Weight: 190 lbs (no change)

Average Hours of Sleep: 5.7 hours

Total Workout Time: 0

Total Calories Burned: 0

Beginning my Passover Project New Me respite, I’m 190 pounds. This means I’m (like last week) a mere 3 pounds from my goal. Of course, high calorie Passover food won’t help me lose weight. I’ll try to eat as well as I can, but Passover is complicated enough without adding points into the mix. So I won’t be tracking them this week. It should be interesting to see how much I gain at next week’s weighin. (I won’t be tracking points, but I’ll still be weighing in.)

As far as sleep is concerned, I did poorly this week. JSL has had bad nighttime coughing fits. He doesn’t typically wake up from these, but we do. He’s come into our bed many nights where we laid awake listening to him coughing. He seems to be getting better (and Passover cleaning is done) so hopefully this will mean more sleep for us.

At the beginning of last week, I spotted the traditional (at least when I was growing up) sign of spring’s arrival: a robin red breast. I didn’t get a photo, but when I was at the park with the boys during the first official day of spring, I spotted a butterfly. We had B’s camera with us, so I took it and snapped a photo.

Can’t see it? Yeah, it’s hard to spot. That’s why I began tip toeing ever so quietly towards it, trying to get a better photo. Be vewy vewy quiet. I’m hunting buttewfwies. huh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh.

Ok, this one used the camera’s zoom, but I thought I could get a better shot. So I inched closer and closer. I was amazed at how close I was able to get to the butterfly.

Wait a second. That’s a pretty ugly butterfly. All hairy and stuff. That’s no butterfly, it’s a moth! Still, that’s one cool closeup.

Ah, a face only a mother moth could love. Now, I might not have found a sign of spring, but I’m sure they’re out there. My Aloha Friday question is: Have you seen any signs of spring yet?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #31

On Friday, March 19th, a few Twitter users started retweeting @CutestKidEver‘s opposition to Congress’ Health Care Bill. There was only one problem. She hadn’t expressed opposition to it at all. In fact, she was expressing anger at the ads opposing it. Here’s her original tweet:

Getting angry at ads misleading people to get them to call Scott Murphy and tell him to vote no on #HCR

Now here’s one of the retweets.

RT @cutestkidever: Call Scott Murphy and tell him to vote ‘NO’ on #HCR

Do you see the problem there? It was even more pronounced when that same person retweeted @ScottFeinberg. Over two tweets, he said:

The following Congressmen are still undecided about health care reform, which needs 6 more votes. Call and urge them to vote "Yes!"

Rep. Scott Murphy (D-New York’s 20th District) at (202) 225-5614

The retweet said:

RT @ScottFeinberg: Tell Murphy "NO" Rep. Scott Murphy (D-New York’s 20th District) at (202) 225-5614

First of all, let me get one thing out of the way. This post is not about the pros or cons concerning any Health Care bill. So please save your "It’s horrible! / It’s fantastic!" comments for another post. (In fact, I delayed this post until after the Health Care vote hoping to avoid most of those comments.) Why did I highlight those tweets, then? Well, it’s all about the Retweet.

You see, for the longest time, retweeting was an informal process. You’d copy the person’s tweet and username, add an "RT" in front of it, perhaps a comment after it, and off it went. To standardize things, Twitter recently added a retweet function that takes the whole tweet and puts it in the timeline of that user’s followers.

I’ll be honest. I didn’t like this change. No longer could I comment within a RT. It was an adjustment to recognize that the strange person appearing in my timeline was from a RT. Luckily, I didn’t need to bother with it because I used Seesmic Desktop. Hitting the retweet option gave me the familiar "RT @Username Original Message" pre-filled tweet. But then Seesmic Desktop began using the new Twitter RT method. Now, I had to copy/paste the message or select Quote Message (which was one level deeper than retweet).

