Blog
Wednesday, January 01, 2014
Happy New Year
I thought I would write up a quick New Year's post today, with a few status updates. I mostly write this kind of post for my own future reference, just to see where I've been, and what progress (if any) I've made in certain areas.
First, I'm happy to say that I stepped on the scale this morning, and it read 200 pounds. I started my diet around Sept 1, at 230 lbs, with the goal of losing a pound a week, until I hit 200. So I hit my goal, and I hit it earlier than expected. I guess my next goal will be to get down to 180, again at one pound per week. We'll see if I can manage that. I'm still logging all my calories with the Lose It app on my phone. I think that's really been the key factor in being successful. I'm not sure when I was last under 200 lbs. Maybe back in college?
On another front, I haven't done quite so good. I blogged, back in November, about Coursera. I had enrolled in two courses, Algorithms, Parts I and II. Part I was technically done before I enrolled, and Part II was just starting up. My plan was to breeze through the first part, then catch up with the second. I was doing OK up through the end of November, and gotten through about 80% of the material in Part I, but then I got busy with other stuff in December, and never went back to it. Meanwhile, Part II wrapped up, so here it is, 2014, and I haven't done anything on Coursera in a month. It looks like I can still watch the lectures, and even submit the programming assignments for auto-grading, so I may just pick it up again this month, and finish Part I. Or I may wait until it "officially" starts up again, on January 30, and try to take it in "real-time". Then, I can take Part II in real-time, when it's next offered in March. Or maybe I'll just try something different this year, either from Coursera or EdX.
Professionally, I started my job at SHI in January 2013, so I'm at just about the one year mark there. I had my performance review with my boss yesterday, and it went pretty well. I'll likely stick with SHI for another year. Given that I'm doing almost 100% Dynamics AX work though, I want to see about doing more web stuff on the side this year. Last year, I did a project for my former employer, Electric Vine, that allowed me to exercise my ASP.NET and JavaScript skills a bit, but I don't have any consulting work planned for 2014. I should really find some, or maybe get involved in an open source project, or something like that.
First, I'm happy to say that I stepped on the scale this morning, and it read 200 pounds. I started my diet around Sept 1, at 230 lbs, with the goal of losing a pound a week, until I hit 200. So I hit my goal, and I hit it earlier than expected. I guess my next goal will be to get down to 180, again at one pound per week. We'll see if I can manage that. I'm still logging all my calories with the Lose It app on my phone. I think that's really been the key factor in being successful. I'm not sure when I was last under 200 lbs. Maybe back in college?
On another front, I haven't done quite so good. I blogged, back in November, about Coursera. I had enrolled in two courses, Algorithms, Parts I and II. Part I was technically done before I enrolled, and Part II was just starting up. My plan was to breeze through the first part, then catch up with the second. I was doing OK up through the end of November, and gotten through about 80% of the material in Part I, but then I got busy with other stuff in December, and never went back to it. Meanwhile, Part II wrapped up, so here it is, 2014, and I haven't done anything on Coursera in a month. It looks like I can still watch the lectures, and even submit the programming assignments for auto-grading, so I may just pick it up again this month, and finish Part I. Or I may wait until it "officially" starts up again, on January 30, and try to take it in "real-time". Then, I can take Part II in real-time, when it's next offered in March. Or maybe I'll just try something different this year, either from Coursera or EdX.
Professionally, I started my job at SHI in January 2013, so I'm at just about the one year mark there. I had my performance review with my boss yesterday, and it went pretty well. I'll likely stick with SHI for another year. Given that I'm doing almost 100% Dynamics AX work though, I want to see about doing more web stuff on the side this year. Last year, I did a project for my former employer, Electric Vine, that allowed me to exercise my ASP.NET and JavaScript skills a bit, but I don't have any consulting work planned for 2014. I should really find some, or maybe get involved in an open source project, or something like that.
Labels: health, programming
Thursday, October 24, 2013
grab bag
OK, I haven't written a blog post in a while, so this one is going to be a bit of a grab bag.
First, on the weight loss front, I'm down 15 pounds so far, over about eight weeks, so I'm losing almost two pounds a week. My plan was to shoot for one lb per week, so I'm doing fine on that. I'm also getting in maybe five or six hours of walking a week, which is pretty reasonable. I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do when it gets too cold to walk outside though.
On the tech front, I picked up a new iPhone 5s a couple of weeks ago. My previous phone was an iPhone 4, so there's a good bit of new stuff for me in the 5s, including Siri.
First, on the weight loss front, I'm down 15 pounds so far, over about eight weeks, so I'm losing almost two pounds a week. My plan was to shoot for one lb per week, so I'm doing fine on that. I'm also getting in maybe five or six hours of walking a week, which is pretty reasonable. I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do when it gets too cold to walk outside though.
On the tech front, I picked up a new iPhone 5s a couple of weeks ago. My previous phone was an iPhone 4, so there's a good bit of new stuff for me in the 5s, including Siri.
- I'm finding that I'm not using Siri much, though it's kind of fun and does seem to work well.
- The fingerprint sensor works quite well, and I'm using that to unlock the phone most of the time now.
- Overall, I've found that the speed of the phone is greatly improved over the iPhone 4, especially for certain things, like using the camera.
- The battery life is pretty bad. I'm usually at 50% by the end of the day, and I really don't think I do anything that crazy with it.
- The iPhone 4, on Verizon was 3G. The 5s is LTE. I haven't seen much of a difference in speed, in everyday use. But I haven't really done much that would stress the network connection. In general, anything that relies on the internet connection over LTE has worked well.
