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A personal dream of mine has always been to have a flat stomach (don’t ask me to quantify it, but I’ll know it when I see it).  I came close 2 years ago when I lost 38 lbs in the winter to get down from 218 to 186.  When I got down to 186, my metabolism was operating at such efficient levels that I would eat junk and still lose weight!  Unfortunately, I took note of this, slacked on my workouts (from 5-6 workouts / week to 1-2 / week), nutrition and lost my motivation.  Subsequently, I gained 16 lbs over the next 17 months.  That’s failure #1: Not keeping up with the nutrition and workouts because I thought my body was finally efficient (like Laura’s).  Since September 2008, I have been trying to get back on the workout and nutrition horse.  A friend gifted me a workout program called P90X through the recommendation of one of the top sports therapists in the country (yes, he works on the Habs).  The P90X program is a 3 month, 6 workout day / week (the 7th day is optional) program that uses the strategy of muscle confusion.  Each month, your program changes so that your body doesn’t get used to the workouts and is unable to plateau.  The thinking is that if you keep your body guessing, your muscles will operate at their most inefficient levels and thus consume and burn the maximum amount of calories.  Sounds insane, right?  The workouts are really great, intense and dare I say even fun.  But here’s why I LOVE the program:  Tony Horton, the creator and instructor, ALWAYS tells you to do what you can and not follow them.  He literally says “If you’re exhausted or need a break, pause the DVD, drink some water, get your heartrate down and come back to us when you’re ready.  You don’t have to do what we’re doing.  Just do your best!”  When I initially started the program, my attitude towards this advice was “Whatever.  I can hold a 170 bpm heartrate for hours.  I don’t need a break.”  What ensued was failure #2:  My mind and body wasn’t ready for something so different and intense than what I was accustomed to and again, my motivation and effort waned (but I would still manage to workout 3 times / week).  Then I started to listen to him.  I took to the workouts with an attitude of “I’m going to do my best, but if I can’t catch my breath, I’m going to break.”  With this revised attitude, my motivation and discipline were immediate benefactors.  I’ve been able to follow the program for 5 weeks now and today was a breakthrough day.  One of the 6 workouts is called Plyometrics.  It’s basically 1 hour of anaerobic hell where my heartrate fluctuates anywhere from 160 - 195 (no lie) bpm.  Although the DVD is 60 minutes, the warmup and cooldown sections take up 16 mins, leaving you with 44 mins of Plyo.  For those who don’t know what an anaerobic workout is, think of what I’m describing as 44 minutes of sprinting all out with just 2 minutes of break.  Tired yet ?   I usually need about 5 - 6 minutes of break for the whole workout.  Today, I was able to do it without additional breaks and the best part was that I felt I could go for more.  I don’t think I would have been able to do this if I didn’t go through failure #2 and adjust my approach to the workouts.  Very cool feeling.

I love P90X because of the encouragement to do your best.  I think that most people looking to get in better shape fail because they get discouraged when their best efforts result in an instructor yelling at them “COME ON!!!!  GO HARD!!!!  FASTER!!!  LET’S GO FATSO, you’re not going to lose weight bent over with your hands on your knees!” Anyone working with an instructor or trainer that does this should fire them immediately.  When your best isn’t encouraged or you don’t feel like it’s enough to get you to your goal, I think most people would reasonably conclude to give up on the goal.  The guys at P90X always tell you that your best is good enough and to go at your own pace.  So you do.  You start getting faster.  You start wanting to go harder.  Five weeks later, you’re keeping up with the instructors and sometimes even outpacing them.  Amazing.

Thanks to failure #1, I know that I have to keep working out over the summer.  In fact, I’m pretty thankful for failure #1.  If I didn’t go through failure #1, I’d like to think that I would have attained my goal, but would have then proceeded to lose it.  That would have sucked and I think I would have had a bigger mountain to climb to get back to where I am now.  If it wasn’t for failure #1, I wouldn’t have learned a fitness lesson that I’ll keep with me for the rest of my life.  So now, I’m 2 inches thinner and much smarter thanks to my failures.  Awesome.

Anyone who’s interested in getting the workout series, you can find it here.  No matter how out of shape you think you are, or how lofty your goals, this is the program for you.

My parents always told me to save.  My accountant tells me to set money aside in my RRSP.  Saving seems like a reasonable thing to do, but why?  Why do we save?  More importantly what are we supposed to be saving for?  After being able to take care of life’s necessities: shelter, heat, food and 3 months of living expenses set aside, what else is there?  My TV tells me I should be saving to get a new car, a bigger TV (I gave in to this one), a bigger house, a nice vacation, etc.  What a fucking scam.  You work your ass off for 60 hours / week and then you buy a nice big house or a downtown condo and now you have to work 80 hours / week to maintain the same lifestyle.  So by saving and then upgrading, you’ve essentially locked yourself into a job you already hated.  Btw, if anyone thinks their house is an appreciating asset just ask your US friends, especially those in Florida or California.

