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I’ve finally met a pair of Vibrams I don’t like.

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Enter, the Komodo LS.

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I bought a pair on the way to Walt Disney World, for the Marathon. In the store, they felt awesome. I’ve got a regular pair of the Komodo, and frankly, it’s my go to shoe, outside of running. I wear them everywhere.

Really.

I should get commission from Vibram for the sales pitches I’ve done in the Grocery store and about… :)

The LS is the laced version, and it fits tighter. It felt high performance. Like a glove is exactly the description I’d use. The regular komodos feel very loose in comparison. I was excited. They felt great in the store. I REALLY wanted this to be the successor to my Blue Bikila’s, only more versatile.

Unfortunately, one hour of wear was all it took to wear a blister on the inside top of my foot, and pop it. The only other blister I’ve ever had in a Vibram shoe was in my original bikilas, during the rocket city marathon 2010. And I didn’t even notice that one until the day after, it was so minor.

I knew this time. It hurt.

I’ve had issues with Vibrams not fitting correctly in the past – I’ve got 4 pairs of the original Blue Bikila’s in 43. 3 of the 4 fit differently. One is too small for any run over 6 miles, one needs toe socks to be ok, and then one of them ‘fits like a glove’ and has been featured on this blog with over 1000 miles on them.

I’ve got a pair of Bikila LS’s that are my current primary running shoe. While they aren’t the near perfection of my original blue bikila’s, I don’t think the lacing system itself is the primary problem. I think Vibram isn’t consistent in their sizing.

So, they are going back. I don’t know if it’s a case of the shoe just fitting me perfectly wrong, or continuing issues with Vibram quality control in sizing, but I am not putting my feet in these again.

Still alive.

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Yes, it’s been sparse, neigh, dead around here. And that probably won’t change much.

But I do have a number of posts that are getting queued up now…

3 Race reports.
4 equipment posts.
Various images.

I’m not going to pretend that I’ll be updating this often, but I’m going to try to change to more posts, less words per post soon.

I have a tendency to want to get EVERYTHING into a post, and make it perfect – there are several drafts that I worked on for several weeks before I just got upset and stopped. So, hopefully, I’ll be able to get out of that habit simply by trying to push more out quickly, and add the details in later posts.

We’ll see how this works out.

Quick update

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I posted an update to my saga of running in Vibram 5 Finger shoes yesterday. Unfortunately, I did not have any idea of the incredible weather events that started to occur about an hour after I posted this.

I had whimsically named the post : “Rumors of their demise are greatly exaggerated.” Given that I had effectively written these shoes off.

When I retweeted the post a few minutes ago, I thought about all of the weather detail I had posted the previous day.

I’ve re-titled the post.  1000 miles.

On a family note: Thankfully, all of our family, spread through Alabama, made it through the storms yesterday without loss. Mom visually tracked two of the Tornados from her safe spot, including the one that really tore up Cullman. Arab, AL got hit pretty hard, although not on the scale of Tuscaloosa or Birmingham. When I see the aftermath pictures, and remember the way T-town used to look, it’s pretty hard to not get choked up.

Mom and the rest of Arab are without power, and likely to remain without power for quite a bit, but she’s got a generator for essentials, and frankly, it’s such a small thing after the possible outcomes from yesterday’s events.

We are obviously very thankful today for their safety, and our prayers are out for everyone affected.

 

Gallery has been reset.

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The Photo gallery I had at http://gallery.d0gz.net has been reset. Multiple years of photo’s combined with shared domain hosting just didn’t add up. Specifically, it ate itself.

I still have all of those files, of course, so I may put something back up on a local server, but no promises.

Since It wasn’t being used terribly much over the last year, I’ve reset it back to scratch, and have uploaded our pictures from our first trip to Disneyworld.

We had a great time, and I came away with over 120G of raw files.  Needless to say, there has been a HUGE amount of editing, which was very difficult. We had a LOT of really great pictures.

I’ll also end up doing a post or two on that, as well as my plans for runs. The two tie up together nicely

*Cough* Dusty around here…

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Wow, anyone still subscribed to this?

It’s been slightly more than a year since the last update to this site. A lot has happened since then.

I’ve spent more than half of that year in Denver, on a contract job.

Mary Victoria is now in School.

William is now NOT in school (His daycare closed)

I’ve lost my Father to a tragic accident.

