Thin Post : Scott’s War on Potato Chips (sort of…)

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A few weeks ago I wrote a little about not having self control with regards to eating certain kinds of junk food and ended the post by pondering the question, “Is it worth giving up potato chips for an entire year to lose 50 pounds???”

I’ve had some time to think about it since then and ultimately in the grand scheme of things, yes, I think it might very well be worth it!

And believe you me, this certainly wasn’t the kind of decision that I was able to come to lightly – I love me some Sweet Chili Doritos or Kibbles BBQ or Ultra Crazy Super Hot chips like I love pizza, but the difference is, I can mow down a lot more potato chips in a single sitting than I can pizza any day, and frankly, the calorie counts aren’t even comparable when you start getting up to those insane quantities. “Betcha can’t eat just one…” is the story of my overweight life…

The thing is, sure it’s a little weird to think about meals without chips – particularly lunch, alongside a nice sandwich, or even to pair with a cheese pizza to help push me through a particularly stressful writing night, but no matter how tasty and delicious these fried, little wonders may be, one thought keeps ringing in my head – I’m never going to lose the weight I want to lose if I don’t learn to cut back!!!

I know that it’s going to take sacrifices, so maybe this is just another one that I have to suck up for the greater, skinnier good. Three months ago I also would’ve told you that there was no way I’d ever stop drinking soda, probably with a Cherry Coke Zero can in my hand while I said it, and yet today I really only drink the stuff if I need something to mix with my rum for the occasional alcoholic beverage! I know that it’s going to be painful, but I think this is my next step towards getting down to the weight that I want to be.

So here’s my plan – no more potato chips in the house, whether it be normal-sized bags or even the smaller snack packs … in the end they’re just too tempting, so they’ve gotta go. The only potato chips that I’ll allow in my life for the next 30 days will be the single-serving bags bought at the deli with my lunch (a la Subway), and honestly, that’s mostly just because they don’t really have any other side items available. For homemade lunches, it’s time to find something else to eat with my sandwiches and whatnot … exactly what that might be thus far, I have no idea!

I’ll write again about my progress in about a month and we’ll see after looking at the raw numbers if it’s worthwhile to consider pursuing for the rest of the year as well. I’m sure it probably will be – it’s really only common sense that as long as I replace the bad stuff with more of the good stuff, my calorie intake should go down, but we’ll see.

I’m going to miss you dearly, Doritos, but this is for my own good…

More speed!!! More cost???

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On one hand, I love the idea of true Ethernet-sized Internet connections finally coming to the home, like Comcast just announced they’re doing with their new Extreme 105 105 Mbps service.

On the other hand, I’m not crazy about the price – an introductory price of $105/month (with their triple-play cable/internet/phone bundle) or standalone at a whopping $199.95!!!

I mean, I understand that bigger and better is traditionally more expensive, but at the same time it kind of astounds me at how much some of us are paying just for data access these days – in our household, we’ve got 20 Mbps cable service (part of a bundle, but probably around $55/month) and also data plans for two iPhones ($35/month each), meaning that we’re spending a total of $125/month just on Internet access … and they wonder why people don’t feel they should have to pay for the content on top of that!

I suppose on the upside, in theory as faster, albeit premium, speeds are made available, the overall default should slowly rise as well. I mean, figure I first started with broadband back in 2000 with a measly 1 Mbps cable connection, and slowly that rose over time to where lately without the upgrade that I pay extra for, I think the standard Roadrunner package is now something like 7 Mbps. Still a far cry from triple digits, but good enough to at least get a start online if you can’t afford more.

As long as they don’t just assume that as video and other high-bandwidth sites flourish, it can’t be a perpetual money pit for them as fast as they can get the tubes a flowin’. Of course, with inflation factored into the numbers, I suppose eventually $75 or $90 could become the new $50/month plan … which I don’t want to think about because the math makes my head hurt … but with any luck by that point maybe 50 Mbps will be the new base speed and they’ll be offering 300-500 Mbps for a premium price…

Getting Back Into Routines, or Trying to, Anyways…

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Slowly starting to get back into the groove of things, although not nearly as quickly as I would like. It’s a tough struggle between continuing to get things unpacked and getting settled in, attending to the random things we’ve found that need to be fixed around the new home, relaxing so as to not completely drive ourselves absolutely bonkers throughout the entire ordeal … oh yeah, and also trying to get back into my writing and exercise routines, too!

Exercise is probably the worse of the two – I won’t even know the exact date until I sit down and put together a new summary post for March, which I refuse to do until I get a routine going again, but I’m thinking it’s got to have been sometime around mid-month, meaning that I’ve been not exercising for almost a month now. This frustrates me because I was doing really awesome towards the end of February and then life happened and I just dropped the ball. I’d like to get going again this weekend, but I still have some pieces of the entertainment center to finish hooking up first…

Writing, on the other hand, isn’t too much better, but at least I’ve managed to post the occasional humor column or blog post … eventually. I think my enthusiasm is slightly better here, though – I’ve got a new office to create in, new desk, and I even just splurged and bought myself a big, new wall calendar (below) to help keep my regular writing better in check. Basically, my goal is to really ramp up the amount of content that I’m kicking out on a weekly basis – in some cases, this may even mean writing every single day, which is ok, mind you … I do consider myself to be a writer!


