Lance Armstrong, I'm NOT

I rode the semi-recumbent stationary bike on my regular schedule today. This is noteworthy only because I nudged it up to level 3 for 48 minutes and lived to tell about it.

In October, I was using level at 1 for 32 minutes.

Most interesting to me is not the "distance" I went, but that my knees (my weakest link) have far less discomfort with this level and time than in they did during the lighter workouts back in October. So it would appear I am responding to the regular exercise.

Still a Few Bugs in the System

A Wii Fit showed up for Christmas, after Katherine searched high and low for it which is tale in itself.

(Short version: She gave up, chose another present, and happened to ask about Wii Fit when she was paying for my other present. Score!)

When Wii Fit tested my weight and balance on Friday, it pronounced my Wii Fit Age as 12 years older than my calendar age, and noted that I'm obese. (No kidding...)

When it tested me today, it said that I had gained four pounds and that my Wii Fit age had dropped 9 years. I think it's downright confused. I have lost weight (per the bathroom scale, used daily), and my fitness certainly hasn't improved that much to overcome the perceived weight gain.

Side note: Since my last post in November, I have been exercising and slowly losing weight, about 7 pounds in the past month on top of previous losses. The loss could be a little faster (bot not much), so life is good.

A New Component Failure

Weight continues to drop faster slightly faster than it should.

Exercise hit minor glitch today when I switched to the Schwinn Airdyne to add my arms to the workout. It promptly reminded my posterior why we bought the semi-recumbent bike four years ago -- the Schwinn saddle doesn't interface well to my own over sensitive (and overloaded) component.

This may be the Great Phys Ed Instructor in the Sky telling me take a walk outside for a change. However, that can overload the knees (which is why I like the stationary bikes). My legs actually want some exercise, we'll see.

Whoops ...

I lost 2.5 pounds in the last day. This would be great, except that makes 5 pounds for the week, which over my goal of 1.5 to 3 pounds. (Over 3 pounds a week, you lose muscle unless really exercising.) This is not a real concern unless it continues.

My riding does continue, a good thing. I just finished the third of bi-daily rides on the semi-recumbent stationary bike, after about the same number again either I'll up the time per ride or ride more often.

Boston, You're My Home ...

The NY Times has an article on the Boston area which actually starts across the river in Cambridge, to where Katherine and I went on our early dates.

It makes me miss that Dirty Water.

Pedal, pedal

I'm gearing up (too) slowly after the recent check up, but progress is visible. I've lost another couple of pounds, I feel my appetite is under control, and today I hit the exercise bike again and it didn't hit back.

However, I think my love affair with the McRib sandwich has to end immediately. Sigh, I liked those things.

The Ongoing Decline of Western Civilization, Media Edition

I don't which is the saddest sign of the magazine publishing industry of the following that earned shelf space at the local Safeway:

• A Historical Commemorative Woman for All Seasons magazine fawning over Sarah Palin that was too cheap to find a unique cover photo of her instead of the standard Red Suit head and shoulders media shot.
  
• Star Wars has its own magazine. Still.
  
• The cover of Rachel Ray's own magazine managed to make her look fat. :-)
  

Of course, they had a copy of Twlight in paperback which I could browse, so the rack wasn't a complete loss.

This Time, We Mean it ...

The POST failure has been checked. Result is not a major issue, but something I won't note here lest a few search engines archive it for posterity to be retrieved out of context.

Action to take, startlingly enough, is lose weight. No funky or otherwise medications needed. But the good idea just got even more important.

An important note is that I am cleared to exercise.

POST Failure Redux - Seek Service

After another long break, I'm back on the exercise bike. Yesterday was my fourth ride on an every other day schedule. Unfortunately, I ran into another episode of being overheated and unsteady about fifteen minutes after I got off. I didn't think I was that hungry, but eating a fruit cup cleared me up enough to get real lunch.

Time to an appointment and get the system checked.

iPhone vs ...

