Best Rap Song Ever

i said a hip hop the hippie the hippie to the hip hip hop,
a you dont stop the rock it to the bang bang boogie, say up jumped the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat

now what you hear is not a test--i'm rappin to the beat and me, the groove, and my friends are gonna try to move your feet

see i am wonder mike and i like to say hello to the black, to the white, the red, and the brown, the purple and yellow

but first i gotta bang bang the boogie to the boogie say up jump the boogie to the bang bang boogie

let's rock, you dont stoprock the riddle that will make your body rock

well so far you've heard my voice but i brought two friends along and next on the mike is my man hank come on, hank, sing that song....

Just say No to back fat

Getting Skinny

165.0 - 5.6% body fat. I need to try much harder if I'm gonna get to 160 by the end of the month.

No Job

Didn't work out as I expected. Not really what I wanted to do. Oh well, time to start looking again.

Prep

So, how do you prep for an interview with a company that has NO public information? Uh you don't, really. That's OK. My answers are the same as they always are.

Blah Blah Blah.....

I get my references updated. Print a couple extra copies of that and my resume.

My buddy Matt says, "there is a game @ Safeco today, which means NO parking." Ouch, I better go early.

The offfice is in pioneer square, so I head out super early to scope it out and make sure I know where I'm going and where I can park.

OK that was much easier than I thought it was gonna be. I now have 1.5 hours to kill. Hmmm. How about the world famous Elliot Bay Books? What are all these people doing in pioneer square? I guess this is the place you hang out if you don't have a job. Oh well....Off to EB books!!

I find an interesting book. I look through it. It makes me laugh. I buy it.

OK it's interview time.

I walk through the door. 10 or so people all sitting @ desks.....somebody in the back behind a desk gets up.

I am assuming you're Alan?
I am.
Hi Alan, I'm _______. Let's see if we can find a place to chat.

We head to the snack room.

He asks me some questions. Since they do lots of work for MSFT he likes that I have some experience there.

I ask some questions about the company, the direction, the niche.

We finish in 45 minutes. Clearly this was not a MSFT drill. God that gets really really old. He says HR person will be back.

She comes back. Asks how the interview went. I tell her well and I like what they are doing. I ask her what she thinks of how it went. She says. I think it went really well. We chat about some details and then she leaves to go get someone else that I should meet.

She and guy #2 sit down and we chat informally. He says he just wanted to come in say Hi and meet me. He leaves.

Somewhere along the line, she says, we'll provide you with a laptop and if you want to use your cell phone, we'll take care of that too.

I ask if I'll be joining them, and she smiles and says, Yea, I think so.

We talked about salary and vacation time and etc. Seems OK to me.

So, for the record, I found a job making pretty good money, doing development project work, in less than 72 hours. Not bad.

Later talking to my buddy Jim who works for Ebay.

Dude, you already took the job?
Yep
They hired you on the spot?
Yep, pretty much. They might check my references, but I think it's a done deal.
Awesome.

Yea, I say it's pretty awesome.

Interview Confirmed

I get an email mid day.

"Hi Alan, you're confirmed with your interview with _____ at 2pm, tomorrow August 6th. Here are directions to our office."

Cool.

Later in the day, I go for a late afternoon ride with my friend Roger. It ain't so cool. In fact it's fucking hot. Real hot. I hope we don't ride too hard. Roger's done STP in one day, and RAMROD this year. I've done NOTHING.

He takes me on a tour of the Kenmore/Lake Forest Park area. We ride lots of hills. Good thing I had the 34 on front. Damn. 2 hours later I get home and I'm pretty blasted. Not from the ride but really the heat. Remember hotter than 80 is REALLY hot here.

A stab in the dark?

I decide I need to start looking for a job.

http://www.dice.com/ - Not bad but mostly contract positions. Contract jobs aren't all that bad, but when you know the contract company is billing you at twice what they are PAYING you, ya gotta wonder......

MS.com - Too much crap. Do I really want to work @ MS again? Maybe I should consider somewhere new?

Hmmm....I'm a pretty huge fan of ol craigslist. I've sold good shit, I've bought good shit. My friend Brian says all the hip kids are using craigslist.

So I do some searching. I see a listing. Description looks interesting. Kinda vague, not much detail. No doubt I can do it. I'll send of an email off Monday AM and see what happens. It's a legit company (or at least they have a website) so....

Monday. Send off the email. Say I'm interested in the job. Attach my resume. Expectations. NONE.

Weather looks really nice today. I think I'll go for a longish bike ride......

Damn, I forgot my phone.....No biggie....I'll be home in a couple of hours.

Huh, somebody called and left VM.

"Hi Alan, My name is ______ and I would like to talk to you about what kind of role you're looking for, blah blah blah. Please call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx."

Holy Shit. Did I even expect a response? No.

I collect some notes and prepare to call her back. We chat and long story short, she wants to know if I would like to come in. Of course I would. She'll send me interview details tomorrow (Tuesday)

Squamish

GO GO GO

Sweeeet

Italy Pics To Come

TBD

Goodbye MS

My contract ended yesterday. I am officially unemployed again. That's good since I plan on taking the entire month of July off. We leave in 2 hours. Excellent!

