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February 9th, 2010
09:52 pm - I need sleep
I came into work this morning feeling okay but quickly slid into head-desk mode and it took a cocktail of 5 Hour Energy, brown rice and black tea to somehow get through the day in any sort of productive mode. Six hours sleep on back to back nights is the obvious culprit: Shortly after this is posted I'm hitting the hay.
I almost e-mailed to ask off the KGB shift I agreed to work tonight but decided to go with it and actually did a decent job on about 20 texts (my 2 hour average) tonight.
I'm using my iPod to time my walks. I started doing this last week: I start the 1st song on the randomized playlist right as I walk out the door and, once I get to work, hit pause. I note the time elapsed on the last song, cycle through and note the times on the previous songs played, and add up the times to get a total. My average time from door step to door step is around 33-34 minutes. Monday morning for whatever reason took 36.5 minutes and that's the longest time to date, while the shortest time was a hair under 33 minutes.
This is what qualifies for interesting news when you stare at applications for eight waking hours. I may try keeping a notepad for random ideas, but previous attempts at this gig haven't yielded much there.
As for diet news, mostly good except I felt hungry all day despite my usual meals, and I felt compelled to buy a frozen pizza on discount and crush it when I got home. Good stuff. Bad sodium and fat content :P
Oh, and too bad this isn't all that noteworthy, because according to LJ this is my 6000th entry. This will have to do.
Good night.
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February 8th, 2010
10:43 pm - Hurfing and durfing
Full disclosure (and apologies to FB people reading this post, as you've heard about this before): I'm taking texts for KGB via my home internet, and agreed to help them out Super Bowl night (one reason I missed all but the last three minutes of the game). However, for whatever reason their servers could not handle the combination of their largest on-hand staff ever and the rush of texts they got in connection with their Super Bowl ad because several agents couldn't even get on the server that night, and many who could didn't have functionality. I was fortunate that I was on and that I managed to field about 20 or so questions during my scheduled two hours... which apparently was far more than most others got to do. Since we're paid by the question, obviously there were a lot of pissed off agents, but by all accounts they turned most everything around in due time and considered the anticipated rush a success. I agreed to work on schedule on two hour evening shifts for the next three nights, and that's what I was up to tonight and the next two nights.
That aside, I didn't get as much sleep as I wanted, film at 11, and work was a drag due in part to that. But on the plus side, I actually don't feel all that sore two days after football! Last time I woke up a sore wreck Monday morning (despite feeling okay Sunday) and it took about 3-4 days for that to subside... but this time, after a mild Sunday, I woke up feeling no ill effects, and that's after an additional excursion Saturday night after the game, throwing down a couple drinks and turning in rather late. I also didn't take a single painkiller. Perhaps I'm working into game shape! Of course, walking 3+ miles almost everyday has probably helped.
I worked out tonight and feel pretty good after that. I started cooking my brown rice for work again this morning after a week hiatus on that, and only outsourced a mid-morning breakfast. I only spent $50 this weekend on groceries too.
I'm examining my debts and with money starting to come in I'm evaluating how I want to address paying them down, but that's a State of the Gomez for another time. Heading to bed soon!
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February 7th, 2010
09:14 pm
One of the mistakes people make when judging my writing or anything I post on the internet is that they believe I keep a blog with the intention of generating web traffic, gaining an audience and making some sort of e-name for myself. Since I started this journal back in 2001, the intent behind it has never changed. It's a place to write about what I do during the day, write about subjects that matter to me or at the least are on my mind, and at times brain dump happenings and thoughts. Over time it became a communication tool to help those who know me keep in touch and get updates on where I'm at.
That said, I do keep a head count via SiteMeter. Directed to it years ago by the long gone ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) hipstomp, I used it at first to keep track of how many people check it out, to get a general idea of the scope of my audience ("do I actually have X number of LJers reading this, or is there an audience beyond that?"). But they also kept track of what specific pages brought people in or what pages people settled on, as well as partial IP's of visitors.
This journal averages around 20-30 hits a day, 30 or more if I've written something that pissed someone off ERRRRRR caught someone's eye for whatever reason. This number doesn't fluctuate all that much. During deader times it's more like 15-20, but then I post something one day, either here or elsewhere, and without warning it generates a spur of activity and readership for a while. Sometimes new readers stick around.
Basically, it's a tool to keep track of what people are drawn to, and where readers of this thing come from. Most are Seattlites, of course, and of course I get a few Vegasites, but I get plenty of random readers, frequently readers from overseas. To this day, this random entry on my continued misspelling of exacerbate is the one entry people across the world seem to come back to.
But ultimately, if anyone's going to challenge me as to why I bother writing in this, it's pretty much because that's what I do, that's what I've done for better or worse for the past nine years, and it's not about being e-popular or generating hitz. It never was. And maybe that's why I have readers. I don't know.
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12:51 pm - Okay
Yesterday at football I actually brought my hands with me and caught a few passes, including a quick touchdown (whose timing was great in that I blew the previous play because I missed the playcall on a trick play) and another interception. I also stuck Brett with a stiff block that led to a TD on the play, as I'm now finding that somehow some way I find a way to hit one good block every time the group plays.
After that I took a 70 minute walk home, and didn't feel too bad so I eventually showered, dressed up and went down to Lo-Fi, because I misremembered the date of ECSC, the monthly dance night several friends like to go to. After months of having whatever reason not to go, I decided to go to this one... except it's not actually until NEXT weekend and I misread the calendar, so imagine my confusion when I paid less than the expected $10 cover to get into a very similar retro night, and only after a couple hours of drinking and dancing (anyway) did it occur to me that this was the wrong night and was in fact Studio 66.
At first I was worried I had the night right but the venue wrong, but ultimately I didn't care. I danced with a few strange ladies and talked a bit with an older lady and her BF about her work with UW's Tech Writing certificate program. If nothing else, that conversation alone was enough to make the accidental visit worthwhile (though they were very nice people too).
Apparently, as long as you have a Bachelor's Degree of any substance, you can earn a certificate in the program, though we didn't discuss any other contingent issues or ramifications in our somewhat short conversation. They went dancing and I went dancing and eventually I slipped out and headed home around 11:30 pm once it became clear that no one I knew was showing up.
After a long, tired and tedious walk, I checked the intertubes and discovered that, yes, I had the night wrong, since ECSC is next weekend. While popular, S66 didn't have any lines out the door and though certainly crowded you could still walk through the venue. I have a feeling both won't be the case once the hipsters come out next weekend, but at this point I clearly ought to commit to attending at least once so I'll do this again next weekend.
Don't take this as an endorsement of clubbing or anything. I like dancing to good music and still took things in stride and turned out to have fun all things considered, but being around nothing but strangers in a hipster environment is still an admittedly awkward experience. The quarterly Studio 66 event (talk about good timing) was actually kind of fun and I'll probably come back when they do the next one in three months now that I've met a few people there. But once next weekend's in the books I'd rather not bother with a dance club until the next relevant event and/or an event with friends is involved.
Also, I burned a total of 2750 calories yesterday and once again I don't feel as shitty as I probably should. I'm starting to think my soreness is now going to be a delayed effect, where I don't feel it the next day but will the day after and for days beyond.
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01:01 am - Real update coming tomorrow
What a long and crazy busy day this was.
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February 6th, 2010
10:56 am - Live from ¡EL DIABLO! but not for long
I'm going out for flag football today and expect to get my ass kicked.
Though I've been interested, I may finally head down to Lo-Fi tonight for their monthly hipster convention, aka the Emerald City Soul Club. Now that I'm broke to the point of scrapping to pay the rent anymore, I can afford to do the 'pay $10 and buy a couple drinks to hang out and/or dance' sort of thing. They're actually not that far down the street from where I live, just a walk down one street and a walk down another... and though that walk is actually 1.5 miles, that's still a fairly direct route. The big thing will be whether football kicks my ass badly enough that going out later tonight proves a bad idea. Either way this is going to be a long and busy day. Also, hough I had plenty of time to sleep, I only got about 6.5 hours so we'll see how I'm feeling later today.
Also, I wanted to wait until details were finalized, but I have renewed my apartment lease for one year at the same price. The manager actually offered a 6-12 month extension and since I like it here, obv I said sure. So I'm glad that's not an issue.
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February 5th, 2010
08:57 pm - Friday
My current job is okay and definitely better than the alternative (namely, not having a job). But this was one long, dragging workweek whose end I'm glad to finally see. I'm processing a long batch of updates that's akin to driving I-5 between Bakersfield and Sacramento... basically, a long, boring, endless stretch of a lot of the same stuff, and all you can do is keep moving forward because that's the only way the endless fields and random overpasses will end... except replace the fields and random overpasses with client vendor records. Actually, now that I think of it the client vendor records are more scenic. Anyway, it's taking days and I believe I can finish the batch I'm on by Monday, though I get the impression there will be another similarly long and dull batch where that came from.
I vary my work-days by:
- Going to the restroom frequently. Typically I try to restrict this to breaks but sometimes I find myself walking over as often as once an hour. I'm not pissing for fun, because I'm...
- Drinking a bunch of tea. Seriously, between black and green tea I'm pounding about 20-30 oz of the stuff a day. I don't know how bad that is (I don't go beyond 3 cups of the black tea since it's the more caffeine loaded and dehydrating of the two... though I don't know the effects of heavy green tea consumption), but I also drink water. Between all those, I have to get up and piss rather frequently.
- Eating every two hours. These aren't big meals after 12:00. By the afternoon we're talking a cup of dry cereal and a banana, or an orange and maybe something else.
- Double checking the work I've done if/when it occurs to me that I've processed items with an incorrect code or three.
It's a bit of a boring job right now, but at this point it's about providing a stable presence, helping the department catch up on their backlog and doing a good job on what I get my hands on while collecting a full-time paycheck in the interim.
I'm currently at the bottom of the hill, if for no other reason because I eventually need to get to Metropolitan Market and get some meat + other groceries for the coming week. I had some coffee and began the long catch-up on my NFL photos posts. I stopped around Week 13, right around when I flew to Vegas, didn't stick with it while in town, and never had a chance to catch up. Fortunately, photo archives for every week are everywhere, and finding good material isn't that tough.
Tomorrow is football. My legs could probably use a few days rest, but I think a long, good night's sleep tonight will help, and by day's end tomorrow I anticipate I won't be going far for the next 36 hours, which should help.
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February 4th, 2010
11:40 pm - Good evening
I wish I could report exciting things and all but alas, not really.
Honestly, as mundane as the day to day working life is now, this is a blessing compared to the previous few months... not because what I was doing was bad. It really wasn't bad at all. But living on less than minimum was as tough as wondering how you were going to pay the bills in a couple months, and knowing that everything's accounted for and that you've got a full timer to work at for the next several weeks feels a lot better. Sure, the issues could arise again if the tail end of this assignment doesn't quickly see the beginning of another one, but at least that's something I've got time to address rather than sending out queries, pensively watching the calendar, the clock and the inbox and hoping for some of your correspondence to pan out before the savings run out.
