This week I hit the 250 mile running mark on my Nike + iPod and I love it.  I definitely hate running though, it’s rather boring and tends to be a lot of work, but adding a bit of technology to it that allows me to monitor my progress makes it bearable and keeps me in better shape.  The Nike + iPod consists of a wireless sensor that attaches to your shoe, a wireless receiver that plugs into your iPod, and the nikeplus.com website.  This wireless sensor is designed to slip under the sole of certain Nike shoes which now appear to be down to as cheap as $40, but when I got the device the cheapest shoes that supported it were $100 so I opted for the RunAway which cost me about $10.  I read a few comments on the Internet saying these adapters don’t work  because the sense works by pressure which you don’t get by strapping the sensor to your laces, but I haven’t had any problems.   Now that the Nike shoes have come down in price though, I may get a pair and test out the difference.  The sensor and receiver combo runs around $25.

Basically the entire add-on is a glorified pedometer, but it has some great features that allow you to monitor your running.  First off you are able to monitor your running, while you’re running.  With one push of the center iPod button, you get informed of your distance, time, and pace.  You’re also able to monitor your overall running by syncing your runs up to the Nike+ website and tracking how well you’re doing over time.  You can also set target goals on the website and track if you are meeting them.

Another nice feature is the ability to set up a power song.  Mine is The Eye of the Tiger and it plays whenever I need a little extra motivation by holding down the center iPod button for a few seconds.

I love this add-on and the ability to track my running motives me to run more, but one thing I don’t like is the fact that I can’t change the song very easily while running since the iPod is strapped to my arm and I can’t see the screen.  Hopefully this problem with be resolved if the Nike Amp+ ever comes out.  It is a wristwatch like remote that allows you to control the iPod while running.

Check it out and I’ll let you know when I hit 500 miles.

This weekend I have been spending most of my time rebuilding my KnoppMyth box by installing the lastest version, applying the patch to handle the new tv lisings provider, Schedule Direct, and adding a new 500GB drive for recording tv.  I wrote down most of the steps to get things setup and plan to do a blog posting about soon.  At the moment what I did want to post is a link to a page on how to add a second drive to linux. They are clear instructions and worked nicely.  I'm mounting this new hardrive to the /myth/tv directory so that all tv recording will go to it.

If you're trying to do exactly what I did, then you also need to set the proper permissions back on the /myth/tv directory or you will get a bunch of errors.  First set the owner of the directory back to mythtv by doing this

chown mythtv /myth/tv

Then to get the permissions exactly back to where the were I added write permission back on for the group by doing:

chmod g+w /myth/tv

You can compare the before and after permissions and ownership my doing ls -l /myth  before you make any of these changes and then again afterwards.

I said goodbye to Wells Fargo this week and hello to a new job that will hopefully fit my style much better.  Wells Fargo just wasn’t hitting the mark for what I wanted to be doing professionally and I found myself doing a lot of content changes and minor code changes, many of which were in classic asp and .NET 1.1.  I was about to start a new project from scratch in .NET 2.0 that would have taken the next two or three months to complete, but I realized that once that was finished I would probably be back to handling minor changes.

                I’ve worked at two different large companies in my development career, and I have come to the conclusion that they do not respect the individual developer as an asset.  Don’t get me wrong, in both cases my direct manager has been very good and I felt they considered me an asset, but in general I think management as a whole in a large company doesn’t care who the developer is sitting in the seat and thinks all developers have the same skill set.  From what I have seen this is definitely not the case and except for a couple of very smart developers I have met, a significant number of developers in general really don’t seem to have the aptitude nor ambition to do their jobs

                The biggest thing I think corporations with development departments need to start doing is charging their internal departments.  A significant amount of money and time seems to get wasted with users and management abusing their development department by flip flopping on changes, and general indecisiveness.  I think by billing the department that the application is for (at a reasonable rate) the requesting department would be more conscience of the time that they are utilizing for development.  It’s very easy to take advantage of the development department, when you have no consequences from it.

                So where are you off too, you ask?  Well I’ve headed over to work with Nick at Two Rivers Marketing.  It will be nice to finally leave my kakis hanging in the closet and be able to wear some comfortable clothes to work for a change.  I’ve met several of the guys there through the IADNUG and felt they had the type of attitude that I was looking for.  I hope that I can learn a lot there and maybe even teach them a few things.

                Lastly I would just like to point out that most of us developer work at least forty hours a week, probably even more, so if you’re not doing something you are enjoying then you owe it to yourself to do something about it.  If you’ve been telling yourself for awhile now that things will get better soon, or that a fun project will probably be around the corner, then you need to start considering a job change and at least stick your resume out there to see what the world has to offer you.