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Saturday, October 24, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
Better choices
I am on day 11 of making better choices for life. As of day 11 I am 15 lbs lighter and I am happy about that. I contribute my success thus far to making some very tough decisions. The criteria for what I stick in my mouth is simple. Is this healthy food or is this junk? Am I really hungry or am I just being an emotional eater that needs to have a quick fix and feel good? The Medifast meal program is forcing me to limit how much I eat and it is changing my eating habits one day at a time. The key to my success will be my understanding that my need to lose weight far outweighs my want for the food I am used to eating. If I want to lose weight I must make drastic changes. Only I can do this, no one else can do it for me. My desire to lose weight is growing as I watch the lbs come off and the clothes I have fit better. Some other motivational after affects of my new and better choices is that my blood pressure has dropped several points and stayed down. My flexibility has improved some as well which is nice. My short term goal is to lose 20 lbs so that means I need to lose five more lbs. My medium range goal is to lose 40 lbs which will be awesome if I can keep this up.
I am on week 9 of the fall semester at Trident Technical College and I am doing very well much to my surprise. I have managed to figure out a system that helps me to stay organized with all four of my classes and I have a set schedule that I follow. I am glad that I have been able to keep up with everything thus far and have managed to make good grades.
Better choices
I am on day 11 of making better choices for life. As of day 11 I am 15 lbs lighter and I am happy about that. I contribute my success thus far to making some very tough decisions. The criteria for what I stick in my mouth is simple. Is this healthy food or is this junk? Am I really hungry or am I just being an emotional eater that needs to have a quick fix and feel good? The Medifast meal program is forcing me to limit how much I eat and it is changing my eating habits one day at a time. The key to my success will be my understanding that my need to lose weight far outweighs my want for the food I am used to eating. If I want to lose weight I must make drastic changes. Only I can do this, no one else can do it for me. My desire to lose weight is growing as I watch the lbs come off and the clothes I have fit better. Some other motivational after affects of my new and better choices is that my blood pressure has dropped several points and stayed down. My flexibility has improved some as well which is nice. My short term goal is to lose 20 lbs so that means I need to lose five more lbs. My medium range goal is to lose 40 lbs which will be awesome if I can keep this up.
I am on week 9 of the fall semester at Trident Technical College and I am doing very well much to my surprise. I have managed to figure out a system that helps me to stay organized with all four of my classes and I have a set schedule that I follow. I am glad that I have been able to keep up with everything thus far and have managed to make good grades.
Well, that is about it folks, have a good weekend!!
Monday, October 19, 2009
New week new day
Today is day seven of my Take Shape for Life program. I am glad that I am mentally adjusted to the program and that I will not be shocked to find out this morning that most of my meals will consist of tiny little food bars that have 110 calories and lots of water. I am eating scrambled eggs with my decaf coffee to jump start my day.
One of my dear friends from Tennessee made mention that I should be doing this for Christ’s sake. I understand the spiritual implications of what he is saying but I have to say that I have much more motivation to do this for my sake. I am motivating myself to make better decisions for life. Take shape for life to me means to make better decisions so that I can continue to live a better less rounded life. In our society where more is better my decision is to say less can be even better. I must die to myself and stop gratifying the flesh and giving in to its wants and desires. The sin of gluttony is just as ugly as any other sin that you can think of. In the book of James in the bible it tells us that when sin takes it full course it ends in death. The sin of gluttony can kill me and I know that unless I get it under control and captivate my mind and renew my thought processes with good information and better decisions that I might get to experience some of the more critical and possibly life ending consequences of obesity. No one wants a heart attack or stroke and I am not any different. I do not want to have my life prematurely ended because I was too lazy to stop poking bad things into my mouth. I am not saying that food itself is bad but what I am saying is that when we eat too much of it and the wrong kinds of things that our bodies get out of balance and that is when it gets bad.
Just last week I caught myself wanting to self medicate with food. Some would say that being an emotional eater will lend towards being fat and I would have to agree with that. I found myself in a stressful situation where I was not happy about something and the first thing that popped into my mind was to go to the general store and get some food. The thought of doing that was very pleasant and happy. The problem with the thought is that I was telling myself that in order to experience the stress of the moment that it would be better if I experienced the stress of the moment with some of my favorite foods in my mouth. Luckily for me I overcame the thought process and caught myself before I acted on it. I told myself that eating something I wanted was only going to do me more harm and give me a setback with what little progress I made last week with this program. So, I made the right choice in that moment and did not do what I have been programmed to do all these years.
