Funky Door Yoga Fallout
Well, it's been about six months since I started a brief (one month) trial of Bikram Yoga at Funky Door Yoga on Polk Street in San Francisco. I've chatted about this before Here Funky and Also Funky but I think there's been sufficient time to give a recap of how I feel.
To summarize, Bikram Yoga is a series of yoga poses (that a guy named Bikram claims to have a copyright on) and you go through them in an hour and a half session in 115F+ heat. The main variation from traditional yoga, is 1) The speed 2) The heat and 3) The set of poses. The jury is out on whether this is good for you or not, but it is a huge shift from traditional yoga, which most people agree is a good pratice to get in to.
So, the shape that I'm in now is not fantastic. While I'm generally healthy, I have several health problems now that I didn't have before going to yoga.
The first one is that I have considerably more back pain. At one point while doing the Funky Door thing, I reached for a door knob and threw my back out completely and is pretty freaky to me, since this has never happened before to me or just aobut anyone in my family. I'm told this is quite common due to how overstretched the muscles get due to the heat you're doing the poses in. My chiropractor will attest to how much worse my back is now as well. He even admitted that he gets a lot of patients from Bikram Yoga, due to the manner in which they teach beginners the poses.
A second item that I've had problems with is an erradic heartbeat at times. I never experienced this before and have a good blood pressure rate overall. I don't know if there is a direct link to the yoga or not, but I do know that when trying to do the poses in the heat, your heart starts pumping very hard, which the "instructors" will tell you is normal and healthy. This is a load of crap, since it's never healthy to hyper stimulate your heart rate like this. It just happens that when you're younger, you can take it better. As you get older, I could see this practice causing a heart attack, or at the very least, weakening your heart. From running cross country and doing other sports when I was younger, I know that you move into this stuff gradually, you don't just throw yourself into it like they have you do.
I had a couple of other problems, such as abdominal discomfort and what not, but other than starting up after the yoga sessions and possibly being the result of acute dehydration, I can't attest to this being from the Bikram for certain. But, I need to say that overall, I'm in good health. The main thing is that I'm not in as good a health as I was six months ago when starting at Funky Door Yoga.
I would highly recommend avoiding them unless you're an advanced yoga student and even then you should be cautious. If you have any kind of health problems, stay the hell aware from there. They'll only make them worse and the instructors are terrible in that they just doing listen to you when you're experiencing pain. They seem to be more interested in maintaining class size, rather than helping people out.
29 08 2004 0 comments
I Love That Tunnel
So, I've been carpooling most of the time in my trek from San Francisco to Walnut Creek for work. While generally rather quiet, I like the group. Some mornings are more livelier than others. One thing that I simply can't stnad is morning radio.
For some reason, somewhere, at some time, it was decided that we wanted to listen to someone jabber first thing in the morning. The occurence of this in the morning has forever tarnished the radio in my opinion, but people seem to listen to it. I guess it must be because you can't get any music stations in the morning due to all of them being the victim of a hostile takeover by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, or one of the countless myriad of morons that pop up all the time.
The one think that I do like about the morning radio though, is that is cannot go underground. And since Highway 24 punches straight through a mountain via the Caldecott Tunnel, there is a breath of silence, where the idiots and the droning on's can't be heard. I love that tunnel and the two minute respite it provides.
27 08 2004 0 comments
Apple can't be corporate
Apple has long portrayed an image of being the "fun" computer. While this is just a superficial item, they were, for the longest time, the only alternative to the large beige boxes that plagued many a workplace. Then there is also the iPod, which is a nifty device and oozes the theme of "fun" all through it.
But, with the latest release of the Apple G5 www.apple.com/powermac it appears that Apple is attempting to go corporate. You toss in the fact that they're making another attempt at the server market www.apple.com/server/ and that assumption would almost seem fact.
These devices do not ooze fun. They do not affirm an independent and Think Different appearance.
More than one noted professional has mentioned the fact that making the choice to use an UNIX distillate for the core of OS X was indeed a corporate move by Apple in order to grab a chunk of the corporate world. They do, afterall, have a niche market for some designers, so why not attempt to capitalize on the need for a server for that niche market. But why do this when there are countless other manufacturers already in the UNIX/Linux market, such as monolithic IBM?
