C-2-5K:W6:D2

Yes, that's Couch-to-5K, week six, day two. And that's what this morning's run was. Again, technical difficulties ensued. I neglected to turn on my foot pod for the first six minutes or so. Doh.

Usual stuff. Nagging hip, but running feels good anyway. Even as the snails pass me by, it feels good to run. Here's the route and graph:

C25K Week Six Day One Take Two

Two days ago I set out for Couch-to-5K Week Six, Day One. My interval timer on my watch wasn't set correctly and I ended up scrapping the mission shortly into the run and just made up my own thing, which was fine.

I wasn't home more than five minutes before my hip was fully inflamed again. I actually took an ice bath and it made no difference for my hip, but it was cold. My wife said I was crazy. I told her I was just going to keep running. It's either going to stay the same, get worse or get better. Thanks John Allen Paulos.

When I woke this morning, I could feel my hip. I massaged it a little and could feel a knot under my thumb squishing back and forth. But I was going to run anyway. I got up and headed out the door for take two at C-2-5k:W6:D1.

Starting out with a five minute brisk walk, I could feel the pain in my hip, but it wasn't going to stop me. After a few minutes of running, the pain was gone. From what I've read, that means it's not a stress fracture.
All in all, good run. Lots of runners out this morning. I tried to stay on the grass as much as I could, but running through downtown makes that difficult. I'm looking for softer surfaces, but I don't want to get stuck doing laps around the track or a park.

At the end of the run today, I pushed the pace a bit. I wasn't trying to sprint, but I was trying to get my heart rate up. I pegged my theoretical max (220 - my age). Over the weekend I did some reading about max heart rate and how to determine it. There are several sub-maximal tests that I could do on my own to estimate it more accurately than the 220 - age bunk. One of the methods I read about said, "If you've been wearing a heart rate monitor for a while, review your logs and find your max and assume that's it."

Ok. I've been wearing a heart rate monitor for a couple months. I looked back at my logs. My max ever was 226 on more than one outing, but I'm willing to say those are inaccurate readings. However, there's even more instances of 224, 220, 218, etc. Based on that, I'm assuming my max is 220. I know, I know, but until I can get to a clinic and do a max heart rate test in a controlled environment, that's my best guess. I'll make changes as needed.

Here's the graph from today.My hip actually felt better all day today than it did yesterday. We'll see what tomorrow brings. For now, I'm going to stick to three runs a week. I'm going to the track one day a week to calibrate my foot pod. Yes, weekly. I hope this will give me more accurate distance readings. I don't live too far from a track, I may run to the track as a warm up, run a mile for calibration, then do some speed work while I'm there and then run home.

It really is good to be back at it.

Hello World!

Meet the newest member of our family. The ultrasound technician says it's a girl. My most signifcant contribution to this world will be three girls.

I want my girls to be like my wife. Intelligent enough to know how to make it on their own in this world and strong enough to stand up to anyone who tries to take advantage of them.

I can't wait to see what they will become.

Back on the road

It's been raining here for a couple days now, I don't know how much rain we have had, but if the level of the pool in the back yard is any indication it's between three and six inches. Every time I woke up last night it was raining and it was still raining when I got out of bed.

I helped make the kids some breakfast and then decided I'd head out the door for a run, rain or no rain. I geared up and headed out, fully intending to run Couch-to-5k week six, day one. However, I didn't check the interval timer on my watch closely enough and it was set incorrectly. After running for three minutes, it started beeping at me. I couldn't remember what the intervals were actually supposed to be, so I turned it off and made up my own run consisting of that first three minute run, a three minute rest, an eight minute run, three rest and eight run again. All in all it was good. I was soaked. Foot pod says the distance was 2.3 miles, Google Earth says 2.75 miles. Here's the graphics:

A week off

I haven't run now for an entire week. That's the longest I've gone without a run since May... and it's killing me. I have been walking as much as usual though. I walk my oldest to school and then walk to work. I walk home for lunch and then back to work and then home again at the end of the day. It's a little over two miles a day by my estimation. After my walk home today, I hitched up the bikes and rode the two and a half mile round trip to my youngest's school to bring her home.

Perhaps I need to give up the walking and riding too?

