Maximum Verbosity

Disney Wine & Dine 2011

2011-10-02T01:27:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, October 1^st, 2011, I ran the DisneyWine & Dine Half Marathon.

This was my first Disney race. Runners had to park in the EPCOT parking area (for free) and take a shuttle bus over to the Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex by 8pm.

There were plenty of fluids and port-a-potties provided during the two hour wait. Disney also provided entertainment.

It was a cool night (for Florida), with the temperature in the mid-60s. Great temperature for running, but I was wearing a pair of running shorts and a light tank-top, so I was a little cold waiting for the race to start.

There was a bag check at the starting line. During the race, the bags were transported to the finish line. I checked a Disney provided (picked up at the Expo earlier in the day) clear plastic bag with my bib number on it at the starting line. The bag contained a towel, a clean shirt and stick deodorant.

The race started just after 10pm from the Disney’s WideWorld of Sports Complex. Around the four mile mark, we were running through Disney’s Animal Kingdom where highlights included running around the Tree of Life and running toward the Forbidden Mountain looming in the darkness.

After running through Disney’s Animal Kingdom, we ran through the streets and then through Disney’s Hollywood Studios. From Disney’s Hollywood Studios, we ran through the Disney Boardwalk Resort. And finally we finished up at the entrance to EPCOT.

I completed the race in 2:30:49. Not my best time, but not my worse time. The course had more hills (mostly bridges over roads) then I expected. There were a lot less spectators then usually. Only employees were in the closed parks. There were a few “civilians” along the roadways, but there were many employees, Disney characters and music about.

Soon after finishing and partaking of some food and fluids, I picked up my checked bag to change into a clean dry shirt.

I didn’t stay around for the after party in EPCOT which was open until 3am for runners and guests.

Getting back at it

2011-07-15T08:27:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since my last blog post.

I haven’t run much since my last half marathon on March 6, 2011. I think running four half marathons in four months might have burned me out. Since March, I have only run a few miles a week for a total of about eight to ten miles a month. I’ve put the 15 pounds I dropped between June 2010 and March 2011 back on. Yikes. Easy come … hard go.

For July 2011, I plan to run a total of about 30 miles for the month, with a long run of about six to eight miles. I’ve already run about a third of the miles and ran 3.5 the other night, so my goal should be attainable.

I have two main goals for the fall and winter running season. (1) To complete a half marathon in less than two hours. My PR for the half is 2:22:00, so I have some work cut out for me on this goal. (2) Finish a full marathon.

To help me with my goals, I decided to join Friends In Training (FIT). FIT is a Broward County Florida running club. It has weekend runs on the Fort Lauderdale marathon course and speed work at Central Park in Plantation on Tuesday evenings. FIT should help keep me motivated and provide me with some coaching.

I signed up to run the 2011 Disney Wine and Dine Half Marathon on Saturday, October 1, 2011. It will be my first race on the Walt Disney World properties.

I’m looking forward to a great fall and winter season of running, hopefully culminating in a full marathon finish sometime early in 2012.

Reverse words in a string

2011-03-25T11:12:00.000-07:00


    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string str1 = "one  two three  four five";
            string str2 = string.Empty;
     
            Console.WriteLine(str1);

            str2 = ReverseString(str1);

            Console.WriteLine(str2);
        }

        public static string ReverseString(string tString)
        {
            string tmp = string.Empty;
            string str2 = string.Empty;

            for (int x = tString.Length - 1; x >= 0; x--)
            {
                if (tString[x] == ' ')
                {
                    str2 += tmp + " ";
                    tmp = string.Empty;
                }
                else
                {
                    tmp = tString[x].ToString() + tmp;
                }
            }
            str2 += tmp;

            return str2;
        }
    }

This is a linear function and as such has a Big O of n.

A1A Half Marathon

2011-02-20T11:39:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, February 20th, 2011, I ran in the A1A Half Marathon in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. This is a great, fast course along the beach. The course started near the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Fort Lauderdale. There was only one "hill" which was the bridge over the inter-coastal on Las Olas Boulevard.

I completed the race in 2:22:00. My PR for the half marathon.

Virtual Active Forward-Motion Cardio DVDs

2011-01-22T13:31:00.000-08:00

On page 21 of the February 2011 issue of Runner's World magazine, I saw a small blurb about virtual running locations. It looked interesting, so I ordered one of the DVDs.

