Benfalk Blog

Today was a great day.  I worked on making an intensive user library for CodeIgniter today, but it isn’t finished yet.  When I get done with it I’ll post it on my site.  Aside from working a bit on some code projects I just couldn’t stay focused today at work.

Had a spirited debate today at lunch about a comment I heard shortly before noon regarding how the American government system was not set up to be a separation of state and union like everyone believes it is.  Having taken some history classes in my time I felt compelled to make a quick Google search to find the two sections of our government’s founding document that DO state just that very thing.  First a section directly from the 1st Amendment of the Constitution

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .

Next, in the same Constitution, Article VI, Section 3….

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

No matter how you cut the mustard on this… if you break these down into their logical components it defines a very good lay out for the separation of church and state, even though the words to do not literally appear in the document itself.  So the next time you hear someone mention that the “Separation of Church and State” is a myth deal, perhaps you will be armed with a bit of knowledge on the matter.

When I got home today I sat around for awhile before Lucas, Mason, and I headed out to the Critical Mass event for Fort Wayne.  Mason shaved half of his head for the event and kept the other half long… needless to say he’ll be getting his head completely buzzed tomorrow lol =) .  There where a couple really neat costumes and the event all and all was pretty exciting.

Update on my top knot !!!:

Top Knot

Tags: Captain's Log by admin
No Comments »

Today was a great day.  Worked on some web projects today that made the day go by pretty quickly.  On top of that I didn’t have too many user calls today =) .  I was told I am not to eat tuna in my cubicle anymore because other people are getting tired of the smell, and I can understand that.  So now I hide out in the phone service room to eat my every two and a half hour meals.

At this point I should probably explain what I am talking about with my meals.  Every morning when I wake up the first thing I do is start simmering 3/4 of a cup of uncooked rice before I shave and shower.  By the time I am ready to leave I divide the rice between four containers, add a 8oz of tuna to each container, and a quarter of a pound of mixed vegetables.  Starting at 7:30 in the morning I eat a container about every two and a half hours or so.  This is something I have been doing over a year solid now, and all I can say is, don’t knock it unless you’ve tried it for a while.  When people ask how I can stand to eat the same foods all the time I ask how they can stand not to.  It keeps my energy levels high and I never feel hungry =) .  At some point I may put together some pages explaining the science behind it.

When I got home I changed into my running gear, stretched up, and went for a run for the first time since the pains flared up on the back of my right knee last Sunday.  I started out slow and after a couple of laps around the cemetery I was relieved to find that my knees where okay.  I ended up doing 8.8 miles tonight.

When I got back Lucas was at my apartment, with my sweeper back as I requested so I could finish cleaning my apartment… which I must say is now probably cleaner than when I had everything moved in orginally =) .  Lucas, Mason, and I ended up hanging out the rest of the night.

Lucas & Mason with Mason's Tall Bike

Side Note:  I bought this shirt from shirt.woot.com today =) !!

Splattermare

Tags: Captain's Log by admin
No Comments »

Today was a busy day back.  I had a series of calls back to back, and a heap of emails to start my day.  On any normal day time would have flew by pretty fast; but my clouded head ensured a slow nagging day of wanting a couple more hours of sleep.  It was only around 6pm tonight that my head seemed to have clear up.  With a hint of pain still behind my right lower knee and the fact that I am just recovering from this sickness I decided to not run tonight.  I am always ever afraid of falling into a funk with my running and I need to make sure it doesn’t happen while I am trying to train for this ultra marathon.

Tonight I made some headway with my “Hybertrofy” project I have been talking about.  If you follow the SVN on code.google.com check it out =) .  Put down a large section of the base framework to work with and am slapping together some documents on how the code logic should flow in the system.  After about an hour of thinking and coding ideas down it became clear that Lucas was pretty bored with being around so we went back to his place and watched “Pulp Fiction.”  I thought it was a pretty good movie and was shocked that the title had gone by unnoticed until now.

I didn’t make any headway in my C++ book today, but that isn’t so bad I guess, I made enough headway yesterday. Tonight I am going to stay up late, probably till 1am, and clean my apartment top to bottom as both roommates are out right now and I have the gumption to do it.