Two mornings ago I got up and did several reps of pushups, situps, leg lifts and various lower back excersizes. Some of the reading I've done indicates that weak lower back muscles and weak hip muscles can contribute to the problem I'm experiencing.

So I don't know what to do about my sore hips. I'm sure it's from overuse, but I refuse to give up walking to work in favor of driving and I'm anxious to get back to running. I think I'm going to keep resting for a few more days. I'd love to get back on the road this weekend. If the soreness is still with me, I may try it and take an ice bath when it's over to see if I can get back into things gradually.

How in the heck did Steve Runner take all that time off after his stress fractures?

Piriformis Syndrome?

So I've been digging for a couple weeks trying to find information about the pain I have in my hips after running. It's a soreness that doesn't go away after more than four days of rest. The problem may be piriformis syndrome or it could just be this. Either way, looks like it's probably a result of too much too soon, or over training. You can see from the graph at the top that my weekly mileage for most of Dog Days was between three and five miles a week, there are many weeks not shown in the graph. The last Saturday run was a 4.5 miler that pushed my weekly mileage beyond the 10 mile mark. Considerably more than the recommended 10% increase per week.

That's when the pain started. I had it in Vegas the week after and ran when I probably shouldn't have. Since that week, I've run less than four miles a week and it's killing me. I want to do more. I want to run right now, but I know that I'll only make the problem worse. All this resting is difficult to do.

Fabulous Running Blog Post

Over the last few months I've started reading a number of other runners blogs. Most of these people are far more advanced runners than I am, especially the host of /etc/running. I'm guessing by the blog title, he's also a technologist. Anyhow this recent post actually had me laughing out loud.

Fed. Judge Rules Bush's Wiretaps Unconstitutional

Well duh.

Read the decision here.

Another post to put me on the watch list. This is great news for those of us who value privacy and freedom. Of course, some folks will say, "If you're not doing anything illegal, what have you got to hide?"

To which I say, "If I'm not doing anything illegal, why does the government need to spy on me?"

Of course there's also the problem that the people doing the spying get to decide what's illegal.

But there's a more fundamental issue at play here, a basic right to privacy. I go to the bathroom, which is not illegal, yet. I don't want people watching me when I go to the bathroom. I like my privacy and I don't think people should spy on me when I do that. Nor do I think people should spy on me when I'm doing other personal things, like perhaps talking on the phone to my friends and family.

I'm encouraged that there's at least one Federal Judge out there who is willing to stand up for what's right.

Shortly after 9-11 many people adopted this quote and put it in their signature files. It still applies today.

"They who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin.

He was a brilliant man and he was right.

Liquid explosives (not snakes) on a plane

Several of my Bush bashing friends have forwarded articles to me recently from explosives experts debunking the idea that any terrorists could take binary or multipart explosives components onto a plane and successfully mix them up in their seats or in the lavatory in sufficient quantities to blow up a plane without first badly injuring or killing themselves.

The level of detail and the willingness of the author of this post to admit that maybe there's a way to do it that he's not familiar with, make it a compelling read.

As I said, I've had several of these articles forwarded to me this week and I'm starting to believe that maybe this whole thing is another one of Karl Rove's attempts to wag the dog.

It's ok. The earth is not getting warmer. Fossil fuels are not running out. SUVs and outsourcing are good for the economy. Your government is going to help you and protect you, just like they helped all those people after Katrina. Go back to sleep.

It's crap like this that gets people on the "watch list."

My three daughters

I woke up this morning fully intending to get in a run. Last night I went to a friends with my neighbor and ended up eating a second dinner, several cookies, some chips and dip and consumed a few beers. It was gluttony.

My wife and I were scheduled to go the baby-doc this morning for a normal check up and a sonogram to take some measurements and determine the gender of this child of ours. It's another girl, by the way. I'll post some snapshots of the sonogram soon.

Given that time was short, I decided I'd run and push my youngest in the stroller to school at the same time. We've owned a nice stroller/bike trailer for several years and we use it all the time to haul kids behind bikes or take them on walks and I some times use it for trips to the grocery store. I try and do my part to stop supporting terrorist by lessening my dependence on foreign oil. I know it's barely a drop in the bucket, but it's also healthier for me.

