Been a Long Time, Part II!

  Been a Long Time, Part II!

I'm going to echo the first line of my last blog entry - "Yea, it's been a long time."


  Why?  Well, I guess the blogging craze has dropped out, both in general and for me personally.  There's still always been a place for it, of course.  But now it's re-surging I believe.  So here I go jumping back in a little anyway.  

  And I've just gotten out of the habit of blogging anything, and a hell of a lot has changed in my life since the last entry too.  But I'm going to try and post an entry once in a while, I'm thinking I am going to do some reviews of equipment that I have, and things like that.

  Changes

  After B'elanna died we got a Boxer, Archer (the white one).  We had already had one Boxer, Chakotay, and really liked the breed.

  And recently we have a new kitten, Spock.  Spock is from a litter of kittens and mother who showed up at our place and who we coaxed close enough to catch them all.  We then found homes for all of them except one mostly white kitten who we fell in love with and kept - Spock.

  Also, my father sold his property, his whole farm, to the Amish.  Big thing for him, but also for us as they are now our neighbors.  It's hard to imagine living as they do, and it's a big culture-shock for us.

  I'm also a telephone contact for them, though this went from them assuring me that it might be one call a year to a few times a month and then to driving them and their relatives and friends places and picking up people and stuff. 

  So one day I kind of tried to put a stop to that by not necessarily answering the door if I don't see a car in the yard.  

  Yea, okay, maybe rude - but, despite what some of the people in Jefferson County think; they're just human beings like the rest of us and if you let them take advantage of you then they will.  It got excessive.  No offense but, geez, their sect should allow them to buy a phone for emergencies at least...

  The Biggest Changes

  But probably one of the biggest changes is that we also changed our whole lives with a new attitude, less weight, lots of exercise, and much healthier eating!

  I can't tell you how it all started, and neither can my wife.  We just started slowly I think, and we didn't talk about it and plan it or anything.  I can't even tell you which of us started because it started so slowly.  And we tend to work off from each other's ideas and habits (which I believe is what a good partnership of any kind should be like).

  I just know that I had went up well over 200 pounds (I don't exactly know how much - and it also fluctuated daily) and even though I was still quite active during the nice times of the year; I could feel the weight pulling me down.  More and more as time went on.  If I bent over to tie my shoes I could feel the pressure of it pushing the air out of my lungs, and I didn't like how I looked or felt.  I could feel how unhealthy I was.

  And having a family on my mother's side of fairly overweight people with all sorts of health problems, including diabetes and heart problems - well, it makes you think.  makes you think real hard.

  Jenny, my wife, had gotten quite large and has always been overweight her whole life.  I was always pretty thin until the last decade or so.  Growing up on a farm I'd always been thin, scrawny, but fairly strong (at least I thought so).  

  But after gaining weight I was fat in the belly, chest, face, and neck yet I still had thin spindly arms and fairly thin legs, except where they were fat on my thighs somewhat.

  So again; I don't know how we started losing weight and getting healthier, we just did.

  I only remember deciding to give up soda (cola).  I started it slowly, and even started watering down the soda sometimes, or trying to switch to slightly more healthy drinks.  Sometimes I'd drink water instead.  

  Jenny was surprised at this a few times when she noticed that I was doing it, as I had always been a real big soda drinker.  But right around the same time we both started changing how and what we ate, and our exercise and lifestyle, so I can't say that I started it, we just kind of did in parallel.  Like I said - I remember stopping drinking soda but I don't think that's what started both of us; we just did it a little at a time.  That seemed like the best way, instead of a huge change.

  I immediately started losing weight once I completely stopped drinking soda, even without making any other changes.  For me personally this really encouraged me.  It was amazing, the pounds just dropped off.  And while I mentioned above that I have always been a soda drinker - I was never real super crazy like some people are.  Usually one or two sodas a day, that was it.

  But it was crazy how much weight I was losing just stopping that much soda intake.  That tells you something significant right there.

  We both started watching our weight over time and before long we had gotten a treadmill, a Sole F63, and was trying to get more exercise in general.

  We worked up from there with getting a Wii and a number of exercise-related games for it.  The two of us spent many hours, together as well as separately, working and sweating.  We started small and worked up.  The Wii was an integral beginning part to our changes, and though we rarely use it now it was certainly worth it to get that exercise that interactive physical gameplay did for us.

  Later we picked up some exercise DVD's of various kinds and levels, which opened up a whole new world for us.  We got more and more of them, trying them and doing and re-doing our favorites.  We also continued to watch our food intake and slowly started eating healthier food in general.