My strategy through this all, though, is to simply take it one day at a time, trying to get some stuff done without driving myself crazy for not getting everything done. It may mean that the house will take a little longer to unpack, and conversely I can’t just jump in with both feet on any one project because I’m trying to slowly do so many at the same time, but we’ll get there.

We’ll get there…

Lego Links a Plenty!

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Watching this video really makes me wish that we had a local Lego convention here in Florida…

Wait – maybe we do?!

Sadly, I think that MegaCon 2011 just ended, like, a month ago, but man, doesn’t the set of Downtown Tampa look amazing?! Here are some more pics – I would love to see this in person!

Also, perusing the Greater Florida Lego Users Group’s website makes me wonder what this little project is going to entail. Makes me want to join (and wish that I had design skills!) so that I could help put together the Lego Space Mountain or something!

And finally, if anything I can always carry around a little nostalgia with me via a new iPhone case…

Not sure if I’ll actually buy one because it seems like it would be a little bulky, but still very cool nonetheless!

Happily Content in Suburbia

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I think I’m gonna like it here in our new home.

To some extent I know that it’s going to take a while to really, truly get used to our new house – hell, right now there are more boxes than things unpacked and we’re still just trying to get the necessities out so that we can get on with our life. In particular, I’ve noticed on a couple of mornings upon waking up that it still feels more like I’m staying over at someone else’s house than waking up in my own bed, but deep down I get that it just takes time to adjust to everything new and that eventually we’ll get there.

On the other hand, last night Sara and I got to spend our first night out relaxing in the hot tub and we both couldn’t help but just revel in all of the new things to be excited about and enjoy with our new place. In between staring up at the stars and sips on our rum-filled beverages, we talked about all of the things that we planned to do to make this house our home – things like buying patio furniture and maybe even a pool table to make our outdoor area all the more inviting, fixing up some of the holes in the fence so that our new puppy will have free rein to run and play when she comes home in another month, re-planting the gardens and lighting some of the gigantic palms out front so that it feels even more impressive when we pull up in our own driveway…

There was a time in my life a few years ago when I vehemently didn’t want the suburban life – houses too close together, with every single one of them looking exactly the same, and SUVs shuttling kids to various extracurricular activities. Maybe I just didn’t have enough perspective to weigh in the positives, like living in a really amazing house, in a great neighborhood where we’re free to go out walking in the evenings, and with almost everything that we could want within a few miles drive of home.

I’m happy to admit that my perspective has justly changed since then, and for however long we end up renting this house until finally purchasing something of our very own, I think I’m going to like it here after all.

new house pics!!!

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It was pointed out recently that I haven’t actually shared much of anything regarding photos of the new house that we just moved into, so this post is an attempt to reconcile that err in judgment.

I should note that most of these photos were actually taken a couple of weeks ago before all of our stuff got moved in, but I’ll do my best to share some better ones in another month or so once we start to get unpacked and the place looks a little more inhabited…


View from the street out front – some of the garden is a little overgrown right now, but we’ve got some cool ideas to clean it up and add a little color once we get everything else in order.


My new office – note that it will never look this clean again until the day that we eventually move out…


Nice hardwood floors off the front entry to the house – this is going to become our exercise room where the elliptical and eventually WiiFit will go.


Looking over the half wall, you can see our dining room … kinda small, but we never once used the dining rooms in the last two places that we lived!


Standing in the living room – this space looks a lot bigger than the picture shows, plus it has awesome vaulted ceilings that make the whole house feel just huge.


Kitchen – a bit smaller than our last house, but we’ll figure it out!


Patio, with a view of our nice, fenced in backyard in the distance – small, but just right for the puppy that rumor has it will be wandering into our lives in about another month or so.


Another view of the patio from the other end just to give an idea of how huge the thing is – we’re really looking forward to putting some furniture and a barbecue out here this summer!


And the main selling point for the house … the pool! It’s big and it’s blue and we absolutely love it.


Finally, one last picture of our own personal oasis – I think the palms on either side of the spa add a great ambience to the area. I expect to spend a lot of evenings and go through a lot of rum relaxing out here under the stars…


So there you have it! I try not to sound like I’m bragging, but I really do love this house – it’s literally got every single perk that we could possibly want in a house right now (aside from just being on the beach altogether!) and I think it’ll do us just fine for the next couple of years until we’re finally ready to plunk down our chips and buy one of our very own. I look forward to doing a lot of cool things and creating a lot of new memories in this house, so friends and family – now’s the time to start planning those vacations to come visit!

The global embarrassment of a government shutdown…

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I’ve got to admit that I haven’t really been paying much attention to this whole “government shutdown” thing until today, but the more that I’ve started to look into it, the more I’m starting to feel more agitated and disappointed by it.

