Bryan Mann's, Life or...'' It's life Jim, but not as we know it. ''

Up again at 4:00am this morning. This time it's a dream about being in the dentist's chair and him giving me morphine to kill my pain but it doesn't. The dentist looks strangely like the landlord of my apartment way back when SB and I were living on Rentfrow together in Las Cruces, and he has a pet lion cub that's amazingly docile. Well this is better than my recurring "La Vida Loco" dreams of San Antonio. In those dreams I'm usually riding my big black fat boy home while Ricky Martin's "La Vida Loco" plays sound track to me going through a construction site where the road is messed up. These usually end with me climbing off my bike and going into my tiny 2bd rm house in the barrio. Thing is I've never lived in San Antonio, although I have been on contract there for the Air Force and T was from SA town, or as I like to call it, Slam Antonio.

Each day out of bed begins with the weigh in, then pose down. The weigh in for this morning puts me at 188lbs. I've lost 4lbs. Apparently the way to lose weight without diet or exercise is disease. I have been sick with a cold for the last couple weeks.

I bought a Tanita digital scale that supposedly can calculate your body fat percentage by sending micro-currents through your feet. Anyway, according to the theory it can. Last time I checked, it puts my body fat at 17%. And according to Tony Horton, of beachbody and company fame to see my six-pack abs I need to be somewhere around 7%. I guess that would explain it :-) So I have some fat to lose. Which is an excellent segue to, 'So what're you eatin' mann?'

I generally eat 4-6 times per day, usually 575-600 calories per meal and for me eating is the most difficult part of bodybuilding. How the hell is it possible for people to be fat? I mean I eat 3 times in a day and I'm like 'please don't show me any more food!!' In all fairness I've never really had a love affair with eating. Right now I'm on the dietgourmet 1700 calorie plan. I usually get 2 breakfasts, a lunch, and a dinner, no beef. I like to think of it as living the Hobbit life, first breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, luncheon, and supper. I eat first and second breakfast between 6:00a.m and 8:00am, then elevensies after I get out of the gym, about 2 hours later I have luncheon, and 2 ½ hours later I have supper. I may or may not eat a snack after that. Depends on whether I'm still working or being a couch potato. Still working, eat. Couch potato, don't eat.

The hardest part of eating for me is remembering to do it. I have to set an alarm to go off every 2 hours so that I'll eat. And in general I think, well, I'm not that hungry, let me just work 10 more minutes. By the time I look up again an hour has gone by and my eating schedule is messed up.

Talked to 'Monica Brandt' in the gym yesterday. It's weird, I've met plenty of famous people, jammed on stage with a few, presented my ideas to fortune 500 executives and millionaires but when I talk to her my mind just freezes up. What's up with that? I'd say testosterone, plain and simple. It is spring time after all. Well it is in Central Texas. Hmmm. 'Monica' if you're reading this, I'm really not an idiot!

Alright off the the gym for another round of Cardio/flAbs.

Awakened this morning at 4:00a.m. by SB. It's been decades, literally since she and I were last in each other's arms and yet... I guess there are just some people that keep coming back to you. Anyway, the most I can say about it is that it was awesome being 19 years old again. Filled with a sense of wonder and urgency and hunger. What a wonderful dream. As Spock so eloquently said, and I paraphrase, “You may find the having is not quite so pleasant as the wanting Teipring.” So I say, “May you truly want what you have.”

I've been working on this most excellent bug. It's related to the fact that a named pipe or fifo can only hold 4k of data before the kernel blocks the writer or the reader, or worse. I have a solution that works for up to N clients but space and laws of intellectual property don't permit me to divulge it in these pages. The solution is purely theoretical anyway. Basically has to do with locking and blocking when multiple processes compete for the same resources. These are some of my favorite problems to solve. My “in practice” solution supports up to 200 simultaneous clients.

Saw J at the gym yesterday. She is inspirational. I asked her how she gets her hamms to look so good. I didn't really like her response, “genetics” :-(, oh well, just means I have more work to do there. That reminds me of a story about the Hammster, John Hamm that is, well, for another time.

