Curiosity Makes The Cat

One Saturday morning I saw this infomercial, looked at the results, and bought into the theory. Max interval training — work as hard as you can for 3 minutes then rest for 30 seconds and do it again. I have always liked the idea of body resistance training as opposed to weight lifting and the moves Shaun T had on display looked “fun” and like they would build strength. Not long after, I was starting the program

Goals

When I first started, I wanted to gain weight in the form of muscle. I’m about 152′ish and I have wanted to get to 160 for awhile. I’ve always had a fast metabolism and it’s difficult for me to get my weight outside of the 145-155 area. Specifically, I wanted to bulk up my shoulders, chest, arms and legs. Oh and I wanted to increase my core strength. So basically, all the major muscle groups, heh.

The moves

I wanted to be sure I gave you an idea of what to expect from the workout exercises. I would describe them as plyometrics and muscular endurance. You’re not going to be doing handstand pushups, but you will focus on muscle areas and wear them out completely in short periods of time and repeat again and again. Some of the plyometrics can be tough since they are high impact. If you have an injury or aren’t doing them right, you could hurt yourself. But Shaun T expresses over and over and over again the proper form and what to concentrate on while you are doing them so that you DO NOT hurt yourself. This workout also includes a good reliance on stretching. In that way, I think they really did this one right. You shouldn’t consider this workout “bad for your body” because you’re pushing it to the extreme. You’re going to take care of it too. I have to say that in weeks 6-9 a longer stretch routine would have helped. You may have to supplement it if you pick up a slight injury or soreness.

First week

Even the first fitness test is tough. It’s a rude awakening to Shaun’s program. You’re going to work hard the first week, and more than likely you will find Shaun T is kicking your butt — but it’s fun. You’re motivated at this point, feeling the results, and enjoying new workouts each day. The first week is tough, but it gets easier after. It’s crucial that you learn the moves with good form here. You’re going to be repeating some of these for 9 weeks or so and staying free from injury depends in part on your ability to do them right!

Weeks 2 – 4

I remember feeling pushed in later weeks, and looking forward to the idea of a recovery week (week 5) but I was never mentally sapped. My body might have been a bit tired but I was always up for the workouts, and the main thing about the first 4 weeks of workouts is that they are short. You can do them in about 30 minutes. It’s a quick workout that you feel good about. The “Shaun T’isms” keep you going. You’ll learn to love his quirky comments and they’ll be little things that distract you from the pain as you work out. You’ll also “bond” with your workout buddies to some extent. You’ll feel bad for them when Shaun T comes over and makes them “get your butt lower!” or pushes to the breaking point. As Shaun T would say “I’m not here to hurt you, I’m just here to make you better”.

Recovery Week

This is definitely a needed break. I wouldn’t say the workout, which you will repeat every day this week, is easy but Shaun T explicitly states that you shouldn’t be working out too hard so that you’re exhausted at the end. This is a mental freedom that is rare in “Insanity”. Shaun T telling you NOT to push yourself to the limit. I loved this week, but in a way, it totally screws you for what comes next.

Week 5

Max Interval Training. You know I said the recovery week screws you for what’s coming up. Why? Because even though you get a little break, your body also becomes just a little bit softer when you need it the most. The first day is INSANE. It’s not even close to OK. First, the fitness test — you haven’t worked this hard in a week and you know how to push yourself now. You will be tired at the end. Then, Max Cardio Circuit — the longest max interval workout there is. 60 minutes of pushing it to the max. The warm-up is new, and feels overwhelming. The workout is double what you’re used to. And you are really pushing it now. Day 1 will kill you.

The rest of the week isn’t much better. This is arguably the hardest week of the program. The thought will float in the back of your mind “This does get easier right”? “Do I really want to do this for four more weeks”? Not even the recovery day resembles a break.