This is probably one of Apple's most ill-fated attempts to date and would seem to run contrary to everything that is successful for them currently (iPod, iTunes, multimedia software, etc.) The reasons that I believe this will fail are two: Total Cost of Ownership or TCO and Apple's inability to deliver their product on a corporate scale.
The first item, the one called TCO is one that is used a lot in my profession because it is a measure by which you ask how much something that you're buying is costing you now and in the future i.e. the total cost of owning this product. Apple fails miserably on this level for anyone who has been around the block in finance or information technology.
The fact that it costs $2000 to get a good desktop machine from them is untenable. You can get a similiarly equipped machine in the Windows world for around $600. While there are performance tests that say the Apple is faster, in real life, myself and even die-hard Mac fans admit that it really isn't. So, that's more than a three-fold cost from the get go. With that, you also need to add in the fact that the Mac comes with a 90 day warranty and the Windows machine comes with a one year warranty as the bare minimum. Why is this important? Because, it is a statement by Apple that even though you are paying much larger prices for hardware that does the same thing, you are not getting any kind of committment by Apple that the hardware will work. Their hardware is cutting edge so to speak, but that does not translate into reliability. So, this is another cost that needs to be figured in, in that you get four times the warranty period with a Windows-based machine than with an Apple.
Then there's the another small item, which is point 1.5 in that, most IT people can't work on the Apple computer. For instance, out of the box, I had a dead G5 computer. I don't fault Apple for this; things happen. But, I do fault Apple for the little salty barb in my day, where, if this was a computer for something that was "mission critical", I would be completely out of luck. I had to take time out of my day to go down to the local "Genius Bar" :( at the Apple Store and wait there for the G5 to be fixed. Ah! It wasn't fixed though. It was a five day wait for it to be fixed because it took them a long time to get in the new part. Had a similar situation happened with a PC, I would have been able to go to most any computer store and get the parts I needed to rush it together and worry about the warranty later.
This all ties in to my other big point in that Apple doesn't seem to be able to deliver product on a large-scale. Because they use very specific parts for their machines, there is a low demand for them and thus, a shortage generally. Currently, I'm trying to purchase about 30 new G5 machines for my office, for which, there is a two to three week wait for the model, which isn't anything special. It turns out my supplier isn't the only one having this problem, since it took me calling around to three Apple stores to find one that I needed in a hurry. Three stores and half my day gone! I would have been able to get a PC in a half-hour at most and in actuality wouldn't have had to, since I can get them from my supplier in the first place.
You tie in an inability to get the parts for the machines and also an inability to supply those machines and you end up with a situation that no IT guy likes to be in, where he has a user who can't work, who is mad at him and the management also mad at him, because the user can't work and thus it's wasting money, time, and possbily the client.
How on earth could anyone roll out Apples on a large-scale at a company unless they absolutely had to? I'm sure not going to do it, except in the case of the designers at my firm and the editors, who have to be tied in with them. All the other people (about 2/5 of the staff) are going to be switched over to Windows machines. In addition to makers of Windows computers being able to take up the slack that Apple likes to butter their toast with, they will also provide a backup plan should Apple kick the bucket on the desktop market, which is what I see happening at some point, since the iPod really is their cash cow now.
23 08 2004 0 comments
Maybe just one day without a protest?
Don't get me wrong, I believe in free speech and I believe in the right to assemble and I believe in the right to protest things that are unfair in general. The one thing that I don't believe in are the amount of protests that happen in San Francisco on a regular basis.
I was reminded of this fact as I walked back from Union Square and there were two strikes happening outside two separate hotels. This happens to be one thing that I do indeed believe in, because it seems that in these days of corporate greed, the only way to make change, is to choke off the lifeblood of the corporation - i.e. money. It's a shame though that a lot of this gets lost on people, since there's always some group protesting Bush, or Microsoft, or World Trade, or genetically altered vegetables, or chipotle-flavored spam... You get the picture.
I think it's great that I live in an area that allows people to voice their opinions about things strongly, but I have a large problem with what the benefit is of them doing it here. Yes the message gets out there, but it gets out to people who, for the vast majority feel the same way (San Francisco is THE definition of liberal.) All these people that come in for these protests are shuttling in on the Bart subway, doing their yelling and then going back to the East Bay to munch on organically grown blue-green algae.
Why, when protesting Bush, they don't go to somewhere where there are minds to change elludes me. I mean, if you really want to get the guy out of office, go to swing states and work with John Kerry's people to make sure that happens. I know, I know, that requires foresight and conviction, which is something that's tough, when all you want to do, is take a 20 minute ride into a town where no one will disagree with you and challenge your convictions.
