Are you kidding me? What a load of nutritional CRAP. Don’t buy this product. Just don’t do it.
They are just like Wheaties with more sugar and fat. Awesome just what we need more sugar!! Okay now 
I’m not against carbs… I’m really not. Being a cyclist I realize the importance of carbohydrates in the diet… but let’s be realistic here. Even though the commercials for Wheaties Fuel say they are for athletes you know that what General Mills is really hoping for is that kids will see Payton Manning, Albert Pujols and KG and buy this cereal and eat a ton of it for breakfast. Sad, really.
I’ve watched all the videos and read all the propaganda on the Wheaties Fuel web site and no where do they talk about why they added sugar and fat the original Wheaties. There is a lot of double-speak by Dr. Ivy about “understanding the needs of athletes.” I had to laugh – in one of the videos Dr. Ivy even says that he thinks the "new Wheaties will have even more fiber! Wrong! My bad... there is 5g of fiber not 3g per serving. Just Way more sugar. A serving of FROSTED FLAKES has less sugar per serving!!!
| |
Wheaties
Fuel |
Wheaties |
Frosted
Flakes |
Honey Nut
Cheerios |
Quaker
Oatmeal |
| Serving Size |
3/4 cup |
3/4 cup |
3/4 cup |
3/4 cup |
3/4 cup |
| Calories |
210 |
100 |
110 |
110 |
225 |
| Fat |
3g |
.5g |
0g |
1.5g |
4.5g |
| Protein |
3g |
3g |
1g |
2g |
7.5g |
| Carbohydrates |
46g |
22g |
27g |
22g |
40.5g |
| Sugars |
14g |
4g |
11g |
9g |
1.5g |
| Fiber |
5g |
3g |
1g |
2g |
6g |
In reality it might not be a bad pre-workout meal but for a normal day-in-day-out breakfast is just seems to have too much sugar - especially when you bump the serving size up to 1 to 1.5 cups and add milk!
I’ll stick with Oatmeal, thank you very much.
I read a tidbit in Bicycling magazine entitled 5 Things You Should Have In Your Car obvious stuff, really. It reminded me that I wanted to write about one of my experiments/resolutions last year. I decided (maybe this idea spawned from a Fatty blog post?) that I wanted to always be prepared to go for a ride. If a friend called while I was at work or if I was out running an errand I want to be able to ride.
Of course this meant I need a bike with me at all times… and last summer I did carry my road bike with me more often that not. I don’t have a canopy on my truck (and even if I did I’m not sure I’d tote my bikes around back there) so this means that I have to stow my bike on the floor of my back seat. Not super convenient when picking up my kids for the weekend! I’ll probably do the same this spring and summer even though it is a bit of a pain to have a bike taking up my entire backseat.
The bike-in-backseat problem aside the best thing to come about from this experiment is that I had to get efficient with carrying all my cycling gear. I think I have a pretty good system down now.
In my center console I carry my Sunglasses and my Garmin Forerunner 305.
Floor pump – carrying a floor pump in your vehicle at all times is a great idea. I’d suggest trying to find one at an REI Garage Sale near you. I always see nice used pumps for dirt cheap at these sales.
Riding gear – this is all the the stuff you don’t wash between rides. Instead of dropping $40 on the trunk organizer that Bicycling Mag suggests I use an $8 RubberMaid storage container! I see these on sale at K-Wal-Tar-Mart for $6 – $10. This is my essential kit… it is so nice to know that I have all my gear in my truck at all times. No forgetting my helmet, shoes or gloves.
- Mountain Shoes
- Road Shoes
- Mountain Helmet
- Road Helmet
- Mountain Gloves
- Road Gloves
- Chest strap for heart rate monitor
- Water bottle or two
I found these AWESOME large Ziploc bags (also come in XL!) to hold the rest of my gear. They are made of much thicker plastic than gallon freezer bags and are great because they slide under and behind the back seats of my truck .
Bag One (Gallon Ziploc) - Cycling Clothes:
- Jersey
- Road bibs (I usually wear mountain shorts when mountain biking but I figure that in order to conserve space I’ll just carry road shorts (bibs) yeah in a pinch it doesn’t really matter!
