Winter, however, has slowed me down a bit. I enjoy some cold weather riding but have some limits to as to just how cold I  can tolerate. However, thanks to some gadgets, new Christmas presents and experimentation I’ve assembled a pretty decent indoor bike riding/training setup. Since I’m a sharer, what follows is a bit of a look at that that setup looks like.

First, the bike. Can’t do any of this without a bike! Mine is a Pinarello FP1. Aluminum frame, carbon fork (just look at that sexy front fork in the picture!) and carbon rear stays with a Shimano 105 groupo. It may be in the bottom tier of the Pinarello family but I absolutely love this bike. Before I added pedals and bottle cages she weighed just over 17 lbs – far lighter than I need/deserve and I’m OK with that.

OK, that’s the bike, now the indoor trainer. I’m using the Cycleops Mag Trainer and it is working out great. I’ve found a resistance setting that feels quite close to being on the road and some timed rides and their  mileage basically bears that out. And, unlike some types of trainers, this one isn’t all that loud either.

I picked up a pretty cheap yoga mat to put under the trainer and bike. Why? Well, it catches sweat. And when you’re doing intervals on an indoor bike trainer you are going to generate some sweat. Not tech but very necessary to save the floor!

Pedaling is all fine but I find it useful to actually measure what I am doing. To that end, the Sigma BC 1609 STS + Cadence takes care of monitoring speed, miles and cadence.  This unit works well for indoor work as you can attach the wireless sensors to the rear wheel (the only one spinning on my sort of trainer). The cadence meter is great for interval training too.

Speaking of monitoring, I use a Zephyr Bluetooth heart rate monitor.  This is designed to work with my Android phone and seems to have a pretty incredible battery life. I wear this by using the included chest strap and find it comfortable enough to easily ignore.

That leads us to software. I have a couple free apps on my phone that are a big part of my indoor training:

1. Endomondo: Tracks my pulse while spinning and helps keep track of useful stats like max HR, avg HR and calories burned (a number I just love to watch).
2. Interval Timer AD: I use this to help manage my intervals. It lets me string together a few different interval plans into one big “super-set” of intervals. I tried a bunch of interval apps and this seems to be the best/most flexible one for my purposes.

Speaking of HRM and android apps, I am also a big fan of the Strava application. If you’re a runner or rider you definitely should check this one out. I will be purchasing the pro version this spring to get the full experience once I’m back to full-time outdoors riding.

Now that’s the list of tools. But all the tools in the world can’t change the fact that pedaling indoors is mind-numbingly boring. That’s where Netflix comes in. I don’t know what my long term plans are but right now I’m enjoying the heck out of The Walking Dead series. Once that is caught up I think I’ll finally get around to watching the Firefly series and Serenity. Maybe watch Battlestar Galactica after that? I’m a bit underwhelmed with the movie selection on the Netflix streaming plan but am finding it a great way to catch some TV series that I missed.

I watch Netflix on a laptop and use my Samsung HM6450 stereo Bluetooth headset to listen. I had tried a few rides with corded headset but came distressingly close to pulling the laptop off the table when I wasn’t paying attention! Then I recalled that my Bluetooth headset had stereo headphones and solved that problem. Works great.

And there you have it: my kit for indoor training using my road bike. Not a ton of money involved — and I was rather blessed to get some of these items as gifts at Christmas. Unsolicited gifts even!

Have any tips or suggestions? I’d love to hear them so leave a comment, please!

I have been running Windows 8 full-time on my work laptop for several months now. Big fan and really like it.  On that hardware it seems to run better than Windows 7 did (not that I had any complaints). So that led me to the idea that it might be a good idea to upgrade my little netbook to Windows 8 as well.

That turned out to not be such a great idea.

The netbook doesn’t have a CD-ROM drive but that is easily resolved with the Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool. That tool let me create a bootable USB to use for the Win8 install. The subsequent OS install was painless and quick as always. No worries there.

