Is it ending?

Is my blogging ending? With only three posts in September, and no recent weekly updates you have to wonder. Well, I don't know.

Over the last seven years I've endeavored to share the ups and the downs. The problem is, as the ups get higher, there end up being a lot of downs. After climbing Mt. Everest, this really big thing, even using bottled oxygen, it's hard to adjust to a normal life again. This summer... trying to do something in the world of ultra running... I know where I've been in terms of physical fitness, and when I'm pretty far away from that it's hard to accept, or take joy in.

There is a saying, "if you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything." At the end of the day, after work and running and making supper, I'll be honest, there have not been a lot of positive thoughts going through my head this summer. It's hard moving to a new place and figuring out my routine. It's hard taking a new job and understanding exactly where my responsibilities are or where I provide the most benefit. It's hard not being in great shape with an important race looming. It's hard adjusting to hot and humid weather. It's hard having a broken hand, and now a somewhat shortened third metacarpal on my left hand that leaves me fearing I will have permanent problems, specifically rock climbing, from breaking it.

So I spend a few sentences venting, and where does it get me? Nowhere. The things I whine about are insignificant to the real struggles of the world. I mean, this is our presidential election this year! 31 Lies in one week?! Best part is destroying phones with hammers...

So who knows?

Instantly Waiting

I know at least three people followed the GPS tracks on Friday and Saturday as we trekked up and down Mt. Rainier. In many ways the entire story played out there in a new coordinate every ten minutes. Headed up or down? On the summit or not?

In this filtered world of everyone becoming his and her own media company the simplicity of the answers to the two questions above almost seem like enough to occupy the entire story. Did we summit? No. Done, story over, you can click the link below and go read about the Kardashians.

You didn't really click on that did you?

We live in an instant world. I am trying to upload the amazing GoPro video from the 15 minutes around when we turned around on summit day on Mt. Rainier, and it looks to take a good 2-3 hours at coffee shop bandwidth rates. I have both an expedition blog post to write up and a post about my little run up and down to camp Muir, and both are going to take an hour plus of my time.

I feel the need to be perfect, instantly, all the time, and I am not. I am not any of those things. Simply waiting to tell you what an amazing trip I had to Washington is hard even for me. Good things take time. In my opinion often we appreciate things we had to work harder for than things that came easy to us. You will have to wait to hear about our adventures on Mt. Rainier and wait to watch the video. Sure, you can see the result already, we didn't summit, everyone lived, not even any frostbite. Yet if we only restricted ourselves to the instantly available, what would be the point? What would be the point of working hard, of suffering, of enduring the intolerable?

In this twenty-first century things are going to be different. Fewer people are going to understand why they have to wait for something. Once the speed picks up, they will forget the previous times. What if I had to hand write this story and mail it to my family and friends? It could takes weeks to tell people. I would certainly regale a small handful with the details, but most would turn away, uninterested, in two minutes. What a strange world we live in.

Year in Review: 2014

Here is a link to my 2013 year in review. That has links to previous years, going all the way back to a 2009 year in review.

Where to start? This becomes a harder post when I have to rehash the follies of the previous year. In other words, it seems to get harder every year.

Everest, Mt. Everest, and the spring 2014 season seemed to define my year. Oh sure, there was quite a bit more to my year than those five weeks, but it's hard to say that what happened there did not change me, or other's perception of me. I'll admit, my experience this spring was a life changing event. Perhaps not as much as people would assume. When the actual incident happened, I heard it, started to see the helicopters, learned it was deadly, but initially, it was thought to be only a third of the size it ended up being. Only later did I learn how bad the serac collapse, the avalanche, really was. Then, after a political week, we left, via the scenic route.

For months, the experience only seemed depressing. My existence this summer was day to day. I just came out and said I was depressed in June. Yet God's plan, and my plan, or any of our plans, were not the same. After all, it was years of success that led me to the "failure" on Everest, and depending on the view, it wasn't a failure at all. So I moved on in life. Certainly something I won't forget, but not something I plan to dwell on. In fact, I finally published the Mera Peak video, basically the world's easiest 21,000 foot mountain.

Fastpacking over four 14ers and more than 50 miles in about a day and a half, was a pretty cool trip. I'm thinking of doing it again, except trying for the whole Nolan's 14.

Meanwhile, this whole time, work was going really well. Whenever I talk about work it's aways in the this vague language, and I hope that I can give some details in the future, but suffice to say, work is going quite well. I made a lot of money this year. My wealth makes me sick sometimes compared to the poverty of so many. Yet I realize that we all have different gifts, and in my mind it is our duty not to waste those gifts.

So as I worked through June and July, getting second in the Run4Troops Marathon in a pedestrian 2:50, I was continuing to train, or rather run a lot. I managed to put up a number of 100+ mile weeks, six I think, with the highest at 131 miles. For the year I think I ended up with around 2800 miles. After such good training, I thought, 'why not run an ultra marathon?' I knew I would get into it sometime, it was just a matter of when. Well, the 24 Hour USA championships were a half day drive away in Ohio, and I figured, if I'm going to do one of these, it might as well be a low key, but maybe semi-competitive thing. In other words, not debuting at Western States or Leadville, or JFK. Well, as you heard, I won, running and walking 154.5 miles. Which I found out only recently lands me on team USA for the 2015 World Championships in Italy. Yep, I'm going to be running on Team USA!

