March 31, 2008 at 12:41 pm (Running)
Tags: Kelly, mile, race, Shamrock Shuffle, Special Olympics
Yesterday was my first race of the year. The Shamrock Shuffle is a five-mile race through the neighborhoods of Glens Falls to benefit the Special Olympics (more on this later). Its a well-organized race with a hearty bunch of runners who brave the North Country March weather.
A lot of the runners use this race to kick off the racing season. I overheard quite a few people saying they hadn’t trained or they were just out to run and have fun, not really race. To be honest, that was my view too. The last few weeks’ schedule hasn’t really afforded time or plowed roads for running.
Last year, race day was bitter cold. Maybe 10 degrees and windy. But I had a good couple weeks before, got some running in and was well-prepared for the race. I did my normal “start at the back and pick people off one by one“. I ended up running the race in 40.20 for an average of 8.04 per mile. I was quite pleased but it sure set the bar high for the rest of the season.
This year was warmer: upwards of 20 degrees 
and sunny. The sun felt good though. My goal way to finish between 40 and 45 minutes (between 8 and 9 minute miles). I ran my first mile in 7.38. Yikes! Way too fast. Mile two was better; I slowed down to 8.03. Good good, exactly where I want to be. But it was starting to hurt. And from thereon out I was never really comfortable. I even walked through the water station around mile three to rub out a cramp.
Mile three has a lot of downhill. My pace picked back up to 7.23. Too fast, I know, but I only had two to go. I can push through two painful miles in my sleep. It was around the end of this mile that I learned the race was to benefit Special Olympics. As we were running down Glen Street in all our late race, ugly-wincing-stumbling, bad-form glory, a driver called out to a marshal to ask what the run was for. The marshal said, “Special Olympics, 5 miles.” My thought was yeah, Special Olympics for sure.
With less than a mile to go I was into my 34th minute. That was when I realized I could tie last year’s time of 40 minutes. A tie, that’s all I was hoping for. I crossed the line in 38.50, a minute and a half faster than last year! My average mile time was 7.46.
So I’m not sure what I learned from this. The pain of the race told me that I was in no shape to be running that. But my finishing time told me to heck with training. Kelly told me I make her sick, but that’s another story lol.
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March 27, 2008 at 11:14 am (School)
Tags: Anna, eggs, Ken, Melba, ow ow ow ow, reporter, Tyler
These things are really starting to take shape. I think the ones that are the most fleshed out are Tyler’s (who could use a hyperlink or two), Melba’s (who needs to layoff the hyperlinks a bit and balance them with pictures) and Ken’s (who could use both hyperlinks and pictures). Anna has a good couple of entries too even if she doesn’t like poached eggs.
You all are doing great so far. I threw this new assignment at you, made you guinea pigs and you are thriving. Thank you.
Here’s what I was thinking would come next. I’d like to see a new post added once a week through 4th quarter for a total of at least 11 or 12 posts by June. How does that sound to you? I’m going to build a list of entry suggestions for those of you struggling with direction. You’ll be able to find that with my pages.
Lastly, here’s the video of the reporter falling crushing grapes in case you missed it.
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March 26, 2008 at 7:59 am (Just for Fun)
Tags: funny, list, words
- A bicycle can’t stand alone; it is two tired.
- A will is a dead giveaway.
- Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.
- A backward poet writes inverse.
- In a democracy it’s your vote that counts; in feudalism, it’s your Count that votes.
- A chicken crossing the road: poultry in motion.
- If you don’t pay your exorcist you can get repossessed.
- With her marriage she got a new name and a dress.
- Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft and I’ll show you A-flat miner.
- When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.
- The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine was fully recovered.
- A grenade fell onto a kitchen floor in France resulted in Linoleum Blownapart.
- You are stuck with your debt if you can’t budge it.
- Local Area Network in Australia : The LAN down under.
- He broke into song because he couldn’t find the key.
- A calendar’s days are numbered.
- A lot of money is tainted: ‘Taint yours, and ‘taint mine.
- A boiled egg is hard to beat.
- He had a photographic memory which was never developed.
- A plateau is a high form of flattery.
- The short fortuneteller who escaped from prison: a small medium at large.
- Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.
- When you’ve seen one shopping center you’ve seen a mall.
- If you jump off a Paris bridge, you are in Seine.
- When she saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she’d dye.
- Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.
- Santa’s helpers are subordinate clauses.
- Acupuncture: a jab well done.
- Marathon runners with bad shoes suffer the agony of de feet.
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March 25, 2008 at 12:53 pm (School)
Tags: fashion, smoothies, platypi, Tag Surfer, comments, Highlander, tumbleweed
Hey hey. It looks like everyone is catching the hang of this thing. Many of you have first posts created, some of you are playing around with hyperlinks and tags and categories. Definitely check out the other blogs being created. The diversity is pretty cool- from fashion to smoothies to platypi! Feel free to leave comments back and forth. Remember, you have to be logged in to leave comments, so the paper trail is there. Be nice.
You might want to explore wordpress in general too. See what other people are writing about. On the right-hand side are current popular tags being used in the wordpress blogosphere. Towards the bottom, the blogs are arranged by category. (I wonder if anyone else is writing about Highlander or tumbleweed?)
I found another cool toy called Tag Surfer (in your dashboard). If you have been labeling your posts with tags, this will show you other blogs that have been using the same tags.
Charlie bit me!
