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| Ow! My Groin! | Sunday, October 5, 2008 16:49:45 |
 Okay, my groin doesn't hurt at all, but it's a great Simpsons quote. My knee is actually the problem. It hurt a little bit yesterday and then today, about halfway through my run this morning it just started to hurt a whole lot. I couldn't walk, I couldn't run but I could stand quite comfortably. So after moving along, I was able to run back to the car at the Running Room and as I was running back and felt the injury explain itself. My iliotibial band (or IT band as they call it in the running world) on the right leg was rock hard as opposed to the left leg which was tight, but not over-flexed. When the IT band gets tight it pulls your knees out of line and when you run like that, you hurt them. It took one of my friends out of the running for her first marathon and it seems that it's going to be an issue for me in my recuperation from mine. I guess the next steps are to start massaging it with ice and get an IT band roller, then to start doing more on the bike to flex the inner thigh so that the outer thigh can be a little more balanced in it's strength. Sucks to be in pain though, I just got used to being able to handle stairs again. |
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| The IT Crowd Series 3 | Saturday, October 4, 2008 09:19:05 |
Last night we were having a conversation about how we hadn't heard anything about the new IT Crowd series yet and for the last two years the episodes were aired in September so we thought we weren't getting anything new. However, this morning I awoke to a message from the Facebook group with a series of one liners from the taping of the second episode last night. Rumours say it's due to be aired November/December this year. Maybe we'll get a Christmas special? Only time will tell. Can't wait! Apparently staying tuned to Linehan's blog got me nowhere because I don't read every detail. He did post a message yesterday but it had his signature speech bubble in it (meaning he's just looking for comments) and I just ignore those posts. I guess I have to start using Google Reader for comprehension.... |
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| RSS Update 'n Stuff | Friday, October 3, 2008 16:31:19 |
It took almost all day, but I've got all of my major sites with ongoing news set up with proper RSS feeds and I've fixed the bug that's been bothering me for a long time now. When users have pre-written content in Word and they paste in into a textarea field on the web, the encoding is wrong so when they mash the save button, the quotes and apostrophes are placed in the document in their native format (like this: ’) instead of the normal ASCII where there's only one character for the quotes. Once I finally had time to put my mind to it, the whole thing came together quite nicely. I found all of the character codes for the characters which appear as question marks in Firefox and Chrome and blocks in Internet Explorer then I just used PHP's str_replace to replace them all in the strings that come out of the database.
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<?php
$msfind = array(chr(150),
chr(146),
chr(145),
chr(147),
chr(148),
chr(151),
chr(133),
chr(149), # bullet
);
$msreplace = array("-",
"'",
"'",
"\"",
"\"",
"-",
"...",
"-",
);
print(str_replace($msfind,
$msreplace,
$textfromdatabase));
?> |
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So once that was all pretty, I made the RSS hints on the headers of my main pages so that people can subscribe to those feeds (and actually know where they are).
 For those of you who are keeping score at home, by the way, my marathon finishing time was 4 hours 10 minutes and 2 seconds (chip time). It actually took me 5 minutes from the time the gun went off to get over the start line, which is why the photo shows me at gun time. The day was warm and for my first marathon, I'm really quite happy with my time because all things considered, I did a good job and I've left myself room for improvement. If the weather was like the last couple of days, heat wouldn't have been an issue, but that's how life works right?
We're having a wrap-up meeting at the Fat Duck to celebrate our first marathon tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to that. Then in a week, my lovely wife and I off to Italy for 10 days!
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| My Marathon Info | Wednesday, September 24, 2008 23:39:11 |
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| My Name: | Ian Service |
| My Race: | Marathon |
| My Number: | 1666 |
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Sunday is the big race that I've been training for all summer long, The Scotiabank Waterfront Marathon! I'm getting really excited. Only one more training run left and a lot more carbs to absorb to give me the energy to finish in my goal 3 hours and 45 minutes. Since it's my first marathon, (first race actually) I'm not too sure how well this will go so I won't be heart broken if I miss my goal time. I think as long as I finish under 4 hours I'll be really happy with my time, other than that it's going to be the time to beat for my next marathon in Ottawa in May. (That's right, I've already picked my next race (Around the Bay) and my next Marathon.
Here's the race info that they sent out for those who are coming down to cheer me on...
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LIVE Results
Once again www.sportstats.ca will provide the LIVE tracking of all participants in the Marathon and Half-Marathon. Splits will be at 10km, 21km, 30km and Finish line for the marathon and 10km and finish for the Half-Marathon.
LIVE SMS Text Messaging
New this year, you will be able to track participants in the Marathon and Half-marathon via text messaging. For $2.99 you can track 1 participant to up to 3 cell phone numbers. Splits will be at 10km, 21km, 30km and Finish line for the marathon and 10km and finish for the Half-Marathon.
