Kaizen Day 2, Apr 11 2017

This post is part of my daily kaizen routine, this is day two of that routine


Today I got up at 3:57 AM, whenever I go to NYC which is normally on Tuesday or Thursday, I set my alarm at 4 AM. I will wake up before the alarm goes off most of the time, this was true today as well

Coffee...


I made myself a cold brew coffee the night before and I drank this between 4 and 4:30 AM

I left the house at 4:30 AM, walked to the train station, this took 40 minutes. I caught the 5:20 train, I read about 30 pages of the book When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi . The train arrived at  Newark at 5:55 or so, got on the PATH train and arrived at the World Trade Center station around 6:20. I then walked to the New York Sports Club gym on Broad street and did back and biceps as part of my workout. I also did 21 minutes of cardio which burned a total of 250 calories

After the gym I went to the office. I brought my breakfast and lunch from home today. For breakfast I had yogurt with fresh strawberries and a clementine

At lunch time I had dinner left overs from the night before, pasta with farm raised ground beef and cauliflower

Going home I did the exact opposite from the morning (makes sense ..how else would I end up home?)

My wife made pasta fagioli with swiss chard, I had that for dinner. As dessert I had 1 clementine and 1 kiwi

Here are also the steps and floors for today,  a little over 25 K steps and I climbed 17 floors... not bad

You are probably thinking what I do while doing all this walking... the answer is simple..I listen to podcasts. Some of the podcasts I listen to at 2X speed, this is always true for the Joe Rogan podcast

Here is what I listened to today

Started yesterday and finished today

Joe Rogan

#943. Moshe Kasher is a stand-up comedian, writer and actor. His new show “Problematic” premieres on...

Finished all these

.NET Rocks

1431 Multi-tenant Apps Using cloudscribe with Joe Audette

Stuff you missed in history class

Three Nuclear Close Calls

Trianulation 293

Ron Gilbert - Thimbleweed Park

Tim Ferriss

Cory Booker — Street Fights, 10-Day Hunger Strikes, and Creative Problem-Solving

Started

Joe Rogan

#944. Scott Eastwood is an actor and model, and is also in "The Fate of the Furious" releasing in theaters on April 14. 

Cameron Hanes is a bowhunting athlete, “training intensively each and every day to become the Ultimate Predator.”

That is all for today...next post will be tomorrow

Kaizen Day 1, Apr 10 2017

This post is part of my daily kaizen routine, this is day one of that routine

I started the day by getting up at 5:30. The night before I made a cold brew coffee, I added some half and half to this coffee and finished in about 25 minutes or so.

I ran for about 30 minutes and was back home around 6:45 AM. The run itself was pretty easy, I didn't go too fast probably 9 miles per hour or so.

After I cooled off a little, I took a quick shower. After the shower I made myself breakfast. Three eggs scrambled in coconut oil, a side of micro arugula and some cherry tomatoes. After breakfast I had two clementines.

I walked to the Princeton Junction train station for 40 minutes to hope on the van which takes me to work. I can take the bus from my home as well but it takes the same time more or less. I would have to walk to the other direction, wait on the bus and then the b us ride would be about 15 minutes or so, and then I would wait at the station for 15 minutes. I hardly ever take the bus, only when it rains really hard or is extremely warm (90 degrees and more)

I basically had another coffee at work as well as a green tea. No food but had lots of water

I left work at 5, hopped on the van back to the train station, and walked back home for 40 minutes

Dinner tonight was the following

What you can see in that picture is pasta with farm raised ground beef and cauliflower.

I had 2 clementines for dessert

Here is a pic of my steps for the day, it is a little more than that but I don’t always carry my phone with me

Adding some Kaizen to my life

I turned 47 this weekend and decided I should try to improve my life, after all I am getting older and want to be around when my kids grow up. I gained a little weight in the last 10 years, probably between 10 and 15 pounds or so. The best way for me to tackle this weight gain would be to use several small changes. Think of it as Kaizen, if you don’t know what Kaizen is, here is a small definition and the link to Wikipedia.

Kaizen (改善^?), is Japanese word for "continuous improvement ". In business, kaizen refers to activities that continuously improve all functions and involve all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers. It also applies to processes, such as purchasing and logistics, that cross organizational boundaries into the supply chain.^[1] It has been applied in healthcare,^[2] psychotherapy,^[3] life-coaching, government, banking, and other industries.

By improving standardized programmes and processes, kaizen aims to eliminate waste (see lean manufacturing). Kaizen was first practiced in Japanese businesses after the Second World War, influenced in part by American business and quality-management teachers, and most notably as part of The Toyota Way. It has since spread throughout the world^[4] and has been applied to environments outside of business and productivity.

The first thing I will do is document all the stuff I eat, I am doing this because if I eat any crap, I will need to document that, so it will force me to really think if I should have that bag of chips or handful of M&Ms today

I will also increase the times I do aerobic exercises

I will not skip my workout days (sometimes it is not my fault, NJ Transit does not always run on time you know) But if I skip a day, I should make it up on a non-workout day

Finally, I should start working on my flexibility, I should work on becoming more flexible, I got kind of stiff over the years

That is all for this post... the first daily post will go out tonight

If you play FPL Fantasy Soccer, make sure to get the Better FPL extension

If you play Fantasy Premier League soccer/football, then you must get the Better FPL chrome extension.

