So, I'm starting my HCG Diet Protocol this week. I gained 4 pounds after my first Gorge day, I'm planning on doing the same today, and tomorrow I start the Very Low Calorie Diet. Woot woot!
I'm excited about this chance given to me by one of my managers at work. He dropped what looked like 70 pounds last year, and kept it off, doing two rounds of the diet. Good for him, right? He had extra, sees that I'm fat, and says "here, try it." So I am.
I've got some concerns, especially with my diabetes, but like my doctor said, trying the diet and failing can't cause permanent harm, but not losing weight is killing me to the tune of a day per day. I asked him what he meant, and he said "Rich, looking at your weight right now, until you get yourself under 200 pounds, you're paying the price of one less day on this planet per day. So, if you don't lose 70 pounds this year, you're probably going to die a year earlier than if you hadn't lost it.
That's some heavy thinking, no pun intended. I call bullshit, however, because according to his math, I should already be dead, I've been so overweight for my entire life, it should be over by now! But, since I'm still breathing, I guess I can spend some time and effort to losing some of this weight, and perhaps get some of my life back. After all, I'm finding more things to live for every day. Like pasta!
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
I'm about to become an illegal drug-user. Thanks FDA.
Yep. I'm about to join the ranks of the crack-heads, the pot-heads, the heroin-heads, and all other kinds of -heads, thanks to a new ruling by the Food and Drug Administration.
See, it's like this: I'm fat. No, really. Fat. Really fat. I'm not going to give my weight here, but if I were 7 feet tall I'd still be considered 'husky.' I attribute this to a variety of things, but mostly my sedentary lifestyle and love of food. But I'm going to change all of that.
Here at the salt mines, one of the guys lost a bunch of weight using the HCG Diet Protocol administered via a clinician in a controlled medical environment. And when I say a bunch, I mean a BUNCH. Like WOW bunch. In addition to the weight loss, all of his other medical stats got better, cholesterol, blood pressure, the works. He waited a little while, and his wife did the same thing, and he did it again. He's kept it off for the most part, but now he's doing the same thing with some of the oral drops out there on the market, and he says he's losing again.
I have wanted to do this, but the cost was prohibitive to me. He would encourage me to do it, but understood I simply couldn't afford the expense of the program. Now, however, the oral drops are out there, and I CAN do it. So I'm in, Right? You betcha!
Problem? You betcha!
See, our favorite Uncle, Sam, has decided that the medical community will lose too much money treating obesity and obesity related ailments like my diabetes if we cattle start becoming healthier. I tried to buy the same drops he is using, but they're now illegal, thanks to a snap-judgement from the FDA. So what. I'm not saying HOW I got them, but I've got them now. I would have started the program already, but after talking to my MD, he wants me to flush out one of my oral diabetes medications from my system before I start. He advised against me doing the diet in accordance to the FDA's guidelines on the matter, but also has given me helpful advise on how to not harm myself in the process. It seems odd, doesn't it?
Anyway, I'll be going live on the plan in a week. Saturday and Sunday are my gorge days - I am to eat as much fatty foods as I can keep down, and take the drops. Then, on Monday I start 40 days of a 500 calorie a day diet. I stop on Thursday, February 16th. After this point I will keep all starches and sugars out of my food intake until three weeks later, then I can slowly bring them back in.
I'm hopeful I can do it. I've seen personally the impact it can have. Hopefully I don't get arrested.
See, it's like this: I'm fat. No, really. Fat. Really fat. I'm not going to give my weight here, but if I were 7 feet tall I'd still be considered 'husky.' I attribute this to a variety of things, but mostly my sedentary lifestyle and love of food. But I'm going to change all of that.
Here at the salt mines, one of the guys lost a bunch of weight using the HCG Diet Protocol administered via a clinician in a controlled medical environment. And when I say a bunch, I mean a BUNCH. Like WOW bunch. In addition to the weight loss, all of his other medical stats got better, cholesterol, blood pressure, the works. He waited a little while, and his wife did the same thing, and he did it again. He's kept it off for the most part, but now he's doing the same thing with some of the oral drops out there on the market, and he says he's losing again.
I have wanted to do this, but the cost was prohibitive to me. He would encourage me to do it, but understood I simply couldn't afford the expense of the program. Now, however, the oral drops are out there, and I CAN do it. So I'm in, Right? You betcha!
Problem? You betcha!
