FitBit

So here I am with more time to kill. For several years now, I've been kind of a sedentary person. I moved in to technology, and while I love my work, it's caused me to pack on the pounds while spending my day at a desk staring at a computer screen. In fact, the last time I regularly got up from my desk to walk around was before I quite smoking several years ago. Since then, I seem to be unable to give myself an excuse to get up and walk around throughout the day.
Off and on I've tried controlling my diet which is very healthy, but I just really enjoy eating, and I've been on an on again off again workout schedule. I tend to fluctuate between about 195 and 215 pounds, and I'd kinda like that to stop. The issue is that when I'm working out I'm starving, and tend to over compensate for increased calorie burn. The few times I've tried dieting I end up starving myself because I have no real concept of what I actually need to take in to sustain myself. Recently my wife and I went out and spent about $100 each on FitBit devices. It's a little thumb drive sized device that uses motion sensors to track movement, upload that data to a web site, and based on various personal criteria, it tracks calorie burn. You can also manually modify activities to get more accurate readings, for example, if you do a 40 minute cardio workout you'll track steps and calorie burn as if you had been walking for 40 minutes. Edit that activity to be a cardio workout, and you'll have a fairly accurate reading of your actual activity. We did a little research before buying, and we've found that most people report this thing having similar accuracy to the Body Bugg, but for a much lower price, and access to the data without requiring a paid Web site subscription.
So, why is this information useful? During our research we kept coming across people who, over and over again, would say that these kinds of things are for micro-managers. They don't provide data that's useful for the average person, and on and on. My experience over the last week is that this is simply not true. On the one hand, if you're a fit, active person, you don't have weight or activity problems, and you're happy where you are, this may be true. It's probably information that is more interesting than useful to you. For someone like me, however, who eats healthy, works out but has a profession that keeps me fairly sedentary, and my efforts produce little to no results, this thing is awesome. Yes, there is the pain of having to track calories I eat. It sucks, but once you get a few foods and meals in there, you just have to say I ate it again. Yes, you do occasionally have to update your activity from just walking around for 40 minutes to working out for 40 minutes, but that's really no big deal. The magic is in the data that you are collecting throughout the day. The bottom line is that to successfully lose weight, you have to simply make sure you're burning more calories than you consume. That's it. This little device gives you an accurate enough view of your caloric intake vs. caloric burn that you can easily sit down, look at two graphs, and see why you're still sitting on a fat ass vs. a thin one. It's where most calorie tracking programs fail. They only tell you what you're eating. That is virtually meaningless data if you have no idea what you're burning.
So, how has my first week been? I weighed in at 210 on Sunday. I weight in today, Thursday, at 205. I went in to this with the attitude that I will eat what ever the hell I want, and as much as I want as long as I log it in the system. I've compared that with my calorie burn, enhanced by regular workouts. Seems to be working pretty well so far.
The weekend is coming up, so we'll see how that goes. Weekends are when I really like to pack in the food.

The rules don't apply to me

I'm watching parking wars while waiting for everybody to get ready to go to the store with me to get some missing onion soup ingredients. The onion soup will be awesome, but parking wars is hitting me with one of the major reasons I can't stand the Utah culture.
Sure, everywhere you go you have douchbags. It's part of living in society, but Utah, specifically the Salt Lake Valley, there seems to be a particularly high percentage of these people. The issue isn't that they're generally assholes. My complaint is very specific. These people expect others to live by the rules, but will find nearly any justification for the rules not applying to them. They don't want their kids in a car seat cause they're "just driving down the block," or, as a former boss of mine said, "why can't I pull my boat in the carpool lane? I can go the speed limit" after he got a ticket for doing just that. They think they can talk or text on the phone because they know how to drive while doing it, while the rest of the world seems unable to do it. Their idea of "freedom" is completely out of control. They think that they can do what ever the hell they want when ever the hell they want, and get away with breaking the rules because they had "a really good reason" to do so.
Pull your heads out of your asses and think. Yeah, you're free to do what ever you want as long as your actions don't infringe on the rights of others doing what ever they want. You're not alone in this world, assholes.

That part is over

We've moved across state lines. While packing we learned that the big truck just wasn't big enough...just the first of way too many very painful issues to occur during the past couple of weeks...and we got a very generous offer from someone to drive a second truck, stay with us for a couple of days, and then we'd fly the generous helper back home. Simple plan, then things really went sideways. Without going in to too much detail, we lost the house we had already rented, went totally broke for a couple of days due to money being tied up in bullshit, got stuck wearing the same dirty clothes for a few days cause everything was in boxes, and on and on and on. It was around this point that our generous help started bitching about being tired and dirty, continually asking to borrow clothes or razors (remember we're temporarily broke and everything is in boxes), wanting to take breaks and go out to lunch, missing work (I missed extra work as well), and on and on and on. Finally, just as things started to balance, our help started to come down with bronchitis, or something similar. Sucks, but our generous helper began to insist that there were chemicals in the air in the part of the house that contained not only the helper's sleeping quarters, but also my home office...btw, I'm not sick...
I guess the bottom line is that I was very greatful for the offer of help, and the initial help, but the selfish attitude of this person while my entire family was facing hell, put me off. It pissed me off, and rather than being greatful for the help, I've ended the week glad to be rid of this very uncomfortable burden that was keeping my little family from regaining center after a week of hell and a new start.
I dunno, I guess I just had to get that off my chest.
I'm tired, very disappointed for many reasons in our helper, and looking forward to a real weekend to rest and have a little fun with my family in our new home in our new city and state.

