Could This Be a Normal Week?

This is Day 5 without soda. I gave it up Thursday, and I've been successful since then. I still miss it, but I've managed to do without it. I've got a jug of water right next to me, and that will have to sustain me at work. The goal is to go one month without soda before I allow myself to have one a week or so, as a treat.

Other than that, I'm not making any drastic changes to my diet. I am going to try to cook and freeze more, so I can spend less money eating out, but I consider that more of an organizational effort, rather than a healthy one.

This is the first "normal" week I've had in a while. I'm not sick, I don't have the duty pager from work, I don't have any car problems or maintenance requests, and I don't have any extraordinary responsibilities this weekend. I'm hoping to use this week to get into a rhythm and work out a schedule and a plan for a few things.

Tonight, I'm going to finish The Hacker's Diet and considering following its instructions.

The Hacker's Diet

I weigh 338 pounds. That's more than I've ever weighed in my life. I had to buy a more expensive bathroom scale a few years ago, because I weighed more than cheaper scales could measure. I can't travel in airplanes, because I don't fit in the seats. I prefer to wear baggy clothes, but now my XXXL shirts are snug.

I have to face the fact that my weight will kill me one day. It's as simple as that. The human body is not designed to handle this much fat. I have to lose weight, or I will die before my time.

I've always struggled to diet and exercise. I know the answers to my problems, but I've never found a way to consistently apply them to my life. When I lived with my athletic uncle, I lost 30 pounds in two months, because I was living his lifestyle of lean eating and constant exercise. It worked, but I was miserable. I've struggled since then to discover a way in which I can weigh less and enjoy my life.

Today, I was looking for some sort of organization tool to help me keep a food journal. During my search, I found The Hacker's Diet. I've only read the introduction of the book, but I think it might be what I've been looking for. It's written by a man who accomplished a lot in the computer industry, then realized that he could use the skills he'd learned as an engineer to fix and maintain his weight. He lost 50 pounds in 1 year. He says that his book - which is completely free - can help people with a similar mindset achieve the same results.

What I've read so far has been inspirational. I'm going to finish it as soon as possible. I have high hopes that this might be my chance to turn my life around.

I don't want to die. I want to know what it's like to be fit. I've been overweight my entire life. It's about time I did something about it.

Next

Having now finished Kingdom Hearts II, I'm turning my attention to the huge stack of games I have that I still need to finish.  Well, "need" is a strong word.  Nobody "needs" to finish this stuff.  It's my hobby, though, and that's something I've come to terms with.

Anyway, I've decided to move on to Final Fantasy XII.  Since I lost my copy, I'm borrowing a friend's, and I prefer to finish games I've borrowed before all others.  I had already made a little progress a couple of months ago, so I didn't have to start completely over.  After taking a few minutes to reacclimate, I once again started off on the adventure.  I'll probably be playing it for the next few weeks.  Let's see, if I estimate 60 hours of playtime and divide that by 3 - 4 hours per week, that comes to 15 to 20 weeks.  Wow.  Ok, if I want to do it in two months, I'll need to put in ( 60 hours divided by 8 weeks ) 7.5 hours per week.  Tall order. I think I'll keep track of my playtime in this blog.  Watch for that.

I'm easing my way back into my diet.  I'm not counting points just yet, but I'm cutting back on fast food.  I've got some chicken defrosting in the fridge right now.  I'll have that with some veggies tonight.  I just need to get back into sound eating habits.  I'll get back on the scale and start counting again Monday.  I'll post the progress here, too.

Rampant Growth

I know, I know.  I'm a couple weeks late.  Here I am again, back on schedule.

Well, the diet didn't go so well last week.  Too many snacks, I think.  I'm back on it again this week.  I'm hoping to drop below 320 for my next weigh-in.  That's entirely possible, since I'm only 1.2 pounds about that.  I just have to buckle down again.

Kay has reached a very exciting time in her development.  She's crawling, teething, pulling herself up to her feet, sleeping in her own room at night, eating Stage 2 food, using a "sippy" cup and getting used to her new crib.  All of this all at once is a little overwhelming for Kay and Misty and I sometimes, honestly.  Misty wishes she'd slow down just a bit, but she's really proud, and so am I.  I'll have to remember to post some new pics and videos this week.

