life « Continual Improvement

Archive of posts filed under the life category.

Fitness on the fly

8 February 2010, 11:43 pm

Having visited a lot of hotels during the past year for work and pleasure, I’m always entertained by the wide variety of characters that frequent these scaled-down fitness facilities. While most have the best intentions, some of their actions have culminated into the perfect ‘what not to do’ list.

10 min Timmy. Timmy often looks the part with the branded shirt and shorts, but his time in the gym will be short. After ten “hard” minutes on the treadmill, he’s off to that big business meeting. This marathon is barely long enough to burn off a cup of nonfat yogurt, and even worse, the false perception of fitness may have Timmy in the doctor’s office sooner than he expected.

Chewing gum Charlie. The second I see Charlie, I scold myself for not finding the time to get my CPR certificate renewed. Sure, Michael Jordan chewed gum from time-to-time, but usually, there were a few (thousand) people in the near vicinity. I’m sure the Freakanomics stats give Charlie a high likelihood of survival, but any good reasons to do this are offset by plenty of bad reasons.

One rep Ronnie. Ronnie likely lifts weights on a strict 12 month schedule. He places the pin on the heaviest level on the weight machine and strenuously pushes out one, maybe two repetitions. After a quick glance/flex in the mirror, he’s off to the next station to pump out another 1-2 red-faced reps. Unfortunately, the only swelling Ronnie is likely to acquire is from a torn muscle or even worse, a hernia.

Frustrated Fred. Of everyone in the gym, Fred is a frequent attendee and loves to spend time on cardio machines. Fred’s problem is not his physical health; it’s his alarm clock skills. When Fred checked out the gym the night before, it was empty, but at 7:30 AM, the room is filled with early rising type A’s. The sign in the gym says 30 minutes max, but Fred is intensely scowling at his watch every 60 seconds while free spinning on the broken upright bike. Fred may be extending his life by being in the gym, but he’s lost 2-3 years from the stress this little incident has incurred.

No wipe Willie. Willie wants to share something with everyone else – his perspiration. Upon his exit, the elliptical machine looks like a rain shower hit the exercise room. Willie’s lack of common courtesy will mostly go unnoticed, but a friendly dose of staphylococcal will provide an (un)healthy reminder of his existence.

Working out while on the road is an essential part of maintenance as well as a good method for countering jet lag when the normal life schedule has been altered. Burning off those high-calorie restaurant meals will make jumping back into the routine much easier, and avoiding the habits listed above will make the experience a lot more pleasurable (for us all).

Filed under fitness, life, travel. Tagged fitness travel health exercise

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Sprucing the sniffer

31 October 2009, 11:52 am

Rarely do I talk of miracles, but I’ve been reveling at my most recent $15 purchase. The Norelco NT9110 trimmer works better than anything I’ve ever used. The trimmer uses a different technology than the rotary blade setups of the past, which allows all areas of the nostril to be cleaned. In addition, it can be rinsed with water, which makes total trimming time on the order of seconds. Granted, a few people on Amazon mentioned that they had problems, so I recommend keeping your receipt. I’ve had mine for about 6 weeks with no problems, but I’m going to buy a spare, just in case.

Anti-disclaimer: I received no compensation for this review, but if promoting this product continues to evolve the technology, I will have benefited many times over.

Filed under life. Tagged ear, hair, norelco, nose, review, trimmer

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The compliment yardstick

29 March 2009, 8:09 pm

The fastest way to ensure failure at an existing or new relationship is to make a positive comment for every negative mention. But what happened to the rule of balancing encouragement with constructive criticism!? Until recently, I thought this combination created the perfect mixture for healthy and lasting unions in our personal and work lives, but a recent reading has convinced me otherwise. Upon further introspection, I was able to recount several situations where I had experienced disastrous exchanges using the “say something nice for every bad thing” formula.

As it turns out, some studies have shown that a 1:1 ratio of negative to positive remarks is a sure-fire way to end or severely damage productive communications between people. This applies to everything from spouses to work associates. A much healthier ratio to ensure an enduring relationship is closer to 1:5 negative to positive interactions, which is far fewer than most of us ever even get close. Granted, fleeting flattery doesn’t count as a meaningful compliment, which means the words must be sincere.

