Disinformation

I now know the moment when I realized that Disinformation was a huge problem, specifically for conservatives from the older generation (Baby Boomers).  The year was 2017 and my father was incensed that Pete Carroll would allow a flag burning in the Seattle Seahawks locker room.  He believed this happened with every fiber of his being.  He read a throw away article with a not all that impressive photoshopped picture of Michael Bennett holding a burning United States flag.  Not until I told my father to look up whether this event was real did he finally understand that he had been duped.  That makes it sound more eventful that it actually was.  He didn't thank me.  No remorse for being wrong.  Really there was no recognition that what he previously believed was incorrect.  He only temporarily turned off his flamethrower of anger and hatred.  Then it was on to the next thing he was told to be angry about.  I'll let you guess where he received all of his information, and you would be right.  

It was at that moment that I understood that my dad was a mark.  This man had volunteered to consume a steady supply of "news" that he liked, which apparently did not matter if it was accurate or not.  This stream of information was designed to anger this mark and feed his insatiable hunger to fuel his vitriol.  And it worked. Every. Time.  

Dad passed away about a year later.  He never righted his own ship.  When he was too sick/weak to replenish his supply of disinformation, he had nothing to be angry about because there was no one telling him what to be angry about.  He calmed down because his supply of anger fuel was turned off, not because of some self-improvement epiphany.  

He was always stubborn, so him not changing his own behavior was not a surprise to me.  What surprised me was his willingness to shelf his curiosity and critical thinking skills.  Characteristics he used to have in abundance and taught me how to use simply disappeared.  

I lost my dad to manipulative, inaccurate, hate-inciting, propaganda many years before he passed away.  He had succumbed to this misinformation many years before he succumbed to cancer.  

Healthiest I've Been In A While

Noticed that I am the healthiest I have been in quite some time.  Recently saw my weight get down to the lowest part of my self-defined "range" of acceptable weights and stay there.  So its not like I magically dropped 25 pounds and it surprised me.  Its more like a subtle trend towards being less heavy.  I have always eaten fairly healthy and stayed physically active.  That hasn't changed, but there is something I'm doing right, so it is time for some self-analysis.

Exercise:

My weight training has probably increased and has been more focused.  One change revolves around my long-term goal of performing strict pullups, despite never being all that close to doing one.  Guessing that I have spent the last year building up the specific muscles to get me to that goal.  For starters, there have more a LOT more inverted rows.  That leads me to recent workouts where I feel like I'm getting closer to a strict pullup by using weigh offsets on a pullup machine.  Doubt that is it, but the intensity is extremely high, using major muscle groups, so it is not "nothing".

Strangely, I have gotten away from major lower body workouts, like back squats.  They just do not appeal to me anymore.  Instead, I have been embracing ATG/Knees over Toes workouts.  I start every gym workout with 3 minutes of backwards walking.  I end every gym workout with raised elevation Patrick steps (10/leg).  While this has been a positive change, I doubt it has done that much to my overall health other than help me avoid injury.

For the last 10 years or so, I have embraced running.  There were times when I worked up to 8 mile runs, but that usually brought on knee pain when I increased my distance or speed.  Thus, the reason I have been using the ATG workouts.  My gym workouts typically involve a 1-2 mile run, which have been consistent.  My overall weekly milage is low (~3-4 miles), so while I have been running, it has not been that much.  

The only other intense gym workouts have been Bench Press, Inclined Bench Press, Curls, "Cable Pushaways" and "Tricep Pulldowns with a flat grip".  Those are to get my arms looking bigger, which have worked a little bit.  Maybe the increased intensity has helped on these exercises?

Diet:

We all knew it had to be the diet, right?  Let's see if there have been some positive changes.

More meal-kit, pre-prepped meals that have been the default lunch since I have been working from home.  This helps with portion control and limiting overprocessed items from getting to the plate.  Big positive here.

