Results – Chunky Monkey VI 2009 10K – 1:16:49

I have now finished my first 10K!  It was quite warm, though a little wind and cloudcover made it not quite at hot as it could have been.

I had settled in to my place in the group, and then the 5K runners caught us.  It wasn’t particularly pleasing to be passed by hundreds of people who weren’t even sweating yet!  However, I told myself that my goal was to finish, and I did. I didn’t feel particularly excited or pumped when I crossed the finish line, which surprised me – this morning, though, I do feel much better about it.

My oldest 2 sons also did the Kids K – both of them ran the entire way.  I was very proud of them.

My next race will probably be the Albuquerque Cross-Country Classic 3 on 16 Aug 09, assuming my wisdom tooth surgery recovery is as quick as they’ve said it should be.

Up Next – Chunky Monkey VI 2009 10K – 19 Jul 09/1900

I got registered for the 10K I had decided to attempt first!  I tried to register online yesterday, but the 10K wasn’t showing available anymore.  Through some research, I saw that you could register in person.  I went by The Athlete’s Edge, and there was room!  I was able to pick up my materials right there as well.  Here’s the t-shirt that I got…

And, I feel so official – my number!

The race starts at 1900 (7pm) tomorrow evening.  I’m excited, and a little nervous.

A New Fitness Blog

I’ve been doing a big push to improve my fitness as of late.  A friend pointed me to Active.com, where you can search for things to do in your area.  One of the things that came with the membership on that site is a fitness blog.  I’ve decided to use it to chronicle my fitness activities.

I’m hoping to have the posts appear here as well – kind of a self-aggregating thing, if you will.  However, if they don’t, the URL for my fitness blog is http://community.active.com/blogs/daniel-j-summers.

Welcome to My Blog

Welcome to my new fitness blog.  This will be a spot for me to record happenings in my continuing adventures in fitness.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with fitness – I enjoy the way I feel when my fitness level is up, but I don’t always feel motivated to keep myself in that shape.  It’s had a negative affect on my career (I’m military), and I’ve decided that enough is enough.  I recently got myself within the standards that my branch of the military has set, but I’m not going to stop there.  My goal is to be able to pass their test any day they come to me and tell me that it’s time.

To keep myself motivated, I’m going to register for a 5K – 10K at least once per quarter – this will help me make sure that I always have a goal no more than 3 months away.  I’ll be doing my first one before my birthday, which is September 14th.

30 Ignorant Opinions

I found this over at House of Eratosthenes, with the full title “Thirty Ignorant Opinions That Are Nevertheless Somewhat Popular.”  As Morgan is moving soon, making the preceding link dead (Edit: link fixed), I’ve reproduced the list here.  The remainder of this post is the excerpt – I agree with 28 or 29 of them.

[These opinions] are the opinion equivalent of driving several miles down the highway with your blinker on.

