

Understandably, training has been really light this week. Last week was also light on account of my legs. Tomorrow the plan is to knock out a mile swim and a HIT training session.

I've been eating/drinking off my diet a lot lately. Monday, I'll be adjusting back to my plan.

Nerd Nite

I'll be meeting up with another friend for dinner, and Friday the plan is to pick up my road bike for the LAF ride and kick it with some friends at the DC Nerd Nite over at Rock-n-Roll Hotel.

The name 'Nerd Night' isn't selling me, but it's the start of Beer Week in DC and the theme will be the history of beer making in America. Sounds cool.

It should be a great way to wrap up the week. Saturday, it's off to Philly for an evening of pre-ride excitement!

Incredible Training Week, Gov't Mule, Bouldering

2010-08-03T12:18:00.001-07:00

Swim training went really well this week. I managed to move in the water in a manner that felt proper.

Yesterday, I knocked out a full 1600 meters - exactly 1 mile. This is the distance in the Nation's Tri. 1800 meters is up to bat next. 1800 should insure proper over training to handle the mile swim in the Nation's Triathlon.

My running pace is pretty solid. I'm not shooting for improvement in that department, just looking to sustain pace for the mileage.

Cycling has been a bit of a challenge lately. My right knee has been really bothering me after my rides. It's gotten to a point that I'm beginning to feel a slight bit of pain in/around it during and after training. Walking up the stairs, standing up after being seated for long periods of time both bring on pain.

I'll blame my Cannondale Synapse road bike or the toe clips for my cycling shoes. My Cervelo P1 never caused issues last year. I've been using the Synapse a lot lately so, I think the geometry and the gear ratio I ride/train on in stop/go areas is hurting me.

I've been good about loosing up the gear ratio and making more gentle starts. I've also started taking glucosamine supplements along with a daily vitamin and fish oil tablets. I hope in a couple of weeks to see a reduction in pain. On occasion, I have broken out Motrin/Ibuprofen, to reduce any inflammation or swelling that could be caused by a potential repetitive stress/strain injury.

Weights

I also started to include a weight-training program into my work out routine. After my 2nd pool work out for the week, I hit the weight room at UMD, conduct a High Intensity Training (HIT) session, and then about 30 minutes of treadmill running.

During my HIT session, I focus on knee extensions. When I started implementing this program about 2 weeks ago, the muscles above my knee cap (my lower quads?) were screaming out in pain. Those muscles are under developed and very tight. This could easily be contributing to the knee issue. Weight training should loosen them up and provide the proper conditioning to build up the muscle tissue. Improvements to the lower quad muscles should create improved support for the knee.

Semester is Ahead, Batter up!

The semester is on the horizon. Parallel Computing here I come. When I was an undergrad, I participated in the Clemson Research Experience for Undergrads program. At the time, I was working on Coven, a High Performance Computing (HPC) programming environment.

I developed a unit testing framework on a Beowulf Cluster. Since the recent growth of interest in GPGPU, it'll be interesting seeing how the field of HPC has changed.

It'll be a little tough dusting off my Beowulf roots for the course.

Bouldering

I'm looking into nabbing some shoes for bouldering. I've been doing it off/on again this year. Each session is an incredible experience. It's doing some crazy work on my forearms. My hands are getting a lot stronger. Hopefully, it's building some agility, but I am a lot more aware of my body size/weight and how to shift it and move it in other sports (swimming, running, cycling) to get the most out of my overall economy of motion.

Gov't Mule

Great show if I wasn't completely exhausted! I was running myself ragged this weekend. Was up late with friends Friday and Saturday nights. Still having to pull a full 8 hours at drill (5 am wake ups and cab rides) - the long and short was that the weekend was packed.

Thankfully, the show was a total improvement over the previous one. The stage was set in a field near a country club in Loudon, VA. Warren Haynes was in good form. They started off slowly and it picked up about mid way with some solid improvisational work on his part. A very sound drum/keyboard solo - a Maryland saxophonist showed up and played with them for a bit. It was a really good time.

My old Clemon buddy Eric is a big jam-band scenester and had pretty solid time. He wasn't 100% sold on the blues-like tunes that Gov't Mule dusts off, but he did appreciate the solo work and proficiency the band displayed.

The big waiting game

It's officially been 1 year since I resigned. I'm still waiting on the resignation. Usually my drills are basically spent completing online training classes or doing documentation checks. This is usually related to "big army" requirements that get pushed down to the my weekend warrior brethren. This month, we actually had a pretty solid training event. I was really impressed with my instructor's proficiency and he seems to have found himself a terrific niche doing some particularly technically challenging work. I'll need to contact him and figure out what type of outfit he's in, it could be an interesting career option if I decide to become a GS/DA civilian.

I had another "service reaffirming moment". On my way to the cab, a guy around my age was walking home (at 5 am is it still a walk of shame for a guy?). He walked right by me, looked at me, and said "thanks".

I was still waking up and probably mumbled something back, but, it was interesting all the same. The reactions I get from DC residents regarding military service still fascinate me. If it's not revulsion, or sympathy, it's appreciation. So it probably is with most jobs in this part of America.

Traveling Blues

2010-07-30T13:10:00.000-07:00

Blues Traveler

I headed down with an old Clemson buddy to Fredericksburg, VA for a Blues Traveler show. He had never made the commute down I95 on a Friday night and quickly discovered my depiction of the Friday night traffic was correct - it's an unholy patch of interstate.

After some 2-3 hours getting there, we showed up for the Blues Traveler set. The band played something like 90 minutes of music. It was still a good show, and when you toss in some IHOP goodness, it was worth the trip out of DC.

They did a couple of unexpected covers. Greatful Dead, Sublime, and Radiohead. Yeah, Blues Traveler covering Radiohead. Just when I think I've heard it all...something like that happens.

Flamenco Guitar

I picked up my guitar this week and will be spending one of my rest-and-recovery nights (from training) practicing.

I'm not very big on video games these days, and I'm still looking around for new hobbies. I loved the music of Flamenco when I was in Spain last summer. I'm not sure what preempted this decision, but, I woke up Wednesday thinking...Flamenco guitar...yeah let's do that.

Bouldering

I caught up with my sister and a couple of her friends Sunday at the rock gym in Alexandria. We decided to spend the morning bouldering.

Had a great time on the wall. I've been to this rock gym about 3 times this year and I really enjoy the experience. I'm not very good at it but, I'm considering the purchase of some shoes and a chalk bag.

