Bootcamp pt 8

I almost skipped bootcamp today. I was so tired and the bed was so warm. Alas, I did not give in and got up. Here is what we did:

1 Mile (9min)
15 reps 2 times through

• Squat to shoulder press on upside down Bosu ball
• Rear foot on Bosu lunge w/bicep curl
• Forward food on Bosu lunge w/lat raise
• Bosu hip extensions
• Upside down Bosu push up w/Brazilian crunch
• Chest press on Bosu ball
• Bosu knee dip crunches
• Bent over row standing on Bosu ball

At the end we were supposed to "save time for a 10 min mile." I got on the treadmill and felt pretty good, so I decided to run at 9:13. At about 1/4 mile Tim came around and started increasing our incline- from 0 to 2. Although difficult, I felt that I could still handle it. It wasn't until he went from 2 to 4 that I felt that I was going to die (not in the literal sense of course). I moved the pace to 9:45 just to keep up. I did have to step off the treadmill for 10 seconds, but I got back on and finished. He waited almost another 1/4 mile before taking off all of the incline. Needless to say, I was really tired when it was all over.

Weekend Wrap up...

Sorry a head of time....this may be a little long.

Matt and I were sick most of Thursday and Friday. Yes, it was only a cold, but it was bad as we were achy and headachey and grouchy. Saturday I woke up and convinced myself to go to Bootcamp and I'm glad I did.

First a quote from Tim, our trainer: On a scale of 1-10, we are going to be doing about a 12.5. Nice!

Here is what we did:
• Ran to Washington Park
• High knee running 30 seconds
• 8 point body building move 30 seconds
• Butt kickers running 30 seconds
• 2 minutes to complete the following (we went through 2 times)

1. 10 regular push ups
2. 10 crunches
3. 10 wide shoulder push ups
4. 10 lower body crunches
5. 10 tricep push ups
6. 10 full body crunches
   

• 2 minute to complete the following (2X – second time we did 15 of each)

1. 10 squats
2. 10 lunges (per leg)
3. 10 pile squats
4. 10 curtsey lunges
   

• Half Plank (on elbows and forearms) – we held the position in a straight line and the person at the front ran and jumped over our legs, we went through two rotations
• Side Planks 30 seconds each side
• Run back to the Gym
The end.....for today :)

Nikki started Intermediate training and she did fairly well. I'm sure she will progress rapidly over the next few weeks.

We hopped over to a friends birthday party later that evening. Although we could only stay about an hour, we had a really great time. We played a game called Apples to Apples and it was a lot of fun - thinking about picking it up this week.

We then met our other friend down at Oktoberfest where we drank some biers and ate some turkey leg. Yum! We planned it out well and were able to get to bed around 12:30am.

Sunday was laid back with a small amount of shopping and driving through some neighborhoods looking at houses. As we were driving past one of the open house signs, Matt pulled over and said we were going to go look through it. It was nice...but I don't know about $850,000!!!

I dropped Matt at the airport around 4:30. He is traveling to LA for a few days. I'm sure he will post something if something interesting happens.

Today I got up and went to Bootcamp, here is what we did:

Section 1
• ¼ mile run in 2 minutes or less
• 3 sets of 30 crunches on Bosu ball
• 3 sets of 24 walking lunges
• 3 set of 15 row machine

Section 2
• ¼ mile run in 2 minutes or less
• 3 sets of 10 stabilizer squat with 1lb weight
• 3 sets of 30 seconds plank on stabilizer ball
• 3 set of 10 bicep curl on stabilizer ball

Section 3
• ¼ mile run in 2 minutes or less
• 3 sets of 12 side crunches
• 3 sets of 15 squats on upside down Bosu ball
• 3 sets of 12 push ups with Brazilian crunch

Section 4
• ¼ mile run in 2 minutes or less
• 3 sets of 15 leg lifts
• 3 set of 15 chest press
• 3 set of 15 lat pull down

Mac Reflections #4: Boot Camp Pt. 1

Mac Reflections #3: Boot Camp Works!

A warning to readers: In terms of a past posts, this one is long, highly geeky, and more technical than usual. Swim at your own risk.

A couple weekends ago I was able to get Windows XP to run on the new Mac Pro. I used the beta of Boot Camp with virtually no problems. First, I had to slipstream Service Pack 2 into Windows XP to get it to install and went through the setup process. I also ran some benchmarks to test the performance and stability under stress. These updates will come in a later post.

A quick note before considering trying any of this: You have to be running the latest version of OS X and you must run the latest firmware updates. Check the official Boot Camp page to make sure you're running the right firmware and OS X updates for the version of Boot Camp you're about to install. I've read absolute horror stories of people killing their hard drives and ruining the BIOS on their Macs by not having done this. If the term "Flashing the BIOS" is unknown to you, don't try this at home.

