Chris’ Blog

    The other day I read a short article called “The Fifteen-Weed Formula“. The basic idea of the story is that there was a lady who suffered from multiple sclerosis which made it difficult to do physically demanding tasks. One day she noticed a whole bunch of weeds in her back yard and noted that she really wanted to pull them out but it would take her weeks to recover from the physical activity. She decided that she would limit herself to only pulling fifteen weeds a day no matter how good or bad she felt that day. By the end of the summer she had pulled the weeds twice because they had started growing back in. She had accomplished her goal of weeding the yard.
    Often times we have good and bad days in life. If we set simple goals that allow us to do just a portion of our tasks that we would like to get done we will eventually get everything done. This is a great lesson that we should all take to heart. Don’t overwork ourselves when we get excited for a new goal, take it slow, and spend just a bit of time on each task, and soon you will realize you got a ton of stuff finished.

The other day there was an article in a newsletter I skim from sitepoint, and it talked about animated css. It was really quite interesting and the link can be found here. I didn’t really see a use for his example (here) but it seemed like an interesting idea. As I thought of it I came up with a way to make it resize the image using javascript and came up with my own example. I stuck it up here. I still don’t know that its usable anywhere, but I thought it was interesting. It gives you an ability to randomize the time the lightning struck. Let me know what you think.

Volleyball:
Yesterday at work we played volleyball for an hour and a half. This was way more exercise than I thought it would be, and I was feeling it this morning - I was afraid I wasn’t gonna be able to exercise or make it through what I started.

Running:
Well I just finished another evening run. I liked that it was lighter out, and it was cooler than it would have been had I tried to run at 9 this morning, but I didn’t like the fact more people were out, and watching me run. For that point I prefer the early morning. We will have to keep experimenting with that one. Well today I ran 1.6 miles according to Google, and it took me 15 mins. I felt the worst while running than I have yet - I think it had something to do with pizza for dinner and v-ball yesterday…

Push-ups:

I remembered last night as I crawled into bed that I had forgotten to do my push-ups… I decided that I would do them today and that would be ok. I manged to get through them all, and I got an additional 2 on my max than was required, but it felt harder than I expected. The problem I also have is I’m supposed to do a test to see how many to do for next week… I was supposed to do that tonight had I done my others on friday morning… I haven’t decided yet if I will do week 2 over again or maybe do my test Monday morning, and do week 3 on Tues, Thurs, Sat… we will see.

In the fear of turning this into my exercise log, I think I’ll just post on Sat. evening from now on - just to keep on track, it gives me some feeling of commitment to know that someone could be reading this.

Running:

Well I went running on Saturday morning.  I put Jayden in the stroller and took him for a short run (google maps says 0.8 miles).  Considering that was the most I have ran in a while, I figured thats pretty good.  Then Tuesday I ran down a less developed road (which I enjoyed because sometimes all the houses are too much) and turned around and came back (about 1.4 miles).  This morning I couldn’t get myself out of bed, so I just got back from a run.  I ran the Saturday loop twice so I would say about 1.5 miles if I was keeping track (maybe I should!).  My run tonight was very enjoyable, I’m trying to decide if I like running at night or in the morning better.  The benefit with the morning is that it is getting lighter as you run, not darker…  Tonights run took me about 15 mins (I would say a little less to be more accurate, but I’m not 100% sure) Todays run puts my total so far just over 3.5 miles in 3 runs.  I think thats pretty good - And I’m feeling 100 times better than the last few times I have started running again!  It helps to have goals!

Push-ups:

I have been diligently doing my push-ups every day I have scheduled (as long as diligently doesn’t mean eagerly…)  It has been a bit of a strugle to get motivated, but I’m doing well.  Friday’s was supposed to be at least 10, and I got more like 9.5, but i went on to this week anyway.  Its been hard, but I have managed to do 2 more than the required max on each day so far.

Overall:

I’m excited to be getting back into shape but I still am only doing these things because I know I should, and I’d like to accomplish a goal, I’m not yet enjoying the time I spend doing them - but that will come, I hope…

 Ok, here goes nothing… I’ve been thinking about these things for a couple of days now, but I guess I’ll commit to them… First up, marathons!

At the beginning of the year I set some goals for myself. One was to exercise everyday, and work to run in a marathon. Its a really really long way, but its something I have just wanted to do. Well, I decided the other day to see when the Salt Lake City Marathon happens. Well its in April (on the 18th) So I thought well what would be closer and give me a goal to work toward. Well it turns out that Spanish Fork has a half marathon on September 6th, which is perfect. I decided I can work to run that (the half marathon) and then keep working to run the marathon in April ‘09! Kinda exciting huh?!

The next goal that I am going to work on is something that JD Roth has been doing and soliciting over at Get Fit Slowly. This involves doing sets of push-ups every other day until you are able to do 100 straight push-ups. I am so out of shape, and I figure this is a great way to start to get back into it - besides, I have JD sending out reminders on Mon, Wed, and Fri so it should help. Unfortunately, I put off starting until I am now a week behind (he is on day 3 today…) so what I’ve decided to do is do the pushups for week 1 day 2 today, and start with week 2 day 1 on Monday.

