Scott Adcox

Doing More With Less Since 1972

Page 47 of 87

Hell In A Cell – A Mick Foley Parenting Tip

October 21, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Mick Foley penned a great guest post for GeekDad on “The Talk”:

Have a talk with your kids. Tell them about some of the unfortunate realities of life, and assure them that you’ll be there for them in good times and in bad, in sickness in health. Let them know that a parent’s love is indeed unconditional and that they can turn to you in any situation. Just don’t let them know that you’re taking parental advice from a pro-wrestler

While my M.O. up until now has been based on the question “WWDLRD?”, I think it may be time to reconsider and change strategies to “WWMFD?”. DLR isn’t quite as literate as Foley.

Have A Nice Day!

Moving America Forward, One Rasslin’ Promo At A Time

October 19, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Was this filmed when Barack Obama was a community organizer? The abundance of gray hair makes me think it’s pretty recent, but the quality of the video makes me think it was shot in the hallway of a 3,000 seat arena somewhere in flyover country to promote the “big event, right out there at the fairgrounds on November 2…we couldn’t have it on October 26th ’cause the flea market is that week.”

Watch and learn. THIS is how you correctly do a rasslin’ promo:

Password Security and Complexity

October 14, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Twister MC has some good advice on what to do about your passwords and protecting your accounts with multiple passwords, but…

Remembering multiple passwords suck, especially the harder they are, but it’s important that you take your security into your own hands.

There’s an easy way around that–come up with your own “password algorithm” and remember that instead of the actual passwords.

Here’s an example: Begin all of your passwords with the last 8 (or fewer) letters of the name of the street you live on spelled backwards with all vowels substituted with alternate symbols or letters (a=@, e=3, i=!, o=0, u=V), followed by the number of letters in the domain name you are creating the password for, followed by all of the vowels in the domain name. So if you live on Maple St.:

Google password = 3lp@M6ooe
Yahoo password = 3lp@M5aoo
Facebook password = 3lp@M8aeoo

Then, all you have to remember is the rule for creating passwords, not the passwords themselves, and they’ll be different for every site. This has kept me from having to go through the “Forgot My Password” process countless times!

You can come up with an infinite number of ways to structure your password algorithm that is easy for you to remember, and you can make them as simple or complex as you like. The only problem comes from some sites that don’t allow special characters (boo) or have a maximum password length that can’t handle your algorithm.

Microsoft and Facebook Need To Go One Step Further

October 13, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Today’s event hosted by Microsoft and Facebook highlighted some changes coming to Bing that will factor in your social group opinions, Facebook “Likes”, into your search results. That’s great, and it’s definitely a step in the right direction, but…

Just because your FB friends like something doesn’t mean it’s something you would like. Being friends with someone doesn’t necessarily mean you respect their opinion on sushi or books. How about a option to tell FB whether or not you want an individuals opinions factored in to your search results? It sounds like they are going to algorithmically figure out who the experts are, but FB’s whole model with photos and groups is sort of built on the idea that humans can organize this data much better than a computer.

And don’t look now, but Facebook has just given all of those people who’ve been calling for a “Dislike” button for all these years a platform to stand on. The “Like” button is great for steering me towards products and services I should buy, but what about steering me away from products I should avoid? If I’m looking at a vacuum cleaner and one of my trusted friends bought one last year and hated it, shouldn’t that factor into my decision to purchase it as equally as the opinion of my friend who bought and loved it?

Again, a huge step in the right direction, so I’m not hating on what they are trying to do. This is going to push Google to really step it up. If Google Me (or whatever it is called) doesn’t catch on, Big G could be put on the ropes a little with this innovation.

Side note: I got a kick out of Zuck calling Microsoft the underdog. I’m sure Bill Gates appreciated that compliment.

Stuff You Should See– September 3rd through October 13th

October 13, 2010 / / 1 Comment

Top 5 things to HATE about Marathon Runners -Ha! Best list since “Stuff White People Like”. I made every annoying thing on this list!

Amusing Ourselves to Death – Awsum.

Higher education bubble poised to burst – "The people running America's colleges and universities have long thought they were exempt from the laws of supply and demand and unaffected by the business cycle. Turns out that's wrong."

Market: Over 12 Year Period You Made More on 1st Day of Month.. – That is a pretty amazing fact.