Weeks 7 – 9

Weeks 7 and 8 are really hard physically and mentally. These workouts are tough. They will push you to the limit, whether it be mental, muscular, or cardiovascular. Or maybe you’re nursing an injury by now. For me, my left foot was super sore. I started doing all the running and jumping exercises on a standing pad which was on top of a yoga mat! I also tweaked the heck out of my left shoulder and had to drop out of one of the workouts because I was in too much pain. But really, in the middle of each workout, I would keep thinking “Why am I even doing this”, and “Do I really want this badly enough”? I’ve already gained so much in terms of results, is this so important? I pushed passed those negative thoughts, and so can you!

One other thing you notice in this week — some of the new workout buddies are kind of idiots. In the first 4 weeks the people were suffering with you, now when it’s much harder we have these new guys that are acting as if it’s no big deal. Most of them are a part of the beachbody training crew. Maybe they won’t bother you, but I found them annoying. Also, Anna, who didn’t seem to be a star in the first 4 weeks becomes the “Tanya” of weeks 6-9. Oh don’t worry, Tanya is still there working her butt off but Anna is leading the way now. Good for her for “getting it”.

Week 9

This is sort of a victory lap of sorts. You know each workout is your last and you start to wonder what you’ll do without Insanity and Shaun T every day. How on earth will you match this level of intensity in future workouts? Are you going to restart the course after you finish? Do random samples of workouts every other day perhaps? Not to say this week is easy, but you KNOW you’re there and that drives you when you’re tired.

Total Effort Required

This workout is insane. I sold another of my friends, who like me is 28 and in pretty good shape at a base level. We’re not gym buffs, but definitely active, outdoorsy people. Probably you’re average active 20 somethings. It kicked both of our butts. I was about 2 or 3 weeks ahead of him but we both understood each others pain. I do recommend you get someone else to do it with you if possible. You don’t have to do it together physically, just be able to chat about it and encourage each other.

So yeah, this workout does not lie. You will sweat like you haven’t sweat in a long, long time. You will push yourself to the max, and you’ll get just enough rest not to keel over and die during the next set. Drink some sort of recovery drink during the workout (protein mix for me) especially during weeks 6 through 9. And you may want to supplement the workouts with a stretching routine — especially if you pick up an injury or soreness.

Eat and live right! I don’t think you can do this unless you fuel your body well with rest, liquids and good food. Neither I nor my friend barely anything during our 60 days. It’s too risky — how will it effect your next workout? And I know I personally made a strong effort to eat well. I know that has different meanings for everyone, so just eat the best you can according to your own theories!

Results

Weight wise, I didn’t succeed. I never ate enough protein or perhaps food in general. There is a calorie guide which is supposed to help you gain or lose weight, but I didn’t stick to it at all. In the beginning, I ate whenever I felt even close to hungry and it was often. But I feel like as the workout went on, my body got used to it and I wasn’t as hungry as often anymore. I probably initially gained a few pounds but at the time of this post I am weighing in at 155.8. That could easily be water weight.

That does NOT mean I did not have improvements! My core is 10 times what it was to start and my legs especially have beefed up I am sure. That was one of the first thing I noticed when doing the workout — how much my legs were burning and bulking. Shaun T loves pushups and my chest is pretty rock hard now though I clearly don’t look like Shaun T. I didn’t gain a lot of muscle mass in my biceps but they are definitely leaner and more powerful. One thing that skews things a bit for me is that I took up indoor rock climbing (bouldering) while doing the workout. I would go on my rest day and twice I went during the week. If there is a benefit in that, it is in my back and biceps (the way I climb as a beginner anyways).

You can judge for yourself with the pictures, but the best result for me is that I truly feel great. I feel like a powerhouse. I feel great about my effort in the program and I’m psyched about redefining the base muscular status of my body.

Shaun T’s Insanity get a HIGHLY RECOMMENDED from this reviewer.

I’ve been using the Plantronics Voyago 520 for about 5 years now. It’s a fantastic device: cheap, comfortable, good sound quality (most of the time), and fantastic battery life. Among the negatives are the difficulty in getting it to connect to my Windows 7 workstation (for usage in Skype), the call answer button which has broken off and now requires precise placement of my fingernail, and the occasional complaint in voice quality.

