GPS watch coolness

So for Christmas I got a Garmin Black Forerunner 10 GPS Running Watch. Its pretty cool, I am looking forward to using it. It has a very nice web interface that tracks your runs down to, as best I can tell, the foot! I could tell when I veered wide around a car blocking the sidewalk. (Isn't there an ordinance about that?)and it was perfectly recording on the map on the MyGarmin site.

I enjoy the splits the watch saves, as well as the pacing information. I am sure as I use it more often I will enjoy the other features as well. I am really looking forward to it while I referee HS soccer this spring. This should be quite interesting to see how much I really run on the field, something I have always wondered about what the physical requirements of that actually are.

If you are interested in the watch, click on the picture below for more details.

First run!

So using my new Garmin Forerunner 10 GPS watch (thanks Santa) I am able to track my workouts via the very cool Garmin Connect webpage.

So while the headline says "first run" it was more like first "walk/jog" of the marathon program. It was challenging and I used my heart monitor to watch my heart rate as well, which I maxed out and averaged 148bpm, which is a tad bit high for doing a marathon, but its a start!

Marathon Man

I am a big believer in having large goals. If a goal doesn't scare the hell out of you its probably not big enough! To that end I have decided to run a marathon this year. I have not decided which one yet but will shortly. The obvious one is Chicago, but I am pretty sure we will be on vacation then so I might have to look elsewhere for a local marathon.

I have been thinking about it for awhile now and of course New years is a great time to set goals!

My marathon thinking is as follows:

• Health Benefits
• Weight loss
• Fitness
• Challenging

Seems like a good mix of positives! So follow along on the Blog Mark 2.0 or should I say version 26.2!

Valuable Summer Information

Great voice mail!

I think this lady might have a career in leaving voice-mails for people, who have issues with insurance companies, phone companies, etc. However since she apparently is leaving this at a school admission office for healthcare related skills, I am not so sure her bed side manner would help much

Please be aware that this link has serious profanity on it, and is NSFW

Neighbor complaint form

I stumbled across this great article on lifehacker.com

We're not all blessed with perfect neighbors. In fact, we're not always perfect neighbors ourselves. We're all capable of being disruptive and annoying, so when that happens we need to call each other out on it.

Classic stuff, complete with a PDF to download so you can notify said neighbor

The mosquito that will eat Round Lake

Well its official the village will not be spraying for mosquito's this year. The cost, roughly .00025% of the village budget was deemed a frivolous expense. While fiscal responsibility is a wonderful thing its does strike me as part of the village's responsibility to make life a little easier for all the residents of the community, and a couple of thousand dollars for this might be money well spent.

Of course with the escalating legal bills the village has encountered over the last three years to fight the county over arcane sewer rights (Somewhere north of $600,000 supposedly) they had to cut back somewhere!

In the past I have blogged about mosquitoes. There is an interesting post about exactly what mosquito spraying should be doing for Round Lake, but won't be, sadly.

Very clever animation

When the guy in the animation stops running place your cursor about 1" above his head.
Enjoy this

The New Me

Since I left the Mayors position over three years ago I have slowly evolved my habits into something more normal, for example:

• The first and third Mondays of each month, are now fruity cocktail beverage nights rather then village board nights.
• Since my daughter has returned home as a college graduate, Thursday evenings, when I was usually home alone have become "Fitness Thursdays" rather then  "Violent TV Thursday's" when I used to enjoy my dose of great shows like Dexter and Justified thanks to my great pal Mr. Tivo!

Needless to say I do enjoy cocktail night, not so sure I enjoy "Fitness Thursdays" as much as "Violent TV Thursday's".

Cedar Lake Road Extension

The long awaited Cedar Lake Road extension is taking shape, it will extend Cedar Lake Road south from 120 down to the segment stretches from Townline Road South to Route 60.

The reason the road was broken into segments is because when we approved Lakewood Homes back in 2002 or so, we insisted they provide a substantial road amenity, and in fact they paid for the road and intersection improvement all along Route 60 as well as the one half mile of the extension of Cedar Lake. The full extension was to be built by 2010-11, but the drive for traffic improvements seems to have died out here.

The work will start the week of April 23.

You can't escape the rush hour traffic in Lake County.

You've tried leaving early. Going home late. Taking a bunch of different routes. Nothing works. You're losing sleep, time with your family and friends, time at work. Instead, you have lots of windshield time with your car. You're losing part of your life, wasting time in a congested mess on Lake County roads with no end in sight.

A simple "yes" vote April 7 can help change all that.

