The 2009 Archives

Just look at all of the great stuff that I wrote in 2009

(or move onto the literary gold from 2010 or the gems from 2008)

Good Thing I Like Fish

...and good thing I'm learning the guitar.

A boat docked in a tiny Mexican village. An American tourist complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.

"Not very long," answered the Mexican.

"But then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the American.

The Mexican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family.

The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs. I have a full life."

The American interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat."

"And after that?" asked the Mexican.

"With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can then negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your huge new enterprise."

"How long would that take?" asked the Mexican.

"Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years," replied the American.

"And after that?"

"Afterwards? Well my friend, that's when it gets really interesting," answered the American, laughing. "When your business gets really big, you can start buying and selling stocks and make millions!"

"Millions? Really? And after that?" asked the Mexican.

"After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take a siesta with your wife and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends."

Cabbage Soup Diet - Post Diet

After the Diet.

Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 1
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 2
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 3
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 4
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 5
Cabbage Soup Diet - 6 (Last Day)
Cabbage Soup Diet - Post Diet

So, I lasted until the morning of the 6th day. A couple of things conspired against me. The first was that I lost too much weight too fast. The second thing was Xmas parties and dinners. Man, I feasted two nights ago on the evening of Day 6 (after I had already shamefully quit the CSD...)

As expected, there was a bit of a rebound effect after going off the CSD. I am aware of it and am going to try to keep my weight around the 210 mark now. I appreicate the Cabbage Soup Diet's role in enabling me to permanently break through the 215 mark, a place I languished in for many weeks...

Cabbage Soup Diet - Part 6 (Last Day)

Day 6.

Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 1
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 2
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 3
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 4
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 5
Cabbage Soup Diet - 6 (Last Day)
Cabbage Soup Diet - Post Diet

It is the morning of Day 6. Yesterday started off well enough, but I ate way too little, did too much, and I forgot to drink water. All I had in the morning was one bowl of cabbage soup. By 3PM I felt like something was a little wrong. I was pretty dizzy and I felt like I was having slight heart palpitations. As a quasi-emergency measure, I stopped at a McDonalds and pulled the meat and cheese out of a McDouble and ate that (and threw the rest away. As I picked that buger apart I had the uneasy feeling that this behaviour could be the beginnings of an eating disorder...) What a mistake that burger meat was because Holy Cow, is McDonald's meat ever salty! It's definitely not 100% beef. I'll bet it's only 75% beef and 25% salt. Then I continued home with my groceries and had my 10oz steak and 3 tomatoes. I felt much better after that. My wife had a good point on the dizziness though. I take a huge cocktail of vitamins each day including some pretty stimulating stuff like Gingko Biloba and Ginger, which together with my empty stomach may have contributed to my problems. And overall I think I should have taken it more easy. I shouldn't have worked out the day before. I mean, it's one thing if you are on this diet while sitting in a hospital bed waiting for surgery, quite another if you are running around town and exercising at the gym.

And then later in the day disaster struck in the form of an Xmas party at a friend's place. I had two kickers and about 6oz of super-salty hors d'ouvres. Man, I tried to resist but there was a spread of tasty food and everybody was telling me to eat. I got home later in the evening and had one more tomato before bed.

Earlier this morning I woke up and I could immediately tell I was retaining water. I think that's the secret of the CSD. Because there is absolutely no salt in it, you end up shedding retained water until you start eating salt again, as I did yesterday afternoon and last night. As I feared, the scale this morning showed a 3 pound gain. I'm now back up to 208.5.

OK, so here's the thing. There's another Xmas party tonight at my in-laws. One thing I can say about them is that they can cook! I can't bear the thought of fasting in a corner all night trying to ignore what promises to be a HUGE banquet-y feast...so...I'm quitting the CSD. Actually I already quit about 45 minutes ago, I just scrambled up three eggs, topped them with Tabasco and plopped them on top of a piece of a rye bread with a chunk of cheese on the side. And I can't tell you how good real food tasted after 6 days; let me just say the orgasm wasn't entirely unexpected...

December 15 - 217 lbs.
December 16 - 212 lbs.
December 17 - 211 lbs.
December 18 - 208.5 lbs.
December 19 - 205.5 lbs.
December 20 - 208.5 lbs.

Total Weight lost in 6 days: 8.5 pounds

I'm going to continue to track my weight here for the next few days or so, so you can see my "rebound weight" as I add real food back into my diet again. I'll also give you my overall impressions of the diet this second time around as well as my final recommendation. Thanks for reading.

Cabbage Soup Diet - Part 5

Day 5.

Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 1
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 2
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 3
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 4
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 5
Cabbage Soup Diet - 6 (Last Day)
Cabbage Soup Diet - Post Diet

I should take a moment here to tell you a little bit about myself. I am a 6 foot 4 inch tall, super-handsome and über-masculine 43-year-old male. Seven months ago, I tipped the scales at 271 pounds - I decided that enough was enough, there was no use in denying it, for the first time in my life I would have to diet and exercise. I picked as my goal the weight I was at when I met my wife 11 years earlier - 232 pounds. I wanted to fit into my fancy and frilly powder-blue wedding tux one more time! So I went on the Cabbage Soup Diet in order to kick-start the whole process and I lost 9.5 pounds in 6 days. Encouraged by this, I continued with a sensible diet and some pretty frequent and intensive exercising until I hit my goal weight a little over 3 months later. I looked and felt great (and the tux was loose on me!) but I wanted to see if losing a few more pounds would be even better for me because according to my BMI, a guy my height should be no more than 204 pounds.

Over the next few months, using the same "secret" formula of sensible eating and moderate exercise, I continued to gently move down, stopping at 225 and again at 215, looking and feeling better and better each time. But I still had a little belly and 204 pounds was calling out to me: "Stephan! Steeeeppphannnn!" With effort, I ignored the call until last week. I had plateaued at 215, and could feel myself creeping upwards again. I didn't want to pull any further away from 204 now that I was so close, so I decided to do the Cabbage Soup Diet just one more time.

This morning I looked in the mirror and I think I'm actually getting a little gaunt! Awesome! My stomach is almost completely flat, I can't even push it out that far. To tell you the truth, 204 might just be a little low for me, but at least I know that fact now and I also have the luxury of putting back on a few pounds if necessary. Can't wait for the morning of day 8!

Yesterday I ate little, but I had lots of *ahem* liquids. I had one bowl of cabbage soup, five bananas, one and a half litres of skim milk, two black coffees, a bunch of water and tea, two beers, a Grand Marnier, a straight up shot of the best whiskey on the planet, and a Hoppe's Own Special 6oz Manhattan.

I am feeling a little weak, and I did have a couple of dizzy spells yesterday but nothing worrying. I worked out yesterday for the first time in a week and had a fantastic session. I'm also a little irritable but that happens even when I don't diet...

Today I can have between 10 and 20 ounces of beef (so for me that means - twenty ounces of beef,) 6 tomatoes, and the soup. The bloody soup.

December 15 - 217 lbs.
December 16 - 212 lbs.
December 17 - 211 lbs.
December 18 - 208.5 lbs.
December 19 - 205.5 lbs.

Oooh, that's getting a little scary. 12 pounds in 5 days? If I lose anything between today and tomorrow, I may just have to stop.

Adventures in Wiring

Split-Phase 220VAC/240VAC wiring strategies

I can't believe what a headache it has been wiring up my detached garage for 220 so I can run my construction heater. I have a cheap, simple 220V heater that I brought with me from my old house, where I had it successfully wired up in my garage there. It's been sitting around the garage for the last couple of years because I wanted to try out one of those propane dish things instead - the dishes are good, but on really cold days in small spaces the fumes make you hallucinate a little, and even though table saws and hallucination go together like peanut butter and jam, I thgouht I'd better stop being lazy and wire up my garage for 220...

Now, I went through a bit of a conceptual struggle years ago when I wired up my old garage for 220. You see, my construction heater has what's called a a NEMA 6 connector. We are all familiar with simple 110V outlets with a hot side, a neutral side, and a ground. We all know that hot is hot, current flows from hot to neutral, and the ground is there to provide a path to the ground in case there is a problem - so that the current doesn't use you as a path to ground. (I simplifiy all of this because that's the only way I can get my head around it...)