Food watch: Those of you worried about my high carb and diminished fat intake will be happy to hear that I've not only cut down on the carbs (to around 450 g a day or so) but have also taken in more fat, around 70-90 g a day. Part of that is the needed flexibility given I'm outsourcing a meal or two a day, and part of it is realizing I'm walking 3+ miles a day and burning quite a few calories. But part of it is also realizing I'm taking in enough fruits, vegetables and protein that for the most part I'm okay. Sodium intake has been over the 2300 mg benchmark but not too far, usually around the 2800-3000 mg range.
I've got a lot I haven't been able to work on, and the weekend will give me a chance to do it, but football also looms Saturday so there's not going to be as much time. I'm looking to get an early start on some stuff tomorrow after work. I also have a lot of baseball research and things I wanted to pound out this offseason, and with spring training looming the clock is ticking. We'll see.
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February 3rd, 2010
07:38 pm - Yes, one of these
It started out as an answer to a "Got any life tips?" question, but I felt it had enough volume to warrant reposting... not that this is by any means groundbreaking (anyone who has read enough of the internet, or even books, has seen variations of several of these before), but I just wanted to share:
Winning and losing are figments of your imagination.
That said, the house always wins. Never think you can beat the house. That's what they want you to think. That's how they take your money.
By the way, I'm not just referring to casinos ;P
Pick your battles.
It's okay if people think differently than you, right up to fundamentally believing different things than you.
When you hate, you reflect an aspect about yourself that you hate.
Get more Vitamin D and potassium.
Walk a mile or two a day.
Don't make excuses. Instead of looking for reasons not to try, look for reasons not to quit.
Turn the TV off.
Turn the computer off too... at least for a few hours during the day.
You can be complete without a significant other. Fairy tales taught us to believe in Princes(ses) and happy endings, but life doesn't reflect fairy tales, which themselves were manufactured centuries ago by the ruling classes to encourage poor, ugly people in Europe to breed so the working classes wouldn't go extinct. But basically, don't tie your sense of self worth to whether or not you have an intimate relationship, because that's one of life's many expressways to unhappiness.
So are delusions of grandeur. Being rich and famous really isn't all that fun once the cameras go away. It has its own sets of pains in the ass, burdens and hassles: The shit-tons of taxes, the stalkers, the high expectations of just about everyone in the world including your friends and family, the business dealings, and the endless stream of opportunistically greedy assholes who act like they're your friend when they really want a piece of your pie, as well as the rich/beautiful people who are your friends... until the party's over, and then they're gone.
Believe it or not, your allegedly mundane life may actually be more rewarding that you realize. Just open your eyes and take a better look around you.
If it still looks or feels shitty, I suggest making a change. You might want to start with changing the person in the mirror, however.
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01:30 pm - The return of the lunchtime e-mail post
Using the playlist on my iPod, I determined that it takes about 32 minutes to walk from my front door into the front lobby at work. I only say "about" because I hit play for the first song, then had to grab stuff and put on my coat and shoes before I walked out the front door, which took about 1-2 minutes. The official time was 33:28, and that's at walking with a typically methodical pace. Thus I guesstimate that it took 32 minutes to get to work.
33:28 means that, factoring in about 3 minutes to walk up the stairwell... I need to walk out the front door no later than 7:25 to assure I can walk to work on time. Beyond that time, I'd have to bite a couple bucks and take a trolley bus in, unless I'm okay with being a little late.
These are the things you occupy yourself with when your mind fries from 8 hours in the white collar coal chamber.
I didn't get much sleep last night, as some last minute stuff had me up until shortly after midnight. I slept through my alarm by about 17 minutes, but I originally set the wake time to allow time to cook brown rice, which I haven't done this week (I've been outsourcing meals: There's some decent, not so expensive options close by)... so
even after the lost time I had plenty of time to cook a quick breakfast, eat, shower and get out.
This is one of those offices where half the department you're in is sick, and whether or not you're going to join in depends on your immune system, stress levels, diet, exercise and eating habits. I've escaped many bugs over the years, and gotten caught a handful of times. And if I knew the common denominator to the times I got sick
I'd spell it out and follow the formula, but alas there is no formula. I just hold serve in my personal life and don't worry about it. That's usually enough.
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February 2nd, 2010
10:21 pm
Last night pretty much disappeared. I got through half of my workout around 8 pm, got really sleepy, laid down and next thing I knew it was 12:45 am. With all the lights on, of course. I shut everything off, went back to bed and had to lay there a while but I was suitably sleepy and eventually drifted back off until the alarm went off at 6:30. If we discount the portions of the night where I was awake, that adds up to about nine hours sleep.
The days in this job just kind of go by. Sure, in the moment it can drag, but the work's detail is fairly involved and it keeps you occupied for the most part from wire to wire.
Other than that and cutting a few minutes off my walk with an alternate route, plus an ill-advised hike up the steeper side of the hill on an ill-advised shortcut after grocery shopping, not much to report. And that's fine with me.
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February 1st, 2010
07:37 pm - Brief thoughts on school
The more I think about it, the more I want to go back to school. I'd like to teach and/or coach, but I have other interests as well: I really should get an accounting, business or similarly professional degree if I'm going to continue working because I keep hitting my head against a ceiling buoyed by countless college graduates and seasoned professionals with relevant degrees. I may also want to study statistics or economics, as I like analytical work with numbers and careers in the field would suit me better than what I've been doing. But again, I do enjoy sports, I do collaborate with others well enough and train people well enough that coaching is something I think I would take to well.
By no means have I made a concrete decision to go back: I'm already working on $30K in student loan debt and chances are very likely I would add to that... if I can get financing at all or get back into school given the economic situation and the tightening strings not just on financial aid but on school admissions.
If I indeed wanted to go back, two issues arise. 1) Having seen the consequences of returning to school with indecision, I really want to nail down not only what I want to focus on, but what path I'd need to take to get there. Grad school isn't a very likely option without some undergrad work in the relevant field and possibly even a second degree in a relevant subject. 2) It's already February, so a decision would have to come quick since we're getting into the early stage of the year's financial aid and admissions decisions. Deciding in May or June to return to school becomes a pointless exercise since most of the money and admissions spots in schools would be tapped.
I need to do more research on the path to a relevant degree and career path to get an idea on what feasible goals I can reach for at this stage in my life. Keep in mind I work during the day as well, and any future work has to coincide with that save for the highly unlikely event that someone is willing to fully subsidize my existence while I attend school. I've tried the alternative of quitting day work to attend day school, and that did not work out well at all. I do not have the resources and support network to make that work.
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January 31st, 2010
12:55 pm - A note about a Friday topic
A couple of nights ago at ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) phoriday we were talking about the idea of someone reviving the Whig party, traditionally considered a socially liberal and fiscally conservative party (though there was also debate on whether we had that backward, and if it was the Tories had that actual philosophy).
Well, check it out. The Modern Whig party is alive, and while fledgling at this point they're slowly growing their presence. They do have a chapter in WA but it's run out of Centralia by Tony Salas and I'd have to do more personal research before declaring Salas officially Above-Board. It's infant enough, however, that one could grow a grass-roots presence in Seattle on their own.
Also, further research on the Tories (and sorry but the Wiki Monster is the most concise source I can quickly cite) indicates that Tory philosophy centered around loyalty to the British crown.
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January 30th, 2010
06:25 pm - Today in numbers
Number of bananas I bought last night: 8
Number of calories I burned in all yesterday: 1121
Number of hours sleep I got last night: 4.5
Number of times in my life I had written or given any serious thought about Harvard or Cornell basketball before today: 0
Total spent on groceries today: $12
Typical total spent on groceries in a week: $60-80
Number of days worth of meat in fridge as of this morning: 6
Number of cartons of soy milk in fridge as of this morning: 2
Number needed to last one week: 2
Number of cartons of egg whites in fridge: 2
Number of cartons needed in one week: 2
Number of people in Trader Joe's this afternoon: Too many
Number of miles walked today: 2.8
Number of calories burned today: 591
Hours of napping I got after returning home this afternoon: 3
Number of Foreigner songs I nearly sang in a supermarket during the lucid stage of dreaming during my afternoon nap: 1
Number of cups of coffee I had today: 1.5
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January 29th, 2010
11:11 pm - Long day is in the books: Phoriday and an interesting bus encounter
We had fun at Phoriday. We went to Solstice and made jokes about Herfy's (among many, many other things) until they threw us out at closing. We would have done Cafe on the Ave (our usual post-Pho coffee spot) but now they've got live music on Fridays and we can't hang out and talk with all that noise so until those kids GET OFF OUR LAWN we'll have to settle for alternatives.
So while waiting for the bus, I somehow draw the attention of this cute girl named Laura around my age also waiting, and we end up talking a bit before and during the bus ride into LQA. She's RAing for grad school on a nuclear physics project involving neutrinos and many, many other things that at this point are far over my head, not so much because the terminology is Greek to me but because the work she's doing is involved far beyond my scope. Rudimentary googling through UW could probably net you more info if you're curious: I would bet CERNA's involved.
The crazy thing is she works like an NFL football coach, working at the lab every day, many days far into the night and many nights even sleeping there. She in fact was only on the bus at 9 pm tonight because she had called it an early night. Fortunately they're paying her tuition and a stipend pays her bills, which allows her to rent a pad down the hill from my place.
I felt a bit awkward only because she seemed keen on talking but I was a bit burnt (I don't work 22 hour days and sleep in an office but I had been up since 6:30 am) and could only offer so much other than interest in her background and what few details I could throw in about mine. It's one of those things where I could have asked for a number and offered to hang out later, but I had no idea by that point if she was still keen or if she felt trapped in a conversation with a random creeper she couldn't wait to be rid of. Women really need to carry signs or something that indicate these things so guys like me who don't make a hobby of this sort of thing can act accordingly :P
Eventually, I hopped off near the Space Needle and took my uphill walk home. Aside from that... shit, I am BEAT. Seriously, I walked four freaking miles from Downtown to the U District in 95 minutes.
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06:55 pm - Good evening
I just walked over 4 miles to the U District. I don't miss this neighborhood really.
Going to eat Pho now, bbl
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January 28th, 2010
08:27 pm - Guess what I did tonight?
My taxes! I got all the forms I needed over the last couple days and quickly knocked it out. Unlike many, I like to get it done as soon as I possibly can so it's out of the way.
And unlike many, I don't have a steady flow of income due to the nature of being a project temp. Yes, I've made many an effort to get into permanent work, and it seems that no one who matters has had mutual feelings as of yet (save for a couple of employers, and those ended in layoffs unrelated to my efforts). In the meantime, I stick to what I do well, and as a result it takes a bit of effort to do a basic tax return, because by year's end I have worked with a few agencies and employers. I did have a long relationship with one agency for three years, but then I made a move and you know the rest. On the flip side, it's free to do my taxes online since I have no investments, expensive property or capital gains anything to report.
