Inside Symantec LiveUpdate

Last April, I wrote about my problems with McAfee Internet Security Suite. Since I am on vacation this week, I finally got around to removing the McAfee suite from my home computer. I decided to upgrade to Windows XP Service Pack 2 -- for the built-in firewall -- and then add Norton AntiVirus for virus protection.

I was particularly worried about removing the McAfee software. Last time I tried that, the uninstall program failed and left lots of remnants on the system. I spent hours first tracking down instructions and then manually removing services and registry settings. By comparison, the removal of Internet Security Suite 6.0 was painless. It took all of five minutes.

The installation of Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) was painless too. I still haven't explored all the benefits of SP2, but I like the built-in Windows Security Center, the new Outlook Express security features, and the Internet Explorer pop-up blocker. (Nevertheless, I will continue to use Firefox for most of my web browsing.)

In short, things were going great. I had a brand-new copy of Norton AntiVirus 2006 and I expected that installation to be dirt simple. Twenty four hours later, I finally have things working. Although the initial installation appeared to go well, I couldn't get Symantec LiveUpdate to work. Without LiveUpdate, it is difficult to get the latest virus definitions. Without those, virus protection is incomplete.

When LiveUpdate fails, it tries to be helpful. It displays an error message and provides a link to a Symantec web page with trouble shooting tips. In this case, the message was:

LU1841: Connection to ISP failed. LiveUpdate could not connect to your Internet Service Provider. Verify your dial-up information is correct.

Possible explanations included problems with the system's Internet Options or misconfigured firewall software. I checked these and other possible explanations, used Symantec's Automated Support Assistant, and generally pounded my head against the monitor for hours. Nothing helped.

Finally, I stumbled upon this excellent document on the Symantec site. Near the end of the document there is a section about some Settings.LiveUpdate files. These files hold various settings including the names of LiveUpdate servers. If the files are corrupted, LiveUpdate can stop working. The document suggests removing the files and trying again. Since the LiveUpdate service appears to keep the files open, this is easier said than done. Unless you take some special steps, you will get sharing violations when you try to remove the files.

Here's what worked for me:

1. Restart Windows in safe mode. This causes Windows to run without the LiveUpdate service.
    
2. Backup all the files in c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\LiveUpdate. I just copied the files to a temporary directory.
    
3. Back in the c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\LiveUpdate directory, remove all files with Settings in the file name. In particular, you don't want to remove the Configuration and Product files. Those files apparently contain important information about your registered Symantec products.
    
4. Restart Windows and retry LiveUpdate.

While this whole process took much longer than it should have, I feel like I understand the inner workings of LiveUpdate a little bit better. I am posting this story with the hope that someone else can benefit from it some day. Now I just have to take care of some overdue vehicle maintenance, finish a few household chores, and defeat the legions of spammers assaulting my Inbox. Then my "vacation" will be complete.
 

Thomas Jefferson

I am reading Paul Johnson's big A History of the American People. I am only about a quarter of the way through, but one of the pleasures of this book is seeing how Thomas Jefferson keeps popping up. From 1776, when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, through his busy years as President (1801-1809), until his influence diminished at the end of his friend James Madison's second term (1817), Jefferson managed to play a key role in shaping our nation.

I've read a lot about Jefferson before, but Johnson's history includes some facts that are new to me. For example:

• As a result of the 1783 Peace of Paris, the United States gained a vast new tract of land, the so-called Old Northwest Territory. Jefferson, who helped negotiate the treaty, proposed dividing the territory into several new states including Metropotamia, Polypotamia, Assenisipia and Cherronesus. Fortunately, he was overruled. Instead, over time, we got Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin.


• While he was president, Jefferson had an open door policy. He let it be known he would answer any letter from any citizen and he was true to his word. He answered, in his own hand, literally thousands of letters from ordinary people and he kept copies of all his correspondence. The result is a lively record of what was on the minds of both the great men and ordinary people of his day.


• Although he was personally involved in adding the Old Northwest Territory and the Louisiana Purchase to this country, Jefferson wasn't satisfied. In 1812, he urged his friend James Madison to invade and "liberate" Canada. Jefferson and Madison expected to be welcomed by Canada's citizens. They neglected to consider the large population of loyalists who had emigrated from south of the Canadian border before, during and after the American Revolution. Even the French-speaking citizens of Quebec were not inclined to oust the British. The result was a disaster. The inexperienced American army was routed and within months the British invaded and burned Washington, D.C.

