|
|
Problem 1: Bright minds often have trouble with what they see as arbitrarily imposed restrictions.
Problem 2: (More) bright minds don’t work for you because you have red tape (who doesn’t?) which those bright minds see as restrictions.
Problem 3: No restrictions within your company would be pure mayhem.
Problem 4: Bright minds are competing against you, taking your business and/or keeping your legal team busy with patent disputes and the like.
Problem 5: Bright minds are not creating the brilliance that they could be; they lack the resources.
Solution:
Hire the bright minds. Tell them explicitly what resources you can afford them. Encourage the creativity to overcome the limitations (that are not arbitrary because you have explained them all.) Let them work unencumbered. Shop from their completed products and rule the marketplace.
The best part about having a baby in this time is the number of toys that exist to play with my baby for me. There are high chairs with toys on them, so someone is playing with my baby while I make food. There are mats, laden with toys, so that someone will play with my baby when he’s crawling around on the floor. There are bath toys so I can just wash him and be done with it. There are wonderful DVDs of distracting, educational beauty, so that my baby has someone to teach him letters and colors and stuff. Best of all, there are actually toilets that cheer for my son when he uses it for its intended purpose. We don’t even have to potty train him! The toys do it for him!
Me, I have more time for blogging and goofing around and 30 Rock. Tina Fey is hilarious!
In case you’re missing the sarcasm, I find this trend disturbing. Toys are being added to more and more non-play-related things. The high chair that has interchangeable trays blew my mind. I just get the feeling that if we were to use it, it would only confuse play time with meal time. These two things should not be confused.
I love my son. I know you love your child(ren), too. We can’t pay constant attention to them. I may still be naive, bit I think that ignoring the kid and expecting him to entertain himself is a good thing. I also think that our present society doesn’t encourage enough interaction with our kids.
So I am making a point to not good around online or watch so much tv.
Another positive benefit of spending time with our infant? My arms are visibly bigger than they were 5 weeks ago. Hah.
There are 4 allowed topics of discussion in our home.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender (The cartoon, not the film.)
- Beer.
- Soccer, but you better call it Futbol.
- Bodhi.
Choose one of those or shut it. ;)
I am a father. I have been a father for 4 days and 30 minutes. It is already the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me.
Two things about this you’ll possibly notice right away:
- I’m not overly forthcoming on details
- There are no pictures
Let me cover these straightaway. Our son is the most precious thing in the world (to us.) Our only job right now is to provide for him and to protect him. The world is a scary place, and so is the Internet. So while I’ve spent my adult life oversharing my own details on the Internet, I will not be continuing that trend with our son. He deserves a say in how public, how documented, and how shared his life is. Since he’s a little young for developing opinions on such complicated and nuanced matters, we’re erring on the side of caution.
So there ARE details. And there ARE photos. But they will not really be centralized. And they will not really be preserved. Now, with all that out of the way, let’s talk about this amazing boy.
Bodhi
Bodhi is an old Sanskrit word that means Awakening. Buddhists like it, and have used it to mean enlightenment, but we’re not trying to say the kid will ever reach that. (Kissing his left big toe will help you attain it, though.) The bodhi tree is the tree under which the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment. So that’s nice.
The reason we chose the name is because he was conceived shortly before we saw His Holiness, The Dalai Lama speak in L.A. It was an auspicious trip, you might say. Since then, though, the name has taken on more meaning. This child has (understandably) become my awakening. I wasn’t really asleep at the wheel to begin with or anything, but my eyes are open even wider now.
I’ve Realized A Few Things
- I’m a little out of shape. Seriously. If my wife can go through a couple DAYS of labor, birth an actual human being, and be LESS sore and LESS exhausted than me at the end of it all, SOMETHING IS WRONG. I need to get off my ass, step away from the computer (he types) and DO SOMETHING. So I signed up for a 4K run on July 4th. That Avery Brewing Company is a sponsor didn’t hurt.
- Humans are perfect. I used to think we were a total mess, but we aren’t. We’re amazing creatures. We just spend too much time acting like we’re not. Don’t be deceived! It’s only a show!
- Perfect Things are Flawed. What makes them perfect is their constant improvement. Times change, and flawless things acquire flaws as they age. EVERYTHING ages, so it’s bound to happen. Perfection is also relative. So they only thing that really counts for anything is constant improvement. And we’re doing that.
- Everything is going to work out fine. I’m optimistic that the things we do wrong are faster than evolution. We’ve had automobiles for over a century and still haven’t evolved any adaptations that help us drive. We’ve had plastic even less time than that. Evolution is our attempt at constant improvement, and it takes time. These intermediate failures cannot interrupt that overall advancement. We just need to avoid killing ourselves off, and I honestly think it will all work out.