I chopped down the savanna that is my back yard yesterday, promised myself if the sun comes out for more than an hour I'm doing yard work. When I was a kid of 8 yrs old mowing was so much more the adventure, feeling all that power, able to cut grass to bits, and loud and bad smellin'. Now at my age I find my mowing lasts about 43 minutes longer than my interest in doing it so I use it as walking meditation. And during that time my conclusion is that the fire ants have been put in my yard to teach me the following buddhist lesson:

ponder loving kindness to all things.

My conclusion after much consideration, therefore, is that the ants have served their purpose in being, causing me to ponder their existence and my relationship to them and now I may remove them by any means necessary. This means war!! Now I become the grounds keeper in Caddie Shack. Funny, I used to work as a grounds keeper at my university golf course. Great job. I'd show up wearing shorts, a T-shirt and tennis shoes. This was in the summer time in Las Cruces, NM, so the average daily temperature was about 103. I graduated fairly quickly from raking rocks on the fairways to sprinkler boy. That was awesome. Ride around in a golf cart, wearing nothing but cut-offs popping in sprinkler heads and avoiding golfers. Got a great tan that summer. Speaking of summer that reminds me that in land far away and long ago I used to date Lori Loughlin..., another story for another time.

It's raining AGAIN today. Did I really miss the memo and end up in Seattle? I didn't think Austin got this much rain!! I wonder if the creek in my back yard will overflow? Maybe I better buy that boat sooner than later.

Alright, we're marching forward to our product release to our first customer. The current plan is to ship this coming week! That's great news!

In the meantime I'm busy with usual complications of living. I bought this house, built in 1984, and I'm in the apparently never ending process of re-modeling it. The kitchen is almost completed. All that's left is stripping and painting the pantry, then doing the finish detail, changing out the electrical plate covers, whatever those things are called, and some painting. Well, and the new bar top needs the shelf supports bolted in before it's ready for use. But it's coming along. I must say that I never really expected that I could be excited about such mundane things as kitchen design. I'm more of a type T personality, extreme sports that type of stuff, but, because the kitchen was my own design it's been pretty fulfilling to see it come together and actually be presentable. I really like it! I guess it bears mentioning that I studied architecture for 4 years, the building kind not the software kind, and even thought I'd end up there. But life had other plans.

The kitchen started out as a 1970's orange and oak, linoleum floor disaster. Well, ok, the rust colored carpet throughout the rest of the house matched. I ripped that stuff up right after painting all the bedrooms 'renters white'. What's wrong with renters white, I like it. It gives you the chance to spice things up with window treatments, excellent furniture and interesting wall hangings. Anyway, all this started because just after the water was re-connected I discovered a leak that ruined the kitchen cabinets. By my estimate it took about 2 years of dripping to do the damage but it was done. Gee I wonder how that slipped past the home inspection I paid for? What was to be a cabinet re-surfacing turned into a rip it out and start over project.

Next are the bathrooms, master bath first, then guest bath, then get wired for networking and TV cable. I'm mulling over a house-wide sound system. In my other life I am a perspiring musician and one of the things I've never really had is a really good stereo. For someone who loves music so much I've never had more than a boom-box for a stereo. And of course everyone made fun of my TV for years, a 13'' color TV. Hey, at least it had a remote.

Ok, in my defense, TV is not my life, but now that DVDs are out with surround sound I'm thinking a huge plasma with full surround would be cool. Hmmm, how does all this fit into the buddhist precepts of the dharma side of life and ... letting go of your attachments?

