Mike’s World

Yesterday (Sunday) Morning Grandma and Tom left, leaving the place all to myself. In some ways it is nice being up here all by myself, as I can just go at my own pace. Yesterday I just hung out and relaxed. I went in to the local town Logville to check out the local grocery store and whatnot. I got back and decided to lay down and take a nap. Once I woke up I was getting a bit hungry and decided to cook up dinner. I had picked up a cute little 14″ weber grill, and a nice new york strip steak before leaving the cities. I fired up the charcoal, cooked up the steak, and sat on the lake and enjoyed my steak. One thing I love about being up here is sitting out on the dock and watching the most beautiful sunsets in the world. Add a nice soft breeze in the air to keep the bugs away, and I jut can not ask for anything more. After it got dark, did some book reading and went to bed.

Today I went to the town of Park Rapids this morning. I wanted to get some state fair admission and ride tickets, and I had not gotten a chance to pick these items up before leaving the cities. This gave me a good excuse to go out for a north woods drive and experience some Minnesota small towns I had not been to before. I headed up to Walker Minnesota, then down to Park Rapids from there. I must say this town was bigger than I thought it was going to be, at a population above 1500 people. I found the tourist building that they sell the tickets at, and then headed back up to the cabin.

When I got back I decided to break out the rowboat. I went out for about an hour, and it was not as hard to row as I thought it would be. The only thing I regretted was not bringing any gloves. I might try this again tomorrow. I got back and decided to repeat last nights dinner again. Once again, sat on the dock until sunset and headed in for the evening. Again another nice cabin day.

Well, I have made it up to my cabin, and now I guess I have time to blog again. I have only made it up here once so far this year, earlier this summer with my sister. It is nice to get to be able to spend some more time up here at the cabin, just the chance to sit back and relax is very welcome. I headed up Friday evening. I attempted to head up Friday afternoon but with my weight training session, shopping, packing and whatnot, it just did not happen. I ended up getting out at about 6:30pm. On the way up, I stopped for dinner at Mavericks wood grill in Champlin, MN and had a very good steak. It was then back on the road fore more driving. I was a very tired, and almost decided to stop by the rest stop in Garrison, MN for a nap, but instead stopped for a sugar hit which kept me going until I made it up to the cabin. I got in around 1:30am Saturday.

On Saturday I slepped in until about 10:30am then woke up to go say hi go my Grandmother. I had a bite to eat, and decided to break out the bike. I ended up biking to the local town, Remer, MN. I headed down county road 53, to a dirt ATV trail, the soo line trail (use to be railroad tracks, if you can guess) which goes in to Remer. After going around town a bit, I headed back on State Hwy 200. Overall trip was about 31 miles. It was then nap time. I did not do much else, just a nice relaxing bike ride (ok, with hills some of it was not all that relaxing.

Well, gone from weight loss to weight training. As I lost weight, I also lost a good amount of muscle mass. 2 months ago or so I decided it was time to start to build that back. I wanted to get a good trainer, and I did not want to deal with the whole gym/fitness center thing. I want my own space, and I do not like being around 20 other folks as I am trying to get my workout done. I wanted something where someone focuses on me and my goals. What I found was avatar training studio. This is a gym studio setting that focuses on one on one physical training. Working with these trainers, I have made more progress this summer than I ever thought I would, it is to the point where I feel stronger and notice I am able to do things I was not able to do before, I have gained back the muscle I have lost, and more.

This weekend it was very, very hot outside. 100 degree highs and humid on one day. I try to get out and walk every day, but this weekend it was something I just could not do, because of the heat. I had to think of a way to get out and exercise, but stay cool. I decided it was time for some bike together again.

Before I had problems sitting down for so long on the bike, would get numbness and whatnot. Before going out this weekend I decided to get some biking shorts, and man did that help! I was able to do 30 miles on Friday evening, 50 miles on Saturday and 40 miles on Sunday, all with very little pain and soreness.

