Raiding Hogger

07.18.2011 -- India bound

2011-07-18T11:43:00.000-07:00

This Saturday, I am getting on a Lufthansa jet from Atlanta to Frankfurt, Germany, and from there, on to Bangalore, India. The flight will be long, and then we basically have 3 days to work and see what we can before we have to head back home.

I've been to Europe once with my wife, but never to Asia, and certainly not to India. I am simultaneously excited and nervous. It will be an adventure for me, and I look forward to it.

I looked into sightseeing options there, and there really aren't that many. There is a "Bull Temple" and a few other things, but I'll leave the specifics of where we go to my compatriots and our driver once we arrive. Wish me luck.

05.31.2011 -- Rare Return to WoW, and Shaman Healing

2011-05-31T10:03:00.000-07:00

In the past, I posted some information about my adventures in WoW. I had quit for a long time, then started back, then quit, then started again. I still play now, albeit a lot more casually than I used to.

My main character, as always, is a warrior, and my raid character is a restoration shaman (a healer). A guildmate was asking me the other day about my healing setup as a shaman, so I thought I'd enumerate it a bit here and offer her the link.

Add-Ons

The first thing to know is that you really need some addons to heal effectively. I rely on a few:

Add-On Name	Purpose
Grid	Unit Frames -- keep track of the health of your players, who has earth shield, who has riptide, who has a curse or disease
ShieldsUp	Keep track of your Earth Shield and Water Shield charges
IceHUD	Easy access to my health, mana, and those of my focus and targets

I use other Add-Ons like DBM and Quartz, but these three are my "must-have" items.

Macros

The second important part about how I heal is Macros. I use Macros extensively. If you use the default unit frames and default spells, your healing consists of clicking on a player, then clicking a spell to cast it. This is too slow in a raiding environment, and people die. Instead, I use a popular concept called "mouseover macros". I have them for all of the major shaman healing spells: Healing Wave, Greater Healing Wave, Unleash Elements, Chain Heal, Riptide, and Cleanse Spirit.

The macros are all basically the same thing, with the spell name changed. Here's one example:

#showtooltip Greater Healing Wave /cast [target=mouseover,help,exists] [target=target,help,nodead] [target=targettarget,help,nodead] [target=player] Greater Healing Wave

You will notice a few keywords here. "help" indicates that it's a friendly target. "exists" indicates that the target exists and is valid. "nodead" indicates that the target is still alive. The macro prioritizes who to heal. First it tries the mouseover target. If that isn't going to work, it tries my target. If that isn't going to work, it tries the target of my target (so if I have the boss targeted, it will heal whoever the boss is hitting), and finally, it heals me if all the others fail.

All of my spells have a similar macro except one -- Earth Shield. I use my focus to cast Earth Shield, because I want to cast it without having to target the person who needs it. In conjunction with the ShieldsUp Addon, I can keep track of the fact that the tank has Earth Shield, and keep it refreshed while healing everyone else. The Earth Shield macro looks like this:

#showtooltip Earth Shield /cast [target=focus,help] [target=target,help] [target=player] Earth Shield

Spell Choice

The final, and probably most important part of healing is spell choice. In Cataclysm, Blizzard designed healing such that using your expensive heals will result in you running out of your healing resource, mana, too quickly. As a result, you have to use heals efficiently.

You have several heals. Here's a quick breakdown:

Healing Wave (HW) is your healing auto-attack. Use it when healing is manageable and you are more interested in conserving mana than anything. You can essentially cast it forever, so if nobody is taking hits bigger than 10-15k, this is a good option.

Greater Healing Wave (GHW) is your "big" heal. If you have a lot of mastery, and your target is at low health, this heal hits like a ton of bricks. I've seen mine crit for over 100k, and with the crit changes in 4.2, that same heal will be 133k. The main detriment to GHW is it is a slow cast, but that can be fixed with Tidal Waves (see below).

Healing Surge (HS) is a fast, inefficient heal. It used to be useful in certain situations, but with the nerfs in 4.1 it's only a PvP spell now. Just forget it exists.

Healing Rain (HR) is a shaman's most efficient spell, if the raid uses it. If you can get 5 or more people to stand in it, it is worth casting. It's expensive though, so don't waste it.

Riptide (RT) is your instant heal + Heal Over Time (HoT). Over its duration, it heals as much as a Greater Healing Wave at a fraction of the mana cost. Casting it also procs 2 charges of Tidal Waves (see bel0w).

Chain Heal (CH) is your mana efficient AoE heal. This used to be a Go-To spell for shaman, but these days, it's only really useful if you do 25-man raids. It heals 4 people for a relatively small amount. If it hits all three targets it's efficient to cast, but otherwise it's not. It also procs two charges of Tidal Waves. If you cast CH on a target that has a Riptide on it, it consumes the Riptide and increases the Chain heal's power by 25%.

Tidal Waves (TW) is a buff that reduces the cast time of your next GHW or HW spell by 30%, or increases the critical strike chance of your HS spell by 30%. You should try to keep Tidal Waves up as much as possible.

Unleash Elements (UE) is a spell accessible to all shaman, but for Restoration it provides a small heal, and boosts your next heal by 30%. This is extremely powerful when used in conjunction with Tidal Waves and Greater Healing Wave.

Now that you know some spells, here are some good combinations to get out a lot of heals in a short time. I use the abbreviations from above to make them easier to type.

RT + UE + GHW + GHW

This is the most healing you can get out in 5 seconds on a single target. The Riptide speeds the cast of the two GHW spells by 30%, and the UE makes the first GHW hit 30% harder.

RT+UE+HW+HW

This is some fast, efficient healing when you want to conserve mana but want to put out some decent healing too.

Some other notes to consider. Use Mana Tide at about 70% mana. Don't wait until you are at 50%. Use it on cooldown in a boss fight. Keep Water Shield up at all times, and keep Earth Shield on the tank up too.

Hopefully this is helpful. If you have questions about spec or glyphs, you can look at my shaman, here:

Turkic@Whisperwind

05.17.2011 - Mobile Development

2011-05-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

So Apple popularized mobile development. Their iOS system with the "App Store" has sold billions of dollars in apps for iPods, iPhones, and iPads. Now, everyone else is on the bandwagon, and I find it funny how much everyone is stealing from everyone else.

As a proof of concept, I've been asked to create a Windows Phone 7 app. I've been using the SDK with the Microsoft IDE for about a week. On the whole, the IDE is quite good, but the libraries available are frustratingly thin in places. We wanted to do some good stuff with XML, but now we're using JSON because the XML tools within Silverlight for Windows Phone aren't good. Other examples are easy to come by, but there are lots of nice things in C# and Silverlight 4 that ought to be in Windows Phone 7, but aren't. Another example is sockets -- if you aren't looking to do HTTP, you're out of luck in this release.

Microsoft copied Apple's model for "multitasking" too, except they didn't include the part where you can run some items in library threads in the background. You basically have an event model that tells you when an app is first launched, reactivated, deactivated, or quit, and you can save or load the state appropriately. When it comes to doing these things, Microsoft copied Apple once again in not providing a file system that is accessible across apps. You can read and write local files, but they are sandboxed. You can read and write key/value pairs to a registry-like structure, but they are also sandboxed. Your only real option is to store data in the cloud using an HTTP-based protocol.

Another thing I found interesting is that Microsoft uses "XAML" (pronounced 'ZAMEL', rhymes with camel) to do their screen layout. It's an XML-based layout, and works pretty well. I don't know whether Microsoft stole the idea from Nokia's QT/QML, or vice versa, but clearly some plagiarism occurred. I like the idea though. It's not unlike Apple's approach, but unlike Apple, you can directly edit the layout in a text editor as well as in the GUI IDE.

Speaking of stealing, Microsoft stole almost every page from Apple's "App Store" process. You can only install apps on authorized devices, and you have to pay a $99 a year fee to submit apps, which are approved for entry into the "walled garden". Like Apple, the tools are free, but you can't get past the emulator without paying, and there's no free way to distribute your apps. Revenue sharing seems about the same as Apple too.

I don't know much about the Android IDE/SDK, but since it's Java, hopefully it's more like J2SE than J2ME. I should probably look into it.

03.15.2011 - iPad 2 is out, but you can't buy one

2011-03-15T10:42:00.000-07:00

Last week Apple began selling the iPad 2. Much like the iPad 1, demand outstripped supply on the day it went on sale. One big difference though, is that the iPad 2 subsequent demand is not going to be met for a while. People ordering now can expect a 5 week wait. I guess my decision to stick with the original iPad has been made easier.

It's been an interesting year in telecom. For one thing, Nokia announced that it will phase out its Symbian S60 operating system, and will not market its "Meego" operating system, instead moving all of its smartphone business to Windows Phone 7. I am not sure how I feel about that. On one hand, Nokia needed to do something different to become competitive, but on the other hand it would have been nice for them to back the winning team (Android) if they were going to jump ship.

It's sort of a shame about Symbian too. The interface has been lacking for a long time, but Nokia makes some great phones. My N8 is awesome. I love the camera, and it has Nokia's great social networking integration, so posting pictures on Facebook is quick and seamless, not even requiring an app.

We'll have to see what the future holds, both for us Nokia software engineers, and for the company as a whole. I hope there is a place for us in the new Nokia. We still want to write great software, if they have need of any.

05.04.2010 - Of iPads and WebOS

2010-05-04T11:39:00.000-07:00

So HP bought Palm for $1.2B and on the same day canceled their Slate tablet. Presumably they realized that Windows 7 isn't a good touch OS, and that WebOS might work better. It very well may, but my previous assertion still stands. WebOS has no market penetration and little market interest from developers. I think this is a valid play to try to keep it alive, but it's a long shot.

I bought an iPad 3G on Friday. So far, I really like it. It's fast, it's easy to use, and I'm discovering more cool apps all the time. I can definitely see this being a long-term success for Apple.

I'm sure everyone saw that Apple sold 1 million iPads in the first month. While I think that will drop off in the months to come, the iPhone OS 4 and the Christmas ad blitz will probably result in 5M or more iPads being sold this year. Much like the iPhone, Apple is getting more and more ahead of the competition. By the time any real competitors to the iPad come out, Apple will be on version 3 of the OS and version 2 of the hardware.

04.23.2010 - The Impending Death of Palm

2010-04-23T10:27:00.001-07:00

On January 12, 2009, I predicted the failure of Palm. The quote of interest was "Palm has a history of being awful to code for, and I don't see anything about this platform that's more compelling than any of the others I mentioned. Who cares?"

Today, the stories about Palm are "Palm Running out of Options" and other similar stories. The landscape of the phone market hasn't changed much.

Apple continues to dominate, selling ~$6 Billion in iPhones last quarter. Blackberry is plodding along with some success but not a lot of style. Android has some momentum, and will get more as time goes on and the OS gets better. Nokia is languishing, but the Maemo phones are cool, and the Meego phones that will replace them are going to be very cool.

The big thing these days is apps, and Apple is winning that war in a big way, with Android a distant second and nobody even trying for third. I know I went today at lunch to investigate a newer Objective C book, and I don't even use an iPhone (though my wife does).

Here's my next prediction. Either Steve Jobs dies, or Apple's stock will break $300 a share. One or the other is inevitable. Oh, and Crystal Bauersox will win American Idol. That's who I picked at the beginning of Hollywood week, so I'm going to stick with that initial prediction.

2010.04.05 -- Of iPads and iSlates

2010-04-05T12:33:00.000-07:00

Apple released the iPad this weekend to much fanfare. I went at lunch today to play with one, and left with the impression that it's a very fun toy, but a toy nonetheless. The most compelling features were the games, which were very impressive. The browsing was decent but really unremarkable. I didn't get to play with the email really. I found it hard to type on, but I think a lot of that was that I was standing at a counter, and not sitting with it in my lap and a reasonable angle.

I'll still probably buy one when the 3G comes out. Regardless, I saw today HP touting their "slate" PC. The article is here. Their big argument is "unlike Apple, we throw in everything you could want, including Windows and Flash and a camera".

Personally, the fact that it runs Windows immediately is a non-starter. I don't know about everyone else, but frankly I'm sick of Windows. I am tired of worrying if my antivirus and spyware were updated in the last 24 hours to account for the 87,000 new malware entities that were just released. I find their interfaces tedious and irritating.

I also find their company deplorable. My wife bought a copy of Windows 7 to install on an older tablet PC, and upon realizing that (a) it is DVD only and (b) Microsoft won't send you a CD version and (c) you can't return it where you bought it, we dutifully sent it back to Microsoft, who mailed us a check. The check was invalid, and our bank couldn't cash it. So, yeah. Fuck you Microsoft.

But even beyond the fact that it has a crappy OS on it, why do these companies continue to think that every electronic they sell needs to include every technology in existence? I don't care if I can't plug my peripherals into my 1.5 pound tablet! If I wanted a full sized PC, I would have bought one.

