5 Minute Daily Journal - May 25, 2016

Trip to Cornell

I'm back from my trip to Cornell to pick up my son. We brought the dog and it went well for me but my other son doesn't like the dog. Same son drove part of the way, which I like.

We ate at Mark's Pizza in Ithaca, NY, Pizza was very good and they had outside eating so we were able to bring the dog there.

We also at at Purity Ice Cream and bought the dog her own vanilla. I had a brownie Sunday with Chocolate Debris which was also delicious. There were 3 other dogs at the ice cream place

Storage Closet

We got a storage closet to store my son's stuff. It's a weird place that makes me feel there's a terrorist storing his supplies there. I hope the government keeps tabs on this.

We used Google maps to get directions from Cornell to the storage closet and had to go back and forth 3 times. The third time we went there my son said "Let's do it without Google Maps."  So we did and it was so easy. I tried to show him the power of something that's hard at first can become so easy.

Cleaned Garage

Prior to leaving I decluttered the garage with the help of my son. I wish I had taken before and after pictures. It's amazing how quickly I can accumulate junk. I'm throwing out my hockey net. I feel sad about it. Hockey has very good memories for me, but my kids never got that interested and it's time to move on.

4HB problem

4HB is shortcut for Tim Ferriss' Four Hour Body. My review on Amazon is here.

I highly recommend this book.  I enjoyed reading it but there is so much information I'm not sure where to start with implementing it. Unfortunately my gym Planet Fitness doesn't have kettle bells or weights to do a dead-lift or bench-press.

Be an Idea Machine

I starting reading Claudia Atucher's book Become an Idea Machine which basically gets your to come up with ideas to work your idea muscle.








The author makes the point that most people say they don't have time to come up with these ideas so they should create 10 moments that have. Here is mine:

1. Before bed
2. In bathroom
3. 1 item per hour and you'll come up with ten in ten hours
4. On train
5. Subway
6. During daily walk from work
7. While walking the dog
8. While waiting
1. On a line
2. at a stop light
3. for the train or subway
4. for the elevator
5. for computer to run a report at work
9. While making coffee
10. While eating meals
11. While taking a shower, don't have a good way to record them
12. Before turning on TV
13. Before laying down on couch
14. While driving to gym

The first 2 exercises are to come up with

• 10 ideas on things I dislike and gratitude for them
1. Aging. If you're not aging you're dead
2. Pain. No pain no fingers
3. Death. Grateful that I'm forced to do as much as I can in this life
4. Osteoporosis. Grateful that I have bones.
5. Boss. Grateful that I have a job
6. Long Drive to Cornell. Grateful that my son was smart enough to make Cornell
7. People blocking Escalators. We have the technology to create escalators
8. Terrorism. Grateful that most people live peacefully
9. Waiting on a line. Grateful that there is a product I want that I'll wait for
10. Woman at work lets door slam in my face. I'm grateful I have a job
11. Not making $ from my ideas. I'm grateful that I have ideas
• 10 Apps I want.
1. App that helps you live longer
2. App that helps me identify and reach my goals
3. App that automatically finds money and deposits it into my bank account
4. App that tracks rude people and makes them take classes to get rid of their rudeness
5. App that finds all spelling errors and helps you improve your writing
6. App that lowers my blood sugar
7. App that helps me LWAKIO
8. App that turns Ideas to $
9. App that does STS or Smart Task Selection
10. App that locates the nearest easy to use bathroom

Loss data to phone

I'm using an app that I like a lot called Color Note. It's a to-do list/list type app. I entered some data to it for the address of my storage closet. Before I leave I check and the data is gone. This fits into the general problem of data loss. It's a good reminder to backup your stuff. What data of your's is vulnerable to loss because you don't have a backup?

$1.49 Chicken Nuggets

Burger King is running a $1.49 promotion for 10 chicken nuggets. This is obviously a loss leader as you'll wind up buying much more. I go to McDonald's for lunch and they're charging $3.99 for 10 nuggets. I buy water and a soda but stop at Burger King across the street for the $1.49 nuggets and that's it.