For the first 4-6 months of the year, I worked mostly full time, so with my standard deduction I had normal levels of income tax taken out. Once I went part time at UW, however, they stopped taking income tax entirely, pulling only SS/Medicare taxes. Supermercado automatically reported zero deductions so during my short time there they took a trickle of income taxes. Add in the ill-fated deus ex machina two-day assignment at my old agency and it all comes out to about $20.5K. Yes, I lived alone on $20.5K, though I also piled up about $4K in additional debt to make sure I could eat and all other needs were accounted for.
So now that, given I made $1000 take-home per month at work during the lean part time period, and that I piled up about $4K in debt during that six month span... factoring in downtime I conclude that my absolute bare minimum needed for survival given current conditions, with no usage of credit whatsoever, is about $21K. Many of you would piss yourselves if you had to make $30K work, let alone $21K. I suppose if I became a total hermit, I could do it on $19K or $20K. That's a challenge I would rather not take, because that level of relative poverty is one I never want to experience again.
Before deductions, I was about $110 in the black with the Feds. Then I was astonished to discover that I was credited with paying over $3000 in student loan interest. Of course, you can only use a maximum of $2500 to deduct, but still. That bumped the surplus to nearly $500, and ironically the Making Work Pay credit did jack and crap to help my bottom line. Kind of appropriate. But now I've got a refund of a few hundred on the way, which given I had no expectations is a blessing.
And lastly, I've discussed this before, but the "Interest Free Loans for Uncle Sam" hogwash isn't getting any attention here... and it's a silly, fallacious, short sighted argument anyway. The IRS doesn't grouse about having given YOU an interest free loan when you end up owing them money. So if you ever get a refund, take it and consider yourself lucky that you're getting an extra check while you go and adjust your W-4 if it bothers you that much. To add to that, those who don't have steady incomes almost need to finish with a surplus, since the last thing you need if the new year comes and you can't find work or it's already near impossible to pay your bills... is to end up with a $500 IRS bill on top of it.
I'm fortunate that I'm working right now, but also sometimes work doesn't come, and that check can help cover. "Blah blah save your money then" is the expected rebuttal, but again, if your income isn't steady, it's very hard to plan so that your savings matches your down time. It's easy for someone with a steady, decent paying job and/or a lot of disposable income to say that sort of thing. Life and working isn't as stable as it used to be.
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January 27th, 2010
11:21 pm - This time you're really getting nothing out of me today
We got logons at work... but only half of the ones we need. So now we're waiting for people to get us THOSE. You can see where all the chaos comes from. Meanwhile, we spend most of the day filing stuff, which at this point I'll take.
Between the walking to and from work, and the walk to and from Trader Joe's I had to take to reload on egg whites and breakfast food, I burned enough calories that I tabled my strength training for today. Given I just recovered from the post-football soreness, that I spent a good portion of the day fighting with tightly packed files, and that I haven't been sleeping as much as I should, having burned 750 calories over BMR I figured I'd cut myself a bit of a metabolic break.
Okay, I also got myself a garlic/mushroom pizza at Trader Joe's and it tasted GOOD.
Back at it tomorrow. Given the glacial pace of answered IT requests I don't expect the logon issue to get taken care of by tomorrow, so I anticipate more filing and whatever else. Given they're paying me either way, I don't particularly mind.
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January 26th, 2010
10:16 pm - I pretty much have nothing to say
I went to work. We did a bunch of sitting and watching others work because our computers still we're ready, then a bit of filing, then I did an entry or two and by day's end our computers arrived, so it looks like we'll be able to begin serious work tomorrow.
I had grape 5 Hour Energy for the first time this afternoon, and that stuff tastes exactly like old school Dimetapp. No joke. That's not a negative thing.
I also ate at Market Fresh for the first time in a long while, since I'm now within reach of a location. While I don't want to make a habit out of $6 lunches, I really wanted to have fried mushrooms, slow cooked salmon and fried breaded shrimp for old time's sake at least once, so why not today.
Though I'm obviously working within a diet to try and shed some padding, I'm overeating a bit lately in case I'm getting sick. My throat felt a bit scratchy this morning, and I've felt a bit up and down the last few days, football aside... which is often a sign that your body's fighting an incoming illness. I tried sticking to the diet, but felt hungry Sunday night as I went to bed and woke up sorer from football than I was the day before, so I decided to err on the side of excess until I'm feeling better. I've probably overshot my calorie range by 200-400 each of the last couple days. I'm getting plenty of potassium and other vitamins, though. As for exercise, the walk to and fro plus the brief walk to get the 5 Hour Energy was enough calorie burn for the day, so no further cardio required tonight WHEEEEE.
I didn't get too much sleep last night and felt rather tired this morning and afternoon, so I didn't mind fading out into a 90 minute nap after work. So far I'm handling the 6:30 wake better than I did during the non-profit stint, but I'm still struggling with it. Funny how waking up at 7 am felt just fine, but waking up 30 minutes earlier tanks me completely.
I haven't heard back about the position I interviewed for last week, though granted it's only Tuesday and from what I recall the range for a subsequent decision was closer to the middle of the week. However, when they're interested, they contact you sooner rather than later, and if you're no-go, they tend to let you hang for a while before telling you.
Huh... that's quite a bit for "pretty much nothing to say". That's all for now.
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January 25th, 2010
10:15 pm - Of all the companies to try something like this on a national scale, it just had to be them
The item of the night actually comes from an interesting news item brought up by TQC, about Whole Foods instituting a bonus employee discount (on top of their existing 20% off) of up to 10% for voluntarily meeting a set of health benchmarks.
Now, I can already see some of you geeking up for the usual slander, and you're only getting one warning: If you turn the comments for this entry into another pro-Democrat John Mackey character attack, or grinding an axe with Mackey's WSJ piece to unload more Whole Foods slander, instead of discussing the proposal and the following take on the level... I'll go ahead and show you the door. Most of you reading are fine, can stay on topic and have a fair take. But for the rest of you, leave the baggage at the door and be objective if you're going to discuss this, or take it outside.
Now, as for those of you loading up your anti-BMI or anorexia/anemia arguments... I can humor those. They're probably not correct, but I can humor them.
Seven key points:
1) This employee plan is voluntary, and every eligible employee at Whole Paycheck is still entitled to a 20% discount on store merchandise no matter what. Nothing is being taken away from anyone. The idea is to give a bonus to employees who hit these benchmarks. So anyone arguing this is unfair because people are being denied are... well, to put it nicely, wrong.
1a) Certain benchmarks are set for reaching certain BMI, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Of course, you can't smoke at all to be eligible. The added discount rungs are set at 22% (the existing 20% + 2% bonus), 25%, 27% and 30%.
1c) Whichever benchmark you hit the lowest level on is the discount you get. For example, if you hit the 30% discount level on BMI and blood pressure, but your cholesterol is at the 22% level, you're only getting a 22% discount. And again, if you smoke at all, you're completely ineligible for the bonus even if you nail the top levels on everything else.
2) Yeah, you have to get poked and metered by a doctor to verify the levels and get eligible. But ideally, you're regularly getting checkups on all this stuff anyway, right?
2a) (For the record, I don't. I guess I'll see you all in hell ;P )
2b) Also, this is an argument against the "People who are naturally skinny get an unfair advantage" point. Those people still have to go to a doctor, get all the checkups and get documentation that they meet all the needed levels.
3) Yes, some people would have to try hard and even overhaul their lifestyles to hit the marks. Some may never hit them no matter how hard they try, and some wouldn't have to try at all to hit them. Show me how the rest of life in general, let alone any other workplace in general, is never at all like that.
The one benchmark I would say is arguably unfair is the cholesterol. Some cultures, especially SE Asian cultures, have naturally high cholesterol levels. Some (including some of you reading) have medical or biological conditions that create unnaturally high cholesterol levels... and even with a very healthy diet you can't get your cholesterol any lower than a certain point. Such folks could eat a vegan diet (with no avocados even!) and never get their total cholesterol below 195. This situation could probably come into play a handful of times, though they do offer the alternative of using LDL levels, and it's possible that folks with a naturally high cholesterol could clock lower LDL levels with a healthy diet. This is probably the one big issue with the proposal, though, since it's the one situation where it could be biologically impossible for some people to hit the stated mark.
However, the BMI levels can be reached. For reference, my BMI a 25, and despite all my work and dieting I'm hardly in the greatest of shape: Enough of you have made fat cracks at my expense that you know where I stand on the skinny/fat spectrum. The lowest mark of 23.99 isn't exactly anorexia. If I really wanted to get my BMI to, say, a 23, I could probably make enough changes to drop the 10 pounds needs to do it without turning into an anorexic, or to a lesser extent eating some miserable diet while killing myself with cardio.
As for anyone at or well above that watermark... well, you've got bigger health challenges than netting an extra 10% off overpriced groceries.
Blood pressure can be a bit difficult, if only because the key would be to cut your sodium intake, which in our processed-food and heavy-flavor age seems virtually impossible for most people to do, and get enough exercise (though, granted, we're talking grocery store employees, so they probably do get enough exercise). But the sodium thing is very tough: I've cut quite a bit and it's still a bitch to stay below 3000 mg a day. A typical diet has about 5000-8000, terrible given the RDA's around 2300. And we wonder why our blood pressure's high and so many people have heart problems: That doesn't even factor in the stress and the other crappy content in the foods most people eat.
4) The one fallacious argument I keep seeing is that people are going to be compelled to drop to unhealthy BMI/BP/LDL levels in order to 'make weight' with this program.
110/70 is not an unhealthy blood pressure: Actually it's the polar opposite. You don't have to drop your BP to 80/20 to keep pace.
23 is not an unhealthy BMI. Again, I'm at 25 and you know how I look. Do I look like I'm starving?
As for cholesterol, it can be tough, but the only people who can possibly have a problem with dangerously low levels are vegetarians, vegans and the rare few with crazy health conditions... hardly the sort of situation people are likely to fall into.
5) Some of you are overweight and fine with that. Some of you don't and won't shop at Whole Paycheck. I'm fine with that: That's your business and you have your reasons.
The way I see it is that no one's being mandated to participate in this discount-bonus plan. It's akin to a company fundraiser or a 401K: You can participate if you want, and there are benefits to participating, but you don't have to.
However, many will argue against this as if this is somehow being forced on Whole Paycheck employees and/or somehow unfair to them... when in fact they retain the choice to participate or not, and still receive a 20% employee discount if they elect not to.
6) I don't shop at Whole Paycheck. Unless you're a hardcore organics dieter or a vegan, there are more affordable versions of the same options all over the place. So I don't have anything to gain personally from this, other than dissuading people from acting or thinking stupid about it.
And the funny thing is that it doesn't affect most of the people who will argue over it, or that many people at all. Anyone who hates John Mackey or Whole Paycheck doesn't shop there anyway, so what do they care? And how many Whole Paycheck employees are there? If any of them hate this program or feel otherwise violated by it that much... uh, they could just get another job. Novel concept, I know. But such a moral opposition for their employer probably would have reared its head long before now, and they would have moved on long before now... unless they love complaining.
