Thanks Joe for the Link!

I will be doing a more in depth blog post soon, but wanted to get the photos out ASAP. Amy and I are moving back to Nashville, TN and these are the photos of us and our friends at the going away party. Enjoy :)

9 years ago today, Tim & I celebrated his 21st birthday (and 3 days later we celebrated mine). And as was par for the course, we had to wear our party hats. There were very few times that Tim and I went out together that we would NOT be wearing hats. Some of the best memories I have from growing up were with Tim, and I am so glad I have these photos to remind me of him always. Wish you were here, Tim.

See below for a few more images of Tim and I - all wearing our party hats :) As you know, You can see all the photos of Tim over at www.timmcgovern.us.

I use Twitter.com daily. If you use twitter, you should add me. You can find me on twitter with username theferf. If you do not know what twitter is, there are many resources you can find about it including information on how to register for and master twitter, listings of the top twitter tools for your computer & phone, and more… so I won’t go into that here. Visit any of those links are do a google search for twitter and start your journey.

And dont forget to follow @theferf!

On a lighter note, I was asked by a good friend to share some stories of the years Tim and I had together (high school friends, college roomates)… so lets move on to that now :)

“The year was 1997 and it was the first year Tim and I were in the college dorms at Purdue University. Tim was, obviously, an ROTC boy and therefor spent many long weekends out in training and many more early mornings at PT, working out.

On one weekend, I had a few friends over for a party where we decided to have some mixed drinks. Screw drivers were the drink of choice (for those not in the know, the ingredients are vodka and orange juice) and in an effort to cover our tracks and prevent getting caught drinking under age, we simply poured the vodka into the orange juice containers so we would not have a bunch of liquor bottles laying around.

Tim was in the field all weekend and went straight to PT Monday morning, so he was unaware of my party. Upon arriving home from PT he went straight to the fridge, exhausted, and slammed a quart of the orange juice and jumped into bed for a few hours. When he woke up, he was WASTED from dehydration and consuming a massive amount of alcohol. He called me freaking out, thinking he had been poisoned some how when in reality, he was just drunk, dehydrated and exhausted from three days of hard training and no sleep.

I remember seeing him huddled up in a blanket in our dorm room when I came back from class looking like absolute hell. From that point on he always sniffed first, drank second, anything that came from the fridge :) “

• R.I.P Tim McGovern
• See Photos of Tim at TimMcGovern.US

Amy and I were going to Vegas, Nik had never been to Vegas… it seemed like it would be too good to be true. But fear not my loyal readers, it was not. We had a rip-roaring good time (we did not get too crazy) but enjoyed the heat, slots, drinks… oh yeah, and the Podcast Expo too.

I don’t need to go into too much detail, but a $60 hotel stay at Circus Circus on the strip allowed us the oppurtunity to gamble, eat at nice places and drink giant-ass 100 ounce drinks from cups that required a strap go around your neck in fear or being too tired from holding the cup to be able to finish drinking it.

It was great to see a few old friends at the New Media Expo/Podcast Expo, but I am not going to lie… it is not the same. I’m not sure if it was the location or just that the people did not seem to be that into it, but this Expo was dead. It was hard to even find parties or gatherings of people while at the expo. So we did what any normal not-too-old person would do… we went to Tao, somehow gained access to the VIP roof party after supper, and danced the night away (thanks Nik).

Nothing too crazy happened (we were in the midst of marathon training still) but it was fun to be there with Nik and Amy. We will have to do it again sometime with a larger crowd that loves to go dance and socialize all night long.

• Check out the full photo set with the 100 ounce beers on flickr

Sometimes, this is what Amy and I have for dinner. I was too lazy to cook anything so I quickly cut up a bunch of crap and threw it on a plate. It looked so awesome, I had to snap a photo of it.

It’s little things like this that remind me of the more simple lessons in life. For example, “Not everything has to be a production” and “accidents can be better than planning” or even “sometimes lazy is awesome”.

Maybe that should be my new life motto. You heard it here first, folks.

“Sometimes lazy is awesome.”

What started as a joke years ago at PodShow has now become a tradition at Mevio. If you are unlucky enough to find an error or 404 page on the Mevio.com website you will find the back of my head not looking back at you. We have had a number of different versions of these over the years within the company for some reason. It’s sad that I look forward to the site crashing and burning to get a good laugh at the images that show up that we have forgotten about.

