Weighed in this morning for the monthly report. I'll do that again for the official report to the study Monday morning, but the good news is that there is 6lbs less of me for November. Given I've had a birthday, a wedding anniversary, a business trip, and Thanksgiving, I'm pretty happy with the results.
This past month has been taking a look at what I'm eating and why. As I said last month, I'm a "high need for stimulus" person, and one of the things I've thought about is whether I'm taking that next bite because I'm hungry, or if I'm just looking for something to whap the tastebuds. And when I start asking that question, I put down the fork.
It's the same thing when I'm at the company cafeteria, which so kindly provides all sorts of deep-fried delecacies. If I have semi-convinced myself that I'm going to get the "five alarm" burger with onion rings, I'm stopping and asking myself exactly *why* I want this. I'm finding that it's not taking much to talk myself out of something that I know is going to make me feel like crap a couple of hours later.
I've also paid more attention to how some food affect me. One of the "I know what its glycemic value is, so why am I not surprised?" discoveries is that if I have potatoes at lunch, I'm going to be alternately sleepy and hungry a couple of hours later. Given the Big Red A provides candy jars on every floor, that can make the "one hit and my blood sugar will be fine until I get some real food" temptation *way* too appealing.
Oh yeah--I'm not pissed at the candy jars, or that the company provides them. I'm the one with the whacked insulin response, and why should everyone else suffer for my biochemistry? That's dumb and selfish, and I won't go there.
And that's probably the nut of it--I think I may have finally made peace with my blood sugar. I'm a reactive hypoglycemic, and I have the glucose tolerance test results to prove it. Whee. I've had this since I smashed into puberty head-on, and I've swung between taking care of myself, feeling sorry for myself, or lurching my blood sugar all over the scale. When I have the blood sugar under control, I think I can cheat and get away with it. Well yeah, but I can't chronically keep cheating, which was usually the path I headed down. Believe me, sugar is a high-stimulus item, and I could keep heading back for another hit.
Sooner or later, though, I felt enough like crud to get back on track. When I was eighteen I could get away with that crap. I could also blame some of my more charming personality tweaks to getting repeatedly hit in the head by pucks. Yeah, I can get away with some of that ;-), but not all of it. I still have a classic "goalie personality", and that twines around the sugar like the snakes on caduceus, but at least I can now accept that and do something about it.
And we'll all see how next month plays out.
Alwin at Code the Web Socket reminds us that we need to get a flu shot.
I did mine just over three weeks ago.
Just over two weeks ago, I picked up the one variant that wasn't covered. That's what happens when you repeatedly share a somewhat large metal tube with 100 of your closest friends on those two hour trips to Seattle.
The flu, as expected, begat a secondary infection in my tonsils.
Note--I was the one kid who should have had her tonsils out, who didn't get them out. I had massive penicillin injections--nasty bad ones that were in some slow melting compound that was injected into my thigh, which then caused saucer-sized multi-ringed coloured bruises--instead. At least until the hives kicked in.
And there is something really whacked about reading how Lon Chaney died from a throat hemorrhage while you're dealing with the eau d'rusty nails yourself.
But seriously--back when I was a tiny coder, and was asked to db the state coroner's records, the one set of data that really struck me was how *many* people died from flu from 1917-1919. And how young so many of them were.
This year's flu looks really nasty for kids. So, even if you're the bid studly type who'd *never* be felled by a virus, think about whether you *really* want to bring that package home to your kids?
Get a flu shot.
In the last two weeks I've been asked about the work in progress on a "book"--I'll call it that for lack of a better term--about ice hockey in the SF Bay Area.
I've spent the better part of the past 3 years at either Cal State Hayward or SJSU's library, going through newspapers from 1912 to 1968, gathering material on "organized" ice hockey. I have a frightening amount of research material in my office, compiled according to the year and the source. And I've used a bit of it, for example, sharing the information of women's hockey being played in SF in *1916* with the local Women's USA Hockey people.
Other than that, and boring/frightening people with my vast knowledge of trivia, I haven't done bupkis with the stuff.
Why? I could use the excuse of life getting in the way, but I've spent time on other items, that's for sure.
And after researching the WWII years , I had to walk away for awhile. There was too much "Remember him? legs blown off. And him? The one who won all the those awards? Dead--shot while trying to take a hill in Italy." at once to handle. Believe me, when you read about 1939-1945 in three newspapers over eight weeks, it starts to get pretty heavy. The brain just says "enough".