And not from the perspective of people having to go without their paychecks, which don’t get me wrong is completely horrible…

But in the grander scheme of things, what does it really say about America if we’re actually talking about shutting down major parts of our infrastructure because our great and almighty democracy couldn’t come to terms on a budget. That’s right, a nation that’s $14 TRILLION IN DEBT is just now suddenly concerned about running out of money … seriously, wtf?!?!?! Not having any money never seems to matter any other time of the year, but today we’re ready to stop the presses and put 800,000 people’s jobs on hold because we can’t decide what our budget … that we’re clearly not going to follow anyways … should be for the next fiscal year?!

Jeeesh.

Aside from the whole ridiculous budget premises in general, I think the other thing that shocked me was in reading just how significant the shutdown would be and what government agencies would be affected. National parks, including the Statue of Liberty, would all close, pretty much all of Washington DC shuts down, including basic services like garbage for the people who live there, the IRS would stop processing tax refunds (but taxes would still be due – LOL), the FCC would stop monitoring complaints, pretty much all consumer safety regulations get put on hold – the list just goes on and on. How it’s somehow “acceptable” for the majority of our government, save “public safety” and all of the wars that we’re currently in, to just screech to a halt because 500 people in Congress can’t agree on a budget is a combination of frightening, astounding, and also dumbfounding to me.

I don’t even care what the reasoning behind the debate is – if the USA wants to be deemed the most powerful nation in the world, this kind of bullshit shouldn’t happen. Ever.

It’s not ALL about video!!!

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I’m not entirely convinced that video is the future of online media.

Don’t get me wrong – I think online video is really cool and it’s a part of the future of media, but I don’t necessarily agree with the folks who claim that in the future, everything will be web video or mobile video or whatever. Case in point – I don’t always feel like watching your video!

There are a lot of times where I’d rather just read a blog post or skim through some photos, so when I see that my only option is to watch your five-minute video about a topic or news story, a lot of times I’d rather just find another source for the same information. This happens to me a lot on C-Net’s website, but most recently what spurred this particular rant was by encountering a tour of a very swanky room at a new Disney resort. I would’ve loved to see a photo blog tour of the suite, complete with commentary of each shot, but instead the blogger opted for a 10-minute video tour, and thus I passed.

Maybe I’m just a web curmudgeon, I don’t know, but for me it’s usually one of three scenarios – if I’m just casually browsing the web to kill time, then I don’t mind video at all; if I’m procrastinating when I should be writing or working on something else, I want short, quick bursts, in which video is not fine; and if I’m on the go, I almost never want to watch video because I prefer whatever I read in tweet or Facebook-sized updates.

And I hope this perspective isn’t simply because I haven’t really done anything with video myself. In fact, there are some avenues that I’d like to explore eventually in the future – it’s just not really at the top of my list and I still need to figure out what I can bring to the table because there are already so many amazing things being done on shoe-string budgets.

I think it’s more simply that I see video as another tool for the web publisher – there are some really cool things that you can do with video better than any other platform, but the same can also still be said for the others. When you’re a video-blogger, everything seems better through a camcorder’s lens, but in reality the key is to use each and every one of these new mediums effectively to best reach your intended audience.

Lessons Learned, Moving

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No matter how much time you think you need, give yourself more.
Last time we tried packing everything the week before and it was absolute hell, so this time we thought we were being awesome by giving ourselves three whole weeks to pack and prepare for the big day. Trouble was, we started getting complacent and slacked off halfway through, and thus we didn’t finish cleaning up until 6am on Wednesday! We had left a lot of cleaning and painting until the last minute because we figured it’d be easier with an empty house, but in reality we could’ve had much more done weeks ago.

If you don’t need it, don’t move it.
Probably our biggest godsend was that in what preparatory cleaning and packing that we did do, we got rid of a lot of stuff! Probably a couple dozen bags of garbage, along with a good 10-12 bags of clothes and some furniture donated to Goodwill. Looking around our new place, we’re still not quite sure where it’s all gonna go, but we’re still far better off than had we brought even more junk that didn’t get used once since our previous move!

Splurge for the bigger truck.
Sure, the 26′ truck would’ve costed another ten bucks and is a little harder to drive, but it would’ve eliminated a second trip AND allowed for our moving guys to muscle everything themselves … instead, that second trip was probably $40-50 between gas and mileage, and we had to do all of the heavy lifting ourselves. Oops…

Paying people to help is money well spent.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again – I’ll never not pay someone to help us move ever again!

Admit that some things will fall behind.
And lastly, something that I’m sure I’ll be coming to terms with even more this weekend as I spend more time putting things away and unpacking than I do writing – some things will fall behind when taking on such a herculean task as moving, and you either have to be ok with that or be prepared to pull your own hair out trying to keep the balance. I wish I would’ve realized this a little earlier this time – maybe I could’ve written some stuff in advance to make the transition a little easier, but at this point all I can do is take a deep breath and slowly start to pick up the pieces one at a time.