Thanks to a few of the people (jawbone, sue, bryn) who made me a living error.

Here are a few of the previous ones I could find:

It turns out that my camera has a feature that helps you take panoramic photos. COOL! Additionally, Photoshop has a tool to stitch together photos in a variety of ways to make photos like the above. Cooler! This photo isn’t that exciting, just a sample. Shot with a canon point and shoot, by hand. It is actually 4 photographs stitched together into one.

Now, what could I do that would be interesting with this? Worlds longest panoramic photo? Hmmmm… I wonder if there is a Guinness Book of Worlds Record for that yet?

Sometimes I forget to blog about all the fun things (at least in my mind) that Amy and I get to do. This was one of those cases, and Im sure as I try to find more time to relax since the Marathon has concluded, i will be able to blog a bit more and share the stories with you.

These photos are from the best zipline tours in Hawaii (Maui, to be more specific). This eco adventure, as they like to call it, was a half day ordeal but was totally worth it. We zipped between two mountains 8 times in total with the longest zip being over 1100 feet. We passed through multiple climate zones, soared over streams and waterfalls and got to enjoy the great outdoors. Maui was much more beautiful than I expected it to be, and spending a week there with just my wife, and being able to experience day trips like this, make it a trip that I will always remember.

More Photos of Amy and I Ziplining

• See all of our Zipline tour photos from Maui Here
• Check out their site and schedule your own zipline tour

Well, we did it. Amongst the long hours of work, moving to the city and other surprises… not to mention Amy Macs knee tendinitis, 6 weeks of inactivity and 4 weeks of physical therapy… we made it! Not only did we make it, we made it look goooood.

Ok, maybe not good, but we both were very happy with the race. 26.2 miles is a hard race to prepare for not only physically, but mentally as well. How do you run that far, and more importantly, how do you plan to run that far? When we started this adventure 6-7 months ago we had no idea what to expect in terms of time commitment, training hours and miles or even how fast we would try to run this thing… so we through some goal times out (pulling them from thin air) and put them out there.

Originally I thought ~4 hours would be something I could accomplish, and I would try to drag Amy along with me. But as time wore on it became more and more obvious with our short training schedule and demands at work that this would not really be possible. I adjusted my plan to be around 4:30 and Amy adjusted her schedule to be 5 hours (although she really wanted to be able to keep pace with me). While not 100% successful, we are very happy with what the results were. I ended up running 4 hours and 38 minutes and Amy ran 4 hours and 59 minutes! Success, I say!

As of this writing it has been one week since we finished our race. I will probably run one again, but Amy was only in it for the one race. Im not sure when I will be able to begin my training again, my toe nail fell off yesterday (my big toe) and it hurts to walk, let alone run. We will just have to see how soon the pain goes away so I can start moving again. Most likely I will start training for more triathlons and half marathons and find a sweet full marathon in the next few years to test me again.

I just read that Sarah Palin ran a sub 4 hour marathon… and with that, I have a new goal time. I would like to say my goal was to qualify for the Boston marathon, but to make that happen I would have to slash about 90 minutes off of my time. Ha ha ha ha!

To all of our supporters for the last few months and those who cheered us on along the route in Portland, thanks for your support, kind words and tips. You helped make this a memorable experience all around.

• Check out all of our Marathon Photos here.
• The Official Portland Marathon Website

Enjoy!

Well, it’s not a giant tube, but it was a great wave to learn on! Here is a quick snapshot of me learning how to surf yesterday here in Maui. I even tricked Amy Mac into learning how to surf too (and if you know Amy, you know she NEVER puts her face in the water)! Notice our instructor (JB Fallo) in the back left of the photo… he was happy we were able to get up and surf that day too.

More later, just a quick post :)

• More of our Hawaii Surfing Photos
• Other photos from Hawaii 2008
• Maui Wave Riders, the place that taught us to surf — HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

WordPress2.6.1 Upgrade

Just a quick note to those who may be having issues after you update to the latest version of WordPress (WP 2.6.1). I recently upgrade from WordPress 2.6 to 2.6.1 and when I did, I could no longer login to my blog. It kept telling me to “Please Login Again”. I even tried to reset the password, with no success. I tried searching the internet and finally found someone who recommended deleting your cookies. It worked!

