Top 10 Reasons…

Posted on August 27, 2008 
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…to buy glow-in-the-dark condoms:

10.) They give you an excuse to buy one of those circa 1972 black lights for your bedroom.

9.) They fit well with The Liberator.

8.) They double as a night light.

7.) Ease of assembly.

6.) To promote safe sex and prevent the spread of STDs.

5.) They are a perfect conversation piece.

4.) They overstate the obvious.

3.) Cheaper than a GPS.

2.) They’re the perfect stocking stuffer.

1.) They make for good clean fun!

Glow-in-the-Dark Condoms

           

Calorie Calculator/Calories Burned Calculator

Posted on August 26, 2008 
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Gadget by LabPixies.com

Calorie Calculator

The Michael Phelps diet notwithstanding, most people in America would benefit from reducing their caloric intake. Obesity has been steadily increasing, and a recent study suggests that no less than 86% of Americans could be obese by 2030, resulting in related health care costs near 1 trillion dollars.

The state of Alabama broke new ground recently by proposing increased health care premiums for state workers who are obese. It is interesting, because free will choices that negatively impact the public health drive up health care costs for everyone, even those who do all that they can to live healthy lifestyles.

There are and have always been many different fad diets out there, but there is a basic science behind caloric intake and resultant weight maintenance, loss, or gain. A pound of body weight is equal to 3500 calories. If you are eating 2000 calories a day and maintaining your weight, if you cut out 500 calories and ate just 1500 calories a day, presumably, you would lose about a pound a week (500 calories reduced per day x 7 = 3500 calories = 1 pound).

So weight loss is not voodoo–it’s science. We also have to take into consideration the number of calories that we are burning when we exercise. There is great tool for doing so here:

Calories Burned Calculator

If you approach calorie counting and calories burned through exercise intelligently, you should be able to devise a strategy that works for you. If you want to eat a special meal or dessert on a given day, calculate the calories involved, and up your level of calorie burning exercise. Do the math, and take control of your body.

           

Sports Happenings

Posted on August 25, 2008 
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I saw the United States play Spain in the gold medal game the other night, and it was truly amazing to me that Spain was able to hang around and have a chance to win the game in the last couple of minutes. Here you have Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, Dwight Howard, Chris Paul, and Lebron James on the floor and the Spaniards are playing them toe to toe. The U.S., particularly Wade and Bryant, displayed some clutch shooting down the stretch, but Spain deserves a lot of credit, and they proved that winning isn’t really the only thing. They played to their utmost potential and I think that is in fact the only thing.

The Super Bowl Champion New York Giants had a fearsome pass rush a year ago led by Osi Umenyiora and Michael Strahan. Strahan has since retired, and Umenyiora suffered a season ending knee injury on Saturday against the Jets. The Giants have responded by moving Mathias Kiwanuka back to defensive end, which makes the slim chances of a Strahan return even slimmer.

Lou Holtz appeared on College Football Live on Saturday and predicted that the University of Notre Dame will win 11 games this season. He then went on to opine on the feasibility of porcine flight.

Arizona Cardinals QB Matt Leinart completed seven passes in two quarters against the Raiders on Saturday night. Four to his teammates, and three to Raiders’ defenders. He was 4-12 for 24 yards with the three picks. Veteran Kurt Warner has reportedly won the starting job in Arizona.

Chad Pennington will be the Dolphins starter, and the #3 pick in this year’s draft, Matt Ryan out of Boston College, beat out Joey Harrington, Chris Redman, D.J. Shockley to get the starting nod in Atlanta. It’s tough for a rookie to earn a starting job in the NFL and I have to give Ryan a lot of credit.

Franciso Rodriguez, the Los Angeles Angels overpowering closer, earned his 50th save of the season in a 5-3 Angels victory over the Minnesota Twins. Bobby Thigpen holds the major league record for saves in a single season with 57. The Angels have 33 game remaining.

AP Preseason NCAA Football Rankings

# 1.Georgia
# 2.Ohio St.
# 3.USC
# 4.Oklahoma
# 5.Florida
# 6.Missouri
# 7.LSU
# 8.West Virginia
# 9.Clemson
# 10.Auburn

The first Monday Night Football game of the regular season is just two weeks away. Minnesota plays at Green Bay at 7:00 PM (ET) and Denver is at Oakland at 10:15 PM.

