VexVox

One day after I checked my Hotmail account, MSN prominently featured a story about retirement planning, complete with a calculator. In the past, I would participate in retirement plans at almost every job I worked. (Waterloo was the exception because I needed every single penny of that paycheck.) But I treated it like some abstract concept. Besides, these kinds of plans are pitched in ways that say, "Just put money in, and let it work for you. Don't think about it."

When I was just starting out, I did exactly that. I didn't think about it at all. The usual routine is to increase your contributions as your finances get stable. Being laid off, then underemployed and now underpaid isn't exactly stable. The cost of living has increased, and my average salary hasn't. So I'm stuck with making the paltry contribution I have been since, well, forever.

Now that I'm within sight distance of 40, it's dawning on me that I just might be screwed, not just with retirement but on the whole. I used to be incredibly vigilant with my finances, but when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, there was no point. Why be vigilant with something that's not there?

I've spent the last few years waiting for things to get better, and now that I'm entering my second economic downturn as an independent adult, I kind of realize they never really did. I'm breaking even. That's fine, I guess, but I'm tired of it.

So I spent this past weekend getting caught up with the numbers in Quicken. I had to reconstruct my retirement data because I had been haphazard with updating it. At one point, Quicken told me my retirement portfolio was worth only $750. After reconstruction, the number multiplied manyfold. But the retirement calculators all still say I'm screwed if I don't pick up the pace.

I have a credit union account in Hawai`i that's supposed to serve as a rainy day fund. It looks like it's raining now. So I'm going to move a chunk of it to my local banks in Austin. I've been stashing away about $175 per month, hoping to save up for something nice for myself like a trip or a new printer. I'm going to bring that back down to $100 per month because gas prices are pretty much forcing my hand.

I thought about cutting expenses, but I don't have much of an extravagant lifestyle. I could cut back on shopping for CDs, but I think the awful release schedule by the labels should take care of that for me. Actually, I ought to go back to cooking for myself, since my grocery bills skyrocketed when I started depending on Central Market's Chef Corner for sustanence. I won't because the only things I can cook involve lots of frying. That, and I want to see if The Abs Diet really works.

To address the credit card debt, I've moved revolving charges — TiVo and eMusic — to my debit card, and I removed the credit card from almost all online shopping sites. If I want to pay for something, I'll need the cash on hand to get it. I'll keep it on record for my domain registrar and for travel web sites. I have no idea whether I need to fly back to Honolulu at a moment's notice. I stopped short of cutting up the card. Rather, I took it out of my wallet, so I wouldn't be tempted to use it.

It's a good thing I'm a recluse. Staying in on weekends is no problem for me, and these leaner times certainly won't curtail what I don't already do. Besides, I have a lot to work with Eponymous 4 to get finished.

Raises are supposed to happen next month, but I'm not holding my breath. I actually got a raise out-of-cycle as part of a promotion, but with economy in such bad shape, I'm betting I'm sitting this cycle out till next October.

I want to think as pessimistically as possible so if something good does happen, it'll be surprising.

I've been seriously relaxing my weight loss regimen in the last month because I've done a lot of good work in a year, and I deserve a bit of break. So I've been keeping my panic perspective in check about the obvious plateau I've now reached. I haven't been able to budge past 168 pounds for a number of weeks now, and while it wouldn't be a bad idea to shed another 13 or so pounds, I think losing 47 since last year is a remarkable achievement.

But I know what's happening: my body has adjusted to change in diet and to the increase in activity. It's figured out how I'm expending my energy, and it's calibrated not to lose any more than it's already lost.

Unfortunately, my personality loves structure. I like going into the workout room of my apartment complex — it's too small to deserve the name "gym" — and knowing I'll do three reps of 10 on Machine X, three reps of 10 on Machine Y, 20 minutes of cardio on the treadmill, etc. So too does my body, and the only way to get it to work is to change the structure. And no, I'm not that big of a fan of change.

I've run across mention of The Abs Diet on Ask Metafilter, and I figured it might help me to shed off the love handles that I've had since, well, forever. I read a bit about the premise, and I found it somewhat encouraging. So I dropped cash on the book itself.

