Lake Garadice 2008 (triathlon number 2)

On Sunday last myself and big Frank borrowed my mum’s car (as it has a hitch) and drove across to Leitrim with our bikes and butterflies in our bellies. Frank did the same race last year and said he really enjoyed and it was my first open water race. This was meant to be my first race but I managed to get a place in the Fingal Sprint in the last few days.

It was a great race but I was very very nervous before it as I had never swam that far in open water before. Even the swim to the starting line seemed daunting. The klaxon for the start of the swim went and pandemonium ensued. Most people were forcing their way forward but I think I was the only one pushing people in front of me to try and get as far back as I could. I took it very easy stopping to breast stroke every 30-50 metres to catch my breath. I finally made it to the bike transition (somehow managing to take a minute off my Fingal swim time). It was no wonder the swim was so sluggish when you consider my wetsuit filled with water – thanks Lidl!!!.

I danced and fumbled my way out of my suit and onto my bike and and off down the road. It was a tough bike ride with plenty of hills but I got a good time (taking a minute off Fingal again). The transition from bike to run was easier this time as I had remembered to tie my laces before the race this time. I had a good week of running training before the race and knew I could make some time on the run. That I did – coming tenth over all on the run leg of the race.

My official race results.

0:19:12 (Position in the swim leg – 143rd /152)

0:01:31 transition from swim to bike

0:39:56 (Position in the run leg – 64th /152)

0:00:43 transition from bike to run

0:21:05 (Position in the run leg – 10th /152)

1:22:26 (Overall position 63rd /152)

As you can see my swim needs ALOT of work.

Frank came 34th overall, only 4 outside his personal goal for this year of being in top 20%. The bottom photo is Mark – Sarahs boyfriend who did his first official tri coming an amazing 33rd.

One thing I did learn from the race was that I didn’t eat enough carbs after as I got a little too tipsy too easily on Sunday night and I had a huge sugar low on Monday morning (I was the laughing stock at training) which was quickly fixed with two lion bars, a moro, a pack of skittles and a bottle of Pepsi – I still feel like crap two days later. I haven’t eaten that much sugar in months.

FinishingTriinLakeGaradice

FrankRunTriinLakeGaradice

MarkRunTriinLakeGaradice

3dtri took 444 photos of the event and they’re all up on flickr.

Sacrificing my EEEPC for a Garmin – EEEPC for sale

eeepc for sale I’ve come to the crazy decision that I need to sacrifice my EEPC in favour of a Garmin Forerunner 405. Why?

  • I’ve got an awesome Vaio that I find myself using more and more at home
  • I’m doing the Dublin marathon this year and I’d like the Garmin to aid in my training

What I found great about the EEPC –

  • It’s very light
  • It plays all media types – great for travelling
  • It’s got Wifi
  • It’s battery life is great considering it’s size
  • It works great as a digital radio hooked up to a hifi

I’m looking for £190 ono excluding delivery (perfect condition with original box and all manuals/cds). That includes a 2GB SD card. I’m putting it on my blog first before ebaying it. I’ve also got an unused Matrox DualHead2Go Digital Edition for sale (£110 ono excl delivery).

Anybody interested?

geek poll: what do you have open?

From the Planet Ubuntu feed I saw the meme "geek poll: what do you have open?"

What do I have open?

  • 3 instances of windows explorer
  • 1 firefox window with 22 tabs
  • I instance of Filezilla
  • 2 instances of Visual Studio 2003 command prompt
  • I instance of EMS’s SQL Manager Lite for SQL express
  • 3 Skype conversations
  • 1 AIM conversation on Pidgin
  • 1 instance of the iis management console
  • 1 instance of visionapp Remote Desktop
  • 1 instance of Thunderbird and 2 half written emails
  • 1 instance of iTunes
  • 1 instance of Visual Studio 2008
  • 4 instances of Visual Studio 2003
  • 1 instance of Jedit

As you can see – I am definitely making use of my dualies 🙂

My first sprint triathlon – Fingal sprint

IMG_2646_cropped This year Frank convinced me to join him in training for a sprint triathlon. I agreed and last weekend was my first (fingalsprint.3dtri.com). It was tough – real tough. I’m not a strong swimmer and I was punished severally in the swim – somehow I was placed in the fast group and ended up being the very very last person in the pool (funny when you look back on it).

