I didn’t get to posting the previous pace chart logs, so I’m lumping the last 2 weeks into a single post here. Yes, I know it’s already Wednesday. Yes, I know I’m getting lazier and lazier. In all fairness, Sunshine had 2 exams last weekend, so I picked up the slack around the house so she wouldn’t have to do any of the chores.

I blatently ignored the PA’s recommendation to not run with the fresh stitch. I did take off the following day and skipped the interval run, but I figured I’d give the extended interval a try and see if I would pop the stitch. Everything was fine, so I continued throughout the week at a slightly slower pace than usual.

That weekend I went to meet a new potential running partner but he had to bail on me. I ran a really good 7 miles at a decent clip (compared to recent performance). I usually don’t have trouble with irritable bowels or weak bladders. In fact, I rarely ever suffer while I run other than being constantly out of breath. Well, that weekend, I suffered a miserable 7 miles. I woke up with an upset stomach (maybe Mexican food wasn’t a good idea), downed some Pepto and hoped for the best. The best never happened. I wanted to vomit every step of the way, but I couldn’t. That must be what hell is like, perpetually on the verge of relief. I sucked it up around 3 miles when a woman passed me. I told myself I just wanted the agony to end but I suspect my ego had something to do with it.

Last week’s runs were tough. The heat is starting to pick up just as my distance is starting to amount to something substantial. I’m starting to suffer from cotton mouth and my sweat is evaporating before I finish. The temperature is near the low 90’s when I usually head out and I think it’s starting to climb upwards.

Speaking of temperature, I ran the Keep Austin Weird 5K last weekend. I mentioned the idea to my brother and he leaped at the idea. When I tried to bail out, my Mom dropped a guilt bomb on me. I signed up and decided to drive down by myself (Sunshine had exams). By time I got down there, he had picked up the packet and went out to buy some running clothes. Apparently, he had been getting very excited at the idea of running the event with me, which was ironic because we fought like cats and dogs as kids.

Needless to say, the event lives up to its name. All of the oddballs come out of the woodwork. The costume contest is usually a big draw and the live music afterwards is usually a pleasure. Unfortunately for me, this was the first 5K I’ve done all year, especially after the hiatus, and it was not a good confidence building race. I should’ve known better when the event started at 6 PM.

According to weather.com, the event took place in about 100^o F heat. That made things very difficult. Around 1.1 miles, I started suffering. The first water stop wasn’t until 1.6 miles, if you discount the icecream at 0.8 miles, and there was no shade. It was excrutiating and I didn’t appear to be the only person suffering. Everyone who wasn’t in a costume looked like Death Warmed Over. I think I was starting to overheat near the end because I stopped sweating and started getting cold chills. I wasn’t alone; I passed at least one person that needed EMS attention. The heat was too intense; I will probably costume it next year.

The uptick is my brother was boasting that he’d be doing 6:30 miles. Turns out he finished in about 28 minutes, a mere 1.5 minutes before me. If I had been having a good day, I could’ve beat him. This is significant to me because he’s always been the athletic one of the family and I’ve always been the family brain (shut-up, no comments). As much as he had always ragged on me for being bad at sports and overweight, it sure felt good to know that I was within reach of being better at a physical activity than my 1% body fat brother. Hopefully he’ll want to do more events in the future because I did have fun lining up with him.

Well, without further ado, here’s the bigger than usual list. Note that the 20080628 event is the race.

I had originally planned a much more tasteless title for this post, but in light of recent events, I had to change it.

So I spent the last few weeks feverishing working on my Database Systems work. I had a project due, an overly lengthy assignment due the following day, and the final exam the following week. As if that weren’t enough, I had decided this was going to be the exam I was going to give one more shot at, so I signed up for the qualifier. That was yesterday.

Let’s see, after I received an A in the Databases class, I took 7 days off total to study for the qualifier. I spent an average of 8 hours a day studying. I rewrote all of my lecture notes into a huge pile of flash cards, about 200 of them. Then I reread the book (2 and a half times total). Then I worked through all of the problems that had solutions available. Then I worked though other university exams. I found this treasure trove of tests for similar qualifiers over at Stanford. University of California at Berekely had a nice stash of exams as well (few mistakes though). I practiced working under time constraints. I polished my SQL skills though there are MANY ways to answer problems usually.