I finished it this weekend, and boy, did I have to steel myself from all the self-help hot air. The author, David Zinczenko, is editor-in-chief of Men's Health magazine, which should put him in a position to know his material. And he does. It does not, however, put him in the position of being a good writer. Yes, he can string together a coherent sentence, and yes, his words have a definitive a voice. A needlessly smarmy, conceited voice. The kind of voice that had me saying, "Shut the fuck up, you goddamn frat." I guess motivational books need a certain writing style to convince

people to get up and do something, but Zinczenko can come across as a

total asshole tool.

Actual mention of the diet itself doesn't start till page 93, which means you essentially get 92 pages of introduction. Yes, 92 pages of "The Abs Diet will do this" and "The Abs Diet will do that" with no mention of what The Abs Diet really involves till 3/4 of the way through the book. Yeah, it wouldn't be much of a book if it cut to the chase — it would end up being a 20-page pamphlet, actually — but holy fuck do you have to get through lots of bad jokes and stupid pop culture references which already makes the book sound terribly dated.

Like there's still comedy gold waiting to be mined from Janet Jackson's Superbowl half-time show.

Those 92 pages aren't without their merit, however. Zinczenko puts out a lot of common sense to debunk the low-carb craze, and he explains quite plainly the difference between good fats and cholesterol from bad fats and cholesterol. I found that information engaging, despite Zinczenko's best efforts to sound conversational.

I admit, I'm the kind of person who wants points to be made with minimal fuss. Be creative, yes, but don't overstate your argument. Perhaps books of this ilk aren't designed for readers such as myself, because it was quite an effort to find the information amid all the rah-rah.

The funny thing is, I was already doing The Abs Diet without knowing I was doing The Abs Diet.

For the past year, I've been using The Hacker's Diet, which is less a diet and more a methodology of measurement. The Hacker's Diet tells you nothing about how to eat and how to exercise. In fact, its only advice is to eat less, exercise more, which is what doctors and health professionals pretty much say all the time. Instead, The Hacker's Diet encourages people not to pin everything on the number you read on the scale. It doesn't measure everything, but regular (i.e. daily) measurements can indicate overall trends. In short, The Hacker's Diet cuts through the signal to noise ratio of what the scale shows you.

So I consulted my doctor, and she gave me certain bits of advice that pretty much confirmed what I already heard — you can still eat what you want, just in smaller portions. And make sure calories from fat don't exceed 30 percent of total calories. A cookie once in a while won't hurt, but a cookie every day won't help.

My eating and exercise habits changed gradually over the past year, and back in June, I found myself eating vegetables, meat and rice in reasonable portions. By the time I read The Abs Diet, I found myself saying, "Yeah, I already do that. And I already do that …"

I'm probably going to add a few more foods to my menu, and I'll probably go back to eating snacks between meals as I did at the start of the exercise regimen. Back then, I needed to because I was unaccustomed to eating smaller portions. Then it stopped being an issue because the meals themselves were enough to keep me full from one to the next.

And since the gym equipment in my apartment complex has been broken for the past month and a half, I've invested in some dumbbells. I need to shake things up with the workout routine, and doing them in my apartment rather than relying on the gym should be a drastic enough change.

It'll be a few weeks — six, according to the book — before I notice a change, so I'll let you know if anything happens. At that time, we'll see how much of a ringing endorsement I can give the book. But my immediate reaction to The Abs Diet? Good info, but the writing is crap.

I've been working with MIDI since 1990. I learned the very basics of multi-track recording from owning a four-track cassette recorder in the early '90s. And since 2005, I've been exploring the world of digital audio workstations and software synthesizers.

In the last three years, my mind would make a connection between how something is done in a studio and how I do it at home.

I wondered why my recordings never had the same volume as a professional recording. That's when I learned about compressors and limiters.

When I started recording vocals, I ran into trouble with clipping. That's when I learned that those same compressors and limiters can be applied on a single track, as well as an entire mix. So I had to buy a hardware compressor and figure out where to plug my auxiliary send and return.

I wondered why my vocals never really "sat" in the mix with the rest of the instruments. That's when I learned equalization allows instruments to reside in "frequency zones" — guitars don't have much business in the bass frequencies, and a bass doesn't have much business in the middle frequencies, although some high end frequencies are helpful.

