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Me and my belly: Not exactly a love story

avram miller — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 22:10:44 +0000

First of all, I am very surprised that I would be blogging about weight loss. About four months ago, a dear friend told me something that I believe has changed my life. Richard had lost a great deal of weight. He told me he did this by changing his diet not by dieting. He ate as much as he wanted to. He gave me the name of a book that would explain all of this. It is called Why we Get Fat by Gary Taubs. I highly recommend it. After, I read it, I discussed what I learned with my personal physician as well as some other doctors who are friends and have followed my health and given me advice from time to time. All of them agreed with what Taubs said but they never explain the concept (very low carbs) to me before. I guess they thought I knew. So I feel, I should take this opportunity to share what I learned with those of you the follow my blog.

While I was marginally over weight (my BMI was a bit over 25) before I read Taubs’ book, I was not fat.My problem was that all the extra fat was located in my belly. There is a term for this. It is called Metabolic Syndrome and it can kill you. It causes a variety of diseases. The most prominent of these being heart disease. The key sign of Metabolic Syndrome is belly fat. Other indications are poor cholesterol scores, high Triglycerides and high blood pressure.

First a bit of background. In 1969, I weighted 107 pounds. I was about 5.9 tall (I am a bit shorter now). I was really skinny and use to joke that I was a human laser beam. Over the years I slowly put on weight. At first I was glad of that. I was happy being 120 pounds and even 130 pounds. But the increase did not stop there. When I left my position at Intel in 1999 I weight about 153 or more. Something happened to me in 1996 at the age of 51 that accelerated my weight gains. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer which I have discussed a few times on this blog. It was thought that fat and in particular, animal fat increase the probability of developing prostate cancer and also that it might accelerate the growth of prostate cancer. See this study. It was also though that meat in addition to having animal protein also might contain growth hormones. So, I like many men dealing with prostate cancer went on a low fast and low meat diet. In particular I avoided, butter and red meats. I used olive oil but only a little. My diet was made up of mostly carbs (both simple carbs and complex carbs). So I started really putting on weigh. By 2003, I weighted 182 pounds. One of the arguments for the low fat/low meat diet was that Japanese people for instance had almost no prostate cancer. They also had low fat diets and did not eat much meat. Of course, they also had no belly fat.

Much of the weight gain went to my middle. Every few years, I had to buy new clothes. And those of you who know me, realize that I like to look stylish. When I stood up and looked down, I could not see my feet. I was really unhappy with myself and decided I had to loose the weight. So I went on Weight Watchers Online. I liked their point systems. It was kind of like having a budget. I had a certain number of points per day and through exercise I could even add points. Being the scientific type, I figured as long as I burned more calories than I consumed I would loose weight. While that is in principle true, it is really a vast over simplification of a complicated system which you will understand once you read the book.

I did loose weight. And the good news is I lost it pretty quickly. However, I was also kind of miserable because I was not getting enough to eat. I was hungry but I was disciplined and committed. In about five months I lost more than 20 pounds and got my weight down to 160. My stomach was flat and I could see my feet. I had all my clothes taken in because I promised myself I would never gain this weight back. But slowly it started to come back and I found myself in the high 160s and then I found myself in the low 170s. So i was back to buying new clothes again and feeling bad about myself. Then I would go back on weight watchers and diet again. I would get back to 160. I was pretty good at staying at 160 when I was not traveling but when ever I traveled the weight would come on. Probably this was due to all the butter and stuff restaurants put on food even when they say they are not. More wine and cocktails also probably helped.

In the summer of last year, I had my weight down to about 162 when I went to England, Egypt, Israel and Greece. When I came back I weighted 172 and I was gone for just three weeks. I did not go on a diet and it just stayed around 170.

My dear friend, Dr. David Agus, really got on my case about my belly. He did not like the results of the various blood tests I had taken recently and he could see the belly. So I got committed once more to dieting. I started to loose weight as always but also I was hungry. That is when a chance exchange with my friend Richard resulted in my learning about Gary Taubs and his book.