I’ve been thinking about using criticism counting as a way to keep the ratio in check. This means I’m on the hook for 5 positives for each and every disapproving statement spilling out of my mouth, which means the criticisms will go down or the positives will go up. In either case, trying to measure up to this compliment yardstick will take some work.

Filed under life, management.

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Electronic Catch Phrase – Supplemental Instructions

18 January 2009, 9:33 pm

Introduced to me about 3 years ago by Jim, Electronic Catch Phrase is an easy-to-learn and entertaining party game for small to large groups. Game play often involves two teams sitting every other one with each team alternating the phrase guessing as the time counts down. The electronic version is shaped like a small disk and essentially becomes a “hot potato” as each team tries to guess the phrase and pass the disc before the buzzer sounds. Having played hours and hours, we have added a few additional instructions to aid game play and reduce debates for more competitive players.

Electronic Catch Phrase - Second Edition

Supplemental rules:

1) Rhymes. Phrase owner cannot use rhymes that match the phrase or specific words within the phrase. Example:
Phrase: snake
Restricted: “Animal that rhymes with bake.”
Allowed: “Animal that rhymes with a reptile that slithers on the ground.”

2) Foreign languages. Two options: (a) Phrase owner cannot use non-English languages. (b) Phrase owner cannot use non-English words that have direct matches to the phrase. (Option “a” is my preference.) Example:
Phrase: water
Restricted: “agua”
Allowed: “H20”

3) Adverbs & filler words. Phrase owner cannot use adverbs within phrase prior to guessers having said them first. Words such as “the”, “an”, etc… NOTE: This is a controversial rule and should be discussed prior to playing. After many discussions, this rule is deemed to be fair because so few phrases contain these words, and since these words are easy to guess, discussing this rule in advance of game play will eliminate arguments. Example:
Phrase: Catcher in the Rye
Restricted: “in”, “the”
Allowed: “Second word: opposite of ‘out’”, “Third word: in blank beginning”

Tips, notes, and general etiquette:

BUZZER NOTE: The buzzer sound does not necessarily mean the point has been lost. The guessing team must hit the Next button and cause the word to change before the opposing team loses a point.

ETIQUETTE: A team must provide at least one clue before passing to the opposing team. This situation commonly occurs when the disc is being passed as the buzzer is sounding. The phrase changed, but the next person did not have time to say anything even though they are holding the disc.

GUESSING TIP: Phrase owners should use “contains n words” earlier in the turn, assuming the phrase does not contain ‘contain’, ‘word’, and/or the number. (See Rule 3 above.)

STRATEGY TIP: Many clever beginners will delay the disc handoff in an attempt to shorten the time for the opposing team. Most experienced players realize this is a futile effort. Beyond being unsportsmanlike, this often strategy often backfires because the next phrase may be quickly guessed by the opposing team leaving the perpetrating team with less time.

Filed under life.

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Killing our kid

10 January 2009, 4:13 pm

A rare 6 PM call from my wife informed me that instead of taking of my routine drive home from work, I would be heading to the hospital to attend my eleven-year-old’s emergency appendectomy. My head was spinning with random thoughts as I quickly shoved my laptop into its satchel. I knew people could get appendicitis at any age and any time, but in the back of my mind I was thinking about how this kid (my kid!) was a pinnacle of health. She was swimming competitively 4-5 times a week, had perfect attendance for 3-4 years a time, and even the doctor commented how rare it was to see her every couple of years for a cold. (…and most of these trips were due to proactive parents ensuring an upcoming vacation turned out well, not what one would consider urgent by any standard.) On the other hand, the situation didn’t seem entirely left field because Kate had experienced an unusual fever (~104 F) and vomiting the previous two evenings and could barely get out of bed once the sun started to set. As I calmly but swiftly drove to the east side of town, I reminded myself that modern technology had perfected the appendectomy into a minor procedure, and even though there was going to be anesthesia, I could imagine of a lot worse things to find out, like the dreaded ‘c’ word, cancer.

