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, February 27, 2016

Blood Sugar

Ran out of my pre-diabetes medication because I changed insurance from Aetna to Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS).

For some reason they require the filling of a prescription for 3 months at a time. The pharmacy has tried to renew a prescription with my dr. but I still don't have it.

So today I didn't have good blood sugar (BS) numbers.

I've been on the +Tim Ferriss 30gms of 30 protein within 30 minutes of awakening. Today I had two protein bars, one chocolate chip Questbar and one Caramel Double Chocolate Crunch Atkins bar. I tested my (5 minutes up here)  BS and it was 151 up from 105 upon awakening, which is much higher than I expected it to be. I'm a little suspect about the bars affect on my blood sugar.

For lunch I ate at Wendy's and had a cheeseburger, fries and diet coke. I ate the bun which is unusual for me. It was delicious. much better than +Five Guys Burgers and Fries I tested afterwards and BS was lower than I expected at 117. While at the mall my son mentioned that they had a delicious Parmesan pretzel. So I bought one and had half.

I had a craving for Carvel but we went shopping at +Target. The cashier didn't shut up. Yap, yap, yap. She was under 18 so couldn't ring up my alcohol purchase. So she had to pass it to the cashier next to her. Very strange rule.

Afterwards the next test at 5:50 pm was 171. I took a nap for 1.5 hours and upon awakening BS was 164 at 7:30 PM, 124 at 8:30 pm. I decided on +Bulletproof coffee for dinner as it probably would affect my BS.

Laptop Purchase

I also went computer shopping today for my son. We went to +Best Buy and +Staples and wound up buying a Dell from Staples for $600 instead of $900 for laptop from Best Buy. The $900 computer lacked a DVD drive and had one fourth the space on it's hard drive. One thing I did was check my sons college website for the computer he needs. He first wanted to get a Chrome book which sells for $200 - $400. His college offers a free copy of Microsoft Office.

Excel Diet

I've been looking for sugar-free yogurt but I can't find it at the supermarket. There is a real lack of low-carb/Paleo products in NY. I have a need for these products but no one appears to be supplying them. I wonder why not? 

My diet hasn't been that successful in terms of getting below 160 and trending downwards. I have noticed more people downloading the diet and am wondering why. I just searched on the terms "Excel Diet" without the quotes and I'm showing up second WTF?  Though lower on the search results a post of mine is appearing with my picture. The post if from Jan. 5, 2013. 

Some speculation as to why. The Excel Diet uses for basic rules in the acronym MEAT

• Measure
• Enter
• Adjust
• Talk

And I've failed at 3 out of 4 of the tasks. I'm measuring still, but not entering, adjusting or talking about it. Some other possible reasons:

• I've been weightlifting so I'm gaining muscle and weight
• I've been eating too much fat in cheese nuts and bulletproof coffee
• I haven't been that committed to losing weight as I was in the past.
• I've been eating foods I shouldn't eat when I'm behind my goal
• I have a foot injury that's preventing me from exercising as much as I would like

While buying the computer for my son I noticed that the spreadsheet didn't appear to work in Google Sheets.

Twitter

I'm still liking +Twitter, especially getting Likes and Retweets. I seem to be getting more than I normally get and I'm wondering if it's due to Twitters change method of showing tweets.

I've noticed that I have a few tweets that have typos that are getting retweets and no way to fix this. Twitter should allow this somehow and not lose the likes. I don't want to delete the tweet.

I had a few tweets that I really liked but didn't get much commenting on.

There was a #fire in a crowded theatre and I didn't yell "FiIRE" because you can't #quote pic.twitter.com/d5aJoh3ZK0

— Alec Berg (@alecberg) February 26, 2016

This one also:

Homer Simpson would be in #heaven here pic.twitter.com/YmJj4RBZU0

— Alec Berg (@alecberg) February 26, 2016

If you like these tweets please retweet or like them.

LIRR/Legal Issue

The other day on the train a guy was talking way too loud. I typically just put my noise canceling headphones on. But I thought I should record his conversation and play it back to him. I didn't do this because it might be illegal and a felony due to wiretapping laws, but I'm not sure.

Excel Class

I've been working again on an Excel class but have had trouble with it do to 3 issues:

• Too much info
• Over and over
• Not enough fun

ok, it's been over an hour on this. I guess 5 minutes goes by when you're having fun.