It's a pretty mentally challenging hobby and there's the obvious physical component that attracts my attention. We'll see. Triathlon, scuba, hiking, bouldering...my outdoor hobby list is getting longer...

Freelance Consulting

Like most people in my field, I am occasionally called upon to assist in the endeavors of my friends. Call it professional advice, consulting, or feeding my narcissism.

More and more, there have been opportunities to receive financial compensation for the services I render, but, I'm a softy. Doing 1099 work and book keeping have no appeal for me.

I have no idea what the "going rate" would be for that type of work. Considering my field typically price gouges people...well...let's say I would rather keep my friends. I'd prefer to just keep it to beer, wine, and/or dinner.

Maybe I'm missing out on a sweet opportunity but, I've another angle that's keeps me up well past my bedtime. If that venture doesn't pan out, I'll fall back on a career as a professional triathlete.

Milblogging

I've been working hard to disengage myself from the mass hysteria that the media generates about, well, everything. A lot of it boils down to unsubstantiated feelings and competing view points...the missing piece is evidence, history, or hard facts.

It's becoming increasingly easier to spot out vested interests and competing interests in reporting sources. "Follow the money" they say.

This is giving birth to the "citizen reporter" - the blogging universe. Say what you will about it, people are turning more-and-more to that arena for information.

You do end up with a lot of people reading material from like-minded individuals. The power that choice offers us. Reading only like-minded-opinions from joe-six-pack seems like a breeding ground for all sorts of troubling results, but, it's almost the same way with mainstream media outlets...

I grew up listening to bands that encouraged a lot of, what some would call, independent thought. I took that stuff to heart.

Recently, I was informed that the blog from my 14+ month stint deployed has managed to find itself seated a solid 94 out of 100. It was a bit of a revelation that anyone, beyond the scope of my friends and family would find it interesting, much less place it into contention with the hundreds of other yarns my brothers and sisters in arms have contributed to public consumption.

I was bean-counter during that year. I only went on a couple of missions and only a few more "escort" missions. I sat through countless day-long meetings that felt unimportant and only seemed to fuel the seemingly endless appetites of the over-inflated egos my superiors displayed. This discovery drove my hand back to the blog and I started doing a review of the content. It's amazing what you can forget.

Fortunately, I'm neither ashamed or embarrassed by what I contributed to that journal. I think what was written speaks for itself. The intent was honesty, and to really inform my closest friends and the passers by that it was a time of many mixed feelings, experiences, and sensations.

A couple of people I know got the word and checked it out. I was given some praise for the journal. Many felt it was a window into a world they didn't know existed. I'll take that as a compliment.

In any event, it was a strange turn of events to find that the journal was getting any type of recognition. I feel a small bit of pride. It's good to hear that while I felt my tour of duty as a bean counter was wholly uninteresting, some people are finding insight from that experience. Maybe there is some value to this whole blogging sensation.

Climbing the Wall of Water

2010-07-29T08:49:00.000-07:00

As most my friends can attest, I've been frustrated with my swimming performance in both DC Triathlon and CROCfest. With the Nation's Tri on the horizon, I've about a month to improve. I'll be swimming around a mile in that event. I need to make some serious strides to complete the event in a reasonable time and still have something left for T2 (cycling) and T3 (running).

Suffice it to say, I've been focusing on my form in the water and increasing my training volume for that event.

Most of the online literature recommends, if you are short on time, focusing on technique and endurance. Speed is something for the off season. No complaints from me on this bit of advice.

I've set my hand to some youtube scrounging. After discovering an amazingly large catalog of Russian and Chinese videos on swimming, I ran across these English swimming gems:

Key bits to take away from the videos:

1) It should feel like you are "climbing a ladder". This sensation factors into the next point.

2) Arm extension should come from the hips. "Shooting from the hip" generates a rolling force on your body which makes it easier to breathe in open water and assists with arm extension.

3) I really like the idea of using the resistance bands to train arm motion/technique outside of the pool. Seems practical and easy to replicate at home. Perfect for a morning training session. (2nd video)

The 3rd video is a very technical and scientific approach to the sport. It breaks swimming into phases or steps.

I've always been a fan of breaking down a complex series of actions into smaller steps. I do this in code all the time. I'm partial to observing something. Breaking it into bits. Walking-and-talking through the series of bits and then speeding up the bits into a whole. It's a key method that I've used most of my life when learning physically based arts. My years of judo and military training attest to this preference. My favorite Sensei's were masters of this style of instruction.

In the Army, we call this, "breaking-it-down" or "by-the-numbers". Drill Sergeants use this method to teach everything (close-order drill, hand-to-hand combatives, rifle maintenance, radio-use, the list goes on).

During my swim training this week, I was shooting my arms out from my hips for the first time in ages. This generated a very positive sensation. It was very similar to the climbing metaphor. For the duration of my lap workout, I found breathing to be a lot less strenuous and I didn't have to force arm extension.

The climbing sensation reduced some of the anxiety I've experienced while swimming. Like most sports that don't come naturally, I find there's a mental component that makes doing something mildly uncomfortable, or unnatural, easier to manage. "Climbing a wall of water" seems like the right association I need to consider when swimming. Kicking also seems less of an issue using this association.

I tapped into my "scuba zen" a fair bit. This reduced a sensation of fighting the water and fighting for each breath. I've also been working on building a mental cadence for the entire process. 1-2-3-1, 1-2-3-1, 1-2-3-1, ...

A Slice of Summer in SoCal

2010-07-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

Got back from an incredible trip to San Diego. I managed to complete an aquathlon, my PADI scuba certification (open water diving), and learned how to surf.

Surfing

I've always wondered how it worked. Like most things, it's one thing to read about the mechanics of a physical hobby like surfing and another to experience the mechanics first hand. Feeling the water rush up against the board as the tide comes in was incredible. The water creates just the right amount of stability to pop on to the board and to stand on it. My cousin says I was "barrelled" - I think he was being a bit generous.

Aquathlon

I participated in CROCfest, a local adventure store was running an 800m swim + 5K run event to support a local children's hospital. I was able to break in my Xterra wetsuit for this event. I was surprised at how buoyant the suit made me in salt water, compared to the DC tri, which was a freshwater swim without the suit.

I'm still ridiculously slow in the water and I plan to focus my training regiment for distance and speed the next couple of months in the pool. It's a challenge I'm looking forward to tackling in preparation for the Nation's Triathlon.