I thought the problem with my vocals — aside from the fact I can't sing — was the fact my microphone is pretty cheap. I considered augmenting the mic with something a bit pricier, in the $300 range thereabouts. Instead, I invested in a plug-in designed to process vocals for $60. The plug-in applied EQ, compression, de-essing, and gate in one fell swoop, letting my vocals sit in an equalized mix much better.

So I spent two weeks re-recording tracks so I could apply the proper equalization to parts.

Part of my inability to sing is an inability to stay in tune. When I record vocals, I think I'm mostly in tune, untill I play back the recording and discover I miss notes left and right. The problem was I couldn't hear myself. I have headphones connected to one auxiliary send, a compressor to the other. The vocal channel has only one dial for auxiliary send — one side for post-fader, the other for pre-fader. The compressor was already connected to the post-fader send, and headphones were connected to the pre-fader send. I needed the compression not to hog up the auxiliary send.

I thought I needed a new mixer, one with two sends, another item in the $300-$500 range. Then I read the manual of my current mixer and discovered an insert I/O jack, into which I could plug my compressor. So instead, I bought an $8.50 send/return cord (tip-ring-sleeve jack on one end, two mono jacks on the other) and connected the compressor there, allowing me to use the auxiliary send to hear myself. Hopefully, that's enough to get my singing in line. Probably not.

Just when I think I'm getting a hang of recording in a home studio, a situation pops up that reminds me I still have a long way to go. And every new thing I learn usually means applying that knowledge to some 80 odd songs. It gets tedious.

New, unguided learning experiences may also lead to questional financial decision. Get a new microphone for $300, or get a plug-in for $60? Get a new mixer for $300 to $500, or invest in a $9 cord.

I don't look forward to the day when I get some gear that I can't use because I made the wrong assumption. I already have plenty I don't use.

I swear to deity, the following dialogue was running in my head while I was doing some menial task at work:

… I am pie eating, part number making …

… You know, when I'm not bothered to do any development, I'm pretty much just the department clerk …

… Clerk. I kind of like how the English say it. "Clark" …

… Just like that scene in Howards End …

… Tell your young clark the Porfirian will smash …

… Helen, do you hear? The Porfirian will smash! …

… What the hell does "smash" mean in that sense? …

… The Porfirian? A fine firm. Solid as houses …

… I kind of want to watch Howards End again …

… Maybe I'll throw in Maurice while I'm at it …

… I should post to Twitter saying how I can't explain why I'm in the mood to watch the Ivory Merchant E.M. Forester films …

… Actually, I'm not that much in the mood. I just had a weird train of thought …

… I'll write a blog entry about it instead …

I had my employee review today, and it was 99 percent positive. The critical 1 percent called me out for being unprepared for meetings I chair. It's a valid observation because I usually attend meetings, I don't lead them. And for good reason.

I've been management before, and I wasn't very good at it.

In the past, I let the whole notion of being in charge get to my head, and it would trip me out. In my various editorial positions back in college, I ruled with an iron fist. At my first job, I was passed over many times for positions of greater responsibility. At the time, I bristled over the fact I was denied a fatter paycheck. In retrospect, passing me over did the organization much good. I would have so totally pissed everyone off.

Part of the reason I left journalism — aside from the lousy hours and lousy pay — was the fact success was gauged vertically. If you wanted to get paper, you had to climb the ladder. That didn't appeal to me, so I decided to move laterally — by becoming a developer. The pay was better, and I didn't have to supervise anyone.

The criticism in my evaluation was offered because the commenter in question would like me to see lead more initiatives in the department. Kramer advised me to start looking into management courses during our last consultation in May (right before my trip to Hawaiʻi.) He said in about three or four years, I'll be in management.

I had to wrinkle my nose at that prediction. Thing is, Kramer also said my music would "take off" back in 2002. Five years later, I ended up recording 90 some odd demos and did a short-run pressing of a CD.

Aw, shit.

If Kramer is right, I'm not looking forward to it. Maybe I can lead, and perhaps the 10 years since working at the student newspaper may have mellowed me out. But leadership is not my default position. I can stand in front of a crowd and speak with relative ease if need be, but I don't go out and volunteer for it. That's a hallmark of the INTJ personality type — we can be called to lead if everyone else sucks at it.

