SAFUN

I use Flickr to store all my photos – all 7702 of them! Wow, I can’t believe I have that many photos. And no, they are not all photos of me hanging around with friends. They are mostly of my travel adventures and social events. I love Flickr because it’s so easy to share photos, add tags, organize them and most importantly they have API’s where developers can build applications that work with Flickr. I have used Blurb and Trippermap, both apps I wouldn’t have known about until Flickr. I really love their service.
Since I am able to tag my photos, they can be searched on. I received an email from Schmap saying that my photo of the Magic Fountain (Font de Montjuic) in Barcelona  has been short-listed for inclusion in the seventh edition of the Schmap Barcelona Guide, to be published early June 2009.

What is Schmap I wondered? I understood that they were a travel guide but I received a better definition by looking them up on Wikipedia:

Schmap is the publisher of free digital travel guides for destinations throughout Europe and the USA, as well as Canada, Australia and New Zealand.^[1] The company’s travel guides are available for download at www.schmap.com, along with a small computer program that interacts with a Web browser to display the guides called the Schmap Player.^[2]

There are currently^[when?] 199 city or island guides available for download from Schmap, purportedly more than the number offered by traditional paper guidebook publishers Frommers, Lonely Planet, and Fodors as individual city or island guides.^[3]

The Schmap Guides are entirely free to consumers, with Schmap relying on sales from its travel store, advertising, and licensing revenue from its commercial customers for financial support

Cool, I thought. I would love to have my photo used for their travel guide. I signed the agreement to allow my photo to be published in their travel guide. Two weeks later, I was notified that my photo was chosen.

Please note: I am not a professional photographer and don’t aspire to be. I do love to travel though and I love to capture images that sometimes I know I may only see once in my life.

When I was in college, I studied in Seville, Spain in the Spring of 2003. I vowed to myself that once I graduate from college, I would return. I graduated in 2005 and the week after I walked the stage, I headed back to Spain with my mom and sister for a 2 week vacation. Barcelona was our first stop and actually the Magic Fountain was the first monument we saw. I remember that day so clearly. We were all 3 jet-lagged but hungry. We went to a little tapas restaurant near the Magic Fountain. The clouds were coming in as if it was going to rain. We walked down to the Magic Fountain right at dusk and just in time to see the lights turn on in the fountain. It was beautiful! I only had my little Canon PowerShot S410 but it captured the fountain perfectly.

I am glad my photo is being shared on Schmap. I hope many others will have the opportunity to visit Magic Fountain and enjoy this beautiful sight.

As noted in my previous blog entry, I have been trying out Alamo CrossFit. I finished my introductory 3 classes and officially signed up as of last Friday! I am excited about this new journey of meeting new friends and establishing a level of fitness I haven’t yet met.

I met with Rick Martinez, RN, owner of Alamo CrossFit, to sign the paperwork. When I met with him, I asked him about his gym and how he got started. His story was so simple, yet inspirational that I have to share it.

If you visit his bio page on the Alamo CrossFit website, you will see that he is a graduate of the nursing school at The University of the Incarnate Word. He has been a registered nurse since 1995 working primarily in the emergency room and trauma settings in Texas and around the country.

Before returning to San Antonio, he served active duty tour as an Army nurse at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington DC. Here, he took care of wounded soldiers – our country’s heroes. These were men and women that put their life on the front lines to protect Americans, you and me.

Following his active duty, Rick could not return to the ER. He quotes:

“As an ER nurse I came face to face, day after day, with people who presented with problems that could have been avoided…maladies that they should not be suffering from…and all because we fail to take care of the number one thing…our health and bodies. I always asked myself, what if this person had the proper coaching, nutrition guidelines and fitness program toget fit and STAY fit?”

He has been active in sports his entire life – soccer, running, triathlons, adventure racing and martial arts- and has been involved in CrossFit for quite some time. So instead of going back to the ER, Rick followed his passion to become a professional trainer and help others live a more fit and healthier lifestyle. Along with his wife and children, he resides in San Antonio and owns and operates Alamo CrossFit.