- Pair of socks
Bag Two (Large Ziploc) – Miscellaneous Gear
- Repair kit - simple stuff. Extra tubes for all my bikes, a rag, a bottle of chain lube, Ziploc sandwich bags a few extra wrenches and a screw driver. Although I already carry a nice multi-tool in my seat bag so I really only need to pack a wrench or two that I don’t normally carry.
- Wet Wipes – I’m currently carrying baby wipes but I prefer something with more alcohol like Wet Ones – more alcohol is better because they provide more and longer lasting “freshening” power.
- One large towel – yeah – to mop up my sweaty, wet, muddy self!
- First Aid Kit - I’m clumsy.
Bag Three (Large Ziploc) - Foul Weather
- Gore-Tex Jacket
- Booties
- Arm Warmers
- Balaclava
Bag Three - Empty
- One of the XL Ziploc bags… a place to put wet/messy clothes and/ or towels
The only problem I haven’t currently solved is this. If I carry my HRM strap in my truck for unplanned rides, it is near impossible to put it on for a planned ride (meaning I dress in the house) without stripping down (under jersey, under bib shorts – very complicated!). Not a huge deal I suppose but it does add time and effort to ride preparation. Conversely if I keep it inside for planned rides I won’t have it with me for unplanned rides.
I like my Garmin Forerunner 305 but the call of a new tech gadget is strong! I’ve been eyeing the Garmin Edge 705 for a while now but the price has been an issue. Garmin recently announced the Edge 500 which looks to be more inline with what I want. I don’t often (never?) need mapping when on my bike. Kind of a nice-to-have that would probably be wasted and never used.
Here is a VERY in depth review of the Edge 500 from a guy who apparently owns almost every sports product that Garmin makes! It’s awesome to get his perspective!
My friend John and I (yeah everyone else bailed on us and it was such a nice day for a ride. High 40s minimal rain. It does not get any better in January in Washington people!) rode 30 miles (out-back on the FootHills trail between Puyallup and South Prairie).
We started at 8AM and rode at a pretty mild pace through 10 miles... then John pulled away for the last five miles. When we finally met up at the espresso stand --- I was three minutes behind him.
We stayed entirely too long at the espresso stand after we met some awesome people. Three ladies, two of whom are trainers at LA Fitness, and one of their husbands. Three of them are cyclists and all are currently training for the Big Climb (aka the Columbia Tower stair climb). It was nice to share some fitness and nutrition talk with our new friends.
After the shivering started we hopped back on our bikes and headed back to Puyallup. We stayed together for 10 miles and once again John pulled away for the last 5 miles! That boy was on FIRE!
I was cooked. I had nothing left in the tank. My legs were dead so I couldn’t pump a high gear, my lungs were dead so I couldn’t keep up a high cadence. I was maxed out and I just couldn't keep up! I was still seeing 16 to 18MPH over the last few miles which in all honesty I feel pretty good about with this being January.
I pulled into the parking lot at 1:56. John's time was 1:50. Yep 6 minutes... John KICKED MY ARSE! No excuses, other than he is in great shape!
Kudos! Congratulations! Seriously an inspiration brother!!!
Keep it up... I've got something to fight for now!
Here are the ride details at Garmin Connect.
First update on The Contest - let’s get this out of the way. I did NOT do well at all. Here are my numbers:
Weight: 259
Body Fat: 25.5%
Now having said that I do not feel too horrible (man I can justify anything, huh?) over the three worst eating holidays Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas I didn’t gain anything and I started to establish better habits. I made it to the gym on a “sporadically regular” basis. I ate better (not great but better). I did research (reading and taste tests) and found supplements that I can count on.
I’m confident that the next round will provide better results. Will I win? I don’t know and I really don’t care. All I want is to get back to a healthier lifestyle and lose some body fat!
Several people have asked me for a list of the supplements that I use. Well here is that list. My definition of supplement is anything I take or use that isn’t real/whole food. I try whenever possible to eat healthy whole foods but in this busy world it is impossible to eat right 100% of the time so I supplement with a great multi vitamin, EFAs, joint health compound and protein drinks and protein bars.
