The Ten Commandments of Working with Nerds

For the following, I am indebted to a friend who must needs remain anonymous.

* * * *

Of working with nerds ...  I was in the dark, but now I see the light.  Here are the rules thou shalt follow:

1.  ALWAYS complain about how much work you have.  The more you complain, the higher your nerd and ego score.  Before you go to work each day remember to repeat ten times:  I'm the biggest nerd in the whole wide world.  Then you will be prepared to do battle with the other nerds and break them down to wannabe nerds and tears.  Make sure to complain about how everything in your life (sleep, exercise, hobbies, house, kids, wife, etc.) is so miserable because you spend so much time at work and thus can't do anything else.

2.  ALWAYS try to show how much work you have.  Pack your lunch to save the time to walk across the street and grab lunch.  Bringing a boxed lunch to work and working in front of your terminal gives you bonus nerd points.  Make sure to eat the same thing every day lest someone think you spend any time thinking about other things besides work.  Stuff your face as fast as possible.  Commute to work by bike so you can show to people that you are so freakin' efficient that you multi-task and thus do not need to do other exercise.  Make verbal grunts at your terminal when something doesn't work the way you think it should so you can show your frustration with the stuff written by other lower level nerds, which is not under your direct super nerdy control.

3.  Optimize the freak out of everything.  Never walk orthorgonal when you can walk diagonal.  Always cross the street before the 'hand cross light' turns on when you know it's going to turn on lest you lose 10 seconds of your nerdy life.  Never have a shell alias longer than two letters.  Never use correct grammar for sentences.  Argue with your colleagues about the most minute trivial details and theorize about how things should be done at all times.  Remember, the nerd who gives up arguing first is the loser.

4.  Mock anybody who has any hobbies or interests that might not be be work related or rank high on the nerd scale.  These things are easily taken hold of as signs of weakness.  Things such as doing a custom install of a operating system or knowing every emacs shortcut give you bonus points.  If you find somebody has a non-nerd hobby make sure to say something like "are ya still doing biiiiiiiiikiiiiiiiiiiing?" with a nice snobby smirk and head bobble for good measure.  Remember, being a nerd is a full-time battle against other nerds for nerd supremacy.  You must grab ahold of any ammunition you can muster to break them down.  Always inquire as to how much time the person spends doing their hobbies so you can calculate scientifically how much time they are working.  Also, gossip as much as possible about which people have hobbies and which people are going to the company beer bash, etc.

5.  If you get sick, even with H1N1, make freakin' sure you go to work!!!  You wouldn't want to make anybody think you were lazy, right?  Plus by making everyone else sick you increase your productivity rating vs. theirs, booyah double whammy!  Remember, your nerd score is the most important thing.  If you decide not to go to work then give a complete dissertation on your symptoms:  101F fever, snot poring out of nostrils, vomiting cheeseburgers all night long, etc. etc.  You still have to work from home though.

6.  Take as few breaks as possible.  Here's how you do it:  Drink a coffee in the morning and then a coffee in the afternoon.  If your pee isn't dark yellow then you're not working hard enough.  Never take breaks for your eyes and body and slouch as much as possible.  Doing otherwise might mean that you don't have a reckless disregard for your health and is a sign of weakness.  Always complain about how you don't have time to exercise and you are so out of shape.  The more out of shape you are and the junkier food you eat the more bonus points you get.  It shows that you only care about your fabulous brain.

7.  Also, never work while listening to music.  Remember, even though the work might consist of being a glorified perl scripter or 'flow runner' that a monkey could do, you got to show that you enjoy it like crazy and you are using that awesome brain of yours at full operating capacity.  Always complain about how the problem you are solving is sooooo complicated.

8.  Dress like a nerd.  The older your clothes the better, especially if they are from your original home country and cost less than $10 per item.  Glasses give you bonus points, especially if you lost your vision after staring at computer screens too long.  Remember, wearing old clothes is a sign of hard work:  it means you didn't have time to shop.  Also, the money is better spent buying dual monitors sized large enough to match your ego.

9.  Never decorate your cube or have anything except a solid computer screen background lest someone think you might have other important things in your life besides work.  If you do decorate it put a bunch of patent and wafer momentos in there so you can you show off your nerditude.

10.  Always work late at night and get into work about 11am.  Remember, the morning is for sleeping and the metabolism and brain is too revved up and thus work can't be accomplished.  Only people that work late at night get work done and it's a true sign of nerddom.  Even if you are doing jack shit make sure to send e-mail every hour starting at 9pm until 3am.

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This e-mail was sent to you by a nerd is not for distribution to other nerds lest they see the light and discover how to increase their nerdiness.

Bike Racer's Training Motto

- Train
- Race
- Eat
- Sleep
- Poop
- Repeat

A-fib in DC's FOH ER

I was in DC Monday-Friday for a training class, but wound up missing the last day of the class and spending half the weekend in the Inova Fair Oaks Hospital (a.k.a. FOH) in Fairfax Va.

