Fitness update

Food is such a huge pita.  In December I started tracking information about my weight, exercise and what I ate each day. 

I’m generally not worried about my weight.  I’m more interested in my fitness level and what I can do (run 3 miles in under 30 minutes, 20 pull ups, 80 sit ups in 2 minutes) than what I weigh.  In general meeting my fitness goals will cause me to weigh the correct amount necessary to meet those goals.  All that said: what I eat has a direct impact on my fitness.

My current eating plan cuts out most sugar.  Cutting out sugar generally has the affect of creating a low carb diet.  I also avoid, or try to avoid, bread type stuff – chips, donuts, bagels, buns, pasta, etc.  But it is not easy following this.  If you want convenience you are going to eat a lot of processed food which means sugars and lots of ‘cheap’ carbs. 

Worse, I friggin love sweets!  Give me a box of Jujifruits and a bag of twizzlers, jelly beans, and just about anything else on the candy isle and I’m good.  So I constantly fight the craving for sweets.  And to help out I have to kids that are every bit as bad as I am when it comes to candy.  My one indulgence: chocolate.  I buy dark chocolate mostly but occasionally some milk chocolate too.  It generally satisfies the candy cravings.  I also get blue bell no sugar added ice cream.  It still contains sugar, but if 1 cup of ice cream in the evening is going to prevent me from achieving my goals then I’m doing something seriously wrong.

Veggies are another problem.  I really don’t like veggies.  Carrots, broccoli, lettuce, and a few others are tolerable, but I have a rough time getting enough veggies in my diet.  The benefit of veggies is that they fill you up like a mofo.  I’ll usually microwave a bag of broccoli and eat that and be full for a long time afterward.

I’m just writing this stream of something or other.  No real plan.  Just thinking through how to get where I want to go.  Think I just need to buy more broccoli.  Maybe see if I can use canned Tuna more.  Me and the cats can eat together.

Government Spending = jobs?

 

That has got to be a punch line to a joke somewhere. Over the past decade our federal government has spend mind numbing amounts of money and made promises of more money (pensions for federal workers, healthcare, social security, etc) all while having to borrow money.  Even better: many states are well on their way to being bankrupt because of their prolific spending and promises (more pensions and other stuff).  All of which leads to me trolling through the news where I found this jewel by CBS news:  Obama's Conundrum: Matching Job Creation and Spending Cuts. The premise is that Government spending creates jobs (Keynesian economic model) and to a degree it does.  We now have a huge federal workforce doing all sorts of stuff.  Stuff they shouldn’t be doing.  Stuff that really should be done by the states, if the states (ie voters in those states) want it done.  Further, the cost of having these wonderful federal employees (or contractors) do their jobs is higher than the private sector.  And how does the federal government pay for all this wonderfulness?  By taking your money.  It also takes my money, and the money from businesses, and from entrepreneurial types that go out and create new businesses that employ people.  For instance: Wal-Mart – it got started as a small store and grew.  In the process of growing it created a huge number of very wealthy people who went out and started other businesses that grew and created more wealth.

The government on the other hand destroys wealth as it grows.  Worse, as it grows and takes more of our money it causes people who have money to look elsewhere.  Even worse many of those people are entrepreneurs who create the very jobs (and pay taxes) the government (Obama) says it wants created.

If The One wants to create jobs – cut spending.  Let people, businesses and entrepreneurs keep their money and spend it how they want.  That will do more to create jobs and get the economy going than any of those stupid stimulus bills, Obamacare, Cap and Trade, or anything else.

However, perhaps I’m not correctly understanding the topic.  When we say “matching job creation and spending cuts” nowhere does it specify the type of jobs being created.  So yeah, if we cut spending then ultimately we’ll end up with fewer federal government employees.  To me that is a feature.  But what do I know?  I’m just a dumb redneck that works 60 hours a week to pay down debt and save up to start my own business.

Fitness plans for the new year

[I really didn’t organize this, it’s a bit stream of consciousness]

Usually crap New Year’s resolutions – blah blah – eat better, exercise more so on and so forth.

Really could care less about all that. I think that focusing on weight is not a great idea. What purpose does your weight serve? Instead I’m focusing on some stuff I want to do that will require me to be in better athletic condition than I am now. If I happen to lose weight or look better as a result fine, but I’m really not concerned about that.

