I flew out to Utah to assist in the set-up of a company’s Web-site, Johnson Financial and Accounting Services, as well as integrating it with Quickbooks 2010. The learning curve is steep but I am enjoying myself and it looks like we are not going to be going forward with accepting Intuit’s services in assisting with this, we’ve decided to move through another avenue.

I’ve also brought my bike with me and have ridden a few times. The temperature has varied anywhere from the mid-50s, like today, to the mid-20s, with snow, as was a few days ago. I was also at a local coffee shop, death to Big-name coffee chains that serve mediocre coffee, and two of the patrons were discussing the deteriorating skiing conditions and that the people running one of the resorts is going to stop doing… something… as the snow is getting more and more thin. I’m not sure what that something was, but they did add the “deteriorating” comment so I knew what they were talking about.

Go to the east coast, I suppose, if you want to go skiing? Maybe it’s melting there, too. After all, that is what snow does once it starts getting warmer.

Next week brings graduation for me. I’ll be moving on to another stage in my life with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science… not the most exciting accomplishment, so I feel, but a step closer to… well, something that I wasn’t a step closer to without the degree. The project that I’ve been working on over the past three months has been a web application for a local magazine called The Smart Shopper. It’s a magazine that focuses on advertising local businesses. I know I complained about this last time I blogged but I felt that I should do it again as I’m approaching the final sprint to the finish. As in bicycle racing, I’m not a sprinter, sprint finishes leave me begging for mercy.

The web application that I’m developing is an e-bayesque application that will integrate with The Smart Shopper’s current avenue of selling advertisements within it’s pages. This project turned out to be a thousand times more difficult that I thought it would be and every time I make some progress I learn something new and end up returning to the point I was at two weeks ago and re-writing everything I have done. Two steps forward, three steps back.

Granted, actual application of my skills to a real-world application is a heck of a lot more useful than being taught “how” to do something by reading a book. I think over to Ben “Helicopter” Bernanke’s solution as well as FDR 2.0’s grab for power over the sheeple and how Bernanke’s “solution” is just fuel for the fire of our new Overlord’s attempts at herding the peasants into re-electing him since no body “cares for” and “provides for” the people like he does… but I digress.

Sorry for not updating for so long. A friend asked about it yesterday and I acknowledged that it’s been a while since I’ve blogged, so, I figured I might as well do it now. In my final semester at school I’m developing an Ebay-esque web application for a local magazine. The website is going to be selling advertising space in upcoming issues of aforementioned magazine. It’s turning out to be 100 times more complicated than I had though it would be.

This whole journey through the cave of web-app development is turning out to be 3 a steps forward, 2.999 steps back-type of journey. Hence, I’m not sure if journey would be the correct term for it, rather, a Merry-Go-Round ride where the only forward motion is a ruse: it appears that you are going forward and… oh, wait, we’re turning and, oh, we are moving forward… hmmm, maybe not, we’re turning again, there is no forward momentum- type of journey.

Now that I think about it, that’s not really much of a journey, it’s more or less a senseless, futile pursuit to catch the horse in front of you when both of you are locked stationary. Actually, I jest a bit, there is some progress, sadly, it is taking a heck of a lot longer than I would like for me to make any headway. I am glad to say, though, that although it is taking a heck of a lot longer than I would like, I am making progress.

Since this blog should be about bicycling, I am getting the chance to bicycle. Sadly, almost none of it is with anyone but myself and it is usually 2 or 3 times per week, not the 6 times a week I would ride when I was in training and competition. Soon enough, I suppose, I’ll be back on the road more times per week. Once this madness ends.

The mafia that is the U.S. Government not only works against me by causing inflation (Austrian School of Economics definition) but builds road hazards with money that it shakes you and me down for to create the illusion of productivity that channels the good ol’ CCCP.

I’m on the local roads 6 days of the week and the one day I decide to use the highway-overcross that I don’t usually use, they decide to have begun construction on it (thank gawd we have TARP funds to create work we didn’t need on projects that aren’t necessary), making for dirty, slippery, gravel-covered terrain.

Again, praise the Lord that we have the Constitutionally-mandated Mafia with their FED-induced new found wealth to build death-traps to remind us that our overlords (Congressmen) like to squabble away our wealth in the most inefficient way possible and make sure that they will create opportunities to buy votes for the next election period and make Alex crash (which also leads to more votes).

Rode to school, cleaned my wounds, met with my professor to discuss my final project, returned home, changed, went back out for 3 hours on the road and then got back to work. Life is grand.

They weren’t as good as I had hoped but I was able to procure a B in that class.  I, of course, was hoping for a better grade but, suffice to say, I’m glad to have received the grade that I did as, even though the result of my programming was good, I felt that it left room for improvement.  After all, it was a project that was supposed to have been completed by 3 individuals and the end result was the product of only one of those three done over two weeks (I did a total re-design, start to finish) of what was supposed to have been done in eight. :-/

Besides that, well, I will post some Market commentary because my Blog is focused on whatever the heck pops into my head at the moment and this appears to be what has.  The credit markets, or at least the Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) that correlate closely to the long bond, is beginning to crumble again (and please correct me if I’m wrong as the one commenting on this is a stupid athlete). TLT, and it’s inverse, TBT, which measure the price action for 20+ year Grubvernment bond, is moving in favor of TLT. TLT measures, or is a close measure of, the risk appetite that exists within the markets. As TLT falls investors are looking to put their money to work in the private sector and as TBT falls, TLT rises, the risk-appetite is disappearing and individuals are not willing to put their money at risk and are, instead, looking to put their money to work in the leech sector.