See, our favorite Uncle, Sam, has decided that the medical community will lose too much money treating obesity and obesity related ailments like my diabetes if we cattle start becoming healthier. I tried to buy the same drops he is using, but they're now illegal, thanks to a snap-judgement from the FDA. So what. I'm not saying HOW I got them, but I've got them now. I would have started the program already, but after talking to my MD, he wants me to flush out one of my oral diabetes medications from my system before I start. He advised against me doing the diet in accordance to the FDA's guidelines on the matter, but also has given me helpful advise on how to not harm myself in the process. It seems odd, doesn't it?
Anyway, I'll be going live on the plan in a week. Saturday and Sunday are my gorge days - I am to eat as much fatty foods as I can keep down, and take the drops. Then, on Monday I start 40 days of a 500 calorie a day diet. I stop on Thursday, February 16th. After this point I will keep all starches and sugars out of my food intake until three weeks later, then I can slowly bring them back in.
I'm hopeful I can do it. I've seen personally the impact it can have. Hopefully I don't get arrested.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
"right at the boundary of where you might get a vague hint of something."
Okay, this isn't going to be a 100% comedy or humor related blog. I'm going to just write about random crap. Sometimes people will ask me where all this random crap that I puke out comes from, either in day-to-day conversation, or after watching my tangent-out on the stage. And the truth is, I have a LOT of voices in my head muttering crap all the time. If you've ever seen the Harry Potter movies, the last 3 or 4, and there's the house elves that wander around cleaning while muttering crap to itself - picture about 30 of those bad boys rumbling around in your head... Like Einstein said - give an unlimited number of monkeys an unlimited number of typewriters and an unlimited number of bananas and an unlimited amount of time and eventually they'll produce Shakespeare. And a lot of poo.
I read random crap a lot, on the internet, on the toilet, on my phone. Usually all at the same time. Today, I read a story, and I was amazed by a quote from Joe Incandela, a top physicist at CERN, the great physics think tank Europe. These guys at CERN are clearly smart. Like Rainman smart. And our pal Joe is no exception. He is a top pointy-hat at the University of California at Santa Barbara, which, despite it's name and location, is actually a darned good school for physicists to come from. He spent his college years chasing tail in Chicago and said, screw it, it's not cold enough, so he then got himself appointed to CERN. Having chased significant French Alps and Swiss tail, he got himself smarter, and is currently the Spokesman for the LHC, or Large Hadron Collider. For those of you not in the know, the LHC is the 'shit' in the world of atom smashers. For those of you still not in the know, atom smashers are cool geeky things, the kind of which Lex Luthor or Wile E. Coyote would employ to do harm to Superman or the Road Runner. The LHC is by far cooler than the Medium Hadron Collider, and totally destroys the coolness factor of the Small Hadron Collider. Not to be left out, the original, Hadron Collider (Or OHC) is still considered cool, but is now only used by Junior College physicists.
The smart people are trying to 'smash atoms' at each other at super high-speed to see what happens when atoms mate outside of mating season. Anyone with a limp grasp on history and WWII knows that the Japanese are very familiar with what happens, but hey, these guys need proof. Actually, they're looking for something called the Higgs bosun.
The what? The Higgs bosun (not to be confused with Higg's Bosun, a naval support officer for Admiral Higgs in the Royal British Navy), a particle of subatomic size that is theorized to be the building blocks of our physical universe. Named after Peter Higgs, an Edinburgh University physicist, the Higgs boson is crucial to understanding the origin of mass. Shortly after the big bang, it is thought that many particles had no mass, but became heavy later on thanks to the Higgs field. Any particles that interact with this field are given mass. If you watch movies, it is essentially the "God Particle" that caused Tom Hanks all that trouble in "Angels and Demons."
Follow all that? Good. So you'd think that all these braniacs would be good for quotes, right? Give us some fantastic explanation of what all this means, and what they've spent 18 BILLION Euros searching for over the past 10 years. Sure, they could be curing cancer, ending world hunger, or even kicking butt on Jeopardy, but no, they're pointing flashlights at each other in the dark making 'voimng voimgn' sounds when the beams strike. Maybe more than that, I don't really know, I haven't been invited. All I know about physics is that according to Wikipedia.org it's a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it's the general analysis of nature, conducted to better understand how the universe behaves.
