I must have this t-shirt

After what I heard last night, I so totally want one of these:

 

http://shop.cafepress.com/design/35532867

….

Getting out of debt

Over the last year or so, Ginger and I have been in the track to get out of debt and become completely debt free! Our goal is to have it all gone within the next 12-16 months, except for the house. The process has not been without its challenges, but we’re making headways.

I’ve decided to write each of the steps we’re taking to get there, with the whys and hows of each step. Feel free to ask me questions if you have any! I’ve been really really REALLY  excited about this, it's become an obsession for me.

Step #1 – The audit

You can’t possibly get out of debt if you don’t know how much money a month you spend on stuff. So the first step you need to take is to audit your bank account and find out all the places where your bank is leaking money, and list them out in a spreadsheet.

It’s actually very important to list them out and write them down! Don’t trust your memory to remember all this stuff, it can get confusing, and we’ll need to refer to this information later, so make sure it’s clean and easy to read.

Here’s how to do it:

1 – Go to your bank’s website, and look for your monthly statements. Once you locate them, go through them back to the first day of two months ago. For example, if you start today, go back to the statement starting  may 1st, 09.

2 – Look carefully through every single transaction. Write down on your spreadsheet every transaction that is recurring, as in monthly gym fees, automated water bill payments, credit card payments, car payments, etc. Write down the date the transaction happened, what the payments is for, and the amount. Do not write out stuff like fast food, movie nights, etc, but do write down fuel and grocery shopping expenses. All we’re putting together right now is a list of all regular bills (utilities, internet) and irregular bills (groceries, fuel).

This list will give you a first overview of everything that goes out of your account regularly. It’s predictable, or almost so. This will be a list of all the bills that you need to survive (like groceries) or that you’ll be sent to collections if you don’t pay (like your credit card payment). At the end of the day, you’ll know when something is due, how much is due, and who to pay. We also went back two months to ensure we got everything, including any payments you might’ve skipped for a month, and to help us get an average dollar amount for that expense (since some months you’ll spend more on fuel than others, for example).

Review your list, make sure it’s accurate, and then save it. It is time consuming, and it might be headache-inducing, but it’ll pay off!

Until next time!

Ouch!

I was surprised to find out that, of all building-like DIY projects, I tend to enjoy plumbing the most. I mean, sure, it can be nasty and smell horrible, but I follow some simple prep-work rules:

* Clean everything as much as you can before hand – There’s no reason you should be sitting in a puddle of dirty water

* Wear gloves – It just decreases the chance of you touching something nasty that escaped your cleaning (step 1 above).

 

So, a few months ago, our old garbage disposal crushed its last piece of food, and died a quiet death. It just wouldn’t turn anymore, sounded like the gears were stuck out of place or something. Well, off I went to the store and got a new one, slightly more powerful (.75 hp, as opposed to the 1/2 hp we had before). Replacing it took about 1 – 1 1/2 hour, including removing the old drain (it didn’t have any putty!!! I’m surprised it wasn’t leaking). It worked like a champ.

Last night, I’m getting some water for the kids after dinner when I step on a bit of water. “Oh yeah,” says Ginger, “It seems that we got a bit of a water leak from the sink. I first noticed it today.” No big deal, I thought, I’ll just take a look after we put the kids to bed. I knew one of the pipes needed to be replaced after I’d installed the new disposal, it was a bit short, but it wasn’t bad. Anyways, I got under the sink, tried moving the disposal a bit to see if I could find the source of the leak, and not really finding anything really telling, I go and turn the disposal on. Surprise!!! The whole thing falls off the sink, with water from the faucet spilling through the now empty sink drain. Oh boy! What a mess to clean!

It wasn’t too bad, though. Ginger got me some towels, I dried everything up and quickly (really, under 10 mins) hooked everything back up. The source of the leak? Apparently, when I installed the disposal, I didn’t turn the neck lock (which holds the disposal to the drain) far enough, so it didn’t actually “lock” in place. There’s little notches at the end of the thread that you’re supposed to lock the neck to, and I didn’t do that. Slowly, over time, the neck went down the thread, until it fell off! The moral of the story is “When tightening something, tighten it really, REALLY tight”.

You can’t really look at it…

But you wouldn’t guess it’s this awesome.

