Five ways to run your business into the ground, as taught by a Billion Dollar Lab company

These five rules ensure any company will collapse given enough time. If your business or place of employment uses these methods, do yourself a favor and fire them, and look for employment else where. You’ll be happy in the end.

Rule number one: Hire poor managers, then, train them to be worse

This seems to be the biggest rule at the place I work. One of management’s most important tasks is to constantly train, educate, grow, and expand the skills of everyone underneath them. Instead of seeking out excellent management, or even better, creating a development program to hire within, my company has taken the easy route by choosing to hire the person who’s been there the longest and expecting them to understand how the company works and basic operations management. The result at both my current place of employment and a previous one is highly destructive. The educational programs in place are geared to only cover the bare minimum that the government dictates, there is no cross training or expansion of skills beyond what the job title needs at its base. Currently, someone who had been working as a courier for thirteen years got quickly promoted twice in one year after a long term manager who tried to do new things under her was fired, and now every system below her that she inherited has been slowly degrading while she fiddles around with the paperwork her secretary should be handling. Twice a year she comes in (did I mention she lives and works in another state?) to avoid eye contact, pretends that she has a relationship that inspires any of us, and discuss how we’ve been failing, or, to give us another layer of poorly written paperwork designed to make up for absent management.

Rule number two: Have an incoherent strategy that ignores market size, history, and needs

Friday I got a call from the person covering my shift while I was enjoying my vacation to learn that our facility in Los Alamos was shut down due to the rent being higher than the revenue drawn in. This was one of the highest volume facilities we have in the state. Instead of relocating, taking the time to understand the market, and trying to get new opportunities going, they did what they did in our Santa Fe office: shut it down. The result? The full time employee walked in Friday, got laid off with no notice (notice could have happened at least 30 days prior) and was handed two weeks severance. The long term result will be the same as the closure of our Santa Fe Facility: our reputation, our brand, is now associated with random closings, poor back end service, and the knowledge of the precious medium size stops that we can not seem to get that we will not be there for them when they need it.  Brand is how people relate to a business. There can be nothing worse for finding new potential clients with a reputation for frantic yearly closings leaving the customer who needs medical testing done. Insane.

Rule number three: Alienate your employees

I regularly get alienated by the incompetence of the people managing me, and finally the trade off of dealing with foolishness has approached not being equal to my compensation. Long term prospects within this company are a joke, and great for anyone who has the ability to just stick it out until they stay somewhere around the 10-13 year mark, when they’ll either be fired or let go for minor infractions in favor of new, cheaper labor, or forced quickly and with out training into management, where they will be blamed for the poor decisions of those above them. My current supervisor inherited his position after the manager in another state went through something like five front line managers in the matter of a year. He currently has to work an extra 2-3 hours a day unpaid for this privilege. Who in their right mind would ever go the extra mile to try to make the business work when they find out that there’s no point?

Rule number Four: Frantically micromanage your business when the end of the quarter numbers come in beneath your operating expenses

Consistently, management, instead of carefully counting beans, starting lean, and creating a money making machine up front, has made the choice of replicating the exact system they have in a different market with different starting points and failed four times to make something work that, by definition, can not. The best example of this is what happened to the communists in china with their five year plans; communal farms in the south, with regular wet weather and better growing conditions were modeled and forced on the north, and the result was a doubling in the size of their desert and a famine that killed, hundreds of millions. My company has tried for ten years (at least) to use this model of business growth and it just doesn’t work.  Management who is operating things has not been schooled properly, they do not understand the different types of operational management. Google recently went into a new phase in its life by recognizing that there is a big difference between start up management and the type of management which refines the new start up. Microsoft’s Steve Balmer is a perfect example of what happens when management and leadership become stagnant.  Management sole job is to be on top of every system underneath them, and at whatever level their at, to be refining each system and enabling each person to shine at what they’re doing. Shuffling papers, then complaining about it, is the definition of non management.

Rule Five: Change nothing

Homeostasis is death. Consistently doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results from what has been tested to be true is the definition of insanity, yet these things are prized and valued for some reason at my place of employment, and at too many others. The stink of death isn’t so much the smell, its the stillness.

Brand degregation, loss of productivity and participation with destroyed employee moral, incompetent management, and completely ignoring your market is the perfect way to run your business into the ground. Luckily, massive government contracts in other states have kept the business running here for some time and allowed me to stay employed, but, my guess is that most people don’t have other business segments in which to test bed bad business practices.

I, for one, can read the writing on the wall and will be getting out while the getting is good.

Adventures in Micro Entrepenurisim

This weekend my Girlfriend and I got the opportunity to run a food booth at an outdoor festival in northern New Mexico, Watt5, about 30 miles north of Santa Fe. Both my Girlfriend and I worked our asses off. We about broke even- we were probably about 100$ short of it, which isn’t too bad for our first attempt, and not really knowing anything about the market. We met a ton of people, and in the end I can say I have another notch in my belt for a business start up, and I think this time it went off better than I could have expected. We both learned a ton, but in the end, for our first business together, I think we both did extraordinarily well.

