So I did 14.2 this morning, and was humbled once again: I was only able to get 81 reps, which is far short of what I thought I would be able to get. I didn't even get to the third round. My right hand ripped while doing the pullups, which may be part of the reason I did not do well.
Not only that, but Jason -- a close competitor -- was able to beat me by 2 reps at 83 (he ripped too, much worse than I did). So overall it was a pretty crappy day overall. I want to retest, but my hand is ripped, so I'm debating if I can get some palm protectors and redo it in a day or two.
The overhead squats aren't an issue at all -- I was able to do them all unbroken. It's definitely the pull-ups that burn you out, especially if doing regular kipping instead of butterfly kipping. I'm tempted to re-do and pace myself slower and break up the pull-ups into smaller groups. I really need to work on my butterfly pullups.
Argh. The open has been far more frustrating than rewarding. I'm understanding more and more why people don't sign up for it....maybe I need to lower my expectations for myself.
Friday, March 7, 2014
Thursday, March 6, 2014
14.2 wow
So the 14.2 open workout is posted, and I'm watching the two beasts duke it out on the YouTube livestream. It's freaking impressive.
It's an evil workout: an increasing 95# overhead squat / c2b pullup couplet with fixed 3 minute rounds. So any time left in each 3 minute round is rest, but the reps go from 10/10 x 2 to 12/12, 14/14, etc.
It's pretty clear that the kicker here is the rest time. The strategy is either to go super hard on the movements and maximize rest or stay even throughout the movements. For beast mode athletes, they are definitely going the former, but for us mere mortals, we'll have to go even throughout to not burn out. Watching the two top athletes do this, the limiting factor looks to be the pullups, where the arms just burn out or you rip. (320 reps is crazy good)
After being humbled in the first open workout, I'm hoping that I can get through 14.2 with 2.5 rounds, or 116 reps. I'm going to split up the pullups to make sure I don't burn out. I'm strong on the overhead squats (regularly squatting over 300 makes 95# look...relieving), so I'm not too worried about those.
Tonight, I'm going to work on my shoulder mobility and try to get the system ready to go for this one...
It's an evil workout: an increasing 95# overhead squat / c2b pullup couplet with fixed 3 minute rounds. So any time left in each 3 minute round is rest, but the reps go from 10/10 x 2 to 12/12, 14/14, etc.
It's pretty clear that the kicker here is the rest time. The strategy is either to go super hard on the movements and maximize rest or stay even throughout the movements. For beast mode athletes, they are definitely going the former, but for us mere mortals, we'll have to go even throughout to not burn out. Watching the two top athletes do this, the limiting factor looks to be the pullups, where the arms just burn out or you rip. (320 reps is crazy good)
After being humbled in the first open workout, I'm hoping that I can get through 14.2 with 2.5 rounds, or 116 reps. I'm going to split up the pullups to make sure I don't burn out. I'm strong on the overhead squats (regularly squatting over 300 makes 95# look...relieving), so I'm not too worried about those.
Tonight, I'm going to work on my shoulder mobility and try to get the system ready to go for this one...
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Pet Peeve
As I live in LA, I spend a lot of time in traffic -- thankfully less than many others. It's pretty much par for the course for all of us. When stopped in a parking lot of a boulevard during rush hour, I get a chance to look over and see what other people are doing. I got to do the same thing when I rode a bus to work every day. And almost every day, I see someone with their head pointed down towards their lap, texting away while driving. Presumably they could be surfing the internet or navigating a map or something but you can often recognize the thumb moving to the predetermined keyboard locations at the bottom of the screen.
This drives me absolutely bat shit crazy. This kills people, and even at best, you're holding up the people behind you and causing worse traffic because the light is green and you're not moving. I get that checking your messages while all of traffic is stopped for minutes at a time is appealing -- I've certainly felt the draw. But I'm not talking about quickly checking the messages while stopped. I've seen people doing 70 and texting with both hands. Seriously?
(Number 2 on the crazy list is people who hold their phones out away from their heads, talking into it like talking into an ice cream sandwich.)
What I want is an app, device, whatever, that blocks people from texting or using their phones while driving. Maybe it detects if it's moving quickly and being held in one hand, maybe it's a radar gun thing that I can point at other cars and it shuts down their phone communication or something. Whatever it is, it's got to save lives.
