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Actively Reading
Introducing Ethics | David Robinson, et al
Socrates Cafe : A Fresh Taste of Philosophy | Christopher Phillips
On-deck
Agile Software Development | Alistair Cockburn
The Hacker Ethic | Pekka Himanen, et al
Counter Hack | Ed Skoudis
Practical Unix and Internet Security | Spafford, Garfinkel
Read (since 9.16.99)
The Career Programmer | Christopher Duncan
A Beautiful Mind | Sylvia Nasar
Me Talk Pretty One Day | David Sedaris
Euclid's Window | Leonard Mlodinow
Ava's Man | Rick Bragg
Affluenza | John DeGraaf, et al
sed & awk | Dougherty, Robbins
The Unix-hater's Handbook | Simson Garfinkel, et al
XML/RPC | Simon St. Laurent, et al
Core J2EE Patterns | John Krupi, et al
eXtreme Programming Explored | Wake
Software Craftsmanship | McBreen
XML-RPC | St. Laurent, et al
Mastering Regular Expressions | Friedl
Programming Ruby | Thomas, Hunt
Slack | DeMarco
Advanced JavaServer Pages | David Geary
Effective Java | Jeremy Bloch
Learning the vi Editor | Lamb, Robbins
The Secret House | David Bodanis
Unix Tricks and Tips | Kirk Waingrow
Learning the Korn Shell | Bill Rosenblatt
Geeks | John Katz
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | Douglas Adams
The Cathedral and the Bazaar | Eric S. Raymond
Stranger in a Strange Land | Robert Heinlein
Several Books on Solaris and Unix Admin
It's Not About the Bike | Lance Armstrong
The Humane Interface | Jef Raskin
The Pragmatic Programmer | Andrew Hunt
The Water-method Man | John Irving
The Nudist on the Late Shift | Po Bronson
Does the Center Hold?: An Introduction to Western Philosophy | Donald Palmer
Principles of Transaction Processing | Philip Bernstein
In the Beginning Was the Command Line | Neal Stephenson
The Tomb | HP Lovecraft
The Lurking Fear | HP Lovecraft
Secrets, Lies, and Democracy | Chomsky/Barsamian
Hannibal | Thomas Harris
eXtreme Programming eXplained | Kent Beck
Philosophy for Dummies | Tom Morris
Sophie's World | Jostein Gaarder
Clear Thinking | Hy Ruchlis
Chomsky for Beginners | David Cogswell
Philosophy, the Basics | Nigel Warburton
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! | Richard Feynman
The Lord of the Rings | J.R.R. Tolkien
Listening
Remain in Light | Talking Heads
Good Dog, Happy Man | Bill Frisell
Revival | Gillian Welch

 

 
Friday, June 30, 2000

So I get all suited up in my bike clothes, and leave work about 4:10 to ride my bike home. I go down to the bike rack to discover that some asshole has stolen my front wheel! Geez! So, I go back upstairs and start calling bike shops to see if I can get a replacement. On the second call, I get a hit! The exact wheel I need, and the shop is right down Broadway, which is on my bus' route. So, I shoulder my bike to the bus station and hop on my bus. The driver is reluctant, at first, to let me on his "small" bus, but I say "come on, man, my front wheel got stolen, so can you cut me a break?". He relents. He even drops me right at the bike shop, which isn't actually a valid stop on his route. $135 later, I'm riding again. The ride home sucked, given that the winds were high, and often in my face. I didn't get home until about 7:15.

Also, I called the "Y" today to see if they'll rent me a locker and let me use their shower facilities for cheap. The guy I talked to said they don't do that, but that I could talk to the "program manager" next week. I hope I can work it out. If so, I'll bring 3-days worth of work clothes in on Monday. Then I'll ride to the "Y", shower and change into my work clothes there. I'll leave my bike clothes hanging in the locker so they can dry out a bit. At the end of the day I'll change back into my nasty morning bike ride clothes and ride back home. I'll do this on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Then on Friday, I can take the bus in and back, returning home with my dirty work clothes. It's beautiful, and nets me over 100 miles in three days. If the "Y" won't do it, then I'll start asking Hotels if they can provide that service.

muttered around 10:23 PM

Looking for hard-to-find books? Visit Alibris - Books you thought you'd never find.

muttered around 2:46 PM

Gotta love this store: ThinkGeek :: Stuff for Smart Masses

muttered around 2:44 PM

Ya gotta read this: Wired 8.04: Why the future doesn't need us.

muttered around 2:19 PM

Thursday, June 29, 2000

Met with ex-Qwest friends for lunch (Chris, James, Kurt, Mike) in Boulder. It was great to visit with them. They're all pretty happy with their decisions to leave Qwest.

