The Tiger and The Bonsai

Posted by fatherlinux on May 4, 2018 in Fitness | 0 comments

Your body has two ways that it can move. Like a tiger and like a bonsai plant. Tigers move quickly, striking their prey. Bonsai plants move slowly, over time, growing towards the Sun.

Humans do both. We run, jump, try new things, sing, and play music we already know. We enact these movements from instinct and muscle memory like a tiger. We are most comfortable with the satisfaction of these quick movements – we understand their outcomes better and can see the results immediately.

We also go into a calorie deficit to lose weight, we lift weights to stimulate muscle growth. We do Yoga to increase our flexibility. But, each of these changes is slow like a plant.

These movements are inextricably connected. If you run a mile, 50 times, over six months, you will, over time, slowly get faster. Same with weights – you will get stronger. Same with diet – your body composition will change. Same with education.

The fast actions influence the slow actions, and the slow actions affect the fast actions. Over and over and over until we grow towards the Sun, or we are eaten by the tiger….

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Three Unexpected Benefits of Losing 35 lbs

Posted by fatherlinux on Mar 26, 2018 in Fitness | 1 comment

About a year and a half ago, I started on a journey to loose 35 pounds. When I started, like many people, I just had this nagging feeling that I needed to loose some weight and do more for my health. I had no idea how far this would go to changing my life forever. I want to quickly share a few unexpected thing that happened:

1. Everything is more fun. I am way more flexible. Bending down doesn’t bother me anymore. Getting up off the ground is way easier. Walking for an hour in the mall doesn’t hurt my back anymore. Pull-ups are way easier. Squats are easier. When I am snowboarding, it’s so much easier to do jumps, etc. I just have more fun doing anything physical, even workouts.

2. It’s changed my view on aging. I feel younger. I am less scared to try new things. My posture is better. My gait when I walk is better. I look better – and my clothes actually fit me. I noticed that I am more playful during physical activity – watch young people, they trip their friends, they make unnecessary moves when walking, they throw rocks and bang sticks – that’s back. People tell me I look younger. I rather like that part 🙂

3. I have a renewed sense of being able to change things in my life. It’s difficult to admit, but I remember looking down at my stomach as it slowly grew year after year, thinking to myself, I guess this is just part of getting older – I guess I will just never look and feel like I did when I was younger. I was resigned to it. Sure, I had seen “before & after” photos of people loosing weight, but that seemed distant and unreal. About a year into my journey, I had lost 4″ off my waist and 30+ lbs. I realized I needed new shirts, pants, and suits – which startled me. I hadn’t planned for that. Let that sink in. I hadn’t planned for it because, when I started, I didn’t really believe I could loose the weight. That hurt when I realized it. I don’t know what new goals I will set in the coming years, but I have a stoic feeling I can achieve unknown things.

All of these little things add up. Together, they have made me feel a lot happier day to day. So, if you felt like I did and you are sick of it, here’s how I started my journey. For me, it started as an experiment – now I know I will do this for the rest of my life. I never want to gain the weight back – ever.

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Armchair Quarterbacks & The Florida School Shooting

Posted by fatherlinux on Mar 3, 2018 in Politics | 2 comments

So, you think you know what you would do in a school shooting? You think that Sheriff should have ran into that Florida school without thinking right? Yeah? You’d do some kinda John Mcclane shit from the original Die Hard? Let me tell you why you have no idea what you would do. There’s a lot more to tactically assaulting a building than what you think.

Before I go on, let me tell you, I don’t know shit. The more I learn, the less I feel like I know for sure (see full disclosure at the end of this article). That said, I have learned a few things about guns, and terrorism over time. Also, when the Florida school shooting happened, I happened to be in the middle of reading a book called Terror at Beslan about the Chechen terrorists who took over a school in North Ossetia (part of Russian Federation). It was a shitshow with 1000+ kids taken hostage, 300+ people dead, hundreds of children, and like 800 wounded. A..complete…shit show. Worse, it could happen in America – but I digress.

If you think the Sheriff was a total pussy and should have ran in guns a blazing, let’s start with some background information to frame this question right.

Tactics for Assaulting Buildings with Terrorists and Active Shooters

First, there are two main tactics for assaulting buildings. While in the West, we have these things called civil liberties, the Russians see no need for that. They are a bit more stoic, pragmatic, and nihilistic.

