Monday, January 5, 2009

Yesterday | Posted to: Ava's Art

Ava's rendition of Wow! Wow! Wubzy covered in mud.

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Sunday, January 4, 2009

2 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

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WBL Hard Labor 85 Miler

3 Days Ago | Posted to: Triathlon

Out to Athens again for the WBL ride. Picked Dana and Marc up at their respective hizzies. After some Panera bagel action we headed up to the ride start. Drizzly, damp and cool. Crowe declared it epic as we got hit with a cold rain at 40 miles, just minutes before the store stop. Shivvering into the next few downhill miles was miserable but eventually we got things steaming again. It was ladies day so the ladies got to sprint it out for a prize purse. Dana took a close second, playing solid strategy. After that it was a nice ride back into Athens. This was my first group ride on the road bike. Braking is the strangest thing... it's more like pushing down than squeezing. On fast/tight downhills I stayed on the hoods but felt sketchier than I do on the tri bike. May opt for some more in the drops but I hadn't tested them out of the group. Also found myself doing a lot of shifting... just because I could!

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Saturday, January 3, 2009

3 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

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New Year's Eve at Marc and Leslie's

6 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

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Wednesday, December 31, 2008

6 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

Going solar baby! At least for my cell phone. In emergency situations. Hey, every little bit helps.

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1 Hr Computrainer

7 Days Ago | Posted to: Triathlon

Nothing special here. 177 watts for an hour. Took it fairly easy.

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8 Mi Run

8 Days Ago | Posted to: Triathlon

One hour. Felt good. Kept it mellow tonight, no intervals or speedwork. Ava rode her SmartCycle next to me for the beginning of the workout. Too cute. Every couple seconds I'd hear "GooDah, ..."

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Busy Day. All Apps on ClusterF. New Commenting System.

8 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

I started today by tweeting "happy monday all! faux work week ahead." Well, today was anything but a faux work day.

Ever since I launched my ClusterF infrastructure project on May 23rd of this year I've wanted to get all of my apps running on it. Right off the bat it serviced and clustered dNeero's four front-end servers. A month or so later I added MyThredz to it. A couple months after that I got Traaak's facebook apps running on it. A few weeks ago I moved PingFit over there. The two final holdouts, the two oldest apps in the arsenal... datablogging and joereger.com.

Getting the last two onto ClusterF took some wrangling. I've given it a couple hours here and there for a few weeks. Last night I did a deployment that failed. This morning I figured out the issue. Code changes were needed. I deployed. Fail. And then the never-fun always-hectic process of undeploying production stuff. More code changes. Fail. Undeploy. And finally the right code changes.

You guessed it... I didn't follow the process for the first two deployments... I figured they were small changes and didn't require testing on local instances. Well, I did. It took a while to get the same Apache load balancer and ClusterF app server setup locally but it was worth it.

So far things are running smoothly. I'm sure they'll explode soon. But I'll fix 'em. It's nice to have all of my junk running on one infrastructure platform. For a while there I had JBoss, Tomcat and ClusterF. Hectic. Error-prone.

Speaking of my junk, you can't see it in the header pic. Jeeze, the amount of sheet I'm getting from that pic. Pretty much guarantees I'll keep it up a while longer. Yes, when I fight authority, authority always wins.

One of the main motivators for the push to ClusterF is that I wanted to put fresh code out so that my blog could support a new commenting system. My homegrown commenting thing is out of date. I hear people complaining about not being able to comment easily/quickly. And I'm with them... it's a pain.

So today I'm launching disqus.com's comments on joereger.com. My hope is that they'll do a better job with comments than I did.

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2Hr CompuTrainer

9 Days Ago | Posted to: Triathlon

Was shooting for 3.5hrs but only managed 2. Trainer riding is never fun. Averaged a comfortable 160 watts on the ride.

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15 Min Computrainer, 5 Min Run

10 Days Ago | Posted to: Triathlon

Boy, these workouts keep getting shorter and shorter. Off season. What can I say? Almost time to get back into it.

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Saturday, December 27, 2008

10 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

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The Start of Ava's Art

10 Days Ago | Posted to: Ava's Art

Started a new log to hold Ava's drawings and art. Put a few in there and moving forward I'll capture as many as I can. It's interesting for me to watch how her drawings change over time. Even in the four I've posted so far there's a lot of progress (they span about six months.)

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The Pink Sink

11 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

01:03:27 PM: Ava's been asking about The Pink Sink for weeks. She saw it at Target and just had to have it. Last night she opened the present. She woke me up this morning by barging into my room and saying "come on doodah, let's put together the pink sink." So it's go time after a little breakfast, coffee, bike setup and work. Ava's excited!

01:12:49 PM: "This will end badly," says Heather as she watches me spread 5000 parts across the living room floor.

01:32:36 PM: After some early progress it appears that my assistant has been busy taking off the little stickers that make the instructions correlate to physical reality.

01:47:44 PM: "Made In China." Yeah, not really. I'm on Step 5. Of 29.

02:17:34 PM: Ava's a great assistant... she helps me hammer in all of the wooden dowels.