Honestly, the only competition for the iPad will be one of the forthcoming tablets running Android. From the Android phones I've seen at work, I'd say they have a workable product, but it's not as slick or intuitive as the Apple devices.

I also saw today Apple's coming out with iPhone OS 4.0. Honestly, if it includes multitasking, the iPad may become a perfect device for me. We shall see.

2010.03.29 - Ordered an N900

2010-03-29T11:03:00.001-07:00

So, I ordered a Nokia N900 for work. I've been using an E71 for about a year now, and I am really looking forward to have a best-in-class web browser (Firefox) in my pocket. That plus the Maemo operating system mean that I'll have full SSH support, plus the ability to watch MPEG4 movies, and more. My coworker has one and loves it. Hopefully I will too.

09.04.2009 - Home Theater Redux

2009-09-04T07:04:00.000-07:00

This summer, I finished my home Theater. It's a true HD experience, and so far we've been really happy with it. I got a 106" high contrast screen, a Panasonic PT-AE3000U 1080p projector, Denon 3808CI receiver and Blu-Ray Player, 160GB AppleTV, DirecTV HD receiver, and a RFX9600 serial extender to tie it all together. My remote is a TSU9400. The speakers are all Atlantic Technology 7.1 in-wall speakers.

We hooked up the Wii in there also, and it's been great. The Mii's are about 3 feet tall in Wii Sports Tennis.

08.25.2009 - Back in the Saddle

2009-08-25T08:03:00.001-07:00

I'm going to try to get this thing going again. I think my site had the same fate of many like it -- my life isn't that interesting. The fact is, I started this for myself, to help keep track of what I was eating and how things were going in my life. I'm generally happy, I have a great family, and a wife that I absolutely adore, so there's not a lot of drama.

I still struggle with my diet. It's not that I am hugely fat, but I could stand to lose some weight. I've basically regained all the weight I lost when I started the blog, and I've stopped trying to eat better. Maybe by restarting the blog, I can restart the healthy habits that let me lose 20 lbs in the first place. My natural weight seems to be about 215 lbs, but I'd really like to be about 190. Maybe I can get back there.

01.12.2009 - Palm Reborn?

2009-01-12T09:55:00.000-08:00

So I saw something last week about the Palm Pre, which is a new Palm device running a new Palm proprietary OS called webOS.

I found out today that it's a Linux-based OS, and the APIs are some sort of Javascript runtime that uses CSS for the UI development. It sounds a lot like what Apple tried (and failed) to do with the iPhone before releasing a real API.

My immediate thought was, who cares enough to develop for this? Right now in the smartphone market, you have several big players: Apple (iPhone), RIM (Blackberry), Google (Android), and Nokia (Symbian). Of those, Apple has the "it" factor, Google has geek buzz and a nice Java API, RIM has business mindshare and Nokia has massive marketshare.

If you agree that right now, developers are the key to the success of your smartphone platform, what would allow Palm to compete for developers? Who would want to develop for the Palm platform over the Android platform? Nokia sells more phones than anyone, and I have a lot of concern over the long term viability of Symbian because developing for it sucks. I don't have any insider knowledge at all, but I do know that there is a Linux-based OS called maemo that Nokia works on, so that may be their answer to that problem.

But Palm, why? Palm has a history of being awful to code for, and I don't see anything about this platform that's more compelling than any of the others I mentioned. Who cares?

12.16.2008 - Didn't Break My Foot

2008-12-26T14:01:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, as I was bounding upstairs carrying Jack, my foot gave way underneath me. I fell down in excruciating pain. I could barely walk on it. Today we went to the Orthopedist. It's not broken. Apparently I strained or ripped some odd things that aren't normally strained or ripped. I was given a space boot and told to take it easy for a few weeks.

The boot to the left is the one on my right foot. I have serious doubts that I can drive with it on, but I'm off from work until January, so hopefully I can take it off by then.

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas. Foot incident aside, we did.

10.01.2008 - Harvest Time

2008-10-01T05:14:00.000-07:00

Summer's over. Fall is here. It's the time of the harvest. Farmers are bringing in the fall crops before the freeze, including tasty things like squash, pumpkins, corn, and others.

At this time of year, it can be fun to celebrate All Hallows Eve and prepare for Thanksgiving in November. My wife found a recipe in a magazine, and we made it. It was a lot of fun, and it looked great when we were done.

As you can see, we made cupcakes. We topped them with pale yellow icing followed by yellow, white, and orange Jelly Belly beans. We finished it off with yellow starburst smashed with the side of a knife to look like butter, and black and white decorator sugars to look like the salt and pepper.

It was a big hit with the kids and the other neighborhood parents. It was fun to make and didn't take very long either.

09.12.2008 - Michelada esto bueno

2008-09-12T16:29:00.000-07:00

So I was a Publix last night picking up some groceries and supplies, and I stopped on the beer aisle to replenish my supply. I've been liking the new Bud Light Lime, which is unusual for me since I despise regular Budweiser. I saw Miller Chill, which is marketed as a "Chelada-style" beer, basically beer with salt and lime.

I tried it, and it's decent. Not amazing, but good enough that I'll drink the rest of them in the coming days. I got curious though, and looked up the Chelada, a.k.a. the Michelada, or "My little cold one" en Espanol. There are some bizarre concoctions that fall into this genre of beer, including the Budweiser one, which is a mix of V8, clam juice, and beer. Ugh.

I think the more promising ones are true recipes that consist of:

1) Dark beer like Negra Modelo

2) Salted glass

3) Lime

4) Dash of Tabasco and/or Worcestershire sauce

I'll have to get some salt and limes and try it, but that sounds pretty tasty.

08.29.2008 - Snakebit!

2008-08-29T09:55:00.000-07:00

So I got bit by a snake today. Not everyone can say that. We have some painters out at the house doing touch-up on the basement, so I worked from home today to keep an eye on them.

My wife calls me out to the garage because there's a snake in the garage. As I have mentioned before, we have all manner of creatures around our house because of the national forest next door. We routinely see lizards, skinks, toads, frogs, and a wide variety of spiders that I have covered previously. We even have deer show up every week or so. While I had little doubt that we had snakes around, I'd not seen one until today.

When I went out to see it, it was a small snake. He was probably 2 feet in length. He was mostly black, with wide dark brown "stripes". The pattern looked a little like a copperhead, but the colors were a lot darker, the snake was too thin, and his head was not viper-shaped. We got him out of the garage, and he immediately began crawling under our hose reel. That wasn't going to work, so I grabbed his tail to try to pull him back out. He did an instant 180 and bit me on the hand. The head wasn't a lot bigger than my thumb, so the bite wasn't bad, but I was surprised that he could strike while the back half of his body was in a straight line up in the air.

I dumped over the hose reel, and he was coiled up to strike underneath. My wife put down the recycling bin, which we coaxed him to crawl into. I took him down to the woods and set him free.

My hand and arm hurt a little where I got bit, but I suspect it's psychosomatic. I don't think it was anything venomous. I did some research on the internet, and I am pretty sure he was a juvenile grey rat snake (pictured above). He rattled his tail like a rattler, and when he bit me he expressed some sort of stinky musk. He also had the classic "kinked" body when he was in the garage that a rat snake displays.

08.23.2008 - Home Theater Part Deux

2008-08-23T07:08:00.000-07:00

As the basement winds down (we have only paint touchup left), I am looking further into the components for my home theater.

I was looking at some 3-seat seating sets, like these:

That set goes for about $1100 for the set. I could in theory put in two rows of those.

My friend John, who is helping me with his expertise, recommends the Lutron GRAFIK Eye lighting control. It will let me do all the cool lighting things I have in mind.

The last question is the remote. John is leaning toward something like a Pronto TSU9400, but that may be overkill for me. I do like the macro functionality though.

08.06.2008 -- Basement progress!

2008-08-06T16:32:00.001-07:00

The basement finishing project is coming along quickly now. They started painting in earnest on Monday, and by Wednesday it's 90% painted. The doors are hung, and even the trim is painted. I'm pretty amazed how quickly it is coming together

This room is the main room, which will someday be my bar and pool room. In the short term, it's a big room for the kids to play in.

Ultimately, I'd like to have a tile floor around the bar area, a solid wood bar with columns up to some cabinetry. I had them stub out plumbing for a sink behind the bar, so that's on the agenda too.

This next picture is the platform in my media room. I had them stain the oak nosing on the platform cherry, rather than the dark color of the bathroom vanity. I think it's going to look great, and the nosing acts as cover for some rope lighting for the media room. I had them do some crazy stuff with my wiring so that I can control it all via remote-controlled dimmer switches. I hope it was worth the added expense, but I won't know until I get the wiring in.

This last picture is the tile in the bathroom shower. We went with a pretty cheap tile (about $2 each) but we did add some small metal accent tiles to make it look a little fancier. I can't say if it was worth the extra money or not yet, but I think it'll be nice to have something in there to break the monotony of the pattern.

07.30.2008 - More basement beasts

2008-07-30T19:29:00.001-07:00

My basement is being finished right now, as I may have mentioned. The sheetrock is up, making a clean white canvas for any spiders that survived the installation. I found this one first, which from the Spiderzrule site looks like a "brown widow" to me:

They're pretty small, about the size of a dry black-eyed pea. I'm not sure how dangerous they are.

The second spider I seem to have a lot of in my house -- and it's one we never had in our old house about 10 miles away. It's some sort of Orb Weaver I think:

Very creepy, but likely not dangerous to people. We have a lot of little ones too, but this one is probably 3-4 inches from one leg tip to the other.

07.29.2008 - The Black Widow

2008-07-29T19:22:00.001-07:00

I live in a house that has a vacant lot on one side and a national forest on the other. The lot is a side effect of the glut of houses on the market, and likely will remain vacant for a few years until the economy picks up.

The forest on the other side belongs to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as part of their management of Lake Lanier. A side effect of being up against this lovely forest is that we get some cool wildlife. Aside from seeing deer on a regular basis, we get all manner of birds at our bird feeders, as well as hummingbirds, a variety of lizards and frogs, and a lot of spiders. I've seen more, larger, scarier spiders at this house than in any zoo. We've got wolf spiders, brown recluse, jumping spiders, common grey spiders, and seemingly an army of black widows.

I caught the one in the picture above in my garage. I had it in a glass flower vase so that I could take a picture and get a good look without any harm coming to me. Unfortunately, with small children around the house and the aggressive nature of black widows, I had to kill it. Generally speaking I consider the spiders around my house to be my fellow combatants against the army of bugs that assaults our house, but when they are highly poisonous, highly aggressive, and inside my house or garage, they have to be destroyed.

Last summer we had some gigantic spiders outside the house (some had an abdomen larger than a nickel. I haven't seen any that big this year yet, but it's still early for them. There were a couple of their smaller brethren outside out picture window for a few weeks, but they seem to have either moved on or been eaten by something bigger.

07.17.2008 - Home Theater Planning

2008-07-17T14:10:00.000-07:00

We're finishing our basement, or rather, we're having it finished. One room is being set aside for my home theater, something I've always wanted. The current plan is to use a room that is 13' 10" by 14' 9" with concrete walls on three sides. The screen will go on the shorter wall. The picture to the right is the platform for the second row of seating.

It's been wired with 7.1 using 16/2 speaker wire, and there's a conduit for the projector in the ceiling containing two pull strings and two CAT5 feeds.

I'm now looking at what else I need to do, so I talked to a friend who does this for a living. His recommendations, if I can:

1) Two layers of sheetrock of different thicknesses on the ceiling for soundproofing

2) Put the 4 can lights on 2 different circuits (front/rear) so they can be dimmed separately

3) Ensure that there is sufficient cooling in there, because the projector will generate significant heat

I am not sure whether we'll be able to do them, but it's worth considering.

Beyond that, we talked about equipment. He recommended a 104" screen, a Panasonic 720p projector, a Denon receiver, SnapAV speakers, and a Logitech remote control to put it all through its paces. It all looks reasonable to me, and he seemed to think he could do it all pretty cheaply. If anyone has any suggestions or comments, I'd love to hear them.

07.14.2008 -- Google Web Toolkit has potential

2008-07-14T08:36:00.000-07:00

Google Web Toolkit, or GWT for short, is a new concept in web site development. The premise is simple -- designing web sites in HTML is a pain, and designing them with good usability via JavaScript is a bigger pain. Furthermore, designing and implementing client-server interaction using AJAX technology is even more tedious. GWT attempts to address this by letting developers define their sites and the interaction of the widgets in the site via Java using a model very similar to Swing. This java code is then converted to JavaScript and HTML via a java-to-javascript compiler.