Up until now my adventures in festivals have been purely on the passive/attendee side. One of my other blogs, http://www.festivalagogo.com, is dedicated purely to this activity. This weekend we took the lunge into being on the other side of the fence, trying to contribute something to the community we’ve been a part of for so long.

It kind of weirds me out that some people have this idea that business and capitalism is all about exploiting and taking and being a dick. The way some people think of business reminds me of the way some people were so willing to accept the doom and gloom of the end of the world prediction there was made for this Saturday- that there is only badness on the horizon and that we should all lament and freak out. While there are those kinds of exploitative and messed up people in the business world, there are also those kinds of people in any situation. The irony is that each business i’ve ever started has been ten times more work and responsibility than i’ve ever experienced as an employee of someone else.  Its a big part of the reason why I decided not to try to get the supervisor position that was available about a year ago at the place I work at now, the cost to benefit ratio is way, way off, and if anything, the worst position to be in is as a entry level supervisor with no hope for advancement in the next five years. Simply put, one has to give, on orders of magnitude more time, money, thought, and risk than any worker ever has to. I wish more people would try to start up small businesses in their spare time, even if its not something that you would like to do full time, I think it gives people a perspective on business that they could never understand otherwise.

I feel like, after this weekend, we did a fairly good thing. We fed a ton of people who would have gone hungry had we not been there, and we did it at reasonable prices with tasty food. We ran out of stuff and had to go back to town twice, which was a good thing. Pricing, organizing, transporting, setting up, tearing down, operating, accounting, marketing, cooking, and entertaining was a ton of work, I think both of us worked 16 hours straight for both Friday and Saturday, and at least another 10 hours straight on Sunday. Altogether this was a solid start to our run up for a gourmet food truck, which we are hoping we can get financed soon.

Seth Godin has it right- the factory- the part of the business that produces the actual product, really is a sideshow to all the other stuff that has to happen in the background.

We’re looking forward to doing another booth soon.

ps, mad love to the entire Watt5 crew, Braheim, Dave Decibel, and everyone else who helped make this a great time.

Days of Yore, Days Before.

Finding things hidden in new shores.

Discovery.

Discovery is something perfect and essential and necessary. Today- as in the now- has become not a game of discovery, but one of unrelenting updates. The uncertainty of time passing exchanged for the concrete now, served billions of times microseconds at a time. Discovery required danger, courage, … fear- hope- Real, tangible human emotions that were the price of growth, the necessary intangibles which each of us must pay in order to become.

Times have changed all that. We are the always on, always connected. The internet in our monthly data plans has turned each of us into the undirected Borg, ever certainly moving and breathing as one as each day progresses. There is no time for youth, growth, trial, discovery, and community. There is only the now, a now that is moving ever closer together.

There was a moment when I would look at a picture of something crazy, new, unknown, and see it as a challenge to meet. Take burning man- my first experience with it brought to my mind nothing but questions, puzzlement, and more questions. Where did this red painted naked man come from, and how did he get to this barren place with wild in his hair and dance in his limbs? Where did this vehicle with all these intricately cut patterns on it come from? What stories did it have to tell? What stories did the people who came upon it have to tell? Was love, or hate, or a mystical experience, or countless moments of humans interacting take place here? Or has it sat silent, with out purpose, waiting?

Why.

I can almost read your mind.  I  go to your facebook page and read whats going on in your life. Even the abstractions have patterns, flows, meanings. I don’t have to ask questions of other people, or travel to far off lands in search of some artifact that some bbc documentary on the tribes of burning man or whatever place was discussed in order to experience it.

This is the age of instant now, which makes secrets a rare prize. People expect the webpage to tell them all the answers about x, y, or z. The age of digital god, minus the substance that makes god, god.

Secret things, experiences, ideas.. made to be found but not readily accessible. This is new currency. There can be no value in the invaluable if the payment of discovery has not been exchanged.

Diego Sanchez got his face wrecked, but won in the end. What we can learn.

Sanchez vs Kappman was just replayed on Versus and I just caught the entire fight. It reminded me a lot of Bobby Fischer vs Russian Chess master Boris Spassky. After loosing repeatedly to the technically better Spassky, Fischer decided on a different way to aporach the situation rather than tit for tat fighting, becoming suddenly dificult, almost crazy with his constant demands, losses, and behaivor. Spassky had never seen this used against himself, and the effects began to wear on him. At one point during their matches, Bobby Fischer screamed “I’m Crushing Him with Brute Force!”    The constant and unrelenting pressure that Fischer placed on Spassky after loosing the first game, forfeiting the second, and constantly dancing back and forth with wild new moves that Spassky had not yet encountered, caused Spassky to freak out, insisting of a conspiracy and a rigged game.  Fischer came from behind and won against Spassky, who cracked and gave up eventually around the fourteenth game, never seeing the superior strategy used against his own better Tactics.