PADI Scuba Certification

This was a heck of a good time. I completed the online course work for the cert and I managed to complete my required dives in 2 days. I went through the OEX shop in La Jolla for an individual training session. It was a very crawl-walk-run styled program.

Pool Training

Day one consisted of pool work, a 20 ft dive, and a 30 ft dive. In the pool, I managed to complete all but one task with little difficulty. The mask clearing section was difficult to master. Having to stop breathing through your nose is a bit challenging to learn. I caught myself breathing in water at the most inappropriate times.

The Shore Dive

We kitted up on the beach, walked about 20 feet into the surf, inflated our BCD's, donned our fins, and swam out about 50 ft from the beach to begin training.

The 20 ft dive wasn't too bad. My equipment worked well, we went down and I had an opportunity to watch bat rays and schools of sardines go about their daily business. the thermocline wasn't too bad either. At this point, my instructor snapped a photo for me (and I snagged one of him) for my family to check out, we surfaced, took a break and walked through the second dive.

At 30 ft we started running through the testable material. I had some issues with mask clearing (breathing strikes again) and had to surface on a couple of occasions to clear it. I passed the test but the seal on my mask kept breaking (breathing out of my nose) as we were swimming around the bottom of la jolla. My instructor could tell I was getting a bit tired and irritated. We surfaced, and headed back to shore.

I was completely drained that evening as the current had been working against us heading back on to the beach.

Reflection

Overnight, I spent sometime reflecting on the dives from that day and realized I had been viewing this entire experience as a challenge to be faced head on. For some it probably is, but, I've had my share of physical challenges and this really isn't the same type of experience. It's not really a contest, it's more like learning to walk.

I was sapping the fun out of it. I recalled my instructor saying, if you're not having fun doing this then something is wrong - he's right. I came out here, spent a good bit of money for training, and I was supposed to be having a life affirming experience! That wasn't quite settling well with me. After some thought, I concluded that I was putting a lot of stress into it, I was fighting the ocean.

Here's where I get a little zen about diving. You are immersing yourself into an environment that, quite frankly, isn't your own turf. If something goes wrong, the worst thing you can do is freak out. You have to relax and submit yourself to the ocean. This was a similar idea I carried with me through a number of challenges in life and it seemed to be a particularly powerful metaphor for scuba. Your becoming a part of the ocean by diving. You can't fight the water, because you're a part of it.

Shore Dive Deux

On day 2, I headed into the water with my new, enlightened, mentality. The process was incredibly more enjoyable and fast. We wrapped up my final qualification dives. We trained at 30 ft, and my final dive of the day took me to the La Jolla Cliff - 47 ft from the surface of the water.

The final exam consisted of more mask clearing, emergency surfacing techniques, underwater buddy assisted breathing, and some underwater navigation.

Navigation was really interesting. I've done landnav with the Army and it's a pretty intuitive process, underwater, I was a bit shocked at how easy the current can work with/against you. The aquaticnav is based on a couple of different techinques, the most interesting was to use PSI to track distance (versus a pace count).

When it was all said and done, I spent sometime chatting with my instructor, completed my dive log, traded contact info, and headed back to my family's place.

Inception, a movie about the nature of truth and perception

Great movie, can't encourage seeing it enough. The ending didn't surprise me much and, honestly, anyone trying to make sense of it - I think - missed the point of the movie.

It's not about the dream. It's about the reality you are willing to accept. Does it really matter if it's a dream or not? If you accept your reality as truth, then you will never have a nagging doubt about your experience because you've accepted it.

The main character made peace with his inner demon. The same is true of the heir of the dying business man. The exception is that instead of attaining truth through a lie, the inception, the main character finds his truth through a resolution.

The question the film poses is more about ideas. If you accept an idea as true and original, and you really believe it, does it really matter if you come to that conclusion via-vis a deception? What is originality anyway? Where do people get ideas? Does it really matter if it's all staged or fake if you believe it's true?

I found that concept very thought provoking. It reminded me of the Turing Test.

Family

My family out there is doing incredibly well. My cousins are on track, my uncle and his wife are doing really well, and my niece and nephews are growing up fast and are in great spirits. I'm looking forward to heading back out there next year.

Next goal for 2010/2011? My Kili climb!

Throwing in my hat for Livestrong Philly

2010-07-16T09:01:00.000-07:00

Team Tise

My coworker Dimitrios Donavos invited me to join him for Livestrong Philly. The idea really appealed to me and I've signed up for the century (100 mile) ride.

It was perfect timing b/c my triathlon training buddy has knee problems and won't be able to do the Luray Sprint this August.

Not sure what, if any, readership I do have but, contributions are well appreciated. All contributions are going to the Livestrong foundation.

The Team Tise donation page.

Goodbyes, Thank yous, and Training Tools

2010-07-12T06:23:00.000-07:00

Another mil weekend down, who knows how many more are left?

I had a long mil weekend. Was able to secure a car for the weekend at the enterprise rental office in crystal city - it was pretty inexpensive compared to the daily rental rate you get from zipcar. (~50 a day versus the ~80+ from zipcar) Even better, the place was open on Sunday since it's considered an airport rental office.

The mil weekends are pretty rough, since my resignation, I've tried really hard to stay positive about the process. When it's perfect training weather outside and it's been almost 12 months since I submitted my resignation...it's tough to continue to take the snail's pace of this process in stride.

A reminder for why I served

Right after I was released from mil weekend, I dropped the rental off at the enterprise and hit metro. I was in uniform, seated on a bench, with my nose deep in the book, Once an Eagle.

A mother, with her 3 sons, and a daughter in tow, came down to the end of the platform I was occupying. One of the boys walked up to me, wide-eyed, and said, "Thank you for your service."

I gave out a quick laugh and smile. Got a little teary-eyed and said, "Thanks buddy." He then plopped down next to me. There was some contention between his brothers for a seat between me and their mother. Too cute.

That type of thing used to happen all the time when I lived in Atlanta. Since I'm on my way out of the service, I'm going to miss little things like that - the way kids look up at you with wide-eye and awe.

It's a bit intense, and in spite of my cynicism, it reminds me of the responsibility the service always instilled in me about public trust and duty. AKA The Army Values. I guess an idealist still resides somewhere deep down inside.

As I was boarding the train, the family looked over at me and I told the boys, "Thanks again, bye!" They waved and the mom replied, "God bless you."

Aidos

The rental was to get my hind parts up to BWI to see my dad off on his next excursion over the berm. He should be almost to the AO, and it was really good to see him while he was in town.