What if the Postal Service runs out of money? – Cheese and crackers! Just let it die already!

Testing Teachers On Math and Reading – I can just hear their excuse now…"I may not be able to lay an egg, but I can tell a good one from a bad one" or "Do you think Tiger Woods' golf coach is better than Tiger at golf?"

Google SEO Starter Guide updated

The Most Influential Consumers Online are on Twitter – The easiest way to get a lot of retweets is to write an article praising Twitter users.

Can Exercise Make Kids Smarter? – "Stupid jock" isn't always true.

Stop Repeating Yourself: Set Up a Workplace Wiki – I tried this at a former job a few years ago. The result–I used it. Then we had the middle management who would copy the contents of a help file somewhere and paste it into the wiki. That gets you bonus points for authorship when you show it in your PowerPoint!

IEEE Spectrum: Get on the Optical Bus – Good news for 3rd party software vendors. Now they can blame software issues on the fact that you don't have hardware with optical bus!

A few fabulous homeschool rants – heh.

I Was Wrong

October 11, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Ok, not really in this instance, but a couple of years ago I wrote a little post on why I give full articles in my feed. I think that, at least for the time it was written, this was a reasonable and logical notion.

Things are different now.

At the time, RSS was the best thing going. For many of us, it still is. I love RSS and Google Reader and still rely on them pretty heavily to keep up with the sites and blogs I follow. But the rules of the game have definitely changed in the last couple of years. I’ve noticed much more traffic being driven by Twitter and Facebook than feed readers ever did. I think the question to ask now is whether your audience and the market as a whole are more likely to follow your blog with RSS or with Facebook or Twitter.

Obviously, there’s no way to get a full feed on a Tweet, so that’s not an issue. But the way Facebook handles blog integration through the Notes application means you probably don’t want to give full feeds there either. If you do, you aren’t leaving any reason at all for anyone to visit your site. Post on Facebook, comment on Facebook, and stay on Facebook–that’s what I’d do.

I’m going back to summaries only in my feed. I think the best strategy these days may be to write a good headline, get an interesting thought or two in the first couple of sentences (thanks for the practice Twitter), and pull people in to your site that way. I also found a nice little plugin that integrates Facebook comments straight to your blog.

Interested to see how this little experiment plays out. I can always switch back later.

Some Simple Campaign Advice

October 11, 2010 / / 3 Comments

If you go door-to-door campaigning, or if you have people going door-to-door for you, it’s probably not a good idea to wear mirrored sunglasses.

You may be knocking on doors in an area that is safe for your candidate, simply reminding people to get out and vote on election day, but even if those people agree with (most) of your positions, there’s a chance they’ll be distracted and put a little bit off-balance by the fact that you aren’t looking them in the eye and telling them exactly what you (or your candidate) stand for.

And if the people you are talking to disagree with you, you’re going to look downright shady–confirming every paranoid and ridiculous opinion they’d formed about you.

Politics isn’t a poker game. In politics, it’s reasonable for people to expect you to look them in the eye and lie instead of hiding behind mirrored glasses.

They Should Be In Charge of EVERYTHING

October 8, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Speechless.

The American Postal Workers Union has extended its internal election after thousands of ballots appeared to have gotten lost . . . in the mail.

I can hear it now:

“We’ve reviewed your X-Rays and have concluded that they never arrived in the mail. Please go back to the end of the 6 month waiting list for more X-Rays.”

“But why couldn’t they just email the X-Rays? Why can’t you just pull them out of a database?”

“I’m sorry. Regulations say that all medical documents must be sent through the mail. We can’t endanger the jobs of postal workers.”

HT Doug Mataconis

How Drinking Buddies Saved Brazil’s Economy

October 6, 2010 / / 0 Comments

My buddy IB Del.icio.us’d this for me…a good read (and there’s a podcast too). First of all, let me say I’m glad something like this could never happen in our country:

The only reason they enter the picture now — or ever — is because in 1992, there happened to be a new finance minister who knew nothing about economics.

So the gist of the story is that these guys came up with a “fake” currency that wasn’t “real” called the URV and weened the country onto it by instilling confidence in it over the country’s “real” currency. I would say that confidence is the only thing that makes a currency real to begin with. There’s really no intrinsic value in a piece of paper–maybe in the metal coins are made of, but not in paper.

