Digital Jedi’s Blog

I had a chance to play with Barnes and Nobles eReader the other day, the Nook (http://ping.fm/bD88H). And while I wasn’t expecting the screen to be as clear and as easy on the eyes as it turned out to be, I was deeply disappointed in the amount of time it took just turn a page. Each time I clicked the forward or back buttons, it too ten seconds or more for the next page to load. Forget trying to jump multiple pages.

I didn’t get to look for too long, so maybe my font size had something to do with it. The Nook handily beats the Kindle and the Sony eReader on the number of available titles, at least for now. And I haven’t had a chance to handle either of those personally, yet. But unless the slow page turn is a universal limitation of the current technology, that’s a deal breaker for me. Even if I have to limit the number of books I have access to.

Busy last couple of weeks for me and baby. We had to do a ton of running around, between going to the chiropractor, therapy and just general business. On top of all that she was agitated with the preliminary effects of an oncoming seizure the entire time. Hopefully she sleeps today.

I’m going back to bed. Only slept around two hours last night. Better try and get some rest while the boo is still out. Of course, I’m going to have to disturb it here in about a half hour to give her her medicine. Blargh!

Strangely, I managed to find time to write this over these two weeks. Posted two new articles on my other blog (http://ping.fm/zVQ2b) and you can find a link to the other one where I did some reader contributions to Re-Imagineering. That has been interesting.

Sorry guys, no AME update for you this week. But I’ll get back on track soon.

–

DATE: 13 Sept 2009.

Dear customer,

You have a Package that is registered with us for shipping. However, the content is a Bank Draft worth is $886,000 USD (Eight Hundred and Eighty Six Thousand US Dollars).Reg .Number: P-01-402761625/Reg Date: 09/13/2009.
Your package is registered with us for mailing by your colleague who is currently undergoing survey project with NNPC (Nigeria National Petroleum
Company). We are sending you this email because your package is registered on a
Special Order. What you have to do now, is to contact our Delivery Department for immediate dispatch of your package to your residential address. Note: As soon as our Delivery Team confirms your information, it will take three (3)
working days (72Hrs) for your package to arrive at your designated destination.
For your information, Shipping charges as well as Insurance fees have been paid
by your colleague. However, the only payment you are to make is £210 GBP to the FedEx Delivery
Department being full payment for Customs Duty Certificate and Tariff. Please Note: All registered package with us have a time limitation and you
are to meet up with this payment to facilitate immediate attention toward the delivery of
your package. Note: Your colleague did not leave us with any further information. We hope that you respond to us as soon as possible because if you fail to respond until the expiry date of the foremost package, we may refer the package
to the British Commission for Welfare as the package do not have a return address. Contact the delivery department (FedEx Ship Manager) with the details given below:
Contact Person: Mr. Richard Raynor
Email: fedex.express_nig@w.cn
Tel: +2348066879532.
Kindly complete the below form. This is mandatory to reconfirm your Postal address for clarification.
FULL NAMES:
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As soon as your details are received, our delivery team will give you the necessary payment procedure for Customs Duty Certificate and Tariff.
As soon as they confirm your payment of £210 GBP USD .they shall immediately
dispatch your package to the designated address with the attach Tracking Number. It usually
takes 72 Hours being an express delivery service.
Ensure to contact the delivery department with the email address and ensure to fill the above form as well to enable successful reconfirmation.
Yours faithfully, Mrs. .Mary Maxwell
FedEx Management Team.
All rights reserved. © 1996-2009 FedEx.

And so it begins; my venture into that dark and shadowy realm that few men dare to enter. A path of danger and harrowing fate. A journey into the darkest recesses of man’s agonizing horror.

Yes, I’m talking about P90X (http://ping.fm/Sb9h6).

Alright, so maybe I’m being hyperbolic. We already started the diet plan three weeks ago, and it’s more food than my wife and I normally eat. With that said, we already lost around 10 lbs each. That’s before we even started exercising.

