13 Resting BPM

Our hearts pump blood to keep blood circulating all over our body. This keeps the blood going all over every part of your body to supply each part with the nutrients needed like Oxygen and Iron(which makes the blood red). If the heart stops, we die. When we exercise and tire ourselves, the more oxygen and other things like sodium and magnesium is needed in our body, especially in the body part that is exerting effort. The more it these nutrients need to circulate, the blood needs to be pumped by the heart.

What fitness trainers use as a gauge for one’s endurance is the heart rate. There is the resting heart rate which is the rate of your heart in beats per minute(BPM) when you are doing nothing. The lower it is, the fit you are, because it takes a longer time for your heart to reach it’s maximum capacity.

And to improve on this, you need to do aerobic exercises(not necessarily the aerobic class many people think of with a lot of women in spandex). Aerobic exercises is nothing but doing a continuous exercise that will make your heart pump about 65 to 75 percent of your maximum heart rate. Going lower than that is said to not improve your heart rate, and going beyond will just burn you out so fast you can’t do anything anymore.

I remember my resting heart rate back in college to be near the 60 BPM range. Today it is like 80 to 90 mainly because of my type of goiter that I have. I have hypertyroidism where my thyroid gland tells my brain that it needs more blood to be pumped there and my heart goes to work, thus I get tired more easily. There were times that my knees hurt because of the lack of blood going there since my Thyroid gland wants more attention.

But it is getting better now since I do not get any problems with my knees. And maybe because I have been avoiding patis and bagoong which are rich in iodine that I do not need because of my hyperthyroidism.

Well I just thought of talking about this because of my admiration of Lance Armstrong who is veing for his 7th Tour de France win! If he wins that will be tour history for him. 7 consecutive wins is a feat that I think cannot be beaten for a very long time. And I have heard his resting heart rate is 13 BPM! Imagine that? Thinking of the human body as a machine… how is that possible? It is slightly more than 4 seconds for every heart beat. And these nutrients should be spread all over your body to live. That means each pump is strong that it is sufficient enough to supply the body with what ever it needs from the blood.

Well Tour de France started with a time trial, one of Lance’s rivals German Jan Ullrich, a former winner also started out 1 minute earlier than Lance since it is a time trial lap, and Lance pass by Jan! lolz :)) funny.

Six-time Tour de France winner and leader of the Discovery Channel cycling team, Lance Armstrong of Austin, Texas, rear right, overtakes T-Mobile team leader Jan Ullrich of Germany, foreground, 3 kilometers (2 miles) before the finish line during the 1st stage of the Tour de France cycling race, a 19-kilometer (11.80-mile) individual time trial between the coastal town of Fromentine and the island of Noirmoutier, western France, Saturday, July 2, 2005. David Zabriskie of the U.S. won the stage in 20 minutes and 51 seconds, Armstrong finished 2 seconds behind and placed second, Ullrich finished in 12th place.
(AP Photo/Pierre Lablatiniere/Pool)

And a surprise time trial win came from American David Zabriskie who has the best time trial performance in the whole history of Tour de France!

Rest? Or No Rest?

The first half of 2005 was cool but busy. New hosting deals in the Philippines and US. Sponsoring the Philippines 1st Blogging Summit was worth it. I also have a new hosting client in Saudi Arabia and colleague John got a hosting deal for his uncle in Macau.

Welcome new web hosting clients: FilPGFamily, Lex Tandog, Pulped Fiction, Fight Club Martial Arts Training Ground, Alibi Productions, JPMP Enterprises, Mook Choi, Informatics Sampaloc.

Thanks to Plum Studio who has been putting in several hosting accounts, not just one, but hmmm how many websites do you have right now on my server? 4? 5? and you recommended me to someone that added 3 websites from him too? As part of my gratitude… I will advertise your site on my blog when it is 100% finished.

Thanks to the Kelly’s too. This Filipino family has already 5 hosting accounts on my server.

With some personal workstation PC problems that have partially delayed all sorts of stuff, and a vacation that I really needed, but shifted some working time, most of the work is done already. SEO of Martal Exterminators is done and Web Design and Development for the Association for Marketing Educators is also completed while I’m nearly done with Graveyard Chef.

