Epic training session today. We "did" one of the "girls" from CrossFit HQ - Barbara. This workout consists of 20 Pull-Ups, 30 Push-Ups, 40 Sit-Ups, and 50 Air Squats. 5 times. Seriously.

It was pretty retarded, but since it is bodyweight you are able to grind through it. It took me 45 minutes and change, and my trainee Kyle did it in just under 47 minutes (jumping pull-ups). It feels great to finish something like this, though certain muscles may disagree for a while.

One thing I was really psyched about was my pull-ups number - I managed to set my personal record on my first set with 18 unbroken pull-ups (or chin-ups, since my hands were facing my face). This is a big gain over my prior record of 15, set earlier this week. That was an improvement from 11. So, basically I've gone from 11 to 18, which tells me that it isn't raw strength but more likely my kip technique. That's great because it has been a point of frustration for me that I haven't been able to kip effectively.

Kipping is when you basically swing your legs forward and up (by contracting your abs violently) and then do a quick pull-up using the energy from the kip. Some people mistakenly consider it cheating, but it's really only cheating if the workout specifies a "dead hang" or weighted pull-up. For a workout of 700 repetitions including 100 pull-ups, you definitely want to be able to kip.

The Gym Jones site has a video of pull-ups, with a couple guys doing 30 and even 40 in a single set. Very athletic. I thought that sounded impossible when I started back in March, but from 18 it doesn't look so far away.

Consider this: training creates opportunities to succeed. In life, you get very few opportunities for definitive judgment. You get your end-of-quarter or end-of-semester grades during school, a couple test results if you take the SAT or GRE or GMAT or whatever, and then most jobs offer an annual review. That's not very much feedback. A lot of people join leagues, softball or basketball or soccer, and then you get that frequent feedback but it is diluted - it's for the team, it's hard to judge individual achievement. Golf gives tons of feedback - but nobody feels satisfied playing golf!

But training gives you chance after chance to improve, to measure your advancement, to succeed. Personally, I thrive on feedback, especially on accomplishment. That's one reason I love investing and other money games (like poker) - the scoreboard is always up. Relative performance can be tricky, but you have the added benefit of actually making money.

Physical training is really gritty and personal, though. You need to crank out 10 more pushups, and only you know if you touch your chest to the ground or short arm it. If you miss a pull-up, are you willing to force yourself to do another "real" one to make up for it, or do you count it? Row 500 meters, nobody is watching to see if you break 2 minutes or 1:40 or 1:30 - but you get that feedback. You can succeed. Yes, you can fail, but when you do you know you'll get another chance, another day to claim victory.

Plus you get to look good and live a long healthy life.

Healthy living at Gym Jones - See the whole workout here.

We pretty much not investing in Chabah anymore…I'll need to see about keeping the store up with enough inventory to fill reasonable-sized orders. Advertising is just too expensive on the Internet, it creates too much risk. Google Adwords and Yahoo shopping aren't profitable either, even at a quarter per click.

For the time being, we have a ton of inventory. I really want to trim it down to manageable levels (we have hundreds of a couple styles/colors), so I'm going to do a temporary clearance at $10 per pair. Also, the hats and pants for $10 each. Pants have been a complete disaster because of the sizing - their Large is about a US 8. Seriously. Purses will be $20, just to clear them out as they take up so much room.

If you are interested, just drop me an email at ddelruss@mac.com or damien@chabah.com (I check .mac much more often). Note that full price ($20) orders online will receive free pairs as I clear out unique styles, samples, etc.

It you're not failing, you're not trying.

A nearly extinct Chabah style

I don't write about work much because you can get in some trouble with things like that on these here internets. So I won't. But I will talk a little bit about career guidance stuff.

The first thing, and this should be required reading, is How To Make Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I got the audiobook. I'm not the only fan, either - Scott Adams credits his Carnegie courses (more than just the book) for much of his success, as well.

Second, and this is much less impactful but valuable nonetheless, are free podcasts. My favorites are the HBR Ideacasts. Knowledge@Wharton is not bad, though I don't look forward to the next issue as I do HBR. For some longer listens, check out the Fuqua Distinguished Speaker Series. There are a couple real stinkers, and a lot of filler that is aimed at recruiting the future MBAs in the audience, but some are quite valuable. iTunes has both video and audio-only versions.

