weight lifting progress is ridiculously fleeting

note: if you're in a rush, only read the red text. that's why i made it red.

for the past 4 years, i've been trying to live healthily by eating decently and exercising regularly. i started weight lifting casually 12 years ago, but it was only during these last 4 years that i consistently went 4-5 times a week and tried to make it part of my lifestyle. notwithstanding, during the prior years i definitely had my share of roller coasters of going and not going, just like everyone else. with this, i've noticed how insanely quick muscles can deplete.

i once gym'ed consistently (4-5 times a week) for 2 years straight -- gladly gained about 12+ lbs -- then, after 8 weeks of not going to the gym, all progress completely disappeared and i also lost all 12 lbs.

i resumed gym'ing and went for 1.2 years. due to a weight lifting accident (see previous post), i had to take a break from gym for 8 weeks. once again, all progress was completely lost, and my body weight immediately dropped 12 lbs! :-( moreover, i could lift no more than what i started with before the 1.2 years. oh well, no biggie. my ear drum has re-sealed and is in place, so i've started back at the gym again.

in this writing, i aim to express:

1. healthiness is a lifestyle; whether if you care to be healthy or not, it's the long-term, holistic direction of one's habits that should be considered
2. yet, any muscle progress should be taken lightly. it's insanely fleeting, and not much stock should be put into it
3. don't feel bad if you don't look the way you want. physical appearance is somewhat of an indicator of how healthy one is, but it shouldn't be the primary focus.

disclaimer / why i work out:

before i go further, i must state that in no way am i trying to assert that i'm in great shape, or that i'm strong, or anything like that. at every single gym i've been to, there have been many people stronger than i. plus, i accept that i'll likely always be considered skinny and will weigh less than my recommended healthy body weight. although it's fun for me to see the slight progress that forms, my main joy in the weight room is from the mere pursuit of trying to out-do my former personal lifting records.

ever since i was little, i've had a strange obsession/joy from keeping track of trivial personal records. for example, i remember being 10 and keeping track of how many consecutive basketball lay-ups i could make without missing. even if the task at hand is completely menial and trivial, i've sometimes played this little game. when i was 9, my dad once brought home stilts from a yard sale. i pointlessly kept track of how many consecutive steps i could take on them before getting tired or falling. bizarre, i know.

1. demonstration of muscles quickly depleting:

high school days:

i casually worked out at times but never really had a routine and i didn't know much. i graduated high school at age 17, weighing a measly 130 and bench pressing only 185.

undergraduate days:

every summer i worked out 5 days a week for 12 weeks, but then would completely stop as soon as the school year started. i simply couldn't afford the time commitment. so, any progress i made would be completely gone within 2 months of school starting. that's fine though, cause i enjoyed working out, and i learned a lot. but, it's an odd and interesting situation to really commit yourself to something for 12 weeks even though you know ahead of time that you will not continue beyond week 12 and thus all of your work will be fleeting.

the explicit pics below depict the seemingly pointless game i played every summer.

junior year

age: 20, weight: 143:

that summer, after 12 weeks of gym. i got in decent shape.

age: 21, weight: 153:

2 months later (start of senior year), and woops, back to my old body and 3am studying until i fall asleep! all muscle and strength was gone.

age: 21, weight: 143:

this see-saw happened every summer for 4 years.

graduate school days:

before; completely out of shape. before i started to gym again.

age: 22, weight: 145

then, worked out for almost 2 years straight, starting 9 months before grad school started. i got in okay shape.

age 24, weight: 152:

i then took about 5 months off due to working on master's thesis and vacationing after graduation. so, once again, i completely lost all gains and was back to my old body. notice how i'm wearing the same shirt in this pic and the previous. in the previous, it fits snuggly. then, after no gym for a while, i lost 10 lbs and it's baggy on me.

age 25, weight: 142:

post graduate school:

i then started full-time work and figured i'd have no distractions to keep me from lifting.

after 1.2 years of gym'ing, i got in decent shape.

me awkwardly trying to document any progress i've made.

age 25, weight: 155:

(yes, i had on shorts in this picture.)

then, the weight lifting medical injury forced me to stop weight lifting.

so, after just 4 weeks of no gym, my body had already started to deplete;

age: 26, weight: 145

by week 7 of no gym, all 14 months of progress was gone, and i had lost 12 lbs;

age: 26, weight: 142

the doctors gave me the okay to return to the gym at week 8, and the amount i can now lift is remarkably low. specifically, i can lift no more than what i could before 14 months ago. it's as if the 14 months never happened. how crazy is that? based on atrophy and de-training statistics, it should take me roughly 3 to 6 months to get back my full strength, at best.

after 3 weeks of returning to the gym, i've slowly started to gain back some of the mass;

age: 26, weight: 151

think about it. is there any other area of our body that takes this long to strengthen yet depletes so fast? the brain is much better; it can learn things pretty quickly, takes a while to forget things, and it's really quick on re-learning.