Went to the gym again today. I've decided to workout 6 days/week. If you must know my schedule because you'd like to watch me workout then here it is:

  Monday 10:30   11:45am
      Leg day   those tears aren't tears of joy!
  Tuesday 9:30   11:00am
      Cardio/flAbs, rotating through weak spots, tri-set, 
      giant set, usu.  Biceps|Triceps|Shoulders
  Wednesday 9:30   11:00am
      Chest/Back
  Thursday 9:30   11:00am
       Cardio/flAbs, rotating through weakness, calves, 
                     hamstrings, quads
                  3:00   4:00 pm
                      Massage, because I deserve it!!
   Friday 9:30   11:00am
       Shoulders, Bi-s, and Tri-s.
   Saturday (day off, bike, kayak, skiing, partying, recovery :)
   Sunday 10:30   11:45am
       Light Cardio/flAbs, rotating through weakness, chest

Some cool stats. I recently did a pyramid on leg press and ended with 540lbs for a shaky set of 4 reps. I managed 280lbs on deadlifts! Did 450lbs on standing calf raises and have started doing the rack, 220lbs on leg extensions. My goal is to squat 500lbs. I'd like to bench 350lbs but I doubt I'll make that. I suffered a repeating shoulder dislocation playing high school football so I'm pretty weak upper body-wise. For example my last 'big' bench was 185 :-( But good news is that my dumbbell presses and curls are decent. 90lbs for curls and 60lb dumbbells for flat bench. As I said to my trainer, 'You know the hardest part is... getting it up that first time... especially when you have to do it by yourself.'

The interesting part, to me at least, is that I did the leg press pyramid without knowing how much I was doing. I just kept stacking weight on til it was more than I could manage for 6 reps.

Proof that it's all in the mind... I calculated out how much I'd done one of those many nights when I wake at 3:00am, and started counting plates and multiplying. Too cool!!

Favorite quote, seen on a bumper sticker yesterday:

Pain is weakness leaving the body.

Only in Texas DUDE!

Oh yeah, it bears mentioning that I met 'Monica Brandt' at the gym today. I was playing with the weights she wanted to use. Strong woman, she rocks!

After three years of the same blank look and much urging to 'update your web site dude' I've decided to take the plunge. A few words about the old photo... myself, my two kids and my then girlfriend T, her daughter and I had gone skiing at Sierra, Lake Tahoe. The picture was taken by my youngest, then 3 1/2. We had a great time skiing but it snowed heavily for our drive out of the mountains that night and I recall it being a bit harrowing to go down the mountain back to Foster City/Pleasanton. I lived in Foster City, she lived in Pleasanton, California, that is.

I suppose to satisfy the curious that I will add some photos under the links section. But like all things I only have so many hours and so little time to do so many things. At present I'm working on a server at work that is an XML message router. That's consuming a lot of thought. Although concern might be a better choice of words. Concern because we have an upcoming release to our first "customer" and my piece of the system, well one piece, the dispatcher, dspd, sits between the customer and the core parts that handle requests to do something. Not to mention, although I will, the ever pressing schedule of eating, working out and working I don't have a huge interest in spending time on a web site.

Lately I haven't been sleeping too well. I suppose that's the life of a programmer. I keep waking up in the middle of the night with a 'cause for concern'. 'Did I remember to allocate the right number of bytes, how could I make reading more efficient, what about robustness, am I dumping core someplace under test that I don't know about, when will I get my income taxes filed, I wonder if I'll see J at the gym today, I so like seeing her, maybe I'll even have the guts to say hi :-), wish I could finish that song I'm working on, I really need to get back home to close out some legal paper work, you know having a girlfriend or wanting one should be more akin to a job interview, and joining a company based on prospects for success, hmmm, maybe I need to get a life... damn, I can't sleep, 3:00a.m. still, it's got to be more than 3:00a.m., ok that's it I'm getting up, maybe reading "Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment" will put me back to sleep.'

My gym time started way back at age 11 when my dad agreed to buy my brother and I a weight set. But I digress. Most recently, on my birthday, I weighed in at a whopping 162lbs. I consdiered that underweight since I'm 6'2" tall. So, I joined the gym and set myself the goal to gain 30lbs of muscle by my next birthday. I hired a professional trainer and got started. She's awesome! I managed to reach my 30lbs goal a bit early. I'm already there. Yes it's not ripped bodybuilder muscle but hey, I could still make that!!