This is day 7 of my new Take Shape for Life program and I am happy to be where I am. I am happy that I have the opportunity to make the right decisions and for those good decisions to take me closer and closer to my goal of shrinking the incredible me. I want to be half the man that I am today and I mean that in a literal sense. This may take me 6 months to a year to accomplish but I am convinced that I can do it. I CAN do this. I can do this. I want to do this. I need to do this. I will do this.
For those of you that are my friends I would ask that you continue to pray for my ability to keep on keeping on with this. I am clinging to Phillipians 4:13 that says I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. This is a hard thing for me to do but I am determined to do it despite my past history of failures. I want to thank each of you for your continued support and encouragement as I move forward with this goal.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Lunch
Dear food nazi, chicken and green beans for lunch with unsweet tea.
:)
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Saturday, October 17, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Making adjustments with the diet day 5
This is day five of my 30 day trial of the Take Shape for Life diet. This diet provides you with 5 nutritious meals and you are allowed one lean and green meal one time per day. I have not followed the plan 100% however I am seeing results.
- I feel so much better
- post lunch comas are all but gone
- flexibility is slowly getting better
- joint pain in my left knee is there but much more bearable
- my clothes seem to fit better
- I have watched my blood pressure go down slowly
All of this has been motivational for me however the biggest motivating factor happened Thursday night when one of my computer customers who had not seen me 8 weeks or longer complimented me on my weight loss. The first thing he said was " you are losing weight, good job". I was like, you can notice? He said,"absolutely you are doing something right, keep it up." Now talk about some motivation folks, that is really motivating. Someone at work also mentioned to me today that she could tell that I was losing weight. Wooohoooo now that is wonderful.
Even though I have not followed the plan 100% I have made some tough decisions which are leading to some big adjustments in my diet. The first thing I am doing is drinking much more water than normal. I am supposed to drink 64 oz of water per day and thus far I have been getting around 48 oz on most days. In five days I think I hit the 64 oz mark once so I need to improve on that. I am using Crystal Light to give me some taste to make it a little easier to consume it. I am also using Dasani flavored water and Poweraid flavored water.
The five delicious meals that I received in the variety pack turned out to be mere snacks to me. I understand that according to the "plan" the five meals are actually THE meals I am allowed to have. My brain is having to adjust to the fact that I really do not have to eat as much as I used to. I have also noticed that if I eat the bars and drink plenty of water that I am really not hungry. When I am not hungry it makes it easier to not eat food that I should not eat. I have also discovered that the only thing in the variety pack that I can tolerate or the snack bars. Thus far the other stuff like the chicken and noodle soup or the shakes are just gross. I even tried the chocolate pudding and it did not taste very good. I know that I need to get better at sticking with the plan as closely as I can. The closer that I stick to the plan the more weight I will lose and the faster it will come off.
This week the adjustments I made was to not eat any of the following.
- ice cream from McDonalds
- ice cream from a grocery store
- cheeseburgers from anywhere
- prime rib wrap from King Street Grille
- sausage biscuit with egg and cheese from McDonalds
- sweet tea
- bread of any sort
- ham and cheese sandwiches
- ham egg and cheese sandwiches
- french fries and fried shrimp (used to eat every Friday for lunch)
- fried foods
Now, I know, some of you might be saying big deal. You should not be eating that garbage anyway. I would say to you that is correct, I should not have been eating that food and thanks to eating it over the last 15 years it has led to where I am now. For me to chose not to eat this type of food is a big adjust ment for me. I am HAPPY that I have been able to make the right choices this week even if I did not follow the plan 100%. So, with that said I need to try and do better this new week. I think that things are going to get easier for me as time goes on. The first two to three days were pretty rough as I was getting over the shock value of what a meal is on the plan vs my expectation of a real meal.
Several of you have been very supportive of me in prayer and in verbal encouragement. I have to say that I could not do this without the prayers and your encouragement. My food nazi/life coach friend has been a proverbial pain in my back side but I do appreciate her motivational talks and reminders to drink that water even if I was a bit snarky about it. You know who your friends are when they stick by you both in good times and bad times.