02:31:59 PM: "Come on mommy, let's play with The Pink Sink," says an excited Ava... which makes it all worth it!

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Pill Box

11 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

Pill box, bought at GNC a few days ago. At this point in season: fish oil, immune probiotic, digestive probiotic, multivitamin and potassium. In high volume months closer to races there are more.

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10 Mi Ride, 5 Mi Run: Xmas Workout

12 Days Ago | Posted to: Triathlon

Nice little Xmas workout on the Silver Comet on the way over to Matt and Kendy's. First ride outside on the road bike. Most confusing part was the first time I had to brake. Figured it out pretty quickly. Shifting isn't second nature yet but doesn't seem like it'll be much of a hurdle. Overall it was comfortable and I really like being able to shift while sitting up. Surprised how twitchy/sketchy the bike is when in the drops. And I thought aerobars were sketchy. Those drops can be tricky. I tried some sprints but my gearing's a little wonky right now... need to trim things up a bit. Run was uneventful. Surprised how many people were out.

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joereger.com v4 Launched

12 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

Been noodling a new joereger.com design for a while now. After a lot of false starts and don't-have-time-for-its I managed to get a new design out there today. It's not perfect. Lots of little misalignments, font problems, browser issues and the like. Workout detail pages blow up spectacularly... but who reads those anyways? And it's not exactly friendly to low bandwith users... viva la bandwidth divide (kidding, of course.) I lost the rotating picture at the top of the page... may try to build it back in if I get some time. Also lost the "Why the Hell Not?" tagline... just felt that I had outgrown it. Redesigned the logo and, yes, got a t-shirt on order. Had to add custom css support to the MyThredz app so that it looks pretty on the old paper background. A step forward... with a lot of rough edges.

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XMas at Home

12 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

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XMas Eve at Beep and Ball's

13 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

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20 Min Bike, 10 Min Run

13 Days Ago | Posted to: Triathlon

Warmed up, calibrated the CompuTrainer. Did 300w for 5min in ERG mode, meaning that no matter what my cadence/gearing it'll increase or decrease the resistance so that I'm outputting 300w. Was difficult but definitely have some more watts in me. After that a light few minutes followed by a short treadmill run.

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A Little Watts/Kg Math

14 Days Ago | Posted to: Training Thoughts

Put together a little spreadsheet. Enter your body weight in lbs and it'll tell you how many watts you need to output to be a cat5, cat4, cat3, cat2, cat1, domestic pro or international pro. All Marc's fault... he sent the chart of watt/kg out and I just wanted to see what I'd have to output to be an international pro (answer, between 516 and 579 watts average for 5 min.) And sorry ladies, had to convert a graphic to cell formulas which was tedious and it's 1am. Click the hard-to-find File icon below to download the Excel spreadsheet.

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30 Min CompuTrainer and 1st Wingate

14 Days Ago | Posted to: Triathlon

Did 30 minutes of intervals on the trainer between 225 and 300 watts for between 1 and 5 minutes. and then completed my first Wingate TT test. Basically .2 miles on a flat course. Takes less than 30 seconds. Time: 26.48 sec. Peak watts: 758. Avg watts: 610. Pretty weak compared to Marc who's got a much higher average and a much much higher peak wattage. In my defense I had just completed 30 mins of intervals, wasn't sure how to shift, didn't have the tension on the wheel so it slipped a lot and didn't have the bike tightened in so there was a lot of back and forth motion. Oh, and my legs are like toothpicks compared to Marc's. I'll have to improve. Good to have a benchmark down.

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Where to Find Joe Reger... All Over the Place

14 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

Both dNeero and MyThredz are playing in the social media world. I like to check out other social media stuff, of course. Which means I've got accounts all over the place. Until recently most of them just sat there. When I extended MyThredz to send my microblogging updates to use the Twitter API I found it was cool to think about my updates whizzing all over the place. Then I daisy-chained my Facebook status to Twitter. Even cooler. Yesterday I took it to another level by integrating MyThredz to the Ping.fm API. Took about an hour. And then some debugging today. Now when I use MyThredz to update my status I'm actually updating 24 different sites. Which gives me a good excuse to put together a list of places that you can find me:

joereger.com (Primary)
dNeero (Primary)
Facebook (Primary)
Twitter (Primary)
MyThredz (Primary)
LinkedIn
Plurk
tumblr
identi.ca
brightkite
friendfeed
jaiku
Blogger.com
Livejournal
Bebo
Plaxo Pulse
Xanga
Rejaw
Friendster
Yahoo! 360
koornk
kwippy
diigo
Multiply
Yammer
utterli
hi5
Mashable
Wordpress
Flickr
delicious

Of course, I still like to keep my data close to the vest, in my own databases. Until data portability and backup catches up I just like it that way. My hope is that by actually updating these services I'll be able to connect with people in new and exciting ways. And I'll learn more about each of the apps... not the executive panel crap... the actual details of how each service operates, how they compete, etc.

