Of course, even the last few months I have more than my fair share of extremely slow workout of the day (WOD) times.  It could be because I try to slog my way through the prescribed workouts, which sometimes seem to be aimed at those with super-human strength and endurance.  However, I get it done, and I’ve never taken more than 35 minutes to complete a WOD, so that feels like somewhat of an accomplishment. 

I started this program not being able to do a pull-up unassisted.  I’m now able to do about three or four in a row, which is not a lot to the CrossFit crowd, but a ton by my standards.  I’ve noticed increased strength in every exercise that comes down the CrossFit pipeline and an increase in muscle tone that I was unable to achieve during my previous year and a half of normal “strength training.”  My arms are more tone now than they have ever been, and I haven’t done a traditional bicep curl in over four months. 

I could go on and on about the benefits of CrossFit, but it would be boring and monotonous.  What I will say is this:  If you are looking for a fitness regime that will get you in shape, CrossFit is the way to go.  I’d LOVE to join a CrossFit gym, but they are too expensive and too far away to be feasible at this time.  However, even following the program by yourself is beneficial, as long as you can push yourself beyond what you think you can do.  Either way, its an excellent fitness program, and one that I suggest you try.

I have started to taken on more of a senior role at work, writing feature specifications and managing small groups to complete these features.  It is a great opportunity for me, however, it leaves me with little time for stuff outside of work.  I’m also trying to devote some time to my family, after all, none of the work matters without them.   I’m going to try to make a concerted effort to post more, but I always say that and I never do…  At least my tweets will show up as page updates. 

I’m trying to revive my weekend development time in an effort to keep up with new technologies and continue to expand on some of the software ideas that I have.  I’d hate to divulge too much information here, but I do believe there are some areas that could use new eyes and perhaps a fresh solution.  More on that later.

As far as my job is concerned, our WPF product has really given me a lot of experience with the .Net 3.5 framework.  I also realize that we have barely scratched the surface as far as the built-in functionality of WPF/WCF, which is something I’d like to look into more during my weekend time. 

We’ll see.  My oldest has one more soccer game for the season, so hopefully after that I can take some time to look into the deeper features of WPF/WCF.

Therefore, I’m in the process of migrating our WordPress blogs to WordPress.com and Dana is starting to post photos to Snapfish or Picasa (we haven’t decided yet).  Hopefully, I’ll be posting more regularly when this is all over.

I had gotten bored with my workout regime, and a visit from Dana’s cousins from Atlanta introduces me to something new: CrossFit. It’s essentially a form of circuit training, but they really push me to kick my own butt. They is a huge focus on pullups, which I really can’t do yet, but I’m working towards. For example, today’s workout was the following circuit:

• 5 Pull Ups
• 10 Push Ups
• 15 Squats

Doesn’t sound bad, right? Well, the full workout is Do as many circuits as you can in 20 minutes. I was able to do 9 circuits.. not bad, but I could definitely get to 10 (I did assisted pull ups).

In other random news, Dana and I have been watching the Pens with bated breath as they make another run at the Cup. I have to admit that yesterday’s drubbing of the Caps was a nice change of pace to the one goal overtime games that made up the rest of the series, and I’m glad it went in our favor.

Well, that’s about as much of the last few months as I’m willing to cover. I’m hoping to get back on track here as far as blogging is concerned, as I really do value some of the information I’ve jotted down here over the last few years, and I hope it’s helped some others.

This NY Times article really just kind of pisses me off. Granted, I understand that the cost of living in big cities is quite higher than here in good old Western Pennsylvania, but the “expenses” listed in this article are completely extravagant. There are people out there who can’t afford to buy food or there medications, but all Allen Salkin really cares about is whether or not a bank executive can afford his apartment plus a house in the Hamptons, his personal trainer and his wife’s designer dresses.

I will agree that some things on the list may not necessarily be extraneous: bodyguards, for example, may be necessary depending on the persons position.

I guess my issue here is that we have these executives complaining that they are living paycheck to paycheck on a $2 to $3 million a year salary while some people are losing their jobs. Do I think it’s right to cap salaries for executives? Well, if you’re getting taxpayer bailout money, then yes, I think you should. If your company isn’t backed by the government and can afford your salary, then what they do with their money is their business (well, the company and the shareholders). But when you ask for the government to help you out, you’d better be prepared to make cuts. I don’t want to be footing the bill for a bank executive’s personal trainer.

For our current application, we basically have to create an install that will publish the XBap application to our customers servers. Unfortunately, no documentation I’ve seen allows us to do that easily. I wrote a small .Net application that uses the Mage.exe program to change the configuration files, regenerate the manifests, and re-sign everything. That part works fine.

The part that doesn’t is trying to get that custom application to run as a custom action in Installshield. I have it set up the way I think it should work, unfortunately, that means nothing. I’m getting install errors on that particular step, however, like all errors, they really aren’t helpful. Tomorrow I’m going to have to go in and perform some installs with logging on and then dig through the logs to determine the issue. I have a feeling this will take all day.

I really hate wasting 8 hours on that type of thing, so I hope it doesn’t take that long. But I’ve blocked the whole day (minus a few meetings).

I expect some new and exciting things to cross my path in the next 6 months. I’ll be sure to keep everyone informed. Happy New Year, even though it’s a bit late.

I worked pretty much all day preparing a build of our new product. It’s selling now, so we’re going to have to start customer support. That sounds like fun . The only good thing is that the initial product is only available as a hosted product by us, so if we find something major, we can drop a fix quickly with minimal user action.