Tightening of the Belt

Yesterday, without even thinking about it, I tightened my belt and low and behold I was able to move it one extra hole. Nice.

Mozy.com

A friend of mine works for mozy.com. The premise of the company is to make offiste computer data backup available to the masses--well for right now only Windows users, but soon Mac users as well.

I tried out their product some over the weekend and am impressed by the concept and the implementation of the client. Looking forward to a Mac client as I don't run any dedicated Windows boxes.

Poor Week

This week from an eating standpoint is going poor. I have for the past three days I have deviated from my 3 meals, one snack regimine. On the positive note I have done weights and cardio each day this week--despite several mornings where I just didn't want to get out of bed.

CFLs (Compact Fluorescent Lights)

We have our electric and gas bill equalized over 12 months, which makes it easy on the monthly budget. Unfortunately the recent electric bill adjustment jumped our monthly electric payment from under $120 to $170. To put it mildly, this shocked me, and quite honestly pissed me off. So to help reduce our electric bill I am quickly moving many of the major lights to CFLs.

The lights that I began replacing with CFLs were the ones that the kids typically leave on for long periods of time. I replaced most of the bathroom lights (which get left on a lot) with CFLs first. Not only are these left on a lot, but they are also a lot of lights--in four bathrooms there are 22, 60 watt lights for a total of 1320 watts in use when all are burning. Of the 22 bulbs, all but 4 were converted to 13-15 watt CFLs. This change reduces the watts used by nearly 900 watts. All of the kids rooms have been converted to CFLs as well as all the main bulbs down in the basement. In all I have replaced about 41 incandescent bulbs with CFLs.

So am I happy with them?

For the most part yes. Each of the bulbs uses less energy, but puts out more actual light. The light output as well as the energy savings makes me very happy, particularly since the lumen output of a 40 watt CFL is similar to a standard incandescent 60 watt bulb, so in some cases where I had multiple lights per room (such as the bathrooms) I replace some 60 watt bulbs with CFLs thus saving a few extra watts.

I am not happy with the length of time the lights take to completely warm up and reach their full lumen output. Some of the lights also have a slight delay before the lights even put out any light. Those two are the major frustrations. The starkness of the light is a slight irritation to me, but not to Jen. She is mostly frustrated with the two main issues noted above, which is why one of our main bathrooms is a mix of CFLs and incandescent--well those two reasons and price. The spiral CFLs are relatively inexpensive--about the same cost as the halogena lights that I really like. Globe lights, that we have in the kids bathroom, are over $4 a light bulb--nearly 3 times the cost of an incandescent. All the literature (well packaging really) says that we will save money over the life of the bulb. I guess I'll find out.

Fun with Amazon

I love amazon and am a regular purchaser of their services--mostly for DVDs and books. Today Jen went on-line to purchase some gifts for her the cousins down in San Diego, and after purchasing the items realized that she had forgotten to ship it to her sister in California. Unfortunately when she went to cancel the order was already moved to processing. And this brings up my greatest beefs with Amazon.

As I am an Amazon Prime member, I get free 2-Day shipping, thus as soon or within minutes of a checkout being made, the order is locked into the "shipping soon" status, which means that the order cannot be canceled.

So upon searching the Amazon website and then google, I found the customer service phone number, where upon I was told that they could not cancel the order and that once I receive a tracking number to call the carrier and cancel the shipment. I explained that I was very aware of their shipment time-frame and was very frustrated with the immediate change to "Shipping Soon" within minutes of the order being placed. I also explained that I know the order won't be shipped till later tonight, early tomorrow and that they should be able to cancel this order as it was being shipped to the wrong address. She again informed me that the order could not be canceled. This perturbed me to no end, so I asked to speak with her supervisor, and unfortunately after requesting it multiple times had to yell at the customer service rep (I always feel guilty when I have to do this).

The supervisor, probably due to my insistence with the front line rep, immediately premised to contact the order fulfillment center to get the order canceled, and much to her credit the order was canceled.

Now here is the ironic part. Shortly after getting the initial order canceled, I went on-line and ordered the products again and checked out. It wasn't until later that night that I realized that I had shipped it to us, rather than to California. I am a moron, who begrudgingly and humbly ate his crow last night.

Sick Day

Last Thursday (Jan 18) Ryan came home sick after throwing-up at school. He later threw up in the bathroom, unfortunately missing the toilet, so we kept him home on Friday. Yesterday (Sunday) Ky came down with the same symptoms shortly after coming home from church. Unfortunately his nausea hit while he was sitting on the toilet with diarrhea. This resulted in the bathroom floor once again being covered with vomit. Nice.