2. healthiness is a lifestyle, not a binge activity:

weight lifting is just for fun, and i view it as just synthetic strength -- as opposed to real -- at best. it's not like the strength that comes from digging ditches and doing construction. plus, being healthy envelopes so much more. i don't claim to be too healthy, but i try:

• gym 4-5 times a week since january 2007*
• haven't had soda since early 2001
• never had coffee
• eat out/delivery only once every 2 weeks to 2 months, or sometimes less frequently
• rarely eat sweets (i.e., chocolate or ice cream maybe once a month, used to be far rarer)
• alcohol rarely more often than every 6 months, although wine a little more often
• fruits often, sometimes i mix 6+ fruits in a 1-liter smoothie on a daily basis
• eat 5-6 tiny meals per day:
  • 7:30 am = cereal + bagel + protein
  • 9 am = banana + yogurt
  • 11:30 am = lunch (i.e., pork chops, pasta, green beans)
  • 3 pm = lunch part II (leftover lunch or a sandwich)
  • 5-7 pm = gym supplements
  • 7:30 pm = dinner
  • 9:30 pm = something light (i.e., chicken nuggets, yogurt, cereal bar) + protein

actually, i don't eat many vegetables, so i guess i don't really eat too healthily. i also probably eat too many starches and carbs, and i drink too much milk.

my biggest hurdles for living healthily are:

• doing cardio
• eating vegetables
• sleeping more

Q: what is your hardest hurdle for living healthier?

permanently deaf in left ear -- the final update and full report

many of you have already heard the news that i'm permanently deaf in my left ear (most likely from weight lifting), but it seems many have not, for i'm asked daily from unaware friends. aside from 2 facebook statuses, this is my first update about it weeks. this will be my final report concerning this whole ear situation. this post is ridiculously long, but it's the end of the book. i won't bring any more attention to it. it aims to answer every question i've been asked. anyone who makes it through the whole post gets a cookie.

i really appreciate everyone's offered help, condolences, prayers, and inquiries during this ordeal.

the table of contents:

• (a) succinctly inform friends of my latest status/summary
• (b) share my thoughts about 'handicap'
• (c) complain about health insurance
• (d) epilogue:
• (d1) current day-to-day
• (d2) summary of all doctor visits, procedures, and diagnoses

---

(a) latest status/summary:

surgery went fine. ear still bleeding due to the surgery, but not too much pain or nausea. i'm fine :-)

• saw 6 mit/harvard doctors:
• condition: sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL)
• affects ~5 out of 100,000 people per year; average age: 43 - 53 yrs old
• roughly less than 2% chance of regaining hearing
• sorted likelihood of causes: weight lifting, virus, unknown other
• had 4 injections into ear drum over 2 week span
• had surgery to help w/ balance (lifted up ear drum, went behind it to patch skin onto oval/round window tears). general anesthesia is amaaazing.
• hearing tests:
• right ear has perfect hearing at 0 decibels.
• left ear can feel ear drum moving before i hear 80 decibel noises.
• when words play at the maximum volume, left ear hears them as forks scratching together at best. it's painful before i hear sounds.
• constant ringing/ocean noise may take 6 months to many years before i'm unaware of it

(b) sharing my thoughts about 'handicap'

permanence?

this experience has forced me to think about the concept of handicap and the idea of permanence, neither of which i've ever been able to fully imagine with any realness. combined together, now that's especially hard to pre-imagine. it might take me a while to fully grasp permanence, as nothing in my life has ever been permanent before. my choice of college, where to live, what career to pursue, etc. all of these choices can be as temporary as one wants.

okay, my situation isn't temporary. sure, it sucks that i can't fully hear and enjoy music like i used to, that loud social environments like restaurants are difficult and exacerbate the ear ringing, and that having conversations with people on my left is hard. but, i can't change that now, so

let's focus on the rest and try to measure what it really means.

what is a handicap?

i believe a handicap can be described as an impair of one's ability within a given domain. for example, think of golf. golf defines a label "handicap" to portray one's weakness/inability. it's not to say that the golfer can't play at all. he can. it's just a metric to suggest how difficult it is for the golfer, given his current skills.

the golfer gets better, his handicap lowers. a handicap is adjustable and is strictly defined by the actual difficulties encountered at the given task. once the golfer becomes perfect, his encountered difficulties approach 0, and he essentially has no handicap.

let's abstract the concept of handicap, while keeping its definition constant.

try to think of something that initially gave you difficulties, something at which you weren't initially great. for me, i started playing baseball when i was 7. initially, i wasn't good at fielding grounders. one could define this as a handicap; my inexperience with baseball was a handicap. but

over the years, i got good. by trial and error, i worked at the objective and i learned.