It's all just absurd and it's made me start walking through the middle of the meaningless protests and getting in the way of things, just because these twitterheads expect no one to confront them. People should. People should get in their face and ask why they're doing all this, even if you completely agree with them. Even if you think the world is black and white, how the hell do you know if you are on the black or the white side of things?
Anyways, support your local unions in their strife to improve their working conditiongs, since a lot of them work for crap wages with no health care.
21 08 2004 0 comments
A City of Wannabe DJ's
A friend of mine pointed out that there is a minority class in San Francisco which is growing at an amazingly frightful rate, which is the DJ Class.
I have no idea why they all flock here and why they all stay here, since there are far too many spinners in this town already, but they're here, they're near, and I suppose we should get used to it. But, I really, really don't wanna, since listening to a bad DJ, is like getting drunk off Zima (horrible, horrible thing to do to your frontal lobes) and is heavily pain-laden.
I guess that the problem with these guys and gals (yes, many girls are doing it as well these days) is that they think they're really, really cool and know what they're doing. As I pointed out in a previous article - here there are some pretty basic mistakes that all these wannabe funktastic musack mastas are making.
Bumping into someone in San Francisco who claims to be a DJ these days is about as common as bumping into someone in Los Angeles who has a screenplay they want to produce. You can't go anywhere without running into these people.
Now, please don't get me wrong, there are some superb mizers out there that really know what they're doing. A lot of them, you can hear for free at Tunnel Top www.tunneltop.com, especially on Friday nights. Ruby Skye also sports a good group who can get a fat, rolling groove resonnating through the club. I have to warn you though, that before midnight, they'll often have the cheap, wannabe guys on stage to try and warm up the crowd. If you happen to bump into them, be sure you get a Zima from the bar first :)
20 08 2004 0 comments
In Case of Boredom: Waste Time
If you're sitting around with little to do and for some reason are still employed, despite the fact your unproductive ass should have been laid-off, here are some sites to blow off your dreary eight hours at:
www.craigslist.org/about/best/
19 08 2004 0 comments
Domain Registry of America
For some reason these ass clowns think that if you get a mailing from them and they make it seem like your domain is about to expire, that, for some reason, you're going to pay their sky-high price to register with them. They must get some suckers to do it, since they keep mailing this crap out.
Not only is it annoying to get junk mail sent to an address that is really only for administrative purposes on my websites, but it's really annoying to see them try and sell you a registry for $25. I'm paying $17 and that's even higher than most places these days. You can easily beat this price by going to www.domainmonger.com who have served me well. Or you can go to www.godaddy.com for rock bottom prices. Hell, you can even go to register.com and get the same deal, but with a reputable company.
Junk mail... I just don't get it.
18 08 2004 0 comments
San Francisco --The Write Off
I don't what it is, but time and time again, I keep encountering businesses in San Francisco that are losing money and either propped up by another company that is out of the area, or about to go out of business and be replaced by the same exact kind of business, run in the same way, and soon to go out of business as well.
It seems that there are some large companies that don't mind this right now, since San Francisco is a really appealing town and I'm sure it's nice for the outsiders who own these other companies to be able to come into town for just about anything and have it be a complete tax write off.
But, there must be something more to it, since you never really need all that many losses, except if you're wildly successful and even then, you'd probably want to invest in your mainstay to keep it profitable. I guess this something more can be summed up best in Cafe Niebaum-Coppola in North Beach, which is owned by Francis Ford Coppola and is as well-known by others, a complete monetary loss. It will probably never be profitable, since the food is bland and undercooked, the prices are exorbitant--not only for what you get, but also given the location, and the service is, as best, appalling. But, when asked about this culinary atrocity, Francis will always say that he loves his Cafe and that he'd rather have it and have it losing money, rather than buy something fancy for himself. Cafe Niebaum-Coppola is Francis's Ferrari.
But, beyond the charm of ownership in SF, I also think that a lot of the companies that have a stake in businesses here would very much like to see them make a profit. The only glitch in this is the dot-com mentality that is still lingering in this city, despite a recession for the last four years and the fact that the boom was really only about 3-4 years. People, it seems are more interested in having fun here, than making money, which is fine, except for the part that making money is what allows you to have fun.