Tampa Bay Anime is evolving as well.  We recently appointed a new vice president, first of all.  She's a good friend of mine, too, and creative and clever besides, so I'm sure she'll help bring the club to a good place.  We're also changing our website.  For one thing, I want to get away from our current webhost, which keeps pissing me off.  I've had problems getting into my account far too often.  Once is too often, really.  Plus, getting that account under the same host as my others will help me maintain the site more regularly.  On top of that, we're converting most of the site into a Blogger blog, for many reasons, not the least of which is ease of updating.  I look to have that project done by the end of the month.

One last change that's affecting me is that my family is now on a stricter leisure budget.  I've got a set amount that I can spend purely on myself per week, and so does Misty.  We also have a separate budget for things we do together, or buy for the apartment or family.  Basically, we need to get moving in a straight line after far too long on a financial roller-coaster.  The budget's a little tighter than I'd like, and I'm definitely going to have to make some changes to my personal spending habits.  To be honest, those habits are a large part of what's gotten us into trouble in the past.  My first big challenge is saving enough to get BioShock, which drops this Tuesday.  I hope to get it next week, but the week after that is more likely.

So much going on... I might have to blog twice this week.  *gasp*

Current weight: 321.2 lbs
Total weight lost: 6.8 lbs

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Riding the Rollercoaster

Getting back on the diet is proving harder than I anticipated.  I gained again this week, if only 0.4 pounds.  I'm not surprised, though, since I ate poorly too often last week.  WeightWatcher's plan allows for a certain amount of flexibility, but I took it too far.  Once again, I'll just have to try again.  I will definitely lose weight this week.

Misty got to attend the Tampa Bay Anime meeting this week for a couple hours.  She hadn't attend for months, because of Kay, so she'd never seen our new projector setup in action or seen the majority of the membership in a while.  She had fun, and Kay was well-behaved.  It was fun having her, and I'm glad she was able to get out of the house for a bit.

Speaking of TBA, I updated the meeting archive on time this week.  That shouldn't be news, but my horrendous record in that regard makes it momentous.  I'm using emacs to edit the web site while simultaneously getting better at PHP, and those things introduce a learning curve and make the whole task take longer, for now.   Emacs is supposed to be a very flexible editor, but it takes a lot of getting used to, because it differs in many important ways from the editors I'm used to: Notepad, Visual Studio, etc.  It doesn't even behave like a normal Windows program, because it was originally created to work on a terminal, with no mouse or GUI.  It is very useful, though.  I can see the potential power in there - I just have to work to get in tune with the program.

Kay is trying her best to crawl now.  The only thing she can manage right now is scooting around in a circle.  She can roll, though.  If you leave her on her back for any amount of time, she's roll right over to her stomach.  She can even get up on all fours for a few seconds, but she hasn't quite coordinated everything into movement.  Soon, though.  If you're so inclined, you can see new pictures of her on my Picasa page.  There's also some pictures of Misty when she was a baby.  Marvel at the similarity!

Current weight: 324.6 lbs
Total weight lost: 3.4 lbs

What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first step to something better.
-- Wendell Phillips

Uncertain Times

I missed a couple of weeks here, because they were exceptionally busy.  It finally came to crunch time at work, so I had to work several nights and some weekdays.  That wasn't a lot of fun, but we did end up putting out a great product, which should roll out soon.  Metrocon also ate up a lot of the time I wasn't working, mostly because I procrastinated in making buttons and gathering prizes for our raffle.  More on that in a bit.  Finally, I was helping Kali with a Flash project for her class.  I feel a little bad about it, because it ended up being far more complex than it needed to be.  She's almost guaranteed to get an A, though.

All of this craziness meant that I spent little to no time on my diet.  I didn't completely pig out, but I didn't eat healthily enough to lose weight.  In the last couple of weeks, I've gained 0.6 pounds, which really isn't all that bad in the short term.  Now that all the craziness is behind me, we'll be back on our diet this week.  Expect weight loss to return.

