Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Weight Loss Week #?

So it's been a year since my last weight-loss post. Partially inspired by Kris' posts, I thought I'd give an update.

A year ago, I weight approximately 229 pounds. Then I got busy with schoolwork and my weight suffered. It eventually climbed up to 240 pounds around the start of last quarter (eg, right after Christmas).

240 pounds is the most weight I've ever been. It's the max, the upper bound. That's the weight I reached as an undergrad that triggered my huge weight loss back in the day. And I was back there again.

In the last quarter and a half, I've dropped 22 pounds. I'm now around 218, just (10 pounds down from last year). Which is about a third of the way to my new goal weight of 176 (instead of the nebulous <180). A third of the way in four months, hopefully I'll reach it by the end of the year.

Actually, this is my final quarter of school (hopefully), so the rate of weight loss is actually increasing at the moment. Since I don't have a fixed schedule, I always have the time to do my exercises on work-out days (mon-wed-fri [I _should_ ride the bike every day, but I don't]). Not that it really takes that much time anyway.

I am once again surprised at how a little effort goes a long way. Almost always less than an hour, and only three times a week, and the pounds drop away. Of course, it's a pretty intense hour, but still, time-wise it's not a lot.

Or perhaps most of it is food discipline. I rarely give in to my urges for unhealthy snacks anymore. At the moment, those urges are fewer and farther between, but I do remember how intense they were at the start of the year.

So that's it. Once again, the secret to rapid weight loss turns out to be diet and exercise. We should tell people!

UPDATE:
OK, so I wrote this post before the weekend that George visited and we had the big dinner and Ken brought two pies and a tray of brownies and two huge bags of chips and all the other things I don't normally eat, and George and I gorged ourselves at the excellent Bangkok Thai restaurant and then China Buffet... Anyway, long story short, I weight myself this morning. 225. Wut... I'm sure hoping that a lot of that is just regular weight fluctuation... I think I'll go hit the bike for a while.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

LRN2INTERNET

(Alternate title: HOW I SHOT INTERWEB?)

Opened my iGoogle today and found this:
The Gmail gadget does not support the "Always use https" setting that you chose in full Gmail. If you would like to use https, please open full Gmail. Learn more
Google fails at httpsing? For shame, G.

This gadget worked fine yesterday; iGoogle also works fine in https. In fact, *ALL* of The Great Grand Google works fine in https except the Gmail gadget all of a sudden.

DUMB.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Google Font



Rhett Dashwood (a hero name if I ever heard one) spent months viewing Victoria, Australia through Google Maps, collecting images for each letter in the alphabet. If one were inclined, one could probably duplicate this for any region, giving each country/state/city its own Google Maps font.

Full alphabet (and map coordinates) on Rhett's site.

(via Geekology, who saw it on Gizmodo, who ran across it on today and tomorrow)

Saturday, April 25, 2009

I have invented a device that controls you

YOU ARE NOW
BREATHING MANUALLY.

Friday, April 24, 2009

I have invented a device that controls you

THE SONG
"THE FINAL
COUNTDOWN"
IS NOW
PLAYING IN
YOUR HEAD



For Al: Show/Hide

Thursday, April 23, 2009

We're Linux "winner"

So the Linux Foundation contest is over. It has been for a while, but I'm closing my tabs today and I ran across it again.

Remember that pantsless guy singing about your mom? Well, surprise he lost. SHOCK!

Here's the final winner:
Show/Hide


WOW that's a steaming pile of shit bit disappointing.

So far, nothing has reached the level of IBM's old ad. Anyone besides me remember this?


OH! I was just reminded of those old Mac vs PC vs Linux spoofs. (I like the 2nd one)

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Keaton

Keaton takes a photo of himself every day for 1 day.
Show/Hide

Small Town Strife

For such a small town, I sure hear a lot of sirens in Cheney.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Mac Daddy

So I might be looking to buy a Mac in the very very near future (possibly tomorrow).

