I've actually had some stuff to blog about lately, but my blog was experiencing some technical difficulties.  I have now fully transferred this site over to ASP.NET 2.0.  Not important to most of you.

Not to be outdone by Mark's latest gadget, I've been working on a "mashup" of my own.  Mine gets theater and movie show time data for your zip code, converts the theater addresses to coordinates, and then maps them all using Virtual Earth.  It's still in its infancy with many more features to come (hopefully).

Here it is:  http://www.flatlandmedia.com/atlas/ShowTimeMaps.aspx  (only works completely in Internet Explorer)

UPDATE:  Everything that works in IE now also works in Firefox (on a PC).  I made the popups work better, and there's a nicer close link on it now, too.  Also, zooming no longer removes the pushpins.

Lately, I've whiled away my sleeplessness playing around on the internet.  I've been playing way too much sudoku at http://www.websudoku.com/. 

I've also been playing with Windows Live at http://www.live.com/.  I wonder how much Microsoft paid for that domain name?  They released their new search tool on live.com today.  It's pretty cool with the way it scrolls instead of displaying on multiple pages, and the way that you can use the slider bar to affect how your results are displayed.  The slider bar is especially cool on the image search.

Yesterday, our neighborhood association arranged for some of us residents to go whale watching on a boat (the Betty-O) that leaves from Marina del Rey, just a few minutes away from our place.  Our concierge had some extra tickets, so Jamie and I decided to go, in spite of my reluctance to get up at 8:00 a.m. on a Saturday.  We grabbed some Starbucks, parked in the paid lot right next to the boat, and then waited at least 45 minutes for others to assemble.  In other words, we could have slept 45 more minutes.  Anyhoo, as we waited we watched many different kind of birds scouring for little fish.  We saw a couple of seals frolicking in the harbor.  We watched as crew teams from area colleges went back and forth.  Eventually, our concierge showed up with her nephew (Alex) and his girlfriend (Emma).  Pretty much everyone took some sort of ginger supplement to aid in the fight against sea-sickness, after Mike, our captain, explained that the water was pretty choppy out there.  Finally, some time around 10:00 a.m., we set off.  As soon as we came around the large rock barrier at the end of the harbor, we could see that indeed, the sea was angry that day my friend!  Like an old man sending back soup at the deli!

We headed straight into the swells.  I'm not much of a nautical man, but surely the swells were at least 10 feet high.  Is that high?  I was a little bit worried that I might get sea-sick, but there was a nice cool breeze, the motion wasn't really bothering me, and I had taken that ginger supplement.  So, for the first few minutes, things were great.  I was talking with Sophia and Jamie about Kurt Russell, when I saw Emma run to the trash can behind them and throw up.  Egg salad sandwich.  At first I felt bad for her, and I tried not to draw attention to it.  I put it out of my mind.  Then, Jamie went to throw out her gum in that trash can, and she noticed what else was in there.  Now, it was the topic of discussion.  Emma threw up again, and moved to the rail of the boat.  I couldn't get it out of my head.  So, I trained my gaze on the horizon, and focused on not getting sick.  It wasn't long before another woman started throwing up over the side, directly in my line of sight.  I turned away.  Then, the girl sitting right next to me, turned around where she sat and threw up over the back of the boat.  I was cornered.  The awkward guy sitting across from me, got up and kind of squat ran towards the galley.  He was awkward, and had been doing that squat run any time he had moved on the boat, so I wasn't sure that there was anything wrong.  But then I heard an announcement over the loud speaker that they needed some help in the galley.  I could only get glimpses into the galley from where I was sitting, but I looked just in time to see the awkward guy throwing up all over himself and the floor of the galley.  He didn't even attempt to get to a trash can or to the side of the boat.  But still, I remained steadfast, affixing my eyes beyond the swells.

Jamie realized that I hadn't yet put on sunscreen, a bad idea for someone with such delicate skin.  She got it out and handed it to me, but I explained that as much as I wanted to protect my porcelain finish, I couldn't risk opening that bottle and catching a whiff of the lotion.  It might be enough to send me over.  So, I sat there unprotected with fellow patrons dropping one by one.  The children had started to lay their heads in their parents' laps.  So, Jamie and a few others who were unaffected had a group discussion with our leader about turning the boat around.  Some protested, saying we were only 20 minutes away from our destination.   But, that meant 40 minutes round-trip, and they hadn't even seen whales for 2 weeks, so the decision was made to head for home.  As soon as we turned around, things started to calm down.  Riding with the swells provided a much smoother ride.  The psychological factor of just knowing that we were on our way to land brought hope to the eyes around me.

We made it back safely without further incident.  Once in the calm of the harbor, our Captain pointed out some large birds nesting in some trees and explained a little bit about their habitat.  The boat docked and we watched the awkward guy exit the boat awkwardly.  His legs seemed stuck between land legs and sea legs.  We got off the boat and headed to the parking lot with our voucher for free parking.  Unfortunately, there was a really long line to get out of the parking lot.  This was strange, because it's a pretty small parking lot, and it wasn't even close to full.  Apparently, we were all trying to leave at the same time as the crew teams we had seen competing earlier.  There was something holding everybody up, so we eventually waited an hour just to leave the parking lot.  The perfect end to a perfect day.  Fortunately, we were able to go straight to In-N-Out to make everything better.  And of course, hours later, I turned bright red.