I've been experimenting with it lately, and so far, I'm fairly impressed. I have been able to do some things that I might or might not have been able to do with JavaScript, but certainly not as easily as I was able to do it today. I defined a "Composite" consisting of a multi-select menu item, a label, and a text field, and instantiated and deleted them programatically via form buttons. Pretty impressive. The next step will be to hook up the submission of this generated form data to an AJAX-friendly servlet that can process the request, return results, and display them in some sort of data grid. I'm hopefully optimistic that it is up to the task.

06.24.2008 - IS/IT Heroics

2008-06-24T11:31:00.000-07:00

I saw this article linked from Slashdot today. The article itself is fun to read, but for those of us who've been in IT long enough to see a project we worked hard on go into a successful launch, the high is amazing.

My personal story was when I worked at Cingular in the billing systems software group in Alpharetta. I and two other developers had been tasked with converting from multiple prepaid billing systems from Alcatel, BCGI, Ericsson, AT&T, Lucent, and others to a single prepaid system for managing prepaid PINs. The system would start off by importing the 50+ million prepaid PINs from these different systems into a common format database with Java software running the show. We had to create an implement a common API for all of the prepaid vendors to use, and we had to test it thoroughly.

When the system finally went live around 2am, I was logged into the NPP (our software) tailing the PIN activation logs and watching the web GUI that tracked connections. Slowly, the connections started trickling in, and activations were working. More and more connected, got their PINs validated, and the system worked, perfectly. It was really awesome.

06.23.2008 - OSX Root Exploit

2008-06-23T06:26:00.000-07:00

There's a significant security flaw in Apple's OS X. It's caused by two things that work together to cause a big problem. They two things are:

ARDAgent is a Mac application that accepts AppleScript input requests, and runs them as the user that is logged into the GUI
ARDAgent has it's UNIX security permissions with the user SETUID bit on. That means that when a user runs the program, the program runs as if the root (superuser) had run it.

This combination allows anyone with a remote or local shell to run basically any program on the machine as if they were root. This could include turning off logging, changing the DNS entries, copying or deleting any or all files, etc. It's what's known as a "local root exploit", because it requires the user to be logged in locally, and it completely compromizes the security of the machine. It's not as bad as a remote root exploit, but it's pretty serious.

The question of course, is how should it be fixed? The long-term solution is up to Apple (most likely changing what ARDAgent does and doesn't do), but there's a simple short term solution if you don't need Apple Remote Desktop capability (which most people don't need).

Open a terminal, and paste in the following:

sudo chmod 755 /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAgent

You will need to enter your password at the prompt. When it completes, ARDAgent will have lost its setuid bit and will then act as the user who executed it rather than as root.

If you wanted to be clever, you could instead use the exploit to fix the exploit, like this:

osascript -e 'tell application "ARDAgent" to do shell script "chmod 755 /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAgent"'

You wouldn't be prompted for your password in this case, which would not only demonstrate the problem, but would fix it as well.

06.19.2008 - Michelle Obama -- Transformed, or decloaked?

2008-06-19T10:47:00.000-07:00

I've never watched "The View". I find pretty much all of those women annoying. Whoopie Goldberg in particular seems to be perpetually drunk or stoned. But because I am very much interested in the meta-politics of this race, I watched it on the DVR with my wife last night. Michelle Obama was a "guest host", and did a fine job by all accounts. She seemed to have a good time, and she really hit the famous "proud" comment head-on and hopefully laid it to rest forever.

The thing that I find so interesting is the attempts by republicans and conservatives to paint her as a polarizing, hateful figure. Sean Hannity, that moron from Fox who gives good conservatives a bad name, in particular seems to want to demonize her. I'm not sure if he has an issue with her personally (I doubt it), or if it's just another part of his "LOOK AT ME" methodology of appealing to the dumbest members of our society, who not coincidentally are often racists and bigots.

When I watched her, I saw an intelligent, well-spoken woman who does credit to her gender and her race. There was no discussion of her political views, and frankly the political views of a first lady are generally a non-issue in presidential elections. When people bash the wife of a candidate, it's basically just the use of a surrogate to bash the candidate. There are plenty of issues that the candidates can use to bash each other, and using their spouses is just childish.

Oil Prices and Alternative Energy

I wanted to mention oil because it's going to be the biggest issue in this election as part of a larger focus on the economy. On one side, we have Obama, who so far is towing the DNC company line about the problem. I'm not thrilled with his performance. On the other side we have McCain, who wants to open up drilling and build nuclear plants. I disagree about nuclear, but I think he's on some semblance of the right track.

Oil prices are high for two reasons. Reason one is that the worldwide demand is continually growing. But reason two is that investors are speculating that oil prices will go up in the future, and that's pushing today's prices upward. The only way to counter this is for oil futures to look less valuable. This can be accomplished by putting more oil in the "future pipeline" and by decreasing demand for oil at the same time.

Right now, we get electricity primarily through coal and natural gas, with a small portion coming from nuclear power, and about the same amount from hydroelectric. Coal is harvested here in the US, so the only problem there is pollution, which can be addressed separately. But natural gas is a different story. We've all seen buses running on it, but because we're using so much of it in power plants, the supply is low and thus the cost is high for us to use it in everyone's cars.

In the US, we have a lot of land. Tons of it. I think that if we used some of that land to generate electricity through wind power and solar power, we could then turn some of that natural gas that is burning in power plants toward consumer car use. It's efficient, burns cleaner than gasoline, and would go a long way toward reducing our dependence of foreign oil. These huge "wind farms" are a great use of our huge supply of unused and underutilized land in the middle of our country.

As to nuclear, the problem there is twofold. First, building a nuclear plant that both works and is safe is so expensive that it's not cost effective. But second, and a bigger problem, is that nuclear power generates nuclear waste, and so far we have no means of disposing of it. It would be great to put it in a rocket and send it into space, but should that rocket explode in the atmosphere, bad, bad things would result. With Yucca mountain likely never to be approved, we could find ourselves with a huge store of used fissile material and nowhere to keep it. This is bad, bad stuff, and we would need a solution before we could consider nuclear power to solve our problems.

So, in conclusion, Obama and McCain need to support reducing our dependency on foreign energy sources through the use of cleaner-burning coal, wind power, hydroelectric, solar power, and using more natural gas in vehicles.

06.13.2008 -- Spooooky!

2008-06-13T10:12:00.000-07:00

It's Friday the 13th. Watch out!

I was actually posting because I found an article that directly stated what I have long suspected -- just as Americans worry that we're not ready to elect a black president, the rest of the world hopes that we can.

Obama in the Nile states what I have suspected all along, that if America could elect Barack Hussein Obama to the highest office in the nation, that it would go a long way towards repairing the huge amount of DAMAGE that GW Bush has done to our reputation over the last 7+ years. Completely discounting what he might do as president, his very election would help our relationship with the Middle East.

06.04.2008 -- Left-Wing and Right Wing: It's all BBQ to me

2008-06-04T07:38:00.000-07:00

When I was first introduced to politics, I had recently turned 19 and was voting in my first presidential election (in 1992). Like all young people in gen-X, I was disillusioned with both the Democrats and the Republicans. They all seemed like crooks to me.

When I learned about Ross Perot, I thought and independent president was just what America needed. Coming from a very conservative family, his views weren't as radical a departure from my upbringing as voting for a Democrat would have been, but it was a departure nonetheless.

Looking back, I realize that those of us who voted for Perot basically gave the election to Bill Clinton. I see a small parallel to Bob Barr in this year's election, although without billions in the bank, Barr has little chance of making such an impact. It did get me to thinking about how the political labels "Liberal" and "Conservative" have moved away from their classical party affiliations.

These are the associations I had from my childhood:

Issue	Conservative	Liberal
Government Size	Small	Big
Abortion	Pro-Life	Pro-Choice
Gun Control	Against	For
Drugs	Enforcement	Legalization
Universal Healthcare	Against	For
Welfare	Against	For
War	For	Against
Gay Rights	Against	For

Generalizations of course, but this is the classical perception. The problem is, this classical perception is no longer accurate, if they ever were. Look at Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is a Republican that favors gay rights, or Rudy Giuliani, who is pro-choice. Having options is a great thing, but it makes it hard to pidgeon-hole people anymore.

We've got two very interesting presidential candidates for the election this fall. Demonization aside, I think either would be a decent president. I'm really glad that The Bushes and the Clintons are finally out of American Politics.

06.03.2008 -- a Historic Moment

2008-06-03T18:22:00.000-07:00

Today, the Democratic Party of the United States of America nominated Barack Obama as their candidate. This is not only the first black presidential candidate from a major party, it represents a minor revolution in American politics. A politician achieved the nomination without bashing his opponent, without accepting money from lobbyists, and without relying on power hungry Washington insiders with deep pockets. Instead, Obama ran a true grass roots campaign, bringing regular people into the political process.

I've personally never voted for a Democrat for president. I voted for an independent once, and for Republicans every other time. But as Obama says, "Not this time." Obama is my candidate of choice. He is a voice of honesty, of reason, and yes, of hope. Hope is something we really need in America right now, with gas prices in the stratosphere, and with a pointless war dragging our economy into the gutter and taking the lives of our soldiers. 2008 is the year. Barack Obama is the guy.

In the immortal words of, well, me:

WOOT!

05.14.2008 -- Cancelled my WoW Account

2008-05-14T04:42:00.000-07:00

I officially cancelled my WoW account this week. I'm selling off my extra junk, and have about 9000g sitting in my coffers. I haven't decided what to do with it yet. I was going to give it to a friend, or keep it, but I haven't decided if I am ever coming back or not.

I have until mid-June when my account goes dark to decide.

05.02.2008 - Breaking the World

2008-05-02T07:19:00.000-07:00

Last night we did 7 more attempts on Vashj. I was the top healer as usual, but we didn't get any further than we have in previous nights of tries. I'm pretty sick of doing my job and us wiping repeatedly. I am going to take a week off from raiding I think.

I did pick up a [World Breaker] off Karathress. I don't know why I took it, but I thought it might be fun and nobody else wanted it. I also got enough badges (150!) to pick up my new healing mace, [Gavel of Naaru Blessings]. I will get the +81 healing enchant on it the next time I have time. I have to buy some of the primals that the enchant requires.

I am eating a doughnut right now. Doh.

04.22.2008 - Pennsylvania Finally

2008-04-22T10:17:00.000-07:00

It's been six weeks, and the backwoods rednecks in Pennsylvania will finally have a chance to show the world just how racist they really are. Go Pennsylvania, make Georgia look good by comparison! Oh, and your state ultimately won't make any difference in the primary, just so you know.

04.22.2008 - TK Denied!

2008-04-22T10:14:00.000-07:00

We did TK last night. We killed Al'ar, Solarian, and Void Reaver. I picked up 6 badges, but was once again denied on the [Worldstorm Gauntlets]. We've never seen them drop. If they had dropped, I would not have gotten them anyway due to some duplicitousness on the part of my raid leader, but they didn't drop, so it was a non-issue.

I'm getting sick of running that place every week. I may just say screw it and wait for us to get to some more interesting content.

04.21.2008 - WoW Weekend Update

2008-04-21T06:54:00.000-07:00

So I ran Kara with RDC again on Saturday night. We did a full clear (22 badges) in 2 hours, 15 minutes. This was by far the fastest run I've ever been on. I think we might be able to shave off a little more next week. Breaking two hours would be really cool. We had a total of 3-5 deaths all night, and my total repair was under 4g (I never died).

I also did High King/Gruul/Magtheridon with RDC on Sunday night. My guild has stopped doing these fights, but I still need the ring from Magtheridon, and 8 badges are always appreciated. We took 2 shots on High King because one of the adds bugged out, then one-shot Gruul. We took two tries to get Magtheridon down, but it was pretty smooth and I liked their approach, which was different from how I'd done it before.

I picked up a T4 shoulder token as a DE save, which I turned in for some Season 1 PvP healing shoulders. I still need to gem them. Hopefully I'll be able to go next week and will have better luck on the ring, but it was a good run overall. I got in Trystasia (aka Rourka) and Fou (aka Kare) from my guild for some empty DPS slots, and they both got epics out of the run.

As usual, I was the top healer, doing quite a bit more healing and HPS than anyone else, but that's expected with my superior gear. They've not even been to SSC, and we've all but cleared it.

Between Kara and Gruul/Mags I am back up to ~100 badges. I need 150 for my new mace, so I'll try to get in a heroic or two this week, and hopefully will get 6 more tonight in TK as I try for the gloves off Solarian. I sent in some bits to the guild bank for EP, but haven't been credited yet. I hope to get it credited before the raid, or else the gloves will go to someone else if they drop.

04.11.2008 - WoW-o-rama

2008-04-11T07:41:00.000-07:00

I got a big gear boost yesterday as the Shattered Sun Offensive (SSO) badge vendor was opened on my server. I ended up getting the belt and chest from the vendor, and hit exalted with SSO, enabling me to also pick up my new alchemy trinket.