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Me thinks I need the chimney cleaned out. Cough
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Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Medifast meals
One of the most difficult things about a diet is the self discipline involved in making it a success. Yesterday was day one on the 5 and 1 Medifast program and I have to say that I was not that successful. I did good up until about 9 pm last night when I gave in and had a portion of chicken pot pie that my wife had made for the rest of the family. I also had a bowl of honey nut cheerios around 11 pm. The good news is that I did not gorge myself even though I was pretty hungry when I got home. I understand that a lot of people have lost a lot of weight on this program and that in and of itself is testimonial itself to the success you can have. The problem that I am struggling with is that I am going to have to be willing to starve myself in order to do it. I understand that the "plan" calls for 5 meals during the day every three hours and then a lean and green meal at the end of the day or whenever you would like to eat it. The problem I am having with this plan is two fold. Problem one is the meal is barely a snack. The portions are VERY tiny and they leave you with the desire to have three times the amount of the suggested serving. The second problem with the plan is that the meals suck. If you listen to the marketing hype about the program you are left with the belief that you are going to enjoy the tasty meals every day and not even notice that you are eating prepackaged food that comes in little silver pouches. I think that I have missed out on the brainwashing session where they were supposed to convince me of this. This is day two and I am going to go forward and do the best I can. Today I am going to try the chicken and rice soup for lunch and hopefully it will be better than the chicken noodle soup yesterday. All in all I think that this plan will help me to get away from fried foods and sweets and breads. Even if I do not follow the plan 100% I think that it is going to help me begin to moderate what I eat and how much and hopefully that in and of itself will help me to start lose weight.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
This is the day the Lord has made rejoice and be glad in it
Good morning Posterous friends. :) I have some new subscribers to my Posterous blog and for that I am thankful. My hope is that the thoughts that I share on my blog will bless you and encourage you in some small way. I sometimes wonder why anyone would subscribe to my blogs. In the blogosphere I am one of many voices that are out there and I always figure that there are folks out there that are much more entertaining or informative than me. The important thing is that I do blog and you like to read it. That fact alone helps me to keep writing I suppose.
I noticed this morning that I could add a theme to my blog and do some advanced customization. I hope you like the new look and feel of my Posterous blog. I am not familiar enough with CSS to do any advanced customizations so I will just stick with simple. I think that simple is better sometime. The nice thing about Posterous is that your blog is not all gummed up with advertisements from who knows where trying to sell you some thing or service that you have no need for or the money to spend on.
I am sitting here in my recliner drinking my first cup of coffee and watching Willie chew on his bone. Willie is our new 9 month old Lab puppy who is so full of energy. Willie thinks that the cats and Frodo are his wind up toys. Frodo who is our miniature weiner dog gives it all he has and plays with Willie who towers over him like a giant. Angel who is our 9 year old female lab is not that impressed with Willie and she is not shy about letting him know about it either. I think that in time everyone will get used to one another and be just fine.
My last three days off from work have been nice and I have needed the time off for a rest. I did not do anything extraordinary but I did enjoy hanging out with Katy and running errands and such. I am sure that Katy will be happy when I go back to work on Monday so she can get back to her normal routine. Katy is more of a home body than I am and when I am around the house I like to go do things. You could call me Mr Spontaneous while Katy likes to plan things out and know what she is going to be doing at least one day in advance. What is the fun in that?
Take Shape for Life starts tomorrow and I have mixed emotions about it. The good thing is that I will try to stick with the program because I do want to lose weight. I really need to get the 100 lb gorilla off of my back. I think that is a good word picture for me to think about when I think about losing weight. That gorilla has been on my back for way too long and has been causing more problems than he is worth. I am not sure if it is a male gorilla or a female gorilla at this point but it probably does not matter. What matters is I am tired of carrying this thing around with me everywhere I go. Instead of being fearful about change I will try to have a positive mental attitude and realize that change has to happen for me to get rid of the gorilla. If I can stick with this the changes will be lowered blood pressure and not having to take BP meds every day. Increased mobility and flexibility will be back in my life. I will have more energy to play with my kids and Willie. Hopefully I will be extending my longevity here on this earth.
Katy and I went to N Charleston last night to attend an awards ceremony for one of my friends son who was recieving the Boy Scounts Acheivement award. My friend introduced me to her husband for the first time and we had a good time chatting. Brian and I have several things in common. One of those things we have in common is the need to lose weight. I told Brian that as time marches on I am getting older. I told Brian that I had noticed that I have not ever seen any older people who were obese. If you ask me that is a wake up call for someone like me who is knocking on the door of 50. It is only going to get harder and harder to do what needs to be done. Brian told me that he can lose weight when he puts his mind to it and has done so on several occasions. He also told me that he will be very interested in hearing about my progress. My hope and dream is that I can lose weight and keep it off. I also hope that my doing so can encourage others just like me who need to do the same. The motivation is to be healthier and to feel better physically and emotionally.
Now it is time for me to get off my rear end and get ready for my trip over to Grace Fellowship Church in Duck Ditch. I know it is silly that I can not seem to disassociate myself with Grace Fellowship but after 9 years of going there I have grown fond of the people there. There is a bond there that will not just go away. We may not be able to make it over there every single Sunday but I want to continue to go there as often as I can. I hope you have a beautiful and peaceful stress free day.
