Left Center Right

Left Center Right is a fun game of chance where you roll dice on your turn, and the roll determines whether you get to keep what you're holding, or pass to the left, right, or center.  The game comes with plastic "chips", but we like to play with tootsie rolls to make things a little more interesting.  The last person with tootsie rolls wins, and gets to take everything from the center too.

I was curious how the game would play out over multiple rounds, since it varied greatly from match to match, so I created a simulation that would recreate a full game with six players.  Then I had it play 50,000 games, and it kept track of how many rolls it took to complete the game, and which player won the game.  Player 1 always started the game, and play went in order (Player 1, Player 2, Player 3, etc.)

Here's the distribution of rolls required to complete each game:

So if you're hoping for a quick game there's a slim chance you'll finish in 25 rolls or less, you're more likely to take 60 rolls, and it's possible you're in for the long haul of 190 rolls!

Here's the distribution of winning players from each game:

I was expecting a more even distribution here, so this came as a surprise.  It turns out if you really want to win then you should make sure not to be among the first players in the round.  Apparently there may be some strategy involved in this game of chance after all.

A Little Slice of Home

It's simple, yet true-to-life.  I love it.  Thanks Owen.

15 in '15!

I'm not much of a resolution maker.  I don't make serious resolutions when the new year rolls around.  Sometimes I'll mention a casual goal to someone, but I never have real intentions of reaching said goal.  However, this past new year all that changed.

In a moment of optimism around Christmas I determined it was time for some self improvement, and decided that as we rang in the new year I would set out to lose some weight.  In general I like my size, but over the past ten years I've been on a steady climb in the weight department, and I wanted to see if that weight was a permanent addition or if it could come off.  And so, my "15 (pounds) in '15" personal challenge was born.

I don't have a lot of extra time for exercise, so I decided to focus on a diet plan that would promote weight change.  I opted for a low carb approach, with some personal tweaks.  The rules were not hard and fast, more of guidelines really, but here's what I set as my diet parameters:

• 30 grams of net carbs per day (net carbs meaning that when you look at a food label you can subtract the fiber grams from the carbohydrate grams to arrive at a net carbs value for a serving of that food)
• All the fruits and vegetables I wanted (even though some low carb diets eliminate many fruits and vegetables because of their high carbohydrate contents)
• Only water to drink (no soda, juice, milk, etc.)
• No dairy products (milk, cheese, yogurt, sour cream, etc. although I didn't try to eliminate milk-containing recipes or products, just stand-alone dairy items)
• No desserts

This took some adjustments at first.  It was particularly difficult to figure out what to take to work everyday, since I'm accustomed to packing a breakfast and lunch.  Once I figured out some good options and got into a rotation this became easier.  Typically I would eat:

Breakfast

• a hard boiled egg
• a nut/chocolate protein bar (9 grams of carbs)

Lunch

• Option 1: celery sticks and tuna salad (tuna+mayonnaise)
• Option 2: tuna wraps (tuna salad on romaine lettuce)
• Option 3: turkey wraps (sliced turkey on romaine lettuce)
• Option 4: salad (lettuce, cubed ham, olives, italian dressing)
• Option 5: broccoli salad (broccoli, craisins, nuts, bacon, dressing [mayo+sugar+vinegar])
• Side: grape tomatoes, mixed nuts

Dinner varied greatly day-to-day.  Sometimes I really broke the carbs "budget" for the day as the rest of the family would have a carb-heavy meal.  Most of the time I managed to keep my carb portions small, and filled my plate with meat (salmon, chicken, ground beef, hot dogs) and vegetables.  I never ate any bread  (lettuce "buns" for me with hamburgers and hot dogs).  Sometimes it took some creativity to find things to eat, but I definitely never went hungry.  I just had to concentrate more on what I was eating than I normally do.  And that was probably a good thing.

So did it work?  Actually, very well!  Here's a plot of my progress:

As you can see, the results were almost immediate.  I originally intended to stick to the diet for three months, but when the progress took off so quickly I managed to reach my goal by the end of February and decided to call it good after two months.

I've included my Fitbit step count as proof that I really wasn't doing a significant amount of exercise over that period.

And has the weight stayed off?  I've waited to record this because I wanted to see if the results were permanent.  It's now almost four months later and I'd say that the fluctuations in the graph are probably attributable to measurement error and normal weight changes.  I definitely didn't spike back up when I went off the diet.

I should note that I did stick with my new low carb breakfast and lunch options, at least for work days.  Weekends I'm back to carb-heavy options most of the time.  And I don't have restrictions on what I eat for dinner, but I do still drink water most of the time.  So there have been some longer term changes in my diet.