7) What you think about John Mackey's stance on American health and America's health care system has nothing to do with whether this sort of idea in theory is a good one or a bad one. Look at it this way: If Trader Joe's rolled out the same employee plan tomorrow, how would you honestly react?
"I would react the same" is not an acceptable or honest answer if you have any beef with John Mackey over his stance on health care: Both you and I know better.
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07:48 pm
Work was fine. Boring, but fine. It's a bit of a mess and they don't have our computers ready, but apparently it's one of those "It's been chaos for the last six months and we're still trying to get it back together" situations. We spent all day training on the convoluted entry process, and gun to my head I think I could get my job, as it stands, about 80% right. Don't know if a B- would keep the hypothetical gunman from blowing my hypothetical brains out, but there you go :P
Also, I woke up sorer than Sunday, and my abs even cramped up in mid-afternoon. Walking 3 miles felt about as good as you would expect it to on like-a-knife to-the-bone sore quads.
Diet-wise, I didn't feel hungry all day, though I wonder if the combination of constant attention to the training process, the cramps combined with a killer need to piss throughout mid afternoon, a couple cups of tea and snacking throughout the day on a cup of Trader Joe's High Fiber O's helped avert serious hunger pangs. I hit all my benchmarks except for sodium: I stopped at QFC for deli food forgetting that I had packed a Clif bar and hadn't touched it. But I only missed on sodium by about 600 mg, so that's not too bad.
More of the same tomorrow... well, the work situation... not, hopefully, the cramps and serious need to piss.
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January 24th, 2010
10:44 pm - State of the Gomez, because why not
So along with looking over my budget and analyzing how this current gig's paychecks would address that, I also took a look at my meal plan, which is basically going to be the meal plan I had during the last gig. However, instead of hitting the QFC deli at lunch, I can eat the brown rice for lunch... stretch the shredded oats, fruit and a lot of water and/or tea inbetween the meals... eat a second banana with an apple and some seeds when I get home, exercise, then cook dinner a couple hours later, with a little less Calrose rice than usual, since I'll get enough carbs over the course of the day.
This plan would get me 2700-2800 calories, keep my carb intake under 450 grams, ensure I get about 50 grams of fat and about 125 grams of protein. I'd also get enough potassium, always an issue, while keeping my sodium intake under 1700 mg and my cholesterol intake around 100 mg. It's such an epic victory five days a week on paper that I can't wait to see how it plays out over the next week(s).
As for my budget, I can finally begin to pay down the debt I spent the last few months accumulating in the name of survival, but it's important to keep expenses low as well as find additional ways to cut further, so that the regular payments I make into the debt do more damage.
I've cut my restaurant expenses by over 50% over the last couple months and I can already see ways to cut even more. If I stick to nothing other than coffee trips and maybe one meal every couple weeks, I can probably cut to another 25% of what I was doing a few months ago, a savings of over $200-250. As for groceries, I've cut it to about $220-230 a month and given my grocery-intensive diet and how much I've put into refining it and eliminating waste, I don't see how I can cut further without compromising my diet and health.
The status of the previous interview remains up in the air, and of course if I received an offer in the end I would take it. I crunch my numbers on Paycheck City, and taking the low end salary range (while subtracting union and retirement dues), I discover that I would net an extra $200 a month at absolute worst. If my budget held serve over the rest of the year, I would pay off more than half of my existing non-student-loan debt with that rate. If the rate's even better, I could pay even more of it away.
That's premature, though. As it stands, things are looking better, and as long as steady work remains one way or another into perpetuity, things are going to look very good by year's end.
I didn't even factor in side or residual income.
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11:16 am - Good morning
All things considered, I'm not feeling too bad after that day of football and hiking. Sure, I'm sore, but the dose of naproxen right after sure helped reduce the inflammation. And I suppose more consistent strength training with more cardio over the past week or two helped as well, but honestly I felt fairly sore when I got home last night, so there was some improvement.
I'm also waking up early under my own power. I did hit the sack shortly after 11 since, obviously, I was beat after the long day. I got out of bed shortly before 8 and have gotten up around 8 each of the last 3-4 days despite no alarm. This will make getting up early tomorrow morning a lot easier than it used to be.
Once again, I've got to get up at 6:30, though granted instead of rushing into and out of the shower and out the door to catch a bus, I'll have a full hour to cook breakfast, pack up and... well... wake up before taking a 1.5 mile walk Downtown. It's like the previous position, except the walk's a little different and a bit farther. I'm still bringing my meals as before and following a schedule, and the walk to and fro will ensure a few hundred calories burned each day.
After waking early, I cooked a fish and rice breakfast, crushed it, showered and dressed and headed up the hill to get some writing done. With the NFL Conference Championships today, I've got a couple writeups to finish, and the NFC writeup is done. The AFC writeup is on its way, but I will preface by saying that putting money on it is a bit nuts because it's going to be close. The Saints, however, are 61-39 favorites: They sport a no-sputter offense and the defense can generate turnovers, while the Vikings have issues with injuries to the defensive linemen, their offensive line has some holes and their secondary blows.
That is all for now.
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January 23rd, 2010
09:11 pm - Were we ready for some football? I guess so!
The biweekly game of FootbaLL went down today and after catching up on some stuff over Cuban Espresso at ¡EL DIABLO! I hopped a bus into the neighborhood and, after some Downtown delays due to construction and poor sidewalk management, I hopped off at 23rd and Union.
An aside: Digging a hole on 3rd Avenue during the weekend isn't such a bad thing, nor is closing 3rd Avenue between Pine and Olive to do it. But Seattle DOT blew it by not closing the crosswalk along the open end of 3rd Avenue at Pine. "Why do that?" the ECBs among you would ask. "Pedestrian have a right to use the crosswalk blah blah blah blah [red herrings galore]." Here's why: The buses re-routed down 5th Avenue all have to turn left at 3rd, but when the signal turns green, all those pedestrians crowd onto the crosswalk, delaying the left turning vehicles. Often there's only enough time for one bus, yes, ONE bus, to turn left during every 30 second cycle of the signal. Thus there was a long backup of buses along and behind the bus island at 3rd/Pine, and about 5-10 minutes worth of delay just at that intersection alone.
On the other side, pedestrians were moving freely along the crosswalk since the street was closed. The fencing only went up to the crosswalk's edge, allowing pedestrians to comfortably use it. It would have been smart for Seattle DOT, as they sometimes do during Downtown construction, to close the crosswalk on the open end of 3rd Avenue so that left turning buses and other vehicles could turn freely, minimizing the delay. Pedestrians could then cross Pine, walk freely along the closed end of 3rd, and then cross Pine to get to point B.
Sure, then you run into an issue with blocking left turning motorists off of 3rd onto Pine... but as many urbanists would have rhetorically asked in response to the original problem... what's a little traffic delay during a weekend? Metro's buses ought to take precedent since they're trying to keep a schedule, and are facing a three block re-route to boot. (The northbound re-routed buses probably turned at Pike, before reaching the closed-off intersection, so they don't run into the latter situation)
Okay, that was a long aside. Despite using the restroom before leaving El Diablo, I had to piss, and last time I got to Garfield HS and had to piss the restroom near the softball field was locked up due to furloughs. I went into a convenience store on Union/23rd hoping to find a restroom. No luck, but I got a bottle of water since obviously I was going to run around for 2-3 hours and having it on hand isn't a bad idea.
I went ahead and walked to the park just in case, and turned out the restroom was open! I guess the Sunday closure was a twice-monthly furlough, only done on Sundays or something. After that, I headed up to the football field and busted my ass for 2.5 hours in a 3 on 3 and, later, 4 on 4 game. For the first time, I didn't catch a single pass thrown to me on offense, either dropping what I got or not having a good angle to catch it. That's on me and my brick hands: I just need to get them back in catching shape. And I covered Lanterman's brother fairly well (while we were bumping/shoving enough at the line and beyond to be the de facto tight ends for our teams), but when he got away, he got away for touchdowns because I just could not get my hands on the flags to tackle. Again, brick hands, and I just need to work on that somehow before the next game because I know I can catch. But I did score an interception, so I caught SOMETHING. Still, I had fun, and I'm looking forward to the next installment in a couple weeks.
We had food and shot the shite at Elysian for a bit, and then I decided not to blow $2 more on my ORCA pass and just walked home. Yeah, I was sore, but I figured the damage was done for today, and it couldn't feel all that much worse to take a lengthy but do-able walk home. Little did I know that I would end up taking a 3.5 mile walk through Downtown, through Belltown, up into Metropolitan Market to get oranges, asparagus and shredded oats, back out and up the hill to my apartment.
I just crunched all that exercise data into SparkPeople, and I burned an astonishing (well, to me) 2629 calories. Imagine that pro athletes do this pretty much every day for several months, and it's a testament to the sort of physical condition it takes to play college or pro sports (you at least get a day off or three each week in college). It makes me feel better about the Trader Joe's pizza(s) I had for dinner last night. I had them because I figured I was going to burn a shit-ton of calories today. I didn't realize it would be THAT much, however.
I took a bit of a nap after I got home, obv, and after much ado I'm going to crush some brown rice shortly. It's been a good day, and I didn't even have to use my AK.
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January 22nd, 2010
04:40 pm
I am one of the few that can drink two cups of coffee, go home and then take a two hour nap despite not being sleep deprived.
I used to do it with ginseng and ginkgo biloba too. Remember the energy drink Josta? That used to knock me out every time I drank it. I don't get it. Most of the time, coffee and energy drinks do to me what they're supposed to do. Sometimes, though, they don't.
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January 21st, 2010
10:57 pm - Workout adaptivity
Every day since about a couple weeks ago I try to burn a certain number of calories, at least about 600, as part of my continuing quest to make sure I a) burn all the carbs I take in (which BTW has gone down) and b) help burn fat, as I'm looking to trim from around 20-25% body fat to something like 10-15%.
I know I'm active, but there are days where I'm very active and days where I'm not, beyond walking to get coffee and coming home. This way, I ensure I'm active each day and burning a net of calories beyond my baseline that will at least fulfill the exercise side of the equation as I make adjustments to the dietary side.
I walk a lot, and the last thing my legs want to do after 30, 60 or more minutes of walking in a day is go outside and go for a run. That's great if you commute by auto or bus and don't exercise much. But I'd like to not wear my legs out before old age just to stay in shape. There has to be other ways to burn 100-200 calories in cardio. Circuit strength workouts will burn about 200-250. Walking to and fro burns about 200-300. Sometimes there's a gap between what I've got and 600. Enter SparkPeople's cheesy but effective kickboxing workout:
It takes ten minutes and while high kicks and coordinated movement are hard enough that I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, it works for me, gives me a decent workout and I'm able to finish it. That's about 110 calories, for me at least. I don't do it everyday, just on days where I notice a burn deficit. I did it Monday, for example, which was also a strength training day, but not Tuesday or Wednesday as I had burned enough calories those days. And I did it yesterday since despite all the walking I did yesterday I was still short.