Training report tool

To keep my mind off the entire affair, I've decided to hack up a quick report tool for my training. I'm a bit torn as to where I should host this thing - googleapps? or my slicehost server? I'd like to open it up for my triathlete friends to access so I'm leaning more toward googleapps.

It's a pretty simple system. Since the garmin takes care of my biometrics and connect.garmin makes that data web-accessible, I'd like to provide a simple reporting tool for how a particular fitness event feels.

This could be a race, a training ride, or whatever. A simple form I could pull up on my droid phone or webpage that can provide me with a simple way to plug in all the information about how the event went - maybe toss in automatic weather reporting (actually was/felt-like/etc).

It's coming along really well. I'm currently playing with user authentication and the data storage code. Google-app-engine might play a more significant role in this project than I expected.

Side project break through

I spent sometime coding the side-project with Surphaze last night. I made a pretty good chunk of progress. Panda3d NodePath objects reference loaded mesh (3d model) structures.

The file descriptions I'm developing can't really store that type of loaded data (it doesn't make sense), so I've had to segregate SceneObjects from the mesh data that represents them.

It's annoying to have to manage two repositories of *really* similar data but, that's the only way I can conceive to juggle this stuff. Fortunately, the unique identifier concept I came up with sometime ago seems to be paying off when it comes to managing these repos.

One more week

Just one more week until San Diego. I'll be coordinating with the SCUBA schools out in cali for my certification dives and I secured great tips for CROCfest registration.

More fitness events

Active.com sent me a list of upcoming fitness events in the VA/MD/DC area and I stumbled on 2-3 small events that would be pretty key. I'll have to check my packed schedule out and see if I can fit them in.

San Diego, CROCfest, the Garmin

2010-07-08T11:31:00.000-07:00

San Diego

In a few short weeks, I'll be on a plane making my way to San Diego for a summer holiday. Originally, the plan was to make tracks for Mt. Kilimanjaro but, some things changed about 6 months out and I decided to stay CONUS and make tracks for San Diego.

Family Reunion

My dad's been in town from his overseas excursions and that's been a welcomed change; the family has been together for the first time in almost a year and it's been nice. I've been making good use of Amtrak, and I have to admit the service is really nice. Particularly for the DC-Newport News/VA Beach route. He's heading back over this weekend and we're all trying to make the best of this time together.

Training

The past few weeks, I've been increasing my training regiment for the Nation's Triathlon and making some small changes to my diet plan. I've been increasing the amount of protein in my diet and I've noticed some pretty significant training impact. I've been feeling a little stronger, particularly running, and more resilient to fatigue.

Cycling San Diego

The original plan was to take my Cannondale out with me San Diego but, it looks like the air carriers want $200 for round-trip (using my cycling suitcase). Ground shippers wanted about $300. Go figure. This year I'm going for a SCUBA certification in open water diving (PADI/NAUI) and I looked around for a non-cycling based multi-sport event. Thanks to Active.com, I discovered CROCfest!

CROCfest

CROCfest is a 2 event race. More to the point, an aquathlon. It's an 8 week long series of races and it just so happens to overlap with my time out there. So, I'll be signing up for the race taking place the week I'm in town.

I'm looking forward to the race b/c it should be a nice test and check of my post-DCTri-swimming focus. Feels like it's a bit soon to be testing myself, but I could really use the experience.

The Garmin

The Garmin-Forerunner 305 came in today. I gave it a spin at lunch. It seems a little unwieldy online but, I really had no problems with it on the road.

I'm glad to finally have the ability to collect and check out some biometrics pertaining to my training regiment. Time, GPS routes, calories burned, elapsed distance, heart rate...all the things I need to really take control of my training regiment I now have access to. It feels great to have that last piece of equipment in play.

DC Improv

A coworker invited me out to a DC Improv graduation ceremony (for aspiring stand-up comedians). Had a blast. One of the comedians had this incredible bit about "The Game" and the seduction community. I highly recommend DC Improv. (it's only around $10 for a ticket)

J Dilla Benefit Show (Friday), the weekend

I'm going to check out the J Dilla benefit show at BlackCat Friday. It should be good Kim and the gang put out the word so, I'm pretty psyched about the chance to see a show with them. I don't think the crew has done that yet.

Uncle Sam hasn't released me from the service yet, so it looks like another weekend in uniform. I'll be bouncing from duty early to see my father off and I'll probably catch dinner with my mom and sister before heading back to the house. Rental car, ho!

Side project

It's been going pretty well lately, slow, but we're getting there. I found an issue with the model loader pertaining to a version change in Panda3d. I almost have our level file format problems solved, which is another big step in the right direction. Soon I'll be able to load scenes from the level editor into my AI demo system.

Surphaze been working on the triangle mesh stuff in our chosen physics engine. He's about ready to start testing some of the physics effects we had originally implemented with our previous physics engine. Exciting times!

DC Tri Wrap up

2010-06-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

Race Prep, Swim practice

Saturday, I made it down to the DC Tri swim practice. It was pretty obvious where to go and what to do. I racked my bike at the T1 (transition) area. There was about a 3 ft gap between positions on the rack for each bike. This space would house your bike, running shoes, and cycling gear on race day. Your area was designated by a racing number. The entire transition area was set up already, they were playing music, portajohns were set up...it was quite a sight. There were a couple of entry-control-points which abated my concern about the safety of my Cervelo P1 being left overnight in a well-lit area in DC.

After getting my bike racked, I headed over to the Potomac. It was a bit congested on the shore line. There was a buoy posted at sprint and olympic distance turn points. The race organizers had set up a temporary dock for the event and you jumped into the water, swam out to a buoy, came back around to the other side of the dock, and climbed up a ramp back onto the dock.

The practice was pretty well organized. There was also a shower tent posted on the road, so, coming out of the water, you could clean off and jog over to T1 for the bike transition.

Race Day

My mom came up Saturday night and met me in Dupont around 0430 (that's AM). We made tracks for Hains Point. The car wasn't too difficult to park and I made my way over to T1 in order to prep my transition area. That took less than 5 minutes to knock out. I picked up my racing chip, got my racing number inked onto my arm and then sat around my age-group corral with my mom, waiting for the race to commence.

They delayed the start of the first wave till 0600, which meant a 3 minute delay between waves. Originally, we were "promised" 5 minutes, but that just meant we were treading water for less time.