okay, that example still concerns a sport, so the analogy is clear. but i'm asserting that the definition still holds across all domains, whether is be painting, communicating, reading, or anything else; there's a gradient to assess one's inability/handicap in anything, and it -- either directly or indirectly -- can be improved over time.

well,

what about when people are placed into slightly more seemingly difficult, uncontrollable situations that yield handicaps? for example, what if one looks at one's genes or the family environment in which one is raised. that's a slightly less controllable thing, right?

my parents are amazing, and they did a great job of raising me. my eco-social environment/neighborhood could be viewed as limiting though. i was raised in a lower-middle income area. although i don't live in GA anymore, my parents still do. same place, and it's still home to me, ever since i was 4. that place has a lot of charm to it. it means the world to me, so this is not a diss. but, the neighborhood has some little childish gangs present, graffiti on the fences of several of the suburban houses on the street corners, and education is far from promoted.

for example, growing up, i didn't know what college was. i personally didn't know a single person who had gone; nobody amongst my parents, neighbors, extended family, friends of family, etc had gone. i love my uncles and aunts, and it's sad that many of them are essentially illiterate. some quit school in 3rd grade. the point is, talk of college didn't exist. when i was in 11th grade, i would often hear fellow students talking about college as if it's the default, next step... so i figured i should go. it seemed important.

i was never inundated with information or advice regarding education. i wasn't a great high school student either, merely an A/B student who barely graduated in the top 30% of my class. i didn't really have any lifelines for the college admission process. it's not my parent's fault, i mean, that whole domain was new to them too. i distinctly remember having 2 resources for applying to colleges:

• bought the princeton list of colleges from barnes and noble. looked through every page to find out which schools to apply to.
• heard of my high school's valedictorian getting rejected from some school named MIT but into harvard (i knew of
  harvard, but MIT was vaguely familiar to me.) this served as the upper-bound for my concept of education.

so, one could say i was pretty unprepared and that i had somewhat of a handicap compared to other kids who were entering post-high-school education. i realize many kids had it worse, yet many were better prepared than i, as they were

experienced with SAT prep classes, tutors, writing help, and advice from adults.

this seeming handicap was one where i could do little to affect my starting point, but i did everything i could to minimize and overcome any obstacles to get to where i wanted. honestly, i never viewed my lack of college preparation as any handicap or anything; i had what i had, and it was merely time to play the game with the cards at hand.

i never felt like i was at a disadvantage amongst my college peers. upon starting college, i quickly realized everyone came from different walks of life, was filled with different preparations, and was equipped with different intelligences. this was obvious. i knew it would do me little good to concern myself with what AP classes so-and-so took in high school. it didn't matter. getting wrapped up with others' handicaps or lack thereof would be completely silly, and it would do me no good towards doing well on my upcoming chemistry test. i focused on the positive, didn't worry about the stuff i couldn't control, and i did everything i could to help me reach my dreams via the pursuit of education.

so what's my point? my point is that our seeming handicaps are only handicaps if we let them be. i assert that our biggest handicaps are merely our self-imposed ones, ones that are merely the consequence of our lack of pro-activity towards actualizing what we want. it's way too easy to not do something. it's the default to not act. and it's this lack of actions, proactive measures, planning, and exploring that creates handicaps.

if we choose to be a victim to something, then sure, we will be, but that doesn't have to be the case. even in situations where it seems like something is physically impossible or out of our control, it doesn't have to be. for example, have you ever seen paralympians compete at the olympics? people who are physically "disabled" can run, swim, and outperform non-disabled humans beyond belief. what then is their handicap? in what way are they handicapped? it takes them longer to get dressed? enjoying a stroll through town is slightly more tedious? but what grand effect does that really amount to? not much at all. not only are they able to experience the full spectrum of worldly experiences, but they are able to exercise their so-called disabled limbs in a way to reach elevated states of experiences and elation far beyond what the average non-paralyzed humans will ever experience. imagine how good it feels for them to sprint, train for thousands of hours, compete, and win. a non-paralyzed couch potato will never know those feelings.

clearly it's not what you have, but what you choose to do with it. clearly there are always other routes, directions, and means to allow one to experience and reach whatever he wants.

in the grand scheme of things, my so-called handicap is nothing. sure, as i mentioned, it limits some social interactions and forces me to seek alternatives at times, such as positioning myself to the left to whomever i'm talking. the constant ringing is really annoying at times, and my balance system is not yet 100%. but that's it. if i think about the happiest moments or eras of my life, needing dual hearing was completely unnecessary for those moments to ensue. i still have every other physical and mental faculty in good shape. i have vision, perfect hearing in my right ear, smell, taste, and touch. i am well-equipped, and there's no reason for me to let my left-ear deafness negatively affect me in any way. anything to the contrary would be nothing short of silly and a sad, unnecessary sacrifice of potential.

