Perpetual State of Understanding

Francis Farm 5k Preview

The Francis Farm 5k Road Race is a pleasant, relatively flat course in Rehoboth, MA. The race is being organized by Gary Menissian of Ocean State Multisport and is focused on raising organ donor awareness. You can sign up for the race online or by printing and filling out a paper form - also available online at the event's website. You can also sign up on race day.

This past weekend I decided to head over there and run the course. I had my gadget of choice with me and thought I'd share the map and elevation profile with those interested.

Before I get into the route, I have a few general comments. There appears to be ample parking for the race - and from what I hear, this will be a very successful inaugural event, so the parking will be needed. It's probably still a good idea to get there early. I ran into the Farm owner just before I headed out for my run and was excited to know I was out there to run the course.

I'm confident this will be a very fun race and a great atmosphere for all.

On to the route:

In the map below, you can see the race starts at Francis Farms on Francis Farm Road. It heads north out of the neighborhood to County Street. County Street is a main road; but Gary has made it a point to focus on safety for this race and with the help of the cooperative Rehoboth police, there will be safe, coned off strips on County street for the runners - both out and back. Safety, of course is the number #1 concern during the race.

By the way, for those who may be reading this who residents in the area, I took special notice that every single car gave me a wide birth when passing - I waved back at them as acknowledgment. Thank you.

County Street is a straight shot, no hidden curves or driveways. The road was in good condition for those concerned about their ankles and knees. Once you hit Route 118, you turn around and head back. There is one water station - at the turn around.

 

This particular route measured 2.86 miles on my Garmin; but I was unsure of the exact start and finish lines. I may head back out there next weekend with Gary to get the exact start and finish and will update this post with any changes.

When you turn back into the Francis Farm neighborhood off of County Street, you'll see the farm; but instead of heading straight back, , you'll turn right on Taylor Drive and head downhill until it the road ends and turn right again to enter a cul-de-sac, where naturally you'll want to take the inside track before heading back to the farm with a slight grade to the finish line. 

For those interested in the elvation profile, I've included it below:

 The large blue spike is where I turned around on County Street just before Route 118. You can see the the symmetry for about 2.5 miles. It's mostly downhill for the first 1.25 miles, then uphill by the time your warmed up. Don't worry, it may look dramatic on this chart; but while running it, I didn't perceive the grade much and if you look at the numbers - its gradual anyway.

I am excited about this race. I hope to bring my wife and children and make it a fun day outside. Whether you are a seasoned runner and looking for a tune up, warm up, PR...whatever or a newbie, novice, or weekend warrior - it's going to be fun time with good people - old(er) and young.

Come out and enjoy the first weekend in Spring for some exercise and fun.

Thanks for reading.

Observations from Text Analytics Summit West - 10, 11 November 2011

Thanks again to Seth Grimes and Ezra Steinberg for putting on the Text Analytics Conference West in San Jose, CA. Special thanks for giving me the opportunity to speak. 

Here are my observations/thoughts on the conference:

• Although the majority of presentations are still given my vendors; I get the sense that soon we will start to see a reverse split in the near future - where partners/customers will give more presentations on the solutions text analytics provides than vendor messages. I feel conflicted in saying this since I am a vendor (not text analytics vendor per se); but we need more consumers of content analytics technologies to present their solutions by framing the problems/needs, the approach they took in evaluating the technology and the benefits they've seen since deployment. I think we'll start to see this transition soon.
• The conference was preceded by the Sentiment Symposium in San Francisco; so there wasn't as many sessions on sentiment analysis as there were in the previous conference. I liked that.
• Many sessions on the first day focused on Social Media - its still the driver for content analytics.
• Still don't see or hear much about content analytics - most, if not all, discussions are about text. Actually, there was one session on listening to the voice of the customer - literally. I liked that presentation especially.
• I see Big Data and Cloud becoming a larger part of the Content Analytics conversation. I think of Big Data as Big Unstructured Content (not just text; but audio, video, images). Cloud technologies enable more efficient analysis of BUC. I'll blog more about this in the coming months.
• The "coolest" presentation: Applying Text Analytics to Social Media/News to Forecast Bull and Bear Markets - By Kevin John Coogan, AmalgaMood
• The presentation that scared the crap out of me: Overcome Data Distortion to Capitalize Fully on Real Time Search, by Stephen Arnold, ArnoldIT - you had to be there. Don't get me wrong, I like Stephen a lot. If I had any skills as a screenwriter, I'd have a pretty damn scary screenplay about how to leverage content to dramatically sway public opinion when they search the net.

