Working hard...

What is group of working dogs called?  A Business?  A Corporation?  A Wrassle?

Frankly with the inclusion of Cinnamon, we are being very generous in the use of the word "Working."

One week back in the saddle...

So I have resumed my 4HB program, after being in a sort of maintenance mode (besides losing most of July to a Pancake and Rum binge.)  July was a bad month. 10 lbs of indulgence and self pity.

However, since I restarted last week I have lost 6.4 lbs already.  That is with just cutting out processed carbs from my diet again.  One cheat day on Saturday*.

I have modified the diet a bit.  There is a similar program put forth in It Starts with Food by Melissa and Dallas Hartwig.  Like the 4HB it is basically a modified Paleo diet.   I found their explanations excellent, but as one friend pointed out they are a fair amount preachy.  However I particularly like how the explained that there is no food Switzerland.  All food is either net beneficial or net harmful.  Twinkies are harmful (not that I eat Twinkies.)  They break down the food is to satisfying one of four criteria, if it doesn't meet it... you don't eat it.  (go read the book if you want to know about the criteria)

Some key differences between their program and the 4HB:

No legumes of any sort, including lentils, kidney beans, and peanuts (which means no PB)
No seed or nut based oils (not a big deal I mostly cook with olive or coconut oil already)
No cheat days.  They recommend 30 days start without any cheat days whatsoever.  In fact they reckon that once you make it past the 30 days you won't need any cheat days.
No Red Wine, in fact they go so far as to suggest cutting all alcohol out of your diet forever.
Fruit is allowed, and even encouraged.
Processed proteins such as whey protein are Verboten.

In any case I am switching to that eating model, but keeping the cheat days, and maybe the protein powder in the form of fruit smoothies in the morning (otherwise realistically I won't have any breakfast.)

I'll give it 30 days with and see how I feel.



*Cheat day is sort of a misnomer.  I actually still am not going crazy on Saturdays.  In this case the only thing different was I got an eclair from the coffee shop Saturday morning.  Otherwise it was perfectly normal food day.

Aaaaand we're back

So here we are again.

Lets get some questions out of the way, shall we?

Why Go Dark?
I had series of personal, financial, and professional events that derailed me and I didn't think it was good idea for me to be blogging at that time.

So things are better now?
Actually probably worse.

So why restart the blog?
I have been strictly forbidden to go on a homicidal, suicidal, or any other -idal based rampage. So I figure I might as well start sharing the random thought my head produces with you again.

Are you still in Architecture school? Is the blog title going to change? Who is your pick for the Superbowl?
Whoa whoa whoa! So many questions! One at a time.

Architecture school is on hold for at least two years (unless something magical happens.) I may however be starting up IT courses in January so in a few months you will see me making cranky noises about subnet masks instead of masses.

I was tempted to change the title of the blog. But frankly everything I came up with sounded either whiny and self-pitying OR revealed to much about my master plan to take over the world. For now the title stays.

Superbowl? DIEINAFIREKTHNXBYE

So what ARE you going to write about?
Technology, geek life in cowboy-land, progress with the studio (or lack there of), weight loss (new program starts today,) and whatever else strikes my fantasy.

What about the dating thing? We want salacious details!
I appear to have better odds of winning the Superbowl, K? Besides this isn't MySpace, get your mopey schadenfreude elsewhere.

Got any other questions?  Post em below.

Kenpo review...

After each belt passed there is a review session where you go back over the preceding belts.  As each belt gets harder and more belts are behind you the review sessions get longer and longer.  Since I passed my 3rd brown all we've been doing is reviewing and have only made it through 3 1/2 belts.

However, the worrisome part is tonight's review was of Blue belt and it feels like I am seeing some of the these techniques for the first time...  2 years since I tested off that belt and clearly I have not practiced it enough since then.

Damnation.