God bless
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Four day weekend starts NOW
I am so happy that I have a couple of four day weekends ahead of me for the month of October. I was planning on going out of town to visit a friend of mine in Denver for 4 days but that plan fell through. So, instead of taking 9 days off I am going to hold off on the out of town visit and just take some extended weekends instead. Hopefully in January I can make the trip to Denver.
My experience with going back to school has been pretty good thus far. The hardest part was just making the decision and going through the hassles of getting registered and providing the school with all of the paperwork involved. Six weeks later and I am finding myself getting into a rhythm and figuring out when I need to do what. I work during the day and then I take a break and then hit the books. It makes for some long days during the week but if I get most of my stuff done during the week then I can have most of my weekends to myself.
For several months now I have watched a friend of mine at work lose weight using Take Shape for Life program. From what I can tell she took the weight off and has kept it off. Granted, she does not have to lose anywhere near what I need to lose but it works. Last week I made the decision to give it a 30 day trial. I bought my first months worth of pre packaged meals , snacks etc and starting on Monday I am going to give it a whirl. I have been reading on the support website of the men who have had a lot of success with this program as well. The key to the success is to stick with the program as it is designed and not cheat. During the day while I am at the office I should not have too much problem with this program. At night and during the weekends that is when this will be the most difficult. I may have to buy Katy a tranquilizer gun or a taser to keep me in check. I am thinking that once I see the pounds coming off that will be all the motivation I will need to stay on the program.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Dallas who ?
Has the billion dollar fish bowl gone to the cowgirls heads or what? I just sat through one half of a football game to watch the Dallas field goal kicker miss a 40 yard field goal and the Dallas offense is sputtering worse than a two bit lawnmower with bad gas. The offensive line is going to get Tony Romo hurt if they dont do a better job of protecting him. I am also thinking that the coaches need to teach the players in the Dallas secondary how to tackle someone. You can not tackle someone that is the same size as yourself or bigger by slapping them with one hand on the waist line. This is not touch football girls this is the NFL. If you can not tackle someone please go sit on the bench and let someone else that can tackle get on the field. If Dallas can not beat the Panthers tonight then the season is absolutely over for them. How in the world will they be able to compete with some of the more high powered teams in the NFL? The answer is they can not.hope to compete playing like this. If Dallas plays like they did in the first half then they will lose the game. I wonder how it felt to the Cowboys when they got booed at the end of the first half?
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
Out of money?
How often do you go to the bank to cash a check and they turn you down because they are out of money? I got off of work early today to go to NBSC on Folly Rd and when I showed them my student loan refund check they told me "we are sorry but we are out of money until tomorrow afternoon when the Brinks truck arrives". I thought that certainly there must be some mistake for a bank to be out of money. Make no mistake sir the teller said, Trident Technical College gave out all the refund checks at once and gave us no warning whatsoever. That means that it was a first come first serve situation at the bank today. All of the brances for NBSC were out of cash , not just the one on Folly Road. I was told to come back to the bank tomorrow afternoon and they might have enough money to cash my check. I am thankful that I just got paid and I can be patient while the bank replenishes its supply. No, I do not want to depost the check in my account so my bank can put a 10 day hold on it. I would rather just cash it and put the cash in my account.
I am surprised to see that I have 7 people subscribed to my posterous blog. I can understand why my wife and close friends might want to hear my driveling but what about the rest of you folks? In order to reward you for your subscription to my blog I have in turn subscribed to your posterous blog as well. Thank you for tuning it to my occasional drivel about this and that.
So far my adventure back into the halls of academia has not been overtly painful. The experience of getting registered was more than irritating but with tons of patience and keeping the phone lines hot I managed to come through that process ok. Financial aid came through to pay for school for this semester and next semester so I now join the ranks of students out there that now owe a student loan once we get out of school. Yeah me!!!
The first three weeks of school were busy but I adjusted my free time schedule to where I spend most of it studying but still have time to do a couple of things I like to do. It basically works out this way. I study for 3.5 hours four days a week and then I use the weekend to finish up any papers that are to be written or project assignments that must be done. When I read a chapter I go over the chapter summary notes and then I go straight to the quiz and take it while the material is still stuck in short term memory. That seems to work better than reading the chapters on Monday and Tuesday and then having to wait until the weekend to study the notes all over again to refresh my short term memory and then take the test. I guess everyone has their system and as long as it works for you that is all that matters.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Windows 7 and XP dual boot
In the last couple of weeks I have been using Windows 7. Thanks to being a student and an associating between MSDN and our school we have access to download the OS and take it for a spin. I installed Windows 7 on a Dell Latitude E6500 with an 80 gb hard drive and 2 gb of ram. I downloaded the ISO file and burned it to a DVDRAM disk with iamgeburn which is a free image burning utility. The install process took about the same amount of time as any other OS. During the disk partition selection process I carved up my hard disk into two separate partitions so that I can dual boot Windows 7 and XP professional or Linux depending on what strikes my fancy later on.