1. Western special forces and law enforcement generally follow a philosophy which can be summed up with the phrase, “speed, surprise and violence of action” – you will find that this language is common in any discussion of tactics. Generally, it means, train like a mother fucker so that a whole team of law enforcement or special operators can move into a building quickly, organized and overwhelm the enemy. This will minimize casualties for civilians and operators, minimize the time to take control, and maximize casualties of the terrorists.
2. The Russians generally follow the above philosophy as well, but they add some stuff that doesn’t sit well with Westerners. First, they LOVE gas. They will use paralysis gas, sleep gas, all kinds of gas. Even when terrorists have gas masks, it knocks out all of the hostages so that they can’t be used as human shields, nor get in the way of friendly fire. Second, they will shoot through hostages. The Russians generally consider you “already fucked” once you have been taken hostage. If you survive, great, but if not it’s because you were already dead anyway. Third, they like to take the terrorist’s families hostage and use them as bargaining pieces. Kinda interesting.

What The Sheriff’s Deputy Probably Knew and Didn’t Know

Now let’s move on to some shit the Sheriff might have been thinking. I don’t know for sure, but it’s reasonable to think that almost any law enforcement officer would know this stuff…

1. An AR15 is loud as fuck. People know when somebody is shooting an AR15 or AK47 (which is even louder). This gives you an indication of what you are facing if you hear one firing in a building.
2. AR15s are WAY, WAY, WAY more accurate than pistols. They are frighteningly more accurate. The first time I ever fired one, I could hit hard drives (like 3″ X 5″) from like 100 yards away – without my reading glasses on. They are fucking terrifyingly accurate.
3. AR15s will shoot through anything in a school, ANYTHING. There is nothing that would provide cover, so you have to move, fire, move, which most average cops don’t know how to do very well. Here’s a video of an AR firing through cinder blocks – this isn’t like the movies where you duck around the corner and you are fine.
4. It’s possible he had no idea who was shooting. Could have been a trained terrorist (yes, they are well trained, read Terror at Beslan and you will never feel safe again)
5. It’s possible he had no idea how many shooters there were
6. It’s possible he had no idea if there were hostages
7. It’s possible he had no idea if there were bombs
8. It’s possible he had no idea about anything
9. It’s possible he was following local department policy on SOLO ENTRY AND “CONTACT TEAMS” which are all over the map depending on police force

Facts

• If he ran in by himself, he would not be following best practice for assaulting a building
• He waited 4 minutes
• The investigation still isn’t complete so we don’t know a lot yet
• If he would have ran in, and shot a kid by mistake he would be fucked
• If he ran in, and got shot to death, he would be fucked
• If he ran in and the shooter had a kid hostage, he would be fucked
• He didn’t received any clear commands that we know of
• The shooter is responsible for killing the kids – he is not

The Actual Solution

After reading Terror at Beslan, I have realized that nobody in the USA is talking about the real solutions.

• More guns is not the answer. Arming teachers is retarded. The average cop qualifies once a year and fires like 60 rounds. That’s not enough, and they don’t do more because it’s expensive. No teacher is going to have the time/money to train enough. Furthermore, it’s tactically useless in like 99.9% of all scenarios. In Terror at Beslan, there was an armed guard, and an armed police officer. Both were taken hostage by terrorists, gave up their weapons, and were summarily executed because they could be a danger later. If you are telling me that a teacher wouldn’t give up in a heartbeat if given the “hostage” choice, you are crazy. As an aside, never take the hostage option, it’s a ruse. Always fight to the death. My two cents.
• Less guns is not the answer either. Banning guns only takes them away from normal people. The Charlie Hebdo Attack and the Bataclan Attack happened in France where people can’t easily have guns. Taking guns away does not stop terrorists or crazy people (who are almost always smart). Technically, we could probably stop stupid, crazy people by taking guns away, but I don’t think it would help enough that it’s worth the political battle.
• The Russians learned from the Beslan attack. The citizens had a shitload of weapons, including rocket launchers and machine guns, but they still didn’t assault the school (but armchair quarterbacks think the Sheriff’s Deputy should have with a 9mm pistol). The terrorists did, however, gather intelligence on the school for weeks, maybe months.
• So, the main thing we can do is wake the fuck up, and keep our eyes open. Terrorist typically build intelligence, just like special forces. This is just like child molesters, so when you see the crazy looking dude in the white van sitting outside the school, say something!!!
• Active shooters are similar but different. But, they usually post stuff on social media, so again if you see something, say something!!!
• I think the gun restraining order is a good happy medium, it adheres to every fact we know about active shooters and terrorists. Terrorists probably don’t buy all of their weapons, but they will often give away telltale signs while gathering intelligence. Also, following the money stream is useful, which the FBI already does.