But once I had the OS installed I quickly noticed that I wasn’t seeing the anticipated performance boost. No, quite the opposite actually. No doubt in some part due to not having all the proper drivers installed. OK, no problem. I figured I’d sort that out later.

Then I hit the real issue: NO Modern UI apps would run at the netbook’s native 1024×600 resolution! Not a one. That freaked me out a bit… I mean, I don’t need all the Modern UI apps (or any, really…) but not being able to have any was simply distressing. A bit of whining on twitter netted me a helpful response with a link to an article on how to “overdrive” the native resolution to something that Windows 8 liked better.

A tolerable work-around, if a bit fuzzy…

But at the end of the day I just wasn’t loving the Win8 experience on this thing; it was time to regress back to 7. Which is when I realized I’d lost the ability to choose alternate boot devices when starting the netbook! I haven’t figured out why yet, but with Windows 8 on it those POST/BIOS-level options were simply gone. That made installing an OS a bit problematic.

I finally worked around that by borrowing a USB DVD ROM drive and starting the Windows 7 install from within Windows 8. Took the option for a clean install, let it reboot and Win7 very politely installed itself.

And hey, that option to select alternate boot devices when I turn on the netbook is back. How odd.

I went with a “real” version of Win7 this time – no more Starter Edition. It runs great and we’re quite happy together again.

I initially figured I’d use my old friend the Windows System Image, created by going to the Control Panel, searching on “Windows 7 File Recovery” and taking the option to create a system image. Creating that image went fine, and creating the Win8 Recovery DVD went fine. However, when I boot into the recovery environment and take the options to restore the image it is never found! No matter what I try I end up with ye olde “Windows cannot find a system image on this computer.”

I can browse to the USB drive and find it myself but the recovery program refuses to see it (in both win7 and win8 recovery mode). Tried all the usual tricks (make sure USB is “basic” disk, fresh format USB and the only use was to catch the image, etc.) but after hours of experimentation still no love.

Trying out Acronis True Image as I write this post. Image creation is a little slow but if this works I’ll probably break down and buy it (I’m using their free 30 day trial at the moment). I’m baffled as to why the Windows tools aren’t working here but I’ve wasted too much time. True Image seems to be what is most often suggested so that’s where I’ll start.

My goal is to make images of the Win8 partition (currently stored in the .VHD file) and some of the HP recovery partitions and then wipe the drive and restore those images. That way what was in the VHD will be directly on the disk.

That’s the goal at any rate.

[Updated a few hours later]

Acronis True Image has locked up my machine 3 times in a row. About 45 minutes into a backup attempt it just seizes up and kills the laptop.

Rats. Perhaps it isn’t ready for Windows 8?

So this weekend I made the leap and and installed a non-eval version on my work laptop. I’m still using the VHD method (Scott Hanselman has a great walkthrough that I followed (but I skipped his boot from USB steps since I had a DVD…)). I then set it up with all of my work applications and have been in it ever since. Should I determine that I love it I will make a system image, then re-deploy it to my “real” hard drive to get a little boost by moving away from the VHD method.

The modern UI (formerly known as “metro”) take some getting used to, but if you’re more of a typer than a clicker you’re not going to have any issues. With Windows 7 I’ve always been in the habit of hitting the Windows Key (Winkey) and starting to type to find programs. That works great with Windows 8. However, if you always drag the mouse over to the start button, *click* and then scroll through all the programs you may find this a bit different… perhaps better though once you get the hang of customizing your Start page. Or perhaps your cheese has been moved too far. I’ll let you decide…

For me? I’m digging it. So far I have had no issues getting all setup with my normal work apps and configurations.

What follows are some stream of consciousness observations, tips and discoveries from the past two days. Maybe something in there will be found helpful to someone.

When in doubt, right-click. In all of the Modern UI apps that right-click will usually expose some options at the bottom (or bottom/top) of the screen. When lost hit the Windows key to bounce back to the Start screen. Hit Winkey again to bounce back to where you were. Or use Winkey-Tab to cycle through a list of open apps. If you’re in a Modern UI app you can just bump the mouse against the left side of the screen to get the list of running apps.  Bump the mouse against the right side of the screen to find Application Settings.