Step 1) Get your legally purchased and fully authentic copy of Windows XP (Service Pack 2) out of the vault.

This was the first hurdle. My copy of Windows XP Pro is old. To run at all, Boot Camp requires the copy of Windows XP being used to be at least to the Service Pack 2 level. This is tricky since the way it usually goes is A) Install Windows B) Run the Service Pack 2 update. I needed to update the Windows files to Service Pack 2 before I even installed it.

To get my old version of Windows up to the Service Pack 2 level, I had to slipstream the update into the installation disk. I followed this guy's tutorial, and it worked like a snap. It took a couple hours of downloading, running, and burning but it worked like a charm.

Step 2) Install a new hard drive.

While this isn't technically necessary, it is really helpful. I try to keep like-purposed files on different physical drives when I am able. It's an old habit hearkening back to the days when the operating system had so much processing overhead, that it was smart to keep the media files on a separate drive to speed things up and add a little insurance. Wait a minute! Have you seen the system reqs for Windows Vista? 1GB to recommended just to run the OS? What kind of madness is that?

I purchased a 320GB SATA-II (3gb/sec) hard drive for $79 through Tiger Direct. I installed it via the amazingly simple process detailed in a previous post. I formatted it to run just like any normal hard drive on the Mac. I rule.

Step 3) Download Boot Camp

Boot Camp is a basic boot loader that lets the user, on boot, choose which OS they would like to load. In addition to a raw boot loader, Boot Camp also comes with a simple installation wizard that takes the pain out of building cross-platform driver disks, partitioning / formatting drives, and what to do once you begin the installation process. While I found it to be incredibly stable, Boot Camp is still in beta, so be warned. Beta just means that it's not officially released yet: If you have any problems with it, Apple will not provide support. A quote from the Boot Camp webpage summarizes it as, "We do not sell or support Windows. Duh." As an aside, the new version of OS X, Leopard, will come with the full, gold version of Boot Camp already installed and, by default, supported by Apple. By October (when Leopard is not reported to be released) they'll have worked out most of the bugs. So, if you're the paranoid type, wait until then.

Boot Camp can be downloaded right here.

Step 4) Install and run Boot Camp

The installation process is the same as any other Mac app. Unpack the .dmg file, browse to the mounted virtual drive and copy the .app file to the application directory. Run the app. Bonus!

Boot Camp will prompt you to do two things before you can install Windows. It will make you print a copy of the instructions and burn a disk of Windows drivers. I got around wasting the paper and ink by copying the instructions to our laptop via a handy 2GB thumb drive Mandy's parents gave me for my birthday (thanks!). Either way, you need to have access to the directions some other way than through the Mac box. You do have to burn the driver disk, however. The driver disk becomes vital in step 6.

The last thing it will do is prompt the you to choose the drive and partition size you where you want to install Windows. I chose the new hard drive I had installed and told it to split the drive in half, allowing 150GB of space to install Windows and 150GB for use as either storage in OS X or a Linux installation some point down the road. After the drive had been partitioned and formatted, it prompted me to put the Windows XP disk in the drive, reboot the computer and pray.

Step 5) Install Windows

Windows installs just like always. The terminal-looking blue screen, complete with the bad Courier font has the warm, nurturing feel of an iron pipe to the face. I followed the Windows on-screen instructions and the Boot Camp provided .pdf on the laptop until Windows was fully installed.

During this phase, Mandy read film trivia questions out of a book I received from my sister-in-law. I got every one of them wrong. Good thing I spent all those thousands of dollars on a film criticism degree.

Step 6) Configure Windows to recognize Mac peripherals

After several reboots and an hour of running the Windows installer, I was presented with the XP Desktop. The first thing you'll notice is the resolution is horrible, there is no audio, and the eject button doesn't work. This is because Windows doesn't come with the drivers necessary to run the hardware peripherals built into the Mac Pro box natively. This is where the driver disk Boot Camp forced you to burn in Step 4 comes in handy.

Simply pop open the disk drive and run the disk. Of course, the eject button on the upper-left corner of the Mac keyboard won't work. Windows doesn't recognize the keyboard layout, remember? To open the disk drive you have double click on My Computer > Right-Click on the DVD drive > Select Eject. Once the driver disk is inserted and the drive closed, Windows will run the driver package on the disk and force the system to reboot. Again.

If all goes well with the driver installation, the next thing you'll hear is the creepiest sound ever to come out of a Mac: The Windows Startup Fanfare. I literally felt a shiver run down my spine when I heard it played through the internal speaker.

And there it is: A Mac booting to, not emulating, Windows XP. To choose the operating system I want to boot to, I just hold down the Option key when the computer is starting up, and it will ask me to pick.

I will post some final thoughts and benchmarking figures in a couple days.