Daily 5 Minute Journal Dec. 26, 2015

Islamaphobia. 

This term has been used in a number of ways, To me it means a fear of Islam. Islam makes me afraid as any doctrine that can get people to kill themselves and others fly planes into buildings, mass murder people who've done nothing at all is something to fear. The term seems to be used to stop people from criticizing an idea, which all religions are.  And when people talk about all the hate crimes against Muslims, there are a number of reasons people do this and the main one is what certain Muslims have done in the name of their religion. Obviously there are many good Muslims and the majority would never do these crazy things. The only question I have is that I believe the term phobia relates to an irrational fear, but I don't know that this fear is irrational.

Health

wt. 165.4 which is > 165. Blood Sugar was 93 which is better than usual. I took a lot of pills and stuff yesterday morning, maybe the affect is delayed. Saw family yesterday.

TV

I watch a weird Star Wars Christmas special that was so bad it was good. 6 is nice.

I watched Booze Traveler show which was in Guatemala. This show is giving me the travel bug. Niece is going to Thailand.

It's nice having my son home from college as he spends time with me. We watch some TV together, like Curb Your Enthusiasm (spoiler alert).

We watched the episode where Larry is going to a wedding get's hung up as he can't find his airline tickets. There is a scene where Larry and Cheryl are driving to the wedding and Larry sing's the following song. Ya dat da.

Memory

Where's my phone? This seems to be the question I ask the most these days.

I walk into the garage and forget why then realize it's to get a trash bag. I've been doing this since I was a kid where I'd get to a new room and not remember why I'm there.

I can't remember Mel Gibson's name and the movie he did with the Inca's?

Wisdom of a Dad

I recently located a hard copy of my book Wisdom of a Dad. It's a bit overwhelming figuring out how to get the information in the book into the one I've published on the web.

Current Task

I'm having second thoughts about CurTask, Which is the software that's supposed to help me reach my goals. I'm realizing that it's not working and maybe I need to come up with another method to get stuff done. The idea is something I've been working on a long time and the real name is Smart Task Selection. The idea is that a smart computer will tell you what to do and if you do it you will reach your goals.

Meditation

I meditated yesterday, using the Headspace app. I liked it. It did relax me.

Optical Illusions

I spent some time yesterday watching youtube videos on optical illusions. Mostly balls rolling up hill.

Annoyance

Annoyance that the Windows explorer to view files by descending date use to be instantaneous but with the newer version of windows it takes too damn long.

Twitter

I'm still posting to twitter and do love when I get retweets, likes or mentions. A little pissed that twitter has banned my account from advertising and I'm not sure why and they refuse to tell me.

Daily 5 Minute Journal Dec. 25, 2015

So I moved on today from watching anti-islamist videos to optical illusion videos on youtube.

Day moved very quickly, before I knew it, it was time to shower and go visit my family.

I did well in terms of eating as I at low carb. I did the following:

• Pigs in blanket. Ate just the hot dog not the bread
• Pizza. Avoided it.
• Desert. Avoided it and brought my own questbar chocolate chip
• Nachos, pretzels, etc. Ate just the cheese
• Alcohol. Just skipped it.

My month goal is lower my blood sugar, which isn't a very inspiring goal. I tried taking all the products that are suppose to lower blood sugar at at same time and didn't notice any benefit:

• Magnesium
• Cinatrol
• Glucosamine
• GTF Chromium
• Ultra Sugar aid
• Fiber

Blood sugar at start was 99, 30 minutes later 100 and 52 minutes later (97, 104) 100,5. So no appearance of lowering from this test.

Today I got a auto-tweet that said "Who are your customers?" and I thought who are they?  I'm not currently selling anything so I guess I have no customers.  So the question should be "What am I selling?"  Maybe the question should be "What could I sell?" or "What do I have that's sellable?" or "What do I have that can be converted to something that's sellable?" What does sellable mean?  

Daily 5 minute Journal Dec. 24, 2015

Up at 8:30 am and working from home from for second day in a row. bp 124/87 and hr = 70, wt = 164.2.  bs = 109.

Right hand in pain and I'm wearing a wrist brace.

I'm watching too much anti-islam stuff and it's depressing. I'm the only one on my team at work. My goal for month is to lower my blood sugar and I don't have a good way to tell if I've done this. I'm trying ALA 200 Mg throughout the day.

My FSH (testosterone) is high and my Alkaline Phosphate is low. I'm not sure what this means but I'm going to start taking a multivitamin again as it said scurvy which could be since I don't eat any fruits.

I'm having bulletproof coffee for breakfast.

I was very unproductive yesterday wfh.  I'll try to be more productive today.

Creating a cool dashboard

I've create the below dashboard pretty easily using Tableau software. I'm impressed at how quick and simple it was and free.

I had to download the app from the Tableau website and watch a tutorial 

I did have one issue where the system ask for a captcha and kept asking me to prove I wasn't a robot. I exited and it seemed ok.