I was very impressed with the install process which gave me no problems to mention. All of the drivers for my E6500 were found and I have been running Windows 7 without any incidents. I was highly impressed that the Cisco VPN client for Vista installed and worked with no problems. I installed Office 2007 , MIRC and several other programs that ran just fine. Windows 7 has the same look and feel of Vista but I have to admit that it runs much better. One of the features that I like on the start button is the ability to type the name of the program and it will give you a selection of applications you can click on. Another program that I love is the Snippet Tool which is similar to SnagIT 8. The Snippet Tool allows you to take a screen shot of any portion of your sreeen that you want. This is a very useful tool if you are doing any kind of documentation and you need to show people screen shots of what you are talking about.
Today I had a break in the action so I made the mistake of installing Windows XP Professional SP3 on the second partition of my hard drive. Everything went just fine and then the laptop rebooted. Windows XP came up just fine but access to Windows 7 was gone. POOF!! Luckily for me I had not mistakenly overwritten the wrong partition during the install phase. I installed XP to the second partition but I guess that XP overwrote the boot.ini file and replaced it with one for itself. Needless to say I was a bit panicked after all the hours I spent installing software and configuring Windows 7 to be my primary OS. I did what I always do when I have a technical problem and I started surfing the Net on the different techie forums looking for the answer. I found a lot of information however I did not find the answer I was looking for. I fixed the problem by booting the laptop to the Windows 7 install media and it gave me the option to repair Windows. Repair windows had five or six options and one of them was to fix the boot up process. BINGO!! I selected that option and a dos prompt popped up in the bottom left portion of the screen and it magically fixed the issue. I rebooted the laptop and now Windows 7 is once again available to me.
I still want to dual boot another OS with Windows 7 so I will have to do some research on HOW to do this and then I will let you know what I find out.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
The Cowboys made me proud today
Living in the Lowcountry means that Dallas Cowboys fans are very hard to find. I had to go to King Street Grill this afternoon to watch the Dalls vs Tampa game and I was surprised to find four other Dallas fans that wandered in to watch the game. At first I was a little bit concerned about the Dallas defense as I sat there and watched Caddillac from Tampa run through Dallas like they were swiss cheese. The field goal kicker for Tampa missed two field goals which did not help their cause. I was very suprised to see the Dallas passing game burn the Tampa secondary for three touchdowns. Dallas wins 34 to 21 which made this Cowboy fan right proud.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Picture Perfect
At Seacoast west campus they wrapped up the mini series on Picture Perfect. The series spoke about our lives and our families and how they are not always picture perfect. No matter how good the portraits might be on the surface there is always some brokeness that is brought about by either a family member or members or external circumstances. Every family experiences some sort of brokeness and how we handle that brokeness will determine how quickly restoration and healing takes place. The pastor this morning gave some very simple guidelines for breaking the crazy cycle.
How to respond to brokeness from 1 Peter 3:8-12
A. Treat others better than myself
1. When we are hurt we tend to respond with a victim mentality. I am hurt therefore I will hurt back.
B. Break the cycle of craziness
1. Serve unconditionally, be nice to those who are mean or harmful towards you.
2. Do not repay evil with evil even if it is in our nature.
C. Seek and pursue peace
1. We need to do whatever it takes to reconcile the relationship and pursue a peaceful restoration.
2. We need to learn how to forgive others and release the bitterness, anger and hurt within us
3. Unforgiveness only hurts us, not the person we are angry with
4. If the other person is not willing to do the right thing then we can chose to be the one to do right
5. If God is bigger than my problems and can forgive me then I can forgive others as well.
I think that this message speaks to all of us. We all have been hurt and we have all been the victim at one time or the other. Today is the day to release that pain and anger and bitterness to the one who is able to handle it for us. God is bigger than all of our burdens and if we will only trust him with those problems he will help us to handle them.
Does this mean that we are supposed to be door mats and allow people to run all over us? No, of course not. People need to own their junk and take responsibility for it. If we approach people with the spirit of love, humility and kindness and work with them we can help them to see how they have contributed to the pain and hopefully restore that relationship. If they refuse to own their junk and do not want to do the right thing then you have done your part and that is all God is concerned with. Sometime healing and restoration is not instananeous and it may take some time, prayer and work. There are resources out there to help folks with these types of issues and most of the time you can find it at your local church or community counseling centers.
Our families may not ever be "picture perfect" but with some help from God working through each of us we can learn how to love and enjoy one another and do better with how we treat one another.