My first exposure to the Icon + Nerd package seemed to indicate it was exactly what I was looking for. “The Nerd”, “just worked” when used on the PC, solving difficulties in Win7 bluetooth setup for Skype. Also the sound quality was supposed to be exceptional, capable of replacing my old boom mic headset that I have been using with Skype for years. As an added bonus it was capable of A2DP for streaming audio from my iPhone. I was so psyched about the possibility of having this device simultaneously connected to my iPhone and Skype that I paid Amazon (the evil empire these days) to overnight it to me (I have Prime, thus making me a full fledged supporter of everything that is terrible in modern consumerism).

The device arrived in Apple-Esq  packaging — really well put together and somewhat “beautiful” with the earpiece displayed on a stand within the box. It comes with a variety of sizing for the earpiece and two different methods of securing it to your head. One involves a ring which “locks” into your inner ear, but I found to be a pain to put in correctly. The other is the old tried and true plastic loop that goes around your earlobe. The loop clips on to the headset and though it seems tight, has actually fallen off a few times when not on my ear. This causes me to worry that I will lose it eventually. My choice was the loop device since you can’t really see it when the earpiece is in, is more comfortable, and most importantly made it trivial to attach the headset.

When testing sound quality I was disappointed at first. The device does not sound anywhere near as full and crisp as my plantronics headset with a boom mic. I lamented the failings of wireless technology before deciding it was probably actually a failing of having a microphone next to your ear instead of in front of your mouth. Those I called via my iPhone said I sounded “as clear as if I were using the phone”. Is that a good thing? Anyways, in the end I decided I was happy with the quality of the microphone.

“The Nerd” hasn’t quite lived up to the no-nonsense hype for me. At first it worked great. Then I went out of range and when I returned it didn’t work in Skype. I fiddled around a bit and it started working again, but the next time I went out of range and returned it didn’t work at all. I could select “The Nerd” as my audio device but I got no input/output from the Icon. After some troubleshooting I’ve realized that it needs to be manually re-paired (that’s the pairing process, not a operation involving a screwdriver) after being out of range for awhile. There may a way to keep this in tighter sync, but I haven’t discovered it yet (UPDATE — SEE BELOW). This is a major drawback since 80% of why I was excited to get this was that it was going to always “just work”. If I got a phone call on my cell, I could easily take it. If a call came in on Skype (my business line), I could answer that too (the device pairs with 2 devices simultaneously [big deal, so did my 5 year old, $30 Plantronics 520] ). Currently this is a fantasy, not reality. One solution may be to unplug my “Nerd” when I’m not using it but that’s a pain and I’m not likely to remember to do that.

The battery life is miserable compared to my old Plantronics, but not bad when considering I have to remember to charge my phone every night these days anyways. The battery has 3 hours of talk time, which is enough to get me through 2-3 days most of the time, but you don’t want to run around with a low battery in case you really need it. The iPhone automatically displays the battery life for the Icon, and the device itself will estimate its talk time remaining by pressing the “Talk” button once. The battery is kind of a neutral issue for me. I liked being able to not charge my plantronics for weeks, but remembering to charge the Icon isn’t that big of a deal and it makes it through a day without an issue.

The bonus has been the A2DP streaming. I use this more than I ever imagined. It’s convenient to have my bluetooth headset constantly in my ear, when it’s not so with headphones. So when I’m waiting for/on the commuter train I often turn on a podcast. If I’m grabbing lunch alone at Chipotle, I’ll listen to NPR in solitude. It’s pretty cool and I really enjoy this feature. It’s helped make up for other features I was disappointed in.

