More Bowling

My Dad gave me some old pictures. In the stack was this one of my grandpa, Fred Renner, Sr. from 1958.

Exhaustion

So, I was supposed to do my push up test yesterday... I ended up Christmas shopping, how hard could it possibly be to find a dolls baby swing? So I picked up the plan tonight. I'm not sure how accurate of a test I did though. I started doing my push ups during warm ups at hapkido, someone started talking to me and lost count then class started so I had to stop. I think I was in the area of 45-50 and I felt pretty good, like I had another 10 or more in me. So later tonight I decided to try again and got to 55. Not sure how accurate it is with the number I had done earlier but I'm gonna go with it, it still puts me on column 3 of the plan. I'm gonna re-do week 4 of the plan.

Today we shut down the ATM network at work. It was originally installed back in 1997, someone made a brilliant decision that gig-ethernet was too bleeding edge and ATM was the better way to go. Over the last 3 years we have been under the process of shutting it down, this involved bulding out a gig-E infrasturcture including a 10 gig core and data center with 14 distribution layer routers servicing approximately 250+ access layer switches. Amazingly, we rolled that out in about 7 months shutting down ATM infrastructure as we went until all that remained was one datacenter that did internet hosting. A new gig-E hosting infrastructure was completed about 1 1/2 years ago and to a large extent sat empty waiting for applicaitons to move. It was not a "build it and they will come" event, it seems the apps folks needed a fire burning under them to get moving and they finally got moving about 2 months ago.

When we were told the last of the apps had moved... not really a well planned project it really involved a long string of unplanned emergency change controls to overcome their planning (do you sense that it was us, the network folks that had to compensate for the lack of planning?) there was celebration, I left all of the alerting turned on and we went down to the datacenter and started powering stuff off. It was glorious. Some of the equipment was end of life and end of support 2 years ago, if we had had parts fail there were no replacements to be had.

Week 4

Push up challenge Week 4.... well, it's only my second week but I'm working on the week 4 plan. Somehow I ended up with 2 days back to back, the whole week has been a bit of a blur with work and holiday stuff going on. On set 5 of each day my max was meeting "at least" number, and they were hard. Looking at the plan it appears that Week 4 Day 3 is one of the hardest of all, second to Week 6 Day 1. Sunday will be my progress test.

Christmas Party

We did the Discovery Christmas party last night. Seems like a good time was had by all. It was at my brothers house so it was a chance for he and his wife to show it off. It was the traditional Christmas Party with food and more food, the white elephant gift exchange. On the positive side I didn't end up with the worst gift, I took home a box of poker chips and a chess set that is missing a pawn. We've had one gift re-appear every year for he past 8 years, a charming little Prescious Moments figureine that has come to be called "Pink Boy". Now if you end up with it you are required to bring it next year. After the gifts was dessert. Yum.

The after party included exploring the garage which I have dubbed the "man cave". My brother has his shop there where he works on guitars and likely another surfboard coming along soon. The bonuse of the man cave is the BEER FRIDGE! A friend gave my brother a fridge that has 2 tap handles and doubles as a bar. He keeps it stocked with beer from another friends brewery, the Craftsman Brewery of Pasadena, Ca.

I did get home and get my push ups in. (22 + 30+ 20 + 20 + 28). I actually made a mistake and thought it was 30 for the first set so overall I did 8 extra. The last set was uberhard.

2 Days and holding strong

So, the push up challenge is moving forward. Tonight I did day 2 of week 3 (20 + 25 + 15 + 15 + max) For my max I made 29. So 104 total. For each of the 15 rep sets the kids had to sit on my back for the first one... I barely made each of those. Ethan likes to count as I do the push ups.

Keith and I did our 3 1/5 mile push/run as he calls it. 12 push ups every 1/2 mile or so. Again a total of 96 that makes the grand total 200 for the day.

I told my brother about the push up challenge and he started on Tuesday as well.

A little extra

Well, I didn't get started on the push up challenge yesterday due to an unbearably long problem at work that had me on the phone for 6 hours but that's another story. So I knew I had to start today, I guess I get motivated to complete things by telling other people about it.

While getting the kids to wind down before bed I told Ethan about the challenge and showed him the plan then it was his job to count. For today, starting at week 3 the plan is 14 + 18 + 14 +14 + max. On set 2 Ethan wanted to sit on my back, that didn't work too well. Overall it was difficult in that I was shooting for good form but I was able to complete all 5 sets. Set 5 I did 30, the plan calls for "max (at least 20)" so I met that with a little extra. Feeling good.

Then I went to hapkido. We never know how many, if any, push ups we'll do during warm ups but I should have know when Mr. Birkholz stepped up to lead class there were going to be a lot. I ended up with just about 150 push ups today.

Push Ups

Ok, as some fallout from doing the running and pushups I found a website (http://hundredpushups.com) that has a 100 push up challenge. Along with it there is a 6 week plan to succeed. I'm ready to give it a try.

Step one is the initial test. I was able to do 33 full good form push ups so that's the starting benchmark. With 33 as a starting point the web site suggests starting with week 3 of the plan. So here we go, Day 1 will be tomorrow.

Started Running again

This week Keith and I started running again. He's taken on some challenge of 30 minutes of activity a day for 30 days, me, I'm just trying to stay fit.

So both Tuesday and today we headed out around The Lot for our 3 1/2 mile loop but now we have added sets of 12 push ups every 1/2 mile. Apparently we can't really measure distance and ended up with 96 push ups total.

It felt good after a 3 week break.... or was it 4. Whatever, I never would have thought I'd say it but I feel much better after running someday I might have to admit that I like running.