The rest of the fall and early winter was what I might call anticlimactic. I gave up my coaching job at the University of Dubuque because my day job was about to consume far too many hours of my life into the early spring. I started running with some coworkers from the University of Wisconsin Platteville, which has provided a nice change to the college coaching rhythm. Work began to accelerate and I started to make many trips to Davenport to our factory. I managed to give myself an overuse tendon injury just a few weeks before the California International Marathon. It happens.

I'm still single. Perpetually single. As I write this I'm just back from a family friend's house where a like 20 year old is getting married to a 22 year old in the summer. That seems so young to me. If there is some jealously that I battle with, it's seeing so many people happy in relationships. Don't get me wrong, I have the best life in the world. I have every advantage a white male in the middle class from the USA can have, and I've taken advantage of many of those. Yet it's easy to be lonely at night in the hour or two after supper and before going to bed.

I take being single in stride. I donated the first $1000 dollars to Sustainable South Sudan this March. Completely as a cash gift to my friend JL who was about to return to Africa. I still haven't seen any pictures of how the money was spent, and thus not given any more yet. The point being, my money can make a huge difference in Africa, a difference that it simply can't make in the developed world. If being single, even my whole life, another 60 or 70 years, means that I have more money to help the less fortunate, instead of raise my own children or afford a stay at home wife, that's okay. Obviously I would prefer the wife and kids, but God's plan is not always our plan, and that is my comfort in still being single.

I capped of the year with a trip to Colorado and hiking and skiing on 14ers, even getting to the top of Quandary on my 7th winter 14er attempt! In fact, here is the first video of maybe seven or eight that track the entire descent. Basically it was about as hard as a blue square run at a resort in my opinion. For me it was a 4:45 climb and 1:05 descent.

What to look forward to in 2015? A number of ultra marathons including the 24 Hour World Championships. I plan to pay off a number of student loans this year that I put off paying off until I went to Everest, because now I've been to Everest. I need to get cruise control installed on my new 2002 Honda Insight. Small detail, but I'm really looking forward to it. I really hope to be able to share what I have been doing at work the past four years. Unfortunately, based on our website, it's still not published to the public, despite the fact we have been taking orders for more than a month... I don't understand marketing. I hope to run 4000 miles. The most I have ever done in a year is 3600. I'm also thinking of launching my Kickstarter campaign, which I started building just before Everest.

It's going to be a good year. Hopefully not the drama of Mt. Everest 2014, but with plenty of successes and lessons learned about how to do.

I Live in Iowa: Week 167

I'm back.

I have been trying to down play my negative attitude the last four months, but in the last two weeks, it's turned around. You see, I was depressed, because of the Mt. Everest debacle. I was a day away from maybe dying. I spent a lot of money and never touched the mountain. I've given a few interviews since then, three presentations, with around 200 people total, and I've talked about it with maybe 70 people. It's like reliving a bad dream. My life, in many respects kind of stopped to make that trip happen and the outcome was not all all what I was prepared for.

For whatever reason, and I have a few, my motivation is back skyrocketing. I needed to hear that I am loved and cared for, and a couple months of going to church and reading the Bible and talking with family and friends finally got me back to the mental place where I do feel loved and cared for. I have a few 100+ mile weeks of running under my belt and that's always a motivation booster. I'm feeling very valued at work recently. After agonizing about quitting coaching, it was the right decision, I'll get back to that. A lot of things have come together and I'm on a mental motivation high.

Work is work because it is not play. Talking about work is nearly impossible most of the time. It's such a big part of my life, 40 hours a week, sometimes 50 hours a week, or more and I can't share much of it with the world. Hopefully, in 2015 I will finally have the chance in concrete terms to describe what I have been working on the last three and a half years. Regardless, I'll keep up my ambiguous descriptions.

Sometimes at work, just like in my personal life, people need to know that others care about him or her or this issue or that problem. I don't know how many people are in my extended product team, maybe 100, maybe more, with varying levels of responsibility, but to make the best product we can, we need to work together. There have been some gaps. Some communication was not good enough between different groups of people. This can lead to problems. I feel this week we upped the communication significantly and going forward are going to solve more problems because of that increased communication and trust.

