2011 Goals

The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them.

Denis Watley

I'm going to use this post to list and track my goals for 2011. The list is ambitious, possibly just beyond reach, just like every list of goals should be. I had lots of fun looking back at my life goals from time to time and contemplating which of them I could attempt this year.

A journey of a thousand miles...

General goals

• Launch at least one "product" (most likely a website) of my own, outside of work.
• Write at least one short story.
• Learn at least two new programming languages/technologies. Likely candidates: Scala, Python, HTML5.
• Visit at least 5 new places. Likely candidates: Thailand, Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, Ano Nuevo, Sequoia National Park
• Get better at remembering birthdays and getting gifts.
• Pick up a new sport.

Fitness goals

Strength/Power

• Squat: 455lbs (current: 405lbs)
• Deadlift: 500lbs (current: 495lbs)
• OH Press: 225lbs (current: 205lbs)
• Crossfit Total: 1180lbs (current: 1055lbs)
• OH Squat: 255lbs (current: 245lbs)
• Snatch: 225lbs (current: 203lbs)
• Clean: 315lbs (current: 288lbs)
• Jerk: 275lbs (current: 258lbs)

Gymnastics

• Consecutive ring muscle-ups: 10 (current: 4)
• Consecutive full ROM HSPU: 10 (current: 2)
• Consecutive pistols (per leg): 15 (current: 10)
• L-sit: 1:00 (current: 0:20)

Speed/Endurance

• Run 40 yards: 4.5 seconds (current: ?)
• Run 100m: 12.0 seconds (current: ?)
• Run 400m: 1:00 (current: 1:10, track)
• Run 800m: 2:30 (current: 2:50, track)
• Row 500m: 1:25 (current: 1:29)
• Run 1600m: 5:45 (current: 5:53, treadmill)
• Run 5000m: 21:00 (current: 22:38, track)
• Run 10000m: 50:00 (current: 51:43, track)
• Row 2000m: 7:00 (current: 7:17)

CF WoD

• Fran: 2:30 (current: 3:20)
• Cindy: 30 rounds (current: 28)
• Mary: 14 rounds (current: 10)
• Angie: 14:00 (current: 16:08)
• Filthy Fifty: 20:00 (current: 23:20)
• Helen: 8:00 (current: 9:01)
• Murph: 30:00 (current: 32:29)
• Eva: 42:00 (current: 49:32)
• Grace: 2:00 (current: 2:47)
• Isabelle: 6:00 (current: ?)
• Fight Gone Bad: 400 (current: 364)
• King Kong: complete it (current: ?)

It's going to be a very busy year. I can't wait.

The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going.

Ralph Waldo Emereson

Flatland and my adventures in Stanford's libraries

I almost forgot to post this tale, but I recently ran across the relevant photos on my phone and knew I had to write something.

A few months ago, in preparation for a trip up to Sonoma, Molly and I were at the Stanford Library to pick out a few books. Susan's house in Healdsburg is one of the few places I actually take the time to read, as opposed to listening to audiobooks; after a day of biking, wine tasting and swimming, there is nothing better than relaxing by the pool with a good story. Except the massages. But that's a different story.

The pool

I keep track of all the books I read - and all the books I want to read - on Visual Bookshelf, so I had my list ready when we got to the library. I found the nearest computer and began to search. First up was Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. They had a copy, but it seemed to be on hold. Next up: The Pragmatic Programmer. Somebody already had it out. I then tried Xenocide, the 3rd book in the Ender's Game series. They had it! I wrote down the call number and headed down to the stacks with Molly.

20 minutes later, we came back to the terminal empty handed. The book was nowhere to be found. I continued searching. The Island? Out. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest? Lost. I tried a few more and finally got a hit for One Hundred Years of Solitude in another library. We wandered over there and, sure enough, it was missing from the shelves. How could this be? A world class library and I can't find a single thing to read? Close to giving up, I decided to look up one final book: Flatland. It was available, but hidden away somewhere in the basement. Expecting more failure, we headed down.

We found ourselves in a large room with a dark red carpet, low ceilings with exposed pipes jutting out and sliding stacks. We followed the call number to the proper shelf and, to our great astonishment, the book was there!

Success! I was just about to head out when one of the pages caught my attention. I opened the book up to take a closer look and this is what I found:

Scribbles. I flipped the page and found more scribbles. I flipped through the whole thing and it was nothing but jagged lines. Every. Single. Page. At this point, I was sure that I had lost my mind. Perchance to Dream anyone?

Molly captured on camera the split second when I totally, utterly cracked.