I like sports talk radio as much as the next guy, but it's good to mix in some of this self development stuff. You can learn a lot just driving or walking around!

I have to thank my sister's pal Emily "Emdog" for some new music she sent over. I am very much liking this lady (or band?) Feist. Nice tone, sort of jazzy/clubby/electronic sound. I am listening to Open Season: Remixes & Colabs, which is probably more electronic than the original tracks.

I remember a couple years ago, probably close to four now, when I put together a nice clubby mix sort of like this. DJ Z Pedro or something like that, Thievery Corporation, Bent, Cibo Matto, Bebel Gilberto, and a little Gabriella Anders to smooth it out. This Feist fits right in.

While I am mentioning music, let me mention one of my old favorites, Enya. I remember when I "discovered" Enya, when I took a trip to Boston with family friends Josh and Kathy to see Harvard among other things. "Orinoco Flow" was on MTV, and I thought it was just the greatest thing.

I really liked her first couple albums, I used to blast (ha! Blast Enya!) them my freshman year at Washington & Lee, there in Graham-Lees Dormitory, before there were locks. I definitely was into her music for at least a couple years (not that it stopped me from liking Nine Inch Nails, Red Hot Chili Peppers, etc).

Now, un-listenable. I can't stand it. I don't know why…I get a little of that with Tori Amos too, a lot of her songs I "like" but skip virtually every time they come up on my iPod. But Enya, really, I can't stand at all. I tried to listen to her most recent CD, not sure the name, but it was torturous. I gave up. Who knows why? I certainly don't. Maybe I just need my bands to change as I change. Or, possibly overexposure at some point just wears out your liking of a band. I mentioned Nine Inch Nails…I can't really listen to that kind of angry rock stuff either, anymore. It just seems very…self indulgent in some way.

OK, enough music pondering. I know I am supposed to keep The Arcade Fire secret, so I won't mention them much…not bad, though. Not as good as the Pixies, though - and they NEVER get old!

The other day I did a pretty wicked workout, "Jonesworthy" from Gym Jones. It's pretty sick, at first it sounds "stupid hard", but it is actually pretty do-able if you have been training for a while. It consists of 3 exercises, the (Air) Squat, Kettlebell Swing, and Pull-Up.

The Squat is pretty much the same for everyone, but the other two exercises can be scaled. The Kettlebell Swing prescription is 53# (24 kg), which I would automatically scale to 36# (16 kg) for women or teens. In other words, if you are 15 years old or a woman, using 36 lbs is the "full" version.

The Pull-Up can be scaled by either using bands or doing what we do at my gym - Jumping Pull-Ups. To make Jumping Pull-Ups effective, try to use a height that leaves just an inch or two of slack in the arms. Full extension is usually too hard, but if you elbows are at 90 degrees then it is too easy. Aim for more like 10-20 degrees of bend in the elbow. If you can do a full set of 20 without a break, it's time to move up to full pull-ups and suffer like the big boys.

So there are 6 rounds, and the progression is pretty normal except for round 5. In a mathematical sense, it looks like the designer slightly "screwed up", but when you do the workout it feels right. The reps per round for the exercises are:

Squat: 80-64-48-32-24-12 Kettlebell Swing: 40-32-24-16-12-6 Pull-Ups: 20-16-12-8-6-3

The easy way to remember is that once you know the Squats, the KB Swings are half and the Pull-Ups are half again.

So this has 459 reps of pretty heavy exercises, so you'll be tired. And it takes a while. I finished, as prescribed, in 32.46. I had my younglings do a "half Jonesworthy", with everything just about halved, including the weight (Nolan used 12 kg, new kid Brendan used 8 kg). Kyle continues to be a beast, and did an almost full ladies' version with 36# swings and strong jumping pull-ups.

I have to say "almost" because doing full pull-ups is very different from doing jumping pull-ups, and there are women who can do them. Note that kipping is not only allowed, but encouraged!

So don't try this at home unless you have been training for a while - you could actually hurt yourself, especially with a too-heavy kettlebell or dumbbell. If you are in shape, go ahead and test yourself. Are you Jonesworthy?

