I have mentioned a few times about how different my health is from what it used to be and I have started working on it, but I can’t go full on because I am not in the gym. On the first I started keeping records and worked on eating healthier and it looks like my mass has not gone down, which I am thankful for. I am using the DoD bodyfat calculation to determine these numbers, which is close, but not exact. While it is not as exact as the BodPod or underwater methods it is what I have been using for years so it gives me a great comparison to what I have been in the past. Right now I am sitting at 165-170lbs lean mass, and that is because it is based on measurements and sometimes you can measure different. I have no doubt that when I get back in the gym I can gain another 10 in muscle, if I do that and drop to 200lbs I will be 10% bodyfat and 180lbs lean mass. I was big before, but people could tell I had bulked, right now I think people just think I’m fat because I have a lot more of it.

Yesterday I got a quick run down of just how out of shape I am. I spent a couple hours moving things to storage and cleaning out the shed. I also went to bed at 6pm and woke up at 9:30am this morning. To give you an idea of what I used to do. I would get up at 5am eat a banana and drink a bottle of water, leave at 5:15 and drive 35min to the gym. I would usually begin working out around 6:00 and finish at 7:10. Shower and then leave around 7:30 after taking my supplements. Arrive at work at 20 of 8, eat my breakfast then I would work from 8 to 5 outside in the hot sun on equipment or doing some stuff by hand, but prior to that 1 or 2 days a week I shoveled horse crap from stalls. Think of working out in the gym * 4 then multiply that by 8 hours, it is literally the hardest work I have ever done and I have done a lot of stuff in life. You are basically removing 1ft+ deep shavings + crap from a 8×8 stall, not your standard family farm daily cleaning. Anyway after that I would go home eat and get 8 hours of sleep before starting it all over again. When you compare that to what I do now, you might understand how I could become out of shape. Not really the job for the type of person that can program in a number of languages, but I loved the job. I hated the smell of horse shit and being dirty as hell everyday, but I worked with friends, I was in shape and when I got home I knew I had done something that day. I didn’t come home with a lot of money in my pocket, but that was ok because I know that I earned every single penny I did bring home and I had the sore muscles to prove it.

I remember in California when I was working with mortgages they would say, you work hard don’t cut your fees just so a loan will go through. I thought to myself, well thats California for ya. I have actually worked hard and made a lot less. You call someone, get their information, email it to some brokers, work up deals, pitch it, and do more paperwork. It’s a joke, you make 2k+ per loan and have a lot of stress when you don’t have clients, but it isn’t hard work, just time consuming at times.

I switched my DNS for another domain over to Google Apps last night. This domain, tworaised.com, is going to be my project domain where I will actually store the code for all my public projects. It will have trac and svn environments for people to interact with and probably a blog plugin integrated into trac, but we will see I would almost like to have one blog to cover all projects. I have considered not using the domain because of the name. Tech people will get the 2^ part because everything is 2^x, but I’m sure others will think two raised as in two middle ,,|,, fingers ,,|,, but what can ya do.

I will be detailing my experiences with Solaris in my next post, along with my experience with the user community surrounding it.

I moved back from San Diego larger than when I left and I have since gained even more weight. I did not notice how much until I saw pictures from beCamp. I am the largest I have ever been and I need to buckle down and get back in shape. I was at one time in shape and healthy, now I can feel it in my body just how unhealthy I am. Monday I will be starting a normal routine to try to recover. It is going to take a lot of hard work, and in the end it will pay off. It’s actually incredibly depressing that all the time and hard work I spent to get in shape is down the drain.

So I guess wish me luck and hopefully I will be better than I was before. My goal is to get back to 175lbs lean weight and a total weight of 200lbs. That will put me at 12.5% body fat, which is good. When I worked out I was 173lbs lean mass and about 25% body fat so 235lbs, not the greatest, but my blood pressure was perfect, I was active, and I had a lot of stamina. I havn’t done the math yet, but I would say I am probably 160 lean, and I’m not going to mention the total.

