Well I sat down today and made my commitments to a handful of endurance events for the remainder of the year. I have four confirmed and still have some hope to get a fifth in.

I am now signed up for and committed to the Central Florida Triathlon Series, which is a three race event. They take place over the summer, each about a month apart, the first event is just a few weeks away on June 22, then July 20 and finally August 17 and each consist of a .25 mile swim, 8 mile bike and 3 mile run. If you are from the Florida area and into triathlons I am sure you have heard just how nice it is to race in Clermont. I am a little nervous, I have done numerous triathlons in the past ranging from a short sprint distance all the way up to Ironman distance events, however I had strayed away from triathlons in favor of running events and this will be my first in a while. It should be a great series though.

Then after these triathlon events are wrapped up I am also signed up and committed to the John Holmes 50k (about 31 mile) trail run, that is done here where I live in Brooksville and takes place on October 11. I had a really good event the year before, (that is where the above pic was taken, that was about the half way mark), then last year had a horrible day and ended up pulling myself from the race due to severe dehyration at about the 29.5 mile mark. Sadly I could not even stand long enough without getting dizzy to even walk (or crawl) the remaining 1.5 miles. So this year I have something to prove.

Otherwise I have once again signed up for the NYC Marathon lottery with hopes of getting lucky. Should I get picked that should prove to be an interesting event as it takes place on November 2, just a few short weeks after my 50k trail run. Oh well, it will make for a good mental test.

Moving into next year, I have hopes to move into an early season Half Ironman sometime around May, where they typically have an event in Orlando Florida, but will have to see how the training goes before I commit to that. I am also hoping to get another full Ironman and a full 50 mile trail run under my belt within the next 1-2 years.

A while back Darren over at ProBlogger had asked his readers that purchased his book to take a photo with it, and sadly its taken me way longer than it should have to even take the picture. Based on that you can imagine I have yet to start reading it either. I am kind of bummed about that but it comes with good reason. I am in the process of finishing up some work contracts and have recently picked up some additional blogging opportunities. If all goes well I expect to be able to blog near 100% in the not to distant future!

While I am VERY far from making the 6 figures that Darren’s book covers, I still feel some accomplishment of being able to do what many dream of doing.

So, with that, I promise I will read the book soon, and also promise to post a review once completed.

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While I already love my current Jawbone headset, which still not only looks like new, but also sounds great I just could not resist the temptation to get the “new” Jawbone. The 50% smaller design, which was my only real complaint with the current Jawbone, its a little on the large side along with the promise of the better sound quality thanks to something they are calling “NoiseAssassin technology” convinced me to make my purchase.

I placed my order a little but after the announcement, on May 20 and just went with the standard shipping. I was feeling cheap and hoping for the best. Well sadly, on the 21st I got the dreaded email to let me know that it was being delayed. Kind of sucks but I can deal and what makes it even sweeter is that that hoped to have it shipped by the 23rd, which really was only two days of a delay and to top it off they are upgrading me to overnight shipping.

It’s always nice when a company stands behind what they are doing, and Aliph has done just that! Keep reading to check out the nice, polite and generous email that was sent. Now to keep my fingers crossed and hope there are not any further delays, and to Aliph — Thanks!

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With my renewed effort to not only keep this site going, but also growing I have added a new way to subscribe to the content. While I know that most who read and follow along are getting it via an RSS feed, I also wanted to have the option to subscribe by email as well.

The email is actually nice, it comes in the form of a daily summary, which gives the previous days posts all in one nice email, so far it has been arriving early in the morning (EST), usually around 7am or 8am.

As for anyone interested in doing the same for your site, it was very, very easy to set up. It took longer to post the code in my sidebar than anything. And for anyone who has edited a theme should know, that is pretty simple.

I am using FeedBlitz for my list management, and the setup process was done using Feedburner, although you can also do it directly from them by visiting their site. If you are a Feedburner user the setup took just a few seconds, once logged into your account, click on the feed that you want the email list setup for and then from there just click on the “Publicize” tab, then on the left hand side click “Email Subscriptions.”

Once there, you will have a few options of service to choose from. Quick and easy! There were three total services to use, I first tried the Feedburner option to manage my list, but got an error, so just went to the next on the list (FeedBlitz), which turns out was a good choice.

Enjoy and feel free to “Subscribe By Email”

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Being self-employed and working from home, I have the good fortune of using and running whatever programs I feel that I need or want to use or even just try out. While there are tons of programs installed on my Mac, everything from apps used to rip (MacTheRipper), strip (DVD2oneX) and burn DVD’s (Toast) to watching live TV (EyeTV), and more practical items such as banking (iBank) as well as Pages and Numbers, here are the ones that I am generally running at all times.

Beginning with the obvious first:

Firefox: Firefox 3 RC1. What else can be said here, a must have for web browsing. Within Firefox is generally Google Reader along with my blogging pages (Expression Engine and Wordpress).

Apple Mail: Standard Mail application for the Mac, while it may not be perfect it works well for my needs. I am not a fan of checking my mail within the browser and use IMAP for my many email accounts. I also store the important emails locally on my Mac, just in case.

Adium: In my opinion the best multiple chat program for the Mac, I have a few Google Chat accounts set up as well as a lightly used AIM account.

Skype: The standard for computer based VOIP calling, although I hesitate to call this daily as I am not always logged in, I tend to jump on to make a call and then disconnect after the call is over.

Twitterific: With an addiction to Twitter a dedicated app is necessary, however Twitterific is slowly being replaced by twhirl, which helps me follow the traffic on FriendFeed a little easier.

TextEdit: Basic bare bones text document creator. I do all my blogging with this and then copy and paste the post into either Expression Engine or Wordpress. I find that TextEdit is far less likely to crash then Firefox, this way I do not have to worry as much about any loss of work, while I am in the writing process.

Pixelmator: I used Photoshop Elements for so long and was comfortable and hesitant to switch, but I am so glad that I finally went ahead. Pixelmator is a wonderful tool, especially for those without the need for anything crazy like the full version of Photoshop.

TimeOut: A great app that simply reminds me when to take a break, its nice and customizable and allows you to schedule the frequency of full and micro breaks. Sometimes when I get into writing and editing posts or even checking my RSS feeds time can fly by without me even realizing. This is a life, well actually eye saver for me.

Snackr: A recent addition, I actually just installed this today and have it running up the left hand side of my second monitor. I am not 100% certain on if this will last as it may become more of a time waster than a useful app for me. Meaning it may distract me from getting my work done, time will tell on this, but first impressions is that its pretty cool. Of course being an RSS junkie I had to set it to display only feeds from the current day.

iTunes: I am a Mac user and this is iTunes, what more can I say, I have way more GB’s of music than I really need and I am subscribed to all of my podcasts using it also. I have however been listening to my Zune Marketplace tracks a lot more than my iTunes collection lately.

Zune Marketplace: Another recent edition, this one is just about a week old, and after some initial frustrations with Windows DRM issues, I am loving the Zune and wish I had picked one up sooner. The subscription model is great, I can listen to all kinds of cool tracks that I love and just do not want to have to pay for, I have been downloading all kinds of cool stuff that I used to listen to years ago. Sadly this is running on a second computer, a basic Compaq desktop PC running Windows XP, but to make me feel better about using Windows everyday, I prefer to call it a music player instead of a computer.

Well, those were my daily use apps, but like I mentioned I have and use lots more on a fairly regular basis. So whats your list looking like?

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