Running life was the other side of the coin. Day 1 we ran in a cemetary near my house. I didn’t expect to finish the third running segment, and I lived up to my expectations. About 30 seconds into the last run, my brain decided my body had taken enough. The second day I faired better, but was still puttering tgowards the end.

I had joked with my runing buddy day 3 was the day we would attempt to increase our speed. We ran at a state park, through the woods, and on muddy hilly trails. Dissapointing myself, I did not complete the run. We talked about possibly repeating week 4, so I could catch up.

Against what my brain was telling me, we decided to push on to week 5 day 1. We arrived at Wissinoming Park at about 8:15 PM. The air was a little chilly for shorts, about 50 degrees with a breeze. Not my preferred running weather.

I have to take a sidebar for a sec and explain how we track our runs. I have an app on my Android phone that has a distinct beep when we need to change from running to walking.

I don’t know how we did it, but somehow we started running early the first run, and ended on time. And the second and third runs, we didn’t even take a break between.

Apparently, the weather we were running in is perfect. My lungs we still a little tired, but not so much that I was ghasping for air. Also my legs weren’t cramping, and still felt “fresh”.

Looking over the map really blew my mind. Especially when you look at all the crazy lines in the middle of the field. After the run a few guys invited us to play soccer, and we did just that. If you want to see the spreadsheet, just take a look over at the Running Log page.
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The show is comprised of these three brothers whose comedy stylings have seemingly been time-belted from the vaudevillian era answering questions posed by the citizens of the internet. Like the Joystiq podcast before them, the answers usually are full of backhanded compliments and not much take-home information. But in every answer there seems to be a bit of truth to be gleaned.

I was hooked from the first episode. When the twitter account requested questions for the second episode, I tried hard to think of really really good questions involving farts. That is as far as my comedic progression went. Then I saw another tweet mentioning that they wanted semi-serious questions, which made sense. How many fart jokes can you make about a fart question? But if you get a serious question, it is just asking for fart jokes about it, right?

So I came up with a questions that I had mulled over some time ago, and actually posed to a few friends with no fulfilling answers.I was hoping for a quick quip, and maybe some real info. What I got was this feeling that I’m not getting enough food rewards at work.

(I edited for content. McElroy brothers, please don’t gang up on me)

mbmbam-smcavinney.mp3

Please support the McElroys. At least one of them is living under a regime built on brainwashing and healthy eating. Dowload the full episode here. Better yet, subscribe on iTunes and rate them highly!

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The question is, did Google understand, and transcribe it right? Well, the transcript is below, along with the actual voice-mail. The differences are slight, ahem, kinda like the original Star Wars Trilogy and the Prequels. Get it, because they are crazy different, only thing the same is that they could both be understood, in a vague sense of the word.

If you want to leave a voice-mail, and compare it to the transcript, click the widget below. I promise not to give out any info, it doesn’t really give me any anyway. Just don’t put your address and phone number in the message, and I think you’ll be ok. Social Security number is good though. Also, check out this post, and read my top 6 favorite Google Voice transcriptions that make no sense.

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Now, Google Voice has a really cool Android app, and the system will automatically listen to the voicemail and create a transcript for reading. The only problem is, that most of the time, the transcript is really awful. It may be that the prospective cold callers aren’t enunciating, or just that google can’t get it right, but reading it is like reading a Nigerian 419 scam.

Below are some of my favorite voice mail transcripts, with numbers edited out, which Google got right.

(Hover over images for alt-text goodness)

1.)

This first one, is kinda funny. His name isn’t even close to what it said it was.

2.)

This is from a student down in SC. He seems to really know about the internet, referencing the Dot Com job site that I posted the ad on. He also has a thing for repeating words, something I only noticed on reading it a few times. “to to” , and “okay okay” are some of them. Sandwich.

3.)

This voice-mail actually really scared me when I read it. Some creepy guy named Steve was calling me from my parents house, telling me to call him there, because he wants to tell me something “good”?

It was all ok in the end, turned out my mom goes by Steve sometimes.

4.)

This is another voice-mail that, if you didn’t know it was full of errors, could make you look over your shoulder quite a bit.

5.)