Kirkland

<p>So, we've finally moved. There is a whole adventure there that I'll talk about another time, but for now, I'm just trying to decompress. I'm out on the deck, having a glass or three of chianti, and just drinking it all in, and I'm struck by something. Back home the norm is to work to have the perfectly manicured yard. Time and money is spent on having the perfect shape around the shrubs, money is spent on consultants to choose the perfect shrubs in the first place. All of this to impress the neighbors, and show that you have the best lot in the neighborhood. Of course in utah you have to have automatic sprinklers because it's hot enough to kill the lawn and shrubs in a couple of days, so I can't really complain about that. Anyway, I'm looking out across my yard, and the little bit of those yards around me that I'm actually able to see, and I'm struck by the difference in realities. Nature is in control here. Sure, lawns are cut and watered, gardens produce some food, but give it a month with out fighting the over growth, and nature would take over. People seem to accept that. They accept that they are here for a short time, but everything around them was here before them, will be here long after them, and if nature became sentient and decided to take over, it would simply eliminate them. This place is alive, and in balance. I come from a desert, a place that you have to fight just to keep the lawn alive. Here, you have to fight to keep green things from taking over. I dunno. The reality of this place is amazing.

Can't wait to be there

So, we're moving to Washington. Hopefully for the last time this time.
We've sort of been in denial about the move, so we really haven't gotten as far in to the packing thing as we should have. That means we have a shit load of things to do before Tuesday. I'm starting to think that not only will we make it, but all of our stuff just might fit on the truck. I am not at all happy about selling our house and becoming a renter again, but there are two things that are making that a little easier to deal with. First, this is not where we intended to stay long term. I fact, we've tried getting out of here a couple of times, once going so far as to actually build a new house...our buyers screwed us, we lost the house we built, I'm still bitter. Second, our new land lady seems like she ia a very nice person who will leave us to our own business. Not all landlords are like that. Besides that, we expect to only be renting for the next one to three years while we figure out where we want to plant our next roots, so we won't have to do this for long.
Once we get there, sure we'll have to unpack, but we won't be on a deadline. We'll be able to do what we need when we need, and get our daughter and our dog back to a somewhat normal life.
Anyway, moving sucks.

#GoogleMusicBeta and Ratings?

I'm still trying to get used to the ratings feature.
On the surface it seems to do what it's supposed to do. You can give a track a thumbs up or thumbs down. Once this is set, the track is added to the Thumbs Up auto playlist. Cool, I guess I can get all the songs I like in to one list. The downside is that I share this library with my wife, and what I consider a good tune does not always match up with what she considers a good tune. I can live with that.
Once rated, you can also sort. It looks like you can either sort on rated songs, where thumbs up are sorted first, then thumbs down, or you sort based on unrated. I guess another way to order and view my collection, but still trying to figure out a practical use for this feature.

What threw me, though, was I started building a playlist this morning. I went through, added a few albums, and started playing. A song came up that I didn't want in the list, because not all albums are winners all the way through, and instead of removing the song from the list I gave it a thumbs down rating. The song stayed in the list, but stopped playing, and skipped to the next.
I don't really know what's going on here, if the song will be played again, or just sit there in the list ignored because it's got a thumbs down. The help docs didn't shed any light on what's happened. I guess I'll just have to keep playing the list and see what happens.

#GoogleMusicBeta and #iTunes playlists

When I initially installed, due to an installation bug, I was unable to choose a custom folder from which to upload. I chose iTunes Library for the purposes of installation, and after the installation was complete, I went back and chose custom folders. After an hour or so, I decided to go switch back to iTunes for the first upload pass because, although my music collection exists inside and outside of iTunes, I wanted to import my iTunes playlists. After about a week of uploading, and within the last 1,300 files in my iTunes library, I've noticed something a little annoying. I'm missing all of the playlists that I actually cared to have imported.
There are a small number of playlists imported. Mostly "On The Go" playlists, a couple of lists that I created for the purpose of burning CDs, and the "Party Shuffle" list. I've spent alot of time building custom rules for smart playlists based on ratings, others based on genre, and others based on custom details, and all of these lists are quite large.
There are other static playlists that I've created that are not quite so large, but they are missing.
Initially I thought that maybe Google Music couldn't import smart playlists, but that idea was proven wrong by the fact that I do have the Party Shuffle smart playlist. I then thought that maybe size was an issue, and Google Music couldn't import playlists beyond a certain size, but I believe that is proven wrong by a handful of small playlists that didn't get imported.
I don't really have the time or interest do really investigate why some playlists got imported while others got left behind. All I know is that the playlists that I really actually use did not show up.
Another point for AudioGalaxy. AudioGalaxy has given me full and complete access to all of my iTunes playlists while on the go, and without the need to sync anything.
In the end, it probably won't matter. Android, in general, is giving me a way to get away from iTunes while building a media collection that is portable across nearly any device, which means I'm working towards a world without iTunes, and likely works in a manner different from iTunes. Any iTunes integration is just a shim that keeps me in touch while the transition is taking place, but it's a feature that is a "nice to have" while making that transition.

Time to get back to work.