Hello, Boston

When I awoke this morning, one of the first thoughts through my head was 'What the hell am I doing?' It's a question that's been plaguing me all day. What am I doing here? I don't mean that in the metaphysical/existential sense. Why, exactly, did I decide to come? I've always thought I should visit New England, but I've never had a strong compulsion to actually do so. Joe's been trying to get me to visit since he moved, something like two years ago. Dave, the kind gentleman putting me up for the first few days, also has said in the past that I should visit. Some of the HK exchange students planned on using a Boston Beerfest as an excuse to have a reunion this spring. There is one this weekend, but it sold out before I could get my tickets, and noone else is coming to visit this weekend; it's just me, the Boston locals, and no Beerfest (not that I particularly enjoy beer). That doesn't really bother me, though, as I can tell now that's not really why I'm here.

So, why am I here? What made me spend the money and time to travel across the country to Boston. Why did I decide to pick a weekend and come without any itinerary or desires? It's not like I was thinking I really wanted to see what Boston was like, in case I wanted to live here; I don't know of anything in Boston I really care to see. When I decided to come, it felt like the thing to do - a perfect idea. Now it feels like I was crazy for even considering it. It's not like plans have fallen through and I am now not sure I want to be here; I had no plans. It just seemed like I ought to be in Boston this weekend, and now I'm at a loss as to why I listened to that feeling and, if it's right, what I'm supposed to do now that I'm here.

The whole thing just doesn't make much sense to me. For those that don't know me, spontaneously booking a trip like this is far outside my realm of normal behaviour, and looking back on it, it disturbs me a bit to not know what I'm doing or why. Anyway, I suppose I will wait and see, though I don't know what I'm supposed to be watching :/

Breakfast and Women

As I have noted earlier, I am staying with my grandparents for a couple of nights. One of the nice things about that is MawMaw wanting to cook for me every morning. This is fantastic, as I am a bit lazy and definitely not a morning person. I usually skip breakfast, as I have no motivation to fix anything. I started thinking it would be really cool to have this, someone to make me breakfast, more often; however, then I realized a problem: the type of woman I like doesn't tend to be the 'cook breakfast for her man' kind of woman. I guess I tend to prefer a woman that is more likely to wake up, glare at me, and throw a granola bar at me than she is to get up and cheerily fix breakfast, which is fine with me, as I like attitude. I just have to steel myself for the fact that this is not going to be something I have very often in my life. Oh well, I'd rather have a smartass woman with a mischievous grin than breakfast any day.

Followup to Yesterday's Novel

You know where I realized that running worked completely different muscles than the elliptical? Yeah, well, yesterday's realization is nothing compared to the epiphany I had upon waking this morning (if you can call it waking, more on that later). Holy [insert four-letter expletive of your choice]! Various parts of my legs, lower back, butt, and feet hurt like hell. I guess I should look on the bright side, that I am sore fewer than 24 hours later, when it used to take 36 to 48 hours (metabolism speeding up), and this should indicate that I have made some progress and the next time should be easier.

One side effect of exercising that I forgot to mention is the return of insomnia. In high school, I always had trouble sleeping. I would have a hard time getting to sleep, then I would only sleep well for two to four hours before waking up and having a fitful time the rest of the evening. This would usually be followed by a nearly mandatory nap sometime in the day. When I got fat, at least I had the good fortune of being able to sleep...sometimes for 12+ hours a day. Well, as I get into better shape and my metabolism increases, the insomnia has returned. Two nights ago was the first good night's sleep I've had in over a week, and last night I slept for a grand total of 4.5 hours before waking up at 6:00 and staring at the ceiling for an hour until I decided to go ahead and get up. Another side effect is an increase in mania, but that's another story and I feel like doing my daily sudokus, so peace out. Hopefully you're all still asleep when I post this.

Running and the Elliptical

That sounds like the title of a really bad children's parable.

I guess I should give some of you a bit of background first, for context. I've never been a good runner...actually, that's a misstatement; I've always been a horrible runner. When they made us run in elementary school PE class, I could barely finish the mile and it was in a very poor time. Throughout my several years of Judo, even when I was going to practice 3-4 times a week for 3 hours each time with an hour of weights and cardio before, I couldn't run. I would do wonderfully on the rowing machine and the stairs, but I couldn't run a mile to save my life. The one year that I played football, I smoked /everyone/ in stadium snakes, but couldn't run distance or sprints at even an average level. When I played Ultimate for two years at OSU, I started at 250+ pounds, so it's understandable that I couldn't run then. But after two years, I was down to about 210 or so and able to do a few crappy sprints now and then and play full games (granted, I was a handler, so I didn't have to run as much as others), but I still couldn't run a mile.

