Archive for November 2006
It’s time for my weekly rant about smoking. I normally do it when I dream about smoking and last night was no exception. I still wanna smoke sometimes, but it’s easy to remind myself NO! when I have all this to look over. Sometimes we do know what’s better for ourselves, but we ignore it because we can’t read it over again.
Some of us try to mitigate the risk of our vices by exercising, believing that surely that’s what must be missing and making us sick, while we go shoot up with a drug cocktail that would make Jim Morrison rise from the dead.
Sure, exercise is never a bad thing, especially for drug users, or smokers. just that I’ve always thought it was an oxymoron to smoke and exercise but never said it wouldn’t help the smoker. I’ve tried to exercise when I smoked and just got a profound sense of “WTF” and quit right away. Knowing you can’t have your cake and eat it too, I would always realize that not smoking and getting no exercise was at least moderately better than smoking and getting exercise. My heart disease, stroke and cancer risk would always be lower as a non-smoker no matter how much exercise I did as a smoker.
At least exercising while smoking does appear to mitigate some of your risk, it’s still up in the air for all the other diseases. Smoking and doing treadmill work is just a false sense of security really, thinking that now you can smoke 3 packs a day since you are running 10 miles per day but then finding out that it did nothing for that pancreatic cancer that is killing you.
But I found that by taking stock in what smoking gave me, and seeing what others thought really narrowed it down to what I was achieving while smoking:
- It relieves minor depression.
- It helps suppress little fits of anger.
- It enhances concentration and short-term memory.
- It produces a modest sense of well being.
I found that after quitting Effexor I still had the same feelings I always did, but my smoking levels went up. No surprise then, and no more of a surprise now. It’s a crutch that helps you get around your depression about things that bother you. Depression beats you down into a hole in the ground, but nicotine helps lift you out of it.
I’ve heard by several doctors (or was it some quack website) that studying human behavior was easy: two cats mimic it very well. Docs should see what happen when a husband and wife quit smoking! Supressing those little fits of anger is not so easy when both of you can’t smoke, even worse being that if you are starting the cycle of getting the smoke out of your home, every fight must be outside.
I can’t count the number of fights that we had together, the wife and I, when we stopped smoking. They were hellish, hours on end all because we would fail to recognize the little bits of anger that the other was having: we had our own anger to deal with! Other fights ensue now for sure, but the anger we have at little points during the day are mostly gone, being replaced by clear thinking that isn’t reward based. IE ending the argument for a smoke.
Short term memory and concentration are a by product of many things, practice, will and environmental effects. This is a hard thing to get smokers to understand isn’t a good reason to keep smoking, and was for me too. It wasn’t too hard when you have a drug like Chantix helping you out however as you get some of the pathways related to nicotine uptake activated, so the extreme foggy head that comes with smoking cessation isn’t so bad.
Damn it feels good to be a gangsta, but nothing can compare to the feeling that you get when you’ve lit that first smoke when you really want one. It really feels that good, it’s almost better than sex, and could rival any other drug I’ve tried during my life thus far.
But it’s all a lie in a cylinder, you only felt better because you’ve stopped the withdrawal of nicotine for just a short bit longer. For those that are depressed or need more control in their lives, smoking gives them what they need.
To me, the smoking effects far outweigh the benefits now, this 3 months and one week later. I feel great since my lungs are finally starting to rid some of the tar that I’d been hoarding in them, and I can do more exercise everyday without feeling like an idiot.
All things considered, our family could buy a Wii easily now: we’ve saved over $500 on not smoking. For anyone that never has any money, or wants more money to spend on yourself or your family, just 3 months of no smoking is enough to buy the hottest game console + 4 games.
So how much is smoking costing you? Time with your family, because anyone that smokes around their kids is killing both, only killing yourself faster. I can’t count the number of times my Doc has told me that, your kids need you and smoking is only taking you away from them.
Examining our phobias is a good sign for personal growth for sure, but many worry too little or believe there’s nothing you can do about some things so why worry?
Heart disease and cancer are just of the most feared diseases out there, but so many of us are not concerned about one specific cancer, just cancer.
CNN tries to do better with this health and risk article but falls a little short explaining in full detail all the broad shortcomings of our human psyche. We won’t worry about lung cancer, but will always bring up outdoor pollutants as a killer just like smoke, nor will we drive 150mph with our eyes closed down a dirt road in the middle of the night.
