Once again I feel this way.

I feel like an embarrassment to myself and my status on the AOS Forums (as a Senior Member). Breakfast today was 2 slices of wheat bread, and a shit load of water.

One of the other guys from the forum told me about a place he does group kettlebell workouts at. I showed up. There was a lot of people there, I thought I'd be in the back of the class where i set up, but it turned out I was in the front. Just more easier for me to embarrass myself.

I couldn't keep up. I know I'm a slacker on true proper training when I'm at home. But I thought I was better than what I was. I didn't think I'd go in and own the workout, but I at least thought I'd be able to keep up. About the only part of the workout I could do was the Turkish getups, and even those were sad.

Slight stretch warmup. Joint mobility and the like (I guess).
5 minutes of Turkish Get Ups. I used a 20kg bell. 15 Right, 12 Left

Then I think we did Swing, Halo, Deck Squats. I did manage to do 12 of those, we were supposed to do 10, but I kept counting 3, no idea why, and I know I did that 3 times before I realized it.

Then we did 2 hand swing, 2 hand high pull, flip and press, 2 hand high pull flip and squat, 2 hand high pull, 2 hand swing, 2 hand high pull, flip and press, 2 hand high pull flip and squat, 2 hand high pull, 2 hand swing. 6 Reps of Each for 3 sets... I could do half a set, when I was lucky. After it was over at the end of the third set I was choking down my own vomit (mostly water, with a little bread).

Then they did 5-4-3-2-1 R/L Highpull, snatch, clean and squat. I got through sets 5 and 4, I couldn't go further.

Then they did of 1 min swing, 1 min snatches 30 seconds rest. I did more than choke down my own vomit at that point. I only did the first 2 sets, and the last set of snatches.

I feel like I should go hide under a rock, seriously.

The new tag stands for: Sunday RKC Led Kettlebell Class (SRLKC)

No I don't call this a work out.

Tonight's fun.
Weight: 32kg kettlebell
10 sumo-deadlifts
10 right hand swings
10 left hand swings

The 32 is still out of my range... but I'm going to beat it, even if it is slowly.

The strange things I think of.

So I'm in the shower this morning thinking... 'It's A Wonderful Life' is really quite interesting.

See what George really was, was a Liberal. He fought Potter, the robber baron of the town, and greedy conservitive. Look at what happened to the town after George was never born.

The town had strip clubs and porn theaters, you could tell Bert was crooked by looking at him, people lived in fear.

Go watch it and think about that while watching that. Then mourn with me for the country

meh to the world

So tonight's martial arts class, I just couldn't get into it. I didn't want to move. I've been having some digestive problems, feels like my intestines are full, even after going to the bathroom.

So I just wasn't there tonight mentally. As in I couldn't get the body and mind to do what they should do.

I went through the motions, but it was like autopilot on a robot.

Then I got used as the demonstration dummy for the 6th dan, Master V. Got an elbow in my face for it too... my nose hurts.

One last trip to the park

So because of financial reasons (one of the co-workers got a part time job on Saturdays)... Tonight was our last Saturday at the park. We're going to do the workouts at work on Monday nights.

Tonight was light, but out side of the comfort zone.

I had everyone move up in weight tonight.
20 swings @ 32kg (me)
20 swings @ 24kg (nick)
10 swings @ 16kg (deb)

Then we moved down to our normal weight, and did 20 swings
me at 24kg
nick at 16kg
deb at 12kg

Then Double swings.... we only went to 10

Then 5 per side clean and press at our normal weights.

Then we were done, and had the joy of pushing 320 lbs up the hill to my car. Nick grabbled the handle, I pushed. We actually ran most of the way up. We got the tennis courts, and had to stop. Then I pulled the last 50 feet up the hill solo.

more sore

something I noticed today, after pressing and snatching (but mostly pressing) the 70lbs bell today. Yes by the way, I did snatch it. Was that my lats and sides hurt. For my 35lbs and 53lbs bells, I don't have to load the lat to do the press. For the 70, I do. Wow I noticed the difference.

The problems I see with SaaS.

SaaS (the camel case abbreviation for Software as a Service), is providing the concept of Leasing Software. Kind of.

Different kinds of Software as a Service I can think of, off the top of my head: Gmail, Blogger (where we are now), Salesforce.com (CRM), Google Apps. In each of these cases, you can take similar software, and build a server. With virtualization you can put several of them on the same server at one time. I could go out and buy hardware; get sendmail and wordpress; and set up DNS. Then I could have full control over my mail and my blog.

However, I use services that run the software for me, and allow me to access what I want across the internet. That's great. It saves me hardware price, electricity, and space. I don't have to worry about upgrading or bug fixes, I don't have to worry about a lot of things.