I really didn’t see the need for this new retweet method. Why replace "RT" (with the ability to comment inline with the original message) with the "intruding tweeter" method? Well, after CutestKidEver and ScottFeinberg’s experiences, I can see one very good reason. While I still can see much utility in the old method, it could easily be used, intentionally or unintentionally, to misquote somebody. And once a misquote is made, it can spread like wildfire with more and more people retweeting the misquoted tweet. Before long, thousands of people could read the original misquoted tweet.

The new RT method is immune from misquoting. You simply can’t use Twitter’s new RT method and turn someone’s support for something into opposition (or vice versa). The problem that CutestKidEver and ScottFeinberg experienced couldn’t happen using the new RT. In the end, I don’t think I’ll be a complete convert to the new RT method. I still like adding my own comments from time to time, but I now can see the importance behind the new method and why Twitter went that route versus incorporating the previous method.

When we last left our brave Disney Social Media Family, they were braving a potential rainstorm to spend some quality time in the Magic Kingdom. At the end of Part 1, they – I mean we – had just finished up a nice pizza lunch.  This meant that it was time to ride what quickly became JSL’s other favorite ride: It’s A Small World.

Read more of this article »

We woke up on Tuesday, February 9th ready to have a magical day. And it was going to be extra magical because we were going to the Magic Kingdom. Unfortunately, we had also been dreading this day. You see, the weather forecasts kept predicting rain. We were lucky with last year’s trip that we only had one day with rain (JSL’s birthday) and even then it was only for a few hours. Still, we forged ahead. We didn’t even eat breakfast because we wanted to be at the Magic Kingdom for the opening show. To be prepared for hungry kids (not to mention grown-ups) we did pack a few snacks, though, and munched on those until we ate a proper meal. Read more of this article »

Weight: 190 lbs (down 2 pounds)

Average Hours of Sleep: 6.5 hours

Total Workout Time: 0

Total Calories Burned: 0

This is the last week of my Project New Me before I allow myself a 1 1/2 week respite. You see, Passover is next week (starts the night of Monday, March 30th to be exact). During Passover, it is hard enough to figure out what to eat without worrying about points. So I’m going to forget about the points tracking for those days. Since Sunday and Monday will be hectic enough getting ready for Passover, I’m not going to bother with Points on those days either. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to eat a five doughnut breakfast on Sunday morning, of course. I’ll still try to be as healthy as I can be under the circumstances. I just won’t be formally tracking it.

For now, though, I’m positioned really well. I’m within 3 pounds of my goal weight. I’m also getting decent amounts of sleep during the week. Of course, my sleep average was helped by a big nap I took on Wednesday. You see, after my nose cauterization and my lack of sleep that night, I passed out in my bed while JSL and B went out shopping. (NHL was in school.) I woke up at 12:30 to my phone beeping that a picture message was received. I knew it had to be B sending me a photo (she’s the only one who picture messages me) so I went back to sleep. I next woke up to NHL running in the room with JSL. Looking at the clock, I saw it was 3pm. Yes, I had slept for 5 hours! (I also had completely skipped lunch, but that was ok because my body needed sleep more than food at that point.)

I know I’ve been lax on the exercise front. I don’t even remember the last time I worked out. However, with the nose cauterization, I now have a perfectly valid reason: Doctor’s Orders. I’m not to exercise, run, eat hot and/or spicy foods, or use any “in-nose” product (e.g. saline spray) for three weeks. Doing so could result in something bad happening. I’m a bit vague on what “bad thing” would happen, but if a doctor says “don’t do it” I’m not going to do it just to see what will happen.

You may have noticed that TechyDad.com and TheAngelForever.com were down for quite a bit both this week and last week.  Unfortunately, our web host, Arvixe, has had some severe issues with their servers.  While I don’t doubt that they were working hard to get our web sites back up and running, having 67.5 hours of downtime in 2 weeks makes one think about other hosting options.

We haven’t decided to move just yet.  Even if we did, our hosting requirements are just specific enough to severely limit which hosts we can go with.  Since we use WordPress for our blogs, we obviously need PHP and mySQL.  However, I still like programming in classic ASP, so I need that.  This means a Windows host.  In addition, I need to be able to schedule tasks.  I’ve looked at a few options but so far haven’t come to a conclusion as to what we’ll do next.  (Besides making sure we have up to date backups.)