(c) health insurance:

this post is becoming long enough, and i don't want to get started on how horrible the whole insurance bureaucracy along the way has been. basically, this ear experience has shown me a glimpse as to how horribly inefficient, moronic, and destructive healthcare is in america.

in one example, my primary care doctor (PCP) wrote a referral for me to see an MIT ENT specialist. earliest appointment was 3 weeks away. so, PCP also wrote me a referral to see a sooner Harvard MEEI ENT specialist, which the health insurance is refusing to pay for. this is ridiculous because my situation was time sensitive -- could not wait 3 weeks to see the MIT person -- and even when i did see the MIT person 3 weeks later, they immediately said

they have no clue about my case and that i did the right thing by seeing an MEEI ENT specialist earlier. so, despite all of the doctors' requests and confirmation of my doing the right thing, the silly insurance group is saying, 'nah, you should have done things in this orderly fashion... even though it makes no sense and is against what the doctors recommended.' haha, so messed up.

(d) epilogue:

(d1) day-to-day:

basically, it's like wearing noise-cancelling headphones only on 1 ear, while having to hear the vuvuzelas of the world cup... just the soccer game never ends. sometimes the vuvuzelas are distractingly loud, other times you can tune them out for about 10 minutes.

how deaf is deaf?

i've had two full-scope audiogram tests (aka hearing tests). my right is exceptionally good -- well above average. right ear can detect audio at 0 decibals, pretty much across the full, typical frequency range. my left ear can only begin to hear noises at 80-90 db, and when it does, it's distorted. this falls within the most severe category of hearing loss, called "profound" hearing loss. also, i'm not even testable on the word recognition test because when i finally do hear words at 90 db (instead of the normal 30 db volume), i don't hear words. instead, the words sound like forks scratching together. because the issues lie within the inner ear, or somewhere even before then, things like hearing aids and surgery cannot restore hearing.

ringing:

so, in short, i haven't had hearing in my left ear since june 4. the most annoying part is not only being able to hear nothing out of the left ear, but the constant loud ringing/ocean noise that is generated within the left's inner ear. every once in a while, a bus or subway train or something will make a noise loud enough for my left ear to relay the fork-scratching-together sound. that's not too much fun. in fact, i can feel my eardrum moving before i can hear anything. it's very weird. i'm getting better at blocking out the constant ringing, though. doctors say it may never go away, but that some people can get used to it after 1-20 years. i've found that when i'm thinking hard about something, i'm completely unaware of it. haha, so maybe this will encourage me to think deeply more often.

balance:

my balance is getting better, too, as i can do a quick walk and not really get jarred or dizzy. only turning the head in certain ways does it. well, sometimes i forget and i turn around quickly to look behind me. i almost fall over then, lol.

(d2) quick summary of everything that went down:

• june 3 - worked out hard in gym at night. ears got clogged, later ringing.
• june 4 @ 5am - woke up w/ "extreme vertigo"; vomited 30+ times. no hearing in left ear. went to harvard's MGH ER. stayed 36 hours.

doctor #1, diagnoses: probable labrynthitis, 100% chance of regaining hearing in a few days (wrong).

• june 8 - saw primary care doctor (PCP).

doctor #2, diagnoses: don't know, could be from weight lifting or viral. not too concerned about hearing. you should see an ENT specialist at MIT. (earliest appointment in 3 weeks).

• june 10 - MRI test. results good. no brain tumors.
• june 11 - started 10-day prescription of prednisone, to fight any possible viral damage.
• june 15 - went to Harvard's Mass. Eye and Ear Infirmary's ER (aka MEEI ER).

doctor #3, diagnoses: don't know, no way to tell. see a follow-up expert, Dr. Rauch, here in a few weeks. 0% chance of regaining hearing.

• june 20 - went to MEEI ENT doctor.

doctor #4, diagnosis: probably from weight lifting. 5-10% chance of regaining hearing?

• june 22 - went to the general MIT ENT.

doctor #5, diagnosis: no idea. less than 5% chance of regaining hearing

• june 25 - went to MEEI's expert Dr. Rauch. ear injection #1, high hopes of it doing any good.

doctor #6, diagnosis: maybe weight lifting, maybe viral, some chance that it's something more random. less than 5% chance of regaining hearing.