Overall, I think the purchase was worth it. The earpiece is stylish (people often ask me what’s in my ear and seem envious, where that never happened with my old, clunky plantronics), comfortable, and has great sound quality. The Nerd isn’t everything I expected, but now that I’ve figured out some of the caveats, I think we’re going to have a good relationship going forward. The A2DP feature is a must have now that I’ve experienced it. The battery life isn’t great, and while the lack of volume control on the device isn’t great either, it hasn’t been a big deal yet. If I were doing some screencasts where I wanted my voice to sound superb, I might switch back to my boom mic headset for Skype but otherwise I think this little device has found a place in my everyday workflow.

UDPATE!

In using the NERD, I have found that the best way to maintain sync is indeed to unplug the NERD when it is not in use. With the headset on, plugging in the NERD after seems to guaruntee a connection and successful skype usage. It does take 10 or 20 seconds after you plug it in before you can actually hear audio in skype. I have also tried unplugging the nerd at that point and letting my earpiece complain about being out of range before plugging the NERD back in. It seems to continue to work in that scenario. After that, I tried leaving both devices on but getting out of range long enough for the earpiece to complain and then returning to try skype — once it reconnected it again worked fine.

So this leaves me to wonder two things. Is the issue only after the earpiece connection to the BT host times out? Or is this perhaps a Skype issue where once the host device is out of contact with the eirpiece for long enough, something goes wrong? I would like to get to the bottom of this for others and mostly myself. When you know exactly when something will fail, its much less frustrating and you can craft the proper solution.

Before:

After:

I recently pulled out my old NES. The system wasn’t working correctly so I purchased a new 72pin connector off eBay, cleaned my games after purchasing the correct security bit and then things were in good shape with the console. The controllers however were not working well. They also looked like crap.

I ordered some new 3rd party controllers of eBay and was initially happy but after putting in a longer session, I realized the D-Pad was really crappy and inferior to the old NES controllers.

I did a full cleaning job on the first controller, and the performance was MUCH better but not perfect. B still didn’t work great so I ordered a replacement pad set from nesrepairshop.com. The pads improved the button performance though it still wasn’t perfect. The replacement rubber pads aren’t machined quite as precise as the original and fit a bit weird. Still, I would say it gets the controller closer to perfection. The following is a guide on how I repaired the 2nd controller.

Tools

You will need:

• A medium or hard stiffness toothbrush. Get the cheapest one you can find. Mine was 99 cents at CVS. I’m sure you can do even better
• Cotton Swabs
• 90% Isopropyl Alcohol. 90% IPA dries quickly and cleans well.  I would NOT use water on your electronic components (the controller PCB)
• Dish Soap. I used Palmolive Pure and Clean. There is no ingredient list for comparison. Just go with your basic dish soap.
• Small container for soaking plastic components.
• Sealed container for screws.

Step 1: Disassemble Controller

Use a precision philips head screwdriver to remove the 6 screws on the back of the controller. Store the screws in a sealed container so you don’t lose them!

Take note of how the controller cable is wrapped inside the controller and then remove it and the PCB from the controller. Remove the rubber contacts. Remove the plastic buttons.

Step 2: Clean the Plastic Parts

Start by washing off the controller faceplate and backplate with warm water to get the loose dust and dirt off. Do the same with the buttons and directional pad (be careful not to lose them down the drain if you are using a sink!).

Now that the loose dirt is off, fill a container with hot, hot water and dish soap. Place the plastic buttons in the container to soak for as long as you don’t mind waiting (but not longer than the water is hot).

Step 3: Clean the PCB

While the plastic parts are soaking, we can clean the PCB (electronic board). Start by pouring some of your IPA (the isopropyl alcohol) into a small container. Dip your cotton swab in the IPA and then scrub the controller. Pay special attention to the black contacts where the button rubber contacts complete the circuit for the buttons. You may need to exert a fair amount of elbow grease to get the black carbon (I think it is carbon) grime/dust off of the contacts. DO NOT COMPLETELY REMOVE THE BLACK COATING. This is meant to be on the controllers!! Just remove what comes off with hard pressure using the cotton swabs!

I also swabbed around the solder contacts to get some of that grime off. The cotton will inevitably get stuck on the contacts and you will need to remove the strands with your toothbrush.

