thursday already?

Not sure I'm happy or ticked that the week is going by so quick. To business.

115 days until the Pittsburgh Marathon. I hope to hit the Half Marathon. I have ~16 weeks to get myself in good enough shape for this event. We'll see how it goes. Getting back in the exercise groove is hard, but working on getting it going.

Trying to get an iPhone Developer's Kit. Still working thru the activation process. Not going very badly, but not exactly a smooth process either. I might be late for this goldrush, but it is an interesting space and doing mobile application development is something I've been interested in for a while. I've built WAP based sites before but mobile device programming would be a good thing to play with. Learning Objective-C and reminding myself how to do stuff in C is also a good challenge. Slow progress, the past few days, an the opening of the Situational App contest may delay making many more changes, but we'll see. Thinking about strategy for developing new apps. My plan is to start with a few free applications, and depending on adoption and feature requests, I may look at adding a paid version.

As I mentioned the Situational Application contest is back on so trying to get a sMash application out there. Also looking at moving an old PHP application to Zero, updating it to use ZRM instead of PHPDB. There was some AJAX items I wanted to add, and this would be a good way to handle that. I've got sMash running on my OSX box, going to reinstall it to my linux system.

Getting my feet wet with Portlet Factory, trying to update my Portal development skills. To date I've been heavy with portlet programming using the IBM Legacy Portlet API, JSR-168 and starting JSR-286, but as the tooling changes so to shall I.

a touch at a time...

Built my first iPhone Application tonight. Only targeted the simulator, and it was an out of the box example. But I got it to work. Going to try and go back and fix my botched application next. It is essentially a very raw hello world, but it is a start. Getting the hang of Xcode and the tools associated with it.

Also made it out for my first run in a few months. Only hit up a mile, and I was hurting at the mile mark. Did about a 10 minute mile, but I have a lot of those to put in before I can get to the half marathon. Did find an appropriate amount of clothing so that felt good. Also tried to get some pushups in. That went ok-- I'm following the hundredpushups.com program. My baseline was 27, I have the option of starting at Week 3, but I think given my general conditioning from the last few months, I may roll back to Week 1 and build slowly.

Project Spotting...

Projects I am currently working on:

- Project A at work. Major releases due this year. Not much posting about that here. I may find other places to play with that.

- Fitness -- I plan to run the Pittsburgh Half Marathon in May. I have 18 weeks to get ready. I plan to mix up running with biking to build cardio conditioning. I want to try and get my Great Race speed to a sub 8 minute mile. We'll see how it goes. I have some consecutive pullup (25) and pushup (100) goals that I want to reach as well for general fitness

- Coding -- Lots of sub projects here: iphone and android development, WebSphere sMash, some skill retooling and growth as I look towards the future. Building some skill with Python and Javascript won't hurt either. Going to do some plugin improvements for Quoteurltext.

- Writing -- A few articles I would like to write and I want to get started on writing a book. I think I have it in me, just need to focus and push it forward. Blogging and journaling will also be good to bring forward.

The big emphasis is getting things done this year. Work fast and get some completion marks.

Greenfield Glide & other health.

Greenfield Glide went out this morning. Did an ok performance. Really happy with my first mile, ok with the second and disappointed with the third. Did my first mile in 8 minutes 4 seconds, second mile was clocked at 17:48 (9:30) and completed at around 30:30. So average time per mile is probably around 9:45. A little slower than I wanted but I pushed things a little too fast at the beginning. Lesson learned and something I can apply to the Father's Day 5k in 2 weeks. While I was a little disappointed with the 3rd mile, I do I can learn to push myself a bit farther to try and get that 8 minutes for longer. It would be nice to finish out the Great Race with an 8 minute mile. It is good to have goals to train for. The biggest setback was getting a stick after about a mile and a half from breathing hard. It made the last hill a little too tough, so I ended up slowing down to walk a bit. I'll need to start running my inital mile faster to try and get past that.

I'm also looking at building up my strength training again. June is a new month and I'm resolving myself to hit the workouts a bit harder this month. I've found a plan that looks interesting to me. I will follow the plan for the next 6 weeks, then find another plan and continue. If I can setup a new plan every 6 weeks I think I can make some good improvements.

Making a goal to eat better. I'm fairly horrible at eating on track, with more than a few regressions in the past few months. June is the 6th month of the year, and I've been slacking since Thanksgiving. I can do better and I will. Heavy on the fruits and veggies, more protein, and less processed carbs. Drink more water! These goals are not hard to meet, and I enjoy eating well, they just take a little more effort. Fruits I like are now coming in season so time to enjoy!

Broke from Vegas!

I had a nice set of habits that were apparently not perfect habits yet that disappeared when I was in Vegas and have yet to reassert themselves nicely. The ones I miss the most: Good eating habits, exercise habit and blogging. I'm SLOWLY getting back on the eating track.

I'm doing really baddly on the exercise track, but I think that one has been down for awhile. I think I'll go and do the Bodyweight 500 program again. I've also busted out my weights again, so I can start lifting on a regular basis. I'm running at least once a week, but I want to try and get more intervals in. Maybe I can mix it up with running and biking. I want to try biking to work one of these days. Doing a race tomorrow, the Greenfield Glide 5k. I ran it last year in 35:17.7 at an average pace of 11:23/M. I've inproved a good deal since then. I think I can do a 10 minute mile easy, so I'm shooting for a 9:30/M in this race. I really need to tone up the exercise and resume the good eating habits. I want to drop another 15 lbs this year. I think I can do it, but I need to start putting some effort back into it again.

As to the blogging, I suppose I could excuse myself and say I've been writing in other places, but to be honest I've just been forgetting. I need to start making my blogging habit a priority again. Posting earlier in the day instead of leaving it for last would help.
That said, I think I'm starting to find my writing groove again. I need to keep working it. I have a few articles I've got planned, I just need to execute now.