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Entry the Six Hundred and Seventy Fourth09 February 2005 Weaving Got Dreamweaver, got in installed, gradually playing with it now. Tonight was actually the first time I've sat down with the program and played some, taking out bad code (and heaven knows there's a ton of it!), tweaking this and that, etc. Is good, as I knew it would be, and some of my previous experience with DW is coming back. Did swim practice today with DCAC this evening, for the first time since last summer. It didn't kick my ass, but it did kick my calves. For some reason, my calves decided they wanted to seize up. One threatened, and the other actually did. Thankfully I was done with a 50, though in the middle of a 400 (which was kicking my ass, actually - I'm not used to more than, say 200 yet). I cut it short, not wanting to seize up in the middle of the pool with folks behind me. Going to have to work on endurance, but I will be going back to practice again. Also got a chance to chat with the coach about the meet we're sponsoring this fall, about events and participating and what not. I want to keep that in mind, and participate, but there's going to be a hell of a lot of prep needed to get there. Ugh. One thing at a time. First, the 10 miler, then a triathlon or two, then the swim meet. Who would have thought I would have turned into a jock? Archives |
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Entry the Six Hundred and Seventy Fifth12 February 2005 Design Thoughts/Finances The calf seems to have recovered from Wednesday's charlie horse as of last night, but I'm going to wait until tomorrow to attempt a run. Will see if I can do the planned 7 miler this weekend or just move the rest week up a week and hit it next weekend. No big deal, I'm still far enough off from the 10 miler, with some wiggle room built in, that a little down time won't kill the training plan. The Dreamweaver stuff is going, but slowly. I managed to get the PHP and MySQL stuff installed on the iBook, and my web provider has gotten the MySQL stuff set up on the site, along with the control panel needed to tweak that, so the backend stuff seems to be up and running now. Now I just have to figure out how to get it all to work and start thinking about how I want the site to look. That's actually going to be the harder part, I think, making it look right. Thankfully DW should make that a good deal easier than it was under my old Corel WebMaster Suite (yes, I was still using a program that is almost a decade old now, and not even listed on Corel's site as something they used to make). Which was, of course, why I wanted to get DW in the first place. Called one of my credit card companies again today, the one I spoke to two months ago who was resistant to lowering my interest rate. This time I politely but firmly insisted on speaking to a manager (so much easier when you're calm and reasonable). Was an interesting conversation with the manager. Long story short, I got the rate down a good chunk. The interesting part was that he claimed my internal score with the company was good, but that my FICO was holding him back from any further reduction in the rate. We had a discussion about that and about the stuff that's still on the one report from my father (ah, the joys of being Moose the Second), and how important it is to get that stuff off of there ("No offense to your father, but you really need to get some of these things off of here; they're not helping your score at all."). So, restarted that process to get that stuff straightened up. Fun. Before it was a bit academic; now, it's affecting my ability to get something I want - my debt paid off faster - so it's a tad more important to me. Spent a good part of today plugged into my iPod in an attempt to completely drain the battery down. Not sure if I'll get there, so might have to continue with the attempt tomorrow, but I want the thing drained completely before I recharge it for Monday's commute in. Not going to have a repeat of the battery problem if I can avoid it. Still trying to decide to what extent I'm going to keep the particular parts of this site separate. I'll still keep the photo journal on the main page, where it's safe for the parental units to see stuff, without linking to the LegalMoose part here. I think the exercise stuff will get included in the main site, because I can categorize stuff as I post it under the plan I'm looking at. It'll be going to a more bloglike format with multiple posts per page, rather than the one-by-one scheme I've had going here since the start. This format just isn't as conducive to easy update and reading. I also have in mind a "body project" part of the site, with updates on how the triathlon training does or does not change this mortal shell, pics, stats, etc. It's not completely clear how I want that to look yet, but it's shaping up. Archives |