Some of us may even be familiar with the kind of 220V wiring used in something like a washing machine. There you have everything that the 110V connection has, plus you have a second hot wire. The first hot flows to neutral, the second hot flows to neutral, and you have your ground too. The great thing about this is that the washer can now use both hots (220V) to power the motor, while still having availiable just one hot (110V) to power the timer...

Now contrast all that with my little construction heater. There are only three wires used to connect it up - a hot, another hot, and a ground (for safety.) There isn't a neutral "to accept" the current flow from the hots. The first time I was faced with wiring this up I didn't really understand what the instructions were telling me so I called an old friend who is a journeyman electrician for advice.

He said, "You wire it up hot, hot, ground..."

I said, "Where's the neutral?"

"There is no neutral" he said.

"Then where does the current flow?!"

"I don't know," he said "that's just the way it's done."

Later (after completing the wiring as instructed and being utterly amazed that it worked) I learned about phases. I'm not sure about other towns nearby, but in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada we use current that alternates at 60 cycles (times) per second. That means that the hot wire alternates between 110V and 0V sixty times per second. Like a pulse. I think I have actually felt the pulse on the few occasions I have inadvertently grabbed onto a hot wire; I swear I've felt the current pulsing up my arm towards my heart. (That statement more than any other I make in this post should underline to you that I am not responsible at all, let alone responsible for what you do with the information I give you here ...) And it's this pulsing that is the secret of how my simple little two wire 220V NEMA 6 connection to my construction heater works.

You see, it relies on the fact that the two hots supplying it must be 180 degrees out of phase. So sixty times per second, while the red wire is 110V and the black wire is 0V, then the red flows to black. And in the next cycle when the red is 0V and the black is 110V, then then the current flows the other way. It's like when I was in army cadets and they sent 15 guys into each end of a tight 30 foot culvert pipe at the same time and demanded we come out the other side. I'm pretty claustrophobic and I'm not proud of how much crying I did that day, but that has nothing to do with electricty.

Get it? You've got two hots coming into your house from the street, a red and a black and they are 180 degrees out of phase. When you install the double pole breaker into your main panel to feed the garage sub-panel, you need to make sure that you straddle both bus bars in the panel with that breaker, so that you are supplying 2 times 110VAC with each leg being 180 degrees out of phase (split phase). If you wire it up so that you garage is fed twice by the same bus bar in your main panel, then you will be supplying 2 times 110VAC single phase...and that's exactly what the Gomer Pyles who lived in my house previously did when they wired up my garage's sub-panel to the main panel in the house. I made the mistake of thinking that the wiring in my home was workmanlike and to code, and so couldn't understand at first why my heater wouldn't power up even though I obediently straddled both bus bars in my sub-panel in the garage. (BTW, I didn't literally straddle them. That's frowned upon by electricity hobbyists like myself.)

Luckily the fix is simple. In my main panel, if I pop out the 15 amp breaker next to the 30 amp double-pole breaker going to my garage, then move the double-pole over by half into the now vacated space, and then re-plug in the 15 amp (master bedroom breaker) on the other side, then that new position straddles the bus bars and I will them be supplying split-phase power to the garage. And since the master bedroom breaker is only 15 amp, single-phase it doesn't matter where it goes. As I said, it's a simple fix. But man, that's a weird main panel...

Cabbage Soup Diet - Part 4

Day Four.

Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 1
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 2
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 3
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 4
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 5
Cabbage Soup Diet - 6 (Last Day)
Cabbage Soup Diet - Post Diet

Yesterday (Day 3) was the hardest day yet. We're in a bit of a cold snap here and I didn't feel like putting my car through minus 15 degree starts to go to the store for fruit, so all I ended up eating for the entire day was some rutabaga/carrot mash, a little sweet potato, a big bowl of cold raw veg, a few apples, and one bowl of that evil soup. Plus tons of water and herbal tea...ummm if I had to guess, I'd say I drank about 3 litres of water and tea. My favourite tea is Country Peach Passion by Celestial Seasonings.

Oh and I ate one other thing. A while ago, my daughter was having a sleepover and I thought it would be funny to walk up to her in front of her friends and embarass her with a baby spoon and a jar of baby food and say something like: "OK, honey, it's time for your usual snack!" So I bought a jar of baby food and did the joke and Elle rolled her eyes at her like totally square dad (like totally L7 man!) and we had this baby food sitting around in the cupboard after that. So yesterday I spotted it while I was looking longingly through my food cupboards at all the food I cannot have. It was "Mixed Fruit" and I checked the ingredients and Yay! it actually had nothing but fruit in it! Apples, Pear, Apricot, and Pineapple. It was offically an "allowed" food today! And it turned out to be 100 calories, 4.5 ounces of pure heaven. I'm sure that's partially because I'm starving to death, but honestly I was blown away at how good it tasted. I found myself wondering how you could use this baby food in baking, I mean it tasted just like a fruit compote. It was very sweet, probably because the pineapple juice was concentrated...I think it only cost me 59 cents which makes it a better value than an actual apple...I could go on and on but now I am wondering how I can incorporate baby food into my new lifestyle and it will be all I can do not to buy 30 jars of this stuff when I go to the store today to buy bananas and milk...

Ok, so for today I can have up to 8 bananas, unlimited amounts of skim milk and unlimited cabbage soup which for me means exactly one bowl of cabbage soup. I love bananas and skim milk so it should be an interesting day.

This morning's scale reading exceeded my wildest expectations. It makes the lack of energy and the misery of yesterday totally worth it!

December 15 - 217 lbs.
December 16 - 212 lbs.
December 17 - 211 lbs.
December 18 - 208.5 lbs.

Cabbage Soup Diet - Part 3

Day Three.

Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 1
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 2
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 3
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 4
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 5
Cabbage Soup Diet - 6 (Last Day)
Cabbage Soup Diet - Post Diet

Yesterday was definitely tougher than Day 1. Eating vegetables for breakfast was not the greatest and I can't believe I am already sick of the soup. I only managed to choke down two bowls yesterday. But like I said before, it's mostly mind over matter and this morning's scale reading shows another pound lost. If I can just make it to 208 or 209 by the end of day six then I will consider the whole thing a complete success.

Today, I can have unlimited soup and unlimited vegetables but no potatoes, beans, peas, or corn. I can also have unlimited fruit except for bananas. Thank goodness for that. It means I can have a couple of apples for breakfast instead of sweet potatoes. I don't know why the order of what you eat from day to day is the way it is - I suspect that a lot of it has to do with the fact that people like to have rigid formulas to follow. The more inflexible the rules, the less likely people are to stray from them. Because I can't see any reason to force vegetables one day and fruit the next except for perhaps to "break the sweet tooth." I have an evil sweet tooth. I can take or leave chips and pretzels, but I have a hard time walking away from anything with sugar in it. When I was a kid I was putting white sugar on my Kraft Dinner when other kids were slathering on the ketchup (which is also almost pure sugar, but that's for another day...) I am ashamed to say that I STILL sometimes put sugar on my KD. So the first time I did the Cabbage Soup Diet I was surprised to notice my sweet tooth (and my starch tooth for that matter) kind of "fall out." Like I said before, I think the Cabbage Soup Diet is a great kick-start to a longer-term lifestyle change.

I also wonder: why so much cabbage? Maybe there is something special in cabbage beside whatever it is that gives you the explosive gas.

Me at work: Hey, everybody, I'm on the Cabbage Soup Diet!

Everybody else at work: Oh, we know...

December 15 - 217 lbs.
December 16 - 212 lbs.
December 17 - 211 lbs.

Cabbage Soup Diet - Part 2

Day Two.

Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 1
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 2
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 3
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 4
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 5
Cabbage Soup Diet - 6 (Last Day)
Cabbage Soup Diet - Post Diet

Today I start Day 2 of the Cabbage Soup Diet. I won't say that Day 1 was particularly difficult but it was no walk in the park either. Though I was "hungry" at times throughout the day yesterday, I feel that for North Americans hunger is more a state of mind than an actual physiological condition. Most have us have never experienced real hunger or else it's been so long that we've completely lost touch with what true hunger feels like. When I was hungry yesterday, I simply tried to put it out of my mind because hell, this whole thing lasts only 7 days anyway.