Running is great! I ran 82 miles this past week, taking Monday totally off and putting in a good workout. Going forward I think a high mileage week followed by a low mileage week with a day off is a rhythm I will be trying. Then on Tuesday I cranked out a 10 mile moderate tempo at 6:10 pace. Not the best 10 miler I've done in practice at all, but really good. This is one reason training on my own instead of with the team has benefits. Not many college teams go crank out 10 mile tempos at 6:10 pace. Yet I need those kind of runs to be a good marathoner. Another example, Friday I left work at 3:30, got home around 3:50, which would have been late to make it to practice as a coach. Then I was tired so I laid around and read for an hour before getting out the door just after 5 PM for my second eight mile run of the day. Another benefit of not coaching is I don't have to rush out of work and immediately go running, I can take a break if I want. Then I slept 11 hours Friday night and when I went out to run Saturday morning on Heritage Trail I saw the runners I used to coach finishing their run as I was starting. Had I been a coach I would have had to miss an hour or two of sleep to make it to practice on time. Training on my own is going well.

What else? I'm reading Ben Graham's The Intelligent Investor which is a sure way to fall asleep at night. Reading about bond prices and inflation in the middle of the 20th century might actually be more boring than reading genealogy. I'm working on some writing, about some personal stuff… I'll publish it soon, probably. It's pretty personal so I want to make sure I say what I mean.

Thank You for Reading

I don't say it often enough, but thank you for reading. If no one read my blog, I would not write. For those few that comment, thank you for taking the time to comment. I don't always read the comments because sometimes it's better not to get involved in an argument, but thanks for taking the time to write. I realize you don't have to come here and read my baloney, but you do, so thank you.

1009 Blog Posts!

I meant to have a celebratory 1000th blog post, but other things were on my mind so we are celebrating 1009 today! Wow, 1009 articles written and published! I have been doing this for four and a half years. It all started on a whim on a weekday night in grad school from my apartment. There have been so many ups and downs since then. My life has not been at all what I thought it would be.

If there is any message to convey today it is that good things often take time. Blogging does not provide me an income, as I naively thought it might when I started. My initial goal to blog the story of a start up company ended with a failure that gave me back pain. I optimistically thought I might run at the 2012 Olympic Marathon Trials, and I didn't. I went to Pakistan and did not summit anything. I was unemployed.

The way I see it, this whole opportunity to blog is a blessing. If I can communicate poverty to the rich, business to the technical, marathoning to the sedentary, then I can help develop better understanding between people. Who knows what kind of value I have created for other people to use in their daily lives! God has blessed me so much. I could have easily died on more than one occasion since I started Learning to DO. Lest I forget to mention my sponsor, Jesus love you, even if no one else does.

Fight the good fight! Stand strong even when you stand alone. We cannot know in the moment what the effect of our actions and words are, so strive to be better today than yesterday. It's a long road. Maybe you will write 1009 blog posts. Maybe 10,090 blog posts. I don't know how you will change the world, at least your little corner of it, but please change it for the better.

Less Condescending

con·de·scend·ing

/ˌkändəˈsendiNG/

Adjective     Acting in a way that betrays a feeling of patronizing superiority.     (of an action) Demonstrating such an attitude.

Synonyms patronizing - gracious I am not always nice when I respond to questions and comments. I hope to improve upon that.

People often tell me things I already know. I feel like I know so little that rehashing the same information, after I have already thought about it seems like a poor use of time. That is probably inappropriate on my part. Well, I know for a fact that at least on one occasion my condescending response to another recently was uncaring and inappropriate.

The reaction that I get from people after I patronize them, however minor, is unpleasant. I need to change. I need to communicate better. People will probably tell me things I already know for the rest of my life. Perhaps since they are telling me something, it is a clue that a bigger discussion needs to be had. Instead of an undeserved authoritative tone or mild sneer (it felt that way twice in one afternoon recently) perhaps I can just say, "yes, I did hear that. What do you think about that?" That way I get the other person to open up and be more descriptive about the situation we are discussing. Plus, I don't impose my own previous thoughts and conclusions on the other person. 

Hopefully I can open up a dialogue about whatever the discussion is about, so that even if it takes a painful few minutes to discuss something I am already familiar, we will strengthen our relationship. Both of us will likely end up more educated. It is a win-win, as long as I don't get in the way of us discussing it.

It is Easier to Criticize

It happened, someone that I gave my book to, actually started editing it. Now I know why the first two people never got back to me, apparently it is the worst grammar I have written since 5th grade. I am not surprised given that I wrote most of it late at night, often with a glass of wine in hand. Plus, I didn't edit as I go. When trying to finish writing something as big as a book, going back to correct every word or add every comma is not worth the effort compared to finishing the paragraph or idea.

You know what? I'm barely phased by it. Usually I get defensive when someone critiques me, but this time I have learned to take it in stride. It is easier to criticize another than put yourself out there to be criticized. An author I read wrote a second blog post about someone changing what he was trying to say, and it's really interesting. I usually do things for a purpose. I write can not when I want to be more clear than cannot. I will write a fragment if it elicits the emotion I was trying to convey.

I'm really happy that someone is willing to read and edit my book. I am sure there are hundreds of grammatical errors. Honestly, I don't even agree with everything I wrote two years ago. Ideologically I have changed since then. The book needs significant work, and there is significant value in that work. However, I wrote it! I created the thing. Then I gave it to people. Those are the hard parts. Criticize away, I'm putting myself out there regardless.

