Wasting away

This is a running post, for all of the imaginary readers who have been demanding more updates on Shifter's exciting running career. I am officially on taper. Woo hoo! I have done four 20 mile runs and one 22 mile run in the past 7 weeks, which is a lot. In the past I've done more like 3 of those runs before a race. My pace is still fairly strong, but I've been much more tired the past few long runs. I was talking with a friend today, who has loads more running expeirence than me, and he was saying I should definitely taper to let my muscles rebuild. Which is when I remembered "Oh yeah, long runs like that eat up your muscles." Which is sadly true. I was noticing last night that my arms have shrunk noticably. I've never been a stick kind of guy, but I have like no biceps. This is kind of sad! I like having biceps. I don't actually like losing muscle mass. I like running faster, but losing muscle seems, well, unhealthy. So this is a dark side to running - you shrink. I've seen runners who really looked skeletal, like scarey. Fortunately, I have no self control with food and eat like a horse when I get to this point, so I don't turn into a skeleton but I do, well, reduce a bit. Sigh.

But the good news is now I' m on taper - I've got a 17 miler in a few days, then it's nothing more than 5-7 mile runs until May 31, when I do the first marathon of the season. And that 17 miler is going to be a FLAT 17 miler, by god. I tried a new route last weeken for my 20 because I was tired of the damn hills. Turns out I should have driven the new route before I ran it, because it had MORE hills than my old course. Including one O.M.G. hill that was like running straight up a wall. I was literally thinking "You've gotta be kidding me" haflway up that thing. And when I was coming back the other way and was at the top of that hill, I could see all of two different cities (suburbs) spread out before me. That part was actually pretty cool, but the running up it part Sucked.

But this marathon on May 31 is going to be it. The one. The sub-four. I've been trying to get one for 2 years and now it's gonna happen, damnit! And I'm really, really hoping that I'll feel a lot more rested and ready when I do it than I do right now, cause right now all I feel is really freaking tired.

A Sorry State

Things have come to a pretty pass when your colleague confides in you that she's been so busy that she hasn't gone to the bathroom yet...at two in the afternoon.  Things have come to an even prettier pass when, at 5:15 in the evening, you realize that although you urged her to go to the bathroom and chastised her for not taking care of herself, you haven't been to the bathroom since 7:30 this morning.

Will The Real Clint Eastwood Please Report For Duty?

I vaguely remember, in a previous life, working on a project that was in full swing.  I remember getting up at 6 and checking my e-mail and responding to various things, trying to get ready for the day's meetings.  I remember taking a break around 7:30 for breakfast (a 30-minute program, Tivo'd down to about 20 minutes).  I remember working straight through until 8 or 8:30. 

 

I was working on one project.  I was working from home, generally in my pajamas.  I was able to get a healthy lunch (assuming that I had procured healthy food) by putting the phone down for a moment or by stretching my headset over to the refrigerator.  And the bright side was that at 8:30 I was home.  I could cast off the trappings of my workday (so basically the headset and the computer) and walk over to the sofa and my work was done.

 

Lately, though, I've found myself working on two projects.  One of them is mine, meaning that I was assigned to it and I am, by and large, responsible for the stuff associated with it.  This project is not a good project--it's not especially well-managed (not necessarily a reflection on the project manager, but on the project management conventions of the organization) and its product is, perhaps, not the best possible solution to the problem.  It kicks up a fair amount of dust, but I could just about ride through it, imagining myself to be, say, Clint Eastwood in an old spaghetti Western, making the best of a bad situation.

 

The other project is Not Mine.  And I'm working on it because it is "too big to fail."  The perception of the project, whether it's true or not, is that it's a big mess.  I honestly think it's not going so badly, but the "deliverables" that our organization thinks make a project healthy are all missing, so all the managers who fancy themselves doctors think the patient is sick or dying.  This causes immense stress on the project team, all of whom are overworked and underpaid, and now doing their jobs under a spotlight that would make anyone sweat.  My best case scenario in this project is to be Robert DiNiro in Brazil.  I can swoop in and keep the wolves away from the door with my skilled use of bureaucratic language, but it's largely an existential protest against the injustice of our situation rather than a long-term solution.

 

The problem is that I'm not sure one person can be Clint Eastwood AND Robert DiNiro.  I'm pretty sure that's going to cause some kind of multiple personality disorder.  Either project would be a large workload, but at the moment the two of them together are eating me alive.  Which is another movie entirely....  Hostel, maybe.

This made me happy!

Ok, well the Linux box has proved its worth! This evening I was working on some statistics for this proposal I've been, uhm, invited to join and I came upon the need to do some crude power calculations. I won't bore you with describing what that means (I know, I know, so why do I bore you with all the other stuff? Silence, imaginary readers, and hear the tale!) But the long and short of it is that the software packages that I usually use are damned inconvenient if not hostile when it comes to power calculation. So I look online for some free tool for calculating power and I get directed to a site selling add on packaged for the low low price of $1,089. For a single add on package! Needless to say they're targeting institutions, not little ol' me, but as they aim that elephant gun at the institutions it blows me away quite effectively, damnit! I've hit this before with power analysis - lots o' programs, none accessible without wads o' cashage.

But then I remember - I have a Linux Box, and one of the reasons I built the Linux Box was because I knew I could put R on it, and R is a quite powerful, and quite free/open source statistical programming language with all sorts of goodies on it. I grabbed my one handy dandy intro to R book, looked up power analysis, and shore nuff, there is a handy dandy procedure written for R with all kinds of simple but powerful bells and whistles that could do what I want. Literally five minutes later, after all of 1 line of code, I had my power analysis. For free. Woo hoo! I can't tell you the hours I've spent getting pissed off over power analysis in the past. I am a very happy Shifter.

So this post is lovingly written to you all on the Good Ol' Linux Box. Woohoo! Now I just have time to play some games on the resource hogging but very capable Windows box sitting right next to it before going to bed. If there is a mothership for geeks, it's calling me home...

Star Trek Story Generator

It's not bad enough to be a Star Trek geek.  I actually geek out over flowcharts.  I know...sad, isn't it?  When Sheldon created his friendship flowchart on The Big Bang Theory I laughed so hard I almost fell off the couch.  But this is a good one.