Here is another one of my humor writings:

So I have this friend, we'll call him Ron Jeremy because he looks like a 70's porn actor. But he isn't really in porn, he actually worked with me in a "normal" office, under a "normal" manager I'll call The Butterfly. I call her The Butterfly not because of her winning smile (butterflies don't have teeth), but because of her thought…process. "Process" is a bit strong, as Craps involves the "process" of rolling dice, but you know what I mean.

So Ron Jeremy, he worked for The Butterfly, which means she sometimes provided vague direction to his time-wasting. And smiled a lot. She also was "responsible" for his performance review. Imagine a 5-year old preparing Thanksgiving dinner and you have an idea of the coherence of that document. Now none of us really care about our performance review until we get to the number at the end - but Ron Jeremy's number was not good.

Let's take a second to recognize that Ron Jeremy is an idiot. But even an idiot can ask a relevant question from time to time. He asked "Why did I get such a low rating?" The Butterfly responded: "You don't say hello to me in the hallway."

Well Ron Jeremy was a bit upset by that - I can't imagine why. But what he did at that point defies the imagination. Ron Jeremy went to his doctor and said he thought he would kill his manager. Imagine this - he actually said something like "If I go back to work I will kill that freaking Butterfly before I even browse the web". So obviously he had a syndrome or something, and he got a MONTH off of work.

Until then, I never realized how one could use that "Emergency Health Leave". Now I know. Ron Jeremy, you are terribly brilliant.

So this last week I made some pretty good equipment for my home gym. I started with two boxes for jumping - most people use pretty complicated designs, but that is really not necessary. I used 1 sheet of 4x8 plywood, about 3/4" thick. I made a 24.5" and an 18.5" box. It's pretty easy, here are the cuts to make:

Cut lengthwise into two 24"x8' pieces. Cut the top piece as follows: 24", 24", 17", 15.5", 15.5". Cut a 17" piece off the bottom 24"x8' piece.

With the remaining 24"x79" piece, first cut 6" off (or however high you want the 2nd box to be, from 24").

Now you have an 18"x79". Cut this as follows: 24", 24", 15.5", 15.5".

The first 5 pieces make the 1st box, and the remaining pieces make the 2nd box. There is a 6x79" extra piece that you can use to make a 6" riser if you want, although I didn't bother since the 24" is a frigging monster already!

But anyway, I had the dude at Home Depot make all the cuts, so I didn't cut a thing. You have to pre-drill your holes and use some nice long outdoor screws to hold it together. I sandwiched the 15.5 in between the 24" so my boxes are 24" wide and about 16.75 deep. They are both very solid, and I had no worries landing on them that they might slide or anything (on rough concrete or a foam pad). Total cost, about $45 (wood was $40). I spent a little more since it was Saturday night and I tipped the guy at Home Depot.

I also made 3 medicine balls. I first tried using "The Slammer" method, but the sand I bought was wet so there was no way I could get the sand in through a tiny funny. I started with 3 cheap basketballs from Target, $3.67 each. I bought two bags of sand at Home Depot, along with some Shoe Goo type glue.

I cut open the balls using an X shape with my utility knife. I made it just large enough to smash the top of a water bottle into. I cut the Aquafina bottle about 2 inches up, creating a crude funnel. I used the bottom of the bottle to scoop the sand. It still got stuck quite a bit, so I had to push it through with my finger. That's an advantage of the wide mouth - it is pretty quick work to fill the ball with sand.

I weighed them as I filled them, making them in 12 lbs, 15 lbs, and 19 lbs. I imagine they might lighten up a bit as some of the water in the sand evaporates out, though I tried to seal them as well as possible.

To seal each ball I first filled the gap with Shoe Goo. Then I cut a small piece of canvas from a tent repair kit I already had. I glued the edges of the canvas and let it all dry for an hour or two. After it was dry I covered the canvas with a bunch of duct tape.

I tried a couple sample slams, and nothing terrible happened. For throwing they certainly feel pretty heavy - I kind of wonder if my scale was off! I bought the balls in three colors, so it's easy to keep track which is which.