Tuesday night, I felt a side-stitch-like pain under my left ribcage, but decided the best thing to do was ignore it and hope it was gone in the morning. It was gone (sort of) by Thursday but I still felt a bit under the weather and the side-stitch had become generalized to what doctors call the left "flank". (I always thought of flanks as being thighs, but I guess that's wrong. Those are loins.) So, Thursday night after class, I went to the Urgent Care across the street from the Hyatt where we were billetted. The doctor asked me a few questions and said, probably a kidney stone, no big deal. He took an x-ray and, sure enough, there was a little white speck 'way down near the bottom edge of the film, which the doctor said indicated I'd already passed the stone into my bladder. He sent me home (well, back to the hotel, that is) with a scrip for tylenol, instructions to drink plenty of fluids, and to call if I experienced any change in my condition. Per doctor's orders, I downed a large bottle of gatorade and a 22 oz beer and, deeming this to have been plenty of fluids, went to sleep on the couch.

I awoke about an hour later experiencing urinary urgency. I was standing over the toilet peeing, and thinking: 1. I had a funny feeling in my abdomen / chest, 2. there was a lot more pee than I had bargained on, but not much was coming out, and 3. it seemed like a good idea to maybe try peeing in the tub instead of the toilet. I don't know why I thought that. I was headed for the tub and had just changed my mind back to the toilet.

6 months later:

I awaken from a deeply peaceful sleep. I'm looking at a distant horizon. It is still. Eternal. Beautiful. No, it's a pattern. A nice pattern. It makes me feel sleepy and peaceful. A pattern that I've seen before. It's the pattern from the carpet in the hotel room where I stayed in Virginia six months ago. What is it doing here? Why is it so close up? I am on the floor, back in the hotel room. Why am I on the floor?

This has happened before. I remember a dream I had once when I was about 5 years old which included a large thumping noise. When I woke up, I was on the floor. How odd, I thought, that Mommy would have moved me from the bed to the floor. I wonder why she did that. It took me a couple of days to put two and two together. So, you see? It happens all the time. Further weight is added to the roll-off-the-couch theory, as I can remember going to sleep on the couch earlier in the evening.

But wait! The couch is way over THERE, and I'm over HERE, outside the bathroom door, near the foot of the bed-- not the couch. Also, I remember getting up to pee after the nap on the couch. How confusing. Humph. Maybe I peed, went back to sleep on the bed, and rolled off that. Endwise. From the foot of the bed. My cheek hurts.

It actually takes about that long to figure out that you have fainted.

I am alone in a hotel room in a strange city, and I have apparently passed out and hit the floor. This makes me very nervous. The adrenaline is starting to pump. My hands are shaky. The doctor said to call if anything happened, if there was any change in my condition. I think this counts. Maybe I should just go back to sleep, and I'll feel better in the morning. No, he said to call. I should call. I call the doctor, and he instructs me very unequivocally to get my ass into an ambulance and get over to the ER. I am not to drive myself. I am not to delay. I am to go, NOW.

I'm embarrassed to bother the hotel staff and make all the fuss an ambulance would create. I try to reach a couple of friends from the class to see if they can drive me, but they don't answer. Oh well. I know from past ER experience that you get better service in the ER if you're brought in by ambulance, so here goes. I make my way down to the hotel desk and I say, very meekly, "I fainted in my room and my doctor says I need to take an ambulance to the hospital." I don't look like a person who needs an ambulance to the hospital. I look fine. "Now?" says the hotel clerk. "Yes, now." I say, echoing my doctor.

The EMT's arrive. They diddle around with my vital signs. They see if my blood pressure changes dramatically between sitting and standing. This is called being something-o-static. It doesn't; I'm not something-o-static. They load me in the ambulance and drive me 5 minutes down the road to FOH. I am alert and responsive. My BP is one-fifty over one-thirty. Do I have a history of high blood pressure? I do not, though I would certainly be interested in reading one, if one were available.

At the ER, a very nice Dr. Gentry (how's that for a name?), probably a couple of years younger than me (but with gray hair, so there) explains, very gently, all the while with a wry smile, that there is a phenomenon called "urinary syncopy," a.k.a. "mictural syncopy" which means, fainting while you pee. Usually strikes older men. Maybe if women stood up more often when they peed, they too would suffer from urinary syncopy. So far, the ER people aren't taking me very seriously. Passed a kidney stone, urinary syncopy, no big deal. Outta here in an hour.

But first we have to do a CAT scan and an ECG; standard operating procedure if you've lost consciousness for any reason. I ask the nurse, an old tyme southern black woman named Gertrude, "what's an ECG?" "Heart monitor" Gertrude says. "What's that gonna show?" I ask. "Probably nothing." she says. A technician rolls a bulky machine into the room. He smears ointment on some plastic pads with snaps on one side, and sticks the pads in various spots all over my chest, snap-side out. He hooks up a bunch of wires from the machine to the pads on my chest. He motions to Gertrude with his head, come over here and take a look. "Hmm" she says, tears off the print-out and takes it over to Dr. Gentry.

