Taking a 20 Year Time Machine

The only thing reunions do is ruin years of therapy.

I'm heading to my 20 year high school reunion this weekend. In order to get ready for it, I pulled my yearbooks off the shelf and took a look.

I was shocked. Every other time I opened the yearbook I saw colleagues and friends staring back at me. This time I saw a bunch of kids. Not my peers, not people who it seems like I just saw yesterday, but a bunch of children.

The second thing that surprised me is that comparing the RSVP list to the pictures in the yearbook, I found that I really don't remember that many people outside of the football team. And my two closest friends from back then aren't coming.

So instead of going to a function with fond-filled memories with old friends, I will be heading to a cocktail party with a group of people I largely don't remember. The exception will be the football team, which is actually holding a separate function the day before where we watch an old game film together with one of our former coaches, who must be 80 by now. I bet that will be like old times:

"Mitch, what the HELL are you doing on that play?!?"

"But, Coach, I thought..."

"YOUR NOT SUPPOSED TO THINK, SON!! YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO REACT!!!"

Ah, I can hardly wait.

For the people I do remember, it will be interesting to see who looks the same, who's aged, who's put on weight, who's bald, which girls who were hot at 18 look frumpy at 38, and the reverse of that. It will be fun just trying to put a current face to 20 year-old memories

Expect a posting on the experience next week.

Picking a Martial Arts Studio

Reader "Mobius" sends in the following question:

I'm in LA and a regular reader of your wonderful blog (Mitch: Flattery will get you everywhere). I was hoping to get your help in finding a good place to get martial arts training in the area. The one place I'm talking to is asking ~$350 for 3 months, 2-times/week. I don't even know what the avg price is around the area and your help would be very useful.

While this question is specific to SoCal, here are some tips that everyone should use when looking for a martial arts studio:

1. Technique - The first step in picking up martial arts is to decide which technique you want to study. There are literally dozens of martial arts techniques, and this web site has summaries on most of them. I take Tae Kwon Do, which is from Korea, but there are techniques from Japan, China, and even some home grown U.S. techniques.

For deciding which technique to pursue, I would answer two questions: what do you want to get out of the sport, and what are you physically suited for? For me, I wanted to have an exercise regimen that would help me lose weight, which means I needed something with lots of movement and kicking. I decided I wanted to do this even though - at the time - I wasn't very suited for kicking since I had low flexibility. This means that my learning curve would be higher in TKD than other techniques where I would be more "natural".

I started off not very good, but my body adapted - and is still adapting - for increased flexibility. At first I could kick only about waist high, but can now kick at head level. It just means that it took me more time to get there than others who walked into the dojong with natural flexibility.

In contrast, if you wanted something that wasn't too strenuous, and would actually be more helpful for self-defense, a "grappling" martial art like Aikido or Hapkido would be ideal. Lots of older people take these styles since there is little strenuous movement, no attacking, and little if any kicking. And as "defensive" arts, they are actually more likely to come in handy in a back alley than a TKD spinning heal kick.


2. Cost - Here is what I look for: what does a membership cost at the local 24 Hour Fitness?

As noted above, I see my TKD class as an exercise regimen, so this is a good comparison. However, I also have developed friendships with both my instructors and classmates, and the dojong is actually a place to hang out and talk, as well as exercise, so it is also like a "club" in many respects.

My dojong works like 24 Hour Fitness in that they put me on a yearly contract and charge my credit card every month, which I find pretty convenient. I pay a yearly initiation fee and $110 a month, which is about the same as you are being quoted. The only difference is that my price is "officially" for three classes a week, although I usually go four or five - they don't charge extra for the few of us that come more often.

The other thing to look out for are uniforms and rank tests. Usually for a "intro course" a uniform (gui in Japanese or dobok in Korean) is thrown in, so I would negotiate that in if it isn't in your current offer. If you need more than one uniform (I do - I sweat like a pig), find out if you have to buy uniforms from the school (with their logo) or can save a little and get it on-line.

Most schools charge for rank tests, and this usually varies on the level of the test. For example, at my school the first rank test (yellow belt) is a $30 or $40 test fee. Down the road when you are ready for Black Belt, it is on the order of $300. Since I see this as my "hobby", I just budget for these things, but it is something to keep in mind.


