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So after slacking for a couple months, I’m getting back to running. Typical workouts as of late are 3 milers, though tonight I did 5 on the treadmill at an easy pace, survived.

You may notice that I added the nice Nike+ widget to the side of the blog, that should keep you up to date. If you see I haven’t been running much, please harass me to go run.

Today I passed the 2 year mark at JPL.  An like this time last year I’ll report the number of e-mails I received since I started.  20,570.  That’s more than one an hour non-stop since I started.  I’ll be honest, I’ve read maybe a third of them.

Not a bad two years at the Lab.  I’ve gone from working on the data operations side of things (making sure the data from the rovers gets where it is supposed to be) to an activity planner for the rover, and now I’m training to be a Tactical Uplink Lead (I basically run the planning sessions).

There has been lots going on and I’ll try to get back in the habit of updating this site, so stay tuned.

I actually got up early this morning and ran a 5K.  I finished it in 21:30 which is my fastest 5K since I started running again.

After that and grabbing lunch I cleaned my bathroom.

I then changed the oil in the Jetta and finally wired up the rear fog light.

I’m not done yet…I still need to do some of my take home midterm for my remote sensing class.

After living in L.A. for a year and a half now, I finally made it to the Ikea over in Burbank.

It’s like a self guided furniture tour.  First is living/bedroom furniture land, followed by office land, bathroom land, rug land, bedding land, and miscellaneous crap land.  All contain some really cheap crap and some not so cheap crap.

I picked up a dark red rug to break up the monotony of the beige carpet in my apartment as well as a coffee table to put things on, like coffee.  The later also makes a nice foot rest.

I took a day off of work on Monday to get in some Spring skiing in Breckenridge, Colorado.

I hadn’t skied at Breck for about 5 years now, and it was much better now due to the new lifts that allow one to get across the mountain much faster. I also took on some double black terrain at the top of Peak 8 (altitude 12,840 feet). It was easier to ski than I remember, but I was skiing on my brother’s Solomon 1080s, which are much more advanced than my decade old K2 Merlins.

Rocking the “Ski Iraq” shirt my brother got me for Christmas.

The view from the top.

I headed out to Colorado on Thursday night for a weekend of relaxing with my friends.  Friday was catching up with friends and then an easy night out at the bars.

Saturday was St. Patrick’s Day.  Starting at 8am I was at Connor O’Neil’s.  It was a blast, until the staff tried to scam us in to paying them an extra $80 we didn’t owe.  At one point the manager was yelling at a couple of us, saying that the card that was included in the payment of a separate individuals tab was being held until we paid them the $80.  That situation was resolved by the bar “comping” us the $80.  What is worse is that this same thing happened to another group.  I’m debating contacting the owner and explaining the deplorable behavior of their staff on such a busy day for that bar.

Today was catching up with more friends and then shooting up in Left Hand Canyon.  I got a change to try Austin’s new 9mm and his new rifle with scope…both very nice weapons.

Tomorrow I’m skiing at Breckenridge (and paying to do so).  I haven’t skied there in years, so it should be an interesting change.  Look for pictures to be posted soon.

Official results are now in.

I ran, biked, and swam in 1:01:54

• 5th in the Men’s 20-24 age group (out of 15).
• 53rd in the Men’s division (out of 255)
• 64th overall (out of 379)

This morning I competed in my first triathlon.  I was a shortened reverse sprint format, that is a little over 5k run, a little over 15k bike, and a 150 meter swim.

It was interesting and a whole heck of a lot of fun.  When the starting gun was fired the first though through me head was “how hard do I run with a bike and swim after this?”

In the first transition, run to bike, all I did was throw on the helmet and bike gloves, then it was back out on the course.  The bike was interesting, it was my first time using aerobars.  The first time I put my weight on them was an adventure, but I got used to it quickly.

The bike swim transition was a bit bumpy as I didn’t get one of my gloves off cleanly.  After ditching the shoes and the helmet, it was time to jog to the pool.   After riding my legs were a bit wobbly, but I got there.  When I jumped in I was bracing for a cold pool, but was shocked to find it warm.  That sort of put a damper on my swim.

I touched the wall at the end of the swim at a time of 1:01, which turns out put me at 4th place in my age group (Men’s 20-24), and only 30 seconds or so out of third.  Not to shabby for my first triathlon.

Last weekend I spent Saturday cleaning four wheel drive trails at Calico, which is just to the north of Yermo, CA. This was a major clean-up event put on my several 4WD groups. As such there were Land Cruisers, Jeeps, Uni-Mogs, early Broncos and other four wheel drive vehicles.

Pic 1: Friday night we camped on the dry lake bed that is at the edge of the four wheeling area. I have to set up my tent right next to my cruiser to ensure I don’t get driven over. (Side note: the “Calico” painted on my doors was in Dupli-Color Car Art temporary paint, and yes it is truly temporary.)

Pic 2: On the trail headed to the clean up site. The trash collected from all sites filled four roll away dumpsters. 5 dead cars were pulled out of the canyons too.

Pic 3: Headed back to base camp after a few hours of cleaning.

So today I got to touch a part of Mars. No we have not brought back samples from Mars (but we want to). These chunks of Mars came to Earth as meteorites. So in lieu of a bunch of “how do we know they’re from Mars” science, I’ll show you pictures.

That is the oldest meteorite ever found by humans…and it killed a dog too. The black side of the sample (it was cut into pieces) is the outside of the meteorite that got melted during the dive through the atmosphere.

Now there is the this one, ALH8001.  It is part of the meteorite that was once thought (and a few people still think it does) have fossilized microbial life.  Now I don’t know enough to be on either side of the debate…but it is certain that without this Martian meteorite there would not be two rovers on the surface of Mars right now.