Now, I just need to figure out how to keep it up for 25+ more miles at a time, and I should be ready for my next race.  Speaking of which, I’m at a bit of a dilemia.  It looks like I may have something going on at the end of March, so Georgia marathon might be out. I’ve been going back and forth about signing up for one of the GRR races that my friends at GUTS are putting on…but haven’t quite committed yet.

The other thing going on is something that I should admit I indulged in.  Really, because I shouldn’t have. Oh wait, I’m a man, let me re-state.  I pigged out the other day, and it was good.

About a block from the office, a Gigi’s Cupcakes just opened.

For a week or so, I’ve been seeing flyer’s (menu’s) around the office, and my co-worker mentioned them a couple times as a place to try, so last Thursday, instead of going running, we walked up there. 

Walking in, it’s a quaint little shop. The lady at the counter asked if we had any questions, so I asked the most important one:  Where are the samples?  She smiled, and looked at me like I was crazy…I don’t know why, it seemed like a reasonable question to me.  At three bucks a pop, I want to make sure I’m going to get something good. 

Everything looked good…each cupcake was probably 4-5 inches tall, piled high with frosting and sprinkles and decorative stuff.  I like that they have a rotating menu, so they have some standard cakes, and then a different daily menu.  It’s also going to change from summer to winter, so there should be a large variety.

I got a couple, and they survived the trip home intact.  One was the Caramel Sugar Mama, and the other was a chocolate midnight magic.

The cupcakes themself were good; fresh and not crumbly. Better than I’ve had at other local bakeries.  The frosting had a lot going on, in a good way.  There was a ton of if.  The consistancy of it reminded us of the Betty Crocker stuff you’d get at the grocery store, but it was better quality. There was definitely a bit of sugar in it.  Having one cupcake was plenty.  (And I don’t say that lightly, I’m a man who likes to eat.)

Yes, they are a little expensive, but I think it’s worth it. We’ll be going back…the wife wants me to get some for a day with the girls.  And the guys at the office, well, we might just sneak over there occasionally with no-one the wiser.

We’re receiving a number of different record types,  ADT-03, 06, 08, etc., all of which we handle differently.  My original channel dumped everything to one place.  After a few records, I quickly realized that I needed to handle updates (differently).  Here’s what I did.

First, I got a list of what records I wanted to handle differently:  Message types A03, A08, A31.  Note that I capture the message type in the source transform.  For the incoming record, I receive everything, and in the source transform, pull the fields I need into local variables. (One of the examples in the Mirth documentation shows doing it this way, and it does make it easier down the line.)

Then, in my destinations, I “cloned” the current destination, gave it a new name, and changed the directory to drop the file. (It’s a file writer destination.)

Then, I added a Filter to the destination.  Go into Filters, and add new.  For this, I made it a simple Rule Builder, and said to “Accept” records if equal.  And in the values, I added the list of my record types.   (Note these are strings, so in the values, enclose them in single quotes.)  Save, and it’s done.

Back in my original channel, I added a similar filter to only accept the record types of A01 and A04. This will prevent the other records from processing.

The other issue I had to deal with was updates for old records coming in.  After talking to the business owner, we decided that anything older than 1/1/2010 we could safely ignore.

So, I added another filter to the update destination.  But this time, I couldn’t use the Rule Builder, so needed some JavaScript.

Add a new filter.  Doubleclick on the “Type” in the filter (on the right side), and select JavaScript.

Then, write out the script. 

//Variable from the source transform
var admitDate = $(‘patientVisit_admitDateOrTime_value’);

//Reject admit dates prior to 1/1/2010
if (parseInt(admitDate)> 20100101000000)
{
 return true;
}
else
{
 return false;
}

It’s pretty straight forward.  Treat the date (with a timestamp on it) as a number, and compare to a our cutoff date.

Tada.  All good now.

(Note:  Thanks to the Mirth forums and the people there…searching the archives has been invaluable.)