The company operations is another thing… collecting all the bills, sending them, checking who paid, who didn’t, following up payment, follow up sales, helps with customer support, generate more sales leads, helping out in event sponsorship, sales presentations is not all an easy task. Thanks to the ever reliable Amor (whom I suspect is also working on the P&J website, hehehe, but it’s all fine, just do your job.) And thanks to the company manager and my lovely wife Marcia who does not only work for the company but also keeping things running well at home, monitoring all our personal bills, insurances, pension plans, trust funds, educational plans, credit card bills. And more importantly, taking care of the kids at home. (of course thanks to Janet and Harry who helps out at home too). Ever reliable Mommy whom I owe money with the unconditional-mommy-loan, 0% interest for life, no penalty fees.

Still a lot of work, and still no money. All goes to bills, bills and bills. I am working, my wife is working, my business is earning, but the bills are still a lot. When I was earning less, I had no money, when I am earning more, I still have no money? MLM/Networking people reading this blog, go away. I tried everything already. I helps but not this time. I have other plans in life than doing that again, but I am not saying it is not a good system, all I am saying that is not my plan in this stage of my life.

Now that my projects are nearly done… I thought of yeah, it is my time to rest again! And how do I do that? By attending Taekwondo classes, going to the gym and riding my BMX. That is the best rest I can get. But I think that is not going to happen yet.

New websites came in. Pritchon, Batang Sayantist. Two under negotiation, which is basically a closed deal by word of mouth, but for me, not until I see the money, then I say it is a closed deal. I got one more under review by the prospective client.

So I do not get rest after all, not yet. But I think it is still worth it. So I still get to rest. But it is all fine with me. Kaya ko ito, I’ve done worse things in the past, as in really no sleep, walking zombie and not earning sh*t. A bunch of sites full of freebies, working for nothing. So this time, everything should be a lot easier.

Miryenda

Just had some snacks.

Mama made this dip for plain generic tortilla strips.

Cilantro, onions, tomatoes and sweezed a lot of lemon.

Hmmmm… that was good. I do not have a tongue for sweet foods and this snack was just great for me. It had a strong taste with some sourness in it that tasted real good.

Hay nakoooowww Jamie

Recently Jamie did something she really should never do. She is just one brave kid doing crazy stuff and how I felt on what she has done made me also reflect on how my parents felt when I did tons on crazy stuff when I was young. It was a very hard kind of feeling to bear especially that I am so far away. But Jamie being the big little kid she is already learned her lessons all by herself. She knows that what she did should not be done again even if we do not tell her. She knows it herself. She will be 3 in August and I know she may forget a lot of stuff at the age of two. I barely remember things about myself at that age. But people remember a few things that are really stressful, exciting, fearing, anything where the emotions are at an extreme, they seem to be saved in a deeper sector of the mind that this data can be easily recalled when needed.

I think Jamie has one of these already. She might have feared what she has done. But as she grows older, this is what I fear. Courage builds up as time passes by. Courage increases as knowledge increases. Courage increases are fear decreases as people learn to overcome their fears and become more knowledgeable of their mistakes. And something that a person may have fear of before, will have an easier time of doing it again unless they were traumatized. Knowing how Jamie thinks, actually knowing how I think too… which is what I fear is she might be thinking the same way. She might repeat the mistake she has done before thinking she’ll do better the next time. This attitude is actually a positive thing since you can see the learning process especially if applied in school and sports. But in other things you should not do, I do not think that is correct.

What ever Jamie did wrong, I have a long history of it. From 3 years old, up to highschool to college days. Jamie started even earlier than me, 2 years old. Now I can imagine how nervous my Mom was when I was kid.

But taking a look at Marcia, and how Jamie’s ate’s are. Her ate’s have a very large respect for their Mom. They follow their Mom and love their Mom so much. And I am very optimistic Jamie will grow up the same way. And I hope she does not grow up getting a bad trait I had that always kept my parents on their toes as I was kid. Courage is good, but doing something you don’t supposed to is not good at all.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Yes, when your busy, you can’t blog that much. Even if I thought of something nice to say in my blog, I just can’t blog right away since I’d be finishing something. And after sometime, you forget about what you wanted to write about.

