After making progress on the house and the yard, I made a trip back to Canton to visit my parents, pick up a few things for the house, and enjoy being active without worrying about work. I made it to the Towpath trails for some running, the local Bally's (not quite the same scene as Chicago), golfing at Arrowhead with my dad, and running the stairs at the McKinley Monument. The monument is right down the street from the Pro Football Hall of Fame (pics) so I stopped in for a couple hours to check out the recent changes to the place.

They've made a few changes here and there, including an exhibit on the Super Bowl and the busts of the recent HOF classes (John Madden might have the largest head in the place). I really needed a bit of karma after seeing the Browns, Bucks, Fantasy, and Touch Football teams lose the past week. The hall of fame city came through as this past week resulted in some wins, but it's looking like no amount of karma can help out the Browns this year.

One of the strange things I have been excited about related to moving in to a new place in Lincoln Park, is that we are now required to take care of the lawn. I might have grown tired of mowing the yard at my parent's place (except for the occasional lawn art that my parents appreciated), but after staying in apartments for the past 3 years, I've actually looked forward towards doing some hard labor around the house. The excitement that comes with buying some power tools and a real lawnmower added to the fun, along with a yard that was in desperate need of some care.

The yard is still a work in progress, but we've made some major improvements that have sparked many of the neighbors to stop by and show their appreciation that we no longer have the "problem house" on the block. Here's some more pics from the cleanup, including our neighborhood fire guy, Dino, who has helped put the big brown spot in our backyard.

On a trip to go see some friends from high school who have relocated to Denver, I was introduced to the wonderful game of sloshball! Sloshball is a mixture of kickball and drinking, including our own adaptation, using an exercise ball in place of a kickball.

The game is pretty simple for those familiar with kickball or beer league softball. A keg is used in place of second base. When runners reach second base, they must finish a cup of beer before moving on to third. However, there is no force out at third base, so an unlimited number of people can be on second base drinking beer.

Everyone on the field must be holding a beer at all times. Fielders may not drop their beer in order to make a play on the ball. If a batter believes that a fielder is playing with an empty cup, batter may call a beer check on the fielder. If the fielder has an empty cup, he/she must drink. If the fielder made an out but was found to have no beer in their cup, the batter is safe. If there is beer in the cup, the batter who called beer check must drink.

We got out to the field around noon and finished the day around 7 or 8 after sloshball, volleyball, and relaxing. We apparently needed to use a bit more sun tan lotion as we were all pretty fried by the end of the day. Definitely looking forward to bringing this game to Chicago, but I'm worried that the Chicago drinking laws won't be as relaxed as the ones in Denver.

Mark Dowds presents the importance of creating an "Aware Organization" within the latest white paper from Brainpark Inc. Their knowledge management product attempts to harness the collective intelligence of today's knowledge workers within an organization, and providing tools to add context and visibility to this information. The white paper doesn't go into too many details on their product, but it seems as though they bring tools from the consumer web market like Digg and Twitter, and incorporate these features, along with powerful search functionality, into their product.

I agree with the benefits described with the white paper, but am left in the dark on the execution of their knowledge management strategy. The competition within this market is strong and I'm wondering how this product differentiates itself from the 800 pound gorilla of content management and enterprise search, SharePoint. The white paper focuses on the importance of knowledge management within large corporations, but I would think that most large companies will understand the importance of knowledge management, so specifics on how Brainpark is better than the competition would seem to be more important. Then again, this approach does encourages the customer to schedule a demo to learn more, which gets Brainpark's foot in the door.

The morning of my birthday I made a trip out to Joliet for the Warrior Dash, a 6 kilometer race that includes 13 different obstacles. The obstacles ranged from hills, a car junkyard, jumping over walls, big wooden spools, and a fire pit while finishing up by crawling through a mud pit. The race was a great challenge and left me covered in mud, but leaving with a respectable 33:26 time. The race was a great time and I'll definitely try and make it back next year. For anyone thinking about doing the race, I'd recommend using old clothes and shoes as none of those items made it home.