Over the last four years, we’ve talked about doing near-real time, if anyone ever came to us and wanted to do it.  I built up our system to handle this, assuming if anyone did, we’d still be using FTP, just needing to pick up files more often.  No problem, I say, my code can handle it. (And it does, since often times I get multiple files in at once from different customers, and get them all processed within a couple minutes.)

We finally had not one, but two partners agree to send us real-time data. Exciting, but with two issues to be resolved:

1. The data is HL7, a format we currently don’t work with. That means writing a parser for it. 
2. HL7 is sent over a TCP/IP connection. Er, something we’ve never thought about doing, so writing a port listener is also needed.

I spent a few hours writing the port listener. It was a fun project…I entertained myself for a good 5 minutes using Telnet to test it, and watching my words get echoed back to me. (Yeah, simple minds…) But then it came time to write the HL7 parser, I was a bit at a loss.  I’ve done tons of work with X12, so figured it would be about the same, so I started looking around to see what’s out there.

 After spending some time looking an nHapi, and not being thrilled, I was just about to throw the towel in and start from scratch when I ran into a reference to Mirth Connect over at Coding Headache. I read all of his posts about it, and decided to give it a try.  Mirth Corp has a nice set of videos going through what the product is, and it’s worth spending the hour watching them.

A simple summary:  This is really cool! A day and a half later, and I’m ready to begin testing with our partner, with no coding required.  

Installation is pretty straight forward, and took about 10 minutes:

1. Download Java.
2. Download Mirth Connect.
3. Run through the Mirth installation wizard, accepting all defaults.
4. Go read the installation guide to see if I was supposed to do something prior to installation.

The wiki that is set up has some examples and pointers to other blogs. I spent a while digging through them, before trying to get going. 

Here’s some gotcha’s I ran into:

First off, you need sample data to get started. Get a copy of an HL7 transaction, you’ll need this for the transform.  Once you paste it into the “Inbound Message Template” textbox, make sure all your segments are on separate lines. (You need a crlf as part of the segment terminator.)

You’ll also need a sample for your destination.  In my case, this was simple, since I wanted to pump the data out as XML.  I have a pretty generic schema, so just created a simple XML layout and pasted it in.  You can also use a delimited file (csv or pipe delimited, for example.)

Once you have these, the mapping is pretty simple.  Drag and drop from the orgin to the destination. I ran into issues where I was using too high of a level to map. I’d suggest always going from the lowest level.  That is, if segment ABC1.3 is a name field, go lower to map ABC1.3.1.  (If you look at the mapping, this makes sense.)

Also, if you’re going to manually update a map, be sure to specify the full path. So instead of writing out ABC[1.3], you need to write out ABC[1].[ABC1.3][ABC1.3.1] to get the right data.  This is taken care of if you drag and drop.

Here’s the big issue I ran into, and I’m still working to get around it.  If you have IIS running on the machine, the Mirth server will tell you the ports are already in use.

Changing to use non-default ports might fix this, I haven’t tried yet. Turning off IIS and restarting Mirth got rid of the errors.   Also, I didn’t see that having the ports in use affected the program running, but right now, I’m only using a file listener, not the LLP listener. Once I switch over, I’ll post an update.

So far, I think this tool is going to be great. I’m starting to look into using it for some of the X12 tranactions I deal with, along with just moving files around our intranet.  I’ll post more about it once I get into testing with our partners.

(One of our partners is using Biztalk, with I’ve looked using. We’re going to connect with them with a WCF service, but I may try doing a web service through Mirth with them, just to see how it goes.)

Why was I thinking about this?  This morning I ran the Dennis McCormick 5K, benefiting the Collins Hill cross country team, in (you guessed it) Suwanee, Ga.  A long time, and miles in-between these two races.

A big difference?  Well, today’s race had downhill in it. But it had an equal amount of uphill, and if I’m not mistaken,about 3/4′s of a track of flat.  (The race finished running a portion of the high school track.) Someone was holding up a sign today that said “go class of 2014,” and that made me feel really, really old. A lot of the kids running this morning weren’t even out of diapers the last time I did this distance.

