Paul Speaks

Sunday, July 01, 2007

Recipe Request

Now that I finally acquired one of these:

What, exactly, am I supposed to cook in it?

I know I've probably seen HUNDREDS of shows of the Food Network where these dishes were used, but nothing in particular comes to mind.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Pizza Pizza Pizza Pizza Pizza.....

Check out Jeff Varasano's pizza page. Who would have thought you could go into so much detail about pizza? I haven't read the entire thing in detail yet, but I'm amazed at the level of detail and analysis he has in there. Also, it's really making me hungry. If only there was somewhere to get good pizza in Seattle...

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Motivation

If the prospect of Jared handing out pieces from a 26.2 foot sub isn't enough to get me through the last few miles, I don't know what would.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Another Contest


With just 179 hours until the start of the Eugene Marathon, it's time for the "Predict Paul's Finishing Time" contest. Leave your guess in the comments anytime before the start of the race. Winner gets a yet-to-be-determined prize. And of course, it's The Price Is Right style, so make sure you don't go over.

Monday, April 02, 2007

Marathon Update

In list format, for the ADD set:

  • Updated training log here.
  • Weekly mileage last 6 weeks: 55, 51, 52, 57, 45, 53
  • Longest run: ~20.5 miles, ~2 hours 51 minutes.
  • Ran Mercer Island Half-Marathon on 3/25.
    • Finishing time of 1:30:32 is 6:55 per mile, and a personal best by over 3 minutes.

  • I've registered for the Eugene Marathon on April 29th.
  • Goal Time: 3:10:59
  • Goal Pace: ~7:15/mile
  • Chance of achieving goal time: 50%
  • Empty beds available in my hotel room if anyone really wants to see Eugene, OR: 1.

Two Complaints about Google

1. Last week I was trying to make a blog post. When I got to the Publish step, I typed in the letters from the captcha incorrectly. This brought to a page informing that Blogger couldn't tell if I was a human or a computer (they only want the former posting to blogs). Instinctively I hit the back button to go to the previous page and fix the mistake. However, something had timed out and instead of going back to my unpublished post, I ended up on a generic page, my post lost forever. This never happened before the XXXed out the "beta" part of the blogger logo. Apparently the non-beta version has two new features: Sign in with your gmail account, and lose all your data when you make a typo. Awesome.

2. To keep track of my marathon training, I created a spreadsheet on Google's free Docs & Spreadsheets service. I can edit it from work or home, and was also able to publish it for viewing by anyone. I missed, however, that the default for published spreadsheets is that only a snapshot of the document is published, rather than constantly being updated every time I made a change. Thus, while I thought everyone could check up on my progress the last two months, anyone who actually tried to do so would have been left with the impression that I had completely abandoned by trainig regime. Fortunately, there is an option to automatically republish the document (but, bizarrely, the only option is to republish every five minutes, rather than, say, anytime a change is made, which would seem to make more sense). But, the default wasn't what I expected.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Oddities

Is it a bad sign when your tailor only takes cash, AND doesn't have change for a $20 (not to mention a cash register)? This may or may not be a front for some sort of Russian organized crime unit. I just hope the pants fit.