For a couple of reasons, I didn't eat all that much yesterday. Something like 4 or 5 apples, 4 clementines, a pear, and three big bowls of my cabbage soup, plus about 1.5 litres of water, 2 black coffees and maybe three herbal teas. One reason I didn't eat a lot was there's not a lot of fruit I felt like eating yesterday. Bananas are my favourite fruit but yesterday they were off limits. And I didn't feel like spending money on blueberries and raspberries so I just stuck with what we had in the house. The second reason I didn't eat a lot was that I guess I am still sick of cabbage soup from the first time I did this diet. I mean, this recipe (with the Lipton Soup) is FAR superior to the original recipe I ate in May, but just the smell of it this time around kind of killed my appetite. Whatever, I still choked down three bowls. It's all short-term pain for long-term gain.

So, this morning I got the scale and whoa! - 212 lbs.! A 5 pound drop in one day! Now, I am fully aware of the realities of this reading. There is no way I could have lost that much in 24 hours, but to paraphrase the Hacker's Diet: "the amount of solids passing through your body in a given day is positively dwarfed by the water that moves through - almost 12 pounds of water moves in and out of your body each day." That explains much of my daily variance in weight. That, and the fact that it turns out that the weight of a live human body is a notoriously difficult thing for a home scale to measure. Apparently, the fact that we move, wiggle, and sway while on the scale, coupled with the fact that the scale may not be on a level or rigid surface, means that on even a good home scale the weight readings can be off by as much as three pounds plus or minus. So all that said, I could have lost 2 pounds of water yesterday (due to my markedly reduced salt intake) plus there could have been a 3 pounds scale error. Whatever! 212 is still 212. That's a powerful motivator for me as I move into Day 2.

Today, I can have unlimited soup and unlimited vegetables including potatoes, but no beans, peas, or corn. No fruit. This will be an easier day for me than yesterday was because I like most vegetables. As you can see from the picture, today I plan on eating 1 to 3 bowls of the soup, plus I happen to have a carrot and rutabaga mash, some sweet potato, some raw celery and carrot and cauli and and broc, plus some barbecued eggplant. (I'm trying to stay on the complex side of the carbohydrates as much as possible.) Can't wait to see what scale reading tomorrow brings!

December 15 - 217 lbs.
December 16 - 212 lbs.

HP Sucks

but then again nowadays, who doesn't?

I bought my main home desktop PC from HP as a refurbished unit 4 years ago for $800. It's got 3 gigs of RAM (now), SATA drives, a hyper-threaded CPU, lots of "us-bee" ports on 'de outside - it's still a pretty good box I think, certainly no longer great, but good enough for me definitely. It came with XP Home and I just left that right there where it was.

Recently, I upgraded it to Windows 7 and one of the first things I got was a message saying that my onboard video didn't have enough guts to run the cool new "Aero" interface. Well, Patti's got Aero-something-or-other on her Vista laptop and it's pretty neat and I'm sure I would like like it, so I thought "No problem. I've got a nice video card lying around that I never bothered to put in. I'll just stick that in now." I remove the side panel on the HP box and...there is no slot for video...meaning there's no AGP port, no PCI-Express slot - NOTHING. The entire board has got just 3 PCI slots with two spots taken! I can even see the solder points on the board where the AGP port would be if it had one, but there is nothing there! What kind of fiddle-faddle PC company makes a tower PC that you can't even upgrade the onboard video?!

What HP has done, by skipping this 25-cent part is they've planned and designed obsolescence right into the box.

I have to laugh at how scummy and transparent their strategy is, as well as the fact that it took me 4 years to notice!

Fuck you, HP!

Cabbage Soup Diet - Part 1

Day One.

Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 1
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 2
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 3
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 4
Cabbage Soup Diet - Day 5
Cabbage Soup Diet - 6 (Last Day)
Cabbage Soup Diet - Post Diet

My ultimate weight goal is 204 lbs. which is the absolute most I can weigh and not have a BMI reading of "overweight", but despite my moderate intentions over the last couple of months, here I am today at 217 lbs. up from an all-time low of 213 lbs. from about a week ago. I know that the fluctuation is mostly water and salt, but I weigh myself every day and I can see that I'm definitely trending upwards. I was going to wait until spring before losing my last 10 pounds for good but I've got nothing going on these days, so I thought I'd just do the Cabbage Soup Diet again and knock the pounds off a little early. I say "again" because when I started dieting back in May, I led off with this very same 7-day diet. It was tough to follow but I considered it a great kick-start to my overall lifestyle change.

So, last night I chopped up an ungoldy amount of vegetables into a stock pot and made my soup. This time I chose the Lipton Onion Soup version of the soup, hoping it will be a little more palatable than the original recipe was, and now here I am on Day 1.

Today, I can have unlimited soup and unlimited fruit, but no bananas. I will also drink my usual two black coffees and a bunch of glasses of water. I am also going to continue taking my vitamin supplements, but I will skip the Vegegreens (because it's a total scam. I'm just finishing the container.) and skip the OJ...

And I'll post my weight each day for seven days here:

December 15 - 217 lbs.

Play Work Die

This is so spot-on, it's spooky.

I figure I'm about six-lines up and right in the middle of that line...

Schadenfreude!

So what. You're all thinking it.

This is from 344pounds.com, which is a guy who went from disgustingly obese to almost normal and now thinks that his experience is unique and that he's got some divine knowledge he's going to share with the world. I've got two inches and 20 years on him and I still weigh less than he does...though technically both of us are still sadly out of shape...

I mean, if he were some exceptional physical specimen then I could see the reason for all of the self-congratulation, but he isn't even average yet! And since when did being average become an accomplishment?

I use this site to remind me that though I've lost a lot of weight, I shouldn't let it go to my head because all I've done is get back into the physical shape I should have been in all along...

Muscle Tone

I weep for the future.

One of the sites I visit daily is the Shorpy Historic Photo Archive, which is nothing but hi-res old photos. I like to pick whatever is on offer that day, view it in original size and wonder what it must have been like to live back then. I can honestly stare at a photo for a half an hour, poring over every detail and just wondering...

One of my favourite photo genres are street scenes because there is just so much to see. You can see the people walking on the sidewalks, the fashions of the day, the storefronts, the cars, and sometimes even the sewage running along the gutters.

I also like pictures of employees, often shockingly young kids, standing outside of mills. Man, it is very moving looking at the hardened faces of children barely 6 years old!

Today's picture was of young guys in the water. Maybe a summer camp? What struck me was how lean and muscular all of the guys were. No obesity here. All had well-developed arms and legs. You can bet that in 1922 the diet was simple yet robust because processed crap hadn't been invented yet. These young guys are the picture of health. You can bet the water was clean too. (But I won't even begin to theorize why the big guy is tied up on the platform...)

I wonder if I went down to the local YMCA and snapped a similar picture, if after the police were done processing me and I got out of jail, how similar would the body types of the kids in my picture be to the kids in this one?

A quick run down of the new Thingamablog tags

Thingamablog is still fully compatible with all the old templates, but yes, for the labels, keywords, and other stuff there are new template tags to take advantage of them.

<*EntryExtra1*> 
<*EntryExtra2*>
<*EntryKeywords*>
<*EntryDescription*>

<AuthorList>
   <*AuthorName*>
   <*AuthorURL*>
   <*AuthorEmail*>
   <*AuthorDetails*>
</AuthorList>

<Ignore>
Anything inside this is ignored and will not be output.
</Ignore>

<Entries>
</Entries>

<Entries category="What Ever"></Entries>

<Entries id="10">
</Entries>

<h1>Sticky Posts</h1>
<Entries label="sticky">
Only "sticky" posts will be here
...
</Entries>

<h2>Regular Blog posts</h2>
<BlogEntry>
The usual blog entry stuff goes here
...
</BlogEntry>

Recipe Hits

Once in a blue moon, I discover a truly great recipe...and then I lose it.

I enjoy cooking. It's one of the few hobbies I have that is uncomplicated by anything other than doing it just for the pleasure of cooking and for the reward of eating the results. I also like the fact that the food I make is up to my own standards in terms of food handling and hygiene; something I worry about with absolutely every meal not prepared in my own home.

It's a shame that classical "Home Economics" is not taught in schools anymore. It's the economics that really makes cooking most enjoyable for me. I love to see how well I can utilize a limited set of ingredients, yet still come up with something savoury. I like to see how inexpensively I can make a meal; I prefer meals that scale well and store well. I also like to employ economy of movement in the kitchen which I view as just another way to save. I absolutely LOVE soul food.

