Month: January 2008

Approximately five years ago, I weighed 210. I got on the scale recently… 238. Dangit. Again. That’s only about fifteen pounds off my heaviest record weight seven or eight years ago.

I don’t think of myself as a yo-yo dieter. I gained a lot of weight, stayed steady right around this weight for several years, lost it for several years, bounced up about ten pounds then watched my eating again to lose it, and then slowly regained over the course of several more years. Basically one big thirteen-year cycle of up, down, then back up again. I guess perhaps that qualifies as yo-yo dieting, but I think of months and not decades for weight loss/gain to qualify.

Day 1

So today, I launched back into tracking my eating and exercise. It’s work, but for several years it was a daily habit: write down what I eat, and remember to do at least a little exercise every day. When I follow that process, regardless of what plan I’m on, I drop the weight. So far, my personal plan is 1500 calories per day, low on the carbohydrates (because carbs make me feel more like binging) to the tune of less than 100 grams of carbs per day, and concentrate on getting proper nutrition according to US RDA guidelines.

If that tracks, I should drop about ten pounds in the first month, then a bit less in subsequent months the closer I get to my target weight of around 195-200lbs. Below 226, I’ll no longer be considered “obese” (or in the euphemism used by various health experts today, “severe overweight”), and that day will deserve a celebration of some sort.

Not food, though. When I do this right, I’m never really hungry, and I stop obsessing about food after a week or two. I just don’t allow myself to chow down the 3000+ calories per day my body requires to maintain this extra bulk.

It’s a simple engineering problem. A pound of fat contains 3500 calories. For every 3500 calories I burn more than I eat, I’ll eventually lose the weight as long as I keep physically active to maintain muscle mass. Some muscle is inevitably lost — I won’t be hauling around an extra forty pounds all day, every day — but I’m naturally a fairly muscular guy as long as I pick up heavy things with some regularity.

What are you doing right now to fight the battle of the bulge?

I just got home from a pretty eye opening event at Walter Reed Medical Hospital. The company I work for does a lot of community work. One of the many resource groups we have is centered on the Armed Forces. The purpose of the group is to see how we can better leverage our resources and earn business in that industry sectors, as well as, “charity” work towards the causes. The company has teamed with the “Helping our Heroes Foundation”. This foundation was created to provide support to wounded warriors returning back from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This foundation has received 25 full 2-year scholarships to Colorado Technical University. The Scholarship would provide tuition, fees, & materials. We have been asked to step in and provide assistance getting the troops to complete an application and then help act as a mentor / sounding board for them.

It was a great night to sit and talk with these soldiers.

CNN has a leading article today about “Don’t Fight in front of your kids… and other myths“.

After four children and thirteen years of marriage, I can summarize most of their advice as “well… duh”.

• Be willing to go to bed angry.
• Be willing to fight (fair, no personal insults) in front of the kids.
• Be aware that having a child does not bring you closer, but usually the opposite.
• It’s OK if your partner isn’t your best friend as well as your lover.
• You need to have sex regularly, particularly when you don’t feel like having sex regularly.

Adding to that, unlike the authors of this article I think a formal “date night” is invaluable for busy couples. What are your secrets to success?

Here at UltraMegaCorp, we have a venerable tradition of frequent conference calls. We use conference calls for basic coordination within a team. We use them to monitor status and triage during emergencies. We also use them for large-scale meetings where only one person is permitted to speak.

The strange thing is, it seems as if 3/4 of us do not know conference-call etiquette. Conversational collisions are the norm.

Conference calls have a substantial, annoying delay. In part, it’s an artifact of the distances involved. Two-way communication all the way across the world requires a minimum of three-tenths of a second due to speed-of-light limitations (usually more like 7/10 of a second due to switching delays). The conferencing software itself introduces some more delay, and the fact that everybody has slightly different delays makes it even more difficult.

Add in several engineers from India, one person obviously working from home with a screaming baby in the background, a Chinese-born citizen who’s English is still barely comprehensible over the phone, one fellow with a strong Boston accent, lots of background noise, and a chubby nerd who has lived in Utah so long he can’t pronounce the letter “T” anymore, and you have yourself a recipe for disaster.

