I'm getting married in a month.

After more than four months of training and preparation, I ran the Disneyworld Marathon with my Team in Training group, finishing the 26.2-mile course in 5 hours and 22 minutes. Jen was not far behind me, finishing in 6 hours and 14 minutes. All 10 members of our team (and two coaches) crossed the finish line just as the five members of our half-marathon team had done the day before.

Everyday, as I drive to or from work or run errands, I must see 75% of the people at stop signs roll through them, and that's if they even slow down at all. The ones that are stopping are doing so because a car is coming and they can't blow through the intersection. Hardly anyone around here stops at a red light before turning right anymore.

Almost every time I run down the road on which I leave, someone comes flying out of one of the condominium or housing communities and nearly runs me over. Worse, they look at me like I'm completely insane when I point at their stop sign after they slam on breaks 15 feet past it.

To put this in perspective, I watched a stop sign a couple of blocks from my office for about 10 minutes one afternoon a few weeks ago. Out of 50 cars, only 4 stopped. That's more than 90% of the cars that ran the stop sign.

We live in such a world today that everything has to be right down to the wire. News has to be delivered 24 hours per day via SMS, people have to be accessible at all times via their Blackberry, and they simply must get from one place to the next in no time flat, because they're obviously oh-so-damn important.

I realize that the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office is stretched and the patrol units are running from call to call. I also realize that this leaves virtually no time for proactive traffic enforcement. But seriously, how did we let it get this lax that nobody even cares if they run a stop sign or a red light these days?

How is it possible in this day and age that government websites do not have their domains duplexed?

If I visit http://census.gov, I get a page not found error.

I have to actually go to http://www.census.gov for it to work..

How stupid is that?

I haven't been posting very often here. It's not that I don't have thoughts, but that I'm so damn busy lately.

In case you were not aware, I am running a marathon with Team in Training. As part of the team, I'm also raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

You can help me reach my goal by making a donation today.

I need your help.

Wine is a beautiful thing.

Not the kind you drink, but the windows API, Wine, for linux systems.

I've often complained that I use Windows more than linux solely because of the inferior software that is created for the linux environment. Let's face it, while some of the developers creating linux applications are incredibly talented, it's difficult to keep up with a company like Microsoft that sinks millions into research and development efforts.

Wine allows you to run Windows applications in the linux environment, essentially rendering needless the Windows operating system.

Will it cause me to give up on Windows completely? Absolutely not, but it sure expands the possibilities for using a non-Windows environment more frequently.

I recently established several goals for myself, including running a marathon next year. In order to meet this goal, I've joined the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's volunteer endurance sport organization, Team in Training to help prepare for the 2008 Disney Marathon on January 14. In addition to training for a marathon, I've also committed to raising $3000.00 for the Society. Please take a few minutes to visit my marathon page to learn how you can help me reach my goal!