new tech tuesday

so rumor has it that ATT 3G has finally come to manchester.  its not showing up on my N95 yet, but im hoping that will change before thanksgiving.

the new Intel i7 chip is now out as well.  oh man, would i love to get my hands one one of those.  but alas, i did just build this machine.  and since 95% of its use is limited to checking my email, i probably don't need anything faster than an overclocked C2D.....  or do i??

only 1.5 weeks left before thanksgiving.  which brings me into my ultimate happy season.  allie and i are leaving for a short trip to nyc the following week.  im pretty stoked.  we are staying directly across the street from the american museum of natural history .  yes!.

that is all.

Sucker Brook wrapup (and other junk)

the 2008 edition of the Sucker Brook cyclocross race came & went this weekend.  All in all one of the best years to date.  Attendance was just over 300 with big masters and B fields.  I'd be lying if I would say i wasn't dissapointed by the size of the elite fields.  with the amount of price money we were offering (quite a bit for a small race), i was a little bummed.  Oh well.  Mark McCormack & Kevin Wolfson put on an exciting final couple of laps with Kevin winning in the sprint.

most of my day was by the side of the one & only mr. dick ring.  what a cool cat this guy is.  with him coming "out of retirement" to announce this race, he asked for my assistance in keeping track of the "new guys" :)  i was happy to oblige.

during course takedown, seeing the course really cut into the grass is when it hit me how much i missed racing.  I knew with a new job & getting married that there would be less time to train this year.  it kept getting pushed back and pushed back.   before i knew it, it was mid-summer and i was barely putting in any saddle time.  training was starting to become more of a chore than a pleasure, and thats when i decided to pull the plug.

forcing myself to train, when im mentally & physically not in it....only to finish back of the pack just didnt seem to make sense.  i was ok with my decision at first.  the last week it has really been nagging me.  or better yet, .
depressing me.

i've been running.  or more accurately, jogging.  i'm slow.  i can't go very far.  and i'm pretty sure i look retarded.  but yeah, thats what i am doing right now.  my intention is to attempt a few 5K's sometime this fall.  who knows, if i keep it up all winter, i may shoot for something a little more challenging when the snow melts.

thats all.

currently listening to:  Sebadoh III

It doesn't hurt to ask.

My dad and I had a "discussion" on who had better prices: Shaws or Hannofords.  I just happend to get some Hannoford coupons in the mail, so I figured I would give it a shot.

However one of the coupons was "Free rotisserie chicken with the purchase of $30".  With nothing to loose, I brought it to the Service Desk and asked what they would do for a vegetarian.  At first she looked at me like I was nuts, but I persuided her to ask the manager.  Much to my surprise, they gave me a gift card for $7.50.

When I got back to the car and showed Allie, she quickly pointed out that there was a picture of a dead chicken on the gift card.

Guess they got the last laugh.

GTD with RTM

A few months ago I signed up for Remember the Milk (RTM). I will admit that I really didn't use it much. Not because I didn't find it useful, but because I never had the time to really get things in order enough to use it.

Well, I recently started reading "Getting Things Done". Still in the beginning, but i got to thinking if there was a way to implement this methodology into RTM. Did a little googling, and found all sorts of goodness.

Here is a pretty cool link that talks about this in much greater depth than I care to.
http://lifehacker.com/software/getting-things-done/getting-things-done-with-remember-the-milk-229003.php

Long overdue update

7.1.08 Wedding in Burlington,VT
Originally uploaded by Alliezzz

I hate it when people never update thier blog, but then every 3 months get on there and say "wow, i never update this blog"

yeah, thats me. its not intentional. life has just been too busy to deal with some things. and keeping up with a blog is certainly included in that list.

so what have i been doing to keep me so busy? Well, the first thing is getting married. yup. for those that havent heard yet, Allie & I eloped to Burlington, Vt last week. this was our secret plan all along. ha ha. even before we got engaged, actually. the whole wedding drama thing just didnt fit in with our personality. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). thats my moto. and what is simpler than 2 people getting married on Lake Champlain? not much.

So yup. now when you see Allie, call her Mrs. Ziemba. it makes her giggle.

Burlington was pretty cool. we got a place right on the lake, with a huge room and a hottub in the bathroom. although we spent the whole week up there, there was still quite a few things we never had time for. we wanted this to be a relaxing week, so sticking to a dictated schedule would have defeated the purpose.

