Quinn’s Brain, aka QBrain

Our Austin trip had several silly aspects.

1. We stayed downtown, but never did anything downtown
2. We went to experience “Austin” but stayed in a Four Seasons
3. We had a ton of fun at the swim meet, but only went one night. It was going on half the time we were there.
4. Everything except the hotel still cost less then one night at the hotel.
5. We are really are jealous of the Longhorn Aquatics Masters team, but didn’t swim as guests at any of their practices. (there were 8 different practices while we were there)

Now, we had a blast in Austin, but looking back at the trip, I wonder at the aspects above.

I am lazy at heart, and there was nothing that I wanted to do enough to drag my lazy ass out of the hotel to sixth street. If we would have stayed at the Driskill Hotel, which is on sixth street, or the Inter-Continental on 7th, I think we would have gone out at least to people watch. Instead we went to sleep as sixth street was probably getting entertaining.

The Four Seasons is a Luxury hotel removed from the surrounding hustle and bustle of the surrounding downtown. Wait, I wanted to experience downtown. Oops. It wasn’t a bad location, we were just lazy. And the Four Seasons bar looks like a mortgage brokers convention in the evening. This will surprise people who know me, but I didn’t fit in. The wine list was supposed to be excellent, and I didn’t even request to see it. Oh, and the bar/lounge area was packed, every night. There was nothing, hot, young or edgy in that crowd. My wife was actually surprised at how dressed up everyone was. Dear, welcome to the Four Seasons, where stuffy is the norm.

Our swim meet trip was planned to only be the last evening we were there, and too bad we didn’t plan it for the first evening, because it was great. Dave Walters broke Michael Phelps 200 yard free record, there were famous people (to us) down on deck and nerdy swim chat up in the stands.

I am going to post separately about the food, but there was no The French Room on the list of dining establishments. It just seems strange to spend so much money of a hoity toity hotel, and then only eat at dives while enjoying free entertainment. Strange, but not necessarily a horrible plan.

Fear explains why we didn’t swim with the Masters team in Austin. In Lewisville, I know everyone, everyone knows me, Brook is the fastest swimmer and I try to keep up with her, and there are only about a dozen people who ever show up, most of the time there are only 4. Austin has 3 practices a day with 40 people showing up at a given practice, with 200 people on the team overall. The team has 8 lanes broken up by speed, and I would probably be in the middle if not in one of the slow lanes. My ego can’t handle the truth, and I know it, so I ignore it.

And that concludes my silly adventures in Austin.

December 8th, 2008 | Category: General | Leave a comment

We stayed at the Four Seasons Austin, and I was under impressed.

First, let me say that I, in Zagat, pulled up Four Seasons Austin and Hotel Adolphus in Dallas, which I meant to compare it too, to make sure it was considered a fair comparison. Zagat does not rank either hotel, so what the fuck is zagat worth. Nothing I guess, and I will figure out how to cancel my subscription as soon as I am done with this post.

Ok, back to the Four Seasons Austin. I have not stayed in any other Four Seasons hotel, and I have no other experience in any other hotel that I would consider in the same class as the Four Seasons as a guest. I have had dinner at the Adolphus Hotel, and I have stayed at The Inn at Union Square, a small boutique hotel in San Francisco 10 years ago, under different management than it is currently under.

The Four Seasons Austin pales in comparison.

I am in Austin, and while they like to pretend to be green and walk/bike friendly, everyone drives. There is no self park at the Four Seasons as you might imagine, so the valet service is the most used “amenity”. The Four Seasons is the ONLY fancy hotel in Austin, and thus, the place for business dinners and drinks. This kills the valet service.

My number one complaint about the Four Seasons is with the valet, so I will go into some detail.

When arriving at the Four Seasons, in most instances, we had to wait for valet. This was true every time we pulled into the valet except at 4pm the day we checked in, and that time they were just so busy that there were no free bell hops, so I elected to carry my own luggage. My preference would be to carry my own luggage actually, since I am not an old decrepit man, but never did I see that there were not bellhops already occupied. In summary, we usually spent 3 to 5 minutes to HAND OUR KEYS to someone. As a guest of a premiere hotel, this seems a little ridiculous. Also, let me point out, EVERY time we pulled up, “oh, will you be having breakfast/drinks with us today?”. My, very terse response, “The valet ticket is in the car”, and I had to repeat it twice EVERY time, quickly followed by “Oh… welcome back.”.

Thanks dickheads. There is a purpose to dividing the people who will be here for 2 hours from the people who will be over night. That division has to do with where to best put them in the parking garage for easy retrieval, it is not a shock and awe campaign having to do with your utter surprise that some who drove up in a Hyundai can afford your overpriced rooms.