A simple start might be an app that runs in the background of the phone that disables / slows down SMS or phone calls when it detects its going faster than some speed. (Parents could force their teenagers to have it installed on their phones.) But it would not be able to detect if you were a passenger in a car or on a train, and you could still text at low speeds, so it's not perfect. Maybe if it were able to detect if the phone is held by one hand (not sure if there is a way to detect that)
Perhaps another approach is that the app could detect sound, and if the sound ahead and to the immediate left were louder than the sound to the right and behind, it would sense that you were in the driver's seat and stop texts. However, you could fool it with loud music, or it would get false-positives even if you weren't driving. But maybe that would be detectable by very small vibrations you normally get in a car.
Anyways, maybe this is something I'm going to hack on in more detail, because it drives me crazy.
This drives me absolutely bat shit crazy. This kills people, and even at best, you're holding up the people behind you and causing worse traffic because the light is green and you're not moving. I get that checking your messages while all of traffic is stopped for minutes at a time is appealing -- I've certainly felt the draw. But I'm not talking about quickly checking the messages while stopped. I've seen people doing 70 and texting with both hands. Seriously?
(Number 2 on the crazy list is people who hold their phones out away from their heads, talking into it like talking into an ice cream sandwich.)
A simple start might be an app that runs in the background of the phone that disables / slows down SMS or phone calls when it detects its going faster than some speed. (Parents could force their teenagers to have it installed on their phones.) But it would not be able to detect if you were a passenger in a car or on a train, and you could still text at low speeds, so it's not perfect. Maybe if it were able to detect if the phone is held by one hand (not sure if there is a way to detect that)
Perhaps another approach is that the app could detect sound, and if the sound ahead and to the immediate left were louder than the sound to the right and behind, it would sense that you were in the driver's seat and stop texts. However, you could fool it with loud music, or it would get false-positives even if you weren't driving. But maybe that would be detectable by very small vibrations you normally get in a car.
Anyways, maybe this is something I'm going to hack on in more detail, because it drives me crazy.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
A Different Cause of San Francisco's Housing Problem
There is certainly no shortage of coverage of the ongoing debate in San Francisco, with protests, rising housing prices, and this guy. They keep it interesting!
Having lived in San Francisco twice before, I know a bit about what is going on. I don't live there now, and I can't call myself a life-long die-hard San Francsican, so my opinions are probably biased or probably perceived as unimportant compared to those who do/are. But I have lived there long enough and in enough different places in the city to know a sliver about what's really happening.
First, the common facts:
- Housing prices have skyrocketed in San Francisco, up over 13% in one year. If you had invested at the very top height of the housing boom in 2008, and sold today, you would have made money
- Rent prices increased by roughly the same amount
- Over the next 25 years, another 150K people are expected to move into the city
This sets up a pretty logical supply-demand problem. The conventional thinking is that the problem is a short supply of housing coupled with a surge in demand from tech workers who either work at startups in the city or commute by shuttle down to the south bay. And the prices are rising as a natural economic result. However, I think it doesn't ask the deeper, and more interesting question: why?
Multiple quotes have hinted that it is very difficult to get new housing in San Francisco -- probably because most current residents don't want massive high rises blocking their view (also sometimes passed off as "don't want it changing the skyline/culture of the city" ). So the very rich people who own very expensive houses in the city don't want anyone else to come in and "ruin" it -- surprise, surprise. It's not all that this is wrong, per se, but it's a story that could be true in any city anywhere. This can be fixed by building more housing units, getting more city permits expedited, working out high rises with NIMBYs, fixing rent control rules, etc. Typical, every day city-planning problems.
The supply question is pretty straightforward, but the more interesting question, one that illustrates how people behave, is: why is demand surging in San Francisco? For a slew of these tech workers that work in the South Bay (I used to be one of them!) the prospect of living in the city as opposed to somewhere closer to work is, well, nearly silly: Commute 2+ hours a day on a cramped bus in some of the worst traffic in the US, get home late at night, pay one of the most outrageous rents in the world (insert New York and Tokyo laughing here), deal with freezing cold weather, lack of reasonable public transportation, chronic homeless problems, crime, and more... why? Most of these articles just say young people "prefer the culture of city". As if they were going to museums all weekend.
Now for something completely different. Let's look at a map.