As I snaked my way through the parking lot of the brand new, highly publicized children’s hospital in Austin, I had a slight feeling of relief that this place was as good as any if you were a kid and needed some medical work done. After being cell-phoned through a series of elevators and hallways, I was able to discover my wife and daughter in a prep room on the third floor. Kate looked ill but calm laying on the gurney. After seeing her grey-colored skin and the lack of sparkle in her eyes, I experienced the deeper meaning of the word ‘ill’ because she truly looked miserable, and as they rolled her away, I mentioned to my wife that she seemed almost content to trade surgery for the pain she was experiencing. The next hour was filled with calls to grandparents and a lot of concerned conversation about how we had gotten here. My wife, DeeDee, stepped me through the day’s events of taking Kate back to our pediatrician, who had recently prescribed some antibiotics to treat a minor sinus infection about a week before. While we had thought the sinus infection had gotten worse, the stand-in pediatrician had discovered the “classic” lower abdomen sensitivity on Kate and recommended Kate be taken to the emergency room immediately. Three surgeons at the hospital had agreed, and the operation protocol had ensued.

Almost to the minute of an hour wait, the surgeon walked out to meet us. She was a confident, attractive, 30-something woman, and while I didn’t read any serious signs of concern on her face, she asked us to follow her to a conference room to discuss the situation. I remember thinking how this cannot be good, and the dreaded ‘c’ word started to pop back into my head. I was thinking about how I should stay focused on the situation and not get caught up into a selfish fear of something chronic. As she meticulously chose her words, we learned that the surgery had gone well, and our daughter was doing fine in recovery. BUT…and this was the part I was dreading…there was nothing wrong with Kate’s appendix, and other than swollen lymph nodes, nothing else appeared to be wrong either. Immediately, my mind starting rolling with one thought after another of how this whole set of events had never seemed to intuitively matchup in my mind. Sure, my kid is fine and doesn’t have to worry about her appendix in the future, but a lot of worry and risk had just occurred. Not verbalizing my frustration, I reminded myself of how appendectomies were difficult to accurately detect, and while we can get our eyeballs laser-ed in a strip mall, this particular procedure was still in the Stone Ages. In any case, three tiny scars and week out of school weren’t going to affect this kid in any memorable way, so back to the day-to-day routine for the Lunt family.

Unfortunately, the reality of that night would not be realized for a couple of weeks. Kate experienced the high fever for a few more evenings after the surgery, but she was back in the pool ten days later swimming better than ever. (We kept telling her it was because she was so much lighter.) Having grown tired of rehashing the events to ourselves, we repeated Kate’s story a hundred times to concerned family and friends, but the revelation came one evening at the swim center as DeeDee was retelling to another swim team mom. This humble pharmacist was able to deduce what 4-5 other “high-caliber” doctors could not. Within minutes of hearing about the sinus infection and the evening fever, the pharmacist diagnosed Kate as being allergic to amoxicillin – not to be confused with its close sibling appendicitis. Upon hearing this from my wife, a severe case of imbecilitis swept over us. To top the list, I’m allergic to penicillin and have been reiterating this on medical forms ever since I was nine. Doh! Included in the hind-sighted set of bad parenting mistakes, how were we unable to correlate the evening fever and daily dose of miracle drugs after dinner each day? Gong!! We even followed the doctor’s orders to continue the prescription for three long days after the surgery. Said differently, try puking with stitches in your abdomen. Ouch!!!

Granted, this tale turned out fine, and we are much less likely to discount our own capacities to analyze the situation in the future. Still, the circumstances seem hard for others to avoid without this common awareness, and being unable to avoid a Jerry Springer final moment, I end this story with a few choice words of advice. Don’t poison and torture your kid(s) like we did.

Filed under fitness, life.

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Twitter poll – fad or not?

4 May 2008, 8:45 pm

A new Jyte poll…

Click on this link to vote, or click on the widget below, if visible.

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Racing to nowhere

1 May 2008, 10:35 pm

There’s nothing like a dose of humility to remind us all that even the best plan can wind up a disaster if we aren’t careful. Take my own personal example of a 5K race I recently “ran”. This is a very hilly 5K race I’ve run in the past, but to make a short story even shorter, the picture below tells the tale. The green line represents the actual race course, and the red line represents the scenic tour that I decided to add to the race this year.