But one thing I no longer strive for when cooking is pleasing my family. My wife has one of the most limited lists of acceptable food I have ever encountered in a person. She absolutely refuses to try anything new, or re-try anything that she historically found unpleasant. There are even foods that she enjoys but not in combination with other foods (hot dogs are OK and baked beans are OK, but not beanie-weenies.) And because she is vocal about her preferences, the kids by association hate all the same foods that she does - often without ever really having tried it!

I recall my own experiences with foods I previously didn't enjoy - like lamb. I used to hate lamb. I mean, I would eat it if it was on my plate; and I could even plaster a smile on my face while eating it, but I never enjoyed its dryness, and it's "off" taste, and what's up with store-bought mint jelly? After years of just plain avoiding lamb, several years ago I ended up at a chi-chi restaurant in Montreal on business; I was bored with food - I'd had everything on restaurant menus a hundred times, so I ordered the "lamb medallions" just for the hell of it and I was blown away. I realized at that moment that I had never before enjoyed lamb properly prepared. I've since had lamb many times, and because I am now qualified to know what good and bad lamb tastes like, I've never been disappointed. Same with the sushi, and with venison too now that I think about it. And even headcheese. I now realize that one should try everything several times before passing judgement. I don't dislike any food anymore.

Usually when I make a dish and it turns out great and I really enjoy it, I throw the recipe on top of my massive and disorganized recipe pile and never see it again. In a week or a month when I need a good recipe idea, I come up blank and end up making soup and crackers. Recently after making and enjoying a phenomenal skillet cornbread and not wanting to yet again simply relegate it to the pile , it occurred to me that if I put my favourite recipes up here on my web site, only the really great ones mind you - the true hits, then over time I would have a ready list of truly awesome recipes to draw from...So that's what I am going to do.

I'm going to start with my phenomenal Skillet Cornbread. Then I'll put up my Savoury Muffins, Steak Salad, and as of yersterday, my Sufferin' Succotash. Have you ever had succotash? I hadn't...it was awesome! I look forward to making all these dishes more often from now on.

National Novel Writing Month 2009 Results

I'm baaaack!...

On November 1st, 170,001 people (including me) set out in friendly competition to write a 50,000 word novel in less than 30 days for National Novel Writing Month. I entered because I always wondered if I had a novel in me. Today, I entered in the last few hundred words of my novel bringing me up over that magical 50,000 word mark. I'm not going to say it was particularly tough, but it did require some discipline. I'm glad it's over. Tonight, I am going out to celebrate! (which means: "eat chinese food buffet then get drunk") But for now, I post for you below an excerpt from the end of my terrible, horrible novel - entitled "eight". You can use this excerpt as a sleep-aid or as an object to ridicule me with - whatever. It's all good.

What's next for me? Well, first I am going to go back through the novel and cut out all of the stuff that would make you probably call the cops on me if you read it. "I think Steph's boss at work is in mortal danger!" Then I am going to spellcheck and edit for a couple of months. Then I am going to have just two copies of the book printed. One will go on my bookshelf, right in between my Penthouse autographed by Ashlyn Gere and my copy of Never Cry Wolf autographed by Margaret Atwood. The other copy I will raffle off to one (un?)lucky commenter. How much is a raffle ticket? Nothing. Just visit my site and leave a comment below this post. It don't have to be flattering; I would actually prefer brutal honesty - I just want to know if the excerpt below is interesting or not. If you are already on my mailing list (meaning you got this post via email) you don't even have to leave your email. Just leave your name and a comment and in February, the lovely Elllie will draw single name for half off the print run of the hot new novel - "eight."

This will be the very definition of limited edition folks, don't miss out on the opportunity.

The inspiration for the excerpt that follows came from my son, Nik - age 6. Not too long ago, we gave him a camcorder and let him film whatver he wanted for a day. Together with his friend Ryan, they came up with the idea of "The Boring Show." Essentially, they simply stood in front of the camera and quietly ate a cookie for 5 minutes. There was no dialogue. They kept their facial expression to a minimum. It was fascinating! I've wondered since, if I wrote something and tried to make it as boring as Nik and Ryan's Boring Show, would it somehow become perversely interesting?

I sat in my chair and ate a cookie. My mind was blank. As I ate, a couple of crumbs collected at the side of my mouth where the top lip meets the bottom lip. These crumbs would not end up in my mouth, nor were they going to fall on the floor. These crumbs were not going anywhere.

"How is the cookie?" asked Jane, my wife.

"Good." I said. I wasn't lying either. It was a good cookie.

I sort of absentmindedly looked down at what was left of the cookie in my hand. It was a plain cookie. I mean, it was a chocolate chip cookie but it came from a cheap bag of some generic brand of cookie so it had no chocolate chips at all. Other cookies in the bag may have some chocolate chips on them, but I guess the manufacturing process for these generic brands is so lax that entire cookies make it through the system without picking up a single chip. Like this plain cookie with no chocolate chips.

I sighed. Jane asked, "Can I have a bite?" but I was putting the last piece in my mouth just as she asked it, so I shook my head and mumbled "No." I then took another cookie out of the bag.

I think this one had chocolate chips. I didn't look because I was really tired at that moment, but I was pretty sure I could feel some chocolate chips with my fingertips. I would know for sure in a minute just as soon as I finished chewing and swallowed the cookie in my mouth and took a bite from this new cookie. Then I would know for sure.

It was taking a long time to finish this bite of cookie. My mouth was pretty dry from the two previous bites of cookie. I wondered if maybe that was the purpose of chocolate chips in cookies, to lubricate the mouth orifice so as to facilitate the swallowing of the cookie. And because the cookie in my mouth had no chocolate chips, that was maybe why I was finding it so dry and hard to finish. That then, would be the purpose of the chips, to act as a lubricant, and the taste of the chips would be the benefit. Not that this cookie was the dryest cookie I have ever eaten, that award would go to a shortbread cookie I had several years ago. Shortbread cookies have lots of cream of tartar in them and I think that dries the heck out of you mouth, like if you ate a spoonful of alum or something. Though alum would kill you I'm pretty sure.

This chocolate chip cookie was nothing like that old shortbread cookie from several years ago. I sighed again.

"Does your cookie make you sad?" asked Jane.

I shook my head. "It's just a cookie" I said.

"Yeah." said Jane. "Can I have a bite of the cookie in your hand?"

"Sure." I said, and I gave her the cookie in my hand. "Hey, does it have any chocolate chips?" I asked.

"I think I see a couple of chips here." she said. I sighed and rubbed my finger and thumb together on the hand that had just been holding the new cookie. Sure enough, it was well lubricated with melted chocolate. Jane took a bite and gave me back the cookie.

Finally, I was finishing chewing the last bite of the chip-less cookie. I swallowed it noiselessly. After a moment of waiting for my saliva supplies to regenerate, I took a bite of this new chipped cookie. The difference was obvious.

"You have a couple of crumbs stuck to the side of you mouth," said Jane. "You know, where your top lips connects to your bottom lip."

She sighed, then paused, chewing and enjoying her bite of cookie no doubt. She said, "Would you like me to get it?"

"What?" I said "The crumbs?"

Jane said, "Yes."

I said, "No, it's OK. I've got it." And I wiped the crumbs from the side of my mouth. You know the spot I am talking about.

All of a sudden, the cookie bag fell over. It was very exciting.

"That was exciting." said Jane.

"Mmm mm." I said. Though this new cookie had far better lubricating properties than the previous one, it was still much drier than say, a cup of oil. But I had to agree, the bag falling over in the quiet room was very exciting, even though no cookies fell out of the bag.

"That was a close one." said Jane. I nodded, picked up the bag, and motioned to her in the universal gesture of cookie-offering - because my mouth was still full of cookie. I couldn't really talk if I didn't want more crumbs to collect at the side of my mouth, or worse, to fall on the carpet.

She shook her head. "No thanks." she said. So I closed the bag securely and stood it back up on the table.

Daily Diet Update

...or "Hupdate" as they say in Quebec...