My iPhone has resumed growing on me. Maybe I need shots for it. Following up my previous comments:

• The Omnifocus people got their act together and stopped crashing.
  
• The SplashId thinking it was a new install is not their fault, a number of applications can act like that, due to an Apple bug.
  
• The Urbanspoon application does have the ability to lock the location, etc, but they hide it in plain sight. *sigh*
  

I wonder how it will rate against the Google Android after the latter has a few months of public use and feedback. (Comparing new to burned in would be unfair. )

The iPhone You Love to Hate

I have an original iPhone from work which I use for on-call duty plus person use. It's now running the iPhone 2.0 software and various nifty apps from the Apple Apps store.

Random iPhone 2.0 software comments:

• Applications that crash silently return to the main menu. This gets interesting when an app corrupts it data and crashes every time it starts up. Hello, OmniFocus for iPhone developers? (I had to delete it and reinstall.)
  
  (Fortunately, I had previously synced the data to my Mac.)
  
• An application upgrading over the Net decided it was a new install and cleared its database. Hello, SplashId developers?
  
  (Fortunately, I had synced that data to my Mac as well.)
  
• Cute apps that randomly lookup real data could use options. Yes, I want to eat random food. No, I don't want to drive randomly 20 miles. Hello, UrbanSpoon developers?

Random general Apple comments:

• Apple letting their servers getting swamped on launch day by people registering new iPhones while others upgrade
  was, for want of a better term, lame. Capacity is not free or easy, but a business decision to make a big splash with a global launch needs to be backed up with resources and fallback plans.
• If launch issues were lame, the outages with Apple's online service Mobile Me are scary. As David Pogue documented, 1% of the users could not access their mail for days.
• No talk of Apple can go without mention of Steve Jobs; this week's topic is the secrecy over his health. Words don't describe anything to do with the cult of Steve.

Gotta Check That Manual

I rode the bike again, again feeling wiped. It would have helped if the bike had been ridden since my last post on the topic.

Power On Self Test Failure - Please see manual!

After my exercise bike ride, I showered and crashed for a nap. (Not only did I ride, I was up way too late last night ...)

Alas, we had a fire drill here at the hobbit hole in the form of broken drinking glasses, with cats needing immediate herding by yours truly. This got me up, dressed, and moving, no doubt with a free shot of adrenaline. The cats weren't interested in being herded, so it took more effort and cat treats than I expected, but finally they were confined. I paused ... and realized I was sweating with a serious power shortage.

I grabbed the nearest prepared food (a pretty good éclair, actually), ate it, got a milk chaser, and then sat to for almost fifteen minutes. Then I went and napped for another three hours.

(And no, I'm not diabetic, due to other issues like low thyroid I get checked regularly).

Power has been restored. :-)

Reboot

Yea, I just turned around on some street paved with good intentions. I don't know which direction I'm headed in, let's try a side street...

More literally, it's been February since I rode the exercise bike, and while I continued dropping weight into March for a total of ~ 7 pounds, it all came back in April as I went deep focus on a project at work. How a deep a focus? My manager, who was not flogging me in the first place, told me to actually take my weekends off as I took vacation this past week.

So I did, and I rode today. So it begins again, actually a pound above where I started the year. Ah, well. Gotta start somewhere.

I Bad.

Rather than riding yesterday, I dived into (and never surfaced from) finishing a Python module and its associated tests for work. I also didn't ride for a week because of morning appointments, so even with my regular schedule of riding every other day I am barely at my goal of riding twice of a week.

Weight is down 3.5 pounds since New Years, which is also not where I want to be.

However, progress is being made on both fronts, so it's focus, not plan which needs a little work.

For My Next Trick ...

You heard it here first folks, my goal by April is to lose another 20 pounds.

Perhaps more important is my added goal to ride my exercise bike at least twice a week. This is up from a total of three days I claimed I got exercise after January last year.

(I keep great records, it's the execution that needs work.)