           

Baseball Hitting Home Stretch

Posted on August 22, 2008 
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We’re getting late into August, and people are starting to get football fever, but the baseball season is hitting the home stretch and it will be a mad dash toward the playoffs. I like watching football much more than I like to watch baseball, but I actually follow baseball more closely because I am a big fan of my favorite team.

I have to admit that I am a lifelong fan of the Philadelphia Phillies. That designation is not an easy one to bear. The Phils have been around for 126 years, and they have won a grand total of one (1) World Series. Last season, on July 25th, the Phillies accomplished the ignominious distinction of being the first professional sports franchise to lose 10,000 games. Ouch.

But they came on late last year and made an astounding run to catch the Mets and win the National League East on the last day of the season. The New Yorkers had a seven game lead over the Phillies on September 12th. Phillies historians are familiar with this type of painful collapse; they had a 6.5 game lead back on September 20th of 1964 and lost the last ten games of the season, winding up a game behind the St. Louis Cardinals.

This year the tables have turned a little bit. The Phillies had a nice lead on the Mets early in the season, but since the All Star break, their vaunted offense, led by Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard hasn’t been able to hit, and the Mets have made their move. They are 2.5 games ahead of the Phils as of this writing.

The Phillies never seem to do the things that good teams do to address their needs before the trading deadline. The Milwaukee Brewers acquired last year’s American League Cy Young Award winner CC Sabathia just before the trading deadline. He’s started nine times since then. His record? 9-0 with a 1.60 ERA, and five, count ‘em, five complete games. The Brew Crew is sitting 2.5 games in front of the Cardinals for the National League Wild Card spot, and 5.5 games behind the Central Division front running Cubs, who have the best record in baseball at 78-49.

On a similar note, the Dodgers picked up Manny Ramirez from the Red Sox and their anemic offense has improved, but the Arizona Diamondbacks have won eight of their last ten and hold a slim 2 game lead over Joe Torre’s charges in the National League West.

Over in the junior circuit, the big surprise is the Tampa Bay Rays, who had the worst record in baseball on this date a year ago and are presently tied with the Los Angeles Angels for the best record in the American League at 77-49. The two teams sit atop the Eastern and Western Divisions respectively, and the White Sox are clinging to a half game lead over the Minnesota Twins in the Central. The Red Sox and Twins are deadlocked with identical 73-54 records in the Wild Card race. The Yankees run of thirteen consecutive years in the playoffs is in serious jeopardy; they’re sitting six games behind the Beantowners and the Twins.

As for my Phillies, they have six games left against the Mets, so they have a chance to make up ground when they play head to head. If they can’t beat the Mets when it counts, well, that means that the Mets have the better team and they deserve to advance. It’s been 28 years since the Phillies won that one World Series, and to be honest, it wouldn’t surprise me if it didn’t happen again for 28 more. But…I’m hopefully optimistic.

           

Having Kids

Posted on August 21, 2008 
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I have one son, and I know everybody says this, but having a son was the best thing that ever happened to me in my entire life. I always wanted to have the opportunity to be a good father because my parents were divorced when I was five, and I never had a father in the house while growing up. I didn’t have any other kids because I didn’t see any reason to. I felt as though it would be hard for me to split my love and attention between multiple children.

Sometimes I see families and parents and children interacting and having a lot of fun, and you can see the love and connection that is there, and that’s a beautiful thing. But I have also seen the other side of that coin.

My friend recommended a particular dentist to me, and I have had a lot of bad experiences with dentists, so I made an appointment. I have gone to dentists that had “factory” practices, overbooking to the hilt and making you wait for an hour after your appointment time in a crowded waiting room stuffed with unruly kids, and I told her about those experiences on the phone when I was driving to my appointment. She assured me that none of that would happen this time.

I arrived at the dentist, and it was a small practice. There were just three other people in the tiny waiting room: a guy about thirty and his two kids, who were around seven and eight. They were alternately screaming, crying, rolling around on the floor, and harassing one another, snatching books and toys from each other, just a mess. It was a small space like I say and it was very, very annoying. My salvation was the promise that I wouldn’t be kept waiting after my appointment time.