Tags: Captain's Log by admin
No Comments »

Almost nothing to say for today.  I woke up at 5am this morning with a fever of 104 with incredible aches all over my body.  I took a shower to see if it would help and for a short time it did, but the problem wasn’t going away so easily.  I took some Tylenol and called in sick to work today and slept fairly solid from 6am until 4pm this afternoon, destroying most of the day…

When I woke up I wasn’t feeling so painful anymore and my fever had died away, although I still now feel a light headed and groggy.  I read some of my C++ book today and made it to chapter 7.  Lucas came and wanted to know if I was okay to visit our Grandma, who just had surgery yesterday.  I decided I was and we set off to visit her.  That was pretty much my day, nothing really to talk about.  Hopefully tomorrow will be better….

Tags: Captain's Log by admin
No Comments »

Why do Mondays always seem to be no good?  While my day at work wasn’t all too bad for a Monday, it seemed worse because my right leg has an irritating pain on the back calf right below the knee =( .  I fear it is the start of tendinitis, and why it cropped up I am not sure.  I know it hurt yesterday; but for the life of me I am not sure why it is flaring up on me now.  I am going to bed early tonight with an ice pack on it in hopes that tomorrow morning it will be better.  It seems to feel relieved for a while if I stretch the leg really good and stay off of it, so that is what I plan to keep doing until it’s subsided.  To many times in the past have I ignored similar dulling pains only to receive over-training injuries.

If the pain is still as irritating as it is today I’m going to look into what could be causing or did cause this problem to spring up so I don’t have a repeat issue in the future.  Part of me thinks it is due to the fact it was raining and nasty out.  I think it threw off my stride and form enough to do some damage… that and it is time to get new shoes too, which didn’t help things either.

When I got home I decided to go to Wal-Mart and get a ton of cleaning supplies because my apartment is past due for a major cleaning… but getting the needed supplies and actually carrying through with the plans of using them are two separate issues.  At this point I think I’ll start that mini project tomorrow.  In any event, I made some great headway on chapter six of my C++ book today and learned more about how the Subversion server works.

Tags: Captain's Log by admin
No Comments »

Today was a mixed bag.  I got up this morning to go for a run and Lucas came along.  I wanted to get a long run in today and it just didn’t happen like I had hoped.  It began raining about ten minutes into our journey, and even though I didn’t turn back, after about twenty minutes of running in the rain I decided I was only doing about 12 miles today.  Along with the rain, my right leg just wasn’t feeling the greatest… and it is still sore, but not sore to the point I am too worried about it yet.

When Lucas and I got back I went back to my apartment to stretch and shower up.  When I stepped back out to head over to Lucas’ apartment I was perturbed to find the the cloudy and rainy skies had melted away and it was actually quite sunny and warm out!  We set out for the homestead to help mom finish cleaning out one of the messiest rooms in the house and after that we hauled up my youngest brother’s water bed back to my apartment to use, as he won’t be needing it serving in the Marines =) .  Our mom took us out to a China buffet to celebrate my birthday and then we parted ways.

I just finished assembling the water bed and it is ready to use tonight, and I look forward to testing it out.  Before I head to bed I am going to read at least twenty pages in my C++ book so I have a dent into chapter six.

Tags: Captain's Log by admin
No Comments »

Today was a VERY frustrating day.  I didn’t get to run today nor did I go into work to get some work done this morning… as I guessed I wouldn’t.  I slept in until 9am and waited around until noon when Lucas was in the safe zone to leave for our mom’s house so we could do some chores for her today.  While I was waiting around I set up SVN and played around with it for awhile, but never fully got it working and it kept ticking me off =X.  To complete the ensemble of destruction I broke my Apache server setting up SSL with the subversion web access mod, which I’ll work on later.

After Lucas and I got back from cleaning up the upstairs bedrooms of our parents house I set back to figureing out how Subversion, SVN, works and more importantly… how it works with my Komodo IDE.  I finally broke down and decided to host my project source on code.google.com .  Once I finally figured out how to get my files updated to the svn project repository my frustration levels started dropping.  Now it’s just a matter of actually working on the project =) .

