Milestone complete

As a follow-up to my original post 6 months ago, I completed a major milestone in my quest to run the SF Marathon in July. This past Sunday, I ran the the Kaiser SF Half Marathon; beating my 2 hour goal by a few minutes (1:56:31). Highlights of the half-marathon include: running with a unicorn, listening to the one-man drum circle, high-fiveing a human-size Lego man, and finishing!

In order to beat my 4 hour Marathon goal, I still have a lot more miles in front of me. But I'm thrilled to be on plan.

Twas the night before Announcement...

Twas the night before Announcement, when all through Cupertino
Not an atom was leaking, not even a neutrino,
The banners were hung on the auditorium with care,
In hopes that SJ soon would be there.

The fan boys were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions on gadgets danced in their heads.
When out on De Anza there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

"Now Schiller! now, Johnson! now, Cook and Jony Ive!
On, Forstall! On, Oppenheimer! On, Serlet, look alive!
To the top of Caffe Macs! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!"

He was dressed in blue jeans with white sneakers of old,
And a black turtleneck to protect from the cold.
He wore circular eyeglasses from decades ago,
His appearance was humble, simple, no show.

A knowing smile, soon covered his face
He knew the media would soon be on the chase
I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
"Think Different to all, and to all a good-night!"

NYTimes: The New Sputnik

From The New York Times:

OP-ED COLUMNIST: The New Sputnik

China is embarking on a new, parallel path of clean power deployment
and innovation. It is the Sputnik of our day. Unfortunately, we're
still not racing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/opinion/27friedman.html

Get The New York Times on your iPhone for free by visiting http://itunes.com/apps/nytimes

Alec

A little Apple inspiration

On my first day of work at Apple one year ago, I received a little gift with a t-shirt (with my start date on the back) and a little cardboard card. Here's the text from the card:

There's work and there's your life's work.

The kind of work that has your fingerprints all over it. The kind of work that you'd never compromise on. The kind of work that you'd sacrifice a weekend for. You can do that kind of work at Apple. People don't come here to play it safe. They come here to swim in the deep end.

They want their work to add up to something.

Something big. Something that couldn't happen anywhere else.

Welcome to Apple.

Witty quotes

"It's better to fail in originality, than succeed in imitation" - Herman Melville

"Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm" - Winston Churchill

"Those who lack courage will always find a philosophy to justify it" - Albert Camus

"Some people take no mental exercise apart from jumping to conclusions" - Harold Acton

"Happiness is a singular incentive to mediocrity" - Michel Montaigne

"If everything seems under control you're not going fast enough" - Mario Andretti

"We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are" - Anais Nin

"Awards are merely a badge of mediocrity" - Charles Ives

Day 1

I drove by the SF Marathon this morning as I head out of SOMA to drop off a friend at SFO, and realized that I no longer have any legitimate excuses to not do something I've wanted to do for a while. So... I hereby publicly commit myself to running the SF Marathon in 2010. This will be my first marathon (hopefully of many), and I'm currently out-of-shape, so I'll need all 52 weeks to make this happen. My goal is to complete the race under 4 hours. I'm heading to the gym right now for Day 1.

I was playing around with QR codes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code) today, and thought I would post the QR code for this website for future reference. You can make your own QR code for a URL/text here: http://qrcode.kaywa.com/

You can used the free iPhone app "Barcodes" to scan this barcode, which will direct you to this site.