I almost lost the ability to update this site today. It all started when I decided to update my email address. I had noticed that I wasn’t getting any type of notifications when people posted comments on the site (not that I get many… more about that later). When I saw that I still had my old truman email address in the settings, I went ahead and changed it. This is when things went bad… I was automatically logged out of the Admin Area, and was presented with a message saying “an activation link has been sent to your email”. Problem with that is I never got the email!

To make a long story short, I was finally able to login to my website’s control panel and access the MySql Database where I was able to find a secondary account I had and give it Admin rights. After this I was able to go in and fix my main account. Phew…

Holidays = weight gain!

This is the first time I’ve had this much of a problem since I started in 02′. I knew I would gain some weight, with the Achilles problems I’ve been having causing me to cut out most running, it was inevitable. But this morning when I stepped on that scale and it measured over 15 lbs above my season low, I decided enough is enough!

I don’t look in the mirror and think “I look fat”, quite the opposite, I know I could stand to bulk up a little if I wanted to look better. For me it is strictly a performance issue, less weight = less required watts for me to go fast. So until I’m back to within 5 lbs of my target pre-season weight, no more alcohol or sausage biscuits…

On the postive side, I ran 9 miles off road at Rockbridge on Monday and 6 miles Tuesday with the Tuesday morning group with my Achilles feeling just fine. I should get in around 30 miles runnning this week which will be the most I’ve done in a real long time…

I’m not real happy with the job I’ve been doing maintaining this site. I primarily post long race reports or other long articles, very infrequently. The main reason for this is it takes me a while to write them, an hour or so. I think a better approach would be to write shorter stuff, more often. If I know I can write something in under 15 minutes, I’ll be more likely to get started, rather than putting something off because I know it will take me an hour or longer… We’ll see how this works out.

I bought my first A+ study guide back in 2000, I was working at St. John’s hospital inventoring computer systems which was a temporary job. If I wanted to stay on full time I needed to become an A+ certified computer technician. Instead I choose to head to Truman State University to finish up my Computer Science degree. Of course while at TSU I ended up working full time as a “Technical Support Specialist”, basically the same job they wanted me to have an A+ certification for in Springfield.

The original A+ certification test I studied for was revised in 2003 and another revision was released in 2006 which is the version I finally decided to take and have passed successfully. Two tests, each $155 plus several books over the years, probably about $400 invested into this certification. Next on the agenda, Network+ certification which I’ve signed up to take on January 4th. Hopefully I’ll be posting in a week or so that I’m also Network+ certified…

See CompTIA for more details.

More to come later, for starters, here are my 05 results: