Help Your Contractor Help You

Floating Wall

I’ve been through quite a few “that’s not what we wanted” scenarios at work lately. The problem is that a myriad of architects, engineers, acousticians, lighting consultants, interior designers, contractors, and construction managers are attempting to read your mind. Even with plans, sketches, reports, specifications, and lengthy meeting minutes, sometimes nobody knows what you’re talking about. In at least one case this week, five minutes spent with the end user on a project would have negated months of debate and confusion leading up to all the wrong decisions being made. There are many times in life that things may seem clear to one person because they’ve been picturing it a certain way since the beginning, but without walking others through their requirements and desires, they’re still just assuming an understanding when there probably isn’t one. In large commercial projects with an array of contractors and consultants managing millions of dollars to the end result of whatever is on a sometimes 25-pound roll of plans, there are still points of contention and confusion; all the more when you’re trying to explain what you want your patio to look like by pointing at stuff in your back yard.

Here’s how to get what you want from your contractor:

1. Explain how you are going to use the space when he’s done building it.

2. Have plans made, or at least commission your contractor to draw up his understanding of the design.

3. Since you probably got the idea from something you’ve seen, let’s take a look at some pictures. If there will be differences specific to your home, point them out.

4. Look for a thorough understanding of what you want and let him explain the process of how he is going to make your design work.

5. Make sure you understand the costs, problems, or potential maintenance issues.

Here’s an example from a condo I remodeled in Marina del Rey last year: What I got from the designer was a typical floor plan showing wall layout, and a vague description of finishes. What they wanted was walls “floating” over a floating wood floor based on some pictures of their favorite Japanese architect’s finest work. Luckily the wood floor installation prompted me to bring base samples, and the details of what they wanted were brought to light and sorted out. What they couldn’t understand was that a floating wood floor is not attached to the subfloor, needs room to expand, and that having no base would leave a visible gap at the walls and nothing holding down the edges. Just because I’m adventurous and wanted to do it, we worked it out, removed base and drywall, L-metaled the bottoms of the walls after blacking-out the sill plate, and finished it all to look like the walls were indeed floating above the new cork floors. It turned out pretty cool after they fired their designer, but having some pictures ahead of time in the design and bid process would have pointed out problems and costs from the beginning.

Of course the last thing they didn’t understand was that the space under the walls would be a dust trap; but although their housekeeper now requires a Shop Vac to clean the house, they still love it.

One Year After Inauguration

So, lets recap a few Obama campaign promises:

$3,000.00 tax credit for every new hire for every small business (nope).

Healthcare for everyone (nope… thank God, so I don’t have to pay for it).

No new taxes (nope, I’m paying another couple bucks a week. How ’bout you? New vice tax took effect 2 weeks into office.)

Guantanamo Prison closed within a year (nope… again, thank God).

All government negotiations broadcast on C-SPAN (nope).

Transparency (nope).

Unemployment will not rise above 10% (nope. I think by now we all know that underemployment plus our 10.5% unemployment in most places makes it nearly 17%.)

No new troops to the Middle East and a complete pull out of all forces within sixteen months (new troops in, yes. End of war in 4 months, not likely.)

Anyone had an ass full of “Hope and Change” yet? (Yep.)

Stop Trying to Diet

Since it’s New Year’s resolution time, and I keep reading all about the latest fads to make you fit, I thought I’d bring it home with some real advice today. If you want to lose weight, stop trying so hard and start thinking logically. Before I became a Certified ISSA Personal Trainer, and before I went to work at Bally’s as a personal trainer, I lost 67 pounds in six months, and more importantly, felt like a professional fighter every day of the week. Want to know how? Let’s answer some simple questions first:

How do most of you think you can lose weight? Your answer: By exercising more and eating better.

True, but why? What burns the extra calories and devours the fat? Your answer: An exercise bike, no wait… Yoga?

Think more simply. What part of your body is burning the calories and fat? Now your answer hopefully is: Muscle.