This book explained it all. I realized that all the ideas I had about eating were wrong. I learned that the body really deals with protein, fat and carbs differently. In particular, I learned about Insulin Resistance and why the crappy American diet which I grew up on could effect how I dealt with carbs (as opposed to how the Japanese). It was at the role that High-fructose corn syrup probably played in changing the way my body processed carbs.
So now, I the only carbs I eat are vegetables. I hardly eat fruit. I eat as much fat and protein as I like. At first I felt guilty eating such things as butter and steak but I soon got over that. Now I am enjoying salami and cheese (but no bread). I still have a vodka cocktail every evening (which turns itself into carbs) I must admit. In two months I lost ten pounds (the first five very quickly) and got to 160 again. Then in two more months I got below 155. My body fat is about 18%. I am hoping to get to 150 pounds and 15% body fat but I will probably have to increase my aerobic exercise to accomplish that. The good news is that I can travel and eat out and it is not a problem. Restaurants can lie about how much butter they put in their preparations but not how much carbs. I just order a steak and say hold the potatoes and give me some more veggies.

The result of all this was fantastic with respect to my blood tests. My blood pressure is down. I have great cholesterol results and my Triglycerides went from 230 to 90.

If you have a weight problem and especially if you have belly fat, please read Why we Get Fat. I am tell you this because I wish someone had told me earlier.

More on Ken Olsen

avram miller — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 19:06:24 +0000

I continued to think about Ken Olsen and Digital Equipment. Ken was a trustee and major contributor to Gordon College which is a Christen College. Ken was very religious. I never really engaged with him about that but one day he told me that he wanted computers (he meant what would be come personal computers) that could be used by his minister and by his secretary. I turned that into the phrase “a computer for clerks and clerics”. Gordon College made two videos here and here about Ken that are worth watching.

Some friends have asked me to share a few observations about Ken. I have so many things I could share but here are a few.

Ken loved mechanical things. He would often hang out in the model shop. But his real love was for power supplies.

He also was very interested in cables. He hate the mess of cables that often came out of the back of small computers and word processors. At one time he had a poster made of the back of the Decmate. It was a mess of cables. The caption for the poster was “Marketing or Engineering? “. I came up with my own slogan which was “could you imagine what software would look like if you could see it?”. Ken did not really get the joke. He never really understood software.

He loved to take walks around the mill and of course knew all the secret routes.

It is true that when we got one of the first IBM PC’s, Ken came to my lab and he and I opened it and disassembled it with a screw driver. He looked at how it was constructed and say that if I ever designed a computer like that I would be fired.

He really believed in the power of great engineering and had little respect for marketing. I will never forget one conversation I had with Ken (which really resulted in my deciding to leave Digital). We had launched our low end products, the Professional, the Rainbow and Decmate II (I was responsible for the Pro and much of the hardware for the other two). We were not doing very well (that is an understatement since all the products failed in the market for a number of reasons). I said to Ken, “if we are going to be successful, we will need great marketing and good engineering”. He said no, I was totally wrong that “we needed great engineering and good marketing”. We went back an forth on this for a while and then he said. “You don’t understand. We are not capable of great marketing”.

People sometimes compare Ken and Steve Jobs. I never worked for Jobs but did know him (it has been more than 12 years ago that I had contact with him personally). There are some similarities. Both were visionaries. Ken’s vision was about making computer that did not have to have computer rooms and could be used directly by knowledge works and not by computer experts. But Ken was not autocratic. He was much more Machiavellian. Jobs obviously understands software. But they both created very successful companies that were great reflections of there values and personalities.

There was something seductive and sweet about Ken. Even those my relationship with him did not end in a good way, I always treasure my memory of him. And most importantly that great smile.

Economics: Science or Astrology

avram miller — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 00:28:24 +0000

I have been having been thinking a great deal about economics. The market crash of 2008 was my inspiration to understand more, that along with a series of discussion with my son, Asher, who is the Executive Director of the Post Carbon Institute. It was Asher who introduced me to the work of Chris Martenson and in particular his Crash Course on Economics which I highly recommend. The more I learn about economics the less I understand. I have also begone to question the ability of economist to predicate the future (of course some will get things right sometimes but that may be the result of the lows of probabilities). I have more faith in the long term weather reports.