So I geared up and the kid and I were off. We walked for the first five minutes or so and being sufficiently warmed up, I started running. It's a flat course that takes us by the neighborhood nursery, through an alley, past a church and through a park before entering the heart of down town.I felt great and the run was pretty easy. My youngest asked why I was running and I told her it was for exercise. She told me she could exercise too and asked if she could get out. I stopped to let her out and she actually ran beside me for a couple blocks. It was great fun.

I dropped her off, dripping sweat, stinking up her classroom and then headed back home. Great run. My foot pod says it was two miles, but Google Earth puts it at 2.6 miles. My time was 24 minutes, this means my pace is improving.

Oh yeah, my brother turns 40 today. I know he doesn't read this, but happy birthday, bro.

Back on Couch-to-5K

Since Red Dog's Dog Days for the summer are over, I'm reverting back to where I started and I'm going to finish Cool Running's Couch-to-5K program. I think my body will benefit from something a little less intense for a while.

So this morning I put on my gear and headed out the door for week five's day three run which calls for five minutes of warm up, I did some pushups, situps, burpees, mountain climbers and light stretchinng for four minutes then started walking down the road until the watch started beeping.

My neighborhood is considerably flatter than the terrain around the University where Dog Days is held, so the running was pretty easy. I went out for a little more than 10 minutes and then started back. I stopped running when the watched beeped at the 20 minute mark. My Polar says I only ran 1.8 miles, but Google Earth puts the distance at 2.15 miles. I've got to recalibrate the foot pod.

I paced myself well, trying to keep my heart rate nice and steady. The max for the run was 174 and the average was 160, slightly below my usual Dog Day's average. Did I mention I'm trying to recover a little bit? Here's the graph:I did some reading this morning, trying to figure out if the soreness I'm feeling sometimes as much as four days after a run is normal. I can't find any definitive answers. This is part of the reason I'm going back to the Couch-to-5K plan. I figure it's less than I've been doing and should give me a chance to more fully recover. Time will tell.

And then there were none

Today was the last Dog Days workout of the summer. They were repairing the field so we couldn't be on it. We did our cals at one end of the track outside the endzone, ran one lap, did more cals, then ran the (apparently) traditional last session run that was originally run by Bob Frederick, the man responsible for hiring KU's greatest basketball coach of all time. Our route was two circuits around the track and the Campanile followed by one set of stadium steps to the top, one set of stadium bleachers to the top and one more lap. I ran all of it but half of the last lap. My fitness has definitely improved since the beginning of the year.

My point tally is 27, two more than I needed to earn the coveted t-shirt. During the last nine weeks or so, I've had lots of days of sore muscles (including today), my first 5K run, my first 4.5 miler and my first real shin splint.

I probably jumped into Dog Days a bit prematurely. I don't think I was quite ready for that level of effort since I was only part of the way through Cool Running's Couch-to-5K program.

So what now? I'm not sure. I'll continue running for sure and there is a fall and winter Dog Days program that meets two or three times a week. I may join them from time to time, but I think I'm done with Dog Days on a regular basis until next summer when I'll decide at that time if I want to participate again.

I would like to work up to some longer distance runs on a regular basis. I'm considerably off schedule for the Waddell & Reed Kansas City Half-Marathon in October, but I'm sure there will be another half sometime in the spring that I can be ready for.

But for the next few days, I'm just going to take it easy.

It's a start

Some time in May I started on Cool Running's Couch-to-5K running program. During what would have been the third or fourth week of the program I started working out at Red Dog's Dog Days and on June 17th I ran my first 5K at Heather's Run and have continued running with the Dog Day crowd.

At the start of all this I weighed myself during one of my wife's doctor's appointments. We don't own a scale so I don't weigh myself very often. Naturally, I was shocked to see that I'd gained nine pounds from the last time I'd been to the doctor's office. Shocking.

A month or so later we were back at the doctor's office and I snuck over to the scale again. This time I'd actually lost two pounds, but I attributed it to having not had lunch yet. So I wrote it off as insignificant.

Yesterday, I had to take my daughter to the doctor and couldn't pass up the opportunity to weigh in again. It is a different doctor's office so perhaps the scale is calibrated differently, but apparently I've lost another five pounds, for a total of seven this summer. I'm skeptical.

So I'm down seven pounds from when I started, when does the running start to feel easier?

Dog Day Number 26

I skipped yesterday morning's Dog Days because it was raining when I woke up. I probably needed the rest anyway. I'm still feeling some soreness in the upper part of my quads when I move a certain way.