That’s correct! Good job. You just solved your problem, although you probably don’t realize it. Muscle burns fat and protein builds muscle. So if you want to burn more fat, even while you’re sleeping, build muscle. This is easier than you think. You don’t need to spend hours in a gym trying to bulk up while sipping protein shakes. If you are spending hours in a gym, you’re probably not working hard enough. Let’s get right down to how I did it. Metabolism. Metabolism. Metabolism.

Here is my secret to increasing metabolism (then I will explain how this worked so well):

Workout program:

30 minutes per day (sometimes only 20 minutes), but the most important part is breaking it up throughout the day. That’s right — exercise just 10 minutes at a time semi-evenly spaced throughout the day. Breaking it up doesn’t give your metabolism a chance to slow down.

Routine:

As heavy as you can lift for those 10 minutes doing Olympic-style lifts, ie: bench press, squat, clean and jerk or clean and press, dead lift, etc. Please be careful, but you should feel like you are going to collapse after those 10 minutes. If you don’t feel like you almost died in the middle of your last rep, your body is not being pushed hard enough to make changes. Your body does not want to do anything but eat, sleep, and conserve energy at all costs. You have to make it do more. You can do this for 10 minutes at a time!

What to eat:

Concentrate on protein because it’s the hardest thing to find in a modern diet, but your aim should be to consume fat, protein, and carbohydrates in a 1:2:3 ratio.

Why does all this work? Working your muscles hard does two things — It prevents your body from metabolizing its most easily accessible source of energy (your muscle), and it builds more muscle to help support its new workload (consequently burning even more calories). If you are using your muscles, your body will not rob energy from them for food; it will have to turn to other sources like what you are eating now, or if you are disciplined enough to be a little bit hungry (after you workout, particularly) it will have to burn fat for energy. Nearly all the calories you burn are to support the function of your muscles (from your large fast-twitch muscles like your quadriceps and pectorals, to your heart).

There is a lot of science behind this that may be helpful for you to research, but think about it logically, and you will easily be able to see how this works so well.

TIPS:

Start a little bit light so you don’t hurt yourself, but you are already far stronger than you think, for example: if you can do 10 reps of a particular exercise before you fail (can’t do one more, or drop the weight) that’s about 80% of what you can do once. Aim for what you can do 3 to 8 times before failure. And don’t rest more than a few seconds between sets. The easy way to eliminate rest is to switch between your upper and lower body on every set.

If you can’t get to a gym, use your large fast-twitch muscles in speed and power exercises you can do all by yourself : sprints, lunges, pull-ups, plyometrics (like jumping on and off or over a park bench).

Remember the key to not letting your body “eat” your muscle is to let it know that it is in use and it is imperitive that it makes more. If you’re riding an exercise bike (especially for an hour or more) your body knows it has plenty of muscle to spare.

Don’t listen to the clowns at the gym telling you about your bad form!! You are not a body builder — you are a muscle builder. The reason you are doing Olympic-type lifts is that they use the largest number of your largest muscles… and every small one, too! That’s the idea. It will make your whole body stronger; from your neck to your little finger. Ladies — this will also prevent you from developing ridiculous biceps or whatever it is that you don’t want.

This is extremely important also — you will be hungry. Your new muscle needs more energy. If you want to speed the weight-loss process drink a lot of water before you eat. It has no calories and will help you fill up fast before you finish that 2nd pizza. Fat loss comes when you take in fewer calories than you need and continue to work your muscles hard enough to make them stick around. Eat lots of eggs (the world’s most perfectly proportioned food in the 1:2:3 ratio), yogurt, milk, chicken, steak, nuts, Northern-hemisphere fruits like apples and oranges, fibrous vegetables. You already know what to avoid (the trick is not to avoid it, but just eat a little cake and ice cream next time).

One more thing. Without going crazy with medical and scientific terms, your muscles contract by pulling a sheath more-or-less over a shaft, sort of like a hydraulic piston, so don’t stretch too much before you lift, or you will become temporarily weaker. Save more intense stretching for after you workout; this will help your muscle grow. Stretch out and loosen up just enough to make sure you won’t pull anything.

Follow this advice and I guarantee that however you feel right now, in a month, you will feel like an ANIMAL every minute of the day. And stick to it for a few days at least. If you’re not hooked within a week, you’re not ready. Get your head right and try again next year.

Amateur Night

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Amateur Night — that’s what the alcoholics call nights like tonight, and for good reason. The same reason that the Highway Patrol and your local police call it that. So first off, don’t drink and drive. And now that I’ve thrown out the mandatory PSA, let’s get down to the science of getting drunk cheap.

Let me begin by saying yes, I am a qualified Certified Bartender with RBS and ABC (Responsible Beverage Service and Alcoholic Beverage Control Board) training; so I do know what I’m talking about.

Here’s my best advice on getting drunk fast and cheap:

1. Order drinks that are mixed as doubles, or that contain several liquors, such as a Long Island Iced Tea or an Old Fashioned. At a lot of bars, you’ll pay whatever the price is for a standard mixed drink but get twice the liquor.

2. Order drinks that have sweet mixers, juices, simple syrup or sugar. Do this because the sugar helps the alcohol get into your body faster. The bad news is that this happens the same way that those drinks make you fatter. If more sugar enters your blood stream than your muscles can use immediately, insulin enters your blood to pull it out and store it (as fat). If alcohol is attached to that sugar, it gets pulled into your body just as fast.

3. Carbonated drinks also get digested and absorbed into your body faster than non-carbonated drinks (Rum and Coke, Vodka Red Bull, etc.)

4. The foods you eat can get you drunker faster also, and most of those foods are cheap, too: bread, pasta, deserts, anything that is high in sugar or simple carbohydrates like white flour (essentially sugar) because they are digested and converted to energy quickly. And as we already learned, excess energy is pulled out of your blood and stored (I should also say that insulin does not discriminate once it is released — it pulls all the sugar out of your blood — so you may get sleepy, too).

5. This sounds counterintuitive, but order better alcohol. You will pay more for each “call” drink, but it will do you much better than a “well” drink, so you won’t need half as many and you can enjoy them instead of drinking as fast as possible. A Bombay Saphire Buck will get you slurring a lot faster than a Gin Buck made with whatever flower-flavored water they have in the “well.”

6. Drink with your friends, run a tab, and go to the restroom when it’s time to pay up.

Just kidding about that last one, but if you’re trying not to get drunk as fast as possible (which hopefully one of your friends is not) do the opposite of all the above suggestions: eat steak or another food high in protein and drink something filling like beer, or order your mixed drinks from the well and “tall” (they’ll come with more of the mixer, not more alcohol).

Have fun and be safe. I’ll be at home drinking in my kitchen like the other alcoholics who know better than to trust the amateurs out on the roads tonight.

My Pollutants are Cuter Than Yours

Like my title? I don’t want to sound like some sort of anti-American, family dog hating Communist heathen, but I feel the makings of a new environmentalist bumper sticker coming on. And it’s not as if the only things I like better than driving my gas-guzzling 5.7 liter V8 are strip-mining and deforestation, but apparently, the title of this post is the latest defense for environmental polluters. On the surface, these hiking, Vegan, nature loving polluters and their bandana wearing dogs seem like they’re as environmentally friendly as they could be. However… there is a new “inconvenient truth” coming from Victoria University at Wellington and the Stokholm Environment Institute that shows your best friend has a bigger carbon footprint than my V8.

The study shows that the average dog, thanks mostly to his carnivorous diet and it’s associated land and livestock requirements, produce more carbon annually than the average SUV (including during its manufacture). Sounds bad for Rover, huh? And this time it’s not Land Rover.

In keeping with my general feeling about environmental preservation, which is this: “Do the best you can and then mind your own business.” I know you love your dog more than I love my truck, and wouldn’t expect you to get rid of him any more than I’m going to start riding my bike everywhere.

I’d just like to point out that the environmental-Nazi point of view is that dogs benefit people in many ways, providing companionship to the elderly, et cetera, so they’re fine as gross-polluters; whereas my truck only keeps me from having to strap drywall to my ten-speed one sheet at a time, and allows me to leave for work at 4 AM instead of 6 PM the night before, so it’s really just totally unnecessary. How about this: next time you want to tell me I’m wasting valuable resources driving to work, you can sell your Prius and ride your dog down to the farmers’ market instead.

What Would You Do?

What if you were there in Chicago two months ago when four gangbangers  beat their well-mannered schoolmate, Derrion Albert, to death on the street. Would you have stopped it? Do you really believe yourself to be capable of stopping such a thing? Or would you turn and walk away?

Think of the story of Kitty Genovese, who was stabbed to death on the streets of New York while all of her neighbors just watched, and never even called the police.

What if you were on the bus when Rosa Parks wouldn’t vacate the front seat and move to the back. Would you have stood up for her? We all like to think that we would have. I’ve pictured myself lecturing some rednecks on the proper treatment of the elderly and then beating the stuffing out of them. But would I have done it? Would I have risked jail in that time, or the pack turning on me? Would I have defied my own race to stand up for someone else? Would I have been able to resist the pack mentality of men that grows their fragile egos? I’d like to think so, but it’s a tough question. Few people can resist the chance to raise themselves above someone else, or kick them while they’re down.

That used to be my favorite part of practicing martial arts. The unbelievable feeling of control as you start to gain the upper hand in a match or even just sparring. When someone’s hurt, there’s the opportunity to pounce and beat him into submission. It’s very difficult to resist the urge to press the attack. Just like when animals are hunting; they don’t search out the strongest, most dangerous prey; they find the weak. And when the prey is hurt, the pack jumps in and kills.

One of the worst examples of pack-mentality ever reported: Just last month, a 15-year-old girl was gang-raped outside a Homecoming dance in Richmond, California. Upwards of 20 passers-by either joined in or just stood there and watched while she was raped for two and a half hours. What is wrong with people?

How about the millions of Nazis who just went along with mass-murder? They had no idea that might have been the wrong thing to do?

When you find yourself witnessing something that shouldn’t be happening, you better know what you’re going to do about it before you get there.

Bribing your Mailman

This is gonna sound a little jacked up considering the fact that I have several friends that are mail carriers, but… With the holidays approaching, I’ve seen a lot of blogs and articles about the etiquette of tipping your mailman.

What exactly am I tipping him for? Bringing me bills? Cramming my mail box full of trash and junk mail? Delivering a good percentage of my private mail already suspiciously opened?

It’s not as if I don’t believe in tipping. My wife’s usually jealous and yelling at me about over-tipping waitresses, for example. But here’s the difference between waitresses and your mailman. Most waitresses make minimum wage and have their tips deducted from their paychecks (especially if you pay with a credit card, most restaurants will automatically track tips and take the tip from their pay). My mailman, with about 14 years on the job, makes around $25 an hour (not too shabby) for driving in circles and putting paper in boxes.

Or am I supposed to be “tipping” him to prevent my mail from being ripped up, opened, or lost? When I go to work, customers don’t throw me a little something extra if I actually do my job. What gives? Or are my customers short-changing me, too?

Killing and Eating Socialism

If an African lion wants to eat, it has to kill. But 9 out of 10 times that a hungry lion tries to run down a gazelle, it fails. So, how on Earth are there still lions around after all those failed attempts? The lion gets hungrier and hungrier, yet weaker and weaker with every failed attempt, often struggling for days, maybe even weeks, and approaching starvation before it finally succeeds and can eat. Desire, even desperation, is the explanation for his eventual success. 

This is why Socialism and even Socialism “Lite” (social programs) don’t work; they strip away the desire to succeed. Once a lion is brought into captivity, or any animal, it is likely never to be released into the wild again. The animal has grown accustomed to having his needs provided for, and has lost his ability to succeed on his own.

It’s the same thing that made me worthless around the house as a child. Like most kids, I could never really get behind a big day of room cleaning or garage organization. It was always just half-assed enough to make it look like I made an attempt. Why would I do anything more? It’s not as if my parents were going to stop feeding me or kick me out of the house if I didn’t do a good job.

When I left the care of my parents, I figured out just how hard it was to succeed on my own. Eventually, just in the past few years, I ended up working as a superintendent for a large contractor, starting my own construction company, selling real estate for ERA, working as a personal trainer at Bally’s, teaching martial arts in the park, and going back to school, all while still a reservist in the Navy, and all at the same time. Why did I maintain 6 jobs and stay in school, too? I wanted to buy a house. Of course, like everyone else who bought in the past five years, now I wish I hadn’t, but that’s beside the point. If I had turned to the government for assistance, I’d still be where I was five years ago.

