The Deets

I’ve been known to take it out a bit too hard in running races from time to time. So I’ve been studying tapes from running races where people have suffered a similar fate to see what I can learn. Example:

In this case, I learned that 220 yards is around 10 yards too long if you’re going all out from the gate while running on a horse track.

iJustine on I-394, originally uploaded by edkohler.

Check out www.iJustine.tv if you want to see live streaming of dinner & drinks from Pracna.

More on this at TechnologyEvangelist.com

When I think of Houston, I don’t think, “athletes.” Maybe it’s the polluted air, or their dominance of fattest city lists.

With that in mind, what kind of ski poles do you think they make in Houston, Texas?

Answer: Poles that hold liquor.

St. Paul Realtor, Bonnie Erickson, has put together some observations on St. Paul coffee shops and takes a swipe at Minneapolis in the post:

St. Paul Coffee

If a business associate suggests meeting at Caribou, you know they’re not local. They’re probably from the other side of the river where our sister city sports more brand names than independents.

Bonnie, we have quite a few independents on our side of the river too. The Longfellow Community alone has Blue Moon, Riverview, Minnehaha Coffee, Hiawatha Coffee, and the only chain is Dunn Bros. Much of South Minneapolis follows similar patterns with unique places like Nokomis Beach, Tillie’s, Java Jack’s, Anodyne, Caffe Tempo, etc.

I’m sure Northeast has a fair representation of independents too.

I’m just trying to decide which St. Paul Coffee Shop I should go to on my next trip to St. Paul:

The Caribou at Snelling & Grand?
The Caribou at Lexington & Grand?
The Starbucks at Lexinton & Grand?
Or the Dunn Bros at Snelling & Grand?

Words cannot describe how happy this video makes me:

Notice when they “Break it down” at 1:50, there is a guy with a sweater tied around heck neck in the 2nd row behind the drummer.

By 3:30, he’s worked his way down to the front row and is flailing his arms to the music.

But then he’s “disappeared” before the song ends. Any idea what happened to sweater around the neck guy?

Apparently, there is a sex tape video floating around the web of a Puerto Rican singer that’s set off a Paris Hilton-like firestorm.

I figured I’d post about it just to see how much traffic can be generated by doing so in the middle of a firestorm. No, I’m not going to link to the video.

But here is a link to a shot she did for Maxim, um, clothed.

Now that I know the term “Fart” doesn’t hurt my PG rating, here’s a video that demonstrates how to escape the emissions:

CliffsNotes version: Stop drop and roll or side-step will patting your ass.

Now you’ll understand why Bob in accounting keep crawling around the office.

Here I am enjoying a Finnegan’s at The Local after representing at the Ernst & Young booth at Minneapolis Pride.

This was the first year that a Big-4 accounting firm had a booth at Minneapolis Pride. The feedback was entirely positive. Some people seemed surprised to see what is often considered to be a conservative industry show up for something like this. That’s a positive surprise and not hypocritical disgust we’re talking about here.

Carly and I knew we were going to be in for some fun when we were walking down Grant St. on the way to Loring Park and some people coming from Pride recognized us by our shirts and said, “Hey, it’s the accountants! We love your shirts!” That is one seriously positive impression gained by showing up and putting some thought into what people should wear.

The shirts were a big hit. In fact, a brisk business could have been done selling them. I think they were so popular because they looked great while stating a message that everyone at Pride could agree with.

Pride is probably my favorite festival. It’s probably the only festival I attend where people of the same sex comfortably hug or kiss their partners without looking around being judged by their perfectly normal - though not universally accepted - behavior.

Rumor has it that people working for other Minneapolis firms were impressed with E&Y’s presence. It will be interesting to see what effect that has on next year’s Pride. Will additional firms show up, or will employees working for other firms today be representing E&Y at their booth a year from now?

The Deets is way behind on this news, but it’s better to be late than never on news this big. My brother in law, Jake, went sub-4 in the mile for the first time with a 3:59.4 in Nashville, TN on June, 2, 2007:

Bruce Brothers has a great column on Jake’s

Chasing the dream of a sub-4 mile as the big clock just keeps ticking

Watson, 21, has been running for years, logging as many as 85 miles a week and steadily inching closer to that 4-minute milestone. He hit a time of 4 minutes, 4 seconds as a Notre Dame sophomore, “and I knew I wanted to come out the next year and take a run at a sub-4,” he said.

Ah, the mystical sub-4.

Watson can remember going for a run with a friend six or seven years ago and dreaming out loud.

“We were talking about running a sub-4 mile,” he recalled, “and it seemed completely inconceivable.”

But Watson continued chasing that dream and continued closing in on it. As a junior at Notre Dame, he produced a time of 4 minutes, 0.71 seconds at an indoor meet in February. And he recorded a time of 3:43 over 1,500 meters, a time people told him converts to a one-mile time of 4-flat “or 3:59-high,” he said, meaning 3:59.9.

Awesomeness.

Congrats, Jake.