Ah, Metrocon.  What a cluster-fuck that almost turned out to be.  For some reason, Anime Nation decided not to participate in this year's Metrocon, and they (through a friend) were the ones who were supposed to get me passes to the con.  I didn't know they had bailed until the day before the con, so I started to panic.  When I got to the con, hoping beyond reason that something would work out, it turned out that TBA had a table, but I didn't know which one, and I had no passes.  I walked around the con for hours (in my staff friend Justin's escort), looking for someone who could help me, but to no avail.  Finally, the con started, and I had no table or passes.  I started to despair when several TBA members found me and started to help.  They went out into the four corners of the con, looking for anybody who could help.  Finally, I got a call that all was taken care of, and I was able to set up our table and get to fund raising.  It was all pretty fun thereafter.  Special thanks to Mike, Jon, Les, Kali, and Angela for their help.  I'm gonna write up a Metrocon report today, and I'll have to make sure to thank them publicly there.

This was Kay's very first con, and she was a champ.  Misty and I worked out a system of taking turns watching her at night, and it worked out well.  We both ended up having a good time and we got to spend time together on the last day.  Kay drew lots of complements and even scored Misty a new friend from Orlando.  Pictures will be uploaded to the web this week.

Current weight: 324.2 lbs
Total weight lost: 3.8 lbs

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.
-- John Quincy Adams

Steady As He Goes

I splurged a little too much on my diet this week.  I weighed in today exactly the same as last week.  I'll have to be a little more diligent this week.

This last week, I've been very focused on The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.  I'm very near the end, and I've been trying to finish off some of the mini-quests before moving on to the final dungeon.  I played a lot Saturday and Sunday, getting much further along.  I resorted to FAQs a couple of times to get past some things that were stumping me.  I used to avoid reading FAQs, no matter what, but I've got too many games to play to waste much time trying to figure something out for long.  So, every now and then, I'll peek into a FAQ just to give myself that little extra nudge.  I expect to finish Twilight Princess this weekend.

Metrocon is coming up soon, so I need to make some buttons.  I design the buttons and Misty helps me make them.  Then, we sell then at the convention to raise money for TBA.  The hardest part is coming up with button designs that people will enjoy.  We got a couple popular ones, and I try to come up with cool new designs every year.  We also sell a couple of buttons that match Metrocon's theme every year.  This year, that's "Anime vs Video Games".  That won't be too hard to make.  Once I've got the buttons made, I'll post them on the TBA website and forums.

I'm going to have a couple of long days at work this week, because we're approaching another deadline.  Bugs are being fixed quickly, but there's still a lot of work to be done before the release date.

Oh!  I almost forgot!   During the latest TBA meeting part of the plug that connects to my computer's speaker jack came off in the jack.  I futzed with it during the meeting for 45 minutes before just giving up on it.  My computer has two sound jacks: one in front and one in back, for headphones and speakers, respectively.  While something is plugged into the front, though, no sound is sent to the back jack.  Bleh.  So, I spent a couple more hours trying to get it out the next day.  Finally, remembering my warranty and support plan, I logged into Dell's support website and chatted with a hardware support guy.  He arranged to have a technician come to my house in a day or two and replace the whole panel.  That's awesome.  It makes me really glad I paid for a computer from a real company.  If I had built it, it'd take me days and a bunch of money to get it all resolved.

Current weight: 321.2 lbs
Total weight lost: 6.8 lbs

To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
-- Farmers' Almanac, 1978

Now With More Gamercard!

I'm a little late with this one, but I didn't forget.  Work has kept me a little busy, but it hasn't really been that bad.  Things are going pretty well for me, right now, actually.

Metrocon is coming up, so I need to buckle down and get some buttons designed and created for Tampa Bay Anime.  Our last meeting before the con is this weekend, so it'd be nice if I could have something to show for it.  I did manage to get the code set up to automatically list the next meeting date, and I've started gathering tools for updating the website and forum on a more regular basis.  So, that's coming along.

Kay is at an exciting time in her development.  She's grabbing at everything, including her feet.  She doesn't quite crawl yet, but she's trying really hard to get the hang of it.  She definitely squirms across the floor well.  She's already managed to paw at my sound system, so I'm going to have to get serious about relocating my floor-level electronics.  She's started teething, too.  This is a time that I've been dreading.  It's varies in intensity - sometimes it keeps her up at night and she'll cry for an hour.  Other times, she's the same as always.  It's a little nerve-wracking, but it's nothing we can't handle.

