And I thought the Fit Test was bad.....

Ugh...

Ouch......

Ow....

Day 2 of Insanity! (Plyometric Cardio Circuit) completed and I'm wondering what the frak I was thinking. I did it, but man it hurt. I took a few small breather breaks here and there but kept up as best I could. I can already feel the burning muscles in places I've never felt before so it appears to be working.

I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.

Oh wait, yes I can.

I went a little bit Insane today.

Some friends and I have decided to run the Tough Mudder and Warrior Dash. Both are muddy nasty trail runs with obstacles every so often. The Tough Mudder is 10mi and the Warrior Dash is 3.1mi. Naturally, with Murphy's Law being around, the shorter event is the 2nd one and not the first one that comes up. No matter which comes first I've got to get in shape. To work on that, today I started the Insanity! program. Insanity! is an intense cardio exercise program that is aptly named. The Fit Test consist of 8 base exercises that you do and count your reps. The Fit Test is repeated every 2 weeks to track your improvement. I'm a bit nervous about the rest of the program because the Fit Test kicked my ass.

Here are my counts for the exercises:

• Switch Kicks : 43
• Power Jacks : 26
• Power Knee : 60
• Power Jumps : 15
• Globe Jumps : 3
• Suicide Jumps : 6
• Push-Up Jacks : 6
• Low Plank Oblique : 30

Based on the people doing the exercises in the video I did so-so to incredibly shitty depending on the exercise. Granted, the people in the video are actually in shape and have been working on the Insanity! program longer than me so I have no delusions that I should be up to their level. Its going to be tough to make myself do this but I'm motivated and sticking to a good diet so I might not like it but I'm going to do it. :)

I guess we'll see what my numbers look like in 2 weeks.

Have you checked in?

Like all things, Social Media is evolving.

At first you just posted to Twitter or Facebook that you "just got to Target" or "finally hitting Starbucks for some much needed coffee". Then Twitter added features to allow you to post your location along with your tweet but you still had to tweet where you were. The location feature just posted a link to the map coordinates of where you were. This created a gap in the Social Media landscape that Location Based Check-In services evolved to fill. Gowalla, Foursquare, Loopt, Yelp, and now Facebook Places are examples of this Social Media evolution. Each has its own unique take on the Check-In process but all are generally the same at a base level. Opening each app begins the location portion of the service and you are then presented with a list of Businesses, Venues, Restaurants, etc... that you can Check-In to if you are close enough. Each app has a form reward system for being the person to check in the most at a particular location.

• Gowalla has a general Leader Board for each location but focuses more on random virtual goods that you "find" by checking in. You can collect these or drop them at locations to become a "Founder" (for the first few to check in) or swap items to find rare ones that you don't have in your collection. Gowalla tracks your achievements thought Stamps in your Passport for things like posting pictures, achieving a certain number of check ins, and unique stamps for each State you check in to.
• Foursquare awards "Mayorship" of a location if you're the one to check in the most number of times in a particular period. You also earn Badges for certain goals similar to Gowalla's Stamps.
• Yelp is more of a Review site but recently added Check-In ability and awards titles of Duke or Duchess for those that check in the most at a location.

I don't use Loopt or Facebook Places frequently enough to know what their reward system is like but so far I've not heard of one for either.

Since Yelp is already established as a general review site/app, Gowalla and Foursquare are the leaders currently duking it out for supremacy in the Location Based Social Media game. Foursquare is rapidly being embraced by the Business Community with deals, discounts, and specials offered to the Mayor of a location or simply for checking in. Gowalla recently entered into a deal with Disney and will award you unique Stamps/Buttons for check ins to each of the Disney Attractions. Gowalla also has a feature to allow users to post travels that people can recreate by following your check ins. (sort of a "follow me" tour of an area). This feature was also part of the Disney deal.

I see neither service rushing out to be an overall leader. Instead I see each becoming a leader in their own arena. Foursquare is looking to be the leader in the Business end of things while Gowalla is looking to become the leader in the Recreation arena. The Disney deal gives Gowalla a strong lead on that front and other parks and venues will probably follow suit. Add to that the fact that the new Gowalla v3.0 iPhone app now uses the Facebook and Foursquare API to allow you to use one App and check in to all 3 services as well as post updates to Twitter. That fact might help push Gowalla into the lead a little bit since nobody wants to use 3-5 different apps just to get all your check ins done. I like the new Gowalla v3 app and use it as my main one for check-ins. One App to rule them all as some would say :)

iPad = Star Trek Geek's Ultimate Toy

The iPad is quite possibly the coolest Geek Gadget I've ever owned (so far). Its exactly what Gene Roddenberry foresaw as one of the futures of mobile computing when he created Star Trek. A thin, portable, powerful, touch screen interface to access the worlds information. Kudos to Apple for making his dream a reality.