Or do I? Here's the problems list, and why I came up with it. I started looking and thinking about this because of 3 things recently.
1: Yesterday I saw a job posting for a really good job. It was Linux administration, Xen Virtualization, MySQL administration, and playing with something called SalesForce.com (which turns out to be a Saas based Customer Relationship Management (customer database)).
2: I was contacted by a recruiter I've worked with in the past about the same position.
3: A comment on this blog post / article. And yes, that is me responding to the post with some of the same information below.

Problem 1:
What happens when you have no network connection? It could be because you're traveling, natural disaster, accident (someone hit the telephone pole with their car and broke it, your ISP caught fire and burnt to the ground, someone got too happy with a backhoe and took out the local fiber --I've seen all three-- ), mistake (telco disconnects the wrong circuit --something else I've seen a lot-- or the DNS expires and the company can't get it back), or maintenance (isp has to upgrade a switch and its year end for your company). You've lost access to your email, docs or customer database. And the problem could be at the far end, where the SaaS provider is, not just where you are, or anywhere along the line between you and them.

At least if the data is on your hardware and equipment, you don't have to send your staff home, or have them waiting around doing nothing until they can get access back. You can also sit down and make modifications on data off line, and upload to central servers later. You can review old emails (something I can do when the mail server crashes, because I have a local copy on my desktop) and get ready for meetings you're about to go into. The list goes on and on.

Problem 2:
Where are the items stored? Are they on your computer, under your control or on someone else's hardware? If they decide to upgrade, do you have a say? When Microsoft comes out with patches or an update, I choose when to upgrade. When someone releases a new version of the Software, I plan it around when it will cause the least amount of chaos. That isn't the case when it's on someone else's hardware. They do things when they want to, because they think it's best for them, with no buy-in from the customer.

Another note in the same vain. I've had 2 friends (well people I know online and consider friends), who had their blogs and things stored on a community site. They lost access to most of their data when the site didn't renew it's DNS. One of these friends I was able to help and get her some of her data back. I couldn't help the other one though, because it was set up differently for him.

Problem 3:
Backing up and restoring data. When it's on your hardware, you do the back ups, and if you mess up, it's you that goofed. However, when it's on their hardware, you lose that right. They make the back ups. Companies do a good job of backing up, but they don't keep the backups forever. If they fold will they give you access to your backed up data so you can move it elsewhere?

Problem 4:
Who besides you have access to your data? In the case of SalesForce.com, Wikipedia (another SaaS) talks about how SalesForce.com was compromised in 2007. The attackers used a phishing scam, and then moved out from there.

Yes, there will always be crackers, but at least if it's my hardware, I would hope my monitoring software would catch them before they were able to attack to far. With SaaS, they just have to attack one vector because they know that's whats there. With your hardware, they have to figure out what you have first.

Going back to Wikipedia, their site shows something else just as good, although in a different fashion. Anyone can update it, which means if people don't like what is being said they can change what is said.

Problem 5:
Network overhead. Where I'm currently working, I have a decent network. Lots of switches, Gigabit links and all the fun that comes with it. However while my network can do 100mbit+ speeds from the desktop to the servers, I have a much smaller pipe going out of the network to my ISP. If my company were to use the SaaS tools, they would have to buy the next size pipe. Considering they ask me regularly if they have to have the one the size we do... I don't think telling them they would need larger would go over to well. Especially if it's because they have no choice but to get a bigger pipe, or wait longer to access the information they need.

Problem 6:
Cost and return on investment. It might cost less to do SaaS, since you're saving on hardware, software, cooling, space costs, and staffing. But it's a re-occurring bill every month to a year. What if you miss the payment? When I had Sprint / Nextel, they'd leave service on until you were 2 bills behind, then they'd cancel your service. That worked great for me when I was a contractor, and would go a month without income. AT&T, who I have now, if your 7 days late with your payment the only places you can call are customer service, and 911. What happens if you miss a payment to your SaaS because of an unforeseen problem? Also when you own the equipment you can write it off over deprecation. Can you do that with a Service?


Problem 7:
Staffing. Lets face it the economy sucks. We currently have a high unemployment rate too. If you don't have the hardware on the floor, you don't need as many people to run it. So there are less jobs and people get let go. I know I'm tired of working more than 12 hours at a time and 5 to 7 days a week (even if they're not all 12 hour shifts). If people don't have a job, they don't have money, if they don't have money, how do they buy your product? If they can't buy your product, where does your revenue come from? If you don't have revenue how do you pay your bills, including your SaaS bill? See problem 6.

I could probably go on if I wanted to, but I'll stop here. For now. While I think the concept is cool, and have no problem using some of it, knowing that things can get lost at any given time; I don't think it is what Businesses should be doing. I think the businesses that are using it, are being ran by people that are too busy counting beans and not paying enough attention to the larger picture. If they looked at the larger picture, they'd see that in the long run they could have a better Return On their Investment if they maintained everything in house.