This morning I weighed in at a new low - 213.5 lbs. The last time I weighed this little there was still a Czechoslovakia, Kim Campbell was Prime Minister of Canada, and Whitney Houston was at the top of the charts. I was surprised to see I had dropped so low because I thought I was adhering to my "dietary maintenance mode." But a lot of water moved through me yesterday, maybe that is the reason. Still, this is a good opportunity to examine my daily diet by looking at what I ate and drank yesterday:

6AM: One scoop of VegeGreens (equivalent to 12 servings of vegetables!) in 6oz of Bolthouse "Green Goodness" juice. I'll tell you that juice is like a liquid version of the VegeGreens powder so I figure I'm getting a double-dose. It's super thick going down. Not a bad sensation, but not great either. Also two Progressives "Prostate Armour" multi-vitamins, and (now I've added) one Ginkgo-Biloba tablet, one teaspoon of Omega-3 fish oil; two black coffees.

8:00AM: 4 oz of "hi-fat" Astro Balkan style yogurt with a handful of dried raisins, another of craisins, some whole almonds, and a little brown sugar.

9:30AM: An apple, and an herbal tea (Apple-Mango I think.) A wedge of home-made pan-baked cornbread leftover from the weekend. I'm putting the recipe up here because man, it turned out pretty awesome.

12:00PM: A salad with Italian dressing, a container of fruit from the local grocery deli - strawberries and kiwi, a scoop of protein whey powder in 8oz. of water, plus another 500 ml of water, and three fig newtons. I find I need to be careful here and eat lunch slowly because I get full faster now and I find that if I eat too fast I get over-full and feel bloated for the rest of the day...Another Ginkgo-Biloba.

1:00PM: a container of fresh pineapple chunks I brought from home.

4:00PM: Got home feeling really hungry, and I think I see why now. It's because I missed my 2:30PM snack. So I ended up dangerously grazing - a few slices of genoa salami, a few dates, a handful wasabi peas, a beer. This type of eating and drinkng can quickly get out of hand, so I try to avoid it.

6:00PM: Patti made a terrific ground beef, rice, and cabbage thing. Out of respect for my need for a smaller dinner than lunch, she gave me a nice and small portion. I dumped some Tabasco on it and devoured it. It was so good, I had a hard time refusing seconds, but I will get to have it again today for lunch.. Yay! I also had a large glass of water. And one more Progressive multi-vitamin, two garlic pills, and a magnesium pill, and my third (and last for the day) Gingko-Biloba.

8:00PM: It was not a workout day today which was good because I was feeling slightly worn out from working out. I had two herbal teas.

12:00AM: The dreaded insomnia. After lying in bed for an hour trying to fall asleep, I got up and made myself a chamomille tea. I swear, there is something to drinking chamomille if you can't sleep...I ended up fast asleep by 1AM.

I must have gotten up three times throughout the night to pee, which is part of aging I guess and also from my unusually high liquid intake for the day. I weighed myself at my usual time this morning around 5:30AM and came in at the aforementioned 213.5. Today, I will try to make sure to have something between 2:30PM and 3PM.

H1N1 Disgrace

The Canadian Medical Community's handling of the H1N1 Flu crisis is a complete disgrace.

Despite my almost frantic searching for clear and concise information and resources so I would be able to act quickly in the best interests of my children, I felt confounded at every turn by the idiotic medical establishment. Here's my timeline of what I experienced:

• In early October, the media reports that vaccine manufacture has been ramped up and there will be plenty of vaccine for everybody in Canada who wants it. Clinic locations and hours are announced.
• Two weeks later, even though flu season is well underway, there is a shortage of vaccine and so healthy children must wait while the most at risk children get their shots.
• A healthy kid in Toronto dies in four days of H1N1.
• A week later they finally open up the clinics to the public. I plan on going to get my kids vaccinated in 4 days time.
• Two days later, before the public clinics even open, the vaccine shortage is again so acute, they re-close the clinics to the public! I think to myself, "screw it" and decide I will punch my way through a legion of medical staff if necessary to get vaccines for my kids.
• As I originally planned, the following Monday I arrive at the clinic just 30 minutes after opening. I am expecting line ups. There is nobody there. Actually there are about 10 people in front of me. I decide to play it stupid. The staff asks me if my kids are high risk and I say, "I dunno. My wife said bring 'em in, so I brought 'em in...I don't even believe in this H1N1 malarkey anyhow..." Because I used the word "malarkey" they think I'm Irish so they must immediately realize it's pointless to challenge me with difficult questions - I just won't know the answers. This plus the fact that there is nobody in the clinic makes it hard for them in good conscience to turn my kids away. They get their shot.
• Much to my kids chagrin (to my daughter's terror actually) we all learn that they will need to come back in 21 days for another shot. They are very clear about this. If we don't get the second shot, then the first shot is wasted. The kids won't be properly immunized.
• The hospital is Peterborough, Ontario instructs family physicians to clear their schedules each day from 3PM onwards. The plan is to divert patients from the overwhelmed emergency room at the hospital to their family doctor. When I heard of this, I thought it was a great idea. Apparently the doctor's didn't. They went home, they went on vacation, or they just plain did not clear their rosters as instructed.
• Despite my own experience, I am seeing on TV long line-ups for flu shots, yet when the posted clinic closing hours come, the clinics still close! In any other industry if there was an emergency, you would expect them to work extended hours, but when 6PM comes for these doctor's and nurses, they go home. In fact, I understand that many doses of vaccine went to waste because they are packaged in multiples. The needle givers would open a package and not use it up before closing the clinic!
• Concerns arise over the safety, dosage, everything to do with the vaccine. There is no coherent and definitive information to be found anywhere. Not even at the Health Canada web site.
• Now, the Peterborough County Health Unit reports that kids no longer need the second dose of vaccine... or they do ...or they don't. I've read the fucking document three times and I can't figure out whether or not my healthy 6 and 9 year old children require the second dose or not!
• I still haven't gotten my shot. I wanted everyone else in my family to have it first in case the vaccine turned everyone into brain-eating zombies. I should have known better. My kids won't even eat peas, let alone brains...I'm ready for my shot now, and I think there is a clinic somewhere willing to give it to me, but flu season is almost over now...

As I get older, I can't escape the sneaking suspicion that despite the face they present to the world, the medical profession doesn't really have the answers for all but the most basic stuff; they don't even know what the hell they are doing. My experiences during this H1N1 scare only reinforces that.

NaNoWriMo 2009 Progress Report

Believe me, it's not literary gold.

Well, I'm19 days into this 50,000 word novel-writing competition. So far, I have a grand total of 32,124 words of (what I am going to optimistically call) prose, which puts me 470 words (about 3/4 of one page) ahead of the game. Yay!

Surprisingly, many people have expressed interest in reading the book once I finish it (I guess people enjoy angry and disjointed profanity-laced rants.) But alas, just as you wouldn't in one sitting eat a pig that once saved your life, you also shouldn't expect to be able to read every masterpiece that ever flowed from the word processors of the gods.

I'm not saying I'm a god...I'm just saying....

It's NaNoWriMo Time!

See you in December

My name is Estefan and I am the Mexican attache to the United Nations. Not the actual United Nations in New York City mind you, but the United Nations Waffle House in St. Louis, Missouri where we got a nice sausage and waffles special every Monday.

These are possible openings for the novel that I will be writing over the next 30 days as I participate in /www.nanowrimo.org">NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. Billed as a literary orgy of "really big" proportions by its organizers, NaNoWriMo is an opportunity for fledgling wannabe writers such as myself to deliver hurried, disjointed, and poorly edited prose to the world, whether the world wants it or not.

And I know that the only way I will be able to generate that many words in such a short time will be if I minimize all distractions while writing. I think I have found the most beautiful tool with which to do that. It's called Q10 and I'm actually writing this post with it right now. Q10 is a minimalist editor. It runs beautifully on a USB key. It has a fully customizable auto-save that actually works. It has spell checker, it has word counts, it has a notes feature, it has auto-correction. It has quick-text and alarm timers. It even has the ability to make a typewriter sound as you type. Including the carriage return bell! (It's funny, my kids have no idea what typewriter even sounds like...) It has been custom-designed for NaNoWriMo. It's well documented, and it's free. You can tell it was programmed with skill, certainly more skill than I have. And it works perfectly. Beautifully. It's pretty light on instructions though, so I've created my own Q10 Reference Card and printed that out to refer to when necessary...

So! Wish me luck! Pay me a visit at some point during November to see how I'm doing, and I'll talk to you in December!

Satisfying Daily Dietary Needs

Wow, upon review I think my diet has gotten pretty darn good lately!