I digress.

It was a good conference overall. I expect to see the conference grow significantly in the next couple of years as we start to see solutions and business value from the technology. I'd like to see more partners and customers doing the presenting and I'd like to see the panelists take more questions from the audience.

Make plans to attend the next conference in Boston in May.

 

Thanks for reading.

Batla

Smithfield Duathlon Preview

The Wish It, Dream It, Du It Duathlon - apparently, the first Duatlon in Rhode Island - will take place in Smithfield, RI on Sunday, 2 October 2011.

Today, I took a drive out there to ride and run the course with the Race Director, Gary. Here's my take.

Run

As you might know, the Duathlon is a race in which you compete in two disciplines; but there are three legs: run / bike / run (again). The run legs are identical and are just about two miles each. The run starts out going up hill - in fact, the first mile is mostly uphill. The next eighth of a mile, you'll flirt with ups and downs, before you plummet to transition for the last two-tenths of a mile. See the elevation profile below:

Here's the map:

It's a little unique in that you'll go into two cul-de-sacs; but that didn't bother me. The roads are in good condition and just about a 1.25 miles in the roads have been repaved with asphalt - which felt really nice on my joints.

Oh, and you'll be doing this twice!

When I look at the map, the route reminds me of a heart shape. :)

Bike

The bike is awesome. It's about 14 miles through beautiful "country" roads in Smithfield where palatial McMansions and old farm houses are good neighbors. There were few cars on the road even though it was was commute time. I expect there will be even fewer on a Sunday morning. In general, the roads are in good condition and some sections are freshly paved. Log Road - which leads you back towards transition - is a nice mostly winding downhill section of the course. It was exhilarating; but I was disappointed in some areas as I did not feel safe enough to max out on speed. There were some bumps for sure; but it was mostly the turns that caused the disappointment - I actually had to get down in the drops and feather the brakes. I really wanted to bomb it and even thought of my days on a mountain bike. Be careful here.

Below is the elevation profile for the bike. You can see there is a decent descent from about mile 9.5 to 11 - approximately 3%. But it has some tight curves.

 

 You might be wondering...what is the graph doing just after mile 12. Well, umm..that would be what most people call a hill. When I first did this ride, I thought, "sweet downhill all the way back." Nope, there is a lung buster just after mile 12...but its short. It's about .85 miles at roughly 5.5% incline grade. You'll have plenty of time to recover for the second go-around on the run though.

Here's the map:

 

All in all, the run and the bike are challenging courses; but they are reasonable and I think this will be a fun race.

A note about transition. A local long-time resident has offered part of his property (a big part of it) to be used as transition. It is very gracious of him. It is very spacious and will serve as an ideal transition area.

Thanks for reading.

-Batla

TDD Recon

Well, I'm back after a couple of summer months off and I thought I would kick things off again with a little report on the TDD Triathlon course (bike/run only).

For those who have done the TDD triathlon, this may not be very useful information to you; but I feel its nice to have another's perspective.

On 3 September, I biked and ran the TDD course with a few fellow Tri-NE members. When we arrived around 7:15am, the park was closed due to Hurricane Irene. After figuring out where to park, we got ready for our ride. The park did open after our first bike loop, so we were able to start our run and second bike loop from transition.

It was a cool morning - cool enough to require some light jackets - keep this in mind for the 17th.

The Bike

The bike route is just under 11 miles and its pleasantly hilly for the most part - meaning, you are rewarded very nicely for some of the minor climbs. If you are intimate with the Scituate TT loop, these will be nothing. There are a couple of sandy intersections; but nothing treacherous. You cross one street, and take four left turns - lefts into and out of the park account for two, and one is in a quiet neighborhood. I'm sure there will be support at each spot.

It's a little bit of a climb to get out of the park; but its not bad. Plus you'll be warmed up from the swim. It's exactly a mile to the park entrance. Once out of the park, you'll turn left and encounter a hill that will require most to drop to the small chain ring (compact set) - you don't want to blow it so early anyway.

