#6 - Work, that's a biggie.

So I stayed up watching the pres. debate and commentary, so much for getting adequate sleep!

Dan. You are always an inspiration to me when I come up with these trips. Your trip from Lincoln to Vail is something I thought about last week while I was bike touring, especially regarding the fact that you rode a mountain bike! Yikes.... Maybe someday we'll actually attempt one of these trips together?

BTW, you need to get a flip video camera. That's what I used to do the video updates. Too easy to use and upload.

brad, if that second photo is an example of your current running form - we may want to take a look at it before the run in October :-)

The idea of balance in life is tough to wrap my mind around. I tend to be an all-or-nothing personality, so over the last 6.5 years I have gradually built into my life strategies a more balanced approach. Ironically (or not), I feel more productive, have less crash-and-burn periods, less health problems... and a better overall endurance athlete.

I'm very excited to see what my 30's will bring when they start in September, as most of the 20's were spent just trying to survive in spite of myself. One big hurdle that I want to clear is accept not forcing every minute of my day in "production" mode. I wasn't kidding on twitter yesterday that periods of hermitage dwelling (Thomas Merton style) are appealing to attack that issue... thanks for the reminder.

Brad. I often see a headline from your blog and come read it like today, I jumped over from facebook. I love to read the posts about the new tech companies and applications that you talk about, but am often left in a difficult situation.

I am not in the tech industry and while the new technologies and applications are very interesting and useful for my website, blog, etc... I often wonder what level of threshold to apply in regards to trying to adopt a new application.

For example, filtrbox appears to be something useful that I could use to keep track of news in exercise physiology, marathon training, etc.. but is it a significant advantage to use in that manner. Does it pass the "threshold" of need to use?

For the readers that are in the tech biz it probably makes sense to keep a lower threshold when taking on learning new apps... do you have any advice for those of us not in the group and that don't necessarily need to be early adoptors?

Personal examples: still haven't found a good use for ligit or mybloglog apps, still trying to decide if twitter is worth it, but have found feedburner way beyond useful. All apps I've looked at after a post by you. Thanks.

PS - Intense Debate is one I've looked at but shied away from out of fear of time consumption.