Would this work for everyone?  I don't know.  I've had a couple of friends try it, and their results have not been so dramatic.  Maybe some dietary variations are more important than others, or there are other factors we haven't considered.  In any case, I think it's worth a try.  It definitely worked for me, and now I'm a bonafide resolution keeper!

Horrorstör

I just finished Horrostör by Grady Hendrix.  I'm not typically one to pick up a scary story, and Christmas break is not normally the time I'd expect to find myself engrossed in something this creepy.  I heard about Horrostör back in October, but my library hold just got to the top of the queue, so here we are.

A few years ago I tried another scary read - House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.  It was a lot of fun, but ultimately turned out to be too much for me and I had to give it up before I got to the end.  I'm still wondering how it turned out.  The problem was the context of the story, creepy crazy things happening in someone's home.  That gets in my head, and at the time we had a new baby that needed lots of middle-of-the-night attention.  There I was, alone in the dark, and freaking myself out.

The same thing happened even more years ago when I watched the movie Signs.  I'm a big fan of M. Night Shyamalan's early films, and Signs is no exception.  I really enjoyed it, and the ending was a great fulfillment of the whole movie.  I'm glad I didn't give up halfway through, but maybe I should have.  At that time we also had a new baby, and back then I was also spending lots of alone time, by myself, in the dark.  After Signs I was wound up for days thinking every shadow or creak was one of those creepy aliens lurking about the house.

As you may recall, the whole Signs plot is centered around this one family's home, and how the alien invasion gets personal when they have to stand their ground where they live.

Some time later I saw Cloverfield when it first came out, another alien invasion story, and you know what?  I loved it.  It was scary and exciting and new and I really enjoyed it.  But the best part about it was that I didn't "take it home" with me.  I slept like a baby after seeing it that night, and never gave it a second thought.  Why?  Because the alien invader is huge, and it's set in the big city.

Horrostör did the same thing for me, turning the haunted house genre into something I can enjoy because the story is set in a furniture store.  Brilliant!  It was scary.  It was disturbing.  And it was fun.  But best of all, at the end of the day it doesn't stick with me to the point that it makes my home an uncomfortable place to be.  Even in the middle of the night, up in the dark with yet another baby.  I suppose if I ever find myself at Ikea during a power outage I may have end up regretting my choice, but I'll take that chance.

Thanks Grady.

The Lego Movie: A Review

'Nuff said.

The Last Policeman

The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters, is a fun read.  If you enjoy thinking about the end of the world, that is.  If you don't then it's really more of a depressing read.  But it has its bright spots, even so.

Winters' protagonist is an earnest, newly promoted detective named Hank Palace.  The end times are upon us and the whole world is aware because humanity is facing the impending arrival of an extinction-level cosmic collision.  For some reason Hank seems to be the last person left trying to hold together civilization as things progressively fall apart.

There is a mystery at the heart of the novel, and watching it unfold gives the reader a reason to stick with the story.  More intriguing to me was the observations of the characters about how the world had descended into disarray as society unravels and individuals deal with their mortality staring them in the face.

Hank is the ultimate Boy Scout as he pursues truth and justice against all odds, the whole world either turned against him or profoundly apathetic to his cause.  His perseverance is reassuring, that even against impossible odds some people will still do the Right Thing.

I've been intrigued with this sort of doomsday scenario ever since we got the double cinematic whammy of Armageddon and Deep Impact in 1998.  The idea that a large space-borne object could be our undoing seems to live more prominently in our collective consciousness now, as evidenced by efforts to track and catalog transient objects in and around our solar system, and to assign them collision probabilities when they're found.

I find this type of event a likely candidate to fulfill this prophecy from the book of Matthew, chapter 24, verse 30:

And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

In the story one of the characters tells Hank that waiting for the asteroid to arrive, with the collision months away as it crosses the vastness of space, has left her overwrought by the "unbearable imminence" of the thing.  If we ever find ourselves in a similar situation I'll be processing everything in the context of Matthew 24, and while there may be some trepidation about the future I'd be inclined to see the whole thing as part of a larger plan instead of just Earth losing a high-stakes game of chance.  I would be looking forward to it, although I'm sure that navigating the pre-collision disintegration of the world would present its own challenges.

That's what I liked most about this book.  It painted a plausible picture of how that disintegration might proceed.  It's a good reminder that looking forward to the last days may be a fun pastime, but there will undoubtedly be more than a few bumps in the road.  It will come when it's time.  Best to enjoy the blessing of the moment, and not hurry along the challenges of the future in whatever form they'll arrive.

Gratitude and Thanksgiving

Presented in Sacrament Meeting on Sunday, November 18, 2012:

Every year, early in November, we have a Family Home Evening set aside to make “thankful turkeys”.  We sit down together and everyone gets a stack of paper feathers.  We then write down things that we are thankful for on the feathers, and glue them to paper turkeys.  Sometimes it’s hard to get going at first, and some of the youngest family members need a little prompting, but before long we have a wall full of turkeys reminding us of many things we’re thankful for.

