Wrapping up the Year

Yay! Only a few more days until my work year and the year in general is over with. In all honesty I don't know where it went. There were many hurdles to overcome this year not the least of which was my possible relocation down to Austin for a new job. That didn't happen and I'm still working at my current/old job which is fine for the time being. That exercise reminded me of a few things that I seem to have forgotten, namely that I know a lot of people out there and can/should work those contacts regardless of whether or not I'm looking for new employment (yeah textbook) but more importantly it showed me that the past two and a half years of _really_ long hours and hard work have yielded me a new set of skills that are desirable in the workplace. They might not be monster.com boilerplate skills, but there sought enough to make me a good candidate for some specialties.

It's funny how that particular job has its ups and downs. One day I love going there and others its the last place I want to be. Most days I'd rather have just enough money to self sustain our little family and go do things that I find interesting. So, on that... I am getting back to drawing and that's been fun. I need to be more diligent about doing it though, it's like writing or music or any other discipline; if you don't do it daily you don't get better. Here's to finding time to do the things that interest me. Cheers.

Billy Pappas

Oddly enough... I was watching the Sundance channel yesterday and happened to catch the premiere of "Waiting for Hockney" a movie about an aspiring artist named Billy Pappas who spent the better part of a decade creating a singular drawing using pencil and paper; a bust of Marilyn Monroe.

What is remarkable about the drawing is the level of detail. He used loupes to magnify the area in which he was working and was able to achieve an amazing level of refinement, a level not surpassed even by photographic imagery. I was amazed when they were taking close-ups of the image and it is remarkable that he spent eight and a half years working on it, millimeter by millimeter, day after day, he must have put painstaking effort into it; maddening effort. I can only imagine.

But after thinking about it for a while I began to wonder, where is the art in it? Is it the piece itself? Is it the artist? Is it the journey? Is it the spectacle? At first glance the piece itself it looks like an engraving, much like a U.S. treasury note; fine lines and patterns fitting together to form an almost perfect image. It is startling to know that it was crafted by a human hand. While there is an astonishing level of detail in the composition at some point that level of detail seems to me to become too analytical, too repetitive, too mechanical. I'm not sure that I want my artwork analyzed and broken down by the equivalent of a human Large Hadron Collider, searching for the "Art Particle". It seems to me that at some point artwork of this nature ceases being artwork and becomes science. I am convinced that with a machine that is refined enough to produce a fifty thousand dots per inch rendering can create something equally interesting and evoke an equivalent response from an observer.

When I think of artwork that is great I look for experiences that make me question, that make me ponder, experiences that evoke emotion and give way to the essential aspects of what it means to be a human being. Van Gogh's "Starry Night" is so fantastic because it allows the observer to bear witness to something beyond that which is normally observed by the five senses. While I admire Pappas for his technical ability, and certainly the iron-man-like effort that is something indeed noteworthy, this piece, and its placement as artwork seems to have been something of a miscategorization.

Have a look
http://www.billypappas.com/index.html

College this spring...

I am thinking about taking a class at Collin County College this spring. Lots of things have come together to influence me to try to get back in touch with the artistic side of myself. It has been a long time since I did anything creative and something where I can let my imagination run and play. It's either going to be Drawing I or Design I, I think probably the introductory drawing. I'll need to enroll next week so that I can register first week in December. Wish me luck.

9/24/2009
w00t! Registered.

Numbers Update

9/13/2009

Just a weight update. Went into the doctor to talk about stress and was weighed as part of the normal processing procedure. Down to 139 pounds, actually a little lower now I think. I had to go to Kohl's again and buy some more pants because the ones we bought just a month or so ago are now to big. I fit into 29'' jeans. That means I've lost 5'' off of my waist since May which is pretty remarkable. I am looking a little gaunt these days, but I think the net benefit to my health is worth it.

Still eating lots of great food... on deck today; black-eyed peas and cabbage with some apples for lunch...

      Weight: 139.6 lbs
         BMI: 20.6 Average                                   (Nov 13th, 2009)
 Cholesterol: Total: 123 LDL 77 HDL 29                       (Aug 12th, 2009)
Tryglercides: 88 mg/dL                                       (Aug 12th, 2009)
         CCS: 128 - LMA(17) LAD(78) LCX(18) RCA(15) PDA(0)   (May  4th, 2009)

Tim Burton and Henry Selick

I've been on this kick lately... maybe it's all part of the turning 40, mid-life crisis, introspection, figure it out phase of life that I'm nearing... or in the middle of if you ask my therapist.

