Finally a new blog design and beginning of an exciting journey!

During the past few months I have been taking any spare time I have and putting some time into designing a new blog design so that I could get rid of the basic template I was using before. This new design and implementation is the first time that I have really done a custom Wordpress customization, typically I modify existing themes to fit my needs.

I am not completely done with implementing my design quite yet, there are a few things I need to fix and few issues to resolve but they will get worked out as time allows. As someone who works primarily with .NET and rarely with PHP it was a very different experience and challenge but rewarding at the same time. Working with Wordpress this first time around felt very clumsy and awkward, I’m not sure if it’s just the way Wordpress is setup or what. How about using some sort of template system instead of having to basically recreate the UI for each type of page (Post, Search, Page, etc.) or the fact that not all opening and closing tags can always be in the same file, that’s horrible for trying to debug layout issues.

A bunch of little quirky things like that made learning Wordpress a challenge, however I’m optimistic that it will continue to get easier to work with and I have barely scratched the surface of the real power to the Wordpress architecture.

Now that I am finally happy with the way my blog looks I can really begin to dive into writing articles and providing resources that are useful to everyone in the design field, hope you will keep an eye on what there is to come.

Headline Photo: While spending a weekend up in Duluth MN and the North Shore with my wife and friends we hiked on several trails, this shot looked particularly interesting to me, I am quite happy with how it turned out.

Cheers
Zebb.

Coming up this weekend on September 12 my wife and I will be running in the Dick Beardsley 5K in Detroit Lakes Minnesota. To many people this is probably no big deal and could care less about this blog post, I say, that’s fine I’m still going to write about it.

I wouldn’t exactly consider this to be one of my life goals, however it is something I have wanted to do for a few years but have never really had the ambition to actually do it. Long distance running is not something I have ever done, sprinting was always my thing so running a 5K is a pretty big deal to me.

It’s very clear to me that I will never run anything as challenging as a 1/2 marathon and especially a full marathon, it’s just not in my physical or mental abilities. I have always been in sports and have been in pretty good shape for most of my life, however once I went to college and especially now that I’m out of school for the first time in like 20+ years it seems my activity level has dropped significantly and the pounds have started to sneak on. As a challenge to myself and to make my body more healthy before it’s to late I decided to start running to help shed the pounds and help my heart (and to make my wife happy).

In addition to running I decided to cut out soda/pop from my diet, I quit drinking it 3 weeks ago but not convinced that it has helped me in anyway what so ever. Since cutting it out of my diet I have been constantly tired, my bedtime went from 1-2am to 11:30pm-12:30am which means I get less work done in the evenings as I used to. It’s been nice because I am actually able to fall asleep pretty quickly compared to the 1+ hours laying in bed that it used to take. I was expecting to get more energy once my body re-adjusted but I’m much more sluggish and worn out than I have been in years. Hopefully it will get better, but so far it’s been for the worse in my opinion. What do you eat/drink that is healthy to help keep your energy up?

My wife likes to run and has done several races already over the last couple of years, she was quite excited to hear about my new ambition and jumped all over setting up a training schedule for us to follow in order to get us ready for the next 5K. The Dick Beardsley 5K was far enough away that we could get some good training in and was in a location we have ties to, so it just made sense to make that our goal.

It has now been a couple maybe a few months now of training, we have only been running 3 days a week and have yet to actually run a full 5K in our training. We should have minimal problems running the full race but we certainly will not be winning any medals. Our goal is to run it in 30 minutes or less, which I think is pretty reasonable for it being my first race.

The weekend will be fun either way, as my mother’s family is from Detroit Lakes so we will be able to visit with good company and show off our son 21 month old Kasen once again to the family. It seems Kasen is the main reason our families like to see us anymore.

If anyone is in the area this weekend let me know, maybe we can get together for a beer or if you are running you can eat my dust