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Cervelo P3 Becomes a Road Machine

15 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

Found a used frame on eBay at a great price to use next season in tris. Ordered some old parts to convert the cervelo p3 into a road machine. Great time to buy bike junk on the bay. Example: bottom bracket for $8.50... normally a $70ish part. Tonight the last of the parts arrived so I assembled the beast. Naked frame/pile 'o' parts to road machine in a few hours. Fair amount of cussing as I stole from peter (mountain bike, ebay and old parts cache) to pay paul (new setup.) Seriously pedals... wtf.

Ava said "GooDah, what wrong?" about thirty times. "Nothing sweetheart, I'm just fixing my bike." "Who broke it?" "GooDah did... go play your Diego computer game."

Five minutes later, "GooDah, what wrong?"

Freddy wins the Spot the New Bike in the Back of the Picture Contest... he commented on a picture of Heather getting the wreath ready with lights a week or so ago. Marc, Dana and Matthew win the First Ride Contest. Josh wins the Notice How Long Joe's Seat Post Is Contest. Blair wins the Recommend New Road Handlebar Model Contest. Tim Smith, who filled his frame with lead and epoxy, wins the Have a Bike Lighter than Joe's New Tri Bike For Next Season Contest.

Thanks for playing. You win nothing. Sorry.

Safety win. Taking my hands off of the brakes to shift is tricky and amplifies risk. Because of... what's that other thing you do better with two hands... oh yeah... steering. After six years of riding a tri bike in tons of centuries, big days, trips to the gaps, two sufferfests, vo2max tests, computrainer sessions, group rides, pizza rides, airport rides, beyond six flags rides, etc... tonight I finally pedaled a road bike. Hadn't ever done that. Literally... as in never borrowed somebody's. Never took a test ride at a shop. Nothin'. Kinda dug it.

Road bikes are reverse-mullet: messy in the front, business in the back. Holy cables batman. I've been around road bikes for years but never realized how much slack there is. I actually had to take a trip to the shop just to make sure there was supposed to be that much junk hanging out there in the wind. Tri bikes pwn road bikes on the cleanliness front.

Questions for people with road bikes:

1) Can you reach your brake/shift up lever when in the drops? When I pulled the horns up far enough to be comfortable (palm part of horn horizontal with ground) I found that I have to reach a bit for my shift up when in the drops. Like, straight arm, have to reach. Elbow bent a bit, I'm good. That about what you've got going on?

2) Downside to too-wide bars? Turns out I rtardedly didn’t measure my tri bars until after I got my new bars. My tri bars are 40cm. My new are 44cm. Should go with a narrower bar but don’t want to do the work or spend the money. Aerodynamics? Shoulder fatigue?

Other than that and a little gear shifting/braking tweakage I’m basically ready to roll. Really digging the ability to shift in a group riding position. And happy that in the drops my back’s fairly flat and aero. Gotta figure out what to do about the Garmin. I like symmetry but don’t think I’ll be able to pull it off with the hardware I've got. May just wear it on my wrist. Or not wear it at all... I turn the screen to something useless and ignore it the entire time anyway. (But it is a good emergency mapping/where the hell am I device.)

Did the competitivecyclist.com fit. Heather helped me out. They have you do eight very specific measurements (inseam, trunk, forearm, arm, thigh, lower leg, sternal notch, total body height) and then spit out a three fit recommendations ranging from tame to aggressive. I snuck in a ninth measurement: shaft length. Heather didn’t fall for it. Damn.

Found that most of my measurements are within a centimeter or so of the fit recommendation. Not as tight as a true roadie might be looking for (they give some a 0.1-0.3cm range) but I’m surprised that it turned out even as close as it was. I mean, I'm taking one of the most classic tri geometries and throwing on some handlebars. I got it comfortable first and then compared it to the competitive/aggressive fit. One area where I don’t agree with them is the saddle set-back. I’m used to a much steeper seat angle after riding in tri/aerobars for so many years. I compromised between what they said and what I had. As long as my arms don’t hurt too much I’ll keep the saddle set-back closer to the tri fit.

Bike feels light. No aerobars. Using a me vs. me+bike on bathroom scale methodology (six measurements, averaged, difference taken) I get a weight of 18.06 lbs. But realize that my body weight somehow fluctuated over a pound and a half during the 3 minutes I was taking measurements. Scale not exactly accurate. Still, 1.8 lbs less than my new tri brick. I mean, bike.

Fingers crossed I'll be able to get this thing comfortable for group/road rides.

Off to The Gaps I go this weekend. Or the WBL. Turns out the guy who runs/works at/owns/whatever Smyrna Bicycles is coming off a state championship cyclocross season and is heading out to Athens. That or Airport. Or The Gaps. Just not The Comet. Need something that'll make shifting *and* braking at the same time a near-necessity.

Later.

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Winter Bike League Ride: 86 Mile Epic

17 Days Ago | Posted to: Triathlon

From the website:

Accidental Epic for 3rd WBL event, Zealots hammer out 86 mile day in 4 hours, quads fried, big rings overheated, chains smoking. Zealots pelted with rain for final 12 miles. Carney awards extra 2 points for all, one for the weather and one for the speed.

Marc and I headed up. Nice day to ride. Enjoyed it. John Murphy was there. Big rain near the end.

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