All heady stuff, which if cool, especially when you're job is researching things that may or may not exist. It's even more cool when nobody knows what exactly it is you do, or how to grade the quality of your work. In Academia they rely on what you publish, what you share with others, and the occasional "E=MC squared"
to prove you're not just chasing tail.
Today, in a widely published story from CERN, our pal Joe Incandela told the world that they hadn't quite found the Higgs bosun, but they've seen signs that it exists. Or they've seen signs that it doesn't exist. Or they've seen signs that it might exist. Or it might not exists. They've seen hints that there are signs they might or might not have seen that would imply to suggest maybe it is possible it is not imaginary. Actually, what he said was they were "right at the boundary of where you might get a vague hint of something."
To me, he's describing what I call the Fart bosun. It's when you walk into an area that someone else had farted in, but you're not quite sure. It MIGHT be a fart, it might be something someone stepped in. The air is just not right. You're pretty sure if you keep walking in the same direction you're going to be certain, but right now, you're not. Or you walk into a room and there's seven or eight people, and one of them might have farted based on the looks the others have, but nobody's called him on it yet. By observing how the others in the room are reacting to that which you can't detect tells you that something has occurred, a 'small bang' of sorts, but still, YOU don't KNOW. You can do more research, perhaps get a grant to determine once and for all the range of a fart, but at this point, you know someone let one rip.
I'm no physicist, nor have I ever played one on TV, but I can make up bullshit quotes that are far better than what my buddy Joe did. And heck, I'd even give some salty details. Take this:
"After years of hard research, we know we're going to be announcing something in the near future that will reflect that effort, and will reward everyone involved in this endeavor, and forever shape the future of research like this moving forward. In the meantime, enjoy the punch and pie."
I read random crap a lot, on the internet, on the toilet, on my phone. Usually all at the same time. Today, I read a story, and I was amazed by a quote from Joe Incandela, a top physicist at CERN, the great physics think tank Europe. These guys at CERN are clearly smart. Like Rainman smart. And our pal Joe is no exception. He is a top pointy-hat at the University of California at Santa Barbara, which, despite it's name and location, is actually a darned good school for physicists to come from. He spent his college years chasing tail in Chicago and said, screw it, it's not cold enough, so he then got himself appointed to CERN. Having chased significant French Alps and Swiss tail, he got himself smarter, and is currently the Spokesman for the LHC, or Large Hadron Collider. For those of you not in the know, the LHC is the 'shit' in the world of atom smashers. For those of you still not in the know, atom smashers are cool geeky things, the kind of which Lex Luthor or Wile E. Coyote would employ to do harm to Superman or the Road Runner. The LHC is by far cooler than the Medium Hadron Collider, and totally destroys the coolness factor of the Small Hadron Collider. Not to be left out, the original, Hadron Collider (Or OHC) is still considered cool, but is now only used by Junior College physicists.
The smart people are trying to 'smash atoms' at each other at super high-speed to see what happens when atoms mate outside of mating season. Anyone with a limp grasp on history and WWII knows that the Japanese are very familiar with what happens, but hey, these guys need proof. Actually, they're looking for something called the Higgs bosun.
The what? The Higgs bosun (not to be confused with Higg's Bosun, a naval support officer for Admiral Higgs in the Royal British Navy), a particle of subatomic size that is theorized to be the building blocks of our physical universe. Named after Peter Higgs, an Edinburgh University physicist, the Higgs boson is crucial to understanding the origin of mass. Shortly after the big bang, it is thought that many particles had no mass, but became heavy later on thanks to the Higgs field. Any particles that interact with this field are given mass. If you watch movies, it is essentially the "God Particle" that caused Tom Hanks all that trouble in "Angels and Demons."
Follow all that? Good. So you'd think that all these braniacs would be good for quotes, right? Give us some fantastic explanation of what all this means, and what they've spent 18 BILLION Euros searching for over the past 10 years. Sure, they could be curing cancer, ending world hunger, or even kicking butt on Jeopardy, but no, they're pointing flashlights at each other in the dark making 'voimng voimgn' sounds when the beams strike. Maybe more than that, I don't really know, I haven't been invited. All I know about physics is that according to Wikipedia.org it's a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it's the general analysis of nature, conducted to better understand how the universe behaves.
All heady stuff, which if cool, especially when you're job is researching things that may or may not exist. It's even more cool when nobody knows what exactly it is you do, or how to grade the quality of your work. In Academia they rely on what you publish, what you share with others, and the occasional "E=MC squared"
to prove you're not just chasing tail.
