Breakfast Anytime

hmm, well apparently i'm in quite the posting mood lately. i think it's funny how i read gaming blogs more often than CNN, so i get random news like mcdonald's considering offering breakfast all day long from 8bit joystick instead of ABC news. not to mention like two weeks later, heh.

not that that's necessarily a healthy idea, but alayna & i were quite disappointed one night in allen when our 1am request at the local mcdonald's for the delicious #4 breakfast was denied, as breakfast didn't start till 4:30am. i guess we were spoiled by the all-night breakfast the college station mcdonald's across from a&m offered. there was nothing quite like having an egg mcmuffin at 3:30am while all the chairs were stacked on the tables and a guy was mopping the floors. thus, i approve of this proposed all-day idea.

--j

Watch TV Show, Write Essay

y'know i'm as excited as the next guy that Lost has started back up, but i've never seen a show cause so much over-analysis in my life. you can tell the writers do their absolute best to only move the plot along as little as they can to keep viewers coming back, and because of that avid fans spend gobs and gobs of time analyzing what they saw and what they speculate could happen next.

a post like this is exactly what i'm talking about. it's like people are typing up little paragraphs generally voicing their opinion on the episode and somebody like this just drops this friggin essay in the middle of the thread. what's sad is that you just know as they're watching the show they're taking notes on a yellow legal pad to rush over to their computers with 3 minutes after it's over. what's even worse than that are the people that post opinions as the show's still in progress, like 20 minutes in.

i've come to enjoy the TiVo Community board more than others i've seen cuz the people are generally pretty down-to-earth, but i've noticed my post count is ridiculously low cuz sometimes i can't believe what giant losers these people come across as. i may enjoy television and i may be an analytical person, but jesus, sit down on your goddamn couch and just enjoy being entertained without telling everybody else what you thought about each minute after it ends.

got that little rant out of my system.

--j

Rick's HFCS Diet

so after hearing so much bad buzz about high fructose corn syrup over the last few months and seeing rick's successful shedding by giving up cokes, i've tried myself to avoid HFCS as best as i can.

it's actually more difficult than i had originally thought, because so many things these days seem to have it. i'm not exactly the type to go scouring through food labels looking for ingredients or calorie counts or anything so sometimes i won't even realize something has HFCS till i stop and think to look. i was surprised that stuff like cans of country time lemonade and a V8 smoothie bottle had it. it almost seems like you have to find something that's specifically marked as healthier (such as including splenda) to avoid it.

i don't wanna act like it makes the biggest difference in the world, but i think avoiding HFCS is something that's relatively manageable for me. i can't pretend like i have a "weight problem" so i'm not looking to really diet hardcore or start massively portion controlling or anything like that. but i had gotten to a point where i was usually drinking one 20oz. coke at work, a 12oz. can with dinner and another 12oz. can before midnight everyday. that's 44oz. of coke a day, which is obviously waaay too much. i started to get better by subbing in other drinks like juices and sugar-free lemonades instead of the cokes, as well as trying and liking coke zero.

with the exception of occasionally getting "real" cokes at restaurants, i've largely stopped drinking real soda with HFCS. when i can find coke zero (which can be dodgy at work) i always go for that. i'd say at this point it tastes about 90% as good as coke, and still has caffeine, so it works for me. i've basically found that if i avoid real cokes for several days, i'll generally be 4-5 pounds lighter on the scale, as long as i'm doing cardio a few times a week. that basically puts me at my goal weight of 195, and i've even been a few pounds below that a bit.

in truth you kinda never want to achieve your goal, because then you don't have a goal left. as long as i'm hovering around 195 i guess i kinda don't care that much how things go. i've actually done a great job at cutting way back on fast food, although i can't really say it's dropped much off of me. i think the only realistic way i'm gonna flirt with maybe 190 is to work out more, but 4 times a week is realistically the best i can't hope for, which also isn't gonna gain me much.

so i don't really know what my new year's resolution's gonna be, at least food-wise. but i guess that can't be too bad a predicament, hey?

--j

A Rare Shot at Self-Discipline

i've decided to try to enforce some rules upon myself to help be more "entertainment productive" at night so i don't get stuck reading whatever blog or site bloglines tells me has a new post, or scrolling through fanboyish posts on digg or slashdot or reading TV episode discussion at TiVo Community for way too long every night. when i say "entertainment productive," i mean knocking out movies and TV eps, logging a few hours on a game, reading a book, etc. my reasons for this include both aiding recuperation for my still ailing back as well as just plain making more significant progress on getting other things done in life.

i came across a few GTD-related programs that might help self-discipline a bit. one is this simple little OS X program called Fob that simply puts a countdown timer in your dock to remind you how much longer you have till [x] event happens. in my case, i'm using it to countdown how much longer i should be sitting at my computers.

the other piece of software i came across today is called DailyLogger, which is a ridiculously simple program that simply keeps a log of everything you enter into it. for my own purposes, i intend to enter into it what specific tasks i got involved with online, to justify why i spent a few hours in my office when i've already spent hours sitting upright all day at work.

hopefully a little discipline could maybe help me alter my still-weird-after-all-these-years hours just a bit.

--j