I mean, think about it. The only thing that makes a check someone writes you worth anything is your faith in weather or not that person has the resources to deliver on the promise of value that check offers. No real difference in a piece of paper just because a government signed a check instead of a person.

2010 Health First Triathlon Race Report

October 4, 2010 / / 0 Comments

First, let me say that this was a very well run race. Everything went smoothly as far as I could tell, there was a small army of very supportive and helpful volunteers, and the course was set up as a great venue for spectators to view the race. I’m not sure about the accuracy of the distances, but I’ll get to that later. In the end, that doesn’t really matter–everyone has to do the same course.

Swim (1500m)
I’ve heard that you can’t win the Ironman on the swim, but you can lose it there. This wasn’t an Ironman, but I think that’s what happened to me today. I did a 28:22, which I would normally be very happy with for an open water race. I had a bad start because the water seemed to never get deep. I actually started swimming once, but my hands were dragging the bottom, so I got up and ran into the water some more. Running in water really jacks my heart rate up, and it took me a while to calm down from that. Throw in the usual punching and kicking and the fact that I didn’t do a single open water swim leading up to this race, and I probably got the results I deserve.

I found some really good feet to draft off of when we started the longest leg of the swim, which was headed north against the wind. This gave me a good chance to rest and settle down. That’s my usual goal for a non-sprint swim anyway–just take what the course give you, and don’t expect too much.

I never really thought I got off course that much, and my time doesn’t seem to say I did, but I ended up 96/195 over all and 6/9 in my group for the swim.

Weird results. Were there really 3 guys over 200 lbs who swam that under 23:00?!?!? In the past, I’ve usually in the top third or so overall on the swim and near the top in my group. This one has me a little flummoxed. Did I swim a really slow short course?

T1
Let me just say that both of my transitions were really bad so I don’t spend any more time on them. I spent enough time on them during the race.

Anyway, I didn’t have my watch on for the swim and didn’t know what to expect from my time, but coming out of T1 I heard the announcer say “We’re now starting to see a more steady stream of swimmers arriving to transition.” That had me thinking I was right where I usually am–top 1/3 or so. Wrong.

Bike (27 miles)
I jumped on and quickly accelerated up to ~20mph, when “wirrrrrrrr’ a guy zoomed by me with a disc rear wheel. Oh well, not catching that guy anyway, right? I was soon passed by another cyclist, which had me (again) thinking I had put in a pretty good swim–all the guys who are fast on the bike and weaker on the swim are passing me. However, I passed that guy back in the next mile or so. I was a net +17 passes on the bike. There may have been a couple more, but once the sprint distance racers were in the mix it was harder to keep up.

The heart rate monitor I’d spent so much time putting on was completely non-functional. I probably gained back all the time it cost me to put it on just because it wasn’t working, and therefore wasn’t holding me back at all.

My strategy was to push the northbound sections of the course (into the wind), take it easier on the southbound sections (wind at my back), and blister the causeways. If you are from the area and are reading this, let me apologize, but…Those. Are. Not. Hills. I knew I would have a psychological advantage biking and running those causeways because I’ve spent most of my life riding and running big hills and mountains. I know a lot of people here train by riding the causeways, but I think my method of getting on the spin bike and doing 5-8 minute intervals of “hills” on there is a much better training method.

The one hiccup on the ride was at the water bottle exchange. I had about a third of my water left, and threw it to the side. I then dropped, 1, 2, 3 different bottles the volunteers tried to hand me. Oh well…only 10 more miles to go–hydrate more in T2 than planned.

I have to say, that’s the best ride I’ve ever had during a race. My time was 1:13:55, 35th overall and 2nd in my group. I put in a lot more time training on the bike for this race than I usually do, and it really paid off. I didn’t care if I cooked myself because my run hasn’t been that great lately. I wanted to have a good bike.

Run (6.2 miles?)
My run definitely isn’t at it’s all-time best right now, and I knew I was going to tear it up on the bike, so I didn’t have very high expectations for the run. Strategy was to start off slowly and try to build something decent–no use trying to run fast off the bike anyway, because that wouldn’t happen. I estimated I was doing 9:30 miles, but when I clicked my watch at the first mile marker it said 8:30…huh?

