I did the hundred

Well, I did it.  It’s supposed to take 6 weeks of training but I managed to get there 2 training sessions earlier than the plan.

My plan was to always exceed the number of push-ups that were outlined in each set and each session so that I could ensure that, when the time came, I’d be well and truly ready.  You can see from the red line in the following graph how I was consistently above the prescribed number (the blue line) and I’ve also marked when I did the 100.

 

Along the way I dumped the data from the website for each week into OneNote and tracked my progress in there:

My plan now is to continue on and see just how far I can go.  Ideally, I’d like to see myself being able to do 10 sets of 50 push-ups every 2nd day and then being able to do a maximum set of around 125.  Either way, it feels good to get a bit of tone back into my upper body and abs.

Setting up a mirrored failover environment for MOSS

I came across these great resources for setting up a mirrored failover environment for MOSS:

 

SQL Server 2005 Database Mirroring and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0/Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

 

Part 1 (Introduction, Overview, and basics)

http://blogs.technet.com/wbaer/archive/2007/04/23/sql-server-2005-database-mirroring-and-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0-microsoft-office-sharepoint-server-2007-part-1-introduction-overview-and-basics.aspx

 

Part 2 (Configuration)

http://blogs.technet.com/wbaer/archive/2007/05/25/sql-server-2005-database-mirroring-and-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0-microsoft-office-sharepoint-server-2007-part-2-configuration.aspx

 

Part 3 (Failover)

http://blogs.technet.com/wbaer/archive/2007/08/01/sql-server-2005-database-mirroring-and-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0-microsoft-office-sharepoint-server-2007-part-3-failover.aspx

Bill and Jerry Windows Video’s

I know that there’s been mixed reaction to the latest marketing campaign by Microsoft for Windows – but I’m actually enjoying these:

http://images.video.msn.com/flash/soapbox1_1.swf
Video: New Family

The 100 pushups challenge – my progress so far

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about my participation in the 100 pushups challenge.  Since then I’ve been diligently going about my practice routine which consists of doing exercises 3 times per week.  I practice on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  Each practice session requires you to do 5 sets of pushups – with the number of pushups in each set growing with each new practice session.  The final goal being that, in Week 7 you are able to simply sit down and crank out 100 consecutive pushups.

In the first couple of weeks of the challenge I stuck to the prescribed number of pushups to be done, but I’ve now started pushing myself a little harder so that I’m hopefully ahead of the game come week’s 6 and 7.

You can see from the following table just how much the numbers have grown since week 1:

Which looks even more impressive when graphed:

Overall it’s been enjoyable working towards the challenge of doing 100 pushups and I’m interested to see how I go.  At the end of each fortnight you are asked to do 1 set of as many pushups as you can.  This Friday I’m hopeful that I can hit 70… we’ll see

Can you do 100 consecutive push-ups?

Recently I came across this site which claimed that it could help train me to do 100 consecutive pushups!  This sounded like an interesting enough challenge (for both the site’s claims as well as myself) so I decided to take it on.

The basis of the program is that each week you do 3 training sessions, 2 days apart.  I’m doing my training on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday’s.  And each day/week, the number of repetitions that you have to do, increases.  I’m in my second week and have done 5 sessions so far – you can see my progress against the program’s numbers in both of the following charts:

The good thing about this challenge is that it’s fun and very easy to find the 10 minutes that are required to do a session.  And hopefully at the end of it all, I’ll look and feel a little stronger too!

Starbucks closures in Australia

This week, Starbucks announced that it would close 61 of its 84 Australian stores by the weekend.  The closures would affect 685 jobs and follows the closure of around 600 underperforming stores in the US recently.

In my home town of Adelaide, I was surprised to see that the main Starbucks store in Rundle Mall was one of the affected sites (see picture at left for the notice that was posted on their front door this morning).

In interviews with locals, many city workers cited that they had recently cut their weekly expenditure on coffee by as much as 50% with dollar figures falling from as high as $70 per week down to $30-40 per week. 

The cut in consumer expenditure is undoubtedly related to the rise in world oil prices and their subsequent knock on effect into retail goods as well as lower consumer confidence in the wake of financial sector shocks in the US and recently locally here in Australia too.

My Windows Live-targeted blog

Recently Grant split his blog into personal and work.  I’m doing a similar thing by splitting my blogging activities into 2 separate blogs.  They are:

This blog that you are reading now and my new blog.

They are both hosted on Live Spaces, but my new blog will be focused solely on articles about the Live platform.  So expect to see me blogging over there about things such as:

• Live @edu
• Managing small businesses on the Live platform
• Live ID
• and a raft of other Live-focused topics

So if Live is of interest to you, please add the URL for my new feed into your aggregator.