Getting in Shape: C25K

I haven't done much exercise at all since my ill-fated attempt to run at lunchtime back in January. I recently heard about this training program called "C25K", or "Couch to 5K". It's a training program designed to get you from doing no physical activity whatsoever to running a 5K in nine weeks. It sounded interesting, and a few of my friends (Annie and Travis) had already heard of it or started it. There's also a subreddit for it, so I figured I had some support.

I had put off starting the program because I knew that if I put too much stuff on my plate, I could get burned out. I finally cast that burden off and did the run Sunday morning (using a nifty Android app called RunDouble). It felt good; I never felt overly extended, but I was definitely tired and sore at the end.

The best reward was using the garden hose on my head. Feeling that cold well water hit my hot head was such a rush! Highly recommended.

Mood: Emo

Well the Schwehmdawgs lost Sunday night, 20-9... it was closer than that though. We gave up 10 runs in the first inning, probably our worst-played inning of the year. I pitched poorly and several people made errors. Remove that inning and we played them tight.

And the Rays lost too, making it 3-1 Phillies. Not good.

And after the halloween party this weekend, I'm just fried. Even though I got 8 hours of sleep last night, I'm just physically exhausted. It's a good thing mentally I'm still alert, because I'm working on some research at work and it'd be bad if I was mentally tired too.

I think it might be a 3-day hangover from the party... man am I old.

A Tribute to the Best Phone I've Ever Owned

This post comes at a time when I just learned that I will be getting the T-Mobile/HTC/Google G1 Android phone (enough keywords?) after all. A nice call to T-Mobile and they upgraded my upgrade to the full upgrade. And even better yet, it will be delivered on my birthday!

So before this information becomes obsolete, I wanted to pay tribute to my lone (cellular) companion these past months, the Nokia 1208.

This is close to actual size... on my monitor anyway.

Just look at that phone for a minute. It's such a mid-90's style. And you don't even see the UI there, but believe me, this phone rivals the Jitterbug for size of on-screen font. I bought this phone when my Samsung t629 died and I refused to pay more than $30 for a phone (I got this for $29.99 plus tax, so it's a wash). I'm going to put this next line in its own paragraph to highlight its importance.

This is the best phone I have ever owned:

• It's better than my first phone (Samsung SPH-A400) because it reliably sends and receives calls.
• It's better than my second phone (Sanyo SCP-700) because it's about half the size.
• It's better than my third phone (Sidekick II) because it's not the size of a brick. Also, it was roughly 10 times cheaper.
• It's better than my fourth phone (Samsung t629) because it doesn't break when I look at it wrong.

Let's talk about that last point. The t629 was a very fragile phone. The slider got sticky pretty quickly, and I had to stop the spring from sliding it because it was too fast and would make lots of rattling noises. Too little too late, as you can see what happened.

On the flip side, I have literally used the Nokia 1208 as a drumstick; At the latest Tufts football game, the Pep Band (which I direct) needed an additional percussionist for a particular song. We needed a cowbell player for Low Rider. So I grabbed the cowbell and asked Keith for a drumstick. He didn't have one; none of the drummers had extras. So I reached into my pockets, found my phone, tested it, and then wailed away. I probably played 15 different full-length songs with cowbell and phone. (Just to be clear, this was a musical-quality cowbell, not the crap you see people dingle at sporting events... no offense Rays fans, I love you guys!) And the phone works great!

So it's indestructible. That's awesome. The other awesome feature: a flashlight.

Yes, a flashlight.

Why every phone doesn't have one, I will never know. The Nokia 1208 has a $0.05 LED on the top of it that is bright enough to see keyholes, navigate over sleeping cats, and probably flag down help on the side of a night road. I mean, come on! How obvious is that?!

I highly recommend this phone to anyone who A) doesn't need Internet and B) wants a reliable, indestructible, and cheap phone. I'll sure be keeping mine as a backup.

UPDATE: T-Mobile has the phone on sale for $19.99 with a $25 refill card included. Hot!

10 Things From a Developer

Two small thoughts:

I have to stop getting any coffee in the office as soon as I get in. It's messing up my stomach and impacting my productivity.

I have to realize that I'm a pretty good developer and actually use my skills to accomplish all the things I want to accomplish. This include Walrus, as well as some other projects.