Multi Vitamin/Supplement
NSI Synergy 3 Men’s Multi Vitamin – yes six per day three morning, three evening. Great vitamin mineral supplement for men. Includes many extras like; acetyl-L-carnitine and Alpha Lipoic Acid (articles and studies show that these two compounds when taken together can improve cellular health) and Resveratol (which apparently really hasn’t been proven to do squat in humans despite the claims that red wine is so very good for you).
Joint Health
Glucosamine and Chondroitin – joint health is pretty important. If you’re injured you can’t work out.
Essential Fatty Acids
Take EFAs (Essential Fatty Acids – Omega 3, 6, 9) – joint health, artery health. Google for hte bennefits.
Protein Drinks
General use: 100% Gold Standard Whey I highly recommend the Cake Batter and Carmel Toffee Fudge flavors! Yummy! I use this as a between meal snacks… sometimes mixing with 1% milk, usually mixing with water.
Before bed: 100% Gold Standard Casein Protein – slow digestion for all night muscle nourishment.
Post workout meal
After Max – great blend of carbs and protein for that after workout jolt your body needs. If you want to be more exact send I can post a calculator that will give you a better “serving size” then the generic 3-scoops listed on the back of the can. Personally I use 4 scoops for my post workout meal.
Protein Bars
Argh – probably the lamest section. Nothing here that is lo-carb tastes very good. Some are okay but none are fabulous. I’m open to suggestions!! Please leave comments… remember I’m looking for lo-carb protein bars only!
Met-Rx Protein Plus
- Mud Pie Fusion: Flavor = 6, Filling = 6, Feel = 6
- Chocolate Choc Chunk: Flavor = 4, Filling = 6, Feel = 6
- Choc Roasted Peanut: Flavor = 5, Filling = 6, Feel = 6
I want to try:
I also like the following although neither are low carb or really high in protein:
- Zone Perfect bars
- Clif Builder’s Bars (vanilla almond is my favorite)
Pre Workout
I’ve been using Ragnarok. I don’t have anything to compare it to. It seems to make my workout more intense… but nothing Earth shattering. I like the caffeine free for weight days and the caffeine version for cardio days. I might try a couple other pre/during drinks but this is the one area that, in my opinion, is least important.
Fuel for long cardio training (over 1.5 hours)
I’ve tried many drinks. I love, love, LOVE Carbo Rocket. Simple. clean, pure, not too sweet.
Miscellaneous
I love the Blender Bottle. I bought a set from - don't laugh - HSN - I read about the bottles on a body building forum and hunted for the best prices and found HSN - I think I got a set of four of the 28oz bottles for $20. I don’t use any other workout bottles now. Of course for water and carb drink, especially when on the bike I use the Camelbak Podium Bottle. Pill organizer: I use three of these. I’m going to switch to one of these fairly soon.
NFL running back Adrian Peterson is it top physical form. His body fat has been reported by Kevin Seifert of ESPN as being 6%. He is shown mostly naked in many commercials – he is TOTALLY flipping ripped.
His Body Mass Index (BMI) is 28.6! That means he is overweight and on the verge of obesity! Yeah right! That is total bullshit.
Regarding BMI (from wikipedia):
It was invented between 1830 and 1850 by the Belgian polymath Adolphe Quetelet during the course of developing "social physics".[1] Body mass index is defined as the individual's body weight divided by the square of his or her height.
1830 to 1850?? What the FUCK? We still use this archaic tool? Bloodletting, blistering and purging were common medical practices in the mid 1800s. Do we still think those are great ideas? NO!! Okay some fringe alternative medicine practitioners think bloodletting and leeching is still cool but you can keep those blood sucking parasites the hell away from me (both the docs and leeches!)!
It is confusing because most “trusted” medical establishments are guilty. Yes *gasp* even the US government is guilty:
Our healthcare professionals have NO idea what they are talking about when it comes to BMI. None.
''I think BMI is a very good and easy screening tool,'' says obesity expert, Cathy Nonas, MS, RD, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association.