Today, March 22, 2007 marks 3 years of not smoking. This is a big day for me and it has been very tempting to smoke, but I have made it this far and I am very proud of that.

Today, February 22, 2007 is the mark of 2 years and 11 months without smoking. It’s amazing that next month will be 3 years since I last had a cigarette. I do still crave a smoke every once and a while, especially when the stress builds, but the money I save, the extra oxygen I have and the accomplishment by itself keep me from starting again. It took me 7 years to quit and I hated smoking from the first day.

When you buy a Camelbak nowadays you are getting an Omega bladder which has a special FDA and EPA approved layer (HydroGuard) to eliminate 99.99% of common bacteria and fungus from your tube and bladder. This doesn’t mean you don’t need to clean your reservoir.

I did a number of searches on the internet for the best method of cleaning. I came across users who used mouthwash, vodka, water, and some didn’t even clean them. The most common methods other than the tablets you can buy from Camelbak were baking soda, bleach, or denture tablets. Here is the information from the Camelbak website.

1. Fill reservoir with warm water and mild soap.
2. Clean with Reservoir Bursh and Delivery Tube Brush
3. Re-fill reservoir with 1L of water
4. Add 1 Cleaning Tablet
5. Shale reservoir until tablet is dissolved
6. Let stand for 5 minutes
7. Remove water from reservoir
8. Rinse reservoir thoroughly
9. Re-fill for drinking or dry completely before storage

It also says in an emergency you can add a tablespoon of bleach after Step 3 just make sure to rinse it thoroughly. They also say to clean the whole pack place it in a tub or bucket and wash with cold water and mild detergent. They go on to mention how you should not place it in a washing machine.

The method I used combined the CamelBak method with others I found on the internet.

WORKING METHOD

1. Fill reservoir with warm water and 2 teaspoons of bleach
2. Let stand for 8 hours
3. Remove water by removing bite valve and draining through tube 3 times
4. Rinse once with hot water and 2 teaspoons of baking soda
5. Fill with hot water and 1 tablespoon baking soda and let stand for 2 hours
6. Rinse thoroughly and then dry

As I am writing this it is sitting with the baking soda in it.

Update: This method worked perfectly. There is no plastic taste, no bleach taste just the refreshing taste of clean water. I hope this helps some of you out.

So far it has been a good start to a year. Some positive projects are in motion and some big things will be happening this year. For one it looks like I will be working with a Vintage watch dealer to improve their design and improve sales. I have also been brought on at Newsforge as a freelance writer and I have some exciting topics to review and provide tutorials on. I have for quite a while wanted to start writing and this will be my opportunity to really get involved. I had a meeting with a local high school last week and if all goes well I will be involved in some of the projects they have going on and maybe I can start a club for teenagers that are wanting to learn more about programming.

With the good comes the bad. This week has been fight after fight with family members over things that make no sense whatsoever. On top of that I re-fractured my right pinky, which never healed properly the first two times. It is a boxers fracture that comes from punching stationary objects. Before you make some conclusion about who I am and what my attitude is like I route my anger through physical action to reduce the emotional buildup. I have never been in a physical fight though so that shows I have great control over my actions. I kept the brace I was given the very first time I fractured it so I have began using it to try to let it heal properly.

The good news on the health side is that I lost 3.5 lbs this week, which is just above what most consider safe, but I know I am getting the proper nutrients so I consider it to be safe. My goal by 7/1/2007 is to weigh 200 lbs so with the ups and downs of weight loss I figure I can average 2 lbs a week over the course of 26 weeks and considering I was 251.5 on the 1st of the year I will weigh 199.5 going by those numbers.

A lot of things got in the way of my fitness plan in 2006, but with a fresh start in 2007 this is going to be the one where I get back in shape. I am not proud of how out of shape I am, but despite my weight I do still have a lot of muscle. Here are my current stats.

