Daily 5 Minute Journal - Jan. 18, 2016

Martin Luther King's birthday and I get a day off from work making it a 3 day weekend.

He was a great man for teaching non-violent protest and his beautiful "I have a dream speech"

It's a cold day 25 degrees in NYC and a slight coating of snow on the ground and phone just rebooted but at least I'm getting a new one.

I think I have ADHD, from an article in Lifehack.org,

I just listened and analyzed an interview from +Daymond John  of +Tim Ferriss. Even a guy like Daymond was uhing in the interview. Though it was very useful to hear Tim's story on how he got success. Of course luck is involved.

He met +Robert Scoble by accidentally being nice to his wife Miriam who was helping people sign in to a conference.

At +SXSW someone canceled and Tim was able to speak there.

He brought on the luck through persistence, being nice to people and asking for help. Some of the takeaways I got were:

• Be nice to people
• Don't pitch where everyone is pitching
• In person beats email or phone
• Surf waves that no one has surfed before
• Hardest place to sell a book is a bookstore
• Volunteer for co's that can help you and work your ass off
• You can get rejected many times and be successful as long as you don't give up
• Small thing (mention from Robert Scoble) can start the entire snowball rolling
• Prepare your presentation, even if in front of a dog
• Get feedback on your idea
• Test your concept so you know if you should pursue it or not

Thinker's Block on a Walk Through NYC

Companies are constantly going out of business I see new ones popping up old ones closing. No one opens a business and thinks it will fail but most do. According to StatisticsBrain.com 55% fail after 5 years.

It's a very humid morning and I decide to walk 3 - 4 miles to work I see a dog pooping and realized my son figured out that if the tail is straight dog's pooping and if the tails curved the dog is peeing.

I realized that stepping out of your zone of comfort means going against habits and that's why it's hard. 

Beautiful architecture 14th & 8th

So I start on my morning walk from Penn Station to Fulton street. There's not much to see between 31st and 23rd street. There's some beautiful architecture on 8th Ave. and 14th street. On 8th Avenue and James Street one block south of 14th I pass some very beautiful flowers and a  crazy guy appears to be yelling at somebody. I'm trying to put my thoughts on the paper but of course the act of trying it means I'm not thinking of anything to write.

Pretty flowers

Whitehorse Tavern

I pass the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street. I think it's one of the oldest bars in New York City. The prices are very reasonable last time I was there the food was very good.

and you can sit outside on picnic tables. It might not be a good choice if the weather is too hot or too cold.

Bagel Store

Streets and sidewalks are very empty at this time just before 8 a.m. to 9 am. I pass a bagel shop and feel sad that I can't have one because of what it does to my blood sugar. It's on Christopher and Hudson.

I pass a guy with a dog and wasn't sure what kind it was. I wanted to ask him but stopped because he was wearing headphones. I pass outdoor sidewalk cafes that would be nice to have breakfast at on Barrow and Hudson.  Hudson is the street Eighth Ave. goes into and some of the streets are very pretty.

I pass a vacant lot that looks like it's getting ready for construction I'm amazed at how the plants can grow anywhere or as they like to call them weeds.

Construction

There's an interesting chocolate store on Hudson and Charlton and they always doing construction in the city.

Pretty Streets

At Spring Street and Hudson the Freedom Tower pops up behind the buildings.

Near Hudson and Canal there is a Classic Car Club and a nice little park called Freeman Plaza.









Right off of Canal a  restaurant called American Flatbread looks like it recently closed.

On my way home at 5 p.m. I pass an interesting building on Lafayette and White Street

As I walk up Lafayette there is an interesting building off of Grand near Lafayette which i think is now a police station. There is a restaurant/bar called O'Neill's where I've heard some scenes from Sex in the City took place.


I pass some stencil art on a building in Lafayette. 

Blue Man Group tube show is on Lafayette near Astor Place and a place called Joe's Pub is across the street.



