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On the hunt for squirrels #dogsinthecity (at Central Park East Meadow)

#dogsinthecity

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#Marathon number 2: Surf City 2015. Huntington Beach CA - feb 1, 2015. Two months to get ready. #running

#running #marathon

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I was helping out at the stuyvesant class of 2004 10 yr reunion tonight and a couple of thoughts came into my head tonight. 1. No matter what decade a Stuy kid is from - a Stuy kid is a Stuy kid is a Stuy kid. I think you have to be a Stuy alum to understand what I mean by that. 2. As a member of the class of 92 .. Man we are getting older and older aren't we? I don't mind at all but watching the young ins at this reunion made me realize half of my life has already gone by. Better make the most of the next half! 3. Finally. There should always be a stuyvesant high school with the same ol entrance exam. Look. If you study hard and if you pass the entrance exam you're in. I did that. In fact I took the entrance exam twice bc I didn't make the cut the first time. I didn't take a prep course or get any outside help. I just studied my butt off and got in. And you know what? I'm happy that was the way I got in. Everyone else before me and up till now has gotten in this way so. It's simple. It's easy and it's fair. Study hard and you'll get in. Ok. I don't say this much but Go Stuy!

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awesome stuff

Client-side web application monitoring comes in two main flavors. Real User Monitoring, or RUM, uses an agent that runs within each web page and reports on the page load data for every request. Typically, the browser’s performance timing API data is used. Gilt uses New Relic for RUM, and it...

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It's hard to believe it's nearly here.

13 hours and 42 minutes until I start my first ever NYC Marathon.

4 months since I started training for the NYC Marathon.

2080.2 miles traveled since I started on this venture to get to this point. This journey which hopefully culminates tomorrow started back in December of 2012 when I decided to join the New York Road Runners with the explicit intent of getting into the 2014 NYC Marathon. To qualify for the 2014 Marathon, I participated in the NYRR 9+1 program back in 2013. 

Yet as I sit here tonight thinking about tomorrow, I've come to realize it's more than the numbers. Running has slowly but surely transformed my life in so many ways over the past two years. A year ago I wrote about how I fell in love with running. That desire to hit the pavements when you see a bunch of other runners in central park in the middle of winter. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!

Yet now, as I prepare for the biggest run of my life.. I look at myself and realize how far I've come. 

Running has me healthy again. I am without a doubt in the best shape of my life. I was OK a year ago and eh about two years ago. Clothes that fit just fine on me two years ago now look ridiculously large on me. I need new belts darn it! Actually what I really need is a new wardrobe but as I often say at work - "that's a good problem to have!" 

Yet not only am I physically healthier, I'm eating healthier too. Something funny happens when you start running regularly. You want to feel as "light" on your feet as possible when you run.. and that certainly won't happen if you're eating fast food every day or eating more than you need to. Running regularly forced me to look at what I ate on a daily basis and although I'm certainly no vegan, I'm certainly more open to eating greens these days. More importantly, I watch what I consume and how much of it I consume. Eating healthy and portion control. Amazing. 

It wasn't just me changing up my diet tho. Running is a thirsty sport you know.. so this means you need to hydrate yourself regularly. Hydration doesn't come about by drinking coke zero fortunately (or unfortunately a few years ago). Hydration comes about by drinking water. Yup. Water. I lowered my soft drink consumption significantly this past year and it's done wonders for me. Wonders. Sure I'll still have that occasional coke zero when there's some in the fridge at work.. yet it's not the first thing I reach for. Water truly never tasted so good!

Running also forced me to look carefully at my habits. It taught me what it meant to stick to a schedule and to commit to something outside of work and family. It taught me that not everything in life is truly that important but a small set of core things that are important to YOU should be. As I once heard Mike say (I think) - it boils down to three things. Family, Fitness, and Work. Anything else falls wayside. If these things are truly important to you then you'll make the time for them. However, if you need to make time for them then you need to allocate and commit to that time because as we all know, time is a precious commodity. Precious.