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Charleston Police Department and Community service
How many times do we call the police or have a need for their service? I would submit that our dealings with the police are relatively infrequent and most of the time when we call them it is because we need their protection or a crime has been committed against ourselves, our families, neighbor or property. No matter what the situation there is usually a need to call for the men and women of our local police department. The same goes for the fire fighters and so on and so forth.
This morning at approximately 2:30 am my son and I stopped at the Shell station at Maybank Highway and Main road to stop and use the restroom and get a drink before we headed out to my office so I could take care of some backup tasks. On the weekends we have stopped at this Shell gas station on several occasions and it is usually in the late night hours or early morning hours. Since this is one of the few establishments open on Johns Island at this time of night there is usually a patrol car there from the Charleston Police Dept. Personally I like the police presence because I feel their being there deters some wanna be knuckle heads from being stupid or causing problems. I spent 10 years in law enforcement back in Texas and I know for a fact that the business owners and store employees appreciate the "men and women of law enforcement" to hang around when they can.
When we entered the store so my son could use the restroom I noticed the officer was leaning up against the counter reading a newspaper and keeping a watchful eye on the patrons which was cool by me. For whatever reasons I did not engage the officer and maybe it was because I was tired and just wanted to get my stuff and get out of there so we could hit the road. When we left the store and got into the vehicle my son looked at me and said , " that guy was a jerk". I looked at my son and said " why do you say that son". My son said, when I walked up to the front counter to ask about using the restroom I looked at the officer and said hello. My son said his response was to ignore his effort at being courteous and to continue reading his paper. My son said that the officer also made a point to watch his every move which made him feel a little bit creeped out. My son thought that the officer just did not like teenagers and was overtly suspicious of him period. I took the time to explain to my son that the officer might be having a bad day and that typically he is probably not used to citizens being overtly nice to him.
My only concern is that the experience my son had was negative and now he may be a little bit leary of being nice to a law enforcement officer the next time. I can not tell you how many times I have been in uniform in public and have had a parent admonish their child in front of me and tell them that if they do not behave they will " tell the big bad police man standing over there " come get you. When I would see this happen I would make it a point to try and defuse the situation by saying something nice to the parent and to assure the child that people in uniform are their friends. We should want our children and young adults to seek out the services of law enforcement or any other public servant when they are in trouble. We do not want them to be running away from them or to be afraid to say them because we have instilled in them some preconceived notion that people in uniform are there to do bad things to us.
I am thinking that the officer in question would have just said howdy and acknowledged my sons attempt at being courteus and friendly that it would have gone a long way with his experience with law enforcement. Now my son thinks the guy was a jerk and he may lump everyone into the same category when he should not. As a parent who has been on both sides of the badge I will do my part to mold and shape that view point but hopefully the men and women in uniform will realize that even the smallest things they say and do can and will affect those that they serve and protect.
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Jasper sitting on my study table next to chair
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Testing my pictures on Posterous
| While getting gas at Walmart several weeks ago I saw this dog sitting in a side compartment of a bike. He was so cute with his own goggles. | |||
| |
I want to illustrate my thoughts here with words and pictures
Friday was a very typical Friday for me at work. I am not sure why but Friday's are sort of like Monday's and they are both busier than I would like for them to be. Support requests seem to ebb and flow and I some times wonder if the moon cycles have anything to do with how feverish the requests become.
This last couple of months has been brutal thanks to an ongoing project to redesign and optimize our network services in such a way to provide optimal performance for all our users. So I get to juggle regular support requests along with the demands of the many redesign tasks and keeping those changes as invisible as possible to the folks that use it. Oh, and lest I forget I am also juggling 12 credits worth of studying this semester at Trident Technical College via online courses. There is no way I could work all day and then drive for an hour to get to the campus in North Charleston. That means I can study and participate online via the Internet. I am a virtual student who is fortunate enough to have 20 years of experience in the same technology I am studying about. This semester is going to be easier than the next one because most of the classes are a review of things I have already been exposed to or have studied about before on my own through self help study materials over the years.
One of the things that I love to do to unwind is to write or play Texas Holdem. I play Texas Holdem online via Facebook and I also go play at a real game with real people. I have been going to this particular place with the same group of people for the last year or so. I take my son with me because it is something that we can do together and we both enjoy it. I spend 20.00 and we both get about 5 to 6 hours of enjoyment and frustration. Justin has become quite the poker star prodigy. Justin has more free time on his hands being 14 so he plays Texas Holdem online at different websites and gets lots and lots of practice at it. He has become a student of the game while I just dabble in it to have fun. Justin says that he wants to be one of the players in the World Poker Tour or whatever it is called. I told him he needs to get a good education so he can get into a good career path where he can make lots of money so he can come up with the 10,000.00 buy in that it will take to get him into that level of play.