Now Dr. Gentry doesn't have the wry funny smile anymore. Now he's grinning rather broadly. "Mr. ___, you're in atrial fibrilation!" He seems happy to have found something really wrong with me. "Oh" I say. "That explains it. I knew I felt a little funny."

- - - - - - - - -

In the interest of brevity, I'm going to cut here directly to the Cardiologist's explanation of atrial fibrilation, (though the cardiologist did not in fact show up until some 8 hours later) thereby skipping over the rather less-satisfactory explanations of (listed in ascending order of satisfactoriness) 1. Gertrude, 2. Jimmy Hicks (another appropriate name), the cardiac nurse and self-proclaimed good ol' southern boy (he made this proclamation after I pointed out his failure to use adverbs), and 3. Dr. Gentry. I shall also be skipping, Dear Reader, over the experience (mild) and results (fascinating) of the echo cardiogram, a technology which allows one to see right inside the heart.

Suffice to say that the Fair Oaks Hospital emergency room isn't nearly as entertaining as the San Francisco General Hospital emergency room. I discussed this with Dr. Gentry, and he opined that SFGH was probably a better place to do your residency, but FOH was probably a better place to make your career and avoid burn-out. SFGH is definitely a more fun place to lie in the ER overnight. My memory of that night is vague, but I must have slept some. I do remember asking whether we could remove the external pacemaker from my chest, since it wasn't sticking too well through all the hair that Jimmy H. had failed to shave completely, and I was rather afraid of the shock the darn thing might give me. This suggestion met with an extremely stern look and a very unequivocal "NO!" from the chief resident, who pointed out that I'd "braded down" (i.e., my heart rate had slowed or paused alarmingly) three times already that night. I hadn't noticed.

- - - - - - - - -

Atrial fibrilation is where the top two chambers of the heart (the atria) are not beating regularly, just wiggling around (fibrillating). This causes the lower two chambers (the ventricles), deprived as they are of the electrical signal from the atria on which they rely as a "cue", to beat irregularly. Aftera couple of days of this, you get blood clots in the atria which can get pumped out to other parts of the body and can cause strokes and other bad things. Eventually, the heart enlarges and weakens. If you don't snap out of it on your own, they have to either medicate or shock the heart back into a normal rhythm.

I spent about a day lying in bed in the cardiac ICU of FOH, staring at the ECG monitor and learning what an atrial fibrillation rhythm looks like. I also found out they have monitors showing all the ICU patients' ECG readouts at the nurses' station, so if you're really into ECG's you can hang out at the nurses' station and just stare at them all (the ECG readouts, not the nurses), and actually begin to get a feel for what the various abnormal patterns look like.

Sometime Friday afternoon two of the instructors from my class came by to visit. I had all those little sticky electrodes glued to my chest with wires leading to the ECG machine, so I looked very authentically ill, though I felt pretty OK by that time. I really felt rather like a malingerer, skipping out of the last day of class for no reason, except I had the whole weight and medical opinion of Fair Oaks Inova Hospital behind me. Anywayz, one of the instructors is apparently one of those people who does not do so well with visiting sick friends in the hospital. He looked ashen and his skin had a waxy, yellow tint. He was stooping over a little and he was breaking a sweat. My nurse took one look at him and wanted to get him down to the ER and work him up for an MI-- a heart attack. He insisted he was OK. She didn't believe him. She wanted to take his vital signs. He again insisted he was OK. I didn't believe him either. He escaped before the nurse could hustle him down to ER, and apparently survived his bout with hospital-visit-induced anxiety (or heart attack, if that's what it was) as I spoke to him a couple of months later and he seemed in fine health. But, I learned that another way to get immediate attention in a hospital is to stoop over, turn gray, and break a sweat: classic signs of a heart attack.

Fortunately, I went back into a normal rhythm all on my own about 6:00 Friday night, so they let me out of the hospital Saturday afternoon. That was one long, dull Saturday.

In the end, I might just as well have stayed at the hotel and slept it off-- they never medicated me, never shocked me, never did any procedures on me at all, except for the ECG and echo. They sent me off with instructions not to drink coffee or take sudafed-- neither of which I had done before going into a-fib. Thinking this over later, I realized that the admonition not to take coffee was somewhat non-sensical, or at least, unscientific. After all, I've been drinking coffee for many years and have never gone into a-fib before. Now, all of a sudden, on a day when I didn't drink coffee (or not much), I go into a-fib. This strikes me as a pretty good statistical proof that coffee does *not* cause a-fib. So I laid off the coffee for a couple of months, then went back to normal.

Epilogue is that I've talked to a number of doctors and cardiologists about this incident in the years since, and the best I can figure is that the kidney stone prompted the urinary syncopy, which prompted the a-fib. Having a low resting heart rate and drinking alcohol could also be contributing factors.