Right now, I needed to run my other computer that I haven’t been using for sometime. And since it has been a long time since I used it, I needed to update everything. All my AVG, Lavasoft Ad-Aware, JavaCoolSoftware Spyware Blaster, Search and Destroy Spybot, Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta, Firefox, Windows, etc.

And I was also managing my hard drives better placing the right files in the right places for better information management. I was copying and moving files from one PC to another on the network. It was slowing everything down and I did not have much to do and I needed to wait until all the copying, installing, scanning is all done.

So here I am blogging away again while all of these processes run.

Ever since school started in the Philippines after summer vacation, I haven’t seen any blog updates too from Ate Dawn, Marcia and Jamie.

I have been learning and sharing on Kangkong.ORG. If you want to talks about anything on Web Design, Web Development and other computer stuff, Kangkong.ORG is a nice place to go.

Work
I may be earning more than I used to in the Philippines, but that is not enough. Too much expenses. But a large bulk of it has been going to pension plans, trust fund, educational plans, insurance and credit card bills. I guess without credit cards, it would be a bit harder to use money when you need it and you do not have any at the moment, but should be used with precautions. Since a lot of money has been going to bills, and a lot of them are plans and credit cards, I guess it is fine than not have any pension plans and educational plans since this may make life harder now but easier later on. I guess that is still better than having life easy now and harder later on.

With all of the work I have with Einstein Industries, once I get home, I still got more work to do. Clients keep on increasing and even if it is manageable right now, I am already thinking about information management, security measures, server backups, customer support since there will come a time all of these will be hard to do is I do not do proper action while problems related to these start to develop.

I am no business management major, but how I run my business is still basically based on my experience being a businessman since 1997. Where the first few years were all mistakes and even up to now, you still experience mistakes, but are minimized since more mistakes you have already learned to avoid them.

Sales is increasing and I can make it increase a lot more, but I am not prepared for that. I am still laying out the process, streamlining all business processes from sales to production to delivery to collection. And when all is prepared, that is when I will go all out on sales. Right now I am building my own information management system that will be used by the company.

Leisure, Recreation
Hmmm… things I like to do aside from work… traveling is not my thing. Going to the mall, watching a movie, seeing places, nope. Unless I am with my family that would be great. But me all alone, I’d rather bike (BMX or MTB), train (Taekwondo, other martial arts), workout at the gym, play the piano or guitar. But I have no piano, no guitar right now. I have no money to train in martial arts. I have no sleep even to train or workout. I even have no air pump for the tires of my BMX, although I know there are cheap air pumps out there, my money is really all used up and every penny counts.

Losin’ Blogging Time Lately

– Chatted yesterday until 3am, but it paid off, closing two hosting deals. When people are in the impulse of buying go with the impulse, tomorrow, the impulse may be gone.
– Official New Client: Pulped Fiction
– Graveyard Chef in progress, Pritchon, waiting for materials.
– AME not doing out of production yet, delay of materials.
– Mansmith Corrections
– Hello clients, I love you all especially the following: ICI Sampaloc, AME, CCME, Simon, Batang Sayantist, Plum Studio, Fight Club Training Ground, Spinal Cord Injury Foundation, Sasad Marketing 😀 Hehe. It is already the 16th.
– Cool forum at Kangkong! www.kangkong.org.
– I need sleep.
– Hello Treo! How do I use you? Big Manual. Close mind. Sleepy.
– I cannot handle another designing, if another is closed.we will outsource.But if graveyard is one the way out,i can still handle it.
– 1030pm. gtg. i only had 2 hrs sleep yesterday. ttyl….

chiao

Love you babe, jamie, ate dawnski, and si ate spiderman. 2log na ako.

US Citizenship and Naturalization

For many Filipinos, being in the United States is a great privilege. You cannot please everyone and there are also a few people not happy in the United States and opt to go back to the Philippines. But most like here mainly because of the financial benefits and what they can give to their family and loved ones.

