I’ve had a busy couple of weeks. Between running, working, and those other little things that come up… well, y’know…

This quasi-drought it killing my garden. It sucks. Sure, I can pump water on it all day long, but the moisture bakes out of the soil in less than a day anyways. Some of the plants are doing okay — after they get established, they flourish because they can get their roots down deep enough — but the seedlings are slow and suffering. If I get even a dozen carrots out of the patch this year, I’ll be surprised.

I spent a couple hours building Claire a sandbox the other day. We had looked at a couple of the plastic doo-dahs, but I figured it might be nice to rough one together that attached directly to the swing set. It’s not huge. A little less than five square feet and two medium sized bags of sand are pretty much all anyone needs to have a little fun in the sun. And besides, I’m running out of yard space.

Less than two week until Vegas. Yeah! That’s all I’m going to say about that for now, besides I’m wondering if my data plan covers me down in the States: Twitter, anyone?

If you saw the odd collection of Flickr photos that showed up the other day — and we’re wondering — it was our annual general meeting for work on Tuesday. As such — and traditionally — we host the board on a tour of local agri-food facilities. So, yeah, I spent the day between a egg farm, perogy factory, and micro-brewery… with sampling at each.

We’re training for hill in my running clinic these days. Last night we ran down to Terwillegar Park (in the river valley) and ran the trail hill six times. Counting the two clicks there and two clicks back, that made for nearly nine kilometers of pain. Yet, it pales in comparison to the fifteen kilometer run I completed on Sunday morning. Did I mention I’m starting to feel a gentle blend of pride and insanity?

As well as the sandbox, our spoiled little girl also got herself a new trike in the mail yesterday. Karin revved up the credit card and ordered a slick little red, green, and yellow tricycle via the intarwebs. Dad got to assemble it, with the help of his daughter who was very eager to take it for a spin. That said, until we get her a helmet she’s confined to the deck and backyard. Apparently she woke up this morning, tugged on Karin’s arm and said: “Mom. Bike?”

We were in Terwillegar Park on Father’s day. (Claire got me some new running gear by the way! Shorts and a shirt.) I was slightly hobbled, still recovering from my morning fifteen, but the dog needed a stroll. Anyhow, some canine agility group was doing a fundraiser down there and for a couple bucks would take any dog through their (temporary) course. Of course, Sparkle gave it a whirl. That said, her biggest obstacle is not climbing, running, jumping, or any of the challenges. Her biggest challenge is her distractability. Talk about lack of focus: Run-run-run do-a-jump now-wheres-brad-wheres-brad run-run through-the-tunnel now-wheres-brad-wheres-brad-wheres-brad and so on…

Claire has officially entered into the Princess Phase. As in, anything that has a picture of a “pin-sess” on it wins. Princess diapers, princess toothpaste, princess everything… And actually, it’s working quite well as a motivator for behavior and potty training. So, I’m not really fighting it.

All that said, it’s looking like it might be a (relatively) quiet weekend. I mean I’ve loved the little gatherings and parties that have happened over the last few weekends — and the one that’s happening at my house tomorrow is a wedding shower and I’m confined to the basement (or something) — but I could really use some quality time with my books or video games. I mean, c’mon, I’m only ten hours into Final Fantasy VII and I’ve had on the PSP for nearly three weeks.

But then, what’s the chance of any sort of calm these days?

I’ve been running. Running a lot, it seems.

I remember a couple years back when I was talking about aiming for a ten kilometer run… someday, thinking aloud to Karin in the car that it would be cool if I could lace up my shoes and think little about such trot around the neighborhood. Then I tried, and I ran for five hundred meters along out nearby park and almost threw up. But little by little, step by step, clinic by clinic, practice by practice I’ve added distance.