The Route 53 project has been planned for years. Now, you finally get to vote in favor of it. You can tell Lake County, state and federal leaders know you're sick and tired of traffic jams. You want to stop wasting dozens of hours behind the wheel every month, watching all the vehicles around you pollute the air while they inch along at a frustrating pace.

And, you can do more than vote. You can tell your family, neighbors and friends to vote "yes" for Route 53. Tell them how it will enrich their lives, help businesses and improve the economic future of the county. We can help you do that. Sign up for e-mail blasts, Twitter alerts, and a Facebook page that will provide the latest on our plan to bring some sanity to the crazy mess of traffic in Lake County.

Vote Yes on 53 this April 7th

Here is a great site about 53.

911 Service Gets its Facelift

A few months ago I wrote about the ongoing improvements to our area wide 911 service and showed a partial picture of the work that was done, well here is a picture of the finished product. Kudos to Director Lisa Berger and her team for improving our 911 services and of course making the center look very good.

I stopped by the center a few weeks ago, and was quite impressed with what I saw, the new cubicles are "state of the art" for the tele-communicators and the ones I talked to were very happy with the new stuff.

2008 Audit Report Highlights

Last night the village board discuss and voted to accept the 2008 Audit report. Here are some of the highlights of the report. Its pretty dull, but its all mostly positive, which given today's economic climate is a good thing!

• The Village’s Governmental net assets increased $11,978,849 from the prior year.
• Business-type activities unrestricted net assets increased $489,032 from the prior year. The fund balance for the General Fund equaled $3,310,475, an increase of $758,219 from the prior year.
• General Fund expenditures were 19.5% under the final appropriated amount of $8,736,188.
• Village-wide assets exceeded liabilities by $69.8 million at April 30, 2008.
• Program revenues for governmental activities increased $1,219,387 over the preceding year.
• All funds operated within legal budgetary limitations during the year.
• The Water and Sewer Fund reported total operating income before depreciation expense of $224,916.
• As of April 30, 2008, the Village had seven debt issues outstanding totaling $17,752,174 and during the year the Village’s total outstanding debt decreased by $820,713.

Major capital asset events during the current fiscal year include the following:

• The purchase of downtown land for $1,434,476 for future development.
• The completion of the West Townline Road project capitalized at $599,629.
• The capitalization of $2,136,661 for the trunk sewer / Dawn Marie pump station project. The capitalization of $889,292 of construction costs related to the 2006 CDBG Linden and Sycamore watermain improvements.

Our Drinking Water is first Class

From the Waukegan News Sun

It's so good it won a taste test, and it's so cheap it's practically free.

The Central Lake County Joint Action Water Agency has won a regional taste test for tap water, beating out 12 other Illinois water treatment facilities that are part of the West Shore Water Producers Association.

JAWA communities include Grayslake, Gurnee, Lake Bluff, Libertyville, Mundelein, Vernon Hills, Round Lake, Round Lake Beach, Round Lake Heights, Round Lake Park, and the unincorporated areas of Wildwood, Knollwood, Rondout, and Countryside.

The processing plant in Lake Bluff can treat 50 million gallons of water per day and serves 205,000 residents in central Lake County.

The next level of judging will be at the state competition in March in Springfield.

"This is just another example showing our member communities that we have access to some of the highest quality drinking water in Illinois," said Round Lake Beach Mayor Richard Hill, JAWA's chairman.

A plastic bottle of Aquafina water from a vending machine is $1 for just over a pint. Meanwhile, residents of JAWA are charged $2.15 per 1,000 gallons, or .215 cents per gallon. Aquafina by the pint is about $8 per gallon.

William "Burr" Koepsel, director of operations for JAWA, said the last time the building in Lake Bluff was retrofitted, they had bottled water in mind.

"Actually, during the last phase of construction we actually put in piping so maybe we could look at that in the future," he said.

Call it JAWA JUICE. Think of the profits if the starting costs are just .215 cents per gallon.

The reason the water taste so good is that Lake Michigan water is a "very high quality water to begin with," Koepsel said.

It goes through ozonization (many plants use chlorine first), then it is filtered through a granular activated carbon -- charcoal in layman's terms. Then a quagulent is added to make suspended particles clump together and settle out of the water. "Some particles tend not to settle," he said.

Next comes ultraviolet light, which does not kill bacteria but destroys DNA -- thwarting reproduction.

Last is a shot of chlorine -- "the smallest amount possible," Koepsel said.

"This was the first year we won (the taste test)," he said.

While taste is important, the professionals are more impressed with other awards like the Phase 4 Award given out by the Partnership for Safe Drinking Water and the American Water Works Association. JAWA received the reward for its personnel, physical plant and operations.

"The award recognizes the highest quality operations and drinking water we produce," Koepsel said.