Author Archives: Michael C. McGreevy

Using Twitter to Track Your Weight

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Fail Whale!When I originally started my life of dieting twenty or so years ago the tools I had to help me do so were pretty much limited to a paper journal and a scale.

My how things have changed.

The modern dieter has a plethora of toys, gadgets, and gizmos available to aid in the weight loss process.  There are paid sites like eDiets and Weight Watchers eTools, calorie counting applications you can download for your iPhone or Blackberry, pedometers and heart rate monitors, digital scales, electronic body fat measuring devices….The list goes on and on.

Developer Mark Rickert has decided to add one more tool to the arsenal by creating an application that utilizes everyone’s favorite new social networking service, Twitter, to track your weight online.

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Trials and Tribulations of Telecommuting

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Image Courtesy of roland

Image Courtesy of roland

Ah, telecommuting.  That dream within a dream for the working professional.  While most of us are stuck in traffic or trapped behind a cube wall while the person next to us listens to “Come On, Eileen!” for the tenth time the telecommuter is sitting at home, sipping home brewed coffee in their pajamas and basking in the serenity that is home life.

Well, that is how we envision it is, anyway.  The truth of the matter is that working from home, while it has many advantages, is not quite the golden apple that those of us in the cube farms picture it to be.  While the telecommuter may not have to deal with Lundberg face-to-face, he or she has to deal with a whole variety of productivity hurdles that someone in an office is safely isolated from;  Kids, pets, door-to-door salesmen, distracting spouses, telephone solicitors, and the perception that the fact that working from home is not really “working” and as a result you should somehow be expected to drop whatever you are doing at a moments notice to deal with the latest non-work related situation that has cropped up in your life.

There is one other major challenge that the health conscious telecommuter has to deal with.   Staying in shape.  Having just finished a period of over four years in which I was telecommuting about 80% of the time I can assure you that while it is easier to avoid the weekly doughnut trap in the break room there are a whole series of roadblocks to being healthy that appear when you start working from home.  If you find yourself fortunate enough to end up with a telecommuting opportunity there’s a few things you can do to help minimize the negative impact on your physical AND mental well-being.

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When Come Back Bring Pie

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Weebl and Bob are copyright j. picking

Weebl and Bob are copyright j. picking

According to Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich there we must all accept that there are certain inalienable truths :  Prices will rise.  Politicians will philander.  You, too, will get old (and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders).

Oh, and Pie is greater than Cake.

Not many people are aware that Ms. Schmich included that in her original column.  Unfortunately that line was omitted from the printed article by a delusional cake loving typesetter named Gladys who worked for the printers.  It’s true.  My wife told me.  My wife….Morgan Fairchild!  Yeah, that’s the ticket!

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You Are What You Believe You Are

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The Comic Book Store Guy - Not YOU!When you hear the term “Geek” what do you think of?  If you’re a self-proclaimed Geek perhaps you think of a highly intelligent person who enjoys some of the less mainstream entertainment in modern society.  Perhaps you think of someone who is good with computers or who always has the latest technology.  Maybe you just think of someone who likes to wear black t-shirts with sarcastic sayings on them.

If you’re not one of the Chosen, though, you might have a different view of our society.  You might see Geeks as being socially awkward, unwashed, and out of shape losers who live in their mothers basement and work in a comic book store.  Society, on the whole, doesn’t paint a very pretty picture of Geeks as a general rule.

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Words of +WIS : Life Is Like A Mop

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Stanley Spadowski's ClubhouseSometimes you just hafta take what life gives ya, ’cause life is like a mop and sometimes life gets full of dirt and crud and bugs and hairballs and stuff… you, you, you gotta clean it out. You, you, you gotta put it in here and rinse it off and start all over again and, and sometimes, sometimes life sticks to the floor so bad you know a mop, a mop, it’s not good enough, it’s not good enough. You, you gotta get down there, like, with a toothbrush, you know, and you gotta, you gotta really scrub ’cause you gotta get it off. You gotta really try to get it off. But if that doesn’t work, that doesn’t work, you can’t give up. You gotta, you gotta stand right up. You, you gotta run to a window and say, “Hey! These floors are dirty as hell, and I’m not gonna take it any more!”