In any event I've been evaluating admirably the works of Tim Burton and Henry Selick, particularly their stop motion films. These include many of which you might recognise:
"The Nightmare Before Christmas", "James and the Giant Peach", "The Corpse Bride" and most recently "Coraline". "Coraline" is FANTASTIC by the way and if you haven't seen it you don't know what you're missing. It's a little creepy in some spots and is definitely not for very small children, but those same creepy parts are somewhat reminiscent of the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm and while much less politically correct, make for a good tale. No spoilers here :)

I'm just amazed with the method used to create these movies. So much so that I looked around at Laika studios in Oregon to see what kind of jobs they had there, as well as MacKinnon and Saunders over in the UK where they make the puppets. It takes some amazingly talented artists to be able to craft such beautiful works of art, and then the complexity and perfection that must go into production of a stop animation in and of itself is mind boggling.

Tim Burton has an interesting past and there's a book "Burton on Burton" that I'm looking forward to getting from the public library. He's also published a book called "The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories" that I want to get and read. I'm on a Halloween creepy story kick too, reading Poe, Edith Wharton and some other things to get me in the mood.

All this to simply say that I feel like I've lost touch with my creative side. I used to do all kinds of things; draw, write music (lots of that) write, fly kites, etc. and I seem to have given much of that up over the years to focus on my career but I'm finding these days that my career just isn't as fulfilling as I want and I need something else to find my 'old self' or 'true self' or maybe just 'self'. Always one to look for inspiration, I think Tim Burton isn't all that bad a place to start. A little strange maybe, but in a way that embraces the differences of an individual. I like that.

Math Magic

Went to C's school tonight for mathematics magic night. He got to show me some of the things they do during the day which count as 'math'. It wasn't much mind you, and I think that C knows it, but he had a good time showing me the things that he gets to do day in and day out.

Outside of school I am really proud that he's doing basic addition and subtraction, and that in addition to being able to write '4' when he sees 4 objects he can write 'four' and seems to grasp what four really means. He's an amazing little fellow really. He just turned six a couple weeks ago.

When we were walking in tonight we accidentally were handed a sheet for the 2nd grader's mathematics magic. Colette offered to return it but C's teacher said 'no, you might want to keep that and let C work through it. It's probably more his speed.' What a compliment.

He's being pulled to test for PACE next week, which is the Plano school's GT program. Having seen his other standard testing scores a couple of weeks ago I'm hopeful that he'll get in. It's a pull program, twice a week. Takes me back to "Dimensions" so many many many (_many_) years ago.

Numbers Update

10/15/09

Stupid H1N1. Yup, developed the flu last week and went to the Dr. for diagnosis and medications. Followed it up with a nasty chest cold and had to back today. Here's another update on the numbers... I have met my goal and am going to try to maintain from here on out. I'm actually a little light...

      Weight: 147.8 lbs
         BMI: 21.7 Average                                   (Oct 15th, 2009)
 Cholesterol: Total: 123 LDL 77 HDL 29                       (Aug 12th, 2009)
Tryglercides: 88 mg/dL                                       (Aug 12th, 2009)
         CCS: 128 - LMA(17) LAD(78) LCX(18) RCA(15) PDA(0)   (May  4th, 2009)

Numbers Update

9/10/09

After a full day in the yard two Sundays ago I managed to come down with a sinus infection. What a week, it was REALLY crazy. Anyway due to the sinus problem I had to go and see the doctor to get some meds and had the opportunity to get my weight on their scale. Here's another update on the numbers... having lost another 7 pounds since mid August, my BMI is approaching my goal.

      Weight: 157.5 lbs
         BMI: 23.3 Average                                   (Sept 1st, 2009)
 Cholesterol: Total: 123 LDL 77 HDL 29                       (Aug 12th, 2009)
Tryglercides: 88 mg/dL                                       (Aug 12th, 2009)
         CCS: 128 - LMA(17) LAD(78) LCX(18) RCA(15) PDA(0)   (May  4th, 2009)

A Great Evening with Dr. Seuss

Tonight I was reading Dr. Seuss to C. We have quite a few of his books and while some are definitely better than the others I can't say I have a favorite... there are just too many that are great.