Convinced that savings suck, but not sure yet about what to do with the extra cash?  Do what I do:  Save just enough for your next business “risk”.  That could be investing in a bottomless stock market, buying a cash flow positive income property with lots of room for equity growth or starting a business.  Your friends might think these ventures are risky.  Your friends must be employed.  Investing in yourself or what you’ve researched is a lot safer than being employed by a corporation that can fire you at any time, for any reason.  What if you fail?  Each failure contains valuable clues to achieve success the next time.  Save some money and try again.  Feel shitty about failing?   Remember that your lost investment would have just eroded in your bank anyways.

It’s a bit counter-intuitive because of how society has defined “risk”, but really one of the riskiest things you can do with your money is to take no investment risk at all.  Yet somehow, I think our asian parents would disagree.

Couldn’t have said it better myself

I want to do this one day…

Root 3 by : David Feinberg

I fear that I will always be
A lonely number like root three.

The three is all that’s good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath the vicious square root sign.
I wish instead I were a nine
For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic.
I know I’ll never see the sun, as 1.7321

Such is my reality, a sad irrationality
When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of a three
Has quietly come waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer

We break free from our mortal bonds
And with a wave of magic wands
Our square root signs become unglued
Your love for me has been renewed

What surprised me was where I found this poem.  You’ll be surprised as well: Root 3

I finally gave in to Laura’s urgings and went through some old boxes that I brought with me from the old apartment.  In one of them, I found my Playstation 1 along with my library of games.  Looking at the titles got me nostalgic, so I plugged it in.  Much to my surprise, it still worked!  Most of the games I had were sports titles and I discovered just how much fun it was to play your favorite teams with old rosters.  I cracked a smile when Sergei Zholtok delivered a hit to Brian Bellows during my game play :-).  Although the graphics were much poorer than I remembered, it was still a ton of fun.  Hopefully whoever ends up with the system and games gets as much fun out of it as I did.

NHL99 Gameplay (this looks better than what it does on my 32″ tube)

Because whatever got you where you are today is no longer sufficient to keep you there.

The edge that comes from the additional knowledge or skill you have over your professional peers becomes duller with every new day.  Being good looking and sweet isn’t enough to maintain a stimulating relationship, although it may have landed you the relationship in the first place.  Going to the gym twice a week and eating whatever you wanted when you were 18 doesn’t cut it when you’re 30 if you want to be in great shape.

In my experience, it seems like complacency just happens.  In reality it’s a choice, especially if you have the statement at the top of the post in mind.  Unless you’ve conciously decided not to, start getting better at whatever is most important to you.  You’ll either feel better about it or realize it wasn’t that important to you to begin with.

Anyone watch the last Canadian debate last night?  I almost keeled over in laughter.  Our debates are so low-brow, even compared to the U.S. debate.  Some favorite moments:

Layton to Harper (he was taunting him all night.  So funny): “Mr. Harper, either you’re not in touch with Canadians or you’re INCOMPETENT!  Which is it!?”

Moderator to Panel: “All of the parties here have condemned the conservatives for cutting Arts funding.  Do you think the Conservatives are BARBARIANS?”

Line of the night (still pissing in my pants):

Layton to Harper: “Mr. Harper, you’re the only party without a platform.  Where is it!? (pause for dramatic effect), UNDER YOUR SWEATER!?”.

Elizabeth May and Gilles Duceppe performed the best.  After getting used to Dion’s difficult-to-understand-at-first accent, he also started to make a lot of sense.  I think I’ll put “Review major parties’ platforms” in Omnifocus.

I have to say though, although we’re a commodity driven economy in Canada, I’m really glad we’re not going through the banking controversy the states are going through.  I like to think that there are different tiers of Capitalism for different kinds of entities.  The banks and mortgage insurers in the States seemed to have forgotten that they were in the “non-aggressive” tier of capitalism and acted more like hedge funds.  Their failure further solidifies my support of having strict investment and lending criteria dictated by the government.  After all, a bank is supposed to be safe.

Given the new TSA (US Border Control) crackdown on laptops and the number of laptop confiscations JB has read about, it seems like there’s an obvious business opportunity for short term laptop rentals.  As for getting to useful application, I know there’ s a product from Route 1 called a Mobikey that allows users to virtually log into their home network or terminal from anywhere without the installation of any software on a computer.  If you can get onto your machine remotely, you should be able to launch whatever applications you have on your home network.

