I'm fat.  I'm not going to candy-coat it with the word "overweight" because the harsh reality of it is that I weigh too much, and it's entirely my fault.  I haven't even stepped on a scale in at least the last 6 months, because I've been trying to avoid this realization.

So: Beginning on December 1st (because I know myself, and there's no way I can start this plan before Thanksgiving), I'm going back on a diet.  Probably Weight Watchers to start with, and maybe South Beach if I'm not losing weight consistently enough.  I'm also going to start exercising a minimum of 3 times a week.  I'm horrendously out of shape, so I'll have to start with walking at first, but (and I know this is almost a cliche phrase for anyone starting this kind of thing) I'm serious about it this time.

For my beautiful wife and potential children (once we start having kids), who don't need a husband or father dead from a heart attack at 40.  For my wallet, which honestly doesn't need the drain of supporting a 280+ pound human, with all of the shit food that I eat on a regular basis, the breakfat tacos and sandwiches on the way to work instead of a good home-cooked omelette because I'm too lazy to wake up an extra 30 minutes early, the lunches at restaurants because I'm not thinking far enough ahead to pre-prep meals, either for cooking at home or for bento to bring with me to work, the dinners that I eat out because I don't feel like cooking even though all of the ingredients are already in the fridge adn/or pantry.  For my body, because it shouldn't have had to carry around the extra 100 pounds it's currently shackled with (and has been for far too long): my ankles hurt all the time, I get winded climbing up a flight of stairs, my back aches, and my GERD certainly isn't getting any better.  But most of all, for me.  Because I'm tired of looking in the mirror at my fat self every day.  Tired of feeling run-down all the time. Tired of deciding to not attend events because of the potential physical activity required.  Tired of the coughing fits after eating because of my acid reflux.  Tired of limping into the shower every morning because my heels hurt.  Tired of resizing clothing patterns because I'm 6-8 inches bigger than "extra large".  Tired of paying more for the fabric needed to make those clothes that I've had to resize.  And tired of having the low self-esteem that I seem to have shackled myself with after my initial "Freshman 15 40" (which also gives you a clue as to how long I've been fat).

Having started on this path in the past, and failed several times, I know that this won't be an easy goal to achieve.  But I'm sure that with the love and help of my family and friends, a lot of determination, and a good low-fat cookbook or two, I'll be able to get the weight off this time, and keep it off.

And who knows?  With all the Egg McMuffins I'm not going to be buying any more, I may finally be able to save up and buy that new laptop I've wanted for the last year or two.

On November 3, 2007, I married the love of my life.  We couldn't have had better luck, in meeting each other, in falling in love, in planning the wedding details, or having the best possible weather in early November in North Texas.  Our honeymoon in San Francisco was the start of Paul and Heather, Year 1.

On November 3rd, 2008, I'm even more in love with my wife now than I was when I married her.  She makes me laugh when I need it, offers endless support in the decisions I have to make, and makes me happier than any one person in the world deserves.

To celebrate the beginning of Year 2, we went to The Melting Pot.  Amazingly tasty food there, if you haven't been.  A bit pricy, but if you're saving up for the "we go out to eat at a fancy restaurant once a year," this wouldn't be a bad choice for it.  Our server was very friendly, made several great suggestions, and while the event did involve a bit of concentration at times (no timers, and the meat cooks for 90-120 seconds), it was absolutely an event to remember.

Also, dessert was amazing.  I think my favorite bit was the marshmallows that were coated in crumbled Oreo cookies.  Here's a shot of the dessert we had; I think it was called the "Yin & Yang":

White and dark chocolate arranged as you see it.  Very tasty, and when spooned over cheesecake, close to the most decadent thing you can legally eat in public.  Or anywhere, for that matter.

Heather, I love you, and I'd marry you all over again in a heartbeat.  Although if we have to plan the whole thing again as well, I totally vote on running off to Vegas and getting married via drive-through.

Version 0.1 is in SVN now.  A README file is pending (I can't work on this project while at work, so when I get home, I'll be writing some documentation, including necessary modules, etc).

For the un-enlightened, this project is a PHP-based CBR and CBZ viewer, for reading "comic book archives" in a web browser, instead of in a standalone client.

When you steal acquire comic books off of the Internet, they generally come in one of two convenient formats (or in a very inconvenient format that I don't care about): CBR and CBZ.  CBR files are RAR files that have been renamed, and CBZ files are ZIP files that have been similarly renamed.  Both archives contain multiple individual image files, which are the pages of the acquired comic.  Traditionally, there are two potential ways to deal with these files.  You can rename them back to .rar or .zip, extract them, and use an image viewer to look at the individual pages, or you can use a specialized program that's designed to view "comic archives", which extracts the images to a temporary location and displays them for you.  The latter method is simply several fewer steps than the former.  The "inconvenient" format that I mentioned is "a bunch of images".  This seems to me like a much more difficult way to manage your collection, increases the possibility that you'll end up with 22 complete pages out of a 23-page book, and generally makes your life more complicated.  If you're the kind of person who likes this method of comic organization, more power to you.  But I like the archive method; it fits my needs much more completely.

I was talking to my friend Paul about this a week or two ago, and he mentioned that he'd seen someone with a web-based viewer for comic archives.  Naturally, I spent a bit of time looking for it, because I'm lazy. If I can just load a web page to read comics, I'm 100 times more likely to use it than I am to download & install a comic viewer on each computer I use (please note, I actually have done this; I'm speaking of a theoretical rather than an actual).  I was unable to find such a program, in any language.  So I decided to write one myself.  It's still in a very alpha state, but here are a couple of screenshots of the devlogic.org cbviewer 0.2alpha.  It uses a couple of what seem like non-stock PHP libraries (for the RAR and ZIP support), but the bonus of this is that it doesn't use any external programs to achieve its magic; it's 100% PHP.

I recommend clicking the thumbnails to enlarge, because the tiny squares that wordpress auto-generated really don't do the program justice.  Naturally, I'm still working on the "make it pretty" aspect of designing a web program (aesthetics aren't my strong suit), but at the very least I've managed to get everything working without having to resort to any hacks.  In this version, at least.  In version 0.1a, I was forced to use embedded base64-encoded images to display files that were inside .cbz files, because I hadn't yet figured out how to extract the image to a temporary (and arbitrary) location without being forced to also include whatever sub-directories were included in the archive.  This had the wonderful side-effect of crashing Safari and WebKit.  0.2a eliminates that problem, as well as significantly tightening up the code, reducing the necessary number of source files from 7 down to 4 (by extending some of my previous logic and discoveries, I was able to make the archive-handling and page generation more generic).

And I think I'm done geeking out for a while, at least on this project.  I'll probably tweak the CSS some more, in an attempt to make the site more aesthetically pleasing, but by and large I've got all but one of the features I want.

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Anyway, due to this new improvement, I may be posting a lot more in the future, if only because it's a lot easier now.  Although I do dislike how long it takes to email a full-resolution photo from my BlackBerry over the EDGE network.  But I'm not about to shell out 600 bucks for a new phone with 3G, so I'll just have to deal with it.

 
So this time, I decided "to hell with it," grabbed a Sharpie®, and put some helpful graffiti on the first page of one of 'em.  Let's see if this actually does the trick, and I use this one-blank book for the purpose for which it was created: to write things in.