Non-Tech

I’ve made it below 300 pounds! Yesterday I weighed in at 295 pounds. I am officially lighter than my driver’s license (which was a big fat lie for the last 8 years, anyway) Carrie lost 5 pounds and Ashley lost another pound last week. The three of us have not had bread, sugar or pop for almost a month. We spend our evenings talking about non-scale victories like fitting into old clothes or no longer having the after-dinner bloat. We’re saving money by not buying high-carb, high-sugar snacks at the movies (or anywhere else). ...

“I’ve decided to lose weight.” I’ve dreaded making one of these posts because if I don’t follow through, it’s just a documented example of my failure. My liver enzymes came back really high this past month and I had to have an ultrasound to find out I’ve got nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. It’s early in the disease, as stages go, but as Carrie has said - it’s the first hard evidence we have to make some changes. Up until now it was easy to cheat or go back to old eating habits because while I was fat, I was sort of healthy. I mean, I had no heart problems or blood pressure problems. But this diagnosis means that the last few years of joint pain and poor sleep and no activity is not just a sign of getting old. I’m wearing out. ...

I have named my office “Fort Impostor” and this is my…manifesto. “The Fraud Police are the imaginary, terrifying force of ‘real’ grown-ups who you believe – at some subconscious level – are going to come knocking on your door in the middle of the night, saying: We’ve been watching you, and we have evidence that you have NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE DOING. You stand accused of the crime of completely winging it, you are guilty of making shit up as you go along, you do not actually deserve your job, we are taking everything away, and we are TELLING EVERYBODY.” Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help ...

I found out after the fact that my bully from grade school died. He was not well liked by most people, if I remember correctly, but I was surprised at the outpouring of emotion online when his death was announced. A lot of years have passed in the interim and in hindsight, I suspect there were other factors at play. Perhaps he’d changed. Perhaps he didn’t grow up to be the insolent prick I knew him as. But that doesn’t change my feelings. His treatment of me (and others) affected my self-esteem for years. ...

So we had a Pokémon Go incident a few days ago. This mother and son came to the office asking if they could catch the Pikachu that likes to hang around here. I didn’t see a problem so I let them in. Well the kid was super excited, running and jumping around everywhere. Well, he wasn’t looking where he was going, and he slammed his head into a shelf unit. ...

*Now, devotees may argue that one sport or game is inherently better than another. For me, sport is actually a chance for us to have other human beings push us to excel.*Robin Williams as John Keating, Dead Poets Society (1989) If this blog somehow survives me and is read sometime in the future, I would be remiss if I didn’t include an entry today. Last night I watched the Cleveland Cavaliers become the first major sports team in Cleveland to win a championship in my lifetime. ...

I had to be part of someone else’s bad day, and it sucked. Please keep confidential, unknown to at this time. Meeting is scheduled for 9:00 tomorrow, in the conference room. Please have someone get his laptop shortly after 9:00 and disable him from the system. Please also have someone discreetly gather his personal items from his work area and bring them to the conference room as quickly as possible. ...

In November 2009 I started a journal to help myself deal with yet another car problem. Since then, I have added other writings to the journal and tried to make it a more full compendium of my digital journaling. But it started with a car problem. Not just any car problem, but, at the time, the latest in a long line of car problems that was slowly squeezing my sanity. Hell, re-read some of these blog posts and see how often the car is the subject of any particular entry. That damned Saturn stole a lot of my life over the last 13 years. ...

Ever have a really bad day? Or a bunch of bad days in a row? Me too. I’ve masked the names to protect the guilty. For a very long time I have been aware that stress can take a toll on your health. But in my experience, it’s never been immediate like it has lately. It started this past weekend with an on-call nightmare: I got two calls about Asterisk, (not my specialty) on Saturday. One guy just needed it started. He had rebooted his machine and now it didn’t work. Easy fix. But the call ruined my lunch. By the time I was done my frozen pizza was almost frozen again. ...

After it was all over, I knew I was going to have to write about it. I don’t know why. Perhaps I like re-reading my miserable days? Maybe there’s something inside of me that feels it necessary to document these things? My therapist asked me once why I write about my problems and then keep the results? Why don’t I write about them, then throw them away? I don’t know. Maybe that’s a good idea. ...