The time finally came…and it went. Twenty minutes later I was still sitting there, and a woman came out of the back. It was the kids’ mom. What a relief. She walks up to her husband and says cheerily, “You’re turn!” So she took his place in the middle of the scrum, he went to his appointment, and the din got even worse under her supervision.

I stepped outside and waited out there for another fifteen minutes or so, until I was finally called into the chair. I waited for the dentist after the x-ray, and I could see the couple and their kids walking toward their car out the window.

If you haven’t noticed by now, I am a philosophical sort, and I got to wondering…why do people have kids? And why do some people have so many? Do they even know? Can they afford all of these kids? Do they have the time to give each of them the proper amount of attention?

When I evaluate why the children in the office were acting the way that they were, it is clear that they were vying for their parents’ attention. I am not saying that nobody should have more than one child, but I am saying that perhaps people should try to understand why they are having children. Is it because their parents want them to, or expect them to? I know a young couple, both of whom have demanding careers, who recently had a baby, only to put her in day care at about four weeks old. I’m not sure I understand this.

It is kind of politically incorrect to say it, but you also see people who clearly do not make a whole lot of money with six and seven and eight children in tow. I can’t see how this is good for the children, or the parents, trying to support a family of ten on a modest paycheck.

I offer no answers or suggestions, I’m just tossing out the question. I love my son and I know the value of having children, but I wonder if there would be less sadness in the world if people asked themselves why they are having a child, or a second or third or fourth or fifth one.

           

Go for a Swim!

Posted on August 20, 2008 
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With the Olympics being upon us there is a lot of athletic inspiration in the air, and Michael Phelps has certainly done his part to shine a spotlight on the sport of swimming. World-class athletes like Phelps and the other Olympians prove to us that you can take swimming to unlimited competitive levels, but the average person can also benefit a great deal by incorporating swimming into his or her active lifestyle.

I hurt my knee last summer and I couldn’t put very much weight on it for several months. I had to find a way to get some aerobic exercise, rehabilitate the leg slowly with minimal impact, and burn some calories because the injured knee resulted in a level of inactivity that I was not used to. So I joined a local gym that has a lap pool, and I started swimming for 45 minutes every night.

I found that swimming a significant distance is a total body workout. When I would get home, I’d feel that sweet sensation of fatigue from head to toe, and I slept really well. I went on a low carb diet at that time, and I lost thirty pounds of fat and gained some muscle and definition.

Because swimming is low impact on the joints, it is especially appealing to people who have certain health challenges. Pregnant women can benefit greatly from swimming, and I was reading an article over at the HealthAndFitnessBlog that mentioned the Arthritis Foundation recommending swimming and water aerobics for people who suffer from arthritis.

I was writing yesterday about efficient communication and artistic expression saving time and creating space for new ideas, and I think that swimming is a very efficient way to get a total body workout. You are getting your cardiovascular exercise simultaneous to resistance training and stretching, and when you look at world-class swimmers, their training results in what most people would consider to be the ideal physique.

But best of all, swimming is fun! What feels better than diving into a nice cool pool on a hot summer afternoon? If you do something that you like to do when you exercise, you will stick with it, and swimming regularly is something that everyone should consider.


Efficient Swimming

           

Creativity, Communication, and Brevity

Posted on August 19, 2008 
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The use of Twitter to present VCs with your business plan in 140 characters or less, as suggested by our CHO, is an interesting idea, and I have experimented with it a little bit, trying to pass along an idea that contained a good bit of information in that brief and efficient manner. Busy people may have three or four hundred emails to read every day, so if you can get their attention for a few seconds on Twitter and get your message across, it says something about the way that you think, and about the respect that you have for their time.

I have gotten to the point where I feel uncomfortable when I am not doing something productive or creative, or for that matter, two or three things that fit that description simultaneously. Since we are all so busy and time can be hard to find, it is cool to try to express yourself in a nutshell, and of course Twitter is a perfect tool for that.

This type of thinking is not exclusively the domain of the modern person who is technologically savvy and constantly on the go. The ancients understood it as well, and Haiku is a perfect example of the efficient transference of emotions, pictures, philosophies, and information. Below is a famous poem by Basho Matsuo, renowned as the first great Haiku poet:

An old silent pond…
A frog jumps into the pond,
splash! Silence again.

With this in mind, I was checking out some more modern ways of expressing yourself succinctly and elegantly, and I watched some 1 minute films the other day on You Tube. I posted a few below, check them out, and remember to keep it simple, it frees up space and allows more information to make its way around.