• june 29 - MEEI's Dr. Rauch. ear injection #2
• july 2 - MEEI's Dr. Rauch. ear injection #3
• july 6 - MEEI's Dr. Rauch. final ear injection #4
• july 7, my birthday - MEEI's Dr. Rauch. ear surgery, to patch any possible tears in my oval and round window. shouldn't have any effect on hearing.

in summary, the 2 most popular suspected causes are:

• (1) weight lifting:

if this is the cause, well, 1 or more of the following 3 things could have gone wrong:

(1) perilymph fistula (aka, tear in the oval and/or round window);

(2) tear in the membrane that has distinct sodium and potassium channels;

(3) blod clot

the body tries to repair itself if any of these happen, but there are no guarantees. further, when damage is done to the hair cells from the corti, then there's no going back. permanent damage is done. only (1) perilymph fistula has a surgical option, and that option can't really bring back hearing. rather, it patches any possible tears to prevent further hair cell damage and balance issues. there's no way to know if any of these 3 things occurred. well, at best you can observe if (1) perilymph fistula occurred by doing exploratory surgery. the others are not observable by any tools.

• (2) viral infection:

if this is the cause, the canonical, default treatment is prednisone to kill the virus, keep alive any semi-dead corti hair cells, and to alleviate inflammation. it only helps roughly 20% of people, but it's been the default treatment since a semi-good paper was published in 1980. alternatively, some docs give a different type of corticosteroid directly through the ear drum. same purpose, roughly same efficacy rate, but without the possibly crazy side-effects of prednisone entering the bloodstream.

i had both treatments. first prednisone, then later 4 ear injections.

regardless of if it's from weight lifting or a virus, it's likely that the damage is irreversible. nonetheless, i opted for the most pro-active steps and have done everything possible: i did both the surgery and the injections, in hopes of preventing any further damage to hair cells.

the end. if you made it all the way through, congrats. if you are later interested in hearing any possible updates or talking w/ me about any of this, that's fine. i'm open to that. i just meant that this writing is the last publicly broadcasted spiel that i'll write about it, and that i won't bring attention to it or whine about it anymore.

student loans: my trick on how to pay them off faster

regarding my loans, i saved roughly $250 within a 12-month span. you can too.

short version:

i wrote a little java program that uses simulated annealing to find the near-optimal solution of how to distribute your monthly loan payment amongst your various loans every month, while minimizing the amount of accrued interest.

click here to download my program, InterestOptimizer.zip

the above .zip file contains 3

files:

• InterestOptimizer.java -- the code
• InterestOptimizerTest.java -- runs the code
• input.txt -- you can edit this with your loan information and name the file whatever you want, just pass it into the InterestOptimizerTest program

for example, run it from a command prompt:

>> java InterestOptimizerTest input.txt

long version:

if you have many loans which total a lot of money, you may be waisting 100s of dollars merely by incorrectly paying the wrong amounts towards each loan. the point of this writing is to help you save money.

obviously, one can save/waste a lot of money depending on when and how much they pay off their loans. this isn't about that. say you have 6 loans and $1,000 you wish to pay towards them. this writing is about how to apply your $1,000 towards the 6 individual loans in the best possible way so that you aren't wasting money. interest is a killer. below, i mention my approaches towards minimizing the interest, and i provide my actual student loans as an example:

upon graduating from ucla last year, my student loans totaled roughly $78,000. it's been 13 months since i've graduated, and i've gotten them down to $27,000. here are my 6 outstanding loans:

loan name, balance, APR, minimum monthly payment

-------------------------

sallie mae 1, $13472.75, 2.58%, $201.03

sallie mae 2, $1544.54, 7.25%, $214.74

sallie mae 3, $5032.22, 6.8%, $221.29

doe 1, $521.06, 8.5%, $52.61

doe 2, $2378.14, 6.8%, $59.50

ecsi, $4495.36, 5.0%, $60.46

for the rest of this article, let's be consistent and say that i pay $2,000 each month.

idea #1 - naive approach based on distribution of annual interest:

this is what i had been doing the whole time. when i had to start paying back my school loans, i didn't give it much thought as to how i would determine how much to spend towards each. i just quickly thought, 'i'll just pay some amount that is proportional to how damaging the interest is.' i now regret not thinking about it more.

the amount i was paying towards each loan was merely determined by its contribution towards my total annual interest across all loans:

loan i's payment := $2,000 * (loan i's yearly interest / total yearly interest across all loans)

idea #2 - brainstorming + linear/non-linear programming:

after filing my taxes, i noticed i paid a lot towards loan interest this past year. so, while brushing my teeth in the morning, i thought to myself that my current method (idea #1) is probably much worse than what i imagined. how can i find the optimal solution? first thing that popped into my mind was to search the solution space by using a genetic algorithm, but by the time i finished brushing my teeth, i had convinced myself that the sheer thought of such was complete overkill, laughable, and non-optimal, and clearly not the best approach.

throughout the day, i thought about other approaches:

linear/non-linear programming:

the idea of using linear programming came to mind. the format would be:

minimize C^T * x || sum(x) = b, where

• C is a vector of known coefficients that represent the interest for each loan
• x is a vector we are solving for, which represents how much to spend on each loan
• b represents how much we are willing to spend in a given month (i.e., $2,000)

in other words, we want an equation for our total interest across a given time period (1 month), and we want to minimize it. but unfortunately, we can't really form a linear equation for it. for example, the interest for one loan would be:

loan i's interest = (loan_i's_original_balance - how_much_to_pay_towards_loan_i) * (1 + APR/365.25)^30

we are minimizing the sum of this value across all loans.