Winkey-X gets you a handy little stripped down start menu in the bottom left of the screen. Get the full start menu by hitting the Winkey or moving the mouse into the bottom left corner.

Speaking of the Start button: I don’t mind having it gone. I rarely clicked it anyways (hit the windows key instead). For mouse usage, bumping the bottom left of the screen is easy enough. When it truly sucks is when you are using non-fullscreen remote desktop to another Win 8 or Server 2012 system. Windows key won’t work (it goes to your own PC) and you have to be darned precise to hit that corner in the windowed session. I’ll have to find a bitter shortcut for that scenario.

Internet Explorer 10 seems to be a dramatic upgrade over previous versions. I have not used a stop watch but it sure feels faster and more responsive. The Modern UI full screen version is pretty sweet as well. However, you lose that option once you make another browser the default. Then IE only works in Desktop (windowed) mode. I believe Chrome and Firefox will have “real” versions of Modern UI interface soon but neither are there yet (without add-ons or beta testing).

Integrated Sky Drive is pretty slick. I had to do a little shuffling to get all my Sky Drive stuff from a personal account to one associated with my work account so that my login ID matched my Sky Drive ID. Never did figure out how to point the Modern UI version of Sky Drive to an account that isn’t your login account. You have the modern UI version installed automatically, but until you fetch and install the full Sky Drive app you don’t have the full Explorer integration — like having Sky Drive show up in Save As dialogs and Windows Explorer.

Office 2010 installs and runs well. No integration with the Modern UI though (and I’m sure that’s all fixed in the 2013 beta version that I haven’t seen yet). I naively hoped for at least an indicator of unread e-mail on the Outlook icon on the Start screen but no such luck. Also, be warned that Outlook new mail notifications don’t seem to make any noise when you’re in “Modern UI” applications. That may be disturbing. On a plus note, the built-in Win8 Calendar app integrates nicely with our Exchange server — and seems to pull in my linked SharePoint calendars as well.

My old pal “System Image” utility is still there, just have to dig it out since the new “File History” feature has replaced Windows 7′s backup utility. File History itself looks pretty slick as a backup tool. Choose the directories you care about and give it a backup destination (presumably a different drive?) and you have a continuous backup going. Something I should look at someday.

Want the old backup — and, more importantly (to me) — and the old System Image utility? I don’t know how to get there directly, but if you go to Control Panel and then use Control Panel’s search field for “File Recovery” you’ll get the “Windows 7 File Recovery” utility. System Image is an option on left.

[edit: OK, to get there directly change your Control Panel view to small or large icons and you'll see it in the list]

The People app (Modern U) is an interesting way to have a list of all your social media folks — I have mine integrated with Facebook, one Twitter account, LinkedIn and Google. It merges them — to some extent — and when you click on a contact you see their recent activity on their various networks.

There’s also a cool little “What’s New” activity stream in there that I find more interesting. Wonder if there’s a way to make that a few clicks closer to the start screen? People has a live tile display in the Start screen but it just shows contact pictures. Would be cool if it could also show activity… or maybe I just haven’t figured that out yet. That stream is pretty slick — worth exploring if you’re participating in any of the social media sites.

Windows Store? I don’t know much about it yet. I managed to do a complete setup of my work laptop without visiting the store yet… so it must not be all that mandatory at this point. That being said, looks like some of my “built-in” apps are listed in the store. And going to the store while writing this article was when I discovered I had a bunch of pending updates for those apps! So… that’s what the little number on the Store tile means… Duly noted.

Windows Essentials and, more importantly to me, Windows Live Writer aren’t in the Microsoft Store.

While in the store I checked out the “Top Free” apps list (yeah, I’m a tightwad…). Imagine my surprise to find a free version of OneNote in there!