Sanchez, tonight, pulled a strategy very similar to Fischers, basically loosing the first round and drawing the second. His face was bloody as fuck by the end of the third, but his superior strategy against a technically better performing opponent won him the game at the end. Sanchez looked fat tonight, not adding significant muscle, working on endurance in a protracted fight to bulk up to 171 to fight Kappman. This threw everyone as Sanchez generally is a really lean guy at his previous performing weight at 150. Repeatedly Sanchez went for take downs that never once worked, slowly but surely reveling his real strategy: Rabid brute force.  By the end of the fight the tables were clearly reversed, and had it gone on another minute there’s no doubt that Kappman would have been knocked out.

Tonight’s fight struck a chord with me, as it proved that the “flawless victory” that we grew up with in games like mortal combat miss an important point of fighting in the first place- deception and false positives create a cloud of confusion that is often impossible to see through.  The Chinese have a saying called “exchange a brick for a jade” and this is exactly what Diego end up doing. Where Diego failed was with much worse technical fighting than Kappman, who continuously landed hits that failed to turn Diego off.  Kappman, much like Spassky, will not understand why he lost for some time.  In future fights Kappman will be susceptible to this strategy until he sees it for what it is.

We can all collectively learn a lesson from all of these fights, especially in this day and age- Constant and unrelenting force works versus a superior opponent.  the real fight is almost always the one that you do not see.  Who are our weaker opponents in this world and how do they use this against us?  Is a handful of billionaires or terrorists really more powerful than millions?  History is thick with the reality that the powerful are often helpless to do anything when a smarter, bait and switch opponent is nipping at them- Sir Frances Drake vs the Spanish, Hannibal’s constant changes versus the Romans and the Romans eventual adaption of Hannibal’s tactics after a full third of the senate was killed in warfare, the Communists in China and Cuba vs nationalist forces, Americans vs the British with the adaption of Native American hit and run tactics, and of course Luke Skywalker vs the Death Star (kidding).  Each of us finds ourselves in a fight against a faceless enemy who continuously misdirects, misinforms, and twists information to its suiting.  The fight can be won, just as much as it can be lost. Its up to us to push through like Diego and Fischer, never giving up.

Adding classes and library lists

I’ve read a ton of books and taken a lot of classes recently. I’m trying to get a handle on the retarded amount of information and I’m using this website as a way (along with a spreadsheet) to try to get a grip on the information, and so people have an idea of what i’ve been up to.

Soon, I hope, I’ll be able to add pages for individual classes and links to them along with reviews and links to books.  I don’t often get a chance to discuss what i’ve learned so i’ll just post it on here and see what happens.

Also, i’ll be updating my testing and, in time, turning part of this site into a prep for others wanting to test out of College.  Its a lot of work, but it’s a project i’ve had brewing for a while that I want to get some forward momentum on.

My weight loss diet, week 7 results

The short of it: i’ve lost between 20-25 pounds so far. I’ve also increased my muscle mass.  This is the best i’ve felt in..forever, and, the best shape i’ve ever been in.

I have a target of loosing 56 lbs from my start weight (256). I am about half way there. I’ve had some setbacks and some really good progress. All of this is a continual experiment in myself, and it’s already paying dividends way faster than the previous two years since i started on this course.  I wish i could give a better measurement of fat loss to muscle gain but i have not gotten my calipers yet. As soon as they get here in a week, i’ll be able to start tracking that also. So now, I’ve only been able to track total weight loss, which isn’t a good measurement of whats going on with me, especially since i started weight training a week and a half ago.

The primary source of information that I have been using has been Tim Ferris’s Four Hour body. Its a big giant book that some people love and some people hate. They had two of them the last time i was at borders at the mall on Louisiana.

For those of you who want to know what i am doing, i have, like Tim, divided out my physical activities into three realms: Food, Exercise, and supplements. I feel like paying attention to these three things at the same time is the key that i was lacking before seven weeks ago, along with one more key; Measuring and managing. while i was measuring some of my work outs before, none of them I was doing regularly or putting in a place where I can correlate action with results. I use google calendar, twitter, and the note pad app on my phone to do this.  I can see a direct correlation between what i am doing and how my body is reacting. This has been critical, as the way in which i percieve myself isn’t always aligned with reality. I don’t feel like i’ve lost weight but measurements and other people’s reactions have proven it to be so.

So step one is to measure activity; exercise, supplements, and food.

Step two is to learn how and why different foods react different ways in the human body. Again, Tim Ferris’s book goes into detail how some things act and react. I’ve also been taking physiology and nutrion classes, available free through itunes and online. The university of California at San Diego (ucsd) has a good physiology of exercise class i’ve been taking, along with a nutrition class from Berkley.  Both are free and update weekly as the class progresses.  A general physiology/anatomy class has also helped me understand how glucose, glucosamine, and ATP are related, along with fat.