- Babies are easy. They want to do 5 things: Eat, be comfortable, sleep, be loved, and learn. If any of those 4 are imapired, they will cry. They DO NOT want to cry, though. They want to eat, be comfortable, sleep, be loved, and learn. I’m not sure in what order, or if it’s random, but it doesn’t matter. They will let you know when you’re failing them on one of these. And they’re all surprisingly easy to take care of (except for the eating part. I can’t do anything for him, there.) 4 out of 5 is pretty solid, though.
Our Son Is Completely Perfect
Seriously. I don’t know where he got this skill at such a young age, but he can manipulate genes. He clearly chose the best features from his parents, and has created a supercreature of adorableness. On the one hand, I’m biased. On the other hand, I don’t think babies are actually all that cute. It’s a rare one that surprises me. On this one, my bias totally wins. Our son is completely perfect.
When I say he chose the best, I mean mostly from his mother. Her hair, her eyes, her lips, her nails. But he did take my ears (his only fail) and my size. You know how cubs have giant paws? Big cats (like tigers) and bear cubs have massive paws. So do the puppies of large dog breeds. You can tell by their feet that they’re going to get big. Bodhi’s feet fill his 3-6 month sleeper, but his legs and arms don’t nearly fill the length of them. It’s hilarious and adorable. His feet are literally the same length as his shin bone. Is that normal for babies? I don’t think so. I sure as heck know it’s not the case for adults! We would look ridiculous! Bodhi, though, just looks like he’s going to be tall. Like his dad.
It is so cliché and so true to say that I have never been more blissfully happy in all my life.
ZOMG START LINE!!! We were in wave WA. Seriously.
Hell yes I was eating a burrito on the course! It was delicious!
Runners and walkers alike passed us by as we relaxed and cooled off in Atlas Purveyors. (And Kia got an ankle rub.)
CHRIS HOUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!
CHRIS! DANA! ANDREA!
FREAKY NEON FRUIT SNACKS! CAPS-INDUCING@!!!!!
My (37 weeks pregnant) wife and I walked the Bolder Boulder today. The start of this 10K race is about a mile and a half from our house, so we walked.
We got more than a mile through the course and turned off to stroll down the beautifully shaded Pine St. before catching the course again at Spruce and 15th. Another block of walking took us to Atlas Purveyors, where we chilled out for a while with some tea.
At the end of the race, there is a fairly steep hill, which caused Kia a little difficulty, but she did a great job. Once we crossed the finish line, we picked up our goodie bags from the Bolder Boulder and from SleepyWrap (the latter of which we got for participating in the babywearing walk.) Then it was up into the stadium to watch the Memorial Day celebration.
Finally, we picked up the car and headed to Whole Foods for a burger. Commercial Barbeque Win.
It was a wonderful day. :)
Poor guys never had a chance. Alison made these cupcakes for the baby party last Sunday. I brought the remaining ones to work where they could be properly appreciated.
The cupcakes are poppy seed with raspberry jam up in ‘em. And they are insanely delicious.
The Totoro are made of fondant and are technically edible… but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. John, one of my co-workers, ate one.
Oh yes he regretted it.
Today, I found my diaper bag at a consignment sale in Longmont. I don’t know if the price was typo’d or what, but it was $2.00. It’s a discontinued Baby Björn Diaper Bag that has been for who knows how long, but this one is in GREAT shape, looks really cool, and seems incredibly practical. And it was two bucks. The Skwish was one dollar.
 
People can’t understand why we have had so much trouble putting together the baby registries. It’s because we can buy the stuff cheaper at consignment sales! WAAAAY Cheaper! That said, we DID finally go to Super Target today and added quite a few things to the registry. Nothing crazy (except the package of Hebrew National kosher hot dogs), but we put a few things on there anyway. Picking out a car seat we like was probably the biggest and best part. We’ve been mulling that decision over for weeks.
I just want to tell you… Last night was awesome. Thank you for the great time.
Be patient with the IgniteBoulder crew while they prepare the videos. They will be posted to the IgniteBoulder YouTube account when they’re ready. In the meantime, here are my slides.
Continue reading “Create” slides (IgniteBoulder 10)
“ASUS is collaborating with Lil Jon to develop a computer targeting urban youth.”
First off, I have huge issues with the phrase “targeting urban youth”. It’s such a loaded word, “targeting”. Let’s not go down that road. That said, I found it an interesting concept and decided to look into it a little further. What I discovered could turn the tech industry on its head.
ASUS
As computer makers go, ASUS hasn’t got the best brand recognition in the US, but it has grown considerably in the last few years, propelled largely by the EEE netbook that was introduced in late 2007. Prior to that, I myself was a big fan of their motherboards, but it was difficult to get a complete ASUS system. Lately, however, they have made great strides in the North American market.
