After 5 months of training and fundraising, the day is almost here. This Sunday is the San Diego Rock N Roll Marathon. Just the training and fundraising has been an experience and I can’t wait for the race. I learned a lot in these past 5 months. I learned that although I think I’m in good shape, I’m not. I’m also not as young as I used to be. My training has been hampered by a nagging IT Band injury. It’s a sobering thing to learn that your body can succumb to any type of injury when all your life you thought that you were practically invincible. I have TONS of respect for long distance runners and people who have run multiple marathons. It’s not the easiest thing to do.

I also learned that when you’re doing something for a cause, a lot more weight is placed on the task at hand. I’m no longer running this marathon for myself. I’m running for all those suffering from Leukemia and other cancers. I’m running for all the people who have donated their own money to help fight these diseases.

I’ve learned that a lot of people are willing to help if you just ask. I think that’s what surprised me the most. At the beginning, I was kind of scared to think that I had to raise $2,500 to participate with Team In Training. I was seriously amazed at what a few emails, letters, blog posts and Twitter posts could do. Old friends, far off relatives, and even people that I did not know donated in my name. I’m not the type to ask for anything from anyone but when I asked for your support in this cause, you all didn’t hesitate. For that, I thank you. I’ll be keeping all of you who supported me in my thoughts as I run this Sunday.

See you at the finish line.

Along with top loading bar bells, can someone please make this redesigned keyhole a reality? (via Daring Fireball)

A couple weeks ago I finally decided to spruce up the living room. Blik is a removable wall graphics company based in Venice, CA. I’ve been meaning to buy something from them since last year but I finally got around to doing it here at the new apartment. I decided on “Boy In The Weeds” because it was simple and added a good amount of color in its design. I like how it came out but it was extremely tedious to put up. Definitely not for those who have little patience.

As a fun little experiment, I posted a 3 hour time lapse video of me applying the stickers. Enjoy.

Last Friday I celebrated my 30th birthday. I decided to keep it simple and do what I did last year; I had people over at my place to begin and continued the party at The Crosby. I’m not kidding when I say I have the best set of friends and family in the world. Thanks everyone for coming out and celebrating. You can check out the madness on Flickr or in the slide show below. Enjoy!

Twitter today released Blackbird, a way for people to visually embed or quote tweets into a website or blog easily without taking screenshots. Twitter is fast becoming a way for celebrities, companies or anyone in general to announce products or just speak their minds. Blackbird Pie makes it super easy to quote tweets and embed them into your websites. You can test it out here.

It’s been awhile since I posted anything on the marathon I’m running so I thought I’d take some time to update everyone. About 3 weeks ago, I went out for a normal mid week run. Nothing too crazy but about halfway through, I started to feel a little stinging pain on the outside of my knee. Aches and pains are a normal part of running and I just finished a 7+ mile run a couple days before so I thought this was nothing unusual. After about 15 minutes after I first felt pain it got a little bit more unbearable. Pretty soon, I was unable to walk, let alone run. I had to limp the final 2 miles back to my apartment. After I talked to my chiropractor and my running coach, I had what’s known as IT Band Syndrome. It’s a pretty common running injury so after some RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) and some proper running shoes (I had no idea how important this is), I’m back to distances I was running before the injury. I’m looking to joining the rest of Team in Training this Saturday for a scheduled 14 mile run.

I’m now less than $1000 away from my fundraising goal and I’m thankful for all who have donated so far. After the initial round of donations, I hit a bit of a wall but a bunch of you donated in the past couple of weeks and I thank you for getting me motivated again. I’ve got a little over a month to make my goal and I’m working with a fellow TNT participant to organize a fundraiser that will hopefully put us over our goals. Please stay tuned for that.

It’s the final home stretch for my training and fundraising. If you haven’t checked out my fundraising page, take a look at the progress I’ve made and all the people who have donated. I hope to see you all at the finish line on June 6th.