Rule two: diet

I’m currently using the slow carb diet and i’ve tweeked it in my favor to help boost my testosterone, which is a kind of tricky thing because testosterone is moderated in a cycle.  Ive standardized every meal, and each one is pretty damn healthy, so there is no weirdness with eating stuff that cant be eaten in the long term. I eat 4-5 times a day (this varies depending on what kind of exercise i’m doing.)  Here’s what i’m eating;

1. within five mins of waking up: banana

2. 1-2 hours after waking up whey protein/coconut milk/fresh ground cinnamon/5-10 varied nuts shake (sometimes i eat at the same time as banana, depending on hunger level)

around 11: first meal, consisting of (usually)  slice of bacon, 2 eggs, cup-cup and a half of black beans or lentils, cup of spinach, half a tomato, half a alvacado, 3-4 white cap mushrooms, a jalapenjo, onion, and sometimes corn tortiallas (never flour)

around 3-4 snack (usually organic chocolate)

around 630-7 second meal, same as above only the protien is fish (usually) or beef or chicken. add in some baby carrots.

around 9 snack (a couple nuts, a few dark chocolate chips (less than 10) or a swig of coconut milk.

This is called the slow carb diet. Ive modified it a bit and it has a lot more fruit than its supposed to have, but it works for me. I eat this every day for 6 days a week. Saturday is my cheat day and in the evening i’ll have whatever i want. it’s important to spike glucose levels with a bunch of sugary starchy shit so your body doesn’t think its starving.  This diet is not ment to be on like this for an extended period, only for weight loss. It works.

Third rule: supplements

here’s my supplements. people might think its extreme but its critical to use in conjunction with the diet.  I take vitamins 4 times a day. I went to walmart and bought a big 7 day/4times a day vitamin container to help me sort it.

4 times a day i take the agg/pagg stack which includes, green tea extract, garlic extract, Alpha lipolic acid, and polisacinol. The polisacinol is supposed to only be effective right before bed, so its only taken at night.  I also, in the morning, take maca, a multivitamin, and vitamin d. 2 times a day i take piracetam (its a supplement for your brain) and have recently started taking cissus 3 times a day also.  I’ve also been able to kick my 24 oz coffee a day habit by stoping drinking all together and reducing my dependence on caffeine by supplementing with caffeine pills, 100-200mgs as needed, along with b vitamin multi in the morning.

Fourth rule: tweeking my gym schedual

Less is more…and minimum effective dosage go hand in hand, i’m finding. when i first started going to the gym 2 years ago i figured if i went every day i could loose all the weight within months, but neglected my diet, supplements, and severely depleted myself within 3 months, making me feel very ill. Ive since tweaked my schedule to look like this: resistance training, 3 days off, resistance training, 3 days off. My biceps are already bulging in weird ways that i couldn’t get them to do. Also, instead of doing quick back and forth movements, I put the maximum weight i can push, and hold for five seconds, and do this ten times. that’s it. Its also highly effective, in both scultpting  my muscles and increasing the strength.   The resoning behind it is solid, again, check the 4 hour body to learn why.

anyways, thats it. Im continuing on this route probably until my birthday in may, where i will re evaluate what im doing and probably change everything at that point. if you’re a beginer, however, i’d recomend this to anyone.

Portland, the Half Blood Prince, and quick notes

Got back from Portland on Tuesday night, celebrating my girlfriend’s dirty 30, which went off well.  I pretty much went off diet the entire trip; Saturday I had some shitty crosamich at the airport, some crazy breakfast at Gravy, some pizza from a food cart pod, a cornucopia of bar food at the Jolly Rodger including more pizza, chicken wings, a burger, tots, and several beers. also consumed were several foods from the food pod including fois gras french fries and one of the best gyros i’ve ever eaten. I also plopped down a few donuts from voodoo donuts, half of a lox and bagel, more beer, and more samich from someplace down near the river who’s name escapes me. Overall i ate like shit and gained about 4 lbs back. this morning i weighed in at 244.6 lbs, almost an exact gain of 4 over my last weigh in on Friday of 240.5 lbs. (update, as of Friday morn I’m already down to 242.8)

One thing is for certain; the weight i’ve lost over the last three weeks is mostly body fat and not exactly water as I was afraid of. By not exactly, I mean that when fat is burned by the body, its transformed into waste products which are atp, water, co2, and heat. Not too different than the exhaust from a car but with a lot less co.  I didn’t know this till i was listening to the physiology of exersize class I’m taking from UCSD, I was expecting that fat was just gonna be pooed out or something.

The net result is that i feel strangely empowered now. My entire life has been ruled by this desperate undertone of dealing with food, and for the first time i feel like i have the ability to easily control both my weight and, further, what I can do with myself physically. Exercise was helping me maintain but the level of output in relation to the results was rather high.  Ive found it much, much easier to reduce the intake of certain foods and increase the levels of others.

