Category Archives: review

GORUCK Challenge

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On May 19 – May 20, I participated in the GORUCK Challenge Orlando event. For those of you who don’t know what GORUCK is, I’d suggest the GORUCK FAQ. Here’s a quick summary of a GORUCK challenge event:

  • Wear a backpack with bricks in it.
  • Perform various PT type exercises with a group of about 20-25 of your new best friends
  • Ruck to somewhere far away
  • Ruck back
  • Expect various factors of suckage along the way

Summary

Overall I’d call the event one of the more difficult things I’ve ever done. I’ve hung out with a number of folks who have previously completed the challenge, and was adequately warned that it would amount to as much. The camaraderie is the only thing that overcomes the difficulty. I’d highly recommend this to all friends and colleagues that are in decent shape.

Cadre – Dave

Our Cadre (guide / leader / painmaster) for the event was Dave. Dave spent 18 years in active duty doing in various roles in Special Forces. Dave was a smaller guy than I had imagined we’d be lead by. Having said that however, Dave is a monster of a man: not in the physical sense, but you can’t escape the feeling that he’s got a vast amount more knowledge about the limitations of the human mind and body than most of us could ever know.

Review

The grossest part of the evening :/


Class 172 started at the amphitheater on Lake Eola in Downtown Orlando. Our route put us around the lake, doing various forms of PT along the way. Within an hour we had our first casualty: a member passed out, and was unable to continue. We wound up in Lake Eola (gross), running to 7-11, then through Downtown Orlando during the primetime of the night scene. We headed to the new Arena, and to the Citrus bowl (directly through the roughest ghetto in 100 miles).

Flags, Ducks, Sand ... Check.

All the while, we were carrying our own packs (mine was just under #40) and 5 bags distributed among the team (each at #50), as well as the team weight: the head of a swan boat from Lake Eola. Doing all of this would have been enough, without the extra load.

When the fireman carry got to be too much, a two man carry was employed.

From the Citrus Bowl we took the scenic route to Citywalk. We had met some of the most interesting characters Orlando has to offer during the trek. Our march to Citywalk was a mix of running, indian runs, PT, and various other mental challenges. Along the way we were threatened by the intoxicated, rewarded with hydration, and questioned by criminals.

Inchworms. The worst thing you've ever wished you hadn't been through.


We got to the entrance of Universal Studios (Citywalk) around 7:30am. We got a group shot, and were able to lighten some of the #50 sand bags we’d been hauling around for so long. By that point, the less physically trained were showing signs of weakness. That’s not to take away from what they did though. If anything, those guys pushed themselves farther than any of us. For that, they have my respect.

Because of this however, our journey back to our starting point didn’t entail any other PT. I was a bit disappointed. I had expected to be pushed farther than I ever have been before. That certainly was not the case however. I had a very difficult time, but not as much as I had been worried about.

Suggestions

If you’re planning on doing the GORUCK Challenge, I’d suggest a few things:

  • Be in good physical shape. Crossfit is an excellent primer for the things you’ll encounter during the challenge. Having said that however, it’s not enough. I highly recommend practice rucks and extra running
  • Bring good gear. A friend of mine let me borrow his GR-1 for the event. That thing is awesome. I’m saving my pennies to get one of my own.
  • Hydrate heavily before the event. I had a gallon of water a day prior, and experienced no cramping at all
  • Eat like a complete asshole the day of the event. You’re likely going to expend somewhere on the order of 10,000 to 20,000 calories during the challenge. Because of this you’re going to need every calorie you can consume. This isn’t the day feel guilty about pizza. Find food, and stuff yourself

Final Thoughts

I’d love to thank everyone who was a part of class 172. My friends Ben, Mirason, Brenna, and Ramon were great to have for the ride. I met a ton of awesome new friends that I can’t wait to join to complete another event. A huge thanks to Dave for being an amazing leader during the event. This was my first event. I can guarantee you it won’t be my last.

The Trouble With The Web …

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Web Development is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. Nearly every day some new product or development turns the whole scene on it’s head. Just a dozen years ago, the thought of being a web developer was less than promising for most folks. Today, that’s quite different.

There’s a huge catch in all of this though. Web developers are quite possibly the dumbest professionals on the earth. No other industry sees it’s standard salaries and income vary as much as the web development industry. Imagine trying to pick between one lawyer who charges $300 / hr, or one that charges $10 / hr. The cheaper one sounds enticing, but we all know you usually get what you pay for.