Some people who are incapable of providing for themselves due to injury, disability, or illness will always need to be taken care of by family, and failing that, by society as a whole. That’s how we roll. Nobody is going to turn their back on the suffering, and tell them to get a job if they’ve got no arms and legs, or can’t work for whatever reason. But for the rest of us, desire is the key to survival and success. When government removes need and desire, through a multitude of handouts, they remove success. And not only is the desire to work removed from those who recieve the handouts, but also from those who have to work twice as hard to pay for them.

Speed up Your Writing

Nobody wants to write essays. Most students complain about the length of time devoted to writing term papers, research reports, and the like. The average university student may spend several hours each day over the course of a week to complete a five to ten page essay. Would it be less miserable if you could just get it on paper faster?

Some of these may sound odd, but here’s a few tips from a professional author, on how to write faster:

1. Have a rough outline (try a voice recorder).

2. Stop trying so hard to make it longer (simpler will be faster).

3. Relax (with a few cocktails if need be).

4. Speak your mind (be argumentative and controversial. At least you have an opinion).

5. Practice (take a few minutes to paraphrase someone else. It will help you prepare).

6. Talk to yourself (often and at length. Whatever’s in your head, get it out, in words).

Wow, really…what a revelation, you say. WTF? Let me explain further. If you are trying endlessly to reword every sentence to fit as many words in it as possible, consulting the thesaurus to use bigger words, trying to sound smarter by explaining each sentence as if the reader started in the middle of the paper, or using any other full-of-crap tactics to increase the size of your essay, you’re really just making it harder and harder on yourself, and producing a confusing and far worse product. Simplicity allows you to maintain your train of thought, consequently writing faster.

Demonstration, please.

Average full-of-crap essay:

In the early morning of December seventh, in the year nineteen-hundred and forty-one, the Imperial Navy of the nation of Japan launched a surprisingly well-orchestrated attack on the United States Navy’s Pacific Fleet docked at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands.

You may even think that sound good, and wish you could turn half a dozen words into bullshit like that. But it’s not good. It’s ridiculous. You’re much better off stating the simple facts simply, and expanding on them simply in subsequent sentences. Do not fill your essays with non-factual opinions like “surprisingly well-orchestrated.” Wasn’t that surprising to the Japanese, and shouldn’t have been surprising to the staff at Pearl Harbor, since they intercepted Japanese messages concerning the attack before it happened and ignored them as training messages, mistakes, or confusion. Maybe you’d be better off writing about that? And don’t expand pointlessly on the location of familiar places, or write out familiar dates as if you’re just trying to make your paper longer (which you are, and everybody knows it). Let’s continue the example.

Better than average essay:

On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. It has long been thought of as a surprise attack, but could it have been stopped? It was certainly surprising to the citizens of the United States who were happy to be staying out of World War II. It was also a surprise to the sailors lost on board the many vessels sunk that morning by the Japanese air strike. But could misinterpreted message intercepts be the real culprit behind the devestation?

The second version is twice as long as the first essay introduction. The real difference, though: something was said, a few points made, and an interesting problem was presented. Everybody knows what happened at Pearl Harbor, after all, it is “a day that will live in infamy forever,” so do something different with it. Same goes for all your writing. If your instructor can only remember one of the 34 essays he’s read, guess which one is going to be the top of the curve.

So how do you really do that? This is one of the most important things that nobody will ever tell you: talk to yourself. Just don’t get all crazy with it and get yourself straight-jacketed. Talking to yourself will help you realize whatever your opinion is and work it all out in a logical manner. Hearing your potential written words out loud reinforces your understanding of the subject matter and helps commit it to your memory so that you can more easily recall it on paper later. You also need to be semi-prepared, at least. Make sure you’ve read at least the highlights of what you’re supposed to be expanding on. If you have a tendancy to plagiarize, it’s almost better if you haven’t read the whole thing word for word. You also need to have an outline. Not the ridiculous two page outline they made you write in junior high, just a couple of words to help you remember what points you’re covering. The outline for my book, Trust No One, that I’m writing now, is about a half page (double-spaced) at the end of my Word document, so it’s always right in front of me and easy to refer to.

