Month: March 2009

Mark McManus, the owner of the popular low-carb bodybuilding site, Musclehack.com, released today a new edition of his “Total Six-Pack Abs” book. This e-book, priced at around $30 depending on exchange rates, details a step-by-step nutrition and exercise program for achieving six-pack abs.

It’s what I followed on my last twelve-week challenge to lose weight and gain muscle mass

There are some pretty major changes between Marks’ former edition of Total Six-Pack Abs and today’s edition. Some of them are:

• A substantially changed diet program. TSPA now includes one carb-up day per week, and substantially modified dietary guidelines to accommodate this carb-up without any slow-down in fat loss. The former version was low-carb only, and I look forward to seeing how this targeted, brief carb-up works out for my body.
• In the previous edition, Mark suggested that the program could be completed with just nutrition, cardio, and ab work. The new edition has an increased focus on resistance training in either a five or three-day split, with detailed workout plans to get even the most detail-obsessed reader moving on a specific, targeted workout plan.
• Mark includes improved supplementation suggestions, including recent research into Medium-Chain triglycerides (helpful to keep you burning fat when you’re at very low body fat levels), multivitamins, and protein.
• There are now links to current downloadable workout podcasts to help you through the intense cardio and ab routines of the program.
• More photos.
• An enhanced recipe section with some of Mark’s latest low-carb creations. Pizza, pancakes, stew, fries, and porridge are all within your reach with Mark’s new kitchen creations… along with the bodybuilding standby of various meats, eggs, and salads.
• Mark spends even more time discussing the evils of sugar alcohols, and strongly discourages their use… even in the chewing gum to which I am addicted!
• As in previous editions, this version of TSPA includes the complete program, from shopping lists to workout splits, diagrams and logs for your progress, updated links to the latest research on strength training and nutrition, equipment recommendations, and a new Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section to address the most common concerns of a prospective low-carber.

Now, I admit, my overview above may sound a bit fan-boy-ish, and it is. His previous edition of this book helped me get started on my own body transformation and lose twenty-one pounds of fat while gaining six pounds of muscle, and although I’m not yet where I want to be, the new edition targets even better how I want to eat, work out, and reach my fitness goals.

I look forward to continuing my challenge following the new and improved TSPA workout and nutrition strategies. For me, it was totally worth the price for a step-by-step, detail-focused, low-carb guide to achieving the body I want.

Regards, Matthew P. Barnson

As you may know, I’ve gone through a few internet service providers over the past few years. A brief review:

• Trilobyte Internet Services. They are a local ISP I used for dial-up when I lived in Tooele. Eventually, they deployed high-speed broadband via 802.11b, and when too many subscribers hopped on-board they discovered just how poorly that technology scales to a metropolitan-area network. DSL came to town, and I signed up with…
• Sisna. They didn’t suck. The only reason we abandoned their 7mbps DSL over Qwest was because DSL’s huge queues hurt the VoIP service I eventually went to. We moved to…
• Comcast. Broadband nirvana. Upload speeds were paltry, but download speeds rocked, VoIP worked well, Netflix streaming was fine, and rarely any problems except in the hottest summer months when occasionally the local switch unit went out due to overheating. We then moved to Riverton, and went to…
• Qwest. Suck piled on suck. Ugh.
• Digis. I’ve blogged about how how badly Digis sucks, both compared to other local ISPs on a cost-per-gigabyte basis, as well as their draconian throttling limits. I won’t go into the allegations of FCC violations, but suffice to say Digis is a poor neighbor. Big antenna on the roof, throttling without QOS that turns a broadband internet connection into a less-than-ISDN connection, obvious insane over-sell of bandwidth, icky.
• Xmission 1.5mbps DSL (over Qwest). Other than the big packet queues that are inherent to DSL, and that VoIP would suck big-time if we were downloading anything, this was OK.
• Rapidwave. These are the guys I’m gonna talk about.