After a recent well visit trip to the doctor, my blood tests showed my bad cholesterol was a little high.  My response was to reduce my cheese intake.  This was easy since I was incorporating cheese in so many ways.  Primarily, my breakfasts include omelets.  Lots of omelets.  That means lots of cheese.  Just before I realized I needed less cheese at breakfast, I had found a new way to make my omelets which was based on the Korean/Japanese method for Omarice.  I decided that instead of rice, I would use cauliflower rice and mix in other vegetables (mushrooms, peppers, broccoli) as a hash base.  Then the egg was basically a French style omelet laid over the hash.  The more I use this style, the less cheese I consume.  I also eliminated cheese as a snack.  This could be more impactful that I realize.

Summary:

No changes that I would consider major.  Weight training has been more intense.  My diet has improved with the drastic cheese intake reduction.  The results are essentially that my weight is less, but I feel better overall.  

80s Mania Wrestling Returns - Tag Teams continued

 It was not enough for me to simply dust off the under utilized wrestlers in an attempt to inject some much needed variety in the Tag Team Invitational PPV when playing 80s Mania Wrestling Returns.  This time around I decided to force myself to use the worst wrestlers I had.  To make it more appealing, I would offset these poorly rated openers with a Main Eventer that would match well with each.

The first part of this was to get the lowest Draw wrestlers:

Brit Buckingham

Lifeguard Chip

Mark Bugg

Tonto Loco

Cesar Sleaze

DangerZone

Yuppie VP

Curt Grunge

The next step was to match them with a high Draw wrestler that "made sense".  Here are the teams following their draft.

Brit Buckingham-King V*

Lifeguard Chip-Dude Brohan

Slugger Johnson-Vin Voltage

Tonto Loco-Chicano

Cesar Sleaze-Hammerhead

DangerZone-Hairy

Yuppie VP-Pierre The Enormous

Curt Grunge-Lazer ALT

Mark Bugg-Buzzsaw ALT**

*King V won the World title, making him ineligible by my arbitrary rules.  Their team name would have been Royal Pain.  Brit did not match up with anyone else, so I went with Hotshot/Ezekiel as a substitute team

**Mark Bugg/Buzzsaw did not make the cut, but would have been named BuggSaw

Finally the best part of the process was to come up with a team name for each:

Hotshot/Ezekiel                 Snipers

Lifeguard Chip/Dude Brohan Beach Bros

Slugger Johnson-Vin Voltage Power Hitters

Tonto Loco/Chicano         Los Guapos

Cesar Sleaze/Hammerhead Head Bangers

DangerZone/Hairy*         Flyboys

Yuppie VP/Pierre The Enormous Stock Market Crash**

Curt Grunge/Lazer ALT         Mosh Pit

*Originally was going to be Chance Solar, but he was injured the previous week.  

**Could have been named Bull Market, Bear Market, Death and Taxes.  A lot of options.

Finally the Tag Team Invitational Tournament:

Round1:

Flyboys defeat Stock Market Crash

Los Guapos defeat Power Hitters

Head Bangers defeat Beach Bros

Mosh Pit defeat Snipers

Round2:

Flyboys defeat Los Guapos

Mosh Pit defeat Head Bangers

Final:

Flyboys* defeat Mosh Pit

*DangerZone/Hairy had the lowest average Draw rating of the teams, but won the tournament

80s Mania Wrestling Returns - Tag Teams

I have been playing 80s Mania Wrestling Returns, which is a mobile game that puts you in charge of booking wrestling match with a strong homage to 80s and 90s wrestlers and pop culture.  The game rewards you when you book better matches, so the events tend to be a little top heavy where the Main Eventers reap the highest rewards, which leaves wrestlers further down on the card underutilized.  To combat this, I decided to de-emphasize the Main Event wrestlers in the March Madness singles tournament.  I created arbitrary rules for my federation that would only allow Upper Mid Carders or lower to compete in the tournament.  I also disallow current title holders.  These new rules made the MM tournament more competitive.

