I Hate Losing

For a man who encounters losing on a daily basis I sure do hate it. I can’t wait until my loss comes in the form of weight.

Today’s Daily Challenge
Alleviate neck tension by gently tilting your head toward each shoulder three times.

Many of us hold tension in our neck and shoulders. Luckily, gentle exercise, stretching and relaxation techniques can help alleviate some of that stress and tension. The ear to shoulder nod – also known as a lateral neck flexion – is a great way to softly stretches the muscles in the neck. It’s an important stretch, too, since your neck supports your head, which can weigh nearly 8% of your body mass!

Lost And Found
On Tuesday I needed to charge my new fancy-pants MacBook Air. A year or so ago Apple pissed of the world by introducing yet another new power connector called “MageSafe 2,” the obvious successor to MagSafe, which is what my old MacBooks had. To offer compatibility between the two proprietary connections Apple sells a MagSafe-to-MagSafe 2 adapter for a “mere” $10, suffice to say that I bought one of these. This adapter is about the size of a dime and really easy to lose; I proved this on Tuesday.

I looked high and low, low and high, removing nearly all of the contents of the Jackmobile’s trunk assuming that the adapter had fallen out of my bag on Monday afternoon when I dug around for items needed for my walk. I could not find it.

Because one of my coworkers has one of these adapters in the office I borrowed his to charge my computer and I decided to wait and look once more before spending another $10. I’m glad that I waited as I found the little adapter sitting in the cupholder of the Jackmobile. Apparently it had fallen out inside the car before I could even put my bag into the trunk.

Oh Traffic, You’ve Ruined Another Night
When I looked at the map at the time that I desired to leave work last night I was dismayed to see much red (and some black) on the two paths that I would most like to take to drive home. With some chicken wings left over from lunch (I bought a large box of wings from Publix at lunch time while out running errands) I decided to wait out the traffic and finish off my wings as dinner.

I missed out on an opportunity to go to The Shed.

By the time I arrived home I was in no mood to attempt cleanup of my basement.

Below you’ll see what I did last night which managed to chew up the remainder of my evening instead.

The Empty Guarantee
When I ordered the physical book, whose title I cannot divulge (it’s not “50 hades of Gray”), from Amazon on Monday I chose two-day shipping because I am an Amazon Prime member and it was free. On Monday evening I received a shipping confirmation from Amazon including the phrase “guaranteed delivery date: September 11, 2013.” Yesterday afternoon I tracked the package to find out that the book was only leaving Memphis, Tennessee yesterday and now had an “estimated arrival date: September 12, 2013.” “But Amazon said that it was “guaranteed” today!” I said semi-audibly.

So I took to Twitter and called Amazon out.

Seconds later I was in a chat with an Amazon associate.

Unfortunately Amazon’s interpretation of the word “guarantee” is about as accurate as most restaurants’ interpretation of “import” when they list American microbrew beers in higher-priced “Imports” category. The Amazon associate apologized, but provided me with no compensation for missing their “guaranteed” date. I could have, and perhaps should have, demanded some compensation for their failure, but I chose not to do so.

Fortunately for me the book’s delivery is not time-critical (and I am hoping that it arrives today so that I can read some of it this weekend), but I am left with a bit of a sour taste for a company whose care about its customers is usually much higher and usually goes out of its way to correct mistakes.

ITP Flickr Pic
“Obligatory ‘DragonCon Hottie’ Shot”

My final post from DragonCon. This marks the official empty point of my photo stream — I need to shoot more.

Lost And Not Found
According to Amazon I purchased a new Apple Airport Extreme wireless extender back in March. I had to look on Amazon to convince myself that I wasn’t going completely crazy because I cannot find this damn thing anywhere!

Shaped about the size of a square hockey puck and colored white (to contrast the AppleTV which is of similar size but colored black) I had a recollection of discovering this in a drawer before going on vacation(?) and putting it somewhere “safe.” Oh it’s safe alright, because I looked in every place I thought that I would put such an item and found myself empty-handed at night’s end.

Perhaps this is just another sign that I need to literally clean house in order to get rid of all of the shit I don’t need locate all of the shit that I do.

I Nearly Road MARTA To Work
The bug that ITP-Reader Steve put in my ear yesterday nearly worked. Because I want to be in Kirkwood by 7pm for tonight’s Cocoaheads Atlanta meeting I figured it might be smarta to take MARTA.

I thought better this morning because if there is one thing I remember from my days of taking the train on a daily basis is that it’s on the days you need to be somewhere at and appointed time that MARTA seems to fail hardest. Instead I forced myself out of the house early this morning so that I can “beat” traffic back ITP this afternoon and arrive in Kirkwood with plenty of time to spare.

Today’s Personal Project
Go to the monthly meetup of Cocoaheads Atlanta which is held at Big Nerd Ranch‘s headquarters in Kirkwood.

Stats & Goals
Daily
Current Mood – frustrated
Current Music – silence at the moment
Website Of The Day – The reason I was checking flights to Salt Lake City was to see if I could do something incredibly impulsive — attend Cocoa Slopes — a one-day conference held in Ogden, Utah on October 12, 2013. This is looking very unlikely. 🙁
Mode Of Transportation To Work – my car
Exercise (b)Log – walking, ~4.8 miles
Morning Weigh-In – I check again some day. For today I’ll just call myself morbidly obese

Monthly
Foot Mileage – ~9.55 miles
Wheel Mileage – 0.0 miles
Gym Visits – 0 (0 cardio)

Days Of Bed-Making – 0

Vegetarian Meals – 11
Carnivorous Meals – 15

Marta Rides To Work – 0
Bike Rides To Work – 0

September Goals
– exercise no fewer than twenty days (and I’m starting on Day 3 so I have my work cut out for me)
– clean my basement to the point where I could have people over
– hire a plumber to replace my malfunctioning faucets

2013 Goals: Measurable
– Get my weight down to 190 pounds so that I can wear a 36″ waist pants comfortably
– Completely read ten books, audio books permissible
– Dissolve Sharpened Stone
– Save $500 for the sole purpose of donating to charitable organizations of my choice
– Completely run at least one 10k
– Fix all (or at least most) of the things which are wrong with the ITP Estate

2013 Goals: Unmeasurable
– Simplify, simplify, simplify
– Continue backing up all data, including the off-site storage
– Do not create a solution for something which is not a problem
– Eat smaller portions
– Start, and continue, to make my own bread using my bread machine as well as using the technique outlined in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking
– Read and discard magazines during the month in which they arrive (even digitally)
– Take two real vacations, perhaps one abroad
– Take a more proactive approach to meeting women (read “stop being such a pussy”)

Books I’ve Read/Heard In 2013

1. Pages 1.7 for iPad (Timestompers Guide) — by Sean Wells
2. 60 Mountain Lion Tips — by David Sparks and Brett Terpstra
3. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business — by Charles Duhigg
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy — by Douglas Adams
5. Amazing Things Will Happen: A Real-World Guide on Achieving Success and Happiness — by CC Chapman
6. So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love — by Cal Newport
7. Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life — by Steve Martin
8. Who Am I: A Memoir — by Pete Townshend

Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]