At the same time, I have been giving a lot of thought to the difference between intuition and analysis. Those of you that know me, know that I am governed more by my intuition than my ability to analyze things. I think analysis is great for understanding the past but not the future. You can read about how I used intuition in my business life here. For me intuition really has to do with trusting that part of our mind that is not conscious. It is trusting our ability to see patterns and to solve puzzles. I good example is how one might try to do an actual puzzle. You could try to use analysis to figure out what the puzzle represented or you could try to put the pieces together. And in doing that you would find pieces that fit together starting with the pieces that might be candidates for the corners. As you got clumps together you would try to arrange them. At some point you might think, wisely, that you should just stare at the board and hope that some imagine would appear. Once you saw the imagine, putting together the pieces would happen rapidly.

So here is the problem with economics. The people that practices are trying to be rational. They are using analysis to build models. But the best people at predicting might not even know why they believe that certain things will happen. I know many people that manage money that just go with their “guts” . But they could never really tell someone that. They would have to put together a story the supported their feelings.

It is a shame that we do not trust our own intuition. Maybe we could actually solve some problems if we did.

Audio Post

avram miller — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 21:55:13 +0000

The killer app for the Internet is dying

avram miller — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 14:58:18 +0000

There is a very interesting article in Newsweek about the Huffington Post that goes discusses the economics of advertising on the Internet. In 1994, I was going around giving talks about the potential of the i\Internet to become a new medium. Some of those reading this post maybe too young to remember that the Internet was a very different animal at that time. The first browser had just been launched the year before. The residential broadband network we all enjoy was in the very early stages of development. I had just signed up a number of companies like AOL, Intuit and Netscape to participate in the cable modem trails we had launched with Viacom Cable and Comcast. I could see pretty clearly that the high speed communication to the home coupled to PCs and the platform for development and distribution of content represented by the Internet would create this new medium not only for entertainment and information but also for communications, and commerce and education. However, I was struggling about the business model. I did not feel that subscription services like AOL (that is how AOL worked in those days) would be the successful model. I came to the conclusion that it would be advertising. In those days, everyone was asking “what is the killer app for the Internet”. It was generally accepted that the spreadsheet had been the killer app for the PC. I came to the conclusion that it was advertising. Obviously, advertising is not an application. But I felt that the potential of moving advertising dollars to Internet content companies would provide the financial fuel that would allow the development of a vast range of applications. And in general this was correct. But it is no longer working.

I am not an expert on advertising. These days because of technology I get to skip over most ads on TV and rarely look at a add on the net. I think the death of advertising as the source of revenue for Internet companies is the result of simple over abundance of places to put ads coupled with a doubt that they are very effective. But frankly, I am not sure how effective advertising was in the past on TV, magazines and radio. And am pretty sure that their value is declining quickly as we can all skip over ads or get content like pod-casts that do not even contain ads.

So what will replace advertising as a revenue source for content? It is not clear to me yet. I am think the combination of free and premium services for some companies (like Linkedin) will work. I think data mining will work for other. For instance, Google may become primarily a data mining company. Facebook can be one too although I think that Facebook does not have a very compelling future (more about that in a future post).

The days of Whine and Roses

avram miller — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:18:40 +0000

Just read an article about how unrelevant Microsoft has become. I thought the article made some good points. I certainly understand what the author experienced. I saw that kind of thing first hand when I worked at Digital Equipment Corp. in the early 80s. That that time DEC (as we called it then) was the number two computer company in the world. Eventually it was bought by Compaq a company that did not even exist until about 1982 and which is now part of HP which is the only company that managed the transition from Mini Computers to Personal Computers.

I could not help but to think of those years when Microsoft and Intel were king of the hill. For many years I attended the quarterly meeting of the top executives of both companies. We certainly thought we were masters of the universe (well at least the CEO’s did) . Of course there was the senior Master (Microsoft) and the Junior Master (Intel).

But there was a big problem in the relationship and that is what is now playing out for Microsoft. Since Microsoft was in the software business it, it could make much more money by upgrading its installed base. But that meant making sure things were compatible over a number of generations of hardware products. The skill the Microsoft developed was how to keep people locked in and forcing them to upgrade. They generated amazing profits with this strategy.

Apple did the same thing but also was able to innovate. But since they were also in the hardware business they had an incenstive to make customers upgrade the hardware and the software which let them move forward. They also have very different CEOs. One company had a CEO that wanted to create insanely great products and make money doing that. The other had a CEO that wanted to make insanely great money and make products doing that.