CNN did manage to hit the nail squarely, it’s the things that kill us fast versus the ones that kill us slow, some of us being more worried about the slow killers than the fast ones. The slow ones creep up on you and you never notice like heart disease and being overweight.
If time permits, I’ll extend this to a custom programmed section that rotates, if not emails you a new chemical of the day. Let’s face it, 4,000 chemicals would keep this blog busy for many, many years to come.
You may have read about the dangers of meth, chemicals used to make meth, and how those chemicals may be in tobacco smoke as well.
Meet chemical #1 Acrolein . Ever wonder what one of the acrid smells were in cigarette smoke? You know now. It’s important to note that Acolein is found in many places:
1. Coal burning power plants
2. Smokers lips
3. Gasoline engines
However, due to winds and altitude the common presumption that since 2 of 3 common polluters put out Acrolein it must be ok to smoke even in a ventilated environment. The trouble here is that it takes a large amount of exterior air to dilute what’s indoor, hence it’s no surprise that indoor air is dirtier than outdoor air.
Smoking in your car, home, or any other ventilated area is not the same thing as smoking outdoor, or the belching of noxious gases from cars and coal plants in the outdoor air.
Christopher Columbus was smarter than the average bear. He threw his leaves away.
Prior to World War I, lung cancer was considered to be a rare disease, which most physicians would never see during their career, that is until smoking was glorified.
Now, consider what we put into the atmosphere during the Industrial Revolution, and the common saying “Yeah, I smoke, but that coal plant you can’t outrun.”. I consider it evidence in the highest regard that lung cancer was not even that high when no limits were on any burning of coal, stacks were lower and air was dirtier.
I’ll try to dig up some evidence to support the stance that a smoker’s mouth puts out more pollutants than a smoke stack. If not a PPM comparison.
This is _NOT_ correlation implies causation. The link shown below has been studied for 40 years, and is considered scientifically correct. (Except by a large % of smokers who refuse to admit they are not only killing themselves, they are killing their own families.)
The professionals call it “intelligence”. The politicians call it “espionage”. To the rest of us, it’s simply “spy stuff”. Call it what you will, it’s all the same.
I have read that intelligence officers (spies to us) tend to avoid killing their counterparts in other countries, since all that untidy killing gets in the way of the primary mission, which is to gather information.
But that was during the Cold War, where distrust between the United States and the Soviet Union was as normal as going to get coffee in the morning. That information was desperately needed by both sides, so for the most part, “spies” stayed out of the killing game.
Now that the Cold War is over (I guess), I believe that the remnants of the Soviet Union are taking care of some unfinished business. First, a look at the past; then, a look at the present.
Ex-agents, defectors, and dissidents appear to be the unfinished business. Take the 1978 case of Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident whose voice was heard often on Voice of America radio, until he was silenced in rather permanent fashion. A poison-tipped umbrella (believed to have injected Markov with ricin) sounds like something out of a 007 movie, but an agency with the resources (such as the now defunct KGB) would have no problem.
Fast forward now to 2004, and the case of Ukraine’s Victor Yushchenko, a candidate for President. Ukraine is very, very close to the heart of the old Soviet Union, and easily within its sphere of influence, and I’m not sure the Soviets (excuse me, the Russians) were especially fond of Viktor and his policies. Take a look at Viktor as he once was:
Ok, now let’s take a look at Viktor after his “dinner”, which apparently featured dioxin as the main course:
Sorry folks, but you don’t look like this after just a few days on the beaches at Sochi. They found enough dioxin in this guy to wonder how he survived at all.
Forward again to today, and Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-KGB agent who perhaps talked a little more than he should have about his past, and is getting too nosy for Moscow’s liking. Now he’s in a fight for his life in a British hospital, with a diagnosis of Thallium poisoning. Care to guess why? More to the point, care to point a finger at anyone?
There has always been a fundamental difference between America and the Soviet Union. That difference remains despite the state of glasnost and the new political system in Russia. Trouble is, people who talk smack against Russia’s leaders or policies are still dying in the same old way. Here in America, people who talk smack about our leaders or policies usually end up as a talking head on the Sunday morning shows.
Here, we embrace the idea of free speech. There, it is still somewhat repressed, by death if necessary. Here, a man is valued for having the courage to speak up from his heart, even if he is just spitting in the wind. In many places of the world, that will get you killed.
Sadly, Russia’s President, former KGB agent Vladimir Putin, doesn’t seem to realize that the Cold War is over (supposedly). The democratic reforms seen in Russia throughout the 90’s are being rolled back. And maybe, just maybe, ol’ Vlad may be dusting off what’s left of the KGB killing machine, and using it.