After a week of being surrounded by hippies, we were glad to be back in manchester. yeah, we may not be as "hip" as burlington, be we love this city.

what else. well, it wouldnt be a blog post unless i talked about training. or in my case, a lack of training. yeah. it is just not clicking this year. each week is a "i will start next week" i look back at how much i was riding this time last year, and its pretty depressing. i am hoping things turn around soon, or cross season may turn into a spectator sport.

work is still great. love this job. love this company. things are pretty hectic at the moment, as our 7 person team is now down to 4 people. same workload, half the people to do it. this coming week, 2 of the 4 are out of the office for the week.... yeah, me & 1 other guy to do deal with all that caseload. it will be a tad stressful, to say the least. oh well, good thing i work better under pressure.

with the addition of a wife, comes the addition of a whole nother music library. we listen to basically the same stuff... but we both have a laaaaarge collection. luckily we are both about 90% digitized. I moved all of her stuff to my machine to keep things simple (KISS, remember?). then included her imac to my pc network.... after a little bit of fighting, the two agreed to play nicely together (at least for now). ok easy enough, but it sure would be nice to get this library out into the living room.

solution? windows media center extender. after a bit, i decided the easiest way to do this would be to just break down and buy an xbox 360. haha. this thing is amazing. lets just put the gaming part on hold for now. the fact that i can stream all our music, videos, pictures, etc at the touch of a button is soooo great. additionally, i have a tv tuner in my pc so i can stream over recorded content back to the LCD. niiiiice.

Forza2 and Project Gothem Racing 4. any dorks out there playing these and want to play online, let me know!!

i know im like 12 years old... but this really makes me laugh. i love this site.

and lastly, i know this will make some of you jealous (ryan kelly) but check out this photo of me & sarah silverman




ok, breakfast time.
see ya in 3 months.

quick update

boy i wish i had some free time to give a proper update... but i will fill you in quickly.

my new job at Autodesk is simply amazing. accepting this job is the single greatest decision of my life. im still doing alot of training and learning, but it really is turning out to be my dream job. oh, and walking 5mins to work is an added bonus (yes, i said WALKING to work). that also means i can walk 5mins back home for lunch...watch some HD, then head back for the afternoon ;) yesterday, i met up with my lovely allie for lunch, walked downtown, ate some falafel, and walked back (we work 3mins from each other.

Training is slooooooowly coming around. Im still going to the gym a few days a week... and on the bike maybe another 3 days or so. Just riding for about an hour easy is all im doing. but at least its something, right?

thats all for now... someone at work made vegan chilli so i gotta run. :)

baby steps

well, its been awhile since i last posted. here is a quick summary of what has been going on:

I finished up my job at PLS. Things went well, and I was sad to go... but I am still really excited about my move to Autodesk. Working for a company for over 6 years, you really get comfortable, both in good and bad ways. I will miss those guys alot & i wish them the best.

Although I will be going through some pretty hefty training once I start, I still wanted to get a leg up on the software, so I have been studying almost daily. Hopefully this will pay off once the real training starts later this week ;)

Christmas was nice. I always get kinda depressed right afterwards.

My tests came back negative for Lyme. This is a good thing. However, I still feel very fatigued when on the bike. Add that to the fact I took a full 2 months completely off from any form of exercise, and it makes even tougher to get going.

Me & allie joined the gym a few weeks ago, and I have been working on the elliptical machine & adding some light jogging. With cyclo-cross a full 9 months away, I dont really see a need to be on the trainer in december. at least in any structured way. That being said, I am still trying to get some saddle time in. Like I said, its been a tough start. After about 30mins, I was dying. I mean, having trouble getting the Powertap to tell me I am doing anything above my recovery zone! yikes. But im sticking with it. Today I rode a full 60mins. which, although sounds really lame, was a good step for me. I think at this point, its just a matter of getting back into shape... and that is just going to take some time. The last time I did any form of actual training was back in September. oh boy.

Well, thats it for now. back to studying.

more videos...

New Changes

So, i had to keep this under wraps for a bit, but everything is now official, and I am psyched to let you know that I am moving to a new job starting Jan 2nd. I will be working for Autodesk, as a product support analyst for thier Civil 3d software. I am beyond excited about this opportunity. It will be a big, big change for me, but one that I think I will excel at.

I have actually been thiking about this being something I would be interested in for the last few years, but I never pursued it. I have a degree in Wetland Ecology & have always felt kinda guilty for wanting to pursue anything other than that field. Its taken me a while to get to the point where I can admit to myself that I dont like doing wetland work. not at all. i also dont feel like that is were my strengths are. So once i got to the point where I decided to pursue this, it all went fast. really really fast. but thats good.