Of course it was only a matter of time until someone took the Star Trek LCARs interface and wrote an app to literally turn your iPad into a Star Trek PADD. The most interactive and useful one I've found so far is called LCARS Internet Media Reader by the guys at Krueger Systems [iTunes Link] ($4.99 USD). Its mainly a Reader app for now without the ability to post but updates are hopefully in the works once they get some annoying legal issues worked out with the Studios.

A few other LCARS related apps that I've found and like are:

• LCARS Clock by Cedesoft [iTunes Link] ($0.99 USD)
• LCARS Calculator by Cedesoft [iTunes Link] ($1.99 USD)
• DiagnosticPADD by Park Bench Software [iTunes Link] ($0.99 USD)

I am ever hopeful that Paramount will get their head out of their collective asses and put a Dev Team on LCARS Application Development. They are missing out on a Metric Ass Load of revenue from the Star Trek Fan Community. The above apps are rather inexpensive and focused on a single or short list of features. The money is in the Official, Licensed versions that would be feature rich and supported rather than independent apps that could disappear via C&D order from the studios any day now.

Come on Paramount! Where are the Official apps? You have no problem having Captian's Log yanked from the App Store yet you haven't given the fans what they are obviously willing to PAY for.

Seriously? WTF Denver?

Face it. The terrorist have won.

The whole point of terrorism is to strike fear and discontent into your enemy disrupting their everyday life. To cause them unrest through acts of violence that lead them to constantly expect another one to occur. To breed paranoia into their daily life and make them eventually self destruct. Like this event the other day in Denver. Someone mounted a TOY robot to a pilar around Coors Field. Nobody knows why the toy was cemented in place but some mental giant sees it and immediately thinks BOMB!!! It never occurs to them to look at it and see its a FRAKIN TOY ROBOT. They simply panic and alert the Bomb Squad. This leads to fear and panic plus hours of traffic jams. All for a TOY ROBOT. Someone was so caught up in all the Right Wing media Fear and Suspicion propaganda that they saw this TOY ROBOT as a threat. This person was so blinded to common sense that all they could see was a potential bomb.

Here is the kicker. We'll never know who the "concerned citizen" was that caused all this needless waste of tax money and police time. Since it turned out to be "a whole lot of nothing" the idiot that called it in will scurry away and hide from the limelight and reporters.

If this had actually turned into some form of bomb or threat that same person would be front and center with every reporter and TV camera crew they could find so they could tell the world how they spotted the threat. He/She would end up on Talk Shows and Radio Programs to tell what they saw and how they reacted to save people. Hell, Hollywood would make a frakin movie of the week around the entire event. All of which is total bullshit. Spotting a threat and making a phone call does not a Hero make. People that call in bogus threats like this need to be named and opened to the ridicule that they deserve. He/She pushed their fear and paranoia onto the public causing disruption and panic for no legitimate reason. They saw a boogieman in the shadows and wanted to make sure everyone else saw it too.

It's shit like this that prove the terrorist have already won.

How many outsourced folks does it take to screw up a new laptop?

I got a new Laptop for work this past Wednesday. Since I am a full time remote-worker I had a former boss bring it home from the office and I picked it up from him. I got it home and tried the VPN connection and it stalled out about 3/4 of the way through the process. I retried many times to no avail so i opened a trouble ticket with our help desk since it was after 9p and nobody was online.

That was probably my first mistake.

Around lunchtime the next day I decided to call about my ticket since I'd not heard anything on it. I went through the normal Level 1 troubleshooting chit chat and explained the problem. Since the laptop was new and I'd never logged into it before I had no cached credentials to get logged in with; and since the VPN wouldn't connect I couldn't get logged in to cache them. Catch-22. The Level 1 person finally got someone from the VPN Client team on and they determined it was a corrupted VPN Client and I needed to reinstall the client, which I couldn't do since I had no way to login. Level 1 guy told me I had to go into the office and get on the LAN so they could remote to my machine and fix it. Ok, no problem. Annoying, but no problem.

I drive in to the office today and give the Level 1 crew a call back. [+1 outsource person] Despite having all the notes in the ticket I still had to rehash everything that had happened before. Then he wanted to go through yet more troubleshooting to get right back to the same point. He needed to reinstall the client. 45min wasted to get back to this point. He then proceeds to attempt an uninstall then a reinstall of the client which tells him it can't because its already installed. Then he goes out to softpedia.com and pulls down some third party Windows Installer Fixer app to try and force windows to remove the old client entries. When he finally gets that done he then tries to put an old version of the client on my laptop. Not one or two revisions, 8 revisions back OLD. He stops when I point this out and gets the appropriate client files but is still unable to get it installed. He is stumped and reaches out to his supervisor [+1 outsourced person] He messes around with the machine for a bit longer and determines I need a local tech to come take a look and fix it. I explain to him I had until 1pm to get this fixed and he needed to escalate the ticket as necessary to get an immediate response. Another 45min wasted.

