Month: February 2006

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Day 8

Well, today is my 8th day on my diet. As of this morning, I’ve lost 8 lbs so far. Not a bad start to a week. I?m doing the south beach diet again, so I’ve another week of phase 1 left. Been eating pretty well for the most part. Had my ritual coffee for breakfast, a kung pao chicken frozen southbeach meal for lunch (really good, but a bit small). Snacked on some roast beef & cheese when I came home. Dinner was a big ol’ ham steak. Of course, I should have fixed myself a salad, etc to go with it just for nutrition sake, but I was kind of busy, so slapping that steak in the pan and letting it warm was good enough for me.

I also had a setback of sorts, but not really. I bought a new scale this weekend. It’s pretty cool. The only problem is that I weighed two pounds heavier than I thought I did. The good news is that I tested both scales one right after the other (old and the new) and they both weighed consistently the same. So I have actually lost 8 pounds, I was just 208 when I started out, and not really 206. I’m setting my target at 185, but in reality, I just want my pants to fit right and to get rid of my gut.

Still haven’t started exercising yet . . .

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Tech lack-of-support

Why do tech support people have to be such idiots? I’m guessing because they are trained to deal with stupid problems like “you have to plug the computer in first, ma’am.” And when someone like me calls with an honest issue, they don’t know what to do “no, I’ve tried that, it doesn’t work. No, I tried that too, it doesn’t work. Don’t even suggest this, I’ve tried it, it doesn’t work either.”

I just got off the phone with Charter high speed tech “support” (using the term loosely). I really hate it when people don’t know what they’re talking about. I got mad because he insisted he was right, when I knew in fact, he wasn’t.

Serves me right, I should have just kept googling.

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Encryption Oddity?

Should it bother me that my email is encrypted with 256 bit encryption (AES-256) while my online banking is encrypted with 128 bit encryption (RC4-128)? You’d think you’d want your bank to have greater encryption than your email. Or is it that google is better at this game than my bank is?

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What’s wrong with this picture?

For the past several months, I’ve been asking myself the same question whenever I hear about Saddam Hussein in his supposed trial: Isn’t this guy supposed to be a prisoner of some sort? How can a prisoner just decide not to show up at a trial? The most recent article is here.

From my point of view, I think it’d be great to see Saddam Hussein sitting in the courtroom in a neon orange jumpsuit and handcuffs rather than being given the freedoms that none of the people under his tyrannical rule ever had.

But then again, I’m not in charge . . .

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Losing weight

I’m on the quest to lose weight again. I’m keeping a private journal of my daily progress, but don’t want to bore everyone with my daily log of what I eat and so on. Last year, my wife and I each had a physical as part of the life insurance application process. When I got the results of the bloodwork, I was shocked at how bad my cholesterol and triglycerides were. I’m now paying a small fee each year so that in the event that I die, my family will be well taken care of. Naturally, life insurance is one investment from which no one wishes an early return. I’m trying to take care of my family, but it occured to me that taking care of myself was a big part of that. I did some reading and eventually settled on the South Beach diet. I didn’t do the southbeach.com thing, but just bought the book and lived by the basic principles. I don’t like having to follow set menus or specific rules, but rather live by general guidelines (ironic from a BJU grad, don’t you think?). It worked well for me and I lost 40 lbs in a few months.

Summer rolled around and with the hecticness of grad school, I went off the official diet. I tried to live by the “do as little damage as possible” philosophy, and that worked well for a few months. After several months, my eating habits in no way resembled those that let me lose so much weight. It took me about 4 months to lose 40 lbs. In the 8 months or so since then, I’ve gained back 15. I’m on a quest to now lose 25 pounds, bringing me down a total of 50lbs from where I started a little over a year ago.

To be honest, I’m not caught up in the numbers of weight loss. I am however, very concerned with the daily consequences of it. I want my pants to fit better, I want to look and feel better. I want and need to be healthier. I’m certain that this time around, I’ll need to add an exercise component. Any suggestions on that one?

I’ll keep you all posted from time to time on my progress. Weekly, perhaps?