24 Hrs in SF General ER

I had throat surgery, and it turns out some Naproxen I had been taking around that time for a sore shoulder was a bad idea. Either that, or it was some aspirin I took. Or both.

As I found out, aspirin and related drugs can interfere with blood clotting: I went to bed at 10:00 thinking I was just producing a lot of saliva, but I woke up at 12:45 a.m. feeling as if I were gargling on something. I got up and spat it out in the sink, and it was dark red. I started hopping around the kitchen, squeaking "I'm bleeding, I'm bleeding" to K, who shot out of bed and directed me into some sweatpants and a t-shirt. I think I started getting a little bit shocky-- I do not handle the sight of my own blood well-- as K hustled me, tottering, out to the car.

Luckily, our house is about one block from San Francisco General Hospital, and I had just pointed out the emergency entrance to her a couple of days before "in case we ever need it". One way to get immediate attention in the ER is to bleed profusely from the mouth.

I wound up sitting on a gurney in the ER from 1:00 Tuesday morning to about 10:00 Tuesday night, since no rooms were available "upstairs", which is what the ER staff calls the whole rest of the hospital. During my 20-hour stay, I witnessed a day in the life of the ER-- sort of like the TV show, but real and better-- including the results of 2 "MCA's" (motorcycle accidents). The first one, a bearded neanderthal Harley dude who had hit a retaining wall on the 101 and been thrown 20 feet, was groaning into the oxygen mask in such a way that, if you are familiar with pain, you knew he was battling a huge wall of it. He came out later with a bunch of casts and bruises, but conscious and feisty. He wanted a glass of water, which they wouldn't give him, nor would they explain to him why not. Finally I told him on my way to the bathroom "they can't give you water because if they have to operate and put you under, you'll vomit it up and suffocate to death." He was actually grateful for the information (why couldn't THEY tell him?) and we exchanged brothers-in-pain "hang in there, dude"s. They hadn't bothered to clean up his hands and arms, which were covered in black soot, and I wondered whether the soot was a result of his accident, and if so, how, or if he just always kept them that way.

The next MCA was quite a bit worse. The admitting/receptionist/coordinator person shouted "we got an MCA coming in from the 280, people, be here in about 2 minutes, put him in Trauma One, no, Trauma One, get it ready, here THEY COME!" MCA #2 was unconscious and naked on the gurney, handsome, with a good body and a tan, black hair dyed stylishly green, surrounded by a dozen bustling Docs and EMTs. They charged in scattering nurses everywhere. I could hear one of the technicians saying, his voice rising at the end, "his vital signs are in the toilet..." and later "he's gonna die on us, people...". (It's funny how you can tell when people are really serious because they use the word "people" in addressing other people.) After about 10 frantic minutes in Trauma One, a.k.a. TR1, the room right across from where I was parked in the hallway, and into which I had a very good view, they raced him back out and "up to O.R." "Now?" "Yes, NOW!" leaving behind just a sad pile of bloody swabs, tubes, EKG cables, betadyne and plasma. I had plenty of time to contemplate it before the Filipino man came by with his mopset and spray bottles and cleaned it all up. I wished I had a camera so I could send a photo to the Chronicle: this is all that's left of a handsome young man with green hair and a motorcycle.

One of the San Francisco Institutional Police had stuck on the butt of his Glock 9mm sidearm a happy-face sticker, so that it smiled at you when he turned away.

The CHP who came in with MCA #2 revealed in idle chat with the admitting/receptionist/coordinator guy that it had taken her several minutes at the accident scene to realize that a motorcycle had even been involved. She was very young and petite and not at all your image of a CHP officer and she was being very nonchalant about the whole thing-- the bravado, I thought, of the inexperienced.

You knew things weren't good when one of the nurses came around asking if anybody had seen a donor card amongst MCA #2's personal effects. Nobody had. The only effect anybody could produce was a helmet, strangely unscratched. All his clothes had been cut away by EMTs at the scene.

I heard later that they cracked his chest right in the elevator going up to OR, and thanks to electrical stimulation directly on the heart actually got his vital signs back at least for a while. I don't know what happened after that.

Even the old ER pro's seemed a bit shook up by the whole thing, and several people catching sight of the sad little pile of miscellaneous medical equipment and body fluids asked, "Jesus, what happened in TR1?" It took the Filipino man over an hour to get TR1 ready for its next occupant. I had been in there a short time before.

A tiny, skinny addict of absolutely indeterminate sex was whining from an exam room down the hall. "I need to see a doctor or a nurse NOW." Later, "If I don't get medical attention IMMEDIATELY I could very possibly die. We have a death situation here." Etc. Later I saw him/her ambling down the hall with IV tower in tow. He/She did not appear close to death, though he/she looked as if he/she had been trying to get there for a long, long time.

