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Four weeks ago, at 5:00 in the morning a gun shot was heard and an impressive display of fireworks were set off. That was in Honolulu, Hawaii. I wasn’t really there for business or pleasure. It was determination of achieving one goal by the end of 2009. That goal was to complete my first ever, full marathon. A fool full 26.2 mile race. The primary goal was completion and secondary was under 5 hours.

Looking back at the majority of 2009 it wasn’t that challenging. It did definitely have it’s challenging and trying times. Especially those that caused my stress and blood pressure to rise almost to the breaking point. Those of you close to me, know exactly the series of events that I’m talking about. I try not to focus on them too much so that I can still keep smiling.

Back to Hawaii. It’s often where my mind goes when I need to escape anyways. It was the start of the Honolulu Marathon—MY Honolulu Marathon. Myself and over 20,000 other competitors began putting one foot in front of the other. The streets were dark with the exception of basic illumination from overhead street lights. It was a weird feeling running through downtown Waikiki, running red lights—granted on foot. I was amazed at the number of people out cheering the runners on, even though it was so early in the morning.

The race for me was amazing. I don’t remember a whole lot about running the race. I pretty much got lost in my mind. There were definitely parts that I remember like watching the sunrise over the Pacific Ocean while running through mile 12. The sweltering heat along the H1 around mile 21. And of course the beer keg at mile 24 — which I realized was beer after I’d already passed by.

The biggest single benefit that I got out of the run though was learning that when I set my mind on a goal, and something to focus on that I’m highly passionate about, there’s no stopping me. It boasts well for an upcoming post on my 2010 goals that I know I need to do.

And it’s true what they say about a runners high. It’s been 4-weeks and I still love reflecting on the feeling of it. Even through the exhaustion and pain. I’m looking forward to my next one—once I figure out which one it will be. Have you got any running tips or experiences about running, whether a marathon or anything else? Let me know in the comments. Happy running.

I knew that my one year anniversary for joining Twitter was coming up soon so I set out to find out when I joined. According to whendidyoujointwitter.com it was a year ago today! My how time flies. My good friend Lyndsay had been trying to get me to join for months. And I do mean months; not days or weeks—full on months. I was hesitant as I was already addicted to too many time wasters. As mentioned in a previous post, she turned me on to quite a few great people I have slowly gotten to know through conversation. Now I’m not sure how it seems I could live without it.

I’ve discussed web development concepts, including a few of my “big ideas” with people. Helped troubleshoot Mac OS X issues (which were actually Microsoft issues). Commented on running and even on my own first full-marathon. I’ve found some great SEO tips and genuinely had fun. In fact, thanks to Twitter and some goof ball on it, I managed to go to my first ever PubCon in Las Vegas back in November 2009. Let’s just say when registration opens for the 2010, I’ll be sure to book my space early so I can take in some of the sessions.

All in all, it’s been a pretty sweet year when I look back on Twitter and how it has positively impacted my life. It’s had a few negative moments too, but we won’t go there. So tell me, when did you join Twitter? Leave it in the comments below.

Wow! It’s been a whole week since I set out to blog daily. Surprisingly it’s come fairly easily. I think that’s because I have no general direction for the blog yet, so pointless ramblings seem to make it easy. I do have some specific drafts setup with subjects and a few links for when I hit the inevitable writers block, however so far I’ve been relatively lucky. I also went back and reviewed some previous posts from over the years that have generated some ideas.

That said, I’m sure that you might have some ideas you’d like to see more information about? Something quick, something in depth, just something. Please, leave an idea (or three) in the comments below and I’ll be sure to write about it in the upcoming weeks.

Thanks for commenting, thanks for reading, and thanks in advance for telling your friends.

I was trying to think of something to write today and it came to me at breakfast with a little extra thought. I was making my morning Double Americano with Fresh Ground Kona Coffee Beans (yes I love Hawaii, but that’s for another post), when it came to me. Why does boiled water seem to re-boil faster? I pondered the thought for a while and even thought about punching in a query into Google, but I thought of a better way.

It seems as though mother’s have been making it into blog posts. BTW, if you haven’t checked out Lyndon Reid’s mom shotgunning a beer…you need to. My mom would never do something like that, but she is a science geek. In fact she’s got her Ph. D and is a serial cereal chemist for the government. So I decided to email her for some insight (thanks Lyndon for the inspired thought).

Hey mom

I figured I’d ask my favorite Ph D person this question since I figure it’s somewhat science related:

Q: Why does previously boiled water, boil faster the second time around…even the next day?

I was making coffee this morning/afternoon an this definitely happened. I figure since you’re a cereal chemist that typically eats oatmeal (a cereal grain) for breakfast and it requires boiled water you would be able to answer it quickly.

In non-typical government fashion, it didn’t take long for my mother to reply. I had a reply in under 15 minutes (it was actually 12).

As far as I know it’s because you’ve driven most of the air out of it the first time you heated it so when you ‘re-boil’ it the heat transfer is faster – but don’t quote me on it (in your case it could have been that the water you boiled the first time was cooler than when you re-boiled it therefore you wouldn’t have to heat it so long to get it to the boiling point). Where you live there could even be some effects of atmospheric pressure (thought I doubt this).

TTFN

I always love the TTFN she signs off with in reference to Winnie the Pooh stories. Anyways, back to the thought. It didn’t seem as though her answer was really to concrete on the thoughts. In fact she even says “don’t quote me on it”. So with that I had to hit Google. Low and behold the first result about Water Freezing and Boiling Myths has an answer:

Previously boiled water boils faster than regular water. Likewise, previously boiled water at room temperature should boil faster than water that has never been boiled, for the same reason it freezes faster (less dissolved oxygen).

So mom, it looks like you were right. I guess it’s just further proof that our mothers really are a source of information, knowledge and love. So if you’ve got a beer or glass of wine, raise it in a toast to your mom—or in the case of Lyndon, shotgun it with her!

With web hosting being so affordable nowadays, many web hosts allow for multiple domains to be hosted either through multiple domain hosting, or through the use of parked domains. With domains from www.GoDaddy.com being so affordable, it’s common to get .com, .org, .net and more — especially for brand protection and online reputation management. The only issue with parking your domains is that if done incorrectly, you could potentially be penalized for having duplicate content. Many search engines explicitly indicate that duplicate content will face a penalty in their ranking. Suddenly your protection of your brand name or keywords doesn’t pay.

I came into this a few months ago when I needed to redirect ExtremePitaCatering.com to ExtremePitaNE.com while not losing any organic search results. The other kicker, they’re hosted on the same server, pointing at the same directory. It makes it easy to maintain. Reasoning behind the new domain is beyond the scope of this post, however simply forwarding the domain was the easiest route.

If you’re looking to forward a domain name, you’ll want to add the following code to your .htaccess

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} extremepitacatering.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://extremepitane.com/$1 [R=301,L]


The above is almost the exact code I use on the Extreme Pita Catering website. The best part is that it forwards the user seamlessly for old business cards out there, old search results, and pretty much anything else. Additionally it tosses a 301 status to the browser (or search bot) indicating to no longer index the page, but to update it to the new one.

Honestly, it’s a quick fix for those with an Apache server and mod_rewrite existing. Did I miss something? Am I doing it wrong? Have you got another way to forward a parked domain correctly?