Dropbox is a great application I found out about a few months back. You create an account and install a service on a number of computers that you use, and it creates a folder that will stay in sync across all of them. The best part about this is that if any computer isn’t on, when it wakes up, it goes out and checks what it’s missed, and syncs back up, and its FAST.

There is also a sharing section, where you can share a portion of your account with another user, and let them upload and delete files. It combines your usable space for this areas, so on group projects it gets quick first. Ohh and did I mention it has its own built in file versioning system?

There’s also a special folder for Photos that will automatically generate an online picture album of any pictures / folders placed into here. Of all the features, while I like some of the other ones a whole lot more, I use this one the most. Its great when working on web sites with clients and being able to save screen shots directly to this folder and show them what I’m seeing.

When I first found out about Dropbox, I was so excited about it, I went on a big kick about how everyone should be using it, but after time this excitement died down. Well now, Dropbox is giving away an extra 256MB of storage space (up to 3GB) (on top of the 2GB you get just for signing up) for every user you refer to the site, and so I’m back at it. Check it out: https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTM0OTg4Njk!

About 3 weeks ago I filled out a form on New Balance’s Website for their Wear Test program. Shortly there after I received an email back from them stating:

Matthew Farmer, your application has been received and will be reviewed by the New Balance Wear Test Team. It is possible that all positions in the Activity you indicated are currently filled, so we thank you for your patience as we look for testing opportunities that suit you.

Once you have been selected for a test, you will receive an email notification of your acceptance into the program. This email will also confirm your User ID and provide a temporary Password allowing you to log in to the site and manage your account.

Sincerely,
The New Balance Wear Test Team

http://weartest.newbalance.com

And that was that. I kind of forgot that I even applied and hadn’t heard from them since.

Then this morning I found a package on my front doorstep. At first I looked at it expecting to see my room mate’s name on it, but when I saw mine I quickly scanned the return address expecting to see it coming from my family, but was excited to see that it was from New Balance!

This last week I really started to gear up on my training for the LA marathon. I ran a 5 mile run at my goal marathon pace of 7:15 minutes / mile on Saturday and followed that up with a 8 mile run on Sunday, each of which left my knees feeling a little soggy.

I really thought a new pair of shoes might help with that, but didn’t want to drop the $80-100 that entailed on it just yet, and was thinking that maybe I’d ask for a pair for my birthday, though my family already do so much for me I didn’t want to. Last night I even had a dream about it. So these couldn’t have come at a better time. I can’t wait to get out there and put some miles on them!

So I’ve been in LA for a little over a month now and figured it was time for an update on how things have been going.

The first week was pretty much tied up with Gosslin, a holiday my friends here made up about 6 years ago. Celebrated at the end of January every year, there are 17 points that must be completed during the night. This year a few of them were: Martina has to sneak in (which he did), Jess had to lead everyone in a song of dance, the Ramones were the only band listened to, Bowser and Banshe got married, and Noah had a Translyvanian BBQ.

During all of that, me and Noah also got a dog, Girl. She was found under a car in Eagle Rock a few months ago when this really nice lady took her in. She took care of her for a few months until we heard about her through a friend of a friend of a friend of Noah’s boss… or something like that. Since we’ve got her we’ve gotten her spayed, dealt with her with a cone on her head for a week, and I started taking her on runs.

As for work, I’ve started giving the freelance thing a try. Mostly doing websites. Its slow getting work, but looks some what promising. I think I’m also going to put my skills from EMC to work and start doing some Hard Drive Data recovery. Dave’s Mac hard drive went last week (due to some nasty file system corruption that DiskUtility couldn’t fix), and I was able to get everything back for him, so I figured I’d see if I couldn’t make some money there.

I’ve also started officially training for the LA Marathon. This will be my first time training with an official schedule, instead of just running as I see fit. I didn’t look around too too much, but decided to go with Hal Higdon’s Intermediate 1 Training Schedule. It’s an 18 week program, but the race is only 15 away, so I’m going to start at Week 1 and skip one week of the schedule until I’m on track. Given I finished Boston in 3:53, with my haphazard training for 6 weeks, I think I’ll be ok with this.

Enough side tracking for now. Back to work!