The reception/admitting/coordinator guy was being shouted at by some lowlife/patient in the waiting room who was apparently trying to leave without permission. "You're increasing my stress level!" I suppose doctor's orders against unnecessary stress gave this added authority. The r/a/c guy was nevertheless unimpressed. "You're increasing MY stress level, and if you try to leave, I'll have you restrained. I have the authority to do that." He not only had the authority, he had the physical ability. The principal features of the r/a/c guy were his height, his bristly mustache, and his muscularity. A lot of the staff at SFGH were clearly gay/lesbian, which no doubt helped them identify with the likewise heavily g/l patient population, and the r/a/c guy, tho clearly gay, was also clearly not to be fucked with. (I figured his height at 6'4", tho it's difficult to determine human heights accurately from a prone position on a gurney.) He then instructed the cop with the happy face sticker pistol to restrain the lowlife-patient should the lowlife-patient attempt to leave, and no more was heard from that quarter.

Anywayz, this whole time the bleeding in my throat was slowing, so I just popped Vicodins for the pain, which was unchanged from the entire previous week, napped, and watched the show. It was quite interesting and I was sorry when they finally wheeled me up to a room also occupied by a very articulate gentleman named James, with the bloated red face of a lifetime alcoholic, who had been struck by an automobile whilst crossing the street to seek employment, and who displayed amazing negotiating skills using the telephone all day arranging to borrow money to pay off his bill at the transient hotel where he had been staying before his hospitalization and for a room in a halfway house upon his discharge, which room provided courtesy of SFGH. "The problem is that I'm not ambulatory, so it's impossible for me to recover my belongings from the Krishna (?) and move them to the Alder without transportation of some type, so if you could help me in my situation..." He was so well-spoken and obviously intelligent, albeit with the ego-less deference of the longtime alky, that I would have felt strongly compelled to advise him, were I his career counselor, that he should pursue financial sales of some type: insurance, real estate, or negotiable securities, preferably in a capacity where he would not have to meet clients face-to-face too frequently. Perhaps he once was.

They let me out Thursday morning around 11:00, and I managed to stay away all of 12 hours. No shock this time, I'd seen the blood before. I even waited an hour or two thinking I could make it stop, but I couldn't. So back I went, the very same admitting nurse was there and said, "Weren't you here Tuesday night, and wasn't I sitting right here?" Yes indeedy. A young med student wrote me up, while a guy (doc? RN?) with a huge beard, a dead ringer for Jim Hansen, quizzed him: "What's the first thing you need to worry about with bleeding like this?" "Um..." "Airway. Anything you gotta do to keep that airway open. That'll be on all the exams." Right. Seconds later, I gagged and coughed up a huge blood clot. It looked like what's leftover when a cat is done with a mouse. K screeched and hopped back, the Jim Hansen look-alike said, "It's OK, it's OK, it's just a blood clot." K apologized and made I-feel-foolish gestures, I looked up at the med student and said, "Yep, airway. I could choke on something like that." By that time, I was getting pretty inured to the sight of blood.

To make a long story slightly less long, I spent only 6 hours in the ER this time, in the care of one very competent and likeable Doctor Abati, who laughed at all my jokes. But I felt a lot worse. I was bleeding pretty badly the whole time, and swallowing most of it, which nauseates. They would have taken me upstairs to cauterize the site, but they couldn't tell exactly where it was, and they would've had to wait until 8:00 a.m. anyway since I'd eaten the night before. It finally stopped about 6:00 a.m., and back up I went, this time to a private room in the same ward, where I slept most of the day. I came home the next day noonish, feeling weak. I was hoping to feel better today, but I woke up still weak, apparently from blood loss, so I'm on alert for any further bleeding. They tell me my "hematocrit" which is normally about 40, was about 30 when I left, so I've supposedly lost a quarter to a third of my red blood cells. The ENT doc on my case says if I get to 25 for any reason, they'll transfuse me-- not a very attractive prospect, considering SFGH is THE headquarters in San Francisco for AIDS and substance-abuse patients, and I understand they still aren't sure whether the filters catch every last speck of AIDS virus in whole blood.

So, I'm taking it easy, popping iron pills and eating spinach. When I start feeling better in a week or two, I can begin looking for a job. Hope that won't be as much of a bloodbath as the past week. It's been grand.

Cure for muscle cramps in endurance athletes

Came across a tiny ad in the back of a cycling magazine a couple of years ago, that said simply, "NO MORE CRAMPS!" At the time, I was suffering from severe muscle cramps on long rides, and even short rides were becoming a challenge-- I cramped once after 25 miles. With my tether getting shorter and shorter, I was considering giving up cycling. I had no idea what was causing the muscle cramps, and I was desperate for information. I hungrily read every word on the web site referenced in the ad. It made sense. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I tried their product, E-Lyte Sport. That was my introduction to cramp-free riding. I had really never experienced before what it felt like for my legs to ache from fatigue WITHOUT cramping!

