I'm hopeful about Poochie...

Today was my call number two with Poochie my Indian SEO virtual assistant, his Indian name is Yashwant. The call was scheduled for 10 am and I waited by the skype phone on my computer and he didn't call. I was like WTF??? These guys never seem to call me on time.

I sent a brief email to him and cc.'d his bosses and within it mentioned that when you don't call me on time you are saying "that you don't respect my time and this defeats the purpose of me having a virtual assistant". Whether it's a meeting at work or meeting friends I tend to always be on time or I let them know I'm going to be late.

He finally called at 10:34 am and explained he had been held up in traffic. I asked him if he had email or a phone and could have called? I was short and terse. I also knew he will or had got shit on by his bosses. My experience with Indians is they are great to the customer, to the point that they will lie about what they can do, and behind closed doors will whip the shit out of their employees like dogs if they screw up.

In terms of the lying, if I asked an Indian programming company if they were able to develop software that could get me into space, they would all say "yes, no problem" over and over. "Yes, no problem. Yes Bryan, no problem".

With all that said, I did have my conference call with Poochie and it went very well. I went through all the changes I wanted made on the website. He's intelligent and was meticulous in taking notes and was able to communicate back to me what was required and the priorities set. Now, the real test is going to be if it gets done right. I did notice that he already has a 10:30 am appointment with Mathew, the programmer, set for tomorrow to go through the changes. It's kind of a cool sensation knowing you have a guy working and following up on the stuff you find mundane.

Poochie also gives me daily notes of what he does. I had him do a quality control check of the website and he goes through it page by page making notes of each page and whether it was a success or fail and what the issue was. He did catch some things.

I'm also not trying to beat up on him. I'm glad we had some issues and I made noise about them right away and he realized, "I can't mess with this guy or slip up or he's going to tell my bosses and I'm going to get put on the company rack and strapped with a cat of nine tails". Now I treat him nicely and with respect providing he does his job. It's all about conditioning. He can either get sugar or salt from me depending on his actions.

On Thursday I meet with my Administrative Virtual Assistant. Let's call him Abbey, that was the name of the second dog I had. Poochie was the first one. I sure hope Abbey isn't an idiot. On the pet scale, Abbey was no Poochie. The one good thing is Poochie is going to now train Abbey on the functionality of the website. I'm glad, I don't want to go through that again.

I was speaking to my brother today and I think he's moving away from buying a business. I'm definitely supporting that idea. However, he's known to change his mind on a dime. I'm very curious about his future as I need to plan for mine. The latest thing we've been talking about is becoming a mortgage broker. They are becoming very popular in Canada and their is great benefits in using one instead of going to a bank directly. They will show out your financial information and come back with multiple offers from multiple banks. The big question is how much do mortgage brokers make? If they could make $200,000 - $300,000 per year, I'd be very interested in being one too. Bob is checking it out and I've even contacted a large firm and sent an email to talk to the V.P. of development.

I also have a call set up tomorrow with a physio franchise. I'm not seriously interested, it requires capital and it's not something I want to part with unless it's such a slam dunk. I'd rather not have capital as a requirement and force myself to find something that will gain from my abilities alone. Kind of like Gene Simmons, he never puts up his own money for anything.

Today was a BAD day on the food front. Really the first in 8 days. It's the witching hours between 3 pm - 7 pm that get me. Today I had red liquorice, some skittles, some party mix chips and some fudigles. I'm thinking about 1500 - 2000 calories worth. I totally lost control. The upside was I still didn't snack after 7 pm tonight. I just ate like a little piggy between 3 - 7 pm.

The one good thing about eating not so healthy is it motivates you to train. Tonight I had a moderate run and was curious to see how my calf would feel. I don't mind the longer runs mentally, it more so bothers me if I can't run. Tonight was the first calf pain free run in a while. It felt great and I was able to run for 90 minutes at a decent pace. My heart rate was relatively low. Sitting in the chair after eating and before running I got it down to 47 bpm, which is a move in the right direction. It also stayed low during the run, although part of that was due to the cool weather outside, it's starting to feel like fall.

I spent some time today looking at my training plan from Mark Allen. I don't belong to the official program anymore, I take my past programs and recycle them, it saves me $29 per week and I've learnt they are pretty much the same. The only challenge is the ITU Long Course distances are not a half Ironman and not a Full Ironman, they are quazi in between. The challenge is knowing how long I should ride and run for. I've decided I'm going to do the full MAO Ironman distances for the running and swimming and I'll shorten the long rides down a bit.

Team Canada sent an email from the coach Mat Reid with a general training program for those that wanted it. I found it interesting, it is way less mileage than I do for Mark Allen Online. I'm not sure if it's better or worse. I'm so used to doing lots of miles that it seemed like a baby program. I wouldn't know what to do with my spare time. Is this what type of distances most people do? As tempting as it would be to try it, I'm going to stick with MAO, it's what got me to the playoffs.

 It felt good to get home from that long run, just what the doctor ordered. My tummy no longer felt like crap like it did for the first half of the run. I feel like I'm losing inches this past week and I'm curious to see if the scale says so tomorrow. I'd love to see myself lose about 2 lbs. If it doesn't I'm not going to be discouraged, I'm going to adjust again. I've already set myself up mentally for this. I have 60 days till the race, I need to lose about 20 lbs. If what I'm doing is not working I need to adjust it's all about cause and effect.

On the family front Alyssa started her first day of her second year of University today. She had to get up at 5:00 am in the morning in order to get to her first class on time. Her friend Stephanie is visiting from Winnipeg and Stephanie went with her and even sat in on one of the classes. When Alyssa came home she had $800 of text books she had to buy. The things weigh a ton. I can't imagine that they have to read the entire books. Maybe they do. It just seems like a lot of reading. I'd only be motivated to read the book if I got to tear every page I read out of the book so when I carry them to school they become lighter as the year goes on.

Mod Run - 1:32:19 / 17.28 km / 5:19 avg pace / 136 avg hr
3798 Calories