7/52 — Week 14

Without further ado... a whole bunch of 100mm shots, except for one.

A DailyShoot submission, and I really like this one. It turned out better than I expected. It did, however, require a bunch of small touch-ups with Digital Photo Professional's stamp tool to remove a plethora of dust specs. It does a great job.

The second of the two DailyShoot submissions for this past week. I like it as well, almost as much as I like my 100mm lens.

What would a week of my 7/52 be like without a shot of my 'ol kitty. She slept on the couch beside me on Saturday afternoon while I watched hockey on the TV.

This evening I decided to shoot different foods at 100mm to see how well it would work with no special lighting. First up... Bread.

Strawberry wheaty things. Didn't turn out as well as I would have liked. I couldn't get the lighting/exposure just the way I wanted in post-processing. Although, to be perfectly honest, I didn't have much patience to tweak it more.

Cocoa. And ya know something... it's unsweetened, as I found out when I got some on my finger. Blech. :)

My favourite of the evening. The lighting and detail are just right, I think.

 

Success — Week 21 progress

It was close.

I was a little worried yesterday morning when I stepped on the scale and didn't see the kind of progress that I was hoping for. But this morning, seeing 239 blinking back at me made me was a great way to start the day. :)

239 is now my lowest official weigh-in so far. I had been a pound or two lower a few weeks ago, during a mid-week check, but by the time the Friday came around I had put it back on.

Onward and... uhh... downward!

Planning? What planning?

I cut my calorie intake from ~2200 to ~1600 on Sunday. I'm only two or three days into it and I can see that my meal planning is going to take... uhhh... some actual planning. :)

Yesterday I consumed a little over 1600, but I did burn 400 in a workout so it brings it well under my limit. That was a good day. I didn't starve myself, and I got to enjoy food I like. (FYI... a Lick's hamburger patty alone has 300 calories!)

Today, which is supposed to be one of my non-workout-break days, I'm already down to just under 500 remaining for supper if I want to keep it under 1600. I guess that's not bad — it works out to almost a third of the daily total for one of three meals. But, there's talk of fajitas for supper. I may have to get in some unplanned workout time before that, just in case.

I really hope I see some good progress by Friday's weigh-in. It'll be a huge motivator to let me know that I'm back on the right track. I already told my wife that even though there's a Sen's hockey game on TV Thursday, which can mean homemade "hockey pizza" night, I'd prefer that we skip it and have pizza for Saturday's game instead.

7/52 — Week 13

A DailyShoot photo. I borrowed the subject matter from a friend, posed it, and shot it. I converted it to monochrome and gave it a bit of a tint.

Another DailyShoot photo. The theme was "metal". I had difficulty focusing, probably because I shot it at f/2.8.

The DailyShoot topic for this one was... orange. Duh. I fired off a half dozen or so until getting this one. The others are pretty good as well, but not as "dominated by orange" as this one was.

Here's one of the reshot photos previously mentioned. This one is at f/11. It has better focus on them mug, but I find the background a little distracting from the subject matter.

Day 17 of my attempt to grow an avacado plant.

I'm trying a second seed as well. :)

Probably one of my favourite shots of the week... a DailyShoot that didn't make the cut for "orange".

 

Kickin' into overdrive... or something — Week 20 progress

UGH.

Another fail this week. Fuck.

I think I finally figured out what I'm doing wrong, aside form enjoying weekly pizza and wings which I refuse to give up. ;)

On the LiveStrong.com site where I track my calories, the "level of activity" that I had specified is probably set to higher than it really is, therefore allowing me to consume more calories than I should. So, when I get close to my maximum for the day, I am probably over. I had it set to the second lowest because I took my workouts into account. I suspect that they're referring to your activity not including workouts. Looking back on my progress, it makes sense. When I was losing, my caloric intake was well below the max and I lost weight.

I fixed it and it reduced it by about 600 calories per day. That brings me into the same range as when I was losing.

I wish I had figured this out sooner.

7/52 — Week 12

A slow week, but here goes.

Day 6 of my avocado seed. Not much change.

On March 21st, we got a somewhat freak snowstorm. It was all pretty much gone the next day.

On Saturday, we observed Earth Hour and turned off all our lights for an hour. My son was playing around with his flash light, so I got my camera out and snapped a dozen or so shots.

Some of our candles during Earth Hour.

My son goes back to reading for the rest of the hour.

I was looking for a new profile photo for Facebook and other social networking sites. This was my fav.

I needed a seventh photo to complete this week. This is a clock I made that hangs about my computer. :)

That's all for this week!

 

Another setback — Week 19 progress

Friday's weigh-in... not so good. Gained a pound or two. I'm confident I can lose it again. I did a real ass-kicking workout this afternoon in attempt to punish myself make up for it. :)

I'm still climbing the Your Shape Fitness Evolved leaderboard for the world standings.

