Doug's Sounding Board

I lose. So there was this really great looking cake that I was hoping I could have for my birthday.  We went to the store (New Leaf) and picked up all the ingredients we were missing except there was no dutch-process cocoa. No problem, we can get it at another store later. Savemart didn’t have it, surely the gigantic Safeway will have it… nope. Shopper’s corner must have it, no but they have a wider variety of natural cocoa. Deluxe Foods in Aptos has a huge selection let’s check there! Another strike. The New Leaf downtown carries different things than the one on 41st, they might have it… no. Cost Plus it turns out is dutch-process cocoa minus.

We can’t just use natural cocoa and expect the same result because dutch-processed cocoa is pH neutral. We could try a work-around by adding baking powder to natural cocoa but that probably won’t come out the same. When did it become so hard to get dutch-processed cocoa? We purchased some without difficulty a few years ago for the first death by chocolate trials. My theory is that since natural cocoa retains the anti-oxidants in chocolate while dutch-processed cocoa destroys them, people are demanding their healthier cocoa and not considering the desserts! I could order it on-line, but it’s not something I thought I would have to order on-line or be able to get on short notice in this area.

Babel – One of those movies where you have several different stories that are all connected. In this case it’s has a global scale of connection. Not like with a global phenomenon or event, but that the people involved reach around the world. If it was just that it would just be an average movie, but the individual stories are interesting on their own and for that I feel it is worth seeing.

A Love Song For Bobby Long –  I could watch these characters in a movie five times this long and I’m pretty sure I’ll be watching this one again several times as soon as I get a copy.

Brigadoon –  I’m converting old video tapes to DVD for my parents and this one was recording while I was doing other stuff so I finally got to see it. I like musicals, but I wasn’t crazy about the songs in Brigadoon. The dancing I liked, the sets and characters I liked. So it’s not my favorite musical, but the story is fun. I really liked how they portrayed triggered memories in the movie.

Janis –  Another conversion for my parents… I liked Janis Joplin, but I haven’t really appreciated her work; this documentary changed that for me. I think the difference is all the live performance footage whereas before I had only heard studio recordings.  It all feels more raw and potent.

The Spiderwick Chronicles – I didn’t read the book so I have nothing to compare it against. The characters were entertaining, but on the whole I liked them before they encountered the computer generated characters. I liked that the same actor played both twins, that doesn’t happen often.

The Other Boleyn Girl – This movie is entertaining but somewhat confusing for someone who knows absolutely nothing about the history. The confusing part is that there is almost no notion of time passing in this movie. On the bright side, that got me to go look up the history. The basic story is right, but a large number of details are changed.

M*A*S*H – I’ve probably seen most of the television series but never before had I seen the movie.  Did you know the title theme is called “Suicide is Painless”? I didn’t until I watched it until I flashed back on a memory from high school band playing the M*A*S*H Theme (Suicide is Painless). It’s weird the things that get pulled up. Anyway, there’s more fast-talking and talking over one another in the movie. In the tv show you’re given more time to digest various jokes. The humor is darker in the movie and there is more sex and blood, but not much more. I think it’s worth watching for the suicide alone.

Last Holiday – Queen Latifah version. I haven’t seen the original with Alec Guiness, but I imaging it’s better. This one isn’t bad, in fact it’s a good bit of fun. Not the kind you should run out to rent, but the kind you start watching because it’s on and don’t really mind.

The Wedding Date – At a certain point in this movie you’ll be thinking “This is like a gender reversal of ‘Pretty Woman'”. There’s a lot of I didn’t care too much about and it really just served to get me to more of the best friend and the father characters. If they weren’t in it this would have been a waste of time.

TMNT –  I liked the first live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. The second was horrible and the third was ok. This can be considered the fourth movie except it’s all computer generated. It ranks well with the first one, not as good, but definitely better than 2 or 3. Everything in the movie is cartoony except the turtles which are given by far the most detail in their structure and their animation. Some body language was copied from the actors in the live-action films. If you like the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie you will probably like this.

Zombie Honeymoon –  Every relationship has it’s tests, this one is evident from the title. It’s not as funny as it could have been, but it was fairly decent. I probably would have cut out a little more in some spots to keep the pace going, but then the moviedoesn’t even make it to an hour and a half as it is. If you’re up late and it’s on it an enjoyable watch.

Nicole and I decided to try the Ten Years Thinner program by Christine Lydon, M.D. to get us back on track eating and exercising better. Both the diet and exercise are backed up by nutritional and exercise research that pulls it all together into an follow to get manner. The diet is basically a whole foods & anti-inflamatory diet in the beginning with grains and dairy being added back in later in the 6-week period. The exercise is designed to be strenuous, get your heart rate up, and be completed in about 25 minutes.

I’m starting this at 195 pounds and body fat at 24%.  I use the Navy body fat calculator because I find it most accurate with the most easiest measuring techniques. I’ve read some studies that show it to be at least as accurate as other commonly available methods so I’m sticking with it.

