Nat Arem's Blog

As I said in the last entry, I am having some trouble recovering from some mouth surgery that I had. It’s now been 10 day since the surgery and I’ve been back to the doctor about five times. He’s been amazingly friendly and helpful about it. He even came into the office on a holiday Sunday (this past Monday was a Cayman holiday). But, unfortunately, he hasn’t quite been able to clear up the problem. To explain a bit, I had a benign cyst removed. It was blocking a salivary duct (ie, where saliva is let out into your mouth, particularly when you’re eating) so it had to come out. After it he took it out, things actually felt way better — for about 36 hours. I had the surgery done on a Monday afternoon and when I woke up on Wednesday, it was absolutely killing me when I tried to eat. Normally I would consider this to be standard considering I had an open wound in my mouth along with some stitches but… it hadn’t really hurt much the day before. After a few days of some really bad pain whenever I tried to eat/chew/swallow/etc, he eventually pulled out a stone (like a kidney stone but in the salivary duct) this past Tuesday. Yesterday it felt a lot better and the swelling went way down. But, today, it has kind of regressed and gotten a bit worse again — although not nearly as bad as it was over the weekend. I had xrays done and they don’t show another stone so right now his plan is for me to finish my course of antibiotics (started on Monday) and see how it feels in a few days. I’m still skeptical that there isn’t something else in there blocking the duct but I obviously have to defer to the doctor for the time being. We’ll see how it feels.

In another event in my recent medical woes, I had a pretty minor break on my left ring finger a few weeks back from a flag football game. Nothing too bad but it definitely hurt pretty bad for a week or two. It’s actually starting to feel better now and I’m starting to use it again (although no football yet). So I went to this new gym which just opened up a few days ago and got in a relatively short workout last night. It’s amazing how fast cardio goes. My cardio last night wasn’t even close to what it was even two weeks ago. I’m sure it will return quickly but I was struggling to even do two moderately fast miles on the treadmill. Before the finger & mouth problems when I was working out 4-5x/week, I was doing four miles at good speed without much trouble. I will work on it to get it back.

I also have recently been inspired to do some real strength training. I’ve lifted weights and whatnot for probably about 15 years now. I think I started when I was 12… maybe 13. So I have spent a lot of time in weight rooms but I’ve never really done “real” exercises. I have never done any serious squatting, deadlifting, power cleans, etc. I have done them on and off but never for real where I do them routinely, track progress and focus hard on form. And wow did it show. I actually did three sets of squats and three sets of deadlifts and the weights were pathetic. My legs and upper back are so sore. Granted I was really focusing on form and not on weight amount but I could barely do three sets of squats at 85 lbs. They were real squats though with a full range of motion. I can’t believe how sore my hamstrings are. I expect to make a bunch of gains pretty quickly as I improve my form and gain core strength to be able to stabilize the weight on my shoulders through the full range of motion. Then, of course, I will plateau and make more normal gains over the course of time. I’m hoping to be able to do 3 sets of 5 reps of body weight squats by the WSOP. Hopefully that’s a reasonable goal. I am not going to rush it if I don’t think I’m going to make it but it is the goal that I have in mind.

As opposed to the exercises I just rattled off, the one respected power lifting exercise that I have done before is bench pressing. I haven’t done it with a free bar in years because it is kind of scary to push yourself when you don’t have a spotter and there’s no safety bar to stop the weight. I am a big proponent of occasional sets where you go until “failure” in order to get stronger. And that isn’t possible with a bench, a bar and no spotter. However, when I was in college and I lifted with my friends, I would actually push myself pretty hard on benching when I had some help if I was about to drop the bar on my chest. Sometime during my sophomore year I weighed around 220 lbs and I was benching 275 one rep. I could bang out 6 reps at 225 without a problem and I am pretty sure I remember doing at least a few sets of 10 reps at 225.

So, as far as bench press goes, I actually have a decent background in it. And it’s part of my new strength routine so I started it out a bit higher than most beginners would do. I currently weigh 175 and I put it at 135. For most people of my weight, they need to train to get to this weight. When I was benching regularly, I could do 135 probably 20 times before I even felt anything. So I didn’t expect much of a challenge. I was wrong, it was actually kind of hard. Much harder than I remember it being. I guess, until I did that exercise last night, I didn’t realize how much stronger I was when I was 20 as opposed to now. Obviously it has a lot to do with training and weight but it was amazing how different 135 felt compared to six/seven years ago. I was able to do three sets of 8 reps without much of a problem but the bar felt heavy and I don’t think I could have done, say, sets of 12.

So, long story short, I am going to focus on squatting, deadlifting and bench pressing a lot. As well as some other of the big power lifts. I really want to build up real strength and, more specifically, core strength. I want to be able to do a full pistol (can’t come all that close right now) with either leg and there’s really nothing else like these exercises to build up that sort of strength. Things like yoga are great and all but I just don’t think they do it with the same level of efficiency and speed. I will update this over time with progress updates (or lack thereof)!

