kubitsky.net

My City Friends!!

I am running the Philadelphia Distance Run on Sunday. Race starts from Eakins Oval at the Art Museum at 7:45AM. We love it when folks are cheering for the runners, so if anyone is interested in coming out to cheer me on here is some information:

Where and when you might be able to see me…
- City Hall around 8:00AM or later
- Washington Sq around 8:10-8:15AM or later
- West River Drive around 8:30-8:45AM or later
- Boathouse Row around 9:50-10:10AM or later

Map of course
http://www.ingphiladelphiadistancerun.com/Assets/runphilly/images/pdr_08_coursemap_color.gif

Race information
http://www.ingphiladelphiadistancerun.com/race_info.html

I’m targeting a finish time of faster than 2h 15min which I hope I can do considering the stomach virus I’m just getting over. Good luck to everyone running :)

I love movies and for the past year I haven’t really devoted much time to watching any. There always seems to be another obligation to attend to and I can’t seem to find 120 minutes of relatively continuous free time.

Last night I began surfing iTunes to find movies to rent for my upcoming trip to Croatia. I love having my own personal media service when flying. I was amazed at the number of titles I wanted to see. Here’s the list, in aphabetical order:

• 27 Dresses - watched
• 2 Days in Paris
• Atonement - watched
• The Bank Job
• Be Kind, Rewind
• Bella - watched
• The Bucket List
• Chaos Theory - watched
• Charlie Bartlett - watched
• Dan in Real Life - watched
• Drillbit Taylor
• I am Legend
• In Bruges - watched
• Kite Runner
• Lars and the Real Girl
• Mama’s Boy - watched
• The Other Boleyn Girl - watched
• Over Her Dead Body
• Run, Fat Boy, Run
• Semi-Pro
• Stop-Loss
• Vantage Point

I’ve rented about half of them from iTunes. I can’t wait to watch them on my various flights and train rides :)

We just received the brand new starting set of rules and regulations at our Condo. It’s long overdue. We’ve been living here since October 2005. Most of the rules are normal rules that are designed to maintain peace, safety and security of the complex and its residents. However there are many surprising rules that we feel are really ridiculous that you wouldn’t find in a typical street were house are absent of home owners’ associations. Here are a few of the ridiculous rules:

• no holiday decorations may be visible earlier than 2 weeks before the holiday or later than 1 week after the holiday
• no live trees in any of the units
• no bikes on balconies or patios even if they are safely secured
• no blinds or drapes allowed in windows that can be seen outsides the building that are not white or light tan
• no gates, cages or other devices may be erected on patios to confine pets
• no taking trash out after 9pm

The list goes on. It will take us awhile to accept some of these. I refuse to accept the blinds rule. My blinds are tan, not light tan and they were hundreds of dollars.

I’ve finally gotten around to planning out my training for the upcoming Philly Marathon. It will be my first marathon and I’m really excited to get started.

After much debate, I opted to work from a marathon training program developed by Bart Yasso. My husband just read his book, My Life on the Run, and found it very inspiring and the training plans in the back to be easy and sensible.

I really hope that my friends, Adrienne and Regan, will train and race with me. Here’s a look at the schedule.

Over the past couple of months, my experience with shopping in retail stores has been extremely terrible. I used to just complain that brick-and-mortar stores were terrible because they never had what I wanted in stock. Selections were poor and stock was always low. Now I can add poorly kept stores, terrible customer service and ERRORs everywhere to that list.

I shop online, but I’m not a fan of shopping online for everything. Sometimes I like the experience of being surrounded by the physical goods, inspecting them, and trying them. Especially for clothing and electronics. I don’t enjoy needing to return things, which seemed to happen far too often when purchasing goods online for me. But, now I can extend the pain of needing to return things to my in-person shopping as well.

Every single shopping trip I’ve taken in the past 2 months, including large grocery store trips, has resulted in me returning items to the store. I’ve had to return a faulty aluminum water bottle, a ripped purse, a pair of 2 right shoes, wilted spinach, missing parts from Ikea lamps, cracked pot for plants, etc. What’s up??? Why are products in stores so poor. Why are the staff so mean when you return them nicely?

I had the pleasure of listening to a talk with George Lakoff, introducing the concepts of his new book, The Political Mind. He argues that the political divide in the United States is not just about the usual arguments of money, power, social structure and history, but that that the ultimate source is in the brains of its citizens.

He goes on to explain the amazing new research has shown that much of our reasoning is unconscious. We all use frames, prototypes and metaphors to rationalize our ideas and decisions on a subconscious level. Previously it was thought that emotion stood in the way of reason, but it is quite the opposite. Emotion is required in order to be rational.

I was so inspired by Lakoff’s 60-minute talk that I immediately bought the book and began reading it as I waited in line for a personalized autograph. I hope to be able to use this book to gain a better understanding of how people make decisions and how we can use empathy, understanding and language to bring about new ideas and new perspectives. I look forward to finding interesting symmetries between his work with linguistics, cognitive science and political theory to the world of information architecture and user experience.

Fast Cat Sports is offering a local Philly Marathon Training program. The Philly Marathon is on Sunday, November 23rd and training begins on July 7th — 20 weeks prior to the race. Dave Thomas, is one of the coaches and owners of Fast Cat Sports. I trained with him for the Alaska Marathon. He’s fantastic!

If you are interested in running a marathon, consider teaming up with Fast Cat Sports for guided training and tips on food, race performance, shoes, etc.

Information sessions:
Thursday, June 19 @ 7pm, Lloyd Hall (upper level), Kelly Drive (Boathouse Row)
Thursday, June 26 @ 7pm, Lloyd Hall (upper level), Kelly Drive (Boathouse Row)

For more information the Philly Marathon Training, visit http://www.fastcatsports.com/FCMTphillymarathonpage.html

Be one of the first to get a sneak peek at the new Morae scheduled to release in Summer 2008. TechSmith will be demonstrating the interesting new capabilities that bring this usability testing software beyond just website testing. Come and check out Morae and UserVue and ask TechSmith all the questions you like.

For more information about the event: http://phillychi.acm.org/?p=69

To register for this FREE event:
http://upadelawarevalley.org/events/event_register.php?id=9

my first pair of glasses

Originally uploaded by ckubitsky

I’m getting old.