sha v 4.0

Archive for July, 2009

New PR!

Sunday, July 26th, 2009

Course map

I got a PR on today’s SF Half: 2:08:30, which is 9:49/mi. (About 12 minutes faster than my SF Half time last year!) I felt pretty good through most of the run, though my left Achilles/ankle was bugging me on the bridge. Amanda and I ran together for about 10.5 miles, but I pulled slightly ahead when Amanda took a walk break on one of the hills after the bridge. There’s a long downhill after that when I was feeling great, but the gradual uphill for miles 11-13.1 nearly killed me. I was feeling nauseated around mile 12, so I ate another Gel, which helped a bit. (As an aside, as I was grabbing the Gel from my waist pack, I heard someone yell my name, and I looked up to see Ross, one of my pace group members from my marathon training in ’05!) I was feeling pretty wiped as I entered the park, but seeing all the finishers and hearing all the spectators gave me a bit of an energy boost, and I was able to sprint in to the finish. I grabbed a bottle of water and turned around to wait for Amanda. I overheard the announcer say that someone who just finished was born in 1933, and looked up to see an elderly man cross the finish line and start yelling, “Catch me! Catch me!”, followed by a younger woman yelling “Catch him! Catch him!” so I grabbed him and basically bear hugged him until he was able to stop and stand up. Then I patted him on the back and said, “Nice finish!” A few seconds after that, I saw Amanda cross the finish line and cheered her in. (She got 2:09:30, exactly 1 minute behind me.)

My time was certainly a long way from the sub-2 I was originally aiming for, but I’m still feeling really proud, especially since this was not just training for a half, but really just getting back into running shape. Considering I went from basically zero running about 3 months ago to a PR without totally injuring myself, I’m feeling pretty good.

GPS data here.

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Posted in Fitness | San Francisco, CA | | 3 Comments »

Almost time

Saturday, July 25th, 2009

Apologies for the lack of updates, friends. Not too much has been going on this week except tapering down for race day tomorrow! I did my last run on Thursday morning, an easy 3-miles. My left Achilles has been hurting a bit, but not so much that I’m worried about it. It does never cease to amaze me, though, how my body constantly finds new and exciting way to hurt. If you like, you can sign up for text message alerts (my bib number is 12691) for when I cross 7-miles and the finish line. Keep in mind that both of these text messages will be coming in before 8am tomorrow, so I’ll understand if you want to just check the results later in the day. :) [Edit: Man, I just realized it costs $5 to sign up for the alerts. F-that! Just check the site later.]

Last night Walter threw a birthday party for Sprog, and he got pies from Z-Pie! Yum! Happy Birthday, Sprog, and thanks to Walter for organizing!

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Posted in Fitness, General | San Francisco, CA | | No Comments »

Right place, right time

Monday, July 20th, 2009

Saturday afternoon, Amanda and I were headed to the East Bay from SF. We were approaching the bridge when the traffic slowed down (even more than it usually does.) Eventually, a CHP motorcycle passed by, and we noticed a car accident on the side of the freeway. A car was spun around the wrong direction, and one of its windows was shattered. Doing my passenger rubbernecking duty, I noticed someone standing outside the car, and as we passed by, I said to Amanda, “Is that Heather?” Amanda looked too and realized that it was indeed her friend Heather. We didn’t pull over since the police were there, but once we got on the bridge, I texted Heather with something like, “We think we saw you on the side of the freeway. Hope you’re okay. Let us know if we can do anything.” Once we arrived in Berkeley, we got a call from Heather, who was getting her car towed to a shop in SF. When she was driving on the freeway, a big piece of wood fell off a truck in front of her, and when she swerved to avoid it, she lost control of the car and hit the guardrail.

She sounded really shaken up, so we all piled into a car and picked her up from the shop so we could take her to the hospital to get checked out. (As an aside, Steven Liu, the owner of the shop, Autobody Garage, was really nice. First off, he came from home to open up the shop on a Sunday so that Heather could tow the car there, then sat with her while we were on our way, gave her water, and his wife (?) brought her a bag of ice for her knee. Based on the 16 5-star reviews on Yelp, I know where to go when my car needs body work.)

Anyway, we ended up taking her back to the East Bay to go to the ER, and after several hours there, it turns out she had a broken kneecap. It was quite a mess, but all things considered, it could have been a lot worse. I’m just glad we happened to be passing by…

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Posted in General | San Francisco, CA | | 1 Comment »

Crystal’s Bachelorette Party

Sunday, July 19th, 2009

For Crystal’s bachelorette party, they took a trapeze lesson at Trapeze Arts in Oakland. I wasn’t able to participate because I had the AIDS Walk in the morning (thank you to everyone who supported me, by the way!), but I watched the last hour of the class and took some pictures. The best part was when we made Crystal wear her veil for her last trapeze catch; it looked great fluttering in the wind! The class looked like a ton of fun, and all the instructors were really nice, so I think I might try it for myself some time.

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Full set of (lower-quality) pics on Facebook.