I should note that this review period is also taking much longer then the preceding ones because Chris isn't just teaching me the technique, now he is teaching me how to teach each of the techniques as well; variants, problems to watch for and ways of adapting to individual students are all covered.

However, for 3rd brown I started recording Chris doing the techniques properly, and then going back over and watching that belt over and over again and transcribing each of the steps.  I also film myself doing the same techniques, and watch the film of myself making corrections as I go along (this was really helpful for 3rd brown katas.)  I have started to do so for these belt reviews as well.  So far I have recorded Gold, Orange and tonight I got Purple, but have only transcribed Gold.

Here's an example from my 3rd Brown notes, with my abbreviations unabbreviated :

Bending the Limb

Aggression: Cross Wrist Grab (Right Hand described, works for either side)

Right Hand makes a small circle to the inside and up, lifting attackers arm to shoulder Level and you re-grab. Step in Left Foot to forward stance and strike attacker’s ribs with horizontal elbow while rotating into horse stance perpendicular to attacker, Left Hand rises up and clears attacker’s arm with a downward hooking back-fist, pivot into a forward stance and Right Hand shoots forward to palm-strike face.

Perils of online dating - Craigslist Edition

On a lark I posted an ad on craigslist.

Time to first spammer: 2 Minutes
Time to first offer to see "sexy pictures": 4 minutes
Time to first broken English attempt to get me to click a suspicious link: 7 minutes

It's been up for 45 minutes and I have received 7 e-mails, none legitimate.

Why Dating sucks... (A numbers game)

This is semi-cross posted on facebook, and a couple of you have already heard me sound off on this, but bear with me because I have refined the number a bit.

Recently I watched an interesting BBC documentary on science of attraction, where they brought together a bunch of psychologists, anthropologist, etc to design a program for predicting what people find attractive. The factored in compatibility of interest, similarity of features, and each researcher had their pet theories of what was going on in the study participants head. They were all wrong.

Overwhelmingly they found that initial impression was set by one thing only and it was different for the sexes.

For men: Waist to hip ratio.

For Women: Height.

The other factors had a contribution to the long rating of their opposites, but generally an initial opinion was set, and didn't vary by more then 10%+/- after that.

The part that is relevant for me is generally women are looking for men that are ~5" taller than them and 3-4 years older.   Sadly... statistices does not back up the point in having hope.

You see, Bozeman has ~30,000 people according to the city manager. Using the last last census 23% are between 25-44. With an average martial rate of 44.9% (we'll call it 45%) leaving 3795 single people, of whom ~52.6% are men, leaving 1838 possible single women, cut out the 15% smokers and the 10% of the population with serious pet allergies 1405 is starting to look pretty bleak.

If we also rule out those that the NIMH classifies as having a "serious" mental health issue which is apparently 5% of the female population

That leave 1335 potential ladies to meet.
If we are generous and include the women who are an inch shorter then I am (52.4%) of thee population then there are 699 single women meeting the very *minimum* standards, not factoring for common interests or anything similar.

That is a 2.5% chance.  That is the optimistic number.   

I'm not going to calculate the what the "optimal" height and age match is because I would probably make me want to crawl under the covers and never leave again.

Comments back to normal (ish)

So last night an obnoxious twit was spamming the comments.

Turns out there is no real tools to blacklist commentators or IP ranges.

So comment moderation is turned on now.

Please continue about your snarky posting.

Spammer Begone.

Comments Disabled for the foreseeable future.

Saturday non-post.

Didn't weight myself.  Didn't do my exercises.  Spent the morning at work doing an upgrade to our server that did not fix the problem the engineers promised me it would.  I am drinking rum, not enjoying my newly minted single status and being propositioned by cowgirls online.

Some days I wonder why I get our of bed.

Oh that's right, because the dog will go out at 8am or bad things happen to the carpet.

Saturday Goal Reached (mostly)

I have have confession to make.  I didn't quit hit my goal.  I missed it by .2 lbs.  Now, if you guys really want to see a picture of me in my swimming trunks in all my hairy glory I'll post is but .2  pounds is close enough for me to call this part of the plan a success.