First event coming up is the Warrior Dash in April. However it sort of collides with the LaRue 3gun match in Austin so I might do that instead and go to the Warrior Dash in Conroe on March 19. We’ll see. I’m still picking out events that I want to attend this year. I want to get in to doing 3gun matches because the videos look like a lot of fun. For instance, last year they did a ‘drive by’ stage:

One of the main events I’m going to do is Tiger Valley’s Bug Out Drill. Some of my internet friends have done it and it is a lot of fun. Tough (a 15 mile hike while carrying gear) but a lot of fun (various challenges along the way). On top of all of this is that I’ll start doing track days in March. Riding a motorcycle ‘fast’ requires good physical conditioning.

A lot of skill is involved in doing this stuff. However, you don’t have to be an Olympic athlete to do it. The other stuff like the Dallas Mud Run and Merrell Down & Dirty Dallas requires a little bit of fitness, but again: not Olympic athlete fitness to do it. I’m just going to have some fun and have a reason to exercise. Otherwise, why bother?

How do I plan to get in shape? Nothing earth shattering. Simple stuff like pushups, sit ups, leg lifts, squats along with jogging roughly 2 miles each morning. I do about 5 miles on weekends. I’m also going to add some weight lifting to the routine. Probably twice a week. As for diet I’m not going to kill myself. First, and probably most effective, is to get back to planning menus in advance and sticking to them. That cuts out the impulse to have Chinese food or Pizza delivered. We’ll probably start back to the 30day cooking thing.

The benefit of 30 day cooking is that you have everything planned out and partially prepped ahead of time. This can make preparing dinner a snap when you are either in a rush or just don’t freaking feel like it. You can also change your mind about what you are having without having to order out.

For instance I buy these packets of chicken breast at CostCo. There are 12 breasts in 6 packets. I open half of them, season and grill them right away. I take the cooked chicken breasts, wrap them and put them in the freezer. Need a chicken Caesar salad? Just grab a breast out of the bag, thaw it, heat it up, chop it up and your good to go. Hamburger meat gets turned in to patties and frozen and some of it is seasoned (salt, pepper and garlic) and browned and then frozen. So hamburgers, tacos or chili is really easy to pull off.

Two reading resources I like are “4 Hour Body” by Tim Ferris and “Fit for Combat” by JD Johannes. Right now 4HB (roll eyes) is all the rage. Truth is Ferris really doesn’t introduce anything new, but I like his writing style and some of the crazy shit he does. A lot of people absolutely can’t stand him, which because so many people are complete morons, makes him more interesting. His other book “4 hour work week” has a lot of interesting ideas that are worth considering. However, be prepared that there are risks involved, but everything has risks. I’ve been JD Johannes blog for a long time and “Outside the Wire” is a good look in to what Iraq is like. In his case compared do your usual run of the mill journalist this guy actually got outside of the hotel to see what was going on in Iraq. Logging video gear while wearing body armor and running around with a bunch of crazy Marines takes both courage and fitness.

So basically in my opinion both authors have a certain amount of credibility. The first part of Ferris’s book focuses on diet. Nothing new: quit eating all the sugar and refined crap. This also includes the diet sodas (which is a damn lie!). This is basically what is called the Paleo diet. If it is or could be white: skip it. That means wheat, rice, corn, and sugar. You should also skip fruit b/c of the fructose content which doesn’t help. To build muscle up: eat lots protein. Muscle burns calories. More muscle burns more calories. Buy continuing to supply your body with protein it will use its fat stores to help meet your muscles needs. Fail to supply enough calories the body will use muscle to make up the difference and save the fat. Eat enough of the right type of calories (proteins mostly).

The goal in all of this is to be in a good enough condition to be able to do well in all of the events and be able to have fun with my friends. Ideally when I get home I’d like to not crash out and spend the next week recovering. We’ll see how I do.

Simple Math for Marksmanship

I like shooting with iron sights.  Unfortunately my eyes quickly get tired from trying to focus on small targets in the distance which makes progress difficult.  There are a few things involved:  distance, the size of the target and the color of the target and its background.

The range I usually go to has a 50 and 100 yard line to shoot from.  I want to use the 100 most of the time, but I can work on the 50 yard line longer before my eyes are too worn out.  To help myself I decided that I should change the target from the zeroing targets the range gives out to something easier on my eyes.  The problem is that I don’t want something huge (really easy to hit).  I want a target that will sit on top of my front post and be about as wide, I also want to be able to clearly see it.

So at 100 yards how big does the circle need to be to appear to be the width of my front post on my rifle?  Turns out the answer is about 9 inches.  But how did I get that?