As far as speaking your mind goes, I’m sure there are plenty of people around who think you talk too much and are tired of listening to your B.S., so put it on paper. Just remember to talk it through first. You’ve got plenty of opinions, just make sure you can present them in some sort of order. Take notes as you talk it though (not think it through, talk it through).

And relaxation is different for everyone. Just make yourself comfortable when you write, especially if writing makes you particularly uncomfortable. My study group had a hard time understanding my need to drink during our meetings at first, but whatever works. That’s what keeps my mouth working and my hands busy writing, because I’m not a naturally outgoing or talky sort of fellow.

Here’s one of my favorite classic relaxation methods:

an “Old Fashioned”

-Two shots of Bourbon (that’s 2 ounces, a double). I like Wild Turkey.

-Two maraschino cherries.

-An orange wedge.

-A spoonful of sugar.

-A dash of Bitters.

-Muddle (smash) all the ingredients together in the bottom of a short glass (a bucket), fill the glass with ice, then top it off with 7-up. The recipe actually calls for soda water, but trust me, it’s way better with 7-up. Then give it a good mixing with a bar spoon or whatever you got. Top it with an orange slice and maraschino “flag” if you want to look like a professional.

Before you know it, writing will be Pavlov’s bell, and you will be his dog, salivating at the chance to settle in with your laptop and a couple of shots of Bourbon. If anyone objects, just remind them how well it worked for Hemmingway. But don’t forget to proofread your work once you’ve sobered up. It’s not my fault if you call your professor a cocksucker.

Healthcare Crisis Solved

I didn’t know for sure that I had broken my arm until about six years after the fact. It was actually the fourth time that I’d broken it, badly enough that I had a second elbow and my lower arm was folded in half. I carried my arm over to the X-ray table and did my best to hold it upright with my other hand. Tech says, “Oh, not the first time you’ve been here.” Of course, it was actually the first time I’d been there, so he showed and explained to me all the healed fracture lines in my bones on the X-ray film.

Wasn’t that surprising, since I’d spent two separate non-consecutive summers trying to hide from my parents, the fact that I couldn’t move my arm too much or turn my hand. Why would someone hide a broken arm, you ask? Well, I grew up with a father who would not even go to the dentist to get his teeth cleaned. I only went to the dentist twice before I was 18 years old. Luckily, I have a lot of calcium in me and abnormally hard teeth, so I never had a cavity despite my lack of childhood dental care.

But anyway, the first time I broke my arm (after being bucked off a horse), I couldn’t stop crying about it like the young child that I was, until Dad threatened me with medical care. It went something like this: “If it hurts that bad, we’ll have to take you to the hospital and they’ll break your arm again to fix it.”

That finally quieted me down. It hurt bad enough the first time, I didn’t need my arm broken again. So, I spent the next 4 or 5 weeks hiding my non-rotating lower arm until it healed. Did it again two summers later, twice, after falling off my skateboard, and again at the end of the summer, after falling off a swing. I sure fell off a lot of stuff, but anyhow, I was always more afraid of medical care than I was of injuring myself in the first place.

My dad still won’t hardly go to the doctor. My step-mom took him about a week after he had a stroke a couple of years ago just for being tired of him dragging his leg behind him and having to do everything one-handed. He’s a little better now, but still hates the doctor, and so do I.

So I think I finally discovered the cure for our troubled and expensive healthcare system. It won’t take generations to pay for it; it will just take one generation of kids having an abnormal fear of medical treatment instilled into them. Hell, I’ve only been to the doctor twice in my adult life. Once when I was pissing blood from kidney stones, and once when I almost died from a painkiller allergy. Dad was right about the dentist. That’s where I got the painkillers, after I let him talk me into pulling my wisdom teeth. The dentist almost killed me.

So, for everyone who doesn’t want to go to college and work hard to get a better job with health insurance coverage for your family, don’t just stand there with your hand out waiting for the government to solve your problems… all you need to do is threaten your children with the horrors of medical treatment.