What i’ve learned for certain about this entire experience is  that what we were taught about what is ok to eat as we grow up is entirely wrong. I constantly am finding life to be a lot like Harry Potter and the Half Blood prince, meaning, that I’m constantly finding the rules in the book i’ve been given to be wrong, and its kind of up to me to figure out where and how its been changed.  USDA guidelines are straight up bullshit. Common folk wisdom tends to be right some of the time, then way off base the rest of the time.  Really, it comes down to depending on “The Field” as I’m coming to call it- the network of people who are interested enough in a subject to talk and give away information and experiences for free. While the field can come up with incorrect solutions, more and more I’m finding that it tends to find the correct solutions and broadcasts them even when it contradicts what is commonly acceptable.  Part of dealing with the Field is navigating the morass of well funded, super hyped/marketed bullshit.  This is often the hardest part, as the bullshit has deep pockets and tends to be in the easiest of places to have access to- mcdonalds and walmart come to mind first as the biggest peddlers of crap that i can think of.

a few quick notes;

1. China fever  has taken hold with the president of communist china visiting and President Obama giving this hard working man of the proletariat a crazy lobster/steak/300$ bottle dinner and reception. What is just sad is to see how fucking week obama comes off . These are the people who have, more or less, destroyed our middle class by underpricing labor. Quasi slaves tend to do that. The fucked thing is that no one here seems to get it, especially my generation and younger. Basically we have cheep labor from Mexico, no decent middle class jobs now or in the foreseeable future, and an upper class that can only get there through extreme education and nicheation. I think that this reception with china will mark Obama’s presidency as the point when America really began to loose the plot. I’m just hoping my fellow gen x’ers will get the cahones to take the reigns of power from our more or less incompetent parents as quickly as possible. President Hintao did a sad, sad, stupid job of claiming technical difficulties when he was asked about human rights in China. This should concern everyone, as China’s leadership doesn’t give a shit about its own people- 75 million have died at the hands of the communist government since the 40’s-  we should expect it to care even less about us.

I feel like it’s time that I do my best to stop buying goods made in china, but I know this will prove difficult. I’ve already stopped eating anything grown in Mexico, I don’t trust the shit and I don’t find any of it to taste right anyways.

2. Starting to do trades again, albiet slowly. Got rid of the few shares of labcorp stock i have from last year, and as soon as I can im going to start looking at buying into the basket i’ve been tracking for the last six months, netflix, apple, and ge are the leaders. wish i had the money to trade in google, but its just way too out of reach at 600 a share.

3.I’m about a third of the way through my text book on management(its 800 pages), finished my sociobiology text book, (about 600 pages)  and finished reading the 24 hour body,(about another 500 pages) which is where i got the diet and vitamin stack recommendations from. Hopefully i’ll be able to test out of sociology and management soon, especially as my mom is pestering the fuck out of me doing it.

4. I feel kind of stuck with festival a go go. finding relevant products just isn’t coming to me quickly enough, however, the list is growing and my weekly hits is more than 1000, so at least i’m gathering steam.  Getting a income stream from this going is vital. I’ve learned enough in the last few months to be confident enough to go ahead with another niche webstie, only this time I think i’m going to do a lot more thought into relevant product sourcing with it before I go ahead. The basic premise is easy enough to get into but implementing it, especially getting ranking in google, is taking a lot of time, as is article writing.

Diet hacking 2

Just a few updates since the last “diet hacking” entry;

-I started using google calendar to track any measurements I take. Ive gone down from 256lbs to 242 lbs in the last 3 weeks, and for the last week have been averaging a pound a day in loss. This has been interrupted by going on trips and the holiday season, but snaps straight back into line as soon as I stop eating refined wheat products and sugary shit. I was able to maintain my initial 6 lbs loss over my 6 day trip to california but just barley.

-this has all been through diet and supplement changes.

-If i can keep my diet at least steady while in Portland, i should be at my 220 target weight by the end of February, at which time i will change my diet again because i want to start adding muscle to my upper body.

-For anyone who’s interested in doing what I’m doing, here’s the rules I’m going by;

-all organic. all free range meat. no veggies from Mexico.

-I’ve ditched the government food guidelines all together. they’re stupid, not realistic, and i believe are wrong, especially for my body type

-I’ve stopped eating bread, potatoes, coffee, anything sporting refined sugar, or containing artificial sweeteners. That means no cokes, diet coke, energy drinks, or anything like it

-all of my basic meals look like this; 40-50% veggies, 30-40% beans or lentils, and the rest is a protein of either beef, fish, or chicken, and sometimes bacon in the morning.

-Saturday is my cheat day and i go out of my way to eat crap. this has had two side effects; 1, anything processed immediately stands out as bad to eat. last weekend i tried to eat a grip of toll house bake at home cookies and a di giorno pizza and got sick from it, and the chemical taste stood out to the point where i never want to eat either again. This coming weekend I’ll be in Portland so I’ll probably go wild on breads and potatoes.