Cathy – you should be stripped of your titles and fired. Then taken out back and shot. Really? What part of BMI is “a very good” … “screening tool?” It is SO “very good” that if Adrian Peterson walked into your office in a baggy sweatshirt and asked for dietary advice you’d tell him that he is nearly obese and that he needs to lose a lot weight, right? Why? Because you are TOO lazy to really pay attention to your patients. Too lazy to have their percent body fat tested accurately. Since when did it become okay to be lazy?
Even worse, when did it become okay for our medical professionals to become lazy?
I propose that standing in front of the mirror naked is a BETTER tool for assessing your fitness level than BMI. If you like what you see then wow you probably are not obese. If you don’t like what you see then get off the couch and do something about it!
Then if you want a truly accurate assessment of your body composition get your % body fat tested at a local BodPod! A test that was invented somewhere AFTER the medical dark ages!
In starting this new contest I’m trying to decide how to best invest my fitness dollars. On one level this seems so simple – I know the formula very well, just eat less and exercise more! I’ve lost seventy pounds by doing this so I know it works. It is simple. Almost too simple. Problem is that I’ve hit a plateau and actually gained back some weight. It ends here. It ends now. I will focus.
So it may very well be that I don’t have to spend any money above and beyond the gym membership, healthy food and supplements! I do feel like I need something this time though, something to kick me in the ass (besides the contest). I want to make sure I don’t gain any more, lose focus or plateau again.
In addition this time I really want to get down to a weight that I haven’t seen since I don’t know when… maybe 25 years? I really want to get my body fat down lower than it probably ever has been. I also want to do something I’ve never done nor felt fit enough to do. Race bikes. I can’t decide if I want to race track or mountain bikes. I honestly think I’m too big (tall, upper body, etc.) to race at any level on the road – hell I hope I can prove that statement wrong but in any case I think I’d like to start on the track.
So knowing that I want to raise my game higher than I ever have, knowing that I want to push myself harder than I ever have… I feel I may need help to achieve my goals.
Here’s what I’m thinking about investing in to help me reach my goals :
- Cycling coach – I’m seriously looking at Carmichael Training Systems (CTS) and Lofgran Coaching.
- New commuter bicycle – nothing in my current stable (of 6 bikes) would make a great commuter bicycle. I’m looking at something like the Trek Portland. Another option would be to build out my old 1984 Trek 610 as a commuter.
- Spinervals DVDs – wow there are so many choices! Over 30 DVDs… Yes I could spend a small fortune on these training aids! Of course CTS offers DVDs too. And These offerings from Saris also look pretty cool.
- PowerTap power meter– most dedicated cyclists swear by power meters. If I sign up for a year of CTS training I get a “great deal” on a PowerTap apparently – of course I have to call to find out what kind of “deal” I get.
Well there you have it. Boring post I know but I wanted to get some of these ideas typed and out of my head.
No idea what I’ll spend my money on, if anything but at the very least I’m sure I’ll buy some training DVDs to use while I ride my bike on my trainer – the daylight hours are too scarce to ride outside after about 5PM in Washington. I’m really tempted to pay for professional coaching – but the coach could turn into just another person that I ignore!
I hate to call what we’re doing “The Biggest Loser” because it seems whenever two or more people decide to lose weight and get healthy it becomes a Biggest Loser contest. One problem with a Biggest Loser style contest is that it favors people who are massively overweight. No one at Benchmark Plus is massively overweight and some people here are even in darned good shape! We wanted a way to involve everyone even the healthy folks. Here’s what we came up with.
The contest will run for one year. Each participant puts in $1200. At the start of the competition and each quarter each participant has their body fat percentage checked in a BodPod. The winner of the quarter is the person who has lost the highest % of body fat %. Confusing? Okay here is an example:
Beginning of contest:
- Steve is 25% BF
- Jeremy is 20% BF
End of First quarter:
- Steve is 20% BF
- Jeremy is 15% BF
Both competitors lost 5% body fat but Jeremy wins because he lost 25% of his total body fat whereas Steve only lost 20% of his total body fat.