My shaman now is at 2028 +healing with 206 MP/5. That's pretty awesome, and it puts me in a position to go comfortably into Hyjal and Black Temple.

04.07.2008 - Badgeorama Incoming!

2008-04-07T07:10:00.000-07:00

Sometime this week, the gear level of all WoW players will go up... way up. Like most servers, ours (Whisperwind) is in Phase 2 of the Shattered Sun Offensive (SSO) and should complete the anvil and forge this week. This will allow players to purchase Black-Temple level loot from the vendor. I personally am having some difficulty choosing what to purchase. I have ~190 badges saved so far. I ultimately need over 400 to get all the items I want, but having 190 will allow me to get 1-3 items depending on what I choose. So far, my goals (in order) look like this:

Item	Old Item	Badge Count	HEP Gain	HEP/badge ratio
[Wave of Life Chestguard]	[Cyclone Hauberk]	100 badges	63.62	0.64
[Clutch of the Soothing Breeze]	[Belt of Gale Force]	75 badges	61.14	0.82
[Gavel of Naaru Blessings]	[Shard of the Virtuous]	150 badges	106.3	0.71
[Anveena's Touch]	[Violet Signet of the Grand Restorer]	60 badges	56.59	0.94
[Runed Scales of Antiquity]	[Cataclysm Legguards]	100 badges	32.45	0.32

I am not at all confident that I will buy in this order, but it gives you an idea. I really ought to buy the mace first, but I just don't want to spend all my badges on a single item. I think that instead, I will buy the chest, which is irreplaceable, and possibly the belt, which is on par with the TK one, but is more accessible (the TK one drops from trash, and we've only ever seen one, with three shaman interested in them).

04.04.2008 - MLK Remembered

2008-04-04T06:25:00.000-07:00

Today is the anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. I think MLK would be proud to see that we've come far enough to have a black presumptive Democratic nominee. As Barack Obama noted in his excellent race speech, this isn't a destination so much as a journey, and I think the US is slowly moving in the right direction.

On the WoW front, I picked up some Tier 5 healing pants (Cataclysm Legguards) last night. I was going to get badge pants, but getting these pushes that off and lets me spend them on other items that will be harder to get elsewhere.

03.25.2008 - The Slacker Cometh

2008-03-25T08:56:00.001-07:00

I haven't posted in a few weeks. Nothing really exciting going on here, hence the lack of posting. Everything's been pretty stable on the home front, and pretty stagnant on the WoW front. At work I am implementing a System Usage report for tenants, and while it's going well, it's hardly exciting.

Wow patch 2.4 is coming out today. It should provide some entertainment for me int he coming weeks and some upgrades as well. I can look forward to a new trinket, new chest, legs, waist, ring, weapon, and possibly others eventually via badge loot. Beyond that, I am treading water in WoW.

My diet has stagnated. We had a lot of junk food on Easter, including a bunch of candy via the Easter Bunny. I have got to get back on track. I brought my lunch to work today in the hopes of starting again. I brought homemade lasagna, some cottage cheese, a yogurt, and some wheat thins. I am full after the lasagna and cottage cheese though, so I may save the rest for tomorrow.

03.14.2008 - 5/6 SSC and 3/4 TK

2008-03-14T12:06:00.001-07:00

Last night my guild ventured once more into Serpentshrine Cavern (SSC). I joined late. Earlier in the week we had killed Hydross and the Lurker Below. Before I joined the raid, they killed Leotheras the Blind in one shot (our third kill I believe). When I joined, we went to Tidewalker, and killed him in one shot (our second-ever kill). We then ventured in to see Karathress. We'd tried this half-heartedly last week. This week we took two practice tries, and on the third try we killed him. We were all surprised and quite happy. Not only does this boss drop Tier 5 leg tokens, but he represents the final block before Lady Vashj, the last boss of SSC. We'll hopefully get to work on killing her next week.

It also means that we can advance our Black Temple attunement quest line, although it's not needed in 2.4, doing it awards the "Hand of A'dal" title, which I'd like to have. I need to go turn in the one I finished and move on to the next one today. I think killing Al'ar is the next step, which is on the to-do-list for Monday (along with Solarian).

That means we are 5/6 SSC and 3/4 TK now. Two bosses to go and we'll be on to Hyjal and Black Temple.

03.05.2008 -- Shoulders!

2008-03-05T20:53:00.001-08:00

I got my T5 shoulders ([Cataclysm Shoulderguards]) tonight! Hurrah!!!!

I'm doing the happy dance.

03.03.08 - The Mace gods finally noticed me

2008-03-03T05:16:00.000-08:00

My usual Friday night has included, among other things, a run at 9:30 my time into Karazhan with the Dogcows (my original guild). This week though, some sort of illness befell the two excellent tanks. As a result, the "Kara 1" group that I go with cancelled their run. Scynthias, who invites me every week, offered a spot in the "Kara 3" group. This is a more casual group than I usually go with, but they're basically competent and a nice bunch of folks.

Faced with either not going at all versus possibly killing a few less things, I opted to go. A wise decision it was. We one-shot all the bosses up to Aran, and got him on the second try. It was a far slower run than I am used to, but for the level of inexperience in the group I think it was fine. More importantly, I finally got one of the healing maces. I picked up a [Shard of the Virtuous] off the Maiden of Virtue. I put a +81 healing enchant on it and couldn't be happier.

As an added bonus, this shifts my heroic badge priority back toward getting other, cheaper items before the healing mace. I'll probably grab the healing pants first, then the ring second (unless I get one from Magtheridon before the 2.4 vendor appears). I am also going to bite the bullet and take shoulders and/or pants from Gruul if I can. I kept waiting for Void Reaver, but I've decided that it's just not worth waiting while wearing iLevel 115 gear from Kara. Back in the pre-BC expansion I thought I learned my lesson in Molten Core about passing on stuff I needed. Perhaps I needed a reminder.

02.27.2008 -- Al'ar sucks

2008-02-27T07:07:00.000-08:00

Well, last night I raided again. We did the Eye in TK. I was hoping to do Void Reaver, but of course we spent the whole night wiping on Al'ar. We finally got him down, but with no time left to go do Void Reaver. I took a healing ring because I'm sick of raiding week after week and getting nothing. It's on my list, but I wasn't excited about it. I really wanted the T5 shoulders from VR. My plan is to put together a huge pile of stuff to turn in to the raid bank before the Monday raid and get back up the list, but I don't know if that's feasible or not. I'm going to look into it anyway. I really, really want T5 shoulders. It's the last item I feel like I "need" from 25-man raiding.

02.25.2008 - Scouts and Stuff

2008-02-25T10:24:00.000-08:00

Tonight's the Pack 545 scout meeting. We're doing trash or something. The big news on the scouting front is that we have Pinewood Derby next month. My son and I have yet to begin on our car, but we need to get started. I think mayne this weekend we'll work on it.

We also have been getting estimates on having our basement finished. We need some safe play space for the kids, so we're looking forward to that eventuality. The goal will be to have a nice bar and a home theater down there too. My friend Marshall will hopefully help me with the AV choices, since he recently finished his own home theater.

I had On the Border for lunch today. I got a steak Quesadilla and some chicken tortilla soup. I have got to get back on the diet -- I've been eating terribly lately.

On the WoW front, I did some research into what gear I want to upgrade. I have 1 upgrade from Magtheridon, one from Alar, one from Solarian, and one from Void Reaver. All the others come from either Karazhan or the 2.4 badge rewards. I find it quite silly that raiding isn't the best way to get gear unless you're deep into Black Temple (which few players are). I need all the items listed in the earlier post to be at the top of my game, and this spreadsheet highlights why:

Resto Gear Spreadsheet

Items in yellow represent my current gear. Items in blue are my goals. You can definitely see why I would want the badge items to maximize my character, but realistically I won't be able to get them all before the expansion. I definitely plan on getting the mace and legs though, since neither is easily replaceable, and both represent large gaps in my gear. Once I get those out of the way, I may get the ring next since it's relatively cheap and offers a big upgrade for me. We'll see if I get any gear from raiding in the interim.

02.21.2008 - Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit

2008-02-21T06:55:00.000-08:00

I addressed my political thoughts in a separate post. This one is personal. My family and I visited my grandparents in North Carolina last weekend. It was a long drive, but my grandmother is ill, and they're both getting old (86 and 87), so we felt like we needed to go.

The kids had a big time. We stayed in an Embassy Suites by Crabtree Mall. It was a great hotel -- clean, good service, a nice indoor pool, and the best breakfast buffet I've ever seen in a hotel. The buffet bears special mention, since it had made-to-order omelettes, pancakes, delicious sausage, bagels, toast, cereal, oatmeal, fresh fruit, yogurt and more. I'm not a big breakfast person, but I really enjoyed it. The kids also had a lot of fun in the pool (which was the reason we chose that hotel) and hot tub. My 5 year old made great progress on his swimming ability too.

Beyond the hotel, I took the kids for a ride on my grandfather's tractor. It's a working tractor from the 1950's. The three older kids all took a turn steering while I operated the pedals and transmission. They are still talking about what fun it was.

In the world of WoW, things are the same. I've not gotten any gear in weeks. My shaman is near the top of the EPGP list but there's been nothing to bid on. I'm hoping we get to Void Reaver and get him down tonight, but I'm not holding my breath. If we do and T5 shaman shoulders drop, I am fairly sure I'll get them. Once that happens, I am probably done with 25-man raiding for a few months. With the changes in 2.4, I'm better off getting badges from easy stuff than I am trying to raid for progress. The new gear in the patch is just crazy-good. Here's my to-get list and the associated cost in [Badge of Justice]

Gavel of Naaru Blessings - 150
Runed Scales of Antiquity - 100
Clutch of the Soothing Breeze - 75
Anveena's Touch - 60
Wave of Life Chestguard - 100

02.21.2008 - Election Redux

2008-02-21T06:38:00.000-08:00

A lot has happened in the race for the presidential nomination since Super Tuesday. Barack Obama has moved from an also-ran to the front runner, pushing Washington insider Hillary Clinton to the fringe. She's now lashing out against him because he gives better speeches, suggesting that somehow he doesn't intend to do the things he talks about. His counterpoint is that the status quo (which she represents) hasn't gotten anything positive done in the last 16 years, so why would this time be any different?

My wife donated some money to the Obama campaign. Assuming that he gets the nomination, I'll donate some for his run toward November. I've voted in every election since I turned 18, but this is the first time I've ever contributed money. It's also the first time I'll vote for a Democrat for the office of the president, assuming my option is Obama and not Clinton. I'd vote for McCain before Clinton, since she pretty much stands for everything that is wrong with our political process.

On a similar topic, Michelle Obama made an innocent comment about being proud of America, and the media had a field day with it, suggesting somehow that she's un-American. I think this is one of those things easily chalked up to a regular person being roasted over the political coals for not having every word they say be washed in the waters of political correctness, and it shows one of the serious problems with our political system right now. I know that I personally wouldn't last 5 minutes in politics, because I'd tell people what i really thought.

I listen to Neil Boortz in my local radio market, and while I can't say I agree with everything he says, he at least seems to have some logic to his arguments. When I contrast that to the Sean Hannity show in the afternoon it drives me crazy. Hannity was suggesting that we should all be "proud" of assorted things like the falling of the Berlin wall, and that the surge in Iraq was working. He fails to mention, of course, that we are only in Iraq because George W. Bush felt compelled to finish what his father started, even though it made no sense. We've spent trillions of dollars on a war that will ultimately accomplish nothing, if we're lucky. More likely we're going to spend the next 40 years undoing the damage is has done to our reputation in the world.

I'm a proud American, and I'd fight for my country if it were threatened. But I have no ridiculous sense of pride in the folly of the moron we elected president. I voted for him both times, realistically voting against his opponents. I assumed that with good advisers he would be a fine president. If he had limited the 9/11 response to Afghanistan, I think his legacy would have been a positive one. But he didn't, and history will reflect that.

If Hillary gets the Democratic nomination through back-room deals, I'm not sure our policical structure could recover. It would likely be the end of the Democratic Party.

02.08.2008 - Friday finally

2008-02-08T05:09:00.000-08:00

This has been a long week for me. I can't really say what's made it so long, but I'm glad to see it finishing up. Aside from the letdown that was the election, nothing of significance has happened this week. I am working on my ActiveMQ code at work, which is progressing nicely.

We have a mini-vacation planned for next weekend to visit my grandparents. My grandmother is suffering from Alzheimer's, so I want to take my kids to see her before she can't remember them. I hate traveling, but I am going to do it for her benefit and that of my kids. We're going to be staying in a nice hotel in Raleigh with an indoor pool in the hopes of making it a fun trip for the kids.