There's a stretch between miles 4 and 6 that I would describe as Rhode Island road conditions; although you're in Massachusetts - its jaw shattering. It smoothes out for a bit around mile 6; but not for long.

After mile 8, there's a nasty hill on Walnut (after you turn left off of Chestnut). For elite riders, this is probably a speed bump; but for most, this one of those hills that will cause your heart rate and speed to unceremoniously depart in opposite directions - and you can guess which one goes up and which one goes down. But, if there's a perfect time for it, its here just after mile 8 - as the rest of the ride is flat/downhill. The key here is to f*!^%# fagetaboutit! When you get to the top, pick it up, because its a nice downhill recovery to trasition for about a mile and half.

Once turning back into the park, its a nice downhill where you'll get a chance to recover your legs for the run, cuz you're gonna need it.

The Run

If you know me, you know I hate the run. So, you've got to take my assessment with a grain of salt - which, incidentally is easily discovered in abundance on my person after every run. By know, you have surmised that transition is the lowest elevation of the race, so the run is a climb out of the park just like the bike. It starts on a dirt trail, which is not only strewn with rocks; but on this day was also littered with debris from Irene's wake (I'm hoping the latter will be cleared or decayed by race day). Its a climb the entire mile out of the park and I couldn't reduce my heart rate if I stopped, sat and beared down for 90 seconds. Once out of the park, you take the same left as the bike and climb the same hill on Wallum Lake Road that you did on your bike. Once to at the top, you get to turn around and run down hill to the finish (including the dirt trail). Just don't turn your ankle before the finish line!

The Venue

The lake and the park are beautiful. There are lots of woods. It's the type of setting that could be chilly on a cool cloudy day and refreshing on a hot sunny day. So if you are bringing family (partners, kids) who won't be working up a sweat, have them prepared for either condition. I don't recall seeing shelter in case of rain; but I may have missed it. Have them bring their bathing suits and towels as the lake is clean and calm - perfect for kids if its warm enough. Oh yeah, bring bug spray just in case. I hear there's going to be kids entertainment during the race and of course a Tri-NE BBQ afterward. Oh, in case you are wondering, it took me about 45 minutes early on a Saturday to get up there from East Providence.

Hope this was helpful to those who haven't done the course yet. See you out there!

Thanks for reading,

Batla

Anatomy of an Optimal Decision: The Perspective

We must have Perspective 

Have you ever made a hiring decision without asking colleagues what they think or know about a potential candidate? Probably not.

Have you ever bought something on Amazon (or some other online store) without looking at customer rankings and opinions about the product? Infrequently, I imagine.

Have you ever made a decision of great financial consequence without considering your partner’s or friend’s opinion or without an expert’s guidance? Most likely not.

It’s because you would like another point of view before making that important decision - because you really don’t want to screw it up.

What do I mean by Perspective?

When I say perspective (see Turning Information into Business Advantage), I mean a view point other than your own. And I’m not talking about having more information necessarily; I’m talking about seeing or considering another point of view. We have a certain perspective - a certain way we regard a problem or situation the way we’ve always known how. It is applied consciously or subconsciously. Our own perspective can be very subjective, narrow, biased, or just not sufficiently informed. Sometimes we even force ourselves to “put it in perspective”. Without other perspectives we are potentially making non-optimal decisions. Sometimes with grave circumstances.

Lack of Perspective leads to Poor Decisions

In July of 2008, a Florida police officer, Officer Andrew Widman, was killed by man who should have been in jail. The killer had been released on bail for a minor offense, when the crime occurred. The judge in the county where the defendant was released, was not aware of the defendant’s arrest warrant in an adjacent county and released him. 

Now, political, technical, and cultural issues aside, the point is that the judge had a very narrow view of the defendant during the appearance. The judge had one perspective - that of the county he presided over. What did other counties know about the man? What did the Registry of Motor Vehicles have on him? Were there any records in other local, state or federal databases? Was there an arrest warrant out for this guy!? (As it turned out, the NCIC database contained the record for his warrant)

The lack of perspective that day in court started a series of events that lead to the loss of life in this case - and with a little perspective, it could have been avoided.

