The Good Badger

The White House Correspondents Dinner has been a source for entertainment over the last few years.  First, it was Colbert tearing George W. Bush apart, from 10 feet away, in front of a large national media.  This past Friday, John Hodgman, a correspondant for The Daily Show and the PC character on the infamous Apple commercials, gave an equally entertaining speech (okay, maybe not as good, but close).  In case you haven’t already seen this.

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Humor, John Hodgman, President Obama, Stephen Colbert, The White House Correspondents Dinner

Traditional commerce is dead.  As a quick reminder, the model went a little something like this:

Step 1) Make a good product or service

Step 2) Offer said product/service in exchange for money

Sprinkle in some marketing, and you’ve got yourself a business.

Those were the days.

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Yesterday, I successfully ran 26.2 miles.  Today, I will not get out of bed.

There are two general lessons that I gathered from this experience:

1)  You will pay the price for taking short cuts in life

My training period was roughly 20 weeks shorter than what most programs call for.  I figured that I could push myself harder in the truncated period to compensate for lost time.  I compare it to starving yourself in place of eating a healthy diet.  Much like someone with anorexia will lose weight, but will also damage their kidneys, lose hair, and put themselves at risk of osteoporosis in the process; I finished the race, and have probably done irreversible damage to my menisci.  The point is, there’s a right way to do things in life.  I didn’t do that.

2)  The Power of Determination

Despite a serious lack of preparation, I accomplished what I set out to do.  My body decided it was done moving at about mile 22, but unfortunately for my legs,  my mind was the one calling the shots yesterday.

The night prior to the run, I had spent six hours performing manual labor at work, and followed that with less than 4 hours of sleep.  I started the race feeling about as fresh as I would after a 8 mile run.  If it were a training day, I would have opted for rest knowing that running would only do more damage than good.  Unfortunately, this was the day of the marathon.  I had already told people I was going to run a marathon.   I wasn’t just fighting my body, I was fighting expectations.  Soon after crossing the finish line, as the determination loosened, my body started to give into its own sensations.  I began feeling nauseous, light headed, and had difficulty supporting my full body weight.  Basically I was dying.

But I digress….

We’ve heard the cliché “mind over matter” so many times that its meaning has been compromised.  Yesterday, more so than ever, I learned its significance.  In fact, I learned that lesson #2 is more valuable than lesson #1.  I don’t recommend taking shortcuts in life.  Had I trained properly and been determined to run more competitively, I would have finished with a better time and  still be able to walk today.  But I was able to offset preparation with determination.

I think the next time I try something along these lines, I will combine the two.

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Bad Ideas, Determination, Pain, San Diego Rock n' Roll Marathon

So far my promise for more frequent updates has been about as successful as a promise to make US politics more transparent.

Regardless, my inspiration for any sort of well thought out, opinion based post, has been buried beneath a layer of anxiety, excitement, and mostly insanity.

This Sunday I will be attempting to run my first ever marathon.

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Marathon, San Diego Rock n' Roll Marathon, Zach Davis

So instead of my typical 2am routine of Netflix, Hulu, and Google Reader, I decided to update the Wordpress Software on this site.  This is much easier said than done.  Needless to say, zrdavis.com all but imploded upon itself and I’ve been picking up the pieces ever since.  I’ve been able to get all of the old posts and pages up and running, but all of the user comments were lost in the fire.  Sorry.

The good news, however, is that this will birth a new era for The Good Badger.  Step one, new page design.  Check.  Step two, more frequent posts.  TBD.  Step three, move to Silicon Valley and bump elbows with Steve Jobs.  I’m all about baby steps.

With that said, zrdavis.com is an eerie place when it’s void of comments.  I encourage everyone to add your 2 cents whenever possible.  It’s not necessary to believe in your opinion, or even have thought it out all that well.  All that matters is that you have one and that you share it with the universe.

And today’s tasty nugget goes as follows:

“I’d rather have a thousand Monica’s….”   wouldn’t we all

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I guess because I first saw this ad in conjunction with watching The Office on Hulu, it might not technically be a viral ad. But since people have sought it out on YouTube nearly 300,000 times in less than a month, I will count it anyways.

I won’t subject you to an advertisement (that I’m not getting paid for) on my homepage. If you’re interested in a really good new viral ad, check out my recommendables page.

And now a word from our sponsors:

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For those of you who aren’t familiar with TED Talks (Technology Entertainment and Design) you will probably be dieing to give me an e-hug after this one. TED Talks, in short, are described as “ideas worth spreading”, but I like to think of it being much more important than that. If I were in charge, their motto would read, “ideas too crucial to keep contained.” That’s also why I’ll never be a professional motto writer.

TED Talks is an annual conference where intellectual leaders in a variety of fields deliver brief (approximately 20 minute) lectures to an audience of 1,000 people. As of the last few years, these talks are now available for free public viewing online at their website.

Where else can you find some of the top individuals in different walks of life presenting information that 99% of the public is either unaware of, or hasn’t thought critically enough about? Imagine a class where each week you’d watch a new TED Talks lecture and then spend some time researching the topic and engaging in a Socratic Seminar seminar by weeks end. Beats memorizing the all of the battle dates of The Civil War.

I’ll end the rant here and suggest to you a few of my favorite talks, although all of them are excellent. Enjoy…

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Tweet Smarts

If you haven’t heard of Twitter by now it’s likely that you get the bulk of your information via Morse Code and the computer is a foreign object to you. In March, the social media juggernaut drew 14 million people, and when Oprah delivered her first tweet a few weeks back, “Twitter” was added to the vocabulary of millions more. Still, I get the feeling that there are a lot of people that only know of Twitter, but couldn’t explain it without giving that “I’m Ron Burgandy?” sense of uncertainty. When I asked my mom if she uses Twitter, her response was, “yeah, I signed up for it”. I explained to her that owning running shoes doesn’t make you a runner [in her defense, she is extremely web savvy for her...um...demographic (that's the PC way of saying age)]. While I’m certainly no Mark Zuckerberg myself, I do spend waste enough time on social media sites to have a decent grasp of what Twitter is all about.

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Human Autopilot

Life on Autopilot

When you think about it, the intricacies of what an airplane goes through during the average flight is pretty incredible. First it has to taxi around the runway for what feels like a full day, accelerate to speeds to generate lift from the ground, continue ascending to a manageable altitude, remain at a constant cruising speed for the majority of the flight, angle itself downward to approach a runway from 6 miles off the ground, and land an enormous aircraft at extremely high speeds on wheels that look to be the size of Fruit Loops on a large cereal bowl sized body (it’s amazing I’ve made it this far without using a cereal analogy - my favorite type). This is only a basic summary of what a commercial airplane goes through on a regular basis, and it’s pretty unbelievable. What’s even more unbelievable to me, is with the exception of taxiing, the remaining tasks can be fully automated. Basically a giant robot can take you from Los Angeles to New York in just under six hours. There’s a human on board to slowly move you around a crowded airplane parking lot, or in the rare instance where you need to land in a river; but in most cases, he/she is often just along for the ride.

This post is not about airplanes. I know as much about aviation as the average American knows about Cricket. It’s about being on autopilot. Human Autopilot.

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