Silicon Valley Diary

Scott Adams on Losing Weight

I realized today that Dilbert seems to have a paunch. Us engineers have such a tendency to gain weight... we walk about 300 meters in total on any given day. From the parking ramp to the cube in the morning, the cube to the break room for some mocha, the cube to the rest room to get rid of all that mocha and then the trip downstairs to the cafeteria and back around chow time. I found Scott Adams's "Dilbert Blog" today and I read this article on Losing Weight. After about 3-4 years of trying to lose weight and succeeding every year, I know most of these tricks already but would recommend them to anyone else who is trying.

First, buy a scale and use it daily. As soon as you find yourself 3 pounds over your target weight, begin the Scott Adams Diet™.

Ofcourse the assumption here is that you are already close to your ideal weight, so most of this advice may not work for the morbidly obese. For the morbidly obese kids out there, start breathing twice as fast and getting off the couch once a day.

Adjust your schedule to allow exercise every day at a set time. When that time comes, no matter how tired you feel, put on your sneakers and workout clothes. Then exercise as much or as little as you feel you can handle. The idea is to make it a routine. There is no other objective at this point. Once it’s a routine, you’ll automatically start getting better at it. That part takes care of itself.

Here are other Weight Loss mantras that work for me, let's call it the Saket Diet™:
- No Sugar
Completely get off sugar. I try to avoid any sugar during the week and then reward myself once on the weekend. Use Splenda in your coffee. Sweetners with aspartme cause poisoning, so sucralose seems to be a little less dangerous than others.
- Snack Healthy
If you feel hungry between meals, snack healthy. I keep a bag of walnuts at work to feed the creatures growling inside my stomach. Walnuts are probably the best source of omega-3 fatty acids too. If you just have to eat chips, get a tiny bag of Baked Lays or Doritos from the vending machine.
- Fruit for breakfast
No sugar remember, so cereals typically don't work. I like to eat a banana or an orange or some red grapes with plain non-fat yoghurt. Non-fat milk and "I can't believe it's not butter" are your friends, fruit juice cocktails and orange juice aren't.
- Burn Baby Burn
Exercise everyday if you feel like you're way off target. When I follow the above regimen with daily exercise I lose about 2 pounds every week.

ADDENDUM:
In response to Ashutosh's query... My decision-making is a lot easier because I can always choose to eat a salad or a sandwich at work on weekdays. I'd say stick to salad/sandwich for atleast one meal everyday.
I try to incorporate a lot of good foods in my meals:
- Olive Oil: Extremely healthy because it contains a lot of good cholesterol. Mediterranean people are supposed to live longer because of it.
- Salmon: One of the reasons why Japanese people live so long.

Few single foods bring as many valuable contributions to the table in significant quantities as salmon. It is an excellent source of high-quality protein, containing all the essential amino acids. Salmon contains vitamins A, D, B6 and B2, as well as niacin and riboflavin. Calcium, iron, zinc, magnesium and phosphorus are also present in appreciable amounts in this choice seafood. The fats in Salmon are predominantly un-saturated.

- Wheat Bread
- Avocado
- Yoghurt

Care to read some news about India? Well Hold on Tight

Reading news about India online is not for the faint-hearted. I am totally turned off by most of these sites like Rediff, TOI and others. All of them have these bright fluorescent advertisements, loads of pop-ups and animated GIFs moving around all the place. Surprisingly these are the only places online that make you feel like you're at an Indian bazaar with hawkers yelling "ek kilo das rupaiyya", crying children, dirt and filth all over, beggars begging for alms. Now that's a pretty extra-ordinary achievement... bringing India's filth to the World Wide Web.

I don't understand why these people don't realize that unobstrusive advertizing like Google will bring them so much more traffic. No person who cares about his sanity would choose to read news on such pages. I remain a faithful reader of the BBC news website which has no adveritizing at all. That is admirable and I am thankful that the British Government is providing such an excellent service to the world.

A friend of mine is working on a nice site for news about India. It is called India Goes.