I wrote the beginning of this post and then got called away from it and did not return to it until the next day. Since I started this post, I have learned something about the Four Seasons Austin.

I was under the assumption that the Four Seasons Austin was a five star hotel. What I have since learned is that most Four Seasons are five star hotels, but Four Seasons Austin is only a four star hotel. This would explain why I had a typical hotel experience. It does not explain why Four Seasons charges five star prices, and provides four star service.

With their proper classification in mind, I feel that the valet was fine. They gave me the same level of service that I have experienced with every other valet I have ever used. The typical Four Seasons level of service just doesn’t exist in Austin and I made a mistake expecting it.

To keep things short, I found most of the service at the hotel typical. I found a doorman and a waiter that exemplified what I would expect at a Four Seasons, but I also found one of each that I would classify as rude.

Did the Four Seasons completely suck? No. Most reviews of the Four Seasons Austin complain about the rooms being small and poorly equipped. I found the furnishings and decor to be quite nice, with the bed being in the top two hotel beds I have slept in. Of course, most reviews found the service to be outstanding, so I have to wonder if we were at the same hotel.

What was outstanding was the view from our room. We had a balcony room, and the view from the balcony was spectacular. The Four Seaons grounds are well kept, but beyond the grounds is Lady Bird Lake Park (previously Towne Lake Park). I have several photos that I took from the balcony of our room that I will post at some point. The Park is really why you would want to stay at the Four Seasons, since the position of the Four Seasons provides the best view of the park and lake, while minimizing the view of the surrounding buildings. Very scenic.

I will post more about our trip later.

December 7th, 2008 | Category: General | Leave a comment

Sunday will be the first day in several days where I prepare my own food.

Monday will be swim practice and weights.

Tuesday work.

Wednesday, swimming, work, lifting AND preparing my own food. Finally rejoining the rest of the world with normal responsibilities after being on vacation for 12 days.

Hopefully I am up to the challenge.

December 6th, 2008 | Category: General | Leave a comment

For the next 4 days I will be eating and drinking my way through Austin.

I will post pictures of the view from my room. It is pretty spectacular. I am pretty sure the room is going to cost more than the rest of the trip combined.

We came to a complete stop where the two 35s merged, and did not see a wreck. As you might imagine, 35 is still under major construction for 50% of the trip, and in Hillsboro (where the merge is), were were probably stopped for them to do some construction thing. Luckily it was only 20 minutes or so and the rest of the trip was uneventful.

I will post more of my thoughts on the Four Seasons later, but they seemed extremely busy when we walked in.

December 3rd, 2008 | Category: General | Leave a comment

I got this diet plan from here.

eat
breakfast like a king,
lunch like a prince and
dinner like a pauper

Pretty simple, and you are eating food when you actually need it. How many calories do you think you need to sleep at night?

December 1st, 2008 | Category: Food | Leave a comment

Eegads, what will I ever do? I can’t possibly afford my house anymore!

If you have an ARM, and you are not a retard, then your ARM adjusting is not really a big deal. My rate will go from 4.75%, which was the introductory rate from when we bought the house 5 years ago, to 5.125%.

I should not trivialize a .375% increase, since that is an extra $375 in interest payments every year for every $100k you have mortgaged. If you could barely make payments when you moved into the house, then with the adjustment, well… you’re an idiot.

I, not being a mortgage idiot at least, did not move into a house I could barely afford, and I pretended that I was paying a 15 year mortgage at the 15 year rate instead of a 30 year mortgage with a introductory rate. After my rate adjusted up, my monthly mortgage payment adjusted down. There is a cap on the adjustable rate of 9.75%, so the worst case would have been that my mortgage would have gone up $180. While this worst case would suck, it is well within what is reasonable for me to pay for housing.

Should I refinance? Refinancing would raise my rate, so obviously the answer is no. What if my rate had gone up to 9.75%? Then refinancing would still probably be more expensive, but lets take the worst case rate change and the best case refinancing case.

My ARM goes to 9.75%, thus my payments increase $180. I can refinance for 30 years at 6%. To get that rate, I have to pay for title insurance, lawyers fees, origination fees and many imaginary fees. I could get a no fee loan with the loan costs baked into the rate, but I don’t want to consider that.

Pulling the original loan documents, and adding up all the fees that I believe pertained to a new loan, my loan cost $3,536.40. That does not include the 6% commission that goes to the buyers and sellers agents or the insurance due at signing or the mortgage interest prepayment or taxes. Those are fees tied back to the loan, and they might be less for refinancing a loan, but lets use these numbers.

