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Monthly Archives: October 2008

How to give away 72 pounds of chocolate candy on Halloween

My wife and I are quite generous, like all good Worthingtons. For as long as I can remember, we have given away massive amounts of chocolate candy to trick-or-treaters every Halloween. A few years ago, we added it all up. We hand out over 72 pounds of chocolate candy each and every single Halloween. How do we do it?

First, we had to get two giant Igloo coolers. I fill each cooler all the way up to the top with candy. These coolers are now iconic legends all over this part of town. Every year, when kids ring the bell and I open the door, I am greeted with screams of “cooler guy!!“. It’s pretty hilarious. Ask my friend, Dan Ross, about it. I had him “stand in” for me one year, and people only saw the cooler, not the face of the guy behind the cooler. ;-)

Igloo cooler full of delicious chocolate candy

As you can see, we only give away the good stuff. All the best and favorite chocolate candies.

 

  • Almond Joy
  • Peanut M&Ms
  • Plain M&Ms
  • Snickers
  • Baby Ruth
  • Nestle Crunch
  • Hershey’s Chocolate
  • Kit Kat
  • Butterfinger
  • Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup (the big ones)

 

That’s in every bag. So let’s talk about the bags we buy. We always get good deals in bulk from either Wal-mart or Costco. This year, we got 13 big bags. As I emptied them into the coolers this afternoon, I did the numbers.

Two Igloo coolers stacked up, full of delicious chocolate candy

 

Each of the 13 bags had a net weight of 5.6 lbs, and 150 pieces of candy each. I put seven bags in one cooler and six bags in the other. The grand total is 72.8 pounds of candy I will give away tonight, or 1,950 individual pieces. Even Elwood can’t believe it.

Elwood and the Igloo coolers full of chocolate candy

Now, how does one give away that much candy in one Halloween night? Well, I have to use two hands. For every kid at the door, I scoop my two hands deep into the top cooler and dump at least a dozen pieces into each bucket or bag. You should hear the reactions when the sheer weight of each two-fisted scoop smacks the bottom of the pillow case!

Stack of Igloo coolers full of candy standing ready at the front doors

I think Halloween must be my favorite holiday. What do you think? What’s Halloween like where you are? Leave a comment or contact me via email.

Current Status: The trick-or-treaters have only been coming for about 45 minutes, or less, and I’ve already cleared one cooler. That’s roughly 36 lbs. of chocolate candy – almost one piece every minute.

hundred pushups plan updated

As I have noticed, and as my brother noted in his comment on my last hundred pushups post, most people trying the program find it tough to get over the Week 3 hump. Since I am starting over, I returned to the 100 pushups site to look up the details again, and I noticed the plan had changed. If you look at the Week 3 page, you will find a link to the original page (“for a limited time”). And if you compare the two versions, you’ll notice the new and updated plan takes a lower slope than the old one. The guy running the site probably has been getting tons of feedback about how unrealistic parts of it were.

Here are excerpts from both versions, to point out the differences. First, look at the original Week 3 Day 1 numbers.

DAY 1

REST 60 SECONDS BETWEEN EACH LEVEL (LONGER IF REQUIRED)
  16 -20 push ups 21 – 25 push ups > 25 push ups
LEVEL 1 15 20 25
LEVEL 2 12 15 17
LEVEL 3 12 15 17
LEVEL 4 10 13 15
LEVEL 5 max (at least 15) max (at least 20) max (at least 25)

 

And here is the updated version. Notice the reps are lower, across the board.

DAY 1

REST 60 SECONDS BETWEEN EACH LEVEL (LONGER IF REQUIRED)
  16 -20 push ups 21 – 25 push ups > 25 push ups
SET 1 10 12 14
SET 2 12 17 18
SET 3 7 13 14
SET 4 7 13 14
SET 5 max (at least 9) max (at least 17) max (at least 20)

 

And it’s not just Week 3, either. Even if you start out brand new on Week 1 Day 1, that’s a new plan, too. You’ll find a link to the former Week 1 plan, and you’ll see its numbers are higher.