And I can throw a bit of blame at SJSU, who shut down their library this past summer, and then merged with the city library, making it almost unusable. If I keep coming in and finding that *none* of the twelve microfilm machines are working--again--when it used to be that SJSU had six that they kept in working order, I just stop coming back.
But yeah, mostly it's me, being a laze.
So, when I was asked about the work twice in a short time, and a dear friend gave me a "small book for big ideas" (and I hope he forgives me for using it to non-computer ends), it was the goddess of sychronicity giving me a big slap along the side of the head, and telling me to get my act together.
So, watch this space--I don't think this will happen in chronological order, but something will start showing up here. I hope that it's good....
We're starting to hear the first murmurs of maybe, just maybe it's time for the Sharks to take a look at Vesa Toskala and decide that it's time to swap the goalies out. Yeah, that's about right--Nabokov would have had the job for over four years (having shown up in the 1999-2000 season) in a month or so.
San Jose loves their goalies.
They love them, they eat them alive, and then they spit out the gnawed-on bones, and look longingly at the next cute wide-eyed puppy goalie.
Jarmo Myllys, who did one season returned to Finland, and never came back
Brian Hayward, whose lower back looks like what happens to Silly Putty when you put it in the microwave
Jeff Hackett, who cared too much to be with a team that bad
Arturs Irbe, the first fluffy puppy who thrilled and then so disappointed us all
Wade Flaherty, the ultimate good soldier, who's still hanging on with the league
Jimmy Waite, looking for one last chance
Chris Terreri, who learned there is no place like home
Ed Belfour, who fooled us all
Kelly Hrudey, who finished his career in SJ
Mike Vernon, who tried to, but ended up where he started
Steve Shields, who never seemed to really *be* here
Evgeni Nabokov, who stole the job from Shields and stole the hearts of the fans
Miika Kiprusoff, who had the chance and couldn't reach to grasp it
Geoff Sargeant, Jason Muzzati, Sean Gauthier, who can point at the books, nod, and say "Yeah, I was there..."
...and Vesa Toskala, the latest, the newest, the shiny new jewel in the chest:
Oh, he makes the saves...
The fans cheer him on
He's highly marketable, you know
A fresh face
Just what we need!
An attitude wrapped in a whiplash smile
Yeah, we'll take him
Who's next?
Chuq pointed me at the request from the ni3 blog for information on root cause analysis resources.
First, I'd point at anyting TQM-ish as a good place to start, or if you're into the math, Deming's work in general. TQM Tools has a nice shrt explanation on using the fishbone to determine when a process has gone out of spec. Simply, it's asking "why did this happen", and "so, why did that happen", until you get back to the cause.
Okay, that's the theory--why doesn't work as well in practice?
The sociology just doesn't work, that's why. No matter how many times people are told that they won't get whapped , the first time anyone makes a connection with admitting responsibility, even a small part of the responsibility for the overall event, and getting whapped for the whole mess, game's over.
And this isn't unique to IT organizations. The times I've seen TQM brought into orgnizations, the boys in the carpeted wing are all hot for the quality improvements, and aren't interested in implementing the organizational changes that have to happen to make this useful.
However, since when there's an incident in IT, either all the corporation gets to "share the love" of the fallout, or at least a very interested and highly-placed subset, unless there is a concrete atmosphere of "no fear, learn from the experience and move on", there's going to be a lot more energy expended on CYA than root causes.
It's the same thing with the re-engineering, six-sigma, or any of the other "let's introduce quality into the organization" theories. Any of these could be used as a tool, but without the sociology in place, it's just finding a bigger hammer when what you need is a screwdriver.
Contrary to what you might think, other than the 99N oopsies, Seattle was a fine time. The people there were great, and I finally had a chance to check out the Fremont district.
Boy, they ought to send the SJ city development people up there, point it out, and say "This! This is what you want to do!" Lots of amazingly cool restaurants and shops and such, all within a very short walk of the office buildings. And it works--you see lots of people out at lunch and at dinner, even with the weather the way it was. Hey--you have rain gear, right? And being right on the edge of Lake Union is just really, really nice.