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March 24, 2008 at 2:02 pm (School)
Tags: blog surfer, Blogroll, Period Six
Ok, at the bottom of this post is the masterlist for the class blogroll. I’ll also create a page in my sidebar to list them. Add your classmates and whoever or whatever you want to have linked to your site. Generally they are topically related links (runner’s blog has other runner sites in the blogroll, finance has finance, etc.).
WordPress also has a thing call Blog Surfer. It’s like its own Reader. It is still “in beta” which means they are still working on it…which means it may not work all the time. In any case you can add other wordpress blogs to this list as well to keep track of new posts. You’ll find it in your dashboard, under Blog Surfer. On the left you only need to type in the blog name. You don’t need the entire “.wordpress.com” stuff. You can adjust how far back you want it to search for posts as well, from as short as your last log in, out as far as a week ago. Just like Google Reader, it may be easier to use this than to visit 15 different blogs to look for updates.
Ken: kyotain Chelsea: chelseaw47 Maddy: mbarrows
Anna: Annabee174 Emily: promisemetragedy Melba: mx3288
Tommi: swiminchic08 Lesley: sevendustxf2f Tyler: ttyyyyllleerr
Holly: hmiron Becca: beccad7740 Chelsi: chel01
Doug: arsenalfootball14 Jess: jsuss10 Cathy: zimm620
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March 24, 2008 at 12:58 pm (School)
Tags: hyperlinks, I am, pages, SAT/ACT
Hi all. I’m going to kill two birds with one stone here. Hopefully you noticed at the bottom of two earlier posts I added a couple of links embedded right in the text. Those are hyperlinks. And they are pretty easy to use. This will require a couple of tabs to do as well (thank goodness for tabs, I hate having millions of windows open!). First, find what you want to link into your entry. Copy the full address. For me the easiest way to do this is with the omnipotent right click. Go back to your entry. Highlight the words in which you want to embed to link. When you hightlight the words, the chainlink symbol will light up. Click on the chainlink button which brings up another pop up. In the pop up paste your link from the other page. You can also give this a title, but it isn’t really necessary. Add it and you’re done.
The other thing I wanted to tell you about was that you also have different pages at your disposal. When you bring up your Write New Post page, in dark blue you have the option to Write Page instead. These pages are linked in your sidebar on your site. Only the title will show, so it (the title) is important. They are built the same way as new posts and are really incidental to your main blog. I have two already. One is my “I am…” page, the other is “SAT/ACT” info.
Oh, yeah…have fun…
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March 24, 2008 at 12:37 pm (School)
Tags: Blogroll, Period Six
Hi all. So it seems one of the conversations today was about how to add other blogs to your site. Here’s the quick rundown. Again, if you haven’t done this yet, it will be easiest to keep my blog open in one tab and your own in another.
Here’s the basics…In your Dashboard, click on Blogroll (in light blue). You should then see Add Link (in dark blue(?)). That will bring up the Add Link page. Enter the person’s name, enter the full addy of the blog including “.wordpress.com” Press add link and you should be all set.
Here’s the advanced…On the right you can also categorize you additions (school, work, soccer, etc.). Below that you can add more specific relationship info. Below that you can upload an image as well.
After playing around with presentations, it looks like some of the different backgrounds don’t actually show the blogroll. It’s up to you whether you want to keep the background and not have a visible blogroll or sacrifice the background for the sake of a blogroll (your call, personally, I wouldn’t change your background).
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March 24, 2008 at 7:52 am (School)
Tags: categories, duck-billed platypi, Period Six, search, tags, YouTube
Hi all,
When you are creating posts there are two more things you should know about and use: categories and tags. To the right of the box in which you create your post there is a box to label each post with a category. Use this to separate your entries (for later search) by main topic. So far I only have one: school. It’s possible that later I will have others like running, wedding plans, duck-billed platypi… Again these are to classify what the entire post is mostly about.
Below the box in which you type is the line to give your posts tags. Tags are all the little things that show up within each post. Again, these make searching later easier. My tags for this post will probably be something like tags, categories, period six, search, etc. When listing your tags separate each with a comma. You’ve all used tags before, these are the labels you search by (think YouTube).
Here’s another fun link. This site creates radio stations based on you telling it what you like… it’s called Pandora
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March 20, 2008 at 7:52 pm (School)
Tags: dashboard, intro, options, presentation, settings
Hey all. A few things you have to do in your Dashboard options. It will probably be easiest to have this open in one tab and your dashboard in another. You can switch back and forth quickly by using ctrl+tab (backwards with ctrl+shift+tab).
First, presentation. Choose a theme. It looks like WordPress offers 5 pages of themes. Check ‘em out. Pick one.
Next under “General” (under options), set your title and tagline to what you want it to be. Also make sure the membership bubble is checked.
Under “Reading”, your front page should display your latest posts. You select how many posts appear in the front page. If you write many, short posts, you want more to appear. If you write less longer posts, you want less to appear (the page would be waaay too long).
Under “Privacy”, you want your blog to appear everywhere. I want you to be published. This will be out there for all the world to see .
It looks like you can leave the rest of the options alone for now. We’ll see how far we get…
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March 25, 2008 at 5:20 pm (School)
Tags: comments, moderation
I noticed a couple of you have your settings set so that you have to moderate your comments. That means before people’s comments appear, you would need to go into your comments tab and approve them (under comments–> awaiting moderation).
You can change this option if you’d like so that they go directly to your site (under options –> discussion). Just keep it so that the commenter has to log in to comment.
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