3. Reputation - The last thing I would look for in a school is the reputation and caliber of the school. Who owns it? Who actually teaches the courses? Is it a "belt factory" where they just churn people through as a business, or are they really serious about teaching both the physical and mental aspects of the martial arts? What size are the classes you would be in and what is the instructor/student ratio? For the day classes I take, there are usually only 3-5 students, so I get great workouts and individual attention. In fact, on some days when everyone else is busy, I get private classes.

This is a hard call, and is something you will have to ask current students about and talk to the people who work there. Note that many martial arts schools get the majority of their revenue from kids (i.e. sub-teens), so make sure that you are in a class that is reserved for adults. You don't want to get into a situation like Seinfeld's Kramer, where he was the only adult in his karate class.


The thing to remember is that if you do start a school and decide it isn't working for you, don't give up - try another. Chances are there are dozens of schools from a variety of techniques near your home and one of them will be just right for you.


Note: This post will be cross-post on KarateTraining.org on March 31.

Business Thoughts for the Day

If both parties walk away from the table a little pissed off, it's a successful negotiation.
- My EVP


There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic.
- Edgar Degas



Test of a vocation is the love of drudgery.
- Anon

Give and Take

Give - I read the sequel to Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, which was also recommended by Instapundit. Like the first book, this is just good, solid entertainment - no deep meaning or deep thinking for this novel. I would call it the perfect airplane book for an LA to NY flight: open it on wheels up, be done by wheels down, and be entertained the entire time.

Like the first book, I am giving my copy away to the first person in the comment section who says they want it. Leave your email, and I will get in touch with you for your address. I'll drop it in the mail by next week.


Take - I am in the market for a car and can't find anything I like. I sort of liked the Infinity FX35, but the more I saw it, the less I liked it. So your mission is to recommend the following:

• 4-door car or medium-sized SUV - For SUVs, I think Mrs. Director got the one with the best styling, the Mercedes, and I don't want to get another one. The BMW X5 is nice, but that brings me to the next item.
• Budget - I would like to stay below $40 (without TTL), but will stretch a little if I found something that I really liked.

I am looking at other cars while I am driving, and actually paying attention to car commercials, but nothing is floating my boat - at least in my price range. If price was no object, I would be sitting in a new Mercedes SL600, but at about $120K that just isn't going to happen.

It used to be that $40K was a hell of a lot of money for a car. Today it won't even get you into the mid-range of some manufacturers' lines, and won't get you into a lot of SUVs.

While the Cat is Away...

Mrs. Director is out town for the weekend, leaving me to do all the secret things married men yearn to do. I am going to:

• Run the dishwasher half-full
• Leave my clothes on the floor
• Eat dinner over the sink
• Leave the toilet seat up
• Have Tivo record Gladiator instead of Little Women

And, of course, the Big One; the one that could lead to marital counseling, and in many cases divorce: Smoke a Cigar Inside the House.

For a married man, this is taking things to the Edge, but, hey, a guy's got to be his own boss - when the wife is out of town, that is.

Creating a New Side-Blog

One of the reasons I blog is to keep a central place for notes, comments, and links on what I do for a living. I find that writing about a topic helps me understand it better, and searching for ideas, articles, and helpful links on a blog is a lot easier than on a C drive.

The problem with posting work-related items on this blog is that The Window Manager has become a general interest blog that has topics on everything ranging from politics to yoga. So in order to have one blog where all my work-related notes can go (and be more easily found), I have created IP Licensing 101, which is also on my permanent links to the right.

Note that the site is still in its infancy, so the formatting, links, etc. are a little raw, but that will be updated a little at a time. I'll post on both IPL and Window Manager regularly, and will cross-post entries on both blogs any time that I feel that one article fits both of the blogs' purposes.

This Wasn't A Religious Memo

This is a verbatim sentence from an email I got today:

It is much easy for us to qualify this GOD.

I sat there and looked at the sentence a moment, wondering why this business memo suddenly got religious.

Then it hit me: the writer was using shorthand for Good Optical Die (and if you don't know what that is, I'll just say it is a rather prosaic technical widget and nothing to do with theology).

Using Yoga to Improve Martial Arts Skills

Note: This article will be cross-posted at Karate Training.org.