I'm just about finished with The Nudist on the Late Shift, by Po Bronson. It's been a pretty entertaining read, all in all. I'm a bit behind the curve in my reading - this book's been around for a while.

My bud Bill has accepted an offer from ObjectSpace, a top-notch consulting and product company based in Dallas.

muttered around 8:39 PM

Hmm. I seem to be doing postings about every other day. I always seem to start with "Yesterday, I...". Anyway, yesterday, I had a great commute home on my bike. It was essentially windless, and I managed a 20.2mph average over what I call the "time trial" section of the ride (this section is all on the Platte River trail, and is fairly uninterrupted), which is about 10 miles. This even when I'm still a little sick with a virus of some sort.

Today I'm super sore from my lifting session on Monday. I did squats for the first time in about 2 weeks, and my right thigh feels like one big bruise.

At work, we're busy preparing for our 7/15 go-live of the browser conversion for all of WDS. We decided to run each application against its own instance of WLS since we can't really cluster right now (we have caching code, which makes clustering impossible to do cleanly).

muttered around 7:21 AM

Tuesday, June 27, 2000

Yesterday was "back to work day". I was a little concerned about the status of the iRDS project, given that so many of us had been out one week or another, but the guys did awesome last week, and basically all Use Cases are running. I spent a bit of time just catching up, and a while analyzing a co-worker's code for inefficiencies, because he'd been experiencing poor performance in a component of his app. I found quite a few improvements to suggest.

Sigh. I have a cold today. I started getting the glimmerings of a sore throat last night, and today it's a full-on sore throat and post-nasal nastiness. It never fails - Saturday we babysat my little nephew, the petri dish, and now I have a cold. So, I'm working from home.

muttered around 8:38 AM

Sunday, June 25, 2000

Rode in Waterton Canyon this morning with my bud Christoph. We didn't originally intend to ride any singletrack, but once we were at the "top" of the Waterton Canyon ride, it seemed like a waste not to check out the Colorado trail. I really liked this ride. The great thing about it is that it's a challenging climb, but not a back-breaker. It has a lot of switchbacks, but they're all rideable. Going back down was really great, because many of the sweeping turns are bermed. Nice ride.

Strontia Dam, Waterton Canyon

The above picture is Strontia Dam, which is much more impressive in person. You probably can't make it out, but there's a Bighorn Sheep laying in the road just beyond the fence at the bottom of the picture.

muttered around 9:14 PM

Saturday, June 24, 2000

Friday's trip home was basically uneventful. I left feeling a bit ripped off over the class, even though it's Qwest's money. It was a waste of time.

Today, was a big day, though. I started the day with a 20-mile road bike ride (my usual C470/Platte River loop). Then, we had our 5-year-old nephew over for the day. Our plans were to take him to a movie, then to a co-worker's party, then to eat. While waiting for the movie to start, I worked on setting up the new Dell desktop we bought. It's 700mhz/256M of RAM/20G Hard Drive setup. Pretty sweet.

Anyway, the movie we saw was Chicken Run, which was very entertaining (at least for the adults). My nephew didn't seem that interested. I think most of the humor was over his head, and there were no Pokemon involved, so he was fairly bored. Next, we attended my co-worker's party, as planned, but my nephew wasn't very interested in that, either. We basically made him go, since that was "part of the deal". We only stayed an hour or so, and he loosened up a bit by the end, but never enough so's he'd play with the other kids. Anyway, next on the agenda was food, so we hit Cafe Rio, which is a favorite neighborhood joint. Not very authentic, but reliable Mexican food.

