Head over feet

For those of you who are unaware, I love to rock climb. Got started about 8 months ago, and fell in love instantly. This, however, was not the first time I had done this, I went climbing for the first time back when I was 16 and loved it. The problem back then was I did not have a partner to belay me, not to mention the closest rock climbing gym was 45 minutes away. I never was able to pursue it until last summer when my friend Chris out of the blue called one Saturday. “Get dressed, we are going to go climbing and check out a gym”, I was all over the idea. I had wanted to join a gym for months, but didn’t have anyone to go with, and as I am sure you are all aware, the human tendency is to procrastinate and not go. When you have someone to go with; there is a balance, you force them to go, and they force you to go. Anyway, we went and checked out Touchstone Fitness, a network of gyms through out the Bay Area.

Anyway, after trying it out for an hour and touring the facilities, we were sold. Signed up that day, went over to REI, bought all the equipment, and never looked back. I know what you are thinking; they go climbing once and then go buy all the equipment… NERDS! But it is not like that; we were sold immediately, and have been going religiously since we signed up.

Again I am getting side tracked; anyway I went to gym all last week, I have been frustrated because I have not been able to climb due to the fact that my hands are severely chapped and anytime I attempt to climb, they open up and bleed… gross! I know. So all I have been able to do is run. On an aggregate, I ran about 25 miles last week; by Thursday I was so sore that I could not even do that. The reason I am so determined to exercise as much as possible, is because I have put on 10 pounds in less than 2 weeks. I relate this to being engaged and getting comfortable, which I am totally against... (Being comfortable and lazy, not engaged... love you honey!!!) That is no excuse to let ones self go, plus the more weight one puts on, the harder it is to climb. This brings me to the point of this rant. Usually I run on a treadmill, but because I was so sore, I decided to use an elliptical. I never had used one of these before, I always thought they looked kind of lame and that I would not get the same endorphin release I get from running. WAS I WRONG! Oh my gosh, for those of you who have never exercised on one of these, you have got to try it. For those who have, WHY DIDN'T YOU MENTION IT TO ME!

The benefits of this machine in comparison to a treadmill are vast, thats not to say that I am going to give up the treadmill, it has been proven that using a treadmill is more effective for marathon training and endurance. But if all you want to do is get your heart rate up for a cardio workout, i.e. to loose weight, then this is the way to go. No impact on the knee’s and the exercise is less jarring and a lot smoother. It takes some getting used to, but once you get the rhythm down, you start sweating almost immediately.

Again, I love climbing, and I have hated being out of it. When it comes to exercise, and I know this might sound like a contradiction, considering what I said above, I can not just sit and lift weights. The nice thing about climbing is it is always different. There is always a new route to try, or a new challenge to overcome. It is not the same thing over and over. Even sitting on a treadmill can be redundant, but I only do that after I climb to burn out. Climbing seems to be the best of both worlds, you get exercise beyond cardio, and the benefits are very similar to weight lifting. Not only that, but it is fun and exciting. Who would have ever known that exercise could be fun?

Finally a post / (I hate MySpace)

I have wanted to get this blog thing started for the last 2 weeks. At first glance it looked like a lot of fun; then my tech mind started to notice that there was more to the site than just posting text. I can add my own HTML script? I can write CSS? This is fantastic! The simple blog site that should have taken 5 minutes to setup became a monster of options, selfless promotion, and lots of flash files. Overall, I plan on putting this freedom of format to full use. I must admit, I joined Myspace at a time in my life where a moment of weakness would equal countless repercussions. I do, however, feel much better after having admitting to that. “My name is Jonathan, and I am a recovering Myspace user”… notice I did not say addict. I didn’t fall enough to classify myself as a resident of a fake community of people with no lives who enjoy seeing themselves type useless phrases like “how’s it going”? Had I said that, would you really have believed that I had recovered? Can you tell I hate that online predator service? To be fair Myspace did allow (to a certain degree) some blog options and script writing, but the negative aspects of it outweighed it’s more functional features. It is catered more for teens… and adults with no lives still trying to hold onto a youth that is no longer tangible. Some people actually check it 4 to 5 times a day… I digress. Blogspot seems to be a nice cozy place to sit and enjoy oneself, without the pressure of advertising and the occasional invite from reta324 who is lonely, but a nice girl who wants to be my friend… “Myspace” a great place to build up ones self esteem and buddy list, and all it costs you is your dignity and soul. Needless to say, I am excited about starting my blog. And I just spent it complaining about something entirely off topic; I had originally intended to start off with a kind of summary of myself. I need to edit the title of this blog.

