Running last week...or lack thereof...

Monday 7/24: Ran 9.1 miles around Lake Hefner at a time of 1 hr 26 min.
Thursday 7/27: Ran 5.0 miles at 8:34 min pace.
Saturday 7/29: Ran 5.0 miles at 8:00 pace.
Sunday 7/30: Ran 2.0 miles (Didnt time.)

So, needless to say I am in week 2 now of marathon training and I am scheduled to run 35-55 miles this week...wowsers. That is because I am going by the Veteran Boston marathon training program...or...trying to at least;) Fairly aggressive, but I need to get serious about training:

Marathon training program I am using:

http://www.bostonmarathon.org/BostonMarathon/MarathonTraining.asp?training=veteranprogram

Hope everyone is doind well.

-Carl the Water Buffalo

3.1 mile jaunt and work fun...

So, I ran 3.12 miles on Friday 7/21, zero miles on Saturday and only 3.0 miles on Sunday evening. Needless to say I have some catch up to do;) But, tomorrow morning I will be running 9.1 so thats good. Today was a fun filled day of playing with and configuring PHP 5.1 and other versions of PHP and mixing/testing it with IIS 6 and Apache 2.2. Seems that for some older PHP applications I needed to run properly were definitely not working as planned...although I finally got to where I needed after some much needed testing.

I am tired of working now...so I will probably do an update here in a little bit...:)

Zend to show PHP tools in October

By Stephen Shankland, CNET News.comFriday , July 21 2006 11:04 AM

Zend, a start-up that commercializes the open-source PHP Web site software, plans to release the first version of a higher-level PHP software package at an October conference, company co-founders said Wednesday.

Zend announced the open-source Zend Framework at the company's 2005 PHP conference and plans to release version 1.0 or a preview version of it at the next show on Oct. 29 in San Jose, Calif.

"The conference is the target for announcing 1.0--hopefully at least a release candidate," Andi Gutmans, co-founder and vice president of technology, said in an interview Wednesday.
The Zend Framework provides a standard way to write applications that run on Web servers and includes PHP software modules for tasks such as database access or Web services communications. It dovetails with the Eclipse programming tools.
But it's not the only PHP tool option. IBM in June announced its PHP Integration Kit that works in conjunction with the WebSphere Application Server Community Edition, software IBM acquired when it bought start-up Gluecode.
PHP, which originally stood for Personal Home Page, is used so Web servers can create customized Web pages on the fly. It's relied on by Yahoo, Yahoo's Flickr photo site, the Chinese search engine Baidu and many other Web sites. Though Zend is the prime company behind PHP and the Zend Framework, others outside the company contribute to the open-source projects.
One partner is Yahoo, which is helping Zend with version 6 of PHP, Gutmans said. The main difference between PHP 6 and PHP 5 is internationalization improvements such as Unicode support so PHP works with many more languages.

IBM in June announced a partnership with Zend in which Big Blue will supply customers of its System i servers--formerly known as iSeries and AS/400--with PHP. "This is by far the biggest deal" Zend has signed, Gutmans said of the three-year, multimillion-dollar partnership.
Zend, with 118 employees so far, is concentrating on expansion and revenue growth for now and will turn to profitability later. The company opened a new office in Munich in 2005 and one in France this year, said Zeev Suraski, the other co-founder and Zend's chief technology officer.
The company is aiming for profitability during the end of 2007 or early 2008, Suraski said.
An acquisition of Zend isn't the executives' hope, but Gutmans wouldn't rule it out: "The goal of the company is to have an IPO (initial public offering), but you never know what's going to happen."

6:30am 9.1 mile jaunt and nephew/family fun.

Dragging myself out of bed this morning was quite fun. I think I hit snooze on my alarm clock at least 5 times. Then I thought about how nice it would be outside at 6:30am compared to the afternoon forecast which was 109 degrees by 5pm...yikes! Anyway, had a nice jog this morning around Lake Hefner and saw many nice people who said the standard..."Good morning"...or better said..."mornin" since this is Oklahoma...the g is silent:) Was not worried about time, but rather on pacing...although I was still slow at a 1hr 31 minute time...have a lot of work to do still, but I will be doing more speed work soon.