Thomas Jefferson was a leading light of the American Revolution and one of our greatest presidents. We have long admired him for his many deeds including writing the Declaration of Independence, building Monticello, and chartering the Lewis & Clark expedition. Recently, his image has been tarnished by his, to our eyes, profoundly inconsistent views on slavery. I guess this is human nature. We put our leaders high on a pedestal and then, every so often, we happily knock them off. But in Paul Johnson's hands, Jefferson emerges as a man in full. Johnson describes Jefferson's greatest achievements, his little inconsistencies, his most enduring ideas and his monumental mistakes. In the end, I am amazed not by Jefferson's inconsistencies (he was only human), but that a man of flesh and blood accomplished so much.
 

Web 2.0 Explained

You may have seen the term "Web 2.0" tossed around, but what does it mean exactly? In one context it appears to have something to do with Ajax. In another context it appears to have something to do with tags -- like tags in Flickr. It turns out it includes both ideas and much more. It's a grab bag of ideas supposedly driving a rebirth of the Internet.

This makes a dramatic narrative. "Web 1.0" rises from nothing in the mid-1990s. Amazon.com takes business from bricks-and-mortar stores. AOL buys Time-Warner. Every business is an e-business. Then, in 2001, it comes crashing down. We realize bricks-and-mortar stores still make sense. In fact, Wal-Mart has gotten very big indeed. Time-Warner executives wrestle control from the AOL upstarts. The Internet bubble is forgotten and everything is (mostly) back to normal.

Then, the narrative continues, "Web 2.0" rises from the ashes of "Web 1.0". Google and a half dozen smaller entities like Flickr and Wikipedia begin to redefine the Internet. Venture capital pours into hundreds of cool startups and the bubble begins to grow again. Hopefully, it doesn't grow too big, too fast. This version of the Web is actually useful.

But there are problems with this narrative. For example, is Ajax really all it's cracked up to be? Chris McEvoy wrote a spoof of Jakob Nielsen lamenting the problems of Ajax. Although it's a spoof, the arguments are compelling. For example:

Ajax breaks the unified model of the Web and introduce (sic) a new way of looking at data that has not been well integrated into the other aspects of the Web. With ajax, the user's view of information on the screen is now determined by a sequence of navigation actions rather than a single navigation action ... Even worse, URLs stop working: the addressing information shown at the top of the browser no longer constitutes a complete specification of the information shown in the window.

And in his excellent essay on Web 2.0, Paul Graham damns Ajax with faint praise:

Basically, what "Ajax" means is "Javascript now works." And that in turn means that web-based applications can now be made to work much more like desktop ones.

Google Mail, Google Maps and other Ajax applications are great, but are Ajax applications really going to replace desktop applications? What happens when I want to disconnect from the web? Don't get me wrong. I don't think Ajax is going away, but it will not single-handedly topple the desktop.

There are also problems with tags. And there are problems with Wikipedia. There are problems with all the social networking, new democracy technologies. Maybe it's just the sources I read, but it feels like "Web 2.0" is losing share to "Cynicism 2.0".

Near the end of his essay, Paul Graham says:

Google was a pioneer in all three components of Web 2.0: their core business sounds crushingly hip when described in Web 2.0 terms, "Don't maltreat users" is a subset of "Don't be evil," and of course Google set off the whole Ajax boom with Google Maps.

Web 2.0 means using the web as it was meant to be used, and Google does. That's their secret. The web naturally has a certain grain, and Google is aligned with it. That's why their success seems so effortless.

In the end, Google is not an Ajax company. They are not even a search company. Right now, their biggest source of revenue is selling advertisements. They are successful because of the value they provide to their customers. The technology they use is only a means to that end. If the "Web 2.0" startups don't absorb that simple lesson, they are doomed to fail.
 

Iraqi Elections

Tomorrow, Iraqi citizens will take another big step toward democracy when they vote to seat members of their new parliament. Undoubtedly, the U.S. media will take a break from the usual body count and "who knew what when" to admit that perhaps, after all, there is promise in Iraq's future.