Lil Jon
In the music industry, many artists become moguls, building a brand on their music and image, but few have done so as effectively as Lil Jon. He came up through the hip hop industry and became well known for the phrases “What?” “Okay!” “Yeeah!” and “Get CRUNK!” He writes, performs, and produces music. He built a small drink empire with his Little Jonathan Winery and CRUNK!!! energy drink. While he doesn’t operate his own clothing line, he did have a featured line of Oakley sunglasses. Most recently, he has begun reaching into the lucrative demographic of white nerds.
Launch Line
ASUS, in collaboration with Lil Jon, will launch the Crunkabyte line of systems in late fall, 2010. The initial release will include 2 desktop systems, 1 laptop, and 1 tablet PC. They will run a custom Linux operating system that was designed with Lil Jon’s image in mind. System sounds are samples of his voice & beats and there are a variety of themes with coordinated icons, wallpaper, and system colors. Not surprisingly, one promotes his energy drink while another features him with a chalice of Little Jonathan wine. (It actually looks pretty cool, but I couldn’t get any of the pictures to download so that I could share them here.) Here’s sample of the system sounds:
Startup and prompts: “WHAT?” followed by a low bass tone
Shutdown: “GET CRUNK!!!”
Confirmation: “Yeeah!”
The systems will all include premium speakers for optimal sound reproduction with emphasis on the low tones. The bottom row of keys on the keyboard (space, alt, ctrl, etc) will have an imitation gold foil on each system as an homage to Lil Jon’s grill.
System Internals
The most impressive and surprising product of this collaboration is a new file system. All computer operating systems employ a file system that controls the structure and layout of the hard drive. (I don’t fully understand all the details of how they work, but I know that they’re one of those things that nobody thinks about unless they’re a total nerd.) Here’s what I do understand:
Historically, data has been stored in hexadecimal, which is a base 16 numbering system. That is to say each bit can have one of 16 values (0123456789ABCDEF). A byte, which is composed of 2 bits, then, is represented in 2 characters. These 2 characters represent 256 potential values. Hex codes, a common way of representing colors in HTML, for instance, are 6-character codes. #000000 is the lowest value and translates to 00 red, 00 green, and 00 blue, resulting in black. Since each color is represented by 2 characters, there are 256 values for that color from 00 to FF. White, created from the maximum values of each color, is #FFFFFF. It helps me to think of these as the color sliders we often see for selecting colors.
Sexadecimal
Lil Jon’s file system is a base-69 numbering system that he created himself and perfected with the aid of the foremost mathematical scholars of Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, and Crunksley. A Base-69 system allows greater storage capacity, but requires a new file system to operate. This is where Canonical (the makers of Ubuntu Linux) were brought on board. Through the collaboration of this superteam, with Lil Jon at the creative helm, a truly elegant solution was devised.
In this new system, sex codes (instead of the traditional hex codes) will be used in every aspect of the system. To keep with the color codes example, for simplicity’s sake, sexadecimal will allow a whopping 4761 potential values on each color slider. The increased color resolution facilitated by this miraculous technology has necessitated the invention of new display technology, and ASUS engineers have been working tirelessly to ensure these screens would be ready in time for launch.
To avoid confusion between hexadecimal and sexadecimal systems, several new terms were created to describe capacity. Hexadecimal storage is measured in bits, bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, and terabytes. Sexadecimal begins with nibbles, which have 69 possible values. Two nibbles is still referred to as a byte, but that now corresponds to 4761 values, as mentioned before. From there, we step up exponentially to Kilobytes, Hollabytes, and finally Crunkabytes.
The two desktop systems at launch will be the Crunkabyte 1, which offers 1 Crunkabyte of storage. The Crunkabyte 2 doubles this capacity. At launch, the tablet will be available with 69 Hollabytes, but a higher capacity device is expected in the first quarter of 2011.
Public Reaction
While a few critics have emerged, response from the technical and scientific communities, as well as that from consumers in general, has been overwhelmingly positive. Some groups find the line (and the concepts upon which it is built) to be offensive. When asked to explain what exactly offended them, however, they were reduced to a series of gasps and yelps, unable to speak a comprehensible word.
As consumer excitement grows, store managers are planning for an incredibly busy launch day. Best Buy has already announced that they will host a special midnight release on the as-yet-unannounced release date. There is speculation that Lil Jon himself will be appearing at one location to promote the line.
Did you know that my wife is a certified yoga instructor? Did you know that she is also certified to instruct prenatal yoga? Do you know that she is also incredibly aware, astute, kind, talented, and intuitive? She doesn’t work at a studio (right now), but does offer private lessons.