And the seafood--amazing. Even as much as they tout the seafood in the Bay Area, the stuff in Seattle is in another class entirely. I could have spent a week there and not even began to get tired of it.
So, yeah, I'm looking forward to my next trip up there in January. It's definitely a place I can get used to being there.
I headed back to San Jose on Wednesday morning. Darn good thing, too, since if I had stayed another day, they likely would have had frogs falling from the sky.
After the massive rains on Tuesday, I fell asleep listening to the windstorm that was coming through in the middle of the night. That should have tipped me off--nothing comes through like that than a cold front.
So, I'm up at 5 AM, turn on KOMO, and find out there's *snow*.
Oh, we're not talking about snow in the passes or on the hills. Nope, we're talking snow at sea level. And in Everett (about 20 mi to the north), it's sticking.
Whee
Now I have a real reason to hurry up and get out of Dodge. I packed up the car and headed down the I-5 for SeaTac. I decided not to deal with the 99 because I couldn't get a road report on it, and if there was a closure, I didn't want to have to deal with figuring out a detour.
About a mile south of downtown, the snow kicked in. Nope, it didn't stick, but there's that *sound* when you realize that the precip has suddenly gotten really, really soft. Add to that some serious standing water, and you have some really nasty driving conditions.
Luckily, everyone around me knew how to drive in messes. If this was happening in SJ, you'd see the application of the old "you start to hydroplane at the sqrt (tire pressure)*9", which, for the mathematically non-inclined, is usually somewhere between 45-54 MPH. Controlled spinouts in a big, empty, supermarket parking lot are fun. On an eight-lane highway? Nope.
So, off to the airport, through security in plenty of time to get to the gate, get a big bottle of water, and on to the plane. Now you *know* this is not going to be a ha-ha flight, since we're going to be flying back through that front.
And it wasn't--the plane was a 737, which unlike the MD80 flying rock, has a nasty tendency to shimmy. And boy-howdy, did it. We finally broke free of the front with 30 minutes left in the flight. I have to hand it to the flight staff--they went out of their way to keep people happy during the flight.
Landed in SJ at 10, and after a short taxi ride, I made it to a meeting at 10:30.
The rest of the day it was "You flew in from Seattle. This morning. Okay...."
Or "Seattle--the city with amazingly *CRAPPY* street signage"
Armed with my maps, I took off for the rental car counter. Okay, does anyone park any further from the amenities than Alaska? A goodly trot later, I found the counter, and a staffer who was in need of someone, anyone to talk to. I spent about 10 minutes at the counter kibbitzing before I took the car stuff and left.
Off to get the car...
Okay, the one thing I try to do before I take the car anywhere is to find out where the goodies are. There's nothing like trying to find WTF did they put the headlight controls on an unfamiliar car while in the hurry in the dark to make it a fairly unhappy time.
Everything checked out fine except for the seat adjustments. Look, I'm a strapping 5 ft 6, okay? I need the driver's seat to be in the same county as the steering wheel!
I reached under the seat and found the control. I also found a lump of silicone grease that had been used on the mechanism. Whee....
I took off, wanting to avoid the crush leaving the Seahawks game. The map said to take 99N and make a "slight right" at 6th ave N. Well, if there is signage off the 99N for 6th av N, it is cleverly hidden. I overshot the exit, and found myself on Aurora, which doesn't want to let you go until you get on the other side of the bridge. I drove back, and when I noticed that there wasn't a 6th ave N exit either, I said "well I *know* where Lake Union is, the hell with it", and cut over, where I finally found Mercer and on to Westlake.
Now, the place I need to go tomorrow is off of Aurora. I have two choices--I can drive Westlake to the Fremont bridge and cut back, or I can try to find a way back onto 99N/Aurora and go more directly. Right now, I think I'll use the former unless someone who is a heck of a lot more familiar with the area has a clue for me.
I did manage to pull into the hotel about 30 seconds before the next rain came rolling in, so that was a good thing.
Now it's a bath, and book and to bed early tonight so I can get an early start tomorrow--just in case they've closed the bridge or something, and didn't bother to tell anyone.
Today was taken up with travelling from SJC to SEA.
The good news--the pilot was a genius and managed to get up into SEA through a sucker hole without a lot of hassle or undue bumpiness.
The bad news--man, travelling is a pain in the tuchis.
