Strange Loops

Reflection

On my long run yesterday, I was able to reflect on the events from the last seven days. I was trying to understand what this experience would teach me. This has been a major wake up call. 

I thought through a lot but I kept coming back to 3 main ideas:

1. Life is too short to be anything but happy.

2. Someday might never come. 

3. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived.

It's not clear how I'll use these ideas since my mind is still in a fog of sadness, anger and fatigue. Hopefully the next couple of days will help to make things clearer.

Numb

I'm numb tonight. I keep thinking about what has happened in the last day. I kept coming back to this quote spoken by one of my favorite fictional characters:

Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives, but I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived. - Jean Luc Picard, Generations

Great quote

On the eve of the race, I found this great quote at cafe ladro.

Happiness is a by-product of function. Those who seek
happiness for itself seek victory without of war.
- Willam S Burroughs

Weekend

Trying out the new TypePad. The differences are there but I'm not noticing anything major. This was the first weekend for the last couple of months where no running was done. Between recovering from the marathon(a month ago), the cougar mountain trail run, Ragnar and the twisted ankle, I was taking it really easy this weekend. It was a nice change of pace not to wake up early on Saturday or Sunday. That gave me sometime to play with technologies and write down some ideas.

Been meaning to try out Aptana Studio and Jaxer. Finally got a chance to do that this weekend. Like the concept for Jaxer bur was really impressed with Aptana Studio. It has a whole bunch of auto complete stuff I didn't expect. I've not been in the IDE world for too long (still preferring a good old text editor) but for new technology an IDE really helps with the learning curve. Might be hacking some rails code with Michael and looking to give Studio a try.

Didn't get too deeply into it but also mucked about with Hadoop, Cappuccino and picked up where I left off with Clojure from a couple of weeks back. Finally settling on Aquamacs + Swank to work with Clojure. Could not get textmate working with the REPL. Also downloaded the MPS language workbench but didn't install it. Also reminded me about the whole language workbench I want to look at and the little pyparsing project I have with Riley.

The two things I didn't get too was the Leksah Haskell IDE and the algorithms class form MIT OCW. Also still looking to build a website with Django, Drupal and SInatra.

Played with a couple of new apps from MacHeist and MacUpdate promo package. Checked out the Project Natal stuff from Microsoft, looks cool but I'll need to try it to be convinced.

Too much stuff. Not enough time.

Rut Busting

I've been meaning to write this post for awhile now. As the infrequent posts might not indicate, this was a year of change. I was stuck in rut for the last couple of years. This was largely my fault. I had trapped myself into a situation that I was afraid to break out of. What was I afraid of? A number of small inconsequential things that loomed much larger during that period. Now that I'm on the other side of the situation I have greater clarity about that.

Being patient through the rut did have two nice side effects. However, I'm not going to put myself through that situation again though (if I can help it).

Under Construction

February came and went without a blog post. I've been playing around with various options for this blog. I've been feeling "blah" for some time and not felt like writing. Lately I've been expressing myself via twitter and tumblr. They tend to encourage sniping of thoughts. I'm not saying that's a good thing but the built in constraints have squeezed out some creative thoughts. Writing is a good exercise to prevent my skills from atropying.

Lessons learnt

Recently our place got broken into. One of the more important things that got taken was my personal laptop. Here are some lessons learnt from the resulting research.

1. Require a password to unlock your computer from sleep. (This would have prevented in my iTunes account from being violated.

2. If you’re extra paranoid, get a laptop lock/safe for your computer. They cost about $20-$30. The one I’ve bought has already paid itself off.

3. Local backups are good to do but doing a remote backup is handy. I used to do backups to an external hard drive. Sadly my external hard drive got stolen too. These are some solutions I’ve found for doing remote backups.

a) Mozy (mozy.com) You configure it with a set of files you want to backup. It backs up your files at pre-determined intervals. According to their documentation, the files are stored encrypted on their side. Cost: 2gig Free, Unlimited $4.95/month

b)  Dropbox (getdropbox.com) Not really a backup solution but remote storage. You store your files on a remote server. Nice interface for getting access to your files (basically shows up as a folder on your computer). Another cool feature it possesses is versioning. It versions all updates you make to it so you can go back in time and retrieve an older version of the file. Cost: 2gig Free. 50gigs $9.95/month (Interestingly the backing store is hosted on S3). Bonus points for working on Mac and Linux.

c) Good ole S3. If you go this route, google for Jungle Disk. I have a friend who really likes it. I didn't go this route.

4. Password managers are extremely useful tools (considering the number of websites I mess around with). Free multiplatform ones are PasswordGorilla and PasswordSafe. If you’re on a mac, I recommend 1password (it even comes with a nifty iPhone version). Remember to backup the password file created by the manager.

5. The other thing I’ve learnt is getting your door kicked in is pretty common. Apparently most door jambs are made from wood moldings that are broken easily. To make it tougher for burglars when installing the door strike, make sure you get long screws that go all the way through the jamb and into the studs behind them.

New Year Resolutions

It's a new year. I know it's like 10 days into 2009 but the year has not aged that much yet. Heck I'm still having trouble dating my checks 2009. Like all new years, I've attached some resolutions to them.

Anyway this is the first post for the 2009. With any luck I'll keep up with my resolution to keep my blog updated regularly. If anybody was curious where I was in 2008, you should check out my twitter feed or my tumbleblog. URLs are below.

http://sigsegv.tumblr.com
http://twitter.com/sigsegv

A Manifesto

Manifesto - a public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives, as one issued by a government, sovereign, or organization. source

T - 7 and counting

Seven days until the marathon.

We've been tapering for the last two weeks after the 20 miler. The previous weekend was spent on Tiger mountain running 12 miles.

Yesterday was our last team practice as we ran 8 miles around the Greenlake area. This has been a great training season for me, I've been extremely privileged to work with Jim (coach) and a core group of team mates.  I felt a touch of melancholy at the thought of not seeing Jim, Kit, and the team every Saturday. When you start out marathon training, it's uncomfortable. Going outside when its dark, wet, cold (or a combination) is hard. It's hard to motivate yourself sometimes. When you do it with a group, that you bond with over the course of the season, going out to run no longer becomes uncomfortable. It becomes something you get done.

On our very last Thursday run, me and Jim chatted while we warmed up around the park. He talked about how a marathon is a training exercise, how that when I got it done I would miss waking up early on those Saturday mornings. For him, the greatest pleasure was the discipline of setting a plan and executing on it. The main event is in many ways a victory lap for those months and months of preparation that was required.

Throughout the season, Kit has been an incredible source of inspiration for me. The ability to do what she has done and live with CLL. She's always shown up at our Saturday practices even though it drains her energy deeply. Having her at the coldest days of the season handing out hand warmers was a great motivator for me to keep moving. Like her, many CLL patients fight constant challenges to keep a sense of normalcy.

Unlike them, I have one final challenge left this season. One long run to get done.