MAS o Menos

No milestones today.  I thought for sure I was going to nail Good status on the pull-ups.  Nope.

1. Pull-Ups - I needed 20 to move from Decent to Good.  I got 17, which is a new personal record, but still 3 shy of Good.  Darn high-reps!  I have set a new goal to do a 100 pound weighted pull-up sometime in 2009.  I might have to get MacGyver with the equipment at my Glitter Gym to pull that off. 
2. Leg Press - Last week I started this exercise with 135 and 185.  No soreness, so this week I did 225 and 275.  Slow and steady.
3. EZ Bicep Curl - In Part 2, I speculated that with my tiny wrists I would probably never get a Good score of 135 pounds.  Today I raised my poundage to 100.  Who knows, maybe Good is possible?
4. Monster Moves - I’m going to refer to the squat, dead lift and bent rows as the monster moves.  They all take place in the cage and like a monster, they tend to be loud.  These are the ones I need to go slow and steady or I’ll get injured.  Progress here will take months, not weeks.  And being injury free is more important to me than being Decent.

My 2008 Training Scorecard remains at 7/12 Decent.

For years I’ve owned the domain MichaelAllenSmith.com and had it redirect here on CriticalMAS.com.  Low on my list of things to do was to create a portal site for my projects.  Then this summer INeedCoffee contributor Paul RJ Muller created a portal site for himself and I was inspired.

My inspiration ran smack into a domain transfer problem with GoDaddy.  This week I was finally able to liberate the domain and setup my own quick portal.  Getting the domain moved over took months.  Hand coding the first version of the site took less than an hour and was done using NotePad.

In the coming months I will update MichaelAllenSmith.com.  The current version is just a placeholder.

MichaelAllenSmith.com

As predicted in Part 2, I nailed the Dips.  I focused on three exercises today.

1. Dips - Have I mentioned how much I loathe high repetition training?  But I really want to be Decent, so I needed to hit 20 reps.  After completing the 20 reps, I grabbed a weight belt and resumed my low-rep weighted dips.
2. Bench Press - My only Decent bench press was back in May 2007.  I’m more of a incline dumbbell guy, so I’m just starting to revisit the classic flat barbell bench press.   Today I benched my weight (200) for 3 reps.  Since I work out in a Glitter Gym, it will be tough finding someone to spot me as I approach 225.
3. Skull Crusher - Added 5 more pounds to this ridiculous exercise.  I’ve already hit Decent and think that Good is possible by spring.

My 2008 Training Scorecard is now 7/12 Decent.  Looking at the table I’m guessing it will be several weeks before I hit another Decent milestone.  However, my first Good score is within reach on the Pull-Ups.

Back when I worked for Nielsen Media Research in the 1990s, I loved Altoids.  I still love Altoids, but nearly as much I did back then.  During the dot-com days, I would go through almost a full tin a day.  Some guys became drug addicts or had gambling problems.  My vice was Altoids.

Instead of throwing away the tins, I started piling them up on my desk.  Then after one eventful Halloween, I found myself in possession of two very real looking plastic rats.  I decided to have a little fun at work.  I set up this display of tins and made it look as if the rats were teaming up to get at them.

Needless to say, it freaked more than one of my fellow co-workers out.  Before long people from other departments were coming over to view the Altoid Rats.

Here is a photo of me with my Hansonesque hair from either late 1997 or early 1998.

When I was young I read a profile on Ted Turner.  Sure he was a self-made multi-millionaire that founded CNN and owned a baseball team.  However, the thing I recall the most about Ted Turner was that despite all his millions, he cut his own hair.  Now I was just a kid when I read this story, but I filed away that tidbit as important information.

I really don’t like getting haircuts.  I don’t like waiting and most places over charge.  The great thing about living in San Diego was it was a military town, so you had military barbers.  Cheap and fast.  The closest thing Seattle has to the military is the Girl Scouts.  This means no military barber.

While living in Bellevue, I found a Vietnamese place that was a 2 block walk from my apartment.  It was cheap and fast.  This is the place I accidentally gave the big tip.  Now I get the Sinatra treatment, so even though I now live on the Seattle side of the bridge, I time my haircuts whenever I need to run errands on the Eastside.

Yesterday I needed a haircut.

Yesterday it was pouring rain.

Yesterday I remembered that Ted Turner cut his own hair.

Yesterday I drew blood.

A lot of blood.

Now did Ted Turner cut his own hair because he funneled every extra dollar into his media empire?  Or did he cut his own hair because he was a crazy redneck and everybody had awful looking hair in the early 1980s?

After posting my review of the science book Satisfaction, I noticed that I could have written it in pseudocode or C#.

switch (novelty)
{
    too-little:
        condition = boredom;
    too-much:
        condition = overwhelmed;
    just-enough:
        condition = engaged;
}

if (condition == engaged && action == true)
    satisfaction = true;
else
    satisfaction = false;

This post had just enough novelty and required an action on my part.  I’m satisfied.