On Tuesday evening Aunt Barb, Uncle Rush, Grandma Arlene, Susan, Caleb, Zion, Carrie and Robert all attended a dinner hosted by me at my house. It was a very fun evening with family. We grilled marinated Chicken Breast on the grill and had wine and (Roberts famous Gin and Tonics) with salad, chips and queso for appetizers and Ice Cream chocolate cake:) Yum. My nephews Caleb and Zion apparently thought wrestling their Uncle was fun...so we had a (Ultimate Wrestling) match in my living room after dinner.

More blogging coming soon....

-(Carl the Water Buffalo)

90 degree 8am run at Lake Hefner...

So I awoke at 5:30am only to turn my alarm clock off 4 times until I had to get up at the last minute at 6:10am if I wanted to get a morning run in. Started my 9.1 mile run at 6:25 am and finished straight up at 8:00am where it was 90 degrees and humid...ugh. So, needless to say, I really did not run very fast at all, but I was half asleep too...:)

Yesterday, 7/17/2006 I ran 3.12 miles in 24 minutes on the treadmill and did quite a few light weight reps at the YMCA on shoulders, back and biceps/triceps. Up to 12.3 miles this week...with a target between 25-35 by this Sunday. Technically, my marathon training does not start until the 22nd, but I am getting ready a little early since I am feeling good.

In other news the Seattle Supersonics might be bought by OKC investors:

http://www.newsok.com/article/2773971

A deal is likely coming it seems:)

This is potentially VERY good news for the Oklahoma City area...now that a permanent professional basketball team is possibly going to reside in Oklahoma City, OK:)

Laters,

-Carl the Water Buffalo

Boeing says plastic 737s not far off

(CNN) -- Forget big metal birds of steel, the aircraft of the future will be constructed out of plastic.

That is according to American plane-maker Boeing who says new technology will soon enable us to take flights in carriers largely constructed from non-metal materials.

Alan Mulally, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said the company was looking to replace existing 737 models with newer models made from materials called composites.
A composite is formed when two or more materials with very different properties are combined together. They are already used in items such as tennis rackets and bicycle spokes.
Boeing's new 787-Dreamliner is built from composites and will set a precedent for future Boeing models, Britain's Press Association reported ahead of the Farnborough Air Show, held in England this week and one of the biggest events on the aviation calendar.

The 787 is expected to make its first flight in mid-2007 and deliver the first models to customers in 2008.

The aircraft is made from a combination of non-metal carbon fiber composite materials, which is lighter than the aluminum normally used.

This reduces the weight of the aircraft and leads to better fuel efficiency. Boeing predicts the 787s will be 20 percent more efficient than its 767 planes.
"All future planes will be made out of composites because it doesn't fatigue and it doesn't corrode," Mulally said.

He said composite material would be used to build up to 50 percent of each aircraft and would significantly reduce the cost of building and maintaining them.

Mulally predicted that the technology needed to build the new Boeing 737s would not be ready until the middle of the next decade.

"What's absolutely key is getting our technology to a position where it's right to do this," he said.
Mulally also said that, like rival Airbus, the company was experiencing supply problems and the weight of the 787 had exceeded its target, although he wouldn't elaborate on how much.
"We're a little over where we want to be at this time on weight, but ahead of where we were on previous programs, so we're really focused on weight-efficient structure right now," he told Associated Press.

Boeing has had 360 firm orders for the new 787.

Airbus was expected to make an announcement on Monday about revamping the design of its middle-weight plane, the A350, at the Farnborough Airshow.

Saturday morning run and weekend events...

I woke up Saturday morning at 5:45am to the sound of my alarm clock which seemed to come very early;) Grabbed my Ipod Nano and made the drive to Lake Hefner to begin a 9.1 mile run before the Oklahoma heat was unbearable. It was extremely hot, but I made it around in a normal 9 min/mile pace. My rigorous training schedule for either the Wichita marathon http://www.runwichita.org/marathon/ or Chicago Marathon http://www.chicagomarathon.com/ Oct. 22nd begins officially July 22nd.