I then ran out and after numerous failed attempts managed to get changed (at one stage I had my head and my arm out my head hole on my shirt). I jumped on my bike and cycled as hard as I ever have all the way from the NAC to Kilbride (near where I live) and back. Then it was attempting to change again and with adrenaline racing through me, it wasn’t easy.

IMG_2661_cropped After the 20km bike is the 5km run and it is the weirdest feeling ever, to run after pushing yourself on the bike – it’s like floating on air but really really slowly and it took about 1km before I managed to get anything like a reasonable pace going.

IMG_2659_cropped The official results are not out yet but I’m very chuffed with finishing and especially finishing the swim (I’d never done the 750m before with the pool in 50m mode). Frank got his time and it was a whopping 9 minutes or so faster than his time last year – well done dude (watch out next year – maybe I’ll be able to dress myself properly by then).

I don’t know how people do Iron Man competitions and the like, my hat goes off to them. Awesome stuff.

We’ve got another one @ Lake Garadice in a couple of weeks so it’s back training tonight. After that it’s all about the Dublin marathon. ps. The photos are courtesy of my mum who waited at the bike turning point for both myself and Frank.

I’ll update later with my official times.

Official Times

Overall Position 133  / 269
Swim 0:20:42    (236th)
Swim to Bike transition 01:28
Bike 0:40:07    (134th)
Bike to Run transition 0:00:54
Run 0:20:12    (41st)
Total time 1:23:23

Woohoo!!!!

My Ultimate Dev Machine

When I started back at Karova I treated myself to a new and very awesome dev machine. I bought it myself so was very careful that I got best value for my money. I’ve been using it for three months now and I have to say I am very very very pleased with it.

dell_conroe_med-precision390

  • Dell Precison 390
    • Core 2 Duo 1.86GHz
    • 4GB Ram
    • ATI Fire GL V3400 128MB graphics card with dual DVI
    • 2 x 73GB SAS 15000rpm drives
    • 2 x 150GB SATA 10000rpm 16MB Cache
    • Dell SAS 5i/R raid controller
    • Intel Sata raid controller
    • Seagate 500GB eSATA and USB 2 external harddrive
  • 2 x Dell 2007FP monitors (I had these from before)
    • Active speaker soundbar
  • Microsoft natural ergo 400 keyboard
  • Microsoft trackball explorer
  • Windows XP Pro (not a chance I will go near Vista for dev work)

I regularly have 5 or six instances of Visual Studio (2003,2005 and 2008) running as well as Firefox, Jedit, Thunderbird, iTunes, FileZilla, SPE etc. etc. and it doesn’t even bat an eyelid. I could have waited until I could afford a quad core but I can always upgrade the motherboard and processor another time. I bought the machine and monitors (not at the same time) from ITCSales who have great prices and very good customer service. All in all including monitors I reckon I spent about £1400 which considering the spec is a steal.

Jedit still going strong – increase heap size

I still use jedit for all my tasks that require a text editor. I’ve been using it for about 4 years now and rarely find fault with it. One thing I did notice was that it slowed down quite alot if I was editing or searching large files. I knew this was down to Java and the JVM. I was not aware that you could increase the Java Heap Size which means you can increase the memory accessible by the JVM. The flag Xms is the initial heap size and Xmx is the Max heap size allowed (the default is 64m).