But I’d never run longer than ten kilometers at a stretch, give or take. In fact, if you go back to those early ‘virtual run’ posts where after multiple runs over the course of a whole week I’d racked up a meager accomplishment of a little under ten clicks and felt wowed by the effort. Fair enough. It was an effort, but…

On Sunday we completed a twelve kilometer run. In real distance, that took us on an arcing tour of the neighborhood, from the store to the utility corridor, into the Whitemud Creek valley and on a hilly trail dash to the bridge near Snow Valley. And that was only half way. Then we turned around and ran back. And honestly, I’d never run a twelve click run before Sunday. Ever. And next Sunday I get to do a fourteen. Happy Father’s day.

Cumulatively, in case you are curious, my mega-goal virtual run has taken me from my house, out to the highway, down the QE2 and right now I’m just passing the turnoff that would lead me into the tiny town of Balzac (just a hop and a skip North of Calgary). That’s right. I’ve run two hundred and seventy kilometers in 2009. So far. And I’m scheduled to do at least fifty more before June is out.

And the half marathon is — as of today — two months away.

I’m sore. We’ve been hill training on Thursday evenings. That means we run two or three clicks to a hill, run up and down the hill multiple times, then run back.

I went out on my own last week intending to do a five click run. I added an extra two just for the heck of it.

I’ve been trying to keep myself in the top half of the class, too. That might be stupid, since there is really no objective measure of that. I just try and run with the little cluster of folks who set the faster pace. They run a 5:15 pace. I used to call that a sprint. Now it’s a five click jaunt. Try sprinting for five kilometers.

My watch tells me I’ve burned nearly thirty thousand calories — this year — just running. Google tells me that’s about eight and a half pounds of fat. My belt tells me that’s about one notch.

I’m going to need new shoes next month. I’ve nearly worn out the pair I have. No really. A hundred dollar pair of shoes used exclusively for running, shot. Well, if I estimate a stride length of even just one meter… that’s over two and a half million steps this year alone.

I’m running a lot it seems. Even Claire asks me every time I appear to be leaving the house, these days: “Daddy. Nun-neen?” I suppose there are worse things she could be asking me.

There was a spoof car advertisement floating around the web recently. I don’t know if you saw it. It looked like a typical car spread from a glossy magazine, a stylish coupe pouring over a winding scenic road. The text implied that the car was called “The Bailout. Coming this January” and the sub-text read: “You wouldn’t buy our shitty cars. So we’ll be taking your money anyways.”

Apparently General Motors is on the brink of bankruptcy. And when I say “brink” I really mean that sometime today they will be officially filing for bankruptcy, marking what will likely be the long, slow death of the monumental corporation. After all, even if it survives the near-death experience will have changed it in ways that can only be speculated at now.

I own a GM car. We bought a Pontiac Sunfire in the days before our wedding as our old vehicle ass-ploded as it climbed through the mountains driving back for the event. We bought it in haste. We bought it on a budget. We bought it cheap.

Now, some would argue that when you buy a cheap car you get what you pay for. And I guess — to a certain limit — that is true. After all, what should one really expect for a mere twenty-thousand dollars. I mean, I understand that quality service costs money. I get that companies need to stay trim to operate and they can’t just be, y’know, honoring warrantees left and right. And heck, when you buy a cheap car do you really expect the smooth ride to last? I mean shocks are rated for what, a couple hundred kilometers at most. And the brakes? Hey! They weren’t squeaking when you drove off the lot, dude.

Admittedly we stopped bringing the car into the GM shop for service years ago. I guess I was a little frustrated that they thought it good for repeat business to up-sell Karin on servicing that was over-kill for the problem. I mean when you go in for fifty bucks worth of work and you spend ten times that… well, I suppose a company like GM wouldn’t have built all those sparkling car lots with all that bright chrome and glowing Vegas-like neon signs by not gambling a little bit with their customer loyalty. Too bad the house doesn’t always win.

If you work for GM I guess I could feign interest and toss some pity your way. I’m not going to. Companies like that, crumbling to dust in the wake of a harsh economy and disrespectful business practices are like ailing cars serviced by their own employees: and if those employees showed as much attention to the company as they showed to my vehicle, it’s no doubt that so many are now looking for work.

