Favorite Workout Gear: Nike Free Trainer 3.0 V4

nike free trainers

My Rating:

I try to hit the gym 4-5 times a week: a mix of weights, cardio and recovery activities (yoga and swimming). Through it all, I’ve struggled to find the correct shoes for my weight lifting sessions. My go-to Nike cross-trainers were too cushioned and impacted my form on squats and presses. My Brooks running shoes were ever worse. It got so bad that I would occasionally go barefoot when doing heavy lifts.

I finally decided to buy some shoes that would cover multiple gym activities. After a few weeks of research, I bit the bullet and bought a pair of Nike “Free Trainer” shoes1.

I should have bought these shoes 6 months ago. I LOVE them. They are lightweight and have a low profile – so my form isn’t impacted by the shoe cushion. I can still do some cardio in them. Plus they look nice.

Now if only I could find some decent socks to wear….

That Ain’t Right

Shaking_head_animatedI read a disturbing post last week; it looks like someone is using photos from a blogger’s personal site to create a meme of characters from Scandal. The rub is that the stolen photos were of the blogger’s kid. From the sheknows.com blog:

There is some good and some bad to having cute kids. The good news is that they make great photography subjects and models. The bad news is, others agree and sometimes take that fact too far — even stealing my family’s photos and turning them into memes for popular TV shows.

I’d thought I’d seen it all. That was until a friend and die-hard Scandal fan direct messaged me a photo of my kids’ heads Photoshopped in with Olivia Pope and Fitzgerald Grant. She found it on a Scandal fan page and thought I should know.

You can read the full blog post here: http://www.sheknows.com/parenting/articles/1101235/scandal-meme-stolen-family-photo#

Getting Started with my Blog on AWS

I workAWS_Services as a technology consultant, and it’s been some time since I’ve been hands-on (these days, I typically architect solutions on paper and the work with technology architects, designers, and developers to implement the solution). This blog will give me the opportunity, in a live environment, to get my hands dirty. Along the way, I’ll document what I’ve done, so others can follow (or use for their own purposes).

Step 1: Take AWS training. The best place to get instant hands-on experience is aws.qwiklabs.com. The website provides everything you need to learn about AWS and to build working examples.1

Step 2: Sign up for a free account. And yes, free means free, for the most part (more on that later).

Step 3: Build a LAMP server. The instructions here (http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/install-LAMP.html) are easy peasy.

Step 4: Install WordPress. Again, super simple instructions (http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/hosting-wordpress.html) Continue reading “Getting Started with my Blog on AWS”