Month: October 2008

Ode to an Xbox Bag by Matthew P. Barnson

In a dusty, small corner Of the cubicle farm Sits a black bag with logo emblazoned.

Rather wrinkled and small, Not notable at all, She kind of looks like an oversized raisin.

The bag’s unassuming; Who would think of presuming Her age and reasonable condition?

‘Cuz I’m here to tell ya Let me hear a “hell yeah!” This bag is surprisingly bitchin’.

She was bought at a yard sale For one-hundred bucks With game console and six games attached.

I would never have thought That this bag that I bought Would have quality clearly unmatched.

You see, I’m quite hard on bags I create tears, rips, and sags, Merely by using them regularly.

Destroying stitches and trappings And specialty strappings For mercy, I leave the bags begging me.

I destroy pockets and innards, And like that old canard “Buy cheap, buy twice” so it goes.

A succession of backpacks Briefcases and lap bags With me, have violent and short death throes.

This bag has a foam liner The tag reads “Made In China” With “Genuine Stuffalon Fabric”.

I don’t know what it is, But this “Stuffalon” biz Takes abuse altogether barbaric.

It was kind of surprising The day I decided To dig this old bag out of storage.

But I was desperate for a way To carry equipment that day And this bag caught my eye while I foraged.

With microphone cables And mixers galore She came back to a different kind of duty.

She was stuffed to the gills By my mad packing skills This bag was no Wasilla beauty.

Since then, every day I’ve abused her this and that way With attempts to retire her from service.

I’ve worn her on my bike While camping, and on hikes, And she never required a reservist.

And still to this day This old bag keeps at bay The requirement to purchase another.

She’s been hardy and tough In the roughest of stuff No matter how I fling and shove her.

Will she last till I die? Will I care just to try? Will I donate it to my great-nephew’s niece?

Will she be displayed at my funeral, Fluffed up and really cleaned well, Along with my airplanes and PCs?

But I know this sad fact That this bag on my back Probably has a fate with far less honor.

The bag looks worn and dated, And even so highly-rated…

I think soon this bag is a goner.

My wife picked up a Wii Fit at a local retailer a couple of weeks ago. The kids have been playing a lot, as have my wife and I. While I don’t think it quite lives up to the name of making one “fit”, the tracking features and exercises will substitute for hard cardio when you don’t want to strap on the running shoes.

One of the features of the Wii Fit is a daily “body test”. You don’t have to do it after the first one, but it starts reminding you to do your body test, particularly if you haven’t done one for a few days. In this body test, it evaluates your weight as a function of your BMI: Body-Mass Index. Of course, it will also show you your weight… but only if you click the “Weight” button. It then stores this information and shows you a graph of your progress toward your BMI goal.

There are a few valid criticisms of the BMI, particularly for the very short and very muscular. That said, however, if your BMI says you’re “obese” and you don’t have bulging muscles and look like a body-builder, you definitely have a lot of weight to lose. Improve your diet, go for a jog, and put up some weights on a regular basis, Fatty.

I recently wrote a forum posting on a bodybuilding forum I’m a part of. A user asked about difficulty thinking during the first few days on a Cyclical Ketogenic Diet.

The overzealous rationalist returns!

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I recently went back on Atkins (very similar to the MANS/CKD diet, at least five days out of the week) after a four-year lapse, but I’d maintained it for two years before getting sick and falling off my eating plan.

What you’re referring to, if you’re new to low-carbohydrate eating, is “brain fog”. A lot of people experience it, particularly in the first three to five days on the diet. It’s usually a symptom of insufficient glucose to the brain. When you are low-carbing, your body relies on ketogenesis (fat to acetoacetate metabolism) and gluconeogensis (protein to glycerol metabolism) to power your body, rather than carbohydrates.

The issue is that the brain takes some time to get used to the idea of using acetoacetate for function. It takes long-term low-carbing (or starvation) of at least several days for it to reach its maximum use of acetoacetate rather than its preferred food, glucose. That said, the maximum amount of acetoacetate the brain can use is about 70% of its total energy consumption. The remainder MUST come from glucose, which if you are on a very low-carb diet will mainly come from gluconeogenesis of proteins. If you aren’t eating enough protein to support this metabolically “expensive” process, then your body will pillage other protein sources in the body (read: muscles and vital organs) to keep the brain supplied with glucose.

