Even using the intro microphone, I find recognition to be pretty accurate. What's missing is the intelligence you find with Siri. I'm relatively fast typist, so I'm not sure I really save time with dictation.

Apple can't bring Siri to the rest of it's product line fast enough. In the meantime there's Dragon Express, and at least it never tells me the network is not available.

Imagine my surprise when the wall never came.  I did struggle a little more than usual on a couple of hills in the last mile, but I had enough on tap to power up the final climb and really push my pace.  I ended up about 10 seconds per mile slower than my last long run, and that's largely because I started out the run much slower than usual.

Feeling great, I went home for a shower and then I ate breakfast–a bowl of raisin bran.  It wasn't too long before I realized I felt very tired and my legs were weak.  The rest of the day I felt tired, and I had some lasting weakness even into Sunday.  I just lost any motivation to move.  I wasn't sore, just weak and tired.  It's something to be aware of as I start pushing into longer distances.

If only my Hundred Push-ups challenge was going so well.  Sunday I did my Week 2 assessment, and I only managed 10 push ups.  The program assumes the "base" level for Week 3 is 16.  Week 3, Day 1 has you do as sets of 10, 12, 7, 7, and 9 push ups.  I managed 10, 9, 7, 2 and 4.  I hit absolute muscle failure.  It's hard not to be a disappointed.  I try to find programs that offer a manageable progression of difficulty so I can follow my mantra of "Just Finish."  Today was the first time I was not able to complete an exercise I planned.

I'm going to repeat this day again and if I still can't do it, I 'll just repeat Week 2 until I can do 16 push ups.  I have to be in the bottom 5% for upper body strength among people my size.

At least I am trying to do something about it.

You see, I was a nerdy child. I don't mean that in a nostalgic, 80s kind of way. I mean that I was overly-imaginative, socially awkward, and utterly devoid of athletic ability. Worse than that was an undiagnosed learning disability that left me with poor short term memory, low mechanical dexterity and very few ways to put into action my profound ability for abstract reasoning. I suffered in school, academically and socially. I had few if any friends, and generally felt like a failure.

Until one day in the second grade some boxes arrived. In those boxes were Apple II computers. They were set up hastily in a ramshackle room. None of the teachers knew what to do with them, so they just sort of put kids in the room a few at a time to see what happened. I fell in love. Here was a device that you could make words without handwriting. You just pressed a key and magically a letter appeared on the screen.

Unlike TV, this machine would do what you told it. By changing disks, the computer would play whatever you wanted whenever you wanted it to. It didn't take long to figure out that if you pressed a couple of keys, the computer would stop it's program in in many cases let you view the magic behind the curtain.

I became an elementary school hacker and programmer. By middle school, I was handling support for teachers on campus and making radical architectural changes to the way systems worked.

I also met the Macintosh. In a room full of Apple IIs was a strange little black and white toaster. I thought it must be primitive, because the other Apple computers were in color. But it was strange. You didn't have to type commands to make the computer work. You just moved a mouse. There was no friction between thought and action. It was magic of the most powerful kind.

I fell in love and asked for a subscription to MacUser magazine for Christmas. I begged my parents constantly for a computer at home. I made persuasive arguments for why it had to be a Mac, that an IBM PC, DOS and Windows were tools of a bygone era.

All the while, I held in my mind that there were two men of Mythology, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. Never in my wildest dreams did I believe I would ever meet them. None my friends met Michael Jordan. No one ever though they would meet a move star or rock star. It just doesn't happen.

But then I met this guy named David Brightbill through a mutual friend. He owned an actual Apple Authorized Reseller and Service Provider. He offered me a job. I would get paid to work with Macs! He knew actual employees of Apple! Through this job I began to cultivate relationships with people at Apple. Dave even sent me all the way across the country to San Francisco where I got to where an Apple shirt and work in the Apple booth. I even got to shake hands with Steve Himself.

An amazing thing happened. Steve remembered me. When I would see him around Apple conferences, or occasionally the Apple campus he would greet me by name. At one point he even called to offer me a job in the company I admired most in the world, the company he founded. I even had dinner with him a couple of times. I remember eating at a Japanese place in San Francisco where he ordered a Mango Lassi. He got it.

I didn't take the job, but Steve always returned my emails. Can you imagine what it's like to be personally known by your hero? This guy created an entire industry that provides my livelihood. He created machines that were my lifeline as a child. He gave me business advice. He told me he respected my stance that my family was the most important thing in my life.

And now, just a week after my grandmother died from cancer, Steve is gone too.

If he was anyone else, I would call him an acquaintance. He is not anyone else. He's Steve Jobs and he will always be my hero.

It's interesting to note that sales of the iPhone 4 increased across the product's entire life as Apple's flagship phone.  It's also interesting that AT&T's second best selling phone is the iPhone 3Gs.  For all the talk of the rise of Android, Apple isn't losing sales to Google's platform.  Apple's primary limit on growth is not demand; they sell every phone they have the capacity to manufacture.

It seems that with the current iPhone lineup (iPhone 3Gs, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S), Apple is primarily concerned with devices that can make in high volumes quickly.  The 3GS becomes a value device free with a contract, and available in volume.  The iPhone 4 at $99 puts considerable pressure on RIM and value Android phones, and van be built in high volumes.  The 4S still matches and exceeds any other phone on the market in terms of hardware–but goes with tech proven in the iPad 2 and iPhone 4.  Apple should be able to build a lot of iPhone 4s units, and production should ramp up fast.