I know what high-speed actually looks like. In my professional life, I’ve worn multiple hats: Network Administrator, Supercomputing system administrator, and UNIX administrator, among others. My work uses entirely a VoIP infrastructure for telephone service, and it works flawlessly. We have multiple redundant data connections suitable for a globe-spanning, massive network with tens of thousands of employees. I expect that the service from my local ISP should be up to the task of the following duties:

1. VPN from time to time. I’m not doing full-time telework, but I’ll work from home a day or two a week and expect full availability during the day. 2. VoIP performance should be perfect. I’m not looking for miracles, just make sure that with modest usage on the line that my VoIP service with Vonage doesn’t crackle. 3. Be up to the task of watching a Netflix streaming movie with decent quality. 4. Allow my children to play online games and Flash videos with decent speed. 5. No draconian bandwidth or speed caps. I occasionally need to back up my web server (~60GB of data) to my home connection, and I don’t want to be charged $1000 for that privilege.

Verdict: So far, Rapidwave has delivered. My speed averages between 6mbps to 9mbps downloads, and around 1.5mbps upload. Netflix will ramp down its streaming speed sometimes to middle-quality, but that mostly seems to happen only during peak usage times.

There were a couple of snags. Installation was delayed due to inclement weather. This is a problem with wireless Motorola Canopy installations that you don’t typically have with cable or DSL installs. It was only a week delay.

One day, Rapidwave went down due to a power outage. It was pretty major, and quite long (basically all day). I am glad that I was at work that day and not trying to work from home! The ISP going out really affects the household, as all the calls to the home phone line get routed to my wife’s cell phone. I’m pretty sure this is an isolated event, and it has not recurred in any form.

Our first bill was a little bit strange due to the one-week delay in installation. I’d not yet paid it, and Rapidwave has a remarkably friendly method of dealing with non-payment: any Port 80 request gets redirected to a “you owe a bill” page. That’s it. It doesn’t affect my VoIP, my VPN, or non-port-80 traffic. Pretty cool that they don’t shut down your service for non-payment, but instead just shunt your web traffic until you’ve paid.

Lastly, I’ve had issues with slowdowns occurring that require a reset of our router. Now, my guess is that this isn’t the ISPs fault, since rebooting my router fixes the issue, but with the same router on my old service it didn’t happen. I suspect the router is having troubles coping with the dramatic increase in data volume and speed, so I plan to try a new firmware to resolve the issue.

Overall, Rapidwave has delivered on their promise. Their service is tremendously faster than the fastest delivered to this household by Digis or Xmission DSL, VoIP service remains at high quality even during very fast downloads, Netflix streaming works fine (though it reduces quality occasionally), and my family is receiving the kind of speed and quality of service we expect for our broadband dollar.

So far, I’m pleased. Good on ya, Rapidwave.

–Matt B.

OK, I’m tired of being asked this today, so I’m going to say it once and for all, though I’m not going to link directly because, you know, hyper-sensitive and hyper-vigilant relatives. Yes, the scene in HBO’s latest episode of “Big Love” — very popular on YouTube today — depicting a Mormon temple ceremony is accurate, including costumes, dialog, and set.

That said, temple matrons do not always shoo you out of the Celestial Room in 15 minutes in the Salt Lake-based LDS church; this bit depicts an off-shoot of the Brighamite** church that may have different policies. However, I’ve personally been shooed out if I was with a large group, told not to sit on the floor, told not to lean on the wall, and told to quiet down numerous times 🙂

The scene, despite its accuracy, is not complete. The LDS temple ceremony takes a couple of hours; the Big Love temple scene is around four minutes. There are also two ceremonies which precede the endowment: baptism for the dead and the initiatory. These may have been performed by other patrons if one is attending on behalf of the dead; for convenience, since the clothing required differ so much, most patrons will attend for just one of the types of ceremony.

The discussion regarding a “love court” refers to the LDS practice of excommunication proceedings. This is no longer referred to as a “court of love” in the Salt Lake-based LDS church, but instead as a “disciplinary council”. If I understand correctly, some off-shoots of the church still refer to it as a court of love.

LDS church discipline varies according to the offense, at the discretion of the leadership over the member who has transgressed.

• Informal discipline includes various prohibitions at the discretion of local leadership. This may include a prohibition against public speaking, taking of the sacrament, participating in ordinances, or other personal behavior at the discretion of the penitent and the leader (usually a bishop). First-time offenders, teenagers, and those who have not broken temple covenants usually are dealt with via informal discipline if they are repentant.
• Formal church discipline is reserved for those who have broken temple vows, repeat offenders, the unrepentant (synonymous with “those who do not take their leader’s advice), those who endanger the name of the church, or those who endanger the innocent. Leaders have principally three options via formal discipline: probation, disfellowshipment, or excommunication. Probation may impose arbitrary restrictions on the member. Disfellowshipment may include arbitrary restrictions, but also forbids participation in many LDS activities. Excommunication is a severing of the relationship entirely.