My diet is stymied. I am not really eating any worse, but I am not losing weight either. I bought a quart of Publix chocolate milk to treat myself with when I went below 200 lbs, but so far it's still unopened in the fridge. I love Publix dairy products. Their chocolate milk, eggnog, yogurt, and ice cream is all wonderful, in most cases better than the premium brands they compete with.

On the WoW front, there's nothing to report. I did "The Eye" in Tempest Keep on Tuesday, but got no loot. I waited outside SSC on Wednesday and never got into the raid. On Thursday I missed the Gruul kill, but I was there for Magtheridon, and again got no loot. Tonight I am supposed to main heal Karazhan again with RDC. I really hope I get something to show for my trouble. I've had horrible luck in there lately. My wish list remains as it was in my previous post on the subject since I haven't gotten any real upgrades in 3 weeks.

02.05.2008 - Super Duper Tuesday (lol)

2008-02-05T07:44:00.000-08:00

So today's the big primary. In many states, mine included, today is the day. I dropped my son off at the bus, then spent the next 45 minutes standing in line as senior citizens tried to slowly process people through the line. It was painfully slow for the number of people that were there (less than 40 people ahead of me). I did my civic duty, and I hope I am pleased with the outcome. I haven't been this interested in an election in a decade.

I haven't really been making any progress on the diet, but we've had some difficult temptations to deal with. My son turned 5 over the weekend, so there have been cake, ice cream, cupcakes, and gummies to deal with. I also had some tasty lunch at Fancy Pantry yesterday that couldn't have been low-fat.

On the WoW front, we took on a new boss in SSC last night, Leothras the Blind. He's a demon hunter. We got him to 30% in about 4 tries. Not bad for our first night, and I am sure we'll kill him next time we try.

I haven't gotten any loot since last week. I got outbid on all the raid loot last week and had no luck getting drops in Kara. Oh well. I am on for two half-nights this week raiding, hopefully for Void Reaver on one of them.

01.30.2008 - Yet Another Wednesday

2008-01-30T10:07:00.000-08:00

I weighed 201.0 today. My lowest weight so far since I began by half a pound. I didn't eat much dinner last night, and I'm sure that's the reason.

I had a 5" Subway turkey sub (lettuce, tomato, spicy mustard, black olives, vinegar on wheat) and some Baked Lays Barbecue chips with a diet coke for lunch. I compared the Baked Lays with the Sun Chips I normally get, and they were the healthier choice of the two.

I did High King/Gruul last night on my shaman. We one-shot both, and a shaman token dropped off of both, and I lost on both to other shaman with more points. I guess I'll try again next week.

In the interim, I am scheduled for the second half of the Eye tonight, which will hopefully include Void Reaver dropping two shaman T5 shoulder tokens. Since T5 shaman shoulders are about the greatest thing since sliced bread, I can hope. I am also scheduled to go back to Karazhan with the Reservoir Dogcows on Friday night. I'm looking forward to another shot at Moroes' belt and a healing mace (either [Shard of the Virtuous] or [Light's Justice]). I'm 0-for-3 on both so far, but my luck is bound to change eventually. I'd also take the [Dragon-Quake Shoulderguards] off of Curator and some decent mail legs.

01.28.2008 - Whatnot and whathaveya

2008-01-28T05:39:00.000-08:00

I did Kara with my shaman again with RDC this weekend. I was going to do Kara with my own guild, but my kids got invited to a neighborhood birthday party at Jungle Jump at raid start time (11:00am Saturday), so I switched. We did a full Kara clear, and I picked up a trinket and some mediocre cloth pants. Not my best run as far as gear, but it was painless and fun. I also garnered enough badges to pick up some insanely good bracers ([Gleaming Earthen Bracers]).

I also taught my eldest son how to play chess this weekend. He really caught on quickly, and it was fun for us both. I'll have to keep working with him. I'm not a great chess player, and he's quite smart, so I suspect he'll be beating me before long.

We had our scout meeting this Sunday. Only a small group showed up, but we handed out our Pinewood Derby car kits. I'm looking forward to making a car with my son this year, and having it be fast. Last year's car was.... not.

I signed up to raid this week, but I'm not sure how much roster time I will get. We shall see. I would definitely like to get in on a Gruul kill so I can get some decent pants and shoulders, and I need to kill some "The Eye" trash so I can get that crazy-good belt ([Girdle of Fallen Stars]) that my friend Boogaloo got. Last week we saw three of the same epic drop off trash, but it was the wrong epic. /sigh

01.25.2008 -- The Lurker Below

2008-01-25T05:16:00.000-08:00

First, my guild FortyTwo kill Al'ar in The Eye this week. We're now 2/6 Eye, 2/6 SSC, with Gruul, HK, and Magtheridon on farm. Yay for us.

Second, last night I got to see The Lurker Below, a boss in Serpentshrine Cavern (SSC). This is a 25-man raid, and my first time healing in SSC. The first time we tried, I died to a "Spout" which was not what I expected. Basically he spits water at the group while spinning either clockwise or counterclockwise. I got to watch and learn while dead and figured it out. Apparently some others needed that too, because we easily beat him on the second attempt. I picked up [Tempest-Strider Boots], some of the best boots from a restoration shaman around.

I was going to do Karazhan this Saturday morning, but my neighbor's son is having a birthday party, so I will be taking the kids to that instead. So now, I'll be doing Kara tonight with my friends in the Reservoir Dogcows. Hopefully I will pick up a healing mace, some bracers, or some mail healing shoulders. I'd also like the [Ribbon of Sacrifice] from the Opera event if possible.

01.23.2008 - Gruul Etc

2008-01-23T07:18:00.000-08:00

Last night we did High King (one shot kill), Gruul (uugly, multiple wipes, finally killed) and then we hit Al'ar again. I'm not sure why we didn't go do Void Reaver (aka Loot Reaver) instead, but we didn't. On our best attempt we had Al'ar down to 9%, so I think it's a given that we'll down him tonight. I'm not on the roster, and don't plan to raid, but it was fun. I also picked up a [Teeth of Gruul] necklace for my shaman, which was a decent upgrade.

01.22.2008 - A Good Night

2008-01-22T11:14:00.000-08:00

Last night's raid couldn't have gone any better. We one-shot Magtheridon, one-shot Void Reaver, and I got some practice on Al'ar. On Magtheridon I got both the shield and the T4 breastplate (check my armory link to the right). I also was at the top of the healing meter by a long shot, easily beating players with far better gear and more experience than I have. I was really thrilled with the outcome, and I am encouraged to continue to improve my gear and continue raiding. I am scheduled to raid the second half of tonight. It would have been nice to be in the first half (Gruul, farm content), but I'll take what I can get with my schedule.

On the home front, we have a bug making its way through the ranks. My littlest son was sick over the weekend, and threw up once. He's been sleeping poorly, burping, and having bowel issues. On Sunday I got a mild case of the same thing, which was cleared up by Monday at lunchtime. My wife came down with it on Monday. All three of my older kids all have runny noses and some have complained about upset stomachs. It's a nasty bug and our house is quite the petri dish.

I'm making progress on the JMS queue. It's slowly coming together into something I can put into our app.

01.21.2008 - It's Cooooold Outside

2008-01-21T12:29:00.000-08:00

It snowed here on Wednesday, and then again over the weekend. It's been about 4-5 years since we had snow, and the kids really enjoyed it. The picture was taken from my daughter's bedroom overlooking the woods next to our house. We made snowmen, the kids made snow angels, we threw snoballs, and even did some makeshift sledding on a plastic garbage can lid. Much fun was had by all.

I had a rough night last night. I started feeling sick (nausea, plus the other end of that) before dinner. It got worse as we bathed the kids and got them ready for bed. I ended up going to bed around 9:30 or so, and fell asleep not long after. I woke up a couple of times during the night as well for "emergencies". I feel a little better this morning (I did go to work), but I'm just not feeling great. I had a Subway ham and turkey 5" combo with Sun Chips from Subway for $3.99 today. It was bland enough to work for me.

I'm trying to figure out how JMS queues work in Java at work today. I wish now we'd pursued them more at Cingular on the NPP project. I am trying to create a JMS topic with durable subscribers, but I just can't find any good documentation on how the code actually works. Grr.

Tonight's a big night for me in WoW world. My shaman is a healer for the Magtheridon raid. This content is borderline-farm status for us, but it's my first time as a real healer. I hope I do ok. I main healed Karazhan on Saturday with Alexis (Kerwyn) from Reservoir Dogcows (RDC), my original WoW guild. We downed almost all the bosses, and I got a lot of loot (9 epics). I hope to get a T4 chest or maybe a ring or shield tonight. I mostly want the chest though. [Cyclone Hauberk]. I got the helm in Karazhan over the weekend, so I could get a set bonus with the chest. The next step would be to run Gruul runs regularly until I get the shoulders and legs. I don't really need the gloves from Karazhan (mine are probably better), but I'd take them for the sake of completeness. I'm at about 1350 +healing right now, and should be a little higher once I get a Silver Spellthread on my pants. I'm still having trouble deciding which pants I should be wearing. I'll post on the Shaman forums for help.

01.16.2008 -- 201.5!!!!!

2008-01-16T07:36:00.001-08:00

201.5 lbs

That was what the scale reported this morning. It's a big deal. A full 2 lbs less than my lowest weight until now. I was getting ready for a shower this morning and thought to myself that I looked thinner, healthier. It was the first time I'd really seen a difference. I got on the scale, and my suspicions were confirmed. I think those pounds came off my waist, I really do.

I'm on cloud nine today.

Last night, I had a lot of fun in WoW. I got my [Vengeful Gladiator's Plate Helm] for Krasher. It's really sharp looking, and pushed my resilience to 195 in PvP gear. Once I get the ring and belt, I'll be a juggernaut. I'm debating whether to go ahead and get the thrown weapon (I have enough honor for it) or save up for the ring first.

On my shaman, I solo healed CoT:Black Morass, and Steamvaults. I got lucky in BM and got the shaman healing bracers. Not as lucky in SV, but I got a lot of compliments on my healing skill. I am on the roster for Magtheridon next Monday, and I am really looking forward to it. Hopefully I'll get a Tier 4 healers' chest.

01.14.2008 - If I were President...

2008-01-14T12:50:00.000-08:00

So there is an article on Slashdot today, called "What Would You Do as President?". It's an interesting topic. One thing I was surprised by is how much my list of to-dos is different from the Slashdot masses, who I generally thought I identified with. I guess the biggest thing is my hatred for Ron Paul. It's a shame, but the Ron Paul Warcrafters decided to stage a "march" on the Whisperwind server, where I play. They generated huge queues where we previously had none, and seemingly they decided to stay, because we still have queues as a result. It's a dumb reason not to like a candidate, but it was sufficient. He lost my vote before I even considered him because of the actions of his supporters to vandalize my preferred form of leisure.

Back to the topic at hand. What would be my political platform, should I run for president? I'm still a year shy of eligibility for the office, but I won't let that get in the way of my fun. Here are the tenets of my campaign.

1) Taxes. A local radio host named Neil Boortz promotes what is called the Fair Tax. It's a buzzword now, but the gist is that instead of income tax with a huge pile of loopholes, you simply pay more sales tax instead. There are of course complexities with this, but the general principle is that you determine how much tax you pay by deciding whether to buy things or not. The goal is to be revenue neutral (no more or less money generated than the current system). Whether or not this system would work in practice is a subject of great debate, but I'd implement it and give it a try. It couldn't possibly be worse than what we have now.

2) Immigration. There are two issues in immigration. First is the issue of people coming over our porous border. The second is how to deal with illegals already in our country. My opinion here is likely an unpopular one in America. I think solving the second issue could help with the first. We need an immigrant worker program. Document the people here, grant them amnesty against prosecution, get them paying taxes, and allow them some means of freedom at the border with proper documentation. The correlary of course is much, much stiffer penalties for people who do not take advantage of this system. Serious jail time, or better, work farms where prison labor is used for public works projects would serve as a stronger deterrent than just being deported for the 20th time in a row. There are of course more details than this, like how to handle people with criminal records, but for migrant workers and people who have lived here and raised families here illegally for lack of other recourse, we should offer some means of allowing them to become part of our society legally.

3) I know I lost some votes on #2, but I can get them back with this one. Bring our soldiers home from Iraq. I like Obama's withdrawal plan here, and I think most Americans agree that we shouldn't have gone in, and despite the hard work of our military, the people of Iraq are not cooperating in making their government a democracy. We should leave, bring our people home, and save a trillion dollars a year for more important things.

4) Fix the trade deficit. A large part of this is that we seem to allow China to fix their currency while everyone else's float. This gives them a huge unfair trading advantage, and it needs to stop. Second, through the WTO and similar programs, we're hamstrung by other countries who seem to think that their interests trump our own. The online gambling issue is a good example. I also don't like that we have too many limits on tariffs and subsidies that we can impose to make our products more viable around the world.

