A little bit of interesting reading

I am someone who has swung from fat to fit and back to fat quite a few times. After a lot of research and reading, I found what most people figure out a lot easily Being fit means you are likely to live happier, richer and longer than overweight people.

However, I never knew of the monetary impact that the combined weight of the entire country has on its economic resources. I found this MSN article to be quite interesting. What if no one was fat? http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Insurance/Advice/WhatIfNoOneWereFat.aspx

 

La Jolla Half Marathon post-mortem

First of all, I am very glad to be doing a post-mortem of the run. Yesterday, I came quite close to having a post-mortem done on me. Read on for details. I will start with the bad news, followed by excuses and will finish with the good news.

I finished in 2:20:14 which was a good 2 minutes slower than last year. Considering that this was about 10-15 minutes slower than my goal, one has to conclude that I failed miserably. So I get an F for timing.

Strangely enough, I am still quite happy. Everyone knows I hate to lose but I do not mind so much if I think I did my best. And yesterday, I did better than my best. I ran my heart out. I ran hard, I ran smart and I really, really tried hard. For effort, I gave myself an A. I have never given myself an A for effort in anything in life before this.

Then why the slow time you ask? The answer in one word would be weather. San Diego weather is usually fuckin’ awesome, but yesterday was brutal to the max. The temperature was between 80-94 degrees during the race and there was no wind. Add to fact that there are at least 2-3 killer hills on the course meant that runners were in for a rough time.

Every runner felt the heat but luckily the race was decently organized and water stations were located at regular intervals. However because it was so hot, runners had to stop at every water station (not normal) resulting in crowding. This definitely had some impact on timings. Also in addition to the water stations, they needed volunteers with hoses to water people down at regular intervals. To give some perspective, I lost 4 pounds of water weight during approximately 2:20 mins of running. Even with very satisfactory support system for the race, they needed about 8-10 ambulances for people who had problems. Last year, I saw one ambulance. In short, the weather gods were definitely not feeling kind yesterday.

But I still finished, and finished well. More importantly, I tried my best, my very best. And that is a good feeling. Also, last year my timing, 2:18 was a good 9 minutes slower than average, 2:09. This year I was apprx 2 mins faster than the average timing, 2:22. I say that is good progress.

Also, I found out that the ratio of women to men at most running events is at least 3:1 in favor of the men . That itself is a good enough excuse to do a race again. Definitely going to try and run in 09 again.

Correction: It is not that great of a women:men ratio, the official numbers are 2250 males and 2560 females. Still not bad.

Obsessing about the half-marathon

Obsessing is something that I do very seldomly, but when I do it, I go all out So for the new few days, I am going to see how best I can run next Sunday.

Yesterday I did 8 miles on the tread mill in 1:17, a very decent effort. Especially considering I had a heavy lunch. Dare I hope?

An interesting idea.

We seem to have so many “days”. Earth day, Mother’s day, Father’s day, Teacher’s day etc. I want to add 2 more to the list.

1. “I am Sorry day”

Almost all of us, no matter how decent and nice tend to do things that cause hurt or grief to people. On this one day every year, you apologize to everyone you hurt during the year. The person could be a total stranger or your own mother. If you did something bad or stupid to cause grief, you apologize. And that person has to forgive you. This would allow a lot of us to get things off our chests and make a fresh start.

2. “You hurt me day”

This is a corollary to 1. A lot of times we hurt other people without knowing it. So if you think someone hurt you or caused you grief during the year, on this day, you tell them how you feel about it.

The reason I came up with these days is that a lot of us keep a lot of things bottled up a lot. Maybe we feel shame, maybe we are uncomfortable or maybe there are other reasons. So I feel we should “officially” have a couple of days (or more) where we are forced to shed that discomfort and say what we really feel.

I think that would be very productive.

Half marathon on the 27th

April 27th 2008 is the day I run my second half-marathon, exactly a year after my first one. It will again be in La Jolla California and is supposed to be a “tough” course. Last year quite a few people I ran with chided me for picking it for my first half-marathon. But like I mention to everyone at every opportunity, I finished quite creditably

Anyone who knows me even slightly, knows that I “wing” things. “Wing” is slang for “Attempting something without adequate preparation.”  

So of-course, I winged the La Jolla Half marathon last year. I did not train, I did not do long runs, I just showed up on race day.  It helped that I was in half-decent shape but BOY, it hurt bad! Aai Baba were with me then which I think gave me more strength and determination. I am not so lucky this time round. It was then I swore that I would prepare for my next one and here we are one year later and I will be attempting to “wing” my 2nd half-marathon, AGAIN ! I HATE myself.