  An exercise room was the next thing we did, building it ourselves using a portion of our cellar which only was used for some storage.  In the pic below you can't quite see the whole room, a few more things around the edge there, small but works nicely for two people (and two dogs).

  You might find this strange and I really need to get an updated video on Youtube showing it - our dogs have gotten so used to running on the treadmill that I don't have to say a word; as soon as we go into the exercise room Chakotay goes and gets on the treadmill and waits.  If we're using it I have to make him get off it. Otherwise I start it up, he walks on it (as I slowly increase the speed so he's jogging then slow it down at the end) and when I press the STOP button and it stops, he gets off by himself and Archer comes over and gets on and waits - all without me saying one word!

  Anyway, after we got he exercise room finished we moved the treadmill to the exercise from from where we had been using it, got a Bowflex, and I moved my stair-climber and rowing machine down there also, and I made a pull-up bar and a wrist roller.  Over time we also supplied it with a TV, Dolby Surround Sound with radio, DVD player, and a hookup to our antenna system and Dish Network.  I'm working on adding a weight bench attachment to the Bowflex currently, and I got a few pieces of free weights from a local Freecycle site.  Later we bought more free weights, they're a great to supplement the Bowflex weight training.

  P90X was also something else we acquired, and we both dove into that.  It was hard at first, Plyometrics was a killer but amazingly, over time, we both got strong enough to do it all with Jenny just now getting into doing the weight training part of it.  Tony Horton is the greatest - firm, helpful, funny, and an inspiration.  I also do Insanity and lots of Bob Harper's stuff, like this one.

  Insanity IS insane.  It is very very hard and I could only have worked up to it after getting very fit, and then doing P90X over and over and over again many many times.  I'd consider it only for those who are very physically fit and fairly advanced.  But I am proud to say that I can keep up with the twenty-something's on the disc.

  Some of it is still sweat-producing hard, but it's hard as in 'good hard exercise' now.  Not hard as in 'I'm not fit enough to do this!'.

  Also, Jenny's severe sleep apnea completely disappeared once she lost a significant amount of weight!  Gone, completely, no more machine, no more problems.

  I lost over fifty pounds myself, but did I mention - Jenny lost over 225!  I've been and continue to be so proud of her.  You can read her blog about the process here. 

  And I guess it surprised me a bit when I heard family members and friends say how they never thought that she could do it.  I didn't think anything of it, I knew she could.  I knew I could.  There was no question.

  It's one of the things that surprised me, people not thinking she was capable of it.

  Check out her blog if you get the chance - lots of pics, including those from when she had to have the operation to remove the extra skin (yuk - not for the weak stomached).

  And another thing that has surprised and still surprises me is how some people are so sure that all of a sudden we're going to gain it all back!  And backslide.

  Sure, a lot of people who go on diets gain the weight back.

  And of course you're going to gain it back if you watch your food intake, decide you've lost enough and look good, and then start eating the same way again and stopping any exercise!  Of course you're going to gain it back, how could you not think otherwise?!

  You have to make a change in how you eat and exercise, a permanent change, not a temporary one.  That's how you get and stay healthy, and maintain a healthy weight.

  Seems pretty self-evident and common sense to me.

  Another kind of strange reaction to our weight loss is those people who say 'I didn't think you were overweight before'.

  Huh?  It seems kind of obvious, look at the before and after pic above.  My double chin was even getting a double chin!  And the before picture was taken a number of years before I started losing weight so I had gained even more  weight after that pic was taken, whew!  My hat wouldn't even fit my head.

  Are we so used to the 'average' American being so overweight that it doesn't look abnormal any more?  In 2002 a government study showed that the average weight for an average American male is 191 pounds!  What?!  More than half of US men are over 180 pounds according to a newer study.

  I've also had people who said I was too thin, usually said behind my back of course.  

  Wow, this is mind-blowing to me.  My arms and legs are bigger and stronger and more muscular than they ever were in my whole life, I've lost a lot of my belly (still got some stubborn belly to lose) so I've dropped a number of pant sizes, yet I'm obviously not thin.  I feel great, good weight, in great shape.  Again, I have to repeat it - are we so used to the 'average' American being so overweight that it doesn't look abnormal any more and someone who is at a very healthy weight seems too thin?

  Jenny's also had a person, or maybe more, who insisted that she much have had weight-loss surgery to lose that much.  Insisted that it can't be done.  Wow.

  But I've had a few people who acted like I was going to chastise them because of their weight.  To me, being healthy is the important thing.  If you're overweight and unhealthy you should look at your life.  But if you're somewhat overweight and fine with it, and healthy, then who am I to tell you differently about how you should be?