Now dip the toothbrush in the alochol and scrub fairly hard (again, not hard enough that you damage the black coating). This should remove any stick grime and also get rid of the cotton fibers that may have been caught on the solder or other parts. Your PCB should not be pretty clean! Lightly dry the IPA with a dry cotton swab and then leave the PCB out to dry in air for a bit.

Before:

After:

Step 4: Clean the Rubber Contacts

I replaced my contacts, but if you are keeping them then clean them with your cotton swabs. Make sure you don’t leave any grime on them which will dirty your PCB contacts when you put the controller back together.

If you are replacing the original rubber pads then I recommend only replacing the button pads that weren’t working well. The aftermarket pads don’t fit perfectly and it just doesn’t make sense to fix what isn’t broken! Just cleaning the rubber contacts on a button that is working well is sufficient for many more years of service.

Step 5: Clean the Plastic Parts

Now that your controllers plastic parts have soaked in hot soapy water, we can scrub them HARD with the toothbrush. Mine were particularly nasty due to some stupid controller sticker I put on them when I was younger. This should all come off after soaking the parts. I have previously tried different oils, peanut butter, nail polish, etc. The hot water with dish detergent works the best and didn’t damage my controller at all.

I used a mixture of rubbing the old sticker residue with my thumb, and brushing REALLY HARD with my medium stiffness toothbrush in clockwise and counter-clockwise patterns. Make sure you get all the dirt out of all the crevices in the buttons and the controller plates. Rinse off the parts after you have scrubbed to see if any dirt remains. When you are done, rinse it off once last time in hot water and leave the plastic to dry.

Step 6: Put it Back Together

Once everything is dry and clean, put it all back together!

Conclusion

Before Cleaning: I did a little test with my controller before the cleaning. Start and Select worked fine (Start occasionally didn’t work, but I am not going to replace it). The directional pad worked fine. It felt a bit stiff and the right button seems to activate a little too easily but all the directionally worked fine. Just the Right d-pad button felt different than the rest. The B button was terrible. It only worked 3 times out of 50. The A button was much better but not perfect. It worked 45 out of 50 times.

After Cleaning:

Wow. Well, I didn’t realize how poorly the start button was working before but after the cleaning it is working MINT with the original rubber pad. I can invoke manual “slow motion” without any issues now, hehe. The directional pad, which was working fine before, has more of a clicky, button feel to it as opposed to the previous stiffness. There is a strange kind of jittery feedback to it now when pressing a direction, which is hard to explain. All the directions feel the same, the different feel of the right direction is gone. They all perform fine after the new rubber replacement. I think I like the new feel better due to new clicky response, however the jittery feedback is odd. Perhaps it will go away with use. Either way it does not bother me, and I think it’s an overall improvement.

The A and B buttons are working GREAT. They have the original button “click” and performed flawlessly in my rudimentary test. 50 out of 50 on both A and B.

So that’s it! I do recommend replacing your pads if you’re going to go through the effort of cleaning all this up. I didn’t test the original rubber pads (except select, start) after cleaning on this controller, but I did find that just cleaning the A and B pads on my other controller was NOT enough.

I haven’t written in this blog in forever but I just wanted to apologize to the humans whose comments are stuck in my approve/reject list. Unfortunately I get many, many spam comments which make it nearly impossible to sort through. I’m sorry!

Yes, you get the message. I had hoped to research something new every week. Spend a few hours cultivating my memory and knowledge; make myself a more interesting and well thought out human being. But my efforts are failing, and by that I mean effort (stop) is failing (stop).

First I wanted to tell you about Re-Forestation after watching an amazing video about how an arngatang lover restored their habitat by empowering native people with a sense of pride and responsbility for their land, but that quickly dissolved into desserts and my curiosity about whether all desserts were the result of mans interference or if some are quite natural. This brought me to the Atacama Desert, on which I did much research for you but in an effort to use more than 1 source (<cough> wikipedia) I was slowed and discouraged and never finished my writeup. I was almost inspired to finish the Atacama story (and wrote an unfinished draft) when I started watching “Battlestar Galactica” and became interested in the F-22 stealth fighter. I did some research on that but alas, never enough and in depth enough to write a story.