“C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_04\bin\javaw.exe” -Xms256m -Xmx768m -jar “C:\Program Files\jEdit\jedit.jar”

starts Jedit with an initial heap size of 256 MB and a max heap size of 768 MB which essentially means it can handle any size file I throw at it. (Source – http://javahowto.blogspot.com/2006/06/6-common-errors-in-setting-java-heap.html).

Another option (specific to Jedit) I found was the “reuseview” flag. This forces the file to be opened in an existing instance of Jedit rather than starting a new one.

“C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_04\bin\javaw.exe” -Xms256m -Xmx768m -jar “C:\Program Files\jEdit\jedit.jar” -reuseview “F:\Working\kf182\Databases\xml\data\Products\9826.xml”

Opens 9826.xml in an existing instance of Jedit.

Monster Commute

Late February of this year I started back working for Karova. As I lived in Dublin at the time it meant a monster of a commute every week, staying at a friends during the week and coming back to Dublin at the weekends. I still do the same commute but I now have my own place in Colwyn Bay which is only 2 minutes walk from the train station and about a minute walk to work. When I add up the commute time (which ranges between 11 and 14 hours a week) it is not far off what I spent on the trains when commuting to Dublin city centre and I get to work or watch DVDs on the ferry/train. All in all it’s an enjoyable trip every week. A little tiring but it means I can stay committed to GAA and my triathalon/marathon training. One thing I have learned on my commutes is that Family Guy is absolutely hilarious.

Good v Bad Customer Service (Dell v EuropCar)

In February 2007 I bought two shiny new Dell 2007FP monitors for dual monitor love. They’re awesome and £500 well spent. I bought them from RDC and saved a bundle on the Dell prices. Since my move back to Wales one of the monitors developed a small yellow square in the top left corner. I rang Dell to check the warranty status. After some chatting and testing I was informed I would get a new one today. 11am this morning I get a shiny new 2007FP in exchange for my faulty one. Awesome customer service. The Dell guy on the phone was very professional and went out of his way to make sure I was happy. Big thumbs up!!!

Compare that with my experience with Europcar today. I paid online for a VW Golf rental car. I arrived at the depot and after some waiting I was given a Polo. I told them I ordered a Golf and that I didn’t have time to wait and that we’d sort out the difference in price when I brought the car back. I brought the car back this morning and was told that it was all head office that needed to sort out refunds like that. So it seems they mess up and I am the one that has to sort it out (excellent customer service). I was then told that the petrol tank was not full. I had only driven 70 miles and I filled up half way (£6) which means that I probably needed to fill about £2 or £3 in petrol. COME ON EuropCar!!! give me a fucking break. The tank registered as full but wasn’t overflowing to the brim. Fine I said whatever you fill it up.

I then get a call when I get back to work from a customer service rep saying that they didn’t like their customers to be unhappy. That’s nice I thought, she might sort this mess out – NO she proceeded to tell me that it was the head office and that if I’d waited I could have had a Golf as I’d requested. Then she revealed that I would be charged £1.60 per litre for the petrol that had to be filled. Now forgive me but surely a phone call like that should have been to do something to resolve the situation, NOT to piss me off even more. EuropCar – your procedures and customer service suck ass. And another thing – your depot is not in Downtown Colwyn Bay it’s in FUCKING Mochdre – a £4 taxi ride away.

Sorry for the rant but I had to vent

Moving Email to Gmail with Google Apps

A third party currently hosts our mail @ karova and I wanted to either host it ourselves or move to gmail with Google Apps. As a proof of concept I’ve moved the mail for the philroche.net domain to gmail. I have to say I am very impressed. I signed up for the 30 day free Google Apps premier edition so I was able to migrate all 29,000 of my imap mail over to gmail. The change in my MX records has not filtered through yet so I have a few emails that are still on my old server I’ll need to transfer somehow (without doing a complete migration again). Now I’ve got superb webmail, mobile access, Imap and POP3 with 99.9% uptime guarantee and 25GB space for only $50 a year. Bargain.