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Well I did it! I ran in my first marathon. And while it was a relay marathon, meaning my leg was only 5 miles of the total 40, I feel fairly proud of myself. Why? Well because I am not a runner, in fact I pretty much have always hated running. But every year in Idaho Falls there is this event held called “To Bone and Back” (Bone being the name of a small farming community 20 miles from Idaho Falls). Last year I told myself that I would run in that race this year. So when the time came I signed up with the team at work and began my training. Now the Bone and Back relay is unique from my understanding. It is a 40-mile race through very up-and-down terrain. Most people run as part of an 8-person team, running 5 miles a piece, but you can also run as a 4-person, 2-person, or even SOLO event. I ended up running the 7th leg, beginning sometime around 11:30. The seventh leg I thought would be the easiest because the majority of it is downhill, perhaps about a mile of it is otherwise. However, I learned the hard way that you need to train just as much for downhill as you do for uphill. I finished my leg in about 44 or 45 minutes (I forgot to look at my watch right away when I crossed the line, it read 45 min when I did), which was my goal. The problem is now, three days later, I still am so sore I can hardly stand it, especially in my hips and ankles, despite all the stretching and such I’ve done. Before the race I was running 5-6 miles once or twice per week without feeling hardly any soreness at all. The difference was I was training on flat ground (usually a treadmill). Next year I’ll know better. Anyway our team finished in 5:55:32, which placed us #10 in our category of 45 teams. Not too bad in my opinion.

I think maybe running is something I want to continue with, perhaps do some 10k runs in the future. Does anyone have tips or advice for a novice runner?

Side note: I wrote this way back in the day (September 2009) long before the current healthcare bill passed. I have yet to read what actually did pass and compare the two. Perhaps that would make for another interesting post.

Organizational Flowchart of the House Democrat's Healthcare Plan

Yeah, I’m saying it. Not only do I think this new Obama healthcare deal is bad for the healthcare industry, I think it will be bad for economy as well. Hopefully I’m reading the correct HR3200 “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009″, but I have read into it about 500 pages (of the …1017 I think?) and am having a hard time finding why this is good for anyone. Anyone who is unfamiliar with the Bill should go here for the down and dirty of it:

The Health Care Bill – John David Lewis

Now that we’re all on track, let’s continue. If I’m understanding this correctly, this Bill will do the following things:

1. Require all Americans to have “acceptable insurance”. Even those grandfathered in will be required to meet the requirements for “acceptable” within 5 years. Those who are not appropriately insured will face a penalty of 2.5% of the adjusted gross income.
2. Employers will no longer offer private insurance. Instead they will opt to pay the 8% tax penalty in most instances because it will save them money and time overall. Take for example:
   

   Average premium per person per year in this country are $7500. In this example company we employ 400 people.

   $7500 x 400 = $3,000,000

   On average our employees make $50,000 per year.

   $50,000 * 400 = $20,000,000 payroll.

   thus

   $20,000,000 * 8% = $1,600,000

   A savings of $1.4 million, not including time spent and man hours spent renegotiating our health insurance every year.

3. By businesses largely no longer offering health insurance, many insurance companies will go ot of business. The health insurance industry employs roughly 3 million plus people from what I’ve heard. Three million Americans displaced from middle- to high-paying jobs is no small matter. Yes, I realize some of those will be absorbed by the new Government plan, but surely not everyone.
4. The government plan will NOT be free healthcare. In theory, it would provide free “wellness” visits, those are preventative visits. For other visits you would be required to pay 70/30, which means the Government will pick up 70% of the bill while leaving you to pay the other 30%. Most private insurances offered by employer pay anywhere from 75-90%.
5. You will not get to choose when you are hospitalized. While the proposed plan provides that no one shall be excluded for pre-existing conditions or other limiting factors, it also puts a limit on readmissions. If you have a condition that statistically does not result acceptable discharge rates, meaning they can be treated, then you cannot be re-admitted to a hospital for the same condition. What this means to me is terminal patients, go die at home. Or any disease that has a high mortality rate for that matter. Sepsis, stroke, geriatric hip fractures….you’re all out of luck.
6. The Government’s fees will not be all the much less, and if you don’t pay your bill it will be a federal offense (just like not paying your taxes)! Also, there are provisions in the bill that the “commissioner” has no limit on fees set and the fees cannot be questioned by any authority.
7. The “commissioner” is appointed by the President and cannot be investigated by the legislative or judicial branches. There is no definition of qualifications for the said office. Let’s see, how much more power can we bestow on one person? Where are our checks and balances?