One of the funniest — and most typical — problems is what I call the “three-syllable tango”. You have two people who want to speak. They each get out three syllables before they hear the other person on the line, then they each shut up because they think they are talking over one another. They then hear the line clear, and start talking again, then hear someone talking over them and stop.

This morning, the longest chain of unintelligible gibberish involved three people and went on for a half-minute before a manager intervened and called out a name to speak next.

The other fun phenomenon of transcontinental conference calls among different nationalities with huge latency goes something like this: Ronjash: “So, I think we should (unintelligible) and leverage (unintelligible) to garble the flitznook and reposition our gobbledygook next time to avoid this behavior.” (Murmur of approval) Ronjash: “So, Matt, will you please follow-up with that?” Matt: “Uhh, yeah. Could you send the exact requirements via email so that I don’t forget?”

Nice cover, Matt. What you should have said to be truthful was “Dude, I have no idea what you just said. I agreed with you because I wanted to get off this conference call and back to my real work.” But asking for a follow-up email is more polite.

Last bit of hilarity: When everybody loses their minds at once. You’ve experienced the three-syllable-tango repeatedly throughout a conversation, and everybody simultaneously decides that they will just keep talking through interruptions.

So nobody understand what anybody else said.

One lonely voice pipes in, “Is that OK? Are we done then?”

For the first time in the conference call, there is unanimity. “Yes.”

“Ronjash has departed the call.” “John has departed the call.” “Matt has departed the call.” “Smeckel has departed the call.” “Njarev has departed the call.”

Our purpose clarified, we can face another two weeks until our next conference call.

This morning I was chatting with an ex-Army co-worker who’s trying to get back in shape before heading to Washington to represent a veteran’s group in some meetings. He has a month, and 9 more pounds to drop. So we decided to look up what the standards were.

Fitness standard: http://www.la.ngb.army.mil/156BAND/apft.html Height/weight standard: http://www.usarc.army.mil/naad/height_and_weight_standards.htm

As a 6’1″ (73″) male age 34 (for a few more months), here are my requirements to get 100% on the examinations:

205 lbs maximum 24% body fat maximum Able to run 2 miles in 13 minutes, 18 seconds or less Able to do 75 pushups in 2 minutes or less Able to 76 sit-ups in 2 minutes or less

According to my calculations, I’m (scribbling, figuring, calculator time) way the hell off from what I should be if I were in the Army.

So, look yourself up: could you pass the fitness and weight requirements tomorrow?

I thought it was interesting to read Mitt Romney’s answers to several technology questions. He seems to be a candidate who has a reasonable grasp on some pressing technology issues, and although I don’t agree with his conclusion on a few of them, it’s nice to see a candidate think about them rather than put them off.

RPM has thrown down the gauntlet yet again: write and record an album in the month of February and release it without a publisher: http://www.rpmchallenge.com/

Last year there were 850 submissions. I wonder how many there will be this year?

Unfortunately, given the state of my equipment (mostly in boxes) and my time (prepping for gigs with a bar band, unpacking into a new house, working 2 jobs) I don’t know if I’ll hop on the challenge this year. But a part of me really wants to try!

okay so a while back i asked for some advice on naming our pups. That post took on a life of its own.

Tonight i received an interesting message:

Read message From: [removed to protect the innocent] To: JB Subject: AKC name for my yellow lab – Jake… Date: Fri, 01/25/2008 – 13:07

need a good AKC name for Jake.

Thanks!

… so how would i go about doing that.

What a night…

I came to this revelation today…

It’s much cheaper to create an LLC than it is to purchase liability insurance.

If you’re providing a service, selling a single product, running a business from home that sells online, doing small jobs in the neighborhood, etc. then it’s much cheaper to provide yourself a shield from liability by filing for corporate status as an LLC than it is to buy general liability insurance.

Filing for an LLC in most states is around $150. Getting a minimum BOP policy from a reputable provider is $500. If you’re hoping to protect yourself and personal assets from any wrongdoing claim put an LLC in play and save some money.

I think the caveat to this is that the IRS will shut down your corporation if the revenues are under $5K per year for two years running.