Fenty made a quick announcement and it was surprisingly punchy. He told the racers, the rule for the day was, "not to pass the mayor". It felt great knowing a city official, of that stature, was participating with us. My mom took this as her cue to make tracks for the shore line.

Very shortly after his speech, the waves started hitting the water. My wave jumped into the potomac and it kicked off!

The Swim

The course was immaculately marked. Every 100 meters had an orange buoy with it's 100m distance printed on it. The sprint distance turn was designated with a yellow buoy with "Sprint Turn" printed on it.

The swim itself was pretty complicated. My previous experience with the Osprey Sprint Tri was relived here. About ~50 guys in my age are clawing at each other. Each trying to get a break for space to cross stroke our way to the 800 meter mark. I found myself gaining ground, only to lose it after repetitively hitting some guy's leg in front of me. I had a couple people drift right into me causing me to lose my rhythm. At one point, I freaked out and had to switch to side stroke and breast stroke in order to keep some type of forward momentum.

After the first turn, the mass had lightened up and I was able to get a reasonable rhythm going. There was a guy I passed yelling for kayak support, I called out briefly and continued going. I still hit a couple people and had a couple almost swim over me, but at the end I managed to get out of the water and started my 50m jog to my bike.

T1

At transition 1, my bike was located on row 5. I was positioned really closely to the exit for the cycling event. I was a bit slow getting there, but I slapped on my cycling shoes and helmet, slipped on my watch and sunglasses and a motivational wrist band (it was given to me after my Army tour in Iraq, it says "For the Heroes") and made my way to the cycling start point.

Cycling

It was a little chaotic over at the start point for the cycling event. In no time, I was riding in front of the Washington monument and making my way up toward the White House.

After clearing the first 180 turn, I heard a gun shot, and I think a racing official had fired a starting pistol (loaded with probably a blank). I have no idea what that was about, but I did managed to pick up my pace.

We ended up on a parkway going toward Key Bridge in Georgetown, made a turn, and then got onto Rock Creek Parkway. The road was a bit rough and going under the overpasses into Georgetown and Dupont were a little disconcerting (it's hard to see pot-holes in a pitch-black tunnel).

Coming out of that portion of the race, the route took us across the Taft Bridge, and we cut another 180 turn and came back to Hains Point for T2.

T2
Pretty simple, dismount the bike without causing an issue, jog with the bike to your transition area (mighty row 5), rack the bike, drop your cycling gear, throw on shoes and get running!

The Run

The run was a bit rough for the first mile or so, my legs loosened up around the Washington monument and my stride/pace were on target for 8 minute miles. Water points were set up in relatively logical places. My only gripe would be the water point set half way up Capital Hill...I'd rather that bad boy be positioned at the top of the hill for motivational reasons. Coming down the hill, a race volunteer reminded us we were 2 turns left to the finish point, and in under a minute I was pushing myself across the finish line.

Race Results, Final Notes

Overall, it was a really well organized race. It felt very professional and while I can't say I was particularly content with my performance (the swim time still burns), I gained a lot of useful information about where I need to focus my training efforts. Only major flaw, the racing packet mentioned a shuttle would be set up to help get spectators to the finish line. I asked a race volunteer for the skinny on the shuttle and was told it'd be offered after the race began. That shuttle service wasn't provided as documented. My mom had to walk a considerable distance (hains point to capital hill is quite a solid distance) to try and catch me. She finally decided to stay at the transition area by the waterfront for me...missing my finish of the race.

According to the site with my race results, here's the break-down on my performance:

BIB#: 345
Location: Washington D.C. DC
Gender: M
Age Group: M 25-29
Race: SPRINT AGE GROUP

Overall Time (h/m/s): 01:37:42

Swim 0.8K (m/s): 20:29
T1 (m/s): 2:25
Bike 20K (m/s): 36:52
T2 (m/s): 1:50
Run 6.7K (m/s): 36:09

Age Group Rank: 58/127 (top 45.7%)
Gender Rank: 233/613 (top 38%)
Overall Rank: 285/1136 (top 25.1%)

DC Triathlon Week

2010-06-17T08:42:00.001-07:00

DC Triathlon Prep-up

I've been taking a slow couple of days getting prepared for the big weekend. To prepare, I took Friday through Monday off from training...partially b/c I've needed to get some laundry done and get my Cervelo enough turn around time at Conte's (my cycling shop) for a tune up. The other side of that, was to give my body enough of a break to recover prior from the training I've been pushing it through. So, it's light training drills this week as a ramp up to the main event.

So far, I've taken an afternoon to do very light swimming. I cut my distance in the pool to half and toned down my level of effort. Training focus was on form and efficiency of motion in the water.

I picked up the Cervelo last night and did a light 15 minute spin session on the trainer. It felt really good. I fiddled with the gear selector levers a bit and found the bike operating at it's smoothest since last fall. I got it up to 22 mph, on the trainer, without any trouble and I'm completely confident in my cycling abilities.

I do need to conduct better preventive maintenance on the bike. The paint is starting to wear off in some places...and I did have a ton of "gunk" trapped on the frame and around parts of the bike. The guys at Conte's gave me a nice, quick, rundown on how I can better maintain cleanliness on the group-set.

I'll probably do a light 2 mile jog this afternoon, and will spend sometime doing wet-suit transition drills. Transitions are timed and getting into a nice routine saves valuable seconds, if not, minutes. I did this prior to the Osprey Sprint, last fall, and I felt a lot more confident going into the race.

My goal is to make a significant improvement over my performance in the Ospery Sprint. I'm not quite as light as I was back then, but I've been doing some strength training and the usual mix of diet modification. I'm going to completely commit to the paleo diet after this event.

Race Day is coming *FAST*

The DC Triathlon is a couple days and hours away (http://www.dctri.com/) and I'm completely stoked about the opportunity.

Bib # 345. 'nuff said.

Vacations

I'll be spending sometime with my family next week - my dad's back in town and my mom and I are really excited about seeing him...it's been a loooong time.

I also have a trip to San Diego on the Agenda but, we'll see. I'm shooting for mid-month and I plan to take the Cannondale out with me for some chillin' rides along the coast line.

SoftwareDev

I've been spending a lot more time around the keyboard in the evenings, at home, working on the big project. This thing has consumed about 3 years of my life and the life of my good friend surphaze. It's been hot-cold, on-again-off-again.

I'm excited to see a invigoration of effort on both of our parts. So much more progress is being made on the project - we both want to see it *done*. I made some really big strides on the resource management code last night and I'll be integrating it back into our editor and demo this evening.