To be fair, this time I am SLIGHTLY better prepared although all of 2008 put a spanner into pretty much any serious training. I think I was in better shape in December than I am right now  On the bright side, I still have 2 weeks to go this time. If I can train smartly in the next 2 weeks and most importantly rest well and keep my weight in check, I think I will beat 2:18 which was my last time.

I personally think I will beat 2:10 and wanted to beat 2:05 but am not too sure I can. Wanna bet against me, I am known to exxagerate

A little bit of coding

I have been super busy coding for the last few days. We are in the middle of re-architecting the Yahoo! Media Player. I consider myself an average coder but a very persistent and decent debugger. It means I can find errors quickly and easily.

My personal experience of programming has been as follows:

1. As a very new, raw programmer I used to write code and BE SURE that it was going to fail. And ofcourse, it would always fail. I would fix the first error,  but the code failed again at the 2nd one. This iterative approach meant that it took about 4-6 passes to be code complete depending on complexity.

2. As an intermediate programmer, I used to write code and look it over a few times to make sure it was right. I would think, maybe it will work, maybe it will fail. It almost always failed. However, when I fixed the error, I would also be proactively looking for more errors down the line. This approach allowed me to write decent working code in about 2-3 passes.

3. As a resonably decent programmer now I write test cases, put try- catch blocks and review every line of code carefully before moving on. My style has improved and every once in a while I will write a fairly big piece of code that just works. It is beautiful however the frequency is about 1 in 5.

There are very good coders I know who never err. I am not sure I can be as good but I do not think that it is NECESSARY that I be that good. However I could definitely be better than what I am right now. I want to eventually be able to write solid, maintainable code that people after me will understand. Some people, actually a lot of people, write very efficient and optimized code that is unnecessarily complex and hard to understand. That is not good code. Being a good coder involves doing a lot more than writing fast, optimized code. It involves putting more thought in design, architecture and documentation.

To summarize:

1. Design and design review (VERY IMPORTANT). Even before you write code.

2. Code and code review with peers.

3. Include atleast rudimentary documentation on first pass (never leave big chunks of code undocumented)

4. Most functions or pieces of codes are step-wise. Include comments like /* Step 1: Check the input */ /* Step 2: put input into code buckets */ /* Step 3: Inspect code bucket one */ and so on and so forth.

5. Accept that you will never write perfect code. Code is a living being. It grows from infancy and gains strength over time. However if you over-code, it will get old quickly and die.

And finally, the most important lesson I have learnt as a software programmer

A lot of people may review your code badly and point to book examples or traditional coding methodologies to support their point. If they are right, fix your code. However if you still truly believe you are right, follow your heart and DO NOT CHANGE. If you are responsible for a piece of code, you have the right to decide how it is going to be. No matter how senior the reviewer, he or she can only advise, NOT order. As with everything in life, trust your gut.

HAPPY CODING!!

A little bit of farewell

A few people I really like and admire just moved on from Yahoo!  Bigtime bummer! But I sincerely hope and pray that they go on to do bigger and better things.

 Ian, Kristina, Robyn, Shattuck, I am going to miss you! It has been a fun ride and I am lucky to be friends with ya’ll.

A little bit of sportsmanship – Part 2

Thinking about my last post, I think I have an answer. When you are playing sports, you only have to focus for an hour or two and it doesn’t matter if you lose. Real life doesn’t work that way

Also sports is probably the “fairest” facets of life. You will find terrible CEOs making millions, losers with great girlfriends/boyfriends, really great people who can’t catch a break, smart people working hourly jobs etc. Life is quite unfair (in good ways and bad) and there is a lot of *chance*. Sports on the other hand is fairly predictable. The better person or the team almost always wins.  Very little depends on chance. And that makes things simple

A little bit of sportsmanship

I strongly believe in the adage that those who don’t play sports find it hard to be a sport. Apart from the obvious benefits of health, fitness, sleep and team-work,  for those who choose to look deep, there are more hidden benefits. Personally, I find playing sports to be a spiritual and uplifting effort.

In everyday life I do quite a few things that I would not do if I was a better person. I lie sometimes, I act selfishly, I do not take my chances only to regret later. Simply put, I do a lot of dumb shit. But I do not know what happens when I am on a tennis court or playing volleyball but I am the best person I can be. I play fair, I respect my opponents and I never give up. I take my chances and work hard on improvement. In short,  I do everything right. I do not win all the time, not even often but I always have the happy feeling that I did good, I tried.

Sadly, I do not have that feeling often in my regular day-to-day life. If I can get the “sports Amit” be the “24*7 Amit” I would honestly be proud of myself