I started running in August. It was soon after our puppy, Rufus, got clearance from the veterinarian to go for walks in the neighborhood. We started out by going on long walks. It wasn't wearing Rufus out, so I started running short distances with him. I'd be winded after 100ft, walk a while, then try again. I did that for many weeks. I took my time on purpose - my heart has 36 years of neglect to make up for, and my puppy needs to work up to it too. Rather than pushing too hard and injuring myself, I forced myself to take it easy and it has paid off. Over time, I got to the point where Rufus would fall behind during running intervals. That was satisfying. I ran two miles earlier this week.I feel awesome. That's two times further than I've ever run before.
Running is probably the smartest move I've made in a long time. I can think faster and more clearly. I sleep better and find it easier to relax. I'm down 10 pounds already with a goal to lose another 20 putting me below 200 pounds.
I'm happy to say that I'm turning into one of 'those people'. I can go on and on about why I love my Vibram Five-Fingers shoes. I'm doing my first 5k this December. I plan to do a 10k next summer, then a half marathon next winter.
If anybody else is interested in running in the Santa Run on December 15 in San Jose, leave a comment or ping @AlTobey on Twitter.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Monday, October 7, 2013
Hello (again) World
One of the things that has bothered me over the last few years is that I have a strong desire to hack on open source projects and share what I've learned. But I didn't, at least nowhere near as much as I wanted. I had plenty of excuses. It usually boiled down to family or work. I was on call all the time for years and told myself I didn't have time to write. When I wasn't working, I was trying to be a good dad and spent time with the family. Then there were the hours after bedtime when I had no excuse, but nobody can be "on" all the time, so while I'd get the occasional burst of motivation, little progress was made.
Now that I'm working at Datastax as Open Source Mechanic, there are no excuses. It's literally my job to do all those things. This is my first entry of what I intend to be regular installments. My technical articles will land on Planet Cassandra while personal / rambling / "behind the scenes" posts will remain here for now.
You might ask, what is an Open Source Mechanic? My official title is actually Open Source Advocate, but it sounds too much like some kind of lawyer to my ears so I asked if I could use mechanic. A mechanic fixes things, fabricates parts when needed, and applies grease where grease is needed. That's me in a nutshell. It's in my paternal legacy going back many generations. This title makes me happy and gives me purpose when I'm sitting around thinking "what should I be doing right now?"
This week, I'm working on VM images that contain Apache Cassandra. These images will be on USB drives we give away at conferences. They will be downloadable. When you boot the image, Cassandra will start up and allow you to interact with it immediately. My goal is to eventually have these images built & QA'd by a righteous union of Jenkins and Packer. For now I'm hand-rolling them so I can have something for Cassandra Summit EU. I have another post in progress documenting all the steps required to make a hand-rolled image. I'll do the same for the continuous integration setup.
The build is going smoothly. I'm primarily working in VMware Fusion on OSX and will test in VirtualBox and Qemu/KVM. I hope to have an image that works for all three. I chose to go with Arch Linux just because it's what I like right now and I get to make the call. I'm not sure what the long-term distro will be yet. I'm thinking about Arch or Fedora so I can put together nice systemd integration, but there's something to be said for the popularity of certain Debian derivatives.
No more excuses.
Now that I'm working at Datastax as Open Source Mechanic, there are no excuses. It's literally my job to do all those things. This is my first entry of what I intend to be regular installments. My technical articles will land on Planet Cassandra while personal / rambling / "behind the scenes" posts will remain here for now.
You might ask, what is an Open Source Mechanic? My official title is actually Open Source Advocate, but it sounds too much like some kind of lawyer to my ears so I asked if I could use mechanic. A mechanic fixes things, fabricates parts when needed, and applies grease where grease is needed. That's me in a nutshell. It's in my paternal legacy going back many generations. This title makes me happy and gives me purpose when I'm sitting around thinking "what should I be doing right now?"
This week, I'm working on VM images that contain Apache Cassandra. These images will be on USB drives we give away at conferences. They will be downloadable. When you boot the image, Cassandra will start up and allow you to interact with it immediately. My goal is to eventually have these images built & QA'd by a righteous union of Jenkins and Packer. For now I'm hand-rolling them so I can have something for Cassandra Summit EU. I have another post in progress documenting all the steps required to make a hand-rolled image. I'll do the same for the continuous integration setup.
The build is going smoothly. I'm primarily working in VMware Fusion on OSX and will test in VirtualBox and Qemu/KVM. I hope to have an image that works for all three. I chose to go with Arch Linux just because it's what I like right now and I get to make the call. I'm not sure what the long-term distro will be yet. I'm thinking about Arch or Fedora so I can put together nice systemd integration, but there's something to be said for the popularity of certain Debian derivatives.
No more excuses.
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