My roomate M.Haase, has started doing some musical compositions in preparation for the big project. He passed me a demo a couple weeks back of his idea for the title track. I really liked it. We were watching Crazy Heart and I told him a bit about the project. He stayed up really late that night, came up with an awesome song and chucked it my way for review. Wow. It was just what I've had in mind. I love it when a plan comes together!

Amateur Art

I picked up a Wacom Bamboo tablet for my birthday (thanks mom+dad). I love this thing. I've been reading digital painting tutorials on the net and I've invested a good bit of time learning how to do that sort of thing. I imagine it'll come in handy when we have to start doing art for the big project.

I'll be picking up the guitar this month. Time to reinvest in that candidate hobby. I ran across some nice web-video tutorials a couple weeks ago that reinvigorated my desire to learn. I'll post recommendations up here from time-to-time.

Cheers.

DC Triathlon training

2010-06-02T10:45:00.000-07:00

The Bees Knees

I've been having some mild issues with my right knee since starting to intensify my training for the DC Triathlon. I'm almost 100% sure it's due to the adjustments on my Cannondale Synapse.

I did my first long ride last Monday ~45-50 miles and the farthest 2 fingers in my left hand have been completely numb for about 2 days. I think it had something to do with the saddle positioning. I could feel my body sliding down a bit while I was at the 15 mile marker.

My hydration practices have been incredibly difficult to improve. It's been unusually humid this year and I'm still having serious dizzy spells after extended amounts of physical exertion. I'm increasing my hydration regiment at work to accommodate the weather.

New Tri kit is in!

I've purchased a couple items in time to prep for the DC Tri. I nabbed an aero-bottle system and bracket for my tri-bars and a race belt. I'm pretty psyched for my first tri of the year, even if it's just a sprint.

Awesome weekend

Had an incredible weekend. Got a serious bit of training completed (cycling/running) and I had a wonderful time at a party Saturday and Monday nights, followed by an excellent evening out with friends on Sunday - met some really interesting people, had a some intellectually stimulating conversation - you know good stuff.

DC: Triathlon, artwork, haitian corpus

2010-05-24T12:00:00.001-07:00

DC Triathlon

Last week I signed up for the DC Triathlon! I'm pretty stoked about the event. I was originally planning to take on the olympic distance but, final exams and an over-extended period of R&R from training changed the plan. I'll be competing in the sprint distance, which should be good enough for me to gauge my level of fitness and adjust my training regiment for the rest of the summer going into the fall.

Artwork

Lately, I've been toying around with digital art software. LMMS is pretty sweet, it's a music mixing tool that comes with a fairly large selection of sound samples and instrument sound collections you can modify. It's pretty easy to figure out how to use the software after looking at the community samples.

I've also been playing around my bamboo-wacom tablet. It's not bad, I've been really impressed with how the GIMP integrates with the tablet and how much easier it is do work with art software given a better input device (than the mouse).

I've been spending a lot of time searching for photos of scenic vistas and exotic critters that I might try to interpret with a digital paint brush.

I'm looking into publishing the fruits of my labors on the blog. I've been developing some ideas about using entropy with art as a data set.

Haitian Corpus

The corpus I built for Crisisterp needs attention. I plan to use up a couple nights this week packaging it for release and distribution. I'll probably wait until next week before I start to tame the copyright free Bibles I wanted to include in the corpus - they're a bit of a mess. Somewhere around 40K sentences are in the Haitian bible that don't align to the English bible. I have a plan to attack this problem but it's going to require more time than I currently have available.

It's 2010 and ready to write.

2010-05-17T22:26:00.000-07:00

It's been quite sometime since I've tapped out some of my thoughts onto the web. I'm a bit cautious to get back into the groove of it. I've had an incredibly interesting 3 years since my last blog post. I'll have to recount some of those exploits for another time but, I'll be posting here a lot more regularly. I feel my life is back in balance, I've an excellent routine I've created for myself since my return from overseas, and I feel like I'm in a positive forward moving state. I'm ready, happy, and am on a roll.

First Job

My first job in DC was alright, I'm not going to name-names but I was dissatisfied with management, the politics of the job, and mostly I was disappointed in the lack of challenge in the work. I wasn't doing what I was told I was going to be hired to do. I love the people I met at this job and continued to keep in touch with them. I lived in Alexandria during this period, it was a dark time but, I've managed.

Job 2

I still have no idea why these guys hired me. I spent about 10 months on the job and implemented the most trival crap for these guys. It was as if my boss was intentionally trying to bore me. I improved a couple of business processes, implemented some AI for them, and did a couple of other things, but at the end of the day, I seriously think I was hired to be a pretty-veteran-face they could introduce to potential customers to bend their arms into giving us contracts. I felt dirty in this job. It was completely unsatisfying and I'm glad to have moved on to Job 3. I kept in touch with 2 people from this job. One continues to work with that crowd, his story of a climbing adventure in Africa has inspired me to make a similar trip before I turn 30. The other has become a fast friend, an artist, and someone that I keep in regular contact with - has an incredible talent with cars. I lived near crystal city during this time, it was better than the last place, but it had it's own rough edges. The quality of my life improved dramatically while living in that apartment.

Job 3

Job 3 has suited me well, I'm continuing to work at this place. I'm taking classes for my master's degree, the climate is what you'd call "academia" and the support I get from the researchers excites my imagination. The work we do here makes a difference, our customers love what we do and we continue to get praise for our efforts. I've made an ridiculous number of friends at this job and those friends continue to bless my life. Working here and pursuing my graduate degree are giving me the drive I needed in my life. I moved into DC and survived a driver's side car wreck. Considering some of the potential life ending experiences I've had, I'm grateful to be alive and living with roommates for the first time in 7 years.

First Year Back

I did a lot of things during this time period. I fought the demons of isolation with the help of some good friends and avoided succumbing to what was becoming an escape into a bottle. I'm not going to say I was becoming an alcoholic but, I was drinking more than I should have and I think a lot of it had to deal with the continued isolation I felt after moving from Atlanta. I thought having a stable, static, job that kept me from travel would ease my angst at the total failure I experienced meeting people in Atlanta and building a life for myself...well time would tell but I got over that and met a lot of great people.

Second Year Back

Completely unhappy with my job I started looking for a new one. This was a dark period for me as I was starting to learn that life is about finding happiness. I've decided work probably isn't where I'll derive joy - I need to look some place else. I decided to start my quest for self-fulfillment by exploring some of the things that made me happy as a child. I started taking a judo class.