Overall, the Tag Team division had its own set of problems.  First of all, there were teams that would dominate.  Teams like Lazer/Flex, Blade Blasters, The Scoundrels, Big Money, were no longer allowed to team up due to their dominance of winning the Tag Team titles and keep them for months.  For reference, Toxic Terror, Daredevils, and the Van Winkles were the better tag teams following this adjustment, which worked since each team could be beaten. The next problem was that I had collected a high number of Tag Team cards.  Unfortunately, the weekly events rarely have tag team matches, unless its for the Tag Team title.  This leaves the Tag Team division with 3-4 teams completing, while 15+ teams never get a chance.  The Tag Team division was stagnant.  

Due to the March Madness success following new rules, I decided to apply new rules to the Tag Team Invitational as well.  I had high expectations, but the same teams kept winning the Tag Team Invitational.  It became obvious that the Tag Team Invitational tournament would need more severe rules.  I decided that the next Tag Team Invitational would have the following rules:

• No Legendary or Main Eventers
• No teams already with a Tag Team card (most cards were for low end teams that had no chance)
• Average draw rating per team must be below 45 (this prevented Upper Mids from teaming up and dominating)
• No current title holders
• Infrequently used wrestlers are encouraged.  This rule was created to give opportunities to wrestlers that had been mostly forgotten or underutilized.  I removed wrestlers that wrestled in most current events.

I won't bog down this already long blog post with a list of every eligible wrestler.  Below is the list of the 8 teams that were created for the Tag Team Invitational with these new rules.  I wanted to pair up the Goods/Bads/Tweeners.  I wanted the team to "make sense" by matching similar wrestlers.  Then finally, I decided to come up with team names for each team.  (For reference, my Fed is in 1992)

Bearded Brutes: Troglo - Big Thugee.  Big, bad, bearded brutes.  Big Thugee was one of the few overachievers invited, since he was doing well as an opener.  Troglo was a recent addition, who still had his default stats and was being mishandled by management (me).

Balls of Anger:  Cabb - Fireball.  They made sense to match up due to their ECW ties.  I liked the team name although it doesn't make much sense.

Masked Glory:  Freedom Fighter - Magnifico.  FF is under used because of how much I use his alter ego, Hammerhead.  Magnifico has taken a run at the Cruiserweight title a couple times, but his low Draw rating and use of a mask balanced nicely with FF.

Intestinal Fortitude:  Dicky Thunderbird - Ronny Believer.  Dicky had fallen off most cards of late and never had a tag team.  Ronny is fairly new and needed a push.  I liked how both wrestlers work long, difficult matches.  The team name fits them both.

Fantastic Frenzy:  Orion Northstar - Beastheart.  Sword swinging heroes.  While they made sense to team up, the team name still needs some work.  Maybe just call them "The Sword"?  They can't all be winners.

The Quest:  Zen - Red Pirate Rogers.  RPR hadn't wrestled in my Fed for several years.  He had a good run with Arizona Chance as The Adventures, but that was along time ago.  Arizona was replaced by Chance Solo, so RPR disappeared.  Zen has a similar problem once 8-Bit and High Score disbanded in the 90s.  Named "The Quest", since the pop culture equivalents to each wrestler was on a quest to rescue a princess. 

Los Arrogantes:  El Presidente - Ricardo Suave.  Originally this was going to be Suave and Strongarm, but Strongarm won the TV title just before the TTI PPV.  The last minute substitution was pure serendipity since this is my favorite team/team name now.  The team name is a nod to The Model's fragrance, "Arrogance".

The Kliq:  Big Rig - VTC.  Obvious team name, but I couldn't top it.  VTC might get ignored because he's last in almost every alphabetical listing.  Big Rig is a true underachiever, who was been given plenty of opportunities but has a terrible win/loss record.  Originally was going to team Big Rig with Chicano, but their team rating was too high.

Here is how the tournament played out...

