Run DMZ

I've spent the last hour trying to figure out why my Blogger Navbar is suddenly bunched in the upper lefthand corner. Anyone familiar with Blogger have some ideas? I've tried manipulating the template to no avail. Anyone????

So I'm on the elliptical trainer at the gym this afternoon. I work out at the Miramar Air Station and thus am typically surrounded by active duty Marines and veterans. I'm sometimes self-conscious of my roundness because everyone there has a hard body. They're fit...semper fit. But today, I'm feelin' alright. I'm coming off a productive weekend. A 7-miler on Saturday morning, followed by an hour of Pilates. On Sunday, infused with an extra hour of sleep, I managed two hours of steady running around the Ranch with no problem (and no Gatorade...but that's for another entry). So there I am with my MP3 player blasting Public Enemy through tiny ear plugs and me pumping my arms faster than my legs when I start to notice the other guys in the gym notice me. I play it cool and look away like I'm working hard, just totally into my workout. I may have even closed my eyes for effect. Occasionally one of them looks at me as I turn over my legs to the beat, trying to...

This was the high school's homecoming weekend. Here are a couple of pictures of Alex's evening. This one's in our backyard before we headed off for pictures at another classmate's house. 

  Alex and her date, Mike, before everyone left in the limo for dinner and the dance. 

Been getting my New England running fix by listening to Steve Runner's Phedippidations podcasts. Also been meaning to recommend the audiocasts on EnduranceRadio.com . The weekly broadcasts feature accomplished runners, triathletes, cyclists and those who coach endurance athletes. Great tips from those who walk the walk, not just talk. I'm partial to the Oct. 17 edition under the Archives section. It features a conversation with our very own coach, Paul Greer.

Time for a little fear and paranoia from the security world. I'm a fan of Princeton University computer science professor Ed Felten's blog, Freedom to Tinker. His latest entry on current and future use of RFID tags is pretty simple to understand and scarey to contemplate. Marketed primarily as a way to track inventory, these microscopic tags also can keep tabs on where you go and what you do. Think of the current IBM television commercial where a woman at a desk in the middle of a lone highway stops a Fresno-bound 18-wheeler heading to New Mexico instead. She says she knows the driver's lost because the boxes told her. Every conference session on this technology I've attended in the past two years has been packed, mostly with admins freaked about the security and privacy implications. Felten's discussion will not allay those fears. Not only are RFID tags readying for primetime, but a future incarnation may be dust motes. That's right. You'll have no idea you...

Ever see a natural disaster of, say, a raging wildfire unfolding on TV and people are trying to outrun the flames and you’re thinking, “Why on earth did they wait until now to flee?!” I’m going to tell you why. It’s possible that you might have woken to the smell of smoke and heavy Santa Ana winds at 5 on an especially warm Sunday morning almost exactly two years ago. And when you went outdoors to shut a banging fence door, you saw the huge thunderheads of smoke. But, when the local news media finally hit the airwaves an hour later, the reporters and talking heads and 911 dispatchers told you the fire, though big, is also 14 miles away and burning in the opposite direction. You call your training partner and weigh the air quality. You’re planning a 14-miler and, after consulting husbands, decide to do it. So you head out, commenting numerous times on how acrid the air, and how incredibly beautiful a backdrop the giant plumes of steel gray create against sunwashed hillside homes on the ...