This is a rough travel route from the city down to Facebook main campus (the leftmost pin). Google and Apple are the middle and lower-right pins, respectively. If you draw out a line from each of these pins to the city and spin it around in 360 degrees, the commute could take employees of these companies to almost every city in the bay area (and from Apple, all the way to Garlic Capital of the World.) Granted, the traffic on some of these routes are worse than others, but you get the point: since these employees could live in any place in the whole bay area, why live in the most expensive, "problematic" one? San Jose is much closer, why aren't employees flocking there and gentrifying those neighborhoods instead?
There are a couple of hypotheses -- San Francisco:
Having lived in San Francisco twice before, I know a bit about what is going on. I don't live there now, and I can't call myself a life-long die-hard San Francsican, so my opinions are probably biased or probably perceived as unimportant compared to those who do/are. But I have lived there long enough and in enough different places in the city to know a sliver about what's really happening.
First, the common facts:
- Housing prices have skyrocketed in San Francisco, up over 13% in one year. If you had invested at the very top height of the housing boom in 2008, and sold today, you would have made money
- Rent prices increased by roughly the same amount
- Over the next 25 years, another 150K people are expected to move into the city
This sets up a pretty logical supply-demand problem. The conventional thinking is that the problem is a short supply of housing coupled with a surge in demand from tech workers who either work at startups in the city or commute by shuttle down to the south bay. And the prices are rising as a natural economic result. However, I think it doesn't ask the deeper, and more interesting question: why?
Multiple quotes have hinted that it is very difficult to get new housing in San Francisco -- probably because most current residents don't want massive high rises blocking their view (also sometimes passed off as "don't want it changing the skyline/culture of the city" ). So the very rich people who own very expensive houses in the city don't want anyone else to come in and "ruin" it -- surprise, surprise. It's not all that this is wrong, per se, but it's a story that could be true in any city anywhere. This can be fixed by building more housing units, getting more city permits expedited, working out high rises with NIMBYs, fixing rent control rules, etc. Typical, every day city-planning problems.
The supply question is pretty straightforward, but the more interesting question, one that illustrates how people behave, is: why is demand surging in San Francisco? For a slew of these tech workers that work in the South Bay (I used to be one of them!) the prospect of living in the city as opposed to somewhere closer to work is, well, nearly silly: Commute 2+ hours a day on a cramped bus in some of the worst traffic in the US, get home late at night, pay one of the most outrageous rents in the world (insert New York and Tokyo laughing here), deal with freezing cold weather, lack of reasonable public transportation, chronic homeless problems, crime, and more... why? Most of these articles just say young people "prefer the culture of city". As if they were going to museums all weekend.
Now for something completely different. Let's look at a map.
This is a rough travel route from the city down to Facebook main campus (the leftmost pin). Google and Apple are the middle and lower-right pins, respectively. If you draw out a line from each of these pins to the city and spin it around in 360 degrees, the commute could take employees of these companies to almost every city in the bay area (and from Apple, all the way to Garlic Capital of the World.) Granted, the traffic on some of these routes are worse than others, but you get the point: since these employees could live in any place in the whole bay area, why live in the most expensive, "problematic" one? San Jose is much closer, why aren't employees flocking there and gentrifying those neighborhoods instead?
There are a couple of hypotheses -- San Francisco:
- Is the only city in the area where you can walk to restaurants and bars, and generally live without a car
- Is the only city in the area where there is a significant population of singles (Santa Barbara is #1! It worked for me...)
- Is the only city in the area that is not one gigantic strip mall
Indeed, if you ask any of the young people who live in the Bay Area, the common refrain is "if you're single, live in the city". And "downtown Palo Alto is 'ok'", maybe because of all the Stanford students. And therein lies the problem. Check what rents are like in downtown Palo Alto -- not too different than San Francisco. Who knew that young single people want to live next to each other?
San Francisco is perceived as the only halfway decent place to live if you are single (and "University Ave is ok, I guess") in that entire radius. Why isn't San Jose perceived as good for dating, as it is bigger and over a million people call it home? Because to meet anyone, you have to drive there, and there is actually no "there" to drive to. Downtown San Jose? Yeah...no. It's a lovely place for families, and is a very nice place to settle.
What's the real problem with San Francisco's housing? San Jose. Young single people commuting 2+ hours on buses every day are running away from the south bay to the lone island of not-needing-a-car-and-might-actually-meet-someone town.