It’s a hell of a bad time to have an opinion on anything these days. Hope no one from Russia comes looking for me.
The PanMan, signing off…
I’m not a rat, mouse or other rodent that’s looking for his cheese at the end of the maze. Life is not a maze, it’s a journey that doesn’t sit there waiting for you to conquer it. It’s moving away from you, wiggling and never allowing you to get an idea that all right hand turns get you out.
My cousin has been doing business school, management if I recall correctly for a while, quitting a job he’d liked when things were just getting ridiculous. I’m positive he was done with that line of work, preferring to see just projects come together without having to actually jump in. (I think)
Now that I’m no longer smoking, those thoughts reverberate in my head as well, but I still want to get my hands dirty. I learn with the hands on, and have been for the last three months. I’ve been touching on various business practices for technical services like computer consulting, computer services and computer building.
I know about Microsoft’s processes, what other companies rely on to refine the workflow and have been actively seeking other methods to learn about them for a bit to come back later.
The Six Sigma is the newest thing I’ve come across thus far and it’s interesting, due to the way it hits the nail on the head. I’m not a person who will jump off the bridge because the mantra says so, it’s just ridiculous to do that, but it helps me understand that companies are not wasteful.
Let’s look at the Six Sigma for a moment for my own clarity.
| Critical to Quality: | Attributes most important to the customer |
|---|---|
| Defect: | Failing to deliver what the customer wants |
| Process Capability: | What your process can deliver |
| Variation: | What the customer sees and feels |
| Stable Operations: | Ensuring consistent, predictable processes to improve what the customer sees and feels |
| Design for Six Sigma: | Designing to meet customer needs and process capability |
Why mess with perfection? Hell, this is a great blueprint for almost any business and from what I can tell, millions are saved when ‘from the hip’ techniques are replaced by modern well thought out production designs.
It’s my belief, along with a desire to find out for sure, that if properly integrated into your daily operations, any product can thrive above the competition. It’s wonderful to have a photographic memory, even more precious to have a memory that percolates nary a detail, but a perfect concoction that never leaves out the most important details.
It’s the details in my opinion, that most people forget about, make excuses for and refuse to refine to the point that all defects are gone. Let’s face it, Six Sigma calls for fewer than 3.4 defects in 1 million units. Customers can complain, sure, because they like to have something to bitch about. However, after a while of refining, you just might be able to make gold out of that.
Without that careful planning to eliminate the issues that cause defects, you can never truly promise to deliver any product, or service to a consumer. It’s one thing to be out of time, harried, busy, distracted or just plain streched thin to the point where you make a mistake, but it’s a different story altogether when you don’t take the 30 seconds to write down there is a problem. Or revert to good old quality control of every damn unit so there isn’t a problem.
Motorola learned the hard way after many, many years of extreme screw ups because people thought the right way was the internal way. Write it down, refine it, and release it. You can’t learn from a product that isn’t released, or released without any good categorizations.
Smoking is wonderful. No really, it’s not sarcasm at all, not even in the faintest whisper. Nicotine from smoking does a great job at calming you down, in fact insects get calmed down too, they are just too small to mitigate the toxic effects. It’s no surprise that your attention benefits from smoking, problem solving skills are no exception either, so it’s not all bad for you, is it?
I do have a slight problem however, with tobacco’s effect as a drug that really kills you. Does smoking help you deal with issues and problems that you face on a daily basis? Is it true that smoking can calm you down, help you deal with a difficult problem, that you would not be able to do normally? I’m left to wonder if smoking (nicotine) does it at all, but the power of suggestion, or addiction does that to you in order to seek success, and receive that reward (nicotine).
I know my addiction did, which leads me to question lots of things about my life, jobs and even my way of doing everything. Instead of smoking a cigarette, looking at code I keep looking now, not a bit distracted. Was it healthier to get up looking around for a lighter, or that pack of smokes I bought but can’t remember where I put them??
If smoking increases attention so much, then why was 20,000 lines of code a daunting task before, but now seems to be so small and trivial. It seems I was convincing myself everything was so major hat it required a just reward about every 10 lines of code! Now I write 40,000 in the same span of time due to no damn breaks, or the patting on the back.
If smoking helped me solve problems, then why is it so much easier now to spot the problem monkey with the wrench than it was before? Hell, i’d stop and congratulate myself with a smoke because I’d found the problem, the completely forget: there’s a solution you gotta find.
