Training ride number 2!

The weather quickly rebounded after last week's snowfall and it managed to sneak back up into the 60s again this weekend. Today was awesome. I was tempted to slack off, quite honestly, but I've received a lot of encouragement this week in the form of sponsors for the Tour de Cure, and I sort of felt like if I didn't get out at least once this weekend I'd be letting those people down. And to those folks who have sponsored me, thank you so much! I really appreciate it more than you know!

So I managed to carve out a chunk of time today and go back to Fort Yargo state park to ride around. This time Donna and Scout had other things to do so it was a solo mission.

I think it was just a bit warmer than last week. However, the same hill that had me wishing for an oxygen mask last time nearly beat the snot out of me again. I have now officially given it the designation "The Hill Of Death". Actually it wasn't quite as bad as last week - in fact, I ended up riding up that hill twice. I managed to bump up my total mileage on today's ride to just over 8 1/2 miles. Hopefully this week we won't get any more blizzards, and I can actually get one or two rides in during the week after work.

Oh, and what does the picture have to do with my ride, you may be wondering? Nothing really. But isn't that just the cutest dog you ever saw?

Fire of Brazil melted my credit card!

So last night, my wife beat me into submission and forced me to take her to this new restaurant, Fire of Brazil. She was nice enough to meet me at my workplace so that I wouldn't have drive home in excruciatingly painful Friday afternoon traffic, so I told her we could eat wherever she wanted. We had never been there before, and the name sounded intriguing (though we had no idea what kind of food they had) and so she wanted to try it.

I on the other hand, had formed only one opinion about the place: it sounded real expensive. I wasn't worried though ... I figured being Friday evening the place would be packed with people, and there would be a long wait, so I could probably get out of going. Alas, 'twas not to be! When we arrived, there was no wait at all (curses!), and we were promptly seated, thereby thwarting my plans!

Shortly thereafter our server came by and asked us if we had ever been there before. After discovering we were noobs, she explained to us that there were no menus. They had a salad bar, with both "Brazilian" and "American" salads which we could help ourselves to. Then there were these little cards on the table, one for each of us. One side was green and said, "Yes, please, throw more slop in the trough" and the other was red and said, "For God's sakes, can't you tell my stomach is about to burst?". OK, I may not remember the wording precisely, but it was something to that effect. So, the idea was, when we were done with our salads, we should turn the green side up, and some gentlemen with very large, sharp knives would pay us a visit. To bring us food. After taking our drink order, Donna (being the smart one) decide to inquire as to the price. Now, I'm not going to tell you how much it was, because I'm too embarassed for people to know how much I paid for dinner. (Hey, if you are determined, you can do the research!) Let's just say, given the choice, if I was going to spend that kind of money, I would definitely rather go to McKendrick's.

Sounded simple enough, so we went to the salad bar. Now I have to say, Donna loved the salad bar. In fact, that was her favorite part, I think. I was not as impressed. They had a bunch of foofoo salad fixings that didn't do much for me. I ended up with lettuce and some salad dressing. So far I was definitely not getting my money's worth. Donna, on the other hand, came back with a plate piled full of stuff that I ordinarily would not even recognize as being edible. She seemed quite happy, however.

So while we are grazing on our salads, the server brings our frosty beverages of choice, and also brings out a little bread basket. Now I don't remember what they were called, but they were these little dough balls with just a hint of cheddar in them. I was going to just try one, since I'm doing the low carb thing and all, but after trying one I decided that I was officially designating this meal as a "cheat" meal. A couple minutes later, our server brought out some kind of fried banana thing, where the bananas were rolled in cinammon. I am not partial to bananas, and since they aren't low carb (please don't question the contradictory logic of the last few sentences), I didn't have any. Donna informed me that they were quite tasty however.

OK, let's bring on the real food. With anticipation, I turned my card from red to green, and .... nothing happened! Well, not for a couple of minutes anyway. Then, a nice young man strolled up with a beef-laden skewer and asked me if I'd like some. Not being the rude type, I said yes. So, I started to dig in and before I had taken two bites another guy walked up with a chicken wrapped in bacon on a skewer. "Now we're talkin'!", I thought to myself. Before I knew it there was a steady parade of these guys. Finally I had to turn my card to red because I just could not keep up with the onslaught of food being heaped on my plate. Meanwhile, honey was still working on her foofoo salad. Let's just come right out and say it, she's weird! In fact, I told her that. Which is how I got this shin injury. But that's a story for another time.

Eventually, after the accumulation of several animal carcasses, it was time to pay the bill. This was definitely my least favorite part of the meal (even when you factor in the whole salad bar experience). When the server brought back my credit card, it was still warm and partially liquefied.

