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Heading upstairs to finally get back to a push-ups workout after once again putting it off for over a week, I got to thinking...

Why do I talk myself into not doing these workouts anymore?  Does it take too long? Does it hurt too much? Am I just tired of doing them at this point since I've been doing them for over a year?

The answer really is probably little bits of each of these things: 

• I tell myself I won't have enough time to fit it in either at home or in the office.
• I remember how much my muscles were screaming at me the last time I finished that final set of 50 or 60.
• I think, well, I've done it for so long, putting them off a little longer won't hurt anything...

Based on this, I'm going to take a different tack to keeping consistent, and I'm borrowing it from your friend and mine - Kathy Brown.

Instead of these mammoth workouts 3 times a week, I'm going to commit myself to doing 100 push-ups every day, for as long as I can keep the streak going.  This will actually work out to be very close in number of pushups done over a week's time, so I really shouldn't be falling behind the pace that I had been on for so long, except for pushups per workout.

The perseverance Kathy has shown in running every day for now OVER 150 DAYS is truly amazing and I can only hope to achieve anywhere close to as long a streak as she has and is continuing to do.

For today I went with 10/15/20/25 and 30 as my set numbers, and I think I'll stick with that a while and see how it goes. It still is requiring me to do pretty healthy numbers of pushups at a time, and I'm trying to only take a minute or 90 seconds in between sets to keep the workout duration short. Today it was only about 15 minutes including changing into and out of my workout clothes.

So, the streak is at 1 day, where will it end? Hopefully not at a single digit...will it make it into the 3 digits? Who knows? But I think this way of going at it will work out better for me in the long run and allow me to stay motivated to do the workouts, which is really the main point, and not so much the numbers.

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Oh, and by the way, I'm also planning to NOT be posting about these daily workouts on my blog anymore.   I'd like to get back to posting more Lotus/Domino Dev, Technology and other types of info on an ongoing basis, and not having my fallback posts about push-ups to fill the space up may help out in that area too.  This is not to say you won't hear anything about the push-ups streak progress elsewhere, I do have another outlet of course.

Posted by Phil Randolph at 01:00:00 PM, in  General  | Changing things up a bit, for the better | Comments (2)

It took a little while, but I got the official ok from my boss and her bosses late last week, so I am going to be attending Lotusphere 2010!

Love the feeling of clicking the 'submit' button on the Lotusphere registration form.

The Yacht Club will be home base for me again.  It's worked out well there the last 2 years.

Can't wait to see all of my 'Spherian friends there in a couple months!

Posted by Phil Randolph at 12:16:00 PM, in  Lotusphere  | Heading back to the ’Sphere | Comments (0)

Kept trying to talk myself OUT of going to workout at the hotel's exercise room tonight, but my sense of continuance won out.

22/22/30/30/24/24/18/18/58 (35, break30sec, 23)

Playlist of the evening:

• One Week - Barenaked Ladies
• More Than Words - Extreme
• Daydream Believer - The Monkees
• Once Bitten Twice Shy - Great White
• Too Old To Rock N' Roll - Jethro Tull
• December 1963 (Oh What A Night) - Four Seasons
• Men In Black - Will Smith
• Here We Go, Let's Rock & Roll - C+C Music Factory

In the last song, the "Go, Go, Go, Go, Go, Go, Go, Go, Ahhhhhh.... Here we Go!" was right as I was starting in those last 23 after the 30 second break in the last set.  Talk about motivation!

Posted by Phil Randolph at 10:34:00 PM, in  100 Pushups  | 100 Pushups - Week 6 Column 3 Day 2 Take 5 Report | Comments (1)

Well,

Made it to the end of the workout this time, but it was touch-and-go for a little bit there...

22/23/30/30/16/16/14/14/55 (35, break30sec, 20)

Was experiencing some excrutiating tightness in my abs at the tail end of the 2nd set of 30, but decided to give the much smaller set of 16 a try to see if I could continue, which thankfully I was able to do.

Instead of a playlist today I decided to try to finish out the current Puck Podcast episode for 10/11/09 and nearly made it to the end. 

P.S. Happy birthday to you today Mr. Eddie Garcia, co-host of the Puck Podcast!

Posted by Phil Randolph at 12:09:00 PM, in  100 Pushups  | 100 Pushups - Week 6 Column 3 Day 1 Take 5 Report | Comments (0)

So, I was tasked with creating a table in a notification email approximating a dashboard view in an application I've been working on.

I'd not done much heavy manipulation of tables via LotusScript before, but after looking around the 'net for a bit, some things I found took me down the right road.