For the past ten years, approximately, I've been losing weight from my peak around 300 pounds sometime around 1998. It tends to go in spurts with plateaus at particular points. I did most of my work between 1999 and 2004. A couple of years of Ultimate and living on rice and beans (with a can of chicken as a treat when I was really rolling in the money...) helped quite a bit. I plateaued around 210 from 2004 to 2007, for the most part. I had started gaining some weight back early in law school, but lost most of it when I went to HK in the summer of 2006. This past fall in HK, I lost almost 20 pounds, which was great. Unfortunately, I knew that I was going to have a hard time keeping it off, since when I returned to the US, I would not be walking everywhere, the food would be much less healthy, and the portion sizes would be about twice as large. So, I decided I would need to make some adjustments to my normal routine when I got home. I decided I was going to take drastic measures...start running !

For the past two weeks, I've been using the elliptical at Mike's place every other day and seeing some decent improvement. The first time I used it, I barely managed to complete about 12 minutes at maybe .7 miles, with several walk-breaks in that period. The next attempt was 15 minutes at a mile, then 18 minutes, then 30 minutes with 4 breaks at 1.8 miles. The last two times I used it, I went 30 minutes without walk-breaks and am up to about 2.3 miles in 30 minutes on hills. I was pretty happy about that, especially considering my atrocious history with running.

Late last night I drove to Houston to see my family and make an appearance at Owlcon. Since an elliptical is not exactly very portable, I figured I would have to finally break in my shoes on an outdoor surface and do actual running. I expected it to be a bit different, maybe slightly different muscles, and maybe a bit easier since it would be on a flat surface rather than hills. Well, guess what? I still can't run a damned mile! I ran maybe a total of 1.5 miles and had to take several breaks. It was completely different from the elliptical! It worked completely different muscles and worked my lungs harder. The elliptical kept my heart rate higher for the duration and worked some muscles just above my knees and up along my thighs. Running was working some muscles above my knees and to the outside of the leg, my shins, and my arches. Part of that is probably my shoes; they are supposed to work the muscles in my feet and lower legs. But, still, it was quite disappointing. I guess I'm going to have to start running one day and elliptical the next to work the different muscles. Hopefully, I will see the same improvement as on the elliptical.

The good news is that, rather than regaining weight, I've actually lost about another 10 pounds since I got back from HK. I am now down to 183, which is probably the lightest I've been since 1993 and my lean, not-so-mean, not-so-green Judo days. Of course, considering I know I still have some fat to lose, that means I have some serious muscle mass to regain, particularly upper body (as usual). I suppose I will start working on that when I get back from Boston and live near campus again. Ok, if you made it this far, I feel sorry for you and I will let you get back to your life now ;)

Quanting News

Mike and I (mostly Mike) worked early this week on the testing platform, with good results. He got it setup so I can put all the data I want in the database (I'll eventually get about 5 years worth in there), choose the dates I want to test, run the test, choose the dates I want to chart, choose the data to chart, and view the chart. I can even zoom in and zoom out (though only to original dimensions for now). We still have some work to do, like getting it setup to read a file for algorithm variables so I don't have to hack the code everytime I want to tweak it, but it's in a state now that I can run tests quickly and look at the results pretty effectively.

Unfortunately, looking at the first few sets of tests, it looks like I may need to change the algorithm some. I'm getting good data on some parts of the algorithm, but there are certain other data points I am missing. I'm getting some decent results, but I don't know if that's just luck or if it's a decent algorithm that could be better. If I could get the other data points and then tweak the components a tiny bit, I could get some fantastic results. I'm just going to have to play with it to figure out how to get those other data points somehow without getting false positives. That last bit is going to be the tricky part.

So, things are progressing well, but I'm a little behind the schedule I had set for myself. I wanted to know if this thing was going to work by mid-February, before I went to Boston, but I don't think I'm going to make it at this point. The initial returns were good, about 1/3 to 1/2 of our target return, but again, that could just be luck. All-in-all though, things are progressing well and I should know something soon. Anyways, I'm going to go get some editing out of the way and maybe eat some soup. Yumm.

This weekend (7.Feb to 10.Feb)

I was planning on leaving for Houston last night to spend some time with the Grandparents, but I was too tired, hadn't packed, and needed to clean part of the house to do my part to help get ready for Mike's brother and sister-in-law coming into town for the weekend; besides, even if I left directly after class, I wouldn't have arrived in Houston until about 10 or 11pm. So, I planned on leaving this morning after cleaning, maybe around 11am. It turns out my grandparents are bowling tonight and won't be home until 9:30, so I'm waiting around ATX until about 6 so I get there when they get home. I'll spend tonight and Friday with them. Saturday I'll make an appearance at Owlcon and probably stay the night there. Sunday I'll head down to my dad's place to see my bro and sis, spend the night there, then head back to ATX early Monday in time for my 2pm class, Nonprofits.

Today, I have to finish editing FUR8-01, BDK7-08, and maybe a couple of interactive ARs. Casey is planning on getting me BDK8-01 late tonight, but they are hoping to run it at 7pm tomorrow night at Owlcon, and I don't know that I will get it turned around that quickly; I'll try though. Also this weekend, I need to read On the Genealogy of Morality a couple of times for my Nietzsche class and prep a couple of minutes of presentation on Sony's IP strategy, specifically related to Blu-Ray and the lessons they learned from the Betamax snafu. In whatever time is left, I get to quant using the new GUI mike put together. (more on that in another post)