From dan at thecsl.org Tue Sep 30 09:47:13 2008 From: dan at thecsl.org (Dan MacNeil) Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 09:47:13 -0400 Subject: [Cadre-politics] status: marathon dental work Message-ID: <48E22DE1.1080503@thecsl.org> INTRO (maybe worth reading) ROAD TRIP! FREE DENTIST MARATHON RUNNING ASKING WORKS BETTER WIDOW'S PORTION FEEDBACK INTRO Research shows most people skip introductions. You are special for reading this one. I'm ok blowing off work for a road trip. I feel bad writing about work instead of doing work when I'm a bit behind. For example, right now, the State of Massachusetts Attorney General could theoretically withdraw our fund raising permit, since I've not sent the forms in on time.... Still, The opportunity to tie the business of our merry band into dentistry is a challenge not to be missed. Better, the last few updates, people have replied with helpful info, donations or at least constructive nagging. OTHER GOOD NEWS Art Crooke is back from summer vacation. The next status report will be more interesting. It will be about how much better svn is than cvs and how cool unit tests are. ROAD TRIP! The last trip was about as much fun as can be legally had in Massachusetts. Charlotte, Mimi and I traveled south to the last Ethos round table [1] and the Tech Foundation's [2] 501 club. [1] http://ethosroundtable.blogspot.com/ [2] http://www.techfoundation.org/ Fancy-pants non-technical talk about tech culture, free booze, sushi. What more could you ask for? You can come on the next one. The Charlotte-mobile leaves LTC (246 Market St Lowell Ma) 3pm on Tuesday October 21. RSVP moi FREE DENTIST Because I don't charge $100 an hour for my work, I resist paying more than $100 per hour to other people. It's been two years and the dental-industrial complex hasn't reacted to or noticed my little boycott. Fortunately, Middlesex Community College has a program where they'll clean and examine your teeth for $25. [6] [6]http://mvhub.com/cgi-bin/guide/guide.pl?rm=show_program&program_id=503223 The downside is instead of a 3 hour process spread over two visits, it is a 8 hour process spread over 3 visits. Still, I'm happy with the experience. By good fortune I was a little sleep deprived and dozed through the boring bits. Between the student and the professor(s) checking her work, I got the most careful dental exam and cleaning of my life. This may be the first time #18 has been cleaned in the back. My takeaway is the big difference between a professional and amateur is speed. A slow amateur can do a better job than a quick professional. MARATHON RUNNING I'm going to qualify to run the Boston Marathon [7] in 4 years or less. [7] http://www.bostonmarathon.org/BostonMarathon/Qualifying.asp For a bunch of reasons, I'm doing most of my training on the treadmill at the YMCA. There is space on adjacent treadmills for people with fitness goals or goal setting goals. Success with the marathon goal like the "CSL is sustainable" goal will be all about setting lots of little gaols, meeting them (or not) and setting new or revised goals and meeting the new or revised goals (or not). About 33 percent of the people who run the Bay State marathon in Lowell qualify for Boston [8] [8] http://www.baystatemarathon.com/ This is doable. Unlike the big CSL goal, the marathon goal has been done before. Most of the hard thinking is already done. There is already at least one good book: http://www.amazon.com/Runners-World-Less-Faster-Revolutionary/dp/159486649X The process is simple. 0) Get in reasonable shape 1) Race a 5K (3.11 miles) 2) Train for 12 weeks 3) repeat steps 1-2, three times 4) repeat steps 1-3, at 10K & 1/2 marathon distances ... 5) Race Baystate marathon in Lowell Step (0) will probably prove to have been the hardest. It took me 2 years to drop 30 pounds and be able to run 7 miles w/o pain. Step (1) was my own little personal 5K at the UML track. I'm 3 weeks through the first 12 week training schedule in step #2 The book defines the training pretty clearly. You find your race time on the chart. You run your finger down to find your training intensity for sprints, medium runs and long runs. I ran 5K @ 21:20, so I get to run 400M (1/4 mile) sprints @ 1:30, 3 miles @ 7:30 and 7 miles @ 8:45 minutes per mile. The goal is to train at goal pace and no faster. Your capacity is know because that's how fast you raced. The charts are designed to have you train at just below your capacity. Do one workout too hard and you can't complete the next one. Already, I've adjusted my goals. I ran my private little 5K on a flat track with the wind behind me and a lane to myself. It looks like the chart is based on people on a road, dodging traffic, up hills and in a crowd. In my first training, I couldn't run the sprints at the planned speed. I felt very little pain, I just couldn't go faster. I adjusted the sprint goals to the speed I can run. In week (3) I'm still on track with the revised schedule. I'm uncomfortable sometimes, but never in pain. By avoiding spurts of over-effort I sustain harder training than I would left to my own devices. ASKING WORKS BETTER Dentistry, running and fund-raising have some things in common, A persistent amateur can get some results. Trying works better than not trying. Little goals are better than big ones. Some discomfort is ok. Pain and injury are to be avoided. Our big goal is to be "sustainable", that is for the CSL to function without me working for free and for there to be 2-3 effective permanent staff to jell more volunteers around. All the steps to reach this $100,000 per year goal aren't clear yet. Parker money, might be a big step in there someplace. The work that Mimi, Charlotte, Jim, Karen & I are doing on the planning/fund-raising committee will probably fit in there someplace too. However, our immediate sub goal is **very** clear. We want to pay Mike Foster $8/hr for 10 hours a week for a year. He does good work. We need the help, he could use the money. Another important sub goal is fund raising experience and motivation for me and the (emerging) fund-raising committee. We've raised $550 in cash and $700 in pledges. (Thank you again) We've got money to pay Mike through the end of November. If we have to lay Mike off for Christmas, I'm going to feel like shit. Avoiding feeling like shit is good motivation for me. As to the sub goals, revised goals, realistic gaols, football goals... I wrote 14 individual fund-raising emails. No copying and pasting, no copying, each email written completely from scratch. (Though I so repeat some ideas) Surprise! Surprise! Asking individuals directly, one by one is a lot more effective than asking all of cadre-politics. Maybe, the bystander effect, is a factor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect Maybe, people believe their dollars are worthy of some effort to ask for them. With an average donation of about $100 and a response rate of 77% , I have about 52 more people to ask. Originally, I wanted Mike's money raised in September. I planned to personally ask 5 people a day. This plan was too ambitious. We've had a happy up-tick in volunteers, there is some must do coding for the north shore expansion, the .... blah, blah, blah The new goal is to ask 20 people a month through October, November and December, roughly one ask per week day. At 1-3 hours per email this is doable. This new goal also means that if you are on this list and you haven't donated, you are in my address book and I'm almost certainly going to ask you for money directly. http://thecsl.org/go/donate/ Anyone donating before I ask them directly gets the customary beer and (if you act now!), the greatest hits, the 2nd best bits from the personal appeals. (The best bits are of course private) WIDOW'S PORTION It is our official policy to keep donations as anonymous as practical. Charlotte has kindly agreed to give up a bit of her privacy to help pay Mike's wages. She's seen him work and thinks he's "hungry". If Charlotte, who is living on $900 month of social security can give $100 (and this is not her first donation to the CSL), I am comfortable asking anyone on this list for 1% of their income. http://thecsl.org/go/donate/ FEEDBACK Hit reply-sender & check all that apply, This status report was: ___ Too long ____ Full of irrelevant stuff ____ Funny _____ Lines broken strangely in MS Outlook ____ not enough tech ____ Other ____ take me off the list ! ____ too greedy. ____ Boooring. ___ So good, I clicked http://thecsl.org/go/donate/