Taking up the "Bigger Leaner Stronger" Year One Challenge

I first heard about Michael Matthews in August last year, when I found his audio book "Bigger Leaner Stronger" on Audible. Even though I had been going to the gym for a year already, I wasn't ready to try his 5-day-a-week program. I simply wasn't fit or strong enough.
In January 2015 I increased my workouts from one day a week to two days a week (Friday and Monday) instead of just a single day, and made some progress. I could now perform the Bench Press, Deadlift and Squat exercises (mostly) correctly, and lift approximately 50% of my body weight of 82kg. For me this was great progress, since I have always been of way below average strength. I'm 54. My personal trainer at the gym was hard pressed to figure out ways of teaching me these basic exercises from such a weak start. But we persisted and after 18 months I could start recording "personal best" weights that were approaching my body weight.
By then I had read "Beyond Bigger Leaner Stronger" and used Mike's "minimum requirements" for that book as my goal to work towards:

• Squats 175%
• Deadlift 175%
• Bench Press 135%
• Seated Military Press 100% of body weight for 4-6 reps.

Ambitious goals for sure, but realistic ones that I can attain in a few years. When the Second Edition of "Bigger Leaner Stronger" came out, I ordered the print versions of both the BLS book and the companion workout diary, "The Year One Challenge for Men". They arrived at the end of April this year. During May and June I worked through all the new exercises with my personal trainer, and decided to aim to work out every Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. That makes 4 days for a 5 day program, meaning that every Friday I would be able to do a different workout under the supervision of my personal trainer. I can't afford a trainer more than one day a week.
Next I realized that my normal note-taking procedure when working out wasn't going to be good enough for the BLS program. So I used my HiSense Android smart phone's software that can edit Excel files on DropBox, called WPS Office. I have created a spreadsheet for the first phase of the program. it lists each exercise for each day, and uses the weight and reps used to recommend what the next week's weight should be, based on the calculated one-rep max from the previous week.

Shown here is a screen shot from my phone for day 5. The sets in blue are warm-up sets, with the target weight in the third column, and the actual weight used in the 4th column. The actual reps are in the next column, next to the target reps. So while you are working out you only need to record the weight and reps performed. From that it will use the standard Epley Formula for a one-rep maximum to calculate the target weights for warm-ups and sets for the following week, based on Mike's recommendation of doing working sets in the 80-85% range. In this way you always make progress and know what your next target is.
The next challenge came when I actually tried to do the exercises. In spite of being used to doing much more than 3 sets on the "big 4" exercises, I found it difficult to jump by a full 5kg when doing Seated Military Press and some of the other exercises. The smallest weight in my gym is 2.5kg, so a barbell can only go from, say 30kg to 35kg. Not a problem for Squats and Deadlifts, but definitely a challenge for Seated Military Press. Without a spotter I just can't manage, and a spotter isn't always available at my gym.

The solution is simple. They are called "fractional weights" and I found a local supplier who could sell me four 1kg plates that fit on the Olympic size barbell I use at the gym. I already had two plates that weigh 0.5kg, so now I can choose any 1kg increment between 30 and 35 kg and not stress about whether I am about to injure myself with an increase that is "too big". If the target weight is 32kg, I have no excuse: I can either lift it or I can't, but I can't blame the gym for not having a 32kg barbell.
So far I have found the first phase of the One Year Challenge tough. Each individual day isn't too bad, but the cumulative effect is pretty hectic. On top of that I have been plagued by a bad cold (it is winter in SA) and an abscess that required 2 days in hospital. So I am only finishing week 2, even though I have done week 1 several times as I learn the exercises. I will be glad when all these interruptions can go away.
Update Friday 3rd July 2015: I have posted a more detailed explanation of the Year One Challenge on my Fact-Reviews website, which includes a download link to the Excel spreadsheet I use, and instructions on how to use it.
Update Tuesday 7th July 2015: Finally made it back to the gym, so we are on track again. I also discovered that the audiobook of Bigger Leaner Stronger has been updated to the second edition, which is now almost 11 hours of useful information.