I fear that in some respects, if the economy starts turning around (come on John Kerry, win damn you!) then SF will face a second recession, since a lot of the losing businesses here will be sold off, due to the perception that the economy is good and the people owning these places will be able to get more for them. This will in turn create an artificial inflation to the already high prices again and cause a second bubble that due to the complete falseness of it and the cynicism of the dot-com era, will be extremely short-lived and actually plunged the city into a deeper recession than it has seen already. That, my firends, is when cautious people like me who get poo-pooed for not buying a house when the interest rates are low, but the prices are too high will make our move and get homes at a reasonable cost.
If Kerry doesn't win and dumb-hole stays in office, then I think the above scenario will happen much, much faster, since the economy won't be turning around and these big companies with their write offs will attempt to dump their holdings in San Francisco as soon as possible. A grim scenario, but hey, that's what happens when people vote for Ralph Nader, so knock that crap off already!
Just my 1.5 cents, but something like this is definitely on the horizon. Needless to say, I'm saving my money right now to really be able to ride out the storm the next time around.
14 08 2004 0 comments
The Laptop Mentality
As I prepare to do a very large upgrade to just about every machine in my company, the question has come up several times from several people in regards to their need (or more desire) to be moved over to a laptop.
There seems to be some kind of mythology that has been built up around the use of a laptop. It's like this cool, speed technology that makes you one of the elite. Well, let me tell you something: I have two laptops and they suck! One of them is my own and I hate it the least, since it was a result of the "I wanna be cool" problem that a lot of people go through. The other is one from work and the only reason I have it, is because I have several locations I have to go to and it's the best way to transport the data, although it's a major pain to deal with.
A lot of people don't realize that no matter the speed rating and all the other things on a laptop, they will generally always be slower than a comprable desktop. The architecture of the system hardware has to remain slow, or the stupd thing overheats, uses too much battery, or is too heavy. Things on my work laptop are considerably slower than any of the desktops around there.
Laptops are also a huge liability, as shown from some of the more disaster-prone users I have to deal with. One user is on her third after forgetting one on a bus and dropping another down the stairs. Another user left hers on top of her car and is on her third as well, since the replacement for the one that went skidding across a parking lot got crushed in a briefcase. Also, one last user, lost his first one, because his daughter knocked a glass of water into it, thus frying it. I might add that these have all been Apple laptops, but this kind of stuff can happen to any of the machines.
Simply put, the sloppiness is high. Not only is there the fact that people are careless, there is the problem that when you're moving a device around from location to location and plugging them in, as I have one user who has on one occasion not plugged in the power to her laptop and then on another, not had the network cable plugged in.
Needless to say, many of the users who are on laptops now, will be deposed of their "coolness" factor when we upgrade. I'd happily do it to myself to get a much higher powered desktop system, but for the time being am cursed to use one of these damned things. At least when I'm at home, I can use my UberGeek setup with two monitors and a UberGeekFast system.
11 08 2004 0 comments
Repeat after me: Kabbalah, Kabbalah, Kabbalah
So, it appears that to make people latch on to fad religions these days, the media will just repeat the name of it so much, that you forget any content about it. For instance, with Kabbalah, I've had it explained to me several times and after each time, someone explains it to me, I just sit there with a blank, dumb look on my face that passes back into my normal look for awhile, only then to pass back into that dumb look when someone tries to explain it again.
I can tell you this for a fact though, Madonna, Guy Ritchies, Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, and a whole bunch of others are into it. So, who the hell cares? The media, because they've got a word they can't pronounce right and they like that. They like it because each time they say it, it sounds like something differenent and since most people can't remember what the hell its about, they can repeat the same content again and again.
I guess you just grin and bear it when it comes to this kind of stuff. Personally, the whole Kwawallab thing is less annoying to me than Atkins people who run around praising it so much, when they don't realize that if you starved yourself you'd get the same results.
Seems that it always comes down tot he fact that the less secure you are in your beliefs and ideas, they more you need to proselytize them to everyone else. This is probably the reason I admire the Buddhists more than anyone else, since if you tell them their religion is ridiculous, they'll just agree with you and be on their way. The always don't run around trying to get people to covert... at least not the true practitioners. There's always some goober in San Francisco, Berkeley, or Arcata that tries to get you to join something that you really aren't part of. But, once again, it comes down to a lack of security in your beliefs, because once the pot clears out of that guys system, man is he gonna have a mind screw.