5) Work on the national debt. This problem seems to get lost in bigger issues, but saving hundreds of billions on the war every year could help pay down the debt and eliminate it.

6) In line with #5, we should pass a constitutional amendment requiring Congress to pass a balanced budget. It's absurd that they need an amendment to force their hand, but it seems that they do. Let's get it done so they have to have fiscal responsibility like all of the citizens already do. You cannot and should not spend what you do not have. No more maxxed out credit cards for the government.

7) Ensure the right to privacy, in law. This is an implied constitutional right, and yet laws like the Patriot Act, the DMCA, and others constantly infringe on our rights to privacy. Let's get a law or ammendment passed that enumerates this as an indelible right of Americans.

8) Fix software patents and the patent system as a whole. This is a ridiculous part of our legal system, and it needs to go away. The patent system is completely broken now, and this is a large part of the problem. We need to fix it.

9) Gay "marriage" is another issue. I don't know how the government got into the marriage business, but I suspect it was to originally to facilitate tax breaks. However, from the perspective of the government, the sexual orientation of partners does not affect their legal status as citizens. Similarly, marriage in the eyes of the government should be a legal state, not a moral one. As such, any two people who wish to enter into such a long-term, complex legal state should be allowed to do so, regardless of their sexual orientation or persuasion. Legality is theoretically based on morality, but in my mind this issue crosses the boundary. I think churches should regulate marriage, government should regulate legal status of civil unions for the purpose of financial matters, and there should be no overlap.

There's the first pass at my presidential platform. I am not qualified to serve political office, but I have no doubt I could do a better job than the sitting president did. I'm the socially liberal, fiscally conservative, common-sense candidate who doesn't want the job and isn't quite old enough anyway, so vote for me!

01.14.2007 - Shammy!!!!

2008-01-13T21:05:00.000-08:00

My shaman hit 70 this weekend, and I respecced him to resto (healing). It's a lot different from what I came from, but it's a lot of fun. I've healed Black Morass so far, as well as a few PvP matches. I think I still have a long way to go before I'm good at it, but I am on the way at least.

I think I have a solution to the raiding problem with my wife. I am going to step down from the "Hitchhiker" raiding rank to "Heart of Gold". That means I can raid whenever I want and not worry about it. I can always go back to HH if I want to, but it will take the pressure off. I think I'll wait until I get a piece or two of raid loot first though.

01.10.2008 - Status

2008-01-10T07:04:00.000-08:00

My weight loss has slowed to a crawl. I'm seemingly stuck at 203 lbs. I think to go further I need to add exercise to the regimen, but the weather hasn't really inspired me. It's either been cold or rainy here. I'm thrilled that we're finally getting some rain, but I don't want to go walking in it. I may have to get some piece of exercise equipment.

My wife and I watched the New Hampshire primary. We were disappointed that Hillary Clinton won over Barrack Obama. I think somehow her crying got her womens' votes, which is just ridiculous. Who wants a president that cries when things don't go their way? The post-election speeches reinforced this; Hillary basically read a dull prepared speech, while Obama gave a really inspiring speech and never once looked at notes. I was really impressed by him once again.

On the WoW front, I'm clashing a little with the wife about the time I am spending in-game. I've been trying to balance it, but I am obviously not doing it well. I have been trying to get my shaman to 70, but it's been tough without disappearing behind the screen for hours at a time. At least I am in the home stretch. I need roughly 1 day behind the screen plus 3 instances and I will be ready to raid. When I get there I'll be on for 90 minutes a night, 2-3 nights a week, versus the 4 nights/3 hours that they seem to want us to do in the guild.

I'm fairly frustrated with my job too. There's so much cruft in the build process and system, I find myself spending hours fighting with it rather than getting real work done. I am not sure how I should proceed there, but once my 1-year tenyure is done I may consider some alternatives. I have to stay that long to keep the sign-on bonus I got when I started.

12.31.2007 - Smokey Quesadillas

2007-12-31T08:13:00.000-08:00

This is a really amazing quesadilla recipe. It's really easy and tastes great. We generally dip in sour cream and/or salsa.

Ingredients
1 (6-ounce) package sliced portabella mushrooms
1 teaspoon roasted garlic
1 teaspoon mesquite seasoning
4 (1-ounce) slices Deli smoked Gouda cheese
4 (10-inch) flour tortillas
1 (10-ounce) can chunk white chicken (drained)
1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
butter cooking spray

Steps

Combine mushrooms, garlic, and mesquite seasoning in microwave-safe bowl. Cover and microwave on HIGH 3 minutes or until thoroughly heated.
Cut Gouda cheese slices in half. Assemble quesadillas, two at a time, by placing 2 cheese slices on one half of each tortilla (leaving other half empty). Layer one fourth of each ingredient, in this order, over top of cheese slices: chicken, shredded cheese, and mushroom mixture. Fold empty half of tortilla over filling and press down lightly.
Coat flat pan with cooking spray; grill 2 quesadillas at a time 2–3 minutes or until crisp, flipping half way through. Repeat with remaining quesadillas. Cut into wedges and serve.

12.31.2007 - What a Slacker!

2007-12-31T08:05:00.000-08:00

I've really slacked off on this site. Sorry about that, if anyone actually reads it. Christmas has come and gone. I'm down to (at my best) 203.5 lbs, which is great progress. I hope to be under 200 before long. All the holiday sweets have been troublesome, but I've done reasonably well I think.

I got my wife a Garmin Nuvi 200w for Christmas. I really like it. It's got a lot of cool features, and a very intuitive interface. After using the build in nav in my ES330 it's a little different, but no worse, and in some ways better. I like the 3D view (though my wife does not) and I like the ability to search for stuff by proximity to you now. I used it to find a Wachovia near my house the other day, and we used it to find a Waffle House near our church on Christmas day.

I personally got a couple of nice gifts from my wife, both unexpected. I got a nice Fossil watch, and an Apple Bluetooth wireless keyboard. It's really tiny and cool.

On the WoW front, my shaman Turkic is level 65 now. I've leveled him really quickly. I wanted to be 70 sooner, since my friend Willow got her shammy Boogaloo to 70 first and is already getting raid epics for hers. I'm on the trail though, and will be there soon. I hope I enjoy healing in a raid, because this has been a lot of "work".

12.07.2007 - Void Reaver Down!

2007-12-07T06:19:00.000-08:00

After our second night of trying, we killed Void Reaver last night. It took two tries, with us wiping at 6% due to the enrage the first time. It's a really fun fight, getting to battle the other tanks for aggro all the way through.

We didn't get a warrior shoulder token, but I don't think I had enough points to get it if it did drop anyway. Oh well, I'll keep going until I get T4 chest off Magtheridon, and either T4 or T5 shoulders from Maulgar or Void Reaver. We don't have them on farm yet, but it's inevitable that we will. Our biggest issue now is getting the trash down faster. We're going to start Serpentshrine Cavern next week, with the goal of killing Maulgar, Gruul, Magtheridon and Void Reaver all in 1 day eventually. That should in theory be doable in 3 hours of raiding, although I'll never be there for the first hour and a half .

Yesterday I had Taco Bell for lunch. At a small amount, and only bean and cheese items (no meat). We'll see where I end up today, but I am guessing I'll be on my own. I kind of want to go see the Golden Compass tomorrow night with my wife, but I suspect she won't want to see it.

12.07.2007 - Mike Huckabee is a Nut

2007-12-06T10:58:00.000-08:00

Having seen only Mike Huckabee's propoganda, I thought he might be a reasonably interesting and viable guy to consider voting for. Apparently though, he's an idiot and doesn't think evolution happened. Discarding a century of scientific proof despite the fact that it doesn't even contradict divine purpose is just ridiculous. Even the Catholic Church, which is arguably one of the more conservative Christian religions, doesn't see evolution as contradictory to the existence of God. A quote from the July 2004 Vatican Statement on Creation and Evolution by Pope Benedict XVI:

In the Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be demonstrated by science. Divine causality can be active in a process that is both contingent and guided. Any evolutionary mechanism that is contingent can only be contingent because God made it so. An unguided evolutionary process – one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence – simply cannot exist because “the causality of God, Who is the first agent, extends to all being, not only as to constituent principles of species, but also as to the individualizing principles....It necessarily follows that all things, inasmuch as they participate in existence, must likewise be subject to divine providence” (Summa theologiae I, 22, 2).

The Catholic church essentially recognizes that creationism and evolution can coexist. I think most reasonable, intelligent Christians, myself included, would agree that evolution research does not exclude divine purpose as a causality, and suggesting that it does indeed goes beyond the scope of science. I'm not a big fan of a lot of the things the Catholic Church puts out, but this is a reasonable position that Mike Huckabee and others like him would do well to consider.

For me, I'm still leaning toward Obama, but I hear Ron Paul is worth a look too.

12.06.2007 - Magtheridon dead

2007-12-06T08:51:00.000-08:00

Two weeks after forming the guild [FortyTwo], the former members of [The Crazy Ones] and [Treacherous Set] have downed High King Maulgar, Gruul, and Magtheridon. It's a big deal, and really fun for those of us who were former TCO members and couldn't get 25 people online for these raids.

We're hitting Void Reaver tonight for the second time. I'm looking forward to it. Among other things, he drops warrior T5 shoulders and really nice tanking bracers.

I'm still working on the diet. I've snacked some over the past few days, even eating a couple of candy bars. I have to watch it a little more closely. So far I've stuck to non-calorie drinks though, and I'm trying to control my intake.

I did some PvP this morning on my warrior, and it was just pathetic. Of 40 people in Alterac Valley, 29 were farming honor while AFK in the cave. What this means is there was nobody left to actually farm any honor. It's completely out of hand, and Blizzard needs to take some additional steps beyond having active players flagging people AFK. We didn't even have enough active players to get the group flagged.

I am leveling my shaman. He's 46 now, and well on the way to 47. I'm gonna have him at 70 pretty soon, and my guild's going to me shocked at what a great healer a resto shammy can be with me at the helm.

12.02.2007 - Weekend Recap

2007-12-03T06:49:00.001-08:00

I had a long weekend. On Saturday my wife worked, so I was at home watching the kids solo (there are four of them ages 11 months - 7 years if you're just joining in). My wife had to deal with an emergency case, so we drove out to meet her at about 6pm for dinner at Sweet Tomatoes, my 7-year-old's favorite. It's really easy to eat healthily there, and I successfully skipped the dessert.

Sunday my wife had a continuing education seminar on Endocrinology, so I was again left with the kids. I took all four to church by myself, which was an adventure. She got home around 3:30, just in time to help me finish cleaning the house when the cub scouts got there at 4 for our Den meeting. We did some stuff with tools, learned to turn screws and hammer nails, then we made and painted totems to keep track of the boys' wolf badge progress.

One of the moms made some Cuban desserts and brought them. It was a sweet pastry with cream cheese and guava inside and sugar sprinkled on top. It was really delicious. For dinner, we had butter noodles, fish sticks, mixed vegetables, and mandarin oranges. I ate in moderation.

This morning, I weighed 202.5 lbs! I was really thrilled. I had some Total Cranberry Crunch for breakfast; I don't really like it, but my wife keeps buying it and I forgot to tell her not to. Oh well, it's good for me.

A couple of other things worth mentioning. I am going to main-tank Gruul on Tuesday. I'm excited about that, even though it's another 50g to respec. I think I need to start doing my daily quests again to replenish the coffers. I'm also on the schedule for Thursday, so I may get to see Magtheridon and/or Void Reaver.

I also got my shaman to level 45, so he's coming along. I'm doing Ferales quests on him now. I always liked that zone, so I'm having fun with him.

Finally, I got on a 5v5 arena team that plays finally. I played 6 games last night, and we won 4 of them. My new S1 arena gear helped immensely, and made me want to work on it some more. I am gathering honor for the [Vindicator's Band of Triumph] next.

11.29.2007 - Litany Continues

2007-11-29T08:19:00.000-08:00

I had a Chik-fil-a chicken biscuit for breakfast this morning. I forgot to have my usual banana at home, and I was hungry. I went to Chik-fil-a intending on getting one of their fruit cups, but in a moment of weakness I bought the chicken biscuit and an orange juice instead.

I also got a big giant bag of Swedish Fish for my birthday from my wife's sister Susie. Since it is probably the world's most perfect candy, I have been eating it lately, and I'm sure it's not helping the diet. Oh well, it's almost gone.

I did manage to throw away the cheesecake my mom gave me without eating it all. Small victory there I guess, but 2 slices of that cheesecake would likely be worse for me that a whole bag of Swedish Fish.

I also ate a healthy dinner. I had a fat free Publix yogurt smoothie, a Lean Cuisine Panini, and a handful of Sun Chips. Probably one of the more health-conscious dinners I've had since I started dieting.