-I eat as soon as i get up. actually, i’ve been eating more i think now then i ever have, mostly because bread is not in my diet, and bread really fills one up. Its important to eat as soon as possible to get the glucose in your body working properly. If i cant cook a full meal I’ll mix one scoop of non denatured whey protein in with a half cup of coconut milk and half cup of water along with a few (like 5-10) frozen organic blueberry/blackberry mix. I usually chug down my vitamins at the same time

-my supplement stack goes like this; 4 times a day before meals i have garlic extract, green tea extract, and alpha lipolic acid. at night i add polysacinol.  This is called the PAGG stack and it helps the body get rid of fat. along with that in the morning i  have a fish oil, multivitamin, b complex vitamin, Choline, and Piracetam along with 1 200mg caffeine pill.   i take the piracetam 2-3 times per day as a cognitive supplement.

That’s. I’ve been steadily loosing a pound per day doing this. I’ll update again when i have more to share.

Ex Post Cali, USD classes, and testing

January is finally upon us and its time to put my nose to the grind stone. I’ve got three tests I’m planing on taking this month (intro to sociology, Marketing, and Management) so I’ve got a lot of reading to do; I’ve already studied quite a bit for the sociology class (clep study guide,wikibooks intro to sociology guide, sociology txt book and using instacert flash cards to round it out) I also took the video podcast of the class (itunes U has it, i think it was from a community college in Virgina, and I found the class to be severely lacking.)  I’m choosing this first class to test out of as a kind of test bed for the other 14 Cleps I’m taking. Things I’ve learned so far is-

• 1. clep study guides kind of suck. The one i read seemed like the professor had pirated a bunch of student papers that were horribly slanted and bigoted, and, did not cover the material effectively
• 2. a combination of randomized questions from the instacert, text book, and wikibook entries helped me cover the pertinent information quickly.
• 3. it’s hard for me to respect sociology as a science at all- so much of it is so damn subjective because its based on human social interaction, which can vary widely by whatever culture it’s playing out in.
• 4. i think its fucking ridiculous that Marx is taught so heavily over the other sociologists available, especially since so much of what he had to say was biased or just out right wrong.  It was, however, cool to be exposed to a lot of the other ideas from all the other sociologists like mills, Comte, Weber, ect.

Last month i started taking Piracetam along with a daily dose of vitamins to help me control my weight better and think clearer. Piracetam has been effective in helping my memory and my cognition. Its not some kind of uber wonderdrug, but it is like turning on a switch to making things feel more “anchored” in the here and now. I have noticed that there is a minimum effective dose for me and if i don’t take enough (somewhere around 1.5grams) I don’t notice an effect. If i do take too much (somewhere over 2.5 grams) i get a bit spacey. Once i get ahold of a good scale and experiment with measuring doses I’ll report back my findings. I’ve also been taking Choline supplements with it.  I’m glad i took that intro to pharmacology class a while back, its helped me understand how its been absorbed, processed, and released in my body. Along with the piracetam I’ve been taking a 4 supplement stack to help with my weight loss along with a really different diet. Its been pretty effective, but I gained a bit back while on the road for new years. Its gonna take me probably another 2 months before I start to really get around where I want to be before I stop with weight loss and start focusing on muscle gains. Its kind of exciting knowing that what I’m doing is finally working. after I’m done with the weight loss i figure it will be easier to stop what I’m doing and retooling my diet for upper body muscle gains. fun stuff.

USD is back with a rather huge list of classes this semester. Im looking forward to taking the Exercise Physiology class and getting the first 8 or so classes that weren’t available for the Cellular Neurology class offered last semester, which was the first class to make me say, woah, kinda hard.  Or at least super complex in the number of interactions going on at the neurotransmitter level.

I’m almost finished with a book on Caesars 10th Legion. It goes into detail about the different Legions underneath Caesar (Julius) how they were formed, how they performed during the Roman Civil war between Caesar and Pompeii, and what happened to them afterwards under the civil war fought with Mark Antony, and then about their history being stationed in Syria later on. The 10th was formed with Spanish troops and was Caesars favorite, so it was interesting hearing about how he used them, controlled them, and wielded them effectively in all his campaigns against the brits, french, romans, egyptians, tunisians, and romans too.

Anyways, thats all. got to go to the Bay Area this New Years and had a blast. Met some new friends (angela and ann jennete, much thanks for hosting us on new years!) got to see a lot of new places (the golden gate finally, salsaludio, capitola, and santa barbara along with stretches of the 101  and 5 that i haven’t seen before). Missed my homies who were partying like rock stars in vegas but im glad i took the time to have a new experience and meet new people. I’m starting to feel ok with anchoring myself out of California instead of New Mexico.  I’m gonna try to get the degree done with and out of the way asap and get started on making money, cause right now that’s the only way I’m gonna get what i want out of the future.