Today I received my first Virtual Active training DVD, the American Southwest. It’s a first person, forward-motion video for cardio workouts. The video is made for running (on treadmills), but I used it with my Schwinn 220p recumbent exercise bike since I don’t have a treadmill.

I rolled my Schwinn 220p recumbent exercise bike right up to my Pioneer Elite PDP-550 50” plasma screen, dropped the Virtual Active American Southwest DVD into my DVD player, grabbed a bottle of water and got to work.

This product is excellent. The videography is absolutely stunning, of course the American Southwest as a lot to do with that. The camera work is unbelievably steady. It’s hard to believe someone is filming with a camera strapped to their body while running. It looks like helicopter filming except for the fact the people are getting out of the way on the trails. The background music is high energy techno which is fine for a cardio workout. The workout narration was brief and at appropriate intervals.

The workout takes you through a virtual tour of the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, Arches National Park in Utah, Capitol Reef National Park in Utah and Bryce Canyon National Park also in Utah, hitting all of the geological highlights.

My first workout with a Virtual Active DVD flew by.

The only drawback is that the workout duration is only 35 minutes long. I was able to cover slightly more than 8 miles on the exercise bike. It would be great if the DVD had options for various times or distance such as 5K, 5 miles, 10K, 13.1 miles. Yes, everyone runs at different speeds, so various times might be more realistic.

At about $20 a DVD, the price point is just about right.

On the Virtual Active website, in addition to running and hiking DVDs, I’ve seen video clips that are for biking, as well as video clips of Venice. I have not seen these DVDs for sale yet though. I’d love to see more variety of DVDs including more foreign cities and world wonders. How about running along Ipanema Beach, down the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu or along the Road To Hana?

I highly recommend this product. I plan on also purchasing the American Northeast DVD soon.

2011-01-11T20:13:00.000-08:00

I registered to run the ING Miami Half Marathon on Sunday, January 30th 2011. This will be my second half marathon in as many months. I have not run more than 10 miles since running the half marathon in Weston on December. I need to get in a couple of long runs of 12 miles plus in the next two weeks. Right now, my legs feel great.

I picked up a couple more Amphipod 10.5 ounce water bottles from Runners Depot to add to my Amphipod hydration belt. I am now running with for 10.5 ounce bottles for a total of 42 ounces of water. That is also an extra 2 5/8 pounds that I will not be carrying in a race. I drink most of the water on my longer runs.

Running goals for the month of January?

Complete the Miami Half Marathon in under 2:22
Run 14 miles at least once
Run 65 miles

Bookmarks in Visual Studio 2010

2010-12-30T15:51:00.000-08:00

Using bookmarks in Visual Studio 2010 makes it easy to quickly navigate through code. You can set bookmarks for sections of code that you interested in and quickly move among those sections.

Here are the keyboard shortcuts for the bookmarks

CONTROL-W, B - This keyboard command opens the Bookmark window
CONTROL-B, T - Toggles a bookmark On or Off
CONTROL-B, N - Moves cursor to the next bookmark
CONTROL-B, P - Moves cursor to the previous bookmark
CONTROL-B, C - Clears all booksmarks

Weston Half Marathon

2010-12-12T16:09:00.000-08:00

This morning, I completed the Weston Half Marathon of 13.10 miles in 2h 22m 44s.

This was my first half marathon in 20 years. I ran the last one with my brother John in Seaside Heights/Park in the fall of 1990.

Here I am, with my new hardware, after completing the Weston Half Marathon. Good thing my shirt is orange. I spilled just about every color/flavor of Gatorade imaginable down the front of my shirt.

Now I have to start thinking about the full marathon.

Just missed my goal

2010-12-04T14:23:00.000-08:00

Well, I didn't quite reach my goal of running 75 miles for the month of November. I logged 63.5 miles. Not too bad. It is still more miles than I ran in October. My wife and I went to Peru for four days over the long Thanksgiving weekend and I caught a cold on the red-eye flight back from Lima. That killed about a week’s worth of running.

Completing the Karhu 5K in 28:02

I also ran in one organized race in November. I ran in the Karhu 5K on November 14th. I finished in 28:02 with a pace of 9:03. I was expecting to run about 31 - 32 minutes, so I was really happy with 28:02.

This was my first organized race in about three and a half years. It was a great route, out and back, along Fort Lauderdale Beach. It was a fast, flat course at nearly sea-level. The weather was perfect.

