theboywonder.co.uk

At age 28 and 10 years on, I have finally found the motivation to once again start cycling properly. In the back of my mind I’ve always told myself that I’d cycle and race again but life, travelling, relationships, work, and shamefully a bit of laziness have taken a priority (entirely my choice I have to say). So far exercising during my twenties has been somewhat sporadic, limited to the odd run, turbo session, and a bit of climbing but never anything more than that. Personally I blame the rapidly approaching number 30 and the inevitable decline of bodily function for my somewhat panic induced fitness fad, although my girlfriend thinks it’s perhaps to get away from her.

Still, motivation is an elusive beast and is often only captured when it’s in line with your core values, or when you feel you have no other choice but to tackle the issue at hand. I guess this is a bit of both; my core values being shifted around a little bit, and genuinely feeling like I have no other choice but to get training again and better the form I once held before it’s too late. It’s not a chore, at least not all the time, but going from a mediocre 40 miles a week (which can easily be 4 turbo sessions) to over 100 miles a week does require dedication. Sometimes you just don’t feel like going for a 30+ mile ride on a Sunday morning.

So far I’ve been cycling consistantly since April last year although I haven’t clocked up any significant miles. After some time off from November – early Jan this year (for various reasons) and missing most of the cyclo-cross season, physically I’ve felt really good the last few weeks. Don’t mistake that as being strong(!). Rather, I’ve had plenty of energy which feels great.

I need to be averaging at least 120 by summer if I’m to outperform my old self and I’m still a little unsure how to achieve this, balancing it with my relationship, work, study, relaxation and sleep. One useful measure of form that helps me assess how I’m going is a particular hill climb on one of my regular routes – at the moment I feel like an elephant, but the legs should start to come back in a few months time and hopefully I can hit the 2010 cross season and not get lapped by the professionals ;)

When asked at work about my New Year’s resolutions I proudly exclaimed that it was my intention to read more books not related to computing. I had picked out twelve; one for every month of the year. A noble and virtuous aim, or so I thought. My colleague then mentioned that someone else within the department had completed “their 100 book challenge”. One hundred! Incredibly impressive. If I had to read that many I’d be reduced to reading Mr Men books in order to stay on target!

My twelve:

My New Year’s Resolutions are usually very similar each year – self improve with regard to fitness, both mental and physical, and work hard in my profession. This year I’m trying to set more explicit goals; rather than “read more”, I’ve set a target of reading a book a month. It may not sound like much, but when factoring in time spent on other things (not to mention reading technical literature) it’s a reasonable aim. Anyway, here they are:

Body:

• After being ill, get cycling regularly again. Aiming for a consistant 100 miles/wk by May, then increase carefully.
• Hit the cyclo-cross season in September feeling strong, not tired. Finish roughly 6-7 minutes down on the professionals.
• Add running into the exercise routine.
• Run my first 10K. Have a rough aim of beating 48 minutes.

Mind:

• Listen to Radio 4 on the way to and from work (rather than music) – and hopefully absorb some of it.
• Read a book a month.
• Take the Microsoft 70-294 exam by the end of May.
• Take the Microsoft 70-298 exam by the end of August, to get my MCSE.
• Take the VMware VCP (Vsphere 4) exam by the end of October.
• Learn to use my digital SLR properly in modes other than Automatic.

C-C-C-Combo:

• Walk in the countryside more frequently.
• Learn a new dish a month, and cook the well rated recipes more regularly!

I made a simple batch file to help fix Windows Update errors on our Windows Servers at work (both 2003 and 2008 / R2). It is based on some advice for various Windows Update errors that were on the internal knowledge base, which was no doubt gathered from information online somewhere. It performs a series of steps, saving a great deal of time over having to perform them manually.

Word of warning: The script will attempt to copy pending.xml before deleting it. If it cannot copy it it will delete it. Personally I have never been able to copy the file; most likely because I have not rebooted the server after taking ownership and granting myself full permissions to the file. I should add however that in all my use of this script I have not suffered any problems when deleting the file. Windows Update will recreate it the next time you/the computer downloads required updates.

:: Windows Update Multiple Fix Script
:: v1.00
@echo off
cd "C:\Windows\WinSxS"
echo Taking ownership of pending.xml
takeown /f C:\Windows\WinSxS\pending.xml
echo;
echo;
echo Granting you permissions on pending.xml
cacls C:\Windows\WinSxS\pending.xml /G %Username%:F
echo;
echo;
echo Attempting to copy pending.xml as pendingbackup.xml
copy "C:\Windows\WinSxS\pending.xml" "C:\Windows\WinSxS\pendingbackup.xml"
echo;
echo;
echo Deleting pending.xml
del "C:\Windows\WinSxS\pending.xml"
echo;
echo;
echo Exporting HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\COMPONENTS to C:\HKLM_backup.reg
REG EXPORT HKLM\Components C:\HKLM_backup.reg
echo;
echo;
echo Removing noted problematic registry keys
REG DELETE HKLM\Components /v AdvancedInstallersNeedResolving
REG DELETE HKLM\Components /v PendingXmlIdentifier
REG DELETE HKLM\Components /v NextQueueEntryIndex
echo;
echo;
echo Restarting Windows Update related services...
net stop "Background Intelligent Transfer Service"
net start "Background Intelligent Transfer Service"
net stop "Cryptographic Services"
net start "Cryptographic Services"
net stop "Windows Update"
net start "Windows Update"
echo;
echo;
echo Please try running Windows Update / patching again.
echo;
echo;
PAUSE

Copy the code and save it as a batch file.