I was a natural born American Citizen but grew up in the Philippines since the age of 5. For many years a lot of people kept telling me why am I in the Philippines? With what you know you can make a fortune in the United States. True or not, what I am earning here is nothing compare to what I was earning in the Philippines. And many of us still consider ourselves underpaid compared to the industry standards.

Last June 9, 2005, I had to drive my mom-in-law to her oath taking ceremony for her awarding of her US Citizenship together with my dad-in-law that was awarded his citizenship a little bit earlier. With all the online maps for the US, looking for the place was not hard at all.

As I was thinking that this thing is a ceremony in a small room with a handful of people, and I was so wrong. There was a very very very long line just getting into the Hall where the ceremony will be held. And I said to myself “What? A hall? How many people are here?”

As expected in this part of the country, you will hear the native Filipino language everywhere. And when we were allowed to enter, me and Papa, went up to the viewers area and the venue looked like a big college graduation to me. It was announce that there were 1,057 people who were there to be declared as US Citizens and that the current venue will be the last time the US Citizenship and Immigration Services will be using that venue and the following oath takings in the future will be at another venue. So that specific batch was called a special one. Aside from that, the Judge who officiated the oath taking was also his last year before he goes into retirement. They said that venue alone has already made 122,000+ US Citizens already ever since they have been using that venue.

The ceremony started with this musical sing and dance number by the Music in Motion Choir of one of the nearby high schools, which is their pride of being Nationally known in various choir competitions. I’m not a big fan of musical, theatrical arts, although I think I’ll enjoy watching ballet and symphony orchestras. So for me I first thought this thing would be boring.

As they performed, their songs progress into various tunes you recognize, common everyday songs of the past that caught my attention. They really did not have the original background music of the songs, but the choir’s voices was good enough. And even if the tunes were delivered in a somewhat happy tempo, upon listening to the lyrics, they have so much meaning into it. I cannot remember each specific song and lyrics but it was all about family, hard work, hope, living a better life. It reflected the main reason why all these 1000+ people were all there for. They worked soooo hard for where they are right now. Which reminds me of the many Filipinos that would go the extra mile just to get here, top doctors study nursing, which is just a few more units since that is more in demand here. Ordinary people or oven people with various successful professional careers go into caregiving. Teachers take their chances teaching here too. IT people apply directly online. Some try joining the US Navy. In some cases of a promised job there are placement fees, so expensive, they even sell their houses in the Philippines, which is considered a suicide move because if whatever happens fails, you have no more house to go back to.

And as the choir performed, I was panning the whole hall looking at all the 1000+ participants from all over the world, from left to right of the hall. And I started to feel the emotion these people have. The happiness they have with all the hard work they have gone through. The emotion started to build up but this choir was performing in a very happy mood that I think most people were not paying attention to the lyrics at all. I felt like tears wanted to roll down but I just closed my eyes and did not let that happen.

When that was done, there was a ceremony thanking all the volunteers of the event and who have been helping out throughout all the years at that venue. Many NGOs, school organizations and sections of the armed forces helping out from year to year. After that, was the time for the Judge to officiate the oath taking. He did express that what was happening is an official court hearing stating that all of them will be citizens of the country, but he still said that everybody should be lose and be happy since all screening was done already and all present will be declared as citizens.

With the emotional mood I had, so did this Judge, he gave his short life story and just could not hold his emotions. He told everyone how hard his parents worked just to get to America. Even if he was a natural born American citizen, he saw the progress of his parents from being immigrant aliens to US Citizens, and has witnessed how important that event was to them as a family. How everything will be easier. His voice was crackling up with a few tears running down. He is quite old already and his parent have already passed away. And as much as he was happy for his parents in the past, he was just as sincere in saying that he was really happy for everyone present at the ceremony.

This proceeded with a speech from a female school administrator that was basically there to acknowledge the presence of the choir that also served as an advertisement for the school which had various races present in their high school. And she herself could not hold her emotions as she recalled the day she also became a US Citizen. She was sitting in front and her students were also performing that time.