This is the training schedule I am adhering too:

http://www.rentinoklahoma.com/myblog/articles/166

My personal marathon/running goals for the rest of the year are listed below:

Oct. 22nd - Finish either the Wichita and/or Chicago Marathon in under 4 hrs to beat my previous 1st marathon time in the Memorial OKC marathon.

Nov. 12th - Finish the Tulsa Run 15K http://www.tulsarun.com/ with a sub 6:45 min. /per mile time.

Nov. 19th - Finish the Tulsa Word Route 66 Marathon in sub 4 hour time...I'll be shooting for sub 3hr 30 min but we'll see....;) Thats a 8 min per/mi pace overall http://www.route66marathon.com/

Dec. 10th - New Las Vegas Marathon http://www.lvmarathon.com/ : Huge goal of a qualifying time for the Boston Marathon which would be a 7:15 min per/mi pace which would be an unbelievable accomplishment with such a short training time, but I want to push myself and see how I can improve:)

Ruling broadens online real estate listings

By Holden Lewis • Bankrate.com

Home sellers should be able to market their houses on the Web, even if they hire real-estate agents who provide limited services, the Federal Trade Commission says.

FTC officials say they forced the Austin, Texas, Board of Realtors to reverse an anticompetitive policy governing which listings are shown on Web sites. For about a year and a half, Austin-area sellers couldn't get their listings displayed on Realtor.com, AustinHomeSearch.com and some other Web sites if they hired limited-service real-estate brokers, according to the FTC. All listings will be displayed on Web sites as a result of a consent agreement between the FTC and the Austin Board of Realtors, which operates the Austin area's Multiple Listing Service. - advertisement -

As a result of the agreement, more sellers are likely to use limited-service, real-estate brokers, and buyers shopping on the Web will have more houses to choose from. The impact probably won't be limited to the Texas capital. The FTC says Austin's Multiple Listing Service isn't the only one that discriminated against what the FTC calls "nontraditional listings," and it plans to go after others unless they change their policies.

"It's definitely a victory for consumers and my niche in the industry," says Aaron Farmer, owner of Austin-based Texas Discount Realty. "I think it'll have a big effect nationwide. It doesn't affect just Austin."

Farmer testified last fall at a Department of Justice hearing on competition within the real-estate industry, and keeps an eye on developments nationwide. He says he has heard that a number of local real-estate boards have adopted rules similar to Austin's, and he expects at least some of them to rescind the policies.

Focus on exclusive agencies
Limited-service brokers offer to list a home on the local multiple listing service, or MLS, in exchange for a fee of a few hundred dollars. In Austin, this is called an exclusive agency agreement, and the consent decree focused on these.

Sometimes the seller wants only to get the property listed on the MLS. In other cases, the broker charges fees to perform other duties, such as writing newspaper advertisements or reviewing purchase offers.

State Realtors' associations have been gunning for limited-service brokers, who are seen as a threat to the traditional real-estate commission structure. In 10 states, including Texas, state Realtors' associations have successfully pushed for minimum-service requirements on real-estate brokers. Farmer, of Texas Discount Realty, says the regulation forced him to raise the fee for his most popular package of services from $495 to $1,995.

According to the FTC, the Austin Board of Realtors opened another front on the war against limited-service brokers by restricting the way homes are listed on publicly available Web sites. Under rules that went into effect in early 2005, a seller could get a home shown on the Web only after signing "a traditional style of real estate broker listing agreement, typically associated with a non-discounted commission," the FTC says.

In other words, if you paid someone $495 to list your house on the Austin metro MLS, potential buyers couldn't find it by searching the Web. Only real-estate brokers could see it, on the MLS's private network. Technically, the house was listed on the MLS, but buyers wouldn't find it if they searched Realtor.com or Austinhomesearch.com.

"That had the effect, because of the importance of being able to display listings on these popular Web sites, of causing consumers, home sellers, to opt for a more traditional form of agreement rather than a nontraditional form of agreement," says Jeffrey Schmidt, director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition.

The FTC, he adds, "is not trying to say which form of brokerage agreement we think is best for consumers. We're simply saying that consumers should be allowed to make that decision for themselves."

