Ryan Kanno: The diary of an Enginerd in Hawaii

I finally succumbed to peer pressure.

After some careful online research (like here, here, and here) and being persuaded by my co-worker Stephane, I finally mozied on down to get myself a pair of Vibram FiveFingers. After all, being named one of Time Magazine’s Inventions of the Year couldn’t be all that bad… right?

After perusing their website, I found only two retailers on Oahu that sold them.

• Uyeda Shoe Store across from Puck’s Alley (map)
• The Wheatgrass Center behind the Bank of Hawaii on Waialae (map)

After calling Uyeda’s several times and being greeted with one of those funky fax feedback tones each time (note - please update your online phone number), I finally decided to ring up The Wheatgrass Center. For those of you instructionally-impaired like myself, just take a left on Waialae Ave. before the Bank of Hawaii heading Kahala bound. Located behind the bank, The Wheatgrass Center is quite an interesting store selling both the Vibram FiveFingers and of course… wheatgrass. (Why people want to ruminate like cows is still truly beyond me.)

Review

When I first saw the Vibram FiveFinger, I did what any other (semi) normal human being would do - I laughed. Not any normal laugh, mind you - but a “there’s no f-in way I’m wearing that in public” laugh. They resemble footwear of a ninja-in-training, and since I’m neither of the two (a ninja or in training), I really couldn’t fathom seeing myself in a pair.

But after trying them on, I was immediately taken back; back to small kid time when I ran barefoot and carefree in the red dirt hills of Mililani. The Vibram FiveFingers not only allows you to feel the contour of the ground, but also provides protection to the soles of your feet. After being given the sales pitch by Mr. Fukuda, I was sold. There’s a few models; I ended up purchasing the Classic. (Check out their website to see the entire product line). Not to mention, Mr. Fukuda instructed ordered me to wear the pair out the door. After a full weekend’s worth of wear and tear, here’s a few images of them on my feet - along with a short list of my pros and cons.

The Pros

• It’s surprisingly comfortable. Sometimes my toes still feel weird being separated, but it’s pretty neat to actually feel the ground without fear of having a rock in your foot. Btw, if you like the separated toe thing, check these socks out from Injini.
• If everything the Internet world says is true (like we all know it is!), I’ll have crazy leg/toe muscles, damnit! And, not to mention, it promotes a more natural walking motion. To learn more, read this article about barefoot running.

The Cons

• I developed a blister on the back of my foot near my Achilles from the back strap. It’s pretty sore, but after reading other reviews, I’m sure I’ll get used to it.
• Since I’m fairly self-deprecating and a non-fashionista (you should see my car), the design doesn’t faze me one bit - but I could see how embarrassment could set in.
• The price. $73 bucks isn’t a drop in the bucket in this economy. Damn, do you know how many beers I’m giving up for this?

I’ll tell you in December how the Honolulu Marathon goes with these on!

Unlucky for all of you, I’m back.

Here are some of the highlights of my sweet two week hiatus to Cali4nia:

• The 2008 Rose Bowl - Though my Fighting Illini got killed, it was still quite the experience.
• Seeing friends - Big Fisch and Steder, Steve-o, Lyle, Marshall, Allen, KK, Bobby!, Tricia, and others.
• Hanging with la familia in San Jose.
• House of Prime Rib with the Townsends!

(Click on our group picture to see my flickr set!)

Welcome, to the rest of my life.

Today, I officially received my Masters in Business Administration from the Shidler College of Business at the University of Hawaii. Though it took me four long years as a part time student, I’d like to thank everyone who made it possible. Thanks for all the late nighters, the fun times running student body, but most of all, thanks for the memories. Not to mention, thanks to everyone who came to see me graduate! Whee! Since I hadn’t participated in a graduation ceremony in a few years, it was quite exciting.

At least I can say I graduated with Colt!

Go Bows!

(I’ll post videos once I can figure out how to convert them from my camera!)

And as a parting thought, the proof is in the pudding!

(Click on the diploma cover to see my flickr set!)

For the record, today just might have been the best day of my entire life.

Retirement Party

After slaving away for months planning my parent’s *surprise* retirement party, everything came to full fruition today. Thinking that they were attending an awards ceremony for the University of Hawaii’s Shidler College of Business, my parents were completely taken aback as more than 150 of their closest friends and family gathered to celebrate their retirement.

(Thanks to me and my sister!)

There’s a lesson to be learned here. If you want to see the most bewildered look on your parent’s face as 150+ people scream “Surprise!”, shoot me an email. And trust me when I say this, but…

It was all worth it.

I’ll post some pics once I get them developed. Thanks to everyone who showed up as well as everyone who made it all possible.

I seriously <3 my family.

Illinois gets a whiff of the Roses

The Illinois seriously needed the moons and the stars aligned today for their hand to be dealt the right cards.

1. Virginia Tech beating BC allowed Illinois to move into the top 14 of the BCS poll.
2. Pittsburgh beating West Virginia and/or (whatever way you want to look at it) Oklahoma beating Mizzo allowed Ohio State to move into the BCS Championship Game.

(As much as I hate saying this… but “Go Buckeyes!”)

Since Ohio State was going to be the Big Ten’s representative to the Rose Bowl, moving into the BCS Championship Game means that another Big Ten school could be selected to take their place.

