I just want to mention that I have worked on several posts recently that I decided for one reason or another not to publish.

I have a post about my thoughts on Hurricane Sandy, but I decided it’s just a little too personal to publish

I have a post about why I blog, but I feel like it’s a topic that’s been played to death. I blog because I feel like it. I blog when I want and about what I want, and there really isn’t a strong rhyme or reason.

I have a blog post about the Ohio State half time band video, but that’s really more appropriate for Google+.

But this post, I’m going to publish if only to prove that I’m still alive. Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving.

habit: a settled or regular tendency or practice, esp. one that is hard to give up.

what are my habits?

Like lots of you, I have bad habits (almost too many to count.) These bad habit have bad consequences: lack of focus, reduced productivity, stress – even health and relationship problems. And these habits are really entrenched. I realized that what I need to do is replace my existing bad habits with new good ones. However, I wasn’t exactly sure how to get started.

Then I read this Lifehacker article and decided to begin developing some new habits.

I started by making a list of the habits that I want to develop.

1. do something thoughtful for my wife
2. be a better communicator/organizer
3. get enough sleep
4. read for at least 30 minutes a day
5. write something at least once a day
6. work on personal development

Then I attempted to identify a couple of keystone habits I could develop.

First for the last week, I take a few minutes in the morning to put review my calendar and put together a “Game Plan” - just a single Google Doc that has a list of things that I need to keep in mind today and what’s upcoming. The goal is to get away from my usual routine of not having a clue and just coasting through each day. If I start the day with a little organization and planning, I’m more focused and less stressed (seriously.)

Second, I ask myself if there is anything I can do for my wife. I draw a blank more often than not, but sometimes I’ll get an idea for a simple thing I can do: buy her a lemonade at lunch and deliver it to her office, call someone in her family just to say hi - because she really appreciates when I do that, or just do some chores without being asked. These are things that I tend to overlook, and over years, the little bits of my inattentiveness accumulates. My hope is that making a daily effort to actively think about my wife will reverse that trend.

Third, I take time to write something. This is usually at the end of the day, and it can be anything: a document for a side project or a new blog post. It can also be something as small as a new note about something that I’m learning.

I have my list of habits. I have my keystone habits that I’m focusing on. I think it’s a good start.

By the way, if you like the article, Charles Duhigg wrote a book The Power of Habit that I’ve also bought.

Like a lot of runners, I have dealt with some nagging injuries. In particular, I battle plantar fasciitis and posterior tibial tendonitis. I have tried a number of options to deal with this pain including ART, physical therapy, yoga, and single-leg balancing exercises (my balance is now excellent.) They all help, but nothing has made a significant change.

Then I discovered this video on Coach Jay Johnson’s blog. I’ve started doing the routine on a regular basis, and it has made a major difference.

I’m not a fan of running during the summer, so I tend to have training cycles that fluctuate over the year. During late spring, I transition from mostly running to triathlon training because cycling in 95 degree weather is far more tolerable than running in it. Plus, I can do lots of cross-training and swimming indoors. I like to end my triathlon season with a fall triathlon.

I begin to run in earnest again in the early fall and usually plan a late fall race – it’s been the NYC Marathon for the last 3 years. But I live in Charlotte now, so my guaranteed NYC entry is over. Because I have been battling some ankle soreness and mild plantar fasciitis (PF), I decided to limit my mileage to a half marathon this year so I don’t re-aggravate it.

Then if all goes well and the injury fairy stays away, I’ll bump up my mileage over the winter – the best running season in North Carolina – and attempt a fast, flat spring marathon. So, here is my schedule:

1. Rev3 Olympic Tri - Anderson, SC - October 14, 2012
2. Thunder Road Half Marathon - Charlotte, NC - November 17, 2012
3. Myrtle Beach Marathon - Myrtle Beach, SC - February 16, 2013

If you’re going to be at any of these races, let me know. I would love to meet up for a pre-race beer (or post-race… doesn’t matter.)

installing Octopress on OS X Lion, oy vey

My initial attempt to get ruby 1.9.3 on OS X Lion ended in frustration. I followed the Octopress install instructions and attempted to install rbenv. This lead to a series of errors that had me installing an old version of gcc, clang, etc. I’m not a sysadmin, so I eventually just gave it up as a lost cause.

So, I moved on to installing octopress on my Windows 7 laptop - done - and a virtualbox guest Ubuntu using rvm - done.

Then, I discovered JewelryBox and decided to give the OS X install another shot.

OS X Mountain Lion Install Log

You can just skip this part if sysadmin details make you go cross-eyed.

• first attempt - install ruby-1.9.3-p125 failed because of readline
  • found this StackOver post about installing readline using homebrew yes, that means installing homebrew
• second attempt - after installing homebrew, I ran brew install readline. It barfed because I didn’t have Xcode 4.4.1.
  • Cleaned up harddrive because I didn’t have enough space to upgrade XCode
  • Opened the Mac Appstore and attempted to upgrade XCode
  • ran brew doctor and followed recommendations to remove macports/fink, old library files, and upgrade my compiler
  • after lots of wasted time, I was able to install readline. Now, to try installing ruby again…
• third attempt - failed again trying to install readline
  • tried this and after following the reinstall instructions on the rvm readline page, it works.

1
2

$ rvm pkg install readline
$ rvm reinstall 1.9.3-p125 --with-readline-dir=$rvm_path/usr

Lessons Learned

• ruby is for hackers
• Apple makes doing non-Apple things hard
• stackoverflow is an amazing asset for a developer

let’s try this again

Like a good geek, I love to try out new things. This site has always been the place that I can use as my playground to learn a new process or a technology.

For a while, I was running a custom rails app, now at social.dnorton.org. It pulls my friendfeed stream and displays it using some simple Javascript. It uses the standard rails CRUD functionality to add running race data (though you can see I haven’t used it in a while.) It even has an ext-js page to create and store random quotes.

Then, I switched to Tumblr, now at tumblr.dnorton.org for the simplicity and convenience. Tumblr has an incredibly simple workflow and an amazing community. But over the last few months, I’ve found myself using it less and less in favor of Google+ which has evolved into my ideal tool for sharing information.

I noticed a trend developing with some of my favorite bloggers like Matt Gemmell and Marco Arment. They are beginning to move away from dynamic blogs - the usual Wordpress/Mysql combination - in favor of “baked” blogs that actually compile text files into HTML. I decided after reading these articles, that I would make the leap as well.

• Matt Gemmell: Blogging with Octopress
• Marco Arment’s Second Crack
• Rudy Jachan: Moved from Wordpress to Jekyll Part 1
• Brent Simmons: A plea for baked weblogs

what about all my existing posts?

I’m not migrating my Tumblr posts. I’m leaving them on Tumblr. Everything here is all new. Please drop me a comment and let me know what you think.