Well, last night Jen began getting the same symptoms as the kids, and Taylor started complaining about an upset stomach. Heather also was complaining about an upset tummy, but I think her complaints stemmed from the desire to sleep with a bowl in her bed. Needless to say today I took a sick day to help Jen out, and we kept Ky and Taylor home from school just to make sure that no additional clean-up was needed at school. All was quiet from the vomit patrol, and no further sightings were encountered. That was good since I can't stomach the sight nor smell of vomit.

278.8

So as I mentioned here one of my main goals this year is to lose at least 50 lbs. To that end I have begun exercising daily (or most days), limiting when I eat and how often I eat, and eliminating many of the grazing foods from my diet (cookies, chips, soda, and candy bars).

For the most part I have done well in limiting when I eat, and what I eat. I have fallen off a couple times, and mornings after Hailey hasn't slept very well have been tough to get up and exercise. But surprisingly the cravings, and longing for food in the middle of the day have been minimal and readily resolved (ie drinking water, or carefully planning my snack to coincide with the strongest cravings).

Current Weight: 278.8

Ryan, the little man

Ryan will occassionaly do things that strike me as more mature or grown-up than he actually is. Today was just such an occurence.

I was walking past the kids bathroom upstairs when I noticed the light was on. When I opened the door to turn it off (assuming no one was in it) I found Ryan sitting on the toilet, reading the newspaper. I had to chuckle.

Ky, the reader

Each night we have a family routine. We start the bedtime routine around 7pm. This routing consists of: pajamas, brush teeth, family prayers (each kid prays), scriptures, then reading with each individual child. We start the reading process with Heather and Ryan, and then move down to Taylor and Ky.

Both Ky and Taylor are good readers, but after finishing reading with Ky I was struck by Ky's love of reading. After reading a couple of chapters of the book I am reading to Ky, I put the book on his window sill, on a stack of books that Ky is reading on his own. Normally Ky's stack of books is several books deep--books of 200-300 or more pages each. This stack of books are typically the books that he is presently reading, but will occassionally contain a just finished and a yet to be started book. Tonight I am not sure why it struck me since the stack is always there, but tonight it struck me how much Ky loves reading. On the nights when we get them to bed late and put them to bed without allowing them to read on their own, Ky will actually sulk.

Fatty, fat, fat.

I be fat. Yes it is true, I be fat. Some would call it obese, but I just call it fatty, fat, fat.

Since I graduated from High School weighing close to 180 lbs, I have been on a not so steady weight increase. Since I got home from my mission the lightest I have weighed was 205 lbs, and that was a result of me chasing my wife--literally. You see when I first met Jen and began studying with her, we didn't really begin dating for a bit, what we did do is begin running together. Really what happened is she mentioned to me that she ran every day and I volunteered to run with her. So up until we got engaged Jen and I ran 6 days a week, and as I result I dropped down to 205 lbs. This 6 day a week running regimine had a couple other benefits: first it allowed me to meet my wife, get to know her, and get her to fall in love with me (I fell in love much sooner); second, it allowed me to lose enough weight so that I could get an 'A' in my weight lifting class--as grades were based upon your ability to lift a certain percentage of your body weight. But now I digress.

The purpose of this post is to affirm to the world that I am fat. As noted above it is not like I haven't known it. Were it not for the three years in high school all of my life since my early teenage years would have been pudgy--a nice fat roll hanging loosely around my mid section.

Well, to be honest I am tired of it and this post is more about publically recognizing that I have a problem that needs fixing, then about the suddent realization that I am a fatty, fat, fat.

My goal for this year is to be under 235. This would require an average weight loss of 1 lb per week. To make this happen I am doing the following:

• Daily exercise (20 mins cardio, and weights).
• Better eating. Salads or some other vegetable each dinner.
• Limiting my food consumption to breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus one snack.
• Not eating after 8pm (2 hours before my desired bed time).
• Eliminating Soda (diet or otherwise).
• Drinking water, rather than milk, when thirsty.
• Reducing the amount of television that I watch.

Starting weight (Jan 2): 288.5

I Suck

Why I though this would be easy, or that I could readily do this is beyond me...in short I suck at keeping a blog, and to make matters worse I feel somewhat guilty about sucking.

To not have written anything since August 23, Ryan's Birthday, is pitiful--considering all that has happened:

• Jen's Birthday
• Hailey's Birth
• Thanksgiving
• Santa
• Christmas
• New Year's