“What?” you say, “you’re doing the diet, too?” Yes, we bought the whole shebang and we’re doing it as closely and as accurately as possible. I found a cheap pull-up bar for the door jamb and I already had a few weights lying around from the previous millennium. We also had a resistance band from a previous futile attempt at Slim in 6, and then one came with the P90X package.

I’ll tell you why we didn’t just bootleg someone’s DVDs or go the cheaper route like I normally would have for a product this expensive. I watched the P90X commercials and infomercials for some time after it came out. I watched it carefully, making sure to catch the little caveats that they generally don’t want you to notice. Infomercials NEVER impress me. This one did. This one, while still succumbing to the elevator/adult film background music, talked about things like “muscle confusion” and showed people actually straining with effort to accomplish the routines. Much more than that, it spoke about the whole spectrum of exercise, weight training and dieting like… oh I don’t know, like I was an actual grown-up who can read past a third grade level.

But I knew from watching the programs that me and the wife were never going to get any benefit from the program if we didn’t go the whole nine yards with it. One thing the diet book that came with the package emphasized in big, giant bold letters was that YOU HAVE TO EAT TO MAKE THIS PROGRAM WORK. And you have to eat well. That much I was already sure of. But I also knew we had to get the whole kit n’ caboodle if we didn’t want to once again spin our proverbial wheels.

So for the past three weeks, while we couldn’t get it together to get the exercise going right away, we started shopping for the P90X diet. Really, seriously, shopping like people trying to eat healthy. My wife and I are on different calorie intakes and Phase plans, but it’s easy enough for me to cook for both of us and we just eat the portions we respectively need to. I never in my life thought I would be buying Whey Protein, much less drinking it, but I started that today. It’s not bad, actually, depending on what you mix it with. I’ve always loved protein bars since I was a kid, so that wasn’t a problem. And we learned that chocolate milk makes an excellent recovery drink. (No, seriously: http://ping.fm/1DBEa) Only tested this personally yesterday, but it seems to have worked.

The diet is actually more food than I’m used to, but that is largely part of most people’s problem with weight control. We’ve been trained over the decades to think dieting is something as simple as calorie, carb, fat, or sugar watching – that it’s just grabbing the box or carton that says low-insert-bad-sounding-evil-ingredient-here or mult/nutra/natural/mega/vitamin-insert-healthy-sounding-ingredient-there – when it’s far more complex than that. It’s a combination of these things in different measure, not just the absence of one or some. Like an instrument, everything needs to be fine tuned, or when you start to play, something is going to strain or snap.

We’ve made a few mistakes along the way (don’t even ask me about the vegetable soup that went horribly, horribly wrong) and even broke down and fell off the wagon a couple of times (a certain chocolate chip cookie, that I might mention, I didn’t buy or ask for, comes to mind, but I digress), but nothing ever too serious. I find that if I put effort into it – serious, concerted effort – I can come up with decent, good tasting, even filling, meals for the family. Once we started figuring out what goes well together, we got into a riff. It’s just like being newlyweds all over again (without the screaming, yelling and holes in the wall), with trying to find the right balance of things to buy vs. things we won’t eat. I find I feel better and have a bit more energy than before. I never really craved junk food to begin with, so the challenge for me is not trying to avoid bad foods, but eating under a prescribed meal plan. That’s where I got into trouble to begin with, and why, while wearing a suit, I started looking like a really pale version of Heavy D. (Look it up kids. Know you’re hip-hop history and pop cultural roots.) For Miranda, I think it’s more what most people would be up against; not eating some of the sweet or fatty foods that she loves. But even she’s astounded with the results she’s gotten out of it.

We start the exercise program in earnest tomorrow. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s necessary. Mahogany is getting heavy, fast. It doesn’t look like she’ll be walking anytime soon, and even if she does start walking in the next three or four years, she’s still going to need a lot of help moving around, as well as having to handle all her equipment. Plus, if we don’t do something now, there’s really no reason under the sun that we’ll be around to take care of her in the next few years if we keep going the route we’re going. This country is one of the most obese in the world. Two years ago the World Health Organization listed us as #9 in a list of countries with the most overweight people. I know we’re somewhere on another bad list where people are dying far too soon in life. It’s one trend I don’t intend me or my family to be a part of anymore.

