Running
- Over-buy at your home improvement store. You will be more frustrated driving back and forth than having to go there once in when you are done to return everything.
- Check the tile pieces that you buy before you install them. Otherwise, you will end up installing one that wasn't the same color (Yes this happened to me see below).
- Buy the right trowel for the size of tile you are using and then make sure you don't use too much mortar. Especially, be careful on the small tiles as I spent a lot of time in the back end trying to scrape it out of the joints so my grout would fill it later.
- You will run into more problems than you anticipated and are going to start replacing a lot more things (e.g., Pipes, Sub-floor, Walls).
- Did I mention that you should overbuy things at your Home Improvement Store
- Realize that as you are going to get sidetracked by your significant other to complete "Fluff" projects some of which are unrelated to the task at hand.
Back to Running
Yep, I was the person outside in Minnesota on January 9 when it was -4 degrees running around the streets.
However, since then the weather has been mostly above 0 when I go out on my runs even though most of the time it is around 9:30 pm. Honestly, I wish I had a better time to do it but I have tried to create a habit in 2016 of running and I tell myself that if night running is my only time, then night running it is.
*Sometimes the sidewalk ends when running in the winter*
###Some Background
Now, for fun here is a little background on my running, I used to be a runner back in High School (long ago) and loved running, still do, but I lost the actual urge to run as I fell into a busy trap. I could find lots of excuses after college, heck even in college. I ran off and on my Freshman and Sophomore year just as something to do as at that point I wasn’t too buried in the books. However, I took it up a notch the summer before my Junior year as I conned my brother into running the Twin Cities Marathon with me in October. I ran ever day all summer no matter what and sometimes 2x per day. However, once school started up in the fall I never really found time to run as I made excuses. Never fear, though, I was young and determined to still run the Marathon and I actually finished with very little walking. However, since that day I have always made excuses and let the excuses win. I would try from time to time but never keep the momentum. In fact in spring, summer, and fall of 2015, I think I went on a couple weeks worth of running and then stopped. Part of my problem I found was I wasn’t making the right choice or prioritizing my time correctly and my excuse was always that I could never find the right “time” to run.
###Starting over again
Fast forward to the start of 2016 and something clicked. It might have been some of the changes in my life that occurred in 2015, or that I wouldn’t mind losing a couple pounds, or maybe I finally remembered that I love running and gives me time to think. I am honest with myself in knowing that I will not run every day but I would like to run a couple times a week.
There is something great about running as it is just pure. You can only move as fast as you can, as far as you can, and as long as you can. However, it is all up to you to determine what you “can” do and what you get out of it.
For me right now I am not worried about the distance, or speed, or length as I just enjoy putting my shoes and going for a run, even if it is below 0.
*Picture of me after one of my many night runs so far in 2016*
Everything is a Remix Remastered and Kickstarter
I can’t believe I missed the announcement that Everything is a Remix by Kirby Ferguson was remastered and all four parts were put together in a nice single video. I stumbled upon Everything is a Remix a couple years ago and wrote about how great the work was back then.
However, besides the remastered version of his project, I was even more shocked to see that Kirby was running a Kickstarter again for the Five Year Anniversary of Everything is a Remix. Now, this is where it gets even better, there is a bunch of cool rewards out there and if his project makes it past $20K (at $15K at the time of writing this), he will start work on another Everything is a Remix project.
So watch the video below, and then contribute to his Kickstarter project so we can get another great video on this topic. Then browse some of his websites like Everything is a Remix and his other project he has been working on called This is Not a Conspiracy Theory. Honestly, how could you not be a fan of Kirby’s work as he does amazing research and puts that together in an awesome video story that captures your attention? Also, don’t forget to follow him on Twitter @remixeverything so you can keep up-to-date on his current projects and anything else.
via Everything is a Remix Remastered (2015 HD) on YouTube.
PS - I just contributed to the project and pushed it over the 15K mark. Now only 5K more to go with 18 days left.
