I had a Myspace profile for a couple years before I deleted it about a month or so ago. It just got too annoying with all the stupid bulletins, spammers and my own personal drama, which I don’t need to go into. So I had heard about Facebook and read that it was supposed to be the “smart persons” Myspace. So I created a profile there. But for me it seems to be too hard to find friends on there. I never graduated from a college, I don’t really have much of a social life within my network (Des Moines, IA). I tried adding some people from my gmail address book, which found a few people I knew, I even tried adding some people from work. I think I’m up to 13 friends? Most everyone I know is only on Myspace, sure Facebook has lots of third party add-ons that you can add to your page to interact with your Facebook friends, but if you don’t have many friends what good are they? I don’t want to just go around adding random people, that seems rather stalker-ish to me. I’ve always been in to music, movies and in the past few years MMA, and all that stuff and more is on Myspace.

Maybe I’m just not one of the “smart persons” that Facebook is made for.

On my 25min drive to work this morning on the heavily traveled I-80, I saw at least 10 deer in the fields. It’s not uncommon to see deer, I’ve on occasion seen so many deer gathered in fields along I-80 that it almost look like cattle. Iowa has a big problem with deer overpopulation. I’m certain that over the next few months I’ll see many deer that have been hit by cars or trucks. Which is sad both for the deer and the danger for the people driving. Iowans cannot hunt deer with high power rifles, only bow, shotgun, or black powder. There are lots of so called animal rights activists that cry over deer hunting, but I wonder how many of them have seen the death and damage caused by a vehicle hitting a deer? If they want to take all the deer and keep them in their backyard go ahead.

On a completely different topic, at work we have been looking at some P2P caching server stuff that looks pretty cool. Especially with online broadcasting getting bigger and bigger. I use Joost sometimes and it doesn’t do to bad. There is a 24 hour MMA channel which is pretty cool.

Anyway, I keep telling myself I want to learn to write better, and cook better. To do that I just need to do both more.

“An American businessman was standing at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish.

“How long it took you to catch them?” The American asked.

“Only a little while.” The Mexican replied.

“Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” The American then asked.

“I have enough to support my family’s immediate needs.” The Mexican said.

“But,” The American then asked, “What do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life, senor.”

The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds you buy a bigger boat, and with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats.”

“Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own can factory. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But senor, how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”

“But what then, senor?”

The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO (Initial Public Offering) and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”

“Millions, senor? Then what?”

The American said slowly, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos…” Heinrich Böll

I forgot to post about the cookies I made the other day. Well, they were edible… my dumb ass forgot to add in the whole wheat flour. But they weren’t as bad as the first ones I tried to make. I’m going to get some more ingredients and try again.

I also want to mention that I am back to a regular workout schedule and am going to be tracking my workouts and keeping a daily food log. In the mornings I have been doing 15 min on the elliptical, 50 push-ups and 100 rotating bicycles. In the evenings I have been mixing in some heavy bag work with some strength training. Either Randy Couture’s barbell circuit or several variations of dumbbell snatches, cleans or presses.

Ok, so those other ones were pretty gross. I thought it was something I did wrong but my wife thinks there was something wrong with the recipe. She says there was no “thickening” ingredient. But I do have a couple more I am going to try. I’ve tried the Peanut Butter balls before and they were pretty easy and tasty. (giggity)

Protein Peanut Butter Balls:

• 3/4 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 scoop chocolate or vanilla protein powder
• 1/2 cup raw oats

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl and form into small 1″ balls. Place in the fridge for a few hours and then enjoy.

These ones look really good.

Energy Bar Cookies

• 3/4 cup natural peanut butter
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups fruit and grain museli
• 1/2 cup chopped dried apricots
• 1/2 cup chopped dried prunes
• 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
• 1/4 cup sesame seeds
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp ginger

Mix wet ingredients together. Add the rest of the dry ingredients and stir until combined. Drop by the spoonful or shape into patties on a greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes.

I really like Clif Bars and Odwalla Bars. But I don’t really like spending $1.50 - 2.00 per bar.