30.  Together, we can take on global warming and we can win.  Save the planet.  Together we can do this.
29.  We’ve got to get some more money into the education system, because our children are worth it.
28.  Seventy languages in use in a school district is a sign that it is a rich tapestry of diversity, and that is good for everybody.
27.  Any statement that qualifies “tax cuts” as an expenditure, such as comparing the “Bush tax cuts” with real spending plans.
26.  We’re going to need a bigger stimulus.
25.  The trouble with our justice system is that the people who decide the cases don’t have enough empathy.
24.  We’ve got to do something to help the unemployed, like taxing the snot out of the businesses that just might hire them.
23.  It’s going to take Barack Obama a long, long time to fix all this stuff, and He is trying His best.
22.  If women were in charge of the world there wouldn’t be any wars.
21.  FOX News tells lots of lies, but I can’t come up with any examples.
20.  You know what we really need to change?  If a guy has lots of sex he’s a stud, if a woman does the same thing she’s a slut.  SO unfair!
19.  Everything that needs inventing has been invented.  Men, drop out of school, learn to rap and do your crunches.
18.  We’ve got to change our policies because our (unnamed) allies in Europe don’t like us.
17.  I can’t approve of Barack Obama’s policies.  But I still like Him personally, and that’s what really matters.
16.  We must all be forced to call gay people “married.”  It’s a civil rights issue.  For them.  Not for anyone else.  Just for them.
15.  We have to raise the tax rate on the rich, because that makes us all a better people.
14.  The Earth is sure to be doomed if I use traditional sandwich baggies.  But it’s got a fighting chance if I use these ones that are 25% lighter.
13.  Sarah Palin isn’t a real woman; she’s a Republican.
12.  I know exactly what my thousand dollar car needs: Three thousand dollar rims.
11.  If we drill, we won’t see a single drop of oil for x years.  Besides, adorable polar bears, penguins, pristine environment blah blah blah.
10.  We should not have attacked Iraq because Iraq didn’t attack us.
9.  I wanna watch American Idol!
8.  Hooters?  Isn’t that a strip bar or something?
7.  The second amendment is out of date because all them founders couldn’t have envisioned nukular weapons and what-not
6.  Those illegal aliens are just trying to make a better life for their kids so we should coddle them all and make them citizens.
5.  Vote for Obama!  Hope!  Change!
4.  If your kid doesn’t feel like paying attention it’s a learning disability.  Medicate him.
3.  No one’s going to be safe until we get rid of all these guns we have lying around.
2.  Culottes and clamdiggers.  That’s what hip fashionable hot looking women should wear this summer.  Who wants to see a gorgeous woman’s bare thigh anyway.
1.  Palin quit because of a scandal.  Yup.  After all that digging, months and months, the entire Fourth Estate…they left one hidden.  Boy, do they feel foolish.

Teh Koolaid

Found this over on IMAO

lolbama!

Paying for Facebook: A Lesson in Economics

This is the first time my blog and Facebook accounts have crossed.  If you’re not a member of Facebook, you may not know exactly what I’m talking about.  However, you know my enjoyment of economic discussions, and this is a good learning opportunity.

Recently, several of my Facebook friends joined a group called “We Will Not Pay for Facebook.”  They’re not alone – this group boasts over 4.4 million members.  The group had articles referring to the profit that the current owner is making on the site, and various purchase offers.  Then there was this…

Because of Facebook’s huge popularity Mark Zuckerberg is getting a lot of offers from people wanting to buy Facebook.  People Who WILL turn it into a paysite.

The assumption here is that if anyone buys the service, they will change it to a pay site.  This is FUD*, and to illustrate this, we’ll look at Facebook compared to another site, Classmates.

What makes Facebook valuable is its large (and exponentially growing) user base.  Facebook can charge advertisers a premium for ads placed there, and if they make it paid-per-view, they make even more money, because they get lots of eyes on them.  There are people who, like me, pay for very few websites (the only one I’m currently paying to use is Geocaching), and were Facebook a pay site, would not have signed up it.  With this high user base, and high business value, comes the innovation – while few people I know like the new “stream” home page, there are things that Facebook can do that few other sites can match.

Contrast this with Classmates – this site has been up longer than Facebook, does pretty much the same thing as Facebook, yet is nowhere near as hot a commodity or as valuable a business as Facebook.  Why is this?  The fee model.  Classmates requires a fee for an account (or at least they did when I looked at them, which hasn’t been recently).

If someone bought Facebook and changed it to a fee model, it would kill the business value of the site.  Sure, you’d have people who got addicted to the free stuff and would pay to maintain their addiction, but you’d have other people (myself included) who would simply let the account go.  I have other ways of doing pretty much anything that site can do.  It’s nice to have it all in one place, but it’s not worth $3.95/mo to me.  All this would severely stifle the growth of the site, thereby reducing its business value.

If this happened, there would then be demand – demand for another free bring-it-all-together social networking site.  The entire science of economics is defined as the study of the allocation of scarce resources.  Demand causes resources to be allocated – whether it was “iShare,” or “Friends and Family,” or “Facepedia,” some other site would sprout up that would provide the services that Facebook used to provide.

That being said – I don’t see Facebook going to a fee model, whether it changes hands or not.  It just doesn’t make economic sense.  And, if the owners decide to go that route, it still won’t be a big deal, as something else will rise up to replace it.  Don’t believe the FUD.  :)

* Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt – rumors of impending doom not based in fact

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