Speedrun: Back to the Future I in 60 seconds
This video is actually a little dated now but I just stumbled across it and figured I would share. It has been a while since I have actually watched the original Back to the Future movie but I was able to track with this 1 min Speedrun pretty well. Really great work by by the creators 1a4studio. Also, if you are interested they have some other Speedrun video’s out there that you might want to check out as well.
Great day for a run today.. But a sad day for my backyard rink and the ones I ran by. Sorry everyone, I would actually like it to get colder.
What a great day to be outside for an afternoon run
Now this is true trail run this morning..
Today was a great day for a trail run
Mr. B and I after our 1 mile Family Fun Run this morning
Remodeling project
Looking back I realized that in the last post I talked about how I was looking for new books to read and I was actually really excited about reading books instead of just listening to book tapes. In fact, I received a copy of “Sleep your way to the Top” by Jane Miller from FGPress not long after publishing that post (perfect timing right). Also, I had some other plans of spending time on some projects that were still very rough ideas in my mind.
No sooner did all of that happen than I found myself trying to figure out why there was water dripping in our basement from the ceiling. What caused the leak you asked.. Well of course a leaky toilet seal. So I did what every do-it-yourself handyman would do.... I decided to redo the entire bathroom instead of just fixing the leaky Toilet ring. If you are going to do something do it right from the beginning.
Upstairs Bathroom - Finished Product
Before and After
Always great to find what the previous owner did. Really shims!
Demolition almost complete
Replacing the floor
Starting to go back together
This bathroom remodeling project only too me 2 weeks until it was usable where as the first one I did took me just about 3 years (Read more here). Here are my words of advice from my first two bathroom remodels.
Thanks to the dog I got a run in and was able to catch up on some news/coffee before heading to work
Nice morning for an early run.
Three watchers during my early morning run today.
Camera Card Issues
A couple weeks ago we went to the zoo and took our Cannon Digital XLR camera along as we always do in order to capture pictures of our kids. However, after a full morning of taking pictures we got home and were going to load them on the Mac when we got a lovely message that the camera card needed to be reformatted and no pictures were found…
WHAT!?
I was sure that was a mistake, so we plugged it into a few other machines but each one said the same thing. For my family we love to take pictures and have been doing it for a long time. About 8 years ago we went to Peru for vacation and took 100+ pictures a day for each of the 14 days we were there. So after realizing that the Card was “Really” not working right I started looking for any type of software that could help recover our pictures from the day.
Let’s just say if you want to check and see if you have a chance of recovering anything you can easily do a quick Google search and find a lot of trial software. I ended up installing a few of them from companies that I felt I could trust. The nice thing about most of the trial software is that you could run the SD Card recovery and get a preview of the photos it found before you had to purchase the full version. In the end we bought the eSupport.com product called Undelete Plus and were able to get all of the photos back from that day. In reality this seemed like a lot of the other products but I liked that this one can restore more than just pictures and videos like the other two I was reviewing.
Update: After this issue happened we decided to use our old CF Camera card we purchased at the same time as our camera. Also, we just got back from a 2 week vacation of taking pictures with no issues. I think in looking back the issue relied in the CF Card Adapter as we had previously tried to replace the SD card.
Blogging to Learn
A while back I had read a blog post by Chris Dixon on Blogging to Learn, it was a short post but the last point he made really made me think.
Try to learn at least one interesting thing each week and then blog about it. Then see how people react in comments, on Twitter etc. I guess some bloggers don’t like comments but for me they are the crucial so that I can get feedback on new hypotheses. Blogging new hypotheses also means a decent portion of your blog posts need to be ignored or ridiculed. Otherwise you are playing it too safe.
The one sentence that really stuck out for me was the first. So instead of making excuses that I don’t have anything to write about or that I don’t have time to write, I should find one interesting thing ever week to write about. I am guessing some weeks it will be more interesting than others but if anything that will help get the habit formed. Just as if you were going to run a marathon, it all starts with the consistency of running before you can really start building up the miles.