It is now official…I have a teenager. We went to the Rock Gym to celebrate. I didn’t think that CJ would like rock climbing much, but he LOVED it. He was already planning for the next trip out there. He won’t have to wait long, since we are going to have his party there this weekend.
I have run with the Garmin many times now, and must say that I like running with it. There have been a couple of times when I have lost satellite coverage and that was frustrating, but overall it has worked great. Unlike the pods, it requires no calibration. I just set it down while I warm up so that it can find the satellites and that is pretty much it. It has really helped me to maintain a consistent pace, and I have gotten a pretty good feel for what distance I can maintain a given heart rate.
I can’t write much as I still need to run to the store and it is very late, but I just got a new toy!! It is a Garmin Forerunner 305, and it is sweet! It tracks my speed, distance, heart rate, etc. I use Ubuntu Linux, and it did require a couple of tweaks. Hopefully this will help someone else out there!
First, you can’t use the Garmin software. No biggy because I haven’t heard a lot of good things about it. Use PyTrainer. It works great, but there are a couple of gotchas with Hardy Heron. First, not all of the dependencies are shown in the package info. So, if it won’t run from the icon try typing “pytrainer” from a terminal. If you see this error: “ImportError: No module named gtkmozembed”, then you need to install the python-gnome2-extras package like so:
“sudo apt-get install python-gnome2-extras”
I also had a problem where I didn’t appear to have the /dev/ttyUSB0 device. All I had to do there was insert the garmin_gps kernel module:
“sudo modprobe garmin_ gps”
Then, when I listed /dev/ttyUSB0 it showed up. Another thing, I saw some old posts about pytrainer not importing heart rate data. Mine appears to be doing that just fine, so kudos to them!!
We are human is now up. All I gotta do now is think of some witty banter to make it interesting. I’m out…
I am here!!
Please come back later, as this site will get better! I will write about family, running, science, technology, law, and whatever else strikes my fancy.