Blubber-B-Gone

I went to the doctor’s this morning before work and got some great news. Not only have I lost weight (8 pounds in the last two weeks!!!), but my blood pressure is down almost ten points on both the top and bottom. My cholesterol’s not bad either. His exact words were, “It’s not brilliant, but it’s not bad either.”

He went so far as to tell me to slow down with the weight loss. He said a couple pounds a month is enough. At that point I told him to shut up and punched him in the stomach. No, really, I told him that I’m not doing anything crazy and that I’ve just cut out soda and have stopped going back for seconds. It doesn’t feel all that bad, actually. It’s something I think can keep up for the rest of my life and not miss out on anything. I can still eat the same things, just not as much. I miss the soda, but not enough to start drinking it again, except maybe the root beer at Sweetwater.

I love good news first thing in the morning…

Greasy and Honest

It’s extremely rare to find honesty in business, especially auto mechanics. I always follow my dad and use whoever he uses to fix his problematic cars (oh my, the stories I could tell you about my dad and his car trouble). Dad has a way of ferreting out honest auto mechanics and then inundating them with expensive and funny car problems. Thankfully, my cars aren’t that bad. Still, I like knowing the guy I take my car to isn’t going to rip me off.

For example, after our latest snow storm, my left windshield wiper stopped working. I figured it would be an expensive “replace the whole thing” affair. So, Jen and I dropped off the car at lunch today. Not two hours later, I get a call at work from the guy saying it’s all ready to go and there’s no charge. Apparently, when it’s icey, the pivot bolts get loose. It was a 2 minute find-it-and-wrench-it job that would have cost me $60 anywhere else. So, if you live in Northern VA, definitely give Houda’s a call. You won’t regret it.

Home From Safari

I surfed with Safari last night and I have to say I’m not impressed. On my TiBook (500mhz w/ 512mb), it took 5 seconds to launch. Mozilla takes 9 to bring up the first browser window, and I get more. Chimera only took 4, and provides most of the features of Mozilla. I’m not going to switch, because there’s nothing really new there. Steve touted the snapback button, and the improved bookmarks, which I don’t think are really all that great to begin with.

It’s not that it’s not good software. It does render pages quickly. It is nice to look at. But, it could be so much more. I’m not really happy having to worry about another browser, even though its rendering problems seem minor.

Keynote Ramblings

I picked up the MacWorld Keynote by Mr. Jobs in the middle while he was showing off iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD. What just came to me while watching this is that Apple isn’t gunning for the workplace anymore. They’ve ceded that to Microsoft. They’ve created an amazing Lifestyle Suite of software. The collection of iApps is robust, and with the new features, I think the Mac’s killer app. We geeks can talk about the BSD underpinnings of OS X, the cool things we can do with things like Fink and the Apache webserver built in.

Yeah, and I just saw the part where he dropped the name on us: iLife. Yeah… Ummm… I called it?

Anyway, I’m pretty excited about the bundle and the new features in all three. PLUS, the predictions were wrong. You’ll be able to download iPhoto, iTunes and iMovie for free or go buy the bundle. Sweet.

Ummm, why did they go and build their own browser? Hopefully, it’s based on Gecko so we don’t have to worry about yet another browser’s quirks. It’s pretty funny how familiar the Safari toolbar is to the Windows AOL Client’s. I’m honestly not seeing anything too hot about Safari so far. The benchmarks looked good, but the features don’t look compelling enough to make enough people switch to make supporting it worthwhile. Also, Steve, please stop touting the Google integration. Big deal. There are Google bars for pretty much every browser out there that offer the same features. Hopefully, it won’t be another HotJava (Sun’s unbelievable horrible browser packaged with Solaris).

If you don’t own a Mac… consider it. I’m making the switch as we speak (it’s harder at work than at home, where the switch is already pretty much complete), and I’ve been extremely impressed.

Christmas Pictures

The Lawver Family

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