     Bodyfat: 35.23%
      Weight: 253.00 lbs
         Age: 24
      Height: 68.50 in
        Neck: 16.50 in
 Below Chest: 45.00 in
Center Chest: 47.50 in
       Bicep: 16.50 in
     Forearm: 13.50 in
     Stomach: 46.50 in
         Hip: 44.25 in
        Calf: 17.25 in
       Thigh: 29.00 in
       Ankle: 11.00 in
       Wrist: 7.50 in

and my goal is

     Bodyfat: 16.07%
      Weight: 200 lbs
         Age: 24
      Height: 68.5 in
        Neck: 18.04 in
 Below Chest: 45.00 in
Center Chest: 48.75 in
       Bicep: 17.55 in
     Forearm: 14.14 in
     Stomach: 36.00 in
         Hip: 41.44 in
        Calf: 16.58 in
       Thigh: 25.84 in
       Ankle: 11.00 in
       Wrist: 7.50 in

These were calculated using this calculator. I feel some of these are not possible. I have very muscular thighs so I do not believe I will reach 25.84 inches. I am 68.5 inches right now, but I was self measuring, and if standing with good posture I am trying for 69 inches even. The main reason is that incase I do decide to enlist in the Marine Corps I will be as close as possible to my required bodyfat and height/weight.

Today at noon it will be 2 years and 7 months since I had my last cigarette. On March 22nd of 2004 I quit cold turkey and in January of that year I quit dipping. Smoking and dipping are obviously bad, but I think dipping was the best thing I could have done because as gross as it is I liked it. I never liked smoking so eventually I could have quit and only dipped, but then I would probably have gotten oral cancer and my life would be even worse. For anyone trying to quit smoking I wish you the best of luck. The one thing I did differently from any of the other times I quit smoking was that I kept a pack of 19 cigarettes around all the time. I smoked 1 out of the pack and I quit and made sure that pack was around me so I had to make the choice. The other times I smoked my last cigarette in the pack and said I was done, then I would say oh, I’ll just have one and I would buy a new pack or bum one of someone which in both cases just started it all back up.

It took me 7 years to quit and that is how I did it.

A few weeks ago I had an entry about my creation of a training log I was going to offer as an open source script. I was asking for suggestions for cyclists and never heard from anyone. I have decided I will create a site such as bikejournal, but increasing the features and the eye candy. I am also going to make mine geared to a larger audience, mine will be structured so triathletes and duathletes can track their data too. Which means if you only run you will still have a home for your data logging.

I have started to speak with some popular websites to try and create some strong corporate relationships and bring even more features. I think I will be able to launch in a few months, I have completed the layout for the most part and just need to work on the data display, adding of information, etc. I will do a few posts about it but not releasing too much information.

When I want to go for a ride I must load the bike in the car and drive down to the school, which is only a couple minutes away. You might ask why not ride from my home, well I have a gravel driveway that is roughly 0.3 miles and that would not treat my road tires too well. When I go to the school I start riding and being so out of shape it is hard and I get to a point where I get depressed and stop. All that translates to being a huge hassle to go for a ride so last night I ordered a set of rollers from Performance. Here is the set I ordered:

I should recieve them on Tuesday, maybe Monday. This way I can sit in my room and ride while watching a movie or when the weather is bad.

I am anal about so many things, and one of those things is starting a new workout routine on a certain type of day. What I mean is, the 1st of the month, or a Monday or Sunday, or Wednesday. Some marker point so it is easier for me to track all my data. This Sunday is October 1st, it is also 6 months from April 1st, which in my mind is always the start of spring. I was just looking at a calender and October 1st is exactly 26 weeks till April 1st. I just stepped on the scale and I came in at 256. They say losing 2 pounds a week is safe, I naturally lost more than that many time before, but if I lose an average of 2 pounds per week I will weigh 204 on April 1st. If I weighed 204 and did not gain muscle I would be 20% body fat. Higher than I would like, but I believe once I start riding and gaining muscle through that I may go back up in lean mass. If I was able to increase my lean mass to what it was a year ago, which was 175, I would be 14%. My ultimate goal is to be around 10%, but 14 would be pretty good. Wish me luck, I just hope I can stick with it this time.