Storm Day

I got in a great day of storm skiing at Alpine Meadows. I had planned on going to Squaw but the entire top of the mountain was closed there. I saw that Sherwood was open at Alpine so went there instead.

Set my alarm for 4:30. At 4:30 I really didn't want to get up and go skiing. I thought the storm might close the mountain wasting a day of driving. I thought it might be too dangerous to drive in the snow going up there. Whatever, I left my place around 5:30.

I made it to the lift around 10:30. I spent maybe 30 minutes at the grocery store and coffee place on the way up. I don't know how long it took to get clothes straight and walk to the lift. Much of the drive had been through the storm at 30 miles per hour. The car is actually great in snow like that, but I wish I had snow tires.

I rented Nordica Hellcat skis for most of the day. I liked them a lot but they are a lot of work! Later in the day I rented Nordica Enforcer's and they were so much less work it was unbelievable. I couldn't see bumps in the low light of the storm but the Enforcers just floated over the bumps either feeling great or dropping me down a making me do a little grunt to recover from the shock delivered from the bump. I was exhaused after the Enforcers so I asked for something really easy. I got the Solomen XWings. Woah these were insanely easy to drive. All of a sudden it felt like I could turn on a dime and the bumps were not shocking me anymore. Probably these skis are too easy for me, but I've got to admit I liked them.

Itunes Playlists

I've been playing around with itunes... way too much. One of the cool features they have are "smart playlists". Smart playlists let you create a list of songs dynamically based on things like when it was last played, or what type of song it is etc... Here are some of the settings I'm using to make smart playlists:

• High Playcount
  1. Last Skipped is not in the last 180 days
  2. Last Played is not in the last last 30 days
  3. Rating is 1
     
  4. Play Count is greater than 4
  5. Randomly select 250 MB
     
• High Rating
  1. Rating greater than 1 star
  2. Last Played is not in the last 30 days
  3. Last Skipped in not in the last 60 days
  4. playlist is not "High Playcount"
  5. Randomly Select 250 MB
     
• Random
  1. Bit Rate is greater than 130kpbs
  2. Skip Count is 0
  3. Last Played is not in the last 90 days
  4. Unrated
  5. Randomly select 600 MB
     
• Recently Added / Unplayed
  1. Artist/Album not blank
  2. Play Count & Skip Count are 0
  3. Bit Rate is greater than 127 kbs
  4. Podcast is false
  5. Kind does not contain video
  6. Rating is not 1 star
  7. Select 500 MB by most recently added
     
• Played but unrated
  
  1. Play Count is between 1 and 5
  2. Skip Count is less than 3
  3. LastPlayed is not in the last 30 days
  4. Last Skipped is not in the last 120 days
  5. Unrated
  6. Bit Rate is greater than 120kpbs
  7. Select 400MB randomly
     

I have around 250GB/55000 songs. It's enough to play straight for 260 hours. I like to explore it by using the "random" playlist. As you can see most of these playlists drop any music that isn't at least 130kps. This is the bottom limit because I find some audiobooks encoded to that rate and I'd like to exclude them. Also the lower the bit rate the worse the music sounds. I've found some songs that I dislike at a low bit rate but like at a higher one. If I'm exploring around there's a chance of getting a negative impression of an artist I've never heard before just because I heard them at a low bit rate.

If a song gets "skipped" it gets kicked out of most of these playlists for 30 days. That mostly works, but I may bump that up to several months.

For Ratings I mark songs I never want to hear again with 1 star. 2 or more stars and it gets picked up more frequently by my "High Rating playlist". One problem I have with the high rating playlist is that I haven't rated enough songs so it tend to have the same stuff all the time.

Posting from iphone

It's 97 here in redwood city

I am Ironman

I raced an Ironman today and completed the distance. Without any permanent damage I believe.

At 16:03 Im a pretty slow Ironman. Really I made a lot of newbie mistake.. damn I could have don e it much faster.

• First off I switched flavors on my sports drink. No big deal yo might think, but I think this new flavor upset my stomach and I didn't figure it out until halfway through the ride. This caused me to under eat making me slower.
• On the run I didn't clean my water bottle, so it had something else in it with my sports drink. I just dmped it out and figured there would be little residue.. stupid me I think this also bother my stomach
• Worst of all I overdrank. Too much water. I stopped at every bathroom on the bike course. By the time I got to the run I was rushing to the bathrooms because I couldn't hold it back. I drank my usual amount.. why was it too much? This killed my run. I tried just sipping and realy reducing what I drank.. no real help. The only thing that worked was that I finally stopped drinking altogether.

More on the Alcatraz swim

Here is a map of my swim from Alcatraz: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http:%2F%2Fbbs.keyhole.com%2Fubb%2Fdownload.php%3FNumber%3D1184825&t=k&om=1&ie=UTF8&z=14

I have to say the swim was a lot of fun. It's a real privilege to be able to do something like this. You jump off the boat in a rush, trying not to jump on top of someone and then try to get away from the boat as quickly as possible. It is a bit crowded and hectic at the start with people swimming over you. After a while you relax and it's just you and the currents and the cold water.

People swim at crazy angles, if you look at my gps track closely you can see that it wiggles a lot. I tried to keep the Sutro TV towers at 1 O'Clock or so as I neared shore. This worked OK, but often I would sigh take a few strokes and then look up to see the towers at 11 O'Clock. The waves and current tended to turn me around some. Sometimes another swimmer comes next to you and rather than swimming over them you have to speed up/slow down/change angles.

At Some point I realized I was moving to the right edge of the swim course so I started swimming directly toward the towers. This landed me in a perfect position on the beach.

The GPS did not get as many data points as it could have. It kept on flipping underneath me as I swam. I stopped a couple times to put it on my back but it eventually went back under me so what can you do?

I did this swim with a wetsuit. Next time I think I'll try without one.

My brother interviewed on NPR

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90889674

2 weeks till ironman

well I'm only 2 weeks away now. I haven't held together well... During training I injured my shoulder/neck, my low back, my toe, and now my latest dehabilition: bum knees.

Clearly the bum knees are related to my new bike.. At first I had a little bit of pain when riding, then I had a lot of pain and my ride distances started coming down. Right now it's a challenge to do an easy spin for an hour.

So even though I planned on doing Escape from Alcatraz this weekend I will only do the swim so that my knees have time to rest. I've been told by people in the know that I will still be able to do the IM, but I need to take things easy.

Oh well the swim for alcatraz should be fun.