2008 Christmas Tree

We had a break in the weather today where it was warm and almost sunny. Since I am away next weekend racing down in Sacramento for the CIM, we headed to the tree farm to harvest the family tree for 2008.

We have gone to the same place for the last 3 years: Vandermost Christmas Tree farm on SW Vandermost Road off of Scholls Ferry. You can cut down any tree on the acreage for $25. Small or large.

We tend to go large and have been happy with the 2 past years trees.

This year I made sure to pick a handsaw that was sharp. So once we had hiked through the "forest" and found our tree, the work of cutting it down was vastly easier than last year.

So with little incident, the beautiful tree was loaded on the car, driven home and is now waiting to be decorated in the front room.

Thanksgiving Running: Give 'n Gobble 5 km

We generally try to do a race Thanksgiving morning ever since moving to the United States in 1999. The weather in Portland has generally been warmer than Minneapolis for running on turkey day.

This year we ran the Give 'n Gobble 5km in Sherwood, Or. A map of the course can be found here.

I raced the 5km as my last speed work leading up the California International marathon on December 7th.
I ran OK posting a 19:05 (6:08 minutes per mile).
1st in my age group and 7th overall.
The legs felt good. I just could not quite find a groove with the course. A little climbing and such in the first 2 miles and then about 1 mile of paved trail running. The trail is fun but not conducive to really fast times with some really tight corners that I ran tentative with the moss and frost. I know, excuses, excuses :-)

I then back-tracked to find Trisha and the kids and ran in with them for about the last mile. Cole's ears where cold as it was about 33 F but the sun was out. Leah was dragging when I met them but boy did she pick it up on the downhills. They did great keeping moving by alternating running and walking. Pushing to the finish, they finished their first 5 km race in 41 minutes (13:11 minutes per mile).

It was great to see our friends from church out doing the 10 km: Jon Lindsey, Jason and Jennifer. I went back again for more cool down to run in with Jon for the last 3/4 mile. Maybe next year we will move up to the big race as well :-)

The race was well organized with the route marked extremely well. Russ Zornick was doing the timing so I would expect the results to be up here soon (possibly as early as tonight). (UPDATE: results are up here and WOW...the race had 702 people running the 5 km!)

Happy Thanksgiving. Boy are we blessed!
Now off to EAT!

An Important Day for EclipseCon 2009

Which of the following are true about November 24th?

• The start of the week that holds American Thanksgiving?
• The day the lead singer of Queen died?
• The day that the Brady Bill passed the United States Congress?
• The last day to submit a proposal for EclipseCon 2009?

Answer: All are true.

This post is about participation in EclipseCon 2009.
We have 5 Domains with 19 categories designated for the conference. We even have an Other category to not miss anything cool and interesting.

So what is your passion: Emerging technologies? UI? C/C++? E4? Web tools?
Submit a proposal for what you love to talk about.

Maybe you would like to share within the Committer and Contributor category?

In the Committer and Contributor category:

• You can tell us about your peer and community interactions or your successes and failures with ecosystem building.
• Do you have insights and experiences on how to work in the open, or how to foster or be a successful contributor or committer? Please don't limit yourself to just Eclipse experiences. Other communities experiences can be very relevant.
• If you are an expert on the Eclipse foundation and its governance model, licensing or the Eclipse IP process, share with the rest of us.
• The Eclipse development process...a whole world unto itself ready for you to help us explore.
• How did you start your Eclipse project, foster its growth and sustain its maintenance?

No matter what category your presentation would fall under, write up your proposal and prepare to share your expertise with a submission.

Florida Sandcastles

Our family spends a lot of time on the beach when we go to Indian Rocks, Florida. We keep busy building creations in the sand. Everything from plain piles of sand to snapping turtles to standard castles.

Some of us are the designers and the diggers, some the sculptors and others the supervisors, critics and admirers.

These are our creations for Florida 2008.

We imagined.
Then we enjoyed building and playing with the sand.

We also made sure to run around laughing as the sea reclaimed the sand we had borrowed.

Racing in Florida: Richard's Run for Life 5km

We are on vacation near Tampa, Florida and independently both of us thought it would be fun to do a race while we were here.

We lucked out in with a 5km race tonight in Ybor City, a historic neighborhood northeast of downtown Tampa. The race is called Richard's Run for Life and is a cancer fundraiser.
We almost missed the race with the traffic/rush hour of Tampa. Parked and did our "warm-up" run to pick up our numbers with 15 minutes to spare for the 7 pm start.

In 2006 this race had 660 runners. 2007 there was 673. This year there was around 1200! But they handled it really well.
The course is not really scenic: several out and backs on city streets starting and finishing at the historic Cuban Club built in 1917.

The race was really well organized with lots of volunteers for packet picket and for the post race party. The post race food was really tasty tacos and paella with free wine, beer and soda.

Trisha nailed her fastest time in a couple of years with 25:15 (8:07).
I ran 18:38 (5:59), 15th overall and my fastest time this year. I grabbed a 1st place paella plate in one of the old man age groups.

It took a long time to get to the awards ceremony. The reason: 1200 people and they were doing the results BY HAND!. It was like a time warp back to the '70s. I have no idea how this race managed to get these results organized. As you crossed the finish line you were passed a card with your overall finish position. It was then up to you to enter your name, address and finish time on the card.
These cards were then placed into little plastic troughs for each age group in random order. Then one guy sorted these cards and stapled the top three from each age group on a larger result card. Trisha and I stood and watched to really see how this worked. Even more amazing the race organizers announced that the full results will be up online by Sunday night! Someone actually has to type in all these results...youch!! The old school way did work, but man, someone get these guys some computerized results! :-)
Full 2008 results can be found at Cool Running.

Fun race, great food (and lots of it) and organization with cool and unique age group awards. Hopefully we can do it again.