1st Round:

Bearded Brutes defeats Balls Of Anger

Masked Glory defeats Intestinal Fortitude

Fantastic Frenzy defeats The Quest

Los Arrogantes defeats The Kliq

2nd Round:

Los Arrogantes defeats Fantastic Frenzy

Masked Glory beats Bearded Brutes

Finals:

Masked Glory defeats Los Arrogantes to win the Tag Team Invitational.

Final thoughts:

This was an excellent way to dust off some forgotten/underachieving wrestlers.  While I will probably not do this for every TTI, it was a great way to mix things up.  Both teams that made it to the finals have earned a push for the Tag Team title.  

Bonus:  Coming up with team names was more fun than I could have imagined.  

All Time Carolina Hurricanes Team

Decided to curate a Carolina Hurricanes All Time Team.  To start the process, I felt like I needed some rules/criteria or else this would be chaos.  I started with hockeydb.com and get a list of all the players that ever played for Carolina.  Next I ordered the players by Games Played, highest to lowest and started there.  Right away, you can see the easy all timers, such as Eric Staal (909 GP), Glen Wesley (729 GP), Rod Brind'Amour (694 GP), and Cam Ward (668 GP).  However, using this method will only take you so far.  Quickly, you will notice that there are some players with high GP numbers that you may not want on your All Time team (Craig Adams, Patrick Dwyer), so obviously I need to go to the POINTS.  My thinking was that you had to have a decent amount of GP for CAR for starters, but you had to contribute on the score sheet.  That is where I tried to get Sebastian Aho on the list.  He may not have the highest amount of games, but he did play 100% of his NHL games for CAR, plus his Points/Game ratio warrants adding him.  Players started to fall into place, except there were some positional oddities from HockeyDB, for example Rod Brind'Amour was listed as LW.  This might have been true when he played for Philly, but while he was a Cane, Rod lined up in the middle winning faceoffs like a beast.  Then there were Jeff O'Neill and Jeff Skinner, who HockeyDB listed both as Centers.  They both moved around a bit from line to line, but I remember both of them as wingers.  This allowed me to take some liberties with some lines and I don't care enough to lose sleep over it.  You may notice that I lumped all the Defensemen together because I was definitely not going to fret over RD/LD designations.  Finally, I had to make tough decisions at the end to fill out the team.  The "tie-breaker" so to speak was to choose to include a player that I thought was the better Carolina Hurricane, a completely subjective and arbitrary criteria that only exists in my head.  This tie breaker kept players  like Joe Corvo and Joni Pitkanen off the list, who may have contributed, but did not represent what I want in a Hurricane.  Without further delay, I present my All Time Carolina Hurricanes:

1st:

Eric Staal - C

Rod Brind'Amour - L

Jeff O'Neill - R

Glen Wesley - D

Justin Faulk - D

Cam Ward - G

2nd:

Ron Francis - C

Jeff Skinner - L

Justin Williams - R

Tim Gleason - D

Jaccob Slavin - D

Arturs Irbe - G

3rd:

Sebastian Aho - C

Erik Cole - L

Sami Kapanen - R

Niclas Wallin - D

Sean Hill - D

4th:

Jordan Staal - C

Ray Whitney - L

Chad LaRose - R

Last Man Out at each position:

Matt Cullen - C

Martin Gelinas - L

Tuomo Ruutu - R

Bret Hedican - D

Brett Pesce - D

Kevin Weekes - G

Low Carb Diet: One month later

About a month ago, I made some dietary changes after noticing that my weight was creeping up a little higher than I thought it should.  Hitting 194 lbs was like a warning light for my human engine and some maintenance was needed.  For lack of a better term, I adopted a "lazy Keto" approach.  Instead of going the full Keto route, which apparently includes militant macro nutrient counting and obsessive label reading, I decided to take the simpler approach of eating more protein, eating almost no carbohydrates, and supplementing extra fats to help keep me fuller, longer.   I started this dietary change close to the beginning of September 2018.  I stuck with it for a month and now I'll share my experiences.

