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Friday, October 28, 2011

GOOOOOOOOOALLLLLL!

Almost 50 weeks and 58lbs later, I finally beat my weight loss goal this morning. At 209.2lbs, I am the same weight that I was in the mid-80s. That equates to 5" off my chest, 3½" off my hips, 2" off my neck and 7½" off my waist.

I've been battling weight issues for most of my life and this is another victory for me. :) But it didn't come without some help. I owe thanks to...

  • Xbox 360 & Kinect for getting me motivated. It put fun into exercise. Seriously.
  • Ubisoft's Your Shape Fitness Evolved game (despite bugs that still aren't fixed... hint hint)
  • LiveStrong.com for helping me track calorie intake. Being more aware of what goes into me was important.
  • My tape measure. When the pounds stopped dropping, seeing the inches continue to come off helped keep me going.
  • My addiction to cycling this past summer. What else can I say? It's fun.
  • My brain for not letting me stray too far. Too many plateaus to mention, but I knew this day would eventually arrive.
  • My T-shirt hording tendency. Nothing motivates you more than seeing a "One day it's gonna fit me!" T-shirt finally fit.
  • Successfully beating nicotine addiction almost 3 years ago. I knew if I could beat that addiction, I could lose weight.
  • My family and friends for the support. Even when they told me to stop because "You don't need to lose anyone." :)

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Part of me would still like to make it to 200lbs, as I had originally planned, so I'm still going to try and continue with my current progress. However, I won't be as concerned about small fluctuations with my weight.

 

Friday, October 21, 2011

Nearing 1 Year

It's been almost 1 year since I began my quest to lose weight and I still haven't reached my goal. I am so close. The last two weeks have been terrible, resulting in a small, yet still manageable gain. I was 215.8 lbs this morning.  My lowest to date was 211.4 lbs in the first week of October. I could have easily reached 210 lbs by cutting my food intake in half for a day or two, but I guess there really wouldn't have been any point to that because I would likely have gained it back in a day.

The indoor cycling, or lack of it, has played a role I'm sure, although to be honest it doesn't appear to help with losing as much as it does with maintaining. It's more difficult to motivate myself to cycle indoors than I thought it would be. It's not only boring, but I'm having to make time for it, unlike when I cycled to and from work. Or maybe I've hit another plateau.

I would love to reach my goal before November, or at least before my first recorded weight on November 14th.

I need to focus. I'm going to do this. Dammit.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Cycling season is over... sorta

The last time I cycled outside was a week ago. The weather took a turn for the worse after that. On the weekend I decided it was time to bring my bike inside and mount it onto the trainer so I could continue cycling inside.

My first indoor ride was on Saturday morning. I hooked up an old CCM odometer so I could track the distance, speed, and time. After ~3 hours of cycling I rode just over 72kms. I didn't intend to ride for that long, but I was watching TV at the same time and a movie grabbed my attention. :) (Spy Game, in case you're wondering)

I've ridden twice since for about an hour each time and I think that's what I'll stick with.

Cycling indoors is boring, unless you're watching TV at the same time, but the trainer can be a little loud so I have to set the TV volume louder so I can hear it. I've been wearing my iPod Nano and listening to fast-paced tunes to set my pace and it's working out pretty good.

I've discovered that when riding on the trainer my average speed is about 5kmh higher and I can "travel" farther distances in the same time. The downside is that there is absolutely no coasting. ;)

I also sweat like crazy without any wind resistance. It's unreal. It obviously shows that I'm getting a good workout, but I swear I could stay dryer if I jumped in a pool.

An hour riding each day is about 25-30kms. Over the course of a month, there's no way I'll get close to what I achieved while riding outside, but I'm fine with that. I getting really close to my weight goal so I don't need to work out to the same extent that I was over the summer.

I'm really hoping to reach that goal by the end of the week. I was close last week but then cut myself a little too much slack over the weekend. :)

Saturday, September 24, 2011

From Fahrenheit to Celsius with a Sears programmable thermostat

We have an old Sears programmable thermostat, model C387-47145-1. It was installed when we bought this house and we don't have the manual for it. There is a sticker on the flip-down door to the buttons that tells you how to program the schedule and time. There's also one on the inside of the cover when you remove it. What neither of these stickers tell you how to do is change it from Fahrenheit to Celsius. Up until today, that wasn't a problem. When it showed the LOW BAT warning, I replaced the three AA batteries and it was happy.

Today I noticed that the LCD display was blank. I replaced the batteries. I don't know how long it was blank, but it was long enough to lose its schedule programming, including the Celsius setting.
I scoured the internet and found a manual for a different Sears thermostat model. It said to press and hold the two TIME buttons at the same time to switch between Fahrenheit and Celsius. Ours doesn't have those two buttons.

I found many requests from others looking for the manual for this particular model, and a few others. What I didn't find was a solution to my problem.

I walked back over to the thermostat and tried resetting it again by removing the batteries. Maybe I missed something when it first powers up. Nope.

I started pressing buttons in combination with each other. After a few minutes I saw a single number on the display instead of the usual time and temp. It said 78. I pressed buttons again, this time the single number was 26.

Bingo.

If you have one of these thermostats, you need to press and hold the HOLD TEMP button and then press the TIME button to toggle it between Fahrenheit and Celsius.

You're welcome. :)

Friday, September 23, 2011

If you have a bike helmet, why not use it properly?

I'm not one of those who thinks everyone should wear a bike helmet. To each his or her own. If I didn't have to buy one to participate in a charity ride years ago, I might not even have one today. I paid for it, so why not use it? And yeh, there's the whole safety aspect of it. :)

I've seen two examples of bike helmet stupidity this summer that puzzle me.

