Day: February 4, 2010

Technique workout

[youtube D3_qAcF8n4Q]This is why I don’t mind paying Dan for some coaching, even when I don’t have a lot of spare cash. I can watch videos of myself alone until I’m blue in the face, but it takes a coach to point out the things I was missing. In this video I’m getting a *lot* more torso rotation that I do when I erg alone. And if there’s one thing that last year taught me, it’s that doing good technique on the erg translates to having good technique be natural on the water. If there’s one thing I heard over and over again from my teammates in 2009, it was how good my technique was and how naturally it seemed to come to me. Stephen referred to me as “a technique savant”. But it wasn’t natural, it was a result of hours spent at Dan’s house erging and listening to his advice, as well as listening to the advice of other experienced paddlers.

Today I was doing 800 metre (half mile) intervals, working on technique while maintaining a fast pace. I did 6 intervals, all around 4:11-4:13. This video is from the last one, where I was my tiredest.

Hosting again

My colo box, which I bought used on 10 January 2007, hung last night and needed to be rebooted. That’s the second time in 3 months, after nearly two years of flawless service. I wonder if it’s time to replace the hardware?

And once I open the discussion about whether to replace the hardware, I open another discussion in my mind: is it time to go back to Linode or some other VPS provider? I left Linode years ago because they didn’t have enough RAM and hard disk for what I needed, but over the years what they provide for the same amount of money has been growing and growing. I currently pay $100 a month for my colo space – I subdivided the box into three Xen domUs, and of the two guys who rent the other domUs, one of them pays me pretty regularly and the other guy sometimes remembers to pay but usually forgets. I don’t think either of them are making very extensive use. So essentially I’m paying $70 a month for 1Gb of RAM and 100Gb of HD for apps, and 370Gb for a music collection. Well, the music collection isn’t all the important, and for $60 a month at Linode I could get 1Gb of RAM and 50Gb of hard disk. Evidently adding another 50Gb of disk would add another $25/month to that, which isn’t optimal. Anyway, I’ve got to consider my options here before spending another $500 on a used colo box.