Today, in a widely published story from CERN, our pal Joe Incandela told the world that they hadn't quite found the Higgs bosun, but they've seen signs that it exists. Or they've seen signs that it doesn't exist. Or they've seen signs that it might exist. Or it might not exists. They've seen hints that there are signs they might or might not have seen that would imply to suggest maybe it is possible it is not imaginary. Actually, what he said was they were "right at the boundary of where you might get a vague hint of something."
To me, he's describing what I call the Fart bosun. It's when you walk into an area that someone else had farted in, but you're not quite sure. It MIGHT be a fart, it might be something someone stepped in. The air is just not right. You're pretty sure if you keep walking in the same direction you're going to be certain, but right now, you're not. Or you walk into a room and there's seven or eight people, and one of them might have farted based on the looks the others have, but nobody's called him on it yet. By observing how the others in the room are reacting to that which you can't detect tells you that something has occurred, a 'small bang' of sorts, but still, YOU don't KNOW. You can do more research, perhaps get a grant to determine once and for all the range of a fart, but at this point, you know someone let one rip.
I'm no physicist, nor have I ever played one on TV, but I can make up bullshit quotes that are far better than what my buddy Joe did. And heck, I'd even give some salty details. Take this:
"After years of hard research, we know we're going to be announcing something in the near future that will reflect that effort, and will reward everyone involved in this endeavor, and forever shape the future of research like this moving forward. In the meantime, enjoy the punch and pie."
Friday, December 9, 2011
The power of zero.
I'm not a math geek. I've never pretended to be a math geek. I AM however, a geek.
I'm a sales geek, through and through, and right now, the 9th of December, I'm at zero. Zero sales, Zero prospects, Zero dollars earned. Last month was a good month, and usually in sales you'll have a good month, then a marginal month, then a great month, a good month, a marginal month, and so-on.
Zero. That's the month I'm having so far. Now, is it me, is it the dealership, is it the snow? Who knows? I've spoken to three customers in my 7 days of working so far this month, and zero sales. Of course, 'customers' is a unique way to classify someone in the car industry, and these three were no exception. One was a woman wanting to see our 'list' of cars for sale under $2,000. Out the door. That list was very short. One guess as to how many cars it contained. That's right, zero.
The other two were people looking for information only, and you treat these people with all the attention, care, and respect as if they just walked in and said "hey, sell me something now!" However, I don't have any 2013 Police Interceptors, nor do I have any 2012 Chevrolet Volts. I'm a Ford Dealer, so the new Volts are not gettable, and the PI's are not yet orderable. So, zero.
I'm confident the month will get better for me, and for everyone else here. Oh, not that everyone else is doing as poorly as I am. In fact, the number of other sales people without a car out so far this month here? You got it. Zero.
I'm a sales geek, through and through, and right now, the 9th of December, I'm at zero. Zero sales, Zero prospects, Zero dollars earned. Last month was a good month, and usually in sales you'll have a good month, then a marginal month, then a great month, a good month, a marginal month, and so-on.
Zero. That's the month I'm having so far. Now, is it me, is it the dealership, is it the snow? Who knows? I've spoken to three customers in my 7 days of working so far this month, and zero sales. Of course, 'customers' is a unique way to classify someone in the car industry, and these three were no exception. One was a woman wanting to see our 'list' of cars for sale under $2,000. Out the door. That list was very short. One guess as to how many cars it contained. That's right, zero.
The other two were people looking for information only, and you treat these people with all the attention, care, and respect as if they just walked in and said "hey, sell me something now!" However, I don't have any 2013 Police Interceptors, nor do I have any 2012 Chevrolet Volts. I'm a Ford Dealer, so the new Volts are not gettable, and the PI's are not yet orderable. So, zero.
I'm confident the month will get better for me, and for everyone else here. Oh, not that everyone else is doing as poorly as I am. In fact, the number of other sales people without a car out so far this month here? You got it. Zero.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
It's and app eat app world!
I'm going to be taking on a completely new challenge.... app development. I've decided it's time I learn a useable skill, so I'm going to be learning to program games using Construct 2, a programming system that alleges it is is easy to use, program with, and develop in.
I suck at programming. By suck, I'm saying the average grandparent could probably out-code me... And yet, I'm gonna try it. Well, as the Great and Powerful Yoda says, "there is no try, there is only do, or do not."
