Sep 27

I’ve had serious lower-back pain lately and after the first night of good sleep in a week, this is my major realization regarding the treatment of this type of problem:

While the injury itself that’s behind the problem may be muscular or skeletal in nature, the systems affected are inter-related and one issue cannot be fixed without correcting the other.

Even if you sit properly in your chair, you’re still sitting in a chair all day if you have a desk job and as Greg says, “our bodies aren’t designed to hold that position for an extended period of time.”

spinalTugOfWar.gifGreg and Michael are the same two guys that fixed my rotator cuff injury back in the Spring. I’ve done three acupuncture and chiropractic treatments for this problem this past week with only mild relief each time, however as I’ve now learned, we weren’t addressing the muscular side of the equation. Yesterday we added therapeutic massage to the regimen and not even 24 hours later I feel 95% improved. Apparently there are two sets of opposing muscle groups that battle over the lower spine and both were having spasms playing tug of war with my sacrum. Moving the bones back into place provided temporary relief but the muscles were undoing the work. By alleviating the muscle strain, the back adjustment seems to have held and my situation is much improved. And yes, that’s me posing in the diagram ;-)

I cannot recommend the services of these two individuals highly enough. When your daily existence becomes eclipsed by a health problem, there is simply no price that can be assigned to the prospect of becoming free of the pain. For me the back problem this past week had become more than an uncomfortable nuisance and was starting to seriously damage my productivity and morale at the office (my co-workers would tell you that I’ve been hobbling around like an old man and I’ve been irritable and unable to deeply concentrate). Thanks to Michael and Greg I should be back in the saddle now.

The question I have is “from where do these problems originate?” I had a major car accident in ’93 that left me with a crushed L5 vertebrae so that’s probably the ultimate culprit but still there is no single event recently that should have triggered the resurgence of problems. My back has been mostly fine ever since the accident with the occasional intermittent, dull pain from long road trips and uncomfortable seating. Being acutely aware of my risk for back issues, I make sure to sit properly in the most ergonomic chair you can buy. The massage guy told me that apparently that’s not enough though, and that sitting uninterrupted for long periods without taking the occasional break to get up and stretch will cause the muscles to strain, which in turn pull the bones out of alignment, which means you don’t sleep well, which thwarts the healing process and creates more muscle strain, etc. Good sleep is so essential to the recovery that once the negative spiral is initiated, it needs an intervention to stop it. The spiral can be avoided entirely by drinking a lot of water and stretching throughout the day.

If you are experiencing prohibitive pain from repetitive strain injury or another work-related stress and are in the Phoenix area, I highly recommend the services of the guys from the CFAM as a measure of intervention.  And for that matter, whatever ails you I recommend you contact the CFAM – here’s a testimonial from a good friend I sent there for her long-term sinus problem and she’s finally found relief. Heck, if you’re outside of Phoenix and your problem is troublesome enough, I recommend you fly here and meet with them. Phoenix is beautiful in the winter!

*One disclaimer here- it should be noted that I did do their web site. I believe the service they do is extremely valuable but I derive no direct monetary benefit from referrals generated via the advice here.

Sep 14

togoFoodTrick11.jpgIf you find yourself driving alone with fast food that has spill-able contents like soups or primarily-liquid dishes in boxes, here’s a neat trick you can use to avoid from spilling your food. Take the “rabbit ears” of the bag, roll down your passenger-side window slightly, poke the knotted portion of the bag out the window and close it so it pinches the bag and suspends your food. You now have your own “gyroscopic to-go food transport pendulum” (?!?) that keeps your food balanced upright as you take turns on the way home. I came up with this technique while grabbing to-go Japanese the other night.

togoFoodTrick21.jpgOf course you look like an idiot driving with rabbit ears hanging out your window but hey, priorities… I had a bag that had a big container of miso soup in it and found myself holding it upright by grabbing the top with my right hand while driving home. It occurred to me that the window could achieve the same function so I tested it and was pleased with how well it worked.
*Note – Do not sue McDonalds or myself if you happen to spill a cup of hot coffee on your lap while using this technique. Think “passenger’s side when there’s no passenger.” It may keep your food from tipping over on the seat next to you, but it could also turn nasty if the window isn’t clamped tight enough. Use this trick at your own risk!!

-sean

Sep 11

powerNegotiating_cover.jpg“Everything you will ever want is presently owned or controlled by someone else.” Think about it. I just did a second pass through Roger Dawson’s audio series called The Secrets of Power Negotiating and took notes this time in mind map format and made them available for download. This series is an excellent overview of how to improve your negotiation skills. It begins by pointing out that no matter what your job is, you are negotiating for things every day. Roger teaches the twenty tactics, or “gambits” involved in effective negotiations and also how to adapt to the different personality styles and how the different types of power influence us. If techniques like The Fait Accompli and Flinching seem too shady and “used-car-salesman” for you to use yourself, you should at least be aware of their presence. Being familiar with the mechanics of negotiations means you can identify when these tactics are being employed against you and easily disarm them.

I had many take-aways from this series, the first of which was that he copied my header for his cover design. I mean c’mon Roger, I’ve had the purple lightning bolt thing for years now… ;-) But seriously, it was helpful to learn the Bracketing technique, how to disarm a resort to higher authority and how the value of services diminishes rapidly once those services have been rendered and therefore why you should lock down the details up front. Also useful was the trade-off maneuver for getting instant, reciprocal goal concessions to bring negotiations to a close, the Nibbling strategy and the counter maneuvers for the good-guy/bad-guy technique.