'Minimum service' clash
In April 2005, the FTC and U.S. Justice Department asked Texas not to impose a minimum-service requirement. The state did anyway. The next month, the Austin Board of Realtors adopted the rule restricting limited-service MLS listings from appearing on Web sites. This one-two punch knocked limited-service listings out of the ring: The FTC says 18 percent of sellers used limited-service brokers before the rules were imposed, and that share shrank to 2.5 percent afterward.

This year the FTC filed a restraint-of-trade complaint against the Austin Board of Realtors, saying that the MLS rules restricted consumer choice, forced consumers to pay for services that they didn't want to buy, and restrained competition among brokers.

The FTC says the Austin Board of Realtors agreed to withdraw its Web policy in the consent agreement. But that's not what the Austin Board of Realtors says. Its president, David M. Foster, says in a news release that the board withdrew the Web policy in August 2005, just three months after it went into effect.

"The rule was initially established to ensure that our consumer Web site was used to promote listings to benefit members," Foster says. "We realized, however, that the rule was confusing and did not work as well as we'd intended, which was why it was rescinded so quickly."

Help for sellers?
He notes that the board does not admit any wrongdoing. Nor was it fined.

The agreement between the FTC and Austion Board of Realtors says "you can't segregate listings based on brokerage type," says Patrick Woodall of the Consumer Federation of America. "I think that's beneficial to consumers, both as sellers and as buyers."

It helps sellers because they can market their property to a wider audience, Woodall says. It helps buyers searching online because "if you're not seeing all the properties, you might not be getting the best property that's available for you."

FTC officials say they expect more Austin sellers to choose limited-service brokers as a result of the rule change.

 

Treadmill 10K run at Edmond YMCA...and work.

So...it was 99 degrees Fahrenheit in Edmond, OK at about 6:30pm today. Not exactly cool enough for me to justify losing 10 lbs. of Water Buffalo weight in the Oklahoma sun running around Lake Hefner. Instead, I took my Ipod Nano and traveled up the road to my second favorite place to run ...at the Edmond YMCA. Ran a 10K...thats exactly 6.25 miles for you non-running enthusiasts;) Just a training run and wasnt real motivated, but did feel good at about a 8min 15 second pace. What else happened today...hmmm...I patched several servers at work today with the latest round of wonderful Microsoft security patches which were released this past Tuesday. Maybe I need to just become a Linux admin again...I think my life would be much easier;) GUI tools are really boring after awhile. Not much else going on besides the fact that I have many on-going projects which seem to never end...

In other news, my sister, her husband and my nephews are coming into town next week...so it should be limitless amounts of fun. You can check their blog out here:

http://calebandzion.blogspot.com

Anyway, tomorrow is another blistering day...check back this week for more updates in the land of Carl the Water Buffalo.

-(Carl the Water Buffalo)

Water Buffalo Factoid...

The Water Buffalo is a very large ungulate. It survives in the wild in India, Nepal, Bhutan and Thailand and is very widespread as a domestic animal in Asia, South America, North Africa and Europe. It is feral in northern Australia. Wild-living populations also exist in much of South-east Asia but their origin is uncertain: they may be the descendants of wild Water Buffalo, formerly domesticated ferals or a mixture of both. In Asia the population of wild Water Buffalo has become very sparse. Adults range in size from 300 kg to 1200 kg, although females typically weigh around 750 kg and males upwards of 1000 kg. Due to genetic isolation weights can vary greatly even in populations in close proximity. Buffalo seem to have originated from South Asia, from India to Indochina.

The classification of the Water Buffalo is uncertain. Some authorities list a single species, Bubalus arnee with two subspecies, the River (B. arnee bubalis) and Swamp (B. arnee carabanesis) Water Buffaloes; others regard them as closely related but separate species. The Swamp Buffalo has 48 chromosomes, and is mostly found in the eastern half of Asia. The River Buffalo is mostly found in western half of Asia, and has 50 chromosomes. Fertile offspring occurs between the two. It does not readily hybridise with cattle which have 60 chromosomes. Milk from both of these animals may be used by many peoples, and is the traditional raw material for mozzarella cheese. Water buffalo hide provides a tough and useful leather often used for shoes and motorcycle helmets.

