In which I recount a race time and manly geek skills

September 11, 2008

The 10k Pints to Pasta race came and went, and I did better than I thought I would, but not nearly as good as two years ago when I last ran.  I wouldn’t say I’m out of shape, just not in as good of shape.  Carrying extra weight and running yes doesn’t help, but I still managed to come in just under my goal–I felt like if I could finish in an hour, I’d be satisfied.  Well I crossed the finish line at 1:00:17, and I was annoyed that I’d come in 17 seconds late until I realized that I didn’t cross the starting line until nearly 1:30 after the start of the race.  With 3500 or so runners, it takes a bit to get there.  So, I ended up with a time of a little over 58 minutes, which I’m satisfied with.  My time two years ago was just over 45 minutes, so I didn’t do too much worse–just a bit slower and more methodical.

I chose not to participate in the 18 mile “Tour de Lab” bike ride to the three Lucky Lab brewpub locations, though.  I rode my bike to and from the race , and since the Hawthorne Bridge was closed all day on Sunday I had to go an extra couple miles out of my way each time.  I ended up riding about 10 miles on my bike to get there and back, and I was absolutely wiped out afterwards.  I don’t think I’ve ridden that slowly on my bike in years.  I had originally made plans to have lunch with a couple of friends of mine from Seattle who came down to run in the race, but I had to bail on them after I got home because there was no way I was going out again.  Nuh uh.  Instead, I sat in a chair and alternated browsing the Internet and napping, pretty much until it was time for dinner.

Our upstairs neighbors asked if if they could split the cost of Internet with us and mooch off Hanne’s and my connection, and while I was initially skeptical about exposing my network to people I don’t really know all that well, after taking a few precautions regarding password protecting, I thought that perhaps splitting the cost might be a good idea.  I even took the opportunity to upgrade the speed of our connection to compensate for the extra users and five-way cost split, which is something I’d wanted to do anyway, but Hanne was concerned about paying additional costs for bills as a student.  I had a perfect excuse now!  So now instead of a paltry 1.5 Mbps DSL connection, I have a much more mainstream 7 Mbps connection.  I could probably go even faster if I did cable, but frankly, I just don’t wnat to have anything to do with Comcast.  Qwest has served me well, and I don’t have to buy any additional equipment or change anything up–I did everything online and they just opened the Internet up a little more for us.

Once the speed boost went into effect, though, I started noticing that our connection was seriously dragging.  Granted, I have a tendency sometimes to saturate the bandwidth as I’m downloading something, but it’s not for extended periods of time and it didn’t affect anyone except Hanne, who typically only browses, anyway.  So, what to do?  Knock on the door leading to upstairs and yell at them to stop whatever it was they’re doing?  Nope.  When people don’t hear anything, they think they’re getting away with it, and I don’t want to knock on the door every time my Internet connection slows down.  Instead, I used my skills as a Network Support Technician and I simply guaranteed Hanne and myself a certain chunk of bandwidth to use at any given time.  The way the connection works is that any one person can use as much or as little of the connection as their computer can possibly handle, and then when more than one person tries that, things slow down for everyone.  I set aside a rule in my router to say that if the Internet connection is saturated by someone else, either Hanne’s or my computer are guaranteed to use up to the amount of our previous Internet connection speed, and the rest is available for everyone else to use.  That’s only when the connection is busy, though, and so if no one else is using it, I or anyone else gets the full amount to themselves.  I decided to be magnanimous about the amount set aside for my use, though–I had originally set it to be 75% of the connection, but I’m happy with my old speed back if it gets busy.

And sure, I could do this for everyone and make sure that everyone has a chunk of bandwidth set aside for them, but if the connection gets bogged down among the three people upstairs, I’ll let them sort out which one of them is hogging the connection.  I felt this was a better option than simply degrading the connection for them.  They are splitting the cost with me, even if I do own the equipment and have the know-how to make myself King of my connection.

Hanne takes off today for a weekend in Minnesota to see her college friends, and so I find myself without companionship for the next few days.  Tomorrow after work I’m going to meet my Dad at the Bridgeport Brewpub for a couple of pints of their Hop Harvest fresh hop ale that’s debuting tomorrow, and then after that the weekend is pretty much on my own.  I have a lot of stuff to do to prepare for Dan coming and staying with us next week, like organizing and cleaning, but that can’t possibly take up the whole weekend.  Perhaps I shall find a game and play it until I can play no more, or cook myself a fine dinner and watch manly movies like Die Hard or Rambo.

Nah.  I’ll probably end up doing a lot of cleaning, a lot of sitting around, and maybe watch one movie.  Face it–I’m whipped.

Posted in Beer, Food, Geekery, General, Hanne, Movies, Running