I did make it this morning, however. Hank Booth gave a short talk about the uncertainty of life. How it's here today and gone tomorrow and the attitude we should take. And he also spoke about dreams and the dream that Don "Red Dog" Gardner had 23 years ago when he and some friends and a few football players started meeting outside the stadium everyday under a tree to work out. Now over 1000 people are showing up for those workouts.

Our workout today was short, but hard. We did the usual cals, then lined up for a sprint to the 50 yard line, run backwards to the goal line, then run to the 100 yard line, jog back on the track for the repeat. On the repeat we went sideways to the 50, then switched and went sideways the rest of the way down, then 15 leg lifts and 15 cruches. Following that, we ran to Spencer Art Museum where we were instructed to run up the hill to the Campanile four times, twice backwards. The backwards runs were a killer. When we finished that, we ran back to the Stadium and were finished.

My heart rate monitor says I maxed out at 225 beats per minute. Again, this is not supposed to be possible. Am I freak or is my hrm broken? I'm going to talk to my doctor about scheduling a max heart rate stress test. I wonder how much they cost. Here's the graph:

Black Hat Extended Dance Remix

While I was in Las Vegas attending Black Hat Training, I took some notes on the trip with the intention of blogging them.

At the airport I was unable to use the E-Check-In kiosk to get my boarding pass. Interesting. I walked over to the ticket counter and checked in with my driver's license and told the woman that I was unable to use the kiosk.

"Oh, you're on the watch-list," she said casually. "Or at least someone with your name is on the list." Very interesting. Apparently I, or at least someone with my name, pose a significant risk to American aviation. At least I'm not alone, there are apparently 80 thousand of us on the watch list now. I would not be surprised at all if it were actually me and not someone else with my last name. Our paranoid administration cannot abide disloyalty nor do they value honest and open discussions that call in to question their policies.

Go write a piece of software that crawls the web looking for key phrases indicating dissent and point it at this blog or get a copy of MoveOn's member list, or the Electronic Frontier Foundation's or read the mail I send to my representative's in government and you'll find enough material to justify putting a person like me on a watch-list, if you're a paranoid government.

Don't get me wrong, I love my country, but I fear the current incarnation of my government. I frequently express my disagreement with their policies in this forum and others. Last time I checked, there was an amendment in the U.S. Constitution that gave me the right to speak my mind. I wonder if our current government is using the watch-list as a tool of intimidation?

Nevertheless, they haven't gone completely insane. I'm only on the watch-list and was able to board the plane with no problems. Flying from Kansas City to Las Vegas on a clear day covers some interesting ground. For such a glitzy city, Las Vegas' airport is pretty lack luster and what's with all the smoking in the airport? I live in a city that has banned smoking inside any public building or business and it's wonderful. Every time I travel and find myself sitting inside a restaurant and smelling cigarette smoke, I'm reminded of how great it is to live in a place where smoking has been relegated to it's rightful place. I hope more cities will follow suit.

The line to catch a cab from the airport to the strip was long, but it moved pretty quickly. After a few minutes of waiting and walking through the maze of a line in the desert heat (it's a dry heat), we were in the back of a van on our way to the hotel. The check-in process was confusing. I made the reservations in my name which didn't help things, but we got it sorted out. Harrah's charges $100 a day as a security deposit and this is refunded when you check out. It's an actual charge, not just a hold. Think about how much interest they must earn on those security deposits.

Having checked ourselves in we went to drop off our things in our rooms. It was then that I realized I'd left my laptop power supply at home. Since we were hungry, we went to find some food. Harrah's Flavors Buffet is expensive and they have a wide variety of food, but it all has one thing in common, it's not very good.

After dinner, my co-worker and I parted ways. I headed over to Caesar's Palace to the advanced check-in for Black Hat Training. Caersar's Palace is unbelieveably huge, there must be more than half a million square feet. It's so large that I got lost on my way out. I took a wrong turn and ended up in the Forum
Shops at Caesar's. I stopped in at the Niketown and tried on a pair of their Nike Free 5.0 shoes. They were super comfortable and I'd like to own a pair, but I think $85 is about $30 too much for that particular shoe, there's really not much to it.

