The Nerd Lifestyle

I have taken the playhouse off the grid.  This weekend I installed a series of 15W PV Panels.  The panels feed 60W into a 7amp charge controller which at this time charges a 55AH deep cycle battery which allows a 110v 200watt inverter to pull power from it.

60W from the sun feeding a 55AH battery

Currently I am using this to power on the coop lights at night to lure the chickens into the coop.  I’ll also wire up a switch in the playhouse for the kids to turn on/off the lights, a fan to exhaust some of the heat in the playhouse and a series of garden lights.

On mothers day I picked up 4 baby chicks for Sara as a gift.  We raised them in the office in a old pack and play from craigslist.  We recently left for a week trip to Sonoma.  When we came back the chicks became chickens and one a Rooster.  Since we cannot keep a rooster in Portland, we sent him off to a Feed Store off of Foster.

I finished up the coop that day.  So now the nasty beasts are outside and the office is reclaimed from the livestock.

I finished my first race this last weekend. I did the Shamrock Run 8k. It was pouring rain, wind from every direction and crowded. It was fun but I am looking forward to doing a smaller and better weather race. I think I heard the estimate of 20,000 people attended this Shamrock run. So many people in my 8k that from gun time until when I crossed the start line was 3 minutes. Which meant that actually running took a while, it was a lot of slowing then passing then slowing behind someone and passing again. Next time, I’ll make sure I have a better position at the starting line.

Next up is the Bridge to Brews which I’ll either do the 8k or 10k for this.

Last night was my speed work night.  I set out for a little over a 5k (3.51 miles) and surprised myself with another personal best.  8:40 average mile.  I wasn’t even pushing it that hard.  While this isn’t anything crazy, I’ve been running for a bit over a month now and it was just last week that I was excited that I broke under the 10 minute mark for a sustained run.  I’m sure I could shave off time if I ran in the daylight (can’t see much at night so I’m always slowing down at intersections or tripping over things) and didn’t play car dodge.

Date: 02/18/2009
Start Time: 18:41:05
End Time: 19:11:26
Time Taken: 00:30:21
Total Distance: 3.50 mi.
Pace: 08:40 (avg)
Speed: 6.92 (mi/hr) (avg)

This is the guide I’ve been following.  I’m currently on week 4.  Only problem I have with this are the repeats and only because I don’t have a good way to track distance without constantly taking out my iphone and looking at my current distance.  I got this guide from here

Week 1

• Monday - Rest. Rest is an important part of any training program.
• Tuesday - Run 2 miles easy. Run at an easy “conversational” pace.
• Wednesday - Warm up with 10 to 15 minutes of easy jogging. Run 4 x Hill repeats. Run up a hill of moderate grade. Run at a pace that feels like 5K pace. Your pace will be slower, but will feel 5K pace because of the added difficulty of the hill. Run up the hill for about 100 meters. Jog down the hill and repeat.
• Thursday - Rest or cross train. Rest or engage in a non-running activity.
• Friday - Run 2.5 miles easy.
• Saturday - Run 2 miles easy.
• Sunday - Run 3 miles easy.

Week 2

• Monday - Rest. This program uses Monday as a rest day, because Sunday is your longest run of the week. You can adjust this to meet your needs, but take off the day after your longest weekly run.
• Tuesday - Run 3 miles easy.
• Wednesday - Warm up with 10 to 15 minutes of easy jogging. Run 4 x 800 meter repeats at around your 5K pace or about 15 seconds per mile faster than your 10K pace. Jog easily for 400 meters between repeats. Cool down with 800 meters of jogging.
• Thursday - Rest or cross train.
• Friday - Run 3 miles easy.
• Saturday - Run 2 miles easy.
• Sunday - Run 3.5 miles easy. You move up to 3.5 miles here. Try to keep your pace easy, but consistent. You are now running over half of a 10K. A 10K is 6.2 miles.

Week 3

• Monday - Rest
• Tuesday - Run 3.5 miles easy.
• Wednesday - Warm up with 10 to 15 minutes of easy jogging. Run 6 x 400 meter repeats at 10 seconds per mile faster than your 5K pace or about 25 seconds faster than your 10K pace. Jog for 400 meters between repeats. Cool down with 800 meters of jogging.
• Thursday - Rest or cross train.
• Friday - Run 3.5 miles easy.
• Saturday - Run 2 miles easy.
• Sunday - Run 4 miles easy. You make another increase in mileage here. Remember to keep you pace easy.

Week 4

• Monday - Rest
• Tuesday - Run 4 miles easy.
• Wednesday - Warm up with 10 to 15 minutes of easy jogging. Run 6 x 800 meter repeats at around your 5K pace or 15 seconds per mile faster than your 10K pace. Jog for 400 meters between repeats. Cool down with 800 meters of jogging.
• Thursday – Rest or cross train.
• Friday – Run 4 miles easy.
• Saturday - Run 2 miles easy.
• Sunday - Run 4.5 miles easy.

