My jog yesterday was in light snow fall. It didn’t stick because the ground is too warm here, but it fell in my face and that was kind of fun. Today it was just a light mist, but it will probably last all day. In Oklahoma, the Natives can tell you when the wind comes from the northeast or east, it will be wet all day. This should be the last dying gasp of cool weather here, but it’s really nice to have this long, slow precipitation to break our drought.
The really nice part was my body was ready for something I hadn’t experienced in a very long time. When I first began running back in high school, I read some really old books about running and didn’t do all that well. In college I hung out just a little with serious distance athletes and learned a bit more. Eventually, I subscribed to Runner magazine for a few years and learned more recent concepts about tuning your running style to fit your build, etc. My best running is using a slightly “artificial” long stride. It’s not what I do by reflex, but I have to consciously stretch it out just a bit, swing my hands a little lower, and make sure I land not quite so low on the balls of my feet. I need lots of spring in my legs to carry my weight. They are certainly strong enough. Today, I was able to keep my body in that longer stride for the first time in twenty years.
Last night I got sick and tired of not being able to run Linux on this laptop. If I didn’t run a recent kernel and distro, too many drivers were missing or broken. If I don’t run an older distro, the hardware is too wimpy. On this particular laptop, Linux is about a decade behind Windows for drivers. So I found the key for XP which came with it, and installed that again. I simply don’t have time to hack and fiddle with it anymore. I never could get Debian to take full advantage of the power control options built into this machine. It would have required too much reading and fiddling, and I’m no longer interested in that. I have too much work to do.
I’m not looking back.