There are classics like the "Cat in the Hat", and there's "The Lorax", and one that I really love to read, "I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew" but tonight we read "The Sneeches" which we've probably read fifty times or more. C is five years old, about to be six in another month or so and he can read it himself without much effort, but I think he prefers to be read to and naturally that caters to my desire to read to him... you know, be the daddy.

That and there's just something almost magical to me about reading a Dr. Seuss book. The rhymes and lyricism with which the stories were penned bring my mouth to something just shy of salivation while reading them aloud. It's like performing an acrobatic maneuver. It requires some skill, timing, mental concentration and perhaps even a little daring to fully execute a sentence appropriately. It's just plain fun to read.

But back to the Sneeches. If you don't know the story, then you should probably grab a copy just for fun. At one point C asked a question about why the Sneeches kept going into the machine, and I tried answer him by telling him that they thought what they looked like on the outside was more important than what they really were like on the inside, and that it's really much more important what you are like on the inside... you know, a typical daddy explanation.

That's the kind of moment in fatherhood where there's opportunity to doubt yourself. Not only do you never really know if what you've said was actually the right way to explain something, there's also the question of what you've said is actually correct... and then there's the chance that your kiddo isn't old enough to be able to fully understand it anyway.

So we finished up "The Sneeches" and read "The Zax", "Too Many Daves" and "What Was I Scared Of?" and then went through the rest of our bedtime ritual; teeth brushing, song singing, etc. which we've done for years now. And then, just as I tucked him into bed, he was looking at me in a kind of wide-eyed and puzzled state and I asked, "C do you want another book to read?" and he said no. And as he stared at me I wondered what he was thinking so I asked again, "do you need something buddy" and he responded with this :

"Dad, I know what Silvester McMonkey McBean did. He tricked the Sneeches. He tricked them into giving him all their money so he would get rich." And with that, we had a short chat about something called "vanity" and how McBean took advantage of it, then I tucked him in, wished him sweet dreams, and all of my doubts simply evaporated.

I have a really great kiddo.

Good Food : Pizza

08/23/09

We've been eating a lot of good stuff lately. One thing that's been particularly fun to do is go and get the fixings to make a pizza. Now, not allowing any cheese or oil in your diet can make this a challenge, but if you know what to shop for it ends up being pretty easy.

Here's what we do:

Crust
There's two routes here, and the most obvious is to make your own. There are some recipes for this on the low fat veggie archive that look great, but they'll take time to make. On the flip side there's a company out of Dallas called the Dallas Gourmet Bakery that makes oil free pizza crusts in of both bleached and whole wheat flour marketed under the "Kabuli" brand. We find them at our local Whole Foods market. They're a thicker pizza crust, so if you're a thin crust person making your own is the best bet (as always).

Sauce
Most commercial pizza sauce has oil, typically olive oil, mixed into it. Instead of using one of those we'll do one of two things. Once in a while we'll use an oil-free spaghetti sauce and reduce it over heat to thicken it up. It's easy to do, but it is time consuming. More typically we'll mix a can of diced tomatoes (Muir Glen has some great roasted mixes) in with a can of tomato paste. This makes a nice thick pizza sauce.

Toppings
This is the easy part, just get what you like. We typically use onions (red and yellow), mushrooms, bell peppers, and pineapple. There's lots of other things you can do here with other vegetables, herbs, grains, etc. Knock yourself out.

The result is a no oil, veggie pizza loaded with yummy toppings that ends up being very VERY filling.

Cholesterol Update

August 13th, 2009

I finally had all the data to post the 'Beginnings' that I wrote back in June.

Things didn't quite work out on getting the cholesterol bloodwork in July so I had to wait until August.

It's been exactly 3 months since I went to the doctor, got back on lipid lowering drugs, and started the plant-based diet, i.e. no fat vegan.

Just for comparison's sake here are the initial numbers:

May 4th, 2009
Weight: 194 lbs
BMI: 28.65 Overweight
Cholesterol: Total: 471 LDL >350 HDL 49
Tryglercides: 149 mg/dL
CCS: 128 - LMA(17) LAD(78) LCX(18) RCA(15) PDA(0)

And here are yesterday's numbers...

August 12th, 2009
Weight: 164 lbs
BMI: 24.22 Average
Cholesterol: Total: 123 LDL 77 HDL 29
Tryglercides: 88 mg/dL
CCS: n/a (doubt there's much change yet)

These are the best numbers I have ever had in 10 years of testing...