Mile 2 was 7:48…what? Mile 3 was 8:4x…ok, maybe. But the next two miles were down into the mid 6:xx range…no way. My 5k PR is a 6:50 pace, and I clearly remember my entire body being on fire for that entire race. That isn’t what I was feeling during this race. The last 1.2 didn’t feel especially long, but my watch said I ran it at 9:36, and I know I was going faster than that. Probably closer to 8:00 miles at that point. I felt pretty good the whole way, and I followed through on my plan to push the causeways, where I think I gained some good ground. There were lots of people walking up.

Final run time was 49:43. Being honest with myself, I think that’s about what I could run right now in a stand alone 10k, but not in a tri. Regardless, we all ran the same course. My time was 2nd in my group and 78th overall.

My overall finish was 2:35:52–65th overall and *gulp* 5th (?!?!?!) in my group. Swim really killed me. I still have a hard time believing I finished in the top third overall and in the middle of the Clydesdales. Two and a half minutes out of the money. Ugh. Probably could have pulled another minute of that back from the transitions as well.

That’s the cool thing about triathlon though. You focus on one thing (bike) and slip someplace else (swim). You don’t practice transitions, and you have bad transitions. And that’s what keeps you coming back–there are so many should’ve and could’ve situations you can improve on.

I’m dropping down below 200 lbs for a while to do some running, but I think I’m going to be back with the fat kids next year to vindicate myself!

My Triathlon Packing Plan

October 1, 2010 / / 2 Comments

It’s been four years since I’ve done an organized triathlon. Ick…that means four years of no open-water swimming. It also means four years of not packing for a triathlon or setting up a transition spot. I’m probably overthinking this, but I thought it would be a good idea to make my packing list official, that way I can make notes as I go and also refer back to it for ideas of things I can do differently.

I like to be pretty minimal on race day–no socks, no glasses, and no shirt unless the rules force me to wear one. This gives me the added strategical benefit of turning the stomachs of the competition in a tight race. The one thing I max out on is food.

Swim:
* Pack goggles, swimcap, race chip, watch
* Make sure to eat a Gu before starting the race

Bike:
* Pack bike shoes, helmet, heart rate monitor
* Make sure bike computer is set to 0 miles and average speed when setting up, one bottle of water on the bike (exchange for gatorade at mile 17).
* Eat an already opened Gu before leaving T1.

Run:
* running shoes, visor, race belt with 3 Gus, water to drink in T2 (not in a cycling bottle). Socks are coming with me this time–I have a really annoying cut on the bottom of my wee-wee-wee piggy.
* Shoes are untied, feet are clean and dry before putting on shoes, race number and Gus are attached to belt, ditch the HRM

Misc.:
Sidewalk chalk to mark my bike row, small towel for transition, big towel for post-race, beverages, plastic cups, many Gus, water, water, water

Wear To The Race
* Trishorts with same board shorts over to wear post-race, flip flops, t-shirt

Am I forgetting anything?

Too Many People Get Into College

September 30, 2010 / / 0 Comments

At least at the University of Georgia, where this anit-Wal-mart column was published in the student newspaper:

Many corporations are firing American workers to cut production costs. They then charge American consumers more money than what it took to produce their products.

You got that? Companies are charging people more money for a product than it cost to produce the product!!! How disgraceful!!!

No mention if the article whether or not there are some companies that aren’t firing workers and are still charging consumers more than it took to produce their products. Maybe Crystal Villarreal could do her master’s thesis on that research.

HT: Talkmaster

Gmail Launches Non-Threaded “Feature”

September 29, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Gmail’s threaded, conversation based approach to email is one of the things that sold me on it early on. But I know there are people who don’t like it and prefer the traditional “one message, one line in my inbox” way of viewing their email.

Fair enough–diff’rent strokes and all. But I always thought it was a little unfortunate that people didn’t take advantage of all the other great gmail features because they didn’t like the threaded messages, especially small businesses that could use Google’s awesome services so easily.

Today, Google announced the ability to turn the threaded feature off. That means people who are used to the Microsoft Outlook type email will be able to use gmail more comfortably while still taking advantage of all the other great features like search and filtering.

Good move on Google’s part to try to include these folks. I approve.

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