When we got home, MB took a nap that turned out to last all night. I continued to configure the new machine, and it went unbelievably smoothly. Win98 did an admirable job of autodetecting the IDSN adapter, which then set itself up quite nicely (it stores your configuration "locally"). Within a half-hour I had the new machine proxying the ISDN connection just like the old one used to. I then hooked the old desktop back into the network, which went relatively smoothly, and started copying files from it to the new box. My intention is to run Linux on the old desktop as soon as I can pick up a cheap "computer switcher" that switches your monitor, KB, and mouse from one machine to the other.

While buying some miscellaneous stuff for the new computer, I picked up Quake III Arena. I've been playing Quake I (QuakeWorld, on the internet, really) since it first came out, and never really switched to Quake II because of a lack of hardware. Well, Q3A runs awesome on the new box, and it's dangerously good. I can already sense a bit of addiction creeping in. The cool thing about it is that Q3A was designed for head-to-head play against the computer or humans. The computer enemies are actually pretty darn smart, so the game is entertaining out-of-the-box. No need to go looking for network games.

Time to play some more...

muttered around 10:03 PM

Thursday, June 22, 2000

Made my way down to Manhattan Beach last nite, and rented a bike. I rode a couple of miles north from Manhattan Beach Blvd along the beach bike path. It was really nice, but a bit overcast and windy. At least that kept the temps comfortable. I rode with a kid that races road bikes. It was his recovery day, so I could keep up with him fine on my crappy rental mountain bike.

One thing I got to watch while near the water was "surfing". This activity seems to mainly involve paddling a large oval board out into the water and then sitting up on the board looking around. Once in a while you stand up on the board and immediately fall off. This is followed by more paddling and, well, you get the idea. It didn't look like that much fun.

After my ride, I walked out onto the Manhattan Beach pier, where I happened upon a classmate from my WebLogic Admin class. We agreed to grab dinner together. We had a good time complaining about the class and talking about sailing experiences.

Today was more torture, WebLogic Admin class-style. On this day we were to learn all about clustering. What we learned instead is that Windows 98 is a crappy environment under which to attempt this trick. Windows 98 doesn't support enough network twiddling to properly perform the exercises, so they were mainly an effort in futility. No-one got even the first useful exercise to work.

I chilled out in the hotel tonite for dinner. My co-worker has bravely endeavored to make the journey to her grandmother's on LA's freeway system. Godspeed.

muttered around 9:39 PM

Wednesday, June 21, 2000

Spent about an hour last night cruising around Culver City and LA trying to find a decent mall with a movie. Never did. Geez, isn't this place supposed to be the "land of the malls" or something? Ended up going back to my hotel, eating in the grill there. Then, went back to the room, called MB, read a little and went to bed around 9:30.

Got up at around 5:30 and worked out at about 5:50 again. This time I just rode their crappy upright stationary bike, and then did about 5 minutes on their crappy stair-climbing machine. No weights today - will do tomorrow.


muttered around 9:47 AM

Tuesday, June 20, 2000

Well, the instructor showed up yesterday for my WebLogic admin class at about 9:45. Turns out that BEA just rented a room from this education facility, and didn't really coordinate with the facility very well. The instructor flew in from Austin yesterday morning, which explains his late arrival. We really didn't get started until about 10:30, but the class seemed to go OK. Nothing I didn't already know yet, but we'll get there.

I worked out at about 5:50am this morning - I was bolt awake at 5:15, having gone to bed at about 9:30. I had a good workout, even though the hotel's "extensive" fitness facilities left a lot to be desired. The stationary bikes, both upright and recumbent, were very uncomfortable, and only one offered toe straps. The weight room was about the size of the bathroom in my hotel room, and had an odd mix of machines. I made the most of their nice dumbell selection, though, and got in a good workout anyway.