It’s all well and good to be happy with what you are and how you look. But you have to be sensible and reasonable about it. You can’t just accept who you are, if what you are is endangering you’re health or the health of your family. You also don’t have to have self-esteem issues to think you need to improve upon it. I refuse to think that I’m doing anything but the best for my family by making them work for a better inner and outer body. I want to feel better, have more energy and more mental alertness than I currently do. I want them to, too. Things don’t get done when you don’t feel good on the inside. You can’t just bemoan how fat you’ve become, and then chronically repeat the habits that made you that way to begin with. You can’t come up with excuses. It takes time and money that are both tight at the moment. But I won’t get any richer, or extend my life any longer if I do nothing but the same old same old. I can pray for that to change every day, but God is not going to send the solution to me on the wings of a dove. I have to work for it. I have to work to help my little family attain it, too. This is our investment in the future. This is our stimulus package.

And so, I reiterate, it begins tomorrow, by hook or, as they say, crook. (Why they say that, I don’t know. I’ll have to look it up.) As a practical matter, I now know the diet works, and I know it doesn’t starve us; rather the opposite. So the exercise can only help, as much as it’s going to physically hurt. Here’s to feeling better and becoming one of those annoying guys who likes to walk around everywhere with his shirt off. I’d do that now, but people keep chaining bikini clad slave girls to me. It ticks Miranda off.

Until next time, Yang chas Solo chone Wookiee!

You Forgot My Underwear!

We’re going to have to do something different for next year’s District Convention. We’ve been fortunate enough to get the hotel across the street consistently each year, thanks in no small part to my wife’s due diligence in reserving rooms early. But as evidenced by this last weekend’s Convention, location is not enough. Habits need to be changed.

For one thing, while walking from the hotel to the convention center is still the better option to driving such a short distance, we still have to drive all over creation just to find something to eat in the afternoon. I’d much rather walk to one of the eating places by the hotel and grab something real quick, rather than struggle to find parking at the hotel later that night. Plus, any way to limit the number of times the wheelchair has to be lugged in and out of the trunk is a good idea.

Another thing we need to work out is making sure the wife and I can get in touch with each other when the baby has to be changed in an emergency. There’s no Father’s Room at the convention center, so when Miranda was away from her seat, I had to try and change baby in the grass out back behind the building under the blazing sun. Not really the most comfortable, nor private place to change a five year old, not to mention having to deal with curious insects and other curious little children. I don’t like sitting in the grass as it is, much less in my good suit.

We also need to stop unpacking everything we bring just to end up repacking it a day and half later. There’s some things that we can just pull from the suitcase when ready to use and some stuff we can take out. But packing and repacking the entirety of our luggage in such a short period of time just wastes time and energy that could otherwise be conserved.

Add to all that, we need to stop eating so much. I think Miranda subconsciously realized that before we even left for our trip, as she only packed snacks for lunch. It took me a couple of nights with severe heartburn to realize that breakfast at 8:30 and lunch at 12 noon is just to close together for me. I never even used to eat breakfast before I got married, and I still only do so when out with the family such as on trips like these. By the last day I had sense enough to just skip lunch and was fine until ready to eat that afternoon. I was overfilling myself and paying for it come nighttime. Didn’t think to bring any Mylanta.

Overall, I’d say we do better then we used to. I’ll never understand why we used to show up at the hotel with five Wal-Mart bags and ten suitcases. I’m glad we didn’t do that too many times. But baby is only going to get heavier and ganglier the older she gets, and we can’t presume that she will walk during a given year, even if that is our goal for her. We, of course, need to work on our own health and strength in line with that reality just generally speaking, as well as for assemblies and conventions. But aside from that, we also need to consider just how inefficient we’re being in the meantime. While my wife has done a good job learning how to pack fewer bags over the years, I think it’s time we start learning how to pack better bags for our trips. Sometimes two mid-size bags are better then jamming the contents into one giant, cumbersome bag that requires a back brace and winch to get out of the trunk. Conversely, the baby doesn’t need both jumbo plush Nemo dolls, when a couple of compact rattlers will do.