So my personal goal is this - I am going to get up at 6 everyday. To start, I am going to run and do push-ups on opposite days. Running will happen on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, while push-ups will happen on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. As I get back into aerobic shape, and as the push=ups become more standard for my body to do, I will slowly ease back into running everyday. Maybe then I will be ready to do longer runs every other day, and shorter, slower runs on the push-up days. So that is my plan - up at 6, exercise some, eat, and then be in to work by 7:30! I’ve tried this fitness thing a few times recently… but I didn’t really have goals except to exercise every day (which turned into a few push-ups or sit-ups or counting the walk to classes…) - This time I am going to really work on it and I will attain my goal!

EDIT: Here is the link to hundredpushups.com where the training schedule is.

    This past weekend my wife’s family had a reunion.  We drove out to the mountains and stayed in some cabins out in pretty much the middle of nowhere.  It wasn’t really rouging it, but it was a good deal of fun!  One of the things I had the opportunity to do was late Friday night.  Everyone had gone to bed, it had gotten colder, the fire had burned down, and I decided it was a great opportunity to lay in one of the hammocks and reflect on my current state of life and the world.  While laying there I had the opportunity to see hundreds of stars, a beautiful moon, a shooting star, an airplane, and a few satellites.  What I found was some great peace.  Here are some of my thoughts:

1. This world is an incredible creation!  The beauty and natural wealth is amazing!  It is quite a blessing to be here enjoying life and learning things every day!
2. Problems aren’t all ours to fix - There are lots of problems in the world today - but that doesn’t mean our personal world is falling apart.  This doesn’t mean we need to ignore problems in the world, but don’t let them stress you out.  The world could be falling apart around us, but we can still be strong - fixing problems one at a time.
3. Sometimes it is hard to get a good perspective on things - from earth at night, a star, a satellite, an airplane, and a shooting star all look about the same.  If you took an instant still shot it would be difficult to determine which was which, but by looking at their speed, direction, and overall motion, we can tell them apart and understand the beauty and be amazed by each.  Take time to look at your problems and gain a good perspective on them - will they still be problems tomorrow or next week?  Then don’t put too much worry into them.  Try to only worry about the important things!

I determined that my life is pretty perfect right now.  I would only want to change one thing and that is to be completely free of debt.  I’m working on that, and it will just take some time.  I love my life and I’m trying to be positive and excited for each day as it comes!

So has anyone else been having trouble with Pandora.com lately? I love the ability to pick the music that I listen to and also not having to listen to commercials, but this week it sometimes seems like it takes a couple of minutes after a song ends before it starts another (sometimes it just sits there for like 20+ minutes.) Changing stations didn’t seem to do anything. Sometimes it runs great for a couple of hours too. I spoke to one other person who is also having similar problems (although he said today has been normal.) Anyone else seeing problems?

EDIT: Wow, I’m impressed with the response from Pandora.com.  They managed to find my fairly obscure blog and post a comment offering support to fix the problem!  Well, just an update - It wasn’t pandora, it was the virus scan program here at work (Kaspersky Anti-Virus…) We are on a trial right now, but I had to go into the web protection settings and add http://*.pandora.com/* to the trusted sites, and it seems to be fixed…  Thanks pandora for the great service and product!

Whale Done! A book about the power of positive relationships by Ken Blanchard (and others) is a great book. I read it a few years ago, and remembered it being great, so for Christmas it was on my list of books I’d like to own and read again. I did get it, and this week I finally took the time to read it. I just finished it, and it has left me with so many ideas on how to make my life better and more rich. (Not money rich, but relationship rich and rewarding!) The story is based on how Shamu and the whales at Sea World are trained. It is a quick read full of insight and wonderful ideas applicable to life enriching goals. I would recommend this book for anyone to read, especially if you feel like you are lacking in your relationships at work or at home.

I work as a programmer in an IT company. My job consists of lots of little things that I need to do each day. Usually they add up to a large project that I am working to complete. Last week our company sponsored a conference here in town and we had a whole bunch of people come. One of my tasks during the week was to record the events and have it available so that we can put it online in the future. This meant I was not doing my real work all week. In fact I hardly had time to think about programming. Well, I came in to work yesterday (Monday) morning, and I was able to get right to work - why? Because at the end of each day I write down where I am in whatever process I am working on, and what I still need to get accomplished inside this portion of a task. This way I can pick right up where I left off and not have to remember what I was doing. It works great! The other advantage it gives me is that it basically allows me to dump my thoughts at the end of the work day so that I don’t feel like I need to remember them for tomorrow. Now I won’t say I don’t think of things I can do at work when I am home, but I don’t feel like I have to.

Bonus Tip: When I do think of something for work when I am home, I write it down on a note card and bring it in the next day so that I can remember it. Why put forth the effort of remembering everything you have to do when you can better spend your energy just getting things done off of your list? Trust me, todo lists can work.