All that said, there are a few things you can do to improve the first-few-days brain-fog: * Take ginko biloba * Take B-complex vitamin supplements (and your multivitamin, of course!). In particular, large doses of thiamin up to 50mg enhance brain function by facilitating glucose uptake. Any thiamin above around 50mg per day passes in the urine, so once again, drink a lot of water! * Ensure you’re getting plenty of protein and healthy veggies. * If all else fails, just wait another day or two. The brain fog should pass shortly.

Now, some people’s brains don’t switch into acetoacetate consumption in substantial quantities. The rest of the body switches faster, and will begin consuming ketones in preference to glucose to save glucose for the brain. If the brain fog doesn’t resolve itself within a couple of weeks of the start of regular low-carbohydrate eating, then you may need to modify your carbohydrate consumption expectations to the higher end of the range (~60g carbs/day) rather than the lower end of the range (less than 20g carbs/day), as well as increase your protein consumption compared to fats.

The brain and central nervous system together, in an average person, consume right around 100g of glucose per day (more or less; the actual average for American males is around 104g). Acetoacetate can substitute for the brain and central nervous system nutritional requirement up to around 50-70g. But the process of the brain “turning on” its metabolism of acetoacetate takes a few days.

That said, however, once it’s made that adjustment, the brain can “turn on” its ability to use acetoacetate rather than glucose much more quickly. This, combined with the fact that glucose stores in the muscles and liver are readily given up to the needs of the brain, is part of the reason CKD works at all.

Sorry, that was probably TMI, but I spent a lot of time researching the biological pathways used in low-carbohydrate metabolism prior to getting into the diet years ago, and the intervening six years has introduced an enormous amount of research into why our bodies can work this way. Some animals can’t!

Over the past 5 years I’ve witnessed the rise of social and professional networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Myspace. I’ve also had many friends create and run their own blogs under their names. I’ve get email invitations asking to join these types of social sites and blogs almost daily.

Consistent with the rise of these types of sites has been my rampage to eliminate all traces of my traceable, personal identity from their pages. At first it was because I didn’t trust the public nature of the internet. Everyone thought I was weird. The internet has changed the way in which we present and communicate ourselves, I was told. Everyone is putting themselves online.

Perhaps I am the social-net luddite. I used to think it was because I was turning ‘intensely private’. Now I realize it’s because I’m against being ‘intensely public’. My in-laws have three kids, one with serious special needs, and they have a rotating roster of in-house nanny help. These nannies are all under twenty-five. One of them last year decided on her Facebook page to post pictures of her getting ripped at a college party. My in-laws, who were invited friends to her page, caught these pictures and then summarily dismissed her. Who wants that kind of behavior around the kids? We all know stuff like this happens. Why broadcast it to the world?

I think this is what the younger generation doesn’t realize about publicly presenting yourself onto the internet. At some point a professional or career life awaits and the internet doesn’t have an erase button. I’ve hired people only after checking out their online history, and determining if they’re the type of person I want to bring into the workplace mix. A trail as wide as the DNS registry can be harmful.

Even for the older, hip generation, there can be consequences. Without knowing much of any details, I can only imagine the personal travails of our blog-friend Pete Dunn. Intensely public can have drawbacks.

Anyway, just wondering what you all think. Is everyone but me joining the online social surge?

Throughout high school, I weighed right around 165 to 180lbs, depending on my general level of athleticism at the time. I ballooned to 215 while on a mission for the LDS church, and returned to around 200 by the time I returned from the mission. Then, through a focused program of poor nutrition, spending all my money on stuff other than food, and an incredibly busy schedule, my weight diminished to 178lbs on the day before my wedding.

