Well today I'm leaving for Las Vegas for this years Devconnections. I'll be taking the ASP.NET track and am really looking forward to learning the ins and outs of ASP.NET 2.0. I've dedicated my track of learn to AJAX. I know that it's the Web 2.0 buzz word, but there is something there. When you can use it as a design tool I feel that you can really add to the user experience. Well as I learn, I'll share, so I'll do my best to post some example from Vegas this week.

Happy Coding

So as I'm sure you can tell from me previous posts, I am working on getting healthier. I have a phsyical coming up next month and of course have to get my blood drawn next week for the lab work. So like anyone in my position I am studying for me blood test. However being the geek that I am I want a way to measure what I'm eating and how my exercise affects that, and I want to keep track of it online. Well after a quick google search, volia, The DailyPlate. This thing is great, almost anything you'd eat is already in their database, and if it isn't, you can added it and use it immediately. It's a great site. I think of it like flickr for my food. You can sign up and use the site for free, or you can be come a gold member for $29.95 a year.

As I mentioned before I am working on riding more. I just finished the Long Beach Marathon Bike Tour, and that was so much fun. However I had to train for it, and being a geek I need to have a away to keep track of my mileage. So I started using Google spreadsheet. This works just like Microsoft Excel, so I have it caculate my distance for the week and keep a running total of mileage. I can see what weeks I did good and what weeks I did not so good. It really helps. And somehow for me looking at the spreadsheet with a lot of blank spaces makes me want to go out and ride some more.

Today I rode the Long Beach Marathon Bike Tour. I rode 26.2 miles in 1 hour 49 minutes. I and Ivan rode at an average 14.7 miles per hour. I had been working upto it since August and I can't believe I actually rode it in under two hours. It's the first organized ride I've done and I have to say that for my first large group ride it was a fantastic experience. I was really pleased that Dad decided to go down with me so he can be there when I finish. I really and truly appreciated his support. Of course my Beautiful Wife has been amazingly supportive and I really couldn't of done it without here love and support. Well now that I've done a 26 miles ride, I'm online looking for something just a little farther to ride.

Update: Check out the photo gallery

Since august 28th, I've ridden approximately 220 miles on my bike. It's not a lot by some people standards, and it extremely far by others. I've ridden that far for Three reason. 1. My family, I want to be around for a long time for them, and they need me, so I need to get my weight down and my heart health so I can do that. 2. Training, I've been training for a big ride coming up this weekend. My Beautiful Wife has been very very supportive. She's said I could do it from the begining even when I had my doubts. 3. I love to ride, I don't know how to explain it other than that. I've tried several times but I've always come short of being about to express it. So instead I thought I'd show you of all things a commerical. As dumb and as silly and as wussy as it sounds I almost always get teared up when I see it. Often times this is the music that is playing in my head when I ride.

As a web developer load times are always a very important thing. There is nothing worse than someone saying, "hey the site is slow" and give you no more information than that. So today I was tired of trying to stopwatch a pageload because it is still a psuedo subjective measurement. So after a quick google search I found fasterfox. A great extension that has a pageload timer built-in and it displays right in the status bar at the right corner. Check It Out

Its coming up on a year since I've started on the "lifestyle" change. I can't say that I kept to it perfectly. In fact from about February from July or so, I had slipped. I wasn't really bad, but I wasn't being really good either. I had let the stress of work and the biggest project we had ever done. So grapes gave way to M&Ms. Well as the sugar intake went higher, the flushing side affect of Advicor got bad. Well I have had enough of it. So I've started back on my routine of exercise and health food. I don't want to say diet because it has a very temporary connotations to it. I really do want it to be a life style change. So I’ve been studying. I came across this great article in men’s health about the top ten new things you can do to keep your heart health. Check it Out

So as I mentioned I am working at exercising more and eating healthy. However I have asthma, allergy based and exercise-induced asthma. So it was kind of a catch 22, I needed to exercise to get healthy, but if I exercise I have an asthma attack. Well that doesn't sound like much fun does it. Well, I started slowly. Lifting weights, with just some dumbells and work up from there. Men's Health again has a good article on how to exercise when you have exercise-induced asthma.

Its dark when I leave the house and walk to the train this morning. I leave the house at 6am this morning to catch the train to get me to work before 8:00am. This isn't so much for productivity reasons as it is for political ones. Ah, office politics. If we could live in that utopia of where being a productive knowledgable worker, allows you to work the times you are most comfortable and productive.  But I don't think anyone really gets that. Its the worker bee's pipedream. So I'm on the early train. It leaves the station and it is still dark outside. The train car is quiet with the exception of the air conditioning. Most people are either asleep or snoozing.  No snorers this morning so its fairly quiet. I rarely sleep on the train. In fact I rarely sleep in any moving vehicle, I've always loved seeing the road go by. In this quiet sleepiness that is the train car, I'm reading and every once in a while looking out the window. We get about half way to Union station and as I look out the window I see the sun starting to rise. However heavy clouds are infront of the sun so it shines through them with beautiful purples and reds and oranges. In my brain the phrase instantly flashes:

"Red Sky by Morning, Sailor take Warning, Red Sky by Night Sailor's Delight"

Riding in the upper deck of the train car, I'm about ten feet above the tracks, and as we cross the San Gabriel River the train is 20 feet above the road, we have a perfectly unobstructed view of the whole valley. The whole sky is ablaze. I think, "I wish I had my camera" knowing that even if I did, taking a low light shot from a moving train just won't come out like I see it. Red Sky by Morning, Sailor take Warning Red Sky by Night Sailor's Delight.