As you know, I am currently in "weight maintenance" mode, trying to hover around the 215 pound mark over the winter with plans to possibly drop another 5 pounds come spring when I can get the bicycle back out and the weight loss comes more easily.

For daily food intake, I find that it's more difficult to achieve balance when I am taking in almost a third less calories per day than I was historically. I have to be careful about my food selections because I have first hand experience as to what happen when you miss on some basic element of nutrition - hair loss, fatugue, depression are all consequences of ignoring my need for a well-balanced diet each and every day. At least watching my diet this closely means I can fall off the wagon on occasion (mostly by boozing it up with friends) without suffering any ill effects. Here's my daily diet regimen as of November 10th.

6AM: One scoop of VegeGreens (equivalent to 12 servings of vegetables!) in 8oz of orange juice; two Progressives "Prostate Armour" multi-vitamins with no iron and tons of B; one teaspoon of Omega-3 fish oil; one black coffee, plus one more black coffee with a teaspoon of Organic Cocoa Powder (brain stimluating)

8:30AM: 4 oz of "hi-fat" home-made yogurt with a handful of dried fruit and nuts. (I often alternate the yogurt with oatmeal, weetabix, raisin bran, etc. And often I substitute dal mix for fruit, and seeds for nuts - for variety.)

10:30AM: One scoop of protein whey powder in 8oz. of water (25 grams of protein) plus an apple.

12 Noon: A normal lunch entree, usually leftovers from the previous nights dinner. This is my biggest meal of the day. I try to keep the simple carbs down and ensure that all fats present are natural. I also try to make sure there is some vegetable present. Lunch is always accompanied with at least 500 ml of water, plus a couple of pieces of various fruit. And If I am going to satisfy my sweet tooth, I do it now.

2:30PM: Another scoop of protein whey powder in 8oz. of water.

5:30PM: A normal family dinner like pizza or meat- potato and veg, stew with bread, etc. I keep the portion size smaller than it was at lunch. I accompany the meal with lots of water. (> 500ml) I skip dessert. I take one more Progressive multi-vitamin.

8:00PM: If it is a workout day, I have a third scoop of protein whey powder in 8oz. of water immediately post-workout, otherwise I defer it until bedtime, but I often forget at bedtime. Workout day or not, I always have a decaffeinated herbal tea, but lately I have been trying green tea (matcha tea actually. It's supposed to be a brain stimulant but it's super expensive) and snack on a handful of wasabi peas, or dark chocolate or something else small - maybe 2oz. max.

This diet has come gradually to me over the last six months. Upon review, I've decided that I am hitting everything pretty well! If I remember to add a glass of water here and there, then I can't really see see any place for imrprovement. I think that with rare exceptions I have pretty well trained myself not to eat or even desire to eat outside of this plan. I can tell you with authority that I now have excellent energy levels in the morning, and am able to maintain them pretty well throughout the day.

I do remember what I donut tastes like though. I kind of miss them...

I'm no longer a java n00b

I just built my first .jar using ant!

C:\hsqldb\build>ant hsqldb

Buildfile: build.xml

init:

javaversion6:
javaversion4:
javaversion2:

-prepare:

... and so on resulted in ....

hsqldb:

[jar] Building jar: C:\hsqldb\lib\hsqldb.jar

BUILD SUCCESSFUL

Total time: 21 seconds

The Electric Company Sucks

And in Canada, we call our electricity: Hydro.

Last July, I moved roughly 150kms from the dentally-challenged Sutton West, Ontario to "the birthplace of boredom" - Peterborough, Ontario. I used to get a Hydro (electric) bill once every two months in Sutton, and because everything in the Sutton house was natural gas, the Hydro bill rarely varied. So every two months, I would get a bill for roughly 60 days of "service"; I would use an average of 25 kilowatt/hours (kWh) of hydro per day at 5.5 cents per kWh, I'd pay $55 for delivery (even though I never did see the delivery guy,) $10 in "regulatory" charges, $9.75 for the $%#@! "debt-retirement" charges (which I really should charge back to my parents since the "debt" was created during their generation) and another $10 of GST for Prime Minister Steven Harper - making the total bill about $160 to $180 every two months, or looked at another way - I paid about $85 per month to the over-paid, blood-sucking leeches at Hydro One for electricity.

Now, I knew that with moving to Peterborough, the Hydro bill was going to go up. Peterborough is a bigger house than Sutton was. Where Sutton had three window air conditioners, Peterborough has central air. Where Sutton had gas stove and gas dryer, Peterborough has an electric stove and electric dryer. And where Sutton had this little hot-water-gas furnace, Peterborough has a bigger (abeit 15-years newer) FAG furnace. But that's about it. And compared to the wooden Sutton house, the all-brick Peterborough house is practically hermetically-sealed and super-insulated. So in the first month we lived here, I vainly hoped for just a 10% increase in my Hydro bill but deep-down I knew that wasn't practical and so I gritted my teeth and prepared for an up to 30% increase instead.    ...read more...

Finally, I got my first bill - for two months. It was more than $300. A roughly 100% increase.

So I called Hydro One to ask them why. I was crying pretty hard so I didn't hear everything, but through it all I was able to ask three questions:

1. Why is the new billing period every month instead of every two months?
2. Why was the delivery charge per month in Peterborough the same amount as for two months in Sutton?
3. How could my Hydro usage have gone up so much? And why was the price per kWh so much higher than in Sutton?

To answer, the nice man at Hydro One laughed at me for a while, then told me that in Peterborough they've been on the Hydro One teat for some time, while Sutton joined the Hydro One fold much more recently (with the sale of Georgina Hydro to Hydro One - which I remember), and so there are some differences between the two locations:

1. As a courtesy to the ex-Georgina Hydro customers, Hydro One decided to continue with the every-two-months billing previously established for those customers. Not so in Peterborough.
2. As a courtesy to the ex-Georgina Hydro customers, Hydro One decided to continue with a subsidized delivery charge rate previously established for those customers. Not so in Peterborough.
3. To answer the third question, the man at Hydro told me that since I am now on a well (the old house was on municipal water,) apparently the well pump eats hydro like a frog eats fudge.

So I bought a kill a watt and attached it to every single thing I could attach it to. I tried it on my computer, monitor, flat-bed scanner, dehumidifer, washing machine, fridge, and deep freezer. But because they 210 volt appliances, I did not use it on my furnace, water pump, sump pump, or dryer. In the end, I spent a goodly amount of time collating the data and crunching the numbers and came up with two possibilities:

• That orange extension cord running from my property to my neighbour's property might have something to do with it.
• The Electric Company Sucks

That was sobering

For the first time in my experience, Linux totally blows away Windows.

The Task:

I had an ISO image that I wanted to inject a file into, and then burn to CD.

In Windows:

I tried to figure out how to inject into an ISO with Nero, WinImage, and ImgBurn. The process, even if it was possible, was hardly intuitive. I couldn't figure out how to do it short of unpacking the ISO, adding the new file into the unpacked directory, and then repackaging up the unpacked files as a new ISO. Even that didn't work though because this ISO happens to contain a directory tree that has folders that are more than 9 levels deep, which violates ISO9660 standards, and therefore none of the softwares would let me create the new ISO. (I have no idea how the original author got around this, but I suspect the answer lies further down this page...)

Finally I gave up on injecting the new file and decided to simply burn the ISO to disk "as is." Nero 7 kept giving me a "Power Calibration Error." I've had this problem before and I tried the various fixes available on the Internet for this issue, like disabling the IMAPI service and setting my burn speed down to 4X/8X, yet I couldn't get a good burn. Trying to burn with InfraRecorder was similarly unsuccessful.

In Linux:

A Google search revealed that ISO Master is the tool of choice for what I want, so I used Synaptic Package Manager to install it. (~45 seconds). Then I ran ISO Master and opened the ISO. I then selected the file to inject and clicked on "Add". Then I did a "Save As" and saved the ISO to a new name (~60 seconds). Then in Nautilus, I right-clicked on the new ISO file and selected "Burn to Disc."

In Conclusion:

As I said before, for the first time, I was completely amazed at how much better the Linux user experience was than with Windows. What was effortless with Ubuntu on my older and slower lab machine, was impossible with my dual-core Windows box. I am definitely not a linux fan-boy by any means and I'm not enough of a n00b to believe that this represents a forward leap for linux as a whole, but the experience certainly gives me something to think about.

