Peter’s Soapbox

Medifast - 2 months, ~25 pounds

Medifast progress: 20080814

Two months ago, I started on the Medifast plan. I was 208# then, and I’ve been as low as 183.4# a couple of days ago. Weight fluctuates, so I’m up a bit today, but I’ve lost nearly 25 pounds in two months. It doesn’t sound quite as impressive as when I lost 18 pounds in the first month, but I knew that the rate would slow as I got nearer to my goal, so I’m not worried.

Today was the first time that people commented, unprompted, at how I was losing weight. The were folks whom I hadn’t seen in over a month, so they had the “old me” (read “fat me”) in mind and could really see the difference. Also, today I wore a pair of dress pants which I hadn’t worn in well over a year because I outgrew them - something which really bothered me at the time, because my wife picked them out with me after a time when I had gained weight. So basically, I couldn’t fit into my “fat pants.” That did not feel good, but wearing them today sure did.

Now I need to replace the four new pairs of jeans I bought back in May. Maybe I can take them in…

So Long, Wild Blue

Several months ago, Wild Blue, my satellite Internet provider, stopped working at my house. After repeated, 1 hour or longer phone calls to technical support and customer service, it was revealed that they had the wrong credit card information on file. However, despite repeated 1 hour or longer calls to resolve this, they didn’t re-enable our account. The effect was, we were without service for approximately a month from March to April. Continue reading So Long, Wild Blue…

Thank you for calling Microsoft, my name is Manju

Actual phone conversation I just had:

MS: “Thank you for calling Microsoft, my name is Manju, may I have the first six numbers in the activation window?” Continue reading Thank you for calling Microsoft, my name is Manju…

Fake JetBlue Tickets Too

As reported this morning, apparently I wasn’t the only one who got malware delivered by a fake email from an airline.

How I Fixed Firefox 3’s Annoying Crashing Problem on Windows

It took a while, but I finally decided to read the error reports. When I did so, I found that nearly every one of Firefox’s crashes that I experienced was related to a specific extension. I dug around in the registry and the extensions folder, and found that it was none other than the Java plugin.

Living on the edge, I decided to just remove it. I uninstalled Java, then deleted references to the plugin in the registry and filesystem. Voila. Everything works and Firefox hasn’t crashed on me in over a week.