Found this recipe online:

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showpost.php?p=4036793&postcount=2

INGREDIENTS

10 tbsp. natural peanut butter
5 egg whites
5 scoops whey protein (I find that chocolate mint tastes the best in this recipe, however chocolate tastes good as well)
2 cups oats (OPTIONAL: For flavor, I dry cook these on a frying pan until they are toasted)
1/2 cup soy milk

DIRECTIONS

Mix the peanut butter and egg whites in a bowl. Microwave on high for 30 seconds, and mix well (so that the mixture appears smooth). Repeat 4-5 times until all traces of egg whites have dissolved into the peanut butter, and your mixture is a smooth consistent one.

Gradually add the protein (one scoop at a time) and stir into the mixture. Next, add the soy milk and follow with the oats. Continue mixing until a thick ’sticky’ mixture is present.

Smooth the thick mixture into a 13×9 tray and leave for 20-30 minutes. Cut into 10 equal size bars. Individually wrap each bar (I use aluminum foil) and store in the fridge.

Nutrition Facts

Serving Size: 1 Bar

Calories: 220
Protein: 20.1g
Fat: 10.1g
Carbohydrates: 15.1g

I found several others but I’m going to try this first. I’ll add some more and also post how these turn out. I’ve also tried the ones that Alton Brown made on one of the episodes of Good Eats. They were ok, but were too sticky for me.

I’ve been watching this season of The Ultimate Fighter, just like I’ve watched all the others before. But I’m not near as excited to watch like I was. I don’t now why really. Could I be getting burnt out on the whole UFC thing. I mean it used to be that it was only a couple times a year the we could watch the UFC, sure we had King Of The Cage and PrideFC, my personal favorite, but they were few and far between too. It was also hard to find them on PPV, not every cable provider had them. So you had to rely on buddies with video tapes or real slow internet downloads of highlights. This was back before torrents and high speed internet became so common. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that MMA is taking off and I’m glad to see fighters getting paid. Maybe it’s because I am also doing more with the local fight scene here in Des Moines and I get to be a cage-side judge for Midwest Cage Championships. Maybe it’s because season 5 is a bunch of little youngsters with crooked hats. I do like a couple of the fighters though, which have also been the ones that made it to the next round of fights. I’ll write more about later. Right now I need to help with the database upgrade on the work servers.

I have been working on a Greasemonkey script for The Ultimate Fighter Forum. This Tuf No Sig User Script. I started out trying to write a script that would remove all the stupid signatures people have on there. I ended up changing the colors and adding some graphics for a couple element backgrounds. If the site’s code was written better and had proper markup it would be a heck of a lot easier to fix with Greasemonkey. I’ll keep working on it.

1. Get Firefox
2. Get Greasemonkey
3. Install the TUF Forum Theme

I’m not completely happy with the theme yet. I’ll keep working on it and try to get the sigs hidden, and maybe pretty up the theme some more.

Here’s a screen shot:

I have got to get organized. All around organized, projects, work, financial, etc. I just can’t seem to figure out where to begin. I’ve tried the Getting Things Done (GTD), Time Management for Sys Admins, all the Moleskine hacks, several web based organizers, digital organizers, and paper based. Currently I am trying to just use 37 Signals’ Backpack and a standard Moleskine. I just can’t seem get in the habit or something, I’m also way too much of a procrastinator.

I’ve been on vacation all week, and I was supposed to get my smaller side projects finished so I could begin to focus on a larger one that I want to really get going. Have I finished them yet? Nope.

I’ve been wanting to blog about my trip to SXSW Interactive and talk about all the great people I met there. I’ve been wanting to blog about my simplifying my workouts down to 30 minutes. So much I am always thinking about but never getting around to doing. Oh and I also got my new black Macbook this week. It’s nice, high five!

I have some books that I am going to read. The first one is Your Money or Your Life and then I am going to dig back into Getting Things Done. I hoping and going to try and stick with something. We’ll see.

… really get back into this whole blogging thing. I’ve always got something to say, just ask my wife, or my kids, or the people I work with, or the people I met at SXSW, anyway. It’s just I’m not very good at writing or some other excuse I suppose. I want to talk about my time at SXSW, my projects I’m working on, my workouts, my trials in productivity and GTD, etc. I dunno, well this is a start I guess. I’ll try and come back later and organize my thoughts better.