Double Blind

I remember when Google went public, one of its objectives in its shareholders’ manual was to “don’t be evil“.

Evil usually implies intent – in the case of Google Buzz, it’s pretty clear that some managers want to merge the relationship between e-mail and other web-socialization utilities (such as Twitter/Facebook/etc.). While some (especially within the confines of Google) might not consider this evil, to a lot of others, it is, including myself.

If I want social networking, I sign up for Facebook. My anti-social life is quite happy not having an account there.

When logging into my Google Mail account that they put a splash screen introducing Google Buzz. This was their first mistake, mainly because when I trained my Grandmother to use the internet, she couldn’t get into her Google Mail account and had to call me to say “the internet is broken!”. Instead, I had to politely tell her over the phone to click on the “No thanks” and suddenly the world was normal to her again.

Being personally very adverse to taking tech support calls and social networking in general, I immediately proceeded to get rid of all vestiges of Google Buzz by unfollowing everybody and getting rid of it on my Google Mail screen.

It must have been fate that this all happened just a few days after I wrote the following after Google nuked my Adsense account:

If Google does reject the appeal, there is something wrong with their click-fraud processes (i.e. I am a genuine “false positive” according to their click-fraud algorithms) and I will endeavour to diversify my reliance on Google in the future – specifically my most vulnerable point electronically is my reliance on Google Mail and I want to be able to make sure that I can operate properly if something “stupid” happens to it. I also refuse to run Google Chrome since Google already runs most of my life, so I don’t want to be giving them my web browser in addition to my mail and reader.

Trying to force an integration between Google Buzz and Google Mail is something stupid, and the combination of this and getting rid of my Google Adsense account (when I had absolutely not in any way violated any terms of conditions that go along with operating such an account) means that Google is officially, in my books, has successfully completed its transformation into yet another typical corporation that’s destined to slip into the mediocrity that other giants (e.g. IBM, Microsoft) have fallen into.

I decided to don on my old shoes today, and proceeded to blaze through a 32 minute run (4 minute run, 1 minute walk, repeated 8 times) without incident. In fact, the cardiovascular and calf situation was quite good – I suspected I could have gone on for much longer without incident and also faster (beyond my usual training speed of 6.6 miles per hour). The only change this time was the lack of a fan blowing air on me during the run, which caused me to sweat what seemed to be a gallon of sweat after finishing.

My old shoes gave me no issues whatsoever with blisters. My old shoes are tried and true, reliable and great. I am sure that anybody else looking at them would definitely think it’s time for a new pair of shoes.

A couple other exercise notes – one is that I ate some rice a couple hours before training and while I am not completely familiar with the metabolic impact of eating food before exercise, I do know that rice contains starches and carbohydrates which can be easily processed into usable energy.

The first half hour on the treadmill I was watching Poker After Dark – the Cash Game, which I find to be a very entertaining rendition of television poker. The second half hour was spent watching some UFC match where just watching these guys punch and kick away at each other made me feel tired. Eventually one of them won with a “sleeper” hold that rendered the other opponent unconscious. Maybe that’s why I was sweating so profusely.

I am glad to be back on the immunological mend and over my brief illness.

I will also see if I can structure some outdoor runs if we get a sneak heat wave coming around in February – I want my feet to be used to asphalt instead of the rubberized surface of the treadmill.

Following up on my previous post about Google pulling the plug on my Adsense account, they have rejected the appeal as follows:

Hello,

Thanks for providing us with additional information. However, after
thoroughly reviewing your account data and taking your feedback into
consideration, we’ve re-confirmed that your account poses a significant
risk to our advertisers. For this reason, we’re unable to reinstate your
account. Thank you for your understanding.

As a reminder, if you have any questions about your account or the actions we’ve taken, please do not reply to this email. You can find more information by visiting

https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

In a way, this is kind of a wake-up call that one day even Google itself can break, just like how Microsoft broke Windows with Vista – even though it’s (barely) functional, it can get loaded with so much garbage that it becomes much less usable than it was before.

I am guessing there are so many people gaming the Adsense system that Google is finally cracking down on people with a wider fly swatter – unfortunately they will be taking collateral damage such as sites such as this one. Although their dollar damage is likely less than $50/year in my instance, if you swat enough legitimate customers it may come back to haunt them.

A few months ago during the H1N1 hysteria, I took the flu shot. I doubt it really did anything.

Just like what plagued my training schedule last year, I got another flu. This is twice this year, just like last year. It was not a bad flu by any means – just a very moderate instance of a sore throat, semi-sore limbs and lots of mucous coming out of the nose. What was ironic was that the run I did last Monday, the longest training run of the year, went routinely. The next day, I started feeling the tingles in the throat, so I took things very easy for the next few days and did not go to the gym.

I am ordinarily a fairly healthy person when it comes to my immune system, but the last few years have featured some sort of flu that takes me out of action for at least a few days. This year and last year were two minor flus so far. At the rate that I am going in 2010, this is a flu each month.

I had earlier expressed interest in healing my legs and specifically my calves, so this was my opportunity to take it easy.