My questions for you are three-fold:

1) Do you backup your website regularly in case your current host goes belly-up?

2) Would the amount of downtime we’ve had make you rethink where you host your websites?

3) Where do you host your websites now?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #30

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had trouble breathing through my nose. The problem is especially bad in my left nostril. Over a decade ago, I had surgery back to cut back my turbinates, but didn’t get a deviated septum operation as my insurance company at the time denied it the day before the operation. (They claimed it was cosmetic only.)

Last month, I went to an ENT specialist concerning my nosebleeds. I was getting them on a daily basis and they were really troubling me. Now when I say nosebleeds, I don’t mean a bit of blood coming out of my nose, I mean a gush of blood necessitating constant pressure for 10-15 minutes. The nosebleeds always came from the same nostril, the left one. Yes, the same one that I can hardly breathe through.

Last month, the ENT packed my nose with special gauze to help my nostril’s blood vessels heal. This worked for a week or two. Then I got a nosebleed. The next week, I got another one. Then they started coming every 2 or 3 days.

Meanwhile, last week, JSL had strep. When I developed a sore throat (and heard that a few of my co-workers had sore throats), I wondered if I was getting strep as well. So I went back to the ENT, figuring I’d find out about the strep at the same time that I talk with them about my nose. They didn’t think I had strep, but did a culture just to be sure. (Results will take a few days.) Then it was time for my nose.

The nurse practitioner took a look in my nose and said that it was time to go for electrical-cauterization. They got their tools ready and here’s the intrument of torture:

First, they soaked a cotton ball with some numbing solution. They shoved this up my nostril, causing numbing stuff to run down my lip and into my mouth. YUCK! After it had a few minutes to work, and after B took JSL out of the room, they began the cauterization. Think of the static electric shock you get from time to time when you touch a light switch. Multiply that by 10. Now put that shock inside your nostril. Yes, it was painful. Very painful. And, even worse, I could smell my nostril burning. (This burning smell would persist for hours afterwards.)

As a side effect of this procedure, I can’t breathe through either nostril now. (Not going to go into any more details since I think I’ve already strayed into TMI territory.) Last night was spent passed out for an hour, then up for an hour hacking and coughing and trying to, somehow, get comfortable enough to sleep.

I know that, in the long run, this will help me avoid nosebleeds. It was also a prerequisite for even considering any form of surgery on my nose to correct my breathing problems. Still, in the short term, it was quite the nasty procedure. I’m hoping to be able to rest a bit more today so I can go back to work tomorrow. (Not to mention being able to breathe a bit better.)

Weight: 192 lbs (up 1 pound)

Average Hours of Sleep: 6.6 hours

Total Workout Time: 0

Total Calories Burned: 0

So here we are at the halfway point of my 20 Weeks/20 Pounds challenge. Currently, I weigh 192 pounds. Since I began at 207 pounds, this means that I’ve lost 15 of my 20 pounds, or five pounds over where I projected I’d be. Despite being two thirds of the way there, I’ve still got some hurdles to clear.

First of all, the last five pounds can be the most stubborn. I could easily hit a plateau now and not leave it until the challenge nears its conclusion. Secondly, Passover is coming up. With all the complications of life during Passover, I don’t need to add “counting points”, so I’m giving myself a Points-Free-Week then. This doesn’t mean I plan to engourge myself, but it also doesn’t mean I’m going to examine the box for calories/fat/fiber before I crunch into a piece of matzoh with cream cheese. With luck, I won’t gain too much during those eight days and I’ll still be able to complete the challenge.

You might not know it from talking to me in person, but I can have some pretty strong emotions.  However, over the years, I’ve learned to keep them bottled up.  It might not be the healthiest thing to do, but it is what my life experiences taught me to do.  Now NHL is showing some of the same strong emotions that I have felt and I’m struggling with teaching him how to manage them. Read more of this article »