Okay, first thing, I carry two laptops. As I say--I have to have a PC, but I get my work done on a Mac. The Mac was dusted for the nasty materials by the inspector. It was returned with a snide remark about "you Apple people".
I also carry an iPod (40GB, eat your hearts out!), and a TMobile sidekick that sorta does a lot of stuff okay--as long as you're within range, anyway.
So, yeah, I have some electronics on me.
My name was called about 15 minutes before they started to board. Since I had an indeterminate message about not being able to get a seat, and even though I did the web check-in and did get a seat, I figured I was first on the list for bumping. Nope, they just wanted to know if I would move up 6 rows so a family could sit together. Okay, *that's* easy karma points.
About 5 minutes before boarding, they *did* announce that they were oversold by 3 seats, and some lucky people were going to get a free round-trip on Alaska and get to go on the 6:30PM flight. Urgh. Luckily, some people didn't mind getting an extra five hours in SJC, so okay.
Now on the to plane. Yup--it's full, and I have window seat. Okay--better than being in the middle, that's for sure.
So, we do the usual and take off. This is where life gets more fun. I had a massive infection back in oh, 1987 or so, and it left me with a really nasty case of positional vertigo. That took about 6 months to finally go away, but the next time I took a flight, I found out that my local vertical is shot to hell. I also pick up all the lovely sub-harmonics that jets have. Thank you iPod--once the "okay, you can turn on your toys" announcement came over the intercom, I plugged in the ear buds, which for some reason seems to take care of the worst of it. I'm not a barfer--I'm just not happy.
So, we run into weather just over the Siskiyous. Right on schedule. About 30 minutes later, they announce that they're going to be asking people to put their goodie away a little early, as there may be some turbulence coming in.
Now, at that point, if you could see the ground, you'd see that we were 90 miles south of Portland. They don't even seriously begin a descent until Olympia or so. This is defined as *not good*.
Oy....
Somehow (and I thanked the pilot on the way out--I appreciate this sort of thing, even if a lot of people never notice), the pilot dipsy-doodled his way through the flight, and landed us with not a lot of the bumpies. Somehow, we ended up in Seattle in the only sunshine we're going to see for the next week or so.
I married the most wonderful man in the world. Chuq, I will love you forever....
Today was flu shot day-whee! My first attempt was turned away--apparently so many people signed up, and no one told the nurses' group, so they ran out of what they brought in the first thirty minutes.
So, back in 90 minutes, and I get the shot. No worries.
n +5 minutes--there's the weird taste in my mouth. That will be there for the next 24 hours
n +90 minutes--right on schedule, the eyes gunk up. It's not like I'm allergic to the eggs, nor to the fowl they come from. But every flu shot, it's the same thing.
n +120 minutes--the left delt is now sore. I have lifted before getting a shot. I have lifted *after* I've gotten the shot. I have skipped doing delts altogether. No difference.
n +480 minutes--hello, left trap. Soreness, right on schedule. That will be around for 2-3 days.
It's bizarre--I can get the full water-borne series, and I'm the only one at work the next day who's just fine. Gimme a tetanus booster, and I get a small hotspot at the site of injection. But the flu shot? It's always worth 3 days of annoying muscle pings.
Okay, I'll take the annoyance over the flu, if that what it means. But geez, don't tell me that there's just no way this can be happening.
Yup, made it another year. And in the mailbox this morning were blats from the PR/info wires from various NHL teams. Nice hack. The one that caught my eye, though, was the on-line store discount from the Leafs. I'd love to see the numbers on this, but I'll bet that it drives revenue to the on-line store that otherwise wouldn't happen.
I'll check that out, but first I need to fill up my iPod--a certain someone made sure that I can have a nice romp through iTunes....
Off-Wing Opinion weighs in on Keenan, and I expect to see something later from Frank Hofer.
Yeah, I have thoughts...
Background--I have a lot of hockey programs. I mean a lot. We're talking 10 vertical drawers full of hockey programs. So, I get to see a lot of bright, smiling faces through a lot of years.
Part of the collection is a bunch of programs from the Rochester Americans, where Keenan coached before he came on board with the Flyers. He's smiling, and he doesn't have that guarded and hard look you see after he ended up, with oh, New York. He looks like a guy on the way up, who knows where he's going.
