I am SO damn proud of Tara. This last weekend my wife ran the Rock-N-Roll Marathon here in San Diego! I’m so proud of her! Ashby, Brenda (Tara’s mom) and I were there to cheer Tara on. It was very emotional. I freely admit I shed a few tears of pride and joy for her.

I don’t link to Tara’s blog here because that’s personal family content, but I’m going to excerpt Tara’s post about the marathon here.

…

The downtown part was great and more so because our families were cheering us on at mile 6. Aaron had a air horn so it was easy to locate my awesome family with their signs.

Somewhere around mile 11 on the 163 my knees started hurting and my little toe on my left foot was aching. At this point, Jarod and I are still together running and we decide to slow down our pace a little.

Right before segment 3/Mission Bay my knees are throbbing but the vibe from the fans was energizing. I liked the neighborhood feel and the view kept me distracted. Also, I tried a few new things which gave me a burst of energy such as chewing on ice cubes and bubble gum. This was around mile 18 and at this time Jarod was going faster so we split.

Around mile 21 I was HURTING beyond words and I began getting emotional – way emotional. I cut out a picture of Ashby the size of my ipod and had it taped to the back. It helped me to see my daughter however it almost brought a wave of unexpected emotion during this mile. I got it together and just focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Luckily, when I passed the corner I could see the end point way in the distance which gave me energy.

At Mile 23 I realize I passed my buddy Jarod somehow and my competitiveness creeped in (in a good way) which pushed me to the end.

At Mile 24 I walked a few steps, collected my thoughts, and pushed all pain out the door. I ran strong till Mile 25 and at that time I experienced the “runners high.” I wish I could find out how fast I ran the last mile because I would not be surprised to find out that I did it in under 8 minutes. When I made the decision to “haul ass” I looked down and I had goosebumps everywhere and I did not feel any pain whatsoever. I literally hauled ass to the finish line. I heard Aaron’s bull horn and saw the finish line all at the same time. I saw my mom and Aaron and I began crying because I was so happy to see them and to be finished.
I finished with a smile and both hands in the air.

Questions I have asked myself:

Will I do it again? Most definitely.

How soon? In the next year.

What will I do differently? I will build up my quadriceps because I believe my knees hurt so much in the long runs because my thighs are not as strong as they should be to support the knees. (my dad’s advice) 🙂

…

What is my goal? To get faster, stronger, and to finish the next marathon in 4 hours and 30 minutes.

4:50 am (my mom was up with me at 4:00 AM) 🙂

6 Mile Marker

Finish Line – weeping

Relief

Proud Daughter

Proud Husband (mom too but she was taking photos)

My Buds

Dressed for the post-marathon celebration at Jarod’s house – going through posters.

Ashby’s Poster

Aaron’s Poster

Poppa and Mimi’s Poster

The Day After – very stiff but itching to jog on Thursday morning 🙂

Once again, I would never have been able to accomplish this personal goal without my ENTIRE family.

Thank you Tara for inspiring me with your drive and ambition. 🙂 I love you.

Democracy Now | Alleging War Crimes, British Activist, Writer George Monbiot Attempts Citizen’s Arrest on Former UN Ambassador John Bolton

John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, escaped a citizen’s arrest Wednesday night as he addressed an audience in Britain. We speak to George Monbiot, the British activist and columnist who tried to arrest Bolton. Monbiot says Bolton is a war criminal for his role in helping to initiate the US invasion of Iraq.

…

GEORGE MONBIOT: Yes. Well, John Bolton has the position that any and every country of which he disapproves should be attacked, and then we work out the justification for that attack later. He was one of the signatories of the letter sent by the Project for a New American Century to Bill Clinton in 1998, saying that we should attack Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. And he had one justification then, he had a different justification in 2003, he has a different justification today. It’s very clear that with Bolton, as with Bush, as with Cheney, as with Rumsfeld, the urge to go to war came first, and the justification came second.

Now, when you look at the main instruments of international law, you see very clearly that waging a preemptive war where you are not in an immediate crisis of self-defense is a crime against international law. In fact, the Nuremberg tribunals described it as the supreme international crime. And it was for that crime that most of the Nazi war criminals were convicted. And that is exactly the crime that Bolton has conspired in committing.

I’m not sure if I mentioned that I recently did some work with Jeremy Thomas and and Aaron Newman on a book for McGraw-Hill. I provided the technical editing. It was a lot of fun, informative, and I got paid. Heck yah! I guess this makes me an expert on Enterprise 2.0 or something.