After waiting for 30min for someone to show up at my desk I called back to ask WTF was up. I was under a time crunch and they were pissing away my time. I get routed, finally, to a Level 2 person [+1 outsourced person] who then goes to a completely different site to get the VPN files and proceeds to install it. Everything seems ok when the install rolls itself back when she got disconnected from my machine. She tells me thats normal and means the install worked if she got kicked off. I explain to her that I watched the installer roll back the installation and then delete the icon from the desktop. After the 3rd time explaining it she finally gets it. /sigh just kill me. She re-remotes to my machine and gets a good install of the client to run and tells me its all done and to try it when I get home. Yeah riiiight. I'm going to drive all the way home to test this. I don't think so.

I go to the Lab and jump on one of our test DSL lines and fire up the laptop. It acts funky and won't let me select Remote Logon so I select Local and log in. The VPN Client then does some self configuration and pops an error about not having permissions to modify the Winlogon process. Oh boy. Not good. I ping the Level 2 lady and she says to click through it and I'll be fine. Ok, she's level 2 and should know what she's talking about. (Wrong again!) I click thru and it says to reboot so I let it reboot.

BLAM!!! Blue Screen of Death!! Reboot, Blue Screen of Death, Reboot, Blue Screen of Death, Re....well, you get the picture by now.

The botched install and apparent failure of the client to successfully modify the winlogon process has thrown me into a blue screen death spiral reboot loop.

Safe Mode? Nope, no good since I didn't have a local logon

Safe Mode with Networking? Nope, Bluescreened as soon as it tried to load Winlogon

Last Known Good? Nope, Bluescreened as soon as it tried to load Winlogon

I was toast and the proud owner of a brand new, shiny, HP boat anchor.

I tell her that I need a reimage IMMEDIATELY and to escalate the ticket however she needed to in order to get someone down to me ASAFP! She initates that process and I head back to my desk. I arrive to find no Voicemails or calls but then get an email saying they tried to reach me and would be closing the ticket in 24hours if I didn't contact them back. WTF?!?!?

I had had it. My time was almost out and I had wasted an entire day fraking with these outsourced, lowest bidder imbeciles who couldn't click their way to google without a detailed script and nice pretty pictures to show them how. I called the number only to get a Level 1 person who wanted to do all the troubleshooting over again. I explained that the machine was in a reboot loop and he was wasting time. After arguing with him for 20min I finally demanded he get someone down to reimage my machine as I would not perform any further (and useless) troubleshooting. He then takes another 15min to put in the Work Order to do what I asked them to do 2 hours ago. He said someone would contact me within 2hours to discuss the repair and I got the number from him and hung up.

Taking the Work Order number with me I went up a few floors where the Techs sit and gambled that someone would be up there and able to help me skip the outsourced HELL that is the Help Desk. Arriving on their floor I discovered what I knew but didn't try earlier. The lady that set up my machine the first time was there and had time to get right on the work order. She still has the laptop but is re-imaging it and I'll pick it up on Monday.

Lesson Learned: FRAK THE HELPDESK. Reach out and ping people directly skipping the morons in India. You'll save HOURS of time and actually get something done.

Oh, and the answer to the question? 4

it takes 4 outsourced folks in India to take a functional laptop with one minor issue and turn it into a blue screening worthless boat anchor over the course of 4 hours.

I'll smurf a cactus before I ever call the help desk again.

13.1 - My First Half-Marathon!

We did it! Jessica and I completed our first Half Marathon. The Disney Inaugural Wine and Dine Half Marathon in Orlando Florida. Jessica did great. She finished in 2:45:17. I finished but didn't do so well. My right knee blew out with a flair up of IT Band Syndrome just after the 10K mark. Up until that moment, I was running at a pace to finish around 2:58. Instead, I had to painfully walk the last half of the race and finished in 3:20 collapsing into a wheelchair with the help of the wonderful volunteers. I was wheeled away to the med tent to see the Ortho. She iced down my knee and wrapped it up. Jessica and I then got our medals and took a slow walk through epcot to head back to the hotel.

Despite the knee problem, I had a great time and definitely plan on doing the Wine and Dine again. Its a night marathon and running through Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios and around the Boardwalk to finish in Epcot was an incredible experience.

Next year though, we're taking Logan with us and doing the Royal Family 5K Saturday Morning before the Half Marathon.