ace's blog

What I saw when I rolled over this morning

petewood — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 13:47:37 +0000

This blog is not dead!

Usually when I wake up, I have my Eli in bed with me (not by my choice mind you). He just kind of sneaks in there…

I woke up this morning and my Eli wasn’t there, then I heard something by the side of my bed. This is what I saw when I rolled over to take a look.

Pinewood derby car

petewood — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 04:53:00 +0000

Here is our naked pinewood derby car. Aaron and I will be working our fannies off filling it with lead and painting it. The pinewood derby is this weekend. At first, I wasn’t excited about it but now I am getting there. I’m really excited to work on the car with Aaron this week.

Android development

petewood — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 20:20:06 +0000

I’ve spent about a week or so working on an Android app. I’ve been thinking about doing Android development for a while. I finally had a decent idea of an app that I would find useful so I just started working on it. I found tons of information online but nothing that help me get started. I bought the Kindle edition of Learning Android by Marko Gargenta.

I thought it was a really good introductory book. It certainly helped me in getting started. In learning to develop an Android app, I had to (re-)learn Java! I haven’t looked at Java since I was in college over 10 years ago! I only took one class where I was exposed to Java and we never wrote any apps from scratch. The only thing we did with Java was to modify programs that we were told had bugs in them. I essentially began this project with no idea how to write Java.

Now, having said all of that, I’ve developed a very functional app in about a week, thank in large part to the book that I read. I did a ton of research online about how to code the concepts I had in my head. I’ve basically lived on stackoverflow.com for the past week.

I’m almost at the point where I’m ready to release the app to a few people to get some real feedback on it. Once I get some feedback and tweak my app to resolve any issues that may arise, I’ll release my app on the Android market.

This morning, I took my first towards releasing my app by registering with with Google

Setting up internet access for the Android emulator in Eclipse

petewood — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 19:57:54 +0000

I’m writing an Android app to track Crossfit WODs.

One of the things I want the app to do is parse an RSS feed. That means I need my emulator to be able to access the RSS feed from my app so I can test it. I’ve gotten my app to the point where I can start working on this feature.

When I execute the browser app on the emulator, it wasn’t getting a connection. After searching around a bit on stackoverflow.com, I found that I needed to set a set an extra option when I executed the emulator from within Eclipse.

In Eclipse, click the “Run” menu item. Select “Run Configurations…” and a window will open up. On the right side of that window are 3 tabs. Select the “Target” tab in the middle.

Scroll down to the bottom of that window and you will see the text “Additional Emulator Command Line Options” and an input box at the bottom. Add the text

-dns-server X.X.X.X

to the input box, where “X.X.X.X” is the IP address of your default gateway. You can find that IP address by typing “ipconfig /all” on a command line.

My default gateway address is “10.0.0.1”.

Click the “apply” button and then Run and you should be all set.

Scumbag right knee

petewood — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 13:22:47 +0000

So I messed up my right knee some how this weekend.

I think it was from the sprinting we did during the Saturday warm up. The WOD was “easy”, nothing terribly knee-killing.

3 Rounds of
5min AMRAP
10 SDLHP F75/M95
10 Box Jumps F20/M24
15 Sit-Ups
Rest 1min between rounds

My box is starting the Paleo challenge (see picture below) this Thursday, October 6th. One of the points detractors is how often you WOD. If I have a hurt knee, then I can’t WOD like I would want to. I wouldn’t be able to push myself as hard as I know I can go.

In the next few weeks, we’re supposed to be doing more of the benchmark (“hero” & “the girls”) Crossfit workouts. I want to do as many of those as possible, especially if we’re going to do the Murph. I did the Murph during my first week at Crossfit Lake Mary.

“Murph”

1 mile Run

100 Pull-ups

200 Push-ups

300 Squats

1 mile Run

For time.
Partition the pull-ups, push-ups, and squats as needed. Start and finish with a mile run. If you’ve got a twenty pound vest or body armor, wear it.

Holy shit my shoulders hurt!

petewood — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:53:29 +0000

My shoulders hurt.

It started off as my right shoulder, in the middle of my back, right on the edge of the shoulder blade. I went to the doctor and asked about it. I was prescribed an x-ray (good news, there’s no fracture!).

Then my left shoulder started hurting. It was after a few shoulder-intensive crossfit workouts. My left shoulder hurts around the joint.

My crossfit trainer has these dense balls that he suggests we use to roll out our shoulders. He’s recommended a foam roller for back, quads, shins and calves. The foam roller was so awesome that I ordered one for my house. After about 2 minutes of using the ball on my shoulders, I found a couple of knots in them that needed to be rolled out. So I searched and searched for “massage balls” but wasn’t having any luck finding anything like what we used in Crossfit Lake Mary. After going to the Sports Authority and discovering nothing, I went back to the gym and talked to Gregg. He directed me to Play It Again Sports and told me to find a lacrosse ball. It cost me all of $3.

I eagerly came home and rolled out my shoulders and wow, they feel so much better! A few more sessions with my lacrosse ball and I should be good to go. I’m hopeful that less pain in my shoulders will help me gain better results in everything I do at Crossfit!

Crossfit “Fran”

petewood — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 13:58:33 +0000

Yesterday’s WOD was “Fran” at Crossfit Lake Mary. It’s a short workout, meant to be completed very quickly – 4-6 minutes.

Fran is a benchmark workout meaning that if you went into any Crossfit “box” and told them you did Fran in Xminutes and Yseconds, they would know exactly what you did and marvel at your time (or laugh).

As I was saying, Fran is a short workout with only 3 rounds. As with most things Crossfit, your goal is to do it as fast as possible. Fran is thrusters and pullups with reps of 21/15/9. I completed it in 5:29 (MM:SS). For the pullups, I used the green band. That most likely won’t mean anything to you but it does to me and anybody else in my box. My weight for the thrusters was 65 lbs. After it was over, I felt like I could have added some more weight but 65 was decent for my first Fran.

Since the workout was so quick, Gregg made us run for 800 meters (1/2 mile) and then do 50 sit ups while holding a plate over our heads and chest. That shit was hard!

because f*ck you, that’s why

petewood — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 13:35:52 +0000

Damn rain

petewood — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 14:42:58 +0000

I heard it thunder, grabbed my helmet and ran downstairs to take my bike home and pick up my truck…
I was too late :’(

F*ck you flowers!

petewood — Tue, 31 May 2011 13:13:55 +0000

This is quite possibly the funniest picture I’ve ever seen.