It's my 43rd Birthday today

I hope I get calcium supplements

"sTEpHan wearing his birthday t-shirt."

Please take a moment to wish a happy birthday to these famous people born today...

  08 - Oct - 1980  
  08 - Oct - 1970   Matt Damon
  08 - Oct - 1966   Stephan Hoppe
  08 - Oct - 1956  
  08 - Oct - 1949   Sigourney Weaver
  08 - Oct - 1943   Chevy Chase
  08 - Oct - 1943  
  08 - Oct - 1941   Jesse Jackson
  08 - Oct - 1939   Paul Hogan
  08 - Oct - 1895   Juan Peron

Even more fascinating stuff that happened on this day: IP - DT - BT - WP - HO - AAR - OTD - A/D - FW - IMDb

I did not lose weight that rapidly...

...but rapidly enough that I started losing my hair!

Since May 12, I've lost 55 pounds. That's 138 days or just about 20 weeks. That works out to just 2.75 pounds per week. Hardly revolutionary. Seems like a nice rate of weight loss to me. If I go further and remove my first and last week of dieting from this equation (because I've always been bothered that the scale shows I lost 8.5 pounds in the first week - how is that even possible?) then I've gone from 263 to 223, which is 2.2 pounds per week. And I do believe that is the perfect healthy level of weight loss advocated by diet experts.

But I have noticed (and others have noticed too) that I have lost a lot of hair in the last 8 weeks. After panicking for a while, I investigated and discovered that I am not getting enought protein in my diet, especially since I am working out pretty intensively several times per week now. Related to this - I didn't realize it right away but in addition to the weight loss I have also been experiencing some muscle catabolism. I've been working out harder and actually losing muscle; my body is burning the muscle since I'm not getting anough protein. It's a vicious circle really because I responded to the muscle loss by working out even harder without adjusting my diet to cope. Other indicators of protein deficiency that I didn't see at the time but are plain to me now are that my knees suddenly started making crunchy sounds after a hard workout, as well as generalized fatigue all of the time. Plus I haven't made any real training gains in several weeks, especially with my push ups.

Initially, the cornerstone of my diet plan was that everything I eat was to be all natural. I wasn't going to take any supplements. But I have realized that this is simply impossible. The general consensus is that a person needs 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. So for me, I need greater than 200 grams of protein per day. Luckily, I have been tracking my calories eaten per day and I can see that I have been lucky if I eat 80 g of protein per day, despite the fact that I have doubled my intake of fish, sardines, and red meat.

So now I have added three scoops per day of whey protein to my diet (one of those scoops immediately post-workout,) as well as a big, fat, stinky, multivitamin three times per day, plus a teaspoon of Norwegian fish oil once per day. It's been only two days so far, but the difference has already been amazing! I'm already feeling such a boost in energy that I know I'm on the right track.

I'm really looking forward to the return of the lost hair too.

Maybe I'm overreacting...

I'm sure this is perfectly normal.

The product of Nik's artistic streak.

Just as before, there's probably nothing to worry about.

A new Thingamablog is here!

After nearly two years, version 1.5b1 is released.

September 10, 2009 - After almost two long years I was convinced that Thingamablog was dead so I don't know what inspired me to visit the Thingamablog site this morning. But there, lo and behold posted just 10 hours earlier was a new version of Thingamablog along with a new domain registered and a promise to get the forums back up and running! Yay!

Eagerly, I downloaded and installed the new version - 1.5b1. Here is my take on it:

Installation

• The first thing I noticed, from reading the EULA, is that Thingamablog is now freeware instead of open source. What this means to the average user is that they will no longer have access to the source code, which I imagine will not be such a big deal to most. I've suggested to Bob many times that he take Thingamablog commercial. Perhaps these are his first tentative steps towards that end.
• The default target install folder is the same as the folder for my currently installed version (1.1b4) of Thingamablog. So when installing I changed the default path to: C:\Program Files\Thingamablog2
• There is a nice new logo.

Under the Hood

• According to the readme, the minimum required JRE version is now 1.6
• Yikes! There's been a huge jump in the HSQL database version! From 1.7.1 to 1.8.0.9. And I couldn't even find that version on sourceforge. (The closest I could find was 1.8.0.10)
• After installation was complete, I started "New Thingamablog" for the first time. The first thing that happened was that Thingamablog asked me what my new "profile" should be called and where it should be placed on my disk. I quickly realized that a "profile" in 1.5b1 is what a "database" was called in 1.1b4. This seemingly minor change will clear up a lot of confusion for current users of Thingamablog. Here's why:
• In old Thingamablog, you had a database often called Thingamablog, which contained a folder called database, which in turn contained your HSQL database. Everything was called database!
• Now you have a profile probably called ThingaProfile, which contains a folder called data, which in turn contains your HSQL database. Much easier to understand!
• I have no idea how labels are handled when using an existing 1.7.1 database. I can't even find the labels table in the database. And I have no idea how extra fields are handled at all.

Main GUI

• The newsreader is now closable. This is good for people who don't need the built in newsreader, like me. I've tried to need it over the years but could never really make it useful for me
• I opened up my existing profile, which contains my nine active weblogs. There are quite a few user interface changes - from the tasks window relocated to a tab, to the new "recent entries" box. It's all very intuitive and pretty. Right away I noticed that if you select the "current" folder under a weblog in the left-side tree pane, the sort order of the entries list (right-side) now stays between sessions! Yay! It always drove me nuts to constantly have to sort by "Date Posted" every time I started Thingamablog...
• The push-pins no longer change from red to blue if you modify a previously modified entry. Aw. I loved those blue push-pins...
• A little thing, but you can now access Authors from the left-side tree pane.
• I notice that now when you open an image from the web folder in the left-side tree pane, it opens in the system default image viewer. Before it used to open in a Thingamablog built-in viewer.
• Theme packs, like "posting from email" is also in this version of Thingamablog. I don't think that this was ever satisfactorily documented, And theme packs simply do what a savvy user could do already, namely zip up templates and root web media files.
• Publishing is now a very sexy process, but I notice that Thingamablog didn't flick over to the tasks tab when I hit "republish all." I had to manually select that tab; an agonizing and laborious extra click.

Editor Window(s)

• As for the new template editor and entry editor, I can only say Holy COW! The editor windows have undergone a huge overhaul.
• They're tabbed now instead of windowed. It's real nice. Real nice! Right now, if the entry tab is active and you open the template editor, that becomes tab number three (the tasks tab is tab #2.) Now if you close the template editor tab, you are placed back onto tab #2, the tasks tab, even though you most probably want to be back to tab one (main tab) I think that it would be better if new tabs were inserted to the right of the current tab, rather than simply placed in the right-most position of the MDI...
• It's nice now to be able to add new categories now from within the Entry Editor window. Before, you had to exit the editor to add a new category, then go back into the entry editor to check it off.
• In the Entry Editor window, you can now add "extra fields", categories, and labels to your Entry pages. I think TAMB turns these into TAMB variables (like <*EntryID*>) however because there is currently no help file, and the templates haven't been updated, I have no idea how to actually use these on the parsed out pages...
• Boy, the swing pane editor thingee is really improved. You can now check spelling as you type!

Settings

• There are many big changes on the "Configure Weblog" front
• A big change is that under Archiving, the day interval can now be set to a maximum of 50,000! (previously it was 999) This is an awesome development for those who don't want their archives split into pieces...
• I know alot of people requested this: Under Entry Pages, now the entry file name can contain the entry title (up to 255 chars). Many feel that this makes their site's pages more SEO friendly. Bob's implementation of this is really simple and elegant as well because regardless of what you choose, the database remains unchanged! If you choose this new option, Thingamablog merely parses out the entry page title as the filename. Only the <*EntryPermalink*> changes. The <*EntryID*> tag stays the same, which is nice for all of my PHP scripts that rely on it
• If you have two posts with identical titles, TAMB appends the Entry ID number to subsequent titles to prevent duplications. In my test-case a "-5" was added.
• Also under Entry Pages there is the option: Organize Pages in subdirectories. I couldn't get this to do anything in my test setup
• Small bug. With the site selected in the the left-side tree pane, you can click on "Configure Weblog settings" (on the right-side) until the cows come home and nothing will happen. You have to click the icon on the toolbar/button bar, or select it from the Blog menu.