Even if the seals don't hold as well as I hope, the worst that will happen is a little sand will leak out and I'll need to re-seal and re-tape it. For about $25 in materials, I'll take my chances versus the $300+ I would have to pay for either D-Balls or Dynamax balls. Plus, I can either slam or throw these (they are catch-able, unlike a heavy D-Ball), so as long as they last they are replacing about $700 in equipment.

This project generally fits into my strategy of buying what I can't make, making what I can, and buying cheap anything that is in great supply (like Oly bars and weights on Craig's List or eBay).

We have a lot of computers. Let me run down the list:

Black MacBook, 13", 2 gigs. That's our newest one. Nice machine. I buy something like this every year because I get reimbursed at work for about $900 after tax, maybe $1100 considering my last tax refund. That makes them pretty cheap.

We also have a PowerBook, not sure how old, must be less than 2 years though. One of the last pre-Intel machines. Nice big 15" screen.

I run TradeStation (and Chabah) on my 20" iMac. The DVD drive went bad on this one 1 month out of warranty, which kind of sucks. Great machine, though.

We have a Mac Mini on the television downstairs. This thing hardly gets used, but it is kind of cool for music and videos. Good back up machine. Slow as a snail, with no extra memory, and this is the first one they released. Still better than an AppleTV I think, though. This was an indulgence that I don't regret a bit.

Artemis has a little colored iMac, one of the originals. Sits in the attic. Should be good for Isis to learn her ABCs, numbers, and shapes like Artemis did. Easily worth the $100 and we don't have to worry about it getting broken. Wheezes something awful, though!

Then, the sick ones. Well, don't forget that we gave away an iBook to Gene a year or so ago. Just because. What can I say, I am a nice guy. But the sick ones - an old iBook that works fine if you run it from an external hard drive, since the main drive is broken and costs too much to replace. Also, our original G4. Some kind of problem with it, but I don't like to spend time on computer maintenance. Life is too short. Just get a new one and forget about it. I keep it there, I'd rather not have the hard drive floating around out there. Who knows, one day I might wash up poor and alone and need to revive this former glory. Until then, he sits silently in the corner.

Reminder to self - wife's birthday tomorrow. Might want to get a gift or something.

Wine. Geez. There are just so many things to get into in life. I realize why old people say time is short - they just know about all the cool things to get involved in.

We have kind of an expensive wine taste. Not too bad, but around $20 per bottle with occasional forays to $30. I have lots of $8 and $9 bottles for more regular drinking. But any way you slice it, it's got to be a minimum of $100 or so per month. Sometimes quite a bit more. Man oh man I am happy my company already socks away 10% into my 401K so I don't have to feel like I am drinking away my retirement.

But then, it isn't worth getting to retirement if you can't live a little.

Back to wine - big reds, that's what we like. Chante Cigale 2003 Chateau Neuf du Pape, slay me. Chante is Isis's shadow nickname - guess why. Go ahead. Think about it for a second - good, nice, I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.

Yin likes the Coppola Zinfindel. Another good red. For cheap, Madrileno has been a nice spicy Spanish tempranillo at $9 at the Co-Op near me.

Say what you want about France, but they make some nice wine.

One thing that is funny about the wine experts, it seems like they are almost always fat. And I mean really fat, like grossly obese. I know they say food replaces sex as you get older, but you're really helping it along when you weigh 330 lbs. Is there something about liking food and wine that stops you from, like, moving? I am not even talking about exercising - that isn't even in the picture - just, you know, getting out of your chair or something. A lot of these folks are chefs or retirees or others with plenty of spare time - here's some advice - move. Really.

But for all their fat slobbiness, they really know wine. Great recommendations any time I talk to one of these Jabba the Wine Oracles. I aspire to drink like them…just not look like them.

Wine, golf, stocks, fitness - you'd think I was retiring soon. I just turned 34 a couple months ago. Funny.

Two results of wine-induced ardour.

Here's a taste of a little humor writing I have been doing intermittently over the past months.

So I decided to get some breakfast rather than eat out at lunch. I go down to Yucky's, and Ralph Yucky or whatever his name is takes my order. He looks right at me, with no distractions, and I say "Two egg special, scrambled, with sausage, potatoes, and Rye toast." He then walks to the cash register and rings me up. I notice it is about 30 cents too much, but what the hell, they might have raised prices or something. He is missing a front tooth, though. 3 minutes later (more on that), my breakfast is up. It has white toast, no sausage, and twice as many potatoes as usual. I am mystified. This is brain damage in action.

