Getting Ready to Run

I’m on the Amtrak Acela on my way to DC, as I attempt to make all of the running I’ve done this year mean something. I decided that I wanted to set the goal of running a marathon a couple of years ago, but a combination of work and injuries prevented any serious consideration of the endeavor.

Things have largely fallen the way they needed to this year, with relatively few missed days and no real injuries. Only in the past week (and worst possible time) did I awkwardly twist an ankle, though with a brace I should be fine.

I still don’t actually believe it’s going to happen on Sunday… It still seems kind of surreal. Regardless of that feeling, come 8am on the 26th, a starter’s pistol will wake me from that state, and begin my four-hour journey through the heart of our Nation’s capital.

I’m ready to do this.

Bag of Fail

After dutifully staying up last night and completing the two homework assignments due tonight as well as studying for my midterm, It was with a grand sense of fail that I elected not to print, sync to MobileMe, or otherwise make said assignments available to myself today.

As such, I’m now completing the second leg of commuting an hour back to my apartment to pick said documents up so as to be able to hand them in this evening.

I am am incredibly stupid boy.

I’ll have to start mirroring my entire documents folder to MobileMe, so this crap never happens again. Dammit.

iPhone 3G WiFail

Hm, I can’t seem to find any other information on the web about this, so I suppose I’ll plant a seed here and see if someone else has had a similar experience.

I have an iPhone 3G which I use to connect to a personal IMAP email server.  It works swimmingly over Edge, 3G, and most WiFi access points.  It does not, however, connect over my home network, which is powered by an Apple Time Capsule, extended by an Airport Express.

In terms of troubleshooting, I’ve taken the Airport Express out of the equation by shutting it off.  I’ve also tried making the network visible (it’s hidden, by default), and adding WPA/WPA2 (default is no security).  None of this helps.

I can *see* the iPhone’s MAC address on the clients list for the Time Capsule, but the metrics are really off – signal is a positive number (other clients are -db), noise is typically 0, and rate is half that of the other clients.  I’m not sure if that has anything to do with it, but it’s a stark difference from the others.

Mind you, these are the same settings which were synced over from Mail.app on my MacBook Pro, which has no trouble connecting.  And the iPhone can connect to other access points and hit the mail server without any problems.  And most oddly, other service on the iPhone work – Mobile Safari is good, and I can hit the work Exchange account through the mail application just fine.  It’s just this one personal IMAP account.

So stumped.  Anyone?

Fortnight

Well, we’re just 14 days to the Marine Corps Marathon in DC and I must admit, I’m really starting to look forward to it.

Through the course of my training so far, I’ve put nearly 800 miles on the tires, shattering my goal/resolution of running 750. I think I may shoot for 1000 miles for the year now… It’s within reach.

The interesting part about this is that I set goals/resolutions this New Years and am actually succeeding. It feels a bit of a change from previous endeavors, but along with the MBA, I think that I’ve somehow become more goal-oriented in my old age.

I think I like the idea of running towards something.

Brutality, redux

So, it’s been a bit since I’ve posted here (Surprising!), bit grades are in and I figured I’d share the results.

In this last term, where I probably expended far less effort than any other, and where a friend more or less taught me all of the material in my finance class…

I got straight A’s.

I have no reasonable explanation for this, but I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

So yeah, 3.63 GPA in an MBA program with about 40% done. Surprising to me, too.

Brutality

So I just came out of my final and all I can say is that my B, which only required a 65 on the final, is in serious jeopardy.

So long as I got a 50, I’m done with the class. Go partial credit go.

Still struggling through

Unfortunately, my classes have conspired to keep me from resuming my regular irregular blogging duties. I suck, I know.

This is the last day of the term where I’m taking my Finance final, one of the three classes I dreaded and knew I would have to fight through in order to get my MBA (the other two being Calculus and Accounting). After today I am freed up to concentrate mostly on my major classes.

I’m just short of halfway done and it feels like I still have forever to go.

Let’s pray I survive tonight with a 65 or better – that should be enough to get me a B (due to some flukey performance on the midterm).

iPhone 3G

So yes, I was one of those idiots who waited in line for the iPhone 3G.

Originally, I had planned to play it cool and just check back later in the day a la the v1 launch, but given the activation requirement this time around, I thought I should err on the side of stupid and just wait it out.

This, as you may have guessed, ended up being an error in judgement.

I arrived at the Apple store conveniently located next to my office and saw a snaking line five turns deep a la Disneyland. Thinking this wasn’t too bad, I went to my building and dropped off my bag before heading back out to wait.

The time was 6:40am.

It was at this point that I realized that the snake-line was not the end, and rather that the line extended 1/3 of the way down the adjacent avenue.

I won’t belabor this post with all of the minutiae of the event, but here are a few details.

As typically reported by iPhone line-waiter-onners, I made friends with those around me, especially that nice young couple who had just moved to NYC from Wisconsin.

The activation servers crashed as noted in many news sources and this had a catastrophic effect on my waiting time. Final number? Around 6 hours (by hour number three I’d decided I was too invested and had to tough it out). Halfway through I had tocall in and take a half-day since it was taking so long.

I was witness to two of NYPD’s finest shaking down the Red Bull promo girls for about a six-pack of free energy drinks.

In the end I was “victorious” and emerged with my chosen black 16gb iPhone and leisurely strolled into work at 1pm.

I’m ashamed to say that I think it was well worth it.

Funny Statistic

I’ve noticed that at any given time ~10% of the posts on this blog are of me apologizing for neglecting it and promising to do better.

I’m so predictable.

Ok, so I’m not typing that again, but you know the drill…

By the way, this was typed on my new iPhone using the just-released WordPress native app. Pretty slick.

Bacon Man

Went to dinner with a friend last night at the truly excellent Wu Liang Ye just south of Rockefeller Center. As is our tradition, we ordered three dishes, two of which are standards with a different third. This visit saw the normal String Beans with Yibin City Spices and Double-cooked Bacon in Spicy Capsicum Sauce, with the Camphur Tea-Smoked Half Duck added to the order (I actually ended up not caring for the duck too much).

The important part of this story is the bacon, of course. They literally bring out a sharing dish heaped with bacon, scallions, and hot peppers in a spicy sauce.

And it is the most fantastic dish ever.

Spicy, salty, with differing textures on the plate, it’s truly a delicious offering.

We suspect, though are unable to prove, that the Yibin City Spices on the beans also contain bacon. Lab tests are pending.

After gorging on bacon and other sichuan delicacies, there’s only one thing to do – go see Iron Man in a theater off of Times Square. I’m not going to bother with a review, other that to say I thoroughly enjoyed it and Downey Jr. was fantastic.