Better FPL provides you with a set of options to improve your experience on fantasy.premierleague.com. Features such as upcoming fixtures with difficulty, expanded league view and options to disable things such as the confirmation dialog, that interrupts when you want to make a transfer, to name a few.

Here is what the team looks like without the extension

Here is what the team looks like with the extension

Now under each player you will see 5 colored boxes, these represent the difficulty for the next 5 games. Now you can better judge who to leave on the bench and who to field.

And here is what the standing look like without the extension

Adding the extension gives you a lot more, you get live points in the GW(L) columns, you can also see the captain and if that player has played any chips like bench boost, all out attack or triple captain. You can also see the transfer cost, transfers this week and how much money the person has in the bank

So do yourself a favor and add the Better FPL extension, you can get it here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/better-fpl/oimpiccgpkkjbdligdbcipdcjcklcglm?utm_source=chrome-app-launcher-info-dialog

SQL Pass Summit 2016... day 1.... just looking around

This is the second PASS Summit I am attending. I will be in Seattle for 5 days. The first day has been a long day for me. I got up at 3:30 AM even though my alarm was set to go off at 3:55 AM. A car picked me up at 4:30, I got to the airport at 5:10 AM. My Alaska Air flight left promptly at 7 AM, I landed around 10 AM at Seattle Tacome airport.

I went to pick up my badge at the Washington Convention Center around noon. I had some lunch right after I picked up my badge

I had some free time this first day, I decided to go to the Space Needle
When I got to the Space Needle which is about a 25 minute walk or so from the Washington Convention Center, I noticed they also had the Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibition. If you want to see both the Space Needle and the Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibition, make sure to get the package deal, you will save around $8 per person.

I took some pictures at the Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibition. All these glass items below were made by Dale Chihuly, In 1968, after receiving a Fulbright Fellowship, he went to work at the Venini glass factory in Venice. This is the place where he learned to work the way he works today.  You can learn more about all lof this at the Chihuly Garden and Glass website





Some alien looking things



Flowers



Straight out of a sci-fi movie

Here is also a video of some of these glass sculptures

After the Chihuly Garden and Glass I went to the Space Needle
I have been to Seattle 4 times now and have never visited the Space Needle. this time I decided to go for it. First of all, I am not a big fan of heights, second..I am an even smaller fan of heights when it is extremely windy. So I went up there, it was very window and it was the typical crappy cloudy and rainy Seattle day. I took a couple of pictures, but I was scared several time that I was going to drop my phone




After the Space Needle, I took the monorail back to Westlake Center Station, at 5th Avenue and Pine Street. From there I went to visit Pike Place Market



I also saw this couple, one playing the guitar, the other doing some flamingo dance.

Since I was so jet lagged, I did not even eat dinner, lunch was around the same time that I normally eat dinner at the east coast, I wasn't hungry at all. I will probably be starving for breakfast however.

Back in the hotel I decided to take it easy. I read a little bit and just relaxed...

Here is final video for you. it is a little grainy but it is a timelapse taken from the hotel room while it is getting dark

Of course I woke up at 1:15 AM then at 2 AM. Finally I got up at 3 AM..and that is why you see this post.

Sometimes I wish I could travel at timelapse speed

I am probably one of the few people who like the commute when taking a train. The reason I like taking the train is that it gives me time to read. I normally take the train once or twice a week, the train ride itself is only about 35 minutes or so from Princeton to Newark. In Newark I transfer to the path and take that to the World Trade Center station.

So yesterday I was sitting on the train on the way home and decided to take a timelapse video between two station. You can see that video below

As you can see that took about 14 seconds for a 4 minute or so train ride duration. That means if I was to travel at timelapse speed, it would be about 17 times faster. With a timelapse travel speed my commute would be about 2 minutes..... Who wants that, that would mean it would take me a year to finish a book if I only read on the train, However sometimes it is handy, this is especially true when the NJ Transit or Amtrak trains are running late........ which is every day!!

Here are two Google Map images of the two stations to give you an idea where this is all located

If you prefer to see this in Google Maps the go here: Google Maps

I am a big fan of timelapse videos, it is always interesting when you see people in timelapse videos, it;s like watching a bunch of rats or ants

If you like timelapse videos, check out timelapse on reddit if you don't already know about that subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/timelapse

Finished dead last...how pathetic..

As some of you know, I am part of a premier league fantasy soccer/football league. The new season started last week…. I managed to have the least points at the end of the first match day. I am glad that this is not my real job otherwise I would be in real trouble. What annoys me the most is that I switched out Philippe Coutinho for Roberto Firmino, Coutinho ended up with 15 points while Firmino only had 2 points. Then to rub some salt into the wound, my dear friend Christiaan Baes pointed out the following

@DenisGobo great to see you are letting everyone have more points than you in your league, very gentleman like.

— Christiaan Baes (@chrissie1) August 16, 2016

Arggghhh.

What can you do, this is just the first week, so hopefully it gets better. Last year I finished somewhere in the middle of the group.

Here is what my team looked like that first week

Not sure why I had Cech instead of Mignolet, lost 6 points right there.
I have made some changes, not too many, I want to keep my wildcard in case some of my players get injured. Btw, you can follow the league here: RealFootball...

 Joining the league couldn't be easier. Simply use this link and you'll be added automatically after you've entered the game: https://fantasy.premierleague.com/?autojoin-code=40704-14764.