We went to an awesome Hawaiian-food place called the Beach Hut for lunch. It was the instructor's idea. The place is in Manhattan beach, right near Rosecranz street. It was a tiny hole-in-the-wall place, and the food was awesome. It's kinda like Japanese food, but fattier. Of course, the lunch ended up taking two hours total, so once we got back, the instructor ripped thru the rest of the materials like a maniac. Luckily I already know most of what he was talking about. Class went to 5:45 with a lab still to complete, at which point my co-worker and I left. We figured we'd come early in the morning to complete the excercises.

muttered around 10:15 AM

Monday, June 19, 2000

Here I sit at my BEA WebLogic admin class, and so far I'm unimpressed, and the thing has yet to start. It's done by some training company in a generic office park. The instructor has yet to show (9:00 Pacific). The furniture and computers are cheap (the flimsiest chairs I've seen outside of someone's home office), etc. Hopefully, the quality of the class makes up for the cheapness of the surroundings. My co-worker hasn't shown yet either. Hopefully, she got the messages about the location being different than we originally expected.

muttered around 10:02 AM

Sunday, June 18, 2000

So, here I am at Denver International Airport, having nothing better to do than update my blog. It's a sordid tale, the chain of events that has me sitting here in "terminal" boredom, but that's travel. My original flight was to be on United at 7:00pm, but that one was cancelled. United was kind enough to set me up with a flight on Frontier at 9:00pm. Well, it's 8:35pm, and I've just found out that the flight is late. It will likely be 9:30 before they board. Sigh. I won't go into the whole hotel snafu that happened earlier today, mainly because I hate typing on this rubber-chicklet keyboard. Yuck.

muttered around 8:38 PM

So, here I am at DenverInternational Airport, having nothing better to do than update my blog. It's a sordid tale, the chain of events that has me sitting here in "terminal" boredom, but that's travel. My original flight was to be on United at 7:00pm, but that one was cancelled. United was kind enough to set me up with a flight on Frontier at 9:00pm. Well, it's 8:35pm, and I've just found out that the flight is late. It will likely be 9:30 before they board. Sigh. I won't go into the whole hotel snafu that happened earlier today, mainly because I hate typing on this rubber-chicklet keyboard. Yuck.

muttered around 8:37 PM

Rode my mountain bike in Deer Creek Canyon today. Great ride, though I had to walk a bit. I've accepted that it's going to happen now, and I don't beat myself up too much about it.

View from Plymouth Mountain Trail - Looking East

The picture was taken from the east side descent of Plymouth Mountain Trail, about quarter-way down. The formation that dominates the center of the photo is the "hogback" -- about the last vestige of the foothills before you hit the plain. Beyond, to the right, is Chatfield Reservoir. If the picture wasn't reduced, you'd be able to make out downtown Denver (it's nestled in the left-hand-side boughs of the left-hand pine tree, at roughly the horizon line, where there's a gap).

Father's Day celebration at the in-laws is next!

muttered around 12:37 PM

Saturday, June 17, 2000

Well, I weighed in very light today (my progress). I'm probably dehydrated a bit from my ride home yesterday, since it was freakishly cold (probably between 45 and 50) when I rode home, and I don't get so thirsty under those conditions. I drizzled a bit, and I was really glad that I'd brought my cycling jacket just in case. As a matter of fact, I was a bit sorry that I hadn't brought my tights and some long-fingered gloves. My knees were freezing by the time I got home. It felt great to bathe them in the hot water of the shower.

While I'm on the topic of fitness (somewhat), I thought I'd mention that I see an inverse relationship between my daily weight and body fat measurements. For more info on the whole fitness plan and aproach (and a bunch of other stuff) see my training log. Note that the only part I keep up with now is the charts. The log part has been replaced somewhat by this blog you're reading.

Today is a weight training day. I seem to have lost interest in the activity, but I still have the willpower to force myself to go. I'm always glad when I've done it.

I had some major fixing of the rest of the site to do. Early in my blogging activity, I had adjusted my site stylesheet for the blog. I was too stupid to test the rest of the site to see what the changes had wrought there. Well, they were pretty bad for the rest of the site. Not only that, but I have since created a blog-specific stylesheet, so not only did I mess up the rest of the site, but for no good reason. So, I had to sit down and work with the site stylesheet a bit to set everything right. Should look better now.