Just a few of my thoughts, but as always I welcome discussion

Here’s an interesting little thing that caught my attention. Apparently Hawaiian legislature has just introduced a bill that would ban all pit bulls from the state of Hawaii. If passed, anyone owning or in possession of a pit bull would be guilty of a misdemeanor.

Now personally, I don’t like pit bulls at all. It has nothing to do with their supposed disposition, I just think they’re ugly. But all that aside, I have some real problems with this kind of law. “Breed-specific” laws are completely unfounded in my opinion. You can’t single out one breed for it’s temperament (I can understand “wild” breeds, but not domesticated). But this bill isn’t necessarily breed-specific. Apparently the great representatives of the people of Hawaii have failed to realize there are more than 20 breeds of dog that are classified as “Pit Bull”. Not only that, but what about pit mixes? At what percentage of “Pit Bull” is a dog considered to be illegal to own? It’s a very broad and poorly-written bill.

My other issue is this: what makes a pit bull more dangerous than any other breed of dog? People have this misconception that Pit Bulls are mean, aggressive dogs. The truth is that these breeds are more reliable and friendly than most breeds out there today. In fact, in temperament tests conducted by the ATTS, pit bulls pass at a rate of about 86%. For comparison, a standard collie tests in at just over 79% out of over 800 dogs tested and only 81% of all dogs ever tested pass the temperament test. A pit bull that is well socialized and taken proper care of is just as safe and reliable as a golden retriever, and this is based on statistical data.

Anyway, I just wanted to cast my opinion that this kind of legislature is stupid. What do you think? For some more information:

StopBSL.com

Update: You can track the progress of the Bill by clicking here.

As a lot of you know, or maybe read here , I’ve been working on this whole “fish business” thing. That fish business started out in the planning phases as an aquarium service-only business but has now shifted focus into aquarium sales and service with an emphasis on fish sales. You see, I’ve gotten into breeding clownfish just recently, and not only is it fascinating to me, but very profitable if done correctly. These little guys fetch around $10 each from the local fish stores, and I have about 120 full-size clowns in my possession right now.

So why the shift in focus? Well mainly because I want to still be flexible enough to move around if need be. Fish breeding has a unique advantage over a service company in that I can still sell fish to anyone in the country no matter where I live, although the shipping costs can be a bit outrageous. To my knowledge, no one in this area is actively breeding fish for stores. We’ll see how it goes, and I’ll keep everyone updated.

The other day I finally gave into the nagging of my WP Automatic Upgrade plugin and upgraded to version 2.7. I thought this would be just another minor fix, but to my dismay…the whole thing is different! After loggin in again I really didn’t know where anything was. No worries though, I have it all figured out now and the new dashboard is actually pretty smooth. I’ll reserve final judgement though, because I still miss my old dashboard . Oh well, here’s to embracing progress!

Just a few short months ago I jumped on the smartphone bandwagon and got my Motorola Q9c with Sprint. It’s an awesome phone that does more than I can even imagine, but it has one major drawback that bugs me constantly….it doesn’t multitask whatsoever.