That’s the trouble with the web. Because so many developers are willing to provide services for next to nothing (for a variety of reasons), the entire industry suffers. There’s just not much consistency in what people expect to pay for professional web dev services.

And now, professional companies are starting to get into this mindset as well. As I’ve been trolling for steady jobs, I’ve seen tons of positions open for senior web developers that pay $15 to $20 / hr.

That’s an insultingly low rate to pay a senior web developer. The skillset and intelligence required to perform solid web development duties is typically on par with my own background in structural and civil engineering. This stuff is complicated, and $15  / hr isn’t reflective of the skill required to successfully create and implement a good web app.

So, what will likely happen, is good paying jobs will be more geo-centric to tech hubs throughout the country (New York, San Francisco, etc..), and the remaining web development work will be limited to implementations of the products that come out of those areas.

The variety that’s made the web so intriguing for years, will likely fade to a much more bland version of the web, filled with millions of cookie-cutter websites about uninteresting products and services.

It’s frustrating, because even some of my closest friends feel the need to undercut their services to get work. My own colleagues and buddies are helping to enforce the un-sustainability of our own careers.

UCF Disappointment

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I went to my first UCF home game at the new stadium yesterday, and I’m a little disappointed at the experience. There was plenty of cool tailgating going on, and there are a lot of new shiny buildings out there which were really nice too. Shiny things withstanding though, I’d rate it a mediocre experience for a few reasons.

  • Fan involvement –  While I was sitting in the USF side of the field, I swear the USF fans were much more involved in the game than UCF fans were. Those fans know all of the songs, word for word, and they belt them out with full force. By contrast, the only time our fans started to act half as involved, was when it looked like we had a shot to win.
  • Fair-weather Fans – with about 12 minutes left in the 4th quarter, a lot of UCF fans gave up, and started leaving. Of course, this was much to the delight of the USF fans, who started chanting “Where You Going?”. If our team has any shot of being successful (more on that in a bit), then our fans have to start acting the part. I suspect many are waiting for a successful team before they start rooting for us. That’s a bad attitude to have, and I suspect your life would reflect poorly if you carried that attitude at work, or at home.
  • Fan belligerence - I was attacked by a UCF fan when I was walking out of a Porto-Let. The guy had me confused with someone else, and as I opened the door, I got punched in the face. I’m not a small guy, so the guy doing the punching must have had a hell of a lot of liquid bravery. I wrestled him to the ground and pinned him, pleading him to stop. After a minute of futile squirming to escape, he gave up. However, as soon as I let the guy up, he was screaming obsenities at me. He just had his ass handed to him (and I didn’t hit him at all), and he was still ready to fight.
  • Undisciplined Players – I thought George O’Leary was some kind of disciplinarian. Watching the game last night, you wouldn’t know it. While I’ve heard some guys say that the refs were making bad calls, most of the calls I saw were completely legit. Our players were making some of the dumbest penalties I could think of, and it cost us the game. I might have sympathy for that sort of thing on the first game of the season, but not the second. I’m especially disappointed to see that sort of behavior against a team we lost severely too last season. I thought we were supposed to be the cleaner smarter team?

So, while the tailgating is excellent at UCF, the game leaves a lot to be desired. UCF fans were largely uninvolved. The most involved fan I saw all day, I had to pin his head to the ground to make him stop. That sort of behavior carried on to the field, were we might as well given guns to our players, so they could try to rob USF players. 

I’m not usually one to play Chicken Little, but I really think someone should be putting the pressure on O’Leary regarding the penalties. There’s no excuse for that sort of thing. If our players are outmatched, and we lose, that’s one thing: Playing dirty football is another. I’m quite ashamed today, even if we did almost win.

UPDATE

My buddy Alex has a good review of the game on his amazingly awesome UCF sports site, UCF Insider.

Gembecki is Awesome!

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Gembecki Mechanical Services, Inc. - A greate HVAC contractor working out of Central Florida!

So, my AC stopped working last night. I live in Central Florida, and it’s August, which means I was in hell. Melissa and I tried to fix the issue, but eventually accepted that we needed a professional to repair the system. A mechanical engineering friend of mine recommended Gembecki Mechanical, so I gave them a call. I was quite pleased.

Melissa had called me yesterday morning to let me know something was up with the AC system. I was really busy at work, and hoped she was just crazy. I forgot about the problem, went to the CoLab Orlando open house and came home. When I got home, I learned quite quickly, that Melissa was not crazy at all. Continue reading →

XP Logs Off Automatically

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So I got a call from a client today regarding a few issues they were having. Most of the problems weren’t all that difficult to solve, save one….