I'm going to get something healthy today. Maybe Subway, since I went to Dreamland BBQ yesterday with my coworkers instead of getting my usual turkey sub Wednesday special. I'd really like more sushi, but it's too expensive to go twice in a week.

I picked up the [Gladiator's Plate Gauntlets] this morning before work on my warrior. They should help with my arena aspirations going forward. I also did a Heroic Black Morass instance last night -- it was a joke. I was really impressed with how painless it was. We had me, Social, Kare, Quoth, and Eliar in there. I did adds (with some help), and we had a good time.

11.28.2007 - Recap etc

2007-11-28T06:28:00.000-08:00

Went to sushi with my buddy Garet Jax Monday (his in-game name, not his real one). He plays a warrior in my WoW guild. We went to JP Sushi and both got the teriyaki chicken boxes, which are delicious.

Yesterday, I went to Taco Bell. Not quite as fancy, to be sure. I got pintos and cheese, a cheese quesadilla, and a chicken soft taco (sans ranchero). I tried to avoid the bad stuff, and think I probably did. I went over to the Apple Store at Northpoint to look around, and to Best Buy to look into a Christmas present for my wife (no luck).

I'll probably head over to Subway today for that 6" turkey special today. Go go gadget weight loss.

Oh! I got all my "welfare epics" last night. For my warrior I picked up:

[Gladiator's Plate Chestpiece]
[Gladiator's Plate Legguards]
[Gladiator's Plate Shoulders]
[Vindicator's Plate Greaves]

I got the boots instead of the gloves and hat. They cost more, but they are a much higher ilevel, so they will last longer. I think I may just arena for the Season 3 hat, because I think it looks awesome, and the stats are great too. I will get the S1 gloves tomorrow. I was about 500 points short on those, but I won an AV before work, and it was the daily quest to boot, so that's ~1200 honor or so right there. I put an Aldor exalted enchant on the shoulders, a clefthide patch on the legs, and gemmed up the BP.

For my hunter, I got the [Gladiator's Chain Armor] for honor points, and the [Vengeful Gladiator's Waraxe] with arena points. I gemmed the chest already.

I managed to get the axe enchanted, but I need a ton of the Large Prismatic Shards for the other enchants (two chest enchants, plus a boot enchant). I'm not sure if I should go for +6 all or +resilience for my warrior's chest, but I'll likely go with +6 all since I'll be using it for PvE and PvP.

Been a long time, been a lonely, lonely, lonely long time

2007-11-27T05:37:00.001-08:00

Wow, it's been a while since I posted. I missed talking about Thanksgiving, my 11th wedding anniversary, putting up Christmas decorations, and a huge fight with my wife. No worries though, I persevere.
I'm still sticking with the diet. I forgot to weigh this morning but I was down to 206.5 on Monday, which is 15.5 lbs less than when I started this diet. I'm surviving so far, even if it does mean giving up Coca Cola (sorry, but Diet Coke and Coke Zero just suck by comparison).

Today is the start of Season 3 in WoW. I've got about 68000 honor saved up on my warrior, enough to get 5 pieces of Gladiator gear. I'm not sure which 5 I am getting yet, but I know I am getting the Breastplate, Shoulders, and Legguards for my warrior, and the Breastplate for my hunter. I am also hopefully getting this insane S3 axe for my hunter with arena points. I don't know how many I'll get this week, but the axe is only 1000 points. I ultimately want all 5 Gladiator pieces plus the trinket, the thrown weapon, two rings (S2 and S3), the Season 3 boots, and the Season 3 belt. That's roughly 150,000 honor, or twice what I have now. I may forgo the season 1 hat in favor of the Season 3 boots, then get a Season 3 hat from the arena. I love the look of it, and the stats are great.

The items I am considering (and ultimately want) from honor points for my warrior are:

[Gladiator's Plate Helm]
[Gladiator's Plate Chestpiece]
[Gladiator's Plate Gauntlets]
[Gladiator's Plate Legguards]
[Gladiator's Plate Shoulders]
[Gladiator's War Edge]
[Vindicator's Plate Belt]
[Vindicator's Plate Bracers]
[Vindicator's Plate Greaves]
[Vindicator's Band of Triumph]
[Vindicator's Pendant of Dominance]

My first arena item for my warrior will be:

[Vengeful Gladiator's Plate Helm]

But I need a better arena team, one that will play every week.

11.19.2007 - Lunch

2007-11-19T10:37:00.000-08:00

I had to get a haircut today, so I popped over to Hair Cuttery across the street from my office. Afterward, I walked next door and got the Subway special of the day: 6" ham & turkey sub, a bag of chips, and a drink. I got diet coke to drink, and some really awesome Garden Salsa Sun Chips. I could eat those things all day.

11.19.2007 - Weekend Recap

2007-11-19T06:22:00.000-08:00

Friday was my birthday. My wife and I got babysitters to come watch the kids, and we went on a date. We went to the new Provino's by the Mall of Georgia, and went to see Dan In Real Life. The dinner was good, and so was the movie. I got a really good Seafood Trio pasta dish with shrimp, clams, and scallops in a Rosatella sauce. My wife got Cannelloni Bolognese, which she usually gets when we go to a Provino's. The movie was pretty good. It didn't get phenomenal reviews, but we both liked it.

Saturday, my 7 year old and I went up to Scoutland for a Cub Scout camping adventure. Because of the drought, fires were banned so the overnight camping was canceled, but we went up for the day. He earned his Wildlife Conservation pin and belt loop cleaning up the shore of Lake Lanier, taking some plaster casts of raccoon tracks, and doing some other fun stuff. He got a badminton belt loop playing badminton with the other scouts, and then we took on fishing. We taught the boys how to tie on a fishing hook in the dark using a special knot that works well for that purpose, and we headed down to the lake. Nobody caught anything, but we all had fun baiting hooks and working on their casting.

Sunday, I took the den to Gwinnett County Fire Station 26 for a tour and some fire safety instruction. The boys had a great time climbing on the fire trucks. There's a picture from my phone of the trip.

I think it was very worthwhile, and I know my sons at least learned how to do stop-drop-and-roll, which by itself made the trip useful as well as fun.

Sunday night my wife made a pre-Thanksgiving dinner. My dad came over to help eat it. She made a turkey, stuffing, green beans, mashed potatoes, cooked carrots, gravy, and we bought some fresh fruit as well. I think everyone enjoyed it.

11.16.2007 Happy Birthday (to me)!

2007-11-16T06:23:00.000-08:00

Sonny Purdue prayed for rain, and it rained that night. I bet that really pissed off the people who were protesting it. We got about an inch at my house, and it was really coming down hard for over an hour. Unfortunately the ground was so dry it soaked it all up in about 2 seconds, but it was still good to see a little rainfall.

We did ZA on Wed night and killed the bear boss. Here's a video of me tanking the troll form part of it:

We killed him again on Thursday after the reset. On Wednesday I tanked the troll form. On Thursday I tanked bear form, since our druid tank was dying to bear form every time on Thursday. The bleeds are just nasty from bear form, and stoneform helped a lot.

So, today is my birthday. My wife is making me an Orange Supreme cake with cream cheese icing. It's not really healthy, but it's my birthday! My mom got me a cheesecake though, and that's going to be the end of my diet if I don't get rid of it before I eat it (I LOVE cheesecake). I had a piece last night, but I am going to send it to work with my wife on Saturday before I break down and eat the whole thing.

We've got a baby sitter coming tonight. The plan is to eat dinner and see a movie. I think we'll probably end up at The Village Tavern, because it's so good, and see Dan In Real Life. It looks like a pretty light-hearted movie, which is good when you only get to go to 2 or so movies a year.

We're also having the Thanksgiving pot-luck at work today. I brought cheesy corn casserole. it's really good, and really easy:

1) Melt 1/2 stick of butter in a casserole dish
2) add 2 Tbsp flour, and 1 egg -- mix with a fork
3) Add 1 can creamed corn, 1 can regular corn (drained)
4) Add 8 oz. shredded mild cheddar cheese
5) Mix thoroughly
6) Crush half a sleeve of Ritz crackers on top
7) Bake @ 350 degrees for 30 minutes

Enjoy!

11.14.2007 - Trolls Abound!

2007-11-14T06:56:00.000-08:00

I did some Zul'Aman last night. We did 3 attempts on the bear boss, then he bugged out and we couldn't get him to engage. We did get him to 25% on the third try though -- he should die tonight. We tried the eagle boss as well. The event is somewhat as described, but the "cloud" effect that everyone has to get under is not anything like you would expect (I was thinking of a druid's hurricane). It's actually a lightning storm. We'll have to work on this one some, but I did like the gauntlet going up to the boss, which was very original.

Ate a Subway 12" turkey sub yesterday for lunch. It was not terrible, and pretty healthy. I should have gotten the 6" but I was starving. I'm not sure what I will do today for lunch -- my coworkers do BBQ every Wednesday, but I'm burned out on it.

11.13.2007 - Fall is In the Air

2007-11-13T06:55:00.001-08:00

This is the parking lot outside my office. The trees are ablaze with color. It's cool in the morning, and comfortable in the afternoon. If only we could get about 4 feet of rain real quick then go back to this, the weather would be perfect.

My wife and I have taken to keeping a bucket in the kitchen and in the shower so we can catch extra "gray water" for watering the plants outside. We planted 3 blueberry bushes and 2 apple trees, and are using it to keep them watered in light of the watering ban. My wife says she feels "green" doing it.

On the diet front, I've lost about 11 lbs if you can trust the scale. Not bad. I need to stick with it. I really like the little ruby red grapefruit cups I got, so those are another healthy snack I am enjoying. I went to On the Border for lunch yesterday, and there wasn't anything on the menu I'd call healthy. I had homemade pot roast last night, but I ate more carrots than anything else. I'm going for Subway turkey today to balance it out.

11.12.2007 Weekend Recap

2007-11-12T05:12:00.000-08:00

I can't say I ate that healthily this weekend. I am going to have ot make up for the Chili's Classic Steak Fajitas, for sure. I did skip the sour cream, but it wasn't exactly a healthy meal. My wife says I have to be willing to eat something I like now and then or I'll never stick with it though.
Speaking of Chili's, our service was horrible. We'll never go to the Suwanee-Dam location again. The one in Buford is busier, but at least you get service when you go there.

We went to Costco on Sunday. I got some really cool red grapefruit cups that I can have for snacks. They're quite tasty. My wife also bought about 5 lbs. of carrots to make a pot roast tonight. There will be a lot of extra carrots, so I may do as my grandmother did for me as a kid and cut some up and put them in the fridge in water for when I want a snack.

On the WoW front, the 2.3 patch comes out tomorrow. I never quite reached my honor goal of 66,000 honor points, but I did get enough to get most of the items I wanted. I'll pick up the rest in the coming weeks at a more leisurely pace.

11.09.2007 - Sushi Zutto

2007-11-09T10:21:00.000-08:00

At the suggestion of Liz at the People Network, I went to a place called Sushi Zutto today for lunch. It's an all-you-can-eat place, but all the sushi is made to order instead of the buffets you might see other places. The selection was really good too, with 20+ sushi types, about 10 sashimi, and 10 or so different rolls.

The sushi itself was quite good, and the menu was varied. I had tuna, spicy tuna, seared tuna, salmon, crab stick, shrimp, and california rolls. The tuna was excellent, some of the best I have had. The california rolls were cut too thick, likely in an attempt to fill you up so you eat less of the other stuff, but they were tasty and I was undeterred. I skipped the mediocre miso soup and ginger salad that is standard fare at sushi places. I had read that they didn't have low-sodium soy sauce, which is unfortunately true.

My only complaint was the service. It took about 10 minutes to get my first order (about 9 pieces, plus california rolls). My second order was 4 pieces and took over 20 minutes to get. They were moderately busy, but that seems pretty extreme. I am unsure if I'll go back because of the service, which is a shame since the sushi was quite tasty.

11.06.2007 - So far, so good

2007-11-06T07:04:00.000-08:00

Last might my wife made Cheesy Chicken and Rice. It was pretty good. I had salad with low-fat Italian Kraft salad dressing, and mixed vegetables, and water to drink.

This morning I had a bowl of Total Cranberry Crunch Cereal. I can't say that I am a fan, to be honest. The cranberry and oat clusters are good, but the flakes themself are pretty tasteless. I guess I'll eat it though, since it's healthy.

I was going to bring leftovers for lunch today, but I forgot. I guess it's another day of going out to eat. Maybe I can find something different than the same fare I usually have.

Weekend Recap

2007-11-05T06:47:00.000-08:00

We had a good weekend. My wife worked on Saturday, so I balanced between watching the kids and playing Warsong Gulch on my warrior for tokens needed to get Gladiator pieces in WoW patch 2.3, plus doing assorted housework. I also took them to get haircuts and to Burger King after. I got a grilled chicken sandwich there -- I'm sure it wasn't good for me, but I did the best I could.