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Entry the Six Hundred and Seventy Sixth14 February 2005 Seven/Nutrition The calf was recovered, as suspected, and the seven-plus miler I did on Sunday went well. Dragged Richard out to Alero in Cleveland Park for some good Mexican food that evening. Wasn't in the mood to eat asian (though I did so today) and wanted to drag him to a place he'd not been before. Was a good choice, we both enjoyed the meal. Today I was sore early but recovered pretty well. No residual soreness by the end of the day. I can see now why most plans have you taking off on Monday after doing your long run on Sunday. May have to change the schedule to match that. I need to change the schedule around anyway to tweak a few things, so would be a good time to redo that and make sure I have the rest day in there on Monday. Took some work home, have to head into the office early tomorrow (yuck), so will crash here shortly (it's not quite 10 pm at the moment). I still want to get up and swim, so just have to get down there earlier than normal to get it in. At least getting into the office early means getting out a little early to get the grocery shopping done for dinner with my nutritionist. Provided she emails me to confirm, that is. We've been missing each other of late, which has sucked. I don't think I need to keep her on full-time after the end of this month, but I do want to set something up for a few on-the-spot tweaks as the spring and summer exercise season goes as I feel the need. I've gotten my weight down pretty well, and I know how to track it and be better about eating now, including snacks during the day. We'll see. I never really got into the "exchanges" that seem to be the rage in diet management. They just meant little to me in my everyday eating, and yet I've gotten myself down 7 lbs so far in the 3 months I've been paying more attention, which includes the holiday season as well (this started in late November). I will go in for an assessment with the woman at Body Smith and see how I've progressed in body fat percentage, resting metabolism, etc. Will be interesting to see those numbers. Archives |
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Entry the Six Hundred and Seventy Seventh17 February 2005 Head Cold/Dreams *grumble* Came down with a head cold, ended up taking Wednesday and today off from work. The rest was much needed, as was the time spent in front of the iBook and Dreamweaver, but I'm not sure I want to see the work when I get back, just before a three day weekend. My nutritionist is going to kill me. We were supposed to have dinner Tuesday, then I got sick, and we were supposed to talk, and then I never called, so we're still in limbo. Ugh. Typical, though, with my lack of follow up. Not one of my better qualities. I'm excited about the work I'm doing in Dreamweaver. The idea of having a nice, clean system, without dependence on anyone else's code but my own is kinda cool. I mean, I'm getting help in the form of this online tutorial I'm going through, but it's not like I'm installing someone else's pre-made package on the site; this sucker will be all me, so the bugs will all be my own. it's easier to deal with your own bugs than someone else's, after all. The way it's being set up it looks like I'll be able to put everything but the main site in one database, too. The template is set up to sort entries by categories, and give separate pages for particular categories, so I can post the exercise stuff, and sex stuff, and normal ramblings all in the same place, and if people only want certain entries, they can sort those out. Nice. Then I just have to figure out the main page's photo journal design. The head cold is the first in a little over a month. I know this for certain because I'm tracking such things now, and the last one died for good on the 8th. Is good to track, so that perhaps patterns can be discerned. Anyway, time to crash and pray I get no more wild dreams about folks from LiveJournal. Those were too damned much the last two nights... Archives |
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Entry the Six Hundred and Seventy Eighth18 February 2005 Wrong I can't quite put my finger on it. I'm just feeling depressed/upset/dissatisfied/I don't know what at the moment. Which makes no sense. My debt is going down, I have enough money to pay down on debt, and still live comfortably. My training, while slowed by the current cold, is still going okay. I just feel like something is missing, and I can't put my finger on it. Something's just... wrong. I want things to fit in neat little boxes, and of course, they don't. I want everything organized, and logical, and rational, and of course it's not. I want to live in an orderly world, and I don't. Things don't match my expectations, and that bugs me. Speaking of bugs, two days after the caulking and spraying, I'm starting to see the bugs returning, just as if nothing had happened. Hell, I haven't even put my kitchen back in place and the little shits are back. If this persists this weekend, I'm calling the building manager again and insisting on bigger guns to take care of this. I cannot, and will not, live with these critters in my kitchen any more. Period. Archives |