– Stanley Spadowski, UHF (1989)

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In Defense Of The Walking Dude

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Randall Flagg from "The Stand"When I started out this project I specifically picked a group of folks who I knew had some very different takes on the whole weight loss and fitness field.  I did this for a variety of reasons, but primarily I did so because I know there is no such thing as a “one size fits all” solution when it comes to weight loss and fitness and that having multiple perspectives on certain subjects is a great way to help our readership find out what works best for them.

Take, for example, the article that Rafe wrote the other day about doing something other than walking in order to get in your daily exercise.  It’s a fine article, and the exercise he mentions certainly seems challenging, but in reading it I felt the need to write a response and give you all the “other side” of the coin.

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Video Games Don’t Make You Fat. Food Does.

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THIS is why you're fat

America is, undeniably, getting larger around the waist line.  As a matter of fact obesity has become such a problem here that back in July of last year Senators Chris Dodd, Tom Harkin, and Jeff Bingaman introduced the Federal Obesity Prevention Act of 2008.  This bill was in response to what Dodd called “a medical emergency of hurricane-like proportions” in our country, and would have established a government strategy for preventing and reducing obesity.  This strategy would have included short- and long-term goals for childhood and adult obesity rates.

Which, in Orwellian terms, meant that the United States Government may have taken a direct interest in America’s waist line if this Bill had passed (it was referred to committee back in September of 2008 and has not been brought back up in the current session).

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Tips For A Healthier Breakfast

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The BlobBreakfast.  It’s the most important meal of the day.  That’s what they tell us anyway.  I’m not entirely sure who “they” are, really, but I know that from a very early age it seems as though every adult in your life was telling you how important it was that you get in your bowl of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs before heading off to school in the morning.  Heck, they even put it into our cartoons.  If you’re a flannel wearing member of Generation X like me you may recall Timer, a shape changing yellow guy who sang to us about breakfast being so important that we might want to consider things like leftover chicken legs if we were out of eggs.

So yeah.  Breakfast is important.  We all know this.  Thing is, somewhere along the line a lot of us forget it.  The desire to get an extra twenty minutes of sleep in the morning often results in either no breakfast or hitting up your favorite doughnut chain for something that, while delicious, is loaded with calories and very little nutrition.  If you’re trying to improve your health, though, kick starting your day with a nutritious breakfast is an important step on the path of doing so.   Research has shown that people who eat breakfast are “significantly less likely to be obese and diabetic than those who don’t.”

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Boring School Stuff

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Just making a list here for my own records so that I can update accordingly (and get a piece of paper off of my desk).  This is a list of classes I need to take before I can enroll in the B.S. program at Saint Petersburg College.

  • BUL 2241 – Business Law
  • MAN 2340 – Human Factors in Supervision
  • MAN 2528 – Introduction to Project Management
  • ACG 2071 – Managerial Accounting
  • ENC 2210 – Technical Writing  *Currently Enrolled*
  • CGS 1822 – Web Site Essentials
  • CET 1171c – Personal Computer Systems Repair
  • CIS 2321 – Systems Analysis and Design
  • CET 1172c – Personal Computer Systems Repair II
  • COP 2837 – Visual Basic .NET Programming

Two Quick Updates

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The Muppet Show's NewsmanThe Virgin Healthmiles program that I wrote about in this post now has a membership program that individuals can sign up for.   The initial fee is $29.99 and that includes the first month, and just like your typical MMORPG there is a monthly fee after that of $12.99.  Considering the fact that you can earn up to $500 in rewards in a year you only have to make it to Level 3 to see a “profit” from that in your wallet (and you’d most definitely see one on the scale).  For more information check out the information and registration page on the Virgin Healthmiles site.

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