Enough Armchair Quarterbacking

I get that people think things should be a certain way, but they’re not. They’re just not. There are practical constraints to the possible solutions.

• Cops ought to train to fire while moving, have body armor, practice with ARs, and be physically fit.
• In reality, they qualify once a year, firing 60ish rounds and many are overweight and out of shape
• We always want what ought to be vs. what is
• We need to live in reality vs. fantasy
• We need to think about how to fix things vs. get mad and rant

Full Disclosure on My Background

• 42 year old, white male – 168 lbs 5’9″
• College degree in Four Field Anthropology. Minor in Computer Science. Took a special topics 300/400 level sociology class on terrorism after 9/11.
• Market and sell free software for a living
• Have shot AR15s and plenty of handguns, semi-automatic and revolvers
• Train at gun range once per quarter – typically fire 200 rounds – do drills like a martial art
• Train 4-7 times per week – weight training, jump rope, rowing, running in weight vests, basically nutty
• Personal records: 360 lbs X 3 deadlift, 315 lbs X 4 squat, 205 lbs X 2 bench, 130 lbs X 1 overhead press. No other exercises matter.
• Grew up very poor, have been in plenty of physical fights
• Trained in high school in a private fight club – fought every day – every day – boxing gloves, no kicking in the privates, no gouging eyes, no other rules – lost plenty – won plenty
• Have been kicked in the head – three times to be exact – same fight – it sucked
• I don’t believe more guns are the answer, I don’t believe less guns are the answer either
• Radically neutral politically, always looking for the logical fallacies on both sides (I hate Libertarians too)
• I have never been in the military, been a law enforcement officer, or shot at anybody, but I have empathy for these jobs….

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Brooding About the Duality of Man (and Woman)

Posted by fatherlinux on Feb 25, 2018 in Life | 0 comments

Pogue Colonel: You write “Born to Kill” on your helmet and you wear a peace button. What’s that supposed to be, some kind of sick joke?

Sergeant Joker: I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir.

We all struggle with duality, when I watch or read the news, sometimes I think I am a Nihilist. But, then I am on a mountain peering over the edge, realizing how close death is, and I realize I am not a Nihilist.

Another duality that strikes me is the concept of sexual dimorphism among primates – particularly humans. We seem to want to emphasize it more than ever, yet neutralize it at the same time. Men wear big, masculine watches and tight shirts to show off biceps, while woman wear makeup and show off cleavage. At the same time, there is a trend toward deemphasizing sexual dimorphism, even letting children choose their own gender, yet children don’t have much sexual dimorphism until they hit puberty, which is based on biology, not culture. It seems absurd.

Lastly, there is a trend toward eating natural foods, Paleo and Primal Blueprint claim you should steer clear of “processed” foods. Yet, almost everyone which is into these diets eats processed MCT oil from Coconuts and suppliments with protein shakes made from processed powders.

The point is, duality is all around us and it’s interesting what causes our brains to emphasize one or the other. Just remember, nobody ever blames the gun when a cop shoots an innocent person, and nobody ever blames the shooter in a school shooting. Anyway, that’s what I’ve been brooding about.

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One Year of Body Hacking in Ten Minutes

Posted by fatherlinux on Dec 8, 2017 in Fitness | 2 comments

Most of my adult life, I’ve had this nagging feeling that I needed to do more to maintain my health. I had a lot of excuses – work stress, travel, email. I even told myself that I just loved pizza, french fries, craft beer, and brie too much.

Well, that all changed. It is possible, and I am going to show you how. I lost 30 lbs over the last 12 months, lost four inches on my waist, got stronger, got faster, and increased my V02 max to 55 – a number many cyclists and runners would kill for, but more importantly, it’s the number one indicator of how healthy you are – and perhaps more importantly, it likely indicates how healthy you will be the last ten years of your life. When most people are in old folks homes and hospitals, I hope to be out snowboarding like my friend Thom, who is in his mid seventies.

First and foremost, you CAN do this. It’s just going to suck because it requires change, and change is painful. The good part is “the suck” goes away after about a month. Oh, and I am 42, you are probably younger, so this should be easier for you 🙂

Here are the steps, in order…

Lie to Yourself

Do whatever it takes to get yourself to do this program for one month. That’s what I did. I told myself, let’s just “try” this for a month. Here I am a year later, and the journey has been life altering.