Scheduling meals:
I live in a house with 3 other people.  Changing my diet drastically was going to affect them.  I did not want to be a burden or an annoyance to them, so I did what I could when we ate together (dinner).  That meant that the other 2 meals of the day was where I would have the most control.  If rice or pasta made it to my dinner plate, I could deal with it as long as I kept closer to Keto at breakfast/lunch. 

New items:
I was concerned about stocking an alternate pantry to support my diet.  Although I did have to buy some new/different items, it was not as many as I expected.  Before this dietary change, I was already close to being a vegetarian, so increasing my protein intake was going to take some effort. 

I started with eggs.  I ate SO many eggs this month.  Two eggs every morning in some way, shape, or form.  I already enjoyed making omelets for myself, but now that I was doing Lazy Keto, I needed to get a jump on my protein intake and those omelets were a perfect solution.  I would mix up the variety with some combination of onions, peppers, spinach, mushrooms, and a collection of cheeses.  On occasion, I would also cook up some bacon.  By the way, for perfectly cooked bacon put your bacon on a parchment lined cookie sheet and cook put it in the oven for 15 minutes at 380 degrees. Works every time.

Smoked salmon and deli meats turned into my go to proteins when I had a feeling I was not eating enough protein and needed to eat it without much preparation.  I bought coleslaw and more cheese to supplement my fat intake in the same non-prep manner.

Desserts had essentially been cut out of my diet due to an effort to reduce/eliminate sugar.  However, I needed something to fill that void.  I went with mixing chia seeds with coconut milk as my dessert.  The chia seeds act like tapioca to create a pudding like consistency.  I had previously bought some monkfruit based sweetener that I used in the chia/coconut milk pudding as well.  The monkfruit sweetener was not some specialty health food purchase.  I found it at my local Harris Teeter.  I originally bought this sweetener for my coffee, but since I don't drink that much coffee I figured that traditional sweeteners would not be so terrible when I had a cup.  I use real sugar (!) or Splenda. 

Meals:
I mentioned home dinners, which did not change that much.  However when I was cooking dinner for the family, I would shy away from the rice/pasta/bread.  Usually, I would prepare a hunk of meat with a vegetable side and maybe a salad.  Rice/pasta/bread would still show up on occasion, but I treated these like "cheat meals".  If most of my meals were low carb/Keto, then I believed I would still see the benefits.  I never saw my weight or anything else get thrown off by eating a higher carb meal occasionally.  I would limit the carbs when I could.  Smaller portions or reducing the carbs in some way. 

Eating out:
I go out to eat for a majority of my lunches during the work week.  This required some creative entree selections at my favorite restaurants.  A salad with meat or a burger without bread became my go-to meals.  A noodle bowl became a poke bowl.  Burritos became taco salads (no shell).  Absolutely no fries.  Soup is out.  And of course, bread was gone too.  I stuck with my half sweet/half unsweet tea.  I could do a separate post on what to eat at restaurants when on a low carb diet.

Social constraints:
There are temptations to veer away from a low carb/Keto diet around every turn.   A box of donuts at work.  A food truck.  A beer.  Yeah, a beer is considered a cheat.  When I wanted an alcoholic beverage at home I started drinking spiked seltzer water.  A surprisingly delicious and refreshing option during the hot summer nights.

People are generally supportive of alternative dietary restrictions.  Any stigma I found was self-induced.  I felt like I set myself to allow for some "cheats", but rarely did I feel the need to do it.  Carbs are rarely forced on you.  Its just a matter whether you want to drop your own guidelines to make yourself feel like everyone else.

Results:
I started the end of August 2018 weighing 194 lbs.  Today I weighed in at 184 lbs.  While I consider this a success, I believe that this approach is a short term solution for me.  That is not to say that I will go back to my carby days of the past.  However, I will re-incorporate carbs into my diet with some trepidation.  In the future, if I see my weight getting a little higher than I want, I could easily go back to this Lazy Keto approach. 