Tae Kwon Do, probably more than any martial art, emphasizes kicking - a typical TKD match will be over 80% kicking. In order to win you need kicks that are high enough to hit an opponent's head. After all, if all you can throw are waist-high kicks, you become pretty easy to defend against. The second thing you need is mastery of the spinning kicks - back kick, spinning-heel, and tornado kick - which help in misdirection and counter-attack.

And in order to kick high and spin, flexibility and balance are a prerequisite. As I advanced into the Tae Kwon Do "middle belts", I felt that in order to progress into the upper ranks that these two areas really needed improvement. I was certainly developing these skills as a part of my regular TKD training, but I started to search for a way to accelerate their improvement.

For flexibility, yoga was an obvious field of study. I had heard about the popular Bikram "hot yoga" for some time and thought I would give it a try. But I entered the yoga studio with some trepidation, expecting to find a bunch of aging hippy vegetarians. Instead I found an attractive young lady sitting behind a computer. Not wanting to seem too granola, I immediately declared "I'm hoping to improve my martial arts skills and thought I would try some yoga."

"Yes," she replied, "we get one of you signing up about once a month. In fact, John is getting ready for our next class and is a martial artist. You should talk to him."

Soon enough I was talking to John, a seven-year practitioner of Tai Chi. He extolled the virtues of yoga and how it improved his martial art practice, and encouraged me to join. Fifteen minutes later I was standing next to him for my first class. Four months later I consider yoga a extension of my martial arts training and go at least once - usually twice - a week. I consider it so much an extension of my TKD practice that I sometimes catch myself unconsciously bowing as I enter the yoga studio.

My flexibility has definitely improved, but the largest improvement has been in my balance, where the improvements have been considerable for such a short period of time. My back kick went from mediocre to very good, and my spinning-heel went from non-existent to something I am comfortable using in a sparring match.

Bikram yoga is a set of twenty-six postures that are done in the same order in every class. It is what I call the "balancing series" of poses that I think has helped my martial arts the most to date:

Photos Courtesy of Bikram South Pasadena

These poses may not look that hard, but remember that you hold the poses. Twice. On standing-head-to-knee the first pose is for sixty seconds. If you can hold these poses for that long, throwing a back-kick and having your body extended in something that approximates the balancing stick for a fraction of a second seems easy.

Another difference in yoga is that when balancing on one leg, the standing knee is locked with the thigh contracted. TKD kicks are done with the standing leg slightly bent, improving balance and stability, so again I find yoga harder than the martial arts for balance, meaning mastery in yoga makes for ease in the martial arts.

The flexibility improvement promised in yoga is also apparent, but that improvement is coming more slowly and will take a longer period of time to master.

But like martial arts, yoga is a life-long practice, with true mastery always being just beyond the grasp. I consider them complementary arts and highly recommend yoga to anyone who wants to improve their martial arts skills.

Elmo Went to Rice University?

Looks like it's time to call the Rice Alumni Association and talk about falling admission standards. I caught this while watching a few minutes of Sesame Street with my daughter this morning. That is definitely Rice University Elmo and his friend are standing in front of. The big arch is called the Sally Port:



Must be those damn affirmative action policies for monsters.

All Psychic Stuff is BS

And I took the test to prove it.



While I maintain this is all nonsense, I do predict several people who read this post will take the test.

No, I Don't Work Naked

I home-office several days a week. This week, for example, I went to the "mother ship" on Mon-Tue, and am working from home the rest of the week.

The reason for this set-up is two fold. First, I live in SoCal and my company is in NoCal. And housing prices in Silicon Valley are so insane that I could never afford the same size house and set-up there that I locked into seven years ago in SoCal. Plus Mrs. Director has a good, long-time job, so moving really didn't make sense.

Second, my job requires me to spend a lot of time overseas - over two weeks a month during busy months - and my company felt that since I spend so much time overseas, it really didn't matter where I plugged in my computer and did my phone calls when I was in the U.S., which wouldn't be too often anyway. My job is basically sales, and getting to HQ few days a month for debriefings is really all I need anyway.

The set-up has been a win-win situation, and I think both parties have been very pleased with the results. But as a home-officer I try very hard to make sure that I keep regular hours and not abuse the privilege. While management is content with my work and set-up, I have had one lower-tier person call me up and go "Hey, so you watching a soap opera?" It is the rank-and-file that I have to make sure stays up to date with the professionalism of my set-up.