I suck at programming. By suck, I'm saying the average grandparent could probably out-code me... And yet, I'm gonna try it. Well, as the Great and Powerful Yoda says, "there is no try, there is only do, or do not."
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Is this thing on?
Is this thing on?
Is anyone going to read this?
Does it matter?
Yes, Probably, and Probably not, but that's okay with me. Someone told me recently that she thought comics were all the same, selfish (I think she also used arrogant) men who have nothing to give, and only go on stage to be selfish, to get out of the crowd laughs just to satisfy their egos. I think that's what she said, but I can't be certain, I was busy staring at her cleavage. And it was awesome.
Clearly she had been spurned, recently, she admitted as much. However, it made me think for a bit about why I do stand-up, what I get out of it? I'm not dedicating the time I need to in order to make a career out of what I'm doing on stage. Sure, I'm making some money, but what I make barely covers what I pay in speeding tickets and alcohol, so why bother? Is it to satisfy, as Tits McGee suggests, my need to be accepted, or my need for an audience to find me funny, to heal through their laughter? I don't know, every time I think about it I see her chest. Heck, even my wife said it was impressive.
I did my set last night, thinking a bit about what she said. It was a pretty clean (language wise) set, and I believe I "killed" it. I wasn't the funniest last night, not by a long shot, but I think I started that room off the way an opener should, with a lot of laughs, probing the audience to see where they were mood-wise, what areas were open to laughs, what areas would produce the crickets. See, I think about my role in a line-up pretty seriously. I'll get into that later, but last night, I thought I'd do a set that would make people actually do what they showed up to do, laugh. I did it selflessly, staying away from some material that I would have gone to selfishly (Sorry, no Justin's Balls last night) and went where the crowd went. It really seemed to work.
As for this woman, I hear she's pretty funny. Clearly she's hotter than she knows, and I'm hoping to get to know her as I work more in the area she's from. But it's that very casual comment she made, comics are selfish, going after 'free therapy' that made me think, and I wanted to say thanks. You know who you are, if you read this ever, I don't know, and I'm fighting the codependent in me that's wanting to point this out to you. I think you're right, though. Most comics are selfish. I'm glad you said you enjoyed my set, it seemed sincere. I'm going to try to focus to make sure I keep to the selfless.
Is anyone going to read this?
Does it matter?
Yes, Probably, and Probably not, but that's okay with me. Someone told me recently that she thought comics were all the same, selfish (I think she also used arrogant) men who have nothing to give, and only go on stage to be selfish, to get out of the crowd laughs just to satisfy their egos. I think that's what she said, but I can't be certain, I was busy staring at her cleavage. And it was awesome.
Clearly she had been spurned, recently, she admitted as much. However, it made me think for a bit about why I do stand-up, what I get out of it? I'm not dedicating the time I need to in order to make a career out of what I'm doing on stage. Sure, I'm making some money, but what I make barely covers what I pay in speeding tickets and alcohol, so why bother? Is it to satisfy, as Tits McGee suggests, my need to be accepted, or my need for an audience to find me funny, to heal through their laughter? I don't know, every time I think about it I see her chest. Heck, even my wife said it was impressive.
I did my set last night, thinking a bit about what she said. It was a pretty clean (language wise) set, and I believe I "killed" it. I wasn't the funniest last night, not by a long shot, but I think I started that room off the way an opener should, with a lot of laughs, probing the audience to see where they were mood-wise, what areas were open to laughs, what areas would produce the crickets. See, I think about my role in a line-up pretty seriously. I'll get into that later, but last night, I thought I'd do a set that would make people actually do what they showed up to do, laugh. I did it selflessly, staying away from some material that I would have gone to selfishly (Sorry, no Justin's Balls last night) and went where the crowd went. It really seemed to work.
As for this woman, I hear she's pretty funny. Clearly she's hotter than she knows, and I'm hoping to get to know her as I work more in the area she's from. But it's that very casual comment she made, comics are selfish, going after 'free therapy' that made me think, and I wanted to say thanks. You know who you are, if you read this ever, I don't know, and I'm fighting the codependent in me that's wanting to point this out to you. I think you're right, though. Most comics are selfish. I'm glad you said you enjoyed my set, it seemed sincere. I'm going to try to focus to make sure I keep to the selfless.
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