We're getting settled into our diet fairly well.  We're starting to miss the foods we used to eat, but we're working together to choose meals that are good for us.  Of course, though, they've opened a Krispy Kreme across the street from us.  And they have drive-through window.  Unfair!

Game-wise, I just bought Puzzle Quest, finally caving to my friends' pressure.  It is a lot of fun, as I knew it would be.  Their characters are much higher level, though, so I'll have to play for a while before I can be competitive against them.  Other than that, I'm getting into Shadowrun for the PC, and I'm trying to finish Zelda for the Wii.  Crackdown, Ninja Gaiden Black, and Lumines Live spend about equal time in my 360 these days.  Also, I occasionally get to play World of Warcraft with Misty.  Good times for gaming.

Current weight: 321.2 lbs
Total weight lost: 6.8 lbs

I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.
-- Anna Quindlen

Full Steam

The diet is off to a great start -- I dropped three pounds this week. I was a little concerned that WeightWatchers' new point formulation for men might mean I'd have a harder time losing weight, but that doesn't seem to be the case, so far. I'll be wearing XXL clothes in no time!

Kay had another physical this morning. She's growing well, with no problems other than some mild acid reflux. We're keeping that under control, though. The doctor gave her the go-ahead for eating her first solids this week, and Misty was just thrilled about that. It's just rice cereal for now, but it'll be Stage 1 veggies in a couple of weeks. I'm sure I'll manage to get some pics & vids of her eating solids soon.

I've been getting very productive lately. Because Misty and I have started on our diet again, I have a few more reasons to get back to programming. I'm working on "Pantry", a program for organizing and building recipes, meals, and menus. I started on it long ago, making it one of my most-delayed projects. Now, though, I've been working on its design in Google Documents. I expect to be working on code on it soon. Before I release it, I'll want to get my personal web site back in order.

I'm trying to get more proactive about Tampa Bay Anime again, too. I put up a new news post about our current raffle, and I've started a thread asking for comments on our latest meeting. I want to make that thread a recurring thing, to keep our members active on the forum. Also, I'm gonna try to gather anime ahead of time, throughout the week, so that I can be thoroughly prepared for the meeting. My eventual goal is to have all news and threads ready to go on the day of the meeting, so I only have to publish them. I also want to put together little synopses of the shows we're going to see -- stuff I can show before the show to give a little info and context.

Anyway, that's all for now. If I get inspired, I'll post again this week.

Current weight: 322.8 lbs
Total weight lost: 5.2 lbs

The path to our destination is not always a straight one. We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn't matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark.
-- Barbara Hall

I'm Not Big. You're Just Small.

Electric Goldfish puts my blog to shame. There's something new up there all the time. Meanwhile, here I am with no posts since March. The trick is to post more often about smaller things. It's inevitable that I'm going to have a lot to post about if I don't write anything for three months at a time. Then again, my natural verbosity works against me. Let's see how I do this time...

Misty and I are back on our WeightWatchers diet. Since we last used it, they've altered the system to work better for men. The end result is that i get to eat even more than I did under the old system. That makes it trickier to work out a menu that works for both Misty and I, but I think we're up to it. It'll get easier as we get back into the groove of it. I hope to have more input into the menu this time. This is week one -- again. This time, I'm starting at 325.6 lbs. My goal is 225, at which point I should be able to wear XXL clothes comfortable. Maybe even XL. It's been so long since I've been that small, I really have no idea. All I do know is that some of my 3X clothes are starting to snug up a bit. That just will not do.

I'm enjoying working at Home Shopping Network. The work is challenging and satisfying, and I have a significant amount of control about how I do it. My managers don't bug me, and I don't have to lead anybody. Plus, I wear jeans and tennies to work every day. Also, for the first time, my work will be used by millions of people all over the world. That excites me.

As you might expect, Kay is a big part of my life right now. I'm proud of her health, intelligence, and spirit every time I see her. I'm taking plenty of pictures to show friends and family, and I'm posting most of them online. I've even put up a video on YouTube. Check it out.



I've already got another one to post. Kay is getting very "talkative", and she just found her feet. Good times!

Anybody wanna start a betting pool about when my next post will be?

Current weight: 235.6 lbs
Total weight loss: 2.4 lbs

That’s the miracle of babies, their ability to lay bare the tender, beating hearts of raging assholes.
--Heather Armstrong