Happy Chiro

01.19.2007

I just found out some good news. The website I did for my chiropractor is working! More than just being up and running, he's actually gotten a couple of new patients due to the website. One is a co-worker of his wife who went online and got the new patient forms. Another is someone moving from out of state whose current chiropractor got online and fount Trent.

It's a good feeling when you make something [in this case a website] and it turns out to be a helpful and useful tool.

Now I think it's about time to go get my back popped!

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The Big Man's Gil Gerard

01.15.2007

Gil Gerard is best known to the nerds of my generation as Buck Rogers (not to be confused with Greg Evigan or Robert Ulrich. While surfing over the weekend I found out that good old Gil underwent gastric bypasss surgery after hitting 350 lbs, and since the surgery he's dropped 140 lbs! Way to go Gil! If you're really curious, you can find the entire story over on Google's $1.6 billion YouTube as chronicled by a crew from the Discovery Channel.

For me the irony is that today is the day I'm picking back up the hardcore phase of the South Beach diet. I've put on about 15 lbs of the 56 lbs I originally dropped, and with the holidays over it's time to get serious again. Now I've just got to lose 155 lbs to get down to Gil Size!

I don't think I've weighed 190 since... 10th grade? Ok, maybe I won't reach Gil Size. Would be a pretty neat goal, though. But let's be reasonable - I'll still shoot for my high school graduation weight of 238.

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Gas Vs Electricity?

01.11.2007

The 2007 Ford Mustang has a base price of $19,995.

The Ford Racing Arcade Game - Twin Unit from Amazon is normally $21,848.85, but is currently on sale for $18,999.00.

When did an arcade driving game suddenly cost the same as the car you're driving in the game?

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To Speak, Perchance To Dream (Of Not Speaking)

01.05.2007

I've gotten to the point to where I do most of my non-food related shopping online. For books, music, dvd, etc, I now turn to the internet instead of going out to my local Best Buy, CompUSA, etc. For most of my day-to-day needs I go off to Wal-Mart and take advantage of their guaranteed low prices. The two things I still venture to local vendors for are comics (for which I have 2 stores and an occasional Books a Million) and magazines.

It's with the comics and books that I've become annoyed lately.

Comics and books are historically the domain of the socially inadept nerd. It's not as bad now as it was back in the 80's (and before), but you have to beware of your unexpected nerd encounters when in the marketplace of comics and books.

Encounter #1: I was at my local Barnes & Noble on Christmas Eve morning (9:00 AM) to purchase a magazine. It wasn't crowded, they had the magazine I was looking for, so I was hoping to go in, grab the magazine, pay for it, and leave. I had reached the "pay for it" phase before things started to fall apart. After declining the chance to buy into their discount club and learning what my total would be, the cashier noticed my credit card had an eBay logo on it. She then went on to tell me how she had bought bags of shark teeth on eBay which she had then turned into gifts for various relatives. That's the short version. The real life version lasted well past my card had been accepted, I had signed, my magazine had been bagged, and I had been looking to the far away exit like a caged beast for a couple of minutes. I felt bad for the guy who had started browsing in the calendar section while waiting his turn to come ask the clerk a question.

I should have just left when I got my bag of merchandise, but I felt it would be rude to leave when someone was talking to me. Damn my upbringing!

Encounter #2: I had ventured to my local comic book emporium to get some quality reading material for when I'm feeling regular - don't work too hard on that visual image. When I got there, 2 of the customers were over by the card game section talking about Magic the Gathering or Pokemon or something. Customer #1 was explaining everything to Customer #2. Customer #2 had that caged beast look when I saw him. While Customer #1 continued explaining things, Customer #2 asked the owner if Customer #1 worked there, because he was doing a good job of talking him (Customer #1) into buying all sorts of things. At this point Customer #1 pointed out that he just hangs out at the comic store and is not a paid employee.

I then realize that Customer #1 is a type commonly found in comic stores. He knows the depth of rules and details for certain things (in this case, card games) and enjoys going on and sharing the depth of said knowledge, usually well past the point of anyone else caring. My problem was there were some Star Wars Miniatures gaming whatnot I wanted to look at over by the card games, and I would have to go over by Customer #1 to look. Usually when getting close to someone like Customer #1 they sense your presence and then aim their knowledge toward you.

Customers #1 and #2 wandered over to another section of gaming goods and I saw my chance to go look at the Star Wars booty. Unfortunately, they quickly returned. I placed the box of miniatures I was looking at back on the shelf and tried to slide by ninja-like. I had made it past them when I felt a hand on my arm. It was Customer #1. "Excuse me, I saw you looking at the Starship Battles game, have you played it?" Crap. I hesitantly told him I had, and then he asked if it was similar to the Star Wars miniatures game. The conversation then took a quick turn to Magic and Pokemon, where Customer #2 and I took turns looking at the cash register for a chance to escape. 10 minutes later I managed to check out as Customer #1 went off to look for a Star Wars graphic novel that he was pretty sure I would be interested in.

There has to be a polite, socially acceptable way to get out of conversations that you're not only not interested in, but not really even taking part in other than being the brick wall the other person is talking to.

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Resolve

01.04.2007

So, it's a new year. Time to reflect on the old year, decide what was done wrong, and then make resolutions on how to fix it in the upcoming year. Let's see how last years highs and lows went:

2006

• Lost old, comfy gov't job.
• Lost 56 lbs.
• Gained about 15 lbs back after slacking off the stringent part of the diet.
• Got a new computer.
• Wrapped up Trent's website.

Overall, I would say that wasn't a bad year. Losing my job wasn't good, but thanks to forewarning and some saved up vacation time it wasn't too traumatic. I now need a plan for this year:

2007

• Start new, probably less comfy job, and regain some of my mad web skillz.
• On Jan. 13, go back to the hardcore phase of the South Beach Diet and see if I can lose 56 lbs again.
• Try not to gain 15 lbs at the tail end of the diet. But to be honest, I've been maintaining my weight for the past 3 months without being too strict on my diet, so I think of that as a good thing.
• Revamp the Canebrake website
• Make some new camtoons....

I've got another project that I was meaning to do over the holidays, but it managed to get put off mainly due to illness. It's time to revamp this website. It's almost an annual update, but there are some behind the scenes changes I need to make, just to keep some of those aforementioned "mad web skillz" mad. Part of me still programs web pages to work on the lowest common denominator of web browser. It's time to change some of those practices. I need to use more CSS and rely less on HTML table layout - hopefully improving the speed with which pages render. I've been playing around with Flash and would like to integrate that into this site, just as an excuse to practice my Flash programming if nothing else. Then there's the ideal of moving to real object oriented code in PHP5....

See, most people make their resolutions on New Years Day. I put a couple of days of thought into it first! I, obviously, am an idiot.

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