For $14, the series is worth the bonus disc alone in which he teaches you how to negotiate your next automobile purchase. For me I disliked the idea that I was at a disadvantage being unaware of these tactics that others could use to manipulate me. Hopefully posting this outline for public consumption is kosher (I’m surprised they don’t have a better synopsis in the Amazon review). In reality, the value of the notes by themselves is marginal since 90% of the effectiveness of using these techniques is in their delivery and you need to hear Roger’s voice to get it right. I highly recommend this series to anyone who needs to negotiate something – okay basically everybody with a pulse… You can download the mindmap below or view the HTML version if you don’t already have Freemind installed. And if you’re not mindmapping, here’s why you should be.

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Here’s a screenshot of the main branches, each one representing an audio chapter in the series:

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Happy negotiating!

-sean

Sep 05

They are very versatile devices and while I’m fairly sure they could launch rockets with a little modification, they cannot be submarines. I learned this the hard way this weekend when mine decided to take a dive. It was the most expensive swim I’ve ever had but the silver lining of this cloud was the process for restoring the data the next day on the replacement device. I gotta hand it to Palm- it could not have gone any smoother. Every setting, application and piece of data (calendar item, contact, memo and todo) was fortunately backed up to my mac and upon syncing (s-Y-n-c’ing) the new treo for the first time, it functioned precisely like the old one. A few years ago this event would have meant a catastrophic data loss and hours of re-entering the numbers that I had a paper backup for. Today it was literally the time necessary to activate the phone and sync it once. Kudos to the folks at Palm for a sweet restoration process!

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Aug 21

“So what does Grid7 do?” I’ve heard and responded to that question at least a hundred times but never had I anticipated that question coming from Guy Kawasaki this weekend. We spent the past few days up in Palo Alto attending the Churchill Startup Panel and the Techcrunch August Capital Party. I’m a big Guy Kawasaki fan and caught him as he was packing up his things after the event and walked out with him.

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After we snapped a quick photo in front of the lobby, he saw our nametags and asked “so what does Grid7 do?” It was a bit surreal pitching to the “guy” who literally wrote the book on startups. In the thirty seconds we had as we walked out to his car I was able to rattle off a quick spiel on the JumpBox and how we feel it’s going to revolutionize deployment of software as a service. I wish I could say it blew him away and that he wanted to meet with us to learn more and write us a check the next day, but the fact is when we got to his car his only words were “so how do we get out of this parking lot?” ;-) Anyways, it was cool to meet him. I knew he was charismatic but he was suprisingly humble and approachable in person. Having followed his blog every day since it launched and finishing the Art of the Start not long ago, it was one of those strange asymmetric relationships where I feel I know someone well who has zero knowledge of who we are.

We learned a ton this weekend. There were about 700 people at the Techcrunch party (here’s the public flickr tag) and in talking to everyone we gained important insights that are now challengeing some fundamental assumptions we had made about our business in a good way. A traditional conference would probably have had more business value but this event was definitely fun and was the social function at which to be seen. We met a handful of startups doing amazing things, hung out with cool people like Noah Kagan, Lorenz Sell and Paul Nixon, found some potential partners and mingled with people like Robert Scoble, Mike Arrington and Dave Winer. We did the entire weekend (San Jose, Cupertino, Palo Alto, Half Moon Bay, San Francisco back to San Jose) on a single 10gal tank of gas in our rental Ford Focus. We didn’t win any style awards and I couldn’t stop thinking that the turn signal sounded like a Snapple bottle cap, but the fuel efficiency was astonishing. Thanks to Mike Arrington and the Churchill Club for putting on two great events.

Aug 11

StarbucksGreenTeaHack1.jpgSo I think I’ve broken the code on the green tea at Starbucks. By the way I’m addicted to this drink. Every day at 3pm I jump in my car and make the pilgrimage to the closest dealer –ahem, I mean Starbucks– to get my venti unsweetened shaken green tea. This habit which costs me $2.11 each day has roughly the same financial impact as the nicotine addiction for the smoker that consumes a pack of cigarettes every day (granted it’s a little bit healthier).

I had a good idea of what I thought was in their tea so I experimented a bit with making it on my own and I believe I have perfected the mix. I knew there was an echinacea flavor in there and I notice they use a syrup for the mix which seems to have a faint honey taste. Here’s the simple recipe I’ve arrived at:

  • two bags of green tea
  • one bag of echinacea
  • one teaspoon honey
  • one quart water

Brew this up, then ice it and I challenge you to do a taste test and pick the one that’s the Starbucks mix. You can get the antioxidant Celestial Seasonings Green Tea online 40 pouches for $6 and 20 pouches of the Echinacea for $4. The venti size at Starbucks is 16oz (1/2 quart) so for $13 (tea plus the honey – prices online are similar to store prices), you can get 40 servings. Assuming yours is a daily habit at Phoenix prices, ignoring gas and time savings, that translates to roughly $50 in savings per month. Plus you don’t have to deal with Starbucks zombies. If you are as addicted to this stuff as I am, this home brew trick just might save you enough money to be able to afford the green tea anonymous rehab treatment you will undoubtedly need. I’ll see you at the next session.

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