Clear as mud now? Thought so! A winner declared for each quarter and that person wins 1/4 of the money in the pot but the contest does NOT reset every quarter so if you do amazing in the first quarter you are not punished.
Here are my stats from my test today:
Weight: 260.4
Body Fat: 25.4%
Interestingly I’ve used a Tanita scale that measures weight and body fat for almost four years now. I’ve always wondered how accurate the scale is… well I’m happy to report that this morning my scale read: 260.0 and 25.2% body fat. Not too bad. It will be interesting to see if it maintains it’s accuracy as I drop BF%.
I’m sure I’ll blog more in the coming months about health and exercise. I’m excited to start this contest now… hopefully it will keep me motivated through the winter!
How can you so easily lie to me?
Do you think I can’t tell?
Do you think I can’t smell?
How can you tell me that you are doing so great
when you’re obviously not keeping your promise?
You are so perfect when you away from your addiction
and so different when your addiction owns you.
I love you so much.
I know you so well.
Do you really think I can’t tell?
In Part I of this series I explained how my apartment was burglarized and how my first attempt to secure the place fell short for me in a few areas. I stated three goals that I had for the future:
- I want to setup and maintain a solid backup system for all of my data.
- I want to physically secure my Windows Home Server.
- I want to integrate my alarm and video surveillance systems.
In this post I’ll show you what I’m doing to fulfill the first of my goals, creating a backup strategy for all of my data. Sounds boring and well it probably is but honestly this took a lot of thought, research and work. I hope I’m covered – if anyone sees any holes in my process or has any suggestions please leave a comment!
I was REALLY lucky that the thieves didn’t take my Windows Home Serve (WHS) because I didn’t have a backup strategy. Yes I KNOW! I would have lost all of my digital pictures and home videos. I shudder to think about it. Makes me almost sick to my stomach. The losers DID take my laptop but I already use Windows Live Mesh to sync my documents between my computers (laptop, home desktop and work desktop) so I didn’t really lose anything on the laptop.
I have even more reason now to make sure my WHS is backed up offsite and in (close to) real-time. My video surveillance software, Blue Iris, records directly to my WHS. I was having a very hard time keeping everything straight in my head so I started of with a simple diagram:
Lets see if I can explain what I’m doing without writing a novel then go into more detail about each piece below: My documents are synchronized between my three main machines and my Live Desktop via Live Mesh. My home computers al all backed up (complete images) to my WHS. My work computer is backed up nightly to a WHS at work. My media (photos, home videos, music) are backed up to KeepVault Online from my WHS. My media and computer backups are also backed up to a rotating backup disk that I move to work once per month.
A little more detail about each piece of the puzzle:
Live Mesh
Awesome service. Keeps my documents synchronized in near real-time between my laptop, home desktop and work machines. I love being able to save a doc at work then come home and open it and work on it. No emailing work back and forth. It just works. If I have one complaint is that on occasion the “Mesh Operating Environment” or MOE process takes up quite a bit of processor cycles. This seems to become less of a problem lately – so maybe Microsoft has been working on the issue? Be warned that Mesh is NOT a backup solution. If you delete a file from one machine… POOF it vanishes from all of the machines that are syncing to that file AND it’s gone from your Live Desktop. Mesh is part of my backup strategy but only in that it syncs my documents on all my machines and allows the other pieces of the strategy to work effectively. In case I do accidentally delete a file and Live Mesh does it’s duty and kiss it everywhere I have several options to recover that file such as ShadowCopy and my mightly WHS backups. Mostly though Live Mesh provides an immediate fail safe in case one machine (or hard drive) dies, gets stolen or burns up in a fire.
WHS Computer Backup
My Windows Home Server backs up all of my home machines every night. WHS computer backups have saved many people’s asses… including mine when a hard drives in both my home desktop machine and my laptop died. Recovery was simple and painless. In addition the WHS backups allow EASY upgrades to new hard drives. Remove old drive, insert new drive, recover the backup to new drive. (No the drives do not need to be the same size.) Done! To augment the WHS backups I use a WHS add-in called WHS Backup Database Backup (BDBB) to backup my computer backups to an external hard drive (which is rotated offsite monthly).