The boss’s computer would immediately log off after he tried to logon. While this might sound funny (in other circumstances, it really is), the client (who is a really cool guy, whom I respect a lot) did not think it was funny at all.

So, I dived into the Google to find out the issue. The short version; there was a bad registry setting. Basically, when this sort of thing happens, the first thing you should check is the registry. Now, you can’t connect to the registry locally, since you can’t logon to the computer with this issue.

So, the first thing you need to do, is logon to a computer on the same network as a user who has administrative rights on the computer concerned. Once you’ve gotten that far, you’ll need to open regedit. Something like this:

After that, you’ll need to connect to the computer in question. That’s easy, check the following pics:

then… 

The following key is what you should be looking for:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

That key should contain a string value for ‘Userinit’. If you’re confused, you should see something like the following:

Well, you probably shouldn’t see the green box, but you should see the string value for Userinit. If you don’t see that value in the root of key Winlogon, then you’ll need to create it. 

That’s not too bad either. First, right click the right hand pane of the registry editor:

Select the ‘String Value’ item in the right click menu. Once you’ve gotten that done, you’ll have a new string value in the right hand pane, awaiting you to name it. It’ll look something like: 

Name the string Userinit. After you’ve done that, right click the entry and select ‘Modify’. Make sure that the value for the key is:

c:\windows\system32\userinit.exe

Again, here’s a picture:

And that’s it. If you have any issues after you’ve gotten this done, I recommend an ERD disk or formatting your HD. Those are extreme options, I know. However, I don’t think you want to tool around with your computer for hours on end ( or maybe you do ).

Social Media Programs Worth Something

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So, as  a follow up to my rant about the lack of value in most social networks that clog the arteries of the internet these days; I thought it’d be a good idea to follow up with some thoughts on networks and programs that I do like, and why I think they’re cool.

[Networks - The places online for social media]

 

 

Twitter

1. Twitter – Probably not a surprise to most tech folks out there. For those of you who don’t know (geez), twitter offers a sort of ‘micro-blogging’ platform. It’s kinda like blogging for people who don’t have time to blog. With a max post length of 140 characters (not words), you can’t say too much. However, it’s a great way to keep up to date with your friends, or important people, like Tim O’Reilly. 

Pownce

1.a. Pownce – For all the same as Twitter, but a different network (with more features too). This is Kevin Rose’s (Founder of Digg) Twitter Clone. 

 

Delicious

2. Delicious – I can’t begin to say how much I like Delicious. The actual site (again, for those of you who are scratching your heads right now) is del.icio.us. The idea is to have a place online where you can store your bookmarks. That way, you never have to worry about not being able to find that one video online, when you’re at your mom’s house or something.

2.a. Magnolia. – For all the same reasons as Delicious. Magnolia is just a different interface to the same idea as Delicious. 

 

 

3. Flickr – Hands down, nobody has online photo sharing down like Flickr. The amount of things you can do to your photos with Flickr is nothing short of obscene. To top it off, the developers are a pretty eclectic group of characters. Call me an idealist, but I like the idea of nutty dudes (and dudettes) writing software that really does something for the world.

[Software - The stuff on your computer that helps _you_ out]

 

 

1. Twhirl – I use Twhirl pretty much exclusively for ‘tweeting’ these days. Twhirl runs off of Adobe AIR, a sort of intermediary between a program, and it’s operating system. This means that if you’re running Windows (XP, or whatever Vista variant), Linux (within reason), or OSX; you will be running the same program. That makes for easy support. Anyways, Twhirl is awesome because it doesn’t always give me the ‘too many requests’ errors of twitteriffic, AND it posts to Pownce for me too.

 

2. Flock – Flock is a browser that’s built on top of Firefox. It makes keeping up with Social Media sites pretty easy. Some of the features of flock (like the top media bar, displaying photos and videos) are equally awesome, and cumbersome. Despite some of it’s shortcomings, Flock is still a really cool app that does a good job of combining a web browser with a social media dashboard.

 

3. Adium – Now, some of you might not think of instant messaging as a type of social network. No websites, no pictures, no birthdays, no etc… However, IM was really the first type of social network, and it was well beyond it’s time. These days, if you’re not on IM, you don’t talk much to me. Seriously, my wife has to get on IM to chat with me, when we’re in the house together. IM is king, and Adium makes using IM a breeze.