  It does bother me that some of those who are significantly overweight and in the public eye are quick to tell everyone that we should all be happy with who we are.

  Good idea in principle; but when you have an unhealthy amount of weight then it seems like the wrong message to issue a blanket statement to everyone like that.

  Hey, if you're happy with setting yourself up for health problems later (or sometimes sooner) in life then fine, but with the epidemic of obesity and morbid obese people in the US, it doesn't seem like a good thing to be preaching eating whatever you want until you're fat from the rooftops.

  I think I look pretty good in general, if I do say so myself.  And for starting this in my mid-40's and only being at it for a couple years - I think I've done well.  And I've worked hard, damn hard every single day.  

  I might mention here too, one thing that helped me target what I needed to do once I lost the weight and wanted to continue getting even healthier and more athletic, was the social exercise website Fitocracy.  

  I'm at what is medically considered the correct weight range for my stats, and I've put on tons of muscle, am more muscular than I have ever been in my life, more flexible (and it's amazing how being more flexible can affect ALL aspects of your life - don't discount stretching and Yoga just for the flexibility part of it, not to mention other benefits), more able to do all kinds of things I couldn't do before or couldn't do well.  My resting and exercise heart rate has come now significantly.  Good to have a nice heart rate monitor, like the Garmin series of GPS/Heart Rate Monitor watches, especiall if you're going to do the intense cardio exercises like P90X's Plyometrics or the extremely intense ones in Insanity.

  I've also found that my body seems to be damn fine at recovering from injuries, and not getting sick now.  When I was young I got sick often; colds, flu's, etc.  Now I haven't had a cold in possibly two years or at least a year and a half.  Which is the most unusual thing for me.  Sure, I might have an off day, a day when I don't feel strong because maybe my body is fighting off a cold, or is tired.  But you have to know when to take a rest, drink lots of fluids, rest completely or at least cut down on exercises for that day, and maybe put a little recovery/vitamin enhancement in your water (like Propel) - and that's the day for it.  

  I know some people exercise way too much, but one of the secrets of it is to take breaks - at least give the arts of your body that you've exercised hard a break.

  I'm also biking as much as I can now, getting my distances up to a max of 45 miles!  And I've run eight miles max (on my 46th birthday!) but normally run three to six.  No marathon, but pretty good I think.  Considering the average American probably couldn't run a mile I think I'm doing okay.

  Tomorrow, on Thanksgiving morning we're running a 5k Turkey Run that benefits the YMCA, no big thing for either of us anymore.  We've done a number of runs this year and at one of them I even got first place in my age group, and in another Jenny got first place for women overall!  

  I remember when I was a kid in school I could barely make it through running one mile, and I was walking by the end.

  Yet I wish I could have started this whole thing earlier.  Instead of in my middle age.  The nice thing is there's no upper age limit to getting fitter, gaining muscle or flexibility - it just takes a little longer and sometimes you have to ease into it instead of diving in.

  So, enough about me.  

  I hope this has shown that no matter how much you weight and in how badly out of shape you are you can make yourself over, better than you have ever been.  And it doesn't take a lot of money - if you're reading this you have access to the Internet and can find everything you need to get started.


 Other Things

  We finally got a faster Internet here, via a Virgin Mobile's Broadband Mifi.  It works okay, but not the best.  But for those without any other options it's better than dial-up.  I'm using a hacked router using DD-WRT to make a connection to it and distribute the signal, both wireless and wired, throughout the house; thus overcoming the limitations of the router somewhat.

  As you may or may not have noticed I have changed the blog template, logo graphics, and arrangement and added some ads.  Sorry, but times are tough and despite what some people think - reading an ad won't kill ya ;)

  So, watch for upcoming blog entries as I review some of my favorite stuff.




Products mentioned in this blog:



   

The Wii, Windows 7

We have been looking at Wii's for quite awhile. But they aren't cheap, that's for sure.

I, personally, am not much of a game player and usually avoid sitting and playing games, as a bit of a waste of time. Though I can happily spend hours flying on a flight simulator; which many people may say is no different. ;)

Anyway, the whole Wii concept looks like a lot of fun and something completely different in the way of videogames.

And, well, the technology is amazing and has a lot of potential.

The prices, surprisingly, haven't really changed any.

So yesterday my wife, Jennifer, decided to pick one up at our local mall's Fye's. The deal was that you buy the Wii and get an extra controller with it, as well as a game that was included in the extra game controller package. Since we were going to get another controller anyway (the Wii game itself only comes with one controller and one Nunchuck) it was an okay deal. She also bought a used, repackaged game additionally.

