The Course!

With 2009 about to end, the big focus in early 2010 will be the Marathon. Came across the 2009 Course Map--hope the 2010 will be posted soon!

More Snow Pics

Snow...Snow...Snow...

Yup, finally got a White Christmas for the girls in PA. While very cold, we got out for some playing, sledding, and such. Too powdery for snowmen, but we enjoyed it!

Christmas Rush is Gone...

Yup, another Christmas come and gone. Of course, our tree is still up, I am still turning the lights on every night, and the Christmas music continues. I guess we'll stop all that by New Year's. I am just not quite ready to stop it yet.
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Enjoyed a nice time in Pennsylvania. Kerry and I, the fools that we are, went for a quite chilly, 7 degree run, on Christmas Eve. Brrrr! Both of us almost took a spill twice, but all turned out well. I think my fingers will thaw out by June. We went to Christmas Eve service with my grandma and the highlight, besides my girls being AWESOME, was when, during the candlelight portion, Myra blows her candle out and yells, 'Mommy, look what I did.' Makes me laugh!
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Christmas Day we did the traditional New Florence and Pittsburgh trip. While exhausting, we throughly enjoyed seeing pretty much all the family. And of course, lots of delicious, yummy food--including my Granny's rigatonis!!!! The trip home took forever, due to I-95 traffic, but we made it, and Santa did indeed still stop! He brought Lucy's 'gift' this year--the Super Fast Crawling Baby.
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Yesterday, after my 8 mile run (Marathon training has officially started!), we went to the Flanigans. Mark, Christy, Aidan, and Maeve flew in, so we spent the day with them and Aunt Shannon and others. Fun time! Today we plan to meet them at Blue Jay Point.

My Wife Loves Me...

I asked for a Hurricanes cookie, and sure enough, she made me two!

Some Snow...

Wow! Pretty impressive when we receive our first snow of the year in December. While it did not accumulate her in Raleigh at all, we did have large flakes throughout the day, and some slush on my car that the girls and I got to go out and eat. Today now, more flurries are coming down, but again, no accumulation. Over toward Winston-Salem and in the mountains, they received upwards of 2 feet. Still a good chance for snow here this winter, considering that fact! PA looks to give us a white Christmas!

Oh Yeah!

We Love Christmas Commercials

Why I Have Problems With Microsoft

While I truly respect folks for using Twitter, I just never understood the buzz. I would read people’s tweets, but could not keep them in any kind of order. And what if I wanted to read responses to my tweets? Then I discovered Plurk. Plurk just speaks to me. I add a plurk, and people can respond directly to it. I can go back a few hours later, use the notifications, and I can see new plurks and responses to existing plurks. I can go back to my plurks and read comments. And it’s all on a horizontal timeline. Definitely allows me to visualize my day and scan through plurks to find what I need. I use it both personally and professionally, allowing for many good educational relationships to be formed, having many questions answered, and many resources shared.
Imagine my surprise, when I read the following blog post from Plurk: (http://blog.plurk.com/2009/12/14/microsoft-rips-plurk/). You really do not even need to read the blog, you get the gist of the sentiment in the URL. Seems that Microsoft stole the entire codebase, including UI, from Plurk for their Asian microblogging tool Club MSN (http://club.msn.cn/). You can view the Plurk blog page to see that not only does the user interface look very familiar, but they copied it right down to the code, substituting the names of the variables for their own names. WHAT? Microsoft, the company, much in the vein of the RIAA or MPAA, that will pretty much hunt you down and throw you to the wolves for neglecting one step in their marathon registration process. The company that charges you over $100.00 (US) for highly overrated software that did not even work with their older versions (*coughOfficecough*). Now they not only used portions of another tool, but they took the ENTIRE code base. Really, I guess this does not surprise me much, but it just frustrates me so much. We in the open source movement work so hard to make sure there are free and open standards, while entities such as Microsoft push money around so they can come out with their own proprietary formats. We work tirelessly to make sure things such as Creative Commons work better than Copyright (thank you, Mr. Lessig), then to have Microsoft swoop in without any fear of retribution. Grrrrr!

All Done

Yup...I squeaked by just enough on Wednesday to be a certified technician! Now I guess I'll start working toward my Linux+. No rest for the wicked!
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Fun weekend. I have a long 8 mile run, and then we'll drop the girls off for an overnight at Grammie and Grandpa's. Should be fun for all!

100th Of the Year...

Yup, my 100th post of 2009. I just wish I had something to say for it.

A Good Sign???

One A+ Down, One To Go

Passed the 602 exam on Wednesday. That, hopefully, is the more difficult one. That is one of the 'elective' tests that must be passed in additional to the Essentials exam. They recommend taking them in the opposite direction, but as always, I would rather finish the difficult things first!
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The test was not too difficult. I only saw a few things that totally stumped me (honeypot???), but for most I could reason out which were not answers, so I could find the answers. Again, I am confident going into Wednesday, but I will go ahead and study some more!

Here I Come, Pittsburgh Marathon...

Well, I registered. Early Registration ended last month, and I made the call to go ahead and sign up. So May 2nd I will run the streets of Pittsburgh for my 3rd marathon. Already have a bunch of folks up there ready to come out and support me with Krispy Kremes and Coke! Training will officially begin December 24th with an 8 miler. I will probably try to run an 8 miler tomorrow too...the Durant Park loop.