I wandered back out of the mall the way I came in and eventually found myself back in the casino. As I was walking out following the signs for "Las Vegas Blvd", I passed by Caesar's Seahorse Lounge and noticed a sign for a Black Hat party sponsored by Debix, a company who's mission is to protect people from identity theft. A short line was forming so I jumped in with the others.

For two hours, Debix bought drinks for several hundred people at this swanky bar. I didn't know anyone there and I'm not much for butting into other people's conversations so I was content to sit and people watch, er geek watch. It was great, I was surrounded by my people, security geeks talking shop.

Debix gave free t-shirts to everyone who came in and encouraged everyone to enter the drawings for a free X-Box and a free iPod. I threw my name in and when it came time for the drawing, I moved across the bar so I could hear the names being drawn. I didn't win. But I did find myself standing next to two people chatting about how their classes were going. One young man was speaking with a rich Scottish accent and was saying his class sucked. Since I was standing right next to him and suspected he might be teaching my class, I asked him who he worked for. "NGS Software," he replied.

"Are you David Litchfield," I said. "Yes," he answered.

"Don't tell me your class sucks, I'm going to be taking it for the next two days."

"No this is a different class. Breakable is going to be great," he countered. And we chatted briefly about the class. I asked him for clarification about what software I should have installed on my laptop and explained that I'd left my power supply at home. Incredibly one of his colleagues had left that day to return to the U.K. but had left his power supply behind. He had the same laptop as me, so Litchfield offered to bring it to class with him. Awesome! I had been afraid that I might be unable to get much hands on work done without it.

On my out of the bar, I asked the hostess if I could have a t-shirt for my co-worker who'd stayed back in his room and she obliged me, which was a pleasant surprise.

The next morning, I woke up and went for a run down the Las Vegas strip. I was still sore from the 4.5 miler I'd done on the previous Saturday and running down the strip at 6:00 a.m. wasn't as interesting as I thought it would be. The Vegas strip is largely fake feeling and it pales in comparison to a real neighborhood or trail run. So at the end of one mile of running, I turned around and ran back to the hotel and decided I'd rest for the next two days and try torecover.

I headed over to the training a half an hour early. The continental breakfast was already laid out and it was quite good, so far as continentals go, decent coffee and lots of it. I was again struck by how large Caesar's Palace was. The hallways in the convention center must be around a quarter mile long and the ceilings are like 25 feet high, it's incredibly wasteful.

I headed to class, reminded Litchfield about the power supply which he hadn't forgotten. He's really a hell of a guy. He had some great information to impart and was incredibly patient with folks in class, even though most came unprepared. They had neglected to read the web site where it said to show up with Oracle pre-installed.

We had a morning break for coffee and baked goods. There was never enough coffee. Don't these people know that most geeks love caffiene and lots of it? Lunch was held in another huge building, though not as posh. It was like an aircraft hanger with AC. Everything inside was painted black. It was pretty classy for a conference; a salad at every setting, rolls, pats of butter, ridiculous service where the waiter puts on your dressing, fancy deserts that I can scarcely afford at a restaurant.

I'd like to see the kitchen that managed to put out these meals. There were hundreds of people eating in this place and all within minutes of one another. On the second day, I walked around and did a quick count -- 10 chairs at each table, seven tables deep and 12 tables wide -- 840 places.

After lunch it was back to class. About halfway through the afternoon session was another break. The afternoon break was supplied with pop, juice and cookies. I snagged a couple extra pops and juices to take back to my hotel room and put on ice. My co-worker chuckled each morning as I met him at my hotel room door and handed him a cold drink. I'm resourceful.

One thing that I really didn't care for at the hotel and the training for that matter was the lack of WiFi internet access. C'mon people, all the cheap crappy hotels I stay at are offering free WiFi, surely Caesar's Palace can afford it too, well probably not, they've got rooms and hallways with 25 foot ceilings that they have to keep cool.

All in all, it was a great trip and I'm really looking forward to attending next year and staying for the briefings. I really wanted to catch Pete Finnigan's talk on unwrapping Oracle's wrapped packages. If anyone knows where I can get a copy of an unwrap utility, please contact me.

I returned home on Wednesday afternoon and it was nice to be home with my family. I woke up early on Thursday and made it to Dog Days for my 25th point. The workout wasn't too bad, I'd rested up a bit on Tuesday and Wednesday but still hadn't fully recovered from the previous Saturday. I should know better than to increase my mileage by more than 10% a week.