So I have lost 29.8 lbs over 95 days, which is a loss of 10.5 of my body-weight and an average of .31 lbs a day.

And although I nearly stalled completely the last couple of weeks, thanks to illness, I suspect those numbers will start getting much better as the HIIT starts to happen every other day.  (Right now it's two days a week.)

That's about all my news.  I'm off for apple filled crepes to celebrate.

On Cheating death (or at least serious injury)

So it is my belief that is it far better to be smart, then to be lucky.  However... when you fail to be smart and luck saves you... be thankful.

Today I was doing a simple household chore, that many of do every day.  Dishes.

I'm a little OCD about dishes, having been cut several times by broken glasses or carelessly dumped in knives. So I no longer have fragile glasses, and my OMG sharp knives I carefully stack off to the side separate from the other dishes.  They are OMG sharp, because sharp knives seemingly paradoxically cause fewer kitchen accidents as they do their job better then dull knives.  This means less chance of using to much force... and therefore less chance of injury.  Unless you do something stupid like gesture with them and then they will open your finger to the bone before you will even notice.  I've done that.  It was stupid and painful.

So I am merrily washing dishes having just a few, and have done all the big stuff and am rooting around for the silverware and I'm swishing my hands back and forth when I slide my wrist, at speed across something inexplicably cold in the scalding hot water.

I freeze.

Count to 5.

Carefully lift my hands out of the water and see a faint red indentation on my wrist almost exactly paralleled to all the lovely ligaments and blood carrying tubes in my arm.

I very gingerly reach back into the water and promptly cut my finger on my OMG sharp Santuko chef knife which has magically transported itself in the water.  I carefully fish it out and realize that I had managed to slam my wrist at speed on the dull side of the knife.  Hard enough to dent my skin.  If by chance the blade had been facing the other way...  many many stitches at the minimum.

So I got lucky.

And boy am I thankful

Saturday... schamturday.

Let's see...

So after a rough week my weight basically back where I started from last week.  No I don't know why, but not particularly worried about it.

In other news, as I mentioned earlier I passed my 3rd Brown Kenpo test.  And I inexplicably found myself with a Saturday when I have no plans, no practice scheduled, nothing but an entire weekend of vacuuming dog hair.

So I had pizza and daiquiris.  First pizza since December or so.  First daiquiri since ...oh last summer maybe?

But it' 60+ degrees out (well it was) and clear blue skies, surely that's good enough excuse for consumption of large amounts of rum and fruit juice yes?  I probably should have waited for them to wear off before writing this...

hmm...

No matter.

Other micro-updates.

HIIT train sucks.  But at least it's over quick.

What sucks worse the HIIT is going into work and getting locked in an elevator when the building manager goes around and turns off the elevators in anticipation for the bar crowd.

Fortunately I have his number in my phone and I was only locked in the damn thing for about 30 minutes.

90 degrees at 30 minutes... because there is no AC when the elevator is turned off...

But that effectively ended any urge of mine to continue to work this weekend.  Hence the daiquiris.

Now, if you will excuse me... there is more chilled fruit beverage calling my name....

That's Mr. Instructor to you.

So I officially am a Brown Belt in Kenpo now.

I also learned a deep dark Kenpo secret which I will share with you now...

Are you ready?

To bad you don't get to know it.

:P

Stupid People and weight loss progress

I'm sure every one has one they work with.  That person who says things that just make you stop and stare at them and as you try and search for a work safe response to something utterly stupid leaving their pie-hole.

Background:  This person has expressed loudly and at length how they and their spouse never ever cook and eat 90% of their meals at McD.  This same person in that same conversation went on to express confusion at the fact that they were always broke and how everyone in their family kept gaining weight.  Particularly one of the children for whom they had to stop every morning and pick up McD for lunch because said child wouldn't eat prepared lunches made at home.  It was difficult to point out that someone needed to act like parent...