Keep Vault
As of this writing KeepVault seems to be the only online backup service that officially supports Windows Home Server. I signed up for 100GB of online storage for $99 per year. Cheap really - $8.25 per month - skipping a couple lattes would cover the cost and the peace of mind it gives me is WELL worth it. I use the KeepVault WHS Add-In to backup my media (pictures, music, home videos) and surveillance videos directly from my home server. I also use KeepVault to backup my media to an external hard drive (which is rotated offsite monthly). Keepvault encrypts and compresses all information that is backed up to the cloud and to the external drive.
External Hard Drive
I have an external SATA –> USB hard drive dock (a Thermaltake BlacX Duet) connected to my Windows Home Server. I drop an extra hard drive in one of the slots and let KeepVault take over. The KeepVault WHS add-in has a tab for local backups… so I point it at this removable drive and let it do the work of backing up all of my media and WHS BDBB backups to the external drive. I have an reoccurring Google calendar item to remind me to swap out the hard drive once per month. Right now I move them to my work office (which is about 20 miles from home). I am considering a safe deposit box for more secure storage.
So there you have it my personal backup strategy! I’d love to hear any comments of criticisms!
As some of you may know my apartment was burglarized a few months ago. It really sucked to come home after a long day at work to find a hole in the wall where my TV used to be. A slew of things were taken, obviously chosen by a group of individuals with the mental capacity of 12-year olds – as in take the time to rip the TV off the wall and pack up the XBox 360 controllers but leave the Denon receiver and speakers! I guess I should feel lucky that more of my stuff wasn’t taken but somehow I can’t get over the inefficiency of these morons!
I have great insurance so at this point most of my things have been replaced. The one thing that you can’t really replace is your sense of security. I felt so violated and I am SO mad at these idiots who are too lazy to get a job and work for their money. I hope they are rotting in prison somewhere.
I did realize that I was pretty vulnerable so the very next day I started researching backup strategies, security systems and video surveillance systems. If these bastards come back I want to be protected and IF they come in I want to be able to give the police some good video! Okay really I’d rather just deter them from coming into my place at all… I bet the stickers that came with the security system will take care of that all on their own! I suspect that I could have saved myself some money and bought just the stickers!
Being the geek that I am (no, you don’t say, Steve? Really?) I knew I could leverage the computing power in my home for the video surveillance portion of the project and in the back of my mind I wanted to integrate my computers, alarm system and cameras together to be able to monitor the status of my humble little apartment across the inter-tubes.
After extensive research and some thought about what price point would be appropriate (Let me explain the “price point" comment – in my opinion it would not be worth spending thousands of dollars on security equipment when in reality my insurance is my real security blanket and safety net. Sure, some things can not be replaced but I’ll take measures to ensure those things are safe. In reality my apartment is fairly small and after my 
divorce I really don’t have that much stuff anyway so I want to be protected but not at ANY cost.) I finally decided on the GE Simon XT Home Security System for the base alarm. It is VERY simple to setup and use. It is wireless which in the alarm world means that of the sensors are wireless and it allows you to arm and disarm the system from a key fob remote much like a car alarm! A wireless alarm was extremely important to me since this is just an apartment I’m renting – no way can I drill holes and modify the place to run wires!
Once the alarm was ordered I switched my research to the video surveillance system. I really considered the WiLife system from Logitech but decided that it was 01) a bit too pricey 10) the cameras are HUGE! 11) it is too limited and proprietary for my tastes. After much deliberation I finally decided on the Blue Iris Video Security and WebCam Software yes it after some initial research it seemed like the right decision to pick the cam software before picking the cameras themselves.
Surprisingly this is a fairly small market. Blue Iris is the best that I tested and it works with almost every IP and webcam available (or ever made!). This was important to me because technology advances at such a rapid pace that I want to be free to chose a different camera next year or three years from now when I expand the system (Blue Iris supports up to 25 cameras). One feature I really wanted was for the camera software to email and text message me when any of the cameras detected movement since I could not find an alarm in my price point that could email or text. Blue Iris does this and a lot more. Setting up the software took a bit of work but all-in-all it wasn’t too complicated and now it is running very smoothly on my main office PC. Eventually I plan to build up a “security” computer solely for the task of running the surveillance software but for now running it on my main PC is not too painful. If anyone would like me to do a full review of the Blue Iris software, comment away!