Priorities

Most tech people and business travelers have a set of priorities similar to:

1. Family
2. Work
3. Life
4. …

This needs to change. It needs to be:

1. Health
2. Family
3. Work
4. …

This is going to be painful. Remember the old financial saying, “pay yourself first?” This is just like that, but your health is way more important than money. Without it, you cannot raise your children, work, or live life. Diet and exercise are the key to health. So, prioritize them above everything else. You might feel “selfish” at times when you dedicate time to work out, but it’s not. It’s what you have to do. You can pay someone to help with your lawn or your house, but nobody can put the time in at the gym for you – nobody can eat healthier food for you, except for you.

Diet

Diet is actually quite straightforward. Follow these three steps and prioritize them in this order. Missing the macros or micros some days isn’t going to kill you, but consistently eating too many calories will hinder your weight loss.

Calories

Track your calories with an app like MyFitnessPal. Actually, just use MyFitnessPal, it’s the best. MyFitnessPal has great listings for packaged or restaurant food, but when cooking at home, weigh everything. Weighing food is the most accurate and it will teach you how many calories are in many types of food.

As for diet, target 10 calories for every pound of desired body weight. If you are 200lbs like I was, and want to be 170 lbs, then target 1700 calories. This is your baseline. This is what you will burn for just being alive and sedentary. Just know this as a general piece of information – use it as a subconscious tool when thinking about calorie consumption.

The good part is, MyFitnessPal will track everything – your calorie intake, steps and exercise. Starting with your baseline, it will add calories for exercise and subtract calories to help you lose weight. But, you absolutely have to track every drop, dab, chunk, piece, nibble and drink of food that goes in your mouth. Also, tracking your food as you eat it trains your subconscious mind – it turns out that the act of recording a log of bad habits trains your subconscious mind and helps you make better choices (I only recently learned this).

You will find that as you get closer to your target weight, you might have to reset the numbers and go a bit lower. MyFitnessPal can do this automatically. Target 1/2, to 1 pound per week, never more. Never more – if you try to go too fast, it will not be a lifestyle change and you will probably loose muscle.

Before starting this program, I found that my calories could be as high as 6000 or 7000 on a a day with three meals, and drinking with friends that night. This is WAY, WAY, WAY too many. Once I tracked my food intake, I corrected this very quickly.

Macronutrients

People talk about food quality, nutrient rich and non-GMO. These are buzzwords and I didn’t pay ANY attention to any of this. I consider ALL of these buzzwords noise which does nothing to help me get to my goal. Instead, eat a balance of carbohydrates, fats and protein. Period. Make the pie chart in MyFitnessPal look balanced. That’s it.

If you want to get fancy, you can go with a formula. I used:

• 1 gram of protein per pound of desired body weight. In my case 170
• 1/2 the grams of protein in fat. In my case 85. Yes, 85. That’s crazy high by what you have probably heard. Go 1/3 if you are really scared.
• The rest in carbs. When loosing weight, my carb number was pretty similar to my protein number.

Just eat a balance. When I started, I found that my carbs and fat were way too high, and my protein was way too low. Once I corrected that, things fell into place. There have been days that I ate a piece of cheesecake that was 780 calories – I balanced it by chugging 400 calories worth of protein shakes and eggs (roughly 80 grams of protein). The bottom line is you “can” eat whatever you want, it just makes it really, really hard to balance out your macronutrients while staying under your calorie goal. Just remember, if you eat cheesecake and chug protein shakes, you will be starving later in the day – STARVING. It’s best to balance out healthy foods throughout the day and slide right into your calorie and macronutrient goals by the end of the day.

Micronutrients

These are things like vitamins and minerals. They are the easiest of the three steps and generally fall into place. Try to target the recommended daily intake in MyFitnessPal.

I only had trouble with three:

• Sodium – to this day, my sodium is often double the recommended intake. It didn’t stop my weight loss at all. And, my blood pressure is phenomenal, but check with your doctor.
• Potassium – mine is still a bit low most days, but WAY better than when I started.
• Vitamin D – most of the people in the US have a vitamin D deficiency and don’t know it. When I had my blood panel done, I was low.

Work with a doctor and supplement where recommend.