However, even after that I still needed to burn about 80-90 calories. After a bit of thinking, I realized they had an calorie-burn entry for 'heavy cleaning', and that it burned about 130 calories every half hour. So there was my answer: I would set the timer for 20 minutes and just clean as much of the apartment as I could. So I did: I loaded up and tossed out the recycling, scrubbed up the sinks a bit, loaded my laundry... and all that took me to the end of the timer.
That works.
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January 20th, 2010
10:54 pm - Food for thought on today
I had a light breakfast and went out for coffee. I had my scheduled job interview this afternoon and, since I had time to think about it, I went back through the annals of time and itemized all the major project assignments and positions I had taken on since my time at Bally's back in 2001. I won't list those jobs here, but it's a diverse list and dug up some memories of old experiences that had even slipped my mind... not just at work but in life over years that in my mind had blended together.
I also decided to think about interview questions, not questions I anticipated being asked of me but of questions I could ask the interviewer. Often in the past I fell short of this aspect of the interview. Even after having made a better effort at it, I never had more than a couple basic questions and I realized that I never came away with enough of my questions answered about a job... so why not ask them?
I dug through a couple job resources that, of course, itemized a full list of questions to ask. Most are superfluous, of course, and would make you look downright stupid if you asked them, like "What are the duties of this job?" Now come on... if you don't already know that, you shouldn't be interviewing for a job in the first place. But the laundry list did have a few intriguing questions, and I put them down on Notepad as I found them. Some of the questions blended together, but when I finished I had about a dozen questions. I realized that the interviewer would answer some of them in our discussion, but I figured why not itemize? Some of the questions I ultimately found were contextual and probably don't cross-apply to all jobs, but some of the ones I found certainly do and I'd invite you to consider them, whether or not you ask them:
What did you see in my skills and history that led you to interview me?
Describe a typical day in this position.
What is this position's biggest challenge?
Who will I work most closely with?
What sort of traits do you notice in people who are successful here?
What do you consider the biggest challenge for this team?
Now, I didn't ask all these questions: Some were answered in the interview and did not need to be asked. And there were other questions I asked that arose from what I learned in the interview.
But, without going into any intimate details, the interview that ultimately resulted was a great one from which I learned a lot and I hope the interviewer (whose name I'll keep under wraps) did the same. This would be a nearly perfect job for me and certainly one I'd like to have for the long haul. And if I need to interview again, the thought I put into today's preparation will help me in future interviews.
One backhanded blessing of the last project's early, abrupt conclusion is that having today off gave me time to do this, and I'm not sure the interview would have turned out as well as it did had I not had the time to do so. Otherwise, I would have spent all day today working, rushed into the interview and, while a lot of what we discussed today would have still been discussed, I don't feel I would have had the chance to think about, cipher and ask the questions that made the interview so much better.
I'm not a believer in fate, but I do believe that what happens to us all and what we learn from it is a byproduct of our experience from preceding events, that everything we have learned is a product of the experiences we had before. This is one reason why I never regret the past, whether the mistakes, accomplishments or deus ex machina: If not for the past we would not know what we do in the present, since the past set up the experiences that built our knowledge.
Anyway, there are plans for subsequent interviews, involving the team I'd prospectively work with, next week. And while there are never guarantees with interviews, I hope to be a part of those because I'm certain they would go just as well as this interview did today.
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January 19th, 2010
08:57 pm
So I'm not working the gig at the University anymore and some of you already know why. Those who don't can ask if you're dying to know, but I'm not going to discuss it publicly since there's no real way to explain it without disclosing confidential information about the department in question. In fact, that was the difficulty in writing an entry today. I could have written this long ago, but wasn't sure how to go about it without spewing department info until I decided on the following vague and passive passage:
Basically, nobody died, nothing illegal or unscrupulous happened and nothing was ruined, but a big misunderstanding tanked it and the only people who are upset about it are people who don't know any better, whether or not they were involved. I'm not upset about it or with anyone: I understand where everyone's coming from and why people did what they did. If, say, I had to go for drinks with anyone involved, I probably would. I have no hard feelings and I would hope nobody else does either.
But now I'm looking for another gig. UW is cool with me as far as I know, and I contacted a couple other agency reps to see if I could coax a bite on an offer. Meanwhile, this developed very early in the AM and I had the whole day, so I walked back, brought some distilled water home before packing up my laptop and heading uphill for coffee, to clear up some info with friends (who were privately made aware of the situation), answered a few work ads because why not, and since I had nothing else going on I decided to start a week-long series inspired by a question asked in TQC and an old method my mother used to use for picking NFL teams in her workplace's NFL Picks contest.
If tomorrow brought a long-term work assignment or something similar, that would be terrific.
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January 18th, 2010
04:26 pm - Live from Fiore but not for long
I wrote a couple other DCB articles just now and dropped a cup of coffee. I got another late start to today, but did pound another huge dinner-style breakfast, one of the turkey breasts I bought yesterday at Trader Joe's, some asparagus, soy nuggets and Calrose rice. It's 1000+ calories, only 17 grams fat and vastly decreases the odds of a metabolic crash during midday on a weekend if I forget to eat.
However, I do need to dramatically turn around my sleep schedule now that I've stayed up past 1 am on consecutive nights and woken up around 9-10 am each of the last two mornings. Waking up at 7 am isn't going to feel good tomorrow, that's for sure, though it's no waking up at 6 am.
I have a job interview on Wednesday for a position that, while I'll avoid specifics unless it pans out, is near my home, would pay reasonably well with benefits and would fit my working skills very well. I know you've heard this half a dozen times. The interview is labeled, however, as preliminary, making it akin to a phone screen, so while I'd ask you to cross your fingers, the best that can come of this particular interview is... another interview, and there's no assurance that there wouldn't need to be another interview after THAT. Why they were skittish about a phone screen or just biting the bullet and hard-selecting five candidates from a pool of good ones to do full intermediate-level interviews with isn't clear to me. The more effort put into a hiring process, the less value each individual step adds to it and the more of everyone's time you end up wasting (hiring manager, department personnel, HR staff and, most of all, the applicants)... especially if the end result's only going to see you hire one person.
Needless to say, when I got a request to interview for a part time position I had applied for a while back, let's just say I wasn't thrilled.
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January 17th, 2010
07:49 pm - Live from ¡EL DIABLO!
After catching the Vikings game and much of the Chargers game, eating a big breakfast and a not as big lunch, I grabbed my things and headed uphill to get some coffee and get some writing done. After a sugar and fruit cube something and a Cuban Espresso I anticipated writing a piece on DCB about Ravens receiver Derrick Mason but instead landed on this piece which I enjoyed and which led me to write a long response piece. Derrick Mason will have to wait :P because that piece (and the side piece it links to) took a few hours.
My friends' two ticket Super Bowl prop bet is now half dead because the Chargers lost thanks to their overrated head coach's horribly conservative play calling down the stretch despite the success of his passing game against the #1 pass defense in the NFL. The Jets struggled until the 4th quarter to move the football, and the Chargers could have easily blown by a tiring defense late had Norv Turner turned the passing game loose instead of running with his washed up tailback.
The Vikings are still alive and if the Vikings can beat New Orleans next week my friends will break even as the Vikes were even money to reach the Super Bowl when I placed the bet for them.
I'm getting hungry so I may skate soon, maybe get something to eat or cook when I get home. Not much to report today: I spent much of the day watching football and/or writing.
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January 16th, 2010
10:22 pm
I actually sat down and watched the Ravens-Colts game tonight. I said on DCB that this game might go either way, but that the Ravens had the edge and... well... thanks to penalties, bad luck and leaning on the passing game instead of their strong running games, the Ravens fell into the latrine and the Colts took care of them 20-3. Not as close as I thought. Ravens got completely away from their strength on offense, leaned on their weaknesses and go figure they got their asses kicked. Funny that.
Today I got up late, cooked breakfast, walked out into foggy conditions and stopped into El Diablo, where I had a soy latte and pounded out NFL Playoff writeups for Sunday's games (I had written on today's games last night). Or, at least, I started on the Sunday writeups, and then I grabbed something to eat and migrated to Fiore where I finished them up over coffee.
I stopped at Trader Joe's and finished the grocery shopping I started last night at Metro Market. At Metro I reloaded on produce, asparagus, bananas and oranges, as well as 10 lbs of Calrose rice as I was almost out. I can't remember what else I got off the top of my head but I spent about $45 in all, $13 of which was the rice. There wasn't any hot deli food in my basket or any one-shots like TV dinners- oh yes, some soy products like not-so-chicken nuggets. Yes, I eat those, as a protein side dish to my pork/fish, vegetable and white rice dinners.
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January 15th, 2010
06:28 pm - Now the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation says it
Today was a deadline for a popular fellowship that's already seen more than 400 apps. Indeed, today was an eight hour run through dozens upon dozens of applications, up to the wire, and I'm sure paperwork for more will come following this sudden long weekend.
UW's website had a link to an interesting article and audio conversation, not so much interesting for any new information (since many, myself included, have been saying some of this for a long while), but interesting in that a reputable university think tank is also saying it.
When now-former Whole Foods CEO John Mackey said that Americans ought to focus more on getting healthier than on health insurance reform, he became a bad guy. Does Christopher Murray at IHME become a bad guy too, now that he's essentially drawn the same conclusion? Granted, Murray doesn't oppose the health care reform bill, but he echoes Mackey's sentiment that reforming health care is a small piece of solving the puzzle instead of the focal point thereof.
You know by now where I stand on the health care issue. Our inherent health, or lack thereof, is what drives the rising demand for health care, whether or not the delivery systems are working properly. So if Murray is not a villain for saying this but Mackey is, I can only conclude that the vitriol towards John Mackey was a media-manipulative partisan effort motivated single-mindedly towards passing Democrat legislation, rather than a rational opinion about the health care issue or about Mackey's opinion itself.
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January 14th, 2010
11:49 pm - Some items
- NFL Photos. I have about five weeks worth of archives to throw up. They'll go up this weekend.
- Work: I just realized today that Monday is MLK Day, a UW holiday, and that while I don't have to work that day, I also don't get paid for that day, which means I'm getting one day's pay less than I expected. Despite a hefty loss, I'll still manage, but again I really ought to have a gig waiting for me on the other side after next week so I can hit the ground running again (this gig saved January but didn't really open up my budget at all). I've already had to tap a good portion of savings to make sure a couple of mid-month payments clear this week (my first check doesn't come until the 25th; the next comes on Feb 10), and I'll probably have to tap again to make sure rent is paid on time.
- Work again: The deadline for the item I'm working on is this Friday and the procrastinative deluge of applications are now coming in, so today was fairly busy. I expect the same tomorrow and I wouldn't be surprised if Tuesday featured more of the same.
- Leno-Conan. I don't watch any major network TV save for football, so I can't say I have as serious an opinion on this as some of you, but I'm not really concerned for Conan because, while this is a rather public bitchslap from NBC, it's pretty clear he'll eventually end up with the 11:30 anchor slot on Fox, get to do far more than he would have on the Tonight Show, and probably end up when all is said and done as the #1 late night host on major network TV.