A few days ago there was an earthquake here in Cayman. No real damage to speak of. I didn’t even hear about anyone getting injured let alone dying. But it was a 5.8 and it was definitely enough to wake me up. A lot of people were understandably freaked out given what had just happened in Haiti. I went outside on my porch to a lot of screaming and yelling. Thankfully though, nothing really happened after that.

I’ve been dealing with this stupid dental surgery all week. I had a relatively minor procedure done on Monday but I have some stitches in my mouth and it’s causing a bunch of swelling. One side of my face looks a bit messed up but it’s been improving slightly today. It has caused a bunch of problems with stuff like eating because, pretty much, the whole inside of my mouth hurts. A lot of it is referred pain from the area with stitches but it’s definitely very unpleasant to eat right now. But, according to the guy did the surgery, this is totally normal and usually mouth surgery tends to heal very quickly. I guess it’s one of the good things about the human body that it makes the mouth a top priority to be healthy. He thinks I should be back to normal in a week.

In TV news, I am excited 24 is back. As usual, I was pretty bored with it for like the first hour or two. I was actually questioning whether I even wanted to watch it this season. But it has managed to suck me back in after four hours so I am definitely excited to see the rest of the season. I am also ridiculously excited for the last season of Lost so I am counting down the days until that starts back up. I also just finished rewatching every Curb Your Enthusiam. What a terrific show. It took me a few months to get through the whole series but I enjoyed every minute of it.

Does anyone know anyone who is a PHP/MySQL expert with experience working with vBulletin? I am not looking for someone who simply knows PHP/MySQL on a basic or even intermediate level. There are tons of those people out there. The person or group that I’m looking for is harder to find. I am looking for someone who knows hardcore MySQL optimization, how to integrate fast full-text search options into vBulletin (such as Sphinx, dtsearch, Lucene) and other more advanced procedures. Ideally, the person would also be an expert at finding slow queries in MySQL, knowing how to fix them (ie, which indices to add, how to change the query, etc), how to change server configurations to optimize performance, etc. Lastly, being a vBulletin expert would be a huge plus. And just having installed vBulletin doesn’t count. I am talking about having a detailed understand of the hooks in vBulletin and how to make serious core-level changes to the code. This is a potentially lucrative opportunity for the right person so please pass along my email (natarem@gmail.com) to anywho who might be interested. And, if you couldn’t tell, this is someone we could use to get the new PocketFives done faster.

I don’t know which thing to lead off with. Given the size and devastation of the earthquake in Haiti I should probably start with that. What a bad spot to have such a violent and powerful quake. Basically the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and right by the most populated area. I’ve read some stuff like “well that’s what happens when you build really shitty houses” and, to a certain extent, that’s true. I’d like to see some criminal prosecution of those in charge of building codes (if they were not up to standards), contractors in Haiti who built houses with things like diluted concrete and engineers who didn’t follow code when designing buildings. I know the country was too poor to be able to afford things but that doesn’t mean they need shitty multi-story buildings in an area that is prone to earthquakes. The simple answer is to build them right or just not build them. Humans have gone millions of years without multi-story buildings… there’s no reason that we need them. Sadly, though, I’m pretty sure no one is going to pay the price for being pretty much directly responsible for the death of maybe over 100,000 people.

I want to make one thing clear: I am not broadly blaming the people of Haiti for this. I am blaming the Haitians and foreigners who knew better, had control over these things and made very very bad decisions. I don’t think the death penalty is out of line for the few people who were the most responsible for Haitian building codes and implementation. That may seem harsh but given the human toll and suffering they’re significantly responsible for, I don’t think it is. Hopefully that would force people in power around the world to wake up and realize what can happen when they disobey common sense and neglect their duty in such a blatant manner.

Obviously the focus for now is to get help to Haiti and hopefully rescue people who are still alive. People in Cayman are sending a container of goods this weekend and, luckily enough, I have a ton of clothes from losing weight over the last year. I am giving away all of my big clothes because I don’t anticipate needing them for awhile and someone in Haiti can probably use them. Although I don’t think many people in Haiti wear XXL I’m sure they don’t care about size. Here’s a picture of some of the stuff I’m giving away:

I’m also going to try to find a good charity online to give money to. I guess the default is the Red Cross but I want to do a little research before I commit. I’m wary of large organizations because I feel like a lot of them waste a lot of money on bureaucracy (see Parkinson’s Law) and don’t get a high enough % of my money to the people who need it. Anyone know of a good resource to tell me what % of money makes it to the intended recipients?