Since then, I've read more on muscle cramps and their causes. As near as I can tell, the fact is that no one has definitively shown what is the mechanism behind cramping, but all indications point to a lack of electrolytes as the culprit: i.e., magnesium, potassium, and sodium in the form of salts, plus calcium. I created a spreadsheet to analyze the various popular sports supplements for their content of these critical ingredients, and the answer is clear: E-Lyte Sport is the most efficient, most economical way to go. Today my method is to take calcium / magnesium supplement pills (cheap and easily available at any health food store and most grocery stores-- Trader Joe's sells a good version) along with E-Lyte Sport on every ride. I'm in my forties, that year I finished one particular century ride I'd been doing regularly for 15 years in PR time and it seemed easy. No cramps.

My advice to any neophyte cyclist is this: don't pay any attention to the idiots who say, "did you drink enough water? Did you stretch?" (How many times have I heard this?) These things have NOTHING TO DO WITH PREVENTING CRAMPS! In regards to stretching: It's true you can "work out" a cramp by stretching, but as soon as you get back on the bike, you'll cramp again. And no amount of stretching will prevent cramps if you're low on electrolytes. As for water: The symptoms of dehydration are totally different from the symptoms of electrolyte depletion. Drinking more and more water will NOT prevent muscle cramps, but it will cause hyponatremia-- water poisoning. I've had mild hyponatremia (on the Death Ride, where I wound up peeing 25 times in one day). Hyponatremia can kill you. If you have any doubts about this, check the newspaper accounts earlier this year (2005) of the frat kid up in Chico, who died from drinking too much water in a hazing stunt.

Finally, don't pay attention to the "you just need to eat more salt" folks, either. Yes, it's true, whereas most people in our society take in more salt (i.e., sodium chloride) than necessary considering their level of physical activity, as an endurance athlete you will quite possibly need more salt than is available in your regular diet. Possibly way more, depending on your level of activity, how much you sweat, and how much processed food you eat. So while we've all been trained to think, "salt: bad!" the fact is that if, like me, you are a heavily perspiring endurance athlete who eats a healthy diet of non-processed foods, then you probably need to make a conscious effort to take in *more* salt-- not less. How much more? Well, if you get a headache after eating a salty meal, that was too much salt. All that said, this will be NECESSARY BUT NOT SUFFICIENT to prevent muscle cramps. You STILL NEED all the other electrolytes mentioned above.

So take your calcium supplements and drink E-Lyte sport.

There. That is what I have to share. Thanks for reading. I hope this helps someone out there.

The other Major Pillar of Western Civilization (MPWC) is the Judeo-Christian Pillar. Let us travel backwards in time to-- when? We don't know, really. Probably sometime around 1500 BCE (again, that's "Before the Common Era"). After Zoroaster, but a thousand years or so before the flowering of Greek civilization, in any case. At this time, a local macher-- a big cheese, a wheeler-dealer-- living somewhere near Hebron, was sitting in the door of his tent in the heat of the day, when three men approached. This seemingly unremarkable event signaled the inception of Western Civilization. How so? These three were no ordinary desert dignitaries. They carried a special message to our macher: the old order was over. The continuous, unending and monotonous spiral of existence, which none could ever escape, was thereupon revoked. Old age inevitable, you say? Death and taxes the only certainties, you say? Hah! Our macher was to have a new thought: anything is possible. Life is not a death spiral, but an upward progression-- halting perhaps, but upward.

You may have guessed by now that the macher to whom I refer was Abraham-- still calling himself Avram at the time-- and his visitors none other than Avram's god, El, and two angels. Now, please bear in mind, I am not putting forth any particular opinion on the theological veracity of this event. That is, whether God can manifest as a person, whether there *IS* a God in the first place, etc., etc., etc.-- I leave all those questions to greater minds than mine. The significance, for my purposes, is that a thought was born. God's shattering message, specifically, that Avram's wife, Sarai (later Sarah), a perfectly ordinary old woman, would bear a child in her dotage, meant that 1. Miracles can happen 2. to ordinary people 3. in defiance of the inevitable cycles of life and death 4. thereby creating a future that is different, worthwhile, better.

Now, take a moment to compare that 4-part statement to your own worldview, and ponder: which is the more remarkable, that you already believed it implicitly, or that no one had ever had this thought before Avram?

If this event was the inception of Western Civilization, then the birth took place some years later. One day, our macher took his son on a little hike...

to be continued

One more thing about Starbucks

Has anyone else realized that Starbucks provides a de facto social safety net in answer to our nation's healthcare woes? All's ya gotta do is get yourself a 20-hour-a-week job slinging java in the local Jolly Green Coffee Giant and-- presto!-- you're covered by the very same health insurance policy as the CEO. Not bad, eh?

Oh, incidentally, today I actually received *mediocre* service in a Starbucks. Yes, folks, the kid behind the counter was slow. And kinda dopey acting. And not only that, I specifically specified *room* in my iced venti drip, and when I received it, there was a distinct *lack* of room. Hmmph!