She really is the best yoga instructor I’ve worked with. So I finally took her up on a lesson yesterday. I’ve had some pain in my shoulder for MONTHS now. But it’s really mild, and only speaks up when I move my arm just so. So I’ve just not done that with my arm … and ignored it.
After a single one-hour session with Kia, that part of my arm isn’t hurting at all. She strengthened everything around it, so it is better supported.
On the other hand, every other muscle in my body is sore!! In the best way. It’s brilliant.
Thank you, darling. It’s just what I needed. Looking forward to getting my ass kicked again soon. <3
Late Preface
This is from September 15, 2008. It’s a bit old and contains some outdated information. The feelings I expressed in the first part will surely not change for many, many years, if ever.
The Post
Think back to The Incredibles, if you’ve seen it. The villain of the film creates a robot monster so large and strong that the only thing that can hurt it is itself. The villain loses control of the monster, and the heros have to use the monster against itself to defeat it.
This is the way business works in capitalist society. Small companies are easy prey for larger companies, and larger companies with their massive resources and redundant systems are nearly invincible… except by even larger companies.
Their only vulnerability, as recently exhibited by Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and even Merrill Lynch, is themselves. The United States, one of the largest companies of all, is rescuing (and essentially taking ownership of) the first two. Bank of America, another supermassive corporation, is purchasing (and therefore rescuing) the latter.
This is in some ways insanely bad, and in others, very good. When it comes to our financial security, our assets and debts, our credit and accumulated wealth, the security of these great behemoths is reassuring. However, if we feel that they are operating in a bad way, our tiny voices cannot be heard atop those pillars of industry. We are ants to them.
Actually, that is an imperfect metaphor. Ants work for their own colony. We work for the megacorporations. Even if you are not employed by Exxon Mobil, they get your money. Even if you avoid their gas stations. Even if you don’t drive. If you pay taxes, they receive some measure of your money through their subsidies. Ants are slaves to no one, while we are willing slaves to the masters of business. We fill their pockets, buy their yachts, and pay their country club dues.
The great decision makers at these failed companies are going to receive wonderful incentives or severance packages for their trouble. They will in no way be punished for their gigantic failures. They will be rewarded. We will fund those rewards.
We have one means and one means only of enacting any change in the world at all. We must vote. I mean this both at the polls and at the register. We vote with our ballot and with our dollar. If we like a politician, we need to vote for him or her. If we dislike a politician, we must vote against him or her. If we like a product or company, we vote for it with our purchase. If we dislike it, we vote by NOT spending that dollar.
My wife and I have gathered all the money we received as wedding gifts, and we are using it to stock our kitchen with quality cookware. We are making several votes at the same time through this process. We are buying things on ebay and at the salvation army. We are buying Le Creuset cookware, primarily, but we are only buying used pieces. We are voting for quality products. We are voting against mining by purchasing things that are not newly created. We are voting against China (as most newer products are made there). We are voting for ebay, which is kind of a bummer, because they’re investing so much money in killing craigslist. So we’re making a compromise there.
On great dilemma I have right now is our cable provider. We are currently voting for Comcast, and I am deeply dissatisfied with that choice. We are having signal problems, and the support that Comcast provides is, at best non-existent and at worst a complete waste of my time. I wasted an hour today waiting for and participating in an online chat with someone who spoke only in pasted phrases. There was a massive lag that made me think he could only be located on the other side of the planet somewhere. After literally an hour of waiting and typing and waiting, we still had not finished the identification process. It’s just outrageous.
And I don’t know what to do about it.
Late Preface
[I wrote this on Christmas day last year and it has been sitting in my drafts for three full months, just waiting to be finished. I didn't find the time, because I was too busy trying to hang out with the people I was previously trying to write about. Clearly, you're all awesome.]
The Actual Post
This is a post about you. But I’m going to start out talkin about me, because that’s a rut I haven’t yet gotten out of in my life or my blogging. If it helps at all, though, you should know I’m working on it. It’s just the lens through which I see the world.
Growing up, I had few friends. This was due to various reasons in the various phases of my life. Through adolescence and into adulthood, though, it was a lack of confidence, plain and simple. And as I moved from place to place in my twenties, I found friends wherever I went, but they were few and (literally) far between. Moreso in Miami than anywhere before, but it was there that I really began to gain the confidence I was seeking. I was also there like 3 years longer than anywhere else I lived, which surely helped.
Miami
It was in Miami that I met my wife. And I made some brilliant friends. Tim and Charlie were each excellent mentors in their own right. Javier and Veda are wonderful, lively people and I miss them dearly. Jamie and I became pretty close despite some things she was going through, and now that she’s through them, we’re even closer, distance be damned. Eric is a great guy and inspired me in ways he doesn’t know. Alicia utterly stunned us by actually coming to our wedding (stunning because it was in Costa Rica) and was just a wonderful friend besides. Judith is a marvel of kindness and hospitality. I love every single one of you, whether you got mentioned or not.