Like any self proclaimed Apple fanboy, I reserved a 32GB iPad the day pre orders were available and this past Saturday, woke up early to pick it up at my local Apple Store. After using it pretty much nonstop since I opened it, here are my thoughts on it. This is in no way a thorough review, there are a number of in depth reviews that you can read, these are just a couple things I like, don’t like and my general thoughts about the iPad.

After unboxing the iPad (photos here) the first thing you notice is how heavy it is. You’ve heard the specs; 0.5″ thin and 1.5 pounds but when you look at it in person, it sure doesn’t feel like something this small and thin could be this heavy. If you’ve set up an iPhone before, syncing an iPad is very familiar. Once I set up my iPad, I was ready to go. The first thing you notice is the speed. No one is lying when they say this thing is fast. Imagine the feeling when you went from the original iPhone/iPhone 3G to the iPhone 3GS. That’s how I felt using the iPad. There’s no lag switching from app to app. Pages load in Safari on my iPad faster than my MacBook Pro. It never stops or lags or has to “think”. I have a feeling we’re going to expect this type of speed from now on.

The battery life is advertised at 10 hours. That usually means at the lowest brightness level and doing absolutely nothing. But in my quick 2 days of use, the iPad EASILY lasts a whole day. I’ve used this thing as I normally would. I didn’t watch a loop of videos to see how fast I could drain the battery. I surfed the Internet. Checked Twitter. I posted to Twitter during that 7.2 earthquake. Watched video I loaded and streamed through Netflix. I can tell you that I started using my iPad this Sunday morning at around 9 am and through normal use I still have 44% battery left (11:30pm). Amazing. If only the iPhone could have this type of battery life.

The iPad ships with 13 default apps but we all know the real fun is with all the 3rd party apps you can install from the App Store. I downloaded a few and there were a few that stood out. If you have a Netflix subscription, the Netflix app is a no brainer. I’ve been a fan of the online streaming feature for awhile. The app launches and takes you to the same web page that lets you manage your queue. Once you tap on a movie, it just starts playing. ABC also has an app that lets you stream the latest episodes of their shows. CBS also has plans to release an app and NBC is working on setting up their website to stream shows. The one site that would make the iPad a no brainer for TV show consumption is Hulu. Currently, Hulu streams shows via Flash which the iPad does not support. For me, the other killer app is Safari. When Apple says it’s a totally different experience to have the Internet in your hands, it may sound cheesy but it’s true. It’s a total “I’m living in the future” moment when you’re on your couch, you pick up the iPad, bring up the New York Times website and just start reading. Check out the screen shots below. Websites in Safari show up like they do when you surf from a laptop/desktop but when you zoom in so that the article fills up the screen, that’s when the website disappears and it’s just you and the content.

You don’t have to wait for iPad specific apps to be developed, you can already use most of the existing 150,000 apps already available for the iPhone. They show up in a small square in the middle of the iPad screen at their native resolution. Or you can double the size so it fits the entire screen. Though while completely usable, the apps look like garbage scaled up.

The new iBookstore looks interesting. I’ve always said I should read more and I have a feeling this will push me to read since the iPad makes a great eReader. The Calendar, Contacts and Mail apps are way better than the desktop versions. It feels like you’re back to using a real physical day planner. The Maps app never gets old. With the bigger screen and Google Maps integration, this is the first thing I turn to if I need to find the number of a location. Games are also a big attraction for those looking at an iPad. I didn’t buy it strictly to play games but I did play some Labyrinth 2 (iTunes link) with my brother on our two iPads connected over a wireless network. I can see how it can be very entertaining.

Before the iPad came out, a lot of people asked me why would one need a third device in between a laptop and a smartphone. After using an iPad for a weekend, I see it as a consumption device. You read email on it. You check your Twitter feeds. You surf the Internet. You buy eBooks and read them on it. You watch TV shows and movies on it. The iPad becomes your recreation device while your laptop/desktop becomes your “I need to get shit done” device. I’m hesitant to call the iPad an appliance because an appliance does only one thing well. The iPad does a lot of things well. Do you need one? Probably not. But if you’re like me and your main source of information/entertainment consumption is the Internet, you probably also don’t need it but it’ll definitely change the way you use your computer and your smartphone. This won’t change the way you use your computer today, but this may be the first step in that direction.