He has started his own following in San Antonio creating a circle of family and friends that are passionate about staying healthy and fit through hard work and dedication. He only accepts people that are committed 110% and nothing shy of that.

I find his story to be so inspirational. The American culture gets so caught up with money – how much can I make and how fast? What about asking yourself what are you passionate about? How can you use that passion to help others follow their passion? This should come first. Once you ask yourself that question, success (and happiness) can only follow.

Get your butt off the couch and follow your passion! And remember there are people out there suffering more than you and they are still making the best out of their situation.

I challenge myself too because I know I haven’t yet reached my potential, not even a fourth.

I am sure everyone has already heard about this but I had to post about it because I just think it’s so cool. Google runs a contest called “Doodle 4 Google.” It’s a competition that invites K-12 grade students to reinvent Google’s homepage logo around a preselected theme.

Doodle 4 Google is a competition where we invite K-12 students to reinvent Google’s homepage logo. Both our country and our world are undergoing significant change and this year we invited students to doodle around the theme “What I Wish for the World”. At Google we believe in thinking big, and dreaming big, and we can’t think of anything more important than encouraging students to do the same.

And the winner? Christin Engelberth, a 6th grader from Bernard A. Harris Jr High School right here in San Antonio Texas. She titled her’s a “A New Beginning”:

My doodle, “A new beginning,” expresses my wish that in the current crisis discoveries will be made. That in these discoveries solutions will be found to help the Earth prosper once more. That those solutions will help the world get back on its feet, and create a better place for everyone.

The logo is being displayed today on Google’s homepage where millions of visitors come from all over the world. Christin will receive a $15,000 college scholarship, a laptop, and a $25,000 technology grant for her school.

She has been featured on many news websites including CNN:

A panel of independent judges and Google employees, along with close to 6 million online voters, disagreed, and chose her sketch as the overall winner from a field of over 28,000 other submissions.

Good job Christin! Way to represent San Antonio, your school and most importantly, yourself. This is awesome news and news we need to hear about more often. There are kids doing wonderful things out there and they need to be recognized.

I applaud Google for developing a program that recognizes our youth for their talent and creativity. We need more companies to be doing things like this. We also need to encourage our youth to search for competitions, programs and contests that challenge them to use their brains.

I am going to print this story and take it my class at Garner middle school, where I am a Junior Achievement volunteer. I want our kids to know that there are programs out there where they can get recognized for their talents. I hope this story will inspire them.

I joined the San Antonio Social Media Club a few months back but hadn’t had the chance to attend an event yet. Today was my first breakfast event. It’s basically a meet and greet and then you will have a guest speaker to discuss a topic of interest. Today, Luis Sandoval (@pandaran) spoke about how to manage all your social media tools. This is key because there are so many platforms out there and it can be so overwhelming to try to keep up with everything. You don’t want to just join everything and simply have a presence but not be active, that defeats the purpose of social networking. They key is finding communities that give you the most bang for your buck. What are you trying to accomplish? Answering this question should help you find the communities you want to be a part of. Not everything is for everyone and it is imperative to recognize this or you will find yourself wasting your precious time messing with something that brings no value to you or others.

Following the speech, there is an open forum for Q&A. I noticed that people still struggle with understanding the purpose of Twitter. Companies don’t want their employees wasting time on these social media platforms. That is not a Twitter issue. That is a company culture issue. If you breed a bottom up culture, a culture where your customers are the star, a company where your employees feel like entrepreneurs – Twitter is an open door opportunity. Those companies that aren’t accepting Twitter are leaving that door closed because they are too scared to see what is on the other side. If you aren’t on Twitter, your competitors are.

First time I heard about Crossfit was at Thanksgiving dinner last year. I had just finished the San Antonio Rock n Roll marathon and I was looking for a new challenge that didn’t involve running another marathon. I like running but 26 miles was getting old. I wanted to reduce mileage and focus on speed. This means that I needed to get fit. My aunt’s husband, Mark, told me about Crossfit. Mark bikes and lifts weights on a consistent basis. He maintains pretty good fitness. He had just started doing Crossfit.