Microsoft Removes Google Search from Internet Explorer - Fixed

Last week I screwed up my Windows configuration on my laptop so badly I had to do a factory reset and reinstall everything from scratch. You'd think I would learn. Thanks very much to Steve Walker from SOS Support Operating Systems for rescuing all the critical data from my hard drive and saving me from losing over a week's worth of data that I hadn't backed up recently.
One thing I learnt in the process of doing the restore is that Microsoft no longer offers a Search add-in for Google. Only Bing and Yahoo search. I called their support line and had a weirdly bizzare conversation with someone who told me that if I want to use Google's search I need to install Google Chrome. Seriously?
Now I understand what the "99% Blocked" icon is all about: Microsoft blocks you from using the search tool that 99% of its users want to use. Anti-trust, anyone?
Update Saturday 20th June 2015: Thanks to Steven Quick for pointing out that the Google Search add-in is back. Thank goodness.

SARS: We steal for Zuma

A few years ago, before Jacob Zuma became President Zuma, Julius Malema headed the ANC Youth League and famously said that the ANCYL would "Kill for Zuma" if necessary. Now have a President Zuma with a "fire pool" at his residential palace in Nkandla, built largely with taxpayer's money and other more dubious sources.
I am one of those taxpayers, and on Wednesday I was subjected to a what I can only describe as theft: an official from the South African Revenue Service took it upon herself to snoop around in my bank account, check the balance, and deduct the money she found there. No warning, no explanation, no due process. On the 9th March my balance was R3,167.75; on 10th March she issued an order to deduct R3,100 from my account. Nice of her to leave me R67 for the rest of the month. Quite generous, really.

In the meantime there were other transactions in the account, so the balance after her little "breaking and entering" stunt was R350 in arrears. Good job I have a R500 overdraft or the transaction would have bounced and I would have been hit with some outrageous bank fees. Of course the FNB doesn't have any security mechanisms in place to warn me that someone from SARS was looking at my balance to see what she could take, but they did tell me once the money was gone. Nice one, FNB. You do a great job of facilitating criminal activity, much like HSBC, another wunch of bankers.

It turns out there is a nasty little program in the SARS computers somewhere that can spit out notices like the one shown above, issued (but not signed) on behalf of the Commissioner. And of course computers never make mistakes, and the information input on the system is flawless in all respects. Never mind that the Tax Administration Act of 2011 never contemplated that such notices would not be issued by a human being, let alone not checked by one before signing it. It is quite specific that it should be an official:

179 (1) A senior SARS official may by notice to a person who holds or owes or will hold or owe any money, including a pension, salary, wage or other remuneration, for or to a taxpayer, require the person to pay the money to SARS in satisfaction of the taxpayer's outstanding tax debt.

This becomes important for the next paragraph, which states

179 (2) A person that is unable to comply with a requirement of the notice, must advise the senior SARS official of the reasons for the inability to comply within the period specified in the notice and the official may withdraw or amend the notice as is appropriate under the circumstances.

As an exercise in pointlessness I called the SARS number 0800 00 7277 and asked for the name of the official who issued my particular notice, and predictably I was told that it was issued by a computer and I should go to my nearest SARS office. That's the standard response by a call centre operator when they don't know what to do and won't put me through to a supervisor.
Not only was the notice not issued correctly, it was not sent to me either. I am told it was posted to me by regular mail during the middle of the Post Office strike, but so far no proof has been provided. Since I was told by the person who took the money, I am somewhat sceptical. Especially when that person claimed to have called me on Wednesday 25th February and left a message. Funny that, because there is no missed call on my phone, and no voicemail either. Not even a message telling me there was voice mail.
A bit of background: this is not the first time the "Collections" department of SARS has supposedly sent me a final demand. This is probably the third one, all relating to the 2003, 2004 and 2005 tax years, for which I should have been awarded amnesty 8 years ago when I applied for it under the relevant legislation. This legislation was designed to "regularize" the affairs of anyone running a small business who was not properly up-to-date with their tax affairs or who had never submitted a tax return.
It really isn't a complicated matter, but somehow during those eight years SARS has managed to:

• Lose the application entirely;
• Fail to notify me when the application had been processed (I found out indirectly by accident);
• Ignore my objection letter to some of their original findings;
• Repeatedly call me for the money even though I kept having to explain that the Amnesty application was in progress;
• Take a year or so to realise that the third objection application form should be signed by me and not by the tax advisor;
• Lose the revised application/objection;
• "Agree" with my objection many months after I sent copies via email;
• In spite of "agreeing" with the objection, they took 7 months in 2014 to decide that the 2003, 2004 and 2005 tax returns were not in business earnings but personal earnings, even though the last paycheck I received was in October 2000;
• Write a letter to me on 15 Sept 2014 informing me of this, but not sending it via email (or post) until after the "Final Demand" of 29 Sept 2014 was already issued. Then they sent it to me via email, once the damage was already done.