I Live in Iowa: Week 98

Another week living the dream! That is such a loaded statement. I mean, I’m an evil sinful person who constantly screws up, yet somehow or other I am constantly rewarded. I don’t take those rewards for granted. Let me tell you about a few of them. 

Work is going well! For nearly two years I have been working on a project, this past week three small parts of it were physically fabricated for the first time! That’s about all I can say at this point. The point being, it’s exciting! Going from seeing images on a computer screen to seeing them in person, life size. It’s emotional. I insisted on this aspect or that feature. The product looks like it does because I was part of the process. Needless to say the next few months will continue to be interesting!

Coaching was a slow week, I only was at practice twice. The transition from indoor to outdoor track was different for everyone so only a handful of people were running most days this week. I just hope that they keep running. If you want to get better at distance running you have to run. Sitting around eating ice cream doesn’t make a person run faster. 

My own running was great! After a healthy 20.6 mile run at 6:21 pace I took the week to recover and Friday night ran a best ever mile of 4:31! I ran a 4:31 mile! That is 34 seconds faster than I ever ran the mile in high school. Seven seconds faster than I ran in college. Hopefully this can be a little inspiration to others that improvement does not stop at age 18. Another article to come later. A total of 88 miles. Interestingly I only drove my van 94 miles this week. 

Socially my sister came to visit. We had a great time eating out, walking around, trying to take a nap. The nap just didn’t happen. I have to be pretty tired to actually fall asleep in the middle of the day, and my runs this weekend just were not tough enough. Plus, it is always nice to socialize a little. Although, I require so little socializing, just ask anyone who has tried to hang out with me past 10 PM. 

In other news, two years ago I wrote a book. I talked about it back then, but I have basically been sitting on it since then. I printed a copy off this week. I gave it to my sister to read and edit. This is now the third person I have given it to. The first two dropped off the face of the earth after I sent the book to them. I am hesitant to share it because it is so emotional. I share so much in it. Plus, it is not a kind book. Two engineering degrees and 57 weeks of unemployment makes one a little bitter. All of that being said, I am considering a Kickstarter campaign to sell advance copies of it. It is already written, I just need to go through it and update and edit it. I need a few people to help edit it as well. There again, a Kickstarter campaign is a risk, what if I don’t reach my goal? What if 100 people do not want to pay $22 for a hardcover book of what I have to say? My last book (What Gen Y Wants You to Know) was produced in a very low budget, obviously self published paperback format. This time I want something a little more classy. I worked hard on this book. 

Thoughts on Long Term Motivation

Long term motivation has been on my mind lately. Why is it that I still run day in and day out close to four years after my last race on a college team? How is it that I sit at a desk eight or nine hours a day looking at models and have been nearly every week for the last two years? How is it I have thought about Mt. Everest most days for eight and a half years patiently waiting? Time and again I run into people that are amazed that I do these things. To me however they seem average. I feel that a lot of it comes down to motivation. I have a lot of it. How did I get it and where does it comes from? I am not sure.

I am working on a graph to describe just my running motivation. I came up with seven categories that motivate me to run. Then I am going through by year and estimating with a number how much each one mattered at that point. It is not finished. This graph is a starting point to articulating and describing my motivations for all aspects of my life I recognize. The second step is to generalize motivations first by applying to other aspects of my life and second by studying the motivations of others. The third step is to understand motivations, at least somewhat. Difficult I know, and I will probably be wrong many times, but worth doing. Some answers may be simple, like looking good improves dating prospects, but others may be complex, like a difficult childhood that causes a person to work hard to suffer more than anyone else. I don't have the answers, that is why I am looking for them. Fourth, and ultimate goal of this personal project is to teach or give or develop motivations.

Motivations get things done. If it is possible to spread motivations more things will get done. If more people commit to long term projects more difficult, and more rewarding, results will be achieved.

I am asking you my readers, comment below, email me, talk to me, Facebook me, or send a text message, what motivates you? Starting in the coming weeks and months I will be looking for case studies, people who are willing to open up about their motivations.

Long term I hope to produce some document, ebook, infographic or something from this.

Happy Thanksgiving!

In the spirit of celebrating the United States holiday of Thanksgiving I am going to tell you about some entities and ideas I am thankful for. Sometimes, when I am bored on a run or want to be reminded of how well I have it I think of a list of things I am thankful for. I usually aim for 50 things, but seeing as how this is once a year, I will give 100 things. The list is in no particular order although the first few things are in order because they do rise to the top. I am thankful for...

