30 Day Challenge, Day 13

The streak made it to 9 straight days before being broken on day 10. Day 11 saw more urgent issues at work and I ended up working my first 30-hour shift at work, wiping out Day 12 at the same time. In the end, due to some great help from Sebastian over at Xtento.com, we were finally able to sync up our Magento website and our Dydacomp based order processing system. Luckily on Day 13 I was back at it and was able to finally get the GoPro video of our Border Collie Mikey going downhill while I was mountain biking.

30 Day Challenge Day 8

After this morning's surf I'm 8 for 8 on my 30 Day Challenge to surf, play basketball or go mountain biking everyday. I've got 4 days with a ride, 3 with a surf session and a basketball day thus far.

Day 1 - Surf
Day 2 - Basketball
Day 3 - Bike
Day 4 - Bike
Day 5 - Bike
Day 6 - Bike
Day 7 - Surf
Day 8 - Surf

Here was a shot from yesterday:

PetDoors.com is a great place to work, here's the recruitment video we've been working on

One of the recurring themes from the business books I've been reading is the importance of hiring. If you hire and retain the right teammates, everything else gets easier and more fun. In our efforts to improve our recruiting, we made a video showing why PetDoors.com is a great place to work. We've got quite a open positions that hopefully we can fill. Most of these are new positions that are being created to help out market reach.

30 Day Challenge Day 6

6 days in and the streak is still alive. The mountain biking bug is biting again which has made things easy. Breaking out the Garmin watch reveals some fun heart rate data. In less than minutes my heart rate was over 150 climbing from there to a 178 bpm peak around the 17 minute mark. It would be nice to see it fall faster and to get lower, but that gives me something to shoot for over time.

This really is a convenient loop because it's pretty easy. 17 hard minutes and you're up, 5 fun minutes you're down, less than 30 minutes round trip from the house. It's only a 500 ft elevation gain, but it's still a fun way to start the day. 

30 Day Challenge Day 3

The first 3 days of my 30 day challenge have gone well. Today I went mountain biking with our 10 month old Border Collie puppy, Mikey. To be a great dog for mountain biking, you need 3 key characteristics. First they need the stamina to be able to run up a mountain. Second, they must be great off-leash and respond to verbal-only commands. Third, they need to be able to keep up with a bike that's going 15-30 mph downhill. I don't know many dogs that can do that, but Mikey's pretty great with all of those.

There's lots of great single track mountain biking trails in San Luis Obispo and we conveniently live down the street from Irish Hills. Irish Hills has lots of trails, but there's an fun short inner loop that is a great fit for me. The climb is <20 minutes and the downhills is fun and fast with sweeping turns slicing through a forresty grove.

Today it took 17 minutes going up and about 6 going down. It's hard to think if a more efficient use of 23 minutes considering the dog just ran almost 3 miles, I had 15 instance minutes of cardio chased with 6 blissful, adrenaline rich minutes of happiness.

30 Day Challenge

30 day challenges tend to generate equal parts intrigue and jealousy out of me. I first learned of them from Google's Matt Cutts and have been been itching to see if I can use it to manipulate myself into a healthy habit.

From today through April 7th I plan to either surf, go mountain biking or play basketball every day. I started it off right by surfing in Morro Bay this morning and tomorrow is my regular Sunday basketball game. That said, there will be days when it rains and others when the waves are 20 feet. We'll see how the next 30 days go....

Surf shot

Last week my buddy Pat almost went the way of Jack O'Neill but hung on for the shot in Morro Bay. Glad you still have both eyes Pat...

Happy

Monday's are awesome

At PetDoors.com we want to get to the point where we are open everyday. It would allow us to better help our customers and would also make it a great place to work for Cal Poly students since we could give them more schedule flexibility. Several months ago I switched my schedule to Tuesday to Sunday and it's pretty great. Monday's can be a little hectic and now I have peaceful Saturdays to focus on deeper problems with fewer distractions.

Another Saturday benefit is that I can sleep in a little and surf in the morning on a "weekday" by rocking a 12 to 9 shift. This also means that Mondays are free to hang out with the wife in Morro after surfing The Rock with only a weekday crowd. Today we went to our new favorite coffee shop in Morro Bay, the Coffee Cottage.

Boomerang site

It's been fun to see the progress my wife's company YV Analytics has made for the website of the famous Experimental Aircraft, the Boomerang. The website was on the Joomla platform but has been relaunched using WordPress. There was also a "learning experience" about subdomains but in the end it is coming around nicely.

It's a pretty crazy, a-symmetric plane.

New project: motorized beach cruiser

Since my brother will be living nearby for a bit, for a Christmas/birthday/random present I got him a beach cruiser and a bike motor kit to add an 80cc motor to it.

We'll see how it goes. The best written Amazon review said it was a 16-24 work hour project.

Hours worked: 1
Worked on: watched installation video, reread through Amazon reviews, checked to see if I had all the parts, realized the beach cruiser I bought has a 3-speed internal gear hub with an incompatible diameter for my motor. I'll need to replace the rear wheel before I can get started.

Also need to get some brakes, will look into buying a cheap used bike just for its rear wheel and brakes.

Why my wife is awesome

Wow, check what my wife did:

http://fashionhedge.com/2014/10/21/ultimate-ethical-fashion-guide/

Dog Park Etiquette

Our new Website Optimization Assistant had his first blog post published on PetDoors.com. If you want to read about Dog Park Etiquette, Stephen gives a great synopsis.

How big will my puppy get??

New blog post: How big will my puppy get?

http://www.petdoors.com/blog/how-big-will-my-puppy-get

Another reason I love dogs

http://i.imgur.com/9yXCBoN.gif

Dog Popsicles

New entry by Rachel about homemade dog popsicles as cheap and entertaining dog treats.

http://www.petdoors.com/blog/popsicles

Avila Valley Barn

The pleasant distant smell of burning corn...

Hiking with Lola and Mikey

Hiking with Lola and Mikey 

Border Collie puppy with GoPro

Mikey with GoPro Fetch harness: http://youtu.be/3SpApOuXgWI

Buddy's plane + GoPro

Cool video by my buddy Tres, putting a GoPro on his plane.