At $180/month increase to me, when would refinancing to 6% become worthwhile? The difference between 9.75% and 6% is $230/month. $3,536.40/$230/month equals 15.375 months.

The problem with that scenario is that when my rate adjusts to 9.75%, I will not be able to get 6%. I just wanted to show how long it takes to reclaim the cost of refinancing when dealing with the extremes. If you had a loan from the 80s, it made sense to refinance if you are planning on living in the same home for more than a year. But if you were playing the refinance game in the 2000s, you were throwing money away and just could not see where it was going.

I will probably never refinance. The cost of refinancing will likely never be beneficial to me, since ARMs follow the current rates available, and the rates would have to make wild swings for my yearly lock to hit 9.75% when I could also refinance for a >6% rate in the same year.

November 29th, 2008 | Category: General | Leave a comment

I am pissed off at WordPress right now. I wrote up a new post, go to post it, requests a login. Ok, this by itself is infuriating. Why is the login a redirect? Welcome to 2000, pop up the login, and LEAVE MY WORK THERE. So I get redirected, so I hit the back button to grab my work, and of course I get another login prompt. Now I am screwed, my work is completely gone. Thanks wordpress, you fucking retards.

I am sure someone will tell me that it is my fault. That is the typical software engineer answer to a problem with the software. “Security is a feature, not a bug.” Thoughts like these are why user experience for most software sucks. If you are going to “autosave” and then silently fail, then there is a bug.

So, no post about training using heart rate monitoring, just be bitching about shitty software.

November 26th, 2008 | Category: General | Leave a comment

Saturday, my wife and I swam in a swim meet, the first in about 4 years and the meet went very well for both of us.

I swam the 50M, 200M, 400M freestyles and the 100M backstroke. Maybe you will notice that the 100M freestyle is missing from that list. Well, my wife decided that she didn’t want to swim the 100M free, since she was tired and that was the last event she was registered for, so she scratched. What actually happened was that I ended up getting scratched, and I didn’t notice until I looked down at the timers clipboard that Brook’s name was listed and not mine. As there were only about 3 minutes until I was supposed to be swimming, there wasn’t anything that could be done to resolve the problem in time. That was really the only mishap of the meet.

The rest of this post will be analysis of the meet that I will be interested in the next time I enter this meet and some analysis of my swims. Nothing is likely to be of interest to anyone other then swimmers.

Getting to the Baylor Tom Landry center was not too difficult, and parking was easy, right across the street. Getting there right as warm up opens is the way to go, since getting in and getting warmed up before the pools fills with retards who stop in the middle of the lane is important, if you actually wanted to get warmed up.

I warmed up with a 400M free and a 100M back. Brook probably did more then twice this about. Lane 9 has water treadmills in it that scare most people away from joining the lane. Brook and I had the lane to ourselves the entire time I was in, and Brook only had one other person join her lane before her warmup was over.

The 400M fr was an easy swim for me, with the purpose being an fast warm up, rather than a competitive swim. I felt like I maintained a strong even pace throughout the race and finished with a time that was .3 seconds slower then my 2004 time. After my 2004 race, I remember being nearly dead, and I probably came home much faster in 2004. Results are not posted for 2008 year, so I cannot compare how I split 2008 vs. 2004.

The 50 fr immediately followed the 400fr. I got a good cool down in after the 400fr, since lane 9 and 8 were open for cool down/warm up, during the races. Again, I swam the 50fr strong, and didn’t really start kicking until the last 12.5 meters. Brook made two comments. First, it looked like I wasn’t bothering to sprint until the last 12.5, which is a comment I have heard many times. Second, she said I just need to quit bothering with 50s and focus on the 100 and 200. My time was almost .8 seconds faster then it was in 2004, which was a huge surprise. After the 50, I did only 100M warm down. The cool down lanes were packed and no one was getting any swimming done. Lots of standers in the lane, and luckily, this was a rarity, probably do to the rate that the 50s were completely and the number of heats.

After the 50, there was probably 25 to 30 minutes before the 200fr. I swam in lane one, which is the only competitive lane against the wall at this pool, and the pool floor slopes up to the wall at a 45 degree angle, putting the lane line on an angle. Other then one really strong jet, the lane wasn’t too bad, and I ended up going 4 seconds faster then in 2004 iirc. There was a problem with the timing system right before this event, and we had to step down and wait behind the blocks for a few minutes. There was a guy in lane 6 who was well matched to my speed, and I could see him and kept with him the entire race. Brook said I beat him at the end. The girl in lane 2 was miss seeded and I ended up lapping her. She ended up not finishing the race because she stopped the same time I did. My race was thoughtless, other then holding myself in reserve. I swam a strong race, but didn’t go all out until the last half length.