On Friday I decided to go to downtown Minneapolis, just to see how long it would take. The weather was warm, but it was not all that bad, as it was in the evening. I found that I was able to go faster than I could before, so this whole weight training thing might be helping.

Saturday I went downtown again, for my trainer session in the afternoon. I then biked around downtown a bit more, went out for dinner at Manny’s Steakhouse then went out for more biking around downtown and uptown Minneapolis before heading back home. When all was said and done, I had gone about 50 miles.

Sunday I wanted to go and see a movie, and get some exercise in. I ended up biking from my house to the Showplace 16 in Inver Grove Heights. I biked up there, had a bite to eat, saw Clerks 2 and headed home. It must be a uphill ride there, because it was much easier getting back then getting there.

All in all, it was a good way to spend a weekend with excessive heat. Just had to keep the wind going, and keep hydrated.

This month has been a very interesting one at work. Late last month our customer canceled a large I.T project due to cost over-runs and changing business needs. This project had been very trying to design around both on a technical architecture point of view, and on a infrastructure side of things. The true scope of the project was not known at initial implementation and every time we would start to get a handle on the size of the project, it would grow. We had constant challenges working with this moving target. I think we did a good job at being flexible to meet the needs of the project, in the end due to reasons outside of us, the project is not off of our plate. It is unfortunate, as if they could have made it work, I think in the end the customer could have seen some good cost savings by moving ahead, if they could have kept the initial scope under control. In the middle of the project they acquired another company, and I think rolling that company in to the project might have contributed to some of the scope creep.

As with any large company, any time you announce you are taking a large write-off, the investors want cost control right out of the box. This has caused a complete re-focus on what I am working on. This month has been all about finding ways to save money for our customer everything from large consolidation plans that could save millions to rethinking on how we handle disks which save hundreds of dollars. It sounds like everything is on the plate. We will see in the end what works, and what does not. It is always difficult balancing the supportability of an environment with trying to reduce costs in the environment. I always tend to lean towards higher availability, and therefore more costs, and it is hard for me to change that mindset.

For the first time in quite a long time I made it out to Valleyfair, an amusement park located in Shokopee, MN, which is for the most part THE amusement part in Minnesota. I have fond memories of going to Valleyfair during the last week of school, walking all around with my school friends and hanging out. I had never done the rides that much when I was younger, first had no interest, then was not able to. The other memory I have is that one day McDonald’s Twin Cities had reserved the entire park for the McDonald’s employees, and I do think thats the last time I had been to valleyfair until now.

First when I was real young, I had no interest in going on all the rides, they scared me and I did not like being scared. When I grew out of that, I was not able to do any of the rides because of my weight. I would do the carousel, thunder canyon, and that was about it. I would do some of the shows, and the imax theater, but most of my day was spent watching people.

Last month I saw an ad for Valleyfair, and that got the idea stuck in my head, that it would be fun to make it out to valleyfair now that I am able to do so. I wanted to go with my sister, as she was in town, but she has a baby on the way so I decided that it was not a good idea to do that. I worked out my schedule, (personal trainer and all) and decided to make July 15th the day. Man was that interesting.

For some reason, that week it decided to be the hottest week in who knows how long in the Twin Cities. On Saturday the 15th, it ended up being 99 degrees, but thankfully it was not all that humid, and it was windy. I have never gone to valleyfair and gotten the full experience. This time I wanted to get my moneys worth. I showed up at 10:00am, and was not planning on leaving until they close at 12:00am, which I did pull off. I also wanted to do every ride, which again I did mange to do. I managed to not loose my lunch, or even get real scared on any rides, but I will admit that towards the end of the day, my throat was sore from all the screaming.

I am very glad I went, as I had a blast. I do plan on going at least 2 more times (once with some friends, and once when they have the park all setup for Halloween), so I look forward to both of those events.

This year I did the hometown 4th of July thing. The city of Richfield does a halfway decent hometown 4th of July thing.