I still don't have this blog looking right under Navigator. Navigator is not respecting the color rules I've placed in the stylesheet, so my table layout, for now, has lines running thru it. Of course, it looks perfect in Internet Explorer (well, perfect enough for me, at least). Once I have the blog looking right, it's going to become my home page. That way, I can keep my home page fresh from anywhere. I'll also convert the rest of the site to keep with the blog's look (whatever that may turn out to be).

muttered around 10:20 AM

Friday, June 16, 2000

Biking in the City is interesting (at least to cyclists). I respect the dedication of someone who commutes every day (I only commute home, twice a week).

muttered around 5:38 AM

Wednesday, June 14, 2000

Okay, so the redesign is here, sort-of. Version 7.0 of samoht.com is well underway. I'm experimenting with the design right here in my blog. As of now, if you're reading this on the day it was posted, or soon thereafter, it's in sad shape. Actually, it looks good in Internet Explorer, but Netscape Navigator (the Communicator release) just doesn't know what to do with it. As a matter of fact, you can't read this text if you're using it.

Why is it that Internet Explorer just plain renders things the way they should be, while Netscape Navigator just can't? I mean, every time I write HTML, IE does pretty much what I think it's going to do. On the other hand, Navigator is always causing me to pull my hair out. The damn page looks better in v3.0 than later versions, for crissake! From previous postings, you'll see that I'm not a Microsoft apologist, but I do feel strongly that IE renders much, much better than Navigator.

I decided to go 100% CSS, rendering be damned, this time (and I'm paying the price). BTW, I used a great, free, little tool called TopStyle Lite to do the CSS editing. It's a little buggy, but overall a damn fine thing, especially given that it's free. Recommended.

muttered around 9:54 PM

Yesterday was pretty hectic, and then at the end of the day I needed just to go to bed, so I missed out on updating. Oh well. I was involved in major refactoring of our web framework code yesterday at work. Had a good ride home -- probably averaged around 18.5-19mph for most of it. Did intervals and sprints. Watched Felicia's Journey, with Bob Hoskins. Very good, quiet flick. Recommended.

Today, so far, I've "finished" the refactoring mentioned above, and am just taking break from being in deep code mode. I just saw an article in the paper that made me want to post, which explains this mid-day post: Some group is whining about Jim Carrey's new movie, Me, Myself, and Irene. Geez, get a life folks. It's a movie, and it's a comedy. It's not going to give me the idea that schizophrenics actually go around punching themselves in the face. Though after this protest, I think it might be a good idea.

muttered around 11:23 AM

Monday, June 12, 2000

Magnetic Poetry v.01 by dink is irresistable.

quickie

muttered around 10:59 PM

Sigh. I must get 10 emails a day from recruiters with "unique" opportunities. I've never gotten so many leads, and this when I'm not even looking. I guess that's what I get for putting my resume online. Anyway, it's nice to know that my skills are in demand. They might not be, someday.

Did weight training for the first time since last Monday. I had trouble getting myself to get on with it. I've been eating fairly normal amounts of carbs, so it's interesting that my energy levels seem low. Of course, Atkins claims that you achieve higher energy levels on his diet. I guess I always just felt that his diet kept me on an "even keel", rather than raising my energy level. However, since going back to a relatively normal-carb diet, I've noticed being tired in the afternoons. Thing is, I'm kinda tired of eating nothing but meat, eggs, cheese, and salad. It's so nice to just have a few granola bars in the morning (even though I'm hungry by 11:00).

muttered around 10:15 PM

Sunday, June 11, 2000

Started the day with a spin on my favorite road loop, about 19.25 miles. Felt good, but my legs were just the slightest bit sore after yesterday's punishment on Green Mountain.

Hung around at the in-laws' for an hour or so, then returned home and talked MB into getting some shoes so we could hike this summer. We had awesome chicken bowls at Wahoo's and were treated to a wind storm that had the yellow umbrellas from the patio flying around like a bunch of startled "Big Birds". The chairs were next. Ten minutes later, you'd never know the storm had been there, except of course for the pile of chairs and umbrellas found in a corner of the patio.