Today I feel mostly healed so I headed off to the gym. My recovery schedule will be doing a day of 3 minute run, 1 minute walk (10 times); then 4 minute run, 1 minute walk (8 times), 5 minute run, 1 minute walk (7 times) before resuming my regular schedule. I did the first day today while watching the middle of the Super Bowl. The onside kick to begin the second half was one hell of a gamble, and amazingly, it paid off.

One other note of comment is that I finally donned a new pair of shoes – another inexpensive Walmart shoe special. I had been running with a very cheap pair for the last year and a half, so this is yet another new cheap pair. I started developing the feeling of a blister on my left pinky toe, so I have experience with new shoes and blisters – doesn’t matter how expensive the shoes are, it always happens. And I have defenses to prevent them from happening again. If these new shoes turn out well, great. If not, I’ve got my old reliable shoes (with holes in the mesh in the side, really glamorous – but functional).

I woke up today and received this email from Google, which I did verify to make sure it wasn’t phishing or otherwise fake:

Hello,

While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our advertisers in the future, we’ve decided to disable your account.

Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We realize the inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation.

If you have any questions about your account or the actions we’ve taken, please do not reply to this email. You can find more information by visiting https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

The only advertising I ever did on this site was when people specifically clicked on articles, they would get a text banner on the top of the page – this was good enough to net about US$100 every 2 years or so. Cumulatively, Google has cut me two cheques for just over US$100 since the Adsense program was open. Much to my amazement, the cheques were real and did not bounce. Google does have $24 billion in cash and equivalents on their balance sheet so that was more assurance when I went to the bank with cheque in hand.

I have click on the appeal link and filled in the appropriate information since I have no idea why Google would deem a low-volume operation like mine to be fraudulent – if I recall correctly my click-through rate was something like half a percent but the last time I checked was so long ago that my memory is fuzzy. According to my webstats (through Awstats that Bluehost provides), there are a few hundred people that read this site daily (for whatever reason, I don’t know) although I’d probably estimate that once you weed out all of the bots and spammers that you’re down to about 100 unique pairs of eyeballs daily.

While this loss of income is crushing, I will be able to survive. It probably works out for the people that read this site simply because there’s less spam on their computer screens to deal with.

If Google does reject the appeal, there is something wrong with their click-fraud processes (i.e. I am a genuine “false positive” according to their click-fraud algorithms) and I will endeavour to diversify my reliance on Google in the future – specifically my most vulnerable point electronically is my reliance on Google Mail and I want to be able to make sure that I can operate properly if something “stupid” happens to it. I also refuse to run Google Chrome since Google already runs most of my life, so I don’t want to be giving them my web browser in addition to my mail and reader.

I begin today’s post observing that I forgot to sign up for the Sun Run in January to get the $5 off on the early bird registration. Oops! I’ve set a Google Calendar alert to register for late March now since the late fee only kicks in on April 1. I doubt any corporate sponsors out there will want to take a 60th percentile runner, but no harm in asking the world out there…

After last week’s training, each time I got onto the treadmill I felt my calves were a bit tender. I thought the three days of rest over the weekend would do me some good, but when I got on the treadmill again today, I still felt a bit of tenderness, but it wasn’t as bad as last Friday.

Today I am following the week 8 schedule on the Learn To Run 10k program. Today’s session was 40 minutes of total running, 10 minute run, 1 minute walk, repeated 4 times. It didn’t go too badly since I tried to keep the steps at 180 per minute – my cardiovascular processing has gotten quite a bit better over the past month and exchanging extra cardiovascular load for less impact on the feet is worth it. I didn’t feel as much energy today as I did in last weeks’ session, but I still made it through comfortably – the 20 to 30 minute mark was the worst of it, but the last 10 minute leg went quite well.

There was still the tingling on the bottom of the feet (or rather the right foot) but it wasn’t as bad as previous times.

I am concerned that my calves do feel relatively tender even when rested for three days – makes me wonder whether I should try an ultra-low load week to let the muscles heal. I remember when doing my end of December/beginning of January runs when my schedule was interrupted for various reasons that my legs felt surprisingly good when getting back on the treadmill, at the cost of feeling winded while running.

The rest of the week is relatively light, with 21 minutes of load and 30 minutes of load on the Wednesday and Friday sessions. Next week is when there will be a training session that gets very close to 10km.

The other comment deals with weight management – although weight reduction was not a primary goal for running, it is a secondary objective to at least keep steady, if not reduce weight. After exercise, I try not to eat anything for at least an hour after, and whenever I feel thirsty, I just drink water, until such a time I am no longer thirsty. A very easy way of gaining unnecessary calories through sugar (carb) intake is by drinking sweetened drinks after exercising. Little stuff like this can shed mass – I think I have lost about 4 pounds since beginning this whole procedure. Ideally if I lost another 10 that would be great since it would translate into a much faster run time. I guess the trick is not to gain it back after the race is over.

Some group of researchers are doing some critical analysis on why humans were able to run with bare feet and avoid injury. Which part of the foot touches the ground first is apparently a critical factor – modern running shoes encourage the heel to the ground first, while barefoot running has the forefoot striking the ground first.