Category: My Blog

Miscellaneous blogging.

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Let’s Ring in the New Year

Yeah, I know it’s a little late to say Happy New Year, I had a two week vacation from work a week ago and it’s always tough to be back at work. Anyways, My new year has started off with a hick up. I lost my Blackberry Bold on a ski trip this weekend. A loss like that is almost grounds for suicide, but I’m holding up fine. At least for now. I’m now using a trusty Blackberry 8700c. I haven’t used this phone in a couple of years and it feels weird using a Blackberry without a trackball.

I remember when 2008 started, it’s ironic how many people said it would be a great and fortunate year since the number 8 is considered to be a very lucky number in Asian cultures, but it turned out to be the worse year since the great depression era. But I have a feeling 2009 will be a much better. Much better than 2008 and I know that’s not saying much but at least we can have a little optimism. So far January will be exciting. We’ll be swearing in a new President into office. Not just any President, it’s a Black President. Also, Two big UFC within two weeks of each other each with an exciting headline match. Rich Franklin v. Dan Henderson will be squaring off this weekend, and BJ Penn will be battling George St. Pierre at the end of the month. Yes, it’s very exciting. So here’s to a fortunate and happy New Year. Cheers!

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Economy in Crisis

Unless you’ve been living under a rock inside a cave located somewhere on the moon you may know that our economy has been in a downturn for about year. It’s especially apparent for the past few months as unemployment rises and stocks tumbling like Britney Spears second attempt at a singing career. The silver lining of this historic event is that gas prices are low. So low that gas guzzling SUVs are looking pretty good, so get your driving on while gas is cheap.

Our government is bailing out the financial institutions and the struggling US auto makers are standing by with their hands out begging to get a piece of that pie. And in the midst of all this economic drama our new President elect promises to heal and restore our economy once he takes office. Also, stock prices are low and cheap. If you’ve never invested or interested in investing now is a good time to buy. If history is any indication investing for the long term at this moment may pay off quite well. But before you go out and throw all your hard earned money into the market. Talk to someone who knows something about investing before you jump into it.

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I’m Certified Baby!

MCITP

MCTS

For the past six weeks I was studying for 3 Microsoft certifications; 70-640, 70-642, 70-646. Hence the lack of blogging. It’s not like I blog often anyways it was just less than usual. All the studying, practicing, and self-control paid off with a passing score. Whew!

I put off the majority of my running and workout for the last six weeks, so I’m in pretty bad shape. It also didn’t help eating fast food, junk snacks, and the remaining Halloween candy. It’s time to get back to business. Don’t worry, I’ll be posting new MMA stuff soon, and get my review of my Blackberry Bold done.

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Gym Memberships

For as long as I can remember I’ve always been against subscription base gym membership. Why pay all this money to workout? There’s so much out there you can do to get a good workout without going to a gym. And best of all they’re free or at least cheaper. I’ve never met anyone who was in good shape because they only workout at a gym. Those who are in good shape that I know don’t even go to a gym. Those people run, bike, hike, climb, and play organized sports. They’re in great shape because they do a variety of activities. Working out exclusively at a gym limits your potential.

Some of my friends swear by it. They go to the gym religiously. It’s the constant in their lives. They workout two hours each day, 3 to 4 times a week with no results to show for it. A few years ago I went with a friend to 24-hour Fitness. He had a pass for me and he needed a workout partner. I was surprise to find out that all he did was a few sets of bench presses and arm curls followed by long stares in the mirror. And his cardio workout is a 5 minute jog on the treadmill before he hit the showers. I always wondered why some people have personal trainers and now I understood. People don’t know how to workout.

But I need to admit in this ironic situation. I have signed up for a gym at Club One Silver Creek Sportsplex (Gasp! I know, I know). It’s a very nice facility and also very expensive. But before I get hoisted by my own petard, I can explain. Before I signed up I thought long and hard about why I should and shouldn’t. And the reasons that I should outweighed reasons not to do it. First, I was signing up through the company I work for and we get a big discount. And the most important reason that I signed up is because it has a great aquatics facility. For the past 5 years my training regiment has been the same. I run about 25-30 miles a week. My training also includes lifting weights and playing pickup sports as a way to cross train. But the one cross-training activity I needed to add to my training regiment was swimming. The last time I did any kind of aquatics training was back in high school for Track and Field. It was great way to mix up the high-impact workout of running and the low-impact of pool training. Now that I’ve sign up with Club One I’ll have the opportunities to add it back to my workout routine.

