Benfalk Blog

Today was an okay day.  Didn’t get much done that I wanted to do today, but it could have been worse than it was I guess =) .  On my way home from work I was stopped by a train that had crossed the road and decided to stop for about 25 minutes, insanely annoying.  I am not sure how much longer it was there as I decided to join the heard of patient people who had also had enough and turned back down the road!  Getting home late was definitely not what I had planned as I wanted to get some running in tonight and flush that Mexican food out of my system; which I was able to do at least.

I ran 8.8 miles tonight, and the first two and a half or so seemed pretty rough on my quads, definitely from doing that strength training from last Friday.  After that though the pain dulled out and running almost seemed to kick into auto pilot mode.  I ran the last lap or so at a very strong clip and was pretty winded on my return run.  I am overjoyed to report still no sign of join pains in my legs, or at least joint pain that has any prospects of lasting.

No C++ today, had to many things going on.  Tomorrow is another day though.

Mondays… oh well.  To celebrate my birthday in the workplace I always bring in a bag of breakfast burritos in the neighborhood of thirty or so, and this year was no different.  Arrangements were made the night before and unlike years in the past, this year was a simple operation of picking them up and paying for them =) .

Top Knot Start

I tried to break the new look to as many people as I could today with my head and I’m hoping the shock value of it dies quickly, which I’m sure it will.  As I have tried to explain a couple times, the top knot is here to remind me of what I should to be focusing on.  Every morning when I shave my head it will remind me of the things I should be doing each day to improve myself.

My knee felt fantastic today, and I think I have to attribute it to the leg strength training and extra stretching I have been doing through out the day.  I hope to put together a set of pages explaining the pitfalls and problems I went through when I started running so other people can avoid them =) .

I’m going to read a tad more of my C++ book and head in to bed early tonight as I’m not feeling all that great, it feels like I have a slight fever.  On a side note:. it appears I made it to the top viewed list in YTMND today thanks to my roommate !  http://runningmad.ytmnd.com

Today was my birthday!  What better way to spend it than running for a couple hours =) .  I got ready at 10am this morning and headed out with my friend Mason, who tagged along on his bike.  He took along his camera and snapped some shots of me running and even made an animated Giff of the event.  My knees felt great the whole time, and even better, I read up on some stretches that will help stretch the muscles that are pulling on my knee and acting up from time to time.  Used my new iPhone on the run and listened to Pandora, it was amazing, and I in no way regret buying the plan after using today.

Benfalk running down Covington Road

When I got back from my run I showered up and my roommates, Lucas, his wife, and I went to a Mexican “all you can eat” buffet.  I didn’t go overboard on unhealthy food, but the food I did eat was greasy and I could feel it coursing through my veins.  A lesson learned, won’t be eating that again anytime soon during my training.  Upon returning home I crashed on the sofa and fell asleep for about three and a half hours.

My mom called and wished me a happy birthday and told me about how the cats got into the house through an upstairs window that I left open from last Sunday when Lucas and I were down helping put together a water bed =( .  It wouldn’t have been so bad but she was gone until Saturday fishing with her father on Lake Erie.

To finish out my birthday I started the official cut of my “Top Knot Project.”  I normally keep a shaved head, but have been letting my hair grow so it’s easier to identify a patch of hair growing on the back of my head while I shave.  It took some time to get it shaved down and I need my roommate’s help squaring it away.  Hopefully by the end of December I will have a descent lock of hair on the back of my head =) .

Had a great but unproductive day.  Not completely unproductive, but more so than I was hoping it to be.  Signed up for and got an AT&T plan with an eight gigabyte iPhone.  I love it already, it’s fantastic!  Was playing around on it off and on today for quite some time installing free apps and getting familiar with how it works.  The one I like the most so far is the Pandora music player =) .

I read about twenty-five pages of the C++ book.  Right now in the book it’s talking about loops and conditional statements, which is pretty much familiar to me from PHP and other languages I have picked up on over the years.  I am trying my best to stay focused on the reading in case there are any nuances or tricks to the language I can take advantage of.

My knee isn’t sore today which has me pretty glad.  These two days off from running I hope will go a long way in making sure it survives the training I’m putting it through.  Tomorrow I’m shooting for a thirteen or more mile run on a different course than normal.  This course will have hills but it won’t have the same quick changing variation of hills like the cemetery course I run does.  Before I go to bed I’m going to do some weight lifting and stretch my legs out as best as I can.  Might even start re-plotting out my Hybertrofy project.

A rushed and busy day with prospects of hurt knee =\ .  I was finishing up helping someone and was turning away to head back to my cubicle when my right knee lit up with pain for just an instant and my heart sank in an instant.  I babied it the rest of the day and kept stretching as much as possible.  Of all the fears I have, one up there somewhere near the top is KO’ing my knee again and being out and unable to run for three or more weeks.  With that in mind, when I got back home I put my plan into action that I made a couple days back: strength train the legs.

I did seven seven sets of leg curls, each set ranging between 10 and 6 reps.  I’m not 100% sure how much weight I was lifting as the machine I was using was a pulley system and the weights were not labeled in any way, which bugged the living daylights out of me.  I also did leg lifts and some lightened squats with plenty of stretching between exercises.  My knee feels quite a bit better afterwards which is good; however, I think I am going to delay running tomorrow and give my knee some more time to heal up.