Perspective in the Enterprise

Looking at the case of above, its clear that perspective was sadly missing - and for a variety of reasons, not feasibly attainable. And the really sad thing is the judge had to make his decision knowing that not all the information was available to him. In my last post, I stated that 80% of business leaders make major decisions with incomplete or mistrusted information. I think the judge joins those 80% business leaders in this case.

It’s ironic that decisions requiring clear perspective, are the same decisions where perspective seems harder to obtain.

We still have a great need for applications/solutions/systems in the enterprise that enable human and non-human decision makers (i.e. processes) to easily observe, consume and leverage perspective. According to an Accenture study in 2007, a staggering 84% of an organization’s information is in silos. That’s a lot of inaccessible perspective. And that number is just in the enterprise. What valuable perspectives are we ignoring from outside the enterprise?

Content and case management solutions are an area where I think perspective brings the most value. The domains are known and finite and the perspective can be equally focused and reliable. Discrete actions can be identified based on this perspective leading to more intelligent and faster processing of cases. In these applications, you need to (at a minimum):

• “physically” integrate other perspectives with your own - to the extent you are allowed to. You can do this by query or direct integration with other systems. With this approach you form a bigger picture which you can analyze and be more confident in the analysis’ output.
• query external systems - to form a bigger picture for the duration of the decision making process (sometimes minutes or seconds). In the case above, many organizations will not allow you to integrate their data with yours (or even allow you to save the information); but they will allow you to query it.
• And from a non-technical perspective, create a culture of information sharing for the benefit of your organization, community and society as a whole.

Once you have other points of view, that content can also be processed by content analytics approaches to provide more context.

In order to make optimal decisions, the information worker needs to have different perspectives; otherwise, non-optimal decisions will be made and exposure to grave circumstances increased - and no one wants that.

And now, I’d like to get your perspective.

Thanks for reading,

Batla

 

Anatomy of an Optimal Decision: The Context

At EMC World in May, we presented EMC IIG’s solutions for optimal decision making (see my earlier post). The anatomy of optimal decision making we state requires these essential component: context, perspective and insight. In this post I talk a little more about the need for context in case management.

I always feel a little weird talking about context because if I get too deep, I fear I will sound too academic, theoretical or ostentatious - I don’t want to do that. The fact is, people consider context in the process of decision making all the time. Actually, the process of gaining context starts earlier than that - it starts when you truly want to understand communication. How much context you need and the process of gaining it vary. Context is required to make good decisions in simple and complex scenarios - from what to wear to a customer meeting, to big-time purchases, from choosing a restaurant for a first date to deciding which job to take (if you are lucky enough to have options).

Often times, the lack of context leads to poor decisions and outcomes. Some outcomes can be easily fixed - such as returning an item or never going back to a restaurant again. Some decisions lead to more serious circumstances or grave outcomes that cause damaged reputation, financial loss, irreparable damage to a relationship or loss of life. I think it's the latter that keeps most folks up at night.

Remember, even with the "best" information and all the context in the world, we can still make poor decisions. After all, we are human and machines are...well not human.

Context, what is it? And why do I need it?

One definition states:

"the set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation, etc." - dictionary.reference.com

I'm going to modify this a bit to say:

"the set of observations or relationships that surround a particular thing"

I think we can all agree on this, yes?

Let’s look at an example in case management. In investigative cases, observations and relationships are what drive the investigation. When a crime is committed, investigators need to know the physical characteristics of the alleged perpetrator - which prepares them to visually (or audibly) to identify the person of interest. And they also need to know the relationships the perpetrator has with other people, organizations, places, etc. They'll often ask a witness to "describe the assailant" or "who do they know" or "where do they work". The answers - the observations and relationships - are the context. With this context, investigators can then make the best decision possible on what to do next in the investigation. The context is intelligently driving the investigation - the processing of the case.

Note my choice of the word "observation". I want to be clear that these are not necessarily facts - and often they aren’t. A witness may have observed the subject of interest to be a certain height, weight, sex or ethnicity or that they saw the perpetrator with someone and inferred they know each other; but in a lot of cases observations do not turn out to be facts. Granted, we often take observations as the truth.