The Sociopaths around us and how to deal with them

At first I just felt pissed. It’s been almost two years and I’m still dealing with the fall out of having a sociopath in my life, as recently as last night. I suspect that I will continue to have to deal with it for some time, which is why I am writing this, so that others know what is up when they have to experience the fallout and deal with the behavior outlined below.. Sociopath is the old term, the new term is “Anti Social Personality Disorder,” and is used generally to define people we know who have no Conscious. They don’t have that thing that is inside them telling them that a or b is wrong to do. Most of the time these aren’t crazed street thugs or members of Hitlers SS, they’re people living next to you and me. About 4% of the population has this disorder, which means if you know more than 24 people you very likely know at least one.

Behaviors of a sociopath, or someone suffering from the rebranded “Anti Social Personality Disorder” Include generally any 3 of the below; (taken from wikipedia)

* Persistent lying or stealing
* Promiscuity
* Apparent lack of remorse or empathy for others
* Cruelty to animals
* Poor behavioral controls — expressions of irritability, annoyance, impatience, threats, aggression, and verbal abuse; inadequate control of anger and temper
* A history of childhood conduct disorder
* Recurring difficulties with the law
* Tendency to violate the boundaries and rights of others
* Aggressive, often violent behavior; prone to getting involved in fights
* Inability to tolerate boredom
* Poor or abusive relationships
* Irresponsible work behavior
* Disregard for safety

Other common characteristics of those with Antisocial Personality Disorder include

• superficial charm
• shallowed emotions
• a distorted sense of self
• a constant search for new sensations (which can have bizarre consequences)
• a tendency to physically or verbally abuse peers or relatives
• manipulation of others without remorse or empathy for the victim.

Egocentrism, megalomania, lack of responsibility, extroversion, excessive hedonism, high impulsivity, and the desire to experience sensations of control and power can also be present. This type of disorder does not relate to assaults of panic or to schizophrenia.

Sociopaths tend to leave a destructive wake in their paths. They’re generally adept at ruining the lives of others, especially the ones closest to them. They’re very skilled at lying and making themselves look very, very good. That is, until, you get to know them.

A while back I was fortunate enough to come across “The Sociopath Next Door”  by Harvard Psychologist Martha Stout. The sociopath next door  is written as a handbook on how to deal with people like this. I encourage everyone reading this blog to check out a copy of this book and read the excerpt below. Chances are you’ll have to deal with people like this, and if you know me then chances are high that you know about the person I’m having to deal with now. Anyways, I hope this proves helpful for others out there.

Thirteen Rules for Dealing with Sociopaths in Everyday Life

from The Sociopath Next Door, by Martha Stout

• The first rule involves the bitter pill of accepting that some people literally have no conscience, and that these people do not often look like Charles Manson or a Ferengi bartender. They look like us.

In a contest between your instincts and what is implied by the role a person has taken on — educator, doctor, leader, animal-lover, humanist, parent — go with your instincts.

Whether you want to be or not, you are a constant observer of human behavior, and your unfiltered impressions, though alarming and seemingly outlandish, may well help you out if you will let them. Your best self understands, without being told, that impressive and moral-sounding labels do not bestow conscience on anyone who did not have it to begin with.

• When considering a new relationship of any kind, practice the Rule of Threes regarding the claims and promises a person makes, and the responsibilities he or she has.

Make the Rule of Threes your personal policy. One lie, one broken promise, or a single neglected responsibility may be a misunderstanding instead. Two may involve a serious mistake. But three lies says you’re dealing with a liar, and deceit is the linchpin of conscienceless behavior. Cut your losses and get out as soon as you can. Leaving, though it may be hard, will be easier now than later, and less costly.

Do not give your money, your work, your secrets, or your affection to a three-timer. Your valuable gifts will be wasted.

• Question authority.

Once again — trust your own instincts and anxieties, especially those concerning people who claim that dominating others, violence, war, or some other violation of your conscience is the grand solution to some problem. Do this even when, or especially when, everyone around you has completely stopped questioning authority. Recite to yourself what Stanley Milgram taught us about obedience. (At least six out of ten people will blindly obey a present, official-looking authority to the bitter end.) The good news is that having social support makes people somewhat more likely to challenge authority. Encourage those around you to question, too.

• Suspect flattery.

Compliments are lovely, especially when they are sincere. In contrast, flattery is extreme, and appeals to our egos in unrealistic ways. It is the material of counterfeit charm, and nearly always involves an intent to manipulate. Manipulation through flattery is sometimes innocuous and sometimes sinister. Peek over your massaged ego and remember to suspect flattery. This “flattery rule” applies on an individual basis, and also at the level of groups and even whole nations. Throughout all of human history and to the present, the call to war has included the flattering claim that one’s own forces are about to accomplish a victory that will change the world for the better, a triumph that is morally laudable, justified by its humane outcome, unique in human endeavor, righteous, and worthy of enormous gratitude. Since we began to record the human story, all of our major wars have been framed in this way, on all sides of the conflict, and in all languages the adjective most often applied to the word war is the word holy. An argument can easily be made that humanity will have peace when nations of people are at last able to see through this masterful flattery.

• If necessary, redefine your concept of respect.