Delete Your Cookies to be Able to Login to Your WordPress 2.6.1 Site!

That’s all I have for now, I just wanted to post so I could help the others that were having the same issues who could not find the answers without searching through 100’s of comments.

• Download the New WordPress 2.6.1 Here

This past weekend Amy and I took off for a long 10 mile run. This was the first long run we did with my new Garmin Forerunner 405 GPS watch. We ran from the ocean here in San Francisco, through Golden Gate Park and back again and ended our run sipping beers and mai tais at the Park Chalet. I have to admit, this was one of the best runs Amy and I have ever been on (especially considering it was 10 miles)!

If you click on the map above or on this link, you will be connected to the Garmin website where you can review the details from the GPS data of our run. It’s not a big deal, but the data that comes from the watch is just plain interesting to look at (at least to a nerd like me). We averaged 11 minute miles for the whole run and even ran our last miles the fastest, clocking in at 9:41 for the last mile! Typically I would not be that impressed, but this was 10 miles!

Coming up in a few weeks Amy and I are planning on running the San Francisco 1/2 marathon with a goal time of around 2 hours and 10 minutes for the 13 mile race (which if you do the math, is 10 minutes per mile). This is slow for real runners, but considering this is our first long distance race, we have our fingers crossed we can make it. One month of training to go!

Wish us luck with our 1/2 marathon and full marathon training!

Amy wrote a great post about the run we did in southern California a few weeks ago with Run for the Fallen. Read Amy’s blog post, I could not describe it any better.

From WithAmyMac.com:

“Every time I head out for a run, I’m focused on MY goals, MY progress, MY training and making it to the next mile. But today it was different. Today we traveled over 400 miles so we could run 5 miles with the “Run for the Fallen” team. The “Run for the Fallen” team, lead by Jon, is a group of 12 people that after recently losing a loved one in Iraq has decided to run a mile for every fallen U.S. soldier. There have been over 4,080 lives lost in Operation Iraqi Freedom and starting on Flag Day 2008 these runners began their journey from Fort Irwin, CA to Arlington National Cemetery. The goal is to memorialize each soldier by assigning them a mile and planting a flag and placard at the start of that mile.”

Read the rest of Amys description of our trip and experience titled “Today, it’s not about me” on her blog.

See more great videos on Jims Mevio Profile here.

This coming Wednesday (June 18, 2008 at 6am), Amy and I will be in southern California (near Camp Pendleton) to run 5 to 10 miles with the people at Run for the Fallen. I am proud of the effort they are making and am thankful for what they are doing to help heal the pain of the friends, families and loved ones of the over 4,000 soldiers who have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom. In my opinion, this is a great way to help remember those who have died protecting us.

If you are a runner and you would like to take part in what is going on with the Run for the Fallen folks, head on over to the website www.runforthefallen.org and check out their route map and other links. They have setup a Facebook Group for each day of the event (over 70 days total of running) listing the time and date of every days run, the days running map, and also the name and details of the soldiers they will be running for and memorializing that day. Here is the Facebook Page for the day of the run Amy and I will be taking part in and here are the names and photos of all the soldiers we are running for that day. Even if they are not running through your area, you should take some time if you are a runner or walker to head outside and take a few steps (or a few 1000 steps) to support the cause.

As we all run across the country, there will be an American flag and signcard for every one of the over 4,000 soldiers who have died placed at every single mile. Our friend, Tim McGovern, will have is signcard and flag placed on August 18th in the middle of Virginia on the way to Arlington National Cemetery.
TIME AND PLACE of Our Run:

Date: Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Time: 6:00am - 6:00pm
Location: South Harbor
Street: Harbor Drive S.
City/Town: Oceanside, CA

What is Run for the Fallen (from their Official Site):

ONE MILE FOR EVERY SOLDIER KILLED IN OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM.

Beginning Flag Day, June 14, 2008, a dedicated team of runners will run across America from Fort Irwin, CA to Arlington National Cemetery, one mile for every soldier killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom. For ten weeks, team members will mark each mile with an American flag and signcard in an apolitical reflection of remembrance of each soldier.

Here is a Video that explains why this run was setup:

Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.

• Find Out More about the Carrotmob
• Read a story about them in SF Mag