A tiny, miniscule chink in the armor of the Great Green Bean Machine?

East vs. West

What we are witnessing in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon today-- indeed, in London, New York and everywhere else-- is a continuation of the 2,500 year-old War Between East and West.

"2,500 years?!" I hear you cry. "I thought it started with the Crusades, weren't they only about 1,000 years ago?" Well, yes, they were, but I believe in order to trace the origins of this conflict, you have to go back even further than the Crusades; in fact, you have to go 'way further: about 1,500 years futher, all the way to ancient Greece.

See, back in about 500 BCE (that's "Before the Common Era") the Greeks invented a new way of thinking. We call it rationality, or logic. (The word comes from the Greek word Logos. Not sure what the connection is to sleazy marketing gimmicks, but whatever.) This way of thinking is so natural to us today, it seems unfathomable that it actually had to be invented. But there you have it: nobody had done it before them. The new way of thinking worked so well, they used it for everything. Like a shiny new toy, they brought it with them everywhere. You can see this if you read some ancient Greek manuscripts (in English of course-- I'm not that much of an egghead.) They introduce all kinds of convoluted logic in places where we wouldn't even think of it. For example, if you read Xenophon's account of his march back from Babylon through Asia Minor, he records a number of discourses by high-ranking generals, himself included, which are so erudite and confusing in their logic, that I, for one, have trouble following them. (I won't go over my credentials, but I ain't no slouch when it comes to parsing out logical statements-- or accounts of military exploits, for that matter. But I digress.) And some of these were speeches to the troops! The Greeks saw rationality as such a virtue, that the more convoluted the logic, the better-- to the point where even the ordinary Greek footsoldier was pleased and persuaded by very high-falutin' rational arguments. (One wonders whether the troops really followed them, or just viewed the debates as a sort of spectacle-- much as we judge the outcome of a presidential debate not by whose arguments were sounder, but by the charisma quotient of the candidates.)

Now, building on this new way of thinking, the Greeks came up with an altogether new idea: the proposition that the Polis (i.e., the city state-- prototype of our modern nation) consisted of independent, thinking, rational individuals whose ideas were important and who should have a say in how the Polis was run. And the leader of the Polis owed his station to the agreement of these men (and only men-- not women: they weren't that enlightened).

The idea is called Democracy. Not everyone bought in. The Persians-- the Greeks' neighbors to the east-- for example, didn't want anything to do with it. They saw things in completely opposite terms. To them, the Emperor was divine, and all the human beings under his reign owed *their* existence to *him*. This is gruesomely illustrated by the story of the noble courtesan, himself a wealthy and powerful man, who requested of the Emperor that his youngest son be allowed to stay home instead of participating in a campaign. In this way, the man could be assured of having at least one son to take care of him in his old age. The Emperor was outraged, and his response-- a sort of Satanic parody of Solomon-- was to order the boy cut in half lengthwise, with the halves of the corpse placed on opposite sides of the army's course of march, as a quaint sort of gateway. Thus he reminded his subjects that they lived at his pleasure, that they lived to serve him, that they owed everything-- their very lives, even-- to him.

And where was the mighty Persian army marching to? To conquer Greece. The Greeks fought as men fighting for their freedom will: tooth and nail. Though they were outnumbered, they held off and then defeated the Persians-- notably at Thermopylae and Salamis. Had they lost, ancient Greece would have become nothing more than a minor outpost on the western fringe of the great Persian Empire. Had they lost, there would be no such thing as "western civilization". Had they lost, I would not be writing this, you would not be reading it, and your entire outlook on life, the human condition, right and wrong, would be completely different.

To quote Edith Hamilton at length:

"Five hundred years before Christ in a little town on the far western border of the settled and civilized world, a strange new power was at work. Something had awakened in the minds and spirits of the men there which was so to influence the world that the slow passage of long time, of century upon century and the shattering changes they brought, would be powerless to wear away that deep impress. Athens had entered upon her brief and magnificent flowering of genius which so molded the world of mind and of spirit that our mind and spirit to-day are different. We think and feel differently because of what a little Greek town did during a century or two, twenty-four hundred years ago. What was then produced of art and of thought has never been surpassed and very rarely equalled, and the stamp of it is upon all the art and all the thought of the Western world. And yet this full stature of greatness came to pass at a time when the mighty civilizations of the ancient world had perished and the shadow of 'effortless barbarism' was dark upon the earth. In that black and fierce world a little centre of white-hot spiritual energy was at work. A new civilization had arisen in Athens, unlike all that had gone before."

Work in web commerce, do you? Bent on changing the world, are you? How much of your thought and effort will remain in the year 4545-- if man is still alive?

But there are two pillars of Western Civilization. So much for the Greek pillar.

to be continued

Further thots on Starbucks

A reader writes,

Haven't read it all, but there is some great stuff on your blog. Of course, I don't agree with everything you say (but I'll defend to the..., well, maybe not, but still I'm glad you're saying it.).