The Front Range
Colorado, though, has been a different beast entirely. People here have been unbelievably warm to us, and we are unbelievably grateful to you for your warmth.
This is a nerd post. Feel free to skip it if you’re not interested. Not that you needed my permission. Hah.
This morning, I got the notice that an update was available for my phone. There were apparently some problems with the initial release of Android 2.1 on the Droid, so it took longer than expected to get it out to everyone. I was getting a bit impatient, but found a couple of things to tide me over.
- The Google Maps update from a few weeks ago turned on pinch and spread zoom functionality
- Dolphin Browser has a lot better functionality compared to the default browser, including pinch and spread zoom, better tabbed browsing, things like that
Still, I was really excited about the update. Why? I’m not entirely sure. I don’t even know what all is involved in the upgrade. So I’m going to look it up on the web and detail my findings here.
Initial Reaction
The update notification was on my phone when I checked it this morning. It installed really quickly (which is good, because we were getting ready to leave the house). I setup a couple of live wallpapers and played with them. They’re neat, but some can be really distracting and make the desktop a little hard to read. Typing also seemed a bit easier. More on this later, but I’m really excited about the possibilities that opens up.
Live Wallpapers
This is one of only 2 updates I could recall were part of 2.1. The zen pond-and-leaf one is not touch-sensitive. I thought touching it would create ripples. The ripples happen automatically. Maybe that was just a Nexus One feature? Either way, I don’t really care. I went through a couple of them and am currently on Maps. It shows a google map in the background (map, satellite, terrain, with or without traffic, your choice).
Soft Keyboard / Typing
This is one thing I wasn’t expecting, but was desperately hoping for. When I first got the phone, typing two or three letters would often bring up a suggested word that was 6 or 8 characters long. This, to me, was mental, and it made typing very difficult. So I turned it off. The only thing it would correct after that change was contractions. Cant would change to Can’t. Canr would not change to anything. Ok. That sucks, but I can deal with it for now.
The update, though, has brought a new brightness to my day, though. Simple typos, on words of the same length (canr = can’t) happen. It doesn’t try to change it to cameraphone or something equally unlikely. It’s actually SMARTER. So it did turn autocorrect back on, but with the improved logic, I don’t object. I will have to play with this more, but I think it’s probably the best of all the upgrades.
Gallery
The new Gallery app is prettier… and slower… and has pinch-spread zooming. It has also integrated with Picasa web albums, so my online photos show up on in the gallery. I presume it’s easier to upload albums as well, then.
Duds
- The Droid has 3 home screens. Android 2.1 supports 5. Android 2.1 for Droid supports 3. That’s ok; more screens will just mean more places to lose things
- New App Drawer (the thing at the bottom) didn’t change at all. The old one doesn’t bother me, though
- News and Weather app has gadgets, but they take up too much space. Weatherbug is better. The app itself features only tragic, horrifying news stories (probably not by design, hah) and has few options to customize it. Stick with a URL shortcut to google reader and the weatherbug app. BOOM
- Voice dialing is not mentioned anywhere that I can find. This leads me to believe that it still isn’t possible. Since third party apps (paid apps) can enable this functionality (which requires a hack to the Android OS itself, wtf), AND since CONSIDERABLY cheaper phones also have this functionality … I’m pissed. Motorola … you suck.
So there you have it. My upgrade experience in a nutshell. Now go back to playing with your iPad.
A lot has happened in the last week. I gave up a LOT of foods. I added a few back. I tried some things out. I upset my stomach. My hands healed significantly.
The diet continues, but it is less restrictive. I have allowed wheat, for instance. And I’ve had a couple of sweets. Right now, I’m enjoying a delicious glass of whiskey. Still no corn. I’m also trying to avoid the nightshades (tomato, potato, eggplant, and – I read somewhere – spinach?) The sugar thing went really poorly, too, so I’m cutting that back out (for the most part).
Oh, I had coffee, too. It was terrible. So that’s excellent. I’m still drinking Tazo chai at work. It’s caffeine, but it’s less caffeine. So that’s cool. Right?
This coming Saturday, the Boulder Farmer’s Market opens. I’m SUPER excited about that.
And now it’s 11pm. So I’m going to go to bed. You’ve been a great audience.
 Quinoa and Vegetable Pilaf I’m not a morning person, so let’s not put any emphasis on how tired I was or wasn’t feeling when I woke up. I was, for the most part, feeling pretty good. I certainly slept well. Even after that gum yesterday and all the teeth brushing, my teeth still felt like they’d been sprayed with an even coat of rustoleum. I brushed them twice. They are much better now, but still not 100%. I wonder what’s up with that.