(17 is my world rank)

It's not about sharing what you had for lunch

Every once in a while I hear someone mention Twitter, and it usually goes like this:

Why do I care what someone ate for lunch?

I tell them that it's not about that and tell them about who I follow and why. I'm not sure what took them so long, but Twitter finally made a little promo video that pretty much sums it all up.

It really is worth checking out. :)

7/52 — Week 11

The first photo this week is one that I took for a DailyShoot and ended up choosing another one. I think this one might actually be nicer. I didn't choose it because it had less green for the assignment.

I'm attempting to grow an avocado plant at work. This was day 1.

A DailyShoot assignment where my hand had to be in the photo. It was tricky to shoot. Holding and operating a camera with my left hand was not easy. :)

My sister got some new bridal gowns in her shop and asked me to shoot photos of them for her web site. My family and I visited the shop on Friday and her infant son was there. This is my wife holding him beside a large mirror so he could see himself. :)

My favourite dress from the shoot.

Shooting dresses on a mannequin involves a lot of waiting, while my sister and my wife change it... or her? 2-3 seconds to snap the shot, 3-5 minutes waiting. While I waited, I looked around and saw one of the mannequin's hands in the sunlight in the front window. I liked how the light fell on it, so I had to shoot it. I really like this one.

Grapes! I ate a lot of these today.

 

Another milestone reached — Week 18 progress

This morning I weighed 240 lbs. So now I'm 27 lbs down from what I was when I started.

That's a big milestone for me. Not because I lost 3 lbs since last week (that's great too!) but because every pound I lose from here on basically puts me at a weight I haven't been in about 25 years.

I also reached the #2 spot on the Your Shape Fitness Evolved leaderboard for Canada earlier this week. :)

I really need to go buy some new jeans.

7/52 — Week 10

I lost track of time, so my posting is a bit late. :)

Once again, I ended up short for photos this week. I decided to walk around my house and look for some of my favourite things to add to the shots. Not so creative in some cases. Anyway, here we go...

First, a DailyShoot contribution from earlier in the week. As it turns out, this is also one of my favourite things. I love this stuff.

Next, another DailyShoot contribution. Ice, in a glass of water. It didn't quite look the way I wanted, so I added a bit of a blue tint to it during the post processing.

What would a week be like without a shot of my cat. :) My son was holding her and I was trying to get a close-up of her eyes. She doesn't like cameras invading her space, so she kept looking away. This was one of the best I could do.

On to my favourite things. My Sens jersey. We won't talk about how the season went.

My Rock Band guitar. It's also an addiction.

I love my 100mm lens.

We'll end off with today's DailyShoot contribution.

 

Slow... — Week 17 progress

There was very little progress this past week, but any progress is good so I'm happy. As of Friday morning I was down to an even 243 lbs.

As far as the Your Shape Fitness Evolved game that I use for my workouts, I am in 25th place worldwide for most calories burned, and I am nearing 2nd place in Canada. One workout today should put me there. :)  1st place is going to take a while, and that person seems to workout very often so it may even be unreachable unless they stop, or I double up on my daily workouts. I currently spend 45-60 minutes per day and it's unlikely I'll do more.

CrashPlan needs a better support plan

I'm a believer that a product is only as good as the support that backs it.  Unfortunately for CrashPlan, this is where their product falls short.

CrashPlan is a data backup service. For free, you can back up your data to an external hard drive, or to a friend's PC across the internet. For a subscription fee, you can also back up your data to their servers — CrashPlan Central. The big draw to their service is that they have an unlimited data backup subscription.

Some time at the beginning of February, I decided to try out their 30-day trial of the service. It worked well. So well that I was impressed enough to subscribe for their 4-year unlimited plan within days of trying it.

After activating my subscription and backing up more data to their servers, I noticed that most of my data was no longer appearing under the restore option.

I used the search function to look for files that I knew I had backed up. It found them, so I was confident that they had the data backed up. But that's not very functional if I needed to restore a folder full of files where I may not know the names of every file in that folder.

I logged onto their web site and submitted a support ticket. Within minutes I received an automatic reply informing me that I could expect a response within one business day.

Two business days passed with no response.

Only after expressing my displeasure on Twitter, twice, about not receiving any response I received one — two weeks after the original submission.

They asked for more info and screen shots. They also apologized and credited me 30 days. I provided the requested info immediately.

Another week passed with no follow-up. Again, via Twitter, I got another apology and then a reply to my support request appeared in my email inbox. This time they asked for the log files, and instructed me on how to provide them. I provided them.

As of today, that was two responses in 26 days, and no solution, and I think the only reason I got any response at all was because I commented publicly on Twitter. Or was it a coincidence? Twice? I have serious doubts that I would have received any response if I had remained quiet. I have since seen other people comment, in their support forum and on Twitter, about the response times.

