Fit and trim again

I'm down 27 pounds! Caprice has lost over 30. We've been eating so much better and getting lots of exercise. I biked 13 times in June, and I've been walking to lunch a few times a week, as well as keeping a drawer full of canned healthy soups and Triscuits in the office.

Feeling good again. Just need to flatten this gut out a bit more. My legs look great from all the biking but my upper body still needs work. I also cannot seem to get down into the 170's. Last time for that was the week my dad died, which was 4 years ago today.   :(  Still think about him every day.

I've been studying the ITIL Foundation handbook, I want to get certified to keep my value up at work, and get better organized at the same time. There's a lot of jargon and mumbo jumbo but there are concepts I really understand.

Enjoy some food porn! Chicken with light lemon/garlic/oil/wine sauce over cous cous, and my first attempt at jerk chicken, which was amazing!

That's also what 105 Chromebooks look like. I got them configured and loaded with software all from the Google Apps admin console. Cool stuff. I even got myself a Chromebook for home after selling off the cracked Surface RT. The battery life is crazy, like 7-8 hours.

New website for side projects

Put this together over the weekend. Hoping to expand my side work to earn some extra cash. Stop by, check it out, and then pay me to fix your stuff.

http://www.lake-effect.squarespace.com/

I've also been sick again for about a week now. Gotta love it. Went to doc, got antibiotics.

I have to do this

http://www.keylargobike.com/Florida-Keys-Photo-Gallery.html 

I'd take 2 days to bike it all.

Easter and better weather

Finally some decent weather! It hit 78 today, Got out on the bike a couple times over the last 10 days for a little over 20 miles.

Caprice is taking a spin class once a week and I joined her last Thursday. That was a tough workout! The girl running it was a bit like a drill instructor, but kept us motivated. I wouldn't mind doing it a couple times a month if the weather sucks but real bike rides are much more fun. Went out to the Brew Market on Bagley afterward to meet Hip, TK, BC, Crina. Turns out BC knows Greg Zola, a guy I worked with at the Bomb Group 25 years ago. Check out the pic of the fish tank they had there.

Caprice is killing it on the diet and exercise lately! She's lost a bunch of weight and is eating "clean" and healthy. I'm trying but it's going a bit slower.

Had a great Easter weekend. We spent Saturday cooking and cleaning, and had brunch on Sunday for about 10 of us. Everything turned out great. We had a TON of food.

Here's a few pics, and a video of Pup going nuts trying to eat water from the hose.

No love in recent tourney

Played a $140 tourney at Marc S' place over the weekend. Played solid for 2 hours, and made a couple of blunders to bust out. Made a horrible call on my last hand, but Crazy Joe still made a terrible preflop call with bad cards and got lucky, and I flopped top-top.

Team tourney is coming up. Gotta be ready.

Got out for a bike ride this weekend, did 11 miles. MAP

Of course, we got 2 inches of snow last night. It was 76 degrees 2 days ago.  I even busted out the sandals. Mother Nature can suck it.

Hooked up my cousin with an LCD TV that I got on CL for $40. Great TV...32", a little old and the remote doesn't work the best, but it beats what he had.

More pics from CHI Town...and food porn

Enjoy...

Happy new year...3 months late

Damn, I've been SLACKING on the posts! This has been the longest freaking winter EVER! It was 16 degrees this morning. Usually by now we've had a few days of 55+, but not this year. I've barely been outside since before Christmas. Depressing.

Let's see, what's new...Home: we're on a bit of a health kick. Lots of fruits/veggies lately. Caprice is on a roll and doing great. I need to catch up! Gonna try a 5-day juice fast with Mean Green from "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead". I can use the reboot.

Speaking of reboots, Id been updating some tech at home as well. Got a MS Surface RT, hated it at first, then really started to like it, but it doesn't do Google stuff well. So, I sold it (it was new) and used the money to get a used Pro version from Gazelle on eBay, and it's great. I only have 2 complaints. The touchpad on the type keyboard/cover is awful, and the AC adapter magnetic connection sucks ass. Stick with the plug!

Saw Kings of Leon in Columbus with Graham in mid-February. Great show, very solid.

New glasses: Got some new glasses and contacts. I like the glasses, it's a cool new look. I just have to keep my hair trimmed, they don't look good with longer hair.

New phones/service: We switched back to AT&T! So glad we did, the reception is much much better, and we got new Galaxy S4's, which are a nice upgrade to the S3. Of course, the new HTC One looks freaking killer and came out right after we switched.

Guns: Sent my XDs9 back for a recall repair recently. Got it back and they hooked me with an extended magazine, although they sent the .45 model, so I have to send it back.