Let’s see how far I get this time.

StrengthsFinder Part 5 of 6 Analytical

This is part five in a six-part series on my StrengthsFinder 2.0 results. In part one, I introduced the whole strengths and talents idea from Tom Rath’s book. He asserts that we develop strengths by investing study and practice into areas where we are already naturally talented. The book and online assessment help you identify your talents and some actions you can take to build on top of those talents.

The StrengthsFinder online assessment reports my Top 5 Talent Themes as:

All right, now we’re getting to the one I keep hearing the most about. I’ve been described as analytical, and I’ve been accused of being analytical, and they’re not the same thing. Something that’s irked me in my professional life is how people will caution me not to make assumptions and then turn right around and urge me to accept their own assumptions. Here’s the first line from the Analytical full description and I like it: Your Analytical theme challenges other people: “Prove it. Show me why what you are claiming is true.” That’s a way of putting it that I hadn’t considered before, but it’s a good one. I don’t think it means not trusting people. In my own life, it’s more “trust, but verify” (to quote Ronald Reagan).

I like to ask questions, because I like to understand. I enjoy logic, I like arguments that build from point to point to point. The full description puts it this way: You do not necessarily want to destroy other people’s ideas, but you do insist that their theories be sound. Right! It’s not maliciousness, it’s just seeking first to understand.

What really got me as I read the full description the first time, and then especially after grappling with the next talent theme, Connectedness, were the references to searching for patterns and connections. It’s right there: Armed with these data, you search for patterns and connections. You want to understand how certain patterns affect one another. I think all my talent themes are unified by Connectedness, and Analytical plays into it beautifully. I really enjoy looking for patterns, searching for meaning in data, finding out how things affect each other long before they affect us. 

magnifying glass on an old bookFinally, the full description actually uses language that was very relevant to where I was professionally at the time I first took the test and got my results. You peel the layers back until, gradually, the root cause or causes are revealed. I think I even laughed aloud when I first read that. The term “root cause” in the context of Analytical is a term central to Problem Management – the analysis of incidents to find out what caused them and how to prevent them from causing more incidents in the future. I couldn’t believe how dead-on parts of my results were, like this one. I am very interested in methods of root cause analysis, trend analysis, and I’m considering a new career direction into Problem Management. So this passage really reached out and grabbed my attention.

Switching to the personalized description of the Analytical theme proved even more illuminating and inspiring, as usual. I found it was good on this theme to take both the full description and the personalized description together because they’re both so true. The very first two lines of the shared theme description, in fact, really struck home again. People who are especially talented in the Analytical theme search for reasons and causes. They have the ability to think about all the factors that might affect a situation. I mean, seriously, that’s what I do.

line chart on graph paperWhat I read in these paragraphs struck me as a kind of defense of my natural analytical streak. As I mentioned, I’ve been accused of being analytical, maybe too analytical. I’ve had to be mindful most of my professional career not to get stuck in ‘analysis paralysis’. I’m not naturally action-biased, but never leaving the analysis of something is ultimately frustrating because nothing ever happens without action, and thinking about something never does anybody any good if no actions are ever taken after the thinking gets done.

The next specific statement that caused me to stop and think was this one: Because of your strengths, you may be aware of some of the elements impacting a group of people, a project, a process, a deal, or a proposal. It’s not just I’m “aware of some of the elements” but that I like to make myself aware of elements in the work before me, and of their meaning. That is analysis, and I’ve been warned by some coworkers not to “over-think” something (which is easy for them to say). I decided after reading all of this stuff that from now on, so long as I make sure to turn analysis into action, I’m not going to allow anyone to treat my analytical tendencies as a liability. So long as my boss and others believe in this whole StrengthsFinder business, then they have to take my results seriously. And that means if being analytical can be a strength, then get off my back when I analyze something.

