Hiatus

Hello everyone!

I have decided to take a break from doing the blog for a while. This is my 100th entry, so it feels like an appropriate time to stop for a while. In TV, this would mean I could go into syndication. Thank you for reading my blog!

Lesson Of The Week: Chewing The Cud

Cows are interesting. They eat grass and hay, but they grow huge. Have any of you ever seen a skinny cow? There is a perception about vegetarians being skinny, but I guess they blow that theory out of the water.

Hay is very difficult to digest, so a cow's digestive system is pretty tough! Cows belong to the ruminant class of animals, which have four stomachs and chew their cud. The average cow chews 40,000 to 60,000 times a day because of the amount of food it eats and chewing its cud.

After grinding its initial food, the cow swallows the food into its first stomach, the rumen. The rumen is the largest compartment and has billions of microorganisms inside. These organisms help the cow by digesting the plant fiber and producing fatty acids for the cow. This symbiotic relationship helps cows digest a variety of materials that are hard to digest for other animal classes. Any food that is too heavy or hard to be digested is stored in the reticulum, the second stomach compartment.

Once this is done, the cow regurgitates the unprocessed food to allow it to grind the food into smaller pieces, called chewing its cud. Once it is done chewing, the cow swallows the food into a third compartment called omasum. The omasum absorbs the fatty acids that were not absorbed by the rumen.

Finally, the food that is left gets passed to the final compartment called the abomasum. The abomasum works like a human stomach. It secretes acids to break down the remaining food.

This is the back story behind chewing the cud.

Spirituality: Luke Chapter 11 Verse 9

"And so I tell you, keep on asking and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking and you will find. Keep on knocking and the door will be opened to you."

Reading this quote from the Bible, consistency comes to mind. The first line says you get what you ask for if you keep asking for it. This sounds a lot like prayer to me. In prayer you are asking God for help, such as help to heal a friend or help to give you strength to do the right thing.

The second line brings truth to mind. We are all looking to figure things out in our lives. As long as you keep searching for answers, then you will find those answers.

Finally, the last line brings action to mind. "Knocking on the door" can mean doing actions that you know are right and moral. If you continue to do good things, then doors will be opened to you.

To me, this quote is saying that if you keep on striving for your desires, then you will achieve them.

Finances: Be Somebody or Be Somebody's Fool

My best friend gave me a bunch of random video tapes once and in the collection was Mr. T's video "Be Somebody or Be Somebody's Fool". I never actually watched it, but I think I can hazard a guess at the topic.

I bet Mr. T says that you need to develop yourself as a person or else people will be taken advantage of by others. Of course, this is true no matter what age you are. We all have something we can be working on to improve ourselves. The same is true for your finances.

You have to plan ahead and think about what financial goals you want to strive for. For example, jobs have no guarantee on them. We are all "at will" employees and our bosses can let us go at any time. Gone are the days of working for the same employer for decades. So, you have to think of strategies to keep your income growing years down the road. My plan is to create my own business. In this way I can control my own destiny to a greater degree than working for someone. Also, I can learn a lot about myself, which will help me grow as a person too.

See Mr. T, I am not going to a fool for you to pity!

Nutrition: Sea Salt

Salt is bad for you. That's what we hear. Stay away from salty foods. There were a lot of studies done that show salt intake can lead to hypertension. However, it's all about moderation.

First, let's make a distinction about kinds of salt. There is sea salt and table salt. Table salt is made using a high heat process to purify the salt crystals to be over 99% sodium chloride. Then anti-caking agents are added to table salt. These agents are not good for the body. On the other hand, there is sea salt which is made in salt water and does not need anti-caking agents. Also, 2% of sea salt is made up of trace minerals that are good for the body. Sea salt has a distinctive flavor.

Now, sea salt has many benefits. It helps regulate the acidity level of the body. The body tries to maintain an acidity level, and if there is not enough salt in the body, then the body will try to lose more water through sweat and urine. By keeping a healthy amount of salt in the body, we can retain more fluid in the body. Salt also is a strong antihistamine, helping to relieve asthma. Salt can even help stabilize irregular heartbeats by working with water to regulate blood pressure.

I consume sea salt every day.

Programming: Resources

OK, so you run across a problem you need to code for but don't know how to go about it. What do you do? Finding where to look for answers can be the most frustrating experience for a programmer. We go into situations thinking "oh, that doesn't sound too bad", but inevitably a roadblock arises. What do you do?

Well first, realize that if you've come across a problem, most likely others have come across it too. Internet searches are a great way to find solutions because there are many sites dedicated to publishing solutions to programming problems. Some people joke that only one person wrote all the code used in industry and everyone else has just downloaded and adjusted the code for their use. That's an exaggeration, but online code samples can lead to great solutions!

Staying with the internet, most programming languages also have sites dedicated to themselves. They contain definitions of methods and classes that you may not ever have known existed. They also have code samples that show how to implement them.

Another resource for finding solutions is technical books. Bookstores have usually have a wide selection of technical books on most popular subject matters. If you use a tool that is more obscure, searches on online bookstores, such as amazon, may be more helpful.

Don't forget your best resource is the people around you. Your teammates may have personal experience with the problem. Don't be afraid to ask them for help if you get stuck.

Wing Chun Fut Kung Fu: Vulnerability

What is your image of a fighter? Probably some scary, big guy who is muscular and aggressive. Well, much of our concept of fighting comes from movies and sports shows. However, Wing Chun Fut takes a different approach.

Most people wanting to learn how to fight think they are going to learn how kick someone's butt right away. Here's the problem with that. Are you learning self defense so you can go pick a fight with people? I don't think so. If you're learning self defense, most likely you are doing it to defend yourself against an attacker. The attacker has probably watched you and thought you were a target, so learning to be the aggressor is not realistic to learning self defense.

Now, one of the hardest things about learning Wing Chun Fut is learning to appear vulnerable to your attacker. Our style is developed for smaller fighters. We do not takes chances with lunging attacks. We encourage our attackers to come in and get closer. When they do get closer, they are in range for our attacks and we follow them, keeping that same closeness between us until we find a controlled strike. By appearing vulnerable, we fool our opponents into coming closer and keep on them until we finish the fight.

Vulnerability takes a lot of inner strength.