What's a brother got to do to get ahead?

Just when I thought the muppets and clowns up in Washington were going to kick some dollars our way, we get to the fine print. Word on the street has been that the wise and powerful senators are going to extend the homebuyer tax credit to include current homeowners! Yay, free money for me (from you and me and our kids and their kids)!

But wait...there's more!

You have to have lived in your current home for at least 5 years
The credit is the lesser of 10% or $7,290

Sensible buyers like Bri and myself, who happened to purchase in the last 3 years, get nothing for nothing. No credit, no free money, just more debt slavery, rewarding the imprudent, the foolish, the wasteful, and the schemers at the top.

Get this, if some ****head and his foulmouthed freeloading wife have lived in their $600,000 home for at least 5 years, they can trade up ...and TAKE MONEY OUT OF OUR POCKETS to buy their new 5 bedroom, 6 bathroom colonial...but people like you and I get squa-doodly.

Granted, some of the folks who can take advantage of this are hard working honest citizens. But seriously? We need to give more tax breaks now, with 11 trillion deficit and 1.4 current year? A trillion is a million million, you know? A billion is 1000 million. Let's just give free money out for everything. Want a puppy? Tax break! Want a pet zebra? Tax break!

Want a new diamond necklace for your girlfriend to support De Beers and corrupt import exporters in NYC?

TAX BREAK!

To folks who can buy an $750,000 home AS IS to 'stimulate the economy'?

YES!

Bah.

Powerstroke lecture preview

Regarding the three main types of freestyle mechanics:
Weakest: elbow slip
Better: straight arm
Best: high elbow catch / early vertical foream

finance and investments

I continue to read daily on finance, investments, broad based global macro economics, and sector specific stuff. Here is a summary:

-Buy stocks, they only go up
-Sell stocks, they are overvalued and earnings are inflated, accounting is fraudulent
-Japan is going to have all sorts of problems
-The US is going to default
-The US will lead the world out of the economic doldrums
-Buy gold it is a hedge on inflation/deflation/systemic failure
-Don't buy gold, it has no yield or inherent value
-Buy commodities, the world will be starving soon because of taking various production offline
-Don't buy commodities, they are manipulated by the shadow empire
-Diversify to smooth out your risk
-Diversification is for idiots and fools
-Real estate is expecting a new wave of bankruptcy and defaults
-Now is the time to buy a new home!

There you go. You're ready to take on the world of high finance.

I just sent out our Q3 checks to the IRS and NCDOR. Here is a visual display.

fast week

I didn't have much to write about this week so decided to skip the inanities. I still don't have much to say today. The Powerstroke DVD is at the shop getting some technical menu bugs worked out and hopefully they finish it tomorrow and then we can send it to the production shop for production and fulfillment. It looks really good and I'm happy with how it all turned out.

In December we've been given the opportunity to reshoot the lecture portion at a professional studio with $$$ cameras and mics. Our current lecture presents great information but we had some mic interference that we weren't able to engineer out of the movie. This is what you get when you use an inexpensive wireless system.

We ran in the March of Dimes Run for Babies 5k over in Morrisville this morning - Bri stomped the heck out of me with an 18:45. I felt OK but suffered on the uphills and ran a 19:50. Going to be a good challenge to get back to low 18 or high 17 by March, but consistent speedwork, tempo runs, and long runs should make it a reality.

Next weekend we're off to Jacksonville FL to hang with sis in law and her fella for Halloween and some sort of football game.

Order the Powerstroke DVD. Tell your friends. The Powerstroke: Speed through force and form DVD loves you and wants to live in your home with you and your wonderful family. How can you reject the Powerstroke DVD? It just wants to be your friend.

Twitter

I may come across as a smart guy, but it is more the intelligence of a dog that kept doing tricks over and over until he got them right. It is super pigheadedness. It takes me a long time to figure certain things out, and some things will always be beyond me (like the mind of an emotional woman, and most higher math, probably because they are the same thing).

But I just don't get Twitter. What is the use of this thing? If you're following a bunch of people, you have to check your Twitter page every day to see what they're up to, or you miss the updates. If you're having the tweets sent to your mobile phone then the thing would be beeping all the time, which seems to me to be a colossal waste of time and energy for what often amounts to something like "I picked some lint out of my bellybutton." Some people stick to a specific industry, which is good. But they tend to send a message every hour or two. I don't want to hear from you every hour or two. You are boring. Stop updating.

As an advertisement, I can see some value, but you have to be a zombiefied self promotion machine to keep cranking the stuff out. By the way, the Powerstroke: Speed through force and form freestyle technique DVD is done, mass production starts next week. you should buy one, now now now now now.

If you follow only one person, then you're a stalker, or a technology idiot, and that doesn't seem right either.

Facebook I get. Blogger I get. There are picture pages, a nice layout, and super cutsie stuff for kids who want to play with stuff on the internet.

Twitter is like the ADD generation on crack. I don't get the utility of it.

I would put a good joke here, but it is early in the morning and I haven't gotten the blood flowing yet.

Off to New Orleans this weekend for some quality time with my father and brother-in-law. We will be at Harrah's Casino, mostly the poker room, if you want to stop by.

winter training camp 2010

I have been looking at vacation rental sites for the past few weeks trying to nail down a house for our base of operations for the annual triathlon training camp in Florida. We held it at St Pete Beach last year and I would like to do that again, but I have been having trouble getting folks to reply to me in a timely manner about their homes. Just spread out the search to Tierra Verde and downtown St Petersburg, both of which are good locations as well, just not right on the beach.