–matthew

** Scholars often group the fragments of LDS churches as Brighamite, Rigdonite, Strangite, and Whitmerite factions. These refer to the various members of the Quorum of the Twelve who, after the death of Joseph Smith, Jr., vied for power. See Succession Crisis. Most members of these factions never refer to themselves by these names, however, instead referring to themselves as the “Saints”. Despite the fertile cross-pollination of traditions and members among many of these factions, most regard the others as apostate groups.

• Brigham Young led the Brighamite faction west to Utah after Joseph’s death; this is the group most commonly associated with polygamy, and also the group most people associate with “the Mormons”. The Brighamite, Salt Lake-based church has splintered into a large number of small factions that cross-pollinate cultures and members with the “main-line”, largest faction. Usually, if the main-line church becomes aware that a member has joined a splinter group, it will excommunicate that member. Today, if I understand correctly Brighamite factions altogether number around 15 million around the world.
• Sidney Rigdon led the Rigdonite group. He was Vice-President of the LDS church at the time of Joseph’s death, and also First Counselor. He had led a large congregation prior to becoming a Mormon, and carried a large number with him after Joseph’s death. However, the groups he led continued to fragment after his death, and no direct Rigdonite tradition appears to exist today AFAIK.
• James J. Strang led an off-shoot colony devoted to living the United Order, and claimed divine right to lead the church. Although small, the Strangite tradition continues today principally in the Community of Christ (though the main-line Strangites repudiate the RLDS/CoC group as “apostate”), and number only a few thousand today.
• Most followers of David Whitmer (Whitmerites) were absorbed into the Church of Christ (Temple Lot), also referred to as “Hedrickites”. Whitmer was excommunicated from the main-line LDS church, and claimed Joseph Smith was a fallen prophet. Today, they number around 6,000.

I just started goofing around on Facebook. I know, I know, Justin, you’ve told me for years that I should use it. Anyway, it’s pretty cool; I’m up to around 200 “friends” on the site now, mostly people I know from school and work. I recently updated my status to show the fat-loss progress I was excited about:

New weight low today: 214.5 lbs. First time under 215 in half a decade. Another five pounds, and I’ll be at my lightest since age 21.

My friend George McEwan asked me,

So are you eating canned air followed by a chaser of water? What are you eating to hit those weight goals?

Facebook, unfortunately, has a limit on status comments that is restrictive. Here’s what I came up with to condense a plan that normally would take pages to describe into a Facebook-friendly length.

I’m on a cyclical ketogenic diet. I modify my plan every 12 weeks, & take 1 week off between plans.

Net 1800cal/day M-F, low-carb high fat. I often have to hit the gym so I can eat dinner 🙂 Protein >1g/lb of lean weight (subtract fat weight from body weight), carbs <30g/day.

3200 cal/day on the weekend, 500g of carbohydrate on Saturday, 250g on Sunday. Protein 1g/lb of lean weight.

Cardio 7 days/week. Started w/15 minutes of moderate walking; now I’m up to 20 minutes of power-walking, and working my way to 45 minutes of jogging or 20 minutes of high-intensity intervals. Depends on the day (lifting day: 20 minutes, non-lifting: 45 minutes).

Weights 4 days/week, heavy as I can, reaching positive failure in 8-12 reps. 6-9 sets per body part, work each part hard only once per week.

Supplementation: Whey protein (50-100g/day), creatine monohydrate (5g/day), men’s multivitamin.

Program from http://www.musclehack.com/ . Great site, get the free e-book. Oh, yeah, and I drink lots of water (>1gal/day).

–Matt B.

Bodybuilding.com’s resident twelve-week transformation specialist, Kris Gethen, has put out a free video series on how to do your own twelve-week transformation with him as your virtual personal trainer, with a video for every single day of your transformation:

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/12_week_daily_video_trainer_main.htm

I’m excited to follow along as I undertake my current twelve-week challenge. What kind of body will you have by May 31?