Here's something you said that I disagree with: "But I just can’t dislike a company whose service and product is so darn good (well, at least, the drip coffee is good..."

I agree the folks at starbucks are cheerful, and helpful, but the drip coffee tastes bad. We can argue about tastes all day long, but I have an iron-clad logical proof of my assertion as well: (1) All coffee that is super bitter and acidic is bad (2) Starbucks coffee is super bitter and acidic (3) Therefore, Starbucks coffee is bad. So lets leave that aside. An idea occurred to me yesterday. The set-up was this: I was in the mall, and got a craving for a coffee. But I found that coffee stands were all closed. I asked the girls at the information booth what had happened. Turns out the coffee stands were closed in transition to Starbucks taking over all coffee vending in the mall. So I said, and this proves I am not just asserting that Starbucks coffee sucks to be contrarian, "Don't you think Starbucks coffee is bad?" Girl 1, "NO! I love the white chocolate mocha!" I,"No, but the drip coffee..." Girls 1&2 almost in unison, "Oh, yeah, I never drink the coffee." I think this is true of many Starbucks customers. I, for example, dislike their coffee but really like their hot chocolate. Starbucks started out as a coffee shop, but now it has caramel, whip cream, chocolate sauce and iced drinks. It occurred to me that Starbucks has evolved to fill the niche formerly occupied by soda shops. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_shop)

--Pat


That's a good point about the soda shop transition and niche-filling thing. Until now, I had been thinking of Starbucks in almost opposite terms, i.e., they specialize in drip coffee, which they do really well (IMHO-- obviously not everyone agrees, but more on that later) but they don't actually do the Italian specialty drinks very well. For example, if you order a cappuccino in Starbucks, the quality is variable, but generally poor. The foam is weak, the bubbles are big and fragile-- it looks like sea foam. (Deliberately nauseating simile.) If you order a cappuccino at Greco or Steps of Rome in North Beach, the foam is so thick you can prop up a spoon in it and the texture is like velvet. It makes me cry.

But, I don't fault Starbucks for that, because they performed a huge, huge service in just bringing decent ordinary drip coffee to small towns all across the US. Just because here in SF we're spoiled and can get Euro-quality fancy espresso drinks by snapping our fingers, big deal.

So, I don't order cappuccinos in Starbucks, just as I don't buy sushi at Safeway.

But now, as you've pointed out, they have added to their original business model with these sugary, cloying drinks targeted at folks (like your mall chicks) who don't really drink real coffee. Brilliant! I have no problem with that, either. If some people want to down 2,000 calories in a single Venti Gulp, fine with me. Our next door neighbor works at Starbucks HQ and has warned us that the primary ingredient in many of these fancy drinks is, in fact, sugar syrup.

They *still* don't do the traditional Italian specialty drinks well, but so what, I live in SF so if I want a cappuccino I can always go to Steps of Rome.

On the Starbucks coffee acidity/bitterness issue, I have had the same experience with Peet's Coffee as you have had with Starbucks. Peet's always tastes bitter and acidic to me. At least, it does when I get it at the Peet's storefront locations. This has been very consistent. I tried to like Peet's for several years, back in my "hate Starbucks" mode, but finally gave up, because I just couldn't drink Peet's. Contrariwise, I started out thinking Starbucks' coffee was too strong (not acidic, just too strong) but I gradually got used to it and now I *like* my coffee strong. I do put a lot of cream in it if it's hot, though. (I drink a lot of iced coffee, too, and it doesn't seem to need cream. Not sure why that should be, but temperature definitely affects the lingual flavor receptor strunods-- witness American cold beer vs English "cellar temp" beer.)

Now for the past 3 years I've been drinking the excellent coffee at my place of work, and I just realized a couple of months ago that it's Peet's! But the coffee at work never tastes acidic or bitter: it's great! I understand that acidic flavors may be due to using too fine a grind. I checked the grind at work one day when the cafeteria staff left one of the humongous urn filters out on the counter, and it looked perfect for regular drip coffee. No surprise there. So maybe the problem at the storefront Peet'ses is that they grind too fine? Seems weird, though. Why would they do that?

It also seems weird that your lingual flavor receptor strunods and mine would come up with such opposite results on Starbucks, but there you have it. No accounting for taste.

On another coffee-tasting note, I once purchased and brewed a quarter pound of Jamaica Blue Mountain, which I had read was the greatest coffee ever. It should be, at $40/lb. I was not impressed. It tasted weak. I've tried various coffees over the years, and I understand that the roasting is critical, the storage, the grind, etc. etc. etc., even which mountainside it grew on-- but I've found that Colombian is always the best.

PS, for anyone out there who likes Starbucks' coffee, supposedly it's available quite a bit cheaper at Costco branded as "Kirkland", their house brand. I'm using it now and it's good.