Diet Hacks

I work and travel a lot, so eating at home is not an option. Also, I am tired and lazy at home, so I eat a lot of packaged and easy to make food. Here are some hacks that I used. You will also find your own based on your taste preferences:

• Protein Shakes – these are the number one hack. I was constantly high on carbs and fat because even if I can only eat a small portion, I still like eating what I like. There are days I ate cheesecake -annoyingly 780 calories 🙁 – and I balanced things back out with protein shakes. Also, thesr shakes make you full and help you eat less. So, slam them all the time. Vegan, Whey, Casein, I drink them all at for different reasons at different times. I always bring protein powder when I travel which is a LIFE SAVER! Slam one before dinner to eat less. Slam a casein shake before bed to make it through the night.
• Cottage Cheese – I always thought this was bad. I was so wrong – it’s high in protein, low in carbs and is great in 2% or low fat form. Replace ricotta cheese, mayo, or even regular cheese with cottage cheese. Use a blender and put it in almost anything. It makes any food creamier, and tastes great. Put flavored granola in it and it tastes totally different, almost like a bowl of cereal (cinnamon, raisin, chocolate granola, etc).
• Healthy Choice Steamers – There are like 10 different options for steamed Chicken – Parmesan, Marsala, with potatoes, etc. They are mostly between 200-300 calories and they take 5 minutes to make. They are very filling and almost always balance the piechart.
• Atkins Bars – low carb diets like Atkins, IMHO are ridiculous, but they make awesome protein bars. They are between 150 and 300 calories – I target the peanut butter ones that are 150-170. They are super high fiber, have decent protein, use sugar alcohol which is actually good for your teeth like Dentine, and taste like candy bars. These are a work of art and science.
• Low Sodium V8 – these small cans helped me with my Potassium deficiency and they are only 30 calories which makes them easy to drink.
• Supplements – work with your doctor, but Vitamin D, Creatine, Beta-Alanine, EGCG, Fish Oil, Glucosamine, and a Centrum are all in my repertoire.

Exercise

Exercise cannot overcome a bad diet. Stated another way, your mouth can eat more than your body can burn off. Stated one more way, you will literally wear your joints out trying to burn off the calories your mouth ate too much of – so, stop eating too much!!!!

About 10 years ago, I did Couch to 5K. The app made it so easy and I made “some” progress. But, I stalled. I just never changed my body composition in a meaningful way. It sucked because running takes SO FUCKING LONG too.

This year, I found strength training and conditioning (which is different than “cardio”). Strength training takes WAY less time, and the progress is WAY more precise, which made it addictive, more like a game with your body.

I still run today, and ironically, I can run a faster 5K now then when my exercise was focused around running. I will explain….

Strength

Everything I do is built around a strength training program – this is the core. One year ago I started with StrongLifts 5×5. The app is awesome, and the progress of a linear strength training system like this is addictive.

After about six months, I started to stall out. It got hard, really hard. That’s when I moved to a Wendler 5/3/1 program – there’s also an awesome app. You could probably start with either, but 5×5 is dead simple – life changing.

Just remember to pick a program focused around big, complex, multi joint exercises – these work the most muscles and give you the most progress. Focus on a program that is centered around squats, deadlifts, bench press and overhead press (sometimes just called “press”).

StrongLifts 5×5 and Wendler 5/3/1 are both “Powerlifting” programs. I had no idea when I started. I never thought of myself as a Powerlifter. But, what I have found is that Powerlifting is very technical and most of the people that develop the programs are essentially hackers/nerds. You will see these HUGE dudes that are very precise in their diet and programming. Since I am a nerd, this helped.

Pick one program, stick with it for 6 months. Do NOT program hop. As you progress, you will learn a ton and add accessory work, but take your time. Even get a personal trainer for a couple months to learn the lifts and movements if that helps.

Conditioning

As I lifted weights more and more, something very unexpected happened – my cardio got better, way better. I was a decent mountain biker and a decent snowboarder, but I never thought my cardio was all that great – and it probably wasn’t – until I discovered conditioning. Little did I know, I was already doing a bit of conditioning with the weights. Conditioning is like cardio, in that it improves your cardiovascular system, but it takes WAY less time. Seriously, like 10 or 20 minutes versus hours and hours. Think of it as intense cardio with a bit of strength mixed in.

I started with jumping rope between my warm up lifts and then a bit more with my accessory work (the other strength training you do, like pull-ups, or dips). Little did I know, this was the beginning of my conditioning program.