On July 2nd, I went down to check out the little carnival that they setup for the 4th of July time. After my evening walk, decided to head down and see what rides they had. I had never done any rides before because of my weight, and I was planning on going to valleyfair, so this might be a good trial run. I ended up going on two rides, one was called the starship, and I can not remember what the second one was. It was a very strange feeling, but I enjoyed myself.

On July 3rd, I had gone down to the park a classic car show. Nothing real interesting, just a bunch of old cars, but I was a bit upset I missed the big one they have in Minnesota because I was in Philly, figured this might give me some cool cars to look at, but ended up being very disappointed.

On July 4th, I started off by firing up the grill and grilling up some hot dogs for lunch, then headed down for the parade. They had a good 80 participants for the parade, and its your normal cheesy parade with bands, people in cars and a handful of floats. Our US congress rep, who has been our rep every since I was born, is retiring this year. I remember seeing him in the parade every year, and the only thing that I remember from the parade is that it seemed a bit off not seeing the old guy in the parade.

In the evening on the 4th I started to smoke some pork and veggies on the gill for dinner. Went out for a nice walk and had dinner and walked down for the carnival and fireworks. I was a bit bad at the carnival, I had a Carmel apple, some mini-donuts and some cookies. I ended up feeling sick, my guess is from the deep fried donuts, but they tasted good. Walked around the carnival a bit, just killing time until the fireworks started, and then made my way to my chair. I must say, I was impressed with the fireworks show. They had a good variety of colors, pops, bangs, booms, and it lasted a good 20 minutes. After fireworks I was not very tired, so I walked around for a bit before heading home for bed. It is funny watching all of the people try to get out of the city after the fireworks. The place ends up being a madhouse.

Every year for work, we perform a disaster recovery validation, which allows us to validate our processes and procedures and verify we are able to bring up the critical computer resources in a disaster environment, should our main data center become unavailable. This test is done in a remote physicality in Philadelphia, so it gives us a chance to get out and travel as well.

In past years, I have been the main driver for the test for our team, so previous years this was a very stressful time for me. This year I decided to take a back seat, and let others in the team have more of an involvement in the process. I found that for both prep time and during the exercise, this made things much less stressful for me. In past years, I was very stressed for weeks before the exercise, and until a week after the exercise ended, then I would wind down. This year because I handed off many more of the components to the test, I was more of a participant than anything, and this made things much easier on me, I found I was much more relaxed this year versus previous years.

This year we got out on Tuesday June 20th, with the test starting Wednesday June 21st and running through Sunday June 25th. One thing I hate is that every year, the test seems to fall on the same weekend as the ham radio field day, which is something else I would like to participate in. Tuesday we had dinner at The Capital Grille, which was a very nice. I was very impressed with the scotch selection they had.

Wednesday morning we had to switch hotels. We had been scheduled to stay in the Residence Inn Philadelphia Center City but due to rooms being full, we spent the first night in the Sheraton Suites Philadelphia Airport. After the hotel room switch, it was off to Sungard to start the test. First for us is to get the environment handed over from the sungard tech’s, and get the backup and recovery environment put together. After that, we then do our server recoveries off of tape and disk, and then the end users do testing. All very boring stuff. This year I did not take over the environment build like I have done past years, I more went with the flow of things.

I worked the day shift for the most part, and was able to find time to go out and walk every day, which was very nice. I have found getting out and unwinding helps me quite a bit. I saw quite a bit of downtown Philly, just walking around, both during the daytime and at night. I also ate halfway decently, which makes these recovery tests bearable. In past years, food has been an issue (getting lunch on time, etc) but this year that was not a problem.

In the end, we had some issues which pushed us to the end of the window for our recovery, but that happens every year, so I am use to it at this point. It is a matter of timing things so I got time to spend time relaxing a bit between shifts I had to work, because I knew I would not have a chance to have much time to unwind at the end of the test. The week went by very quickly, and I was exhausted after things had wound up. I was asleep in my bed within a hour of getting back home from Philadelphia.