Week 5

• Monday - Rest
• Tuesday - Run 4.5 miles easy.
• Wednesday – Warm up and run 2 x 1600 meter repeats at your 10K pace. Jog for 800 meters between repeats. Cool down with 800 meters of jogging.
• Thursday - Rest or cross train.
• Friday - Run 4.5 miles easy.
• Saturday - Run 2 miles easy.
• Sunday - Run 5 miles easy.

Week 6

• Monday - Rest
• Tuesday - Run 5 miles easy.
• Wednesday - Warm up with 10 to 15 minutes of easy jogging. Run 8 x 800 meter repeats at around your 5K pace or 15 seconds per mile faster than your 10K pace. Jog for 400 meters between repeats. Cool down with 800 meters of jogging.
• Thursday - Rest or cross train.
• Friday - Run 5 miles easy.
• Saturday - Run 2 miles easy.
• Sunday - Run 5.5 miles easy.

Week 7

• Monday – Rest
• Tuesday – Run 5.5 miles easy.
• Wednesday – Warm up with 10 to 15 minutes of easy jogging. Run 3 x 1600 meter repeats at 10K pace. Jog for 800 meters between repeats. Cool down with 800 meters of jogging.
• Thursday – Rest or cross train.
• Friday – Run 5.5 miles easy.
• Saturday – Run 2 miles easy.
• Sunday – Run 6 miles easy. You are now running almost a full 10K. This will be your longest training run. The fitness level you have built up will easily carry you the last .2 miles of the race.

Week 8

• Monday – Rest
• Tuesday – Run 6 miles easy.
• Wednesday – Warm up with 10 to 15 minutes of easy jogging. Run 8 x 400 meter repeats at 10 seconds per mile faster than your 5K pace or 25 seconds per mile faster than your 10K pace. Jog for 400 meters between repeats. Cool down with 800 meters of jogging.
• Thursday – Run 2 miles easy. You are starting to taper, or decrease the volume of your training today. This will keep your legs strong and fresh for the race.
• Friday – Run 2 miles easy.
• Saturday – Rest
• Sunday – RACE DAY!! Have Fun!

So I started running again after a day at the park with my daugther and wife.  I asked the lady if she’d mind if I tried just running around the park track once (.5 mile).  I’d been mentally a little stressed (work, family, economy, etc). and wanted to try the distraction.  I pulled it off no problem.   I ran some in the past but never really tracked the runs.

With my iphone I am able to GPS track my run.  I love crunching stats and tracking progress.  This got me out the door the next day so that I could begin to log some data.  Then the next day and the next.  I needed data points!

In addition to data points, I need a goal. I signed up for a 8k in march and a 10k in april. I’ve been following a pretty ridged 10k training plan. I also committed to the 100 pushups and 200 sit-up challenges. Both are 6 week programs and again more data points to plot. Though I almost feel like I should do one of those photo a day things to track changes in my physical stature.

Last sunday I set my personal best which was a 4.01 mile run with an average (9:40 mile).

Date: 02/08/2009
Start Time: 15:36:31
End Time: 16:15:42
Time Taken: 00:39:12
Total Distance: 4.01 mi.
Pace: 09:46 (avg)
Speed: 6.13 (mi/hr) (avg)

I’ve decided I need to start running again.  One of the biggest motivators I find in running is tracking my progress.  I downloaded Mapmyrun for the iphone which tracks your runs via gps (locaiton, speed, averages) and then uploads them to the mapmyrun website.

here is my profile

http://www.mapmyrun.com/user_profile?u=421421973025

So I think I’ve finally come down to nailing what in the world was causing some emails to be randomly rejected after implementing ZoneEdit’s backup MX service. Now this post may be invalid if my understanding of greylisting is flawed but let me play it out. So someone sends us a email, the email is greylisted and bounced back to their server to be resent. The server says “Ok let me try this other MX”. It sends to the other MX which is zoneedit’s backup MX service.

Now here is the rub. ZoneEdit’s backup MX also does it’s own form of spam scanning which you cannot edit. It will reject messages that do not match the hostname. I see a lot of mail come in where the Client host has a active directory name like mailserver.local. So the secondary MX rejects it to the original sender with a 550 Client host rejected: cannot find your hostname. That secondary MX doesn’t even try and send me the message.

I also saw the message on the main xwall page about greylisting and zoneedit, which sort of pointed out to my ah HA! moment. So it either comes down to not using greylisting or dropping the secondary MX.

If you are like me you ran to your computer and had someone google “How to unstick a martini shaker”.  Atleast I did.  The information was underwhelming.  With most ending in “OMG Get a Boston style you noob”.  that is all good but I already poured some tasty gin into this and it is subject to melting ice.

I ended up salvaging it by running some warm water over the top.  Leave a comment with your tips for getting these things unstuck!

This is my Oregon Scientific Wireless Weather Station up on the roof of my house. I have a serial connection setup from my indoor receiver to one of my servers which then logs the data, compiles and ftps the data every 15 seconds to my website. You can rest assured that I graph all the logged data.

• Tabled data dump from station
• Daily, Monthly, Yearly Averages and Trends
• Graphical Representation of Current Data
• My station (KORPORTL108) on the weather underground