Military security?

At today's marathon, the finish line was at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot. As part of being on base, all bags were subject to search and weapons were not allowed. My dad forgot that he had his Swiss Army Knife in his pocket and had to go back to his car to drop it off; that's fine, but the policy of "weapons" is not evenly applied. At the start line, runners could check gear in "gear check" bags; I had zip tied my bag closed and all bags were transported on UPS trucks to MCRD. While the bags were clear, it is quite easy to conceal stuff in the bags and they were never searched. So after I got my bag, I couldn't open it and asked a vendor if he had a pair of scissors. He gladly said yes and cut the zip tie off my bag. Are scissors not a weapon? Furthermore, how many of the vendors had box cutters to open up their boxes? Most likely all of them.

It's a good thing that nothing really exciting happens at MCRD. At friend of ours is a civilian contractor at MCRD and he said that they don't have weapons or anything interesting on the base, except for the weapons that the military police carry (some had pistols, others had some type of automatic rifles).

I rock!

Well, today I completed my second Rock 'N' Roll Marathon. I registered for it last year before I knew that my wife was pregnant. To say that training was a bit tough and I wasn't ready was an understatement. Our son is just over a month old and I haven't run long runs in months. However, my goal was just to complete the marathon again. I'm not sure how I did it, but I beat my last year's time by over 12 minutes; I came in at 4:02:37 which still amazes me.

Will I run another marathon? At this point, it's unlikely. My reason for running my first marathon was to prove to myself that I could do it; with that behind me, I have a lot less motivation to run another.

Is there magic to using plastic wrap?

A number of weeks ago, I tried to wrap up leftovers from our dinner and it dawned on me that I've always hated plastic wrap. I think there must be something wrong with me as I can never rip it off the roll without making a mess and it usually doesn't stick. Years ago, I recall my father buying the big rolls at BJ's Wholesale Club and I hated them. Plastic wrap seems so popular, but the mechanism for slicing off pieces hasn't evolved. My mother-in-law wrapped stuff up when she was here to visit without any problem, so I think that I need a few lessons in plastic wrapping.

MotionBased has gone down hill

When I got my Garmin Forerunner 305 last year, I signed up for MotionBased and was generally pleased with it. I pay for a yearly subscription (which isn't cheap), so I expect more than just a crappy website. Unfortunately their site has almost become unusable as it is so slow. The other day it took 5 hours or so to upload some runs to it. Today I wanted to upload my marathon and it's just sitting there waiting to process. They need to start adding horsepower to the website and give paying customers priority over free customers. That's just smart business sense. Can I recommend MotionBased to others? At this point, no. Hopefully the service gets better as I have about another 2 years left on my subscription.