During this time the "outstanding debt" of R149,218.48 has generated interest of R142,926.21, and continues to do so at a rate of R805.06 per month.
Update: Why am I writing this? Mainly because I can't sleep. I took sleeping tablets on Wednesday and Thursday nights, but on Friday morning I woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep, and it's now Saturday morning and I am tired of tossing and turning and figuring out how to get SARS to fix my situation the way it should have been done in 2007. So I'm frustrated, gatvol and outraged that some low-level accountant thinks she has the right to go snooping around in my bank accounts and deducting money without my consent.
Update Thursday 12 April: Amnesty department say they can't modify my 2003-2005 tax returns because the computer system won't let them. I guess a manual calculation is beyond them any more.
Update Thursday 14 May: I had a meeting with the Debt Management department at Megawatt Park (now unofficially known as MegaWTF Park) where they casually told me that the "Final Demand" doesn't need to be issued by anyone at all, and it was purely a courtesy that it was issued to me. We'll see about that. They also made a number of other outrageous statements, which will be the subject of several other blog posts.
Update Thursday 11th June: I got a letter from the head of the Amnesty department approving my 2006 Amnesty application, and my account now shows a credit balance of R87,864.58 ;-)

See also: Tax Collectors and Sinners and SARS is making me sick.

Four months flew past

I can't believe that I haven't blogged anything for the past 4 months. Time has flown. During that time we got a cute black and white kitten, and I had a big fight with the City Council to get them to evict squatters from Aleit Street Park. I will try to catch up with the news shortly. Been spending too much time on Twitter

Sabotage! Or how to prove you're a loser

One of my customers recently fired an employee for poor performance and not showing up for work. As his "parting shot" to the company that gave him a job he wasn't competent to do, he switched off his computer, and then sneakily changed the voltage selector on the power supply at the back of the computer from 230V to 115V.
The next person who switched it on caused the power supply to burn out, frying the motherboard in the process. We're not sure if it killed the hard drive as well, but at least we have a backup of all of that stuff, such as it is. I'm very tempted to publish his name, but there are too many other people called Shaun Williams who would be wrongly implicated. Pity.
All I can say to the one who did it: we can't prove it was you, but since no one else in the office knew the consequences of doing such a thing, you just proved that you are a malicious jerk and a serious loser. I hope no one ever employes you in a responsible web design or IT job again, for their sake, not for yours. It will come back to bite you on the ass at some point in the future, I'm sure.