To be continued…

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Evan Tanner found dead

Evan Tanner was found dead in southern California. He was out on a camping trip in the desert were it was reported that he had run out of gas on his motorcycle and eventually succumbed to the desert heat.

I’ve been following Tanner’s career since his early days in the UFC were he fought at 205 to when he won and loss the Middleweight title. Tanner was well-respected in the MMA community and a fighter who brought exciting fights in the cage. You will be missed my friend.

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What a Summer!

I’ve been out of the blogging scene for a while. Who am I kidding? I haven’t blogged much in the past year and a half. With work getting ever-busy and running season is here it doesn’t leave time to do much except for catching my monthly dose of MMA (I should have my UFC 88 picks by tomorrow). There’s really nothing new. I haven’t taken any vacation this summer, but I think I’m going to need one soon. I still have my iPhone and it’s working fine, but I’m still waiting for the Blackberry Bold to be released. There’s a good chance I may ditch the iPhone and hop back on the Blackberry bandwagon, but if AT&T keeps delaying the device I may just hang on to the iPhone.

I recently got a new speed/distance watch with GPS. It’s the Garmin Forerunner 205. I replaced my old Forerunner 201. It works great and the GPS works much better than my old one. What makes it even cooler is that you can send your running log data to Google Earth and it can map your routes so you can visually see where you’ve ran. It’s a great watch for serious runners who want to keep track of their pace and mileage.

Summer is at an end and I’m going to try to blog more. I’ve gotten about a dozen emails requesting more movie reviews. I’ve actually seen quite a few movies over the summer, but I just haven’t had time to write any reviews. I was too busy watching the Olympics, which was great by the way. I hope everyone had a great summer and I’ll be back with more content on this site, but no promises though.

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Summer Time!

It’s been quite a long spring season for me. Having to coach wrestling and track and field can be very time consuming. My track and field season has not yet ended. I still having one more athlete in our CCS finals. If he advances then we’ll be going to the State Meet.

The weather has been extremely hot the last few days and it doesn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon. My ankle is healing up well I will be getting back into my running regiment. Oh, another thing, I will be in Las Vegas this coming Memorial Day weekend. No it’s not for a UFC event unfortunately. It’s just for vacation which I deperately need. But there is a UFC event on the on Saturday. It’s doubtful that I will be able to make it to the weigh ins. Maybe I might get lucky and get to go to one of the UFC after parties.

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All South Park Episodes Online For Free!!

southpark

I’m a huge South Park fan and recently the creators of South Park, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, have release all the episodes of South Park online at South Park Studios.

Similar to other TV networks such as NBC that release some of TV show episodes online the South Park episodes are streamed through their website. So that means you’re forced to sit through short commericals during the show. I’ve watched a handful of episodes and the commericals are about 10-15 seconds long and appears about twice per episode. You barely notice them. The best part is the shows are uncensored and all the profanity are un-bleeped. 😀

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Contemplating a blog upgrade

This blog is about 3 years old and I think it serves its purpose quite well, but the code and design of this blog engine is getting stagnant and outdated compared to other blogs. Blogs are vunerable to spammer placing ads and links in the comment entries and there have been a few days were I spent a good amount of time removing and blocking them. So I’ve been looking at other alternatives for a few weeks now and one of the options that looks to be a winner is FlatPress. There are many other alternatives out there but I was looking for something that does not require seperate database like MSSQL or MYSQL. This blog script, Simple PHP Blog, and FlatPress uses a flat-file database meaning all the blog data is stored in a text file format. Flat-file DBs are great because it allows easy back up of your blog site. You can just zip your root directory and unzip it onto a another web server and you’re ready to go. A blog with a MYSQL backend database will require a backup of the database and the root web directory. And to move the site you have to make sure your new host allows you to have your down DB.So it can get a little complicated and tedious.

If the Simple PHP Blog team doesn’t make any huge updates by the time summer ends I have may have to switch to FlatPress.