Sunday, January 4, 2009

2 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

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Saturday, January 3, 2009

4 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

4 Images

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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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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Saturday, December 27, 2008

10 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

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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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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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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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Friday, December 19, 2008

18 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

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Tuesday, December 16, 2008

21 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

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Barry and Joyce's Holiday Party 08

24 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

Thanks to Barry and Joyce for hosting their annual holiday party!

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Shoot the Moon: Biggest of Year

25 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

Took some pics of the moon tonight. Extremely cold night with no cloud cover. Telescope my family got me for my birthday plus my digital camera equals a decent shot of the moon. Took me a while to dial in the focus, iso and shutter speed.

Tonight's moon was the biggest of the year according to NASA and others:

It's no illusion. Some full Moons are genuinely larger than others and this Friday's is a whopper. Why? The Moon's orbit is an ellipse with one side 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other: diagram. In the language of astronomy, the two extremes are called "apogee" (far away) and "perigee" (nearby). On Dec. 12th, the Moon becomes full a scant 4 hours after reaching perigee, making it 14% bigger and 30% brighter than lesser full Moons we've seen earlier in 2008.

Funny thing is, I had no idea that it was the biggest moon of the year when I was taking the photos. I had just been noticing the moon for about a week, thinking "I need to get the telescope out to take some pics." Have to say, I was quite pleased with myself when I saw on some news site that the moon's big tonight.

Look at the detail/contour of the upper right portion of the photo. It's close to a full moon so the light is almost behind me, the photographer. I think that I need to get the 'scope/cam out for a half or quarter moon... I suspect that I'll see more depth in the craters because there will be more contrast between sun/shadow.

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Frosty the Snowman

25 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

When I turned this on Ava said "yeah, I want to watch this." Then when Terp walked by she said "mommy, this is a good show to watch." Terp brought Emme in to watch too. Last year when (spoiler alert) Frosty melted Terp acted upset. Ava said "it ok, he in swimming pool." Fair enough. This year she was a little more in tune with the action but she was also more amped up and competitive with her little sister Emme who seemed to be grabbing some of our attention. Which means she was bouncing off the walls.

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Sunday, December 7, 2008

30 Days Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

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Friday, December 5, 2008

1 Month Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

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Ok, Fine, I'm Twittering, Jeeze

1 Month Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

No secret that when it comes to digital history I like to keep mine on my own databases.

I dig the whole microblogging/short status update thing. I did it here on joereger.com, powered by reger.com... basically short blog posts aggregated into a single timestamped entry. And that worked for a while but the short updates got messy inside of a traditional blog. I built MyThredz as a microblogging service to fit me better than Twitter. And that worked for a while because I didn't know many people on Twitter. But now @yellowjeepgirl, @riverace, @metamarshall and others are actually Twittering their proverbial arses off.

For a while now I've wanted in on their convos. But I couldn't fathom updating joereger.com, mythredz.com and then twitter.com. I had planned on getting MyThredz to use the Twitter API so that when I update it'll automatically update Twitter. I used the Twitter API when I built dNeero to send new conversation updates out so I knew it was easy to use.

So today I spent the 30 minutes to code it all up. And the 30 minutes to test and deploy it. The core API calls took 5 minutes. The javascript user interface options allowing me to see how many characters I've typed and to override Twitter updates took a few minutes longer. I also updated the mobile phone interface so that I can control Twitterage.

Alas, I am finally Twittering. Follow me here. Expect nothing useful.

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Monday, December 1, 2008

1 Month Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

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Trip to Target

2 Months Ago | Posted to: Random Stuff

That first pic's Ava hiding under mommy's shirt while groggy post-nap. We made a run to Target for some holiday decorations. We're skipping a real tree this year. Emme's mobile and eating everything in her path. Trees tend to drop a lot of little things that we don't want her to get her hands on. Terp made the investment in LED lights for her outside wreath so that she doesn't have to replace the lights each year. Aves and I picked out a nice red robe for her that matches mommy's.

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