I started considering life after the army as I was spending a lot of time not near work or my hobby b/c of the army and I was getting annoyed with the idea of a return tour overseas in less than a year, particularly since I felt my life made zero progress compared to Atlanta (no grad school, no way to do it, etc).

Third Year Back

I dated quite a bit during this period of time. A couple long and short relationships that have now defined my current mood toward romance - no one knows what they want until they see it, so why rush anything? I dropped judo b/c of the large number of MMA types showing up (it's a martial *art* people!) and I did PUG soccer in it's place. After a couple months, PUG soccer wasn't doing it for me, so I decided to commit to triathlon and started running and cycling.

I started looking for a house to purchase in the district. It's been a tough search, and after the car wreck, I opted to stay put in a rental situation. Triathlon has picked up a little less here than previously but, I'm getting adjusted still to life without wheels.

I went to Spain that year, had an incredible time. Met a ton of people from all over the world. Coming home I decided to adopt the "backpacking spirit" and I met a lot of people trying to "backpack DC." I have attained the social life I always wanted and I take great joy and contentment from the friendships I've been building.

I had some good friends guided me through a topsy-turvy series of relationships and I started to consider taking a break from dating. I also made Captain in the army reserve and started the resignation of my commission as a military officer in the army reserve after almost getting called up for a tour of duty overseas 3 times.

Enough with the catch-up, year 4 starts now!

So it's late and I should be racked out. I jotted a lot up here I'll have to go back and edit later, but for now, it feels good to have all that out of my system. Year 4 catch up is coming. It's been a bit crazy but, I'll even it out. More to come.

Active Holiday

2007-10-08T20:23:00.000-07:00

One short hike deserves another
Saturday I ended up hiking out along the Bull Run Conservatory. It was a fantastic experience. I made it to the top of this mountain out there. I climbed out on a massive rock formation and got to stare out over a valley of trees and into the distant Shenandoah mountain range.

I attempted to complete the trail but I started to lose confidence in my trail as the number of cobwebs increased, the leaves looked less abused along the trail from repeated traffic, and the number of tree obstacles blocking my line of travel were becoming more complicated to negotiate.

I also felt as if the trail was moving out in a direction that was wider than I could recall the map indicating on line. After following the trail for about 15 minutes I called it quits and quickly backtracked to my starting point.

3 years of mountaineering at Clemson in ROTC paid off I think as I was unable to find my compass and get a print out of the map (with terrain features) prior to my trip.

Trail of source

Later that day, I started working on my project with my partner in crime. I managed to get the physics code integrated after realizing some errors I was having were related to a discovery I had made earlier in the development cycle.

I also managed to correct some camera issues that had been plaguing my work (ie: gravity is -9.81, not 9.81...) I finished implementing PyODE's 3rd Tutorial source using Panda3d objects. I have some questions to post on the PyODE listserv, but beyond that...progress is being made.

10 miles for Fun
On Sunday my sister ran the Army 10 miler. She beat me out in registering for the big Army 10 miler Sunday. So, I got to "lame" it out (as she would put it) at the finish line cheering her effort on - it was a pretty good day for the run. From what I heard, the weather was just about right.

the Melvins
I managed to see their show Sunday night at the Black Cat. It's great venue and I had a great time! Probably one of the better acts I've seen this summer when it comes down to the hard rock/metal world.

The opening act was a 14 "track" short animated film by what someone told me was a graffiti artist.

The opening band was excellent. Had a nice groove about their sound. Toward the end of their set, don't quote me, but I think it was Dale Crover who hopped onto stage and started playing guitar along with them.

After the set ended, King Buzzo hopped on stage and each band member held their own waltz into position and the set started up. The end was a abrupt, to say the least, as each band member would stop playing one-by-one and exit the stage with the newer drummer closing out the show with a drum solo.

Next week
Well I've friends coming into town, I've got a concert Sunday night (Bad Religion), and the week after I've got Umphree's McGee with an old Clemson buddy. And the start of my epic return to the judo dojo.

Herculian efforts

2007-10-06T05:48:00.000-07:00

Wiimotes
I've recently purchased a Wii and I've really enjoyed the end-user experience. It's awesome. Quite possibly one of the most innovative ideas to come out of Nintendo in years. To see this platform bring smiles to my parents, grandfather, and uncle in one fell swoop was definitely worth the proverbial "cash-money".

I've become interested in integrating this experience on my PC and I've managed to get my PC to link to the Wiimote by-way of a 30 dollar USB bluetooth antenna. I'm in the process of building an IR emitter so the Wiimotes lateral and vertical data can be captured and processed by my PC.

Unfortunately, most of the Wiimote libraries out there are lame, feature incomplete, and just not really all that easy to work with. I'm working to change that. I've found a library called "WiiYourself!" (the most feature complete one out there) and I'm in the process of re-working this source code so it can be a little more malleable. Oh and so that it can support Python...and Panda3d.

Currently, and I'll try to be polite here, it's a hideous beast of spaghetti code that makes me shudder to think that a human mind was capable of such convoluted expressions of "cpp syntax". To say it's a work in progress is to say...much.

Blender

The "Angry One" (a former roommate of mine at my much bemoaned Clemson) was working on a plugin project for this application some 3 years ago. Well, we've been pushing this beast up development hell hill for a couple years now. We've applied different improvements to the application and when it dawned on us that we need to port the beast from it's Python parentage to a more speedy and seedy C++ implementation. We were discouraged by this effort and managed to complete the project about a month ago. Unfortunately, the output data is "wiggidy-wack" to say the least.

We're tweaking this beast hopefully we can have some solid results prior to Christmas but, there I go again making promises and falling back on wishful thinking.

Panda3d

I've inspired the "Angry One" to assist me in an effort to use "Panda3d" to implement a very simple video game. Why?

For the sake of back story...I wanted to avoid video games like the plague prior to and during college. And guess what I discovered? It's in my blood. It's genetic. I've seen my dad. He's a gamer. Ergo, I'm a gamer. Ipso facto. I've slowly managed to pick up the habit again. Spending the past couple of years in the desert has also managed to only strengthen my resolve to game. I can't help it.

So we've started this effort. It may end up commercial and it may not. We're not sure. We need something to look at and mess with prior to making that decision but, we're both excited at the prospect and I'm adamantly and inconsistently burning up hours that would otherwise be wasted preparing for the GRE or reading...books... working on this endeavor. I almost have the physics simulator working with the visualization component. Almost.