The 100M back immediately followed the 200M free, so I needed to cool down quickly before I had to get back up to swim the back. Brook stopped me during cool down to talk about the races, and I had to tell her that I had another swim in 2 or 3 heats and needed a quick cool down. There ended up being a meet break for 5 or 10 minutes before the back heat started, so there was plenty of time.

This was the first time I have swam the 100M back in competition. It did not feel as strong as my freestyles, but I was not disappointed with my performance. I entered the median time from 2007, but I mistakenly entered the yards conversion, not the real meters time. I was worried that I would not be able to go the yards time, but managed to bet my seed time by 3 seconds. My start did not feel horrendous, so that was an improvement over practice. Brook did tell me that I had not kickout from the wall, and if I would work on just that one thing, my time would improve considerably. Brook may not remember that my kick sucks in general, and that is the primary reason by my kickout is non existent.

There was a large break between the 100 Back and the 100 Free because the 200 IM and the 50 Breast took a fair bit of time to complete, and there were 9 heats of 100 free, which I thought I was in the 6th heat. Turns out that when Brook went to scratch, I was the one who ended up getting scratched, and I did not notice it until the heat before mine, so I was not able to swim the 100 fr.

We ended up leaving right around 11:30am. This happened to be right when I predicted we would be done with the 100M free. To figure out how long the meet would take, I took the worst time from 2007, rounded and then multipled by the number of six person heats. This approximated pretty well how long each event would take.

Brook started talking about scratching the 100 after swimming the 50fr, which surprised me. Brook had previously never had a good 200 swim, so I would have expected her to scratch the 200 and swim the 100. I think the cold was getting to her, and she wanted to swim one more race and then go get warm. It is possible if the meet was running slower, that she would have scratched both the 200M and the 100M freestyles, having already swam 3 events.

Brook was cold the entire meet. She wore her new parka, swimcaps, sweat pants and uggs whenever she was out of the water, and she was still cold. I, on the other hand, was never cold the entire meet. I started out waiting for Brook to come through the women’s locker room to the pool when we first got there, and I was too hot to leave my sweat shirt on. After warming up and wearing a long sleeved tech shirt for about 20 minutes, I stripped out of that and went shirtless for the rest of the meet, only wearing a pair of umbros and my uggs. Next time bring flip flops.

Along with being hot the entire meet, I probably drank 60 oz of water, and 24oz of that was before the meet even began. I did not drink and thing but water during the meet and only a sip of gatorade after the meet. During the meet I did not eat anything.

For breakfast before the meet, I had 2 eggos, a plain omlette and a latte. After the meet, we stopped at Chipotle and picked up burritos, and I washed mine down with a half a bottle of wine. I did not drink any alcohol for the month leading up to the meet, and for the week leading up to the meet, I ate paste rich meals. My lunches were baked ziti, with dark meat chicken, with meat lovers pizza on Friday at Joes. The two nights before the meet, were spaghetti with butter garlic shrimp and spaghetti with italian sausage. The whole week was well planned so I did not worry about being hungry. Breakfasts were eggos and omlettes, with Endurox after workouts.

The swim workouts were Wed., Thurs, Friday before the meet Saturday because Shannon was out of town Mon and Tues. Thursday I swam hard and Friday morning I was sore when I got into the water. Friday, I swam the entire workout at a recovery pace, only doing a pull set fast. Friday’s workout ended up only being 3600 yards, while Wed and Thurs were 4100 and 4200 with more hard sets. I did not spend much time on starts, only practicing starts a half dozen times, maybe 3 weeks before the meet and spending no time on turns.

November 23rd, 2008 | Category: Swimming | Leave a comment

I am still lifting fairly light weights, but today I had my first “OH SHIT” moment lifting.

After a warm up set of squats, I start in on the first set of squats at weight (5 sets of 5 reps at 150lbs). It is not very much weight, still well below body weight, but on the second rep, I leaned forward a little too much and the weight all the sudden was supported by my middle back muscles. A shock went through my back as the muscle completely tightened trying to handle the weight and I thought I was going to go down, aka fall forward. Luckily, the weight was light enough that I got it back under control quickly, and was able to finish the set without problem.

Form is really important. I have hurt my knees, shoulders and wrists in the past, so last year I went back and spent a lot of time relearning appropriate form for bench, shoulder press and squats. Today, I was just a little careless, and the scare reinforced that I need to focus on good form even with fairly light weights.

I squat in a cage, so I am unlikely to kill myself, just severely injure my ego.

November 17th, 2008 | Category: General | Leave a comment