In all, I I'm glad we tried it though because it was really a different type of dining experience, but I don't think we can afford to go back for at least another two or three years.

Who says it never snows in Atlanta?

Normally, when they forecast snow, or even flurries, in the Atlanta area, people go crazy. The radio and TV stations start giving special reports called "Stormwatch 2004" (or something like that). People go to the stores and buy all the bread and milk. It is crazy. Generally, what happens next is, that the temperatures drop into the upper 30s, and it's cold, and we get rain.

This time though, the forecasters were actually right. Got about 2-3 inches of snow at our house. Sure is pretty, but it will all be gone by late tomorrow.

First training ride of 2004

Well, the weather was really nice today, so I finally got out and did my first training ride of 2004, in preperation for the Tour de Cure. I set a goal for myself of going about 1/10th the distance of the tour, or about 6 1/4 miles. I ended up going just over that, about 6 1/2 miles. Probably doesn't sound like much, but I was not riding on the nice, flat Silver Comet. Instead, I went to a state park that is about 20 minutes from our house and rode on some of the access roads. Also, except for a couple of short rides in my subdivision, I haven't been on a bike much in the last year.

I got off to a somewhat rough start, going up a rather steep hill. Though the weather was nice today, it was still just a little bit cool and windy, and by the time I got to the top of that first hill my lungs felt like they were on fire. I have mild asthma which mostly only acts up in cold weather, especially when I exercise, and although I didn't think it was that cold, apparently it was cool enough to make my lungs unhappy. It didn't bother me for long fortunately, and then I started really getting into the ride.

Not long after, I heard a rustling sound in the woods, and of course immediately assumed it was probably some kind of vicious, wild animal that was going to leave with a chunk of my leg. It turned out that it was a wild animal, but fortunately it was just a deer. I got just a quick look at him as he ran away. That was pretty cool.

So I ended up doing a complete loop around the park and was pretty happy with my accomplishment. I might have ridden a little longer, but I reached my goal. The sun was getting close to setting, and Donna and Scout were patiently waiting for me at the truck. They went for a walk on one of the nature trails while I went off riding. We all had fun but we were all ready to go, too.

I think I'm going to try to start going in the afternoons after work assuming the weather stays nice, and that I get home in time. It will be a lot easier to do that as the days get longer and especially once daylight savings kicks in. I need to start building up my mileage, I'd like to go maybe 15-20 miles during the week and take one longer ride on the weekends, maybe 40-50, and a maybe a couple of 60 milers before the big ride. I'd also like to take a few longer but leisurely rides on the nice, flat Silver Comet trail too. It's definitely gonna take me some time to work up to all those miles though.

On the brink of insanity ...

Well I certainly wish I had found THIS about 3 hours ago. It seemed like such a simple thing I was doing. You ever notice how all the really simple parts of a project turn out not to be simple? Why oh why must I continually persist with my misplaced optimism???

I now must listen to one of my favorite songs from the 80s, Go Insane by Lindsey Buckingham.

These are a few of my favorite things ...

Just thought I'd share some cool little utilities I found recently.

First, I've been hooked on the concept of virtual desktops ever since I ran them on an X workstation long, long ago. They are well supported on Linux, but not Windows. There is that free "powertoys" thing but, IMHO, it is a piece of crap. I have tried various other utilities but they have either turned out to be slow, unreliable, quirky or some combination of the above. Recently I tried goScreen, and I've finally found my virtual desktop manager for Windows! It's $20 to register but there is a generous trial period so you can see if it's right for you. I have no connection to these folks other than being a happy, registered user.

I also recently discovered a nifty little minimalist system monitoring utiltity called simeter. It's also shareware, only $10. I'm still playing with it. It's cool, but I am not sure it's something I'm going to really use enough to pay for it. On the other hand, it is only $10!

Finally, one of my favorite little utilities which is, best of all, FREE, is FreeShade. Apparently this concept is common with the Mac (never used one!) but I was first introduced to the concept of a "windowshade" when I was playing with WindowBlinds. Certain of the themes in WindowBlinds supported this extra button on the titlebar which allows you to "roll up" the window and just have a floating title bar. It worked great, and WindowBlinds is cool, and I even registered it a few versions back, but I just found that although it looked pretty, the performance penalty and memory footprint wasn't worth it (for me). Really the only thing I hated giving up was the windowshade feature. I tried finding another program that did _just_ the windowshade feature. I didn't have much luck, and the ones I did try really kinda sucked, with the exception of FreeShade. It has a small footprint, is simple, and does exactly what I want. I can't believe it's free!

Good News!

I just saved a ton of money on my insurance ... oh wait, no, that's not it, let me turn off the TV.

I just got back from my appointment with my ophthalmologist. (BTW, thank goodness for dictionary.com -- I simply cannot spell that word correctly on my own!) Anyhow, the visit went really well.