Click the following link to sign up now for this service:
http://sms.eventsonline.ca/sms/crs_scotia/index.html
Where to watch your loved ones:
#1 Recommendation : would be on Bay Street from Queen Street south to Wellington
#2 Recommendation: We have 11 Neighbourhood Cheering Sections with live Entertainment, food and much more! Check out our website for more information on exact locations:
http://www.torontowaterfrontmarathon.com/en/nc.htm#map
#3 Recommendation: There is also limited space on the Nathan Phillips Square walkway above the Start and Finish line- get there early to claim your spot- with 14,000+ participants and all their family there to watch, it will fill up fast!
Where to meet your loved ones after they have finished:
We will be having a Friends and Family Zone located on the south side of Nathan Phillips Square. We will have flags set-up and you will be able to meet your loved ones underneath their letter (Bob Smith, wait for him under the "S" flag) |
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| Why Jean Machine Sucks | Friday, May 2, 2008 19:07:51 |
So I went to Jean Machine today and the entire experience left me with a whole lotta rage... This is the subsequent letter that needed to be sent.
Today my fiancee did me a favour by picking up a couple pairs of jeans for me to try on. I only wanted one new pair, but she couldn't decide and purchased two so once I got home and tried them on and we picked one then tried to return the other only a few hours after they had been purchased, we were told that returns were not permitted. The cashier told us that it was Jean Machine's policy not to allow returns but that we could exchange for another pair. Having no need for two pairs of hundred dollar jeans, I was quite upset by this news. She offered us a gift card instead which was better than looking for second pair of jeans that I can't really afford but still infuriating. I can only recall meeting with such a harsh return policy when I'm buying "what you see is what you get" antique computer parts from a small vendor, but even then they always double check with me verbally to confirm that there are no returns on this product. It strikes me that Jean Machine is probably the only large retail chain that I've ever shopped at that has given me a hard time with returns, especially when the original form of payment is present to be refunded and I was astonished that the date stamp hadn't even changed on the generated receipts yet we were still given such a hard time. I could understand if it had been over thirty days like any of the competition or if there was as shadow of a doubt that the jeans had been worn for more than a minute, but I find it truly ridiculous that my money is now being held hostage in Jean Machine's accounts only to gain interest for the corporation instead of me for a matter of a few hours with no wear of an unwanted product.
On top of all of that the cashier told us that the gift card has a two year expiration date. I'm not sure if your staff has been briefed on this fact, but Ontario has outlawed the expiration of all gift cards.
I do appreciate that companies need to protect themselves from fraudulent activity and that a company's goal is to turn a profit. However it is quite possible to do both of those things without causing undue stress and aggravation with an honest business practice. If it is Jean Machine's policy to not allow returns on any product and that all customers consider their money completely nonrefundable once it has passed through your registers you may want to post that in big banners all around the store because that is not the normal method of operation. Managers should be training their staff to verbally confirm that there are no refunds on any product as a simple 8x10 sign mixed in with all of your other eye-catching desktop merchandise is not nearly enough when every other merchant in the same building will be lenient with you and return the product to inventory. We were also told that it's printed on the receipt, but I guess by following that logic, by the time you've read that it's already too late.
I would truly appreciate it if you would contact me so that we can come to some form of resolution on this matter. The number one rule of retail business is that the customer is always right and I did keep, and am quite happy with the other pair of jeans. I would like to continue to consider Jean Machine as a good place to shop.
Thank you,
- Ian Service |
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| What's with the American Beer? | Monday, March 31, 2008 23:55:05 |
 Watching one of the last episodes of Dexter and then later today, watching an episode of How I Met Your Mother, and reflecting upon my lovely summer excursion to Florida this winter... have you never heard of a 2-4? Another reason Canadians have words like two-four and double-double. Americans just can't take the goods. The most I ever found down there was a one-two and that just doesn't work as a thing. Honestly... they have giant pops (aka: sodas) and fries but not beer, that just doesn't make any sense. |
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| St. Patrick is Immovable | Tuesday, March 18, 2008 22:42:42 |
  Awesome St. Patty's Day celebration! All the regulars were in attendance and an excellent night was had by all. We rocked out at Molly Blooms until 6 and then rocked out our place on Rock Band. Too bad there isn't a Celtic Band. All this despite the fact that the Catholic Church tried to move St. Patrick's day to the 15th. It's just not possible. St. Patrick's Day isn't a day until it disrupts a work week. |
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| Is this thing on? | Thursday, March 13, 2008 15:40:00 |
I made a bunch of changes over the course of the day today to the server because I finally brought it upon myself to change the register_globals flag to Off in PHP. Unfortunately that means finding little bugs all over the sites I've built. Mostly it's just the really old code, but even so, lots of little stuff needs to be changed so it continues to work. |
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| Happy Leap Day! | Friday, February 29, 2008 08:57:17 |
I just wanted to take a moment to wish you a happy leap day! February 29th only comes along every once in a while (they tell me every four years, but I don't believe them). For those of you born on February 29th, happy birthday, hopefully you feel good about yourself for being so young. |
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