Meanwhile, there are bloggers who remind us of that promise every day. Michael Yon is one blogger who regularly posts good news from Iraq. I am particularly impressed by a photo essay he posted last month. I'll get to the photo essay in a minute, but first take a few moments to clear your mind. Forget WMD, "blood for oil", the Al Qaeda connection and so on. Those arguments are all relevant certainly, but they are also old news. Regardless of how we got there, we are in Iraq now. If we leave too soon, we risk the total collapse of a fragile democracy. And we'll have broken a promise to our allies.

If you want to meet our allies, see Michael Yon's photo essay.
 

Bloglines

I finally got around to trying Bloglines last week. It's great! I realize this is not news to my techie friends, but I want to spread the word to the less techie readers of Runtime Log.

Bloglines is a FREE web-based service that watches for new posts on multiple blogs. It keeps track of new posts so you don't have to constantly visit your favorite blogs only to be disappointed when there's nothing new. It's especially useful for monitoring blogs with infrequent or sporadic activity.

The heart of Bloglines is the nifty outline shown in the picture. It lets you organize blogs by category. Blogs (or categories) with new activity are shown in bold type, with the number of new posts in parentheses. To read new posts, you simply click on the outline entry. When you do this, Bloglines shows just the new posts in a separate frame.

Reading a blog with Bloglines causes it to be marked as completely read, but you can remember a post you want to get back to by checking a box labeled "Keep New". In the picture above, I have marked two Software Development posts as "Keep New". This is indicated by the numbers in gray parentheses.

If you read lots of blogs, Bloglines is a great way to organize them and save time. And if you have your own blog, you should look at it with Bloglines too. It will look slightly different. You might be interested in how some of your readers are seeing your blog.
 

Form Follows Function

For the past several weeks, I have been working on an API at work. The first step was to design the API and have it reviewed by other software architects. I was surprised by how much time we spent debating the mere form of the API. For example, we argued a lot about whether to use interfaces or classes for value objects, but comparatively little time discussing the function of the API. I am not saying the interfaces vs. classes debate is not important, but often the argument was, "By convention, all value objects must be defined as interfaces (or classes)." In other words, it was a case of form for form's sake. The argument was not grounded in the function of the API.

Now that I have moved from design to implementation, I am noticing another kind of tension. As developers begin to use the emerging API, they make enhancement requests. Often these requests are to add a method that is outside the scope of the API, or worse, to make an existing method do some additional work that isn't obvious from the method definition. As an example, I've had several requests to make methods aware of the User Interface (UI) context, but this is an API for accessing data and metadata. None of its implementations should introduce side-effects in the UI unless all of them can guarantee the same behavior. I think it is important to keep the API contract as simple as possible, so I generally decline such requests.

It strikes me the answer to both kinds of debates is the same: "Form follows function." This phrase first gained currency in the discipline of building design. The late 19th century architect, Louis Sullivan, and his disciple, Frank Lloyd Wright, were its most famous proponents. The phrase is sometimes misinterpreted as a statement of precedence. In other words, it is interpreted as, "function precedes form," but that's not really the idea. Rather, Sullivan and Wright were reacting against the conventions of the day. They thought it was silly to build Renaissance train stations, Greek Classical post offices, and English Tudor homes. There were against ornamentation for ornamentation's sake. As Wright said, "Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union."

"Form follows function" has been applied to lots of other design activities besides building design. I actually haven't heard it used in reference to the design of an API, but I think it makes sense. It carries with it two important ideas. When designing an API, you should:

1. Resist unecessary ornamentation. Some conventions are certainly of universal importance, but others should be applied in only some circumstances and some are mere fads. Each convention should be tested against the function of the API. Does it really make sense in this context?
    
2. Make each method as explicit as possible. To improve the usability of your API, give each method a descriptive name and make it do what it says -- no more, no less. Avoid the temptation to have methods cause side-effect in other parts of the system. This is particularily important for APIs that will have multiple implementations.

Next time someone tells me I must always use interfaces for value objects or I must follow some other such convention, I'm going to say I heard differently from a famous architect. "Form follows function." I heard it from Frank Lloyd Wright.
 

December - January Issue of Striding Along

There's a new issue of the Gate City Striders newsletter on the web. This issue includes a description of the Boston Marathon "bypass" process for club members, news about about the Freeze Your Buns winter race series, cold weather running tips, a glimpse at the 2006 New Hampshire Grand Prix calendar, and more. It is also my first issue as ex-newsletter editor. I think the new editor, Bill Farina, is doing a great job.