The course, although hilly, was pretty good.  I actually thought it looked worse driving it than it was running…of course, this doesn’t mean it’s easy, but hey, we live here and run up and down hills all the time so it’s not like we shouldn’t be used to it.

This was Little Man’s first race, and my first time pushing our stroller for a significant distance while running. I’ve gone around the neighborhood, but nothing worth talking about.  He handles it pretty well (he actually usually seems kinda bored), and it was fun trying to beat some lady with her stroller.  She started out running, whereas I walked the first 5 minutes with some friends, so I was pretty happy actually catching up to her.  LM also had a good time running around the football field afterwards, and getting soaked by the grass.

Although I didn’t win anything, they had a nice door prize raffle after the awards.  I was going to laugh if I won the Runner’s Fit gift certificates. 

I met up with a coworker and some friends for this race, and we went to breakfast afterwards.  Always fun…

Then, I noticed something kind of odd.  Lets see if you can spot it.  I’ll give you a hint.  Look at the tree in the background.

Yup. Here was a tree, in the middle of tree growing season (if there is such a thing), with absolutely no leaves on it.  And a bunch of debris on the ground.

On getting closer, I took a look, and the whole tree was covered in caterpillers. 

Not cute little furry butterflies-to-be.  No, full-grown mammoth beasts of devouring! Look at the maws on these things!  I would have ran shrieking like a little girl if LM wasn’t with me.

Well, after we  made it past the tree of doom, and finished our walk, I started to look into this.  First off was a note to the HOA and community manager, hoping one of them know someone who’s good at this stuff. (They then forwarded it to the head of the landscaping committee.  He’s my neighbor, but I didn’t have his email.)

And I searched all over the web.  Looks like it might be an Eastern Tent, but I’m worried it might be Gypsy Moth, since there were no tents, and gypsy’s are know to devour trees.

Oh, did I mention how beastly they look?  Here’s another picture just to make sure you get the point.

We’ll see what happens over the next week or two.  I caught them in action, actually walking down the street to the next tree. (No, I’m not kidding.  Their migration was actually happening as I watched. Had I too much time on my hands, I would have done some video.)  I went back this afternoon to take a look (camera in hand, naturally), and saw them in a bunch of trees spanning the distance of about 10 houses.

We also made an emergency pesticide purchase at Walmart, in case they start to get close to us.

And on the bright side, the lesson from the little man this week is: Sometimes, banging your head on the floor is just fun.

A co-worker talked me into running the Dennis McCormick 5K in a couple weeks.  (The check’s in the mail.) Di looked the course, and after confirming it with the race director, it looks like it’s pretty tough. The first half is downhill, and then you run back up it.  Whew!  I’m sweating just thinking about it.

It will be fun though, since I haven’t run a 5k in years.  Plus, given that we’re planning on Waffle House for breakfast afterwards. 

The distance will be just right for me, since right around 3 miles is what I’ve been doing lately. Been working on holding a sub 10 pace, and making progress.  This last weekend, ran into BethM right as we were both starting, and did a lap around LMP with her.  Although she said that I was wearing her out, I don’t believe her, but we did do the 2.2 mile loop in 20:40.  For me, that’s cruising!

Work has me doing a rapid job on a HIPAA translator for a specific transaction set. Joy…look for more soon. Also doing some web services, and HL7. (Yeah, I know…living on the edge.)

For a while now, I’ve been thinking about doing a blog about work and stuff of interest besides running. I think I even mentioned it here before, a year or so ago.  Well, I’ve finally decided that here is the place to do it. 

Why?  There are a couple reasons:

• Believe it or not, there is more to life than just a single activity.  Yeah, I know some of you may not agree, or even realize it, but really, there are lots of things going on out there.
• It’s much more efficient to have a single site.
• Not really a reson, but I really like this domain name.