Next year will be different. It always is. We always learn something with each passing year. One day we’ll get it almost perfect. Then maybe, we can have enough energy to stay alert for the session, and have enough strength to keep baby from chewing on the back of the head of the people in front of us.

Just so you know, the wife and I have been starting the Doctor Who saga over. And I mean over. As in William Hartnell over. Most Americans were introduced to Dr. Who during the Tom Baker years, but once it gained popularity here, they threw a few of the Hartnell/Troughten episodes on the air and that was pretty much it. Since I’m a completest kind of person, I’ve been putting the cursed Blockbuster account to good use and playing catchup on some stuff I’ve been wanting to see. So with that said, I’ll probably be caught up with the current series sometime around 2015. (That is, provided Blockbuster starts filling in the missing DVDs they don’t have. It’s bad enough most of the Hartnell stuff is missing, much less having to skip through what little does exist.)

Here’s the thing. I was looking at an article about the new guy. And I guess it was an American website, because the nimrods in the comment section of this site kept making jokes about how they were going to crossover Doctor Who with Twilight and 90210 and some such nonsense.

As I said, here’s the thing.

They were insinuating that the show was coping to the teen/Twilight crowd because they picked this real handsome young guy.

Yeah.

Young, surely. Bloodless, maybe. But handsome? Twilight handsome? Is there something about the “leave a comment” button that just turns on every dim bulb in the world and forces them to say something, even when it doesn’t make any sense?

Baby has not been having a good two weeks. She’s constantly been having her sleep disturbed by what we could only describe as small crying seizures. It’s tough to sleep when you seize the whole night. And you can’t stop having seizures if you can’t get a good night’s sleep. Ever seen the movie Catch 22?

Since we’ve been running to the doctor and calling Wake Forest over and over again, her neurologist started getting a little concerned and had us run to Winston-Salem for an EKG at Brenners. Short notice, otherwise I would have tried to sleep last night, which I didn’t do, which I wish I had, which I made up for later. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

At Brenners they attached a bunch of electrodes to her head, drugged her up and then expected her to go to sleep. That went well… Baby doesn’t like sleeping in public. She’s too nosy.

After having to pin her down to get the electrodes PROPERLY attached we wrestled with her for what seemed like an hour to get her to go to sleep. Lots of screaming ensued. Lots of electrodes did not remain attached properly. Finally I took her and laid down on the bed with her over my shoulder and she could no longer resist. She had one seizure during the scan, which was a good thing, as they were able to rule some things out. And, well, it was a pretty comfortable bed and I hadn’t slept in 24 hours, so…

I felt like I was there to have this baby-shaped tumor removed from my chest. Remember that movie with the little dude attached to the other dudes chest with all the wires sticking out of his head? Yeah…

In any event, the doctor ruled out what she was afraid it might be. Infantile Spasms Seizures I believe was the correct name. She figured she was too old for them, but just wanted to be sure. As it turns out, we just need to put baby back on the Keppra, which we had just weaned her off of prior to my Grandma’s funeral, and was right about when all the trouble started. Right when I started blogging regularly again. We figured as much, but she has a good neurologist, so we waited to see what she thought.

Baby is asleep now, thanks to the sedative they gave her and she’s been sleeping all day and night. No crying. The wife’s been asleep since this evening, and I slept till about 2am. I got hungry. Plus I closed City of Gamers last night to do some much needed maintenance and upgrades, so I’m really behind on that. I’m sure Maruno would like back into the Wiki at some point. Not to mention, those extensions I keep promising him…

On the subject of parents who force their kids onto rides, I brought up a few points that I thought were being overlooked over at the Mousestation Podcast. My email got read on the air, about 30 minutes in if your not interested in listening to whole show (which was a good show by the way) and seemed to be received positively, even if I did come off a little snippy in retrospect. http://ping.fm/uiiQW