After the first two days Nicole and I werre both in pain from the workouts, but by the end of the week it had thankfully transitioned to normal muscle soreness and tiredness a after a workout. I think the first two days are a shock to your system if you haven’t exercised in awhile.  By the end of the first week we both noticed body shape changes with clothes fitting differently and muscle definition more present.

At the start of the second week I measured myself again and found that the measurements used for body fat calculation had not changed enough to report a body fat difference. The book says don’t get hung up on measuring too often and that sometimes things might seem to go in the opposite direction as you build muscle, but it’s still a little disappointing. I can see and feel the differences but those changes haven’t started in the shrinking area yet.

At the start of the third week we can add in beans of all sorts and peas and chickpeas. Nicole has learned that she’s sensitive to beans, good to know! Halfway through week three we’ve finally got the supplements correct. I went to tenyearsthinner.com to look for something else and in addition to what I was looking for that we needed to be having larger doses of the EFA and DHA (2400mg preferably in a ration of 2:1) in our omega-3 fatty acids and that we need more calcium and magnesium. We’ll see what kind of impact that has in the coming days. Overall my energy levels are good and I get farther in the workouts which means muscle is being created.

End of week three and I don’t know why but I just realized I was doing the squeeze crunches slightly wrong. My stomach has been getting toned, but the lower abs weren’t getting so much. So today I started pulling my legs in too like I should have been doing all along and that certainly was felt when it came time to do the bench dips. Exercise-wise we’re going to do week three again to try and get our reps up in preparation for week four which adds more stuff!

Starting week 4 I’m noticing the layers of fat are getting thinner. I’ve dropped another body fat percentage point to 20, my thighs, and fore arms have gained in size, and I’m seeing more definition in muscles than I have before during previous periods of fitness. We decided to run through week 3 exercises again to try and get our reps up before the week four routing adds in another set of four exercises. Nicole’s back and neck are being aggravated so she’s going to start going different exercises.

Starting week 5, we can add in grains and grain based foods, but not more than 100 calories per meal. I’m thinking that the extra week on week-3 exercise was not the right thing to do. Yes, I feel that they were good workouts, but I am beginning to believe that it was really designed for you to move to the new exercise set. You might not be able to do all the reps but you need the extra exercises to start pushing you. I was even thinking this before I didn’t have any body fat reduction this week. Tomorrow the workouts do for four-day stretches and have 4 more exercises in them for a total of 16.

On to week 6 and I see definition starting to show in my arms and maybe in my abs? I’ve never had that before so I’m not sure.  When the 6 weeks we’re supposed to be able to have one cheat meal a week, but our first one came durign week six for a birthday dinner. My body doesn’t seem to have noticed despite it being the first grain I’ve had in almost six weeks. Finally the fat around my middle is starting to diminish.

End of week six and on to maintenance. So where do we stand? I’ve lost 2.4 pounds and 5% body fat which means about 10 pounds of fat lost and 8 pounds of muscle gained. My clothes certainly fit differently and I feel good in general. Even when I was hitting the gym a lot and eating well previously I hadn’t had body shape changes this quickly. I’ll be continuing this to see how far it goes.

With the ends of the rain and the sprouting of plants has also come the return of the gopher. It doesn’t really eat any of the plants we have in the yard, it just makes a mess as it takes dirt from one place and pushes it to the surface elsewhere. Nice path.. with large piles of dirt in it. Nice rock bed… with large piles of dirt in it. Sometimes plants aren’t being targetted but are just too close to where the gopher decided to surface. These piles aren’t holes you can target for traps or anything, they’re just gopher refuse. The actual holes are hidden or perhaps even in a neighbor’s yard. I now fully understand Carl Spackler (Bill Murray’s character in Caddyshack) in trying to get rid of the gopher. If someone ever invents a gohper terminator robot they are going to be very wealthy, but until then I’ll just have to dream of a gopher-shaped robot with glowing red eyes stalking the tunnels.

Last night we went to see the Santa Cruz Roller Girls in their pre-season opener against the Silicon Valley Roller Girls at the Santa Cruz Civic. The Civic was sold out and the crowd was amped up! By the end of the night my ears were ringing some but that’s all gone today. It was a lot of fun cheering on the local team as they went on to win 66-56 despite what seemed like half the team in the penalty box for the second half. Despite all the colliding action only one roller girl had to leave due to injury; hopefully she’ll be well in time fo the next match. We’re definitely going to more, possibly all, of the home games and I suggest everyone in the area should too; the next match is April 12.

The haircut we gave to Grover: We have our dogs shaved fairly regularly because they get too hot in the summer otherwise, they bring in WAY too much dirt, and it cuts way down on the dog hair. Why not get some clippers and try it ourselves? How hard can it be? I think the sides are fairly ok, but the back, how do they do it? It’s long hair that lays flat so the clippers won’t touch it. You can’t go against the lay of the hair because, well, the clippers just won’t go that way. So Grover has a funny looking and incomplete shave. We didn’t even want to get started on Sage.