Look, I'm a mark for cheap jokes so unlike a lot of people grinding the axe with the Big Chin, I like Leno's 5 cent comedy. And sure, appeasing his ego in NBC refusing to fire him has played some sort of part in this whole saga. But apparently it came down not to his ratings, which were fine for the time slot, but to the local affiliates complaining about their newscasts' ratings tanking, because apparently Leno's 11:30 show got people to stay up and sit through their boring newscasts but now that he's on before 11 pm people are going to bed (since they're not going to stay up to watch Conan... not a bag on Conan so much as a testament to the loyalty of Jay's audience) and tanking their ratings. I think that has far more to do with the lacking quality of local network news than it does with Jay Leno or Conan, but NBC decided to appease them and set forth this whole chain of events.
It was unfair to job Conan like this, but it would've also been unfair to job Leno and can him completely over a problem that had little to do with his show itself. Basically, however, if Leno wanted to retire in the first place, he should have stayed retired instead of insistently coming back and doing a not-so late-night version of The Tonight Show in the first place. His actualized idea for a half-assed version of his old show after allegedly not wanting to do said show anymore pretty much set the stage for this dramarama of a TV saga. So if we're gonna blame him for anything, it shouldn't be for bad comedy or crybabying over getting canceled as much as pulling a Brett Favre and going "Now I'm gone... now I'm back! Take me back!"
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January 13th, 2010
10:52 pm - One more thought on specialized financial aid applications
(I lump scholarships, grants, fellowships, upyourassships, etcships all together in saying this)
Letters of recommendation have lost their meaning. If a school gets, say, 300 applications and require a letter of recommendation, the glowing recommendation of your professor or mentor ends up meaning little next to the other 299 glowing shit-don't-stink recommendations the others submitted. Basically, everyone's got a letter talking about how great of a person X Student is. Sure, as a skeptical screener of these applicants, your job is to read between the lines and find who marginally stands out from everyone else.
But the problem is that nobody does stand out, because once you weed out the obvious crap you've still got a couple hundred qualified apps, and everyone's got a terrific resume, terrific grades from a terrific school, a carefully crafted personal statement designed to press the right buttons with the right buzzwords, references and phrases (as advised by advisers, writing centers, Princeton Review, etc)... and a letter of recommendation that clearly is not going to say a critical word about the student or paint the student as anything other than the epitome of academic and character greatness. As Jack Palance spit at the end of Tango & Cash, "When the one Great Scorer comes to write against your name, he'll mark not that you won or lost... but how you played the game.... What bullshit!"
What academia needs to do (but won't do) to better discern between all these kids with inflated 3.8 GPAs, polished essays and resumes and glowing recommendations is to ask that they also include a Letter of Dis-Recommendation. Basically, have one or more people you worked or studied for, under or with, or someone otherwise close to you, write a letter critical of your shortcomings and flaws. This way, in light of all the finely painted-on business, the committee also gets an idea of what you need to work on.
Before you say this is unfair, keep in mind the workplace already does the same thing to some extent in checking references. Some technically can and do only ask for hire dates... but many will drill ex-supervisors for dirt.
Yeah, won't happen. But I just don't see how the present process is any more reliable in picking a superior recipient for a scholarly award out of hundreds of 3.8s and glowingly academic applicants well-versed in sweet talking their way up the chain than, say, putting all their names in a bag and drawing one out.
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08:23 pm - Your resume is an academic credit check
Because I deal in confidential data I try not to discuss work too much, but I felt this tidbit had to be shared. In maintaining anonymity plus confidentiality I'll remain vague about all but basic details.
I work with people who are screening apps for a fellowship, and one of the young ladies reading app letters comes out of her office and mentioned to my cohort that she thought a particular applicant's personal statement was particularly tremendous, but that she'd have to toss the app because the history in the guy's resume "jumped around" and that, while she didn't mind, she was sure the advisory committee wouldn't like him.
Now, as someone whose career resume, quote, jumps around (end quote), I suppose I ought to take some degree of offense... though to be fair my CV is a somewhat extreme case due to various paths less traveled, and grad school's not too high on my to-do list, so I won't.
But it seems from this that if you're a college student, and you at any point change your life plan or course of study, as far as senior academic advisers are concerned you become a second class citizen and thus disqualified. It's like you need to be a grad student who has said and done All the Right Things.
Along with this, I have no ill feelings towards the person who said this because, after all, she would have gladly moved that kid along, only tossing it because she knew how her superiors would react (of course, I assume she wasn't exaggerating their bias and just projecting her own onto the statement, but I'll make that assumption). If that's the bias of the advisory committee, then to be honest she was right to stone the application: You have to be mindful of who you're working with.
So to be fair, if anyone warrants vitriol over something like this (and I'm not so sure anyone does), it's the academic seniors who insist on kids who have unblemished resumes and academic/career paths. Basically, if you didn't go straight from high school to college, and/or stay in the same program throughout your undergrad and GRE-skip-and-jump right into the same subject in grad school, then you're probably at a disadvantage. To the pessimist in me, it appears that educational mistakes and truly unique experiences need not apply: The school is here to shape minds, and someone who had to tread the off-beaten path can't be molded into their image of a great scholar like a lock-stepper from Dartmouth or Smith College can.
In fact, with hundreds of applications received for this particular award, the Dept might do themselves good to openly advertise this as a disclaimer, to not only save themselves time and effort but save the time and effort of students who aren't a part of the proper academic caste so they can pursue a better academic future with someone who will want them instead of dismiss them. The school should offer a disclaimer that, "If your resume or C.V. shows two or more changes in major, or two or more career changes prior to your application, or two academic/career changes of any other kind, please do not apply for this fellowship as the advisory committee will reject you. Thanks." Or if you want to be a little more tactful, "Applicants must not have changed majors or careers more than twice in their lifetime." I mean, if you're going to DQ people for this, then you might as well let applicants know in future years so they don't waste their time and you don't waste yours with "bad" applications.
And glad to be aware of one fellowship that I can never possibly qualify for. Of course, for all I know they could all be like that.
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06:48 pm - Wednesday and such
I've spent most of today hunting down contact info for postgrad personnel at fine universities worldwide, perhaps for inquiries on potential research projects. I honestly have no idea why.
I briefly considered an old lunch idea I formulated back at the trust accountant gig, where instead of taking an hour lunch, I take two half hour breaks: I'd take them at 11 and 2:30. However, the issue isn't the logistics as it's very easy to do, but rocking the boat to where you needlessly annoy people you work with and suddenly for close-minded reasons you're a problem. It's not so much a knock on the people I work with as much as it's a knock on the office culture we as a society have created.
Anyway, I had those burritos again, though this time I had them for lunch, and saved the brown rice for later this afternoon. It took only 35 minutes to walk to QFC and back during the lunch hour, so that's neat. The burritos did not hit the spot, however, so that idea is tanked. I'll try something else tomorrow. Maybe.
But clearly, the idea worked as the 3:30 brown rice staved off any hunger pangs, and only now as I type this am I getting hungry.
Once again, this is as much excitement as you'll get out of me for now. I have a couple actual topics for later, though. Stay tuned. Or don't ;P
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06:40 am - Yeah, so I woke up about half an hour ago
Around 9 pm I laid down for a second after eating dinner and was out like a light moments later, a coincidence since my lights were on when I woke up :P or something to that effect.
I've had one cup of coffee in the last two days. Coincidence? I THINK NOT. But seriously, they don't keep a ton of coffee in the fine kitchen, and once I get off work at 5:30 there's no need for coffee, so I just haven't had that much. I had one cup on Monday, and then a cup of black tea on Tuesday, and between that and separate hits from a now-empty 5 Hour Energy bottle on both days, that's all the caffeine I've taken in. I had, over the last four weeks, really increased my coffee/tea intake (averaging about two cups a day in various capacities), and though it wasn't as much during this past week I still drank more than I'm used to, or some say ought to.
So maybe the disappearance of caffeine took an edge off, which is how I was able to lay down at 9 pm and get 9 hours sleep without any effort.
Meanwhile, I had a strange family dream where my father tried to give me $500 as a gift and I refused on account of holy crap dad don't you need that money.
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January 12th, 2010
08:15 pm - Not much to say these days
Work is fine. It's a two week project so I'm not going to get too attached. But I do stay disconnected for the whole eight hours, moreso than at most jobs I've had. Usually I'll check the intertubes during breaks or something but here I find I'm able to keep working throughout the shift. The work itself isn't exactly invigorating, just processing applicant paperwork sent from universities and tracking down contact info for international PhD programs. But it's a fairly relaxed situation and a pleasant work environment. I just end up disconnected, and then coming home and trying to catch up on what's happening with you folks and in the news. I was worried about a deluge but I'm happy to report that most of the data, much like this post ;P, isn't all that interesting.
My single biggest issue after two days so far has been avoiding hunger pangs during the afternoon. If they come during the AM it's not a terrible deal because lunch comes at 12:30 and they're gone. But when they come at 3 pm or 5 pm, that's a problem because lunch isn't right around the corner. Each of the last two nights, I've stopped at QFC and gotten something from the hot deli, which hit the spot each time and from there I've been fine.
Today I had a breakfast of two baked sausage links and a hash brown patty. I nursed 18 oz of soy milk with a hint of protein powder after I arrived at work. I had a cup of shredded oats around 10:30 and my 2.5 cups of brown rice with the egg whites at lunch. I got a bit hungry before I had my orange around 3:30-4:00, but the pangs hit again around 4:30 and even after a Clif bar when I left work at 5:30 it still wasn't quite enough so I hit the deli.
Chances are likely I can solve the problem with something more substantial at the 3:30 hour. I'll figure that out in the next day or two.
No really, this is pretty much the height of drama in my life right now. That's great.
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January 11th, 2010
11:25 pm - Food and drink
FTR, I'll probably do most of my diet and exercise ranting over here, now that I got around to assembling a page with a pseudo-blog. I figure it's more productive to discuss it in an appropriate environment than bore you with meal details, but once more for old time's sake let me go into the details.
So I started a new diet plan today with no advance test run or anything of the sort, just 'okay here is what I plan to eat and... let's go!' I woke up on time, 7 am, and cooked the brown rice with little trouble, but didn't realize until too late that I hadn't cooked the egg whites. D'OH but I'll manage.
I also shake up a soy milk and protein powder shake and pack it. I baked a tilapia fillet, the last one I had, and ate it quickly after a shower. I grab an apple and an orange, pack it and walk the 1.1 mile in the rain to work... but forgot my roasted soy nuts and a Clif bar. That may or may not have sent things sideways.
Now, I did okay for most of the day despite hunger pangs, especially in the PM. The soy nuts were supposed to be a 10:30 tide me over to get some protein in the system until lunch. Without them, all I had was the soy milk I had nursed since shortly after I got into work and a glass of water I had poured once the milk ran out, and let's just say that didn't do the trick.
I ate my brown rice at lunch and it sated me at the time, but I got hungry again around 2:30, and not even my orange and apple at 3:30 with another glass of water could stem the tide. And the Clif bar was supposed to be the item I ate right after work en route along my 1.1 mile walk home.