We took some pics that I'll post on flickr.

I non-chalantly linked to Dolph Lundgren's site in my Back from Texas post the other day.  If you missed it, I strongly suggest you go to http://www.dolphlundgren.com/ and catch up on what he's been doing since Pentathlon, which is one of my favorite movie trailers on one of my favorite mockumentary tapes (And God Spoke...).  "They created him...but they can't stop him!"

Here's what you do.  Train for and run a half-marathon.  Then, whenever you start feeling guilty about not exercising or eating like a pregnant lady, just remind yourself of that day you ran 13.1 miles all at once.  Pat yourself on the back (do this figuratively; literally might require exercise) and eat another cookie.  So far, I've ridden this wave of rationalization for 6 1/2 weeks.  One day, I'll get new shoes and get back on the horse.  One day.

Jamie and I just spent 11 days in Texas.  We were glad to see so many Austin/Temple/Belton folks while we were there.  Sadly, we missed our Dallas folk.  Here's a smattering of what went down:

• The first weekend, I hosted SING at Baylor University on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights.  The show lasted 4 1/2 hours.  I showed some of our old Segues videos, including Making of Sing, DPS, Shredder, Titanic II, and SLC.
• On Sunday, we went to Austin, where I held Jenna Miller (pics here).  This is definitely the youngest baby I've ever held that wasn't related to me (if not the only).
• That night, we met up with B-dub & Jan, Perk & Darby, and Ben Burch for dinner.  Afterwards, we went over to the Wilsons' to check out their new house.
• We spent the night at the Driskill Hotel, our lodgings of choice in Austin.
• Monday (Presidents' Day), we hung out with my family in Belton/Temple.
• Tuesday through Thursday, I worked via my laptop, while Jamie volunteered her time to re-merchandise Congress Clothing, a retail clothing store that our friends own in Waco.  (I'm working on their web site, which I'll link to when it's done.)  The store looks great the way Jamie merchandised it!
• Friday and Saturday, I had more SING hosting responsibilities.
• Sunday we finally returned home, on a plane carrying Ivan Drago, no less.  But first, we stopped at Perk & Darby's new house and had lunch with them.
• Clinton was along for the whole trip as well.

It's good to be home.

Mark, I always knew you would manage to beat me to 30.  Have a fantastic day!

On our way home from Taco Tuesday, Jamie and I saw a strange fog with a bright light on the commercial end of Playa Vista.  On closer inspection, we saw that it was a set for a movie about 9/11.  It's a scale replica of the towers after they fell.  Truly a spooky sight to behold not far from our house.  We got a picture, but it's not real clear.

I'm sure that many of you thought that this blog had turned into a running blog, and when I stopped blogging, it was probably because I had stopped running.  While my training became a little less consistent since my last post, I continued to run.  The reason I didn't post was because a lot of people were eulogizing Kyle on their blogs, and I kind of thought I should do the same.  If I were going to do that though, I couldn't post about other trivial things.  But there was also a big part of me that didn't want to use this space to "send Kyle off".  I'm not entirely sury why, but I think that maybe I feel that stories about Kyle deserve to be told face to face.  I don't know; it doesn't bother me to read other people's blogs about Kyle, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.  Thus, the very long gap in blogging.

But now, I've accomplished the task that turned this thing into a runner's diary to begin with.  I ran the half marathon on Sunday.  My gun time was 2:51, my chip time was 2:47, and my Garmin Forerunner 301 GPS watch time was 2:43.  The reason for the discrepancy is two-fold.  The chip couldn't tell that I had to wait in line to use the restroom around mile 2.  I was able to pause the timer on my watch during that time.  Also, I actually covered the 13.1 miles prior to crossing the finish line due to lateral movement on the road.  I did break down into a walk a couple of times, but I was able to jog the last mile, and my overall pace was 12:28/mile, just under the 12:30/mile that I was hoping for, though finishing was more important than finishing fast.  Don ran with me for the first couple miles, but I was holding him back, so he went on ahead.  The guy who won the marathon passed me when I hit mile 10.  He was on mile 23.  It was pretty cold the day before the race, so I got a long-sleeve UnderArmour shirt that helps keep you warm without getting weighed down with sweat.  I highly recommend that.  It helped me stay just the right temperature throughout the race.  The two things that slowed me down in the race were some pretty nasty blisters that I got for the first time last weekend while training and the uphill portions of the race.  The hills weren't terrible, but I trained on perfectly level terrain.  Two days after the race, my calves are the only things that are sore.  Hopefully, I'll be back to normal by tomorrow. 

So, now that it's over, will I run again?  A half marathon?  A whole marathon?  At all?  Well, I'm going to take this week off.  In fact, maybe a week and a half, as Jen Lake will be out here visiting Fri-Wed.  Then, I'm going to change my runs to shorter, faster runs.  I'm thinking of working for six weeks on speeding up my 3-mile pace.  Then, maybe I'll look for a 5K or something.