1. God and his son Jesus. I am so blessed. In regards to this, everything else fades away.
2. My family, specifically my immediate family because they have seen me through so much, but the whole group is a blessing.
3. The United States. We have it so good in this country.
4. Running and the ability for me to run.
5. 55 degrees Fahrenheit.
6. The Sun.
7. My blog. I pour myself out here. I hope the world is better because of it.
8. Asia, for their different perspectives and opportunities. 
9. The cross country and track and field coaching staff at UD.
10. My engineering job at John Deere.
11. The opportunity to go to Indonesia.
12. Videos, so that experiences can be shared.
13. Leeks, who knew?
14. Pasta, especially the whole grain style.
15. Ladies, women, girls, females whatever the preferred vernacular is now. 
16. My van with 291,007 miles on it.
17. Turbofan jet engines. Still one of the coolest things I have ever learned.
18. National Public Radio. 
19. My training partner(s) because 5AM is better shared.
20. My carbon fiber bicycle.
21. Group bicycle rides.
22. The organic vegetable section.
23. Sea bass.
24. Scallops.
25. Wood furniture.
26. The positives, negatives and more positives of Janzen Gear.
27. Wikipedia.
28. The general sharing of information and ideas.
29. The running locations around Dubuque like the Mines of Spain and Heritage Trail.
30. The athletes that I work with as a coach.
31. The college kids in Dubuque, you all make the city a better place.
32. Toilet paper.
33. My iPhone.
34. Wine, like a good Cabernet Sauvignon or Malbec.
35. Steak. I tried vegetarian, I like steak too much.
36. Electricity.
37. The Internet.
38. Peace in the Middle East ...at least for the last day ...not counting Syria.
39. Progressive taxation.
40. Dividends.
41. Employment.
42. Conservation from natural resources to personal finances.
43. National parks, and not just in the United States.
44. Rock climbing.
45. Mountaineering, alpine and high altitude climbing.
46. Renewable resources.
47. Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
48. Paying off the second of my 11 loans last month.
49. My 1966 motorcycle, which helped me appreciate antiques.
50. Suffering, so I know how well I have it.
51. Pain, so I know what no pain feels like.
52. Fear, so I know what it feels like to not be afraid.
53. The truth.
54. Headlamps with Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs).
55. Failure, because it makes the success so much sweeter.
56. The running community.
57. The mountain climbing community.
58. Teaching Sunday School. I'm new to it, but I like it.
59. My church community, I'm one of maybe five 20somethings, but I like it.
60. Volunteering, from serving free meals this afternoon to going to Indonesia.
61. Charity. It still boggles me that I was out of engineering (unemployed) for 57 weeks. I understand how hard it can be for others. 
62. Africa and the runners they send to race me.
63. Streaming video and audio.
64. Drug testing.
65. Jail time for DUI offenders.
66. Freshly mowed lawn.
67. Running shorts.
68. A well fitted shirt.
69. Holding the door for a lady.
70. Daily news, specifically Runner's World and the Wall Street Journal.
71. Prana pants.
72. The Patagonia R1 Hoody.
73. Passing 50,000 visits and 100,000 page views this year.
74. An enclosed house with heating, air conditioning, electricity, hot water, and carpeting.
75. Food. The volume of food available to me is just staggering.
76. Electric cars. 
77. The smell of a book. 
78. The fact that my sister and I paint with oils and acrylics. 
79. Pomegranates.
80. Persistence. The idea of continuing with an idea or plan even when it is hard.
81. Minimal (low heel) running shoes.
82. Not getting struck by lightening on Humboldt in 2006.
83. Not breaking anything on Cannon Cliff in 2008.
84. My friends who are so strong they can push me more than I imagine.
85. The flicker of an idea, that 'ah-ha' moment when I realize the solution.
86. A good hearty laugh, maybe even one that hurts or makes me cry.
87. Massages.
88. Empathy. When someone can relate to another's issue and they can emotionally connect.
89. Down clothing, because it is so warm.
90. Ten uninterrupted hours of sleep.
91. Running as fast as I have at every event.
92. The marathon.
93. Mexican food and drink.
94. Stories from one friend to another.
95. Meetings that end early with all items accomplished.
96. The freedom to express beliefs and ideas without government backlash.
97. Friends who taught me about mental disorders. 
98. The idea of gifts and generosity.
99. People who care about changing the world for the better.
100. That we made it this far. A lot had to go right in the last thousand years to get us here.

I hope that you have something to be thankful for today. I am incredibly blessed. I do feel that I have the best life in the world, and I hope you feel the same way about your life.

Thank you all for reading my blog. It is your positive support, mostly in person and usually not related to this blog, that motivates me to write on those days when I don't feel like I am living the best life. Thank you!

If I Was to Start a Blog Again

I have been thinking about this a little recently. The reason being that once you start something, changing direction can be difficult. For example, I started my blog under the premise of starting a company. Then when I started the company I started a new blog directly for that. For some reason, probably because people were still reading it, I kept this blog moving. In other words, this is it. I will have this blog indefinitely. The graphics and layout will change and the content that I add will change. One day in the future I could quite possibly be talking about what to do about a daughter’s boyfriends. That however, is not in the foreseeable future. 

There are a few concrete things I would do differently if I was to start over again.