It doesn’t matter that much to me at a personal level. I mean I understand that the ground will shake a little as the giant topples. I understand that lots of people will be hit with debris as a corporate behemoth crashes at such speed. But sometimes you just gotta rip a bandage off fast, even if you lose a few hairs.

And I was never going to buy another GM car again anyhow.

For those who are interested, I just published a new episode of my online web-novel, The Data Yodeler. I write two new episodes every week, and appreciate your insight and support as I work my way through this massive, multi-year project.

Below is an excerpt from Episode 37 / Just Photons and Pixels

Beth frowned at me, and I was almost certain it was laced with disappointment. And the worst part of it was — as I discovered later, peeking over her shoulder as she cross-loaded the day’s photos onto the server — the images she’d captured in the hour prior to my confession were glowing works of art when compared to the uninspired snapshots she’d snapped in the fifteen minutes following as we’d walked to CafeToo with Lloyd. It was as if a little piece of her had been stunned, blunted, and numbed.

And I’ll admit, looking at those failed photos was when it really stung. An artist like Beth can work — creating inspirational pieces — with the gift or burden of many different emotions, but it would be a dark and dangerous feeling that could leave her with just photons and pixels.

Check out the full site at fiction.datayodeler.com. By the way… this notice is an automatically generated post that will repeat for every new episode published. Share and enjoy!

It is finally nice enough outside to escape the bonds of home. It being my flex day yesterday — and also in the mid-twenty-cees — I think it would be a fair calculation to say that I spent more of my waking hours yesterday outside than in. Lovely.

Claire and I enjoyed the backyard for about an hour and a half after breakfast, she continuing the effort of breaking in her swing set while I made sure that every plant in the backyard was sufficiently soaked. The little girl was absolutely fascinated by (a) the water, trying to help out whenever she could, (b) the flowers, which I’ve finally convinced her not to paw and pluck, and (c) the spiders, who require her protection as they are “seepink” (sleeping) on the shed, a ten foot wide perimeter from which quickly became off limits to both dad and the plastic bunny garden ornament.

Around ten-thirty we loaded up the stroller and hiked over to the library. Round trip, including a stop at the library, the bakery, Safeway, and the playground — for both play and an impromptu picnic — was three hours. I think I burned my neck a little, but the girl with the over-sized sunhat did just fine.

Another two hours out-of-doors in the afternoon included more swinging, a little girl who (though reluctantly and after some whiny-crying calls for assistance) learned to use her slide all by herself, and dad plucking weeds from the flower-bed and garden. (Yes, it took two hours!) Sparkle spent most of that time in the yard, too, baking her little brains in sun.

Of course, that might have wrapped up the father-daughter part of the day, but I did find myself outside for most of the evening too: I had my running clinic, the dog wanted a walk, and the flowers in the front yard needed some TLC. I hobbled back in when the sun started to set and went to bed. All that fresh air… y’know?

For those who are interested, I just published a new episode of my online web-novel, The Data Yodeler. I write two new episodes every week, and appreciate your insight and support as I work my way through this massive, multi-year project.

Below is an excerpt from Episode 36 / Folks Wanna Know

“No. I guess you could call journalism a hobby for me. I’m actually working on a linguistics degree.” Lloyd pulled another slug from his coffee and twitched his head to the side with an involuntary kink of his neck, a quirky affectation that — even ten minutes after meeting the guy — was driving me nuts. The reporter was lean but awkward, wore a wincing smile, and had spent most of his time with us so far justifying his interest in the assignment. “I’ve been snapping up these little freelance projects for the University paper to get some practice writing.”

“I hope so.” Lloyd shrugged. “They haven’t published anything I’ve submitted.”

Check out the full site at fiction.datayodeler.com. By the way… this notice is an automatically generated post that will repeat for every new episode published. Share and enjoy!

I understand Twitter now. I get it. And the knowledge, the upsight, the clarity came to me after the nth time of explaining it to all those people who repeatedly asked “but why…?”