  1. cyclists who wear their bike helmet tilted back on their head, and
  2. cyclists who ride with their helmet hanging from the handlebars or strapped to a carrier

Regarding the first one; if you're not going to wear it properly, why bother wearing it at all? There's no law that says you have to, if you're over 18. It also makes you look rather stupid.

As for the second; why the hell did you bring it with you? I don't understand what the point is. If anything, I think it's more of a hazard swinging from the handlebars, and at risk of falling off and into your path or someone else's.

Neither of these is going to do your head much good if you fall off your bike.

Can someone please explain these to me?

 

Thursday, September 22, 2011

No ink level monitoring for Epson Workforce 633

We bought a new printer a couple of weeks ago: an Epson Workforce 633. It's a multi-function printer. For the most part, I got it up and running via wife and all our computers printing, scanning and faxing with it in no time.

I had one tiny problem, and the problem existed only with my PC. The driver preferences allow you to see the ink levels. With my PC, that didn't work.

I couldn't find any answer to the problem on Epson's web site. I did find references on the web from of other people with the same problem using other Epson printers. Nobody seemed to have a solution.

It wasn't a critical problem. It didn't prevent me from using the printer. But I can be pretty picky about things. If something is supposed to work, I wanted it to work. If it doesn't work, I want to know why.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the printer, updating the driver, and changing firewall settings. Nothing worked.

This morning I submitted a support request via Epson's web site before leaving for work.  I received a step-by-step reply at during my lunch hour. I connected to my PC remotely and tried the solution. It worked.
Although the instructions worked, they did need a little tweaking. I decided to post them here for others to find, along with my comments.

The solution was to remove and reinstall the printer, but I also had to remove the port that was created during the original installation, and then recreate the port.

If you already know the name or IP address of the printer, the first 4 steps can be skipped.
  1. Press Setup button. (on the print panel)
  2. Use the up or down arrow buttons to select Network Settings, then press OK.
  3. Use the up or down arrow buttons to select Confirm Network Settings, then press OK.
  4. Write down the IP address displayed on the LCD.
  5. In your computer click on Start menu > Device and Printers.
  6. Under Printers and Faxes right click on your printer icon then click on Remove Device.
  7. Click on Microsoft XPS document writer icon then click on Print Server Properties. (this is a button along the top of the window)
  8. Click on Ports tab.
  9. Look for EpsonNet Print Port that indicate the IP address of your printer. Select it then click on Delete Port.(My printer's IP address was NOT listed, but it did have EPSON in the port name. Also, when I tried to delete the port it wouldn't let me because there was another print device, the Epson fax, using the same port. I had to remove that printer before getting to this point)
  10. Click on OK. (aka CLOSE)
  11. Click Add Printer (select "Add Local Printer") then click Next.
  12. Select Local Printer attached to this computer and unchecked Automatically detect and install my Plug and Play printer then click Next. (this entire step wasn't even needed)
  13. Click Create a new port and on Type of Port select EpsonNet Print Port.
    • If you see your printer select your printer then Next.
    • If you don't see your printer select Manual Setting then click Next
    • Enter your printer's IP address then click Next (if you know the name of the printer, you can enter it instead)
    • Click on Finish
  14. Under manufacturer select Epson and under printer select your printer then click Next. (Even though my printer is the Workforce 633, the driver is listed as Workforce 630 series)
  15. Select default Printer then click Next.
  16. Select do not Share this printer then click Next.
  17. Select Yes to print a test page then click Next.
  18. Click Finish.
Somewhere between step 14 and 18, I was prompted to allow the printer access through the Firewall. I chose Private network.

That reinstalled the printer and I had access to the print levels in the driver preferences. However, I also had no fax printer because I had to remove it before it allowed me to remove the port. I wasn't provided any instructions for reinstalling the fax printer. A couple of minutes of poking around the Epson software I had installed got that fixed.
  1. Click the Start Menu > Epson Software > Fax Utility
  2. Click the Add Another Printer (Fax) button and follow the prompts. If you had this set up previously, you'll be clicking Next throughout the entire setup.
That's it!

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Feeling a little deflated

In the months that I've been cycling to work, and even in the years prior that I cycled only on weekends, I've never gotten a flat. I've often seen cyclists at the side of the bike path or road fixing a flat on their bike. Every time I see it, I can't help but feel for them. "That must really suck."

This morning I got to know what it feels like to be one of those cyclists. :( But I wasn't able to repair my tire.

I was about half way to work, not far from Major's Hill Park, when something didn't feel right about my bike. The rear wheel felt like it had a little too much side-to-side movement. I glanced down and it seemed ok. My first thought was that maybe the rear wheel was loose. I stopped at a traffic light and looked at it again. The wheel was fine, but the tire pressure seemed a little lower than a minute earlier. The light changed and I kept riding.

I decided that when I got to the top of the steep hill leading down to the Rideau Locks, I would get off the bike and have a better look at it. The last thing I was for my wheel to come off or have a full flat when I hit ~40kmh going down that hill.

As I approached the hill, I looked down at the tire again. It was flatter. I got to the top of the hill and dismounted. I pressed on the rear tire. It was definitely going flat.

Fuck.

I have a repair kit and pump with me all the time, but I don't have the tire levers. I'm not sure why I bother to carry anything with me when I don't have the tools to remove the tire.

I grabbed my cell phone and called my wife, whom I was sure would almost be at work by now — she was just passing my work, so yeh, she was almost at work. I told her I had a flat. She got off the highway, turned around and I met her in the Byward Market about 10-15 minutes later. We put my bike in the back of the truck and I drove her to work.

I'll be heading to the bike shop at lunch to pick up a new innertube and some tire levers.