White toast is terrible, by the way.

Anyway, while I was waiting for my meal (very tasty by the way), this "athletic" black woman received her breakfast. By "athletic" I mean she looked like a sumo wrestler or perhaps a nose tackle, about 5' 4", 225 lbs. Heart attack in Keds. Anyway this lady, she gets her meal and it has double grits. She requests the melted butter, them makes a nice dent in her grits with her fork and fills it with butter. Mix. Repeat. Mix. Repeat. After the third serving of butter I got sick and walked away - I THINK that was it, but I can't be sure. She sure was mixing in that butter. Don't forget to lick the fork afterwards.

I'm going to go ahead and speculate that she is not real health conscious.

As I continue with these major updates, I should mention that I'm Mr. Fitness now. Well, not officially, but these last 5 months or so I have been reading up the way I do. The movie 300 kind of started it, as I saw this video about it and tracked down the trainer responsible, Mark Twight of Gym Jones. From Gym Jones I found the CrossFit website, and that was it. So much content, such a great system, really empowering and fun.

Since then I got some weights of my own, a couple squat racks in the back yard, some Olympic bars, etc. I just got a set of Kettlebells which is super awesome. I have been training Yin, and my neighbor Nolan and his sister Kyle. Everyone seems to like it, and they put in some great efforts.

So, I am training people, designing workouts, etc. I am also the "fitness guy" on our Wellness Committee, although that doesn't involve much. Apart from some back pain here and there, I'm in the best shape ever, probably. Definitely my strongest, even stronger than when I worked out in college. I am not doing much running, but I don't think running is so great for my athletic goals anyway. Just 3 or 5 miles every now and then.

Eventually I might like to do some paid training to help meet our budget (we are looking at new houses and may need a little extra income), or possibly some coaching later in life, high school or something. We'll see.

No fitness photos of me, so here is Isis in a more recent pose.

So let's talk a bit about stocks today. One of the big projects I worked on over the last year was writing a couple automated trading systems and funding a trading account. To see all the detail about that you could ever want, just read about it on Elite Trader (Google "Chabah Trading" to find it). Long story short, right now I have turned off my automated system and I am working on a couple other ideas. I cashed out enough from my account to pay off all my debts (including my pretty new car, a VW Rabbit) except for Yin's car (our other new car, a Volvo V70).

The strategy I am working on now is a very simple thing, a way to stay in a stock at a certain level. Basically, say you like Google above $535, and right now it is $540. Well, if you put in a stop-loss to protect your capital, which you should definitely do, then the price might hit $535 and then go back up again. By the time you get home, or the next day, it might be back the $542. If you had say 20 shares, that just cost you $140, especially if you get back into the stock.

So, wouldn't it be great if you had a little helper there that sold when it hit $535 but bought it right back again at say $536. This way you only lose about $22 ($1 commissions per trade on TradeStation).

Anyway, I think it would be just super, especially for the way I trade. What I am doing these days is picking a couple companies I really like and betting pretty heavy on them. The thing is, when you do this, you have to use stops to protect your capital, because a 5% loss might be $500+. You can't let the stock run away and cost you $1200 or something. Likewise, getting back in when it moves back above your stop price is important, too.

So that's what I am thinking about and will code sometime soon. What stocks do I like right now? Apple, Google, and Crocs. That's where all my equity money is right now. I think in 10 years we'll be laughing about how dead obvious it was that these companies - especially Apple and Google - were such no brainers. I have made a ton on them both already and I plan to keep it up. Crocs has been a powerful performer too, and is simply not a fad. It's a well run company. I do keep a stop loss on them, of course.

So Isis was born November 25th, 2006, the Friday after Thanksgiving. We had Artemis baby sitting coverage starting that Saturday since Yin was due on Dec 1st, but lo Isis came early. So, I missed it. It was 11:30 pm, and the hospital wouldn't allow Artemis past the entry. With Barbara out of town until the next day, there was nothing to do, so I brought Artemis home and we got some sleep. Yin called in the morning, all came out OK, easy labor, and Bob's your uncle.