Here is the thing you need to understand to get Twitter: Twitter is a search engine. Sure, it is disguised as a social networking site. Sure it is dressed as a stream of seemingly disconnected thoughts strung onto the web by hundreds of thousands of vain and incomprehensibly motivated people. But that is nothing more than a disguise. Twitter is a search engine. And not just a search engine. It is a search engine for up-to-the-minute glimpses into the thoughts, idea, feelings, opinions, and (here’s the important part) observations of a vast and mobile network of human beings.

“And…?” you ask. “So what?”

Let’s step back and look at the history of the increasingly speedy ways we access published, public information. A few generations back, information traveled at the speed of publication. If you wanted to know something you needed to wait until someone put it in a book. Then newspapers. Each morning the overnight news couple be purchased for a few cents, consumed, and discarded. Faster, but still dozens of hours late. Shortly came radio and television and news stories — collected by reporters — could be parceled out a quickly as a reporter could be “on the scene.” Even faster, but still anywhere from a half an hour or more before we get the info, and even then on a news director’s agenda of priority. Google brought us published news stories within minutes, articles and blogs as fast as they could be indexed. And now Twitter has dropped the state of active citizen journalism into the transfer speeds of seconds. On Twitter, information more than a few minutes old is scrolled off the bottom of the page before we get a chance to see it.

“Still…” you argue. “What should I care?”

I’ll use the example from a personal experience from last night. I arrived home from work, looked out onto the Western edge of the city, and saw a huge cloud of gray smoke rising into the sky. I could have waited until the next morning to check the newspaper. I could have waited until five thirty to hope the television or radio news was carrying the story, presuming they judged it news-worthy. I tried searching Google, but for what? “fire edmonton” or “west side edmonton fire” brought me stories about fires that had happened weeks ago, the firing of the local hockey coach, maps to fire safety supply stores, and a link to the fire fighters union home page. That all might be useful, but I still didn’t know what the billowing cloud hanging at the edge of the city might be. So, I searched on Twitter: “YEG fire” (YEG, of course, being the currently fashionable short-code for Edmonton) and was greeted with fifteen results, including (but not limited to) descriptions, photographs, road closure speculations, and local reactions to a grass fire burning on a chunk of nearby First Nations land. Some of those posts were, literally, seconds old, and all were from people who I did not know and could have connected with in no other conceivable way.

Are you still wondering why I call Twitter a search engine?

The fact is this: while much of the crap on Twitter really is spam and emo-txt, the folks out there who are “on the ground” and “on scene” and connected to their mobile data devices are feeding into what is, essentially, a crowd-sourced network of citizen-based micro-journalism. By observing — and then Tweeting — our eyes and phones become nodes of content collection and creation that is up-to-the-second relevant, available, and search-able. Couple that with a collection of “followers” and followees that generally observe information you might be interested in and potential to access a world of news and updates more widely and indulgently is approaching limits only imposed by the speed of download.

Is that useful? Is it sane? This isn’t an arguement either way. I’m just saying I get it now. Got it? @datayodeler

The heat is fine, but when I’ve been training in the chill of winter a ten kilometer jog through the neighborhood is a pain. That is double so when it is actually a race.

I’m neither fast nor slow. I finished with my best ten kilometer time to date. But in mixed company, including some better trained and conditioned than I, my place was in the back half of the pack.

The route was painful. The first two kilometers were one long, slow decent into the nearby ravine trails. The trails, given that they were in fact, through a ravine, were a topographical stock chart — up and down, up and down — finishing with a final click through a fairly level neighborhood. That would have been great except for it was an out-and-back race: now reverse what I just told you for the back five. One level click through a sun-drenched neighborhood followed by a roller-coaster trail run, finishing with a final two kilometers of a long slow ascent back to the finish line. It was the long hill a the end that added a couple extra minutes to my otherwise respectable time.

And I didn’t even win one of the door prizes.