Shocking Blood Sugar Numbers

I write this from Buffalo, NY. after having dinner at Duff's, known for their wings and the food was excellent. So after a long plane flight mostly waiting in the airport I didn't eat well. I usually eat low carb. Today I had:

• Pizza
• Pretzel
• 2 bags potato chips
• Chocolate candy
• Chocolate cookies
• Pretzels

Then for dinner:

• Steak wrap
• Chicken wings
• Cheese sticks
• French fries
• Ice cream
• Light beer

I took a Metformin around 2 PM and then with dinner. When I got back to my room after dinner I was shocked to see that my blood sugar was 83 where I expected > 160. I tested 3 times and 83 came up each time. So my question is why? Some possibilities:

• The Metformin is working
• I just started lifting weights and it's working
• Something at home, maybe mold is making my blood sugar high
• I've been doing the Tim Ferriss 30 gms protein/within 30 minutes of awakening and maybe that is helping
• I ate so much that the food hasn't been digested yet
• I had alcohol which with the Metrormin which is keeping my blood sugar low

Daily 5 Minute Blog. Feb. 13, 2016

Wt. 165.6 and blood sugar at 89 at noon. I've been doing +Tim Ferriss 30gms. of protein within 30 minutes of awakening and I'm on day 5. I also have gone to gym 2 days. I had 2 Questbars at 9:20 AM and 1 cup of coffee.

I got James Altucher's Choose Yourself on CD yesterday.

I posted questions on his #CYChat on Thursday and he didn't respond.  I've been thinking about responding to the questions that he didn't answer and also study the questions that were asked.

I came up with about 40 things to do on my to-do list today.  I know it's way too many and I need a better prioritization filter.

I've gone 2 times to +Planet Fitness and have decided to try to do Wed., Fri., and Sun. as my days of choice. Yesterday I walked for an hour in the freezing cold and then stood on a train for an hour, LIRR sucks as usual. I've decided that the important thing with the exercise is consistency so it wasn't that hard to go knowing my goal was to go and not to work out that hard. I was at the gym for about an hour. My wife noticed that the signs misspell the word "judgment" as "judgement."

I'm not sure what my February goal is as it's just about half over. Maybe it was lifting weights.

Work has been better as I'm learning a bunch of new technologies including:

• MapR
• Hadoop
• Tableau
• Drill
• Python

Though I'm worried about automation eliminating jobs. Will there be jobs for my children when the get out of college?

I'm trying to track what I do each hour as the days seem to go by so fast and I feel I haven't accomplished much.

My Excel Diet hasn't been going well, but at least I'm not gaining weight. I've just about stayed the same over the past year.

Daily Five Minute Journal - January 16, 2016 (video will bring tears to your eyes)

I haven't been journaling daily but it's much easier to do it on the weekend. It says 5 minutes but it definitely takes much longer.

Still doing twitter and also enjoy getting retweets or likes.

Blood sugar is high this morning 110 and weight was down 162.6.  I haven't been that focused on losing weight even though it's my month's goal.

Neck pain almost gone. I slept on couch for a couple of hours and woke up with a pain in my neck. I've had pain for at least a week.

Movies planned for tonight

David Bowie

David Bowie passed away this past week. They're is a shrine to him on Lafayette and Houston (pronounced Howston) in NYC. Loved his song Space Oddity with my favorite lyric "and the stars look very different today" brings tears to my eyes.

Death List

I continue to update my Death list of famous people who died before their time http://bit.ly/DiedB4Time

Cur Task

This is the term for a spreadsheet I use to select what to do, ie my to-do list. I use it to PURGE (Plan Ur Goals Everyday).  It's a partial solution to my STS (Smart Task Selection) idea. It's goal is to answer the question "What should I do now?"

Obstacles

I'm into obstacles this week. One of the things I've been bad at is overcoming obstacles at work.  

Verizon

Finally got Verizon to send me a new phone. This was a PITFA. The Droid Turbo phone kept rebooting. I lost data in the process as I didn't back up information from my apps. There was nothing that I really needed, mostly ideas and passwords. The things I tried were:

• Bring phone into Verizon service center
• They told me it was a bug and I had to wait for Motorola to fix it
• Report issue via twitter
• Ran phone on safe mode (still randomly rebooted)
• Refreshed phone (still randomly rebooted)

I did notice that the reboots were much more likely to occur if I was outside and walking. If listening on headphones it rebooted even more. I'm not so confident that a replacement phone will fix the issue. Verizon also said they would remove an overage charge from the phone.

Lottery Odds Computation (Powerball)

I didn't win the $1.6 Billion Power Ball drawing. I joined a group at my company and we bought 100 tickets from 40 people at $5.00 a pop.  We won $20 and played the Friday night powerball.

The odds of the Powerball are easy to calculate in Excel.