If you’ve taken the StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment and want to share your results or discuss anything I’ve written here, leave a comment or contact me via email. If you’ve just got questions about any of this, feel free to contact me, too—I love to hear from readers and I love to share thoughts about this topic.

photo credits:
“the worlds greatest detective” by practicalowl
“chart” by paul worthington

 

Three states in three nights

Twice in the last year, I’ve spent three consecutive nights in three different states. On one of those trips, it was even three different timezones in three nights. Maybe a different state every night is no big deal for people in the northeast, what with tiny states like Rhode Island and Delaware and whatnot. But out West, it takes a little more effort.

The most recent three state hop was this summer. I flew from Denver to St. Paul, then a coworker and I drove to a Milwaukee suburb to meet with our clients. We spent two nights in Wisconsin, then drove back to St. Paul. We spent one last night there before flying back to Colorado. So that was Tuesday night in Wisconsin, Wednesday night in Minnesota, and Thursday night in Colorado.

The three timezone hop took place in spring. My wife and I were in a Chicago suburb for a short weekend visit to her parents and cousins for an anniversary celebration. That was a good time. We flew back to Denver, and then the next morning I had to fly to Seattle to be back on-site with my client at the time. So that was Saturday night in Illinois on Central Time, Sunday night in Colorado on Mountain Time, and Monday night in Washington on Pacific Time.

Did that jet-setting around throw me off too much? Not really. Partly it’s because I was never going farther away than the next timezone – skipping one or two timezones is when you really start to feel the lag. And partly it’s because I wasn’t in any one place long enough to really know where I was or what time it was supposed to be. Well, it’s more accurate to say the effects caught up with me later, as they always do.

one hundred pushups

I read about this 100-pushup program at my brother’s blog. It’s a methodical program designed to train you over six weeks to able to do 100 pushups without stopping, no matter where you’re starting from. My brother, his wife, and one of their daughters were going to start it in July. Then I read one of my nieces’ blogs and she said she was starting, too. I read all about the plan and it made sense to me. I could also tell it is intended to test the limits of human endurance. Sign me up. :-\

I told my great friend Melinda about it, and she thought it sounded good. She said she’d start, too. I told my wife about it, and she pshawed me, saying, “just because you get good at one exercise, that doesn’t mean you’re strong“. (Disclaimer: my wife pumps iron and is one of the strongest people I’ve ever met, man or woman.) Well, I still liked the idea of trying for it, so I started.

The program begins with an initial test. You do as many good-form pushups as you can, until exhaustion. That tells you what level you’re at, and then you use that along with your age to find the right place in the program for you start.

I did my initial test and got started. I travel a lot for my job, but I kept on doing it even in my hotel room when I was on the road. Basically, you do a certain number of sets of a certain number of reps in sequence every other day for the first two weeks, following the chart at the 100 pushups web site. It’s designed to build you up gradually.

I was impressed with my progression. At the end of two weeks, you do another exhaustion test. The number of non-stop pushups you can do at that point is part of how you determine your path in the next two weeks of the program. After having only been doing the program for two weeks, I was able to triple the number of pushups I could do without stopping.

But I guess the designer of the program overestimated how far the first two weeks would take me. I was keeping right on track – always exceeding the minimum mini-exhaustion sets along the way. The gap between my exhaustion test number and the minimum threshold required for starting week 3 is too big, though. I have actually read this on multiple blogs, too, so it’s not just me. I decided I’d just repeat week 2 (which is the advice at the web site) and see if that got me closer to the week 3 threshold. But I went back into it too hard and started getting a pain in my shoulder. That, and my travel schedule got more intense, which is no fun.

So I fell off-track. Bummer. I will start again this Monday. Melinda’s got her own story to tell, but her experience is very similar to mine – doing pretty well, then up a steep curve, then pain. Since a couple of weeks after first hearing about 100 pushups in July, I haven’t heard anything more from my family members about it. I know one of my nieces in Kansas got into week 4 (I think). Has anybody made it to the end? Can you do 100 pushups without stopping? No? How many can you do?

link to One Hundred Pushups web site

(That’s one of the official badges from the One Hundred Pushups web site. I don’t like it – there’s no way that’s good form. Look at where her hands are!)