that exponent makes it non-linear. moreover, i'm not sure how to solve it using non-linear programming either, as we no longer have a clean coefficient. we don't have an Ax = b; we have f(x) = b

maybe there's some way to use the simplex algorithm for this, but i wasn't interested in finding out. seems messy.

idea #3 - simulated annealing:

well, when all else fails, use simulated annealing, right? haha. simulated annealing is a pretty simple, common AI approach that seeks to find an optimal solution within a large search space.

i implemented it in a little java program.

basically, it:

• initially assigns random payment amounts towards each loan, while meeting the constraints of the minimum and maximum payment for each loan.
• it then calculates the total monthly interest across all loans.
• then, for however many epochs i care to run my algorithm, it will:
  
  
  
  • randomly decide to increase or decrease a to-be-selected loan,
  • then the loan it chooses to adjust is probabilistically chosen, based on each loan's contribution towards the total amount of interest across all loans.
  • the amount that it perturbs the loans is randomly chosen, too.
  • if the new payment amounts yield a lower interest, let's save these payments as the current state and continue
  • if the new payment amounts yield a higher interest, let's probabilistically save these payments as the current state and continue (this is to help avoid local minimums)
  • saves the best payment distribution that we encounter

the only tricky part was ensuring that the perturbing of the payment amounts still satisfied all of the constraints across every loan. a lot of error-checking tedium.

the program will display how much to pay towards each loan for every month, and it'll produce a summary that tells you how much you paid total, and how much went towards interest.

you can also experiment with choosing different monthly payment amounts and see how much it affects your lifetime interest amount. for example, my program showed me that:

• paying $2k/mo will take 13 months; i'll accrue ~$500 of interest.

OR

• paying only $1k/mo will take 26 months; i'll accrue ~$1,000 of interest

so, if i take a bullet of paying a measly extra $500 in lifetime interest, i'll gain the

freedom of having $1k extra of non-loan money each month for the next 26 months! it's definitely worth it.

solution:

click here to download my program, InterestOptimizer.zip

the above .zip file contains 3

files:

• InterestOptimizer.java -- the code
• InterestOptimizerTest.java -- runs the code
• input.txt -- you can edit this with your loan information and name the file whatever you want, just pass it into the InterestOptimizerTest program

for example, run it from a command prompt:

>> java InterestOptimizerTest input.txt

future work:

my current solution attempts to minimize the accrued interest, but it only does so over each upcoming month. basically, it works in a month-to-month basis until all loans are gone, which is not guaranteed to be the optimal, global solution, since it's not looking at the bigger picture across the lifetime of all the loans. the optimal solution would need to apply random amounts to all loans across every month of its lifetime, then make shifts both (1) between the various loans and (2) from month-to-month. this would give it a global picture to search within.

i suspect the improvement would be relatively negligible. in my case, i'm guessing that it would save me no more than $20. so, i don't plan to add this improvement. it's not worth it, but yea, i recognize it as an area of improvement.

ideas?

if anyone has any ideas for a faster or more optimal solution, please let me know. i'm curious to hear suggestions.

how i lost my hearing

for the short version, scroll to the very bottom of post.

long version:

the point of this entry is not to seem bold, or to render sympathy, or anything like that. rather, a lot of people have wondered what happened to me lately, so this writing aims to:

(a) tell the whole story so i don't have to repeat myself tons of times

(b) educate people with random tidbits about inner ear problems

(c) bring attention to how amazing the human body is

(a) how it went down

thursday (june 3), i worked out at the gym after work, like always. it was triceps/biceps/shoulders day, and i pushed hard on the clean & presses and shoulder presses, setting new personal records. at the end of my workout, my ears felt very stopped up and weird. no pain, just weirdness. i drove home. arrived by 8pm. by 11pm, my ears started to ring. they both just felt weird. no pain. i went to bed at midnight.

friday morning (june 4), 5 a.m., i woke up for no reason and the room was spinning uncontrollably. you've felt dizziness before. imagine what dizziness feels like. the room spins a little, and it's kind of silly. well, this was 10x more than that. i was half asleep, and out of nowhere it appeared that the room was moving upwards and over very fast. it was as if i were going to fall out bed, even though i was lying down. this is "extreme vertigo."

luckily, sheley was staying over -- sleeping in the living room -- because she originally had a flight at 8am and i was going to drive her to the airport. i woke her up, saying "sheley. something's not right!" i felt very nauseous and couldn't even stand up on my own, much less walk to the bathroom. with sheley's help, i made it. i vomited many times.