Concerts, Shows, Big Events.

2007-10-06T05:23:00.001-07:00

Having just posted about concerts below I'll go ahead and spat out a couple of mental mementos regarding some concerts I've bothered to go and take part in observing.

Blues Travler

Quite a surprise to be honest. I've had friends make no mention of how unbelievably talented these guys are. It was like listening to free-form jazz for 3 hours. They played a couple of their staple hits to warm up the audience and after that it turned into a mad house of improvisation. Each band member looking at the other toss around the solo/lead buc. The organ player seemed to be the maestro queuing to each player, "ok buddy it's your turn to take this song by the horns". Probably the best show I've seen in a couple years and for 15 bucks! The venue was Ashburn, VA - "Loudoun Summer Music Fest". A bit of a trek but well worth it.

Dream Theatre

While not a fan, previous co-workers invited me to join them as they had a spare ticket. I got to admit, I tried. I tried a lot and I just wasn't sold on these guys. Individually they are all very talented (though the vocal department could use a little work) I wasn't sold. I had hit my double-bass quota for the evening just as the show started and I dunno. It would probably have helped me if a) I knew the songs and b) I liked the band. I caveat this by saying I'm not a hard core Blues Traveler fan but when you can go to a show like the one I saw previously and be completely held in a type of awe for 3 hours and then go to a show like this under similar circumstances and not have that happen...it's kinda hard to apply a tasteful thumbs up to the efforts of the band in question. Yes, I reckon' this show just wasn't for me.

The video drop behind them of each band member fighting off a monster hearkened to the Metalocalypse episode "Skwisklok". It was hysterical; I about lost it laughing during the show but I had to temper my inner beast of humor to accommodate the hard core fans I was viewing this display of dorkishness with.

They Might Be Giants

Another excellent show. I've wanted to see these guys for years and I've managed to finally pull it off. I did this with my sister as a birthday present as a) she knows very little about music beyond top 40 and b) to introduce her to what I recall was a child hood favorite from a cartoon series we used to watch.

I had a blast we were at the Rams Head and I managed to get a second level perspective on the show. After a few beers the crowd warmed up and it was rolling. Though I have to admit the 1 hour transition time between the opening band and TMBG was a bit of a cooler for the audience. That was the tough part. We were primed and ready to go where TMBG wanted us to go but, there was this freakishly long dead space time between sets that kinda killed the buzz. In spite of that the boys from boston rallied the crowd and we returned to our former state of fervor in short order.

Sky diving

I was invited to jump out of a plane in order to experience 2 minutes of free fall recently. Well I did it and it was pretty awesome. We went to a small airport just outside of Maryland into Pennsylvania and while waiting for ever for our chalk to take off I had a blast and everyone else in the party had a great time taking the leap.

Horatio Sans

Quite a disappointment. I had expected more from this guy than sophomoric sex humor and to be quite frank the show consisted of him with 5 of his buddies hanging out on the stage trying really hard to be funny. They succeeded a couple of times but for the most part it was very flat-faced humor. There was some heckling but overall not really what I'd call a culminating point of the evening. Heck the beer wasn't even enough to push these guys into champions of comedy.

Henry Rollins

Another ball hit out of the park. I only recently stumbled on his TV show via-vis a coworker. He's a pretty amazing guy. It was a spoken word show so picture one of your best friends getting on a stage and talking with you about their life-experiences for 3 hours...ok that sounds borish...but imagine if your friend was a godfather of american punk music and oh by the way had visited many of the samethat you have. He provided an insight to global affairs that was impressive, told some stories about his trip to FOX News, talked about singing a benefit show with his favorite punk band "The Ruts"...all in all, it was fantastic. If only I had spent more time hanging out at the Birchmere *after* the show ended I could have swung some chat time with the guy.

Lies and my own Tomfoolery

2007-10-06T05:14:00.000-07:00

It has been a breach of trust that has brought me back here. Actually I'm here to begin posting again. It's been a challenge trying to find things to write about in light of my personal experiences last year.

Being home has only emphasized how mundane and gray things can be when you've moved around at a high frequency over the past couple of years to new cities and towns with next to no obvious opportunities to find friends and re-integrate yourself into some type of society.

Alas, here I am writing again. And there goes my renewed interest in pursuing a graduate degree, if not but part-time.

A Brief History of My Time

In short I started up a job in this area and after a couple months of working I just wasn't happy. I loved the coworkers but the work itself ... web-monkey stuff ... just really didn't appeal to my sensibilities. That and the old Fight Club adage of "this is it?" slamming alongside an even more painful reality that "this is what I felt like I was missing in Iraq?".

So I've made efforts to spice things up. Working out with a high level of frequency, making an effort to shed those annoying couple of pounds that have plagued my belly for years!!! I've met resistance at each step but, with some moderate exercise and going through severe "behavior modification" I've managed to slave off a couple of the pounds.

I decided to return to the concert scene and with that I've also decided to write in this journal of those experiences and some of my experiences with my hobbies. This seems like a great reflection point for me and it'll serve as proof of my mid-life endeavors to expand my social network beyond the scope and realm of the work-place.

Turn a Page, The Story, The Same

2007-02-27T17:14:00.000-08:00

Home From Iraq

I promptly took the ride up to my parent's place after our welcome home ceremony. They pulled out all the stops. We waited a whole 2 hours for the generals to show up. It was unreal. Such a long road for the soldiers around me.

All the danger, all the screw ups, the successes, the pain, the joy, the excitement. It all was coming to the culmination of this moment. We would go inside, they would cheer, we would put on a show and leave - veterans and citizen soldiers.

It's been a couple months since returning from my overseas tour. I've decided to continue writing about my somewhat less exciting exploits in the states.

After coming home, I found out my job in Atlanta was no more. The contract was up and since I was a contracted employee, the company would not be obligated to find me work.

So, I started hunting. I managed to find a job in the DC area writing software. Something I've wanted to do for some time now. Return to my craft. Get paid to do what I spent 4 years in college learning.

It's been interesting and over the next couple days, I'll recount some stories about the move, my first couple weeks here and the big frost I managed to survive.

The End and a Begining

It would appear that my regular travel overseas as come to an end.

I have mixed feelings about the end of that part of my life. I'll miss the excitement, the danger but, so far, while the chapter has changed. The story, my life, is still the same that I've scripted out in the Signaleer journal.