CrossFit is the principal strength and conditioning program for many police academies and tactical operations teams, military special operations units, champion martial artists, and hundreds of other elite and professional athletes worldwide.

Mark said that he never felt so much in shape in his life. Crossfit helped him get more lean and has actually helped him run longer distances and at faster speeds. I wanted to know more.  He invited me to a free Crossfit session at the Medical Center one Saturday morning. My sister and I went. We started off with a few stretches. Then we went to the grass area where stations were set up. We basically ran back and forth to stations where we did kettle bell lifts, push ups, sit ups, squats and frog jumps. We had to do as many as we could under a certain time frame. It was awesome! I felt like I was in high school all over again. That was in November. 6 months have gone by and I still hadn’t committed to anything. The gym that Mark goes to is far from my home and I was looking for something located more conveniently. I started to do some research. There are many gyms that offer Crossfit but that wasn’t their specialty. It came down to Alamo Crossfit. Still not closest to my house but closer and more convenient than the other gym. Plus I have heard so many wonderful things about this gym. I had to check it out.

I emailed Rick with Alamo Crossfit and he said I could attend the Tuesday class. I showed up a bit early. I really had no idea what to expect. I walked in and there were a bunch of guys working out – like UFC type guys. Hand stand push ups and all. It was nuts. I was thinking to myself “Where the heck am I?” As it got closer to our class time, more normal people showed up. Apparently the class before was for the elite that actually competed. Phew!

Since it was my first day, I had a personal trainer and we went through the “Baseline Workout.” The Baseline Workout is something every beginner has to go through. If I remember correctly, this is what it is: 500m on the rowing machine, 40 squats, 30 sit-ups, 20 push-ups and 20 chin-ups. The only thing I was worried about was the chin-ups because I never do chin ups. Everything else should be pretty straightforward. So we started. I started a bit slow on the rowing machine but began gaining speed. Craig (the trainer) pushed me to go faster and I did. From there, I went to squats then to sit-ups and where I started feeling it was at the push-ups, I finished the 20, just slower than I expected. Then was the chin-ups. So what we do is get a step so I can reach the bar. At the bar we tied a rubber band and pull it to the bottom so I can put my foot down to stretch the band in full length. This is to help me get some push while I pulled my body up. My arms felt like jello. I seriously kept stopping and ended up doing them in 2’s. Something funny happened though during the chin-ups. Since I was feeling weak, my legs couldn’t stabilize. My rubber band ended up popping out from under my foot and went right in between my legs, like into my crotch. So there I was hanging from the band. Poor Craig was trying to help me but it was such an awkward position. So embarrassing to say the least! I laugh now but at that point, I felt so weak and helpless. I finally finished in 10:30 min. I guess if I didn’t have the rubber band fiasco, I could have done way better. They said that the Baseline Workout will always kick your butt no matter how long you have been doing Crossfit – your goal should always be to increase your time. It looked simple on the board but not so much in real life. Crossfit Level 2 peeps have finishing times starting at 6 min. That is my goal.

I liked Crossfit so much that I decided to give it another try. Today we did full squat jumps with a 15lb bar for 1 min straight, rest 1 min and another straight minute. I finished with 28 and 26, totaling to 54.

Then we did shoulder lifts. We were looking for our max, within 7 tries. I was with 3 other girls. These girls were awesome. 2 were somewhat new and the other girl had been doing it for a while. I did the least max at 55lbs. The highest was 70lbs. Another goal.

That’s what makes Crossfit so cool. You are always setting goals. Beat this time, lift this weight, add more reps. Every work out is different so you never know what to expect. They are lonly 45 min so they are high intensity. And you are working with others so everyone is pushing each other, cheering each other on. We were a team.

Alamo Crossfit, in particular, is like a family. Many SA law enforcement officials attend this gym including SWAT. It’s like Cheers, where everyone knows your name. I really liked it and think I am going to stick with it.

Also, Alamo Crossfit takes photos at every workout. So yes, they have some photos of me. I am going to use these to motivate myself and strive to get better.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alamocrossfit/3531719337/in/set-72157618071657343

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alamocrossfit/3531727757/in/set-72157618071657343/

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