I actually prefer being No. 2. Someone I knew back in high school had a clever answer whenever scholarship interviewers wanted to know what she wanted to do in the future. She said she wanted to be chief of staff at the White House. Why not president? Because the chief of staff has more power and is the closest to influence the president.

That's why I never applied to be editor-in-chief. It's how I ended up managing editor instead.

I'm a terrific leader so long as I've got someone to front for me.

If this post is any indication, today marks one year since I started my workout regimen. And it was Labor Day weekend last year when I discovered my scale had been lying to me. Thus sufficiently motivated, I vowed to get myself as close to my college weight as possible.

This morning, I weighed in at 167 pounds. A year ago, I was 215 pounds. I've shed 48 pounds in a year.

(Thank you, thank you. Hold your applause.)

According to some metrics, I still have about 13 pounds more to shed before I'm square in the middle of my suggested BMI. The fact I'm back to a reasonably healthy weight (if still a bit high) gives me a bit more room to relax. When I started, I went to the workout room — it's too small to be called a gym — every day for 40-45 minutes. Now I workout three times a week for 50 minutes. Lately, it's been 40 because one of the machines is broken.

For cardio, I used to walk on the treadmill for 30-40 minutes. Now I've thrown in a bit of running into the mix and cut back to 20 minutes. My shins and knees are still pretty novice to running, so they're not yet ready to do more than that. I'm also using the stationary bicycle once a week to preserve said shins and knees.

When I hit my first real plateau in December 2007, I started weight training. It's weird feeling some definition in my arms. And sometimes after I come out of a shower, my blurry eyesight fools me into thinking my abs are trying to exert their presence.

Perhaps the strangest result of all this work is the fact I sometimes develop a restlessness on my non-workout days, and I end up walking around the neighborhood. From December 2007 to June 2008, I had a four-day workout schedule. I've traded one of those days for those neighborhood strolls.

My diet now still mostly consists of Central Market Chef's Corner, but it revolves around turkey, salmon, chicken breast, tofu and various cooked vegetables, including spinach, broccoli and string beans. My breakfast during the weekdays is the sludge that is a SlimFast milkshake, but on the weekends, I treat myself to an Einstein Bros. bagel. I bring my lunch to work in a two-cup Pyrex bowl. My coworkers are amazed I can eat just that much.

I do have my high-calorie weeks, particularly these past two weeks. But that's part of the plan. I can't entirely lead an aescetic life.

Last week, I bought The Abs Diet, mostly out of curiosity. I've been concentrating on getting the weight down, now I want to focus on getting rid of some body fat. I thumbed through a few pages, but the motivational tone of the book really turned me off. That's what appeals to me about The Hacker's Diet — it's all observation and science. I'll get back to The Abs Diet eventually, but for now, I've got a routine that's been working for me.

I may still try to reach 155, or I may try to trade body fat for more muscle. Haven't decided yet. (I'm concentrating on Eponymous 4 stuff at the moment.)

I've always had this notion that I'd be my hottest when I'm 40. Now it doesn't seem so abstract.

Latest results of the cholesterol blood work.

• Total cholesterol: 141 (normal range 140-200, down -9 from 150)
• Triglycerides: 67 (normal range 35-160, down -20 from 87)
• HDL (good cholesterol): 46 (min. 40, up +10 from 36)
• LDL (bad cholesterol): 82 (normal range, 80-130, down -13 from 97, hypertension range 80-100)
• Liver panel: normal

Previous results: 1, 2 and 3.

The doctor finds these results satisfactory, and so do I.

Next check sometime in December.

Just to demonstrate the level of my growing apathy toward web development …

In the past two days, I've toyed with the idea of setting up a shopping cart system online so I can offer MP3s of my demos. The purpose is more to track listeners than to earn an income. In fact, I would rather the system offer them for free.

I experimented with Zen Cart, which is available from Dreamhost as a one-click install, and it was too robust for what I had in mind. Other solutions were paid services using outside servers, and I have more than enough space on my web site to accomodate my files. I'm not concerned with bandwidth at this point because, well, no one is listening to my stuff.

The more I looked into it, the more it became apparent that my needs are way too specific for what is available. And if I went with a third-party tool, I would need to hack it extensively to do what I wanted.

I've built my own applications, and I've hacked other people's applications. The time sunk into them is equal.