1. Set a mild to moderately focused theme. Talking about engineering, then running, then socializing, while very descriptive of my life, does not convey a clear sense of purpose. It would be better for the blog if the scope of topics was smaller and the depth great. 
2. A couple weeks of content ready to go. I would not publish it all at the same time. Simply one post the first day, another on the second and so on at a frequency that is what you plan to maintain or slightly higher than you plan to maintain for the life of the blog. For example, I typically post 4-5 times per week. The first two weeks I might do 5-6 articles to get people interested and have some content for the search engines to start combing through.
3. Generate some buzz with the first few articles. Tell your Facebook friends, Twitter friends, and even people in person about this awesome thing you started. Nearly a dozen of my friends have started blogs, but so often after a couple weeks or months it fades away. Or there is only one new article a month, which is okay, but kind of depends on the scope of the blog as to it’s impact.
4. Design it to look great and have all relevant information accessible. I really like the design of my blog now. However it went through a couple cumbersome renditions. Overall it is quite simple to navigate. I especially like the labels and blog archive features. They seem to link to relevant articles or different times in my life which give context to the other articles.

There are also a few suggestions I have for people setting out on the path to self publishing.

1. Once you start, keep going! It is not always easy to write about your topic or topics, but for the sake of the whole truth please write during the hard times as well. 
2. Develop a style. The Internet is a strange place and really there are few rules. You could start a blog about your college experience, or quest to run the Boston Marathon, and when the goal was accomplished and you wrote a couple epilogue articles, end contributing to the blog. I suppose what I am suggesting is that the blog have a plot line that builds over time with some sort of climax. Although, Seth Godin, from what I can tell, has no long running theme aside from marketing/sales/business to his blog and it’s the most popular in the world. In other words you do not need to read any of his posts to understand any of his other posts. I prefer on the other hand stories that build and continue that take a long time to tell. I know that some of my posts if read alone would not make much sense, but as a whole, the message is more complete. In other words, decide on the way you will tell the story or types of stories that you would like to tell. 
3. Include pictures, graphics and videos when possible. I realize that I publish words in far more abundance than I do pictures, charts and videos. Yet visual images convey strong messages. 

There you have it, four suggestions to do when you start a blog or website and three as you build and maintain it. 

Sonnet: Stressed Out!

The vote was four for more sonnets and three against which is net of one. So you all just get one. Enjoy!

Stressed Out!

I am filled, containing nothing left.

My emotion has been taken away.

Feeling, sensitivity pass bereft.

This burden we can not attempt pay.

Normal paths close into our face

“What is the point!” We plead and pray.

This is a challenge I dare never race. 

Yet the task has led me to a fray.

We say, “Where is the end and at what price!?

I have lost track of who and what is dear...

Please help me I request just a slice,

just a little comfort and less to fear.”

Onward time passes and after a pout

with some help I am not stressed out.

I wrote this July 11th this year. It's kind of a culmination of a few things that were happening to me the last few weeks. The tendonitis in my foot, projects that were taking longer for me to complete than I considered appropriate, and some social differences. I was somewhat unresponsive as I felt more overwhelmed. I dealt with the feelings of failures by retreating into my shell. Having come out the other side of this phase, I realize how ridiculous that was. I could have organized my thoughts much faster by discussing them with the appropriate parties. Thus the word pout in there. No one like to admit pouting, but it was the truth.


Since I only plan to post one of these for the foreseeable future permit me to explain why I like writing poetry. It is the ultimate aesthetic expression of written language. I feel they enhance my vocabulary and exercise sentence structure. I like writing sonnets because they are long enough to send a message but short enough that I can typically pop one out in less than an hour and I don't get bored rereading it. Plus, they have an organization. Which Stressed Out! does not follow strictly speaking. I like (and write) the English sonnets because that's what I first learned although I am open to new styles. For those of you that don't know, the line structure is iambic pentameter, which means ten syllables total in five groups of unstressed/stressed syllables. An easy example from above is the word "Please" at the beginning of the 11th line. Think of it as "pl-EASE". Then the rhyming scheme is ababcdcdefefgg, although b and d are the same above, so I would get in trouble for that depending on the English teacher. The final question you might be wondering is how often I do this? Typically every month or two. In the last two and a half years since I started I have only written 18. 


Your mission (should you choose to accept it): Write a poem. You don't have to tell anyone, Haikus totally count, but you aren't allowed to start with "roses are red, violets are blue..."

Website Updated!

Hello Friends!

I updated my website. I got rid of some stuff that people weren't really clicking on and simplified everything just a little to make it a little more user friend. It's also a little more mobile device friendly too!

To expand on the changes a little I shall start with the old. The old website was great, but it had a darker tone to it and the opening picture in the header took a long time to load. Since I spend a significant amount of time accessing the Internet from my phone, it was a hassle to wait for it to load. The links near the top were nearly a waste too. No one bought DVDs. The only person that paid me to coach was a person that I started coaching before I put up the coaching webpage.