Dietary Changes

Decided to focus on my diet after I noticed that I was increasing my weekly running mileage, but my weight was creeping higher and higher.  I have been in the 190-195 pound range for years, especially since I have given up roller hockey and went to running as my full time exercise outlet.  When I see the weight get to 195, that is my alert to check on what I have been eating and possibly make adjustments.  Typically, a night of beer and/or barbecue would spike the weight a bit, so I could dismiss it as being too indulgent.  As long as I did not eat/drink like that on a steady basis, the weight would stay in my self-defined safe zone.  One day I noticed that the weight was not going back down, staying closer to 195 than to 190.  I figured some changes were in order.

I had a good friend that had reaped the benefits of going to a Keto diet.  I won't get into the specifics, but essentially, its a low/no carb - high fat/protein diet.  The science behind Keto and other carb deficient diets is that you get your body to burn fat instead of carbs.  You do this by not eating sugar/carbs (carbs get processed as sugar in your body).  Then your body has no choice but to burn the fat since there's no carbs/sugars left.  Since carbs fill you up, you need to offset the carb reductions with an increase in protein and fat.  This could be right up my alley.

I did the research and noticed that there is a high barrier of entry to this diet and what seems like an even higher level of commitment.  All new foods to buy (what is monkfruit?).  Readily available foods I used to eat any time are now forbidden.  This was not going to be easy.  Instead of jumping in the deep end, I decided to take a more gradual approach.  I created some customized guidelines for myself.
No potatoes - I had already mostly phased out potatoes from my diet, but now it was real.  I had been eating fries out of habit, not out of desire.
Less pasta/rice - I'm married to a native Louisianan.  Rice is going to show up on my plate from time to time.  Smaller rice portions should do the trick.  Removing pasta will be a battle.
Much less bread - I was having toast with my omelettes at breakfast.  Those were easy to eliminate.  Decided to eat half the bread on most sandwiches/burgers.  I would either toss the top bun or cut the bread down to smaller pieces. 
Beer on weekends - I'm a craft beer drinker.  Almost every beer I drink has carbs out the ying yang.  No more beer with dinner on week nights.  If I need to imbibe, I go to spiked seltzer which has been a refreshing twist during this summer already.
No desserts - I was never much of a dessert guy anyway. 

After only a week of using these guidelines, I saw the pounds come off.  I weighed in at 191 before deciding to ruin my progress by drinking beer and eating carbs over Labor Day weekend.  This 3 day weekend helped highlight some of the obstacles I may encounter using my guidelines

Sweet Tea - A few years back I switched from full on Sweet Tea to Half Sweet/Half Unsweet Tea.  I'll admit that I am addicted, since its a staple when I go out for lunches.  If I remove tea completely, I would probably offset by increasing my coffee intake.  Bought some low glycemic sweetener just in case.
Pasta - Some of my favorite cuisines are based on pasta (Italian, Chinese, assorted southeast Asia fare). 
Bread - The wife made some awesome sweet zucchini bread.  That was extremely difficult to ignore.  Cereal -  For most of my life, cereal is all that I would eat for breakfast.  Recently went to making eggs in some manner, but cereal is close to 50% of my breakfasts.  The carbs are just too high, so cereal has to go.  This will be phased out over a longer period of time.
Cheese/Crackers - I make a killer cheese dip.  The cheese dip can stay, but its delivery mechanism will need to change.  Still working on what that will be.  Might be an actual spoon.
Dark Chocolate - If I drink red wine, I love to finish with some dark chocolate.  Its more of a habit, I know, but the craving will be a battle to subvert. 

Although I had some quick success, it was fleeting since I did not stick with it long enough.  Looks like I can focus on my breakfasts and lunches, Monday through Friday.  I would hate to force the rest of my family to change their diets just because I decided to change mine, so dinners will remain mostly the same.