So I gave my notice yesterday & it couldnt have gone better. my boss was genuinely happy for me, and that was really important to me.

anyways. so thats whats goign on in my life right now. I start Jan 2nd, and am gonna spend the next 4 weeks learning everything I can about the software. Once I start, I will have about 4 weeks of training, as well.

im soo stoked ;)

ouch.

we got a new stapler at work. it is super spring loaded & has massive force. it only took a couple hours before we were trying to shoot it into things (walls, ceiling, other people)... but in order to shoot it, you had to put your finger on the "saftey" and then shoot... yeah, about 5 mins into that, seth put one thru the tip of his finger. haha.

i should have learned. cause, as i was trying to shoot him with it, i shot one into my finger... i mean completely in... all the way. ouch.

still hurts 8 hours later.

cha cha cha cha cha changes....

possibilities.... maybe?

watching is the new racing

Allie & I headed down to noho yesterday for the Cycle-Smart International. In theory, I love this course. It suites me well. But for some reason, I have never had any luck there, so not racing wasnt a huge kick in the balls for me. In fact, it was great to be on the other side of things. The "shite-giving" side :) I could yell all sorts of things at mike, pierre, mark, ryan, josh & everyone else...and there was nothing they could do about it. ha ha ha. I could get used to this!

So, its been a week of antibiotics and it has made so much of a difference, already.

So where was Yash this weekend? slacker.

I put 80% of my life on ebay this weekend. I want to clean things out. by the end of the year, I want to be down to: a bed, computer, bikes, 2 rolls of toilet paper.

Happy Halloween!!!

A cabbie picks up a Nun. She gets into the cab, and notices that the VERY handsome cab driver won't stop staring at her. She asks him why he is staring. He replies: "I have a question to ask you but I don't want to offend you." She answers, "My son, you cannot offend me. When you're as old as I am and have been a nun as long as I have, you get a chance to see and hear just about everything. I'm sure that there's nothing you could say or ask that I would find offensive."

"Well, I've always had a fantasy to have a nun kiss me."

She responds, "Well, let's see what we can do about that: #1, you have to be single and #2, you must be Catholic." The cab driver is very excited and says, "Yes, I'm single and Catholic!" "OK" the nun says. "Pull into the next alley."

The nun fulfills his fantasy, with a kiss that would make a hooker blush. But when they get back on the road, the cab driver starts crying. "My dear child," says the nun, "why are you crying?" "Forgive me but I've sinned. I lied and I must confess, I'm married and I'm Jewish."

The nun says, "That's OK. My name is Kevin and I'm going to a Halloween party."

Results.. season over.

just got a call from the docs. positive for lyme disease.
i dont want to say im happy about this... but it certainly explains alot.
4 weeks of antibiotics... then they test me again after 6 weeks.

i felt like such a whiny pussy the last month... but damn, i have been soo tired, unable to train.. dropping out of races.. it was getting pretty discouraging/demoralizing/depressing, to say the least.

probably no point in racing... right now, i am only good for 10-15mins at race pace anyways. they said i caught it early & should recover fine.. but basically to take it easy until things clear up.

so if anyone needs me to pit for them... let me know :)

thanks to John Hanson for suggesting i go get tested!! He went thru all this shit last year.

i love craigslist.

got an extra ipod?

ouch. my head hurts. bad.

another day off the bike.

while others were getting ready for a weekend of races......

back to plan A

after Glostah, my legs were feeling fine by Tuesday. Rather than give up a week of training, i thought maybe I had enough time to train, then rest the early part of next week. I had alot of personal stuff going on in the next week, so I thought I could figure it all out.

Well, Wed i took the cross bike out and did some 5x5min intervals. yesterday, I hit the road for some threshold intervals. I normally do straight blocks of 15-20mins. but I wanted to mix it up a bit - the first one, i did an "over/under" set. ouch. very ouch. the next set was a 5on/1off. not too much different than a straight block... but allows you to go just a tad over your LT. I started the 3rd block, and just popped.

so, i wasnt as fresh as I had hoped. I think it really is time for a rest.
so here is my sched for the next week:
fri: easy / play video games - maybe download HL2:EP2
sat: easy ride / hang out with allie
sun: allie's 5k / no ride
mon: easy ride
tues: easy ride
wed: no ride / Dan Blakeslee's Halloween show
thurs: back to training!!
fri: easy
sat: open up for canton
sun: kill it at canton

so that plan will give me 5 days of rest. i hope/think that will help add some snap back into the legs ;)

just in case you were wondering... this is what i would look like if i had amy winehouse's body.

this was posted in our office... and a service guy just came in and did a double take... then looked at me. then my co-worker unknowing ran down the stairs singing "its raining men, hallelujah". i have never laughed so hard.

we have lots of fun with putting each other heads on various pictures.
i love photochopping.

recent conversation

after seeing the most beautiful white zank this weekend:

justin: oh man, if i had a ton of money, i would buy 2 of those
allie: aww. one for me, and one for you?
justin: umm. ok, i would buy three of those.