Super Sunday (aka the Iron Chef is a pansy)

This weekend was crazy packed. No, it wasn't from all wild partying, which is definitely not my usual weekend fare anyhow. I spent a most of the weekend cooking up a storm. Now that we're eating 5-6 times a day (smaller meals), cooking lots of food is a necessity. I spent almost all Sunday (and part of Saturday) making all our food for the week:

1. tofu veggie soup
2. sticky rice with tofu, black mushroom, and mixed veggies
3. stir-fried Chinese broccoli with black beans
   
4. stir-fried tofu with broccoli and mushrooms in bean sauce
   
5. one pot of mung bean soup
6. two crocks of red bean soup
7. 3 loaves (really 1 regular, and two mini) of honey whole wheat bread
8. cornbread
9. lavash (actually my attempt at crackers which inadvertently turned into flatbread)
10. baked marinated tofu

I also made extra mirepoix for a tomato sauce which Gen actually finished because I was too tired/lazy after my cooking marathon to finish. Gen also made the vegannaise for our salad and sandwich dinner.

Believe it or not, I had actually contemplated three more food items (quesadillas, Thai curry, and pesto), but I was lacking in either ingredients or energy. As much food as that is, I actually anticipate needing to cook more by Friday. *Sigh*, cooking is a never-ending task. At least all this homemade food is tasty.

Oh, and yes, the Iron Chef is a pansy. He has several helpers and a spacious, well-equipped kitchen. He also doesn't have to do the dishes.

You just can't make this stuff up

Gen found this gem on the local library catalog the other day (click on picture to see it full size). I know a lot of financial schemes are scams that prey on the gullible and weak-minded, but maybe the librarian overreacted just a bit with this book.

Punching holes in the corporate box

I really think Verizon customer support is truly incompetent. My DSL saga finally ended today when a repair tech actually came to fix our problem. I know it's not much of a saga compared to some of the horror stories I read about online. Some people wait months to get Verizon to repair their problem. That level of customer service is really unacceptable. Verizon really tries to make it as hard as possible to get in touch with a human, and then the human agents follow a pretty strict script to deal with your problem. It's so rare to find a support agent who will think and operate out of the [largely unhelpful] standard corporate procedure.

I can understand the need for scripting to a degree, but it is pretty insulting to my intelligence and probably multitudes of other customers. Considering that I managed to get a Ph.D. in engineering and make a living troubleshooting problems, it's particularly annoying having to deal with first tier tech support. You'd think I wouldn't have to constantly go through the same song and dance after having called 5 previous times. Eventually I got so fed up, I rattled off a little tirade the last time I called. It went something along these lines:

I've already called 5 times, and my problem has not been resolved. I have no dial tone and no DSL. I've power cycled my modem several times to no effect. I've plugged and unplugged the cables to check for loose connections. I've switched the ends of the cables plugged into the modem and wall jack. I've tried three different cables, two of which are Verizon provided. There are no other devices plugged into any of the other phone jacks. I've tried every other phone jack. The are no filters in use. I've tried plugging in an analog phone and got no dial tone and the keypad did not light up. I've unscrewed the wall plate and confirmed that there's no voltage on any of the wires. Are there any other tests that I've missed?

If they hadn't sent a repair tech (who thankfully was quite competent, unlike the phone support), I would have called again and added a few more choice lines about having a dry loop data only line (making the dial tone test completely irrelevant) and hooking up my phone lines to a neighbor's connection to confirm that there was nothing wrong with my apartment's wiring. Since my first attempt at pre-emptive question answering was so successful, I had a new answer script planned to stun the phone support into issuing me problem ticket. I didn't have to use it this time, but I'm keeping it around just in case.

Right hand, meet left hand

People often joke about big organizations having clueless departments which have no idea how to interoperate with each other. Anyone having to deal with a big institution has experienced this at some point. Even though I know to expect this, it's still frustrating every time.

So, what happened? Our Verizon DSL went out two days ago. It just went kaput and stopped working. That also means our phone stopped working since we have VoIP (Verizon Voicewing). After a full day of it not coming back on and doing the suggested modem power cycle several times, I figure it's not going to fix itself and contact Verizon. First, I try e-mail since I'm at work (remember no internet and phone at home). After much digging, I find an e-mail form. But lo and behold, there's a little message at the top of the form saying that I will only receive an automated response via e-mail and no actual human will ever read my message. What the hell is the point of e-mail support then? If I wanted canned responses and bad AI, I could either call their automated 800 number or wade through their maze-like website.