Exploit Adsense Earnings!

Having the pages with the proper keywords is one thing, but motivating visitors to those pages is another matter and often that part that is lacking. You need to optimize your site navigation. Think about how visitors are using your website. After a visitor has landed on a certain page, they have the trend to click on another page that sounds appealing. They get there because of the other links that appears on a page that they initially landed on. It's all about enabling visitors to move about your site. The typical website has menu links on each page. The wording on these links is what take hold of a visitor's attention and gets them to click on one of the links that will take them to another page of that website. Links that have "free" or "download" are good attention-grabbers. There are some websites that are accomplishing a lot of traffic from search engines, but have low earnings. The trick is to try and use come cunning labelled links to get the visitors off that page and navigate them to the higher earning ones. Before you begin testing, you need to have two things. Something to track and compare, and some high earning pages you want to funnel your site traffic to. An option is to select a few of your frequently visited pages. This is to guarantee fast result.

The next thing to do is think of ways to get visitors viewing a particular page to try and click on the link that will take them to your high earning pages. Come up with an appealing description for that link, and a likeable and unique description for the link. Think of something that people do not get to see everyday. That will trigger their curiosity enough to try and see what that was all about. Use graphics to grab your readers' attention. Be creative. As far as many Adsense advertisers are concerned, there are no written and unwritten rule to follow regarding what they write. As long as you do not violate the guidelines of the search engines. In addition, keep in mind that it is all about location. Once the attention grabbing description has been achieved, you have to identify the perfect spot on your page to position that descriptive link to your high paying page. Another way of doing it is to try and use different texts on different pages. That way you will see the ones that work and what does not. Try to jumble things around also. Put links on top and sometimes on the bottom. This is how you test which ones are getting more clicks and which ones are being ignored. Keep testing and tracking until you find the site navigation style that works best for you site.

4 Steps to Creating A Website Specifically to Earn AdSense Revenue

Building a website to earn Google AdSense advertising revenue has become a popular way to make extra money online nowadays. It is easier to earn AdSense income versus generating sales by selling products or services online. However it does involve works, time and money before you start earning from Adsense program. Below are the steps to creating a content website for earning AdSense revenue.

Step 1

Decide the content of your website. You can write a topic or subject related to your interest, hobbies or experience. You can also provide educational information and advice on your website if you are expert at something.

Step 2

Use a website builder to create your website. One of the easy-to-use website builders that can help you build a website is Bluevoda website builder. Bluevoda site builder allows users to build a website without technical knowledge. You don't need to build your site from scratch. The trick is to use a free professional template provided by the site builder and then start adding your text and links to your website. You can add some graphics and pictures to make your site look nicer. After completing your website project, your next step is register a domain name and sign up for a hosting account to publish your website on the Internet.

Step 3

Join Google AdSense program. It will usually take several days for Google AdSense team to review and approve your site. If Google accepts your application. You can start learning how to generate AdSense code for inserting to your website to generate Adsense revenue. If your site rejected by Google, don't get upset easily. Google will let you know the reasons of the rejection. You can fix the problems and reapply again. Step 4 You need to drive targeted visitors/traffic to your website to generate Adsense revenue. The higher your websites traffic the greater your Adsense earning will be. Below are some of the ways that can help you drive some traffic to your website in short period of time.

1) Use Per-per-click (PPC) advertising. The two most popular PPC search engines are Google and Yahoo. Google and Yahoo can deliver instant traffic to your website but it is costly to advertise on Google and Yahoo. There are other alternatives like Bidvertise.com and Clicksor.com which are cheaper to advertise with.

2) Introduce your site to your family and friends.

3) Write several articles with a link to your website on the resource box and submit them to article directories. You can find a list of article directories by going to Google and entering the search term 'article directory.

4) Post messages on community forums with a link to your site on the signature of each message posted.

Hello from the Water Buffalo...

Well, this first post is my first post on Blogger...congrats to me.

Please check out some other postings which include subjects such as marathon running and training here:

http://www.RentInOklahoma.com/myblog/

Thanks for your interest!

-Carl the Water Buffalo