100 LinkedIn Connections!

Not much of a personal achievement, I know, but I recently surpassed 100 connections in LinkedIn! I was expecting something, maybe some new features unlocked, or a new colour scheme, or some added bonus, or access to a secret level, or a big boss battle. But no, it seemed to make no difference. I think I'm going to have to stop playing that game. I'll go back to Resident Evil 4 on the Wii, shoot some zombies instead.

Run run run...

Apparently there were nearly 3,000 people on the run this year compared to only 2,000 last year. The sun came out for most of it, but it remained pretty cool, and the road was dry, very light wind, so really perfect conditions. Organisation was good, it started a mere 10 minutes late, traffic was a bit mad getting there, and they could have done with having a few more portaloos. The goodie bags were nice, usual mixed bag of snacks and vouchers, but the T-shirt they gave out at the end is a good one, a proper Adidas running shirt, light polyester wicking material.

This time I ran well, I finished it in about 38 minutes, I think I gained nearly 4 minutes on last year. I probably finished somewhere in the top 800 runners. The main reason I'm happy is that it was my fastest 5 mile run in recent years (i.e. since my early twenties), I only managed to break 40 minutes last Wednesday.

Race Tomorrow

I'm doing a race tomorrow, The Adidas Irish Runner 5 Mile, around Phoenix park. The race starts at 10am. I'll probably get very very wet!

I'm looking forward to yet, on Wednesday I managed to do 5 miles in under 40 minutes, which is my best time since I was in my early twenties! So I think I'll be able to do the same tomorrow.

Personal Security Tools for Windows - UPDATE

Sorry for the long delay in blogs, some updates on the personal Windows PC security front (by request):-

AVG Anti-Virus is Free again! - http://free.grisoft.com/

(Thanks to Garry for this one.) AVG is back with a free virus scanner option available from http://free.grisoft.com/. I think this is my favorite virus protection system. Easy to use, active guard, scheduled scans, and updates are frequent, online and automatic. See also links to free anti-spyware, but I haven't tried that myself yet (installing onto Andrea's PC).

McAfee Site Advisor - http://www.siteadvisor.com/

No major news to report on this one, but still working well. http://www.siteadvisor.com/ Site Advisor marks up your google search results to warn you about known bad sites before you click on them. Having said that, Google seem to have cleaned up their act a bit, maybe due in part to Ben Edelman's constructive (and very very detailed) criticism.

Open DNS - http://www.opendns.com/

A utility that is not even software, simply a new and better DNS server setting (for your PC or broadband router) that protects you from many types of phishing and mis-spelt domain names. If you know how to configure DNS, just use 208.67.222.222 and/or 208.67.220.220, alternatively visit, http://www.opendns.com/ for more info, they explain it better than I can.

Really this post is nothing but links. Sorry, I can do better. I'm having a hard week. Coming soon... blogs on Miyazaki Junior's Earthsea and Death Note (though Andrea has visited both topics already), and how Ireland's beautiful summer is impacting on my marathon training.