Once I decided on the software picking the cameras was a breeze… I went to Best Buy *shudders* and bought two D-Link DCS-920 Wireless G Cameras because they were on sale. It was nice to not be locked into any one brand or any one technology. I am fairly impressed with these cameras but when I want to expand I’ll look at all brands and options for the best price-point.
So finally I’m getting to the good part of this post… or not because as it turns out this will be a series of posts. I’ve had this basic security setup working for the past few months and while I’m generally happy with it I’m not COMPLETELY happy… the biggest issue is that the alarm and cameras are not linked together as a whole system. The keyfob remote arms and disarms the alarm system it does not automatically start and stop the video surveillance – so every time I leave I have to go into my home office and start the video software and every time I get home I have to go into my home office and stop it, getting text message warnings along the way since I cross paths with a couple cameras on the way to my office.
I really have three goals to accomplish before I’ll be happy with my system:
- I want to setup and maintain a solid backup system for all of my data - from my computers and my WHS.
- I want to physically secure my Windows Home Server.
- I want to integrate my systems so that when I arm my alarm system my video surveillance system becomes active and when I disarm my alarm the video surveillance stops. Seems like a simple request but since the systems are separate and dissimilar how will I get this to work? Stay tuned to find out!
A fourth goal that isn’t really necessary is building the aforementioned video surveillance computer to take the burden off of my main office computer. This is an extra-credit project and I don’t plan on accomplishing it any time soon.
I know you will find it hard to believe that my Windows Home Server (WHS) was running out of space since it has 3 terabytes of disk space which equates to about 2.73 TB of usable disk space. One day when perusing 
my WHS console I saw a scary sight… I realized that I was using over 2.5 terabytes of space or 92% of the usable space on my Home Server. Time to panic! Almost no room for error here! I was not happy with myself that I let my server get to this point but I took some solace in the fact that it is very easy to expand the server with external SATA (eSATA) or external USB drives.
I talked in my previous post about hard drive space about expanding my WHS with a four bay eSATA enclosure. I decided to bite the bullet and go that route. Even though it is fairly straight forward to remove a drive from the WHS pool to add a larger drive I was afraid that with my current capacity issues that none of the drives could safely be removed (since the data on a drive need to be moved to other drives in the pool),
I purchased a SANS DIGITAL TowerRAID TR4M-B 4 Bay SATA to eSATA enclosure for $169.99 – this is a nice inexpensive eSATA port multiplier unit that seemed to get descent reviews on NewEgg.
The next decision was the size of the hard drive to put in the enclosure. With the price of 1TB drives dipping below $80 and 2TB drives still tipping the scale at about $219 -- from a pure $/TB value the 1TB drives win. I weighed the $/TB value against the value of having double the space in one drive bay leaving me with 3 bays open for future expansion and decided to go for the 2TB drive, specifically the Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EADS 2TB drive – green uses a bit less power and runs cooler something that I thought might come into importance in the future in my inexpensive 4-drive enclosure.
Install and setup was simple and very quick. Take case off enclosure, insert drive, put case lid back on, plug into power, plug eSATA cable into enclosure and the back of my WHS, open a WHS console, add the new drive to the pool. Finished. I was honestly done in 15 minutes.
The next issue I had was that WHS didn’t seem to be balancing or evenly distributing the data across my drives. So even though I had added 66% more storage space three of my older drives were still at 97% capacity. Is this bad? I don’t really know – but I do know that it feels wrong. Even after a couple weeks of nightly “balancing” the same problem was holding true. The new 2TB drive was not being utilized. I found a WHS utility called Drive Balancer that seems to address this problem (or perceived problem).
My WHS is much happier now and so am I!
I mentioned that I was going to try to program a Monty Hall Problem simulator in my post yesterday entitled Losing My Marbles well it turns out that this is REALLY lame. Why? Well it is simple, there really isn’t much to it once you know the mechanics.