I haven't run at all now since Thursday and am planning on going to Dog Day's on Monday morning. My mom is going to go and walk the track. I hope I feel 100% in the morning. We shall see.

Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos

Atom is the only Asimov book I've ever read. I know he was a prolific science fiction writer, but beyond that, I don't know much about him. I was discussing this book with a friend who holds a masters degree in chemistry and she told me that Asimov has written quite a few non-fiction books. Again, I don't know Asimov. Douglas Adams is more my speed for sci-fi.

But Atom is not fiction. It begins with a discussion of dividing matter and the ancient Greek philosophers' writings about the basic components of the Universe. Democritus (460 - 370 B.C.) is credited with calling the smallest piece of matter, atomos meaning "unbreakable".

Titus Lucretius (96 - 55 B.C.), an Epicurean, wrote a poem called On the Nature of Things that explained atomism. According to Asimov, the poem was very popular in it's time but with the rise of Christianity, "Lucretius was denounced for what was considered to be atheism." His writings were no longer copied and many existing copies were destroyed. Only one survived the Middle Ages.

Asimov continues detailing experiments conducted by scientists that gradually led to atomism's triumph and the discovery of the atom's subatomic components and the elements that are comprised of different types of atoms.

Although the book is not highly technical, it is a little on the dry side in places, but for the most part it's very interesting. I recall reading in high school science class that scientists were debating whether light was a particle or a wave and that the commonly accepted notion was that it was both. Asimov's book goes further saying that most scientists believe that all matter exhibits both properties. Everything is both a particle and a wave. I also did not know that all the lead in the world started out as radioactive material, nor that 1 gram of radium emits 140 calories an hour. There are many other interesting facts in this books pages.

As with Twin Tracks which I'll review eventually, the thing that I find most interesting about this book is the amazing things that scientists were able to determine about the nature of matter 100 plus years ago using simple, low-tech experiments.

Back from Black Hat

I'm back from Black Hat Training and I am afraid for any organization that's running Oracle. I attended David Litchfield's course Breakable: Secure Your Oracle Servers By Breaking Into Them. Litchfield's presentation was great. He demonstrated several techniques for elevating one's privileges from that of a regular Oracle user to that of Database Administrator.

He had a nice remote exploit for Oracle's Application Server that doesn't rely on privilege escalation and allows one to completely take over the database server on the backend. Litchfield also demonstrated using extproc to access the local file system and run any command on the host system. Lots of folks in the class were blown away and couldn't believe what they were seeing.

A couple of times people asked Litchfield what could be done to secure Oracle against these types of attacks and his response was "Right, that's a really good question" in his thick Scottish accent. To be fair, he did say that Oracle's latest database product, 10gR2 is more secure than anything else they've put out, but there are still problems and Oracle has a dismal track record of getting problems fixed. They have allowed some vulnerabilities to go unpatched for five years.

The really frightening thing about many of the things Litchfield demonstrated were that they were not novel techniques. Anyone with a little knowledge of SQL Injection techniques and the time to go through Oracle's packages, triggers and procedures carefully enough could find these same holes. Maybe some hackers already have.

One thing that would slow most people down is that many of Oracle's packages and procedures are "wrapped" meaning they have been encrypted with some proprietary technique. However, before Oracle can use these packages, they are first decrypted and as any cryptographer will tell you, if you have the known plaintext and the cyphertext the algorithm used for encrypting and decrypting can be determined.

In fact, it has. Litchfield's employer, NGS Software has a tool for internal use only that can unwrap Oracle's wrapped packages. Additionally, another well known Oracle Security expert, Pete Finnigan was to give a presentation at Wednesday's Black Hat Briefings where he was going to release a tool for unwrapping Oracle packages.

Litchfield has integrity and when he finds a hole in Oracle, he reports it to them and waits for them to fix it and gives several months for users to patch their systems before fully disclosing the vulnerability to the security community at large. Now that details of the wrap mechanism are coming to light, any cracker on the planet will be able to comb through Oracle's code for vulnerabilities and when they find them, they will likely develop exploits for them without first telling Oracle.

Let's all hope that Oracle wakes up and starts really trying to make a product that is worthy of the name, Unbreakable.