As it turns out, instead of the real Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott, I had stumbled across some modern art/poetry thing with the exact same title. The "author" explains on his webpage:

For each page of Abbott’s novel I have traced, by hand, a representation of each letter’s occurrence across every page of text. The generated result is a series of superimposed seismographic images which reduce the text in question into a  two-dimensional schematic reminiscent of EKG results or stock reports.

How the hell does this crap get published? Why did Stanford buy it? WHY?

I left the library that day without a book and quite shaken by the experience. Fortunately, time heals all wounds. Time, and a nice bottle of wine.

My hackday project is live: The Resume Builder

Last Friday, I got my first project up on LinkedIn Labs: Resume Builder. This little app will take your LinkedIn profile and convert it into a beautiful resume. You just sign in with your LinkedIn account, pick from one of the many resume templates, customize what sections are visible and their order, and then print & share to your heart's content. Some samples: sample 1, sample 2, sample 3.

The Resume Builder was my first hackday project: it won "most likely to launch" back in March, 2010. What motivated me was the frustration of maintaining my "professional profile" in multiple places. I had Word and PDF documents all over my computer, my LinkedIn profile, my homepage, etc. Every time I needed to send my resume somewhere, I wasted hours searching for the latest one and often times had to resort to some old version that I tracked down in my gmail "sent mail" folder. Once I joined LinkedIn, I figured it was time to keep my professional data in one place and produce all other formats from it, and I tested this idea out as a hackday.

The reaction to my hackery was very positive, and while it took me a while to get around to it, the Resume Builder has finally been converted into a fully functional app. The best part was that it gave me the opportunity to learn and play with a number of "best of breed" technologies: Ruby on Rails, jQuery, Compass, SASS, the LinkedIn APIs, and Markdown. Naturally, these are all part of my resume now.

I created the Resume Builder Blog to track updates to the project as well as the Resume Builder IdeaScale community to give users a chance to leave feedback, report bugs, and vote ideas up and down. If you have some time, give the Resume Builder a try and let me know what you think!

2010 Crossfit Games: Northern California Qualifier, Day 2

Introduction 

After a smooth first day of competition, Sunday was a bit of a mess. Although all of Saturday's scores and standings were available online, no one really knew who was eliminated, who would compete on Sunday, when to show up or when the workouts were. Not until ~11PM on Saturday did a link to a heat schedule appear on the Crossfit Games website in the comments of the day 1 results page. The schedule looked legit - there were timings for the top 186 finishers from Saturday (the other 70 were cut) - but the whole thing looked poorly planned out. 

My workout wasn't scheduled until noon, but I felt bad for those who had their first heats at 8am. The disorder continued when we arrived around 10:30 and found out that everything was massively delayed and my workout had been pushed back to 1:20. I would've expected these sorts of details to have been worked out more smoothly considering registration for the qualifier was $100.

Anyways, after baking in the sun for 3 hours, it was time for the two back-to-back Sunday workouts: 

Workout C1
In 6 minutes, work up to a max squat clean to overhead.
* The bar must start on the ground, you must pass through a squat, and then send the bar overhead in any manner you choose.
* You'll be able to designate your opening weight before the workout begins, and the judge will be able to help you load and unload weights. In addition, you'll have plenty of time to warm-up prior to the beginning of your heat.

Weight completed: 235lbs (missed 245lbs twice)
Rank: 61 (out of 174 competitors)

Once again, Crossfit honed in on another weakness of mine: the split jerk. I could get the bar to my shoulders without difficulty - the cleans were no where near my max - but I just could not get more than 235lbs over my head. I missed the jerk on 245lbs twice, both times with horrendous technique. I'll definitely be practicing this lift a lot more in the future.

Workout C2
At the immediate conclusion of Workout C1, perform the following for time:
25 Burpees
100-yard Walking Lunge
Then 5 Rounds of:
- 15 Dumbbell Shoulder-to-Overhead (40lbs)
- 100-yard Dumbbell Farmers Walk (40lbs)
Then 25 Burpees
Row 500m
Run 450 yards

Time: 21:25
Rank: 101 (out of 173 competitors)

A brutal workout - especially on the shoulder/traps from the combo of farmers walk and shoulder press - but overall, a pretty classic Crossfit "chipper."

Final Thoughts

I ended the weekend in 61st place out of 256+ competitors. As a software engineer who spends ~10 hours a day behind a desk, I'm pretty happy with a finish in the top 25%. To qualify for the regionals, I would've needed to finish in the top ~8%, but I had too many holes in my fitness. The good news is that I had one hell of a fun weekend: the athletes put up some amazing performances, the spectators were incredibly supportive, I learned a lot from the experience, and I know what I need to work on for next year.


Pictures and Videos
Day 2 pictures
Day 2 videos