Objectives:

• Drop my total cholesterol below 150mg/dL

So we'll call this one achieved!

• Drop my BMI to 22 (5'9'' x 155lbs)
  

I'm well on my way to achieving this... about 9 pounds to go. We'll see where my body stops.

• Ween myself off of these pharmaceuticals as possible

We'll see how this goes. I think I am one of those unfortunate folks (<3%>

Avoid open heart surgery, stints, and angiograms like the coward I am ( :D )

Still the plan...

My HDL is a little low and the doctor says that could improve with exercise. They were amazed at my weight loss yesterday, particularly when I mentioned that I wasn't exercising. What is a bit disappointing is that after getting my numbers back and calling me today, the doctor wanted to add yet another prescription to the regimine, Niaspan. I've taken Nicin in the past and the flushing side-effect is difficult to deal with. Hot prickley skin on the face, neck and shoulders, metalic taste in the mouth, ears popping. Not planning on sticking to that unless it's a precursor to removing a different medication from the regimen.

Anyway... off to a good start. Now to follow through on objective 2 and work on objective 3.

Beginnings

June 4th, 2009

My family history regarding heart disease is fantastic. Here's the short of it:

• My fraternal grandmother had it, i suspect my fraternal grandfather had it.
• My maternal grandmother had it and passed away from it.
• My maternal grandfather passed away from cancer and I suspect he had heart disease too.
• My maternal uncle has it, and has had several stints placed. On more than one occasion his measured total cholesterol has topped 600.
• My father has it. He underwent a triple bypass at 55.
• My mother has it.
• My younger brother has it. His cholesterol measures 300+ without medication.
• My elder brother had it. He died of a heart attack at age 31, not entirely due to heart disease, but certainly a contributing factor.

Following my brother's death, and knowing well from previous test that as a teenager my cholesterol topped 200, I underwent a cholesterol test at age 29.

• My total cholesterol level measured 495, this was in the fall of 2000.

I'm better than you. My body is genetically superior to yours at absorbing and producing cholesterol. It just so happens that in today's society that isn't a good thing. Back when times were tough and food was scarce this trait probably would have been great. In modern America, with a government that subsidizes multiple industries to ensure the production of a protein-rich diet, this really isn't an advantage, in fact it's more of a death sentence.

Over the next 10 years, my cholesterol level would fluctuate; 358 (HDL 49/LDL 285) in 2002 to an all time low of 171 (HDL 43/LDL 111) in 2003, depending on my regiment of lipid lowering drugs, exercise habits and diet. I was dieting and working my butt off to get to 171.

I have tried numerous diets and exercise programs; low calorie, low carbohydrate, etc. always with success, however typically with little staying power. I tried the Atkins diet, filling my body with eggs, meats, cheeses and fats, abstaining from carbohydrates and as advertised, without any change in medications, my cholesterol dropped a whopping ~60 points just in the induction period. However, for me that particular diet is not sustainable over the long term and I have concerns that there may be other significant risks in its application. I am not convinced that ketosis is really a steady state for the human body.

A cholesterol of 171 doesn't really sound that bad does it? After all the American Heart Association AHA still recommends a total cholesterol of less than 200mg/dcl as desirable [ reference : http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=183]. So what was I doing to get it that low?

My prescription regiment included:

• 1 x 80mg Lipitor daily
• 1 x 10mg Zetia daily
• 3 x 625mg Wellchol daily (6 prescribed, but I only took 3)

and I was eating the Atkins diet, which again I find an unsustainable practice. My exercise regiment included working out 5 days a week for about 1 hour a day. Not an easy thing for a software programmer; you know, the guys that live behind closed doors, consume mass quantities of soda and are served pizza through the gap beneath the door. Much less easy for a software programmer on Atkins.

Within that year I stopped doing the Atkins diet and found that my lifestyle and preferences just didn't mix well with exercise. Not that I don't believe in exercise, I do enjoy it, especially when I am in shape, but it just wasn't something that I had grown up doing nor did I have the inclination to seek it out independently.

As such, I have never exercised regularly and my diet has been quite atrocious, i.e. the typical American diet. I ate what I could afford, what I wanted really, and ate when ever I wanted to eat. There are many American's out there who are eating similarly under the protection of lipid lowering pharmaceuticals, "no worries, I'm on cholesterol medication...".