Blog

I have to start taking more pictures that I could include them in this blog. I'm not in the habit of taking enough pictures so I can get more people to read it or just to remind myself of the pictures.

Best Food Secret on Long Island

Yesterday, I ate at a restaurant in Plainview, NY called DirtyBurger. It's near Fareway and was formerly where another restaurant called Cheeburger, Cheeburger was located.

I'm reluctant to write this review because I don't want crowds at this place.

Our friends raved about the food.

The decor is proper for a burger joint and our friends were already seated. Of course we are 5 minutes away from the restaurant and they were 20 minutes away and still arrived there first.  We got there early to beat the crowd at around 6:30 PM on Saturday night.

Our meal started with $3 margaritas. It was very salty and didn't seem to have much alcohol or taste.

For appetizer we had Nachos with Guacamole. The chips where warm and had a nice spice taste and the gaucamole was very good.

For the main course I had the Skirt Steak, medium well with the dirty fries. The "dirty" spice has some honey mixed in and as a low carb eater I asked the waiter if they could hold the honey. She said it would be too spicy and wouldn't taste good that way.

I agreed to have it with the honey. This was one of the best tasting meals I've had in a long time the steak and fries were to die for.  And the waitress was right as the spice and the honey together is what made it taste so good. If they removed the honey it would just be spicy.

My wife had the Lamb burger medium and it came back very rare. She complained to the waiter and she replied that's how it's cooked here.  Now this is a bad way to treat a customer. Just say sorry and cook it a little more. It came back pretty quickly and my wife loved it.

The prices where a bit high but worth it. The bill for the 4 of us came out to around $95 with tax and a $16 tip pushes it to around $28 a person.

I liked that they served alcohol every though my drink wasn't to my liking.

Now if our friends didn't rave about it we never would have gone. There are so many burger places these days it's hard to distinguish them:

• Bareburger
• Shake Shack
• 5 Guys
• All American Burger
• Smashburger
• Cheeburger, Cheeburger
• White Castles
• Burger King
• Wendy's
• McDonald's

The name dirty brings up images in my mind of dirty food and unclean conditions. The place also opened where another burger joint Cheeburger, Cheeburger was located and went out of business.

I had no intention on trying this restaurant until my friend raved about it. She saw a TV show reviewing restaurants at 4 AM when she had trouble sleeping and they said how great the food is. 

You can learn more at DirtyBuger.com.

If you liked this post please follow me on twitter and like or retweet the post and leave a comment.

Daily 5 Minute Journal - May 3, 2016

Sick at work

Today I left work early as I was feeling lousy. There are two possibilities and both are drug side effects:

1. I upped my Metformin dosage
2. Risedronate side effect
3. Combination of the two drugs
4. Something else

Dr. Mercola

This is a good website with a vast amount of medical information at Mercola.com and his twitter feed:

Tweets by @mercola

iPyrhon

Today a coworker mentions iPython.org and it looks like something to look into.

May Goal is Health

I'm trying to figure out my goal for May 2016 and I think its my health. This is a bit vague. I want to finish a few books:



Some other tasks are:

1. Set up Dr. appointments especially heart and colonoscopy
2. Set up Skin Dr. appointment

Goal Q's

There are a number of questions I could answer to help me figure out my goals:

• If I had 1 year, month, week, day to live what would I do?
• What do I want said at my ulogy
• If I couldn't fail what would I do?
• If I came into $100 million or a billion dollars what would I do?
• What did I like doing as a child?

Prepare

I run my weekly Tuesday meeting today and I get to the room and there's no phone. I didn't check the room on Monday. I will do this next week.

Cooties at Work

Today while cleaning up after making Bullet Proof Coffee at work two people poured their dirty liquids in to the sink where my clean dishes where sitting. This pissed me off. I said something to one of them to not do that I don't want cooties, jokingly.

I thought the word cooties and it was related to when a girl touched or kissed a 5 year-old boy. You give yourself a "cooties shot" to inoculate yourself.