The above scenario probably reminds you of the popular TV Series, Law and Order. Where the inspectors are gathering and disseminating interrogations, witness accounts and other information on the fly and with great accuracy. But the reality is, in most cases the context and relationships are "hidden" in unstructured content - in documents as well as images, audio and video. Context is waiting to be discovered or extracted. In a given case, numerous pieces of content are collected that contain the observations (or facts) of a subject of interest.

The “why” should be obvious, right? We need to make optimal decisions, and we can’t make them without context.

Well, well...In just a few paragraphs, I've insulted machines (well, maybe they don’t really care), I've changed the definition of context to make my case, and I have even referenced a TV show. Time to “real” it in.

I like context. How do I get me some?

If you expand your perception of case management beyond the legal or criminal, and include any case that requires "digging deeper", you'll encounter in most instances a large volume of unstructured content and most likely unstructured processes - since context is needed first to help drive the processes.

This content holds a wealth of context that you don’t readily realize unless you analyze it using some software or ask human information workers to read all of it and tag it. You can certainly try the latter, but it becomes unscalable rather quickly (not to mention the issues in ensuring consistency)

So, how do we solve this issue of getting context out of massive amounts of content?

Well, you need content analytics - and as your content continues to grow (and these days the growth is astronomical), the importance of having content analytics grows as well.

At a minimum you need to be able to:

• discover entities (using a NLP-based approach) in content like people, places, companies - when searching later, you can find cases that share entities and with an integrated knowledge base, you can get context on the entities themselves
• categorize content and cases with a business taxonomy - entities in the content don’t necessarily tell you what the content is about, categorization does
• discover metadata by rules - sometimes you just know what you are looking - if you are familiar with the case content and your domain is tightly-scoped, rules help you get your context faster and with precision
• discover relationships - or rather identify subject-predicate-object triples in the content and creating the opportunity for human knowledge workers disseminate and manage relationships within and across cases - leading to richer context

Now, instead of just having a massive amount of strings of characters, you have context. You can now derive meaning from them at a scale much more suitable in an environment where intelligent decisions need to be made in an efficient and compliant manner.

 

What happens when you don't have Context?

Making decisions without context puts the decision maker at a severe disadvantage. Maritz Research published a research whitepaper: Context Before Cool Charts in 2010 that identifies two mistakes researches make when they don't have context. (I copy part of it here; but follow the link above for the entire paper):

1. They mistake the norm for insight
2. They miss signals and flags

 

If you've gone through my presentation - Turning Information into Business Advantage , you'll remember: 80% of business leaders make major decisions with incomplete or mistrusted information (IBM's Insitutute for Business Value 2009). You can confidently point the finger at lack of context (and perspective; but I'll get to that in another post) as the culprit. Without context, what people have is a set of obervations or facts - with seemingly no relationships to anything else - that don't mean much - and without anything else to go by, this becomes insight.

Scary.

“Wow” rather than “cool”.

Content analytics is great. I’ve been involved with designing and implementing solutions leveraging content analytics for a number of years. Initially, we were enamored by the recall - and the “cool” things we found in the content. But, you have to look beyond the “cool factor” and figure out the business advantage of content analytics in a real-life solution or application that provides real business value - and I think we’ve done that at EMC by integrating content analytics with content and case management. Content analytics is not the end - the end is the optimal decision. In case management this is especially true as we want to avoid making poor, uninformed decisions that cause grave circumstances.

Thanks for reading,

Batla 

Observations from Text Analytics Summit - 18, 19 May 2011

Not sure how almost a month has passed by before I got a chance to post something about the conference.

First of all, I enjoyed the conference quite a bit. I got a chance to see some familiar faces and discuss "old times", finally meet people I know face-to-face, and of course make new acquaintences. All who are passionate about the technology of content analytics and its applications. Thanks Seth Grimes.

On to the notes and observations. A few things I'd like to apologize for in advance - these points are not in any order; some are short; some are verbose.