Too often, we mistake fear for respect, and the more fearful we are of someone, the more we view him or her as deserving of our respect.

I have a spotted Bengal cat who was named Muscle Man by my daughter when she was a toddler, because even as a kitten he looked like a professional wrestler. Grown now, he is much larger than most other domestic cats. His formidable claws resemble those of his Asian leopard-cat ancestors, but by temperament, he is gentle and peace-loving. My neighbor has a little calico who visits. Evidently the calico’s predatory charisma is huge, and she is brilliant at directing the evil eye at other cats. Whenever she is within fifty feet, Muscle Man, all fifteen pounds of him to her seven, cringes and crouches in fear and feline deference.

Muscle Man is a splendid cat. He is warm and loving, and he is close to my heart. Nonetheless, I would like to believe that some of his reactions are more primitive than mine. I hope I do not mistake fear for respect, because to do so would be to ensure my own victimization. Let us use our big human brains to overpower our animal tendency to bow to predators, so we can disentangle the reflexive confusion of anxiety and awe. In a perfect world, human respect would be an automatic reaction only to those who are strong, kind, and morally courageous. The person who profits from frightening you is not likely to be any of these.

The resolve to keep respect separate from fear is even more crucial for groups and nations. The politician, small or lofty, who menaces the people with frequent reminders of the possibility of crime, violence, or terrorism, and who then uses their magnified fear to gain allegiance is more likely to be a successful con artist than a legitimate leader. This too has been true throughout human history.

• Do not join the game.

Intrigue is a sociopath’s tool. Resist the temptation to compete with a seductive sociopath, to outsmart him, psychoanalyze, or even banter with him. In addition to reducing yourself to his level, you would be distracting yourself from what is really important, which is to protect yourself.

• The best way to protect yourself from a sociopath is to avoid him, to refuse any kind of contact or communication.

Psychologists do not usually like to recommend avoidance, but in this case, I make a very deliberate exception. The only truly effective method for dealing with a sociopath you have identified is to disallow him or her from your life altogether. Sociopaths live completely outside of the social contract, and therefore to include them in relationships or other social arrangements is perilous. Begin this exclusion of them in the context of your own relationships and social life. You will not hurt anyone’s feelings. Strange as it seems, and though they may try to pretend otherwise, sociopaths do not have any such feelings to hurt.
You may never be able to make your family and friends understand why you are avoiding a particular individual. Sociopathy is surprisingly difficult to see, and harder to explain. Avoid hi/her anyway.

If total avoidance is impossible, make plans to come as close as you can to the goal of total avoidance.

• Question your tendency to pity too easily.

Respect should be reserved for the kind and the morally courageous. Pity is another socially valuable response, and should be reserved for innocent people who are in genuine pain or who have fallen on misfortune. If, instead, you find yourself often pitying someone who consistently hurts you or other people, and who actively campaigns for your sympathy, the chances are close to one hundred percent that you are dealing with a sociopath.

Related to this — I recommend that you severely challenge your need to be polite in absolutely all situations. For normal adults in our culture, being what we think of as “civilized” is like a reflex, and often we find ourselves being automatically decorous even when someone has enraged us, repeatedly lied to us, or figuratively stabbed us in the back. Sociopaths take huge advantage of this automatic courtesy in exploitive situations.

Do not be afraid to be unsmiling and calmly to the point.

• Do not try to redeem the unredeemable.

Second (third, fourth, and fifth) chances are for people who possess conscience. If you are dealing with a person who has no conscience, know how to swallow hard and cut your losses.

At some point, most of us need to learn the important if disappointing life lesson that, no matter how good our intentions, we cannot control the behavior– let alone the character structures– of other people. Learn this fact of human life, and avoid the irony of getting caught up in the same ambition he has– to control.

If you do not desire control, but instead want to help people, then help only those who truly want to be helped. I think you will find this does not include the person who has no conscience.

The sociopath’s behavior is not your fault, not in any way whatsoever. It is also not your mission. Your mission is your own life.

• Never agree, out of pity or for any other reason, to help a sociopath conceal his or her true character.

“Please don’t tell,” often spoken tearfully and with great gnashing of teeth, is the trademark plea of thieves, child abusers– and sociopaths. Do not listen to this siren-song. Other people deserve to be warned more than sociopaths deserve to have you keep their secrets.

If someone without conscience insists that you “owe” him or her, recall what you are about to read here– that “You owe me” has been the standard line of sociopaths for thousands of years, quite literally, and is still so. It is what Rasputin told the Empress of Russia. It is what Hannah’s father implied to her, after her eye-opening conversation with him at the prison.

We tend to experience “You owe me” as a compelling claim, but it is simply not true. Do not listen. Also, ignore the one that goes, “You are just like me.” You are not.

• Defend your psyche.

Do not allow someone without conscience, or even a string of such people, to convince you that humanity is a failure. Most human beings do possess conscience. Most human beings are able to love.

• * Living well is the best revenge.