Isis had jaundice, so she couldn't leave the hospital for a few days. I was on paternity leave so it was no problem really. Except, well, for Artemis ALMOST FRIGGING CROAKING the 3rd night Yin was in the hospital. I wake up and she can barely breathe, of course the only night Yin is not around. My sense of gallows/ironic humor is so ingrained I am thinking to myself "Geez Yin is going to kill me if I let my daughter die the 1 night she isn't around." Except I wasn't laughing, I was thinking. I stayed calm and remembered that Yin had mentioned something or other about Artemis having asthma. Never had an attack, but we had some inhaler in her room. That worked like a charm.

And so you see, this is how Isis' life goes. I try to tell you about her birth once, and it brings up my Dad because of the Thanksgiving connection. I try again, and must relate the story of Artemis' near death experience. I didn't see her birth, and we just have a couple photos, no video. She doesn't even have her own music video yet. Welcome to being the 2nd child, sweetie! No, not you Artemis, get out of the way, I am talking to your sister. Isis. Isis Nara Del Russo.

What can I say? She's really calm, beautiful, and has looked wicked smart since her birth.

A lot of people say she looks more like me. Maybe a little bit.

Oh, and she started standing at 7 months. Daddy's (other) little girl.

This is the thing about being out of touch - you start to tell a story, and boom you hit upon a major headline left unread. This last March, my father Jon passed away. He was at home, which is Greenbelt, MD, my old house. The one where I rebuilt my first kitchen, built (and later moved) my first shed, married my first wife (just kidding! Ha!), had my first daughter - most all documented within these pages. My dad lived there for about 3 years with his wife Barbara.

There is a lot I could cover, a lot that I laid out at the ceremony we had in April at my aunt Mary's. It was hard to say, then, and it would be hard to type now. Let me focus on the bit hardly anyone could understand, Thanksgiving and his last weekends.

Thanksgiving 2006 was, I believe, the first Thanksgiving my dad wasn't in NJ with family, excepting when he was far afield with Barbara in Minneapolis. In fact I think he even made it when at Duke, but anyway. This year, he was in Greenbelt, at our house, awaiting his second granddaughter while playing with the first. And damn, the food was good. He was sober for a while by then and really getting along with all of us.

The weekend before my father died, we had a different kind of time together. I loaded up Artemis, Barbara, and my dad for a trip to Washington DC. Artemis absolutely loves sculpture, and my dad absolutely loved Artemis and Washington DC. He loved me too, but it's not the same when you're grown up and argue and debate and stuff. Artemis was the light of his life for the last three years. He loved Isis too but she was still too small to really play with.

We parked down by the mall, searching for a spot in my "secret" area. We found a spot about 8 feet long, which for a car is not large. I super squeezled my new VW Rabbit into a spot and Barbara showed my dad, placing his hand against the bumpers. About 6 inches at each end. Spectacular.

We walked through the Hirschorn outdoor gallery, across the mall, and through the National Art Gallery lower level gallery, which is stupendous. Artemis pointed to the Diana running with the hounds "That's me! That's me Daddy!", and also the nude with the bow, "That's me again!" Dad loved it. He asked Artemis questions, and we did our little routines at certain sculptures. Like the one fighter with the huge hand, where I ask Artemis "Who would win in a fight?" and she says "Him!" and I ask "Why?" and she replies "His hand can crush your head."

Maybe not Dad's best day ever, but I was only born once and this had to be pretty close.

Artemis hasn't asked about the sculptures for a while.

Shhhh! Don't tell anyone I'm back. I may barely be back, so no grand announcements like last March. No, I mean last March, 2006. Eeeek!

Guess what happened since then. No, don't. Artemis is now 4, which is big news - but there's even better news. I have a new daughter! Well, kind of new. 7.5 months.

There's a lot of stuff to write about now, so much saved, but let's take our time. Let's stick with the kids for a minute, since they're the center of it all.

Isis was born November 25th, the night after Thanksgiving. Yes, of course Yin prepared an entire meal, which we enjoyed with all family - Artemis, Isis (in utero), Yin, Damien, and Jon. Oh. That brings up another bit of news, well not news, but something from this March. Tomorrow.