See it all on the newsletter page.
 

John Vlissides Remembered

John Vlissides, perhaps best known as a co-author of Design Patterns, passed away last Thursday after a lengthy illness. Many of his colleagues are using his Wiki page to share stories about working with Vlissides. If you have read Design Patterns or any of his other works, you may be interested in reading about the human being behind the words. By all accounts he was as humble and generous as he was brilliant.

(via Bjorn and Ward)
 

Erich Gamma on Shipping Software

In part five of a series of interviews at Artima Developer, Erich Gamma talks about Eclipse's culture of shipping software. He talks about six week milestones, transparent planning, constantly "eating your own dog food", and the controlled end game. This is all very familiar. It is almost identical to the Notes development culture at Iris Associates.

There are at least two important differences. Notes release cycles were historically much longer than those of Eclipse. And Notes never was an open source project. However, these differences just highlight the importance of the common themes. If I had to pick one, I'd say the most important is "eat your own dog food". There are lots of different strategies for quality assurance. Nothing compares with running your business on the product you are building.

(via Jeff Atwood, at Coding Horror)
 

Knit Wits and Sports Nuts

My sister-in-law, Patty, has been blogging at PurlySpaniel for a few months. Now I've discovered my sister Deirdre has a blog too. Dee's blog is Knitter from Keene.

Both blogs are mostly about knitting, but they are more than that. For example, I really like Patty's post about knitting and baseball:

They statistically break down anyone who looks like the player, has a name like the player, once played with the player and who has the potential to play with the player. And while this happens my head is spinning and I am knitting. Baseball has been very, very good to me. They watch, I knit. Everyone is happy

I can relate. Although I grew up in a sports crazy household, I've only become interested in sports recently -- mostly because my sons are sports nuts. I guess the "sports crazy" gene sometimes skips a generation. I'm still not a sports nut, but at least now I'm not completely lost when the talk at family get-togethers turns to the Sox, Celts and Pats.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Bring on the sports talk. I won't even try to keep up when the talk turns to knitting.
 

Now Close the Windows

Now close the windows and hush all the fields:
If the trees must, let them silently toss;
No bird is singing now, and if there is,
Be it my loss.

It will be long ere the marshes resume,
I will be long ere the earliest bird:
So close the windows and not hear the wind,
But see all wind-stirred.

-- Robert Frost, from A Boy's Will
 

Beta Testing Considered Harmful

Joel Spolsky warns about the dangers of large-scale software beta testing. He calls it "shipping early and often":

Does ship-early-and-often really work for a huge company doing massive PR pushes that's going to get millions of people checking out their early release?

I don't think it does. This is a classic example of what I've always called the Marimba Phenomenon. The Marimba Phenomenon is what happens when you spend more on PR and marketing than on development. “Result: everybody checks out your code, and it's not good yet. These people will be permanently convinced that your code is simple and inadequate, even if you improve it drastically later.”

As usual, Joel singles out Microsoft when he could just as easily be talking about any large software company. He also adds a plug for small companies (like, for instance, his small company). And he doesn't mention big company Beta success stories. For example, the Google Mail Beta has generated lots of positive buzz for Google.

However, by and large, I agree with Joel. Software companys would do well to heed his warning.
 

Book Review: The Kite Runner

Kahled Hosseini's The Kite Runner is a wonderful book. It's the story of a close-knit Afghan family from Kabul. It follows the family from before the 1979 Russian invasion of Afghanistan, through twenty years of exile in America, and back to the Taliban's hell on earth in 2001.

The story begins in the 1960s, when Afghanistan was a relatively peaceful developing country. The author initially focuses on the friendship between Amir, a wealthy Pashtun boy, and Hassan, his Hazara servant. Although such a friendship is unlikely in the class-conscious and sectarian Afghan culture, Amir and Hassan share a close bond. Hosseini beautifully captures their days spent roaming Kabul, going to the cinema to see American and Pakistani films, playing "Cowboys and Indians", and flying kites. Just below the surface, however, there is tension. Amir is the more privileged of the two, but he is jealous of Hassan. Without understanding his own actions, Amir rejects Hassan. Shortly after, the Russians invade Afghanistan, Amir's family escapes to America, and the two friends are apparently separated for good.