$617.42 Mac Mini
$164.23 RAM and drive upgrades
$781.65 total (with tax and stuff)

Not great, but not terrible. Hmmm.....

What It Is To Be Natural

This ... takes a bit to get going, but stick with it. Show/Hide

What did I just watch?

Genius satire. It's a response to this video. And there are others, but this one was my fav.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Death and TurboTaxes

I got a notice from the IRS today, so let's talk about my taxes.

In years gone by, I used to file by phone, which was way easy. Unfortunately, now that my money is earning interest, I no longer qualify for the 1040EZ. Anyway, I don't really have time to do all the math on the 1040A by hand, so my brother recommended TurboTax.

Let me tell you, it was great. It asked what forms I had, and had me entered my data. It did all the number crunching for me. Bing bang boom, I was done. This was March 27th.

I filed electronically. The estimated date for my refund direct deposit was April 10th. When the 10th came and went and no deposit was forthcoming, I went to the IRS's Where's My Refund page. I was then informed that my return (which I had already been told was accepted) would now be accepted on the 14th. So, even if there were an error that was caught in time, I would only have a single day to fix it.

Well, then I forgot about it. The refund deposit never did show up and I just got busy with schoolwork. And then the notice came.

Through the little window on the front of the envelope, I could read "We are writing to you because there is an error on yo[...]". Awesome. :-( I opened it up.

Why We Are Sending You This Notice
We are writing to you because there is an error on your 2008 Federal Income Tax Return. We will explain why we made the change and what you need to do.

Why We Made The Change
  • We changed the amount of the recovery rebate credit you claimed on Line 42 of your Form 1040A because the amount entered was computed incorrectly.
Wait, what? Recovery rebate credit?

I looked at my tax return, line 42 "Recovery rebate credit (see instrs)". I can't see instrs because I don't have the tax booklet or any of the actual forms. TurboTax calculated this value for me ("95" says TT).

Ahhhh.... I'm beginning to remember now.

I didn't receive a stimulus check last year, because my income for the previous year indicated that I probably wouldn't qualify (I came back to the US towards the end of 2007, so I didn't earn enough income). The stimulus check itself was just a prebate (is that a real word? I saw it on the IRS website, but I think they might just be fucking with me) against our 2008 taxes. Since I didn't get the check in 2008, I should have qualified for the money on my tax return. SOMEhow, TT didn't crunch the numbers right, or just assumed that everyone got the check last year, or something.

Anyway, the IRS was kind enough to catch it and bump up my refund by $205. Thanks, IRS.

My favorite part of their notice was the second half, where they tell me all about my options for disputing this change. It does put me in quite the quandary, as I am ethically opposed to government handouts (they're giving me money I didn't earn), but I'm also a broke college student. Hmmm....

GoRemy Show/Hide

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Spokane Police Are Incompetent

Apparently they think squatters fall under the landlord-tenant act.

If any officers happen to run across this, here's a quick tutorial on how you can tell if someone is a tenant: Is there a rental agreement? No? THEN THEY'RE NOT FUCKING TENANTS.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Crime & PUNishment

Based on an actual conversation I had this morning.
PHOENIX is on his way to the laundry room, wearing a t-shirt that says "Ursines excrete solid waste in silviculture", and he runs into STEVE. STEVE reads PHOENIX's shirt, and starts a conversation.
STEVE: Did you hear about the Energizer Bunny?

PHOENIX: That he got arrested for battery? Yeah, I heard.

S: It was really shocking to him when the coppertop arrested him.

P: *groan*

S: They even had to put him in a Dura-Cell for a while, because he was too energetic.

P: Ouch.

S: Yeah, and all they could find for him to wear were some shorts. He tried to meditate to regain his composure (Ohmmmm...) but there was just too much resistance - he couldn't get through.

P: *wince*

S: But he'll be discharged in a couple of weeks.

P: Oh yeah?