So, what’s been going on lately?  Well, for running, I was going to be a runner on our Blue Ridge Relayteam this year, but then they ended up finding someone to fill the slot. (Who goes twice as fast as I.)  I’ll be the driver again, and back up in case there’s an injury…and that’s fine, I had a blast last time.  Plus, I may manage to get 30 miles in, if I decided to run a 1/2 mile out at each exchange to meet the incoming runner. Not saying I’ll do it, but it might be a fun thing to try.  (Gotta be careful though, because official runner isn’t allowed to have a pacer.)

My wife has recently started walking with all her friends, so now one day a weekend I go out with her for a couple miles. Little Man usually looks pretty bored in the stroller, but the playground at the end is a lot of fun. 

Work is pretty busy. My boss and I had a black-op going on, where we were giving one team some support they needed as we had time.  Officially, the work wasn’t sanctioned, so it was just providing support as we had time.  And yes, we like making it sound like a spy thriller.

Well, as it usually goes, this operation has now turned into 50% or more of the hours each week. We’ve been given the clearance to work, as long as it doesn’t interfere with achieving our corporate goals.  So, we’re busy with it, and trying to keep up with everything else.  You’ll probably hear me talking about this in the future.

This weeks lesson from Little Man: Waffles are good food. Having a Waffle House hat with them makes them even better.

My coworker and I managed to get out a couple times during lunch this week for a few miles.  Now that he’s learning the names of the routes, he’s having a bit of fun mapping everything out.  It will be nice once he finishes, so we can pick and choose, and not run the same thing all the time. 

Unfortunately, seeing them mapped maps me realize that some of the names I came up with don’t really make sense.  There’s one route, “q”, that got its name because it’s shaped like a lowercase q.  Well, at least that’s what I thought…turns out it looks more like a kite, with a big triangle and a tail.  Suppose it doesn’t matter.

We’ve tried a couple differently things lately.  One new route is a couple miles just going up and down all the parking structures in the complex.  As far as hills, I wouldn’t have thought it was tougher than what’s on the street, but it sure wore me out.  Maybe we’ll try that again this week, now that I’m getting back in shape.

Last weekend, we went shopping, and that leads to this weeks lesson from the little man:   Infant shoes are much cuter than adult shoes.

I’m still working out during the week, but weekends are usually booked up.  Sorry guys, but going to gym class with the little man on Saturday mornings trumps most other things.  We both have a blast, him running around and me trying to keep up.

I’m going to try to get back to weekly posts, but no promises.  For y’all that are on Facebook, you’ll notice I do very little there anymore. That just sucks up waaaaayyy toooo much time.

A decent portion of the company knows my co-worker and I workout during lunch.  Sometimes, people even want to join us.  During the winter when we were doing the stairs, at one point there were 6 or 7 others doing it to.  Well, last week people have wanted to start running with us.  So we had some company for a very casual couple miles once.

We didn’t intimidate very well, since this week one of the ladies came back for more. Well, it happened to be a day that I wanted to do speed work, so we ended up doing an indian run. Oh, it was a blast!  Haven’t done that in years.  By the end, we were all wiped out pretty good.  (We’ve also started running up and down the parking structures, which are long and drawn out…for some reason it tires me out more than if we  just run up hills out on the street.  Probably because the incline is slight enough that I end up running more than I normally would.)

And lets see if I can add something new to the blog:

The Little Lesson of the Week  (as taught to me by The Little Guy):

The option to disable the power button on the computer was put there for a reason. That reason is because 1 year old’s in the same room as your work computer don’t mix.

The Race:

The conditions for the race were good.  Overcast in the low 50′s with a chance of rain.  Naturally, waking up at 4:00 AM was way to early, but getting to the race wasn’t bad. I ended up catching the 5:15 train that was almost empty.

Having no plan, and being early, I wandered around a bit and eventually ran into Rico and Len, who I know from GUTS.  Rico gave me some suggestions on pacing, which I actually thought about and tried during the race. Didn’t work too well this time around, but I’ll keep playing with it.  A little while later, the “girls from Hamilton Mill” came around and said hi. (Er, I might need to have a better name for them.)  Enough time wasted, I headed to the very back of the start.  I’d guess when the gun went off, there were 50-100 people behind me.