Anything Can Happen


The Plastic Battle


Change?

           

Benefits of Telecommuting

Posted on August 18, 2008 
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Telecommuting is becoming more and more popular, and to me, it makes a lot of sense. With the prices of gasoline hovering around $4.00 a gallon and the earth warming due to greenhouse gas emissions, telecommuting saves workers time and money and it is good for the environment as well.

I have been able to work from my home for the last couple of years for the most part, and I have been extremely productive and virtually stress free. The last job that I had to commute to was on the other side of town, and it was about 15 miles away, but the traffic made it a 30 minute drive at best, and it would often take longer than that. So I had to leave for work almost an hour before I had to be there, and I would arrive every day rather stressed out from the commute. When you’re sitting in gridlock on a freeway with several thousand of your closest friends at 7:00 a.m. you really start to question the wisdom of the “system.”

So in a very real sense I committed nine and a half to ten hours of my time a day in order to earn eight hours worth of pay. Plus, I used about a gallon of gas a day. At today’s prices, that’s an extra twenty bucks a week, plus the wear and tear on my vehicle.

Allowing people to telecommute would seem to me to be good for most companies as well. I think that happy people are more productive, and when you are working in your own surroundings you feel completely comfortable and there are no distractions. The company doesn’t have to provide you with any equipment or space. You save them money while you optimize your own ability to produce for them.

I was reading a post earlier today titled “Working From Home” on a blog called Design For Learning, and in it the author, who telecommutes, was asked by his dad how the company can keep track of what he is doing. He said they do it the same way that they did when he was sitting in the cube farm. He said “They know I’m working because I get my job done.”

He also brought up an interesting point that I have considered as well. He estimates that he used to spend at least ten percent of his time filling out task-tracking sheets and status reports to prove his level of productivity, but in fact, he could have been producing during that time instead of filling in the sheets! If you multiply that time by all of the company’s employees, that is a significant amount of lost productivity.

At the end of the day, even if you are at work and being “supervised,” nobody is watching you do what you do. It is your production that they see, so telecommuting doesn’t really change that equation to any great extent.

Another positive for the company that allows telecommuting is that people won’t leave the company because they want to move, or have to move because of a spouse’s transfer or a family matter. You can also consider talented candidates who may not live in your area. For companies that are located in less populous areas, or areas without many candidates with the right specialized qualifications, this can be a major consideration.

Personality conflicts in the workplace are avoided by telecommuting. We like to talk about “culture fit,” but it becomes much easier to attain when all that is required is productivity, professionalism, and polite communication. In a sense, progressive workplace culture should involve looking for people who are savvy and self motivated enough to do what is necessary to be a successful telecommuter. I wouldn’t want to hire someone who I couldn’t trust to work independently.

Telecommuting is the wave of the future. It is more efficient on many levels and it provides people with the freedom to live wherever they want to and work in a manner that is ideal for their particular proclivities. It’s all about results; if you can get the job done from home, why not telecommute?

           

A Few Culture Thoughts

Posted on August 15, 2008 
Filed Under Fit Fuel CHO | 1 Comment

I spend 50% of my time dealing with internal company issues - namely culture - and 50% of my dealing with external issues, like customers and vendors. Today, I feel an urge to write about company culture and how a focus on culture can go wrong…fast.

I’ve said on several ocassions that the culture I admire most is that of Goldman Sachs - it is best defined as a “culture of success”. Having interviewed and been offered a job at Goldman, I have an appreciation of the process. During the interview process, I met with 15 people, including a ’super day’ of interviews that lasted 8 hours. At the end of the day, all 15 people had to agree that I was a good fit for the company. They clearly take culture very seriously. Everyone at Goldman seems to have that weird ‘Goldman thing’ about them; humble, scarily smart, kind of reserved and team oriented. The model has certainly endured.

It is mainly a culture of performance, and that is what I believe should underlay any company. At Fit Fuel, we screen every single employee to make sure they are culture “fits” - we have margaritas for lunch as a team, BBQ together on the weekends and are like a big family, and it’s important that new team members are part of it…I’ve had to turn away many, many candidates who I really “wanted” to hire from a purely skill-set perspective, but couldn’t because they would destroy our awesome chemistry. With that said, the most important point that I’d like to make is that cultures predicated too much on “getting along” without enough of an emphasis on performance can suffer serious consequences.