The Insurance Industry Protection Act

avram miller — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 16:56:30 +0000

The Senate passed the Insurance Industry Protection Act. Glad to know that our insurance industry will be healthy. Now can we start to deal with how to make Americans healthy? And hopefully that can be done without effecting the health of the insurance companies otherwise, it will not happen. After all when the press counts the dead and maimed bodies resulting from the lack of insurance they do not count the number of died or maimed resulting from poor disease prevention, bad diet, lack of exercise etc.- such things have no corporate sponsors (well maybe Nike, I don’t know). Of course, congress just proved that you can be sick and still function if your primary job is your own personal survival.

Americans are very confused. Our problem is not really the insurance companies other than their ability to pay off politicians. Our problem is that health care in the USA is way too expensive and is not effective in preventing disease. The employer basis system of group insurance isolates employees from the true cost. Not taxing health care benefits means that the USA government is paying a large part of the bill for health care but has little influence. Medical malpractice suits causes doctors to order tests that are not required. So much money is wasted on the last year of life. If that money had been spend on medical research and prevention that last year could happen many years in the future.

The way our government has handled the health care issue is a demonstration of how ineffective and corrupt our government has become. It is very sad to say the least.

We need a single payer system because only that way there will be a true economic interest in dealing with the real problems of health care. Insurance companies have no long term interest in our health.

I can’t figure out how the Obama Health Plan will really fix our medical system.

avram miller — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 18:49:59 +0000

I can’t figure out how the Obama Health Plan will really fix our medical system. It just deals with a sub set. It is hard to see how private insurance companies can do much to fix the bulk of these problems. While I hate to think of the govermen taking over health care, I think it may be the only way to deal with all these issues.

Here are the problems I see:

American’s live unhealth life styles (bad diet, lack of exercise, not enough sleep)
Preventative health is not promoted or paid for by insurance companies
The health system is almost medival when it comes to IT
Litigation makes doctors order too many tests
Way to much money is spent in the last year of life
Insurance companies are inefficient and treat customers badly
Way to many people have no insurance
Business pay for most insurance which makes them less competitive

Microsoft needs end of life counseling: Bring on the death panel

avram miller — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:23:07 +0000

Installing Windows 7 on a vista computer seems about as easy as passing health care. Check out this column from Walt Mossberg And guess what, there is no way to upgrade from Windows XP.
I am now into my second day trying to upgrade my Vaio Vista notebook to the windows 7 release candidate. I moved about a year ago from the PC to the MAC. Although it has not been an easy transition it has been well worth it. My reasons for doing this can be read on my post 12 steps program to go from the PC to the MAC. Some of my experiences can be heard on a podcast interview on MacCast. So why am I trying to upgrade my Vista computer? Well, it turns out I have a number of things on the computer that are embedded in programs that do not run on the mac. I have quicken and while there is a version on the mac, it is not compatible with its sister program on the PC (kudos to Intuit!). I use Photo Shop Elements on the PC particularly for organizing my photos. The version on the Mac does not have the organizer. I now use iPhoto but it works in a very different way. I sometimes need to go back to Photo Shop Elements to figure out the tagging on my very old scanned photos. I used Family Tree Maker for my genealogy and but it also does not run on the Mac and I want to be able to make sure I have all the info converted. But most importantly, my home AV system and lighting system can only be programed with a PC. However, I cannot work with Vista it drives me crazy and I did not want to downgrade to Windows XP. So my hope was to use Windows 7 to finally get access real access to my Vaio.

I am on my second day (probably three hours of my actual time). I had to upgrade and correct several problems with the Vista installation before it would agree to do the upgrade. That took a day. Now it is actually doing the upgrade.

Well, it is the next morning and Windows 7 is actually running. I just tried to remove a program that is not compatible with Windows 7 and the systems crashed and is shutting down.
Just got it running with remote connection on my Mac which I could never get done with Vista. I can see it is a lot faster than Vista. It will probably be successful for new computers but the upgrade process is very ugly.

Next month I will upgrade my Mac to SnowLeopard and I would guess it will take less than an hour and work the first time.

It is time to pull the plug on grandma-soft.