Next up, I try live agent chatting. That was incredibly slow. I get nothing useful from that and am told to call in my support request. I get home and use my cell phone to call tech support. This is where the true left hand and right hand corporate disconnect horror story begins. I call DSL tech support and give them all my info (name, phone number, address, what the problem is, callback number, the phase of the moon, and some information about Barney's evolutionary past). They tell me that my problem is my lack of a dial tone and that it's the local phone company's responsibility to take care of it. Bear in mind, that I have no voice service, just a data Verizon DSL line on top of which runs my Verizon Voicewing. But they would have none of those rational explanations and transferred my call to telephone voice services. I give my info again and re-explain my problem only to be told that I have a dry loop data only line, and it's not their issue to solve. So, I get transferred back to DSL support.

I bet you can see where this is going. I repeat the spiel with DSL support again, and get transferred back to the local telephone company support. Except this time I get an automated message (not even a real human being) saying that I only have DSL and need to call DSL support, after which they hang up on me. So, I call DSL support again, get the same story, and get transferred back to an automated telephone voice services system, and dropped yet again. At this point, it's been a little over an hour, and I'm pretty annoyed.

I call back the telephone support number and try cursing to bypass the automated system which just automatically drops me. I had heard that this little trick often works on automated phone systems when you can't figure out how to get to a live rep. FYI, cursing on the Verizon automated system doesn't seem to do much. But for future reference, just say "representative" to bypass all the nonsense in the Verizon automated support. I finally just flat out said that I'd been transferred 5 times already and just wanted my DSL service fixed. If I didn't do mindfulness training, I might have started swearing at that point and abusing the service rep. But I can't blame the service reps though. I doubt they're paid or trained well enough to be deal with anything beyond the basic "is everything plugged in?" and "did you power cycle the modem?" sort of issues. I do blame the Verizon corporate machine for creating an incompetent customer support system that insults my intelligence and wastes my time.

Motivation

I had a pleasant chat with someone at the gym today. I didn't realize that my exercise routine was inspirational for other people to watch. I also got to hear about how this person had lost the motivation to exercise and was just getting back into the swing of things. When I heard the story, I could see why exercise fell by the wayside. Burnout and boredom. It happens to even the most dedicated fitness buff at some point.

I've been fortunate in that I usually can keep myself motivated to continue training, but I think a number of factors have contributed to that success and perseverance:

1. Surrounding myself with people who love training, whether it be martial arts or fitness.
2. Understanding how to set [achievable] goals, determining milestones to gauge my progress, and committing myself towards achieving those goals.
3. Keeping my training regimen fresh by maximizing variety and rotating in different exercises on a regular basis.
   
4. Treating each training session as a mindfulness drill and really trying to focus my mind on controlling and feeling my body to correctly perform the exercises.
5. Making my training multifaceted by incorporating skills, conditioning, flexibility, strength, speed, coordination, power, neuromuscular body control, etc. exercises into my training.
6. Eating enough to fuel my training.
   
7. Taking days off to allow my body time to recover and avoid burnout.

Of course, it probably doesn't hurt that I'm vain. My Chinese zodiac symbol is the snake, which is described on those restaurant paper placemats as being "vain and intense." If that's true, it's no surprise that personal fitness has become an important part of my life.

Back from NY

Well, I took a four day trip to New York for some I-Liq Chuan intensive training. It gets a little easier to do every year. The first year really drained me. The second year was tiring because we were training heavy. This year, my legs only got sore by the 3rd day, and I thought the meditation training was a little on the short side. I've come to realize more and more the truth of what my Sifu keeps saying: he's not teaching us anything new, we're just gaining a better understanding.

However, the thing that I realize the most is just how much work I have left ahead of me. Each time I train with my Sifu, the difference between my skill level and awareness compared to his becomes more clear to me. I already that he was a lot better than me, but now I'm beginning to comprehend just how vast the difference in mental focus and perceptual abilities between us is.

On the plus side, interacting with my senior gongfu brothers and with my Sifu has inspired me to ramp up my training again. I had been on cruise control for a while just getting my training from teaching. I really ought to be doing more personal training. So, I'm committing myself to getting at least 5 minutes of training and 5 minutes of meditation every day. Usually, if I make it through 5 minutes, I get more training in just from sheer momentum. Let's see if I can work my way back up to 30-60 minutes a day of training and meditation.

Brrr! Tales of the cold.

When there's nothing else to talk about, we make small talk about the weather. The past two days I've been waking up to temperatures in the teens. That'd be ok since I'm not usually outside, but we haven't had heat in our apartment for the past two days. Thank goodness I didn't just sell off the space heaters in my mission to declutter my life. Apparently, our apartment is the only unit in our complex that sits above ground rather than above the basement. So, the working theory (if we are to believe the apartment management and repair guys) is that there is ice in our radiator pipes impeding the flow of hot water.

How are we supposed to fix this problem? By running space heaters everywhere to try to thaw whatever section of pipe has the frozen obstruction, that's how. It was a logical theory presented by the maintenance guys. Simple. Based on sound principles. The only problem is that the apartment isn't really wired to be running that many high load electrical devices. The breaker trips every time we attempt to run too many heaters.

Oh, the joys of apartment living.