Now, I jump rope, swing kettlebells, sprint, do bear crawls, and a multitude of heart pounding exercises between my warm up sets and accessory work. Basically, do anything that gets your heart rate up high. This is conditioning. Tabata is a very specific, optimized version developed by the Japanese and the science is showing that intense heart training increases your vO2 Max, and VO2 Max is the number one indicator of health. Don’t get bogged in the details, just slowly add a cardiovascular component to your accessory work.

Exercise Hacks

• Lie to yourself. I used to tell myself that I was just going for the sauna or steam room. Then, once I was there…
• Powerlifters will tell you not to do conditioning mixed with your lifting days because it will slow down your progress of lifting heavier and heavier weights. Who cares, I don’t want to compete in a powerlifting competition. I want to live as long and healthy as possible and mixing them takes way less time. The lifts already get your heart rate going, I just drive them even higher after the lifts.
• Get a weight vest. Trail run in it for one mile. It will suck worse than anything you have ever done. When complete, the entire world will be back in perspective and going to the gym will be easy.
• Change accessory work often, but stick with a program for your core work.
• Have fun. I know this sounds crazy, but try new stuff. Don’t be embarrassed. Most other people at the gym have no clue what they are doing either, or they only know the few things that they do. I have found that my flexibility is WAY better one year later and it makes life more fun.

Quantitative Methodologies

Formulas

• 10 calories for every pound of desired weight
• 1 gram of protein for every pound of desired weight
• 1/2 gram of fat for every pound of desired weight

Tests

• V02 Max – This can be done at a local facility, but usually the more “sciency” ones. I went to Amp Fitness in Cleveland, but there are facilities in any large city. Basically, they make you run on a treadmill with something akin to a gas mask on. It sucks bad, but it tells you what your VO2 Max is.
• RMR – Resting Metabolic Rate – This can be done at a local facility to determine how many calories you burn per day doing nothing. Check the same places that do V02 Max as the machines are the same.
• Blood Panel – this is done by your doctor and will tell you about your cholesterol, vitamin deficiencies, etc

Conclusion

That’s it. Go out and do it. I believe in you. I will leave you with a couple more hacks:

• Don’t be intimidated by all of the crazy vocabulary in the fitness world. You will learn about Hypertrophy, Hyperplasia, Accessory Work, Energetic Systems like ATP, Glycolysis and Oxidative, but they don’t matter to get started.
• Forget the “everybody is different” line. Forget it right now. It is never an excuse for something not working. Generalized diet and strength programs work for almost 99.9% of people except where they have actual health conditions. Everyone is different when squeezing out the last 5% or 10% – this is optimization, but you can absolutely get started with a general program.
• Much of what you read, and even personal trainers will ask what your goals are – I struggled with this the first year because I didn’t even know what goals were possible. I just wanted to be “healthier” – but, that is a bad goal because it is way too general. Come up with a simple goal – something like “lose 20 pounds” or “lose 4 inches on your waist” – these will seem crazy, but you can do it.

I will leave you with some final prose. Much like today, it was a November day in Ohio – the Fall leaves were Burnt Orange and Brown, Red and Yellow. I knew I hadn’t exercised much the preceding summer and I had also been eating pizza, chicken wings, and drinking without care. I told myself it was part of my job – meeting with customers, conferences, airports, etc. I told myself that I had to be social which makes it difficult to eat right.

That November day, I was scared to step on the scale because I knew “scale don’t lie!” Well, scale told me it was 202 lbs. I was heartbroken. I had never broken 200 lbs before. It was some magical level which thou shalt not cross. I am only 5’9″ on a good day, so this was too much. It hurt when I sat at my desk too long because my stomach pushed on my organs. My back hurt if I stood too long. I would get chafed when I walked too long in the city. Minor things in the big scheme of things, but I couldn’t deny it any longer.

If you are anything like me, you are having the same struggle – work, life, kids, eating out, packaged food, alcohol, whatever. It all makes it difficult. I love pizza, chicken wings, and beer – LOVE it. But, you can change, you can follow this program. You can learn all of the things I learned. It might sound cheesy, but I know anybody can do this and I hope this article helps.

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The Basic Model – How I Tackle Everything

Posted by fatherlinux on Nov 4, 2017 in Life | 0 comments

This is my definition for becoming a hacker and achieving desired outcomes in the modern economy….