Pseudo Code:
Testing “always switch”:
- Pick a random number >= 1, <= 3. This is the door# where the car is hidden. Call this CarBehindDoor.
- Pick a random number >= 1, <= 3. This is the door# the contestant picked. Call this ContestantChoiceDoor.
- if CarBehindDoor = ContestantChoiceDoor then the contestant loses and we add one to LossCount.
- If CarBehindDoor != ContestantChoiceDoor then the contestant wins and we add one to WinCount.
- Go back to 1 (loop).
Testing “always stay”:
- Pick a random number >= 1, <= 3. This is the door# where the car is hidden. Call this CarBehindDoor.
- Pick a random number >= 1, <= 3. This is the door# the contestant picked. Call this ContestantChoiceDoor.
- if CarBehindDoor = ContestantChoiceDoor then the contestant wins and we add one to WinCount.
- If CarBehindDoor != ContestantChoiceDoor then the contestant loses and we add one to LossCount.
- Go back to 1 (loop).
Once this is written… it is painfully obvious that “Always Stay” results in a win 33% of the time and that “Always Switch” results in a win 66% of the time. *sigh* and I thought this would be a fun thing to write.
On a sad note I still wrote the test application and here are the results of a run of 100 million tests of “Always Switch”:
Wins: 66,667,053 Losses: 33,332,947
I was talking to my girlfriend, IrishGirl (@irishgirl31 on Twitter), about the now famous (or is it infamous?) Monty Hall problem:
Contestants on a game show are given the choice of three doors: behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. After a contestant picks a door, the show’s host, who knows what's behind all the doors, opens one of the previously unopened doors, which reveals a goat. He then asks the contestant, "Do you want to switch doors?" Should the contestant switch doors?
If you haven’t heard about it or read about it you should, Jeff Atwood has a great overview or go to the source Marilyn vos Savant -- wow I bet a lot of those PhDs and math professors wish she’d take down their quotes! Wouldn’t it be fun to take a class from James Rauff, Ph.D., Professor of Mathematics at Millikin University who said:
I have been a faithful reader of your column, and I have not, until now, had any reason to doubt you. However, in this matter (for which I do have expertise), your answer is clearly at odds with the truth.
and just heckle the hell out of him for being totally WRONG about this? Okay I shouldn’t pick on James… the exalted Paul Erdos didn’t believe the right answer either until a colleague wrote a computer simulation to prove it to him (Hmmm… that sounds fun actually, I think I might write a computer simulation in my spare time tonight).
To me the whole issue is an amazing study in how poor humans really are at understanding probabilities. Casinos know this fact VERY well and I’m sure this human flaw is a major reason casinos do so well, even in a down economy. People throw good money over bad in hope that the odds are NOW magically in their favor! Sorry chump doesn’t work that way!
Anyway I didn’t want this post to be a re-re-re-rehash of the original problem I really just wanted to say that it was a very nice intellectual conversation working through the Monty Hall problem with IrishGirl… because as I’ve learned you can’t truly explain something to someone else if you don’t fully understand it yourself. It took about fifteen minutes to convince her that you should ALWAYS change your initial choice after the host reveals the goat. Always. You will win 66% of the time if you switch and only 33% of the time if you don’t. Hurts the brain, huh?
All of this talk reminded me of how much I truly enjoy problem solving, logic, probability and statistics. I’m not very good at any of those things but I do enjoy having my mind bent on occasion. I’m not sure why but this simple logic problem has always stuck in my head. Yes I was actually asked this question back in the early ‘90s when I interviewed at Microsoft (it was a series of 6 hour long interviews to go from being an “a-“ to a “blue badge”). The answer is very simple but it makes you think a bit and you don’t need to draw a chart to solve it - and I guess that’s why I like it.
There are three sets of marbles: all white, all black, and mixed white & black
There are three velvet bags (think Crown Royal – as in you cannot see through them)
Each bag has a label attached to it: White, Black, or Mixed
Each bag contains one set of marbles
The labels on the bags are guaranteed to be incorrect
How many marbles do you need to pull to correctly re-label the bags? Explain your answer.