I’ve resorted to my nerdier side since I haven’t been able to really run that much lately (and don’t really have too much desire to be on my bike these days). I was inspired by my co-worker’s talk about his own home built MythTV based PVR that I decided to investigate building my own too. I already own a TiVo, but I have some recordings on there from almost a year ago that I’d like to be able to get onto DVD or some other kind of digital format. Lets face it… VHS is dying fast!

I bought the Hauppauge PVR-250 card and installed it onto my windows machine. After fighting with their drivers a bit, I was able to get TV displayed onto my PC. Neato! Capturing video to my hard drive wasn’t too hard either, but converting that video to another format has proven to be a nightmare. My head has been aching for the past three days trying to learn about different video and audio formats and trancoding/encoding between them all. It doesn’t help that you don’t know if an encoding was successful or not until you let it run its course, which for an hour long show usually takes a few hours itself. This headache went on for three days or so when I finally came to the conclusion that most all the video editing/encoding programs and packages out there (1) suck, (2) are buggy, or (3) do things not quite to standards and therefore output isn’t interchangable between programs (I guess 2 and 3 really amount to 1… sue me :mrgreen:). I don’t know what took me so long, but I finally settled on using a program that came with my card which I originally passed over for other freeware and it seems to work ok.

So three days later, I have those shows that have been sitting on my TiVo for a year onto a neat little DVD with the commercials taken out and pretty little menus and everything. Exciting, eh? I really need to be able to run soon… :neutral:

I really don’t have anything very exciting to report. I’ve been a little bummed in that I’ve been wanting to start running again (my biggest limiter), but these injuries are preventing me from doing so. Just when I thought my knee was getting better, I get this phantom ITB pain in my opposite knee?!!? I don’t know how I go from resting to the point where my ITB in my left leg is nearly better to having identical pain now in my right leg. *sigh* It’s so damn depressing. :(

I still don’t have much desire to start riding my bike again, although I won’t have much choice here soon if I want to keep the weight off. I’ve been swimming 4-5 times a week, but am starting to develop some pain in my right elbow from all that volume. Bleh. I really do want to start training again for next season, but my body isn’t cooperating with me. I’ll keep on giving it more time to recouperate and heal, but I wish it would hurry up already. :neutral:

In other news, I took a trip to Wisconsin Dells last week which was pretty fun. I’ll be heading to California soon to visit my family there. Then it’s off to Florida and back to California once again to round up the rest of the year. I hope it’s warm everywhere I go. I need to thaw.

… my weight. :(

The cycle begins again. I feel like I’m a kid and it’s the last day of summer vacation.

/me drools

… was released today. There shouldn’t be any significant changes that affect the site, but if you notice that something is wrong do let me know.

I’m not sure if this device ever actually worked, but it’s a pretty darn good idea. :)

In other news, I ran again today just to see where my knee is at. I only planned on running two miles so I didn’t have to walk as far home this time if it started hurting. The bad news is that I stopped just over a mile away again. The good news is that it wasn’t really a pain this time but more of a tingling feeling. It didn’t really hurt per se, but I stopped and walked back from there anyway. Slowly but surely, it’s getting better.

Seeing how it was Antarctica cold yesterday, Carol and I went for a post dinner Starbucks run to get something warm to drink. It was my second time visiting Starbucks, the first being last Sunday. I ordered the same Vanilla Latte that I had the previous time because it was tasty. Little did I know how many calories coffee and milk could have. 280 calories?!

Back to diet soft drinks and water for me.

It sure has been a while…

I was in DC last weekend for a wedding. It was a great time and it was really great to see some old friends that I haven’t seen in quite some time. Hopefully we’ll have more get togethers in the future. My best wishes to the married couple. :)

My knee felt good all last weekend and I was very optimistic that things were getting back to normal. I biked last Monday and toyed with the idea of maybe running in the Twin Cities Marathon this Sunday. I planned to do a short 3-4 mile run on Tuesday, but my knee pain started again around 1.5 miles into the run. :( So, I’m definitely out for Sunday. I won’t get to avenge my horrible marathon time until some undetermined race in the future. Oh well.

It feels like it’s been a pretty busy week here. I’ve been swimming in the mornings to try and keep my feel for the water. It seems like every evening there has been something going on. I’m looking forward to some downtime here this weekend.

I saw a pre-showing of Shark Tale yesterday evening. It actually wasn’t as good as I thought it was going to be.

I’ve had a pretty annoying week dealing with an unnamed piece of software that used to be free, but that they’re now charging money to use. No good conversion software exists yet to transition me to another free solution. I’m going to take a closer look at licensing agreements before I start using stuff from now on.

I’m planning a couple more trips this year. California, Florida, and California (again) are on my radar. Perhaps a trip to Wisconsin Dells next weekend. Haven’t decided on that one yet.

It’s been getting comfortably cold here the past week. We have mornings with the mercury in the 30s and highs that are 60s. Winter is coming soon.

Just got a call from my friend. We’re going to do what we do best - EAT! :)

I’ll try to post more regularly…