I finally got around to cleaning up my office and recycling some magazines that I had no business keeping around this long: two years' worth of Microsoft Systems Journal and Visual Basic Programmer's Journal are now ready to be recycled into technology magazines that matter. I also threw away a bunch of reference CDs that I had laying around: Encarta, Grolier's, Cinemania, etc. Why? I never use them any more -- the web has pretty much replaced them. Not that it's not nice to have actual edited content available in that form, but it's so inconvenient to actually run special software just to view graphics and text, and to have to read that stuff off of local magnetic/optical media. That's what browsers are for now.

Finished up the day with the DVD Pushing Tin, which was pretty amusing, and yet fairly serious at the same time. I liked it.

muttered around 10:44 PM

Saturday, June 10, 2000

Sprogopolis is Hilarious!

muttered around 5:42 PM

Hmm. Missed posting last nite. Well, that's to be expected from time to time. Not much to say about yesterday, except that I did ride my bike home from work. Early in the day it looked as if I'd have a punishing headwind. Luckily, by the time I started, the wind had shifted mostly the other way around, so I had an almost-tailwind. Related link: Bike Commuting.

Got up early today to do a ride at Green Mountain with Paul (my boss) and neighbor, L.J. It was grueling but fun.

Green Mountain looking northeast.  Denver in the distance

After returning, before I showered, I tried "Nair" for the first time. Yes, I shave my legs, at least in the summer. And given my experience with "Nair" I will continue shaving my legs, because when you have hair like barbed wire, "Nair" just doesn't cut it (so to speak). All it did was burn. It removed a little hair, but left my legs looking as if I'd shaved blindfolded. No, actually, I'd do better blindfolded. The only positive thing is that it softened my hair enough that when I shaved to remove the great deal of hair that was left, it came off pretty easily.

I took about 30 pounds of change to the change counting machine at a nearby grocery. Took about 5-10 minutes to feed the thing all the change. I had guessed that I had about $150 bucks in change and was off by almost $100 (to the good). Totalled $236 and change (heh). Of course, they scrape off 8.9%, so I took home about $215, but I'd rather send their kids to college than count all that change myself. MB and I are going to a great steakhouse (Brooks') tonite on the proceeds.

muttered around 2:37 PM

Thursday, June 08, 2000

Had trouble getting up today - still tired. That's a bummer, and I wonder if it's the Atkins diet or just the heat. Should have done my weight training tonite, but by the time we ate it was really too late. I wasn't really up to it anyway.

Listened to my new copy of Armed Forces by Elvis Costello and the Attractions. This is a remastered version published by Rykodisc, and the sound is amazing. That, combined with the still-fresh tunes on this late-70's disc, make it a real winner. The cover differs from the American Capitol release which featured an abstract splatter painting. Rykodisk chose to use the original "elephants" cover art from the back cover of the American release. It also includes all the songs from the extra 45s that were included with various releases. Recommended! Elvis rocks!

I also listened to the Velvet Goldmine soundtrack at work and at home. It's damn good, and I realized while listening to it that the lead singer (Tom Yorke) from Radiohead does a few of the vocals. Recommended.

muttered around 10:26 PM

Wednesday, June 07, 2000

Spent most of the workday helping other folks to figure out bugs in their code. But also got around to putting some session managment into the web framework. Blew my Atkins inception by eating Mexican tonight. Oh well. I've got three days of workouts coming up, so I should do OK. Picked up the soundtracks to Outside Providence and Velvet Goldmine today. Velvet Goldmine was an interesting flick. I saw it a few months ago, and it didn't hit me very hard right then. But it kinda stuck in my mental craw, and I realized it was a pretty good movie, just not very narrative is all. Great music, as I recall (I haven't actually listened to the CD yet, but it's got Eno on it so it can't be all bad).

muttered around 8:44 PM

Tuesday, June 06, 2000

Sleepy. Very, very sleepy. Cycled home today on the Platte River trail. Did speed work to improve my mountain biking performance. Worked out last nite. Total of 10 hours sleep in two nights. Going to be early tonite, as long as I don't get caught up in tweaking my blog page.

Received a nice evaluation and raise today. It's good to be appreciated.