It wasn't long before I had the power plugged into our Monster Cable power strip (don't get high quality home entertainment electronics without one!), as well as the rest of the cables; and had synced up the controllers.

A sensor bar attaches to the tv, or above or below it (the controllers use IR like your TV remote, as well as like my Air Hogs helicopter - mentioned in a previous blog entry. The idea of using IR instead of RF for something that needs moderate bandwidth is pretty interesting in itself. It's carrying a fair amount of information - velocity and motion and other senosr info, as well as button control and the sound that's transmitted to each controller).

First off I was a bit disappointed that the video and audio output is in analog, using a/v cables. Especially since the connector that goes into the machine itself obviously has a multitude of connections, yet the output itself is standard analog a/v cables. So it took one of our precious a/v inputs - the tv has plenty of HDMI inputs but only a few a/v inputs.

A quick look through the manual explains that there are component cables available (not bad) and it's capable of 480P. Not great, but it's not exactly known for it's super hi-rez graphics either. Though screenshots of some of the nicer games are very good.

The machine itself seems to be built slightly better then your standard piece of crappy electronics nowadays. It can take memory cards (damn, gotta scrounge one up) as well as Game Cube games and controllers, and USB devices like wireless and wired networking, USB keyboards, etc.

It can also be mounted horizontally or vertically, and has a stand for the vertical mounting (which we used, fit nicely).

The gameplay is amazing, and takes your experience to a new level. The graphics themselves of the games we have are smooth but cartoonish (at least on these games), and the gameplay is hard yet easy to master enough to have fun. Oh, and to work up a sweat too! The graphics, despite being a bit cartoonish on these particular games, are nice with vibrant colors and good resolution.

I really like the boxing, and got quite a sweaty workout from it. My punches did seem to be sometimes faster then my character was punching. I suspect this may be the way the game is set up for the boxing part; so you're not punching someone across the room or something. I can play the baseball game and swing the bat as fast as I possibly can, and it keeps up just fine.

The technology behind the whole thing is certainly interesting to contemplate. Velocity and motion sensors, rumble servos and IR technology that sends sound to the controllers, etc. And all in a fairly good quality package, unlike so many game machines (that are in comparable price ranges) as well as TV's and DVD players.

The game that comes with the machine also has a whole fitness section where; instead of playing the games against other people or the machine, you go through this whole fitness regimen using parts from each one. I started it - it's quite a workout! And maybe I'll give it a try everyday, it's sure more fun this my rowing machine and long walks in the cold.



On to Windows 7... I decided to go ahead and give it a try, despite my initial thought that I had neither the time nor the interest in trying it until at least a release candidate.

I'd tried it on customer's computers (one who was even running it as their main operating system for their business! Not smart).

The installation went very smoothly and it picked up nearly every device I had, including lots of older USB devices (and I got a lot of USB devices). The only thing it didn't install a driver for was the SM Bus (wonder if the driver for Vista would work? Probably) and a driver for the printer/copier/fax - though it did identify it correctly.

At first blush it's pretty nice. Much faster then Vista, even with Aero running! Lots of new features, lots of good features that Vista had, and it seems to be MUCH more compatible with more software. I even foudn myself anxious to get up the morning after I installed it. The last time that happened was whuen XP came out. Yea yea, that's a bit geeky...

Right away I had a bit of a SNAFU with one of my favorite programs - Rocketdock. This turned out to be somewhat my own fault. It's SUPPOSED to be easier transferred to a portable device using the option of saving the set up as a separate INI, which is what I have the option set as. That way I can easily transfer it over to other computers on my network.

Unfortunately this didn't work for whatever reason. Maybe it had to do with Windows 7, maybe not.

But it messed up it's entry in the registry to the point that even deleting and re-installing Rocketdock wouldn't work.

I went on to install Stardock's Objectdock instead, which also didn't want to load quite right the first few times. But after a reset all was well with it.

After going back and scanning through the registry (yes, the registry editor's exactly the same, it seems) and deleting the entries for Rocketdock and re-installing it; it worked perfectly. I've since switched back to Rocketdock though.