How do we solve the ongoing housing problems in San Francisco? One solution is to build a whole bunch of high rises in one of the most seismically active places on Earth, cramming more people onto landfill, and have the same problems in 2 years. The demand will rise to meet the supply, and those new units will fill up and rent for outrageous prices, and we've just hit refresh on the whole issue.
Instead, the area could design a place for young, single people somewhere else. It's not like they haven't tried. (But it's still not the right formula: you still need a car to get anywhere.) Make it so they don't need cars, so they can walk to many bars and restaurants, has housing that isn't all tract houses, and live in a place that has things to do for single people without kids. And isn't freezing in the summer.
Since that takes decades to build, even with the right political will, why not improve the public transportation that takes people to and from the city? Imagine a train that ran once every 20 minutes, had 3 stops, ran 24/7, and got people to the city in under 30 minutes (and had a stop in the Mission, and in Northbeach)? There would be a lot more young people living at the stops in the south bay.
I'm sure that my opinions may be lost in the sea of others' opinions on how to fix the problem. And maybe these ideas aren't unique. But can't we agree that fixing some of the problems of San Fran's housing might lie in fixing the system that generates the demand, rather than just bailing water?
Monday, March 3, 2014
Delicious Crack Delivered by Children
You know what I'm talking about when you see stuff like this:
Pure. Cut. Cookie Crack. 2+ pounds of saturated fatty goodness, that helps our future leaders learn business skills. Probably isn't going to do my weight any favors, but I know I'm making the world a better place.
Remember to do your part and support your local Girl Scouts!
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Filler Words
I'm finding today is a difficult day to come up with some thoughtful ideas. I thought I'd just write a stream of consciousness that will, in hindsight 20 years from now, seem insightful.
I spotted an article today about public speaking, and this article described the best thing you can do is practice a presentation before you do it -- like, a lot. This helps you filter out things like "filler words" ("um"). I'm especially terrible at plying many "ums" in my presentations, since often I'm nervous. Public speaking is one of my own perceived glaring weaknesses, as it were.
But I've found that many of the presentations that I have to give are often last-minute, built-by-committee fraken-decks that have other people's words all over them. It's impossible to practice these without time and without the freedom to say what I want to. If it were entirely my work and I had more than a day to practice, I'm sure I'd be a lot better at it.
Maybe my next 30 days' challenge will be working on my public speaking?
I spotted an article today about public speaking, and this article described the best thing you can do is practice a presentation before you do it -- like, a lot. This helps you filter out things like "filler words" ("um"). I'm especially terrible at plying many "ums" in my presentations, since often I'm nervous. Public speaking is one of my own perceived glaring weaknesses, as it were.
But I've found that many of the presentations that I have to give are often last-minute, built-by-committee fraken-decks that have other people's words all over them. It's impossible to practice these without time and without the freedom to say what I want to. If it were entirely my work and I had more than a day to practice, I'm sure I'd be a lot better at it.
Maybe my next 30 days' challenge will be working on my public speaking?
Saturday, March 1, 2014
ProductCamp LA
I had the great opportunity to attend Productcamp.la (un-confernece for product managers in LA) today, where we had some strong speakers -- Rich Mironov gave a really spectacular talk (I have a lot to learn). It was good networking with so many other product managers in the LA area. Kudos to the organizers to making it happen.
A couple of things that I picked up while at the conference:
A couple of things that I picked up while at the conference:
- Many, if not most, product managers are "INTJ" on Meyers-Briggs, which is pretty profound. INTJs make up 1-2% of the entire population. Cross that by the common requirements for a PM -- eng undergrad, masters degree, experience -- and they're pretty rare.
- Product management can be done well enough, be done really well, and be done brilliantly -- and I need to step up and be brilliant rather than "ok". And brilliance is earned through experience.
- There are a lot more product managers in west LA than I thought. There were 200+ of us!
- It's really weird to be around hundreds of product managers. It's like being in a convention of unicorns.
- Agile. Scrum. XP. Waterfall. Wagile. It was a constant drumbeat of "well-established development methodologies" that eventually grated on my soul. Does all this shit really matter? Whatever happened to "getting it done fast" and iterating?
Anyways, it was a great experience, and I got to see how so many other PMs do their work.
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