A Eulogy For A Phone

All good things must come to an end. I've been using a Samsung T629 cell phone for about a year now, when all of a sudden this happened:

Through the looking glass.
A power cycle solved the problem for about an hour, then it reinverted. I just worked with the weird phone until I shut it off for the movie theater. Now it will not power up at all.

It is truly a sad day for all phone-kind.

What really sucks is that both Targets I've been to have been sold out of T-Mobile prepaid phones. What the crap man!

Walrus Mark, uh, Zero

The Romans never had a symbol for zero because they were that awesome.

I got some good work done on Walrus tonight (ok yeah, I had Baseball Mogul open in the background... and Comedy Central on the TV). Mostly a lot of groundwork for getting the One True List into the app. I now know how to load data from Excel files. I'm going to hardcode everything for Rotoworld for now (following the "hardcode first, hardcode second, generalize third" rule), but it should be easy to import any set. Hot.

A few more features I'd like to add:

• Must-draft options: Add the ability for a user to set a draft round for a player that if the player drops to that round the user "must" draft him. The system would highlight the player somehow.
  
• Notes: Both a text note and possibly a "+/-/=" rating (for gut feelings). I could have players with notes brought to the forefront (maybe use tooltips?).
• Fantasy replacement level by postion: Set the replacement level for each position (that is, the point after which you either don't draft a player or pick only sleepers).

Fun times!

Fantasy Baseball Draft App - Walrus!

I've been playing fantasy baseball for a few years, and as I've said before, the draft is my weakest link. I've tried giving myself a cheat sheet with a clear one-value system for evaluating players. I've also tried providing myself with tons of information. Yet I always fall too far to one side of the information-overload/lack of info problem.

Enter Fantasy Baseball Draft App, codenamed Walrus (I just made up that code name because I didn't want to call it "Fantasy Baseball Draft App" or "FBDA"). I've started writing a windows application (in C#.NET w/ VS 2005) to help me with my draft. Basically I want a way to display to me "The One True List" (whatever ranking list you have) but with all/any set of analysis that I want as needed. For example, I could provide information about position scarcity compared to all teams' rosters (let's say there are only four tier three shortstops left, but only three teams don't have a SS already; that's valuable information). Or I could show fantasy-team-average stats compared to what I (or my opponents) have already drafted (and how a given player would impact them). These are just a few of the things I want to do.

Here's a basic feature list:

• Import projections/rankings from Excel files. This is tricky; first of all, importing from Excel is never straightforward. Secondly, what formats do I support? ESPN, Rotoworld, Rotowire, Baseball Prospectus? Likely I'll start with one format and go from there.
• Format projections to match league settings. Depends on how I set league settings...
• Set league settings. Yeah, I know.
• Set stat goals. Obvious and simple.
• Display "The One True List" with sorting and filter options. Easy.
• Display my roster and other rosters. Pretty simple.
• Allow a player to be drafted to my team or another team with a button click. This part requires some design decisions; do I have 1 or 2 buttons? How do I correct mistakes?
• Input total roster count and draft order. Simple.
• Provide a variety of calculations: ADP, position scarcity, etc. Depends on what I actually do.

That's just off the top of my head. I'll see how far I get with "Walrus Mark I".

What Is Inside Should Be Outside

I'm a gamer and a geek. I stay up-to-date on technology news. I play plenty of video games. Yet my wardrobe doesn't reflect this. I wear business casual clothes to work (and I wore casual business clothes to my last job). I have a few geek T-shirts, but I almost never get a chance to wear them. 

Now I never really thought this was a problem until after a meeting with the reverend presiding over my wedding. He told us that we should try to get elements of things that are important incorporated into the wedding. He gave the example of a poker-playing groom who carried a royal flush in his jacket pocket. Even though no one saw it, it was a part of his special day. I said, "Hey, I could bring a little Master Chief chotchke in my jacket pocket," and chuckled. But then I got to thinking and realized that I should make my geekiness a part of every day.

My first thought was a geek-themed necklace; I was encouraged by this item blogged by Hawty McBloggy (yes that's the actual title): 

While this is awesome, it's a little too  flamboyant for my tastes (plus I never play the guitar in Rock Band, only drums or singing). Then I remembered this little item from SplitReason:

I could manage this, though the dog tag style isn't really me. I want something simple that fits beneath my clothes (making a necklace ideal). I really want to do something like this but I also don't want to look like a total tool. Any thoughts?