New Fitbit

I switched from a Fitbit one to a Fitbit Charge HR last summer after I lost my Fitbit One.  I liked some of the features on the Charge HR but missed the battery life of the One.  The Charge is supposed to be able to go something like 5 days on a charge but I usually had to charge it after 2 or 3.  Recently my Charge HR started to fall apart and I called Fitbit and they gave me the option of a replacement or 30% towards a new tracker.  I decided to upgrade to a Charge 2 and am anxious to see if I can get better battery life out of the new one.  The Charge 2 also replaceable wrist bands so I am looking for something besides the stock band that it came with.

Helping Others

One of my pet peeves is how many people expect others to take care of everything so they don't have to.  It does not matter if it is a club sport or a school activity.  These activities are always looking for help because so many parents won't take the time to get involved.  What kind of message is that sending to their children?  That they are too important or too busy to be bothered by it.  We need to set the right example for our children and for other adults.  While I was opening some mail today I came across a bible quote that I had forgotten about but have tried to live by.  The quote is Mark 10:45 - For even The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve.

Apple Headed the Wrong Way

I am currently using a 2011 MacBook Pro and right now it seems that I may not buy another Apple Laptop. I am not even sure if I will buy another Apple Desktop. Apple seems to be obsessed with making systems thinner and lighter and forgetting that there are people that are more concerned with performance over portability. In their drive to make things smaller they have resorted to soldering in memory and drives so that users can't even upgrade their hardware anymore. My 2011 MacBook Pro has been upgraded several times and still works great. Making hardware that cannot be upgraded is making things more expensive and they are alienating more and more customers. They make great hardware but not everyone wants the smallest system or to store everything in the cloud. I am anxious to see if they upgrade things this fall. I hope they change their direction but I doubt it.

 

Sonnet Echo 15 Impressions

I have been looking at Thunderbolt Docks for my MacBook Pro for some time and finally took the plunge. I decided to purchase the Sonnet Echo 15. It was the most expensive of the docks that I looked at but I decided to get it because of the extensive functionality it offered. It would give me USB 3 on my older MacBook Pro and still has FireWire and esata. It also included an optical drive and room for a hard drive.

When I first unpacked the dock I liked the look of it. It did not look cheap like some others I looked at. I plugged in my peripherals and monitor and things worked right away. I didn't start having issues until I loaded the driver and rebooted. When I rebooted I found that I first had to login to my MacBook and let it finish booting up before I could use the keyboard and mouse. I have a usb keyboard and mouse and when I have them plugged into the Mac instead of the dock I can boot up and login on the external keyboard and display.

The second issue that I found was that when I plugged my speakers into the dock I only got sound out of one of them. I then unplugged the input cable and plugged it back into my MacBook and sound returned to normal.

The fan on the dock is not loud but is noticeable. If that was the only problem with the dock I would keep it but it's not. For a dock that costs almost $500 I expect to have no issues. I will be returning the dock and will be back to my original setup.

 

Blog Update

Well despite my best intentions I have not been using my blog very much this year.  Work has been so busy that at the end of the day I rarely feel like spending much time on my computer.  I do the obligatory things like updating finances and a website or two but I really don't spend much time on the computer.  I post a lot to Facebook but not here a much.  I am trying to decide if I am even going to continue using this blog since I use it so rarely.  I would like to keep it I think as using it to document things like my 3-Day training is a real help.  I guess time will tell.

Awesome Concert - Hits Deep

Last night I went to the Hits Deep Concert featuring Toby Mac and it was such an awesome concert.  I got tickets for my birthday and it was one of the best presents ever.  There were something like 4 or 5 other artists in the lineup and they were all excellent.  TobyMac has to be one of my favorite artists ever.  The energy that he puts into his shows is just incredible.  I love that he can put on a great show and it will all be positive.  I also love concerts like this that have a purpose.  They are there to entertain but also to give glory to God and to help God's people.

Hello 2016

It's the first day of 2016 and I am going to try to do some things differently in 2016 than I did in 2015.  First of all I am going to concentrate more on Fitness.  I started this in 2015 but am going to carry this through all of 2016 and really emphasize it.  I am going to use my Fitbit every day and going to try to walk at least 5 miles a day.  I joined an online challenge to walk at least 1000 miles in 2016 and I should be able to do that.  I have walked over 800 miles since August when I started concentrating on getting back into shape.  I am also going to continue to work on my weight this year.  When I started last August I was about 19o.  I worked myself down to 177 by the end of the year.  By the end of 2016 I would like to be about 160.

Blogging and learning are another thing I would like to concentrate on in 2016.  I am going to try and use my blog site at least once a week to post about something I am doing.  I haven't decided what I am going to concentrate on learning in 2016 yet.  Most days when I am done with work I really don't feel much like learning more about Networking.  It would be good for me but I am not sure I want to do that.  Maybe I will concentrate on learning a programming language like Python or Perl.  Will have to get back to that.

I would also like to read more in 2016.  I read a number of books in 2015 and plan to continue that in 2016.  Baen has quite a few authors that I enjoy and I would like to read more new stories and not reread as many older books in 2016.

I guess that's all I have to start out 2016.  Hoping  it's a good year.

Goodbye to Drupal

I started learning Drupal about 8 years ago when I decided to update our Parish website from a Dreamweaver Solution to something that I or others could update without having to have a proprietary program on their computer.  Drupal has a rather steep learning curve but it is rather powerful and has a pretty great community of supporters that help develop it and make it better.  I am saying goodbye to Drupal as I will no longer have time to develop the Parish Website and the people that they are looking to develop a new site for us plan to use Wordpress for the new site.  I can't say that I blame them.  Wordpress has a huge market share and there are many more developers that work with Wordpress and in turn the sites are usually less expensive to develop.  I had switched my blog from Drupal to Wordpress sometime back because I had less time and was looking for something simple to allow me to blog when I felt like it and add a couple of other pages.  Wordpress makes this very easy for us amateurs.  I enjoyed the platform and the community but now it's time for me to move on.

10 Weeks

It has now been 10 weeks since I started exercising every day and watching what I eat.  I feel better when I get a chance to start the day with exercise but I have been making sure that even when I need to catch up late in the day I am doing that.  I have hit my 10K steps each day for these 70 days.  I have also been tracking my food each day with an app on my phone and I am down 12 lbs in those 70 days.  I do need to start working on adding some flexibility and strength training as I drop weight.

Still At It

It has now been over 7 weeks since I started walking every day and tracking my food in MyFitnessPal. It's not always easy to find time to exercise but it's important and I have been sticking to it. Getting results helps to find the time. When I started this my weight was starting to to het away from me again and I was back up to 190. I am now almost to my first goal of 180. I decided to set my goals at 10 pounds at a time. When I started I was walking about 30 minutes a day and I am now up to at least an hour a day. I feel a lot better now than when I started. I can't wait to set a new goal when the first is behind me.