I am already looking forward to my next race. Hopefully I'll be able to complete a longer race in December

As it is so hot and humid here in south Florida, I recently purchased an Amphipod RunLite Hydration Belt so that I can easily carry water with my on my training runs. The belt is very light-weight and comfortable. It comes with two water bottles, but you can also attach additional bottles if needed. Each bottle holds 10.5 fluid ounces of liquid. The belt also has a nice large pocket which I used for my iPod. The only problem is that I have had an empty bottle fall off the belt while running.

Running Goals

2010-11-07T17:45:00.000-08:00

It has been almost three months since my last post on running.

I met or exceeded my running goals for August:

Run at least 12 times. Check. I ran twelve days in the month.
Run 4 miles at least once. Check. I ran at least four miles twice, including my final run of the month during which I ran 6.27 miles to reach my final goal.
Run 36 or miles for the month. Check. I logged 36.2 miles for the month. I just made it. I think because I wrote my goal down, my body would not let me stop until I reach 36 miles. It felt great.

In September I didn’t have any running goals except to keep running. I knew that I was going to be out of the country for the first two weeks of the month and that I probably would not be running those days. Once I returned from my trip abroad and getting over a cold of several days, I was able to log seven days of running for a total of 17.2 miles.

In October, I once again set three running goals for the month:

Run at least 12 times. Check. I ran twelve days in the month.
Run 8 miles at least once. Check. I ran at least eight miles twice in the month.
Run at least 50 miles for the month. Check. I ran 53.8 miles for the month.

Now for November, I have the following three goals:

Run 10 miles at least once. Check. I already ran 11.98 miles on November 5. Checking my notes, I believe this to be my longest run in some twenty years since I ran the Seaside 1/2 Marathon in the fall of 1990.
Run 75 miles for the month.
Run in at least one organized race.

I was planning on registering for the Fort Lauderdale 13.1 on November 14th, but since I wasn’t able to run 10 miles at least once in October, I registered for the 5K instead. I’m looking forward to my first organized race since the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Denver back in 2007.

There are a couple of local 1/2 Marathons in December. I may sign up for one of those.

Custom sort order in SQL Server Stored Procedure

2010-10-29T08:06:00.000-07:00

While working on a project, I needed to query data from SQL Server in a custom sort order. Here is an example code snippet:

select
   level,
   unit, 
   dept,
   organ
from demographics
order by 
   case level
      when 'ev' then 1
      when 'sv' then 2
      when 'bl' then 3
      when 'sd' then 4
      when 'tl' then 5
      when 'as' then 6
   end,
   center,
   unit,
   dept

Fibonacci Sequence In C

2010-10-26T19:11:00.000-07:00

During an interview, I was asked to write a function, in my language of choice, that when passed integer N, it would return the Nth number in the Fibonacci sequence. I remember doing something similar in my high school computer science classes in BASIC. I didn't think using BASIC would be a good idea during an interview, so I used the all-purpose interviewing language C.

In the Fibonacci sequence of numbers, each number is the sum of the previous two numbers, starting with 0 and 1. This sequence begins 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987 ...

If the function is passed 0, it would return 0; passed 1, it would return 1, ...

In general, n=(n-1) + (n-2).

Here is the code in a bastardized mix of C and Visual Studio 2008 C++.

#include "stdafx.h"
#include <conio.h>

int fib(int f)
{
 // Special case #1
 if(f<0) return 0;

 // Special case #2
 if(f==0) return 0;

 // n = (n-1) + (n-2)
 int n=1;
 int n1=0;
 int n2=0;

 for(int i=1; i<f; i++)
 {
  n2=n1;
  n1=n;
  n=n1+n2;
 }

 return n;
}

int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
 int f;
 
 f=fib(7);

 printf("%d\n", f);

 return 0;
}

Visual Studio 2010 Keyboard Shortcuts Posters

2010-09-29T17:38:00.000-07:00

For those of you that are Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 users, Microsoft has released a series of Visual Studio 2010 Keybinding Posters. These keyboard shortcut reference posters show the default keybindings in Visual Studio 2010 for Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++ and Visual F# in high quality, print ready PDFs in letter and A4 format.

I printed the C# reference posters in color on heavy card stock on our HP C7280. They came out very nice.

Thoughts on running …

2010-08-14T22:07:00.000-07:00

Garmin Forerunner 201

For years, my Garmin Forerunner 201 (now discontinued) has been my virtual training partner. The wrist mounted Forerunner 201 is a completely self-contained, performance tracking device. All lap data is automatically saved in the unit history for future viewing. The device saves up to two year of workout history. The Forerunner Logbook software allows you to download your workout history onto your pc. I still use the Forerunner 201, but manually save my running history in my Training Log on the Runner’s World website.