This is one of my best discoveries of late, a proof that the internet isn’t completely wasted effort. I’m not sure how I found it either, but here it is

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime-images.html

SOHO stands for Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. It’s an international project to monitor solar activity. The link above will take you directly to their most recent sun imagery, where you can see what the sun looks like through various spectrum (spectrae? spectra?) such as magnetic, infra-red, ultra-violet, and other I don’t really know. Take a look around, it’s really, really impressive. The section under “MPEG Movies” is an actual montage of the pictures, so you can see the sun “moving”. Again, it’s very cool, worth lots of time! Here’s a quick preview…

The one above is right now (or the most recent they have)

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/eit_171/512/

Next one is from 12/18/2005, two days after CJ was born

Very cool stuff!

This is exactly how I feel in the mornings

This is one of my favorite Woody the Woodpecker episodes (I’m a big fan!). Funny enough, it describes exactly how I’ve been feeling in the morning, when I have to wake up to go to work. If anybody knows where I can find that tonic, please let me know!

 

Debunking BMI

I’d heard that BMI was not that reliable, but I never imagined it is completely bogus! Here’s the link to the article itself, on NPR, and excerpt below

Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus

 

1. The person who dreamed up the BMI said explicitly that it could not and should not be used to indicate the level of fatness in an individual.

The BMI was introduced in the early 19th century by a Belgian named Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet. He was a mathematician, not a physician. He produced the formula to give a quick and easy way to measure the degree of obesity of the general population to assist the government in allocating resources. In other words, it is a 200-year-old hack.

2. It is scientifically nonsensical.

There is no physiological reason to square a person's height (Quetelet had to square the height to get a formula that matched the overall data. If you can't fix the data, rig the formula!). Moreover, it ignores waist size, which is a clear indicator of obesity level.

3. It is physiologically wrong.

It makes no allowance for the relative proportions of bone, muscle and fat in the body. But bone is denser than muscle and twice as dense as fat, so a person with strong bones, good muscle tone and low fat will have a high BMI. Thus, athletes and fit, health-conscious movie stars who work out a lot tend to find themselves classified as overweight or even obese.

4. It gets the logic wrong.

The CDC says on its Web site that "the BMI is a reliable indicator of body fatness for people." This is a fundamental error of logic. For example, if I tell you my birthday present is a bicycle, you can conclude that my present has wheels. That's correct logic. But it does not work the other way round. If I tell you my birthday present has wheels, you cannot conclude I got a bicycle. I could have received a car. Because of how Quetelet came up with it, if a person is fat or obese, he or she will have a high BMI. But as with my birthday present, it doesn't work the other way round. A high BMI does not mean an individual is even overweight, let alone obese. It could mean the person is fit and healthy, with very little fat.

5. It's bad statistics.

Because the majority of people today (and in Quetelet's time) lead fairly sedentary lives and are not particularly active, the formula tacitly assumes low muscle mass and high relative fat content. It applies moderately well when applied to such people because it was formulated by focusing on them. But it gives exactly the wrong answer for a large and significant section of the population, namely the lean, fit and healthy. Quetelet is also the person who came up with the idea of "the average man." That's a useful concept, but if you try to apply it to any one person, you come up with the absurdity of a person with 2.4 children. Averages measure entire populations and often don't apply to individuals.

6. It is lying by scientific authority.

Because the BMI is a single number between 1 and 100 (like a percentage) that comes from a mathematical formula, it carries an air of scientific authority. But it is mathematical snake oil.

7. It suggests there are distinct categories of underweight, ideal, overweight and obese, with sharp boundaries that hinge on a decimal place.

That's total nonsense.

8. It makes the more cynical members of society suspect that the medical insurance industry lobbies for the continued use of the BMI to keep their profits high.

Insurance companies sometimes charge higher premiums for people with a high BMI. Among such people are all those fit individuals with good bone and muscle and little fat, who will live long, healthy lives during which they will have to pay those greater premiums.

9. Continued reliance on the BMI means doctors don't feel the need to use one of the more scientifically sound methods that are available to measure obesity levels.

Those alternatives cost a little bit more, but they give far more reliable results.

10. It embarrasses the U.S.

It is embarrassing for one of the most scientifically, technologically and medicinally advanced nations in the world to base advice on how to prevent one of the leading causes of poor health and premature death (obesity) on a 200-year-old numerical hack developed by a mathematician who was not even an expert in what little was known about the human body back then.

I LOVE INDEXES!

 

The whys and hows of sql indexing are going to be an interesting topic for another day’s post, but it is sufficient background to know that I deal with indexes daily, and it’s one of the pivots of my job as a dba… It’s almost like being a mechanic and not having any power tools. How much do you think you’ll accomplish in a day without your power tools?

Well, I’ve been working on this report for a couple of days, and one of my biggest obstacles has been performance. Each time I hit “run”, it takes about 15 mins for the report to complete. If I made a mistake, then it’s another 5 mins to fix the mistake and then another 15 mins of waiting!!!!