I then proceeded to load Win 7 down with lots of installations, here's a few of my initial ones:

Rocketdock
Objectdock
Webcam32
Paintshop Pro
Paintshop Pro upgrade
Metapad
Keynote
Netscape
Expression web
K-meleon
Flock
Quicktime
Openoffice
Firefox
Thunderbird
Gimp and a bunch of plugins, including Photoshop ones
Mozbackup
Mappoint
Goops
Filemenu Tools (amazingly this works fine - see a previous blog entry about this tool)
GPSBabelWrapper
Google Earth with GPS control wrapper
Google Sketchup Pro
Adobe reader
Adobe reader update
Foxit reader
Flash
Garmin trip and waypoint manager
Driver for Garmin Legend HCx GPS works fine
Driver for radiosonde receiver works fine
Driver for Powershot a570IS works fine (I don't like the camera connection wizard as well as XP's, may use Faststone's picture download as the autorun default)
Winzip 11
7-zip
Avira AntiVir
Wordweb
Weatherwatcher
Winweather
NOAA NWS Weather Spotter's Interface
uTorrent
USAPhotomaps
City Navigator 2009
Free Download Manager


NASA's World Wind didn't work. A bit of a disappointment to me, but I still have my Windows XP partition working fine so if I want to use it it's there for me.

I next installed the driver and software for the Logitech orbit webcam (though a generic driver was installed by Windows 7).

The controller that moves the camera on the servos was not available, and neither was the face-following option. A quick update from MS (using the handy Action Center) solved that problem.

I also updated the video driver but then my favorite resolution was not available. There was one very close, so that was no real problem.

MaxiVistaMirrorPro didn't work at all, no surprise.

Comodo firewall also didn't work, and neither did the newest version. Which seemed to work for some people.

Unfortunately at this point I tried to force it to install by using the compatibility tab under the install's properties.

Erp, bad choice. While this method may have worked for some people it crapped out for me. And worse of all after installing half of itself.

After resetting the computer Windows 7 would not start. A couple system rollbacks later and I was back in business, but not before a bunch of error-checking by the system and questionable messages.

To be fair - Windows 7 is a Beta and I was installing a low-level driver that shouldn't have been installed, plus I had installed a bunch of updates. Not a good combination.

After this incident I continued to use the system but with a couple crashes per day.

I went ahead and messed recklessly with a few things - knowing that I was going to start over from scratch anyway - and outside of the problems likely related to the bad firewall installation; it performed pretty well otherwise.

So eventually I wiped the partition and re-installed Windows 7.

This time it was much stabler, though I did have one crash right off the bat but I haven't had another though.

The built-in firewall is okay, and actually scored quite well with my own tests as well as Shields Up. But despite that I would rather have something with more control, and chances are companies like Comodo aren't going to release a version for Windows 7 until the actual full release of it is done. Would you release a security program for a buggy Beta, or even for a release candidate?

So I found the very good (and free) PC Tools Firewall Plus which seems to be very compatible with Windows 7, as well as scores just as good on my firewall tests. Rather have Comodo but this is a good choice also.

The taskbar's "combine with taskbar is full" is great, especially to us power users who have a crapload of programs open. XP's handling of this was negligible at best.

And the Action Center seems to have replaced the security center. But you do get more options. Maybe MS has done something right with this also. I like it, I have to say.

As I said - the whole system is quite fast. Though occasionally while using certain programs it can pause for an alarmingly long moment, or get overloaded a bit. Of course, I do my best to stress it way past the point of normal use, even by me.

The above could be the result of it being Beta, I'm sure there's going to be some memory management tweaks at the very least. It seems to take advantage of my full 4 gigs of memory anyway. Which is good compared to XP's only handling 3.1 gig of the 4.

And it could use some tweaking - I'm running with the default services still intact. Many of which can be turned off for more speed and stability.

I've yet to run any REAL tests, like rendering some heavy-duty graphics - and comparing it to XP and Vista.

I do have a few problems, which seem to be fairly common problems with others. My taskbar icons seem to randomly disappear. The programs are still running and I can access them by using ALT-TAB or the Task Manager, but they disappear from the taskbar itself. Sometimes while I'm using them (it doesn't affect the opened screen though, only the icon in the taskbar).

Also, I've noticed that if I'm restarting Windows 7 and I try to use the network or even access much of anything in those first few moments when the desktop pops up - sometimes things don't show up or work properly along the lines of the network or displaying notification icons. Giving it a few moments to start without touching anything and all is well.

The disappearing taskbar icons is the most annoying thing for me, and hopefully there's some sort of resolution for it at some point from MS. It's maddening in fact, and makes it almost unusable when it happens. No matter what taskbar option I've tried it still happens occasionally.

But, Windows 7 is still in Beta. So there's got to be some bugs at the very least. From what I have read there are many, yet it also has much potential.

I even though the login screen in the tv show "Heroes" last night.