Chrome OS getting deep Flash integration.

“We plan to bring these benefits to Chrome users across all platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Google Chrome OS,” a Google spokesperson tells me.

This is definitely a direct shot at Apple whose iPad does not support Flash. This could get ugly.

When I first started this site, I used to write about all the things I did during college. I used to post frequently but now that I look back, I can’t believe I wrote those things thinking people would actually want to read that I took a final or studied at the library yet again. I got away from that for whatever reason and started posting links or wrote about topics that I found interesting. I’ve always said that I like the fact that this site serves as a digital documentary of my life since college. So every once in awhile I’ll write a post to catch up on what’s going on in this life of mine.

For the first time ever, I’m playing in an organized football league. I’ve always liked watching NFL games and playing football for fun. Now that I’ve gotten a taste of organized “competitive” football, I can see myself doing this every season. In our team’s first season together, we’re a respectable 2-5 in our division but being our first year playing together as a team and having over half of our team having some form of injury doesn’t help us.

This past weekend, we celebrated Lisa’s early birthday and her going away party. She’ll be doing a travel nursing assignment in New York City. A small group of friends came out to The Crosby for dinner and some drinks at my and Nino’s new apartment. More significantly, it was the first time in almost 2 years that the Original Mango house tenants were all together at the same place at the same time. Just goes to show how busy we all are.

March 13 was the date of the Pacquiao vs. Clottey “non” fight. Aside from that, we watched the main event at Yaz and Edwin’s new loft in Anaheim. Very nice set up. To keep us entertained, because the fight did nothing for us, we took shots of whatever Edwin decided to hand us.

About a month ago, I moved out of my Apartment 395 into my new place at Apartment 454. Yes, I moved up one floor. It was the easiest move I’ve ever had to do. From the pictures, it looks like the same apartment. In fact, the last picture is the new apartment. It’s the same exact layout but there is now an extra bedroom.

If you really want to hear what I have to say multiple times a day, you should follow me on Twitter.

Whenever you purchase Apple hardware, it comes standard with a year of service and support. You are also presented the option of extending that service to two or three years with the purchase of AppleCare. When it comes to places like Best Buy, I usually don’t buy their extended warranties because to me, it just seems like another way for them to scam you for money. With my first laptop, I stayed away from purchasing AppleCare because one, I was a broke college student, and two, I thought it was a way for them to squeeze more money out of me.

With my current 15″ MacBook Pro, since my work was paying for half, I went ahead and purchased the AppleCare for it. In retrospect, it was the greatest accessory I bought for my computer. It has saved me on three occasions. Just a little over a year after I first bought my laptop, it suffered from the nVidia video card problem. Had I not bought AppleCare, I would’ve had to pay for the repairs since it occurred after the one year window of the original purchase. That repair paid for the AppleCare by itself. Replacing the entire motherboard easily would’ve cost more than the $350 price of AppleCare. I also brought in my laptop to have the optical drive replaced when it would stop reading CDs and DVDs.

What made me a lifetime advocate of purchasing AppleCare happened earlier this week when my Time Capsule unexpectedly died. I brought it in to the Apple Store expecting that I would have to purchase a new one since the existing warranty was expired. Once he verified the unit had failed, he started looking up my account info. Instead of having to purchase a new Time Capsule, he said since I had purchased AppleCare for my MacBook Pro the Time Capsule was covered under it as well because it was purchased within that 3 year window of coverage. It’s rare that a corporation will go out of its way to do something for the customer. They could have easily made me purchase a new Time Capsule but instead had me leaving as a happy customer. Whenever I plan to buy another piece of Apple hardware, especially a laptop or desktop, I will definitely be adding AppleCare to my purchase.