harvard's hospital, ranked top 5 in the nation, is literally 1 street away from my apartment. yet, i couldn't even make it there on my own. sheley to the rescue! she drove me. i was admitted to the ER and vomited many times over the next few hours. having received little sleep, i wanted to sleep. however, closing my eyes or reclining back even a few inches made me really nauseous.

friday 3pm: i was moved from the ER to an observation room. they continued to pump fluids into me through an IV. i was told that i vomited many more times between 3pm and 11pm. i have no memory during this 8 hour span, and i was asleep during most of it.

saturday (june 5) 4pm: i was released from the observation room. i was a little dizzy but stable. still no hearing in left ear. sheley was a complete lifesaver. if it weren't for her, things would have been very ugly. just for me, she even cancelled her flight home to see a wedding of an immediate family member. now that's love! she's so great.

sunday (june 6) - today (june 12): i still feel the same. i can walk on my own pretty well, but any quick head movements or turning takes a second or two for things to register. i have zero hearing in my left hear, and it's been ringing for 1 week straight.

what's it like to only hear out of 1 ear?

imagine wearing noise-cancellation headphones only on 1 ear. plus, the headphones constantly emit a high-pitched ringing. imagine wearing these headphones for over 1 week straight. that's the best i can describe it.

loud places with many people (i.e., subway and cafeterias) seem to really do a number on me. imagine: people to your left, who are out of sight, make noises. the noises bounce of walls to your right and enter your right ear. so, you hear the noises coming from your right, but clearly nobody over there is making the noises. plus, you are unfamiliar w/ their voice, so your vision and all gets even more confused. now imagine this happening all around you, with dozens or hundreds of people all talking at once. lol, it's really pretty trippy. it drowns out and overwhelms my right ear so much that everything gets muddled and it's really draining. pretty wild stuff!

i've realized how much of our vestibular/vision/hearing systems that we really take for granted. it's amazing how much is being processed by our bodies all the time.

(b) researching the cause, thanks to doctors and the internet

i initially experienced "extreme vertigo" -- the intense feeling of everything spinning. but, the vertigo itself was not the problem; it was merely the result of the underlying issue. many (17-42%) of people who report vertigo, have it due to something called benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) [1][2].

BPPV:

basically, everyone's inner ear has a collection of calcium crystals that hang out within the 'utricle' (see above pic). but, it's possible for these crystals to randomly migrate to the semi-circular canals (the big looping things in above pic). when this happens, crap goes wrong (aka, you get sessions of vertigo).

but wait, what would cause this to happen? BPPV is considered idiopathic, meaning there is often not a clear cause; it just happens. it usually happens in older people, usually in women. it usually lasts for short periods, but can persists over years. oh crap. but there are solutions to it.

the canonical method to diagnose BPPV is to use a voodoo-looking technique called 'dix-hallpike.' basically, the patient tilts the head in certain ways, lies back, rotates head, sits up, and does silly things like this. there are many variations of this. it makes the patient dizzy, but one can look at the patient's eyes to conclude if it's BPPV or not. very interesting: it the patient's eyes spin downwards, it may often suggest that a brain lesion exists, rather than BPPV!

epley manuever, another silly method similar to dix-hallpike, is often used to treat it. how crazy is that? merely turning the head in certain directions can re-adjust the crystals in your inner ear and fix your balance and everything.

the doctors found a liquid buildup/pressure behind my left inner ear. BPPV doesn't necessarily include this. also, my prolonged hearing loss is not too characteristic of BPPV.

let's rule out BPPV.

so, what's causing my inner ear problem? there are a few typical causes:

• brain lesion(s)
• meniere's disease
• labyrinthitis

brain lesions: i didn't have any head injury, but having 8th cranial nerve damage would yield the same exact symptoms as i'm exhibiting (i.e., no hearing in 1 ear, vestibular system messed up). i got an MRI and no tumors were found:

whew! yet, it doesn't mean that nerve damage couldn't exist. we don't know. so, the doctor prescribed a small dosage of prednisone for anti-inflammatory reasons, just in case.

meniere's disease: i might have this. it includes everything i have, including the fluid build-up. it's also idiopathic -- no clear cause -- but the only thing that suggests that it might not be this is that i haven't had migraines, as they often occur within those with meniere's.

labyrinthitis: the doctors listed this as the probable cause. seems about right, and i really hope this is what it is. often, labyrinthitis is cause by a virus in the inner ear -- as opposed to a bacteria -- and goes away within 2-6 weeks, but can take months or years. hearing is gone until it goes away. rarely, permanent hearing damage occurs. [3]. viral labyrinthitis may re-occur anytime, maybe several years later, but if it does, it's likely actually just meniere's disease. they are very similar.

so, what can/should i do in the meantime?

