Vlad Mazek

I try to get out of the office every Friday and become as unavailable as I can. It helps me step out of the daily grind, evaluate where the week went, what to do next week and prioritize things more strategically (than by urgency/response that is dictated by the clients). A while ago I started calling this DFWVF where D, W, V, F stands for Don’t, With, Vlad, Friday. You can probably guess what the other F stands for.

This Friday I went through a few local roads in Lake and Marion counties, US 27, which is supposedly the most scenic Florida road and US46 which cuts across all the major lakes in Lake County. Here is what I found.

From Ocala. You can usually find the best thought-through business plans attached to a gas station; Its kind of like admitting entreprenurial defeat: “I know my idea sucks, but lots of people buy gas and I’m just hoping for inertia (or they are too stupid and walk into the wrong door)”

So whats interesting about this photo? Well, the store is called “Asia Foods, and gifts, Italian Grocery.”

I figured I better take a second picture because nobody will believe me. The Italian Grocery subtitle has an Italian flag as the background so its hard to read, but they indeed sell Asian food inside.

How does that make sense? I am not sure. I guess they give you a meatball with your lo mein?

Not to fear though, there are plenty of dumb good ol’ American ideas too. This establishment is titled Bob’s Zippy Market, from Leesburg, FL. Note the Coca Cola sign, likely from the 1970’s.

One of my running jokes about people that live north of Orlando is “Located 20 miles north of orlando, stuck 50 years in the past.” This is apparently a local chain and they also have a liquor store brand.

And just in case the Meatball LoMein and 30 year old coke don’t float your boat, how about some Gator meat? Yep, if you can hit it, we can grill it! We’ll even make a souvenir out of it.

I don’t know why but this made me smile. I pulled up to a pickup truck on OBT for J&J Handyman Services Inc.

Their slogan, without the slightest bit of arrogance and pretension: “Perfection… at its best”

How humble of them.

Week one went pretty well, surprisingly enough, without a lot of pain. That was by design somewhat, I really tried not to hurt myself right off the bat and have to take a break. I took Friday off but did at least two miles each day and at least 100 reps each every other day on about five weight machines (mostly ram, leg and ab work).

So far so good. I lost about 6lb this week so I still have ways to go in that department but I’m able to jog 5mph and walk at 4mph… which is pathetic for a 28 year old male but it’s a start.

Today Katie totally burned me in such a quick and effective way that I just had no response. You all know how often I’m speachless, so here goes the conversation from earlier today:

Vlad: Hey, want to go to Vegas?

Katie: Sure, when?

Vlad: January, 6–10

Katie: What’s then?

Vlad: CES, the consumer el… <cut off>

Katie: What, want to go find the cell phone of your dreams?

Oooooffff. Now a few hours later I did think of a response (“Yes, so I can call my dream girl when you’re being a smartass!”) but at that moment I was pretty much totally pwned.

Chatting with one of my friends at the moment (whose identity is being obscured so s/he doesn’t lose his/her job tomorrow morning); mind you, it’s 5:30 AM our time and both have been up for quite some time and I think s/he just stumbled on a winning Facebook application:

Someone says:

one of the options when you confirm a friend is “we hooked up”

Someone says:

“we worked together” “we have a mutual friend” “we hooked up”

Someone says:

that’s just impressive

Someone says:

i want to know what the statistics on that are

Vlad Mazek says:

oh, I put fake shit there (NAMBLA members)

Someone says:

i want a job at facebook just to sell the contact information for the girls who check that box

Today is day #3 of the “5K a Day” initiative and while I knew it would be rough I didn’t think I was this stupid. So let’s see. Day one went great. Day two, not so much – I pushed it to 5K and some weights which apparently was just a tad too much. Suffice to say that the sex last night sucked and by the time I got to sleep I couldn’t feel my legs. I woke up this morning feeling pretty good, volunteered to walk the dog and all – which I shouldn’t have done without trying to walk first. Ouch.

But by lunch time the work sucked worse than any pain I could have imagined so I went to the gym and just walked @ 4mph for the first mile which is all I hoped to do.. but then I went on for the second mine. Then the bridge fell down in MN so I went on for the third mile.. by the time I looked down I was already on the treadmill for almost 50 minutes.

Feel much better today than yesterday, definitely starting to feel a little more power (less daily homicidal tendancies too)

And no, Katie doesn’t know about this blog.

So this is roughly what I look like right now (sans the hat)

And I’ve got about four months to get my fat ass in gear and ready for the marathon season in January. I started somewhat paced running yesterday which went quite well, but today I added some weightlifting to the combination and I guess took it a touch too far.

I have four months to lose 20lb and sustain about 5mph for 14–15 miles. The rest I intend to rely on inertia and just push my luck like I do for every other event. Should be an interesting few months but not really much of a challenge since I’ve wiped my travel schedule I can now eat like a normal person (no more “Your flight has been delayed. Please enjoy your dinner and alcohol at Beer & Greese Champ Bar near Gate 42” stuff) and I have to get my body and everything else in some order before it either kills me or I start killing others by sitting on them.  

I get my IT advice from CPAs

I sell Vista Home on $259 Dell workstations

I configure POP3 connector as a redundancy feature

I have never heard of the MX record

My brother-in-law does odd jobs around my house for beer

              -I am the face of SBS

Inappropriate title, sure, but I assure you there is nothing inappropriate about this post.

Mentally, physically.. emotionally.. I am in the same state I was back in 2002 when I started cranking out huge chunks of code like a madman. It’s sad to admit that most of that code is still on active duty, but..

• I haven’t gone to bed before 4 AM once this week
• I haven’t woken up past 8AM once this week
• I wrote software for fun tonight and automated away about 30 minutes of daily tasks

My life is coming back together at the right time at the right pace and things are starting to look good.

Do I smell optimism? Nah, just the usual arrogance but its damn close! Woooooooo!

This is slightly interesting, esp given the last rant about social networks being a virtual prostitution ring. Today I logged in and saw this ad (who am I kidding, I saw the girl and figured there was no way she was my friend) and this ad:

Make $250+ Working Only 45 Min./Day!!!!

Oh really? Let me guess what you’re typing for that kind of money. Clothes optional?

The interesting part is that the site links to a legitimate at-home business. Have we really degenerated enough that even legitimate business has to lower its standards so much to get attention?

Can’t argue with results, I clicked on it.

I’ve posted the collected pictures from the Microsoft World Wide Partner Conference 2007 pictures. Almost all (with the exception of ones featuring myself) are appropriate, have stripped the embarrasing stuff.

http://www.vlad.net/gallery/wpc2007

Enjoy. If you would like a copy of the movies/videos you were in drop me an email, those are a little bit too personal to put online.