I already have OneNote 2010 installed but I’ll be checking this out soon. Is it a limited version or a Modern UI integration or …? I’m a huge OneNote user so this might be cool. A very quick look, shows me that the ribbon is gone and a new radial menu has been added. But I can’t turn off author display from the radial menu. Hmmph. Maybe this isn’t quite finished yet.

What made this easy is the ability for modern versions Windows to boot from VHD (virtual hard drive) files. While VHDs are really just  big files with .vhd extensions, Windows can mount them alongside your “real” hard drives and, more importantly, event boot from them. That’s the magic sauce.

Today I noticed that Harold’s event invitation is still up and that invitation happens to include links to prebuilt VHDs for both Windows 8 and Server 2012. Temporary licenses, mind you but if you re-arm ‘em you can get some solid evaluation time out of each. Hopefully I’m not overstepping here…

How to set it up? Surprisingly simple. From that event invitation page scroll down a bit and grab either the prebuilt Windows 8 or Server 2012 VHD (or, if you’re like me, grab both – I’m triple booting them). (note the sneaky links in there)

Once you have it downloaded, unzip it and put it somewhere that you’ll remember – c:\boot perhaps.

Fire up the Disk Management tool and attach the VHD and give it a drive letter. Don’t overthink the drive letter – but be sure to remember what letter you gave it for one of the following steps (and no fears, this isn’t permanent. That drive will be gone after next reboot).

Not sure how to get to Disk Management? Well, there are more ways than I’ll ever discover, but here are a few options that work if running Win7:

• Hit your windows key and type “create and format” which will lead you to “Create and Format Disk Partitions.”
• Right click on Computer, go to Manage and then click Disk Management in the resulting window.
• Winkey+R (the run dialog) and type diskmgmt.msc and hit enter. Or type the same in a command prompt.

Now that you have the VHD attached and assigned a drive letter you’re ready to add it to the boot manager. Start a command prompt as administrator (right click on it in the start menu and choose “run as Administrator”).

In that command prompt type BCDBOOT x:\windows – where “X” is the drive letter currently occupied by the VHD file. Hit enter. Reboot and admire the new option at startup.

Want to undo it? Run msconfig and go to the Boot tab. Whichever entry selected here as “Default” is the one that will boot if you don’t select any options – it is also the one who’s boot manager runs. I find the Windows 7 boot manager to launch faster than the Windows 8 or 2012 so I make sure that’s my default. When done just remove the VHD boot options from that same list.

Fun stuff.

Side note: Finding Hyper-V in Windows 8 totally made my day.

Once we got to the hospital our phones got more use. More phone calls, more texting and some light web research.

We left the hospital (everyone was discharged and OK, thankfully!) and headed south to find the lot where a wrecked car was deposited. More phone calls, more GPS and…

Out of battery.

5 hours of steady use (not non-stop though) and both of our phones were dead. Crap!

I know there are folks out there who use their phones WAY more than I do. How are they solving battery issues? I often carry an extra charger with me to get a charge in the car but forgot it in all of the excitement when we left… What other options should I explore to be better prepared next time?

External battery-based charge packs? I remember some fun projects back in the day with AA’s and an altoid case. Solar? Good intentions?

Seriously, in this era of short battery life, what’s an effective approach?

I had been told that Microsoft’s System Center would be the way to go, but it sure looks expensive. I made a few phone calls on that and then decided to look for something more focused at backups.

A few web searches later I turned up a product called BackupChain. I liked what I saw on their “Hyper-V Backup” link so I decided to try the free 20 day trial. 15 minutes later I had it installed and configured on three Hyper-V host servers and the first backups running.

Does just what it says on the tin and I’m now seeking the funding to purchase a few licenses. And to be clear: I’ve had no contact with the company or their marketing people. I just like the product!

I set up weekly backups for a big pile of live VMs and haven’t had to think about it since. And yes, I’ve tested restores too. That’s also dead simple – and a reasonable way to clone VMs to boot.