S: They ran a battery of tests on him and found he was bi-polar. They put him on lithium, and that rectified the situation.

P: Well, that lithium is powerful stuff.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Change Is Constant

Blogger changed the feeds for comments, breaking the PEEK function (which then broke the entire page). Awesome.

So no PEEKing until I have time to fix it.

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Phoenix Watches Heroes**

You'll have to click me to get a readable size.  THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!  Wait, what?

**much to his regret

Blogger doesn't let me post the full size directly anymore? Dumb.

Saturday, April 04, 2009

FANTAstic

I was on Digg recently and there was a thread on 10 Commercials that are Exercises in WTF.

Those 10 were OK, but better ones appeared in the comments.

Feel Great (Nutrigrain)
Show/Hide

Apparently this is from 2003. I missed it.

Sync Is Everything (FusionONe)
Show/Hide

Short and sweet. I didn't get it until the end.

Swiss Family Robinson (Emerald Nuts)
Show/Hide

Low volume warning. Heavy into WTF territory on this one.

Tailor / Mirror (Skittles)
Show/Hide
translation from comments
Man on Suit: "Wait... I'm not eating Skittles"
Tailor (Thai): "Hey! You can't eat during work!"
Filipino: "But I am hungry"
Tailor:" "I don't understand what you're saying"
Filipino: "I am hungry so I am going to eat"
Tailor: "You lazy worker!"
Filipino: "Don't you... (gibberish)... Don't do this to me."
Thai: (starts speaking gibberish)
Filipino: "Son of a ****, I want to... (*kicks mirror*)"
Thai: "Hehehehe"
The obligatory Skittles commercial

Finally, the REAL reason for the post:

Japanese Year Three Teachers (Fanta)
Show/Hide

This is a whole series of commercials (in Japanese, but with subtitles). As a former 3rd Grade Teacher in Japan (third year in middle school, equivalent to high school freshman), I identified with this commercial. ^_^ There are more (sans subtitles). This was posted to YouTube in 2006, so it must have aired in Japan while I lived there. I guess I didn't watch enough TV. :-/

Children's Day

Today is April 4th. It's also Children's Day in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Fapril Mules

Today was (is?) April Fools. Quite a lot of good stuff today.

YouTube made this video even more awesome.

Slashdot added achievements (which will probably stick around)

Google's big show this year was impressively extensive. Although... remember when everyone thought that GMail was an April Fools joke? It did sound too good to be true...

Reddit had a pretty good sense of humor to make itself look like Digg for the day (a lot of content makes its way from Reddit to Digg, and vice versa).

For the end-all be-all rundown, checkout http://aprilfoolsdayontheweb.com/

You can't just CWalken to Twittor

(Sorry, title is three memes deep, and I'm not going to explain them)

So, CWalken, the "Christopher Walken" twitter account, has been removed (impersonations are verboten).

I'm glad.

See, I loved the CWalken tweets, but I hate everything about Twitter (including the terminology. Tweets? I feel like I'm taking CRAZY PILLS).

I almost even made a twitter account, just to follow CWalken more easily.

But, now that they've banned the account, I won't have to do that. In fact, now that the only interesting (to me) thing about twitter is no more, I can forget about it entirely.

The ONE THING I regret is not keeping a record of my favorite CWalkens. SOMEONE should do the same CWalken thing*, except with a blog. (CWalken at Blogspot is already taken by a couple of douchesacks that don't even use it)

*And by "The Thing" I mean how CWalken wasn't written by just one guy. It was an open account; people who thought of something that would be funny if said by Christopher Walken would post stuff to the account. Now, I think a little moderation would have been better, but the basis is sound.

Fenix Down

School is back in session.

I spent the week of spring break mostly in bed.

It's the oddest illness. Recently, I'm sick every other day. I'll be fine, fantastic in fact. The next day I will be unable to sit up without getting dizzy.

What the EFF?

So, if you've been wondering where I'd disappeared to (and judging from your comments, you have NOT), now you know.