There is so much I want to talk about, unfortunatly my life is not that interesting to be able to keep a consistent flow of entries from week to week, especially if I give everything all at once. I am in the midst of building a new webpage/site for the wedding. This has been really exciting for me; I am embarking into a new realm of flash design. This, by far, will be some of the most creative and code demanding flash structure I have ever done… though at first glimpse it might not look all that impressive. I also designed a count down clock that will display how many days, hours, minutes, etc are left before the big day. Although a lot of your internet backend programmers hate flash, more than 2/3’s of the internet runs on it… 2/3s!!! Which brings me to another complaint, just recently I bought an iphone, actually 2, but back to that latter… for those who know me, and I know what you are thinking… Quiet! In all honesty, the iphone is great and very robust; the limitations, however seem very odd to me. You can not send multimedia texts, which every other phone out there on the market can already do. Multi deleting of emails is still unavailable, and to quote Steve Jobs, "the iphone has a fully interactive Safari browser”, which does not support flash. Again, 2/3s of the internet runs on this software in some form or another... hardly fully interactive. Originally, their fears were that voice over IP, supported by flash, would be used for phone conversations, instead of racking up minutes with AT&T, but that is no longer a threat. Considering that Adobe now owns Flash (they just recently bought Macromedia), you would think that Apple would have been gang busters to allow a Flash plug-in for the Safari browser, especially since Adobe and Apple have always shared interests.

Sorry about all the tangents, it's what I do!

Back on topic; I recently bought 2 iphones, one for me, and one for the wife to be. So, after proofing my latest entry, I realized I have made a couple of vague references to the other big piece of news in my life, not to say that she is big… she isn’t, in fact she is short and tiny, like "tart and tinnies"… Open mouth, insert foot Jonathan. I AM ENGAGGED! Not only am I engaged, but I am enraptured with love and excitement. Anna and I met through church, and as soon as we started dating, life has never been more exciting or fast paced, and I have not looked back since. Anna is a fabulous girl who not only shares my sign; she also shares my penchant for burning journals, going off on tangents, and driving in the most comfortable position know to Man… or Woman. To quote a famous Dr. “She is the mongoose to my snake, or the snake to my mongoose… I don’t know animals”. She seems to be a perfect match; we both enjoy laughing at each other, and at ourselves, and never tire of conversation or learning about the other. She grew up in Davis, got her Bachelors degree in GIS/Cartography at BYU, and is now getting her masters at Chico so she can teach at the college level. We are going to be married on June 7th, 2008… which is 6/7/8. Cool Huh! A date I can never forget. See the countdown clock from my soon to premier wedding page below. To see my lovely lady's blog, click here>>> http://countingclare.blogspot.com/

Well I guess that is it for today, I really need to figure out what this blog is going to be synonymous with; Mezo is just a handle that I have used since the days of boards and handles. I continued using the name along with the infamous itsdafuz, under the assumption that keeping these names would be to my benefit, that they would be my unique identifier for the internet age, an age where standing out in a crowd is almost impossible. It is kind of weird to reflect back and think that something could have seemed so plausible at the time, and yet so idiotic in retrospect. "Don't listen to them, their jealous" I whisper to myself while patting my back.

Beta testing