The color scheme was inspired by a number of thing. Twitter Blue, as I have been calling it (4099FF) even though it isn't Twitter Blue, has a nice feel to it. It is solid enough that it feels clear, bold, clean, bright, cheery, and to be honest, educated, if that can count as something a color can make you feel. Green is the color of life and growing living things. I went with a bright green because it's more exciting than a dark green. When you scroll over any of the links they turn green signifying the life in that link to another place. There is also a little red too. After you have visited a link it will turn red. That way it is easy to keep track of what you have visited and what you have not.

I hope you enjoy it!

Back to School

I have not taken a formal class longer than three days since the spring of 2009. Everything since then has been a short one to three day seminar or independent learning (research). Until now.

Inspired by a MacRumors article last week I signed up for the Stanford iPhone and iPad App Development Course. Why? I have been thinking about writing an iPhone app since 2010 when I was unemployed. With the proliferation of development resources (the lecture videos on iTunes), as well as a lingering foot injury, now seemed like the perfect time to expand my third rate programming skills. Since I have not taken a formal programming class since high school, I was blown away in the first lecture how well the professor explained everything!

I have ideas for three different apps. While I originally intended them solely for the iPhone, perhaps the iPad and even the Mac as well as other platforms may be possible. I'm getting ahead of myself. I haven't even done the first assignment yet. Point being: I'm excited.

Doubling The Rate of Failure

Ryan Hall had a blog post recently about things he knows about running now that he didn't understand a decade ago. One of those (#4) is that if you want to succeed more you need to put yourself out on a limb and fail more. It's a really interesting to articulate that. People do not like to fail. Yet it is our failures that we learn from.

I took apart my motorcycle down to the carburetor and everything looked like it worked well, yet when I put it back together it leaked again. Fortunately there is a fuel line I can easily switch off. So it looks like I will be remembering to switch off the fuel line every time I park just in case the carburetor decides to leak.

The problem has not been solved, but I know quite a bit more about how my motorcycle works. In the process I learned how carburetors work and I cleaned out my rusty (the guy who sold it lied) gas tank. Not a simple process. It is all progress.

The same thing happened at work. I was progressing through a project the way I always do, which errors on the conservative side. Then I ran into a problem that required more detail. Doing my analysis the way I have done it in the past shall not acquiesce this time.

Hopefully my foot does not really follow along those lines because I do not think that you need to get injured pursuing an endurance sport in order to have success. Most successful athletes will experience significant setbacks, and learn from them, but injury is certainly not a prerequisite to train injury free.

I just restarted a project that has been on hold for just over a year. I will need some help. It will probably fail anyway. This is some good stuff I am working on. Stay tuned. If you want to help send me an email. It will require in the neighborhood of 5-10 hours.

If Edison failed about 3000 times and succeeded only twice in the light bulb endeavor then I can certainly stand to fail more.

Nominate a Website!

I'm planning to redo the layout of my website. I want something a little less involved, that will load faster on a smartphone. I plan on removing a few of the tabs along the top, getting rid of a few along the side, making the top image a little shorter so that I don't have to scroll down to read the first article, and putting in a vector layout so that on wide screens you do not have a foot of empty real-estate on the screen. I'm thinking something a little more aesthetically pleasing and interesting than Seth's blog, but not a mess like the New York Times.

In my quest for something a little better, more smartphone friendly, I am seeking recommendations. I am contemplating something with a Twitter Blue theme. Blue is the new old green. (It was in a year or a few years ago, I am not sure what is in now, maybe red, but that's not really blog appropriate.) If you would please post a link to a website or multiple websites below that you admire for their quality I would much appreciate it in my endeavor for a better reader experience. Also comments about things that you think are good or bad for a website would be great!

Thank you for contributing!!

Incomplete Thoughts

One of the things I like about blogging is that it is okay when a blog post is not fully fleshed out. Unlike most forms of media it is semicontinuous. Articles can stand on their own, but they don't have to. Also, sometimes I don't have the time to really tackle a topic, but I can at least get the conversation started. "The Conversation" sounds like a good article...

I live in Iowa: Chapter 2

In the engineering world I worked 43 hours all in front of my computer screen this week. I am in the perfect situation to learn HyperMesh and the intracasies of finite element simulations as they relate to stress analysis. In other words, I'm getting paid once again to get even better at one of the things I do. Yeah, life is good.

About working more than 40 hours a week, the way my contract schedule works I am hired to work 40 hours a week, but I can work extra hours and take time off later so that the total comes out to about 40 per week, I can also get paid a quarterly bonus for the extra hours I have at the end of the quarter. So I'll probably be working more than 40 hours every week that there isn't a Holliday. In fact, after my marathon I'll probably bump up the weekly hours even more for a few weeks. In other words, my salary isn't limited to 40 hours per week or restricted to five days a week.

Other than that I ran 73 miles. It took me like four days to recover from my 30 miler run but I backed that up with a great 16 mile tempo and a 4 by mile workout where I even ran a 5:11 mile! I haven't been doing that kind of pace (5k personal record pace) very often lately. With two weeks until Green Bay I feel that I prepared well. Not incredible or ideal, but better than I could have.