Hosseini devotes the "second act" of the book to Amir's exile in California's Silicon Valley. This part is also compelling and wonderfully told, but the "third act" is the most memorable. In 2001, the now 38 year old Amir is summoned back to Afghanistan. He secretly re-enters his country, sees the destruction wrought by twenty years of war, and bears witness to the tyranny of the Taliban. It's a heartbreaking and terrifying passage, but Amir sees it as the only way to redeem his past.

Although the story focuses on Amir, it is filled with fully realized Afghan characters including Amir's father (or Baba), his friend Hassan, his "uncle" Rahim Khan, his wife and in-laws, and many more. I think the book gives you a real appreciation of traditional Afghan culture, the tragedy of the Russian invansion, and the ruthless reign of the Taliban.

The Kite Runner is a story of personal redemption, but it is also unmistakably an allegory for the redemption of Afghanistan itself. Having read the book, I am proud of the role America played in ousting the Taliban and hopeful about the country's future. Salaam Alaykum, Afghanistan. Peace be with you.
 

Visual Studio vs. Eclipse

According to an internetnews.com story, Microsoft is making some outgageous claims about the cost of Eclipse:

Repeating the Microsoft mantra that "free is not really free," [Microsoft's BJ Holtgrewe] showed that while the basic development environment for Eclipse is free versus a basic Visual Studio 2005 license, which costs $8,200, the cost of using Eclipse increases as users tap into load testing and other advanced features.

When he added it up, the cost of using VS 2005 was over $30,000 versus more than $100,000 for Eclipse-based applications.

That's crazy, but Mike Milinkovich of the Eclipse Foundation thinks it is The Highest Compliment. When Microsoft (or any big company) aims it's FUD arsenal at you, you know you've arrived.
 

Wallace and Gromit

Last night we saw Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. As others have said, it is a great family film. It is nearing the end of its run in in my local theater. If you haven't seen it already, you may be running out of time to see it in a theater.

As great as Were-Rabbit is, I think The Wrong Trousers is a better film. The action sequences in the older film are ingeniously inventive. I've never seen anything as good. You can see The Wrong Trousers and two other short films by renting Wallace & Gromit in Three Amazing Adventures.
 

Book Review: Mrs. Roberto

I recently finished reading Mrs. Roberto, the fourth installment of the Moosepath League series by Van Reid.

I'm too rushed to write a complete review, but I heartily recommend the book. I've written about the Moosepath League series before. In my opinion, Mrs. Roberto is the best installment yet. The fifth book, Fiddler's Green, is also the last in the series. At least it is the last one published. I hope there will be more.

Here are some real reviews at Amazon.
 

Conway's Law

In a 1968 article called How Do Committees Invent?, Melvin Conway minted Conway's Law:

Organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.

This makes sense to me. A product like Eclipse -- with loosely coupled components and a very small kernel -- can only result from a loose "open source" organization with little central control. On the other hand, an organization with a rigid command structure and central planning is most likely predestined to produce software that is unwieldy and difficult to change.

It also suggests how designing the wrong organization can result in gaps in a system design. I know of one client software project that never had a network group although one was desperately needed. The hope must have been that a network layer would emerge out of the shared requirements of many groups, but it didn't happen. Because there was no assigned responsibility for a network layer, each group created a different set of network utilities.

Dr. Conway calls this phenonmenon homomorphism. There is a "structure-preserving relationship" between the organization and the design it produces. This insight is significant in itself, but Dr. Conway also develops some interesting corollaries. One of them is:

... the structure of the system will reflect the disintegration which has occurred in the design organization.

In other words, when two groups in the organization do not communicate well, the components they produce will not communicate well either. This suggests a better way to monitor progress in software development. In addition to monitoring the progress of individual components, we should also be asking are groups X and Y communicating well? If they aren't, it might indicate an impending breakdown in the design.

While reading How Do Committees Invent?, I experienced several "Ah-ha" moments. Once again, I am amazed something written in 1968 is still relevant today. Follow the preceding link for the full text of Melvin Conway's article.

The truth about Google. I found my way to Conway's Law by reading Don Norman's essay called The Truth about Google's So-called Simplicity. That is also interesting reading.
 

Top Ten Blogging Mistakes

Jakob Nielsen has published a list of the Top Ten Design Mistakes made by bloggers. Mr. Nielsen is a smart guy, but he's not half as funny as David Letterman.