–Matt B.

The U.S. is left with a disaster scenario thanks to Presidemented Bush. His work destabilized our nation and imperiled long-term safety and prosperity. Meanwhile, I’m so fed up with the Obama administration already. For his entire campaign we heard “change”. This guy hasn’t brought any change. He’s brought “tinkering”. His slogan should have been “tinkering we can believe in”.

This made me realize, thanks to a recent post by Matt, that the two political parties really don’t have anything to offer as a distinguishing platform. Nobody in today’s two-party system is really out to change anything. They’re only out to amass power and then minutely tweak existing systems to keep their contributors appeased. Never mind we have some systems that are truly broken. Keep adjusting, tinkering, modifying, but don’t bring any real ideas to the table that result in change. That’s the Democrat and Republican way.

When was the last time you truly trusted people in government to come up with the big ideas? If I had been voted President…

1. NO LONGER ARE WE A SUPERPOWER. The United States is no longer interested in serving as the global police. We are done with holding everyone’s hand. We’re trying to put a democratic government into a nation half a world away but we can’t put a man in an apartment here at home? NATO – over. UN – over. We are people who raise kids, play baseball and grow old. Please come visit us because we like tourists. We hope you like our food. But don’t expect us to pick up the phone for your request of military, diplomatic, or economic intervention unless a true coalition of the willing amasses and brokers our involvement.

2. SELL ALASKA AND HAWAII. I’m looking at a ridiculous deficit. I’m also looking at two states that came into the union in 1959 and today account for less than a percent of our population. On the 50th anniversary of their ratification into the union we are packaging them for sale to Russia for half a trillion. I only wish we could sell Texas to Mexico as shameful punishment for Bush.

3. ACCEPT THAT SOMEONE NEEDS TO BE BETTER OFF AND SOMEONE NEEDS TO BE WORSE. We become an export country. The only way we ensure continued safety and prosperity is by building things that other countries want. A societal mores is continuously promoted that levies honor and accolade among those people who build and ship things that other countries buy. We prop up industries that serve other countries buying needs. We penalize those industries at home which are the tantamount of massaging each other’s back for no real productivity gain. For example, lawyers get a salary cap because they do nothing except translate English into a language nobody else can understand. As a result of all this, the U.S. becomes valued for something else entirely, which means…

4. CUT MILITARY BY 66%. The reason we currently need to have a big military is because we operate as the world’s superpower. We don’t need a military if we become innocuous. I think our #1 export right now is our military. And we’re paying for it. But each person in the citizenry will serve in the military for 2 years between the ages of 19-21. We all learn how to defend.

5. INSTITUTE THE FLAT TAX. The last thing we need is keeping 2.5% of our population working to help the rest of us figure out the 9,000,000 worded tax code. It’s out. Flat tax is in.

6. END THE RIDICULOUS OVERVALUATION OF PEOPLE WHO CONTROL MONEY. Explain to me again how investment bankers on Wall Street really help actual growth? They are vapor paper. Capitalism only goes as far as production and sale of exports takes us.

7. STOP BAILING OUT BROKEN SYSTEMS. When something breaks, it breaks for a reason. Trying to revive a dying fire with watered-down sticks doesn’t do anybody any good. We either retrain labor or don’t get involved.

8. A PENAL COLONY FAR AWAY. With the proceeds from the sale of Hawaii and Alaska we buy some land that becomes a distant penal colony. If you are charged and convicted of a serious offense, you are going far away to a cold and terrible place where criminals are tossed together in a hellish pit of terror. All the jails here are closed.

9. EVERYONE MUST SERVE IN THE POLITICAL PROCESS. Similar to mandatory military service, everyone must take part in some way in our political process. Through volunteering, appointment or weekend service, everyone is involved with the process.

10. LIVE AND BREATHE A MANDATE THAT ESPOUSES REAL ‘VALUES’. We are happy to live in the hills, the valleys, the shadows of tall trees. We are happy to share the earth peacefully with each other. We trade in ideas and intellect. Come over and meet my family. A smile is mightier than the fist.

So the Wife o’Weed has received an iPhone 3G. I’m sure I’ll answer this question as I play with it, but why would I need to jailbreak it? What apps or features would I need that Apple doesn’t allow?