Of course, the first year and a half of marriage, bringing with it enormous quantities of excellent food lovingly prepared by my wife, saw my weight rise dramatically. 220, 230, and I eventually landed a position as a meter reader. A pedometer told me I was walking somewhere between 10 and 15 miles every single day. I came to be in pretty good shape — eating like a horse and weighing right around 200-210lbs — but I always looked back at 178lbs as my healthy, high-school and college weight, thinking I was just too big and needed to reduce

Time changes everything. Including my body image. A couple of months ago, we weighed-in everybody in my data center. At 251lbs, I was the king: the heaviest guy here. This was my original motivation to resume the low-carbohydrate, high-veggies eating plan with which I’d been able to reach and maintain 207lbs on several years ago (with almost negligible exercise, I might add).

At the time, that was almost 100lbs heavier than the lightest guy in the data center, Dave S., who weighed 155lbs. I thought maybe there was just something wrong with me. Turns out, there’s really something right, and I didn’t know it.

As mentioned recently, I have been spending time at the gym, and learned that my body-fat percentage was 25.7%. In other words, my lean-muscle and skeletal mass is 74.3%. This ratio is really important, but until this morning when I spent time with a calculator figuring out realistic goals, I had no idea how critical it really is.

I found this handy chart of general body fat percentages helpful in my quest for better health & nutrition. As always, this is just a guideline, and your individual body chemistry may dictate more or less depending on your body’s needs.

Classification	Women (% fat)	Men (% fat)
Essential Fat	10-12%	6-13%
Athletes	14-20%	5-15%
Fitness	21-24%	14-17%
Acceptable	25-31%	18-25%
Obese	32% plus	25% plus

Math time!

I’m currently 25.7% fat, or 74.3% lean mass. Simple math gave me a startling result: 235lbs * .743 = 174.6lbs

Yep. My lean mass currently stands at 175 lbs. If I retain all my lean muscle mass, there is simply no way in hell I’ll ever be 178lbs again unless I’m willing to pillage a lot of muscle to do it. Damn. And that 155-lb guy in the data center that works with me? I’d have to be extremely sick or dead to even approach that weight.

So I worked it the other way: if I’m satisfied with my goal of around 15% body fat (85% lean mass) — a healthy body fat percentage for a male, by most measures — what would my weight be if I just maintained the exact same muscle mass?

174.6 / .85 = 205.4lbs

Yep. So if I worked out and ate just enough to keep my existing muscle tone while losing weight, my original goal of 200 lbs is actually about five pounds lighter than what should be my target weight. Apparently, I should be aiming for a higher weight than my goal, not lower! Which means that, even if I maintain my historical (in)activity level I’m less than thirty pounds away, and I’m not fifty pounds overweight as I assumed.

It’s always nice to learn you’re wrong when the result is that you’re much closer to your goal than you expected.

All that said, I’ve been weight training, and my weight loss has temporarily stalled for the past few weeks right at 235 lbs. Yet my waist has kept shrinking, I need a new, smaller belt, and my size 38 and 40 pants now practically fall off my butt when I put them on (the 36s fit great, and the 34s are still a bit too dang tight). Two weeks ago at 235, those same size 38’s fit just fine.

What changed? Lean muscle mass is heavier than fat. I may have continued my five-pounds-per-month fat loss regimen, but if I’m gaining five pounds of muscle at the same time, my weight loss will be dramatically reduced while I — with any luck — keep looking better and more muscular.

I like this plan, even though it means I might have to substantially modify my weight-loss goal.

So I ran a few “what-if” scenarios. Let’s say I put on 15 pounds of muscle over the course of this year. I know that many say that’s too optimistic, but I’m a little over six feet tall, have a naturally muscular & broad-framed physique, and am a beginning weightlifter. Everyone knows beginning weightlifters post the most dramatic gains, at least for a little while. I think I have a shot at those kinds of gains if I eat the right diet to support it, follow a muscle-mass-oriented training regimen, and use good form in each exercise while working with the maximum weight that my body allows. With the original target of 15% body fat, the equation of how overweight I am at the moment changes dramatically:

Lean weight: 189.6lbs Total weight: (189.6lbs / .85) 223lbs Fat weight: 33.5lbs

Holy crap. If I can pack on fifteen pounds of muscle this year, I only need to lose around twelve pounds, total, from where I am now. I think I really prefer this equation; wouldn’t you? If I targeted a “show your six-pack” 10% body fat, I’d need to drop twenty-four pounds from my current weight to get down to 210lbs. Still totally do-able, and I’ve been there on diet alone — with almost no exercise — before.