Breakfast
Once again, my wife TOTALLY hooked me up. I came to work with the rest of yesterday’s lunch (sweet potato, chard, onion, coconut milk), a delicious smoothie (16 oz of banana, almond butter and yogurt), a pint of milk, and the last dregs of my bottle of Bolthouse Farms C-Boost. I like it because it’s tasty and contains a lot of zinc, which is a boon to the immune system.
The Day Falls Apart
What happened today was a combination of messes. People had chocolate and candy ALL around me (but I didn’t touch it). Also, we were crazy busy at work. today was the last day before a product release. We were supposed to have it ready and out by 5pm, but it didn’t happen. We stayed until 6:30, and it still didn’t happen. But by then, the weather had gone COMPLETELY to hell in a hand basket. I spent two nerve-wracking hours on the road. It was just awful.
Filling in the Gap
I ate no candy bars. I tore the HECK out of whatever remained of all the food I had mentioned above. I quite thoroughly enjoyed the Ginger Snap Larabar that I had picked up the night before. (The sweet potatoes didn’t get eaten until around 2, but I had such a variety of great breakfast snackings that it was fine.) Around 4, I was getting really cranky, so I washed off the apple I had taken in, filled up my water, and got out the almond butter. That snack took me over an hour to eat, with all the work drama, but the slow snacking kept my blood sugar in a happy place.
Safely Home
My wife made me a crazy delicious dinner of quinoa and veggies, straight from a Moosewood cookbook. It was excellent. Also, a couple glasses of water with apple cider vinegar. Alkalizing goodness!
The diet began in earnest yesterday. After a delicious meal of dim sum to celebrate a friend’s birthday (lots of foods my diet strictly excludes!), my wife made a phenomenal dinner.
Dinner Last Night
- Green Smoothie (spinach, celery, pineapple, and pineapple mint) [16 oz]
- Quinoa and black beans [1.5-2.5 cups?]
Both were delicious. In case it’s news to you, mint comes in a shocking multitude of flavors. You already know of spearmint and wintermint, I’m sure. There is also chocolate mint, pineapple mint, and scads of other natural varieties. These are not artificially flavored. They’re just crazy. :)
This morning, I felt a little tired, and my head hurt (likely due to sugar/caffeine). I felt terrific otherwise. Happy gastrointestinal system. Good energy. (I don’t know how to reconcile feeling tired, yet energetic, but both are true.)
Breakfast today
- Men’s multivitamin + Omega-3 borage & fish oil pill
- Smoothie: melon, yogurt, water [16 oz]
- Green tea [16 oz]
I also had a pint of water with apple cider vinegar (ACV). The tea helped out with the head, but it’s coming back now. My throat is a little sore, too. I’ve had pretty decent energy this morning, and good mental focus. Not great. Not bad. Good.
I’ve been drinking water like crazy. I’ve had to pee like 5 times this morning already. It’s excessive, maybe, but I think of it as rinsing out my body, like rinsing out a glass. Except you don’t have to tip me upside down. Hah.
It’s 11:30 now, and I’m getting a little silly, and a touch light-headed. I definitely need to eat. Fortunately, I have an AMAZING lunch ready for me!
 Sweet potato, red chard, onion, coconut milk Lunch
My wife cooked this for me this morning. She’s amazing. Totally amazing.
I was feeling a little tired before lunch. Now, I’m just plain exhausted. I want to sleep. I want nothing but just to sleep. It took me about an hour of this before I identified a craving: Eggs. I want a big plate of scrambled eggs, or an omelette.
Listening to your body is an important skill. It is a skill I’m still working on. But in this case, I think the message is clear: My body wants protein.
I have some emergency nourishment to make sure I can drive home safely. But I think it’s a good idea for me to quickly figure out how to prevent this fatigue. I need to get some stuff done at work this week. A lot of stuff, in fact…
Afternoon
Within half an hour of starting on lunch, I became SO fatigued. It’s a delicious meal, and very nourishing, but I was just wiped out. Sam’s comment about bad food creating cravings makes a lot of sense (I’m going nuts for these candy bars on the next desk over, but haven’t touched them). The fact that I was craving eggs really seemed to legitimize it, though.
So I checked my primary resource, The New Detox Diet (limited preview on Google Books), searched for almonds, and found that they have SEVERAL mentions of them, including in recipes. Searching for “peanuts” on the other hand, only turns up references to things to avoid. So I had a couple tablespoons of almond butter. And now I feel AMAZING.