Anyway, if you are considering a 2010 winter training camp think about us - February 22 through March 1 in St Pete Beach (or downtown St Pete, or Tierra Verde/Fort Desoto). We strike a balance between serious training and some fun social stuff.

nice weekend

Bri and I had a nice weekend. On Saturday morning we loaded up the car to set up at the Pinehurst triathlon and cheer on our friends/athletes/blood-feud enemies. The Pinehurst triathlon is a very challenging olympic-plus distance race that you'll never see me racing in because of the run terrain. There are too many hills for this intrepid adventurer. The morning was warm and humid, making me even happier that all I had to do was sit there and yell at people.

After the race we came home and kept an eye on Ironman world champs going on out in Hawaii. I had one athlete out there competing - congrats Emily!

This morning was a lot cooler, and we did a run/ ride in Umstead. Then I took a big nap.

This must be one of the most banal posts I've put up in a while. Yakk yakk yakk.

The point is I enjoy hanging out with Bri. She rocks. The end.

Powerstroke-ing it

I have gone into crunch mode here at Powerstroke headquarters, shutting myself up in the office and only emerging for food and other human bodily functions. Just when you thought you had everything figured out, you noticed the excessive pixelation in your Livetype fonts when they were imported into Final Cut Express and then exported as a movie file? Why is that? Ah because you were using the rendered movie files from Livetype when all you need to do is import the livetype file itself. DUH! Anyone could have told you that!

Good thing you only have to re-enter the livetype files where appropriate and then re-export the movies. The movie exports can take a while because these things are huge. I bought a terabyte hard drive a few months ago to handle it all.

Waiting to hear when my local DVD guru and editor can take everything off my hands and turn into a finished product.

That is all.

winter weekly training plan

Trigeek data:
Monday: PM run 30-40 minutes, Kung Fu, swim 1500 yards easy
Tuesday AM run 15-20 minutes with Tassie, PM run track workout
Wednesday AM swim 3,000 masters, PM ride 1 hour easy, Kung Fu
Thursday AM run 40min to 1 hour with tempo
Friday AM swim 1,000 easy, run 15-20 minutes easy with Tassie, PM San Shou (Sparring)
Saturday long run - 8 to 12 miles
Sunday easy ride - 1 to 2 hours, optional easy run

Lake Royale Triathlon

I felt really good this morning and had a great race, finishing first overall. The bike and run courses were both hilly. The first and last section of the bike go through the Lake Royale subdivision which is all twisting, turning, up, down, very technical. The middle section was a nice straight(ish) out and back and flat. The run was like the first part of the bike - not a flat spot in there.

I jumped to a lead on the swim and held it from there. This is the way I need to compete in order to win, since my strategy (if feeling good and in shape) is to get far ahead on the swim and bike, then limit damage on the run.

Night and day between how I felt at the Wilmington YMCA and today. Funny how a couple adjustments can make such a difference.

Here are a couple pictures of me from this morning. Notice the good running form. Working out with the The Athlete's Foot track group on Tuesday nights has helped me quite a bit lately.





Earlier this week I gave a presentation at Lenovo on "Improving your 5k Training" - a lecture for intermediate runners looking to drop their 5k running times. Here's the presentation if that's you. It's a Powerpoint.

In a couple hours we are off to totally kick some more ass at the Durham Beer Festival. I am so psyched for this once a year event. I rested and tapered for it and everything.

Ken Lewis payday

In case you're keeping track, our boy Ken Lewis from BoA did OK for himself. $125 million payout when he leaves in December.

That is twenty-five hundred $50,000 jobs for one year, or two hundred fifty $50,000 jobs for ten years. I dunno about you but it sounds pretty good. I am sure he will put it to good use though.

Oh, wow, the govnmint got some job loss numbers wrong, too. Oops.

homeward bound

Today Tassie and I spent all day inside the house. I take that back. I spent all day inside the house, Tassie went in the backyard to hunt birds and squirrels periodically.

I was glued to the computer...final editing for our Powerstroke: Speed through force and form DVD. I am actually nearly done with everything at this point - just a couple more edits and voiceovers for stroke analysis, then we send it to a local production company to put a nice DVD menu together and perhaps fancy a couple things up. My chum Bill Payne has already designed the DVD cover and labeling. It will rock.

You should buy at least one of these most excellent DVDs, if not one for you and every member of your family.

Here is a preview of what the DVD includes:

Part 1) 30 minute lecture and Q&A: What is Powerstroke?

Part 2) 27 minute analysis - the Three Types of Swim Strokes for Freestyle and how to improve:
Type 1: Elbow slip
Type 2) Straight arm pull
Type 3) High elbow catch / early vertical forearm

Part 3) 15 minute explanation & analysis - Powerstroke as a drill, stroke form, and way of swimming

Part 4) Additional drills & voice over explanation analysis (1 hour):
- Catch up drill
- 1-arm drill
- Fist drill
- Techpaddle (drill)
- Sculling
- 6-kick on side rotation drill
- Doggy paddle drill

Part 5) Dryland stretches and supplementary exercises

It is more than two hours, part of the reason it has taken me a couple years from conception to completion to get it done. I did not want to outsource production and distribution, so we could call it our baby.

If you work in the triathlon or swim fitness industry and would like to stock it, let me know. Please help spread the word.