Some of the foreign stock exchanges have begun to fall quite strongly and some of the bonds I follow are also getting hair cuts. The Hong Kong Stock Market, for example, tumbled a strong percentage over the last few days. Oh well, new semester begins, who cares about the Market when learning is on the table…

In two weeks time I will be finalizing this semester, or, at least, session A for this semester.  Everything is rather hectic at the moment as my group has, more or less, fallen apart (imho, we never became a fully-organized group from the beginning).  We are, or were, working on a project to create a pizza sales site.  I’ve spent the past few day redeveloping the site to get it up and running.  It was written in Microsoft’s ASP.Net 2.0 and although it’s not the greatest work that I’ve ever done, I am pleased to say that I find it to be a rather well done site, especially considering the time I’ve had to redo it and the fact that it was supposed to be done by 3 people and is, instead, only done by me.

I’m hoping to finalize the development of this web application by the end of the week and will let everybody know of the progress.

A few hours ago I returned from U.S. Nationals in Bend, Oregon. I was the 3rd to start in my category and passed my one, two and three minute man before the half way mark. The course was a 12 km out and back TT that started out as a straight-away at the start that turned into a quick 8-10% climb right out of the gate after 50 to 100 yards (estimate).

After the quick climb at the start of the course it flatted out for a brief sprint followed by a long, slow climb throughout most of the remaining course (until the turn around).

Following is a map of the layout and terrain-change of the TT course: map.

I was supposed to ride the 12k route but instead (like the idiot I am) only rode to the 10k marker and then turned around. Although I can say that the course was poorly marked, I arrived 36 hours later than scheduled because of airline delays and rerouting and, therefore, not having a chance to pre-ride the course, there were cones used for turn-arounds strewn about multiple locations of the course and many of the judges had absolutely no idea what was going on, the only person I can really blame for this incident is myself.

My time per kilometer, according to the head coach of U.S. Para-Cycling, Mr. Craig Griffin, (had I been assigned to the 10k course and not the 12k that I was assigned), would have placed me not only in the top 10 but would have allowed to medal and would have put me in Gold, as well. Sadly, my mistake disqualified me. Meaning, I will not be attending Worlds this year.

They are going to be held in Turin, Italy in mid-October this year. Granted, I’m working on finishing my degree this year (finally, some might say) and because of that would, possibly, have to skip Worlds; however, those are all excuses to make me feel better and give a reason to my failure instead of taking the blame that I am due. My own mis-steps lead to my downfall.

Expounding on my last post, as your altitude decreases the concentration of oxygen in the air increases and is the reason why many professional athlete’s subscribe to the “Train High, Sleep Low” methodology.  Of course, there are others that subscribe to the “Sleep High, Train Low” methodology.  From what I understand, which is probably very little as I’m a  dumb athlete, the main goal of this is to improve a person’s ability to convert oxygen in to energy and this improves with the availability of Oxygen in the air.

Oxygen is what assist mitochondreon in their production of Adenosine Triphophat, more commonly given the abbreviation ATP (P.S. what ATP stood for I had to look up, being the individual with limited mental capacity that I am).  ATP is the vehicle by which chemical energy is transported in cells.

Applying that to how the “Sleep High, Train Low” methodology works, while in your body’s rest state your body is generating a larger number of mitochondreon so that when you are training, or competing for that matter, your body has access to a higher number of mitocondrea to assist in the creation of energy.  At higher altitude, with less oxygen available, one’s body will produce higher number of mitochondrea per cell to assist in the intake of a lesser amount of oxygen to create the same amount of energy.

I hope that scatter-brained explanation made sense.

This year the U.S. National Championships are going to be held in Bend, Oregon.  Meaning, the race will be held at an elevation of around 3,000 feet.  Correlating that to athletics, the higher ones altitude is, the less dense the oxygen in the air, meaning, you have to breath in more to intake the same amount of oxygen that ones body takes in when at, similar to my Florida home, sea level.

It typically takes an individual over 30 days (I believe) to adapth to a change in oxygen content in the air.  For example, when athlete’s competed at the Mexico City (elevation about 7,000 feet) Olympic games they were flown in just prior to their race start so that their stregnth/endurance would not be as negativley affected as an individual who had arrived a week or two before.  The decline in performance is rather significant after the first day or two (if memory serves me correct) and slowly begins to work back up towards a decreased, but definitely better, level as your body adapts to the lower levels of oxygen concentration in the air. According to what I have seen, performance can decline as much as 45% over the first 4 days and then slowly builds back up, I believe it to be about 25 – 30% below, over the next 30 – 45 days, of what an athlete had at sea level.

Oxygen intake is important to athlete’s as it has a significant impact on one’s body’s ability to perform cardiovascular tasks.

The authors who write for Time are absolute morons, plain and simple.  That goes for anyone who reads the septic filth they term journalism and agress with the points that they conclude.  The issue that really raises my ire is an article by David M. Kennedy and lists several “lessons” that our current Overlord should learn from the first Communist President of the United States, FDR.

I nod my head in disdain at any incompetent that considers the scum-bag-in-chief Roosevelt to be the one that “rescued” us from the problems that existed during the Hoover – Roosevelt administrations.  Absolute imbeciles.  The Depression was exacerbated by the meddling of these incompetents and the masses agreeing that “only the grubvernment can save us” is what prolonged our plight.

Repeating these steps is a step in the wrong direction.