So I cringe a little bit when studies come out that explore some of the common stereotypes of home officers, the most recent of which claims that one-in-eight male home officers work naked. That seems a little far-fetched, but I do admit to working in sweats. There is no reason to put on an Oxford and slacks when spending the day home alone.

I also never turn on the TV. It is not a rule, I just don't find it interesting. I do read the internet from time-to-time, but wandering around HQ yesterday I saw dozens of people doing that right in the office. Home-officing doesn't seem to be a prerequisite for that.

Maybe the one stereotype I do follow is that I take long lunches - that is when I do my daily work-out. However, considering I typically log on and start email at 6am every morning, doing two hours of work before most people at HQ even get into the office, I consider that a fair trade-off.

Tech Jobs Fleeing Europe

Not exactly surprising news from Instat today: Despite Prospects of Growth, West European Electronics Industry Continues to Face Global Pressures

According to an annual survey published by Reed Electronics Research... production in the (European) region amounted to Euro 192 billion in 2004, around 19% of the global total...a sharp decline between 2000 and 2003, when electronics output fell by just under 30%...Output in real terms declined by 0.7% in 2004 and was forecast to fall by 1.3% in 2005.

Other findings include:

The sharp decline in the communications and IT sectors, in particular, has had a significant impact on the industry and most notably in France and the UK, where a combination of lower demand and the migration of production to lower cost locations has seen output fall by 37% and 45% respectively between 2000 and 2004.

Europe is obviously seeing the same outsourcing to China and other parts of Asia that the U.S. is experiencing. However, once jobs leave the U.S. they are replaced by new ones, as seen by the current U.S. unemployment rate of 4.8%. Once jobs leave Europe, however, they stay gone. The unemployment rate in France is 9.6%.

Is a Wife an Economic Good?

I think I saw this article referenced on a blog or two, but I finally sat down and read the Forbes article The Economics of Prostitution. In makes for some interesting reading:

Two well-respected economists created a minor stir in academic circles a few years back when they published "A Theory of Prostitution" in the Journal of Political Economy. The paper was remarkable not only for being accepted by a major journal but also because it considered wives and whores as economic "goods" that can be substituted for each other. Men buy, women sell.

The correct term is pay. Married men pay. And pay big.

Glucosamine: Does it Work?

Tae kwon do. Yoga. Jogging. These are all exercises that I do to keep in shape, but they are murder on my thirty-seven year old knee and hip joints. The muscles around these joints are definitely getting more limber, but I have been trying to figure out what to do about the ligaments and cartilage, which for the most part don't respond to training.

The word around the dojong has been to start taking glucosamine. This is a "dietary supplement" recommended for older people with arthritis, but is also supposed to help those without this condition develop looser, more nimble joints.

This supplement is apparently the rage among the middle-age crowd. An informal survey of physically active "about 40" guys around the office found that 100% of them take glucosamine. The activities these guys participated in ranged from biking to triathalons to basketball. There must have been an article in Men's Health that I missed.

The scientific evidence on glucosamine is sketchy. The above referenced wikipedia entry and other references on the net show that, like most "health supplements", the efficacy of the product is questionable. Studies in Europe show it works, but studies in the U.S. cast doubt on that. For the record these studies were for the treatment of arthritis and not for the general flexibility of the joint itself.

The one thing the studies are unanimous on is that the stuff is harmless - there is no risk or side effects in taking it. So, figuring I have nothing to lose, I am going to start taking a Glucosamine-Chondroitin supplement (the combo is supposed to be the best for working on the joints) and see what happens. It supposed to take about eight weeks for the benefits to kick in, so I'll report back in two months.

And just how am I going to measure this? I practice tae kwon do at least four times a week - usually more - and yoga usually twice a week. If my joints seem to work better, I'll know.

Just Over Two Days to Go

After a long dry spell, my favorite show - even more than BSG - is coming back Sunday night. I am getting ready, having converted my "premium" channels back to HBO (they have nothing else worth watching).

This week HBO is running the previous season leading up to the new season, as well as showing a really good season six clip trailer, which you can link to from here.