I was hooked on cigarettes and the cravings were keeping me distracted trying to get my fix all the time. Got a problem? Find your smokes, it’ll solve all your issues, remember? It helps you fix everything. Do something good, figure out a solution? Find your smokes because you deserve a treat.
I’m sure if they had a nicotine cheese stick in the maze instead of normal cheese, the average mouse would do 400% better than normal mice. How many people do you know that go to the fridge and get themselves a piece of cheese every time they do something right? I don’t know anyone who eats 20-40 pieces of cheese a day. However, I bet you know someone that lights a smoke, just like the proverbial Pavlov response, when they do even the slightest thing right.
Soon you are no longer addicted to life, but the pursuit of nicotine, in the form that you wanted it, after every event no matter what size. You no longer remember what the smoke smells like to anyone around you, or what someone smelled like that smoked all day, right up in your face talking to you.
So the addiction is gone now, the world is clear and easy to understand all the sudden, given that you are not seeking rewards all the time. You can manage to get completely through a problem that didn’t require 5 breaks to finish, without ever disrupting your concentration. Let’s face it, you won’t ever admit something broke your concentration when the reward is the one action that breaks your train of thought. Remember, you never had it, it was a the wanting of the reward that pushed you through somehow.
Smoking is the one drug that so perfectly hides the addiction, it becomes the most dangerous drug in the world. Cocaine doesn’t claim the number of deaths per year, heroin doesn’t put as many people into the ground. Addiction is a serious thing, but smoking might escape the label of addiction. Addiction normally signals someone they have a problem, to stop the activity, get away from the thing that’s harming you.
Smoking lies to you, makes you feel like it’s helping, all the time destroying your body and mind. I’m glad to say it’s been almost three months for my smoking cessation so far, and it’s getting easier everyday to breathe and think. My attitude is hard to break because I’ve avoided finishing anything in one run for over 2 years, and it’s difficult to see others do the same thing.
Mark Cuban has stated before about what type of videos get posted on Youtube, and why it’s moronic that anyone would buy them. I’ve believed for sure that there was real videos of interest that get uploaded to Youtube all the time. I’m not one for Redneck news all the time, or videos of a guy lighting fireworks in his ass, but there is news out there.
Sure, it’s not Dan or a great Mavs game but it’s real life that is rarely caught by reporters.
Maybe this guy who decided to not leave when he was clearly violating the rules is a moron, but I for one can’t undermine the importance of having a place to post clear evidence. Let’s say for instance this was a media report, the video would be chopped down and reduced to headline news. Youtube didn’t edit the video and frankly I’m sure they don’t have the time to fiddle with your news.
I’m not saying I have advertising dollars I wanna spend on the ads for that video, but I’m pretty sure I can’t depend on HDNET to post all 7 minutes of the video, nor can I say all email servers would allow the video either.
Last night wasn’t enough lunacy mixed with some idiocy, so now I see that the boundries of ripping DVDs is getting worse.
The MPAA will never stop so long as you can rip movies so you don’t have to buy 5 different formats, and given that the blind will never be allowed to watch the biggest hits since their retinas are digital there isn’t much hope for us.
Within 20 years, you’ll pay $5 to own a movie but it’ll cost you $20 to blog about it.
It seems that all the fuss being raised over Youtube by Mark Cuban might not be due to any threat he perceives from them against his own fledging companies. One is only left to wonder why he cares at all, and believe it or not it’s on my todo list.
Odd, probably eccentric, I just don’t even know myself why it bothers me so much.
I still hope to find out more about myself in the process, so not all is lost. Maybe some of the quip will have to go to kinder pastures though. Sometimes you love the way you respond, other times you feel like a jackass.
With all the recent Mark Cuban material flying around, I just can’t stand it: there is now a Mark Cuban section of my Blog.
Yes, I know “Why bother a billionaire?”
Simple. I can’t talk to him besides leaving comments on his blog, but he’ll never attempt to school me on why business has to stay the way it is. I respect some people to the highest measure due to their unfaltering views of humans and where we are going. Respecting the ones that accept us as who we are and what we must do currently is within my control too.
But this man, who started from the same depths all of us did has built himself up to the point where he is the grand decider for all. He -knows- the Google Youtube deal is bad.
I do understand that Youtube wants to ‘use in any way shape or form’ the clips you upload. It’s standard practice, but even more important when the clips are shared on 2 million web pages. Geez, the hot air must interfere all sorts of things.