It was just a very emotional day, and it ended with the Judge calling out each country of the world in alphabetical order having the participants stand up if their native country is called out. It was a very long list as people clapped in the audience as well when their countries were called out. Majority of the countries had like about 1 to 5 people. A few were just barely more than 10 people. But as the list of countries went on… two countries were skipped. And when the Judge finished the list, he said “Did I miss anything?”

A shout from the audience came out, Philippines! and he then said “Did I hear Philippines? Ok Philippines, stand up.” And every Filipino cheered and clapped that it looked like 40% of them were Filipinos. As the Filipinos were clapping and cheering, continuous shouts of Mexico! Mehico! were heard. And when all Filipinos sat down, the judge said: “What’s that? Mexico? Ok Mexico!” And it was like 50% of the participants were all Mexicans.

There are so many Filipinos here in the US, it is like you did not leave the Philippines. During the whole ceremony, I can’t help but imagine the day like that, where it would be my family up there in the hall as I cheer for them.

Pictures in your Blogs – For my Wife and Daughters

This posting is basically for my wife and daughters who are running their own blogs right now.

First problem they had was a breaking up page with pictures too big. Now their problem is some pictures are replacing others and they are starting to have the same pictures.

I told them to email me the pictures and I will fix them as I give tips to them as well through my own blog.

Here are the tips.

  1. I can see babe, you tried resizing some of Jamie’s pics, which was good. Looks like you got the right size. But also try changing the resolution. All images should be 72dpi (or dots per square inch, also called pixels per square inch) Since monitors cannot display beyond 72dpi (monitors can display up to 96dpi, but the 72dpi and 96dpi make a negligible difference) In that way you get the maximum image quality the monitor can display and the smallest file size so that downloading is faster too.
  2. In some cases the images are small and when resized to fit in the page makes the image even smaller to appreciate. If the picture has a lot of space around it, background that is not important, you can crop out the background and not just resizing, so your image it still big.
  3. Generally a big image that you shrink down still has good quality, but a small image that you stretch to be big, starts to become pixelated, you start to see big squares, jagged edges, and generally blurry. And I understand you have been scanning some pictures there at home. If ever you want to make a picture bigger, it is best to scan at a higher dpi, like 150 to 200 will do, then as you resize you also change the resolution to 72dpi. So there is not much image lost in making it big.
  4. Resize the actual image, and do not use Blogger to resize it. This is for Ate Dawn naman. Her images are resize through HTML with height and width attributes of the image tag or using CSS width and height styles to the image. It does resize it, but the image is really big and the file size is big, thus downloading takes longer. When you resize the actual image, you also adjust the resolution to 72dpi as well for better downloading.
  5. You now have problems in your blogs with new pictures replacing some of the old pictures. Why? Simply because all your pictures are all in the same place and when you upload a picture with the same file name it replaces the old one. A picture that is always named jamie.jpg or dawn.jpg will always replace the picture with the same name. It is better to name the pictures of what the topic of your blog is about like swim1.jpg. swim2.jpg. For me, just to be sure I do not overwrite my pictures and I feel lazy making folders on the server, I name my files: yyyymmdd-eventx.jpg, where yyyymmdd is the date I uploaded the picture and event will be replaced with the event name of the picture and x is the picture number. So if I have 3 pictures during a picnic today June 5, 2005. My pictures will be named: 20050605-picnic1.jpg, 20050605-picnic2.jpg and 20050605-picnic3.jpg.

To my other blog readers, hey I know this is like kids stuff to you, but this is for my wife and daughters. I already gave them the tips and their next lesson is how do they it in Photoshop.

Aaarrrgg… Online forms that look like paper.

Online forms, aligning field names, input text boxes, adjusting the widths of each one, use tables. Not hard but to finish a single form with a bunch of fields uses so much time, especially if it looks like the form they fill up on paper. Appearance is just the first part, processing the form is the second part, so many variable names, and if error checking is required, it takes more time. I think I will make ready made codes in the future for commonly used things like date select boxes, country select box, state select box, age computation from birthday entries, etc. To make work faster in the future.

Still a lot more fields but I am half way through and when this is done, the whole client site is done, and I can now bill them. This should be done before the office starts in Manila, Philippines, +8GMT.