Wanting to eat ASAP after work I walked to the QFC and ordered a couple of those hot fried burritos from the deli. I crushed them both on the way home and that did the trick until I cooked a full dinner once I got home (I WAS going to eat multigrain cereal and save dinner for 8-ish). The dinner shut my stomach up, and some dry shredded oats cereal an hour or two later helped as well.
Now... this meal plan could have worked fine except I forgot three key items, two of which were protein items: The soy nuts, the egg whites and the Clif bar. The nuts themselves are 12g of protein, 120 calories and I was supposed to dose about an ounce of them at 10:30. The egg whites are only 50 calories but 10g protein, and they're supposed to go with the brown rice at lunch. Could that additional 22g have made a world of difference in whether or not I felt hungry today? We'll find out tomorrow, because I sure as hell won't forget them then, but I have a feeling that day two will go a lot better for my digestive tract.
And yes, I got my full workout in tonight. I also just crushed a protein bar, so now I'm over by a few hundred calories: 70g fat, 505g carbo, 150g protein... the anticipated totals were 55-60g fat, 470g carbo, 130g protein. Again, we'll try again tomorrow.
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10:23 pm - Pushing paper in a fine environment
Being a temp and all for the better part of the last ten years, I've had a few dozen first days and after a while people get put off by how casually and non-kiss-assedly you go about your business on the first day once you've gone through the routine a few dozen times, especially when on a two week assignment. You introduce yourself only part of the time and when the occasion presents itself, while not seeing the need to bother if it appears the other person doesn't either. To them, there's just this new guy in the hallway with a stack of papers and/or a coffee cup with his head up like he's been here forever and okay, whatever. At least, the latter SHOULD be your response ;P
Now, the office. Pleasant people. The people in particular that I work with are very friendly and we'll get along fine. It's a VERY nice office: The Gates Foundation bought them some of the nicest, lavish, shiniest, most elegantly sculpted digs you can build. Walking through it at times almost feels excessive in itself. I can't even walk past the reception desk yet during the workday because I almost feel like doing so is outside of my pay grade.
This is always a concern at jobs, but not here: They'll have enough work for me to do. Today I scanned and routed a bunch of various paperwork associated with grad apps for a fellowship, dozens of transcripts, resumes, letters of recommendation, personal letters etc. This is clearly a valued fellowship as we're getting applicants from the Ivy League schools, the prize private colleges like Smith, Grinnell and Brandeis and of course all the major public schools. And in case you're wondering how competitive these sorts of things are, these kids basically all have 3.5s and 3.8s with international study and work experience, not to mention recs from bosses at work student jobs and advisers on major research studies and published efforts. I mean, basically being a super student with a mountainside of extracurricular accomplishments only gets your foot in the door.
I spent all day verifying GPAs, then scanning and attaching files. I flew through a bunch of paperwork over the rest of eight hours and there was still a pile left for tomorrow, not including the next batch we'll get in the mail tomorrow and the subsequent days after. Eight hours didn't necessarily fly by, but never at any point did working really feel like a grind. I don't anticipate that it'll go beyond the allocated two weeks as the application deadline's approaching and obviously once that passes the workflow stops. But I certainly wouldn't mind staying here if for any reason it came to that ;P
As for the current diet and exercise... I'll get to that in a bit.
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January 10th, 2010
10:33 pm - Assembled meal plan
In light of this recent analysis, I crunched some numbers over the drone of Al Gore and Mike McGinn on the Seattle Channel. Having just gone grocery shopping, I mapped out a workable diet plan and used SparkPeople to get some totals and see if it would meet my goals.
Amazingly enough, the following would keep me around 50g fat a day, ensure I get about 130-135g protein and help me average about 2800 calories each day. It also allows for consumption of one of the tilapia fillets I earlier mentioned trying to take out as well as bypassing the hash brown patties and sausage, but turns out WITH them I can still meet my goals. In fact, they help meet my daily requirements as well as help sate me in the AM.
- Get up at 7 (and one great thing about this current gig is that it's within walking distance and starts at 8:30, which allows me to wake up later) and cook a batch of brown rice with egg whites. Package the whole mess and bring it to work. This will serve as lunch.
- Pour in 18 oz soy milk and add a 1/4 serving of soy protein powder, then shake and take. This I will nurse en route to work.
- Bake either a tilapia fillet or one hash brown patty with two sausage links. Eat whatever I bake before I leave home at 8 am.
- Pack an orange, an apple, my bag of roasted soy nuts, a Clif bar and the brown rice I prepared.
At work, I'll eat an ounce of the soy nuts at 10:30, reheat and eat the brown rice at lunch around 12:30, eat the orange and the apple at 3:30 and then eat the Clif Bar on my way home after work.
Once I return home, I'll cook and eat a pot of the multigrain cereal, and then around 8:30-9:00 I'll prepare and eat a fish fillet or pork steak with Calrose rice and asparagus.
It's airtight, and it can work. I am on the way to excess-fat loss.
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04:43 pm - No football but a couple long walks and a few things learned
I left for football a bit late, around 11:45 (they were scheduled to start at noon). Before then, I had to finish two DCB writeups that didn't quite turn out to be writeups, eat breakfast, shower and pack up.
I hopped a bus Downtown and another bus to the CD, the first time since moving here that I've ridden the 27. I hopped off at 23rd, walked down to Garfield High (the meetup point), bought a bottle of water to break a 20 to help defer the cost of new flags, and had to piss. No big deal, I figured, since there's a park restroom near the fields... except they decided at some point to lock up the fields during Sunday, so now I've got to piss and holding it for 3 hours while playing football was out of the question. The nearby convenience store didn't have a restroom, so my best bet was to find a coffee place or a restaurant that had a restroom where I could grab a quick bite. I walked a few blocks down to MLK and found two places, a low-rent coffee place and a place claiming 'fast food' called Catfish Corner. The coffee place's restroom was out of order and I quickly ducked back out the door. I walked into Catfish Corner and, seeing they had a functional restroom, quickly scanned the menu and ordered something light and safe, i.e. the prawns and fries plate. Which set me back over $8. That didn't even include a tip (which of course I left). Uh.... well, since I came in there for a reason, I ducked in the restroom and took care of business before taking a seat.
The food... it was delicious, sure. It certainly wasn't as fast as advertised: It took 15 minutes for my plate to arrive. The breading on the prawns was crisp, not too oily, the fries were fresh and crisp. But there wasn't much on the plate. It was akin to what you get from Ivar's, except the quality of the food was a bit better, they offered hot sauce (which I didn't use) and the price was a buck or two higher (and keep in mind Ivar's prices are a bit inflated to begin with). I certainly didn't hate the meal, but if I'm gonna pay $9 for a meal, it needs to give me more than that. That said, this place would make a killing in Capitol Hill because hipsters hate money and just eat this sort of delicious and overpriced/undersized shit up.
So I walked back to Garfield, walked up to the football field, and discovered a lacrosse team practicing on the entire field. Having put my phone/wallet/all other things in my backpack earlier, I bet I missed a phone call, and sure enough DC left a message alerting me of this development and advising me the game had moved to Franklin HS.
Now, three problems:
- Though I know Franklin HS is on the South End, I hadn't a clue where exactly it was, only knowing that relative to my location it was a bit far, and a bus could get me there if I knew where for sure it was, which I did not. At best, I could hop a 48 to Rainier Avenue and either hope that eventually I stumbled upon it or hop a 7 and jump off once I see it. However, I paid a cash fare and the ORCA transfer I had was about to expire meaning I'd have to pay another full fare just to get there, and another to come back home, and I only had enough on the pass for the fare I paid to get here, and one more.
- Though I managed to check my voicemail, my phone's battery was low on power. By this point (it was about 1:15-1:30 and the message came at 12:30 as I initially reached the CD) the gang had likely migrated over and began play, at which point DC's phone was probably back in his bag and out of earshot. At best, I could leave a message and await a call back that I likely wouldn't get before my phone ran out of juice, but in all likelihood I leave a message that doesn't get heard until play stops an hour or two later.
- Even if I decided to try and track down Franklin HS's location, by the time I would get there I would, at best, maybe get to play about an hour or so at most before everyone called it a day.
So I decided to turn around and head back to base. Thankfully I had just enough time on my transfer to escape paying fare on the 27 into Downtown, and I decided to save a fare and just walk the 2 miles back home from Downtown. That took enough out of me that, along with the beating heart and shortness of breath from an earlier run to catch a 16 Downtown, I realized that maybe I need to get in better shape anyway before playing football again. They reportedly play every fortnight, so there will certainly be another game in the near future.
Meanwhile, I took a breather when I got home, packed my laptop and took yet another hike, this time up the hill for some coffee. I've got to do some grocery shopping and then get some rest tonight, as I'm heading back to work tomorrow morning. I'm helping a UW department with grad apps in a Belltown office for a couple weeks and they're paying enough to cover January, so huzzah!
More later.
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January 9th, 2010
04:50 pm - More food research
Though my weight has stuck around 165-170 pounds and my weight is by all accounts healthy for my height, I have taken a recent interest in burning fat, as my 24.5-25.0 BMI and my lack of super manly muscle indicates that I've got some excess fat to burn.
I ducked in to Queen Anne Books and read a couple books that indicate that I can maintain a high activity level in the 2700-2900 calorie range, slightly lower than what I'm taking in. One book whose title I've since forgotten mentions a calorie threshold that everyone needs to fuel daily activity, a topic that's obviously been researched and confirmed all over. SparkPeople says the bare minimum for me is somewhere around 2070 calories, not including any additional physical activity such as exercise.
So I decided to do some research on fat/carb/protein ratios, and try to shape my diet to a healthy ratio relative to the baseline. One ratio offered says to make 20-30% of your calories fat, 25-35% protein and the remaining 40-50% carbohydrates.
I decided to break down the base 2070 calories by the stated ratios, and then fill in the other 600-800 or so calories with carbohydrates to get to 2700-2900. The reasoning is that the base requires a proper mix of the three different types of calories. But other research I've found indicates that you shouldn't take in more than 2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight or you'll damage your kidneys. So after converting my weight (170 lb = 77.18 kg... each pound is 454g and obviously 1000g = 1 kg) I discovered that I should not take in more than 155g protein, so I decided to stick to 130-150g of protein a day, more like 140.
So beyond the proper ratio for the base 2070, I don't want to take in any more fat than is needed for that 2070. Beyond that, I don't want to take in any more protein due to the kidney risks beyond 155g (and to meet the proper ratios for the 2070 I'd already be around 140-145g). Thus to get to 2700-2900, all of those calories needs to be carbohydrates, and that makes sense. Carbs are energy, and when working out or otherwise engaging in strenuous effort, your body reaches for stored carbs to get its energy. Thus it makes sense to bridge the gap between 2070 and 2700-2900 with carbs... provided that you use them!
