I Live in Iowa: Week 173

A good week, not the week I thought it would be, but I will take it. After all, you can't really redo a week can you anyway? Even the worst week of your life, once it is done, that is it.

So much of my week is bound up in work, my job, my career. It is this thing I put emotion into. So obviously, you hope it goes well, otherwise, life is not going to be as good, or easy, or happy as the case may be. It is really interesting, I spent about three times as long this week making a few decisions as I usually do. However, we are at the point in the project where a change, any change, let alone a significant one, has significant repercussions, and no way you slice it will the cost be less than thousands of dollars. So one had better make a good decision.

I hope that I am able to more freely talk about what I've done the last three and a half years at some point. No guarantees.

I had an idea this week. I am an engineer, I design structures, mostly out of steel. I have a lot of good designs, I have a lot of experience, but we encountered a problem and I realized, this particular problem would be a perfect opportunity to crowdsource an answer from our customers. Because the truth is, I don't understand the problem well enough to know the best solution. No, I didn't even mention anything about this to anyone at work because while we crowdsource feedback on our designs, we rarely, and maybe never formally, crowdsource designs. It's an interesting question. As the economy changes, how does something like a design develop? Does it involve people (the crowd) essentially working for free?

Running went great! Wow! I ran 82 miles!. That includes a strong 12 miler on Monday with three UW Platteville Almuni, a four mile tempo in 23:28, and then on Saturday a 20 miler in 2:14, including a 5:52 18th mile. Stunned how well this went. I have had some trouble recovering as I push the mileage and the paces. However, a 67% increase in mileage, is pretty crazy, plus five of those miles were sub 6 pace and another 30 were under 7 minute pace.

I went out to dinner a couple people this week, nothing out of the ordinary, but sometimes I feel the need to say that I have a social life, despite how small and tame that social life is.

Hopefully you had a good week! Hopefully you have a good week this week!