To compound things further I started having problems with my thyriod in 2007 which resulted in fatigue and weight gain. At my peek weight, measured upon my physician's scale, I weighed 194 pounds, on a 5'9'' frame. With a BMI calculation of 28.65 this places me at the high end of the overweight category and precariously close to the edge of the obese category [reference : http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=3048134]

As I approach 40 I have found this whole ordeal to be quite tiresome. There are so many things going on in my life; health, family, work, finance, spiritual, friendships, just to name a few, all of which compound the stress that each creates individually. That and those prescription medications all add up to a quite handsome sum every 3 months. One day I just feel that enough is enough.

To cut down on (read: rebel against) those stresses, I decided that I just wasn't going to take my prescribed medications any longer. Now, I know that this doesn't sound like a smart decision and quite frankly it isn't given that I seemingly had no alternative way to control my cholesterol problem. In my own defense I admit to being human, and we humans, well, we don't always make the best decisions no matter how intelligent we are summed up to be.

On May 4th, 2009, after some significant goading by my wife (thanks honey!) I had my cholesterol checked. I naturally suspected that it was going to be high again and decided to go in to the doctor for the blood work and to get more prescription medication to manage it. During the visit, the doctor mentioned a procedure that was being done called a Cardiovascular Calcium Scoring (CCS). She had mentioned this to me the year prior. This procedure appears to utilize an MRI to measure the calcium deposits in the major arteries around your heart. These calcium deposits are indications of plaque buildup within your arteries. Plaque or rather plaque rupture accounts for some 87% of heart attacks in the US. It's not the blockages that kill you, it's the bursts fellows.

The CCS measurement scale is as follows:

• 0-0 - No identifiable plaque
• 1-10 - Minimal plaque burden
• 11-100 - Mild plaque burden
• 101-400 - Extensive plaque burden (danger Will Robinson!)

Keeping in mind that the total score is the sum of the 5 values presented as measurements of plaque burden within each artery, my total score was 128. Now, that's bad but not too bad given my history. It puts me at the low end of the Extensive plaque burden range, which is probably to be expected given my age, my history and my atrocious diet. One of my physicians put it to me one time as "your arteries and veins have been bathed in this stuff for so many years now". However, there is just this one little problem.

Here are my individual arterial measurements:

• 17 - Left Main Artery (LMA)
• 78 - Left Anterior Descending (LAD)
• 18 - Left Circumflex (LCX)
• 15 - Right Cornoary Artery (RCA)
• 0 - Posterior Descending Artery (PDA)

Cue ominous music... my Left Anterior Descending (LAD) score is 3.5 times the other scores, meaning that I have one artery that is king, the LAD. My doctor's physician assistant tells me that the LAD is also known as "the widow maker".Nice.
So, what do the measurements tell me then? We'll not much without further analysis.

My take on it says that there's some significant plaque buildup in that artery that is being detected by the presence of the mineral calcium via an MRI procedure. It doesn't give any information regarding the plaque distribution or density, it just gives a relative measure. That plaque could be spread throughout the artery in a way that distributes it evenly (unlikely in my opinion) or it could be all bunched up in one spot forming a tiny little hole for my blood to flow through (more plausible, but also unlikely in my opinion). So what does it say? My guess is that it's somewhere in between. Having seen pictures of clogged arteries on the internet and books I have a fairly good idea of what it might look like. Hills and valleys. Frankly I'm not about to have an angiogram to find out what it looks like for real.

What is definitely certain is that it is dangerous and something that I need to take action upon. So what now?

Well now, I embark upon something that I hope will change my life.

I'm going to try to reverse my heart disease. I'm going to take up something that I've read about and for which there is compelling evidence to support, that heart disease can be stopped and in fact reversed through changes in diet and eating habits.

There are a few books available to the general public that provide references to medical studies that support this assertion. Some of those are among the ones that I've read so far. These include:

• Prevent and Reversing Heart Disease - Caldwell B Esselstyn, Jr. MD
• The China Study - T. Colin Campbell, PhD with Thomas M. Campbell II
• Program for Reversing Heart Disease - Dean Ornish, MD
• Healthy Heart Handbook - Neal Pinckney, PhD
• Eat to Live - Joel Fuhrman, MD

I intend to take up the advise within them and consume a 100% plant-based diet where 10% or less of the calories consumed come from fat. In particular, Dr Esselstyn's book seems to outline things the best.