We went to Golden Corral for dinner because Olive Garden had 50 minute wait, which is a death sentence with 4 hungry kids. I tried to eat reasonably healthy, but it's tough there with all the fried foods and desserts. I did have a small piece of cake at the end, but it was a compromise from the huge array of desserts I could have eaten.

Sunday after church we went to the outlet mall in Dawsonville. My wife needed to get clothes and stuff for the kids. I got a really nice desk lamp for my office at the Restoration Hardware outlet for 40% off.

We ate dinner at Ruby Tuesday's. I got a 7 oz petite sirloin steak (rare), a baked potato, and steamed broccoli. Pretty healthy, especially since my two younger sons helped eat the potato.

I'm off to work now. I had a bowl of Reeses Puffs cereal this morning. I'm all out of the granola bar cereal until I can get to the store.

Our Next President?

2007-11-02T09:00:00.000-07:00

I've voted in every presidential election since I turned 18. Since I was in my early twenties, I have tried to follow the primaries and vote in them as well. I've always ended up voting for the republican candidate for president in the end, but not so much because I liked them, but because I disliked the alternative. I was pretty happy with the first George Bush, and thought Bob Dole would have been a decent enough president. I never cared for George W (I think he's an idiot and always have) but John Kerry was a liberal freak, and I liked Al Gore less and less every time I saw him in a speech or a debate, to the point I just couldn't vote for him. The whole Florida vote fiasco made me like him even less.

I'm generally a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. I'm generally against the government restricting people's rights (pro choice, pro gay rights/marriage), and I really like the fair-tax idea. I'm not a fan of welfare or nationalized health care, but honestly as long as I can take my kids to whatever doctor I want and don't pay more than I am paying now I don't care who runs the program.

Now that you know where I am coming from, I am really interested in this upcoming election. On the Democrat side, we have three leading people: Hillary Clinton, Barrack Obama, and John Edwards, plus some other guys. On the Republican side, you have Rudy Guliani and Mitt Romney, plus some other guys.

I honestly don't like any of the Republicans at all. None of them seem smart, and they all seem to think the current administration hasn't completely screwed up (I think they have). So I'm left looking at the Democrats for my candidate. I don't like John Edwards; I feel like he's a rich guy pretending to be a regular guy, and he just doesn't pull it off. That narrows it down to the two front runners. My wife says Hillary has zero chance to win the election, and I think she's right. She's just as waffly a her husband was, and I always disliked that about him. I'm not entirely sure I couldn't vote for her, but it would take some effort on her part to take some stands I agree with.

Finally, there's Obama. This guy is smart, eloquent, and practical. Why can't the Republicans get a candidate that you can say that about? I saw him on Ellen the other day (my wife TiVo's it), and I was impressed once again. I can't say I agree with everything about him, but I like his "naive" approach to Iran, I like his strategy for exiting Iraq, and I think he's smart enough to think for himself (the critical flaw of George W. that got him into this mess in the first place).

So for now, Obama is my candidate. I'll be watching closely.

11.02.2007 -- So tired...

2007-11-02T05:54:00.000-07:00

I am just so tired today. I went to bed before midnight, so I'm not sure why I'm so worn down this morning. I am fighting off a cold though, so maybe that's the culprit.

I had leftover chinese food for dinner last night -- ate a reasonably small amount too. I did eat 4 or 5 pieces of Halloween candy though. My willpower's not infallible.

I haven't had breakfast yet. Usually on Friday someone brings in bagels and donuts, but so far, nothing. I had meant to grab a banana off the counter before I left, but I forgot (probably due to the aforementioned tiredness).

I am going to try for something healthy for lunch today - maybe head over to Jason's Deli - and get that lovely healthy turkey rubin.

11.01.07 Lunch

2007-11-01T11:12:00.001-07:00

I went over to JP Sushi solo for lunch. I was starving, and it sounded so good. I got the Teriyaki Chicken box, which has three pieces of sushi (I think it was tuna, yellowtail, and something exotic and sweet for the third), four california rolls, ginger salad, miso soup, some lightly fried veggies, and two of some sort of dumplings, plus teriyaki chicken and rice. It was quite tasty.

I'm a sushi neophyte. I do really like it though and think it's got to be doing me some good over all the fried, cholesterol-filled junk I used to eat so often.

11.01.2007 Recap of Hallows Eve

2007-11-01T06:12:00.001-07:00

My wife was working yesterday, so I took the 3 olders kids out trick-or-treating while my dad came over and manned the door at my house and watched the baby. We live at the bottom of a hill in a very hilly neighborhood, and my butt's feeling the results this morning.

We ended up getting chinese takeout last night after the kids went to bed. I was hungry, and my wife and dad were also. I am sure it wasn't that healthy, but it's not the end of the world. I had a couple of small pieces of candy from the haul, but nothing to be shocked about.

I had a banana for breakfast this morning, and a cup of coffee with Splenda. Jeez, my right leg and my butt hurt. I gotta lose some weight.

10.31.2007 Lunch

2007-10-31T10:29:00.001-07:00

I had to take my car over to the dealership to get my 20k mile service today. While I was waiting, I walked over to Moe's and got an Art Vandalay (vegetarian) burrito. It had black beans, rice, tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, sour cream (I know it's bad, but you need it to temper the heat), cilantro, fresh jalapeño peppers, and of course, hot sauce, with a side of chips (only ate a few) and a diet Coke.

I'm not a fan of diet Coke in general, but it's hard to find diet drinks at the fountain, and I can't drink unsweet tea. In the south unsweet tea is sort of an abomination.

It wasn't a half-bad lunch, and probably wasn't too bad for me. I didn't get the steak (which I used to get) in an effort to be a little more healthy, and skipped the guacamole for the same reason.

10.31.2007 Breakfast

2007-10-31T05:19:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween!

I had Kellog's Lowfat Granola with Raisins for breakfast. It's not that healthy, but it's not terrible, and it tastes pretty good too. My wife says I should eat something every morning for breakfast to keep my metabolism higher. In the past I would generally skip breakfast, or get a Chik-fil-a chicken biscuit on the way to work. Those taste wonderful, but they aren't really healthy at all.

Zul'Aman First Impression

2007-10-30T19:25:00.001-07:00

5 of my guildmates and I visited the Public Test Realm (PTR) to try the new World of Warcraft raid, Zul'Aman. First off, the intro sequence is awesome. I laughed out loud. We got through all the trash before the first boss in about 6 minutes our first time there, and it didn't seem that tough. Unfortunately, that's when the instance server crashed. We didn't get an attempt on the boss.

I am really looking forward to trying this out on the live servers.

10.30.2007 Dinner

2007-10-30T15:07:00.000-07:00

My wife made homemade spaghetti for dinner tonight. She makes a really good meat sauce. It's not that hard to make, but it has to cook all day (the longer the better). Had garlic bread and water to drink. Not too unhealthy considering it's mostly homemade (a few canned tomatoes).

Here's the recipe, and it's good enough that my wife usually doubles it so we can freeze some for later:

3 cloves garlic
1 lb. Ground beef
1 small can tomato paste
1 can diced tomatoes
1/2 tsp salt
1 medium onion
1/2 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil
1/4 tsp pepper
1 heaping Tbsp sugar

Brown the beef and the onion. Drain the fat. Add the rest of the ingredients plus 2 tomato paste cans of water. Simmer – very slow boil for at least 2 hours. Add water if too thick, cook longer if too thin.

Where I Live

2007-10-30T10:59:00.001-07:00

There's a huge drought in Georgia right now, the worst I can remember. We have some pretty severe water restrictions going now (no outdoor water use), and they are asking people to use less water at home too.

I live near Lake Lanier, one of two major reservoirs for water for Atlanta and the surrounding areas. The water level keeps dropping and dropping.

It's gone down more than 6 feet since we moved here in August. The Army Corp of Engineers that runs Buford Dam is still sending tons of water downstream to Alabama and Florida, even though neither state is experiencing a drought. We're going to be out of water so that some mussels in the mud don't die off. It really annoys me.

The pic is one I took on my way to work on Sept 18th. It doesn't truly do justice to how beautiful it looked in person.

10.30.2007 Lunch

2007-10-30T10:41:00.001-07:00

I had a Publix 12" turkey sub for lunch. It had lettuce, tomato, black olives, mustard, vinegar, and oregano on a wheat roll. I skipped the oil, salt and pepper, and mayo in the interest of healthiness.

Drank about half a Coke Zero also. It's not nearly as good as real Coke, but better than Diet Coke anyway.

Not terrible. I think I prefer the turkey sub from Subway, and it's cheaper and smaller too (a bonus when you're trying to be healthy).

I was craving sushi, but I couldn't bring myself to buy sushi from the grocery store. Maybe I can convince Garetjax to go to JP Sushi on Friday. They have really good stuff and I don't worry as much about food poisoning.

Does anyone know, is sushi considered healthy? I know California rolls have avocado in them, which isn't particularly healthy, but the benefits of eating fish are all over the news. I don't get a lot of fish in my diet, and aside from sushi, the fish I do eat is generally either fried or soaked in butter to ensure that it's not healthy.

Work

2007-10-30T08:14:00.000-07:00

I work for a phone company -- one that makes cell phones. My work doesn't involve making cell phones though. I work on software that is used for enterprise device management. So, if you're Coca Cola, and you have 10,000 employees with smart phones, you can manage them with our software. If a phone gets stolen, you can disable it remotely, wipe off all the data, etc.

If you're at a meeting and need a file, we can push it to your phone for you. We do all the usual stuff like email and contact synchronization too of course. Pretty cool stuff.

Our big push right now (and why I was hired in July away from my job at Cingular/AT&T) is to port our software to java and get it running on Linux (previous releases were Windows-only). It's going pretty well, and we're shooting for a November release. My background is java and UNIX so I'm a lot more comfortable on the new code than I am with the old Windows MFC stuff.

I just finished a feature called Distributed Push, which basically lets you update a publication (a file, or whatever) and tell all the phones out there to come get it, but to do so in a distributed way across multiple servers and over a period of time such that everyone doesn't come and sync at the same time and slow things down. It's pretty cool.

We're putting in a lot of extra hours to get it out the door. I think it's gonna be a good release though, and should help us to make the company and its shareholders glad we exist.

2007-10-30T07:49:00.001-07:00

Oh, here are a few things I love to eat:

Restaurants
Chili's -- Classic Steak Fajitas are about the best I've found
The Varsity -- two chili dogs, peach pie, and onion rings, so greasy and good
Ruby Tuesday's -- Peppercorn Mushroom Sirloin is really good for a chain
JP Sushi -- teriyaki lunch box is wonderful (has sushi, sashimi, and teriyaki, as well as some veggies)
Village Tavern -- the crab dip is to die for, and the steaks are so good you don't need steak sauce
Simon's Chinese -- the best Chinese in Alpharetta, by far

Other Stuff
Cheesecake (New York style is ideal -- dense and rich)

Day 1

2007-10-30T07:24:00.000-07:00

Welcome. This blog is mostly for me, but you're welcome to visit.

Two weeks ago we had free health screenings at work. I am 6'2" tall, and weighed in at 223 lbs (fully dressed, with shoes). My cholesterol was a little high, and so was my blood pressure. Free health screenings are a good thing, I think.

I'm a snacker. I've always been one, but it's gotten worse as I've gotten older. I especially snack after my wife ands kids go to bed and I am sitting in front of the computer playing WoW until 12:30 or so at night.

So, I'm trying to do better. I have cut out sugar-based soft drinks. I'm from the South (Georgia), so Coke is a staple of my diet. Plus, at work we have free soft drinks from the machine, so that's an additional temptation. I've gone from drinking 3-4 Cokes/Mountain Dews per day to none. I've had 1 Coke in the last 2 weeks. I am drinking a lot more water, and some Coke Zero, and a cup of coffee sweetened with Splenda in the morning.

I've also tried to eat better. I've cut out the Zesty Chicken Bowl at Taco Bell (mmmm) for Bean Burritos and Chicken Soft Tacos (no ranchero sauce). I seem to remember them being some of the healthier choices there. I have switched my Chik-fil-a lunch from 2 fried chicken sandwiches to 1 grilled one and a fruit cup. I get the oriental salad at McDonalds now instead of the Premium chicken sandwiches.

I've also enlisted my wife to help. She's 5'4" and 120-something pounds (an amazing feat considering we have 4 kids). She historically has bought tons of junk food, and doesn't eat it, fueling my snacking problem. She's promised to stop doing this.

I plan on tracking what I have been eating here, including the crap I eat that I shouldn't. I'll also track how the weight loss goes. Wish me luck!