i don't like geraldo, but i don't like bill o'reilly either -- and i don't claim any political party, i just think they are both media hounds...

but way to go geraldo for calling bs on this one:

...or another lesson in common sense.

i've not been in a great mood lately, namely because of random health (not serious...at least not yet) 'situations' that have caused me to continue to ponder about how i've gotten to that point.

probably one of the triggers was me watching a late night show on the learning channel called "i eat 33,000 calories a day" (note: i tried to find the description but the learning channel website has a broken link to it).  it's a profile of about 4 people in england who are obese, in the morbid sense.  we're talking 600lb+ here.  they were eating in excess of 30,000 calories a day.  now, personally i draw the line at 12,000, so this was getting ridiculous.  all kidding aside (no, i don't eat 12K a day, but i could see how easy that could be), it was sad...and got me thinking (again).

you see, i'm not in the best shape.  in college i ate taco bell about 3 square meals a day.  religiously.  i was a huge taco bell fan...c'mon who isn't.  but, i was also riding a bike everywhere (had no car) and was pretty active in general...so i never gained weight.  fast forward years later and i've been married for a while now, 2 kids, "corporate" jobs...and i can't seem to find that bike anymore.  net result: +60 lbs.  ugh.

the events leading up to this are obvious to me: eating more (and of the wrong stuff), exercising less.  i didn't need any 'body for life', 'weight watchers', dr. phil, or oprah to tell me that.  i'm a victim of my own bad habits.  the choices you make in food have domino effects as well.  for me, it's resulted in lethargy, self-esteem loss (at the beach), GERD (which results in basically having heart-burn throughout the entire day, which is quite painful), and now more recently, dental health (i'm on part 3 of a 4-part series involving a root canal, crown, and potentially 2 cavities -- we'll have to see in part 3).  my wife and i have our engagement photo on our refrigerator and people cannot believe it is me.  add on top of all that, i have horrible heart problems in my family...and my dad had 2 heart attacks and is the recipient of a heart transplant.

when will the light finally go off.  like i said, i don't need any program to tell me that i'm out of shape and not doing anything about it.  the formula is simple: eat smarter, do some exercise...and do more exercise if you aren't eating smarter.  it's motivation for me that is lacking.  and traveling isn't helping -- conference buffets, late night dinners, etc.

anyhow, i really don't know why this was worthy of a post and certainly is more noise than signal to most of my entries, but part of me felt that if i put it in writing (rather than in my brain and my wife naggingreminding) something will change...maybe.  at least i'll cut down to 8,000 calories a day ;-)  some tips i have found are drinking less soda (oh yeah, i've already had 3 kidney stones as well -- mother of pearl you do not want those) and finding water-based, sugar-free drinks like crystal light.  for me, my drinks must have flavor, so plain water isn't a good first step.  the other thing i'm trying to do at conferences is leverage meal choices.  i've started to request kosher meals or vegetarian.  why?  first, because i'm hoping the choice will be better (and more controlled portion) than a buffet line.  second, because it usually *is* better.  that's one tip i'm trying out at least.

wish me luck -- and if you are a programmer like me who has seemingly started to spend more time behind the keyboard than usual, i hope you aren't in the same boat.

hmmm...maybe i could have taken a walk instead of taken the time to write this :-)

when i travel and need a rental car, i use avis...not by choice really, but it's a company standard i guess.  to me, to be honest, a car is a car...service is where it is at.  i'm a member of the preferred program (which anyone can be, you don't have to 'earn' it) which entitles me to essentially skip the main counters when i rent (although the preferred counter is quickly becomming the 'main' one it seems).  i've also recently received 'select preferred' probably because i've rented enough.  i'm not sure what the difference is other than the fact that they assume i want the largest, most fuel inefficient vehicle available.  my last 3 rentals were: f150 truck, crown victoria, grand marquis, sonata.  the last one is only because i said i didn't want to drive an f150 again!

anyhow, the service has been great and recently i've noticed some added bonuses.  i've never gotten email receipts before but just started to...and they are realtime.  my last trip i returned my car in denver airport.  the gentleman asked me how the car was, blah blah, etc.  as my receipt is printing in his mobile device/printer (literally), my phone buzzes that i have a new email...what was it?  an email receipt of this rental.  wow, now that is realtime baby.  way to go avis.  big bonus points for me as a geek and a traveler.

after recently finding out about open source design sites, i wanted to cut my teeth a bit more and learn some css by just reading them...so i figure i would adapt a few designs for subtext (my blog engine).  i've created three subtext skins based on designs...you can see the screenshots of them at this flickr photostream.

i adapted three designs: minty, greenway, and metic.  the only requirement to using them is that the footer credits stay in place.  these designs use the creative commons attribution licenses, so please give the original authors credit and honor that license.  i've zipped them up individually and you can get the files below on this post. UPDATE: also available at www.subtextskins.com as of now.

each skin has a "Styles" folder with the name of a stylesheet matching the skin name...i.e., "minty-main.css" so to add then to your subtext admin/skins.config file you'll want to add (using greenway as a sample here):

<SkinTemplate Name="Greenway" TemplateFolder="greenway">
  <Styles>
    <Style href="Styles/greenway-main.css"/>
  </Styles>
</SkinTemplate>

for each skin you want to add -- just ensure the folder does exist in the skins directory.  hope you like -- they are very basic...maybe phil will include them in the next drop.

File: Greenway
File: Metic
File: Minty

one thing that i really have been liking about microsoft over the past year is the teams that have been listening to feedback.  here's one case in point.

previously it was discussed (i'm not sure if was even officially 'announced' or not announced, but there was some discussion at best) that the expression tools (expression web, blend, design, and media) would not be available to premium visual studio subscribers (also known as 'msdn subscriptions').  this caused quite a bit of uproar in the community (and candidly i'll share with you that the uproar internally was ten-fold).  microsoft embarking on this designer/developer story, talking about separation yet cohesiveness via XAML, etc.  you can see where the arguments came from of such a toolset not being made available to purchasers of the premium developer tool suites.

well, alas, feedback taken.  much like similar feedback changes, microsoft listened...and reacted.  so today, we see that the expression blend and web tools *will* be available to all premium subscribers of msdn/visual studio.  this is great news!  feedback listened to and changed!  great work community on proving the value of such decisions.

what does this mean?

• expression blend and expression web will be made available to msdn premium subscribers
• expression studio will be made available to team suite w/msdn premium subscribers

see the announcements here and here.