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Posted in General, Photography | Oakland, CA | | No Comments »

Backpacking in the Desolation Wilderness

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

Reflections

For a few weeks, Amanda, Sara, Jeff and I had a backpacking trip planned for this past weekend. The original plan was to stay two nights, but all four of us were busy with work, so we decided to cut it down to one. Friday night, Amanda and I headed up to Sacramento and spent the night at Sara and Jeff’s. While packing our gear, we decided to save some weight by not taking the rain flies, since Jeff and I both checked the weather forecasts, and they never made any mention of rain. (This, dear readers, is what we call ‘foreshadowing.’ Pay attention.) After everything was packed up (including Dora’s doggy backpack), we picked up some sandwiches for lunch, and headed out. We got to the trail head around 1:30, and after a slight off-brand hydration pack debacle (damn you, North Face,) we were on our way! The hike was pretty strenuous, but it didn’t bother me too much because 1) I think I might actually kind of be in shape, 2) my pack was the lightest out of everyone’s (hooray being tiny!), and 3) the scenery was totally mind blowing and distracted me. The weather was beautiful, and the trail took us through the forest, across creeks, scrambling up rocks, and around several beautiful lakes, and I had a blast taking pictures. I decided to take my 20D instead of my 5D both to save weight, and so I could use my (crop-sensor-only) 10-20mm lens.

After about 5 miles, we reached a potential campsite, and Amanda, Sara, and I took a rest while Jeff went to check out a different campsite at slightly higher ground. As we were resting, the wind started to pick up, and a bank of ominous looking clouds started to blow in. After a little while longer, it started to sprinkle. Eventually, through a series of indecipherable hand signals, Jeff told us to come up to the higher campsite where it was a little more protected from the wind and rain. By the time we got to the second campsite, we were pretty soaked, but decided to try to wait it out before making a final call. After 20 or 30 minutes, it became clear that it wasn’t going to let up, and none of us really wanted to sleep in a non-waterproofed tent, so we turned around and headed back to the car. On the way back to Sacramento, we stopped for pizza, and all basically passed out once we got home.

Sunday morning we slept in, made a delicious brunch, then went wine tasting. Quite a change from camping and backpacking, but I didn’t hear anyone complain.

Despite the rather abrupt change of plans, I had an awesome time, and I really hope to go back to the Desolation Wilderness again. Next time I’ll take a rain fly. :)

Photos ahoy:

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Posted in Fitness, Photography, Travel | Desolation Wilderness, CA | | 4 Comments »

Juan and Rain

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

Have you ever done a Lord of the Rings-themed photoshoot? Me neither, until yesterday! Juan and Rain both work with me on the Sims, and a couple of days ago, Rain asked if I could do a quick shoot with them for their save-the-date cards. Since it is a themed wedding, they wanted to be in costume, which I think is awesome. So we met outside EA yesterday and did a quick set of shots. Click on each thumbnail to get a bigger view.

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Posted in Photography | Redwood City, CA | | No Comments »

Free your music

Sunday, July 5th, 2009

I bought an AirPort Express a while ago to stream music from my computer to my stereo. Besides a very painful setup process, it’s been working really well, and it’s really nice to be able to stream music from iTunes to the stereo.

While I was at Costco a few weeks ago, I picked up a Seagate FreeAgent 1.5 TB drive on the cheap to backup my photos. However, even after backing up every photo I’ve ever taken, I still had something like 1.3 TB left, so I decided to put all of my music and all of Amanda’s music on it, and turn my MacBook into a dedicated iTunes machine. (Uh, that is, unless I ever get back to working on my iPhone app…)

After all that, I had a nice iTunes streaming solution, but the one thing I always found myself saying was that I wished I could stream Pandora to the stereo. I thought that the Airport Express only worked with iTunes, but yesterday I decided to just search for “airport express pandora” on Google, and lo and behold, I discovered Airfoil, which is a piece of software for Mac and Windows that allows you to stream audio from any program to your Airport Express. The result? Streaming Pandora to my stereo! Airfoil also allows you to stream music from one computer to another, or even stream music from your computer to an iPhone or iPod touch. (Sidenote: there’s also a piece of software called PandoraJam that can stream from Pandora to Airport Express, but I decided against it because it also allows you to record from a Pandora stream, and I don’t want to buy any software that could get Pandora into legal trouble.)

So I am, as I type, listening to my CocoRosie Pandora station streaming to my living room stereo and browsing through a pretty sizeable iTunes collection, and I gotta say that it’s pretty sweet. I’m half-thinking of buying another (hopefully used) Airport Express unit and a Tivoli table radio to put either in the kitchen or my bedroom and have apartment-wide synchronized wireless music. Whee!

Posted in General | San Francisco, CA | | 4 Comments »

AIDS Walk 2009

Saturday, July 4th, 2009

Once again, I’m participating in the AIDS Walk on July 19, so if you can spare any amount, please consider making a donation on my page. If you do make a donation, please check if your employer has a donation matching program, and you can have your donation doubled. It’s always a little awkward to be asking for money in economic times like these, but remember that any amount helps, and it will be going towards a very worthy cause.

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Posted in Fitness | San Francisco, CA | | 2 Comments »