I’m excited to see the book hit the stands and to read the final version. The book is really a fantastic resource that provides just the right mix of technical and high level information. It will prove highly useful to the IT and business reader alike.

Pre-order today and save 37%.

Social Glass » Why It’s Been Quiet

Aaron Newman and I have been working for several months on putting an Enterprise 2.0 implementation guide together. Aaron Fulkerson, CEO of MindTouch, has been doing the tech editing for us. And we’ll have another all-star, Jevon MacDonald, doing the forward for us. This is my first book, and let me tell you the process is extensive. Figures and illustrations have to follow a special naming pattern, chapters have to meet pre-determined page counts, and the tone of the book has to be consistent (which is tough when you have two authors writing it). Aaron and I edited each other’s chapters as they were completed, then sent them on to Aaron F. for more editing.

1. Don’t do real work
2. Talk, type, tag, text & twitter
3. Hate a lot of stuff
4. Celebrate other douchebags

Yaaaay!!

In the spring of 2007, a conference was held on the outskirts of Washington, DC. Entitled Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, it hearkened back to the Winter Soldier testimonies held three decades ago during the Vietnam War.

 

I originally heard this story on Democracy Now! I’m glad to see it surface on Digg. Go digg it.

I bike to work. Most days anyway. Recently I’ve been sick; so, I’ve not been biking as often as I was. MindTouch is headquartered downtown in Little Italy and I live in Mission Hills. This means I have to bike uphill on the way home. It’s not bad. The bike ride is only 2.5 miles each way and I really enjoy it. However, since I’ve been sick (for damn near 4 weeks now with 3 illnesses I think) I could really use some assistance on some days coming up the hill. Here’s an idea:

Turns out you can buy it on ebay. I wonder if that’s street legal. Probably not. There are several stop lights and signs on the way home. Taking this straight up Laurel Street would be pretty awesome though (steepest street to climb in San Diego).

 

Johnny Lee you rule.

Well, I know Matt says: “open source is all about…people” in this fabulous video he produced, but MHinkle made the soylent green reference and I’m trying to make use of that Discrete Math class I took in college that I don’t get much use out of now that I’m in management. 🙂

Challengers of Open Source: Music video
by mjasay

I’ve been asked to blog at Internet Evolution, a TechWeb property. My first post just went up this morning. Going forward I intend to evaluate software for IT professionals. It doesn’t seem, to me, like their are a lot of software evaluators in the blogosphere who address the needs of IT. I expect to cover new/social, open source, or free technologies for IT and trends affecting the IT professional and manager. I think this should prove especially salient for IT during our current economic downturn.

Internet Evolution – Aaron Roe Fulkerson – How, and Why, End Users Circumvent IT T

Enterprise IT has been changing, or evolving if you like. The challenges of IT have grown more complex, spending habits are in flux, and technology adoption patterns are shifting. There are some key forces driving the changes in enterprise IT, but let’s take a quick look at the increasing complexity of enterprise IT.

A long time ago (meaning, a few years back), the IT department had only to combat rogue deployments of desktop software in business departments, such as Microsoft Access and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, the latter of which could often have more business logic than most of today’s Web 2.0 applications. Now, however, companies have a plethora of insurgent server-based applications that are proliferating both inside the firewall and outside in the “cloud.”

Who’s deploying and feeding these guerrilla applications (often of dubious engineering quality and even more questionable security)? It’s the users in the business departments [gasps of horror] who are installing and driving adoption independent of IT sanction and governance. The business users are taking matters into their own hands in an effort to improve their productivity and remain competitive. They’re turning to easy-to-use and flexible tools like wikis, blogs, lightweight CMSes, social bookmarking tools, and others that are often grouped under the category of Enterprise 2.0.

I was recently interviewed by Geoff Daily of AppRising. Geoff describes his blog as:

App-Rising.com covers the development and adoption of broadband applications, the deployment of and need for broadband networks, and the demands placed on policy to adapt to the revolutionary opportunities made possible by the Internet.

App-Rising.com is written by Geoff Daily, a DC-based technology journalist, broadband activist, marketing consultant, and Internet entrepreneur.

Unfortunately, I can’t embed the video here, but you can watch the video interview at Geoff’s blog. I start off a little slow, but I think the interview gets pretty interesting once I get comfortable with the format.

On the topic of the format. I think it’s fantastic. I’d like to do interviews, picture in picture, like this, but I would prefer to use Skype and then I would upload the finished product to Viddler. Viddler rules. Geoff is using SightSpeed, but to get all the features Geoff uses costs money and no one I know uses the application; so, I would have to ask them to install. Skype video would be so much better. Anyone know an easy way to do this? Tools?