Our thankful turkeys cover a wide range of topics.  Some of us stick to the basics, things like food, water, and clothes.  We remember the gift of the world we live in with feathers for the earth and the sun.  We recognize the blessings of being a family with feathers listing mom, dad, brothers, and sister.

Making our turkeys close to Halloween this year meant that Lincoln had to have a feather for candy, something he had recently been enjoying in great quantities.  He also had a feather for Husky, his favorite stuffed dog.

Like I said, when we first start brainstorming what to put on our turkeys it can be a challenge, but when you start to really ponder all of the blessings in your life - and recognize that they come to us as tender mercies from a loving Heavenly Father - suddenly the task changes from trying to come up with a few things you can list.  Instead, you have to prioritize and sort out all of the possibilities and decide which ones get a place of honor on the wall through the month of November.

When I get into this mindset, I would say that I can focus on my life through a lens of gratitude.  It becomes easy to recognize blessings both big and small.  It reminds me of King Benjamin’s sermon to the Nephites, when he reminded them that God, “...who has created [us] from the beginning, and is preserving [us] from day to day, by lending [us] breath, that [we] may live and move and do according to [our] own will, and even supporting [us] from one moment to another …”  He calls us unprofitable servants, given more than we could ever hope to repay.

Fortunately, Heavenly Father doesn’t ask us for repayment.  He does ask us to keep His commandments, and He expects us to remember Him and His love for us.  In Doctrine and Covenants, Section 59, we read:

And in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things, and obey not his commandments.

As in all our dealings with Heavenly Father, we are not coerced to thank Him or recognize His role in our lives.  It is our opportunity to cultivate and demonstrate our gratitude, through prayer and through service.

Recall the day the Savior was traveling and entered a village when ten lepers called out to him from a distance: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”

And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed.

And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God,

And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan.

And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine?

There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger.

The scriptures do not recount what became of the other nine lepers, but I suspect that their healing was no less complete or lasting than the Samaritan who returned to thank the Savior.  I think it’s surprising that having just asked for His help, and immediately receiving it, there were not more expressions of gratitude from this group.  Contrast this situation with the world we live in today, filled with people, all benefiting from the blessings of our Heavenly Father, and yet so many would not know how to give thanks to God, or give a second thought to expressing gratitude for those blessings.  Those who lack a knowledge or understanding of the source of their blessings have an excuse for what might be considered their ingratitude.  We, on the other hand, do not.  Like the nine lepers who stood before their benefactor as he blessed them, it could certainly be asked of us “where are the nine?” if we do not express our gratitude to God as fully as we can.

President James E. Faust wrote:

As with all commandments, gratitude is a description of a successful mode of living. The thankful heart opens our eyes to a multitude of blessings that continually surround us. President J. Reuben Clark, formerly a First Counselor in the First Presidency, said: “Hold fast to the blessings which God has provided for you. Yours is not the task to gain them, they are here; yours is the part of cherishing them”

When God tutored Moses in the plan of salvation, and showed him the extent of His creations, Moses responded: “Now [...] I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed.”  For me this reverence, this lack of pride, is a natural accompaniment to the grateful peace I feel when I ponder Heavenly Father’s love for me, and for all of us.  The entire plan of happiness, all of the wonderful aspects of this mortal existence where we can learn and grow and strive to become like our Father in Heaven - I feel that gratitude deeply.  That gratitude extends to our Savior, for His atoning sacrifice which elevates the challenges and struggles of mortality from just a learning experience to an opportunity for us to seek and - hopefully - attain eternal life.  My gratitude is expressed well by this hymn:

I stand all amazed at the love Jesus offers me,

Confused at the grace that so fully he proffers me.

I tremble to know that for me he was crucified,

That for me, a sinner, he suffered, he bled and died.

Oh, it is wonderful that he should care for me Enough to die for me!

Oh, it is wonderful, wonderful to me.

I am so grateful for all of the blessings that Heavenly Father has extended to me.  For the most part they may be small and simple things, especially when considered individually, but when I look at my life as the sum of all the blessings I have received: parents, siblings, a peaceful existence, years of experience that have shaped me in countless ways, education, employment, a sweet wife, and the innumerable blessings of fatherhood - the list is long, and the result is an overwhelming sense of indebtedness and gratitude, but also a sense of the love He has for me.

As we pause to enjoy food and family this week, may we also reflect on the Lord’s hand in our lives.  May we express our gratitude and our love, through our actions and in our prayers.  Let us not give thanks just in the abstract sense, but let us thank our Heavenly Father.