Besides more than tripling my normal time with a 60 minute 5K record, I learned a few things along the way. First, taking frequent checkpoints of where you are cannot be underestimated. If you are an Agile purist, this means short iterations – two weeks preferred. Second, just because you’ve been there before doesn’t mean this time will be the same. To emphasize this point, I like the quote “if you feel comfortable, you should be uncomfortable” (author unknown), and my discomfort was only compounded when I had to stop and ask a local resident for directions on how to get back to the finish (twice). And last, the hare doesn’t stand a chance against a tortoise that knows about the first two lessons.

Filed under agile, life, process.

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Can Flickr Make You Famous?

27 January 2008, 9:22 pm

My amateur status as a photographer has now been set, and I wasn’t even trying that hard. Here are the details of what happened with a few parting ideas on how to “get famous” via Flickr. To start, I was contacted by an online travel guide, asking for permission to publish one of my Flickr pics in their latest version on London. Here’s the link where the pic is published, which includes my name and a link to my Flickr pic. Granted, it’s nothing fancy, but it has become my most popular photo by over twofold. This is the 3rd request I’ve received to use my Flickr pics in other’s material over the past year or so, and while I’m far from famous, it’s been an unexpected upside to publishing my pics on the Internet.

Guidelines for a good Flickr presence:

Always give photos tags, a title, and a description. A nature shot is good, but it’s 10X better when you know where and/or why it was taken.
Make the good pics public, and keep the duplicates private. A few snapshots of your dog is good, but clicking through 100 speed shots can get tiresome.
Post your best pics on your blog along with a post. This will give your post some nice spice while publicizing your pics.
Add a Flickr “badge” to your Web site. This is a nice way for visitors to see random samplings.
Use photo sets whenever possible. This allows photos to be grouped with one description, and a photo set can have a separate link.
Turn on Flickr stats. This is a manual process, but it gives you an idea of what photos were more popular and when.

Filed under life.

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Scary management

10 December 2007, 10:23 pm

Have you recently told someone on your team to do something? If so, there’s a good chance that some management training may be in your future. (Disclaimer: This blog post doesn’t just apply to software development.) We often hear that the command-and-control style of management is the “old way”, and removing roadblocks is the “agile way”. While this sounds like a good thing every time we hear it, there isn’t a quick and easy way to determine how to adjust. I often find that it’s difficult to take many of these self improvement suggestions and act on them, so I prefer internal triggers that can shape behavior in an ad hoc manner.

In this case, the key trigger is simple asking/telling someone to do something. What?! Our internal voices may find this proclamation to be borderline-insane as this is method by which we get almost everything done. But wait, there is a better way that creates self-empowering teams and removes the management dependence. The alternative approach, simple and elegant, involves explaining the expected result and trusting the teams to accomplish the resulting tasks. In some cases, the difference is a subtle change in the wording and intentions, and in others, there may be political reasons why specific commands are given. In the later, this is a trigger in itself that the political issues (often elephants in the room) should be tackled head-on instead of being obfuscated.

It’s true that since childhood none of us have liked being told what to do, and each of us wants to feel that we had some say in the planning. Using the method above solves both of these common psychological dilemmas. The bottom line is that if you can’t trust people on a team to know the intended result, there could be a problem with having the right people on the team or managing the team.

Filed under career, life, management, process.

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Picture, pictures everywhere, but not a one to find…

5 August 2007, 5:31 pm

If you are like me and capture digital pictures in almost every circumstance, the frustration of organizing all of these has crossed your mind once or twice. Two common options are (1) installing software on your computer to help keep track or (2) uploading all your pictures to an Internet site like Flickr. With the first option, the software to organize your pictures is likely to require you to open its user interface (i.e. application) to manage your pictures, and you will be responsible for transferring this application to another computer when you upgrade. With the Internet upload option, which I partially use, the idea of having all your pictures labeled, grouped, and constantly backed up does have its advantages; however, I’m not a big fan of uploading every picture I’ve ever taken out on the Internet. (Call me old-fashioned.) In both cases, there’s likely to be a license or subscription to purchase.

To alleviate this image nightmare, I’ve created a simple and free system for organizing and tagging pictures that allows for easy searching and backing up. This involves creating a directory/folder structure in Explorer similar to the following.

Each year has a folder, and within each year, there are groups of pictures with keywords as the name of the sub folder. Note that the beginning of each sub folder is a number, which indicates the month the picture was taken. This provides chronological searching, since the folders are sorted in order.

