Category Archives: Life Journal

The absurdity of college athletics

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As I prepare to send my third child off to college, I’m seeing costs for colleges that are out of this world and rising. Here are the projected costs for one-year of tutition, room and board at various four year colleges:

  • In-state public university: $30,000
  • Out-of-state public university: $45,000
  • Private university: $68,000

So when I see an article like this about universities spending obscene amounts of money on athletic facilities, it makes me wonder if the university system has lost it way. Are these institutions of higher learning, or are they owners of professional sports franchises?

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2015 blog review, 2016 blog goals

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2015 marked my third full year of blogging. I started the blog in November 2012. Since that time through the end of 2015, the blog has hosted over 45K sessions from over 35K users. I realize this is peanuts compared to the daily traffic of some sites (Facebook probably does that every 5 minutes), but it’s better than the traffic of most personal blogs.

Here’s a look at 2015, a few lessons I learned, and what I’m hoping to accomplish in 2016.

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Saving Your Code with Git

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For the Ventura County WebMob Meetup in January, I did a presentation titled “Saving Your Code with Git.” Since revision and version control is such a huge part of software development, I volunteered to present Git, which has become the de-facto standard due to the emergence of hosted repository services such as GitHub and Atlassian’s Bitbucket.

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Sass: An Introduction

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For the November Ventura County WebMob Meetup group, I did an introductory presentation on Sass, a CSS preprocessor. The goal was to explain what Sass is along with what it isn’t, do a brief demo to get people interested and show them how it works, and provide people with information and resources to get started.

Here are the slides that I covered during my presentation. They make more sense live because of the demo I did after slide 8, but there are links to resources in the slides that are very useful if you are just starting out.

If you’re interested in front-end web development, or are a front-end developer who is not using a preprocessor. I would strongly suggest that you learn Sass. It will make you a lot more productive in your work, and it’s a skill that will make you more attractive and marketable to prospective employers.

Bearded

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After last year’s edition of the beard, in which it got pretty full, I decided that I was going to retire the beard for a few years. I’m not a huge fan of the facial hair look, and it isn’t any less work than staying clean shaven in my opinion.

I don’t know exactly how it happened, but I woke up one morning, and the beard was back.

Gregg Borodaty - the 2016 beard

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My first (and possibly only) 10K

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10K Running TageI’m not a runner. I don’t like running. I don’t understand why people run.

My daughter Amanda, who’s run both a full and half marathon, roped me into running a 10K recently. Well, she didn’t twist my arm too hard. I do my best to stay is shape at the gym, and I do a lot of walking with my dog. Running a 10K was one of those things I wanted to cross of my list of fitness things to do.

Here’s my experience running my first, and quite possibly my only, 10K.

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Old Town San Diego

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In the nearly 25 years that I’ve lived in Southern California, I’ve visited San Diego a dozen or so times. I’ve been to the Zoo and Sea World, toured UCSD and San Diego State, spent time at the Convention Center, taken in the view at Point Loma, and enjoyed the night life in the Gaslamp Quarter. Surprisingly, I had never ventured to Old Town San Diego. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the name that made it sound tired, run down, and not much fun.

On a recent trip into San Diego, a colleague who lived in the area suggested I give it a try. He said that it would be a great place to take the family and get dinner. Since I had never been, I figured it would be worth giving it a try for something different. I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised.

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The Hollyridge Trail: Hiking the Hollywood Hills, pt. 2

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Hollyridge Trail Panorama from the top

A panorama from behind the sign: Left – Downtown Los Angeles, Center – Hollywood, Far right – Wilshire District

Earlier this year, my family and I did our first hike to the Hollywood sign. We did it via The Tree of Life Trail, which I documented here. It was a very challenging trail. When we reached the Hollywood sign at the top of the trail, we noticed a paved path that people were walking to reach the sign, which looked like a much easier path than the one we took. A little research revealed this was the Hollyridge Trail. We decided to try the hike this past weekend. Here is a look at the experience and how it compared to The Tree of Life Trail.

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Biking: Ventura to Ojai, round two

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Ventura to Ojai bike trail overviewIt had been over nine months since my daughter Amanda and I took a bike ride. When she approached me about getting out again, I was game. We decided to revisit one of our favorite rides from last year, the trip from Ventura to Ojai. It starts at the base of CA-33 and ends at Bryant Street in Ojai. The ride is a combination of the Ventura River Trail and Ojai Valley Trail that spans over 30 miles.

I’m not going to go into the logistics of the ride since we followed the same route from our first ride, which is documented here if you are interested. The purpose of this post is to compare the ride to our first attempt and to document the ride profile and splits.

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