I also had a chai tea. Forgive me. That and a stick of gum were my only failings today. It’s just that the chard in my lunch left my teeth feeling funky, like they have a coarse matte finish on them. No me gusta. The gum helped, but didn’t fix it. Can’t wait to get home and brush up the teeth. While the tea and gum helped, the almond butter is what really did the trick. I think this will remain in the “safe” category for at least the first couple weeks of this.
Aside from water, I think I can hold off on consumption for the next 40 minutes or so before I head home. I still have a Lara bar, though, in case I get silly in the car and need some extra juice to get me safely home.
Evening / Dinner
I’m not much of a planner. That’s for sure. After working late, driving home, and taking a few minutes to relax, it was almost 8pm. So I drove to Tibet Kitchen, one of my favorite Boulder eateries, and ordered the Tsel Nezom with brown rice. (Ting-mo, the buns that are available instead of rice, are made with wheat.) Tsel Nezom is basically a bunch of vegetables in a peppery broth. It’s outrageously good, and quite healthy, I think.
Before dinner, I was tired and loopy. Trouble focusing. Things like that. After dinner, I was very much the same.
On the way home, I stopped at Whole foods. I got:
- 1 bunch of swiss chard
- 1 lb of lettuce mix
- 4 apples
- 6 bananas
- 2 avocados
- 3 sweet potatoes
- 1 red pepper
- 1 red onion
- 1 pint of almond butter
- 1 big bottle of apple cider vinegar
(not pasteurized, still containing the live mother)
- 2 cans of black-eyed peas (Eden brand, uses BPA-free cans)
- 2 cans of adzuki beans (same brand, same reason)
- 1 quart “No Chicken Broth”
(The veggie broth is made with tomatoes, which I’m not eating. The “No Chicken” is made only with veggies and oils that I’m eating, so it’s ok)
- 1 ginger snap Larabar
The produce is almost all organic. The beans are canned, which is less good than dry, but I have a lot of trouble with dry beans so far. I’ll work on that, because even though the cans are metal, they are lined with plastic. The Larabar is packaged in plastic as well. But the ingredients are amazing: Dates, Almonds Pecans, Ginger, Cinnamon, Cloves. It’s a fiber-and-protein-packed compromise.
Day 1 Summary
For being largely unprepared for this, I think I did a pretty fair job. There were a couple of modifications through the day. I won’t call them failings; that would be defeatist. And I even ended the day with a slight effort to prepare for the next…
There is no good name for this. We’re talking about food habits, and it’s a touchy subject for everyone, so any name we apply is immediately tainted by association. Diet? Cleanse? Whatever.
Reasons
- My fat goes where it’s most likely to kill me, so I don’t want any fat
- I want a flat stomach. That’s not so hard to believe, is it?
- My digestive tract is a mess. It doesn’t manifest externally, but it’s not comfortable
- I have allergies (which CAN be an indicator of a dietary problem)
- I have eczema (which is OFTEN an indicator of a dietary problem)
- I am dependent on caffeine and sugar. I do not want to be dependent on these things
The Goal
- Eliminate any foods from my diet that I should not be eating
- Eliminate allergy triggers
- Eliminate dependencies on particular compounds
- Strengthen my immune system
- Learn to prepare foods that achieve my other goals, so that I can provide my family with a healthy diet
The Plan
To do this, I first need to identify what foods I should not be eating. Eggs can trigger eczema. If I determine that they are triggering my eczema, I will have to stop eating them. To determine if they are a problem, I have to stop eating then until the eczema goes away, and then start eating them to see if it returns. This is not a minor change. This is not a week-long diet, after which I can return to my old habits. This is a fundamental change in what I eat. I have already quit coffee, and am just drinking enough caffeinated tea to get me through. As soon as I can do without caffeine altogether, I will. Processed sugars are out. I’m still allowing myself honey and maple syrup, but in as small a quantity as I can stand. Sugar reacts with yeasts in my body to produce things I don’t want in my body.
I am following advice from a couple of books, one of which is The New Detox Diet. It contains a lot of good backing, cites the studies from which its information comes, and just generally makes sense. Furthermore, it lacks the sort of loopy, crackpot tone a lot of these books tend to have. (Forgive my judgment. That tone is maddening to me.)
Most importantly, I’m getting a LOT of help from my wife. She is generally much smarter than I am. Specifically, she has a great deal of experience and expertise with nutrition.
The Blog
In future installments, I will go into the specific foods that fall into the yes, no, double-no, and dunno categories. I will also be detailing my diet and how I’m feeling after meals. This may or may not be interesting to you, loyal reader, but it will be VERY useful for me as I look back to see how I’m reacting to certain foods. Stay tuned. Or don’t. :D
MacHeist is a thing, apparently. It’s kind of a big deal. I picked up the current bundle and hope that you do, too.