For all the moments where life can get you down.. there's nothing like a good run in the park. I've come to use these moments to reflect on issues or problems that I hope to be able to solve. Yet I've also come to use these moments on the pavement as time to simply disappear. Run and not think. Just absorb the surroundings and take it all in.

However, if it's inspiration and motivation that you need, running provides ample materials to soak in and think about. There's that story of a man with cerebral palsy who has run the NYC marathon backwards for who knows how many times. Then there's the man who has run 38 straight NYC marathons. Or the countless people out there who simply are running this race b/c it's their bucket list item. Whatever the motivation or inspiration, the stories are out there. You just need to either discover them; read them; or hear them from others. 

Perhaps the one thing that most motivates me at the end of the day is... seeing how running has changed the lives of many of my good friends. Everyone from colleagues at work to friends on the volleyball court to folks on the other side of the country. Seeing the commitment that my friends have made for something as simple and as raw and as primal as running is simply motivating enough for me.

Running has made me a better person; a more focused person; a person that now wants to explore other cities and places where runners meet and embark on travels near and far. 

As the New York Road Runners say on all of their materials and shirts -  Run for Life. 

13 hours and 11 minutes to go.

#tcsnycmarathon #nycmarathon #running #nyc

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I shouldn't complain...

I had to dress up a bit more today (aka - wear a shirt vs a t-shirt) b/c of an company event this evening and guess what? Nothing I had in the closet fit. I put on dress shirt after dress shirt and everything felt large and bulky.. it was like a scene out of BIG when Tom Hanks younger self is wearing an older outfit after he reverts back to his original age. I put on my jackets.. and yeah. I looked ridiculous. 

I suppose I shouldn't complain b/c this means i've thinned out somewhat from all the running I've done this past year but I don't really want to go out and buy new clothes as a result. The only shirt that fit me well was this fitted shirt that used to be a tad bit too tight on me. Sigh. 

So there you go - run enough and you'll lose some weight.

You'll also likely need a new wardrobe. 

sigh.

#firstworldproblems #running #losingweight

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Thanks for dropping by the Zola Technology Blog!

The goal for our blog is pretty straightforward. We want to engage with all of you. In doing so, we hope to share some of the:

technology being used here at Zola. We’ll talk a bit about our architecture, some of our design decisions; our stack;...

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The sad #beautifuldeath of the King in the North

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Confused by REM and EM?

Thanks to Sam for sharing this link with me - "Confused by REM and EM?"

http://j.eremy.net/confused-about-rem-and-em/

#css

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The French Bull mugs came in from @zolaregistry and they're awesome!

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Xbox One Feb update rolls out

Owners of Xbox One consoles - rejoice. The February update has begun rolling out to the masses according to Major Nelson (http://majornelson.com/2014/02/14/xbox-one-february-update-is-now-starting-to-roll-out/). I just got my update tonight as I woke up the One so I could watch Season 2 of House of Cards on Netflix. All this good stuff followed by Titanfall next month sums up to an awesome time to be an Xbox One owners

#Xbox One

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Multi-tier caching using cached clients & MongoDB

Here is a picture from our MMS showing how we’ve reduced hits to our MongoDB cluster by using cached clients for services in pages with high amounts of traffic!

The pattern is pretty cool because it moves the cache out from our web app written in the Play Framework to the service client, which means that the web app doesn’t have any of the code for handling refreshes or the lifecycle of the cache! Clean code FTW!

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Last month Gilt Co-Founder/CTO Michael Bryzek was the featured speaker at the monthly fireside chat organized by Startup Grind NYC, the local chapter of the global Startup Grind community for entrepreneurs. “A full house for sure, but this was definitely our first event where fashion...

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gilt-tech:

NYC Tech Talks is one of New York City’s top meetup groups for technologists who write and test code or work with servers, so we’re very excited to be hosting their next meetup on Tuesday, Jan. 14. Even more exciting for us is that our very own Yoni Goldberg will be the featured...

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2014 resolution #1

Get (and keep) my work inbox down to under 20 email messages.