I was able to get the table built to the right size and dimensions.  I could do the alternating row color thing.  I could even get the text I'd be appending to the table to be color-coded programatically based on my field values.   What I could NOT do for the life of me, was to set the background color of an individual table cell to a certain color programatically like I'd been able to do with the foreground text. 

Unfortunately that was what I was trying to do, as the view I was trying to approximate was doing column background coloring to show the dashboard info.

The closest thing I could come up with was to use the following construct at each cell that I wanted to set as a certain color.  Basically a bunch of "|" characters all smashed together for the entire length of the table cell.

Call rtitem.BeginInsert(rtnav)'
If C2=0 Then
 richStyle.NotesColor = COLOR_RED
Elseif C2=1 Then
 richStyle.NotesColor = COLOR_YELLOW
Elseif C2=2 Then
 richStyle.NotesColor = COLOR_DARK_GREEN
End If
Call rtitem.AppendStyle(richStyle)
Call rtItem.AppendText("||||||||||||||||||||||||||||")  '28 |s
Call rtitem.EndInsert

Resulting in something like this:
 

What I'd like to propose then, is an idea to incorporate setting an individual table cell's background color into LotusScript, similar to how the text color is set.

IdeaJam item - Set table cell background color via LotusScript

Posted by Phil Randolph at 09:40:00 AM, in  Notes/Domino  Lotusscript  IdeaJam  | Idea: Set table cell background color via LotusScript | Comments (11)

Sneaking a quick workout in before heading to bed while Kath watches HGTV.

26/26/33/33 and that's all for me tonight...

Too tired now and my arms are still fatigued from the carpet rip-out work yesterday and not yet back to being used to the rigors of these workouts after taking too long off.

Yes, of course that's a lot of excuses...and I assume full responsibility for being a slacker for so long...

Hopefully next workout will go better.

Posted by Phil Randolph at 10:15:00 PM, in  100 Pushups  | 100 Pushups - Week 6 Column 3 Day 3 Take 4 Report | Comments (1)

Katie created this artwork recently, inspired by the illustrations in the book, "Fly Away Katie", by British author/Illustrator, Polly Dunbar.

To me it has a very Halloween kind of feel to it, so it's very appropriate for this time of year.

Love seeing these original and creative pieces, and sharing them with all of you!

Posted by Phil Randolph at 08:02:00 PM, in  Katelyn  | Fly Away Katie...by Katie | Comments (0)

Well, obviously my previous comeback was very short-lived.  I intend to do better this time and let a real groove get going here.

Felt good to get down on the mat and start these sets again.  A bit of right elbow pain the first couple times as the muscles got used to this punishment again, but all is good now.

22/22/30/30/24/24/18/18/58 (30, break 1min, 28)

Playlist for tonight's workout:

• Ridin' The Storm Out - REO Speedwagon
• Only the Lonely - The Motels
• Goodbye to You - Scandal
  
• Never - Heart
• Together Forever - Rick Astley
• Destination Unknown - Missing Persons
• I Ran (So Far Away) - A Flock of Seagulls
• The Beginning of Amazing Race 15 (DVRd)
  

Posted by Phil Randolph at 09:10:00 PM, in  100 Pushups  | 100 Pushups - Week 6 Column 3 Day 2 Take 4 Report | Comments (4)

Good to see the Wings finish out a game through the ENTIRE 3rd period instead of collapsing as they did in their two games "across the pond" against the Blues.

The Wings won their game against their 'rivals' the Chicago Blackhawks last night 3-2 on goals by Captain Nicklas Lidstrom, Kris Draper, and Johan Franzen, and top-notch goal-tending by First Star of the Game recipient Chris Osgood.

Here's a couple of other bloggers' and news outlets' takes on the game:

• Red Wings grind out 3-2 win over Blackhawks (Winging It In Mowtown)
• Red Wings beat Blackhawks 3-2 in their home opener (Yahoo Sports NHL)
• Around the Rink ? October 9 Edition (hockeytownblog.com)
• Game Recap on redwings.nhl.com

Who'd have though we'd see this as the top of the regular season stats table:

Scary times in the 3rd period for Jonathan Ericsson as he took a shot off his ankle.  After the game Coach Babcock gave this quote: "He just got a shot. He seems to be fine" - Hope that is truly the case, don't want to be missing that big guy for too long this early in the season.

Looky who's birthday is today - Henrik Zetterberg turns 29.

Hoping for another win as the Wings face Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals on Saturday at 7pm at the Joe. 

Go WINGS!

Posted by Phil Randolph at 11:05:00 AM, in  Wings  | Getting back to their winning ways | Comments (0)