I've been really worried for awhile now about developing glaucoma. Since I'm diabetic, I'm at increased risk for developing the condition. Additionally, my intraocular pressure readings (you know, that test they do when the blow that puff of air in your eye?) have been right on the borderline of high. This is one of the signs of glaucoma.

Apparently, quite recently they have found that the intraocular eye pressure reading by itself is not sufficient. That raw reading needs to be adjusted to take into account the individual's cornea thickness. Turns out I have some big ole corneas, apparently. So the doc informs me that my "borderline" pressure readings over the years have been due to the cornea thickness, and that everything looks just fine! YAY!

So, with that good news, I got to schedule another visit for 6 months for now. This will be the fun one where they dilate your pupils and all that good stuff.

Oh, and to top it all off, looks like I've managed to assassinate another pound. All in all, not a bad Monday so far.

Weekend Update

Forgive the length of this post, but it's been awhile since I've added anything to the site, so I have a few things I want to say.

Well i've decide to change things around on my website. I'm going to give Google's Blogger service a try. It will make adding entries easier, and so hopefully I will be able to update the site a little more often with random musings, photos etc.

2004 is turning into an interesting year. My life-long struggle with my weight and more recent battle with diabetes has taken a little bit of a turn for the worse over the last year or so, but I'm trying to get back on track. I was losing weight steadily for probably a year after I got diagnosed, but sort of fell off the wagon last year and have managed to add about 60 pounds back of the 100 or so I had lost. I also have not been very good about checking in with the doc. So I've been beating myself up about it quite a bit, and feeling bad about it but not really doing anything. I've made a few off and on attempts at dieting but haven't managed to stick with it for very long.

Finally a month or so ago I decided I better shape up my act or I was going to be right back where I was. So I went to see the doc, and miraculously my blood sugar and other numbers were still OK. I've also been getting more serious about my diet. I'm trying the somewhat controversial Atkin's diet this time around. Contrary to what you may have heard, it is not all about eating unlimited quantities of eggs and steak all the time. It seems to be working well for me so far. I lost a few pounds right away, which admittedly was probably mostly water weight. But I've lost a few more pounds so that I've lost a total of about 13 in a month. OK, not earth shattering, but it's a positive trend and I seem to not be constantly craving high carbohydrate foods all the time. With the low carb approach I seem to be able to eat a lot less food and still feel satisified. I have to say, I found a lot of inspiration from the book Living the Low Carb Life : From Atkins to the Zone Choosing the Diet That's Right for You. It covers a lot more low carb approaches besides Atkin's, some of which I may try out further down the line. I've just been doing Atkin's because it's the simplest and what I'm most familiar with.

I've also started exercising again. For awhile I was running, which was awesome because I had never been able to really run any distance. I managed to get up to the point where I could run a little over 3 miles non-stop, albeit slowly. I'm not even trying to the the running thing anymore, but I have gotten back on the exercise bike.

Along those lines, I'd like to ask your help with something. I have decided to once again participate in the Tour de Cure, which is a 100K bicycle ride geared at raising funds to help support the American Diabetes Association. I don't much like asking folks for anything, but this particular cause has a lot of personal meaning for me, and if you're a friend, family member or benevolent stranger reading this page, I'd sure appreciate your sponsorship. Any donation would be greatly appreciate, and remember - it's tax deductible. And making your donation is easier than ever this year, now that you can do it online through my personal Tour de Cure fundraising page!

And by the way, if you'd like to read a little bit more about my own personal experiences with diabetes, you can read a little sort of journal I wrote read a little sort of journal I wrote. You'll note I haven't updated it in awhile, you can consider this blog entry an update.

So what else is going on with me? I'm still employed, which is good. In fact at the end of this month I'll be at four years with my current employer, which I believe is the longest I've ever worked anywhere. I'm trying to keep my skills and credentials up to date so I've been studying for a Java programmer's certification. (By the way, if you're looking for a good book to study for the Java Programmer's certification, I can highly recommend the one I'm using: A Programmer's Guide to Java Certification: A Comprehesive Primer, Second Edition.

I guess the certification is mostly just a piece of paper, since I've been using Java for years right now, but in the event my job is outsourced to an Elbonian at 22 cents an hour hopefully it will look good on a resume. (If you don't know what an Elbonian is, you really should be reading Dilbert). A college degree is just a piece of paper too, right? But it demonstrates you have at least some level of competency I suppose. And if nothing else, studying for the test really makes you think about some of the more tricky parts of the language that you might not force yourself to look at otherwise.

Oh, and I almost forgot. GO #8!!! The Nascar Nextel Cup is off to a great start this year!

OK, that's enough for now, more random musings later