• I'm am on the fence regarding the claim that we have "solved" entity extraction. That being said, there were some good points made by folks I spoke to that think it may not be worth the cost of increasing performance of entity extraction a few percentage points. Maybe it is indeed good enough in most use cases.
• I spoke to one individual (customer of analytics software) who was very dissatisfied with the Entity Extraction accuracy of one vendor (vendor was not present at the summit). I have experience with this vendor as well as others in the past and suggested to him that for the most part the performance of all analytics engines (for entity extraction only) are pretty much the same. There are strong points and some weaknesses; but for the most part they are all very close in quality. When I spoke to him further, I realized that categorization may be what he really needs...
• So, maybe we can assume we've "solved" entity extraction - sufficiently. Maybe entity extraction is good enough to help an information worker make the final connections and ultimately, optimal decisions. To be clear, I think investigation use cases have a dire need for entity extraction.
• What if we put more emphasis, from a solutions perspective, to categorization - approaching "aboutness", rather than merely mentions of some thing. I think entity extraction should be used for discovery - leveraged as input into a taxonomy or knowledge based (via an editorial process) and used for categorization. So, perhaps we can put more energy behind leveraging knowledge (internal & external) and building a knowledge base that can be used to categorize content. What is article, paper, research, case really about? If we don't know what the content is about, then how valuable would sentiment analysis be (see below for comments on sentiment analysis)
• Oh, and categorization is much faster than entity extraction.
• Conference was heavy on sentiment analysis - of course this is being driven by enterprises wanting to know what's said about them in social media. I mean the volume is insane. I wonder though, how useful it is and how much effort is (will be) required to "clean up" social media content before it can be analyzed. I think the discourse in social media is missing or harder to gather to get good sentiment analysis. 
• I felt one area overlooked by most was call center information. Here we have a discourse (between operator and caller) and we have more than 140 characters and we have more than a thumbs up or down. There's also really good speech to text technology now - and of course, once its in text...
• I think there is a lot of value in analyzing call center information because the calls you will get most likely drive some kind of action. I saw a chart that suggested a rougly 2:1 ratio of people who have something negative to say about a product (and actually say it) versus those who have something positive to say (and actually say it) - meaning we are bunch of whiners. In social media, you have to sift through both; in call centers, you primarily have negative feedback. I argue this feedback is the most useful - it helps drive decisions on how to improve product or process.
• I was dissapointed to see very little on analyzing rich media.
• I don't remember sitting through a session that talked about extracting relationships
• I had some interesting conversations with a few folks on visualizing relationships. No one seemed to have the right answer - as the common denominator for our ideas required software that could figure out what the information worker is thinking! One individual believed the relational navigation paradigm (think Siderean) might come back. Over drinks, a few of us agreed that the key in investigative use cases was detecting anamolous relationships and that we need to figure out a way to "bubble those up to the surface". The message of "navigating forever" is cool and may wow at first; but is akin to surfing the web - if you have a lot of time on your hands. However, when you are trying to complete a task at hand and make the best decision possible, you want to do that as optimally as you can.

 

I have a ton of raw notes; but I think I'll keep those to myself.

 Thanks for reading. I would love to hear your thoughts.

 

-Batla

The Anatomy of An Optimal Decision

Just in time for EMC World, I described the anatomy of an optimal decision. In this presentation, I detail the essential components in optimal decision making: context, perspective and insight - and describe how the EMC Information Intelligence Group delivers the solution.

 

In a series of posts, I’ll dive deeper into each one of these pillars of optimal decision making. As we take a closer look, we must keep the primary goal in mind - the optimal decision. Its not just about analytics, its not just about search, its not just about data integration, its not just about cool visualizations that wow; its about decision making. Its about effective task completion, case resolution, or process improvement - in environments with structured or unstructured processes, structured or unstructured content, workflow, collaboration and compliance. 

 

Featured in the presentation are xCP’s search and analytics capabilities:

• xPlore: evolutionary enterprise search
• Content Intelligence Services: content analysis - entity extraction and categorization
• Federated Search Services: federated and external search
• Business Activity Monitoring
• and more

 

The slides are available in the following locations:

• EMC Powerlink: Solutions -> Information Intelligence Group Solutions -> xCelerated Composition Platform (xCP)
• Slideshare.net (EMC Channel)
  • view only: http://slidesha.re/keyneR
  • downloadable: http://slidesha.re/j79hWk
• Slideshare.net (sabatla) - http://slidesha.re/kilZLO

 

The presentation was also given by David Le Strat, Group Product Manager at EMC IIG (@dlestrat).

