Natural high

I decided yesterday to do a "sprint" workout, something I haven't done in a long time. I was partially motivated by the fact that I want to play ultimate frisbee this weekend, and would like to get the lactic acid out of my legs ahead of time. I was also partially motivated because the more I've done Yoga, and stretched out my legs, the more I feel like I need to do something to tighten them back up. Just stretching all the time is uncomfortable.

Anyway, the point is I ran some sprints. And it was EXHILERATING. Man, it was great to run at full speed. It feels like I'm flying. And almost immediately after finishing the first sprint, I could feel the runner's high hit me like a freight train. I had a huge grin on my face. I felt awesome. So I ran a few more sprints. And I felt awesome. But then I quit, because I knew I was running on borrowed energy, so to speak.

About 15 minutes later, as I was getting ready for work, I crashed. I felt sick. It was brief, thank God, but it was real. Unsettled stomach, spinning head, the works. Yeach.

So what's the point? I need to sprint more often.

A great idea finally comes to life

I had this idea maybe 5 years ago; I just didn't know how to make it happen. Iomega has launched a wifi NAS... what is it? It's a set of hard-drives that you just hook up to your home network. You put all your photos, music, etc on there, and it's all available to every computer or networked television (Tivo, Windows Media Center) in your house. Not only that, but because there are multiple hard-drives, the data is backed up. Even if one hard-drive fails, you haven't lost the data. You just swap out that one drive and keep going.

It's probably still not sufficiently user-friendly to hit a mass market, and I doubt most people would get the benefits, but someday something like this will be either part of your home stereo setup, or part of your internet setup.

I'm glad it's finally happening.

Denali!!!

I'm totally stoked! Soph and I have cemented our plans to take off for Alaska this summer, something I've wanted to do for a while now.

We'll be spending about 5 days backpacking in Denali National Park (pictured here). The mosquitos will suck (literally), but it's wide-open, no trails. Basically hike wherever you want for days on end, with nearly endless sunlight. Cool.

Then we'll take an SUV down the Denali highway from Fairbanks to Anchorage for a couple of days. The road parallels the park, and has great views of the mountain. The whole thing is unpaved, too... Off-roading!

So then after a full week+ of exhausting vacationing, we'll take a cruise down the Alaska/Canada coast for a week, taking in the sights, doing day excursions if we have the energy, and basically soaking it all up with very little effort.

And then we come home and collapse for a day before returning to work/school.

I am SO stoked. I can't wait. I'm starting to compile a list of stuff I may need to buy in anticipation of the trip (and probably sell on Craig's list/Ebay again after we're back). Things like:

• 600mm lens (for bears and wolves and such)
• GPS (no trails, remember? and my map/compass skills are ok, but maybe not ok enough)
• mosquito netting (nasty suckers)
• solar recharger? (camera batteries, gps batteries)

If you've been to Alaska and have any recommendations, throw 'em my way.

Crush List

Soph and I both realized lately that we have become buried in our work and hobbies, both individually and together. It seems like whenever we have free time - weeknight or weekend - we try to fill it with things like watching a movie, reading a book, surfing the web, playing a game, photography, etc. We're already super-busy during the week with work and school, so perhaps it's understandable to want to relax.

The effect, though, has been that we're not investing in people's lives the way we once used to. We used to have at least one night a week that we spent with friends, or with people we were hoping would become friends. And that time really was a great way for us to both be encouraged and have fun, but also a way for us to pour ourselves into other people.

If you examine Jesus' life, you'll see that he was almost always inviting someone to join him in *whatever* he was doing. Every moment, it seems, was a chance for him to invest himself in someone else. That's how he made disciples. My Dad refers to this as the "With Me" principle. He even wrote a book on it called "The Joy of Discipleship".

Anway, both Soph and I came to this conclusion on our own at about the same time a couple of weeks ago. So we decided to institute the Crush List. This is a concept we borrowed from a friend of ours from his "single" days. He had 5 women on the crush list, and 5 in waiting. It might seem like a strange concept, but it makes sense. He was basically focusing on the set of people he wanted to develop relationship with. So Soph and I now have a "Crush List" with people that we really want to target developing deeper relationship with. The list changes regularly, and the number of people on the list isn't really a set limit. But it gives us some focus relationally, and gets us off our butts when we have free time.

360 drafts...

I really really wish 360 allowed me to save draft blog entries.

This entry, for example, I am writing in notepad because I just posted another post. I don't want to post all my thoughts all at once, but I need a place to capture the thought when it occurs. I've also run into plenty of instances where I'm halfway through writing a post when I need to shut-down, close the browser, whatever. I can't save the draft, but I don't want to post a half-finished thought, so what can I do?

Why multiple blogs are useful...

I constantly find that there are things I want to blog about that for one reason or another I can't. Usually it's because it's related to Yahoo!, or product strategies of competitive companies as they relate to Yahoo!, etc. Obviously I can't blog about that stuff in public, because, well, it's not public information.

But sometimes I *really* want to talk about it. So now I have three blogs. I have this one, purely for personal stuff. I know some people are much more hip than I and use their 360 to write up their thoughts on Web 2.0 stuff, but most of my thoughts can't be expressed publicly anyway. So this blog is for personal happenings, opinions, etc.

I have *also* started a blog internally at Yahoo!, behind the corporate firewall (sorry to those of you who don't work at Yahoo!), where I *can* comment about these things. Actually, I've started two internal blogs. I started one for my group - the Advanced Products Group - and one for myself.

It does mean, though, that I've neglected this blog for a number of days, maybe even weeks, since I've been posting to those other two blogs. Sorry about that. I'll try to make amends over the upcoming weekend.

Snowboarding blind

Since my trip out of the country for work was postponed, I took advantage of having no meetings scheduled for Friday to take the day off and hit the slopes with Soph. We headed up to Kirkwood early in the morning, and had an awesome day.

The snow up there is crazy deep. Like 20 feet or something. We were going down blacks and double blacks that were essentially just blues. All of the gullies and gulches were filled in with snow. It was a blast.

It was blowing really hard, though. I couldn't see the lift until we were one pole away. No visibility at all. And the wind was so strong at the top that if you just stood up on a flat area, it pushed you along like a sailboat. One run we went on was so whited-out, that it felt like I was in Antartica. A little bit disconcerting.

But the snow was awesome. I love being the first or only person to make tracks down a long run. What a blast!