I was mesmerized by the trailer's music since it reminded me of...the Doom video game. Seriously. Sure enough, the music is The Mark has Been Made by Nine Inch Nails, the guys who wrote music for Doom.

Update: The season opener was a good episode, and I think a foreshadow of what is going to be a great season.

The Most Annoying Thing About a Disk Crash? iTunes

My laptop hard drive went up and died on me last week. Surprisingly I took it with equanimity, but only because:

1. The laptop was only about 12 weeks old, so I didn't have too much new stuff on it yet. Most of the files on there were transferred in December from my old laptop, which I still have.
   
2. I had SOME of my newer files backed up on a company network
   
3. All of my email - which is 70% of my work - is kept on a server, so my loss there was zero. And I recovered a lot of files from email attachments.
   

So my total loss of work since December was probably only ~15%. Not too bad. The good thing was that the drive failed early ("infant mortality"). If the drive had gone on for a year or more and then failed the damage could have been a lot worse.

That's not to say that this wasn't painless. The most annoying things were, in reverse order:

3. Pictures - I had some pictures I had taken over the last couple of months that didn't get backed up. Gone forever.

2. Financial Files - Microsoft Money lost about two months of transactions. I keep paper copies of everything, so this required just sitting down and inputting it again. A pain in the ass, but maybe it will make me remember to back up more often.

1. iTunes - Hands down the worse. I think everyone knows that Apple makes it nearly impossible to download from the iPod to the hard drive, so the first thing I did was copy my old library from my old laptop, which got 99% of my music. When I did this, Apple was good enough to remind me that I had to "reauthorize" my "new computer" (it's just a new drive, Steve), and that the tunes I bought on my old computer have now been used three times (my old laptop, my failed drive, and now my new drive). Only two more computers to go for those songs.

Then there is the music that I bought since January. It's sitting on my iPod, but I can't get it into my computer unless I dig deep into the iPod files (doable, but a pain), buy software to do it for me (At $20-$30, a lot more expensive than the music I bought), or buy the few songs again (only a few bucks, but we are talking about the principle here).

Whatever I decide, I can only say that I am really happy I downloaded like mad during the closing weeks of Napster.

New Business Phrases for Today

Seventeen years in business and I still run into new terminology. Two new ones just today:


"Woffy" - Verbal expression of the acronym WFOE, or Wholly Foreign Owned Entity. Usually refers to a business entity in China set up by a non-Chinese company (there are three different types of organizations a foreign company can set up in China, but that is a topic for another time).


Velcro Organization - An organization that pulls itself apart and reassembles itself in order to respond to new opportunities.

Where is That on a Map?

The funny thing about living in SoCal are conversations that go like this:

Mitch: I notice your accent. Where are you from?

Colleague: Persia.

Mitch: Oh, really?


Here is the same conversation with thoughts added in italics:


Mitch: I notice your accent. Where are you from? Somewhere in the Middle East...

Colleague: When those no good ass clowns took over my country, forced my family to flee, and took American hostages it was bad enough to admit I was Iranian. Today it is even worse. Persia.

Mitch: Oh, really? They mean Iran, of course, and if they say "Persia" that usually indicates they were the pro-western families that were forced out of the country when the Shah was toppled.


So it is a little linguistics game where the speaker and the listener both know what is really meant by "Persia".

The Director's Half-Second Oscar Review

Lame.

Babes of Blogging

Many of you have sent me emails wondering why I haven't posted any pictures of Mrs. Director. So to silence those, and to provide some eye candy for the rest of you, here is a picture taken just this week.

Off Skiing

Mrs. Director dragged me off skiing this week, so I am up in Lake Tahoe, which is that body of water you can just make out in the middle.



So blogging will be light, but I can tell you about an interesting thing that happened to me today. Mrs. Director went off to ski a triple-diamond black called "Certain Death", which is quite beyond my skiing skills. So I went off by myself to ski some easier runs.

I hooked up on the lift with another "single", and as usual in these sort of circumstances I decided to make some conversation.

"So," I asked, "what do you do for a living?"

"I just got out of prison."

I looked around me. The lift was up quite a way by this time. There was nothing I could do, so I decided to continue.

"Uh, what were you in for?"

"I pushed a total stranger out of a ferris wheel."