Five balls are picked without replacement numbered from 1 to 69 and a sixth ball from 1 to 26 is picked.  The Excel formula
=COMBIN(69,5)*26

returns

292,201,338 which means you have a 1 in 292,201,338 chance for each $2.00. The actual formula is       n! ---------- k! (n-k)!

where ! is the factorial. The factorial of 5 is 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1.

The odds of flipping a coin to heads 28 times in a row is .5^28 = 3.72529 10^-9 and 1/3.72529... = 1 in 268,435,456.

The ^ character means to the power of. So x ^ y  is x to the power of y. So 2^3 = 2 x 2 x 2 = 8.

Daily 5 Minute Journal - Jan. 6, 2016

Health

Blood Sugar seems to be improving slowly (97 at 9 AM, 100 at lunch and 89 at dinner). I'm trying to get my blood sugar < 90. My weight down to 163.8.  I'm trying to follow closely the ExcelDiet.com which I've tried a number of times in the last year but failed. The diet uses the acronym (MEAT)

• Measure
• Enter
• Adjust
• Talk

I measured and entered but didn't adjust and talk about it. The key is to be very aware of whether I'm above or below my goal and to adjust based on that. 

I was drinking Bulletproof coffee for a while but it didn't really work. The drink is about 500 calories for 2 cups and I was usually still hungry. 

Today I skipped my usual 6 mile walk because I'm ahead of my goal. I'm considering having ice cream if my family wants it.  

Work

Work has been a little more interesting as I've started working more with some new tools:

• Tableau
• MapR

Tableau is a dashboard system that takes data and creates interactive dashboards and MapR is a system that managed Big Data. 

A strange thing I noticed today is that we hired a new employee who is black. My co-worker is black and she hired another person who is black. It just seems odd to me that her group has 3 blacks in it. I guess people will hire people who are like them.  Many years ago I noticed the same thing in a department at a finance firm where all the employees and the manager was black. I feel more connected to them than to the foreigners at work which are either Indian Chinese or Russian. They're all very nice people, though I dislike when the Indians eat in our lunch room and talk in Hindi, makes me feel excluded.

One annoying thing at work is I can't load software to my computer. I have to learn this software but until it's officially approved can't use it. This really sucks.  

Happy and Depressed

I'm a little down from the short days, long nights and cold weather in NY.  When I walk my dog no one is out, it's very quiet.  I've been enjoying my older son being home from college as we've been playing chess and watching Curb Your Enthusiasm. 

Idea

To day on my phone I can say "OK Google" and it allows me to talk to it. I asked "What song is this?" and then whistled 2 songs. It wasn't able to guess it, but it should have asked me if I knew and then improved it's guessing via these types of "training sessions."

Goals

My month's goal is to weigh < 160. I've also have some goals from previous months, to declutter and to lower my blood sugar.

Daily 5 minute Journal. Jan. 2, 2016

Woke up with blood sugar 107 which is still too high. I'm not sure the Metformin is working. I've upped my dosage of metformin to 1000 mg but it hasn't seemed to lower my blood sugar.

Weighed 166 this morning which was higher than I'd like.

I have set my goal for this month to weigh less than 160, but I've been stuck where I am for so long I'm not sure if I can reach it. I have stopped putting butting and coconut oil into my coffee.

Still have a messy area and thought today that I should do the following:

1. Come up with life's goals
2. Come up with 10 year plan
3. Come up with 5 year plan
4. Come up with years goals
5. Come up with monthly goals
6. Come up with week's goal
7. Come up with day's goal
8. Do most important thing on day's to-do list

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time watching Youtube videos. I learned how street performers levitate and watched many of Project One Life videos and saw very funny Jesus pranks. This guy  I have that http://Time-creator.com software that would every 15 minutes remind me to log data about what I did the previous 15 minutes.

question of "What did I do yesterday?" I feel like I did a lot of nothing that was goal related. I had an alarm in my

• What did I do
• What goal?
• My rating for review
• Exceeds Expectations
• Meets Expectations
• Below Expectations
• What an Exceeds Expectation would have done
• What to put on resume

Walked the dog and it was very cold. Watched Larry David with son.  I'm into compiling Larry David songs and he sang two:

1. Jaiya Jaiya Jaiya I made it out of clay
2. N-E-S-T-L-E-S song (The Terrorist Episode)
3. Ah Yapa doody Ya Ya

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.

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.  

News

• Refugees [from Syria] keep streaming to Europe
• Iran - US Nuclear deal 
• Women in Kentucky denies Marriage licences to same-sex couples and is in jail. Why wasn't she just fired? story