Happy Birthday

It's official. I'm 35. Where does the time go? No, you don't have to answer that one.

So what's new with me. Well, life is crazy right now. Between work and two summer classes I find that I have absolutely no time. Part of that is my fault, because the time I do have is spent sleeping. Not the normal, necessary, nightly sleep. We're talking more the lazy, lethargic type. What am I doing to try to fix that? I'm sure there are plenty of reasons for it. Weight, nutrition, and exercise are probably the key reasons though. I'm not stupid, I only act it!

So what have I decided to do about it? The usual I'm sure. The latest attempt has been the addition of a spreadsheet. Years ago I used to track how I ate and found it helped me lose a bunch of weight. After years of failures without, I've decided to go back to it. There are better programs out there designed specifically for this purpose, but they can get a little overkill. It depends on what your goals are I suppose. For me, right now, it's simple. I just want to record the very basics. The weight, the calories, the exercise, and the all important... "How do you feel?". Has it helped me? I just started today so it's too soon to tell. But I think it will. To do this I've decided to use google spreadsheets. I wanted to try it out, and this way I'll be able to access and update my spreadsheet from anywhere with an Internet connection. My first impression is that for basic spreadsheets with simple functions, it's pretty good.

We are always misjudging what we eat. If you know that a typical male can eat 2500 calories a day and not lose weight, and that a pound is the equivalent of x calories, what does that tell you? As I said, I'm keeping it simple, but you get the idea. Today I was going to eat a "relatively healthy" lunch. I was pretty pleased with my choice until I looked it up afterwards. 1600 calories. And since we were celebrating my birthday today I still had chinese food, cake, and ice cream to go! As you can imagine, today was definitely "in the red". A dark, dark, red.

A few weeks ago I went down to the chess club and happened to play Richard Gold a couple of games. For some reason, I seem to have good luck when playing Richard. This particular day it was no different, I finished 2-0. Last night I played 2 games against Paul Sarrazin. I finished 1.5-.5, but they were difficult games. The 1st one was truly a game of mistakes. I think I started out with a winning attack, transposed into a crazy endgame where I'm not exactly sure who was winning, but it was close - and I was lucky enough to win it. The next game was another crazy game that ended in a perpetual check. I hope to get the games into the computer for analysis this week, so I may post them up here.

A final note. Kip put me on to this site on Friday which is truly amazing - and hilarious. The guy is a musician who used to be a programmer, and his songs are great. Some of my favorites include "Code Monkey", "Millionaire Girlfriend", and "A Laptop Like You". Be sure to check it out:

http://www.jonathancoulton.com/songs/

Until next time, Ed.