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Fantasy Sports August 18, 2008

Posted by postalblue in Life, San Francisco, Sports, Website, Work-related.
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With all that has been going on lately, I haven’t even had time to think about two of my favorite things: fantasy football and fantasy cycling.  

As you probably know, I run a fantasy cycling website.  It’s still in its’ infancy, but I’m seeing a few people logging in here and there.  Word of mouth worked well during the Tour de France.  I can only hope that trend continues.  

Either way, I haven’t had and don’t foresee having the time required to effectively put on a good fantasy game for this September’s Vuelta.  I might be able to get all of the checkpoints in on time, and get the riders into the system before the race begins… but I definitely have NOT had time to do any research.  Neither have I had time to do any kind of promotion.

As far as fantasy football goes, I’m usually quite obsessed.  This year, though, I just haven’t had the time.  My usual league drafts tonight and I won’t be around.  Even if I were to be there, I’m picking ninth.  Where’s the fun in that?  And to top that all off, the league commissioner decided at the last minute to make some slick changes to the point system, rendering Yahoo’s normal pre-draft rankings useless.  

Le sigh.

On a slightly better note, this is my last week of work.  Consultancy sucks.  I need a beer.

Web Browsers May 21, 2008

Posted by postalblue in Website.
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This is going to sound blasphemous to some of you, but I’ve actually been using Safari (Apple’s browser) quite a lot in recent months.  I quite like it.  It’s no Firefox, but then again, I don’t know if anyone can hope to produce a browser as awesome as Firefox.

A few months ago, I realized my website looked a bit funny in Internet Explorer.  That made me a bit paranoid.  I don’t want to be sending this website to any potential employers if it’s not going to look it’s best regardless of the browser they use.  So I made a point to start using all of the browsers interchangeably.  Yes, that’s right – I spent some significant time using IE7, Firefox 2, Safari, and now Firefox 3.

Firefox 3 is definitely the best browser I’ve ever used.  Safari’s nice.  They say it runs faster than most browsers, but I don’t buy it.  It may run fast on OS X-based computers, but I haven’t noticed any marked improvements on my Thinkpad.  The one thing Safari does have going for it?  Text smoothing.  Text just looks great in Safari.  The smoothing option is spiffy on my laptop – and Lenovo’s are known for their incredibly sharp displays.  Whenever I want to read an article, a blog, anything – I tend to gravitate to Safari for just that reason.

I’m not saying I’m going to make the switch or anything.  I’m a Mozilla man through and through.  But it’s nice to have a change every once and a while.

Oh, and as a side note: Internet Explorer has absolutely no redeeming qualities.  

Not my fault! May 16, 2008

Posted by postalblue in Life, Strange Happenings, Website, Work-related.
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Okay, I must admit – I have been exceptionally lax with my updates lately. I blame this entirely on that fantasy cycling website that I mentioned in my previous post. It has been eating up a lot of my free time – so much, in fact, that I’m beginning to wonder whether or not I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.

There are a surprising number of daily tasks that I’ve got to do to keep my website running. I write stage recaps. I do some research into tomorrow’s stage. I input all of the scoring and placement information. I have to prod users who’ve forgotten to update their line-ups in recent time. Then I write daily messages and try to keep spirits high, even for those users who have little knowledge of the sport and little interest in the site.

It’s not easy. In fact, it’s exhausting. The Giro’s a 21-stage race, though, and we’re already seven stages down. That’s one-third of the way! Of course, the end of the Giro only means the Tour de France is approaching… but that’s a bridge I am resigned to cross when I get to it.

Fantasy Cycling & the Giro d’Italia May 7, 2008

Posted by postalblue in Cycling, Website.
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I spent most of the winter building and testing a website. It was a huge project and it’s finally come to fruition.  The finished product is a fantasy cycling site, much like the fantasy football or baseball sites you may use to pass the time at work… when you’re not reading random blogs, that is.

Anyway, I’m having the hardest time drumming up interest in this site.  I know there’s a demand for fantasy cycling.  It’s got to be out there.  There are other, smaller, less-advanced sites that are quite popular, especially when it comes to the Tour de France.  Why, then, can I not convince anyone to join mine?

If you’re a cycling fan or are interested in checking out this site, head on over to www.FCYCLE.com.  It’s totally free, I promise, and I’m not going to do anything with your e-mail address or any of that business.  I just want people to join and have a good time following the sport.  The Giro is going to be a great race.  I am very excited to see how the site handles 21 days of racing!

Two Good Things February 15, 2008

Posted by postalblue in Running, Website.
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Today’s been fairly productive.  Not only was I able to launch the second beta test phase of my latest web project – I also ran almost seven miles!

I woke up early this morning.  I’d sent out e-mails to my beta testers last night and sure enough, I had some issues to deal with as soon as I woke up.  Fortunately, I was able to take care of those issues in a timely fashion and now things are rolling smoothly.  I haven’t heard too many complaints, but I have received some feedback and that’s always a good thing.

After some initial troubleshooting, I put a playlist together and hopped onto the treadmill for a sixty minute run.  This is all part of my time-based training plan: I’m not going to focus on running distances any more – it’s all about time.  Now I should probably thank the treadmill for how great a run that was, but man… it was a great run.  I hit a 9:05 mi/hr average and my legs don’t even feel too bad.

Anyway, I’m pretty psyched because of that.  I know if it’d been sixty minutes running outside, I wouldn’t be able to make it up the stairs for the rest of the day… but I’m just going to be content with what I’ve accomplished and give myself a little pat on the back.

As far as my running goes, I’ve got a pretty sweet schedule in place now.  I like the time idea – it’s fairly flexible.  If I manage to get an easy 30 minute run in tomorrow, I’ll have 200 solid minutes under my belt for the week.  For every week that passes, I’m going to add ten minutes (roughly 1.2 miles) to that total.  Next week, I’ll fit 210 minutes, 220 the week after and so forth.

My weekly schedule isn’t bad, either.  Two off days, two lighter days, one long run and two middle-distance runs.  I’ll have to incorporate some interval training into that mix at some point, but I’m in no rush to get there right now.

I want to make a concerted effort to run outside at least once a week.  This is going to be difficult until the weather warms up a bit, but I’m just going to have to suck it up.  There’s no other way to prepare my legs for the abuse they’re going to take this summer when I’m running outside all the time.

Anyway, congratulations me!  6.75 miles ain’t to shabby!