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Entry the Six Hundred and Seventy Ninth21 February 2005 Small? I'm so mad, I could spit. Was having a lovely holiday today. Slept in until 10ish. Finally got going, cleaned a little, then zipped out with Richard to pick up some things we've been wanting for the house. Got a larger garbage can (sooo much nicer than the last, broken one), some recycling bins (a tad larger than we expected, but that's okay), and then off to get a ton of groceries. Finished up with that, I unpacked stuff, sent Richard off to his workout, then I remembered I was going to go hit the Presidents' Day coupon sale down at Hecht's with a gift card I'd gotten for Christmas (yay for parental units listening when I said I Need Clothes). Confirmed that my friend Brian was unavailable, then caught a bus down. Got in. Discovered the place had been overhauled completely since the last time I was there. Found where men's dress clothes were, proceeded to determine that my favorites, Van Heusen shirts, were on sale, and then tried one on. The 15.5 neck fit, so i decided to go ahead and get it. I've been hovering between a 15.5 and a 16 for a while now, with the consequence that I usually wear my last button unbuttoned and the tie pulled up as far as I feel. Much like several of the managers at work, mind you, but still not the neatest look in the world. Pick out five shirts that I like, proceed to look for my favorite ties, the Cocktail Collection put out by MADD (consistently good designs and colors over the last ten years), and can't find them. Head back over to the Van Heusen ties (because, hey, the colors should match, right?), pick out 4 I like, deposit the now unwieldy bundle at a sales counter and go look at socks. Find two sets of two pair each of my favorite padded dress socks (that extra cushion is so nice). They're rare, so even though they're not marked on sale, I grab 'em. Grab two other three packs, and head over to underwear. Had noticed that my brand, Jockey, was having one of their 2-3x a year sales, so I thought it would be good to get some, even if it meant hauling out my own credit card to get some. This was when the shopping experience went downhill. First, a bit of history. As I've mentioned before, I used to be a big kid. I had to buy a pair of 36" jeans my senior year of high school that barely fit. I now wear either a 31 or 30, depending on the brand. Much better waist size for my 5'6" frame. Growing up, mom bought us fruit of the loom (FTL) undies. That was just what we got. I was able to get her to dump the white ones in favor of color in high school, but FTL was what we got. Which was fine. They fit okay, and were comfortable enough. Then, I shrunk out of FTL's sizing scheme. You see, the small in FTL undies was, at the time (I have no clue how they size now) a 32-34 waist. I could no longer wear their small because I was down to a 30 waist. So suddenly I had to go into department stores to look for underwear, because there was nothing else in the usual places where I bought undies. This was a whole new world for this little not-very-affluent graduate student. While looking, I discovered Jockey boxer briefs, primarily the "Sport" line. And they were perfect. The price point was good, not nearly as expensive as, say, Calvin Klein. The size fit just right. And the legs were great. A lot of boxer briefs are more like "mid-way" briefs, where the brief's legs come about 1/2 way down the thigh. Which would be fine, if I didn't have runner's/cyclist's thighs. Mid-ways start to ride up my legs and bunch near my crotch about mid-way through the day. Not terribly comfortable, let me tell you. So the Jockey ones were just great. They came in a whole bunch of colors and patterns, and tended to go on sale a couple times a year, bringing them down to about $9-$12 a pair. Not bad. Fast forward back to today. I go over, look through the Jockey Sport line, and have my fears pretty much confirmed. After years of letting the line linger, it appears they're letting it die. They had already killed all the colors save Black, White and Grey, but I could live with that. Now the packaging was looking dated, and everything else had new packaging save the Sport line. Okay. Not the end of the world, I said, I'll just go over and look at the other lines they have, including a couple new ones in different fabrics. Wander over to the newer display, note they've continued with sticking a sticker on top with the size so sizes are easy to find, and look for S stickers. Find a bunch of Ms, a lot of Ls, and a ton of XL thongs, but no S stickers. In the middle of getting frustrated at not finding any size smalls, I have the following exchange with a salesman: Him: Hi, can I help you? I was not in the best of moods at this point. I finally pick up a box to look at the sizes, and then I see that on the new packaging, sizes start at a medium (32-34) and go up. No size small. They've discontinued carrying size small. I absorb this, and decide to check out. Buy my stuff, wander over to pants, see that my Dockers are on sale, pick up a couple pair of those (from the same embarrassed salesman, who was not very eager to help and find me my 31 waist pants *grin*), wander through looking at other stuff that was wholly uninteresting, then head home. After making dinner and trying not to watch American Idol (it never works - I always get sucked in), I hopped online and checked the Jockey web site. Sure enough, there are only limited sizes of the old Sport line, and the new lines started at Medium and only went up. Again, no