The gun went off, and we [stood still, then inched forward and crossed the starting line 13+ minutes later] were off. 

About a mile into the race, I came upon someone showing some pretty good walking technique. It was Steve, from Virginia, and we was going to racewalk the whole way, trying to finishbetween 5 and 6 hours. (He did 5:33.)  I hung out with him for a good portion of the first 10 miles.  

Right around mile 9.5, I saw a bunch of cars with GUTS stickers on them, so figured I’d see some people I knew.  But they didn’t materialize. 

A mile later, I was passed by someone who’s shirt said “99th Marathon”. It was a Team Achilles shirt, so figured I had to catch up and say hi.  I did, and his support person turned around. “Hey!”  It was Jenn of Team Vogel, super ultra runner and really nice lady, and someone whom I never run with because there’s no way I can keep up.  Well, we spent the next 6-7 miles together, then leapfrogged the rest of the way in.

This was Kevin’s 99th marathon. For 100, he’s doing Boston.

Partway through Decatur, someone was giving out donut holes.  And well, since America runs on Dunkin, and I was suppose to be running, figured I’d have one.  Man, was it sweet! The sugar definitely kicked in, and the next few miles went by pretty good.  I ran into two other people who were running their first merry.  One of them had never done over 13 (due to being sick), so it was going to be an adventure.  They eventually left me behind, but I caught them up right before going to into Piedmont park. 

One memorable moment was when someone was trying to get up the street, driving on the course. I don’t know how they got as far as the did, but a cop came down and let them have it. (Everyone was polite, but there was no way that guy was getting through. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind about that!)

The miles flew by as the clock ticked on.  At one point, I talked to a lady from San Fransisco, and she said our course is a lot harder than the SF marathon.  Gee, I thought they were supposed to be hilly…

Piedmont Park added some new twists. There was an out-and-back added that just seemed to go on forever. I don’t know why, probably just because it was 21 miles into the race. But it seemed to last an hour.   Coming out of the park was a new route too, which was a bit more interesting than previous years.  At one point, there was a building being knocked down. Luckily, the rain had kept the dust to a minimum, otherwise that would have been pretty bad.

The final mile came.  It was faster than previous years, but it still seemed to be a lot longer than a mile. Final 385 yards I had to myself, and I was going in….Wham! There’s the end. 

A snack, and went looking for Jenn (and Lane, her husband), and found them at the massage tent. Took advantage of the free massage offered by the school, and headed home.

Here’s the movie:

Post Race Analysis:

Uh, I should have trained.  That would make it much easier.  But considering I hadn’t, the race didn’t go to bad.  Wasn’t in much pain, and the day after was bearable.

I took in Gatorade a little too early (mile 15ish), and had some stomach issues.  I really should just stay away from it.

Losing my water bottle in the happy-can wasn’t good, since then I couldn’t really eat my trail mix. (Peanut butter pretzels, raisins, chocolate chips and salt.) But hey, I have to set some standards somewhere on what I’ll pick up.

Photo Analysis:

Carrying my big camera wasn’t much different than a water bottle, so really not that big of deal. I need a slightly longer neck strap though.  During the light rain, I just tucked the camera into my jacket and it stayed pretty dry.

Although heavier, a IS lens would have been better, since most my shots were blurry.  The downside to it is that the focus is slower, so maybe it wouldn’t fix the problem.  I kept the camera on full-auto (i.e. the green square), and maybe I should have used sports mode.

I went through 1 battery. I think this was due to the mode constantly setting off the flash.  If I switched to sports mode after the run rise, it also would have helped.

I only took 842 pictures.  My goal was 2000 or so, but hey, I was running a race after all.

I’d like to do it again with a camera set to automatically take a picture every minute or so.  The results would be a lot smoother motion once they’re put together. 

The photographers on the course got a kick out of me taking their picture every time they tried to take mine.