• don't drive
• don't do anything that requires balance beyond walking
• take over-the-counter medicine to help de-congest me.
• take over-the-country motion sickness medicine
• take prescribed predisone for 10 days to help w/ possible inflammation
• avoid loud, crowded places

oh, i forgot to mention that the MRI results show that my sinuses had thick lining, which further suggests that it's either labyrinthitis or meniere's, as opposed to my straining too hard in the gym and causing a hole in a membrane. whew, i hope that's true.

(c) the human body:

how crazy is it that such a very tiny area within the inner ear can completely wipe someone out and make them unable to stand up? sure, parts within the brain are even more sensitive with respect to vitality per volume. it's interesting how vital every part of the body is, and that luckily, most of our body is very resilient and good at automatically rebuilding itself. think about how insane that is.

short version:

over a week ago, i woke up to the world violently spinning. vomited tons, and i haven't had hearing in left ear since. it's hopefully labyrnthitis, a virus in the inner ear, and will go away in a few weeks and maybe never come back again?

[1] Bhattacharyya N, Baugh RF, Orvidas L et al. (2008). "Clinical practice guideline: benign paroxysmal positional vertigo"

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benign_paroxysmal_positional_vertigo

[3] http://www.dizziness-and-balance.com/disorders/unilat/vneurit.html

google is so nice

last week or so, i casually posted my "top 100" pics on picasa web albums, which i rarely use. to my surprise, one night i started receiving tons of foreign language comments on my pics. nobody even knows about my picasa web albums, so i figured this must be spam. when i woke up the next morning, i had ~30 more comments/email notifications, most of which were in foreign languages. "what in the world is going on here?" i then noticed that 2 of my pics made google picasa web's main page, amongst the thumbnail images!

i'm not sure how long it'll be featured, but it's been about 5 days so far. check it out: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/explore# we all know that google gets tons of web traffic. well, it's still been a wake-up call to me as to how much they really get; my featured pic(s) is usually just 1 of the 12. yet, within 5 days my 100 picture have received roughly 250,000 views, with the highest pics receiving over 20,000 views. how crazy is that!

i know my pics aren't phenomenal or anything, but it's still been cool to see tons of strangers from all of the world say "nice picture!" in so many different languages.

KFC's double down!

in case you haven't seen it, KFC has released a double down sandwich: http://www.kfc.com/doubledown/

instead of bread, they use chicken as the outer layers. sheley and i whimsically stopped at a KFC/taco bell on our drive home recently, so of course i had to try it. it was pretty darn good!

it clearly looks fattening and overboard, i know. so, i feel obligated to defend myself, or it, or something, heh:

1. it's actually only 540 calories (although about half of your RDA of fat).
2. my mint.com report shows that i've only eaten fast food 5 times in the last 4 months, all at subway for a grand total of $25.
3. i've eaten-out/ordered-in 5 times during the last month.
4. all other meals (aside from some lunches at work) were cooked at home.

anyway, i recommend the double down! or, if you're feeling in even more courageous or in need of clogging arteries, ask for a quadruple down.

crazy recruiter

lately i've been randomly contacted by recruiters from facebook, google, etc. this is usually flattering, but i explain to them that i'm happily employed with MIT lincoln laboratory. yesterday though, i definitely encountered the oddest recruiter.

at 7:40pm, my phone rang. the guy on the other end of the phone immediately spoke in such a casual tone that it suggested that he already knew me. he almost sounded like he was joking, and his accent was like a surfer's mixed with a southern guy trying to act ghetto.

chris: hello?

guy: hey, hows it going, man?

chris: fine. um, who is this? (wondering if i know him)

guy: my name is ___, i'm with calvin group. i have an exciting opportunity to share with you.

chris: wait, what's calvin group?

guy: calvin group is your life, man!

(chris pauses)

guy: haha, jk. nah, check it. calvin group is a recruiting agency out in LA, and i got an exciting opening to share with ya. it's for a senior python programmer workin with django out in el segundo.

chris: ah, sorry, i'm happily employed with MIT lincoln lab out in boston.

guy: ah, good ole 'MIT', eh? (he prounded it MIT as in a glove, not the initials).

chris: heh, yea.

guy: you learnin to count cards and stuff like that?

chris: what? (i didn't hear him clearly)

guy: you learnin to count cards and stuff?

chris: haha, something like that (nothing like that)

guy: that's coo, that's coo

(at this point, i'm still wondering if it's an old friend just joking with me the whole time).

chris: wait, how did you get my info?

guy: i dunno man. i just got an old copy of your resume from 2007. the last job you listed is with google in santa monica.

chris: hmm, maybe someone forwarded it from a ucla career fair?

guy: ha, no idea man. well, thanks for your time. keep on truckin' man.

(he didn't say the last sentence, but it was something like that).

how strange. his tone definitely reminded me of southern california and the beach lifestyle. haha.