Lafayette goes into 4th Avenue and there is a pool hall Amsterdam billiards and bar which you should call ahead to make sure there's no leagues taking over all the tables.




 also right next door is the post from a few Seinfeld episodes.

Post office from the Seinfeld TV show

The is also an interesting costume store and used book store on the west side of 4th Ave.

This costume store is open year round

Small bookstore

A few blocks away is Strand bookstore which is on 13th and Broadway, one block to the left. If you make a left off of 4th Avenue Union Square Park is a nice park will be on your left side as you walk up 4th Avenue and you can see the MetLife building what used to be the PanAm building.

People lounging on the perimeter of Union Square Park

Bathroom on North East Side of Union Square park

View looking up Park Ave.

Great Barnes and Noble bookstore

Restaurant on the North side of Union Square Park. Only open during the nice weather

Great sporting goods store Paragon on Broadway

September 6th, 2015 #Health, #NYC, #Questbar #Diabetes #BloodSugar

Health

Blood Sugar test day 2 where I'm comparing change in blood sugar from 1 Smore's Questbar vs. Oreo Questbar. From previous tests I notice surprisingly that the Oreo raised my blood sugar much higher than the Smores.

Weight was up yesterday by 2.27 lbs. It seems like I eat one "bad" food and my weight goes up a lot. According to my Walk Logger app I walked 8,591 steps or 3.8 miles.

And the results of this one test.  Smore's bar is better than Oreo bar. I compared two different Questbars and tested my blood sugar in around 30 minute intervals. The adjust difference is adjusting the Smore scores up 5 points  and the difference is calculated. So the Oreo increased my blood sugar  10 points after 1/2 hour, 27 points after 1 hour, 10 points after 1.5 hours and the same at 2 hours. So my conclusion is to eat the Smore's over the Oreo bars. Some future tests will be to use 2 bars for comparison.

	Oreo	Smore	Adjusted difference
start	100	95	0
T+30 mins	120	105	10
T+60 mins	127	95	27
T+90 mins	112	97	10
t+120 mins	98	93	0

Trip to New York City

Yesterday I went into New York City with family. We had Linner (Lunch and Dinner) at Foley's on 33rd between Fifth and Sixth Ave. It's also the Irish American Hall of Fame. My son heard about the place from reading Zach Hample's blog. He is the guy who is famous for catching over 8000 balls at baseball games.

We were there at around 3 PM and the restaurant was empty, but it has great baseball paraphernalia, including hundreds of signed baseballs, cards, bobble heads and chairs.

Afterwards, we walked down to Madison Square Park and got a shake at +SHAKE SHACK. There is an express line if you're not getting burgers.

We then proceeded to Strand Books where they have used and new books. I picked up 5 books for a cost of $19.05.

I have a policy that for each book that I buy I must get rid of two books. This is difficult for me but something I must do if I want to declutter my life.

Feng Shui is a way to place things in your house. I relate it to the way I feel when I walk down certain streets of Manhattan. Sometimes I feel good when there are lots of trees and pretty sights and other times I feel a negative energy to to dirt, ugly buildings and lack of trees. I'll probably never read this one but the concept seems interesting.

The Power of Now is a book that I'm interested in after reading +Sam Harris Waking Up, and is related to Buddhism and self-transcendence.

The Intelligent Investor is a classic investing book that I probably already have. I liked analyzing the stock market in the past and for $1.00 how could I not buy this.

Visual Design for the Modern Web is a book that is old but I could use help with my websites from a design point of view. I've wanted to have a better website, but that's a small piece of the puzzle in trying to make money from one of my ideas.

Concise Guide to Writing is because I'm trying to write and need help.

Current Projects

My current projects are:

1. Upgrade Listi.net to SQL Server
2. Complete Wisdom of a Dad
3. Declutter
4. Read Library books I have
5. Work on lowering my blood sugar

Note, that I had 4 books on dieting which I didn't buy.  

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