Well last week at CES, the guys who first brought us the mobile organizer and smartphone bring us a new “innovation” in mobile computing…..I’m talking of course about the Palm Pre. This is an amazing phone, in my opinion far superior on paper than even the mighty iPhone (and I’m somewhat of an Apple fanboy). Pre is based on a new system called webOS, which has UNIX/Linux at its core. It’s a touchscreen phone with a portrait-style QWERTY keyboard. I can’t even begin to give you all the features here, but I’ll suggest to you checking out the Palm website and giving it a thorough look-over at www.palm.com/pre.

I can tell you this though, if it comes in under the $349 mark I’ll be sure to have me one of my own the second it comes out .

Update: According to reports flying around the web (like this one HERE), the Pre price point will likely be $399-499 without a contract and $149-199 with a Sprint 2-year commitment. If that’s the case, I’ll Pre-order the minute I can (pun intended)!

It also looks as if the target release date is being speculated at around May or June for the U.S.

Well I just got home on Saturday from yet another Vegas vacation this year, only this time it was more business-related. I was attending SuperZoo, which is a convention help every year for pet retailers, put on mainly by the Pet Industry Distributors Association (the good PIDA haha) Worldwide Pet Industra Association (WWPIA). It was an awesome time and I met a whole bunch of people that I hope to be doing business with in the near future. Later on I will post a whole bunch of pictures from my trip and write a little more in depth on my stay. For now, though, I need to get my site working properly again (at the time of writing, the CSS is displaying incorrectly). So until then, anticipate the next awesome post!

I’ve been working on organizing a new business venture for a few months now. Last month I had all of the necessary paperwork filed and approved and now have an official LLC for this project. It’s called Freki Aquatics and is basically an aquarium service and maintenance company. This is a fairly unfilled gap in my area and I have done some estimates and figure it’ll do pretty good once I get a good word out. This week I’ll be in Las Vegas attending SuperZoo 2008 at Mandalay Bay. Hopefully I’ll get some good networking done and learn a thing or two about this industry I’m about to dive into. Wish me luck! I’ll put up some good pics and stories ASAP

Okay maybe I don’t exactly fit the description of the prodigal son, but I was gone for a very long time…and have now returned to the blogosphere. Where did I go? Well, I got caught up with everything I was doing (as I easily do). I just got so busy with finals and all of my goals that the blog just kind of slipped away. Not to worry, I’m back again and here today I’ll try and get you up to speed.

First of all let’s go over some of the goals I had set for myself before I stopped blogging:

• I didn’t do the greatest at keeping up on the guitar. In fact I quit practicing all together. It’s sad, because I still really want to learn to play, but right now I just have so much going on (lame excuse I know).
• I stuck to my dieting goals, eating smaller portions mainly, but also eating healthier in general. Well this one is a big whopping success! I went from 215 pounds when I first posted I would try a healthier diet, down to a much more appropriate 185 pounds today. Yay me!
• I’ve stuck to the excercise….mostly. I’ve been trying to hit the gym about 3+ days per week. I’ve also been trying to run as much as possible. This comes and goes. Some weeks I do great, others not so great. I know I can run a 5k in about 22-25 minutes though.
• I’m still working on building my financial strength. This proves harder for me than I realized, but is still chugging along at a positive pace. I’m working on improving my credit/savings enough to buy a house next summer. More on that next.
• School. It sucks. I’ve been at a loss about what I really want to do with my life other than making money. I work in healthcare and love it. So naturally I decided maybe nursing would be a good fix for now. I thought that to be an RN (LPNs never get the respect or pay they deserve) you needed 4 years of college (BSN). I was wrong! I discovered this week that I qualify for a 3-semester RN program at a local college. I’ll be spending my next year retaking one or two classes to improve my odds of being accepted, but I’m excited about my new direction!

So to recap, I’ve been busy! But I HAVE been making improvements in my life, so it’s not for waste

Sorry world, I’ve been gone FOREVER. More on that later, but I figured to help apologize for my absentness, what better way than with a hilarious YouTube video. I laughed my ass off! These losers are trying to score some chicks on a video dating service (from the ’80s). Love it!