I’d be looking good! Well, as good as this bobble-headed, Irish-descended, freckle-faced white guy with crooked teeth can look, I suppose.

Doing the math, however, made me realize the dreams of high-school weight are gone forever. I will never again be the scrawny teenager. But, with work, maybe I can be a middle-aged beefcake instead!

Can’t believe Tim or Matt haven’t posted these up.. but check em out..

THE FIRST PICS OF THE NEW, IMPROVED, STAR TREK







Enjoy!

Hey all..

So, we’re doing an “Official Bootleg Screening” on Halloween night, and I’d love if any of you guys could come out and make it.

I know Halloween can be crazy, but we have 2 shows 9 and midnight, in Leesburg, VA. Go to www.nvzmovie.com to buy tix online.

More fun stuff to come.

Ran across an article on Vetvoice discussing the irony of the Dawa party bombing the US embassy twenty-five years ago, yet the ruling party in Iraq today. As usual, LeJeune doesn’t spend much time drawing conclusions, but lays out the facts for you to draw your own.

Unfortunately, it’s still widely regarded as unpatriotic in the USA to draw comparisons between the well-loved revolutionaries of our own history and today’s terrorists/freedom-fighters in Iraq. And to a point I agree: our revolutionaries were fighting for the Enlightenment ideals of life, liberty, and property, while often the factions in Iraq and Afghanistan appear to be fighting to unite the region under the banner of Islam.

I find those two ideals to be the polar opposite of one another: one fighting for the right for free people to choose their own religion, and one fighting to have their religion rule the area.

That said, however, their methods are not unalike. The fact is, although the term for guerrilla warfare has only existed a few hundred years, humans have always fought one another, and it’s certain we’ve been using these kinds of ambush tactics for a smaller force fighting a larger one for millennia, if not longer.

What I’m interested in is how yesterday’s terrorists are today’s politicians.

No, I’m not talking about Barack Obama. The fact is, only a few extremist, fringe elements attempt to paint Obama himself as a terrorist. His choice of friends and financiers, of course, might be legitimately questioned, but not the man himself.

That’s where it gets interesting.

The Islamic Dawa Party was brought into being in the 1960’s with the express goals of creating “a party and a movement which would promote Islamic values and ethics, political awareness, combat secularism and communism, and create an Islamic state in Iraq.” For background, however, at the time the party was formed, secularism was nearly synonymous with socialism and Arab nationalism. The Dawa party was backed by Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, and was responsible for a large number of terrorist attacks on Iraq at the time in an attempt to depose secular leader Saddam Hussein.

The attacks on the embassies were later repudiated by Al-Dawa, who claimed they were perpetuated in their name by rogue agents hijacked as proxies for the state of Iran. There is some truth to this claim, but as always it’s murky when it comes to politics. Hezbollah supported numerous attacks in the name of freeing Al-Dawa prisoners related to the attacks in Kuwait. Some say that the invasion of Kuwait — and subsequent freeing of Al-Dawa prisoners, either by escape or prisoner trade with Hussein — was part of the agreement brokered by the USA for the invasion of Kuwait. Which might explain Saddam’s surprise that the US took an interest, when he thought he had tacit acceptance of the invasion by a long-time ally.

Anyway, that’s just about ancient history. At this point, I wonder what Maliki’s connections are to historical terrorism by agents claiming to represent Al-Dawa? Directly, as far as I can tell, there are none except fomenting rebellion in the name of Islam against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the 1970s, and supporting Iranian efforts during the Iran-Iraq war. He has strong ties with Hezbollah, and Syrian and Iranian leadership, built while in exile in Syria and later Iran. To gain and hold leadership, he’s had to coordinate with parties hostile to his aims. I think this makes Maliki a communicator and coalition-builder… but not a terrorist, though factions within the organizations he works with have engaged in terrorist actions.

To me, it seems obvious that the bombings were part of the Iran-Iraq war that inflamed the region. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, and for many in the area the impact was as profound as World War I had been on the psyche of Europe. The Iran/Iraq border is huge. Trench warfare and gas attacks were the modus operandi.