The above was created pretty pretty pretty easily using Tableau Public software

Daily 5 minute Journal: Dec. 22, 2015

Woke up at 10:15 and weighed myself at 164.6. I'm below 165 but not near my goal of W<160. Went to Cheescake Factory for dinner to celebrate by son getting into Buffalo University and other son getting 3.88 average at Cornell for his first semester last night.

Have pain in right thumb, I'm thinking from juggling weighted balls.

The weather is mild but raining on Long Island.

Made my Bulletproof Coffee and it's the last day of my vacation.  I'm angry over my phone which rebooted 3 more times last night, my blood sugar was high last night (measured at 152 probably higher) after eating Nachos, Avocado Egg rolls, 1/2 California Cheesesteak and about 8 french fries, I skipped the steak.


I need batteries for my blood sugar machine.

I'm also trying to figure out what plug I need for my exercise bike. I thought I found a plug that worked but it didn't. The Lifecycle isn't marked with a serial number except on the transformer.

I contacted my doctor on Friday morning and she hasn't gotten back to me yet.

I've been reading and watching a lot of Sam Harris and watched a few Robert Spencer from JihadWatch.org videos.

I updated my book Wisdom of a Dad on the internet in pdf form.

December is running out and my goal for the month lower my blood sugar hasn't been reached. My goal for November 2015 was to declutter and I'm no where near finished.

Yesterday, I finally looked into code that helps you control a website and used it to retrieve the due date of my library books.

Search on "vba CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")" and you should find examples.

Follow Up your way to Success

One of the most important things to do to be successful is to follow up.

Why don't people follow up?  There are many reasons people don't follow up but the main one is fear of appearing rude. Many times you contact someone like John and ask him to send you a copy of your test results.  But alas John is busy and doesn't have a good system for following up.  So John is very busy and doesn't get back to you.

But you wait and wait and wait. Eventually you forget about the test results and at some point don't follow up with your doctor.

The first thing to realize is just because you ask someone via email, in person or phone to do something it doesn't mean it will get done. What if the person is on vacation or sick?

What if John asks his employee to send  the test results but the worker forgets or is working on an urgent issue?

What if I sent John an email and he never got it because it went to his spam folder or the receptionist accidentally delete all the voice mails?

Waiting to follow up can cause issues as the longer time that passes the less likely someone will follow up.

The first thing to do is keep a list of who and when to follow up with people and check it daily. This is best incorporated into your to-do list.

On the opposite side is you're own need to follow up requests. If someone sends you an email to do a task, tell them you got the email and when you'll be able to get to it, about how long it will take and what other priorities you're dealing with.

Using Microsoft Outlook is a good way to follow up as you can mark emails with the Follow up indicator. You could also set an alarm to remind yourself to follow up.

One technique to get follow up is to copy people's bosses on emails. This can backfire as the person may get angry and go out of there way to not help you. Never address a request to multiple people, address it to one of them and cc the other.

If you send an email to a group sometimes called a DG (Distribution Group) make sure to include at least one of the actual names in the cc list.

Another way to increase follow up by others and to be very thankful when people do help you. If you can give them a subtle or direct compliment.

"Wow, that was great service... I really appreciate you help"

and copy their boss.

Another way is to use the software I helped create called http://Time-creator.com which uses Excel to create alarms that help with follow up.

Anyway if you have suggestions, comments or tips I'd love to hear from your below.

AB.

Verizon Droid Turbo Continually Reboots and Verizon Don't Care

I got my first droid Turbo about 6 months ago before the headphone jack stopped working.  I brought it to the Verizon store and it cost me 2 -3 hours waiting and traveling. After waiting for them to look at my phone for an hour the tech said he couldn't help me because the phone isn't under my name, it's under my wife's. I started RAISING MY VOICE and making a scene. The tech said if my wife could  give me a password they sent to her phone and they would help me. Why don't they tell me ahead about this issue than scare and stress me that they wouldn't fix it?

The tech asks me what's wrong and after telling him the headphone jack doesn't work he orders me a replacement phone.


A few days later the new phone arrives in the mail. I have to back up the old phone and load everything to the new phone. Why didn't Verizon do this for me?

From the first day I get the phone it re-boots randomly. After 3 months I'm fed up with this lemon and decide to get the phone replaced.

I arrive at the Verizon store and explain the problem to the tech. He  the tech goes to the back and when he finally comes back he says "it didn't reboot." Almost implying that I was lying. Then he accused me of running too many apps and showed me how to shut them down.  He said "There is a fix from Motorola, but we don't know when they're going to make it."

WTF.  I showed him on the battery usage and how he could see the reboots in the gaps. I shutdown all the running apps and the phone reboots the minute I get home.  To make matters worse the phone rebooted 2x while I was sleeping and wakes me up.

I also noticed a high data usage one day when the phone kept rebooting. I believe the video I was watching was downloaded multiple times. The tech said he couldn't help me.

They did nothing for me and now I'm ready to switch carriers.