Gary Vaynerchuk

I listened to an interview between Gary Vaynerchuk and James Altucher. They were discussing his book: This is the second time I've come upon his work. Steve Scott also interviewed

There are other interviews at http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2016/03/gary-vaynerchuk/

Gary says there is an arbitrage opportunity to buy on Ebay and sell on Amazon you could make money.

You can listen to Gary's podcast on Youtube. I was surprised at the high rating Gary's book got on Amazon 4.9 of 5 with 353 reviews which is very good.

Derek Sivers

James also interviewed Derek Sivers. Derek has a great link of his books summary at http://Sivers.org/book

He has 3 Ted talks

1. How to start a movement
2. Weird or just different
3. Keep your goals to yourself

4 Hour Body

I continue to read The 4 Hour Body.  Tim Ferriss was discussing running and talked about how running isn't about pushing off but about falling and catching your center of gravity. The important thing is to run 180 steps a minute or 90 each foot. The only problem with this book is that it's packed with so much information it may be hard to actually implement.

New York Islanders

Tonight the Islanders play game 3 against the Tampa Bay Lightning. This is a big game for them.  They haven't looked that good in the playoffs and have been outplayed in just about every game. It's not fun to watch but Thomas Greiss has kept them in the games.

Scully 

I came across this plaque in Little Italy in NYC. Scully was one of my favorite games as a kid.

Daily 5 Minute Journal - May 2, 2016

Excel Diet

My Excel Diet continues to falter. I made a mistake and bought chocolate from Trader Joes that is lower carbs than most.  That's good and it's delicious, but I don't have the will power to not eat it.  So I can't buy it.

I walked 7.8 miles or 17,143 steps according to WalkLogger which is a great Adroid app.

Though I've walked this walk so much I'm not burning the calories I use to.

Goals for May 2016

I'm having trouble figuring out what my goals should be for the month. I did hear a book on tape that came up randomly on my iPod from Zig Ziglar on goals.

• What can Excel do
• Book for son going to college
• Lower Blood sugar
• Excel Course Ideas
• Excel and gambling
• Reduce death risk
• Dr. appt plan
• Clean garage
• Figure out my goals and focus

Blood Sugar Higher than Usual

My blood sugar has been higher than usual for past few weeks and I'm. Today I upped my dose of Metformin to 1000 mg. I did take a Risedronate pill today so maybe that had an effect.

• 5 Hour Energy Shot
• Diarrhea

MicroStrategy Better Today

I've been trying to learn MicroStrategy software and today I made some more progress than before. I've been focused on some of their confusing terminology which might just be Data Warehouse terms but I'm not positive.

One Second Ahead

I started reading the book One Second Ahead which has a 4.9 rating from 20 reviews on Amazon.com. I picked a chapter on Goals to read and was unimpressed by it.

This turns out to be something I call an Overhyped Bias. This is where you expect something to be great like this book and it doesn't live up to my expectation which makes my opinion of it worse than if I wasn't given the expectation.

This often happens with a movie, video or story when someone says how great it is. This makes it difficult to meet your expectations.

Interview Prep

Today I was supposed to interview someone and spent almost an hour preparing only to find out that he took a job somewhere else.

Tim Ferriss Dog Picture

Today I was telling my wife that Tim Ferriss' dog looks a lot like ours so I searched for "Tim Ferriss Dog Picture" and the following came up. The funny thing was that a picture of my dog cam up but not his.

Work hurts weekend

Yesterday I spent multiple hours running and making sure reports ran at work. Wasted most of my weekend.

Gym

I went to gym thanks to my to-do list. I hadn't gone for over a week. My rule is to drive to the gym which is easy. Once I'm there it's usually easy to workout.

Data Usage

Today during my walk I listened to a James Altucher podcast with Peter Theil. I thought it was very good but it kept disconnecting maybe 5 times.  Also used a lot of data from my cell plan. I have to make sure to download them through wifi and then listen.

Daily 5 Minute Journal - May 1, 2016

Cold

It's a cold rainy day in Long Island. The weather seems cooler this year than usual. It's 49 degrees.

