ZenLinux Blog

I feel reasonably prepared for the American Diabetes Association Tour de Cure ride next weekend, where I will be riding my bike 75 miles to help raise funds for the ADA. I’ve been ramping up my mileage over the past month, and completed two 50 mile rides during the past two weekends. It’s really remarkable how the human body can adapt when it’s put under physical stress – for that first 50-miler I was just about in agony for the last 10 miles, but for yesterday’s ride I felt great at the end. Here are a couple of photos from yesterday’s ride, where the weather was absolutely perfect.

There’s plenty of rain in the forecast for this week, so I’ll probably be doing some easy work on the indoor trainer. I sure hope the weather is dry for the ride itself – I’ll still be riding if it’s raining, but it makes things much more difficult.

If you’ve been thinking about making a donation to sponsor my ride and haven’t yet, I can still accept donations online this week.

I have a symbiotic relationship with hills on my bike. They get the satisfaction of me suffering to climb them, but doing so makes it easier for the next time.

So Zappos sells shoes online. They have a very interesting marketing strategy – they exceed expectations so much they inspire word of mouth advertising. I placed my first order for a pair of shoes yesterday, and chose the free shipping option (4-5 business days for delivery). A short time later I received an email informing me that they’re going to upgrade my shipping for free. Today I discovered that they upgraded it to FedEx overnight delivery. I’m wearing my new shoes now, just 24 hours later.

Their marketing strategy works. I’m blogging about buying a pair of shoes from an online retailer.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt

I just found out that a group called the NH Media Makers will be meeting at Crackskulls coffee house in Newmarket, NH on May 11, 2008. For more details, check this blog post. I’m planning to attend and love to see groups like this popping up in the area.

The RailsConf 2008 presentation schedule has been posted. I’m really looking forward to it as my first RailsConf.

Also, the April NH Ruby and Rails User Group meeting will consist of a live hacking/help session, so bring any code you’ve having issues with or would like a code review on and we’ll work on it during the meeting. Directions and details on the wiki.