In the end, the exam was over before I knew it. 90 minutes was barely enough time to come up with answers, not to mention check my work for mistakes, which were bound to be made. Plenty of people were still there with about a minute left. I’m really hoping that other people had a hard time finishing, even though there were only 4 problems. I also found out there were several people (of the large 18 person group taking it) who had not just taken the course. They all had studied material from the reading list the professor said would not be on the exam (decided to exclude it and I asked him about it). I wasn’t too surprised about the questions, but I’m hoping the other students were.

The reason why I had to change the title of this post was because I originally was going to name it “Another One Bites The Dust.” Last week, I finalized my plans to make a surprise visit to see my grandmother, aunts, and mother in Kansas for their Mother’s day get-together. However, in the last few days, my grandmother’s health has taken a serious turn for the worse. She’s dying of many complications, but she is unable to fight off pneumonia right now. My aunts all decided to remove the oxygen supply and let her pass away. They took her off today and she is likely to pass within the next few days. Her birthday is on the 18th.

I might have to fly out a little early tomorrow, depending on my grandmother’s health. Meanwhile, Sunshine has traveled to the last of rising stars (LA) to be with her friend for graduation. I have the house all to myself and all I want to do is watch Detroit crush Dallas, again.

Today I turned 26. I am almost half my parent’s age, and I was born at 1:15 PM on a Cinco de Mayo. Today was a surprisingly good day.

It started off by getting a surprise from sunshine. She apparently hurried while I was out running yesterday (amazing weather) and blew up over a dozen balloons and placed them in my car. She also put my birthday card in there as well. She pulled a fast one on me; I’m impressed she did it without raising any suspicion. She also informed me that I will be receiving a pair of custom Oakley sunglasses (I’ll be getting the polarized black iridium with carbon fiber frame) to make my summer a great one.

I missed the vanpool, but I found my grade in my Database Systems class. I received an 88 of 100 on the final (to match my 80 of 100 on the midterm), which beat the average by 14 points. I was basically gauranteed an A at that point, which I was informed of when I met with my professor. We discussed the material for the qualification exam and he is omitting the material I understood the least!

Unfortunately, on the way to the campus, I had to break up a fight. You’re probably thinking, “who would I catch fighting?” As I waited at a stop light near campus, I saw one guy beating the holy snot out of a smaller guy. When I say beating the tar out of him, I mean the smaller guy had been hit so much and so hard he couldn’t keep his balance and actually fell into traffic. I pulled over and yelled at the guy doing the thrashing to stop and it became clear he had a serious case of ‘roid rage. Even though he was trying to talk to me, he was yelling. The smaller guy’s face had litterally been beaten to a pulp. If another guy and myself hadn’t stopped it, there would have and may still be, a death because of this. The smaller guy climbed out of what we thought was his car and into the car next to it and drove off while we were calling 911. The cops never showed and neither guy had stuck around. I hate to think the smaller guy died of such a bad head injury.

My family made sure to call me just after sunshine and I enjoyed some killer home-made Mexican food. We stayed in and enjoyed some House on TV.

Lastly, I just found out that Nine Inch Nails has released a new album. To make things even sweeter, when you register, you can receive the FLAC copy completely free of charge! What other musicians do that?! I have finished downloading the FLAC (not the MP3) version as I type this.

Happy birthday to all of you out there who had a birthday, and congratulations Mexico on the sweet victory over the French.

So I now have finished CS 6375 Machine Learning, with the exception of the final exam. This marks the 12th credit of 33 required credits towards my masters degree. I also found out that they are changing the PhD qualification exam policy, so I’m not really sure what I am going to do in that regard.

Today is Thanksgiving and right now, the thing I am most thankful for is rest. I desperately need some time off that does not involve studying or working around the house. I decided to make today one of those days and it has been extremely peaceful. We decided to have a quiet dinner by ourselves this year. I started a fire in our fireplace since the temperatures dropped by about 40 degrees in 2 days, and we have been sitting around the living room all day.

I also went out for a run today to start getting acclimated to the cold weather run in preparation for this year’s Too Cold Too Hold 5K. Last year, I won my age group, so I’d like to repeat that performance. Starting in December, I’m going to follow the Ryan Hall Half Marathon training plan in hopes of reaching the elusive sub-2-hour half marathon.

I don’t really have any other news to report other than I wanted to express my gratitude for a day of solitude.

It seems like all I ever do anymore is work. I leave work and go to school which is like an extension of work. The more I work, the more I complain that I need some time off.

I have been procrastinating several posts lately. As of this week, I have started a long long study session. I have 3 exams in 3 weeks; each of which increases in difficulty and importance. Next Monday is the second midterm, followed by the final exam, and lastly the qualification exam.