I've read that a great number of Android's activations come from low-end feature phones that use Android simply because it's free.  These phones never use apps, or surf the web, or do anything more than simple messaging.  For all the hand-wringing on Wall Street, it's clear to me that the 4S will lead the iPhone onto it's most dominant year ever.  Android may have impressive unit numbers, but iOS will remain in the lead across all devices–and when you factor in revenue and profits for the entire ecosystem, it's not going to be close.

It's going to be a big year.  Tim Cook's first product introduction is going to be Apple's best selling product in its history.

Thursday will be an easy recovery run before Saturday's 6.5 mile long run.  That's very near half the distance I'll do in the actual race, and I'm interested to see what happens to my pace in a run that is longer than an hour.

So I started exercising and watching what I ate.  The pounds melted away, and I felt much better.  Only something strange happened to my body.  My exercise of choice is running.  Over the last few months I've found I have very strong, muscular legs.  My legs look better than they ever have in my life.  The only problem is they are attached to my still pudgy midsection and the tiny stick-arms I had as a teenager.  In terms of measurements, I've lost more than 3 inches from my arms since I started running.

Some of that was fat, but most of it was muscle.  Everything I've read says that running burns fat–and muscle.  In my chest and arms I've burned a lot of fat and a lot of muscle too.  There's not much left.

I tried the gym, but I'm too weak in my upper body and my core to perform exercises with any kind of form.  I got discouraged.

Then I remembered I'd been here before.  There was a time–just last year-that running any distance seemed impossible.  The key was a gentle, steady difficulty progression in the form of Couch to 5k.  Surely there must be some similar system for starting from zero in the muscle fitness world.

I scoured the Internet for an answer.  A surprising set of exercises appeared as well-researched tools for building full-body strength: push-ups, crunches and pull-ups.  Here's the problem: I was too weak to do more than a few push ups, or any pull-ups at all.  I hate crunches.  Still, I have to start somewhere and push ups seem the most doable.

I found a system that many of my fellow nerds reported success with: hundredpushups.  The program is designed to take you to doing 100 push ups without stopping in 7 weeks.  You start with an assessment to see how many good form push ups you can do without stopping, and then enter one of 4 tracks based on how many you did.

With a grand total of 5 pushups, I made into the lowest possible zone.

Doing 5 push ups won't build strength fast enough to make progress that encourages you to continue, so the program has you do sets of push ups with rests.  On Monday I did 12 push ups.  On Wednesday I did 16.  On Friday I pushed to 22.

Today I started week two with 24 push ups.  I feel stronger already.  Week 1 was easy and I didn't have much soreness.  Today was tough, and I feel a little weak today, but like my c25k experience, I didn't stop when I wanted to.

Sadly, there is no "runner's high" with these workouts.  On the positive side, it takes less than 10 minutes.

I'm also doing 45 crunches a day to try and build more core strength.  Hopefully these two routines will make me strong enough to actually go to a gym.

I managed at 10:15 pace or so for both miles, and I felt strong the whole way. Of course, today was a three mile run. That last mile was challenging, but still much better than day 1 & 2 of this week. All in all it was a great run.

I need to learn from my dogs. They think every run is fantastic regardless of pace, training routine or route.

I have to imagine that the fatigue I'm feeling from grief over my grandmother's death and my worries about my Dad following an accident on the farm is affecting my energy. I'd had a really strong week last week, and I expected better from this week.

It's also possible that my body is starting to favor morning runs. I'll have to try that next Tuesday.

Tuesday's run was not so good.  In fairness, I'd taken my dad out of the hospital early to be at the bedside of my dying grandmother.  It was a stressful day with a lot of driving–and my run started late in the evening.  To boost my spirits, I decided to take my dogs.  They're Weimaraners.

I'm not positive, but I believe Weimaraner is German for "Canine Cruise Missle."  My dogs can sustain a 25 mile per hour pace over 20 to 30 minutes.  Ruby can sprint over short distances at better than 35 miles per hour.  This means my sprint is a slow jog or trot to them.  They have a nearly insastiable thirst for speed and movement.  Thanks to their influence, I started out at a 9 minute per mile pace.  That is much to fast for me, even for a threshold run.  Before I knew it I was struggling to run, and the remaining 27 minutes of my 35 minute run were brutal.  I have never wanted to stop so much in mu lfe.  It was worse than when I first started Couch to 5K and the 8 minute segments hit for the first time.

I never stopped.  I did clock a 15:30 pace at one point, but I never broke a running form for a moment.  I ended up with an 11:48 pace over 35 minutes.  That's not good for a threshold run, but I went.

I certainly hope tonight's run is better.  This time I won't try to run at Weim speed.

Tuesday went great.  I felt like I had a lot of power on tap and that it was easy to move fast.  I pulled an 11:11 pace for 30 minutes, which is quite good for me.  My personal best is in the 10 minute range on a 5K.  It didn't feel all that tough, but my heart rate monitor verified that I was working hard.

Thursday was different.  I started at what I thought was a slow pace and was shocked when Runkeeper told me I was running 11 minutes a mile.  I was aiming for closer to 13.  As I tried to slow my pace, my legs started to hurt and the last mile was tougher than it had any right to be.

Tomorrow I'll do a 5 mile run.  I'm excited about adding some real distance again.