To group the pictures in Explorer, you can see a small preview of the picture on your hard drive or the memory chip from your camera by setting Explorer to show the Thumbnails view. If the preview isn’t enough to determine which folder to place the picture, moving your mouse pointer over the picture in question will provide additional details. If you are like me, I often have a set of pictures with the same date and relative time, which makes it easy to figure what goes where.

The benefits of this system are that it’s super easy to do while moving the pictures from the camera’s memory chip to your computer. Just create the folder on your hard drive with some memorable words, and drag the pictures into the folder. In addition, it makes backing up the pictures easy as well, since you can backup via the date/year. This is especially important once you have more pictures than can fit on one DVD. What’s best about this model is the ability to take the system to different computers without additional software or Internet access.

Filed under life, process.

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Mouse vittles

29 July 2007, 6:37 pm

I was planning to grill some fajitas, but we decided to let the meal come to us. Click on the picture for more details.

Filed under life.

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Exercise poll

27 July 2007, 9:34 pm

I’ve been playing around with Jyte, and it seems like a cool way to do some simple reader polls on my blog. This is my first one, so we’ll see how it goes. Click on this link to vote, or click on the widget below, if visible.
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Filed under fitness, life.

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Confrontation meets capitalism

21 July 2007, 10:02 am

Can the simple rules of capitalism help you with life’s predicaments? In both family and business, all of us are forced into situations where we have reached an impasse with someone else. Often the “facts” favor each party’s perception of the conflict. Before entering into a conversation that can become heated, one simple rule of thumb to remember is the supply and demand mindset. On the demand front, it’s important to never demand anything during the conversation. The goal should be to determine what the goal is and work towards an action plan that is acceptable to both sides. This is not easy to do when we think we are “right”, but it’s a simple rule to remember once the emotions start flaring.

On the supply front, it’s a good idea to start the conversation by admitting what part of the conflict you have supplied. This is the most difficult but most important part of resolving the problem because we often think in terms of facts and evidence, but the only reality is that both sides have contributed some part of the awkward stalemate. This also requires serious self-examination as the contribution may have been doing or saying nothing for too long of a time. When having difficulty identifying what your contribution may be, viewing the situation from the other person’s point-of-view can often help. In many cases, the admission of what one person supplied to the problem will result in other person following the same course, and in the end, the conversation has a much better chance of both parties having their demands met.

Filed under career, life, management.

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Workout wisdom

19 April 2007, 10:00 pm

No, this is not the beginning of a multilevel marketing pitch. In fact, the pitch is an old story with a different twist, and it begins with the old adage that exercise is good for you. Shocker!? Here are a couple of facts that the local health club rarely mentions.

It’s now and has been a proven fact that exercise will make you smarter. Simple blood flow and increased nerve growth in the brain improve cognition and decrease the amount of degeneration of brain cells. In other words, exercising isn’t about being vain; it’s about being smart.

An additional item rarely mentioned is that exercise helps with sleep. When someone sleeps more sound, they need fewer hours of sleep, which could result in doing something much more productive like being awake. In addition, exercise helps wear out the body physically, which allows one to fall asleep faster and decrease insomnia.

The combination of these two improvements could very well provide a business justification for 45-60 minutes at the gym. An alternative take on this is that regular exercise will prolong a person’s ability to think and focus as they age, which is a bonus that needs little salesmanship.

Filed under fitness, life.

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Food: A necessary evil?

11 April 2007, 9:21 pm

As any personal trainer or dietitian will attest, the best way to increase general fitness for most people is to cut back on the food, but can cutting back on the calories increase your lifespan and healthy years besides just losing a few pounds? While most associate healthy eating with a lack of obesity diseases, there is a substantial amount of research that says a lack of eating actually decreases the aging process.

One article goes so far as to say that every unnecessary calorie avoided increases your lifespan by 30 seconds. While this statistic might be a little hard to believe, there is hard evidence that reducing calories will slow the metabolism. Unfortunately, eating a lot and exercising it off doesn’t seem to result in the same life extending aspects, even though exercising has its own benefits. Interestingly enough, both of these theories seem to hold true to the health adage that fitness is 80% diet and 20% exercise.

Filed under fitness, life.

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