After a bit of enlightenment this morning, I did some tuning and indexed the heck out of the database tables I’m using. After about 1 hour worth’s, the report now completes in :03 secs. This is 30000% more efficient! Thank you indexes!

It’s ALIVE! IT’S ALIVE!

So, a few months back I started talking about a projector I was rebuilding. “Started talking” is the key word here, since I never finished talking about it… Reason being it’s such a long and tortuous story, you’d be even more bored than you must be just about now as you read me ramble on and on and on about why I didn’t do what I said I’d do, and even worse, as I ramble about my rambling rambles abou (skillfully dodges a flying wood show aimed at my head) Alright! I’ll get to the point!

Well, I finished it! Me and my newest favorite toy, the glue gun! The one pictured above is similar to mine, cordless and all, and I got a great deal on it. With it, I was able to finish assembling the new bulb (great story right there), and install inside the projector, all with an extra pair of helping hands (thanks, Sione!), and large amounts of hot glue. I’m just so excited to find out what I can I hot glue together… It’s easy to handle, fairly inexpensive and dries very quickly. This puts hot glue in the “very very useful” list, along with quick-dry crazy-glue GEL (yes, gel, and it’s awesome not to have your super-glue run around your stuff like hot lava, getting everywhere it’s not supposed to) and magnetic super-small jeweler tools. And yes, the PSP is in that list too (thanks, Honey!!!!)

Speaking of my Honey, many many many thanks to her for putting up with my projection obsession… For the last few months, Ginger has had to put up with:

* Soldering late at night (even helping me with holding the iron and stuff)

* Projector parts all over the house, and keeping the kids away from it

* Many “Honey, come see it now, isn’t it great!”

* Much whining from me about parts not arriving on time

* Etc…..

Yeah, Ginger’s been incredibly patient and supportive as I let this project suck away hours of my life, THANK YOU HONEY!!!!!! I love you!!!!

I’m hoping this weekend will be the first real-life test for it, as I try to watch conference on it. I’ll send out updates then…

Chaves do 88

This will probably not make much sense to anybody US-side. I grew up watching a mexican show called “Chaves”, about a homeless boy that lived in a small bunch of houses called a “villa”. A Villa usually consisted of a bunch of tiny houses that shared a common area, almost like the really poor cousin of a gated community. It had a cast of very odd characters, and generally veered towards slapstick comedy.

Anyways, the two videos below feature some of the characters from the show, but not doing anything they would normally be doing. Very funny if you ever watched the show with any kind of regularity (aka, anybody born in Brazil in the last 20 years)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And another one

Enjoy!

More Payne!

Not sure how I missed that one, but I should’ve remembered… Max Payne’s theme song is a fabulous piano arrangement that really gives out the feel of the game. Enjoy!

Max Payne!!!!! -- EDITED

[Note: I just realized that the plot summary below is inaccurate and makes Max sound stupid. I've changed it to better reflect what actually happened]

A few of you may know that I’m a huge Max Payne fan. No, not the movie (haven’t seen it yet), but the game was awesome.

Max who?

According to the wikipedia:

Max Payne is a third-person shooter video game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published in 2001. It is set in modern New York and follows the titular DEA undercover agent who investigates the source of the designer drug Valkyr that caused deaths of his wife and daughter three years ago. At the beginning of the game, Max's cover is blown; and he goes on a killing spree, targeting the distributors and masterminds behind Valkyr, He is then marked as a double-crosser: the police believes he abandoned the force and became a drug lord (he was wrongly accused of the murder of his partner by a mole in the police), and the bad guys felt betrayed once they discovered that he was an undercover cop. The bad guys placed a bounty on his head, and the police had a warrant on him due to the murder charges. With both sides of the law chasing him, Max has no choice but to fight and try to prove his innocence, discover why he was framed, and the real reasons why his wife was killed.

A interesting aspect of Max Payne is how the plot is presented. Most games will try to have intricate, very detailed computer-generated animation, but Max Payne’s story is presented through comic-book style cartoons, complemented with actors reading their respective lines. It’s very interesting to watch. Here’s one of my favorites: (click on the picture to see it in full size)

From My Pictures

Another great part of Max Payne is his quotes. No macho man is complete without a great set of macho quotes! Here’s some of my favorites:

• Collecting evidence had gotten old a few hundred bullets back. I was already so far past the point-of-no-return I couldn't remember what it had looked like when I had passed it.
• I would have laughed, if I could have remembered how.
• Nothing is a cliché when it's happening to you.
• He was trying to buy more sand for his hour glass. I wasn't selling any.
• So much for being subtle.