Great talk by Prof. Tedlow on the 386

avram miller — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:23:08 +0000

Professor Richard Tedlow gave a really interesting and fun talk at the computer museum recently. You can see the lecture here or read a summery here. Tedlow wrote a back about Andy Grove that while very much worth reading was a bit unbalanced (I think most of his sources where people Andy gave him). My original comments at here. The book dealt with what made Andy a great man (and he is that) but not well with some of his limitation and especially those that are now reflected in the current version of Intel. This talk about the 386 and Intel’s decision to go against current business practice is a very important story in many respects. 1) It tells how Intel pretty much fell into this strategy by a series of important but tactical decisions but not with a vision of where it would ultimately lead (and I applaud Andy very much for owning up to this) 2) How the decision coupled with IBM’s previous decision to allow the DOS O/S to be kept by Microsoft and licensed freely, turned the computer industry from a vertically integrated industry where the company that had the ultimate relationship with the customer was in the power position to a horizontal structure where where two of the component manufactures (Intel and Microsoft) had most of the power and therefore most of the profits. I think there are other cases of ingrediant brands having a lot of power but do agree that this situation was very unusual. The real archetect that made this all possible was really the early pc group at IBM. Althought they did not understand the business implications.

Prof. Tedlow, shows how as a result of this, Intel went from a company that had already started to loss significant money because of Japanese Competition in the D-Ram business (the very business that Intel had created and which was its foundation) to one of the most profitable companies in the world. I was at Intel during those wonderful years of high growth and even higher profits. Frankly, I would not be sitting her in my home office in Sonoma looking at the oak trees and the grape vines if I had not been. My contributions to the Microprocessor business were indirect at best. I push the company to market to consumers and in particular did a lot of public speaking on the topic. And by taking the lead in the computer industry to create broadband networks, I probably gave the consumer PC business a longer run way but I failed to effect Intel in the most important way possible (the future beyond the Microprocessor) even thought I tried. I joined Intel in 1984 after having served as the President of Franklin Computer a company that was to Apple what Compaq was to the IBM PC (a clone), but with an important distention which was Apple’s willingness to use the courts destroy any chance we had of getting funding to support our amazing growth (almost a 100 million dollars in an our first year of operations and this was 1993/94). I use to say that when I joined, Intel was in the strip mining business and selling silicon by the ton (the memory business). Then one day the found a vein of gold (the microprocessor) and decided being in the gold mining business was a good thing. So the started extracting the gold and investing in a bigger gold mine. The only problem is eventually all the gold is tapped out. This is what has pretty much happened to Intel and to a lesser extent, Microsoft. I guess the relevant questions is what should Intel have done. I think about this still often even though it is almost ten years ago that I left Intel. Well, I don’t think there was any way to keep the top line growth and profitability long term. The demand for personal computing on a world wide basis created a kind of hyper growth or if you are a student of cosmology, it was like the inflation that may have happened in the Universe after the big bang.Eventually the growth would slow and in particular the demand for higher performance would change. Intel was in competition not with AMD but with things that other made that provided a better experience for the customer. A bigger a monitor, more memory, a bigger disc, an a nicer printer were more important than 15% more processor performance. And since Microsoft made more a more money by selling upgrades to the installed based as opposed to Intel which made its money when new systems were sold, it most important strategic partner was doing less and less to take advantage of new processor performance. It should have been no surprise that the party would come to an end. Intel needed to find a way to break out of the coffin it was finding itself.

In my opinion, the answer was there. It was on the other side of the wire in the network. But I for one could never get the company to understand this (and I tried). We did make some progress. Time Warner Cable was willing to do a deal with Intel and Oracle to form a broadband ISP (Roadrunner) and I even got an OK from Andy for us to join in this business, but are “good friends” at Microsoft found out and basically after Time Warner twice the money took over the deal (it was a stupid decision for Time Warner too since Microsoft did nothing to help them and it’s only interest was keeping Oracle and to a lesser extent us, out). Check here. The real problem was the Andy did not develop any company leadership that could take advantage of what Intel had accomplished find the new opportunities that continue its growth and profitability. Andy in my opinion made the worse possible decision when he moved out of the CEO role and gave it to Craig Barrett who had lead the companies manufacturing activities until he become the COO of the company. Few companies can re invent themselves. Intel did that when it went from memories to microprocesors. I guess it was too much to expect they could do it once again. And I guess companies like people have age.