Well, its time to “come out” with what my life has been about since last June or so. It is kind of hard for me, as I am not a very open person, but I think I am ready.

All of my adult life, and a good chunk of my childhood, I have been overweight on a extreme level. I remember being for the most part normal during my early childhood, up to 6th grade or so. By high school I was well in to my 200’s, climbing up to past 300 as I left high school and then past 400 around the year 2000 or so. My high point was about 490 around April of 2005.

It had always been hard to move around, and I have lived with it for so long with it, I just got use to it. Everything in my day to day living was unhealthy. I would eat McDonald’s twice a week, have 2 or 3 servings at every meal. It was not all that uncommon for me to down a entire box of cereal in one sitting. This is just how I lived my life. I would sit around all day long, watching TV, not moving around, at all. I would get winded climbing a set of stairs, or just walking around. Simply looking at a piece of furniture would cause me to break it, sometimes a very embarrassing experience.

That was then, this is now. Starting June of 2005 (well. June 26th, 2005 to be exact) I started taking drastic steps to correct my weight problem. In April of 2005 when I was getting close to 500, I did start to eat better, but I was not trying all that hard, I would just have a salad or something every so often. From April to my “diet plan start date” of 2005-06-26 I had gone from approx 493lbs to 472lbs.

Starting at the end of June, I started tracking what I eat, and started to reduce my calorie intake, and getting exercise when I could. At this point it was still very hard for me to move around, but for the first time I had a good amount of motivation to get going. I had initially thought about loosing weight, with the goal of being a normal weight by the time I was 25. Well, my 25th birthday came and went, and I did not do anything about the problem. I then had the age of 30 in the back of my mind (I am 28 now). I was expecting that to come and go, just as 25 did, as I had not thought seriously about taking the steps in my life needed to loose the weight.

This all changed in June, I saw reasons to start changing my lifestyle, almost like my eyes had opened up to see the light. I do not feel like going in to details (heh, only I get to view those blog entries :-) but I realized that a good reason to stay healthy is not only for yourself, but the people around you. I kind of saw that if I want to be happy with life on a long term basis, I had to make changes to my life before I become a old man or I die. In a nutshell, thats it. I started to slowly decrease my calorie intake, so I can start loosing weight with the plan of working my way to very aggressive goals.

My aggressive progress put me at a loss of 7-10lbs a week. I had drastically reduced my calorie intake, and I had started getting more and more exercise. Now, if you can imagine, the more weight you move around, the more calories you burn moving that weight. This made exercise very effective. I admit as I went through this, I went a bit overboard
at times, but I managed to survive. I managed this by putting myself on a very controlled diet. I watched everything I ate, making sure every calorie counted. This allowed me to have a minimal calorie diet, while still getting for the most part the nutrition and energy I needed. This with drinking water and getting exercise every single day allowed me to loose weight the weight I wanted to.

So, how did I do? On 2006-06-26 I was down to 202lbs. A loss of 270lbs over a year. I am now working on the hardest part of this while thing, maintaining the weight loss. My overall goal is to “live a normal lifestyle”, whatever that means. It has been a long road, but I am happy overall with the changes I have made. I feel good, and it is great being able to move around again.

Well, there is the history, now its time to keep this silly blog updated again.

I do not know what it has been, but this year has started off great. For the first time in as long as I remember, I am feeling good both in mind, spirit and body. It has been good weather for the first weeks of January (i.e. has not been 20 below), I am getting stuff done that I have put off for years (started moving out of my dad’s yet again, at least getting stuff out of his place) and just getting things all over all lined up.

I have been working hard on my health over the past several months and I am starting to really feel it. I have started doing other things in my life that I have just put off for years, and I feel good about getting all of this stuff rolling again.

On top of all that making this a great start to the year, my sister made a surprise visit last weekend, for her mother in law’s 50’s birthday. It was excellent seeing her again, and a great surprise. I have seen her more in the past month, than in the previous 5 months. Just icing on the cake.

If the rest of the year is going to be this good, its going to be a great year!