 

It’s an exciting time at EMC - we have a fruitful future ahead of us. Combining EMC’s core foundation, innovation and drive, we will change the landscape of how software companies deliver technologies that provide the tools for partners and customers to build solutions enabling information workers to make efficient optimal decisions.

 

Thanks,

Batla

 

I love my neighborhood - Neighbors, Seven Stars, Avenue N, Local Races

I may be biased because I live here; but I love Rumford. And since we moved here in 2006, we've made great friends, we've seen Rumford Mill transform into hip and retro offices, condos and businesses and we've also been a part of inaugural local 5k and Duathlon races.

Family Treats and (Potential) Date Nights 

Seven Stars Bakery and Avenue N are two new local business that have opened up in the renovated Rumford Mill. Seven Stars is killing it here. I'm there a lot and if they cooked egg breakfasts, I'd be there all the time. Avenue N just opened a few weeks ago and if you ask around, there's mixed reviews on various aspects - space, food and $$$, etc. We went there today at 4pm for happy hour. If you know me, happy hour is a common occurrence...well an everyday occurrence in fact. We sat outside on their smallish but quaint patio and received great service from Julie. I'm not a food critic, nor do I have any formal culinary training - other than 40+ years of eating food; but I'm going to take some liberties and do my best food critic impersonation.

We were greeted by a young hostess who appeared to me guarded; but cordial. She was young and from the neighborhood. Perhaps she did not know what to expect from us since we appeared as if we were in the sun all day and showed up in a very inexepnsive looking transport - a Radio Flyer Wagon - the off-road version I'll have you know. The urban SUV of wagons if you will. We were seated outside and given very nice menus - I mean they were physically very nice menus. I immediately became concerened for their well-being. Astonishingly, the children did not put them in their mouths or destroy them in anyway. We promptly got the children their waters and they commenced the misuse of ordinary everyday silverware. Kathy and I pondered our drink options - I never take long in my decision - it's a martini: rock star dirty; not porn start dirty. Kathy was reunited with a drink called Pimm's Cup. I'd like to take a moment and express that I continue to be surprised by my wife - I love it. She's recoiled at the smell of Bombay Saphire; but yet she's got a history of Pimm's consumption! The kids - not to be outdone, had their usual three olive happy hour with their giddy parents.

Moving on, we ordered our drinks and went back to our menus. We decided on a Margherita Pizza and a "Local Salad" - presumably entailing local produce - fuji apples, honey-almonds, goat cheese and tasty tangy yellow tomatoes in a vinaigrette. (btw, where do we get local apples in the spring?) Both plates were exceptionally succulent. The pizza was balanced with a multitude; but finite set of flavors that appealed to not only the sophisticated adult palette; but to the palette of a five and two year old. The kids devoured it as we did. As usual, I was the only one moaning through the entire meal - the rest of my family uses a more subtle approach to expressing such delight. We ditched our plans for grilling pesto chicken (with pasta) tonight and enjoyed a filling treat at Avenue N.

We are ecstatic about having a local "walk-to" restaurant in the neighborhood and can't wait for many more visits. Good luck Avenue N. Btw, I've heard rumors of a kids menu - we'd love to see that very soon.

Incredible pastries, robust coffee and friendly service makes Seven Stars an immediate favorite - and we run into people we know all the time. Friends, neighbors and acquaintances seemed to take turns making their visits during our 30 minute stay today. The experience really gave us a feeling of a village here in Rumford. Seven Stars has a primo spot and is killing it - from a patron's perspective. Keep up the good work! 

Promoting Health Awareness and Quality of Life while Supporting Great Causes

Shifting gears from experiences best enjoyed while sitting, the last three weekends have also featured three great local athletic events. One race - the Run to Mama 5K road race raises funds for the local Brown Play School (BPS) - had it's second annual race this May. BPS, BPS board and friends raised more money than last year for this non-profit preschool gem in Rumford. Special mention to Rock-a-Baby for playing at the event - you guys rock, literally!

RI Multisport's first Duathlon took place at the Newman YMCA and was a great success. A fine race and course put on by RI Mulitsport. A percentage of the proceeds will allow children to go to the Y's summer camp (who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford to). Contact the Newman YMCA for more details. A great venue provided for family and friends to cheer on their racers. Tri-NE showed up in great force to race, volunteer and cheer on *everybody*. Again, another very supportive "village like feel" was prevalent.