DStv: Turning customers into enemies by being greedy

DStv is the local satellite TV company. Normally I use their "EasyView" option, which has a few free-to-air channels such as the abysmal SABC channels, plus a few useful ones like Aljazeera English and Classic Movies. We also have a "Walka", a 7" LED portable device that allows us to view some of the sports channels. Total monthly bill: R29 for EasyView (25 channels), R79 for the Walka (15 channels), i.e. R108 per month for a total of 39 different channels, or R2.77 per channel.
From time to time we have "upgraded" our subscription to the R665 "Premium" service, in order to watch one of the sports channels (Supersport 2) on a bigger screen, and to catch some of the cricket broadcasts on other random Supersport channels. Essentially we are being forced to pay for 131 channels, even though we may watch possibly a dozen channels, at R5.08 per channel. The only redeeming factor in this monumental ripoff was that one could "upgrade" and "downgrade" once at any time during the month, and be charged pro-rata for the Premium service. Until September, that is.
Now some marketing genius at MultiChoice (the parent company) has had the brainwave of making customers pay for an entire month if they upgrade, whether they want to or not. This customer satisfaction guru and bean-counter extraordinaire has decided that it is too tricky to provide pro-rata refunds, so they have stopped their system from doing so, and the customer can just bloody well put up with it. This up-and-coming manager clearly worked for the SABC or SANRAL before moving to MultiChoice, because he has just single-handedly pissed me off. It must have been "he" because no woman with an ounce of sense would ever do anything to monumentally stupid.
In the past I would call DStv (assuming their lines weren't all busy) and arrange the downgrade, and then ensure that the Walka stand-alone subscription was reactivated. Now to add insult to injury I can't reactivate the Walka subscription during the month I downgrade. I have to remember to do it on the 1st of next month. Or not. Since they just forced me to pay R125 extra for the week of service I don't want, I really don't see why I would want to rush back and pay them their R79 for the Walka on 1st November, since I don't use it much and Penny will be too busy with other stuff. So I'll see if we can do without it for a month or so.
So since DStv have just royally pissed me off by ripping me off, I think I'll just ignore them as much as possible. After all, I don't care if they make more or less money. I am certainly not going to force them to take any of my money. They just made an enemy by sheer arrogance, stupidity or bloody-mindedness. Pick any two. Update 13 November: It turns out that my account is now R538 in credit because they billed me on 1st Nov for the Premium service even though they knew a week before that I wasn't going to be using that service. You can only cancel the service at the end of the month, but the billing run is set up before the end of the month, so their system is designed to steal your money, and they will take 14 days to give a refund. I tried phoning their main switchboard number 011-289-3000 to speak to the head of their accounts department, but she wasn't answering her phone and the next extension I was put through to was engaged or they put the phone down, I'm not sure.
Someone called Charles phoned me to find out what the problem is. WOW! I think he handles escalations. Anyway I will be getting a refund in the next 14 days. At least someone there is paying attention.

Microsoft's one useful feature missing from Outlook 2013

Microsoft's marketing people talked up the "new features" of Outlook 2013 claiming how much more "productive" it would make users. Well, they neglected to mention how they deliberately removed one feature that has made me productive in Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 for years. It's the ability to preview the contents of messages that you haven't read yet. (Click on the image above to see what I mean).
The image above is how it would look if the brain-dead idiots in Redmond hadn't decided to remove it. Now I have two equally dubious choices: display a preview of all messages, including the ones I have read, or disable the preview altogether, and use the "preview pane" instead. This is a time waster because I have to click on each message to preview it, and the default is to mark it as "read" once it has been previewed. This is about as clever as it gets.
So if anyone in Redmond with a brain ever gets to see this post, listen up: either make the screen work as shown above, or at least have a "preview unread messges" next to "all" and "unread". In the meantime, can I have a refund for my purchase of Outlook 2013? I was told that it was the last major release of Office, and that from here out subscribers to Office online would get incremental upgrades with new features. So far I have noticed none. More vapourware? In this case some of the features of Office 2010 have evaporated. Huh?
Update 26 October 2014: I finally realised that this missing feature is a productivity improvement after all: now that Outlook is more difficult to use, I check my mail less often, which makes me far more productive. Genius!

Carbonite's coloured dots stop working after installing Dropbox

Last night I spent a long time with a very helpful guy from Carbonite's chat service (a major improvement over what they had a few years ago) because I have just installed a new subscription of Carbonite on my new Lenovo Z50 Windows 8.1 laptop, and the coloured dots weren't showing. I had also noticed that some of the dots had stopped working on my old Windows Vista laptop.
It turns out the problem lies with DropBox. Or Microsoft. Or something. Dropbox has a whole bunch of overlay icons that it uses, and these tend to crowd out any other programs, like Google Drive or Carbonite. Frankly, I don't care about Dropbox's little icons, but I do rely on Carbonite's coloured dots to tell me what files still need to be backed up. So after uninstalling Dropbox and doing a reboot, the dot problem went away. But I need Dropbox and Carbonite.
I was reading a Dropbox helpdesk article "Why aren't my Dropbox icon overlays appearing correctly?" when I found the answer. There is a Windows registry key called "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers" that stores the details of programs wanting to use Shell Icon Overlays, the technical term for Carbonite's coloured dots. If you are technically minded and brave, exit from Dropbox, delete the 8 Dropbox entries in this registry key, and start Dropbox again. This fixes the problem, at least until Dropbox updates itself with a new version.
I'm not surprised that the Carbonite tech support people didn't suggest this, but I'm not entirely sure that "uninstall Dropbox" is good advice either. But if you don't mind fiddling with your registry keys, you may want to give it a try. It works on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012.