Since this is basically my last hope at passing the qualification exams, I am really trying to do everything I can do to earn a pass. I have been beaten up by two marginals, so I really could use this. At the same time, it’s to the point where if I didn’t pass, I don’t think it would be as big of a deal as I imagine it.

Christmas vacation is rapidly approaching. I am hoping to avoid any on-call work over the break so that I can take car of things around the house that sorely need attention. I have a giant TODO list that keeps growing. Hopefully, I’ll get around to posting that list before the break starts so I can see how much of it I accomplished.

Bleh, I was going to say more, but I lost my train of thought.

So the summer semester wrapped up. I received a B for the coarse thanks to a simple calculation mistake on the final. It’s frustrating to work so hard on something and get dinged hard for something so trivial.

Some other things are finally coming to a close though. I had a Functional Test Verification (FTV) at work on Friday. I was demonstrating my work to add support for a new device to the system. It took about a week beyond what was scheduled, but it turned out well. There were close to 20 people in attendance, covering the entire spectrum of project development. Some program managers and my boss’ boss were even in attendance for the full affair.

Sidebar: I usually take longer on a project up-front, but it pays off in the end. I have yet to have a serious problem with my software post initial release. In fact, I rarely have bugs reported against them; usually only feature additions are requested.

So anyways, I also wrapped up my summer training today. I competed in the Too Hot Too Handle again this year. My unofficial time was 27:51 and I was 15th in my age group. It’s not the best time in the world, but it’s a tough race. I went out about 30 seconds too fast on my first mile and started paying for it near mile 2. The humidity was really high, so I did not do nearly as well as I had hoped. I wanted to be in the 25 minute range, so I was about 40 seconds slower than I had wanted to be.

Now that I had a few weeks until class starts, I think I will take the time to watch Deadwood and finish beating God of War 2 on Titan mode. I also am hoping to finish organizing my photos and music.

Twenty five years ago from yesterday, I was born. It was a strange coincidence to be born on Cinco De Mayo, as it made for some rather fun birthday parties in central Texas as a kid. It’s a little bizarre to think that I’m a quarter of a century old now, exactly half of my parent’s age again.

Some of my birthdays in recent years have been kinda crappy. I’ve had finals on my birthday, been out of town and away from friends/loved-ones, and even had Mother’s Day on the same day (happens once every 7 years, as it will next year). I’ve some good ones and some bad ones. I’ve had to work on my birthday as well.

Not this year. I had my Artificial Intelligence Qualification Exam on the 3rd. The week leading up to yesterday, I spent being sick. I had developed a migraine on Wednesday, allergies, and a sore throat. I was starting to feel better by the end of the week though. Yesterday started off my running in the White Rock ‘n Roll 5 mile race in Dallas. I’ve had much better runs before, but I was battling a headache and restricted air flow due to the phlegm buildup. I had to stop every half-mile or so and cough up some really nasty mucus. In the end, I still managed to shave about 12 seconds off my 10K PR pace.

The after party to that race was pretty sweet. They had a ton of food like pizza, pigs-in-the-blanket, bananas, oranges, and breakfast burritos. They were even serving beer from a keg! I’ve argued before that the best post run drink can quite often be a beer, so I definitely grabbed myself one. 9:30 in the morning and I had already started drinking.

I took Sunshine to the gym to meet with her trainer while I went and cashed a few checks and hunted for a James Bond DVD boxset. It’s been on my wish list ever since I learned of their existence. Then we met up with some of my running buddies at Chuy’s in Downtown Dallas. Not everyone ran in that race, but Chuy’s has a way of bringing people out of hiding. I had several more drinks there, rendering myself incapable of driving.

By time we got home, I remembered why I don’t normally drink. It makes me sleepy. I always get very tired the more I drink. This time, I had passed out in the car on the way home (Sunshine was driving), and napped when we got back. That definitely did not help with ridding me of the headache.

We still had plans for the evening, so we headed out to Arlington. I bought some decent tickets to the Rangers vs. Blue Jays game earlier in the week. I haven’t been to a baseball game since I was a kid and I was just as excited. I ate a classic hot-dog, a pretzel, and had a blast. The stadium wasn’t too crowded, so we had enough room to move about, but there was still plenty of people in attendance. We even got to see Sammy Sosa strike out. I think we’re going to go catch a few more games this year, so it’s a good thing I can get discount tickets through my employer.

Anyways, all in all, I had a pretty spectacular birthday this year. It’s a shame that I wasn’t able to give Sunshine the equivalent for her birthday; I’ll have to plan ahead for next year.