Yes, I know, playing a game with dice or playing cards is illegal in South Carolina. My pastor told me that he would not come bail me out of jail if I get busted because I have not shared any of my poker winnings with him. My pastor knows that I play Texas Holdem because he follows my posts on Facebook so I guess you could say that he is keeping a watchful eye on my activities. The role of the pastor keeping a watchful eye on the sheep has become a little bit easier now that the sheep do not mind blathering about their life activities on Facebook. How convenient is that pastors of America ? If you want to know what your congregations are doing in their spare time just sign up on their Facebook pages, MySpace pages or follow them in Twitter. You will know more about your church members than you really want to know and then some. Oh, and if you have members in your congregation who are not as forthcoming with their daily lives online then that should throw up a red flag for you and those people are the ones that you really need to be concerned about. They are probably the ones who are involved in all manner or shady and illegal activities. LOL.... Ok, I know that my editors from days gone by are going to wag their finger at me for using Internet Chat acronyms in my writing but guess what. This is MY BLOG and I am really not concerned about every single rule of grammar. This is my literary playground where I can blather and have fun and not worry about the 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration rule of writing. I can just write and write and write and let the words leak out of my fingers at any ole format that I want them to and just have fun doing it.
Speaking of writing , I am taking English composition 100 this semester. Most of this stuff is review because I took this same class about 29 years ago back at Henderson Junior College in Terrell Texas. It has been intersting to me to read the many responses of my much younger fellow classmates as they are reading the same articles I am and having to provide substantive repsonses for the teacher to read and critique. At first I was appalled at the fact that many of my fellow classmates struggle with basic spelling and grammar. My wife who is taking graduate courses tells me that a lot of her classmates online that participate in online discussions have no clue how to use spell check nor do they know how to formulate simple sentences or how to write susbstative responses that flow or make sense. I have always told my children that they must get the basics mastered. The basics are reading, writing and math. If you do not get the basics down at a very early age then you are missing some very critical building blocks for the rest of your education and you will struggle from there on out. Despite the fact that some of my classmates struggle with spelling and simple sentences it has been interesting to see how different people who read the same articles come up with different and varying ideas and responses to the article. It is also interesting to watch all of us writing and responding to one another in the online discussion forums. I guess it is all part of the learning experience.
On a final note this morning before I jump outta here is this. How in the world do you insert an image , picture or clip art into an article on Posterous. If there is a way or you know how to do it please reply via comments or write to me at jcmoffittatgmaildotcom (have at that you spiders) and let me in on the secret. I would like to have the ability to insert some graphics so I can illustrate my ideas and thoughts along with the words.
Have a restful, peaceful and blessed Labor Day weekend folks.
Friday, September 04, 2009
Happy Friday
Thank God it is Friday and the Labor Day weekend is here. I try to thank God every day for life and for all of the wonderful things he has put in my life and around me for my pleasure. I thank God for my health, for my family, for my job, for the things that I have. I pray for my friends who I know that struggle with depression in hopes that God will allow them to enjoy some rays of sunshine in their lives. I sometimes struggle with situational depression in which I go through moments of time where external circumstances or stupidity on my part causes me to get depressed or upset. Luckily for me I have the ability to pull myself out of the slump and try to focus on the future instead of the past. I thank God that he is in control of the bigger picture and I am not. If you think life or the world around you is messed up now, you have no clue how messed up it would be if I had the controls. I am reminded of the young lady that won American Idle not too long ago who wrote the song Jesus take the wheel. Like most of us we do not cry out to God until our lives are like the young woman in the car who is spinning out of control. That is when we are more likely to call out to God and ask him to make everything right.
I am looking forward to three days off away from work. I am very thankful that I am employed full time and I have medical benefits for my family and we live in a very nice place. One of the things that I am not to fond of about my job is the symbiotic relationship that I have with it. In other words most of you when you leave your job do not have to think about it again until you arrive again for work on Tuesday morning. I on the other hand am on call 24x7 and I can get an sms text message or an e-mail or phone call that will snap me out of my personal time back to the computer network that I manage. Luckily for me our business is not 24x7 and our locations shut down sometime between 6 pm and 8 pm for the night. That means that once I go to sleep around midnight or 1 am that I probably wont be disturbed until 7:30 am or later. This also motivates me to make sure that all of the systems I am responsible for stay well maintained and that I have monitoring in place that will notify me at the first hint of trouble so I can log in from remote and fix things quickly before anyone else is even aware of it.