Thus the other half is to make sure I'm doing the exercise needed to burn all 600-800 additional calories I'm taking in. An argument can be made to scale back if I'm not expending as much effort over a period of time. For reference, 30 minutes of strength training burns roughly 215 calories. An hour of walking at a normal pace with the bookbag on burns about 300 (245 with nothing). I've now got a formal benchmark of activity: The key is to meet it, whether I'm scheduled to do strength training or cardio that day, whether I spend an hour each way walking or I just walk to the coffee place and back. If I find I'm not doing the work needed to burn all those calories, then I need to scale back the carb intake.
But in the interim, here is the fat/carb/protein breakdown for my base 2070. All totals are rounded:
Fat: 45 to 70 grams. Ideal total: 50.
Carbohydrates: 210 to 260 grams. Ideal total: 260.
Protein: 130 to 155 grams (the original max was 183, but again the 2 per kg rule says to keep a max of 155). Ideal total: 145.
From there, I add an additional 160 to 210 grams of carbohydrates to get to a desired total of 420 to 470 grams. That's obviously less than the 500-600 I was previously aiming for, though to be fair I frequently fell short of that 500-600 number (and probably good thing I did too since I didn't get nearly enough exercise to burn that much off).
Cutting about 30-40% of my fat intake's going to be a challenge. It's not the rock bottom totals many dieters ill-advisedly aim for, but it's certainly far less than what most people take in, and less than the 70-90g I consistently take in per day. I'm already pretty careful with the usage of oil, never more than a small spoon taken in per meal and certainly not much more used when cooking. Here's what needs to get swapped out:
- The tilapia fillets. I love these things but there's 17g of fat in each one right off the bat. Replacing these with a regular baked fillet of salmon or other fish will probably cut about 5-10g at least.
- Restaurant meals. Pretty much all of these are fat and sodium bombs. They're also wallet bombs, so eliminating them would help on more than just the fat and sodium front.
- Typical hot breakfast foods. Egg whites are okay. Hash browns and sausage, even when baked, are not okay. Without any oil, two sausage links and two hash brown patties pack about 33g of fat all by themselves (one pattie instead of two makes 18g). Bust out the multigrain cereal!
I think I can do it with those simple adjustments. Not eating at restaurants isn't exactly hard, locking in oats can be done, and interchanging different types of fish is also easy.
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January 8th, 2010
11:40 pm - Rainy Friday
I slept in until 9-ish, then got up, made and ate breakfast, and worked out. I actually hadn't worked out in over a week, so it was good to get that in, especially given I agreed to play flag football this Sunday.
I walked up the hill for coffee and several hours writing this. Among other things, I suppose. I went up to Julia's for a big and relatively inexpensive happy hour meal, then had a soy latte at El Diablo and took a rainy walk back home, where I've played several hours of Tecmo Super Bowl on the Virtual NES.
Here's the thing with TSB... sure, I play it and sure, I started 6-0 with the Chiefs before losing 4 straight in pwnage fashion including an embarrassing loss to the 1-8 Rams after a 100 yard rushing day by something named Buford McGee, but what I spend most of the time doing is going through roster after roster between weeks, benching fringe players in bad condition, starting guys in good condition, figuring out personnel combos to get the players in best condition on the field, revamping the playbooks to use them all properly etc. And then I run another week and see what happens. It's funny to see the 1991 Bucs and Cards sitting at 7-4 while the 1991 Cowboys and Bills are each 5-6, without any real trickery on my part. I do things like start fullbacks at TE or play Eric Metcalf at wide receiver or make Andre Rison return kicks for a week while his Falcons teammates on the bench get a start or two. Also, Steve Grogan and Billy Joe Tolliver suck but you knew that.
I've got to write two more playoff previews tomorrow, for Sunday's games, and then need to get cracking on a few dozen articles.
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January 7th, 2010
10:48 pm - Hey look, a sealed can of worms
I keep an online profile on OkCupid. I threw it up years back when I took their personality test and other quizzes, and I've just left it up since even though like many others I clearly haven't used it for its intended purpose. Every now and then I'll browse the... uh... selection.
See, here's the thing with dating. Never minding the obvious insecurities over whether or not someone will find you acceptable, let alone get along with you, let alone want a relationship, let alone not be crazy or otherwise repulsive themselves... relationships are a lot like what people say about having children. Nearly everyone who's done it sells you on how rewarding the experience is, the joys etc... but no one really talks about the downsides. The downside of your bundle of joy is the 24/7/365 job of watching over a child, keeping your child fed, sheltered, dressed and diapered, and answering their every errant shriek over the most trivial of things. For every moment of joy there are several never ending pains in the ass. I even stand to reason that the ideas of joy are just a mantra mothers and fathers tell themselves and each other to keep themselves from losing their minds over what many realize (too late) was a very bad idea.
Everyone wants a relationship, and when everyone thinks of relationships they think of the hugs and kisses and gifts and companionship and (for those less prudish of you) the sex... but no one ever thinks of the consequences. You've got to shell out for dates. You've got to not only dress up but now you're self-conscious of whether or not you're dressed right, how you're acting, how you should act, what traits of your personality are okay to show and which ones you shouldn't show and blah blah blah. We'd like to think we can be ourselves around the ideal mate but all of you know it doesn't work that way. We all put on our social personalities before we go outside, and what I see from you isn't totally who you are and vice versa.
So let's say the money spent or whatever leads to a relationship. Now you've got to stay in regular contact. Now you've got to be self conscious of who you talk with, if a conversation with someone of your gender of choice will be considered infidelious flirting. Now you've got to be mindful of holidays, anniversaries, Valentine's Day, gift giving holidays, finding a gift that isn't too excessive yet isn't considered insultingly trite etc etc etc.
And the best part: Your free time is no longer completely yours. Now you've got to be mindful of what your partner's doing, of what your partner likes to do. Even if you're separate that evening, you have to be mindful of where you're going, who you're with, when you come back home, keeping in touch etc etc.
Some of these things will come into play for some more than others. But basically, my point is that while I think it would be nice to go date and get in a relationship, I'm also mindful of the consequences, and realize that I take a lot of perks of single freedom for granted, perks that would disappear if 2-3 dates turned into something serious.
And that never minds the possibility of rejection, which is also fun in its own right ;P
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January 6th, 2010
11:59 pm - Wednesday
I know I just had pizza earlier in the week, but I decided to bite one and try Olympia Pizza's Queen Anne location. I previously had pizza a long while back at their Capitol Hill location on 15th and liked what I had. I luckily got in and out before what looked like a 6 pm rush of moms and kids, and had a quiet place mostly to myself beforehand. The sauce was rich, the crust was thick, the blended cheese was thick, and the pepperoni and mushroom wasn't bad, though it got lost amidst the other three ingredients. I enjoyed it enough, though obviously I'm not looking for a reason to pay $12 to have it again unless I'm drowning in the sort of income where spending that much isn't such a big deal.
I'm eating less in the afternoons. Sure, I'm still having breakfast, and actually I've had bigger breakfasts over the last few days, eating the tilapia and Calrose rice I'd usually have for dinner at 9 in the morning, and then eating a brown rice plate in the evening. But during midday I have very little, just coffee, a banana and a protein bar during the midafternoon, and maybe something else here and there... except obviously for these last two times where I had a big pizza. I've also hoofed it up and back down the Hill to get home each day, so we'll see if these 2400-2800 calorie days produce some weight/fat loss, or additional fat gain. I'll wonk over my specific nutrition stats later :P
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03:03 pm - Austin works stiff with Stallone
Wrestling fans will love this: Rocky no-sold Stone Cold's Stunner, so they repeated the spot and Austin MADE him sell it.
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January 5th, 2010
11:48 pm - On today
I bum rushed eight articles over four hours this afternoon on Helium, and then walked down to the post office as I keep forgetting to pick up my held mail from my trip. Yes, I have the sense to put a hold on my mail while I'm gone. I'm sure you're shocked.
Well, the lady comes back and all I have are fliers and a menu from the pizza place I ate at a few days ago. Uh... glad to see I didn't miss anything!
I got a call from the University this morning, and they want me to take on a two week temp project offsite near Downtown starting next Monday. It would be 40 hours each of the two weeks and it would pay well enough that I wouldn't have to worry about January. I would have to find something after Jan 22, but still, bills paid!
Tonight I've played a bunch of Tecmo Super Bowl thanks to virtual NES and used save codes to start a season with the Chiefs. Despite lacking the chops to play just about any other game on the VNES interface (seriously, I tried Super Mario Bros 2 and couldn't get past the first level, and that was a game I pwned back in the day), I'm 4-0 with the Chiefs so far. Fun!
Tomorrow and the rest of this week will be about more writing. No sports writing today since I was so locked in with the other articles. But now I not only have the rest of the week off, but I don't have the worry of how the bills are going to get paid, which was in the back of my mind as this week started.
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January 4th, 2010
11:22 pm - Good evening
I set my alarm and woke up at 7 am this morning, if for no other reason than to get going early and get to writing and whatever else. Sure, I suppose it helps to get back to an early schedule, but really I just wanted to have breakfast and write. I bought some sausage and hash brown patties over the weekend and baked some of each. The patties are okay and the sausage is buhhhh.
Over coffee this morning, I spent a couple hours longer than I expected working on this NFL playoff preview, and much to my chagrin I still need to cover the other three games for completeness sake. Later I took a walk, had a banana and stopped into El Diablo, where I discovered some news that led to this writeup. Fortunately that didn't take nearly as long. I ran out of steam around sundown and eventually headed home. I've spent this evening watching the Fiesta Bowl (way to sputter in the spotlight, TCU) and playing around with Virtual NES, where I got to play (albeit using the clunky controls of the keyboard) several old games of my youth and a few others that I hadn't previously touched.
That is all. I'm going to bed.
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January 3rd, 2010
12:35 pm - Some notes
- Any gambler who bets the NFL in Week 17 is a fool. It's so much like betting the preseason: So many teams are resting starters for the playoffs and playing the young backups to see what they've got for 2010 that the team's playing resemble little of the team that played in the same laundry the previous 16 weeks.
The above point turned into a DCB entry once I got into the NFL's plan to expand the regular season.
- I have a headache. Not sure if it's from caffeine withdrawals (I went from 2-4 cups a day in Vegas to one, maybe two back here in Seattle), or a lack of water (I didn't quite get enough yesterday). I still have a bottle of Aleve so I popped one and will hope for the best.
- On the Ballhype Contest I had researched and written on... I am destroying it right now and have been for a while. I almost feel embarrassed at how quickly I turned the contest into a walkover (too bad you don't win much of anything). Within 3 months I have become the 12th all time leader in points and my ridiculous 200+ point week already has me breathing down 11th's neck.
At this point, my main goal is to become the game's all time leading scorer with as few picks as possible. I was initially hoping to do it by May or June. But at this rate, I may crush it by April, with maybe 1/4 of the correct picks by the current all time leader... unless they overhaul the rules of the game or something.
- I slept 8-9 hours last night, probably the most sleep in a night I've had in about a month. I felt beat at the end of last night after all that walking, and didn't really feel like getting out of bed this AM but compelled myself forward.
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