Here's how my blog measures up:

1. No Author Biographies. Guilty.


2. No Author Photo. Guilty.
   (Then again, I don't post dozens of high resolution photos of myself like Mr. Nielsen)


3. Nondescript Posting Titles. Not guilty.


4. Links Don't Say Where They Go. Not guilty.
   (I'm on a roll.)


5. Classic Hits are Buried. Guilty.
   (Well, I was on a roll.)


6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation. Not guilty.


7. Irregular Publishing Frequency. Guilty.


8. Mixing Topics. Guilty.


9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss. Not guilty.
   (Heck, I am writing for my current boss most of the time.)


10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service. Guilty.

Four out of ten is pretty bad. Why am I doing this again?

Update. I previously ended this post in mid-thought. To answer my own question, I expect this blog to be read by only a handful of colleagues, friends, and family. It started as an experiment and I keep going mostly because I enjoy writing. Getting a better score on the "Nielsen test" is the least of my concerns -- especially if it requires a lot of work.

Of course, I do hope people enjoy Runtime Log. Many thanks for reading!
 

On Quotes and Misquotes

"Quotation, n.: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another."
-- Ambrose Bierce from The Devil's Dictionary

A few weeks ago, I added the "Random Quote" section to the right side of this page. Ever since, I have been looking for new quotes to add to my list. Recently, I stumbled upon this one:

Proof by induction is not as prevalent as proof by intimidation.
-- Austin Train

I like that. It neatly captures what many of us experience every day. In supposedly rational debates, power often trumps reason.

Before adding this quote to my list I decided I should at least answer one question. Who is Austin Train? Google provided the answer. He is a fictional character in The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner. Although I am reluctant to quote the words of a fictional character, I decided to take it a step further. I used Amazon.com to Search Inside the book for the above quote. Guess what? The fictional Austin Train apparently never said those words.

The point is a quotation is a dicey proposition. One of my favorite sources is the often bizarre, always deadpan comedian Steven Wright. There are many lists of Steven Wright jokes on the Internet, but I remember reading once that Steven Wright himself denies making some of the jokes. So while I am 99% certain Steven Wright is a real person, I can't guarantee he said everything you might see under "Random Quote". I can only say I wouldn't knowingly misquote anyone.

This of course is a symptom of a general phenomenon. We have more information readily available to us than ever before. The trouble is half of it is wrong. So enjoy the quotes, but don't believe everything you read.
 

B.A.A. Half Marathon

Many runners have a favorite race -- a race they return to year after year. My favorite is the B.A.A. Half Marathon. Last Sunday I completed the B.A.A. Half for the fourth time in as many years. I've run each edition of the race except the inaugural 2001 edition.

Why do I keep going back?

• The beautiful 13.1 mile course starts in the Fenway district of Boston, runs out to Franklin Park Zoo along the Emerald Necklace, and returns along the same route. I've heard it described as a moderately difficult course, but the hills are nothing compared to New Hampshire hills.
  


• Columbus Day weekend is a great time of year for a half marathon. The temperature is cooler and the Fall foliage is just getting started in Boston.
  


• The race is very well organized. It is officially run by the Boston Athletic Association, but it is really directed by Dave McGillivray Sports Enterprises. This is the same team that has directed the Boston Marathon for the past several years. Each year, the B.A.A. Half organizers bring a great volunteer staff, provide excellent traffic control, and in general manage the race flawlessly.
  


• At three thousand plus runners, it is a medium sized field. It's not big enough to cause a huge bottleneck at the start, but you have plenty of company all along the course.
  


• The crowd support is great. Much of the six mile plus, out-and-back course is lined with people cheering the runners. The crowds give you a boost of energy, especially in the last two miles. The smaller New Hampshire races I normally run just can't compare.

All of the above combine to produce a favorable atmosphere for racing and, usually, I post a relatively good time. Of course, I am no threat to the leaders, but I ran a "personal best" 1:38:23 at the 2003 B.A.A. Half.

This year my time was about four minutes slower, but it was about what I expected given the amount of training I've been able to do. When you are a middle-of-the-pack runner, your main goal is to run your best possible time at an even pace. You don't want to go out too fast and finish the race slow. This year I felt in control of my pace largely because I am now so familiar with the course. I can't wait to give it another try next year.