To Maliki, the eventual finding, trial, and execution of Hussein were a vindication of all he had worked for for twenty-seven years. Finally, the man responsible for his exile had seen justice.

I don’t see a good guy or a bad guy. I see a complex man who has lived in many places and necessarily made many compromises to rise to a position of power and see his aims met. That said, however, he is a militant anti-secularist, in favor of religious leadership of the region. Which means that my conscience tells me I should oppose his leadership in favor of secular — not Islamic — democracy in the state.

I guess I would not have been willing to make the compromises needed to maintain power in newly-liberated Iraq. And in fact, in a choice between McCain and Obama, I believe Obama will foster better relations with Iraq, because he has shown a similar tenacity to Maliki: an ability to accept compromises in order to preserve a fragile peace and get the job done.

Anyway, I rambled a bit. Sorry about that. In this world of shades of gray, it’s really hard to get a good grasp on what side I should be on when the sides change so often.

Here’s my idea. Instead of making this election one big divisive nonsense, especially since prior to the runup McCain and Obama were pretty much aligned on many issues, and especially since Pallin is a complete joke of a candidate, and especially since the negative ads are not at all helpful to our democracy, my idea is just to have Mccain and Obama on the ballot. Whoever loses gets VP.

Doesn’t an Obama-McCain or McCain-Obama ticket seem so much more appealing?

As most of you probably know, I’m not a huge fitness enthusiast. I figured eating lightly and a little exercise would be about all I needed to stay in reasonable shape.

Well, unfortunately, the scales topped 251lbs (13.8kg) for me a few weeks ago. At 73 inches (1.8 meters), that’s just not as healthy as I should be. So I got back on a reasonable eating plan, portion and carbohydrate-controlled with lots of veggies, and decided to try out a gym.

I signed up at the local Snap Fitness. They offered a free one-hour consultation with a personal trainer, so I scheduled it for this morning. I really tried to kick my own butt this past week! Unfortunately, I discovered that even though Snap is open 24 hours a day for members, I could only get in during business hours due to a problem with my passkey.

So this morning, I met with “Kelly” — the same woman who had signed me up, and obviously an employee/trainer — and we talked about fitness goals. To sum up:

* Today I’m 235 lbs, from a high of well over 250. I’d like to be around 200 lbs. * I haven’t lifted since I was a cheerleader in high school. I’d like to get my overall body strength up. * I’ve always had a problem with spraining my ankle. I’d like to see if my workouts can alleviate that tendency which has kept me from playing sports that involve much jumping. * I want to improve my overall coordination. I’m not naturally terrifically physically coordinated, and it would be nice to be able to do something like — for instance — the Wii Fit balance game without looking like a total doofus who over-balances doing just about anything.

So the trainer focused on balance-enhancing exercises, and suggested that I perform most of my squats and lifts on a “balance ball”. This torture device looks like a really big ball chopped in half with a plastic platform attached to the flat part. You stand on the flat part and try to keep your balance while doing other workouts.

Nifty. Just thirty seconds on this thing demonstrated to me that I really need to get better at balance.

So anyway, she outlined an exercise plan. She mentioned that the one on my iPhone — I use iPump — looked like it would be effective, I should make sure to concentrate on free-weights rather than Nautilus-style equipment due to my concerns about building general coordination and balance. And salt my workouts with some work on the balance ball and big bouncy ball to improve my coordination as well.

Because of a hip injury, however, she suggested I be really careful with crunches. Basically, if a particular exercise causes pain, find a different way to work that muscle group that doesn’t cause pain. Some years ago, my doctor suggested it probably was a small tear or rip in either the muscles or ligaments in that area of my hip, and he recommended that, rather than surgery, I simply work around the injury. Surgery in that area, he said, would probably make it worse rather than better. Too bad the pain if I move my hip a certain way is fairly permanent, though.

Today’s weight: 235 lbs BMI: 31 Body fat: 25.7%

Goals: Weight: 200 lbs or lower BMI: 26 or lower Body fat: 15% or lower

Anyway, those are my thoughts on working on fitness regimen. What are you doing to stay in shape, and what are your current goals?