Started reading Goodbye, Descartes today, having finished The Age of Spiritual Machines (recommended). Goodbye looks as though it might be pretty interesting. The thesis appears to be that pure logic may not be enough for us to achieve machine intelligence, since we don't appear to work on pure logic, ourselves.

muttered around 9:39 PM

Monday, June 05, 2000

A stranger at the gym tonite commented on how I'd lost a lot of weight. That was nice to hear, especially from a stranger.

muttered around 10:18 PM

I've been doing the Atkins diet on and off since about January 10th. I'm sure it's not the healthiest diet or anything, but articles like this kill me (perhaps before the diet has a chance to). Here's what bugs me: they say, "when you quit this diet you'll gain weight back". I say, "Jesus, of course when you 'quit' the diet you'll gain weight back!" I mean, that's natural, isn't it? If you were a food vacuum before you went on the diet, and then return to your evil ways "after" the diet, then yeah, you're going right back to lipidville. This is true of any diet!

The point is, what weight control technique can you adapt for life? I don't think a "pure" Atkins approach is the way to go full-time for a lifetime, but I intend to use it as a technique for weight control. I also work out (weights and cycling) quite a bit. The combination is pretty effective.

Just check my training log, which has tons of details about just how effective the plan is. Note the bit at the end. There's a discontinuity, where I didn't weigh for a few days because I was out of town doing the TOSRV ride. I was off the Atkins diet before the ride, during the ride, and for about a week after. Yes, it looks like I gained a bit, but I moved to a body fat measuring scale that weighs about 2lbs higher than the old scale. But over the last week-end, I did go on a bit of a bender. My weight spiked yesterday, and so I decided to go back to Atkins for a week or two. That's all it will take. It's management and working out. The thing is, I can live with this diet because I don't have so many cravings when I'm on it. A low calorie diet is torture for me. Maybe it will work for you. BTW, I'm not a doctor, but I don't play one on the web, either.

muttered around 7:23 PM

Sunday, June 04, 2000

Attended my bud Franz' "Hat Party" last nite. Met a lot of interesting folks, and in general, had way too much fun, including tequila shots for the first time in about 14 years. Doh! Slept in until about 12:30, then did bills and visited with in-laws. Ate dinner at CB & Potts: not recommended. Our waiter was inattentive, the fries (which they saw fit to "brand" for some reason) were tough and less than tasty, the monte cristo sandwich I had was blah, etc. I think I'll go back to a low-carb diet for the next work week. If you want to see how those work, then check out my training log, which is way behind, but still is worth a view (if you're into that sort of thing).

I signed up today for the Courage Classic bike ride. It's a 150-total-mile ride over July 15, 16, and 17th. Should be fun. The route goes thru the Copper resort area each night, so Mary Beth will join me there and entertain herself while I'm riding.

Updated the text of ye olde home page, which is a bit long in the tooth and in dire need of a redesign (you could say that about most of this site). I must say that I consider blogger to be a killer web app. Perhaps second only to browser-based email, blogger is something of serious usefulness to many, many people. The concept is simple, very well implemented, and compelling. It will likely keep my site from stagnation, since I can update it from anywhere I can access a browser, and I don't have to fool around with formatting, timestamping, and yadda else.

muttered around 8:27 PM

Saturday, June 03, 2000

BTW, not to come off like too much of a Microsoft-basher, but God am I tired of random crashing in Windows! OK, I added the link to this blog to my index page, and saved that. Then I was changing my editorial comment to refer to this new blog -- I go to save it, and when I hit Alt-F, WordPad (yeah, just WordPad) GPF'd on me. For what? So, I restart it and try again. Same thing. Why? How is it I deserve this, Microsoft? Windows really does suck.

muttered around 5:15 PM

My first blog and man are my legs sore. No, not from blogging, but from doing a mountain bike ride today with Paul. We rode (OK, speaking for myself, and walked) the Mt. Falcon trail. This was my first time on Mt. Falcon. Geez, I've been commuting home from work on my road bike since February, and did the TOSRV (210 total mile ride over two days in Ohio) a few weeks ago, and I still get my ass kicked on mountain bike rides. Some things never change. Well, the downhill was fun. Next Saturday we ride Green Mountain, which should be interesting because I've done that ride a few times, and so I can measure my fitness against it (I usually lose).

muttered around 4:45 PM

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