The puppy… Is still a puppy, but he’s huge.

I’ve lost almost as much weight as he has gained.

I’m running. More than I ever have. 2 Half marathons are done, as well as a couple of 5k’s and 10ks. Now I’m training for my first full marathon in April.

I don’t know what to do with this space. I’m seriously considering making it a running blog – updates on what I’m doing, a place to publish results, graphs, thoughts, etc.

Part of me really wants to do that, part of me wants to make sure that it’s maintainable. I keep a ton of data in Polar, but getting that information here easily might be another story. I could always link to my RunKeeper pages and update from that… I don’t know.

So… I know this blog is here. It’s called back enough to have this post. I suppose I’ll start writing again, but I doubt it will be as voluminous as I used to be (and that wasn’t much)

Conde Cavaliers

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Our first parade! Mary and William, never attended one before. Jeffie is unclear as to if she has been before or not. She recalls a bit, remembers getting beads. Foggy about the rest. (or simply isn’t going to tell ME.)

I’ve marched in one parade in New Orleans, but had never been on the spectator/tourist side of the fence. The really nice thing about where we stayed for this one, is that we got to see the parade up close and personal, and then could go back to the room, and watch it again from up above. It was REAL nice.

Conde Cavaliers
We have the pictures for the Pharoh’s parade on the Saturday after. I’ve got to push them up, and then start getting ready for the next set of Parades! We’re heading back down to Mobile for the culmination of Mardi Gras – Saturday through Fat Tuesday. Mary Vic has been told there are Fire Breathing Dragons on Saturday at the Mystic’s of Time (I think that’s the parade). I hope so, as she has locked down HARD on that idea.

Sean’s Baptism

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The second reason we went to Mobile last weekend was for the Baptism of Sean Pavel. It was rather interesting pulling the kids into nice clothing after the parades and festivities of Mardi Gras, (and telling them if they weren’t good, they couldn’t go to the parade that evening!) Add to that, it seemed that our choice of Hotels backfired on us a bit. Because it was downtown, ON the parade route, we ended up leaving the baptism reception afterwards a bit earlier than we would have liked, just to keep from being blocked out of the hotel and parking. They do shut the streets down, and frankly, I didn’t know when that was going to happen.

Our kids had a blast. They banded together with some of Jim’s Nephews, as well as Christian, and made their own entertainment, all while actually being quite good. Running laps around a prayer garden seemed to be the greatest attraction, although the baptismal pool held great interest. Sean, being the star, didn’t enjoy the festivities nearly as much. That water seemed quite cold. :)

Enough talk. Here are the Pictures that I pulled. I didn’t know the etiquette for the ceremony, so I mainly stayed in the back, and just shot with the long lens, but I think I got a few good ones.

Sean's baptism

When we did the initial sort, I noticed this one. It’s quickly becoming one of my favorites. Click through to see the larger version (or click above, it’s the last image in the gallery).

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Family pictures

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I haven’t forgotten them. We had a bit of extra time when the Parade wasn’t in full force.

Of course, there were pictures:
Misc Family Pictures
These include the shots of Aunt Janie before the Conde Ball. I thought they came out quite well given the five minutes we had to actually take the shots, and the fact that the best backdrop available was a dark window.
I’m going to have to change how I’m posting pictures… It seems that the aspect ratio gets screwed up a little when I upload them directly here. And I’ll probably start posting the pictures to Facebook as well. It seems that they will end up there, regardless on if I post them or not. :)
Hopefully, I’ll get the Parade pictures and the Baptism photos up tomorrow or Friday.

Gallery And WordPress.

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They have won. The Divorce is final. They weren’t meant to be together, they’re independent software, and it’s going to stay that way. WPG2 is a great concept, but I’m tired of beating myself silly trying to get it, permalinks, and url rewriting to work together.

If you want a Simple Gallery, it’s fine. You want Gallery to be part of WordPress, sure. Gallery to be a fully functional member of Society AND work with WordPress? HA!

So, I’m sure that some of the image links are broken now. I’m trying to fix them as I have time and find them.

Link farm:

The Blog (in case you aren’t reading this) : http://d0gz.net/blog

The Gallery : http://gallery.d0gz.net/

Ganphoto (WordPress and Gallery working together simply) : http://www.ganphoto.com