Nobody should excel simply because everybody likes them - though it is definitely an advantage to that individual. At Fit Fuel, we take likability as a given…people wouldn’t be here if other people didn’t like them. But at the end of the day, performance and success drive everything we do. It’s the ultimate meritocracy, and we intend to keep it that way. There is nothing more devastating to an employee to know that they got passed over for a promotion because their colleague had drinks with the supervisor a few days a week, regardless of being over bought on inventory and completely blowing a deadline.

I think one of the hardest things to manage in any culture is the balance between performance and fit, but if you assume that fit issues are vetted in the beginning and you discourage things that can doom chemistry - tons of internal personal relationships/dating, clicky drinking clubs, inter-departmental social rivalries, and employees who come to expect that they deserve a party everytime they have a good month - then you are well on your way.

We’re certainly trying to do that here, and we have Goldman Sachs quotes posted on our bulletin board to remind us of what is possible when everyone comes together and focuses on the success of the company first. That success is reinforced by our great personal relationships, but those relationships are more of a foundation than a focus. They are a foundation on which we built a culture where people know that the more they push our company forward, the more they share in our mutual success. When we refer to performance, we refer to company performance first and individual performance becomes something like a wheel on a car…and I think everybody realizes that. It is humbling to know that if a few of our key employees left, we would be in a bad position. But it’s that prospect that keeps us all focused on growing our company, growing our brand, and coming together as a team that recognizes that it is only together that we can truly accomplish great things.

           

Running as Meditation

Posted on August 15, 2008 
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Our CHO (Chief Health Officer) says that he does his best thinking while running, and he routinely puts in double digit mileage in the summer heat of Las Vegas, so a whole lot of thinking gets done. I agree that running is a time for reflection, and my experience of running distances has been a lot like the practice of meditation.

If you are going to run for distance, you can’t be concerned about “getting it over with.” People who view running that way probably aren’t going to stick with it for any length of time. To enjoy running, you have to just stay in the moment and go one stride at a time. When you regulate your pace based on your heartbeat and breath, start sweating, and find your groove, it’s all on autopilot, fueled by your favorite music pouring out of your iPod and into your ears. You empty your mind and invite the ideas to come to you, and invariably, they do.

What I describe as “finding your groove” is akin to the spirit of meditation. You get in touch with your body, calmly evaluating your stride, the angle at which you are holding your arms, and the way that your feet are hitting the ground. In meditation you concentrate on your breath, and regulating your breathing is a key element to distance running. Whether you consciously realize it or not, the act of running is an attempt to balance the mind, body, and spirit, not unlike the practice of meditation.

I recently read an article entitled “The Zen of Running, and 10 Ways to Make it Work for You,” and the author says that he uses a mixture of concentration and contemplation when he is running. You focus on the mechanics of what you are doing, staying present and in the moment, and then you allow yourself to drift off mentally and get into the realm of contemplation, which is the breeding ground of ideas and solutions to challenges. And then back to the concentration, maybe a burst of speed or an uphill incline that requires more of your attention.

Sakyong Mipham Rimpoche is one of the most recognizable teachers of meditation in the Buddhist community, and he has hosted an annual retreat in Colorado called “Running With The Mind of Meditation.” Participants ranged from serious competitive runners to those with a casual interest in running, but just about everyone seemed to benefit from it a great deal.

Jon Pratt was one of the organizers of the event, and he had this to say:

“What surprises some people is that meditation is very much a body-oriented discipline. It is not about leaving your body and entering some celestial realm. It is about relating to the here and now which we experience through our five senses. So in meditation we learn to let go of our thoughts and come back to our body. Running and meditation are perhaps the most energizing and ultimately, joyful, activities in my life. Bringing them together is about as good as it gets…The practice of meditation has brought freshness into my running because when I have a meditative mind I am fully in the moment and fully in my body. I am more relaxed and more joyful. When I have this attitude every run is a new and exciting experience.”

We all know that running is good for our physical health. In fact, a Stanford study recently concluded that middle-aged runners were half as likely to die over a two decade span than non-runners. But running is also very good for your head, so lace them up, stay in the moment, put one foot in front of the other, and let the ideas fly.

           

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