Finally, some thoughts on the markets.  Firstly, yes, we’re in a recession.  During these times, cash is king as are tangible appreciating assets (cars and bicycles don’t count, unless their collectables).  If you can handle some market swings, the next 6-18 months are going to present some fabulous opportunities to build up your long term equity holdings.  Real estate could also be very interesting, even in this country.  Everyone is feeling the pinch from the markets and you might just be bailing out a couple that’s on the verge of retirement that purchased a home by assuming their investment income was going to cover their payments. 

Finally, pay no attention to the recent purchases of Goldman Sachs and GE that Warren Buffett just made for the following reasons: 

1. The reporters like to highlight that he made a $5 Billion dollar investment in Goldman and a $3 Billion dollar investment in GE.  Firstly, he invested in preferred shares of those companies that provide much better dividend returns than their common stock alternatives to a tune.
2. In the case of GS, his investment in the company got the the company up to an equity ratio of 18:1, which qualifies them to access the $700 Billion lending window the U.S. is voting on right now.  GS had every incentive to give him a sweet deal, not to mention that GS will be looking for capital in the coming months and it’s always nice to say “Warren Buffett believes in us.”  To be honest, this was a great deal for GS.
3. Warren Buffett’s investment portfolio is roughly $287 Billion.  That’s just his holdings and doesn’t include the investment cash he has floating.  His investments in GE and GS represent a mere 1.03% and 1.71% respectively of his investment portfolio (not counting the cash portion of the account which we’re not privy to).  To draw a parallel, if you had $10000 in your RRSPs and wanted to mirror Buffett’s investments you would be putting down $103 in GE (5 shares) and $171 in GS (1.22 shares).  To me, that doesn’t sound as big of a vote of confidence as is implied by these articles.
4. People need to know that Buffett is a focus investor.  A focus investor’s philosophy is to put a lot of money behind a handful of stocks.  Sounds to me that Buffett got deals he couldn’t refuse, but also couldn’t back the proverbial cash truck on.

Don’t be fooled, the markets are uncertain and any investments you make today are for returns you hope to see in 5+ years.  Warren Buffet’s recent investments only support that view, despite what some articles might have you believe.  I have to say though, day traders must be making a fortune.  Every big swing one way brings a swing the other way within the next couple of business days.  Wish I was stupid enough to play sometimes.  Must be that gambler in me :-).

When the U.S. dollar was tanking back in 2006 the brilliant idea of taking advantage of arbitrage in the used car industry came to me.  When I looked at prices, it seemed that the prices of high end cars had more variance between their U.S. and Canadian prices.  After talking it over with Laura and Yannick, I settled on buying an Audi S4.  The plan was to purchase the car and sell it in the Canadian market two years later to break even or take a small loss.  A little more than 2 years later and I’ve executed the plan accordingly.  The S4 is sold and I took a small loss on it (bigger than I would have hoped, but small enough for me to feel like I got a great deal on the car).  Surprisingly, I’m going through seller’s remorse.  I really loved everything about the S4.  The way it looked, the way it drove and the way I felt being in that car (I’m shocked that a car made me “feel” anything).  Selling it makes me feel like I’m taking a step backward.  Fortunately, Laura’s reminding me that although it might look and feel like that on the surface, it’s definitely the strategist’s move and I am, after all, a strategist.

I’ve attached some pics that I took when I first picked up the car.  That was such a cool day.

Giddy like a 12 yr old girl.

Two grown men giddy like 12 year old girls (co-starring Yannick).

Taking a bend and oversteering at 180km / hr:  Bliss.

Laura and I went out on Saturday night to a house party and I got completely sloshed for the first time in my life.  While I remember having a good time, I don’t really remember why I was having a good time.  When I woke up, 2 hours past my Club Championship Qualification tee time, I had a splitting headache along with the sensation of wanting to hurl, although I didn’t give in.  After calling the golf course to be informed that I had been disqualified from the competition, Laura gave me a summary of some of my drunken shenanigans, some of which I can share with you:

1) At 1:30 a.m., I was telling Shawn to follow women into the bathroom, because that’s surely what women want when they are asking for directions to the bathroom.

2) By 3 a.m., I was telling anyone I could find about my plan to get my body fat down to 10% from 16%.

3) By 4:30 a.m., I was telling people that I grew up on the mean streets of Ville St-Laurent.

4) By 5:30 a.m., I was giving Doug shit for being a 26 year member and having a 10 handicap

There’s more, but the rest is just too embarrassing.  Two things I learned from that night: I have an extremely tolerant and awesome wife in Laura and being drunk is definitely overrated.