Today, RI Multisport put on the PALS 5K road race to raise money for the Blaze Foundation for ALS. I did not run this race; but volunteered myself and my children, Alex and Kyle, to provide hydration at the half-way point. Alex and Kyle loved it. Alex was particularly excited as she was ready well ahead of time with rows of cups perfectly aligned and ready to hand out. We were happy and honored to help - we weren't alone of course, Gary Menissian (of RI Multisport) was there with us at the water station as well as other volunteers on the course. That community feel continued as just before the race started one of Alex's schoolmates and his family rode/walked by our water station and chatted with us for a few minutes. One subject was of course the new restaurant, Avenue N. Her schoolmate's older brother helped us with an entertaining simulation of a racer running by the table and grabbing a cup of water from Alex, drinking some and pouring the rest over his head!

Two back-to-back, fun races by RI Multisport's Dave Deary, Joe Goddard & Gary Menissian. Look for RI Multisport's Deary Tri in July. I also hear there is another Duathlon in the works in nearby Swansea, MA.

It's been an incredible month of May. Despite the weather, time continues to move and seasons come. Spring gives us a sense of excitement and rebirth - its an incredible stimulant and gives us a euphoric endorphin rush. So, maybe this post has some of the Spring drug in it. In any case, we love it here and are loving life.

 

Thanks for reading,

Batla

Prediabetes Type 2 - A Blessing in Disguise

In the winter of 2008, I learned that I had type 2 prediabetes. At first, I was frightened. I was in my doctor's office alone, Kathy and Alex were at home (Kyle would be born less than a year later).  I honestly did not know what it meant. Did I have diabetes or not? Was there something I could do about it? Am I going to be on insulin and be forced to a strict diet for the rest of my life?  My doctor explained the situation - details which you can find on the web. What I can say is that prediabetes type 2 is controllable by weight, diet and exercise. Whew! What a relief I thought. Explaining it to Kathy was another issue; but I almost felt like...you know... this is exactly what I need to get off my lazy arse and get back into shape.

My doctor prescribed a couple of visits to a diabetic nutritionist. These visits proved fruitful as I learned about carbs, protein, calories and how to read nutrition labels and things like 100% whole wheat as opposed to containing whole wheat. I was relieved to learn that I would not have to cut meat and alchohol out of my diet! However, there was a piece of the bigger picture missing: exercise. Exercise was a key facet missing from the prediabetes conversation.

Following the nutritionist's direction, I immediately and drastically reduced my carb intake, I lost a bunch of weight and my numbers came back into range within several months. But I was not exercising - and the new "diet" was unsustainable. Meaning, at some point, it was all going to go to hell. As it turns out, I slowly gained the weight back and my numbers appeared in the red once again in January 2010.

I was disappointed; but in no means discouraged. I knew what I had to do and I knew I had it under control for a while. What was missing was a change in lifestyle that not only included healthy eating; but exercise - and other habits that keep you active and less sedentary. Healthy sustainable exercise does not mean you have to keep up the intensity you used to have when you were younger or perform the same activities even.

So, that January, I decided to do a triathlon. I had wanted to do one for over ten years and decided to complete one before turning 40. I did three official tri's last summer and many "brick" workouts - that consist of combining any of swim, biking or running activity in one workout. This year, I will do maybe one official tri; but I love the workouts. In fact, I plan my days and weeks around exercising - it's just the way it is. And its contagious. Kathy, who is in great shape from chasing our children around is now running again and kids are aware of this thing called exercise: running, biking and swimming and more  - and I'm glad its not just their Papa they see exercising.

As for my diet. I think I ate more carbs last year than the previous 2-3 years combined! My issues around eating that once existed are not the focal point anymore. I'm eating a sustainable diet and with a lifestyle change, the choices in diet are easier to make because its not about denying yourself - its more logical as your choices are framed around your general health and active lifestyle. I became more aware of how the food I eat impacts my performance, ability to exercise and mood. 

I am not prediabetic anymore - and I'm on a path where I can maintain this status. I plan to lose more weight; but really, its about the healthy lifestyle that I now live - which also makes me a happier person.

Thanks for reading.

 

Batla