http://www.chriscowan.us I'm a rambling man Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:32:07 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en This weekend I worked on setting up a Selenium test for Plus 3 Network using Cucumber. I've been using Machinist to create fixtures for my non-Selenium Cucumber scenarios. I wanted to continue using my Machinist blueprints that I had already setup so that my Selenium tests would use the same ... http://www.chriscowan.us/2009/11/cucumber-selenium-machinist/ Lately Nginx has become my new best friend. It seems like every time I think "Hey I want to do ..." Nginx is the solution. Recently I've setup a new "high availability" cluster for Plus 3 Network and needed a easy-to-configure load balancer to route the traffic between the web ... http://www.chriscowan.us/2009/10/nginx-load-balancer-reverse-proxy-jack-of-all-trades/ Yesterday Patrick and I decided to meet up for a "lazy" ride at Skeggs. We have both been putting in the miles lately and we thought it might be nice to just get together for a easy ride where we are not slaves to some schedule like a typical dawn ... http://www.chriscowan.us/2009/09/its-never-easy-when-its-hot/ Yesterday on my commute back from a meeting at the Yahoo! Great America office I was attacked by a vicious Wasp! I was riding along minding my own business when out of now where this little bastard jumped me. I could tell this thing had no honor nor did it ... http://www.chriscowan.us/2009/08/i-was-attacked/ One of the hardest things about being a husband, father, young (is 35 still young?) professional and cyclist is finding time to squeeze in a good mountain bike ride. I found the only way to accomplish this is to get up at the butt crack of dawn and hit the ... http://www.chriscowan.us/2009/08/the-dawn-patrol/ This morning when I was returning home on my morning road ride I was passed by a guy wearing a full Google Kit. As he passed me he gave me a nod and smile, since I'm a Yahoo! I couldn't let this Googler get away with that, so I got ... http://www.chriscowan.us/2009/08/two-strangers-working-together/ So I know this is a very controversial topic amongst mountain bikers (and cyclist in general), but recently I started Rockin' & Ridin'. For the uninformed, Rockin' & Ridin' is when you listen to music (via an iPod or iPhone or some other shitty MP3 device) while riding your bike. ... http://www.chriscowan.us/2009/07/rockin-ridin/ I've been doing quite a bit of test driven development lately with Merb and Rspec. Tonight I banged my head against the wall for several hours trying to get cookies to pass to a strategy via a request() call. I finally got it working. I figure I would share this ... http://www.chriscowan.us/2009/06/merb-rspec-testing-requests-with-cookies/ Last night I had the pleasure of attending an event hosted by Palo Alto Bicycles featuring Tom Ritchey (yes, he is the same guy who's name is on your bike). Originally, I was planning on driving over but when I got home last night I had a sudden urge to ... http://www.chriscowan.us/2009/01/an-evening-with-tom-ritchey/ For some reason I'm really resistant to taking drugs when I need to. The really strange part is that I take my Prilosac every night without fail but anything else and I tend to shy away. I feel pretty comfortable with Prilosac for my GERD because I've been told by ... http://www.chriscowan.us/2009/01/drugs-not-the-fun-ones/ Over the last couple of days I've thought of a few things I wanted to post about but didn't have enough substance to fill an entire blog post. I know that Twitter is good for these types of things but some of the thoughts can't really be summarized into 140 ... http://www.chriscowan.us/2008/12/a-few-random-thoughts/ I'm still in the process of recovering for my knee issues, all in all things have been getting better. My off bike pain is limited to some post ride discomfort in my patellar tendon for a day or so. On the bike I still have some pressure on my patellar ... http://www.chriscowan.us/2008/12/recovery-status-and-the-future/ Phoenix has changed a ton since I was here last time, it keeps growing and growing and growing and growing, I think it's called sprawl. It kind of sickens me in the stomach to think how spread out this place is, not that everything is so close in the Bay ... http://www.chriscowan.us/2008/12/phoenix-wrap-up/ This morning I woke up with a mission, a ride to the top of South Mountain and work up a huge appetite for Thanksgiving dinner. Last year I had already stopped riding by this time of year and I ended eating so much food that I eventually got sick, gluttony ... http://www.chriscowan.us/2008/11/my-thanksgiving-ride/ I woke up this morning to go for my first ride in 5 days, my knees have been feeling especially good for the last couple of days. With everything going on at work (meetings, meetings and more meetings) I was jonesing to get a ride in this weekend. I decided to ... http://www.chriscowan.us/2008/11/40-miles-chocolate-croissant-milk-perfect/ Yesterday after I got done putting Catie down for the night I ran to Walgreens to pick up some Jumper's Knee straps to try and relieve some pain from my Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome. A friend from work had suggested trying them when I was originally trying to self diagnose my knee pain ... http://www.chriscowan.us/2008/11/this-does-not-suck/ Well... I'm hanging up the towel for the rest of the year, riding is officially not fun any more! For the last couple of rides I've been struggling to work back into riding. I was sticking to riding flat routes and not pushing it too hard, it really sucks when you ... http://www.chriscowan.us/2008/11/this-sucks/ Not only can I not ride my bike because I'm still in recovery (according to the physical therapist) but now I got the sickness that's been going around. The PT thinks everything is coming along well and they will have me back on the bike soon. I'm jonesing! http://www.chriscowan.us/2008/10/sick-and-broken/ I've been swimming for about a week, okay maybe a few days shy of a week but still enough to have some thoughts about it: I find it strange that after I get done swimming and dry off I still sweat... it's a strange sensation. When I bend over after I swim ... http://www.chriscowan.us/2008/10/some-thoughts-about-swimming/ Now that I'm officially off the bike for a while I decided to start swimming to help maintain my fitness. Holy Crap! Swimming is a really hard workout. I'm not sure I was really swimming, I think it was more like me flailing away in water moving from one end ... http://www.chriscowan.us/2008/09/went-for-my-first-swim-tonight/