Life is way to short to get hung up on the little things. Go and make your life what you want it to be. Design it. Spend more time planning your life than you would your vacation. Do it.

Bebe is trying to convince me she needs out of her crate.

This is what I go through whenever I try to get Bebe inside.

We just wrapped up an absolutely incredible LDS General Conference last weekend. The problem was that I missed most of it because I was busy with work.

For those unfamiliar, General Conference is a twice yearly, weekend conference where leaders from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints give teaching and counsel to church members worldwide. Over a two day period, there are a total of five, two hour sessions.

Thanks goodness for modern technology. Within mere hours of the original session broadcast, audio of the broadcast is available for download in mp3 format at http://lds.org & http://new.lds.org.

That in itself is a huge blessing! I however, would like to show you how you can add more value to this kind of audio.

My big tip? Convert the audio to audiobook format.

Whereas we are an iPhone/iPod household,I will explain how to do this using iTunes. This conversion may work for other devices that support the audiobook format, I just don't have a method of verifying it.

There are three primary benefits of playing an audiobook formatted audio on your iPhone/iPod:

1.  You can play the audio at normal, half or double speeds.
2.  You can rewind in 30 second intervals at the tap of your screen.
3.  Your device will always remember where you left off if you weren't able to finish a track.

HOW TO CONVERT YOUR AUDIO TO AN AUDIOBOOK

1.  Import your audio into your iTunes library. On your Mac, this is as easy as dragging and dropping your audio files from Finder to the iTunes window.

2.  Make sure your tracks are numbered in a proper sequential format. If you have less than 99 tracks, make sure the first nine have a track format of 01, 02, 03 etc. Otherwise it could play like: 1, 10, 11, 12 etc. You can change a track's number by secondary clicking on the file in iTunes, select Get Info then go to the Info tab.

As a side note, Conferrence audio is tracked like 1001, 1002... Where the first number indicates the session. This will work fine as well.

3.  Once your track numbering is in order, simply select all of your audio tracks in iTunes, secondary click them and select Get Info. Go to the Options tab then change the Media Kind to audiobook.

Now when you import your new audiobook to your iPhone/iPod, you will be able to enjoy some added-value listening!

 

...Or so I thought.

Some time in late 2009, a friend (Tim) of mine was talking to me about a 5k he had run during the summer.  He mentioned that he might do it again the next summer and pitched the idea of me running with him.  At this point, I am 32 years old, extremely sedentary and have been for the last forteen years.  The idea had some allure.  The problem was that everytime I had any spurt of ambition to lift weights or have any level of activity, it was thwarted by getting sick which turned me off to being active.  Not to mention that I never had enjoyed running and could never understand why people would willingly do it.

Tim turned me onto a program designed around getting lazy butts like mine up and running.  The program is called Couch to 5k.  Fortunately, there is an iPhone app by the same name that walked me through the process.  Essentially, it is a three day a week for 9 weeks program that takes you through the baby steps that will get you to the point of running a 5k.

It took me a total of about 13 weeks to get to the point of running my first 5k, which was the Provo Freedom Run on the 5th of July.  Much to my surprise, I ran it in 35:32.  Much, much faster than I had ever anticipated.

Gratefully, I still run every other day and have been able to do some weight training on my off days without being sick.  I don't know that I have been in this good of shape since I hit puberty.  Nevertheless, I am grateful that I had a friend that just happened to ask me to join him this year in the Freedom Run and that everytime he talked about his running, it helped me to get out and do mine.  I can't say that I enjoy running (although I do enjoy the occasional runner's high) but I certainly like the way that I am feeling day-to-day not to mention the flub that has managed to disappear from my bod.