Sunday, September 15, 2013
losing it
I decided recently that I really need to lose some weight. So I started using Lose It about two weeks ago, to track my calories. I also bought (and read) their book
. I'm not sure if my scale is accurate enough to say whether or not I've really lost any weight yet, but, if it is, then I've lost a couple of pounds. My goal is one pound a week, until I've lost 30 pounds, so, if that works, I should hit my goal in mid-March 2014. Assuming that Lose It is giving me correct numbers about my calorie budget, then I don't think I'll have a huge problem sticking with the program. I've stayed within my calorie budget every day so far, though I've had to make some guesses about calories recently, so I don't know if I've *really* stayed within the budget.
The last several days have been a bit rough. I went out to dinner with a friend on Wednesday, and had a meatball parm sandwich, which was definitely a bad idea. Then, we had a department lunch on Thursday at an Italian restaurant. We had three entree choices, and I ordered the one that seemed likely to have the fewest calories, but it probably still had more calories than I wanted. Then, on Friday, we had a department barbeque, which I just skipped out on. But another friend wanted to go out for dinner Friday night, so I did that, and had a small steak. Saturday was fine; I only ate good stuff that I knew the calorie count on. But today, I went downhill a bit again, since I went out to brunch with my brother (banana pancakes), then picked up a couple of empanadas at the Somerville Jazz Festival this afternoon. (They were from a restaurant here on Main St that makes *great* empanadas!) If I guessed right on calorie counts, then I'm still within my budget. But who knows, really?
I should be able to do reasonably well in this coming week. We've got no work events that should cause me to deviate from eating relatively low-calorie lunches. I don't have any particular plans for going out to dinner, but I probably will once or twice. I'll just have to be careful.
On the exercise front, I'm just trying to get in a lot of walking. The weather has been pretty good, so it hasn't been a problem to do a fair amount of walking. I'm worried about keeping that up once it gets cold out though. I've been looking around at cheap treadmills that would fit in my apartment, or a local gym that's got treadmills. (We have a gym at work, but I'm not that enthusiastic about it, for several reasons.) The treadmill thing is actually turning into a challenge. I haven't found a local store that actually carries manual treadmills, which is what I'd need to buy if I want a reasonably-priced, compact, folding, model. I can just order one from Amazon, but I'd really like to check one out first. And, on the gym front, there's a new fitness place opening on Main St, but they only have exercise bikes, no treadmills. I also tried the local YMCA, but I had trouble finding anyone to talk to there, so I have no idea if they have treadmills or not. I may have to try calling them during the week.
I don't want to turn my blog into a diet and fitness blog, but I thought there would be some value in writing this up, for future reference. If I meet my goal in March, then I can look back and see where I started. And, if I don't, maybe I can look back and figure out what I did wrong!
. I'm not sure if my scale is accurate enough to say whether or not I've really lost any weight yet, but, if it is, then I've lost a couple of pounds. My goal is one pound a week, until I've lost 30 pounds, so, if that works, I should hit my goal in mid-March 2014. Assuming that Lose It is giving me correct numbers about my calorie budget, then I don't think I'll have a huge problem sticking with the program. I've stayed within my calorie budget every day so far, though I've had to make some guesses about calories recently, so I don't know if I've *really* stayed within the budget.The last several days have been a bit rough. I went out to dinner with a friend on Wednesday, and had a meatball parm sandwich, which was definitely a bad idea. Then, we had a department lunch on Thursday at an Italian restaurant. We had three entree choices, and I ordered the one that seemed likely to have the fewest calories, but it probably still had more calories than I wanted. Then, on Friday, we had a department barbeque, which I just skipped out on. But another friend wanted to go out for dinner Friday night, so I did that, and had a small steak. Saturday was fine; I only ate good stuff that I knew the calorie count on. But today, I went downhill a bit again, since I went out to brunch with my brother (banana pancakes), then picked up a couple of empanadas at the Somerville Jazz Festival this afternoon. (They were from a restaurant here on Main St that makes *great* empanadas!) If I guessed right on calorie counts, then I'm still within my budget. But who knows, really?
I should be able to do reasonably well in this coming week. We've got no work events that should cause me to deviate from eating relatively low-calorie lunches. I don't have any particular plans for going out to dinner, but I probably will once or twice. I'll just have to be careful.
On the exercise front, I'm just trying to get in a lot of walking. The weather has been pretty good, so it hasn't been a problem to do a fair amount of walking. I'm worried about keeping that up once it gets cold out though. I've been looking around at cheap treadmills that would fit in my apartment, or a local gym that's got treadmills. (We have a gym at work, but I'm not that enthusiastic about it, for several reasons.) The treadmill thing is actually turning into a challenge. I haven't found a local store that actually carries manual treadmills, which is what I'd need to buy if I want a reasonably-priced, compact, folding, model. I can just order one from Amazon, but I'd really like to check one out first. And, on the gym front, there's a new fitness place opening on Main St, but they only have exercise bikes, no treadmills. I also tried the local YMCA, but I had trouble finding anyone to talk to there, so I have no idea if they have treadmills or not. I may have to try calling them during the week.
I don't want to turn my blog into a diet and fitness blog, but I thought there would be some value in writing this up, for future reference. If I meet my goal in March, then I can look back and see where I started. And, if I don't, maybe I can look back and figure out what I did wrong!
© 2011 Andrew Huey