So, he ends up with the Flyers, and they're a team on the move as well. They've matured from the Broad Street Bullies, and now with their new goalie, Pelle Lindbergh, they look like they have all the pieces in place.
Depending on which Flyers book you want to read (or the "Six Shooters" book about the Sutter brothers), Keenan had a party for the players--you know, one of those "all the wood behind one arrowhead" type of things.
Pelle Lindbergh didn't survive. Cast the blame where you will--a Porsche that was modified beyond control, too much alcohol, whatever, but Lindbergh sustained a serious brain stem injury, and after a few days, the doctors turned off the machines.
The press caught up to Keenan, and he was quoted as saying "How am I going to win the Stanley Cup now?!?"
I'll give Keenan points for being totally distraught, and not having his brain properly engaging his mouth.
But after that, he couldn't properly coach a goaltender. He picked up a rep for being particularly abusive to his goaltenders, talking to the press about how they weren't so special.
After that Keenan fell into a pattern of screwing up the relationship with his teams, making it a certainty that he'd get canned when things got completely out of control.
Because if he left them, they couldn't leave him, could they?
Update: Frank Hofer offers his opinion on Keenan
As of this morning, Keenan isn't coaching the Panthers. Shields, however, will likely finish out the season as Luongo's backup.
There's a editorial in here somewhere...
Okay, maybe twisted attitude aerobics...
I used to do a lot of aerobics--five classes a week, and then serious powerbuilding on top of that. Anyway, one of the things that I noticed is that aerobics music is just too darn cute. Enough of that!
Here's what I'd like to have put together for an aerobics class:
Warm-up: Bring Me to Life--nice register, starts out slow, and builds. Perfect for getting the shoulder shrugs out of the way
Raising that pulse: A view to a Kill: Duran Duran: "To drench your skin with lover's rosy stain"--yep, just the kind of disturbing lyrics I wanna hear!
Let's Get Into it!: Twilight Zone: Golden Earring, and Don't Fear the Reaper, Blue Oyster Cult. And I want the one with the multi-minute drum solo!
Just because we need a dance song; Obsession by Animotion--"Who do you want me to be, to make you sleep with me?"--the ultimate meat market anthem!
Okay, let's get out of the red zone: I'm only Happy When it Rains: Garbage, because I'm not being a sunshine gal today, okay?
And down... Joey by Concrete Blonde--save the rest of Bloodletting for future floor exercise sessions
On the floor, and movin' slow: What Would Happen by Meredith Brooks. Feelin' good, and being a bad, bad, girl...
hmmmm
Anyone up for a workout?
When there isn't a cat sitting on my chest...
Seriously, am I the last in captivity to still script in awk?
Chuq makes a pointer to the "How to properly fold a cat" page, and it notes "never attempt this with a badger".
In the first in a series on "how did my brother manage to survive to adulthood", here's something else to not do with a badger....
My brother came in one night, looking for something a little more sturdy than the playskool plastic golf club he was holding. I asked him why, since I didn't want him running off with one of my hockey sticks or baseball bats to do stupid stuff.
He tells me that there's this *really big*, *really flat* animal out back, and he was attempting to get it to move by whacking it with the plastic club.
Huh?
Figuring my brother had actually been beating the snot out of a shag rug, I turned on the back porch light and saw one really big, really, really pissed off badger. Why, while my brother was smacking it, it just didn't turn around and rip him to pieces is a mystery (as every other animal in the neighbourhood took turns biting, scratching or pecking him), but it wasn't going to get a second chance.
To a shout of "you stupid f*ck, that's a badger!", wildlife control was called, and my brother's extracurricular activites came to an end--that evening, anyway.
Okay, hands up--who else has an overwhelming urge to repeatedly smack him?
It's been one month since I started to take part in a taste experiment as a method of weight control. So, I've been sprinking taste accentuators on food for the past month, with the idea that if the taste stimulus is satisfied, saiety is reached earlier.
Well, given I'm a "high need for stimulus" type, I'm your girl! And I'm in for six months.
And one month later, there's 10 lbs less of me.
Now, there definitely seems to be something going on betwixt tongue and tum, since I do notice that I feel full earlier in the process. I also wonder if I am "Westinghouse effect"-ing myself, where by just paying attention to what I'm eating, I'm eating less.
hmmm
Time for pragmatism here--whatever is working, as long as it keeps working, I'm happy.