This next one is interesting for a few reasons. For one, nothing in it is correct at all. If I played some of the other ones for you, most of the words would be accurate, or pretty close. Google knows that they don’t always get it right, so they assign a shade of gray to the word depending on how accurate they think they are. Light gray is skeptical, and black is accurate. Every word below is black, but totally off base. I’ve embeded the call so you can hear for yourself.

6.)

This last one is a real gem. I could lie to you and say that this caller was well versed, spoke clearly, and made sense. But honestly, I listened to the voice-mail again, and the transcription is an improvement. Google doesn’t know what to do with stuttering and mumbling, so it decided to write an entertaining novella instead.

Do you think this is funny? Let me know, and I’ll post your voicemail with the transcription on my blog for all to see and compare. Click below.

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We were looking for a track to run on during the rainy days, instead of running on the muddy grass. We headed over to NorthEast High, because there is a pretty good track there, so I’ve heard. Unfortunately the whole place is locked down like Alcatraz, and try as we might, there is no good opening to get to the track. So we ran around the school a few times.

I found out pretty quick why people recommend that you run on a track, treadmill, or at least grass. At the end of the run my whole body felt like someone had used it like a jack hammer. Especially my feet. But we prevailed, and are better for it.

Before we ran, I hopped on twitter to encourage others starting out on Couch to 5k. Offhandedly I mentioned to one guy that I wasn’t looking forward to running in the rain, and he sent me the video I will watch every time I feel like quitting. Aside from just the sheer number of excuses in this video I’ve used variations of, the ending is knock out. Check it out below.

And as always here is the Spreadsheet, and map:

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I saw an interesting tweet this morning from my favorite gameshow host and yours, Corey Anatado. It said (if you didn’t click to read it) that his twitter feed was being sponsored. I was like, whaaaa? And my jaw did that thing in the cartoons where it hits the floor. I mean I know Corey is a cool dude, and he has a bunch of followers more than me, but he’s getting sponsors? Really? I had heard a while ago that some celebrities were getting paid to put ads in their twitter feed, but a regular guy like Corey?

At first I had the knee jerk reaction that some of you are probably having right now. I thought he sold out. That maybe I should unfollow him before my feed gets hijacked with ads for viagra, and various Japanese handwarmers. And he had the gall to follow up that tweet with this one. I was shocked and a little intrigued.

His ad was specific, and targeted. He let me know what I was getting into before I clicked the link. It wasn’t just a “hey guys check this link out, PLZ RT”. I’m not in college any more, so I didn’t even check it out. That’s when it hit me. Twitter is the perfect place to do referral ads. Think about it. How many people do you follow? And how often do you just skim through the tweets to find one that is funny, or relevant to you. If I was still in college, I would’ve checked out Chegg for sure. I follow a bunch of celebrities and weblebrities (I just coined the term), and they are always shooting off links to things they are in, or random crap that I don’t care about. But I follow them because I’ve determined that the good tweets outweigh the bad. And every once in a while, when the link seems relevant to me, I’ll open it up.

This also got me thinking, in a roundabout way, this is helping out small businesses. I meet a lot of small business owners and many of them cannot afford to market effectively. General ads cost way too much, and the more detailed a list, generally the more expensive it is. 20 cents per tweet is pretty low right, for a targeted, specific referral. Take Chegg for an example. They are a small company that rents textbooks to college students. They opened in 2005, but their first business model was broken, and losing money. They relaunched in 2007, and are building a base of students. The problem with having a base of students, is that you only have 4 (or 8 if they are docs) years to educate people about your service, and convert them to customers. Twitter makes super sense for a company like them. The viral nature of twitter, especially on college campuses is a great way to spread out information regarding your brand.

So I signed up. I took the plunge. I sold out. But before I did, I checked out what it all entailed. First of all, they are really really good about making sure everything is disclosed. You will never see a sponsored tweet by me with out disclosing it. Also, the service doesn’t have canned tweets that you have to post. They give you choice of advertisers, and also, choice of how you want to spread the link. I’m pretty impressed also that they have a readily available violation report system in place.

I’m going to give Sponsored Tweets a trial run. I’m not worried so much about if I can make a ton of money from it. Rather, I hope that I can come across some cool opportunities for my followers, and not let the system get out of control. Also, I’ve got some interesting ideas of how to get retweets, and clean out my basement at the same time. Either way, follow me @smcavinney, and let me know if you think this is crazy, or crazy awesome.

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Edit: Pictures added

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