My brother and I are scheduled to once again head down to the old homestead to help our mother get the house ready for the family who will be taking care of the place; but, before we do I plan on doing my long run tomorrow morning.  I haven’t read the C++ book for a couple days as well, I plan to read at least fifteen pages tomorrow night before I hit the sack.

Tags: Captain's Log by admin
No Comments »

Had a great day today.  Even after being interrupted quite a few times today, it was still all and all a good day.  Made some fantastic headway on a big project at work that I hope to have wrapped up by the start of next week.  During lunch today I decided to build up the start of the code section for this site and laid out in my head some of how I would like to arrange it.  Part of me wants to go back into work tomorrow morning and get caught up on some other things that I know I won’t be motivated to do during a normal work day, and I just may… but since I’m leaving it up to chance and not making plans to actually do so it probably won’t happen.

When I got home today I changed into some gym clothes and went over to do some more strength training on my legs.  My legs seemed to be a bit stronger than last Friday so that’s a good sign I assume =) .  I did leg curls and squats with various leg stretches between sets.  I would like to get my long run for the week in tomorrow, but since it’s going to be raining it looks like it might not happen… I really don’t want to do it on the treadmill, but if it comes down to it I will by Sunday if I have to.

Before I go to bed tonight I hope to get some more of the coding section done and work on setting up my PHP project of “Hybertrofy” on a SVN, a source code management system.

Tags: Captain's Log by admin
No Comments »

Today was pretty descent.  It started out kind of shaky with email problems with one of our remote plants, but things seemed to get better as it got closer to noon.  I worked on a couple helper libraries for a PHP framework I like to use called Codeigniter .  I highly recommend this framework.  The website has some descent video tutorials to help show you some of the fundamentals of the framework and what it is capable of accomplishing.  One negative against this framework is it’s not all that easy to set up with Microsoft’s IIS as it likes to use “clean URLs” to trip class functions of the framework.  On a plus side however; it works quite well with Apache =) .  Sometime tomorrow I’m going to start publishing my class libraries and helper functions on my site.

When I got home from work I changed clothes, did some deep stretches, grabbed my iPhone, and set out on a run.  I had a fantastic run tonight I might add!  I did 10.2 miles in just under one and a half hours.  I am estimating my average pace for tonight was somewhere around 7.2 miles per hour, and the best part was I wasn’t all that winded either =) .  My knees feel fantastic and I have to attribute it to the extra stretching I have been doing to the IT bands.  I am also sure the strength training on my upper legs is helping too.

I made it to chapter 6 in my C++ book.  Branching and conditional statements, here I come!

Tags: Captain's Log by admin
No Comments »

Unproductive day ahoy!  I seemed to gain no ground today at work and spent a fair amount of time struggling to figure out the riggers of Microsoft’s worst operating system, “Windows ME.”  About forty-five minutes before lunch an email popped in my Yahoo from Activestate saying I qualified for their Komodo 5 IDE beta !! =) .  I installed it and played around with the features for awhile before remembering how much stuff I need to get done.  After getting knocked off course a couple more times by normal, random user calls I made the executive decision to go ahead and leave at my “scheduled time” of 4pm, which I hardly ever do.

When I got home I did the exercise bike for awhile to get the heart pumping and then did some bench pressing.  I need to start incorporating some more core strength training into my workout plan, going to work on that tonight and make a schedule I can stick to.  I have also been tinkering with the idea of tweaking my running schedule.  I am thinking about doing some light distance running on my off days.  On Friday I want to do leg strength training again, and I’m thinking before I do that I’ll do two miles and see how that goes.

Read about twenty pages in my C++ book today.  I was to afraid to see, but it feels like I’m about half way though chapter five.  I am excited to get on to chapters that make me feel like I am once again learning helpful material =) .  While I have been talking here and there about C++ I haven’t really said much about the core language that I do know, PHP.  My hope is to have some pages up on that soon!

Tags: Captain's Log by admin
No Comments »