Allergies

Today is May 1st and this is usually the first day of my allergy season. I don't know why but I just sneezed 3 times as I wrote this sentence. I'm reminded of my dad's unusual sneeze where he would say eee-ha, eee-ha, eee-ha when he sneezed.

Last night my eyes were itching. I've never been officially diagnosed with an allergy but I call it "Rose fever."  I usually have itchy eyes, scratchy throat and sneezing.

Coincidences

I've been noticing some weird coincidences recently and trying to document them. I don't believe they mean anything as it's kind of like the birthday problem. This is where if you have 23 people in a room the odds are > 50% that two people will have the same birthday (month & day).

I'll post a spreadsheet that demonstrates this phenomenon.

Sardines

My wife was asking me about sardines which I recently had a bad batch of the fish. That instant I noticed a book on my shelf and I pulled it off the shelf and turned to a random page and the following heading from the book Diabetes without Drugs.

HOW TO GET MORE COQ10 AND UBIQUINONE IN YOUR DIET

Dietary sources in descending order include sardines, ...

Weird Shoes

I started noticing people wearing these weird shoes in New York City. They remind me of the shoes worn by Herman Munster.

Book I didn't buy

I went to Barnes and Noble last night and was looking for the book

Smarter, Better, Faster by Charles Duhigg. I heard a great podcast from James Altucher  that I thought was very good and worth listening to. I didn't buy the book because it was $28.00 which isn't a good price point. I would have paid $15.00 but I could get this from the library or Amazon.com or wait until the book is released in soft cover.

Excel Diet

I've weighed myself everyday in the morning for about 4 years. The only time I haven't was when I was on vacation or forgot. Today I didn't feel like taking off my clothes to do this.

Books I bought

I did buy 4 books

1. How to Fail at Everything and still Win Big - Scott Adams
2. How Google Works
3. Do you Talk Funny
4. The Brilliant Memory Box

The Scott Adams book I bought because I liked him on a James Altucher podcast. I bought How Google Works because it was $7.98 and looked interesting. I bought Do you Talk Funny because it had 5 star rating on Amazon and the Brilliant Memory Box was cheap at $9.95 and had nice packaging.

Lawn

I spent a few hours thatching, seeding, watering, mowing and pulling weeds from my lawn. The sprinkler broke just as I was about to water it. I should take before and after pictures.

I like doing the lawn even pulling weeds one at a time.

While I was doing the lawn I was listening to a Sam Harris podcast on him reading his book The End of Faith. I placed my phone in a dangerous place on the lip of a recycling can. It kept falling off into the grass and nothing happened. But then it fell into the street and my beautiful phone has a cracked screen. The reason I put it there was I was wearing shorts without pockets.

This teaches me 2 new lessons:

1. Be careful with fragile items and don't put them were they could fall
2. Wear clothes that has pockets

Hitting Baseballs

My son and I went to the baseball field in our town to hit fungo baseballs out of the park. It's only a 200 foot fence and I couldn't get the ball out unless I moved 10 feet ahead of home plate. I think the bat was too heavy for me.

I hit 3 balls out and one ball must have gone 400 ft. as a women handed it back to me and said "wow you hit that all the way to the tennis courts, that was some shot."

Goals for May

It's May and my April goal didn't come to fruition. Why? My goal was to write a small book on Excel/VBA. I think the task didn't interest me enough. I did work a little on creating software to create a mailing list so when the book was finished I could ask the people on the list to buy the book. This technique I learned from James Altucher's podcast with Steve Scott.


I'm not sure what my May 2016 goal is but today's goal is to figure it out.

Annoyances

I'm annoyed with Blogger, I can't use a shortcut to change the heading. Maybe I'll write some code to do this. I have all the components.

At work a plastic container I keep my coffee in disappeared. The only thing I can think of is that the cleaning woman threw it out for some reason. This item is very cheap and I can bring one in from home, but I think the anger is from not knowing what happened.  I just have to let it go.

I've learned from Sam Harris' book Waking Up to think of how ridiculous to hold on to this anger when I can easily replace the item.