Anyways, why am I so excited? They’re releasing a new Max Payne, that’s why! Max Payne 3, baby! December can’t get here any faster.

Welcome!

 

If you’re seeing this, then welcome to our new home!

Still alive!

I don’t quite remember how I came across this site, but it is something I enjoy visiting every now and then

http://englishrussia.com

This is a site maintained by a Russian photographer about life in Russia. Not that I’m that interested in moving to Russia or anything like that… What’s interesting to me is his “field trips”, like this one

Lost City of Chernobyl

Yeah, some of this is definitely on the creepy side of things, but very interesting nevertheless!

An Abandoned Coastline Defense Canon Battery

AK-47 Kalashnikov museum

Some of this postings are bizarre enough to prevent me from checking it more regularly, but it’s always interesting for the occasional visit.

This post brought to you by the Department of Too Much Information

After successfully becoming a waterholic (really, I’m drinking a ton of water. So much, I just don’t have the “time” to drink anything else. Gotta hit that goal!), I’ve decided to expand/abuse my reader’s patience some more.

I’ve learned long ago that accountability is one of the keys of successful delegation: If you have to report it to someone, you’re much more likely to do it, for any number of reasons I’m not going to go into. So, now I’ve decided to make You, the reader, the boss of me! Yes, that’s right! Now I’m going to update my water consumption (but not every half-hour, no way), but I’m also going to update with my… food intake!

 

(crowd stares in terrifying unbelief, starts to look for pitchforks and torches)

 

It’s true… I like food! I eat a lot. I can eat all day… candy bars, grilled cheese sandwiches, peanuts, anything. If it’s within reach, I’ll grab it. If I’m stressed, I’ll grab twice as much. If I’m tired, then you’d better hide your stash, I’ll be over in a minute :-)

So now, if you look on the right side of this page, you’ll see a section called “Food & Water”. I’ll be updating it regularly with my drinkage, and with my eatage. I don’t think I’m going to give a detailed account of what exactly I just ate (unless my wife made it, and you’ll be very jealous, specially once I describe how incredibly delicious it tasted). It’ll probably just be a “I ate something!”.

Alright, now I gotta get some work done. 

Resolution!

Following my wife’s excellent example, I’m working my darndest (spell checker thinks that darndest should be spelled dandiest – brought to you by my very short attention sp….hey, look, it’s shiny!) best to stop drinking carbonation. It’s not an easy task, specially in the IT world, where Mountain Dew is King and Lord over All Other Beverages. My shameful worst is 4 cans of Dew in a single day (but they were diet!).

Anyways, one of my excuses is that I always try to drink a healthy amount of water/day, usually about 1 liter. Interestingly enough, after some googling (hey, it was my lunch time!), I found this link

http://www.naturodoc.com/library/nutrition/water.htm

Once you drill down past the wise and sage advice, I found this definition

"Proper water intake is a key to weight loss," says Dr. Donald Robertson, medical director of the Southwest Bariatric Nutrition Center in Scottsdale, Arizona.  "If people who are trying to lose weight don't drink enough water, the body can't metabolize the fat adequately.  Retaining fluid also keeps weight up."

The minimum for a healthy person is eight to ten eight-ounce glasses a day," says Dr. Flaks.  "You need more if you exercise a lot or live in a hot climate.  And overweight people should drink in an extra glass for every 25 pounds they exceed their ideal weight.  Consult your own physician for their recommendations.

At the International Sports Medicine Institute, we have a formula for daily water intake: 1/2 ounce per pound of body weight if you're not active (that's ten eight-ounce glasses if you weigh 160 pounds), and 2/3 ounce per pound if you're athletic (13 to 14 glasses a day, at the same weight).

So, right now, I weigh a manly 190lbs. According to the formula,

190 x 1/2 = 95oz per day

then, remembering that a regular water bottle carries about 17oz of water

95/17 = 5.5 bottles/day

A lot? Yeah, that’s a lot of water. However, if I’m awake 18 hours/day then

18/5.5 = 3.2

That means I have to drink 17oz of water every 3.2 hours. Hourly, that will translate into

17/3.2 = 5.3oz

So, 5oz of water every hour that I’m awake! All y’all cooks know how little that is. For us cubicle-dwellers, if I get up every half-hour and take a nice drink of water from the water-fountain, then not only I get to stay awake, I also get to stay hydrated! Awesome! Also, remember that 85% of your brain is composed of water, so you gotta make sure your gray matter is always nice and moist (maybe soggy is even better, but make sure you don’t drench it… It actually damages the gray matter, and then it don’t work so good. Anyways.) if you want to keep your marbles not looking like the poor marble in the right

 

Good luck, and happy drinking!

