Feeling a little sore after starting strength again yesterday.  Kids were home today since it was voting at the schools, so no workout.

Today at BT

Paying the bills.  Fixing a few more things in the new inbox.  Verified iCal is not working correctly with a few BT training logs.  Miscellaneous email support.  Contacted a few writers for the month.

Last night my wife and I had dinner with a local race director that has gotten some very good feedback from BT'ers that have done his races - starting some discussions on a BT race.  Would love to do it in 2012 if finances are well and there is still enough time.  At least the ball is rolling.  We still need to figure out if the course I have in mind is still feasible.  Great Lakes Christmas Ale was very good.

BONUS!  I just received my tech shirt from HFP Racing's Portage Lake Tri...they were out at race day.

Today at BT

We are working on the new inbox issues as I write.  I like the new inbox system and the increased flexibility it provides while also cutting down on the size of the database with some enhancements we made over the old pm system.

The inbox was my brainchild on an 'increase your productivity' social feature. Personally, I hated the old inbox...it was hard to keep track of replies and I frequently missed messages just due to it's inefficiency.  It also didn't have a user search, which made things difficult. Mike did and still has issues on it 'looking and behaving' like the forums and a source of confusion...but I think this will only be temporary for the current users.  Extending the inbox to include forum functionality was a natural thing to do as all the features you wanted for the inbox was, essentially the forum.  Not a lot of new code.  Though when we come out with the new site we will work more on skinning the inbox to have a 'separate look' from the forums.  Mike is correct...they need to be distinct.

10 years ago I did my first triathlon...

If you have ever watched the History Channels 'Revolution,' the modern day version of George Washington as it pertains to triathlon is...well, me.  Now, I am not one to toot my own horn,  hell, I am the shyest guy on the planet, but after watching George's re-enactment...you will note that he thinks a lot.  He is very contemplative.  He considers everything.  He truly selflessly did his job as military commander of the Continental Army not expecting anything in return.  But it was something he believed in...down to his core...a United States of America.

The last 9.5 years of BT I have served more out of a sense of duty from my convictions than any grandeur vision of what the website could have become.  I wasn't an entrepreneur.  This wasn't a 'get rich' scheme.  It just happened, accidentally.  I was a bodybuilder and looking for endurance to balance it out.  Triathlon seemed interesting.  After the first triathlon, I was convinced:  The road to ultimate health is through triathlon. 

9.5 years later - almost 10 years even, I have certainly changed in a lot of ways. The site has certainly changed too.  I have been doing BT for 9.5 years. I am 37, I am about to hit the 2nd productive half of my life - that's nearly 40 years!  That's a long time. That scares me. That scares the shit out of me. I am trying to find myself with respect to BT as BT is about to begin it's next phase - adulthood.  BT has become the dominant online triathlon destination.  It's the entrance to the entire industry.  That is not a small feat.  That took 9.5 years of thought and work plus the support of the community.

And what exactly does 'BT Adulthood' entail?  What does BT want to accomplish for this next stage?

Maybe the answers to my question could be from the beginnings of BT, for which I am a little fuzzy on.

- WHEN DID BT ACTUALLY START? I have been having a tough time pinning the start date down...it was around early February 2002.  This was the very first BT website, though named at the time 'Mindbodysoul3.tripod.com'

- mindbodysoul3 was to BT as Australopithecus was to modern humans.  Here is a later version in 2003.

- Beginnertriathlete.com was officially born in mid 2003 and we migrated from the Tripod site to our real domain.

- The first edition of the new BT in mid 2003

So BT will actually officially turn 10 years old Spring of next year.  10 YEARS OLD.  Coincidentally (as I didn't really know how old BT was) we will doing our first REAL re-design.  BT will be coming into early adulthood.  That's kind of exciting. 

Like George Washington, I will be thinking on this much as we begin the redesign. The one thing I admire about George Washington is that he was honest and 100% for his beliefs.  At the end of the day, I am just like you.  Perhaps having a small midlife crisis.  I am no different than you.  I am just your steward of BT and the people should know what my thoughts are from time to time.  You are much a part of this site as I am.

I value anyone's input.  In the past it's what has served as motivation to get BT to where it's at today.  I need input.  I need your motivation.

Back from Part 2 of the redesign meeting.  It was two days of solid work, little small talk on unrelated things.  We ordered everything in...we never left our conference room except to sleep.   We put in about 15 hours solid on the page-by-page redesign this time.  Of particular excitement to me are the new 'races' pages and the redesigned training log (we still have presereved the look and feel of the current one).  The new route manager will be cool too.

Day 4, the final day of the BT redesign meeting.  About 5 hours today.  We have redesigned every page of the site.

Day 3 of the BT redesign meeting.  12 hours straight.

Sneak peak of the new 'Friends' page - see album for lager pic

HOW MESSED UP IS PUBLIC EDUCATION?  The Akron public school cirriculum is just getting more messed up...and like I have said before, my kids are in the best of the Akron schools.

My third grader is learning multiplication concepts now...not even fact tables yet.  Guess what he has to learn in Science?

Newtons Second Law of Motion

Force = Mass x Acceleration

And I quote "Imagine a ball with a mass of 5 grams (0.2 ounces).  It is moving at an acceleration rate of 3 kilometers (2 miles) per hour.  So, the ball has a force of 15 grams-kilometers per hour (0.4 oz.-miles per hour)."

WTF?  The ball has a force of 15 grams-kilometers per hour REALLY?  This is 3rd grade.  My 3rd grader should be learning this NOW?  This is middle school, freshman intro physics stuff. HOW CAN MY 3RD GRADER RELATE TO F=MxA IF HE IS STILL LEARNING MULTIPLICATION CONCEPTS?  Le'ts now mention that fact that he is learning MOMENTUM and INERTIA.  GOOD GRIEF.

This is why our kids our getting dumber...these 'educators' are knee-jerking to state/govt mandates to cram more stuff, faster down our kids throats earlier...they don't even get to master a concept.  My 3rd grader has mentally  'checked-out'...homework took forever tonight...he is so confused now and he was an A student last year.   They are getting hammered with advanced concepts when they don't even have basic concepts down.  And when they do teach basic concepts, they show the kids how to do a simple two row, two digit subtraction problem 3 different ways to further confuse them.  So instead of kids having 2-3 good, learned tools in their toolbox that they can pull out and use correctly time after time, they have about a dozen tools in their toolbox, half of them doing the same thing as another...so the kids don't know what to do.

I AM SO FRUSTRATED.