I busted my back

Long story short, on Saturday I fell while climbing. Brian carried me out. Compound fracture of the L2 vertebrea. Totally my fault and I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing.

Since I walked up to the emergency room, I guess I wasn't an emergency, therefore I got to wait 3+ hours before I saw a doctor. Better yet, we were there a total of 8.5 hours. I can't wait to see what the bill is.

For the first couple of days, I've been in some pretty good pain. How to you spell relief? P-E-R-C-O-C-E-T!!

It's healing fine, thank you.

Boxes

Boxes full of wonderful goodies have begun arriving @ my door step.

JUICY!!!

8,420

In 2008 Melanoma will be diagnosed in 62,480 Americans and will kill 8,420, according to the American Cancer Society.

6/10/2004 = 4 Years Ago.

SKINNY!

So, before I started actually tracking my weight via a spreadsheet, I blogged that I was @ 182. Today, I'm @ 165. 17 lbs..... http://midlife-dirtbagging.blogspot.com/2008/04/im-fat-for-me.html

So on Sunday I decide to go for a ride. As I take off up Market street, I cannot believe the difference in how much lighter I feel. I don't feel super strong, but I certainly do notice the difference in weight. In just over 7 weeks, I've lost 17 lbs and now am at 8.5% body fat in the morning (worst time to measure) and about 6.5% in the evening. Crazy.

For comparison....

• When racing cross, that was 5 years ago, I weighed about 168.
• When I started working a year ago, I was @ 170 ish.
• In college I weighed 160.
• When I finished chemo, in October of 2004, I was @ 159.

I read this recently and was completely blown away.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24670307/

Roughly 15 percent to 19 percent were eating at least five servings of fruit and vegetables daily, the researchers found, while 30 percent to 47 percent were getting the recommended amount of exercise. From 83 percent to 92 percent had quit smoking.

Overall, 5 percent were meeting all three requirements, while 12.5 percent were meeting none. Fewer than 10 percent of survivors of any of the six cancer types were meeting two or more recommendations.

Among breast, prostate, colorectal, bladder, uterine and melanoma survivors — all of the cancer types the researchers looked at — health-related quality of life rose steadily with the number of lifestyle recommendations met.

I need to do the best job I can to take care of myself. Shouldn't you?

Mercury is no longer in retrograde, I think.

6/7 - Stereo guy came and worked on my truck. Fixed.
6/6 - Get invited for a informal interview. Good.
6/5 - Swap road Dura Ace cranks and put in a 118 BB. Solid.
6/1 - Geek Dudes replace hard drive and get Vista Ultimate installed. OK.

I lost my weight tracking spreasheet on my failed laptop hard drive. So I took a two day break and started again.

6 weeks later

Wow.

I'm 13 lbs lighter....Body fat @ 9.5% in the morning, 6.6% in the evening.

Reservations are Made

Climbing @ the end of the summer in July!!

• http://www.squamishrockguides.com/
• I sent an email and got a response from Marc, the owner.
• We talked for a while and then I made the reservations.
• Colin Moorhead is gonna be our guide.
• I can barely wait...2+ weeks in Italy.
• Then a little break, then 4 days on the rock with a professional instructor!

Amazing Man....Amazing

WikiLeaks

The Wikimedia Foundation has received a copyright infringement claim from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon Church or LDS Church. The infringement claim is in reference to a URL used as a source in a Wikinews article about Mormon Church documents leaked to the website Wikileaks, titled "Copy of handbook for leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints obtained by Wikinews". The URL was originally cited as a link in the sources subsection of the article. The Wikimedia Foundation is a donor-supported non-profit organization which runs Wikipedia and Wikinews. This is the first time that the Wikimedia Foundation has received a copyright infringement claim regarding an article published by Wikinews.

The Mo's bring the heat.

How much?

So on 4/26, I started tracking everything I ate, with the goal of losing 10 lbs by the end of the month. For example an egg is 74 calories. A large avacado, 300, a tablespoon of my favorite salsa, 20. Non fat milk, 110, a cup of museli, 440.

Here is what I learned:

1. If you track everything you eat, and write it down each and every day, you really begin to pay attention to each and every thing you put in your nasty little mouth.

2. Calculation your basal rate is kinda hard because it's how much it takes you to be alive, plus some extra wild ass guessing factor. I originally estimated I burned 2250 calories a day. Three weeks in, my weight loss was much more than my calorie loss, so somewhere my calc was screwed up. So, I now think my basal rate is more like 2500 a day.

3. If I ate well (no ice cream or cookies or stuff like that) I was pretty easy to stay below 2500. I averaged a net 900 calorie difference.

4. On big exercize days, I allowed myself another 300-500 calories. Big days were in excess of 2500 calorie burn days.

5. I averaged 400 calories @ each meal and another 400 calories in snacks.

When I started working again a year ago, I was 172 ish. A month ago, I was more than 180. Today, I weighed 167.7, with less than 10% body fat.

In another month I plan on being below 160.

Italy - 1 Month

Day 1 Rome
Days 2-3 Florence
Days 4-6 Lucca and Pisa
Days 7-8 Cinque Terre
Days 9-10 Piedmont
Days 11-12 Milan and Italian Lakes
Days 13-15 Venice