Why has my attempt at a blog failed? Do I blame it on my Wired Subscription, the initial instigator of my curiousity into random topics, which has never arrived since I paid for my subscription 2 months ago? Perhaps it was my obsession with Battlestar Galactica through which I watched 4 seasons in just 2 weeks? Maybe it is simply a lack of efficiency in managing free time and inspiration in learning (this is obviously the root of the issue).

Arg. So what is the future of this blog? Will I find more time to write in it and what sorts of words will I fill it with? I feel like I would like the following things to be true from now on.

A) Each post should contain a relevant picture.

B) I should not require myself to do so much research that it keeps me from writing at all.

C) I should not limit myself to posting about just research oriented topics. (Whatever keeps the writing flow alive)

This is James.

Out.

The Atacama Desert. Do I really need to say more? Well, if you are anything like me and have the poorest worldly education possible then yes, probably I do. I’ve actually been looking over information about the desert for a few days now and the minute details are really not sticking in my head to well so I’m going to chalk that up to a lack of interest in lots of spatial numbers and a lack of underlying knowledge for geologic events.

The Atacama Desert is known for being the driest place on Earth (in parts). It runs along the Pacific Coastline of Chile (well not all of it but the middle to upper part) and into Peru. It’s over 600 miles long! Holy crap! One might wonder how a place that is literally bordering the coast can have such a dry climate and that’s where the interesting stuff comes into play (and the part that I don’t perfectly understand — future topic ‘Weather System’)!

Bordering the desert on the east is the massive Andes Mountain Chain. In fact these mountains are so high that the rain clouds cannot actually pass them (entirely true? Not sure. But the mountains do keep the rainforest isolated from the desert).  To the west is the Pacific Coastline. Despite this massive body of water, the only moisture that comes from the ocean is in the form of stratus clouds, which is really just a high altitude fog. This fog actually supports the only flora that grows in the desert, mostly fungus.

One cool side note I found out about is that the locals have developed (actually it was developed in Canada) a system to capture the moisture from the fog. What they do is hang giant nets with a tightly spaced weave which allows the water to re-condense in the nets and then drip down into a basin where the water is used for drinking and also farming. I want to say this provides something liek 25,000 gallons of water per day, but the number could actually be much higher.

All this lack of water leads to –

You will never know. I have unearthed this half finished post only to wet your appetite for the desert (Oh! Oh!).

All right. I don’t have to stare at this draft in my dashboard anymore, and that to me, is worth more than the integrity of this blog.

So, St. Patrick’s Famous Day is coming up and that tends to be a big deal in Boston. I’m sure it’s a fairly big dig everywhere since most everybody is looking for any excuse to get as sanctimoniously hammer as possible. BUT, we are Boston and we do have quite a bit of Irish pride floating around (not to mention duesche bags [not necessarily of Irish descent]), and in order to celebrate right I feel there are only two courses to take: Guinness or Whiskey. Since I am a poor alcoholic and cannot drink Guiness for hours on end and still have the energy to do anything, I will choose an Irish Whiskey for company (which will probably land me hovering over a porcelain device at some point since I will only have my poor judgement and not my full stomach [Guinness] to protect me from excess.)

I’ve learned to appreciate (know of the existance of) just one Irish Whiskey and that is Jameson’s Irish Whiskey. So I decided to embark on an education adventure surrounding Jameson, Irish Whiskey’s and whisky in general. The results of which are summarized below in (hopefully) a truthful and somewhat interesting manner.