Overall, though this release is looooong overdue, there are tons of groovy new features. It's certainly worthy of the minor version number increment, Kudos to Bob!

Update!

September 11, 2009 - Ummm. The more I play with this new TAMB, the more I realize I should wait for a higher beta number...

During publish, something is blowing away the contents of the temp folder under the weblog folder when I publish.

• The last profile opened value is now stored on the C:\drive under %APPDATA%\Thingamablog and I can't figure out how to make TAMB store it elsewhere.
• Your super-vital-important database does get updated when running it with the new TAMB. If you don't back it up first, there is no way to "downgrade" back to 1.1b4...

NaNoWriMo 2009

This year, I'm gonna do more than 1,200 words...

DIY Yogurt

Make your own yogurt at home in just 20 minutes

Lately, I've been making my own yogurt. Over the last couple of weeks I've made a couple of batches and I may just never go back to store bought yogurt ever again. Home-made yogurt tastes amazing, is fast and easy to make, and is really cheap! - less than a third of the cost of store bought yogurt.

Here is the equipment I use:

• Pot
• Measuring cup
• Candy thermometer
• 1 quart/liter mason jar plus cap and ring
• tea towel
• 2 rubber bands

Here are the ingredients:

• milk
• 2 tablespoons or so of yogurt from your last batch.

It goes without saying that everything should be clean. To me, clean is a relative term. Washed in soapy water is clean enough for me. I don't boil containers in advance or run them through the dishwasher. If a pot or jar has been washed and put away into the cupboard, then it's clean. Here's how I do it.   ...read more...

OK, here's the pomposity.

You didn't ask for it, so here it is...

How I lost more than 40 pounds in 15 weeks.

• I followed a fad diet - For the first 6 days, I followed the cabbage soup diet. Strictly. It was a great way to kick-start things and break my sweet-tooth/starch-tooth. (By day 6, I was pretty sick of cabbage though.)
• I calculated - 1 pound equals 3500 calories therefore to lose 2 pounds per week I needed to cut 1000 calories per day from my diet. Using the Interweb, I calculated how much a sedentary person my size needs for "maintenance" calories in a day, and from that deducted 1000 calories so I could achieve that magical 2lbs. of lost weight per week. Instead of eating again calories spent during exercise, I treated that as bonus weight loss.
• I ate no "processed foods" - nothing with "enriched" in the title. Almost no breads, and certainly no white bread, cookies, chips, pastries or baked treats. Nothing with "high-fructose" in the ingredient list. Nothing with aspartame. As little white sugar as possible.   ...read more...

Holy Freaking Moly

That's Sour!

Patti and I dropped by the unfortunately named Bulk Barn a couple of Saturdays ago in order to pick up a couple of Valentine's day treats for the kids. Somewhere along the way, I spotted a bin of these deceptively little sour candies - Toxic Waste "Hazardously" sour candy. Neat packaging. So I grabbed a handful, paid for them, brought them home and put them into the candy jar on my desk - and thought no more about them until the next day when Nik asked for one. When he popped it into his mouth,he gave this hilarious agonized expression but I thought he was just hamming it up. (even though us Hoppes have been told ten million times that we are not prone to exaggeration or hyperbole.) I mean I have had sour candies before but really, I've never one that was even moderately sour. I thought for sure he was faking...

...so I popped one into my mouth. A watermelon one. Instantly, my lips slammed together into a point. I couldn't open my eyes. You know that pain you get behind your earlobes when you eat something sour? I got that times 10. After about 15 seconds of the most excruciatingly sour taste sensation I have ever experienced, the sour was over and the candy then turned blessedly sweet. I continued to enjoy my Toxic Waste straight through to the soft sour center - nowhere near as sour as the beginning.

Just this evening, Ellie and I tried the lemon and the apple flavours. If anything, they were even more sour than the watermelon! Definitely not for sour amateurs. Of course they are made in Pakistan - as you know nobody knows sour like the Pakistanis. In short, Toxic Waste isn't a candy, it's an experience. An awesome one. They are so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking some up. I know I will.

Say ello to my liddle fren...

A USB Key Theft-Prevention Device

A while ago, I bought a USB thumb drive for my company for corporate use, but I think the term "corporate use" was misinterpreted to mean: "steal me." So I bought another thumb drive and then developed a PHP registration application that interfaced with a MySQL database to keep track of who had the key and when and for how long...but I'll admit it might have been overly complicated creation - I guess it didn't really need the captchas and the blowfish encryption... because the second key somehow still managed to vanish into thin air during one of the regularly scheduled application and database maintenance backups...

So, taking a page from the local gas bar I toiled away for the better part of a week of evenings in my home workshop and finally finished crafting the "Gas Station (USB) Key anti-theft device." (or g-SUK) I took great pains to make it authentic - right down to the urine splatters on the board.

It's been 48 hours and while nobody has exactly borrowed it yet, at least it hasn't been stolen.

(The title of this article was a line from Scarface, btw...)

And you all thought I was crazy...

And you may not be wrong...

Well, as Britney says: "You think I'm crazy? - I GOT your crazy." NOW BEHOLD THE WONDER, THE MAJESTY, AND THE AWESOME POWER OF HOPPE MOUNTAIN! (And let's not think about the huge legal liability it represents by my letting the neighbourhood kids use it.) Here's some background:

• 1945: World War II ends.
• 1960: Health Canada approves sale of the birth control pill.
• 1966: Stephan Hoppe is born anyway and he immediately resolves that after he grows up, he will make a snow mountain for his children each winter.
• 1967 - 2008: Ontario's aggravating winters - consisting of cycles of tropical snow-melt days alternating with brutal sub-zero conditions, combined with Stephan's own lack of physical conditioning, mean that year after year Hoppe Mountain only reaches heights of 6 or 7 feet or so. Despite the setbacks, each year Stephan continues to talk a big game to anyone who will listen...
• October 2008 - January 2009: Stephan brings in his pinch-hitter - Uncle Pete, and barely 30 minutes after Uncle Pete starts throwing snow, Hoppe Mountain is connected to the roof of the house, and now for some reason the master bathroom ceiling has a crack you can fit your head into. (I call it: The Hoppe Crack)
  

Nik and I still haven't gone down Hoppe Mountain this year. Because we're scared. For different reasons. Nik is scared that he'll go so fast and so far that he'll sled straight into Hoppe River (the culvert that runs along the back of our property.) And I'm scared that because of my weight, if I go up there I'll end up seeing The Hoppe Crack from a whole different angle.

And here's Uncle Pete going down Hoppe Mountain.

And here's Nik. 5 years old. You'd think he'd know enough to wait until I say: "Go."

Last year was just a dry run...

It's New Year's Resolution time and I've decided to rollover last year's resolutions to this year. Last year, life conspired to foil my poorly-planned intentions and lukewarm efforts, but I'm pretty sure that '09 is the year baby - yeah! So, here's my list for 2009:

(On January 2, 2009 - I started at 270 lbs.)

1. Lose 42 lbs. I currently weigh 270 pounds. That may not sound like a lot but I am only 4 foot 11 inches tall. Worse, the weight is concentrated around my mid-section (as well as around my large and over-developed ego) which makes me look a little like a plum speared on a toothpick.

2. Learn Spanish. At the very least, I would like to speak English with a "conveensing espaneechay accent." I've already got every single Spanish instructional CD and book ever published. Unfortunately, I now know that the act of purchasing said materials is not enough to learn the language - I guess I got to actually open the stuff too. Wish me luck! (or as they say in Spain - "Tengo los huevos muy grandes.")

3. Stop watching TV. Hmmm. As Survivor's Jeff Probst often says to the 16 new survivors as they reach the island: "There is no way Steph will ever stop watching TV..." Well you are wrong this time, Jeff. I will turn you off. And I'll turn off Chuck, Reba, Peter Griffin, Malcolm Wilkerson, Kenny, Spenny, Bret and Jemaine, and - hardest of all - Adam and Jamie...I expect the hydro savings alone will be on the order of many thousands of dollars.

4. Learn the guitar. Or at least enough chords that I can play "Whole Lotta Rosie" with reasonable proficiency. Again, I have the guitar, the CDs, and the books. And I already have the good looks of Steve Tyler and Tom Petty...the complexion of Bryan Adams, and the body of Meatloaf...really I think based on all that the guitar should come easily to me.