Queen and Weird Al

I’m not a huge Queen fan, but I’ve always admired Freddie Mercury’s talent as a singer. Apparently, so does Weird Al… Here’s a quick compare of Queen’s original, “Bohemian Rhapsody”

 

And here’s Weird Al’s version of the same song. Same lyrics, completely different song!

I know I should be getting work done….

But this was too funny to pass. Enjoy!

http://www.threepanelsoul.com/view.php?date=2008-10-13

At least I’ll die with a happy tummy

I know some of the stuff just looks horribly gross, and I had a heart attack when I saw some of the other pictures, but, to my shame, I’d try some of the following

Deep Fried Cheese-Stuffed Ground Bacon Burger

(too gross to picture, but it sounds good)

Snickers Pie

chessecase on a stick

I would certainly never never ever have any of the following

 

bacon tacos

 

Deep-fried Twinky On A Stick Dipped In Chocolate Syrup

 

And the champion of the worst, most horrible looking food of all times….

 

Turbaconucken

A chicken inside a duck inside a turkey, all wrapped in bacon.

What are your choices?

http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/

AMAZING GIVEAWAY!!!

Lucky you!The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you.This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
1- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
2- What I create will be just for you.
3- It'll be done this year. (might be a little while)
4- You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a story. It may be poetry or an article on properly cleaning your face before a masque. I may draw or paint something. I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
5- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.
The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must repost this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog.
The first 5 people to do so and leave a comment telling me they did win a FAB-U-LOUS homemade gift by me!
Oh, and be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it!
Good luck!

Laugh with me if you get it

Over the last couple of years I've slowly become a die-hard republican... Yeah, it's a long story, but I can get pretty heated under the collar, as some of you may have found out.

Anyways, tonight I was reading a thread from a blog posting about great deals online, one of such deals being "Obama and the American Story: A History of Freedom for $0." I was following the comments other readers have left, and I found the following gem:

*** Disclaimer

(I started to type a long disclaimer to make Obama-supporters happy, but it got too long. If this post offends you, oh wells)


Here it goes....

-------------------------------------

"Obama and the American Story: A History of Freedom"

*rolls eyes*

bboysca "Obama and the American Story: A History of Freedom" ...

4 replies by Saboth, klaybc, T-Will ...

• 

  Brendan Byrne
  5:05 PM

  @bboysca: I'm a big fan of Obama, but yeah, I'll have to agree. *rolls eyes in unison*

  
  
• Saboth
  5:47 PM

  @Brendan Byrne:

  Yeah, I voted for Obama, but...it's kinda getting out of hand with the hype and the media lol.

  "Obama raises hands and lifts a nation" (CNN) /spins eyes.

  
  
• klaybc
  6:03 PM

  @Saboth: Hey, that book's worth every penny.

And here's my favorite post

• T-Will
  6:31 PM

  @bboysca: Shouldn't it be "Obama and the American Story: A History of Socialism"?

Off-topic – For the trekkie in all of us

Found this on the internet yesterday, thought it was fabulous!

Here’s the link, if this image is still too small to see.

Create your own original Star Trek story

On TV’s and Projectors – part 2

Eventually, however, I ended up with this guy

That’s a mitsubishi projector, off of ebay. I paid about 10% of the cost of a low-end high-def tv, for an image about 4 1/2 times the size of goodly-sized high-def tv. Here's a comparison chart, to help you get an idea of how the sizes compare:

Right, it’s just like that.

Actually, it really is pretty awesome. I don’t have any pictures of the actual screen size, but if filled out most of the wall. The kids were somewhat intimidated at first, but then they loved touching the screen and kept on trying to grab whatever was displayed on the it.

Stay tuned for chapter 3 of my amazing projector adventures!

Better comments!

If you’ve wondered where your comments to my posts went, wonder no more! I’ve changed some of my settings, so now your comments should show up right away. So, no more excuses, speak up!

Where in the world have you been????

Yeah, I’ve been….. busy. Way busy, actually. Here’s quick list of what I’ve been up to in the last little while since I last posted:

• Repaired a bunch of nintendo DS (4, to be precise)
• Modified my projector to use any type of bulb I want
• Sliced my finger, got a couple of stitches
• Got a bunch of new responsibilities at work
• Played a lot of guitar hero III (awesome!)
• Did a lot of playing with my kids

I’ll probably post individual entries for this stuff, just so I can say that, in average (by total count of post alone), I’ve been posting just as much as anybody else :-). Stay tuned!