Simple: similar triangles.  First, lets set up the parts we need to know:

The values we are working with are:

• Size
• Distance
• Angle

In the first triangle we will use the rifle so the values are:

• Size=.05 inches for the front sight post (your post might be different – go measure it)
• Distance = 20 inches from the eye to the front post (your rifle might be different – go measure from your cheek weld to the front post)

We need to find the angle.  To get the angle we divide size by distance. So the angle of the triangle is .14 degrees (small).

Now for the bigger triangle we know the Distance and Angle.  To find the size of a target that will sit on top of the front post we multiply the tangent of the angle by the distance (tan(angle)*distance):

• Distance = 3600 inches (100 yards)
• Angle = .14

So a target that is the size of the front post at 100 yards (3600 inches) will be 9 inches in diameter (if it is a circle). 

So if I want it to be roughly half the size of the front post a 4.5 inch circle will work.  I should mention that as you do this for yourself you need to keep your units the same.  So if you want to make a target for 300 yards you’ll have to convert yards to inches (10800).

The next question is what color?  Black on a white background would be great, unfortunately I wouldn’t be able to see where I hit.  Red, green or blue might also work.  I’m not sure about yellow?  I’ll have to experiment to see.

I can probably buy a book of targets that are already the right size.  But what fun would that be?  A program like Publisher or PaintShop will let me make whatever I want.  I can customize it to my heart’s content – grid lines, faces, shapes, different colors, etc.  We’ll give it a try this weekend and see what happens.

SCARlet goes to the range

I got to take SCARlet to an indoor range on Thursday.  We got an initial zero done at 25 yards.  But I got out again today... so I went and tested myself at the 100yard range:

The top 3 shots were the first group.  The 3 shots on the diamond were after dropping the front post 8 clicks.  That was done using the stock iron sights and a sand bag.  Unsupported, at best I can do 2" groups using irons.  It's not my hands, it’s the eyes.  I can’t maintain focus for very long, even on the front post. Going to have to give up and get a good optic.

Moving on to the actual shooting, the only complaint I have for the SCAR's irons is that there isn't a 100 yard setting for the rear sight.  It goes from 200 to 600.  They’re really nice sights though. They are folding sights. The rear sight rides on the rail and the front site sits on the gas block.

To adjust the rear sight you turn the post until the number is lined up with the white line. The windage is adjusted using the knobs on the side. The front site is works just like the M4. To go up or down you use a sight adjusting tool to turn it. I suspect for CQB stuff you could get away with just putting the target inside the circle (assuming man size targets inside 25 yards):

Shooting the SCAR isn’t really any different than the M4. Actually, it’s more comfortable because of the SCAR’s adjustable cheek rest. However, I highly recommend finding a place to park your thumb if you leave the charging handle on the left side (you should unless you are shooting left handed). I smacked my thumb twice because I had it in the charging handle’s way. Didn’t hurt me but I could see how you could get hurt doing that.

One thing that did surprise me is that the recoil from the SCAR is really mild. Not much different than my M4. However, it is loud! It was pretty funny because when I took my first shot I heard several people comment ‘What the %!#%$@# was that???’. Perhaps the muzzle break has something to do with it:

I realize I didn’t provide anything for reference, but it is nearly 3” long. At the indoor range that I went to earlier in the week it provides a very nice fire ball once it has warmed up. Good for cookouts.

Basically, my impression is this: with practice I could stack bullets on top of each other at 100 yards. Invest in a decent optic and I bet it would let me stack them at 500 yards too if the rifle was supported.

Now for the fun part: Disassembly!

Breaking down the SCAR couldn’t be easier: pop the takedown pin loose, slide the lower forward and out, pull the stock down, pop out the rod, slide the BCG (bolt carrier group) back, take out the charging handle and then take the CBG out and you’re almost home. On the BCG you just pop out another take down pin, drop the firing pin out, pull the cam out of the bolt and then pull the bolt out of the carrier. Viola, you’re ready to scrubba dub dub.

Take down pin:

Three easy to carry pieces:

The charging handle (you can move it to the other side if you want):

The BCG:

The upper after everything is out:

Until I learn differently: I’ll run my SCAR wet like I do my M4. A friend of mine commented that my M4 leaked more oil than his motorcycle. Just call me British Petroleum.

That’s it. What else can be said by me? It’s a bit expensive. But for the price you get one hell of a rifle. It’s accurate, it’s loud, it throws a big friggin bullet, its sights are really good. I think FN did a kick ass job making this thing. I’m glad I get to own one.