#email #resolutions

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Startup/Tech Links of the Day - Jan 4th, 2014

I'm resurrecting something I used to do on Krunker.com - a list of interesting links for a given day. This time instead of focusing on gadgets, I'm going to expand it to things related to startups, entrepreneurism, and tech (in no particular order). Here goes nothing!

"10 Things To Do At Work At The Start of 2014" (forbes.com). Points 1 and 2 are big to me - "reviewing the past year" and "setting goals for the new year"

"Rap Genius claims to have fixed it's Google search violations" (theverge.com) - "We overstepped, and we deserved to get smacked". Ha.

"Ask a VC: Revolution Ventures' David Golden's Predictions For 2014" (techcrunch.com)

"26 Amazing Startups You Need To Watch in 2014" (venturebeat.com)

"The Basis smart fitness watch will tell you exactly how much good-quality sleep you get" (venturebeat.com). Hmm.. The reviews on Basis's current fitness watch on Amazon aren't that promising.. but since I'm a running geek.. thought it was interesting to post.

"Zappos' CEO on Using Corporate Relocation to Preserve Customer-Led Culture" - (hbr.org). Good read - especially for someone in the e-commerce space. Providing awesome customer service can do a lot to the overall lifetime value of a customer.

"How Regular Exercise Helps You Balance Work and Family" - (hbr.org). This one's near and dear to me. I definitely am a believer of using my running times as a way to both decompress as well as think about ways to solve work (or home) problems. A great read for those who are looking at ways to balance work and home.

"code != computer science" - (ultrasuarus.com) - Touchy subject I know. Where do I stand? I think it's great if you have a CS degree - especially if you're doing software development. IMHO - there's nothing like having a firm understanding of the fundamentals - data structures, algorithms, operating systems, you name it. However, this isn't to say this is the only way to becoming a great engineer. I like to balance this with "can I get shit done in an effective and thoughtful manner?"

"Can-Do vs Can't Do Culture" - recode.net. Avoid the Can't Do!

#startups #tech #business

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The upcoming LyveHome makes me miss CES

OK. I'll admit it. I miss the days of attending CES in Las Vegas. The endless number of booths and press releases. The countless number of products being launched (or relaunched). The hours of talking but mostly listening (and pretending to be interested at times). The enormous amount of SWAG (nowadays mostly just USB keys, phone cases, and of course your requisite t-shirt).

OK.. so maybe I don't miss it all that much but if you're a gadget fiend (geek) like myself, then CES is absolute heaven. Damn the sore feet. Damn the long lines for buses.  Where else are you going to see the latest in upcoming hardware? Yes it's a gadget lover's wet dream.

I'm reminded of all of this after coming across this article over at the new recode.net (they were formally the editors of AllThingsD if you're not familiar with the site). The article talks about the upcoming Spring release of the new LyveHome - a $299 device that promises to be the solution to sync all of a person's media. From what I can gather, it's basically a multi-terabyte box that syncs your media (photos, videos) across your devices - whether they're on computers, mobile devices, or online storage services. It promises to maintain at least two copies of the files across various platforms/devices. Finally, there's a touch-screen that shows the health of the system. 

To make this work, you install Lyve apps on your respective devices and the apps will automatically sync your media to the LyveHome device at home. It's an interesting concept which if executed correctly could be a great solution for the average consumer. It probably wouldn't work well for me given how much  media we have here in this household. (I'm currently the owner of a Synology 5 bay DS1512+ with 12 terabytes of disk space - most of which is filled). Yet - I might be interested in it for a subset of my media - in particular my photos. If there's one thing I treasure the most across all of my terabytes of ridiculousness, it's my photos. I suppose it's because I can be nostalgic at times and it's nice to go back to images from yesteryear. 

No word on pricing or storage capacities.. or really any major details. The market's certainly packed when it comes to NAS's and backup solutions but when you think about it - there's no automatic, fullproof solution out there. Time Machine comes close but that's really about backing up machines. What we need is a simple, easy to use, idiot-proof media backup solution that just works in the background. Here's hoping Lyve will fulfill that come spring 2014. 

And this my friends is why I miss CES.

#CES2014 #Lyve #LyveFire