Runtastic Pro for iPhone

Recently, I added Runtastic Pro for the iPhone (thanks Randy) to my collection of running paraphernalia. This is a great little application for the iPhone and other mobile devices. It is one of only two applications that I have purchased for the iPhone, the other being MLB’s At Bat 2010. This app automatically tracks your run, maps it out, stores the data online and allows you to post your runs to Facebook. It replaces your iPod as it will play music on your iPhone while you run. It also announces miles/pace each mile. Runtastic Pro is well worth the $5.99 that it will set you back in the Apple App Store.

I haven’t run more than ten miles in a month for a few years. In the early to mid 90s, I used to run 5 to 10 miles a day three to four time a week, as well as running in a half dozen or so races a year in Colorado: Runnin' Of The Green 7K, Bolder Boulder 10K, The Turkey Trot 4M and Jingle Bells Run 5K to name a few, mostly because my brother John would drag me along. The Denver metropolitan area has a running race just about every weekend. It was cheap entertainment back in the day while completing college and starting my career.

I am planning to start running in some races here in south Florida in the near future, most likely in October. As such, I am working on slowly getting back up to runs of 5K (3.1 miles) to 5 miles. I’m struggling a little bit getting my mileage up. I thought it would be easier here at sea-level in south Florida compared to the rarified air at 5,280 feet in the Mile High City of Denver, Colorado. I don’t know if it’s the heat and humidity, my age or the extra pounds on my frame, but I’ll get there. As the temperature cools (please god!), the mileage increases and the weight comes off, I’ll get there. No doubt about it.

I also switched from running in cotton t-shirts to Nike Dri-FIT shirts. My cotton t-shirts were soaking wet by the end of a run. They felt like they weighed five pounds. The Dri-FIT shirts keep me cooler and dryer; and they don’t absorb all of the water. They are well worth the investment for running in this swamp.

Road ID

The one other piece of gear that I always wear is my Road Id. It’s a laser engraved id tag mounted on a Velcro wrist band. It succinctly displays my name, address, home phone number and my wife’s cell phone number. Sadly, my father had his first heart attack well before his 40th birthday and had another three or four heart attacks before finally succumbing to heart disease and stroke. Now that I am in my forties, if I pull a Jim Fixx, I want to make sure my corpse is clearly identified. I’m not trying to be morose, just practical.

Running Goals for August 2010

Run at least 12 times.
Run 4 miles at least once.
Run 36 or more miles for the month

I'm headed to Poland, Ukraine, Russia and Lithuania for a few weeks with my brothers at the end of August to taste the local brews, so I'll probably miss out on three or four days of running at the end of the month. I should still make it though. Through the 14th, I'm at 6/3.2/15.6. Run Billy, run (Thanks Stefi)!

Star Wars on Blu-ray

2010-08-14T17:07:00.000-07:00

George Lucas has announced that all six Star Wars movies will be release on Blu-ray in the fall of 2011 for the 35th anniversary of the release of A New Hope.

Removing "... eliminated by an aggregate ..." warnings

2010-06-08T10:19:00.000-07:00

I maintain some SQL Server 2005 scripts which run nightly calculating various employee metrics versus desired results. The 'Messages' tab in Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio displays the various script names and parameters as each is run.

Many of the scripts SUM data points and the 'Messages' tab displays many warning such as:

Warning: Null value is eliminated by an aggregate or other SET operation.

I don't want to see these message, but I didn't want to just turn off the warnings and then turn them back on when each script is complete.

SET ANSI_WARNINGS OFF
SET ANSI_WARNINGS ON

I wanted to eliminate the condition that was generating the warnings.

The code that was generating this warning tends to look like the following

SELECT SUM(data_point) FROM table

I modified the select statement as follows to remove the warning:

SELECT SUM(IsNull(data_piont), 0)) FROM table

Bill

Turning Off The Command Prompt Error Beep

2008-01-16T09:18:00.000-08:00

When I am working with a command prompt (DOS box), it will make a very loud beep when an error occurs. This happens alot when I am working with MySQL.

I found the following information on how to turn off the beep for the current session or for good:


net stop beep
sc config beep start= disabled

The first line will turn of the beep for the current session. The second line turns off the beep service for good. Notice the space between "start=" and "disabled". The space is required.