My scooter lights: I haven’t been riding the scooter because the headlight hasn’t been working and it’s been dark when I leave work. I spent a couple of afternoons two weekends ago looking for what I figured was a burnt out wire from when smoke started pouring out of the front when I was installing new batteries. I looked at the old parts scooter for how things were wired up and found a few burnt wires there as well (yay for cheap Chinese stuff?). I found the burnt wire and put in a new one, still no headlight. I followed more wires and found two more burnt out. More patches and still no headlight, but now I see the battery level go down when the headlight is on which means there’s a short and it’s definitely not good. I look but I can’t find anything else so I pack it up to look for the problem later. Now thanks to daylight savings time it’s light when I leave work and headlight isn’t an obstacle. So I ride to work today but I notice that when the turn signal blinks there is a major draw on the battery gauge so the short is more serious than I thought but should be easier to locate and now I’m down to hand signals.

I just finished reading this collection of small presidential biographies and seeing the changes over time in this was is very interesting. The styles of campaigning changing from you announcing your candidacy and the party campaigning for the candidate compared to today where the candidate has a lot of work cut out for them. The creation of party controlled newspapers which set the stage for things like Fox News. The ebb and flow of graft and corruption (this administration has definitely been flow).

Another thing I noticed was that most presidents had some legal profession background before becoming president. Of the 42 presidents, 25 have had a background in law while 17 haven’t. Of those, 11 of the non-lawyerly background were in the 20th century. Certainly both groups have their ups and downs, but the ones with the law background tend to have a bigger impact during their presidency (for better or worse).

Presidents without a law background:

• George Washington – He was primarily a planter though he certainly knew how to run things.
• James Madison – Life-long politician
• William Henry Harrison – Soldier
• Zachary Taylor – Soldier and farmer
• Andrew Johnson – Tailor
• Ulysses S Grant – Soldier, farmer, real estate agent, leather store clerk
• James A Garfield – Schoolteacher, college professor, preacher, canal worker, soldier, president of Hiram College
• Theodore Roosevelt – Writer, historian
• Warren G Harding – Newspaper editor
• Herbert Hoover – Miner, engineer
• Harry S Truman – Timekeeper for railroad construction, bank clerk, farmer, haberdasher
• Dwight D Eisenhower – Soldier, president of Colombia University
•  John F Kennedy – Writer
• Lyndon B Johnson – Teacher
• Jimmy Carter – Farmer, businessman
• Ronald Reagan – Broadcaster, film actor
• George Bush – Founder of Zapata Oil and Zapata Off-shore Drilling
• George W Bush – Businessman

So far with the iPod Touch I’ve checked the weather, stocks, browsed the web, played music, watched video (found a nice recipe to use Nero for that). However the most entertainment I’ve had with it so far is to watch the names of WiFi hotspots that come into and go out of range while someone else drives.I’ve learned that a lot of people use what AT&T gives them with their 2WIRE### devices. I think about overall 80% are protected in some way which is much better than I anticipated. Here are a few of my favorites so far:

• Eat Me
• SKULLFUCK
• STAYOUT
• SonjaCan’tDoComputers

For awhile now as I ride to and from work I get to look at the increase in graffiti around here. It’s ugly and it’s pretty much impossible to stop because catching someone in the act is very very unlikely. So I started brainstorming ideas on how to stop graffiti.

1. More graffiti! I know that sounds counter-intuitive but when you think about most graffiti as being territory markers then you start to see it as someone’s personal calling card. So the idea is when you wake up in the morning to find some fresh graffiti you add something like “eats ass” to it and then have the police wait that night for the tagger to fix the amendment. Cost is fairly low for the extra spray paint, and the wall already needed repainting so no extra cost there. The main cost comes from the stakeout and the social cost of having obscene message in highly visible areas. Chance of success? Probably not very high. I don’t see a lot of back and forth when rivals deface their tags so why should a little insult matter to them?
2. Video cameras. Basically this is the obvious appraoch where businesses would have tog et video cameras, mount them in a hidden or out of reach area, and make sure it’s high enough resolution so the perpetrator can actually be identified. The problem here is that video cameras like that are expensive, they are easily defeated with masks or just taken out directly.
3. RFID tags. I came up with this when I decided video cameras were too expensive but it involves more infrastructure. First you need to get spray paint makers to put RFID tags in the cans, then when you show your driver’s license to buy your spray paint the RFID gets linked to your driver’s license number. Business owners need to buy a series of readers (about $20 each) to monitor the taggable parts of their building and when graffiti happens they can get the RFID that did it and give it to the police. The downsides to this plan are privacy concerns about purchases being tracked. Also the RFID signals can be blocked but then a tagger has to carry around jamming equipment which I don’t think is very likely; tagging seems be somewhat a crime of convenience.
4. Honey pot. I just thought of this one last week after seeing another under-construction building tagged. Incomplete buildings always seem like a good target. An incomplete house will be tagged but a completed house gets avoided, though fences always seem to be fair game. So the idea is to find an empty lot and put up some very cheap non-permanent pre-fab structure. Then use a stakeout or  cameras to catch those that show up to do their tagging.

Any other ideas?