Soup cookoff: Took 3rd out of 15 in the AmVets soup cookoff back in February. Smoky potato with bacon and leeks. MMMMMMMMmmmmmm!

new years: Went to TK's. Coleman joined us. We had a great time, though it ended up being only 7 of us.

poker: I've barely played! Still getting crushed at the cash game lately, but I'm doing well in tourneys. I need to find a good one somewhere soon.

I got into a new series lately (besides Walking Dead, which isn't fantastic, but fun to watch), called True Detective. Quite possibly better than Breaking Bad. Just amazing. Found some episodes of a Brit series called Black Mirror. Kinda like a modern Twilight Zone with lots of technology. Pretty cool.

Chicago trip: Just got back last night. What a cool town! Did the museum, aquarium, skydeck at Sears Tower, Cubs game at Wrigley (woo! bucket list item) and even caught a very funny improv comedy show. Family friendly too, since we had the kids with us. It was a lot of fun.

Work is going GREAT! Just switched to a new help desk system called Zendesk. "Love your help desk" is their tagline, and I love my help desk! It took me some time to get it all set up, and I'm still working on a few customizations, but it's very Zen-like and smooth. Really makes our workflow easier, and from the end-user side, it's a breeze as well.

I'm going to bring in a 37" TV that I have sitting in the attic, and set it up as a "control center" monitor for the network, tech tickets, wireless syste, etc.

I just started taking some Google tests, for the Certified Trainer program, and I'm 2 for 2 so far. I also just had a great evaluation.

We just got some new cabinets in the office and I moved all of our parts/supplies into them. They look MUCH better than the beat up metal cabinets we had before, and they hide all the clutter, and lock so we can put new iPads/laptops in there at night. There have been times where we had $30k worth of tech just sitting there. I do have a small motion alarm that might help, but a locking cabinet adds a lot of security.

So, that's a quick update for now, I'll try to keep up from here!

RIP Ray

Lost a long-time friend the other day. Cancer sucks.

Reading this right now

In Focus, Psychologist and journalist Daniel Goleman, author of the #1 international bestsellerEmotional Intelligence, offers a groundbreaking look at today’s scarcest resource and the secret to high performance and fulfillment: attention.

Combining cutting-edge research with practical findings, Focus delves into the science of attention in all its varieties, presenting a long overdue discussion of this little-noticed and under-rated mental asset. In an era of unstoppable distractions, Goleman persuasively argues that now more than ever we must learn to sharpen focus if we are to survive in a complex world.

Goleman boils down attention research into a threesome: inner, other, and outer focus. Drawing on rich case studies from fields as diverse as competitive sports, education, the arts, and business, he shows why high-achievers need all three kinds of focus, and explains how those who rely on Smart Practices—mindfulness meditation, focused preparation and recovery, positive emotions and connections, and mental “prosthetics” that help them improve habits, add new skills, and sustain greatness—excel while others do not.

I need to put down the phone/tablet/laptop and FOCUS. Focus on losing some weight, on exercising, on eating healthier, on passing the Google certified trainer tests, etc. My mind is going full speed in 10 directions at once lately. A thought will come into my head, say, something I need to add to a to-do list at work, and as I'm looking for the list, the item slips my mind. I'm hoping this book will help with that, among other things. 

Tournament cash and Thanksgiving

Had a decent T-giving dinner. Food was great, but it was me, mom, brother, and sister-in-law. They ate and ran so they could go shopping. Unreal. So after they left I popped the cork on some wine. I happened upon Tisdale Cabernet at my local supermarket for $4 a bottle, and originally got it for cooking, but this wine is damned good! I've had $30 bottles that were not as good. Very smooth.

So Black Friday I played Julie's $100 deep stack tourney, and finished 4th out of 28. Got sucked out on the last hand when Luckbox Linda lived up to her name, shoving preflop with 7-8 suited against my AK suited. She got a flush. NH. I would have had a monster chip lead with about half the chips and 3 left. Ah well. Paid $300. I then sat at the $.25/.50 cash table for 30 minutes and raked in $40. Not bad.

So what did I do with my profit? Sunday after watching the Browns lose a game that should have been cake, I saw a Microsoft Surface tablet on Craigslist pretty cheap, and made the guy an offer. It was brand new in unopened box. For about 24 hours, I HATED this thing. I still wouldn't recommend it to the casual user, but I am getting the hang of it, and it's pretty slick in many ways. Gonna sell my Samsung laptop to cover the cost. That will leave me the Asus laptop, the Surface, Nexus 7, and a desktop I never touch. Wouldn't mind trading the Samsung, Nexus, and Surface all for a Yoga 11 or even Surface Pro 2. Very cool.

I think we finally got the fleas off the dogs! Had to dip them s few times and stay persistent with washing their bedding and spraying the floors.

Oh, and check out the pic of the Browns app for Win RT. I don't think those stats are accurate. Pierogies in the pic were for a potluck at Amvets for the OSU-MI game. Killer! And what a game that was!