size small. Now, I already have to buy boys size XL undershirts because no one seems to make a small undershirt anymore. I'll be damned if I'm going to get dumped down to boys size underpants, too. And the thing is, this makes no sense! Jockey is placed in department stores and malls where they're competing against Calvin, Nautica, etc. that all have a size small that goes below a 32 waist. Why in heaven's name would they dump that size? Especially when they have row up on row of XL thongs!?!?! And even if they were dropping down to compete with FTL, why would they not adapt the sizing to match FTL's, rather than claim the same size in their product was one size LARGER than the equivalent FTL size? It makes no sense. Needless to say, they've lost a previously happy customer through this and I'll be damned if I'll buy another thing from them. Grrrrrr. Archives |
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Entry the Six Hundred and Eightieth22 February 2005 Overused Well, I knew it was a possibility, I just didn't expect to see it so soon. I have an overuse injury. It's a mild one, admittedly, but evidently the 1.5 hour bike ride Saturday followed by the 4 mile run on Sunday did a number on my right foot. So I'm going to hop into the aircast for a day or two and see how that does. That should let it rest enough to heal up, with some good ibuprofen therapy besides to help kill the swelling. Whee! At least I know what it is, since it feels almost exactly like my foot did at this time last year when I first got off the crutches and back to walking around again - sore from overuse. Odd that it's the opposite foot (I broke the left ankle, not the right), but as I said, at least I know what it is and don't have to run to the doctor. Memory came in for the iBook today, but it's down in the resident services office. Will get it in the morning before I hobble to work. 1 Gig to add to the built-in 256k, thus maxing out the DRAM. Yay! Should make Dreamweaver work & boot a little faster than it's current speed. I hope. Praying the foot will be better for the weekend. I'm fairly certain it was the biking more than the running, since I've not done squat for biking thus far this season, and I have yet to get clipless pedals, so I'm sure it was moving all over the place rather than staying nice and stiff in a biking shoe.. Will limit myself to 1/2 an hour sessions until after the 10 miler, then gradually build. Running has got to be the focus until April, then I can build up the other stuff. Archives |
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Entry the Six Hundred and Eighty First23 February 2005 Unplanned Day Foot did well in the boot today. Not that I went anywhere. Woke up, went toward the front door to get the paper, and discovered several piles of wet, white something or another on the dining room floor. Not the way I usually like to start my day. My first thought was, "What the hell did the cats eat that they puked up that?!?!" Then I looked up. The small bit of bubbling in the dining room ceiling, in the same spot which has bubbled before, which I had noted the previous evening when I returned home, had decided to continue leaking. And dripping. As I stood gaping at the lovely hole that had formed in my ceiling, I noticed that it was still dripping all over the floor at a fairly regular 5 second interval. So I did what anyone else would do in such a situation. I stepped around it and got my newspaper. Proceeded to have breakfast, read the paper, and get showered up before going downstairs to pick up a package (new memory for the iBook - yay!), and tell the resident services folks that my ceiling had fallen in. They got someone up pretty quickly. Unlike the last two times, they didn't (couldn't?) merely sand down the bubbled spot and re-plaster and paint it. They had to rip out a large section of the ceiling and dig out the water. They discovered that one of the drain pipes from the roof had developed a small hole and that was causing the leak. The pipe got plugged, the drywall and what not got trimmed, and I have a large bag over the hole while it dries enough for them to replaster and paint, probably sometime around Friday or Monday. By this point, I was totally not going to work. Took the cats to the vet at noon, finally getting them in to get their long-overdue shots, and to get Natasha's missing back nail looked at. They did very well with the trips to and from, and the vet visit itself. Was happily surprised when Natasha did not immediately dive under the bed when I brought them home. Before she'd have hidden herself away until she got hungry. Thank heavens she's over that. Afterward I found my friend Brian was also at home, his water not working so he couldn't shower. Since he's all of 6 blocks south of me, I invited hiim up to use the shower here and then we played several hours of DIablo ii: Lord of Destruction. First time I've played with someone else, and I quite enjoyed it. Will have to see about getting other folks over to play (since I can't handle the little urchins who play on Battlenet; I prefer a methodical working through of the maps, not running down the end objective. So, all in all a good day, even if the whole thing was unplanned. Archives |