I got on my bicycle for the first time this year. Just to ride around town but Dubuque is small enough and I live close to the center that I will probably be biking for errands quite a bit this summer.

My unemployment book is headed in the right direction. I queried two literary agents this week. Thus far sending an electronic query seems to be much easier than applying for a job. Instead I am saying, 'this is what I have do you think you can sell it for me?' This stage of the process is all about querying scores of agents until I find one that wants me while I continue to edit my 54,000 work patchwork manuscript. I feel really good about this. It's a feeling like writing a paper for school and when you hand it in you know you did well. That's how I feel about my manuscript. By the way, if anyone does know a litern agent I would love a personal introduction or recommendation. Plus, if no one else ever reads more than the first chapter (typical of a query) writing all of this down has helped me immensely.

A few people have offered to be beta readers and help edit, that's probably a good idea, but I still feel like I have my own editing to do before that. The publishing process typically takes around a year so there is little need to rush, plus unemployment is still high, which means it will be easier to sell my book to a publisher.

When I write all of this stuff down it looks like I am super busy but most nights after 8pm I am as unproductive as anyone. (Except that here it is 10pm Sunday and I'm blogging with my thumbs like most nights...)

Question of the week: Is Osama Bin Laden really dead?

The Life of a Contract Engineer: Week 11

As weeks go this was a good as any. I worked a nice 40 hours. Although, one day they did not have enough computer simulation work for me so I spent the day in the "lab". We were working on competitive tear-downs, which involve hundreds of pounds of steel and copper. I had the chance to wear my lab coat which was fun for the first two hours then I got tired and slowed down. Eventually my attitude eroded a little because I felt that my talents were not being sufficiently harnessed. That being said, feelings are not fact. The most important task is often the one at hand. It was nice to see a different aspect of the factory and work with an A-frame and a chop saw, but I enjoy my desk.

The engineer who I was replacing is back and I am quite happy that he is. Several times every day I consulted him about the modeling that I was working on. He has more experience than I do and always offers valuable input. Before he came back I was an island making guesses about the accuracy of my models. Now that he is back I have someone who understands modeling well and can very accurately critique me.

Regarding my move to Dubuque, Iowa, I had an apartment picked out but someone else picked the same thing and had the deposit check in before me and thus rented the apartment before I could. So Monday April 18th, I'm starting work, but I don't have a place to live yet.

While I was unemployed I spent hundreds of hours applying value to aspects of my life outside of work. That is an important outlook to have on life. Without those things outside of work I guarantee I would be a workaholic. This brings us to the subject of running! I had a week that started on a good note, went through a bad section, and ended on a good note.

I had a nice 24 mile run Sunday, the longest training run I have had in a year and a half. Plus it was at a half decent pace. Then Tuesday a knot in my upper calf tore something in my lower calf/achilles area and I was more or less out of commission until I could massage it apart. It hurt so much! Fortunately, I did exactly the right thing and recovered soon enough to run a half marathon I paid for a few weeks ago. That race went very well. I started out with the leaders but going up a slight hill after two miles they broke away and I spent about the next nine miles running my own race. Then they were slowing down and I dropped a couple of 5:19 pace miles to move into second from third and come within nine seconds of the leader. I finished in 1:12:48 an official personal record by more than four minutes. I split 56:01 at ten miles (5:36 mile pace) and finished the last 5k in 16:47 (5:25 mile pace). I am really happy to negative split that much. I was holding back most of the race because I was afraid of going anaerobic and it was nice to let my legs turn over like that after the ten mile warmup.

I went over 53,000 words on my book and I reorganized it so that the chapters are more equal and related in terms of content. All I have left to do before submitting it to agents is edit it and add some more stuff about Reaganomics. It is a good book. I am excited. I have so much information that I consider useful from interview tips to "the exercises" to economic history. I feel it is a rather comprehensive resource for people like me in January of last year, which really could be anyone unemployed ages 16-30.

I am heavily considering buying a motorcycle. The problem is they don't sell the Honda CBR125R in the USA so I'm having a hard time finding something I am really motivated to own. I mean who needs to go over 75 miles per hour and who wants to get less than 90 miles per gallon? If you have any suggestions email me. I'm looking at used bikes exclusively and there are a number of sub 200cc starter bikes available for a 130 pound lightweight like myself. I mean Ducati starts at 700ccs! I would surely hurt myself on that without some experience.

I ended the week watching Morning Glory, which is a good movie, and writing a three sonnet series. The more sonnets I write (I'm up to five) the easier it gets. Sometimes I can even think out a ten syllable line that rhymes on the first try. It's fun to write poetry because it is an even better way to express emotions than simple writing in plain english. Who knows, maybe I will write an entire book of sonnets eventually. If you are curious to read them, sorry, they are on the romantic and emotional side and you have not earned that privilege from me. You can read my first sonnet if you want. The rest of them are similar, but I'm not the kind of guy that runs around talking about that stuff in public.

I am tired. 40 hours of work is like vacation, but when you add in the running and social events it adds up to quite a few hours.