The Situation:  I brought in some of those amazing pressure cooked hard boiled eggs I have been making to share with a different coworker.  Previously mentioned clueless coworker sees the exchange and comes over to contribute their font of wisdom.

Clueless: "You shouldn't be eating those, they are totally full of fat.  You should put them raw in your morning shake* you are so proud of."

Coworker: "What, just the whites?"

Clueless: "No, the whole thing all the good stuff is in the yolk."

Coworker:  "How is that less fattening then hard boiling them?"

Clueless:  "Duh, they are raw!"

I didn't say anything, just stared at Clueless like she was dead to me until she was uncomfortable and went away.

*Shake previously mentioned in this post ** which has undergone some refinements, but coworker asked me about it once so I explained it.  Whereas the previously described shake killed three birds (Coffeee, Ice water, and protein) I have upped the ante by adding coconut flesh (for more protein, fiber and MDL fats) and Saigon Cinnamon (blunt insulin response.) For a while was adding Cinnamon flavored flax seed oil... but I finally couldn't take the fake cinnamon flavor anymore,  it was ruining the whole shake.

**I should mention in that shake post I mentioned that sucking down 5 eggs was hard... the pressure cooker method... makes them so soft and amazing it's hard not to eat that many.  I actually have to pace myself as last time I made a dozen I ate them all in a day.


~~~

Progress...  so unofficial update.  I have regained the setback between the combination of bacon death gravy and being sick. I am officially once again the lightest I have been in over a decade, and it was further highlighted today by wearing a set of pants I have never fit it, and a shirt I stopped wearing last summer because it had "shrunk."

Snowpocalypse 2012

So I'm sure my readers in Alaska (hi to both of you) are going to make snarky noises at the rest of this post...

Since mid-December every couple of weeks the weather pundits have been preaching doom and gloom as some weather system has moved our direction.  Dire predictions of food shortages, rabid badgers, and endless snow have hopelessly intertwined, frightening the elderly and making weak men weep.

None of which materialized.

The closest we came was in Late January 4-6 of snow was predicted over the weekend, and we got 1/2 an inch of dust that was gone by noon.  In fact, the few times this weekend I left the house (for cold medicine) I didn't bother with a coat, and I watched sadly as the Dog tried to do her business on a patch of snow the size of dinner plate (she prefers snow over grass.)

That's how it was when I went to bed last night.

This morning...

There was ~6 inches on my car and there are only 4 of the 12 employees in the office today.

It's still snowing...

Saturday Sick day.

Quick post just to note that this week was not so good for weight loss.  Didn't particularly change my eating habits, but a head cold basically shut me down all week.

I'm actually a pound heavier then I was last week, so I only lost 1 lb from last Saturdays binge (still was worth it.) But this week was a weird one.  One day I'd gain .2 lbs next day I'd lose .6 back and forth all week.

I can't think of anything specific that would have caused it except being sick screwing up my metabolism (I didn't cheat during the week.)

Let me amend that, I have been tinkering with a microwaveable cake recipe, that should have had no impact on my carb levels.  The ingredients were all low carb and sugar free.  But perhaps that screwed me up, or at least contributed to it.

I will skip mid-week experimentation for the time being and only try things like that on the weekends from now on just to test.  Or perhaps when I'm well again I will empirically test it to see what impact it has.

I also found a source for Mung Bean noodles (or threads) but not the flour.  I boiled some last night, and the results were interesting.  They have about half the Glycemic index of flour based pasta, at 29 vs 61+, but they boil up crystal clear and about the thickness of spaghetti.  Also not sticky like wheat pasta, which means the sauce doesn't really stick to them... nor do they stick to themselves at all.

No flavor to speak of, but a pleasant texture.

Back to sucking down cold medicine...

*edit* So many typos!

Thursday Wisdom

Sick at home, recovering from a head cold and working my way through the first season of "Game of Thrones."