The rest of my night is pretty much my own.  Roommate is over at my brother’s place trying to watch all four seasons of “LOST” in an inhumanly amount of time on the new LCD TV.  I took the opportunity to finish reading chapter four of my C++ book and did some mapping out of the web based game I really want to finish, “Hybertrofy.”  I don’t want to spend too much time blabbing about that though, that’s for a separate posting altogether sometime.

Today’s looking back forecast: fair.  Morning was descent, worked on the tracking program logic some and made some catch ups on some of the jobs that have been building on my marker board of depression.  Noon time was a little rugged with some server problems but for the most part they corrected themselves.

My knee today seemed to have fits off and on like it was going to start hurting, which kept me on edge most of the day but it never really acted up.  I stretched really good before going out on my run and took it easy for the first ten minutes to make sure my knee was going to be okay.  Ran the normal Cemetery trail which I will post the route sometime in my running section.

I have yet to finish chapter four of my C++ book, and it is a little depressing for me but a near schedule free weekend is just in sight =)

Today… bla.  My day started out busy and was pretty annoying.  Putting aside normal work issues, I was told I need to get a phone =(  .  When my wireless plan ended I decided to cancel my phone because I couldn’t justify spending money on a phone when I almost NEVER receive calls on it.  I have mixed feelings on this debacle… I can understand the company wanting to be able to contact me in the need of an emergency, but it’s service I hardly use for myself.  Even if I were issued a company phone and I didn’t have to pay for it I would start getting phone calls from other people that knew now there was a way to contact me.  So it seems my bliss of a phone-less existence is coming to an end.

Got home and did some weight lifting for about forty-five minutes or so.  Lucas came over and lured me out with a trip to Wal-Mart so I could get some coffee and a fresh sack of frozen peaches.   While there I decided to also buy a few more pairs of my favorite black pants for work.  When we got back from the trip I was roped into watching three episodes from season one from the series LOST on the new big screen LCD TV…  It is a great show; however, it isn’t what I had planned to do with all my time.

Side Note:: My woot t-shirt with the “Lost Cause” logo came in !

Today was a busy day.  Had a lot of calls and was taking care of little issues that kept cropping up this morning.  My day got better the second half though =) .  I started working on a web based tracking system, that, when I finish I hope is pretty sweet.  I want to design a system for our loading dock person that will give them the ability to scan any package from a major shipping company and pull up the info for it and log it as well.  I’m hoping to tie in and do automatic tracking look up for UPS, FedEx, and DHL at least.  I was able to get the UPS portion working with a SOAP service.  That alone got me pretty excited about the whole project.  When the framework is all put together I’ll make a code post on the design layout and how it works.

When I got home from work my room mate and I went running around the cemetery.  He is getting quite a bit better.  He ran every other loop and rode his bike on the odd numbered ones.  My knees feel good most of the time; however, I am always paranoid of the right knee having fits.  I’m trying to stick to my plan of doing a series of staggered long distance runs with plenty of the right nutrition and rest between runs.  If you look at my October running logs so far you will see the distances I want to run.  Hopefully by the middle of next week the long runs will be in the 14 to 15 mile range.  On Friday I plan to use the apartment’s “fitness center” and do some strength training to help my knees out as best as I can.

While I want to go over and hang out at my brothers to enjoy his new TV with him I feel compelled to stay home and finish reading chapter four of my C++ book.  May god have mercy on my soul.

Monday at work seemed worse than normal.  I came in an hour and a half early to curb some things I wanted to get done but got caught up doing work that had cued itself up in my mail over the weekend =( .  A week ago I made a mental commitment to use a white marker board I was given to help myself remember all of the tasks I need to do and it’s making me more and more depressed the more I look at it.  I think I’m going to have to pick a week and come in everyday at like 6am and just work until X amount of projects are done until I’m caught up.

With that aside, I decided to buy Activestate’s “Komodo IDE” today.  I used a chunk of the rent money one of my room mates paid me for several months in advance so I could keep using the trial I was working off of.  It is mainly a scripting IDE, and for what I do I have found it to be the best and cleanest ones when it comes to PHP.  Several times I have started working on a web based game I want to created code named “Hybertrofy”… I’m hoping this will help me keep that commitment active.  Even if it doesn’t it will still be a great tool for me with any web programming I need to do.

Left work at 4 today to help my brother set up his new 46inch LCD Samsung TV.  It is really sweet =) !  Did a little rearranging of the furnitature and pulled up the carpet a bit to slide some cables under it.  I must say, I am very tempted to find some odd end jobs to buy one of my own… but only so many hours in a day: I guess I don’t need one so bad after all heh.

Today was a great day.  Read a solid chunk of chapter four in the C++ book.  Also got in a 12 mile run around the cemetery with excellent weather.  I opted not to use my iPod and it was pretty amazing.  My mind drifted in and out of different topics and it was easier to focus on my breathing.  After the run I came back, showered up, and my brother, my sister-in-law, and I went down to help my mom with things around the house in preparation for when she leaves to join my father this winter in the Philippines.  We put together my old water bed and sorted out things that could be thrown away versus things that should be kept.  Once that was done our mom felt that was good enough and decided it was time to call it quits for the day and head to Pizza Hut for supper.  I am proud to report I stayed on course with my diet today and only had salad at the Hut =) .  Before I go to bed I’m going to see how much more of chapter four of that C++ book I can conquer!