My original intent was to wait a full four weeks before canceling, but the more I thought about it this morning, the more I asked myself "Why?" Why should I bother? They've had almost four weeks to at least provide me with a little hope that my issue would be resolved soon. And what if I needed that backed up data immediately? Could I trust that they would be there to help me when I needed them?

Nope.

I logged onto my account and tried to cancel. It failed, and informed me to contact support@crashplan.com. If there were any doubts in my mind about the decision before this, they were gone now.

It took three or four attempts to cancel before it actually worked. Oddly enough, the one that worked was the one where I didn't bother to add a reason for canceling.

Minutes later, I received an email from CrashPlan informing me that my subscription was canceled and a refund — minus $2.86 for the month used(?)... so much for that 30-day credit — would be issued.

It's too bad that they weren't as quick to keep a customer as they were to let one go.

Back on track... again — Week 16 progress

I must be losing my mind.

First, I forgot to write my week 15 progress. Second, I'm sure I started writing my week 16 progress — including something for week 15 — twice now, and yet, I still have nothing posted. Ugh.

So anyway, despite the fact that I had gained about 1½ lbs for week 15, that's not why I didn't write it. I simply forgot. I think the fact that I had a cold that weekend was a contributing factor.

The good news is that for week 16 I lost the 1½ lbs I gained and a bit more, putting my weight at the lowest it's been in about 6 or 7 years. In 3½ lbs, and every pound after, it'll put me at my lowest in about 25 years.

That's going to be a major milestone for me.

7/52 — Week 9

I have plenty of photos for this week, and didn't have much difficulty in choosing which ones to post. Oddly enough, it turns out that all of those I chose were shot today.

First up, is my son hugging our cat. Our cat is 17 years old. My son is 15. It's only been in the last two or three years that she let anyone, aside from my wife and I, go near her. She used to be extremely timid and cautions of our kids. I'm pretty sure she lost her hearing in the last two or three years, which seems to have contributed to her calming down. Sounds weird, but I can't explain it any other way. She'll even sit in his lap as he uses the computer. They're best friends now.

Sam watching the bird feeder and "chattering" at the birds.

Today I took a trip out to Rideau Falls, with the hope that I'd be able to shoot massive chunks of ice piled up at the bottom of the falls. They did the ice blasting last weekend. It was not to be. Maybe I'm still too early?  It was damn cold with the wind coming off the river though.

A closeup of the cool ice formations at Rideau Falls.

I saw a couple of workers on the bridge just before leaving Rideau Falls. I think what they were doing was thawing the sluice gate with hot, pressurized water.

There's a somewhat humourous story to these next two. As I drove to Rideau Falls, I passed a cool, snow covered tree that I thought would make a great photo. I decided I would stop on the way back and shoot it. So I did. Kinda.

In the winter, there's only one parking lot open along the Rockliffe Parkway and I knew it would probably be a fair walk to get to the tree. I parked and walked. And walked. And walked. In foot-deep snow. I kept thinking it had to be "soon". I couldn't find the damn tree. Either that or it looked much different than what I saw when I first passed it. After about 30 minutes of wishing I had brought my snow shoes, I knew I had to be mistaken about what it looked like. On the way back, so my walk wasn't all for nothing, I shot some of the trees. This isn't what I saw, but it's still cool nonetheless.

Looking back to where I went...

At least I got some decent exercise. I also realized that it didn't tire me out as much as it used to, when I smoked and was more out of shape.

One rant, two rant...

I am so frustrated with the lack of support for a service I pay for right now.

I'm not quite ready to turn up the rant volume yet.  Depending on how this next week goes, I may have a fairly beefy blog posting to put up. I've been keeping notes — a small diary of sorts. Next Wednesday will be the day, if things don't change in the next six or seven days..

Even then, I may still post something about it. I haven't decided. Stay tuned.

As an aside, yes, stuff is still broken and missing here on my Posterous blog. I'm serious considering dumping this and going back to only posting on my Blogspot "mirror". As with the aforementioned service, I can't trust something that loses my data. I'm glad I kept up the cross posting.

7/52 — Week 8

I had big plans for really cool photos this week, but cold germs had other plans, preventing me from going out this morning to shoot what I wanted to shoot. :(

Soooo... I set up in the living room and tried to get some nice shots of the birds that visit our feeder. I got a few, and a few more of my stand-by model — my cat.

But first, a close up of a painting my daughter made that hangs in our foyer. :)

Most of the birds that visit our feeder are like the one on the right. But occasionally, we get a chickadee or two.

This little guy (or girl) pigged out at the feeder, but remained on the other side the entire time. :)

And last, but not least, our cat Samantha catching a few Zs in her bed beside the window.

I ordered a new lens last week and it should arrive tomorrow. I'll no doubt be playing around with it all week so I should have more interesting shots next week! :)