Any advice or recommendations are welcome

Thanks Weed

Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/startrek/startrek_trailer3_large.html

As I’m sure many of you have noticed, I’ve slowed down a lot on the blog postings. Despite my goal of “a post a day”, I’ve realized that I just don’t have time for all the things I want to do in a given day without sacrificing something.

What is the thing slowing me down lately from what I want to do? Well, as you probably guessed based on the content of my recent blogs, it’s mostly the whole fitness thing. Relentlessly tracking food intake, hitting the gym, and living an active lifestyle takes a lot of time and mental effort. An overwhelming amount at first, but the amount required seems to be tapering off as I grow more comfortable with my new habits.

But in all of this, the quest for balance continues. I want enough time for my family. For my wife. For my blog. For my work. For my hobbies. Can I do it all in one day? One week? How do I achieve balance in so many areas of my life?

The further I get along as an adult, the more I’m starting to realize that, at least temporarily, one must become unbalanced to regain balance in life. As a for-instance, during college we spend an inordinate amount of time on studying and in class so that we can have the fundamental knowledge necessary to survive and do well in our chosen professions. Once in the workplace, the hard work in school simply fades back to quiet mastery of the subject at hand.

The same lesson seems to apply to physical fitness. I’ve simply never been a fit person, nor have I ever established a long-term routine, gained the background knowledge, or even developed enough of an interest in the topic to be effective at keeping myself fit. Now that I’ve realized some of the benefits, I’ve been consuming information like a starving man consumes food after a long fast.

Isn’t that the way it is with so much of life? To achieve true balance, I first must be unbalanced in order to gain mastery over an area of my life. Then once I’ve gained that mastery, the confidence and competence that come with such wisdom allow me to re-establish a new sense of order, with the new-found knowledge taking its place as part of a harmonious lifestyle.

I think I’ll come through it much better for the effort. But to achieve my long-term goals, in the short-term I’ve had to sacrifice some of my favorite pleasures. Thanks for hanging with me through the intermittent silence and myopic focus I’ve had lately.

–Matt B.

One of the revolutions in personal diet management in the 2000s has been online diet-tracking software. Two of the leaders in this personal tracking area are Fitday.com and LiveStrong.com’s The Daily Plate. Both play an important role in improving the health of Internet-connected people everywhere, but have strengths and weaknesses

1. Fitday.com. If you are extremely detail-oriented, you’ll love Fitday. It gives you details on everything you eat, and you can break it down by macro and micro-nutrients. If you purchase Fitday PC, you can track everything without having an Internet connection, and it offers much more detailed reporting. With personal customizable foods, easy data entry, and superb reporting tools, it’s a great combination of ease-of-use with advanced reporting and monitoring tools. Even more advanced reporting and utilities, as well as freedom from advertisements, are available with their Premium membership.

2. Livestrong.com’s The Daily Plate. This has a much, much larger database of foods than fitday.com because users can submit foods for everybody else. This makes it really nice for quick look-ups for on-the-go food tracking. You can even use an iPhone app to look up your food and put it in while eating on the road. Easy-to-use web interface, plugins to both Facebook and Twitter, it’s nice. Through their association with LiveStrong.com, The Daily Plate now has the benefit of large user groups, online forums, and social networking for fitness nuts. Big downsides: unless you buy a Gold membership, you can’t get detailed micro-nutrient tracking like on fitday.com, and eventually they delete your food history (not sure how far back it goes before they delete).

I used Fitday for my last twelve-week challenge; I’m using Livestrong’s Daily Plate this time around. I miss the detailed micro-nutrient tracking, but since I already have a pretty good idea of where my diet put me last time and I’m eating similar stuff (hey, I lost over 20 pounds of fat and put on 6 pounds of muscle, I’ll stick with the plan!) I know what the deficiencies tend to be. Basically I take a twice-daily multivitamin pack and eat plenty of spinach and other potassium-rich foods.

If you’re looking for some way to track everything you eat, both fitday.com and livestrong.com’s Daily Plate are superb resources with active communities of users and support. Heck, why not try both and swap between them based on your current needs? That’s what I’m doing, and both work really well to help me stay honest on my diet and fitness regimen.

–Matt B.