The Universe

• Things perceived to be completely under your control: OK
• Things perceived to be somewhat under your control: OK
• Things perceived to be out of your control: ERR

 

Things Perceived to be Somewhat or Completely Under Your Control

Forget things that are out of our control. If the company is getting sued for $5T, it’s in the lawyer’s hands, not the engineers or salespeople. But, there are things we can control, this is what we get paid for. Sales, Marketing, Engineering. Achieving results with things perceived to be, at least somewhat, under our control. Same applies to kids, house, relationships, etc.

 

How We Achieve

We leverage and obtain knowledge in three main ways. We do this to achieve desired outcomes – building things, selling things, suing people, defending people, healing people, making war, etc:

• Things that are commonly known: Google it or use other specific knowledge bases
• Things that are known by peers: Ask a peer
• Things that are unknown: We figure this out ourselves, then make it common knowledge (write blogs, books, teach) or share it with peers (possibly too nuanced, complex or specific for knowledge bases aka tribal knowledge, wisdom, or mentoring).

 

Junior vs. Senior

Junior

• Junior people use Google a lot
• Junior people ask people around them a lot
• Junior people figure out things that are unknown, but these are typically things that could be figured out by most other junior people
• Junior people are productive, but do not tend to contribute a lot of “knowledge”  in quantity or quality compared to a senior person

Senior

• Senior people use Google a lot
• Senior people ask other senior people around them a lot, especially experts in other fields
• Senior people figure out things that are unknown as well as things that are TOUGH to figure out quantitatively (specific skill) or qualitatively (wisdom). Junior people cannot typically figure these tough things out in an efficient amount of time, nor in a way that would provide proper risk/reward. These things can be so hard that perhaps, even other senior people cannot figure them out. Imagine sending a newb to lead 1000 tanks in Iraq – not going to happen efficiently.
• Senior people are productive, and they are expected to contribute to mentoring (peers), as well as creating knowledge bases which can be used commonly (building their brand)

Unicorns

• Unicorns are senior people that can also force themselves to do things for which they have no passion
• They understand the psychological principle that you like what you do, not you do what you like
• These people will become passionate about almost anything and hence, can do almost anything well

 

Contribution Velocity

Being able to achieve desired outcomes by figuring things out at an efficient velocity and sufficient quality is important to becoming senior. Essentially, this is my definition of hacking. Whether it’s breaking an encrypted hard drive, figuring out how to program something in a new language, program something you have never programmed before, selling a specific dollar amount of goods and services, losing weight and gaining muscle, or leading 1000 tanks in Iraq, these are all hacking.

When you are good at hacking, you are good at figuring things out that are both unknown and quite difficult, then quickly leveraging these new things to acheive your desired results. When you gain this skill in any specific discipline, you are a hacker. When you have been hacking for 20 years, and have achieved mastery in 5, 10, 20 or 30 “technical” disciplines, you may be considered senior. The more disciplines you master, the quicker you master new ones, essentially increasing your rate of mastery in new disciplines. When your skill of mastering new disciplines achieves a certain velocity, say one a year, it will be difficult for the job market reward you with appropriate financial compensation. Most technical disciplines lead to a financial ceiling on compensation in the job market. Hence, when people become very senior, they look for other rewards. Great and productive people, lax lifestyle, free time, free food, notoriety (Google, Amazon, Microsoft) whatever. This can lead to laziness.

That is, of course, unless you choose the disciplines of entrepreneur, salesperson, or bandit. These disciplines are basically unlimited in financial compensation or reward. Your ability to contribute is not limited, so your ability to garner a cut is also unlimited. A salesperson can sell $100M, then sell $200M, then $1B year after year. A bandit can steal as much as he likes. An entrepreneur can grow the company as big as his skills allow. Your ability to achieve is only limited by your hard work, creativity, quality of product, and ability.

That is, at least, until you bump into things that are out of your control (cancer, global war, macroeconomic problems, etc)……

 

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Today We Brought You Home From The Hospital

Posted by fatherlinux on Sep 27, 2017 in Akron Politics | 1 comment

It’s just before Midnight on September 26th, 2017. Today your mother and I brought you home from the hospital. Someday, when you are ready, I will share this letter with you because I think that reflection is important for personal growth. As the clock ticks past midnight, I am reflecting about a conversation that I had today with my mother, your grandmother, about what childbirth means. She said, that to her, giving birth to another human being is about the past, the present, and the future. I found this intriguing – she explained, that when you look at a child, you can see the past. Some of a baby’s physical features come from their grandparents – this is a looking glass into the past. Also, some of a baby’s characteristics come from each of the parents, who also experience the birth, in the present. The parents and the baby will continue to live in parallel as the baby ages and matures. Finally, the baby will grow into it’s own individual person. The baby will be a mix of new characteristics, different from the past, different than its parents and grandparents, yet carrying a piece of the past forward. Sort of a way for the parents to live on – in part. Old and new together as one.