Later on in September or early October we are planning to take an extended weekend and fly out to Denver Colorado to visit friends of ours. I have known these particular friends since the early 90's and I speak to them online almost every day or several times per week. My friend James has worked his way through the process of getting his private pilots license and is now able to do solo flights which means that he will be coming to visit us here in the Charleston area some time soon by flying here. How awesome is that people?
I need to pull my head out of the blogosphere and stick it back into the computer network that I am supposed to be managing and get back to work. It has been nice to drivel in here for a little bit. I love to write and to share this and that with the rest of you. I hope that you have a restful, safe and blessed weekend over the Labor Day weekend.
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Tick Tock
I have four minutes, go!! Hiding in lunch room eating food and surfing Facebook and my many other social networking sites. Today has been very busy but not more so than most. I have a 1 hour project conference call at 2 pm and I am hoping that some technical wizzards that are brighter than myself can help me solve a couple of very irritating issues I am having with network latency and an application server. I am getting ready to pull out the OSI layer chart and my magnifying chart. I am looking forward to the three day weekend. I am hoping to spend some time in the great out doors and away from technology. Is that even possible for me? I can stay away from the Internet for all of 2 or 3 hours but then I start to twitching because of my desire to connect to the Net and see what all of my netcitizen friends are up to. Ok, that is my four mintues, need to close this laptop up and get back to work. See you later aligator!!
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
This and that
How fast is your propeller turning today? Mine is at about 50% today. I am staying busy but nothing I am doing is really forcing me to put my brain into afterburner. Yesterday was a difficult day for me mentally in that I found it hard to focus. Last week was the first week back to school and it was pretty brutal. I already have a job where I have to go to work all day and solve problems. When I have to go sit down and focus and think about things that I dont necessarily want to focus on it makes it harder. No matter how hard it is to focus my secondary job is to increase my knowledge and become more educated. Yes, they will teach me things that I probably will never ever use for the rest of my natural life however they will teach me things that will make me a more rounded person. Considering my physique I am not sure that I need to be more rounded but you get my drift.
I think that old age is creeping up on me because I am having the hardest time remembering "Posterous". I keep remembering it as "Proteus". I think that must be because of the movie Matrix. One of their ships was named that wasn't it ? Anyway, good thing there are bookmarks or I would never find my way back in here. I was speaking to my wife the other day and she told me that 60 is not considered old by her anymore. I looked at her and laughed and said that is because you are in your fifties yourself. Of course 60 does not appear to be old from that stand point. I guess age is relative and you are only as old as you feel. With my joints acting up like they have in the last couple of weeks I have felt like I was 70. Thanks to the marvel of modern medicine I am walking again without a lot of pain.
Currently I am scanning the network computers and servers for missing Microsoft Security patches and critical updates. I am migrating users off of one Terminal Services server onto another server that has been configured for Terminal Services. I am gearing up for an application vendor to arrive here tomorrow so we can all three put our heads together and find out why the HECK their application is running like a locomotive that fell off the tracks. I have spent considerable time over the last 2 months agonizing over this and that trying to figure out why this application runs so slowly. I have been up and down the "Please dont take my pizza away" OSI network layer trying to figure out why it is so slow. The Pizza saying is the word picture that I memorized so that I can remember each of the OSI layers. Physical, Data, Transport, Media, application. I think I have Media wrong. Oh well, it is something close to that. When data leaves one computer and travels across the network media it stars at the bottom of the layer and works its way to the top and then when it arrives at the receiving computer it works its way from top to bottom. One huge cycle that goes around and around all day long millions of times per day as data packets are thrown around on the network. Pretty amazing stuff when you think about the complexities of it all.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Happy Tuesday
It is now 12:19 am and I am still awake. I am sitting here watching Conan Obrian and wrapping up school work. I just checked one of the discussion boards and one of our students in one of our computer classes has been waiting for the book store to get some more text books. I went online and searched Ebay, Textbooks.com and Amazon and could only find the older versions of this book. How crazy is that? I tried to help this chap find the book he needs but maybe he will have more luck. Hopefully the book store will have some on back order. I am glad that I went to the bookstore when I did and got all my books. I had something weird happen tonight while doing school work. Somehow I managed to get a week ahead in two out of four classes. How the heck did I do that? I also found out that I need to pay 197.00 to register Smartdraw which is an application for drawing network designs. That price is 30 percent off of the regular price of 300.00. Oh well, I guess I know where that much will be coming out of student loan money. I better get to bed and get some sleep since I have another full day ahead of me in about 7 hours. Nite Nite
Sunday, August 30, 2009
SoundClick artist: Bob Doyle - Bob Doyle creates ambient, new age, orchestral, soundtrack, and other electronic music.
via soundclick.com
Most of the time I listen to gospel and contemporary christian music. During my exploration of Posterous I found this artist who has some awesome instrumental music.
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