This particular quote was to good not to share.

“A craven can be as brave as any man, when there is nothing to fear. And we all do our duty, when there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then, to walk the path of honor. Yet soon or late in every man's life comes a day when it is not easy, a day when he must choose. (Maester Aemon)” 

Kenpo and carpel tunnel.

So I just completed transcribing instructions for all 40 of the techniques in 3rd brown for my instruction book.  I didn't even try to transcribe the the 250 steps or so in either of the kata.

But to describe those 40 techniques, succinctly but accurately it took 2531 words, 5 pages, 11 pt font, and about 8.5 hours of work between yesterday and today.

Worst yet... I really need to go back and do it for the other belts.  I did it for Green or Blue ( I forget which) but not the beginning belts.

*groan*

Saturday update and bacon

I forgot to post on Saturday mostly because I was to busy stuffing my face.

I had one of those inspirational cooking mornings where I knew exactly what I wanted.

But first, on Saturday morning I was 27.6 lbs lost, average of .37 lbs a day something like 9% of my body weight removed in the last 2.5 months.

Then...

The biscuits.

So I was thinking about biscuits and gravy, but lacking a stove I wasn't going to be able to make biscuits, so I went next best thing and bought some English muffins, toasted them and placed some shredded cheese on top.

Next.. bacon.  1/2 pound of it, was fried and mounded atop.

I then poached a couple of eggs (not perfectly but adequately) and those were placed atop a two of the muffin halves.

I then made a white bacon gravy (as opposed to a sausage gravy.) though I added bit of butter at the end and broke the emulsion...

While this was all cooking, I prepped a fresh bought pineapple and some prosciutto they had on sale.  I relly don't care for for prosciutto wrapped melon... but adore ham + pineapple.  And since the normally $8 meat wast $1...  well I did it for science.  (I ate the rest of the pineapple throughout the day)
It was much better then the melon, but still not something I'd call great.

The end result was not pretty but it was incredibly tasty, glorious even  Between this and the entire pineapple I ate... I gained 2 lbs.

Worth it.

Whistles, HIIT, and leg sweeps.

In preparation for the next phase of the body-rebuilding/whatever the hell I am doing I have been exploring the lovely Bodyrock website and it's High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) videos.  I did a couple of their beginning videos and they kicked my ass. That's a good sign that by doing them I will make great progress.

These videos feature a sweatproof body timer thing.   It looks lovely, appears to function well and is actually quite inexpensive... but a free app that replicates it's function is even less expensive. Naturally it was downloaded to my phone upon discovery.

During testing I discovered that the Interval alarm was a coach's whistle.  The first time it went off Cin poked me in the ribs with her cold nose while whining in concern.

The second time she bit me and ran into the other room in fear.

I think I'm going to change the alarm to something that doesn't leave me mauled by a malamute.

Further, working out with/around her is... umm... a treat.  But only if you appreciate the absurd.

 Firstly, whenever I work on the heavy bags, BOB, or the speed bag Cin glues herself to my side and makes a sorta... half-chuffing whining noise.  I don't actually know if she is complaining... or just excited...

Cin also did it when my former room-mate came over and gave the heavy bag a few test smacks.  Just not as loudly.

Secondly, practicing the various katas are also problematic.  When I am on the mat she wants to be on the mat with me.  Not on her dog bed, not on the wood near the mats... she wants to be ON the mat.  Shoo her away and it lasts until your back is turned and she's back on the mat.

Lastly, she loves my Gi pants, not only because they pick up her shed hair so effectively but she appears to love the *snap* they make when I am doing kicks or moving quickly in a technique or kata.  Last week she actually grabbed the hem of my pants as I was leaping backwards (don't ask... it's part of the kata) and yanked me sideways resulting in me crashing to the ground instead of landing gracefully.

If I can figure out how, I'm going to teach her to do that on command.