India Goes is pretty good and also has some options that I care about but don't find elsewhere. Take "Blogs" for instance or the "World Tech" section. The interface could be a tad better, I definitely don't like long lists, but my friend told me that they will be updating the interface soon.

The History Channel: Don't channel-surf anymore!
A friend of mine called Sateesh once said, "Democracy doesn't work, because majority of the people are stupid and so is a decision made by the majority". I think it a similar logic applies to television too. Most of it is lame because it caters to those idiots out there. I am a nightmare for people who have to endure my channel surfing. Rarely does one arrive upon quality TV programming of the caliber of the history channel. I spent the better part of the day watching it and I am amazed by some of the things I learnt.

So what did I watch this weekend? I started out by learning about the recent history of Iran from 1978 on a show called "Declassified". History is just a chain of events leading in a logical fashion to the problems we face today. The seeds of the Iranian nuclear stand-off were sown in the American support for the Shah of Iran. Iran has a very interesting recent history, from the abdication of the Shah, the arrival of Khomeni, to the bloody Iran-Iraq conflict.

Information recently declassified from Stalin's tyrannical rule over Russia was next. Some of it has been alluded to in George Orwell's "Animal Farm". What was very depressing was the number of people Russian, Jews, others who died from Stalin's oppressive policies. The Nazis were pretty bad judging by Holocaust, but what is even worse is the enslavement and murder of millions of "your own people". Hitler was pretty mild compared to Stalin in retrospect. Such was the horror of Stalin's rule over USSR and 10s of millions of people died. Finally when Stalin was on his deathbed, apparently lying in a pool of his own urine, no one called the doctors for a while. When they did, some stupid doctors arrived because all the smart Jewish doctors were in Gulags in Siberia because of Stalin's former orders. How ironic... death the equaliser as they say.

Also learnt a bit about the Kennedy family but I won't bore you with the details. If you don't subscribe to cable TV like my friend Hob,I hope this changes your mind.

A Full Weekend

After a long time I really enjoyed myself this weekend. The most fun discovery I made this week was this Yahoo chatroom called Trivia Madness 5. It is a chatroom devoted to trivia and the regular members of this room have brought Trivia down to an exact science. 24 hours a day there is someone asking questions here. One regular question followed by a tune you identify. Unlike the BCQC and much like Jeopardy, speed is rewarded and the fastest person to reply wins a point for the Freds or the Wilmas or the Guys vs the Gals.(Yes it's "a battle of the sexes" in there and there are many noteworthy lady geeks who outdo the men all the time.) I did okay for a first timer and I even signed up to read questions sometime. The Classic Rock songs just make the whole experience memorable. I downloaded "Eye of the Tiger" from the movie Rocky, quenched my thirst with Oasis, and enjoyed some Cranberries.

I also played Age of Empires 3 on PC. My friend Priyadarshan used to download and burn CDs of the older incarnations of AOE for me long back, (thanks Priyu) so AOE 3 wasnt something I was totally alien to. I am hoping to finish the demo next weekend. Unfortunately it doesn't save game progress, so I am going to have to play from scratch again. The game's good. My graphics card doesn't meet the minimum spec recommended (guess who works at a company that makes graphics cards? ;)), so I had to lower the settings a tad. But once I did that the scenes looked pretty good with the minor inconsistencies such as men walking through passing carts.

Also chanced upon Asterix after a very long time at the library. My friends at the Boat Club QC had told me about the character called "Dubbelo-six" from Asterix and the Black Gold, meant to ridicule James Bond. He does look like Sean Connery, Ramu. I had read all the Asterixii and Tintins as a kid but wasn't smart enough to understand the satire there, so I hope to revisit Asterix again.

On the gluttony front, I got Masala Fried Fish from Spice Hut in Sunnyvale. It was the bestest pomfret, just the right amount of spice and didn't seem greasy to touch either. Went to Kebab and Curry off El Camino Real, great food but pathetic service. Also had avial for another meal, something I loved but hadn't tried before.