Enter Illinois

After a dismal 2-10 season last year, the Illinois came roaring back this year with wins over then number five, Wisconsin, and then number one, Ohio State. Featuring a potent running attack, an amazing freshman, Leman led defense, and a surprise resurgence of “Juice” Williams, a whiff of the Roses will be well deserved.

Hawaii says pass some Sugar, baby.

For those of you on the East Coast that couldn’t stay up to watch Hawaii’s wild win over Washington, please, please watch today’s replay. Not only does it exemplify Hawaii’s heart and soul displayed throughout the season, but it’ll show all you analysts what to watch out for on New Year’s day.

All I can say is…

If Colt Brennan isn’t a Heisman finalist, something is seriously dead wrong with the system.

All the ESPN and BCS committee haters can stop drinking the haterade because the University of Hawaii showed true heart and grit in its final four games of the season. Not many of the so called “experts” and “analysts” gave them a chance to be the only undefeated team in college football. Notice, I didn’t say all because there were a few here and there.

But 12 games and a 12-0 record later, here we are.

Since Boise really paved the way for non-BCS conferences last year with a wild win over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl, the Rainbows are expected to get an at-large BCS selection to the Sugar Bowl.

Go Bows!

Now my only dilemma is what bowl game will I attend?

Now that my MBA class is finally done for the summer, I can focus on more important things… like upgrading my Python installation on Dreamhost for my Django application. Seeing as how Dreamhost is still behind the Python times, with Python 2.4 hidden in Dreamhost obscurity, I figured I’d blog about updating your Dreamhost Python installation (and subsequent MySQLdb libraries) to Python 2.5.

The very first thing I did was search Google. You know, I really don’t know how people lived pre-Googs. In any case, I found this blog posting describing exactly what I wanted to do. Thanks Ben! Since I’m not a big fan of running one large batch script people create in their blogs, I’ll break it down for the non-*nix fans out there.

Before I begin, I’m assuming that you already have Django running on Dreamhost. If you’re having a “wtf” moment, make sure to stop by Jeff’s blog and read “Setting up Django on Dreamhost“. (This is how I set mine up). To follow my short tutorial, you’ll need shell access to your Dreamhost account.

After ssh’ing into your Dreamhost account, you should be in your home directory (/home/username). According to the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, the /opt dir “is reserved for the installation of add-on application software packages.” With that said, issue the following commands:

$ mkdir opt
$ mkdir downloads
$ cd downloads
$ wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.5.1/Python-2.5.1.tgz
$ tar xvzf Python-2.5.1.tgz

First, create a directory named opt. Next, create a directory named downloads for all your files. Change into the downloads directory, then download the latest Python from http://www.python.org. Finally, unzip and untar the package into the download directory. Everything will extract into a directory named Python-2.5.1.

$ cd Python-2.5.1
$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/opt/ --enable-unicode=ucs4
$ make
$ make install

Change into the Python-2.5.1 directory and type in the following configure command. Basically, configure prepares your installation for compilation. The –prefix flag will install machine-independent data files in subdirectories of the specified directory. The default is to install in /usr/local, but it’s overwritten with the opt directory created earlier. Finally, run make and make install which will install your custom Python installation.

$ cd ..
$ rm -rf Python-2.5.1

Finally, delete the Python-2.5.1 directory. Before you can use this Python installation, you have to add the /opt/bin directory to your path. To do this, add /opt/bin to your .bash_profile file in your home directory. To do so, you’ll have to add the following to your .bash_profile.

export PATH=$HOME/opt/bin/:$PATH

Basically, this allows you to type ‘python’ in your shell and reach the custom Python 2.5.1 installation instead of the Dreamhost one. To make sure that our Python installation is working, type the following in your home directory (cd ~):

$ source .bash_profile
$ python --version

After the last command, you should see the following: Python 2.5.1. If that displays, your upgrade was successful! After upgrading your Python installation, you’re not done yet. Since Dreamhost uses an old MySQL-Python installation, we’ll upgrade that as well. Type the following in your home directory:

$ cd downloads
$ wget http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/mysql-python/MySQL-python-1.2.2.tar.gz
$ tar xvzf MySQL-python-1.2.2.tar.gz
$ cd MySQL-python-1.2.2
$ python setup.py install

First, change into the downloads directory and issue the wget command to download the latest MySQL-Python files from Sourceforge. Once you’ve received the files, unzip and untar the package. All the files will extract into a directory called MySQL-python-1.2.2. Change into this directory and install the files by typing python setup.py install. If you followed the custom Python installation, the files should build and extract into the ~/opt/lib/python2.5/site-packages/ directory as an egg file.

You now have a custom Python installation and a MySQL-Python upgrade!

Voila!

Update: Just so you don’t get caught up in the same mistake that I made, to be sure that your Django fcgi installation is using your custom Python installation, make sure the dispatch.fcgi file reads as such:

#!/home/USERNAME_GOES_HERE/opt/bin/python
import sys

sys.path += ['WHATEVER_PATHS_YOU_NEED']

from fcgi import WSGIServer
from django.core.handlers.wsgi import WSGIHandler
import os

os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'wegoeat.settings'
WSGIServer(WSGIHandler()).run()