Jameson is a single distillery Irish Whiskey company based in Cork, Ireland (thank God, the lawmakers have stated that to be a “Irish Whiskey”, it must be distilled in Ireland). The single distillery means every bit of the whiskey you end up drinking from a Jameson bottle was created at their distillery. Many whiskey labels end up mixing whiskey’s from multiple distilleries in order to create the taste they are looking for, but that’s not the case at Jameson’s Midleton Distillery. Jameson is a bit of an oddball for this; they are one of the few (possibly only, but I can’t confirm that) single distelleries of Irish Whiskey.

Giving a bottle the name of “Irish Whiskey” has a certain conotation that comes with it, mainly that it’s a mix of a bunch of different types of whiskey and so can’t quite be called anything more than “Irish Whiskey”. What they are really saying is it’s a blended whiskey as opposed to “Pure Pot Still”, “Single Malt Whiskey”, “Pure Malt Whiskey”, etc. With Jameson this usually means a blend of “Pure Pot Still” whiskey and grain whiskey’s. Creating a certain brand of whiskey often entails mixing together several different types in order to get the correct taste and consistency people expect from that brand.

“Pure Pot Still” is an interesting aside. It’s a type of whiskey that’s created in a “pot still” which is an apparatus for distillation which has a large base, tapering towards the top and then leads off into a second chamber. This type of whiskey is exclusive to Ireland and has a supposedly “spicey” taste to it due to the blending of malted and unmalted barely (the unmalted barley is termed “green” and it’s from this that the whiskey gets the spicey taste). The entire pot still is made out of copper (sometimes aluminum lined with copper) giving it a disticitive look. Why copper? During the distillation, when the alcohol is boiled off from the water, the copper collects sulfurs that are present and filter them from the whiskey (sulfers have a less than desirable taste to them and so good riddance).

Grain whiskey’s can be any whiskey created from maize (corn), rye, or barley. In more recent times they’re distilled differently from malt whiskey’s in a column still. It’s a more efficient and quicker process to get to a purer ethanol (alcohol) and so these whiskey’s tend to be cheaper. Admittedly, I haven’t done much research on this type of distillation as it seems a bit less “romantic”.

All of the barley (and presumably other grains, if they use them in any of the Jameson blends) come from within 50 miles of Cork. Granted Ireland isn’t a huge island and it would probably be expensive as hell to have grains shipped in, but I think the whiskey industry in general is such a great model. All the ingredients are locally harvested, the distillation is done entirely in Cork, and there is no importation of foreign products. It really feels like a healthy, well managed, and sustainable industry. I know that it’s a much simpler product than say producing a car which probably does demand outsourcing and importation of materials but at the end of the process you really have a product that has a strong sense of identity and pride in it’s creation.Personally, I’ll proudly drink a Jameson on the rocks (and the remaining ones straight) for St. Patrick’s Day. The companies practices leave me feeling all warm and fuzzy inside (and the drink too). Now if only they weren’t owned by a damn French Conglomerate.

Happy St. Patricks Day!
Further Background Information

I’ve been more and more curious about the way other people think and remember stories and subject material as I realize that my own memory is absolutely abysmal. What good is spending any time learning about new and interesting things if you’re left with a blank shell of information a few days later.

“Well…I read about the flight traffic problem over New Jersey/New York, and there were some really interesting facts and problems but I just can’t recall enough to make much of a story out of it.”

It’s like taking in some sort of emotion about the subject material but not having the facts to prove it or back it up. It’s really frustrating in conversations and it pulls down my perceived intelligence. I wonder if it’s some sort of evolutionary survival mechanism to take in a general good or bad feeling about a place or event or story but throw out the details since it’s not something I’m likely to deal with very often? Anyways I don’t particularly like that mechanism and I’ve decided to start a small knowledge blog to try and fight it.

The knowledge blog is based on what my favorite brand of tea sometimes takes a moment to impart on me:

“To learn, read.

To know, write.

To master, teach.”

The knowledge blog to me is this:

• Research a subject I’ve been driven to curious intentions about.
• Spit it back out in my own words here in an attempt to make it more concrete in my mind
• Do this once or twice a week
• Have a log/reminder of the things I’ve found curious and taken the time to look into