Why? Because I really want RapidWeaver to be unlocked. Seriously.
One of the quite good apps is MacJournal, from which I’m typing this blog.
When you are testing a microphone, don’t say “test” or “one” or “two”. Say “SCUBA!”
I am male.
I am white.
I am tall.
I am straight.
I have brown hair and hazel eyes.
Aside from my missing appendix, there really isn’t anything at all abnormal about me. There isn’t anything out-of-the-majority. So while I sympathize with everyone who has faced challenges that I will never understand … I also have to admit that I will never understand. Ever. So I feel sorrow and sympathy and empathy, but I can only do so from a place of vast ignorance.
In high school and for a few years after, the general consensus in some circles was that I probably wasn’t straight. But I was never actually treated like I wasn’t. So I don’t understand.
When I lived in Miami, I was in the minority (22%, to be exact), but I was generally accepted, appreciated, and didn’t stand out so much. So I don’t understand.
On the other hand, I found my own things to whine about. Trust me, as a teenager, my life was harder than EVERYONE ELSE. Way harder. You couldn’t have understood. Looking back, I can’t understand, either. Looking back, in fact, I think I was just a whiner. (Facts will show that I basically was, but facts can’t understand how I felt. So facts better keep their damned mouths shut about it.)
So I’m telling you now, unless you are ALSO a tall, straight white man, you don’t know how I feel. And I don’t know how you feel.
I’m also acknowledging that you don’t want to hear me whine. Really at all. Similarly, I don’t want to hear you whine either. Nobody else wants to hear either of us whining.
That isn’t to say you need to keep your mouth shut. Voice legitimate complaints. Cry out against the establishment. Write letters to the editor. Vent to your friends. We all need these outlets. I just suggest that, in so doing, we all try to keep the whining to a minimum. I mean pure, inconsequential, pointless, obnoxious, unproductive whining.
Nobody wants to hear it.
Shit happens. If it didn’t, there wouldn’t be a common saying that goes something like “Shit happens.” And it wouldn’t be so common that people have used it to sell baby onesies, insurance, and quaint home decor. Bad things will come your way. They may be coming your way right now. You may have just gotten through the latest batch of shit. We have no control over this.
Fortunately, there is one thing we can control: how we react. Someone cut you off or drove 10 under the speed limit and got you caught at a red light when you were already running late. You could not have prevented it, but are nevertheless thoroughly displeased. How do you react?
Do you get out, grab your tire iron and bash the person’s windshield in? Sure, if you like jail.
Do you can honk and scream at them through the duration of the red light and then peel around them as soon as it turns green? Sure, if you like hypertension.
Do you let it go, tell yourself this ass hat will probably be on the road tomorrow, and leave a few minutes earlier to prevent him from upsetting you so much? Sure, if you like being calm.
This choice is all yours. The right choice will result in an outcome that pleases you. The wrong choice will result in even more shit coming your way. Our reactions are our choices, and our choices are incredibly important. If we really have free will (the philosophers among you can go nuts now, but leave the rest of us out of the discussion), this is where your free will is manifest. And when you really get acquainted with yourself, you will be surprised with exactly how much control you have over your reaction.
Many of us think that reactions are preordained. We place the blame externally so that we don’t have to face any responsibility for the action. It makes sense, right. We don’t want to be responsible for more than we have to. It’s risky and scary and uncomfortable. But we need to get comfortable with it. We need to face our choices and our ability to actually choose. We don’t always have to choose the reactions that seem so natural to us.
You have been offended before. We all have. And it seems pretty obvious that we can decide how to react to the act someone else committed to offend us. We can react to the fact that we were offended. We could punch the offensive person, for instance. We could never talk to them again. We could immediately hug them and say “You are so very mean, but I forgive you!” We can just let it go. But I think this is too late.
What we need to do is choose whether or not to be offended. Maybe I didn’t hang up on you, you know? I mean, I was driving home at the time. Maybe it’s a total coincidence that the call dropped right as you were criticizing my taste in movies. I didn’t deserve to be treated that way, I’m sure, but would I really go so far as to hang up on you for it? And I had a choice whether to be offended by your criticism or not. Maybe you thought Zoolander was the stupiedst movie ever because you secretly wanted to be a model and resent how critical that film was of that career. But why did you choose to be offended by the movie? The producers never meant to make you feel that way. You never meant to make me feel that way. And I certainly didn’t hang up on your sensitive, hilarious-movie-hating ass. We should both just get over it.
Or maybe we chose not to be offended by any of those things to begin with. Maybe we recognize some of the common flaws of the human psyche. Maybe we realize that we can’t be considerate of absolutely everything all the time, and some unnecessary things are going to be said.
Shit happens. We are just going to have to Get Comfortable with it.
|
|