So, from this, I want to share with you three reflections today. One for each of – the past, the present, and the future. I hope that these might be useful to you in your life.

The Past

It was recently discovered that modern human beings have been around for at least the last 300,000 years. If most of our ancestors reached maturity around 15 years old, which is reasonable up until the last few hundred years of human history, you and I both have approximately 20,000 generations of ancestors. Let that sink in. Even with my best efforts to search ancestry.com, while your mother was pregnant with you, I could only find names for perhaps 4 or 5 generations at best. That means we have approximately 19,995 generations of ancestors for which we have no information, not even their names. Little is known, much is not.

This puts things into perspective. The things that we think are important, stressful or even joyful today, will become insignificant in the immenseness that is the past. Individual people, the generation that they are part of, the politics of that day, and even entire millennia will fall by the wayside to time. When life seems hard or difficult, try to remember this – think about how difficult it must have been for our ancestors 5,000, 20,000, and 300,000 years ago. Day to day life had very little convenience – it strikes me that the word “convenience” may not have even been invented until perhaps 5000 years ago.

I think about this every time I change one of your diapers 🙂 Our ancestors didn’t even have disposable diapers, much less the Munchkin STEP Diaper Pail (so that they wouldn’t have to smell your poopy baby butt).

The Present

Life is better now than it has ever been. This is, of course, a double meaning. Technology is better than it has ever been, but there is also a trend in 2017 toward doing Yoga, meditation, and practicing mindfulness (whatever that means) – basically focusing on the present as opposed to the past or the future. And what way is better to focus on the present than by controlling your breathing (a bit of sarcasm) – which is normally handled by your autonomic nervous system along with your blood pressure, but I digress…..

As I write this sentence, I can hear you squeak, coo and cry in the other room – I can hear one of the cats run up the stairs, and Christopher come in the room and nail the Moroccan Pouf in my office.

These moments are precious. Raising you is going to be amazing, watching you grow, seeing you become your own person, separate from your mom and me.

Tonight, before I wrote this letter, I ran to the store, picked up the Munchkin STEP Diaper Pail, then went for a two mile run, took a shower, and changed your diaper – I believe for the fifth time. Today is never easy – the only easy day is yesterday (David Goggins, my 2017 man crush), because it is done.

The Future

The future is constantly happening – it’s a constant barrage of decisions. Keep running or quit – stay in college, or drop out – lift the heavier weight today, or change the programmig because it’s too tough (a concept from weight training), procrastinate, or take action? This is the set of decisions that you will be bombarded with. We all are, but the sum of how you make these decisions will take your life in small, incremental course changes that will add up to a huge amount by the end of your life. They will be difficult to see day to day – like heartbeats, breaths, and steps, they will seem small, but will add up to huge consequences, not only in life itself, but in the way you look at life and engage with it.

Park far away and walk two minutes instead of spending that exact same time driving. Save $5 a week instead of spending it on frivolous things. Finish the book before playing the game. Finish the homework before watching TV. These are the drills that are not enjoyable today, but create a happier life in future – which in turn makes it easier to do the new drills. In the end, you can end up with the same one year of experience five years in a row, or five years of new experience. Either way, you will be five years older.

Decide what you want and make small incremental steps towards it because five years from now, you will be five years older whether you do it or not. The small incremental steps build upon themselves. This can end with feeling either content or regret. Primates are not very good at imagining the future, much less deciding what they want. Practice that skill and you will be happier over time instead of less happy as you age.

Conclusion

I can tell you with 100% certainty, I feel better today than I ever have. I have you sleeping in the other room with mom and the cat (Christopher) driving me nuts licking the Moroccan Pouf. I feel this good because I am content with the choices I have made to get here and I am confident that we can raise you with a better life than I had growing up.

You will face challenges in life, but I hope you will have immense opportunity as well. I want to take you to the tops of snow covered mountains, the centers of huge metropolises, and the coves of tiny islands in the middle of huge oceans because growth comes from seeing, learning and experiencing as much as possible. I will do my best to show you all the beauty that the world has to offer.

The future is bright….

Love You

Dad

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