My objectives include:

• Drop my total cholesterol below 150mg/dL
• Drop my BMI to 22 (5'9'' x 155lbs)
• Ween myself off of pharmaceuticals as possible
• Avoid open heart surgery, stints, and angiograms like the coward I am

I made the decision to lose weight around the time of the CCS test. I adopted a calorie counting approach which I've done in the past. With 1 pound of fat containing ~3500 calories, buring 300 calories a day of my body fat it would take me the better part of a year to lose 30 pounds, putting me at 165. But as I started to read, I realized that just counting calories would not be enough. To actually lose the weight and in fact lose the plaque, there would need to be an entirely different approach to this problem.

By the time that I realized that plant-based nutrition was the only way that I could effectively stop, and possibly reverse my heart disease I had already lost about 6 pounds, this over a three to three and a half week period. Calorie counting does work for me. And mind you I was never really hungry, nor did I work out during this period. However, calorie counting requires discipline in tracking everything you eat and then determining the caloric content of that food. I did it for almost a month. It takes time.

Having switched to an plant-based diet I am today at 182 pounds, having lost 13 pounds in about 5 weeks. Some folks may say that rate is a little too high and that I am not consuming the number of calories that I should, but I suspect that my body will help me out there when it needs to. I do eat when I am hungry and I will say that I have only been hungry once or twice and when I was, it was no big deal for me to go and grab some fruit or a piece of whole wheat bread (I can have certain brands). The foods that I'm eating taste great, and I find that I can eat my fill.

I have a Dr. appointment scheduled for June where I'm going to ask to have my cholesterol taken again. My hope is that it will be low, in fact fantastically low, so much so that it will result in a reduction of my medication dosage. But that's just an initial goal. The proof will be in the numbers.

So what does it mean to be on this diet. Well, I would say that my diet is vegan, but that's not saying everything as there are all kinds of variants on the term vegan. My diet is in fact more strict than the average vegan diet. Here's the basics, paraphrased from Dr. Esselstyn's book (buy it)

• no animal protein - nothing with a face or a mother, that includes eggs
• no dairy - cheese, yogurt, etc. none of it
• no oil - not a drop, including extra virgin olive, canola, etc.
• no nuts - nuts are mostly fat
• no refined grains - no white bread, typical pastas, etc.
• no avacado or coconut - too high in fat content

None of it. None at all. Ever.

• few if any refined sugars
• few if any juices

Sounds pretty extreme doesn't it? Well it is in fact not bad at all. In fact there are some great things that I can eat all the time. I am eating tons of fruit and whole grains and loving it. There are beans, breads, pastas, pasta sauces, non-dairy milks, etc. that I am able to eat in addition to just about every vegetable and fruit under the sun. And salsa... mmmm I love salsa. There are great recipes to make these things and I actually find myself craving these foods (like black bean soup at 10pm).

I plan on keeping a periodic tally of things and update this as I go along

Here's the staring point:

May 4th, 2009
Weight: 194 lbs
Cholesterol: Total: 471 LDL >350 HDL 49
Tryglercides: 149 mg/dL
CCS: 128 - LMA(17) LAD(78) LCX(18) RCA(15) PDA(0)

Here's today:
June 4th, 2009
Weight: 183 lbs
Cholesterol: Total: n/a LDL n/a HDL n/a
Tryglercides: n/a mg/dL
CCS: 128 - LMA(17) LAD(78) LCX(18) RCA(15) PDA(0)

"Hello World"

For any programmer, read "aged programmer", these simple words are most often the first to be dictated and read back when beginning anything new. It's a natural and well ingrained ritual that when invoked plants a flag at the base of the mountain, knowing well that there is perhaps a long and difficult journey ahead.

I never thought of how often I revert back to its use until the other day when a younger coworker was watching over my shoulder as I coded something up to test it out. Naturally I leaned upon the familiar use of this mantra and upon invoking it he uttered ever so slightly, "old school...".

"Old school" I thought, "really?". Well that may be, but why do I do it? Why is it that every time I start something new to I revert to this familiar and ritualistic practice?

It's an interesting statement really, uttering "Hello World". It is:

• a first breath - I am born


• a clear objective - concise, complete and achievable


• a greeting - nanu nanu


• a statement - I am here


• a command - technology, bend to my will


• an accomplishment - I made this happen

While certainly applicable to the world of programming... it only seems fitting for such a tactile objective to be utilized in all facets of life, and for me to begin with this.