Anyway, for the less important news, I have a broken left ring finger. I hurt it playing football on Tuesday night. The doctor says I should feel better in a few weeks and I should have a perfectly good finger when it’s done healing. That’s a relief because I’m a lefty and I would prefer to have a healthy left hand down the line. Here is a pic of my ring fingers side-by-side. I couldn’t get the scale down perfectly but you can use the nail to figure out which one is zoomed in more — obviously there’s a lot of swelling on the left finger though. I’m not embedding it so anyone who clicks on it is basically saying they want to see a close-up picture of my two ring fingers side-by-side. You’ve been warned. I broke the bone near the nail where you can see the bruising. Annoying but I’m dealing with it. Already typing pretty well without it.

I am wrapping up my trip to Miami. It has been ridiculously cold here for this time of year. It’s been going down to like 30 degrees at night which is obviously not as cold as the northeast (where I’m from) but is still really cold for Florida. I guess it’s part of the high pressure system over the northern part of North America which is making so much news lately. I feel pretty bad for all of the farmers who are currently getting their crops destroyed but I guess shit happens. Hopefully they have insurance for stuff like this.

Unfortunately for a lot of people in south Florida, they don’t have heat. My grandmother claims she hasn’t used her heat since she moved into her current condo (something like 20 years ago) and when we tried to turn it on it didn’t work. Also, when we went out to a Japanese restaurant they sat us near the Hibachi grills away from the door because they didn’t have any heat. I guess this all just goes to show how unusual this cold front is in south Florida.

So last night I went to go see “Up In The Air” with my brother. It’s a movie with George Clooney where he stars as a frequent business traveler who goes all over the country firing people at various downsizing companies. In the movie he says he’s on the road for like 280 days per year or something ridiculous like that. He’s “elite” status at a bunch of different places like American Airlines, Hilton, Hertz and others. I won’t give away the point of the movie but I found a few things about it really funny and familiar. For one, I am a Platinum Elite in the American AAdvantage frequent flier program. It gets me upgrades to first class and a number of other things. I also sympathized with him on a number of levels. Things like his thought process for how to choose a line at airport security really resonated with me. Overall I definitely enjoyed the movie although I don’t know if I would bother to see it again.

The other funny thing about seeing the movie was listening to all of the old people in the theater saying “what did he say??” over and over. I am not making fun of old people for poor hearing as it happens to everyone but it was kind of entertaining to hear the whispering all over the place. Although, to call it whispering was pretty generous. I think the elderly stop whispering at some point because they know their spouse can’t hear it so they just say everything outloud even in movie theaters. It definitely would have pissed off the people in stevesbets’ movie theater if they’d been at this showing up Up In The Air.

Today I went with my brother to Sawgrass Mills which is a huge outlet mall like 30 minutes north of where my grandmother lives. It was a total madhouse. As with most outlet malls, there’s a reason why the merchandise is at an outlet mall. It generally sucks. I saw a lot of random stuff like neon green polo shirts and the like. Also, the Oakley store pretty much only had XXL tshirts. Lots of other stores had similar ridiculous selection. Nonetheless, my brother managed to find things at a number of stores and a I found a few good items as well. If you went to the right stores, there were definitely some great deals.

Anyway, that pretty much sums up the weekend. This hotel has horrible internet (even worse than the internet at the UB Aruba tournament — and that is saying something) so I am probably even more excited about getting home to good internet than I am about escaping this weather.

I mean, seriously. I get so sick of marching bands by the end of the bowl season. It seems like almost every halftime show is just marching bands. I don’t intend to be mean but they’re really barking up the wrong tree. Football fans and marching band fans don’t cross over that well. Maybe the parents and the relatives of the band members care. Maybe like a few fans of that specific school. But like… it’s really a dumb tradition to have them performing at halftime unless we’re just trying to make them feel good. Just my opinion.

So tomorrow I’m going up to Miami for the weekend to visit with family. This is going to be my first flight under the new rules so I’m kind of curious to see what will be enforced and what won’t. I know that they’ve loosened some of the requirements but it will be interesting to see how screening is different and what, if anything, is different on the plane.

As I’ve said recently, I am working on P5s a lot lately. We’ve got some decent designs done, we’ve done a lot of the forum migration stuff and we’re about to start on a lot of the custom features. I’m really excited about some of the stuff we’re doing but the launch is kind of far away so it’s also a little frustrating in a way. It’s just so far off (months) that it’s hard to see the finish line and get excited about taking the site to the next level.

Well, anyway, now that Bama just won (which won me a bet against sub — who I have been absolutely destroying lately) it’s time for me to pack up and head to sleep for this early flight.

I have tried to submit things to failblog.org multiple times without success. I’m just going to post them on my own blog from this point forward. I am watching the Mich St-Texas Tech game on ESPN right now. Pretty boring game because I don’t care about either team but it’s the best game on right now and both teams are lighting it up so it’s worthwhile. Anyway, I saw this scroll the across the screen and my first thought, obviously, was “FAIL”:

Poor girls…