I wanted something to run out-of-the-box. That's not possible.

Five years ago, I would have dove straight in and started coding. Today, I'm filing the idea in the mental cabinet to wait for a time when I'm not feeling so apathetic.

This apathy even extends to my blogs. I have a lot of reviews I've been intending to write but no drive to write them.

I want a sabbatical.

I'm usually hesitant to fire up the home studio and work on music. Something happens when I get deep into the throes of recording — I don't want to concentrate on anything else. There's always something to tweak, something to adjust, something to edit.

When I get into that mindset, everything else is a distraction, the least of which is the means by which I pay the bills. I've tried (unsuccessfully) to set up the Windows XP VPN server so I can make a Remote Desktop connection from my work computer to my home computer. (Yes, I have a VPN connection from home to work, but I'd like to make the appearance of face time.)

It's these times that make me dread heading into an office, which then results in a spiral of doubt and fantasy. What would I be doing if I weren't doing what I was doing?

First off, I'm feeling restless with web development. As professions go, development has always been something I could do that doesn't annoy me, but my identity is not entirely wrapped up in it. I read these articles on dzone all the time bestowing the virtues of good developers — the ones who constantly learn, the ones who recognize the holes in their training and try to plug them — and I resembled a lot of those traits about three years ago.

(Huh. Three years ago. That's about the same time I started building up the home studio again.)

Now I've hit a wall, and I'm not certain I want to get past and/or around it. I could do much more to be better at PERL, PHP and all the rest, and I could probably even take a deeper plunge into Ruby and Ruby on Rails. But the time spent doing that means time away getting better with effects processing, mixing, rehearsing …

I don't even know if I want my day job to be "developer". Oh, I still want a day job — I like how music serves as a refuge. It would stop being so if it became the focus, and I would develop the same restlessness for it as I have for web development.

I think more than anything, this restlessness is more about mental stimulus than anything else. Solving problems with code is a great fit for me, but at some point, how many more ways can I look at the same control structures and data types?

Which brings us back to the question of what I would be doing if I weren't doing what I was doing.

I don't have a concrete answer. Some vague ones in which I might indulge at some point, but nothing solid.

In short, I don't know.

(Kind of a sequel to this entry …)

What is it about a sluggish economy that triggers my covetous moods? In reality, some of these items might cross over to "need" than "want". Still, it would be nice to have …

• An upgrade of Microsoft Office 2000. It didn't seem the 2003 upgrade was all that necessary, but the complete overhaul of Office 2007 reveals a lot of clunkiness in Office 2000. What spurred this realization was the utter hell of trying to get my novel properly prepped for QuarkXpress to layout correctly. Thing is, I don't write all that much, and my heavy spreadsheet use happened before I released enigmatics. Still, the version I have is 8 years old.
• A new laser printer. The one I have dates back to 1995 and print out 8 pages per minute. Yeah. Ancient. But shopping for printers is really, really paralyzing.
• A camcorder. A total pie-in-the-sky desire. I've been making music videos with my point-and-shoot digital camera, and while I've managed to gloss over the cheap video quality with creative editing, I would like to try my hand at using the proper tool for the job. But really? I must prohibit myself from purchasing a camcorder till after I get a new printer.
• A new desktop computer. I bought my current home computer in 2005. It's more than capable of supporting the digital audio software I have installed on it. Now that I'm venturing into video, a faster processor would be really nice to mitigate rendering times. But I just extended the warranty on the current computer till 2009, and maybe by then the idea of moving to Vista won't be so nightmarish.
• A full version of Windows XP. But really, that's just a fear of Windows Vista. Is it warranted? Will it matter by 2009?
• An upgrade of QuarkXpress. I think I'm actually more curious about an upgrade than I am desirous of it. QuarkXpress can be inscrutible at times, but I've managed to hammer out some CD covers and actual books with it. I must be doing something right.
• An upgrade of Sony Sound Forge. I'm so tired of the lack of UTF-8 support in the IDv2 tagging. Of course, I could make life simpler and not title my songs in Japanese. Sound Forge 9 takes care of it. I have Sound Forge 8.

I'm so broke, I have no notion I'll be able to scratch off anything from this list. Except the printer. Holy hell, do I need a new printer.