I have a very good friend who serves in the US Air Force. I met TSgt Adam Page while I lived in Colorado Springs. He’s now on his second tour to Iraq. Adam is a dietitian for the 332nd CASF. (That’s the Air Force equivalent of a MASH unit.) Adam also works on the team that transports casualties to and from the unit. He spends a lot of one-on-one time with our wounded servicemen and women.

He sent me a request a couple weeks ago. Due to the climate over there, chocolate is a rare commodity. But during the winter months, it’s possible to ship it safely. Every day, Adam goes through the wards talking with the patients and offers them some chocolate candy bars. He said it’s been amazing to see how much these guys light up when they see chocolate. It’s a bit of home that some of them have not seen in over a year.

Seeing as it’s Halloween shopping season, and our kids at church are looking for ways to serve people, I put a big box up at the church and explained to the kids I was taking donations of chocolate. We got a pretty good response. Then Tammy and I both sent out emails to our coworkers. The response has been huge.

One of Tammy’s coworkers even tried to get Hershey’s on board, but they, understandably, have some policies about donations that we can’t meet… yet. I’ve also gotten some pretty nice cash donations that I’m going to use to buy more candy when the post-Halloween sale prices hit.

This is all really exciting and Adam and I are both hoping in continues to grow. Adam has promised me that when he ships out, he’ll pass the word to his replacements and we’ll keep chocolate moving. Of course, we can only ship it safely two or three months out of the year, but the good news is that those two or three months are when chocolate is most available in stores.

If you’d be interested in donating to the cause, you can donate money via PayPal (in the side bar). We aren’t organized enough to offer tax deductions or anything, so this is just a gift from the heart.

Ever wonder…

Why do banks leave their doors wide open and then chain the pens to the counters?

Yes, I had to remove a post. There’s some cool stuff still to say though.

At lunch, I posted about an event my employer is hosting. It’s really cool and has a very high geek score, but the event is hush-hush, not to be publicized at the behest of some of the attendees. Sorry. Let’s just say I work at an amazing company that is changing how email is done.

Now, what’s really neat is that less than an hour after I clicked “Publish”, our companies marketing manager got an automated email from Google letting him know there was a new blog post that linked to our company site. How cool is that?

Of course, he quickly came to my office, and in a very friendly, non-KGB, non-Jack-Bauer way asked me not to publicize the event. My bad. I didn’t know it was hush-hush. Intriguing, eh?

The afore mentioned cracked DVD from NetFlix was Star Wars III, which I ended up buying so we could watch it.

It got me in a Star Wars kind of mood, which led me to this hilarious mash-up of every James Earl Jones movie ever made. There is some PG-13 language in it. You have been warned. I only wish I had the hours and hours of free time it would take to do something so creative and fun.

Vader Goes Nuts Video

My favorite part is right at the end when Vader can’t find anything good on the radio.

This weekend, we got our first damaged, unplayable DVD from NetFlix. That’s pretty good. Out of a couple dozen DVDs sent to us in unprotected paper envelopes, only one has showed up cracked. I’ve also watched several movies online and watched all of the available episodes of “The Office”, both Brit and Yank. I’d have to say, I really like NetFlix.

It got me thinking. How do you get your movie fix? C’mon all you lurkers out there. I want to see some votes from people other than Ghosty and David. I’ve seen the logs. I know you’re there. Speak up!

(Intercepting your comments ahead of time:) Yes, Ghosty and David. You can still vote too.

Okay, so, like, you know all this talk about WeightWatchers lately? You know how I’ve said that I get 28 points a day and stuff? Well, I’ve been living for the last three weeks on that 28 points a day (more or less… okay, mostly more) and I’ve done pretty well. I’ve figured out at which places I just can’t afford to eat and what foods just won’t fit in the points budget. I think I’ve been a great student.

So why would I be upset? Well, you know me. I didn’t really read every word of instructions when I signed up. I’m a guy. Worse yet, I’m a geek – a web geek at that – and when I sign up for some web service, I pretty much feel comfortable figuring it out on my own.

But somehow, somewhere, I missed the part where you’re supposed to “click here” to take your “target point quiz”. See, even the name doesn’t really tell me what’s really going on there. The “target point quiz” is where you “confirm” your height, weight, age, and gender, and pick whether you want to maintain your weight or lose weight. I figured that since you asked me all those questions when I signed up that the 28 points that showed up on my profile was correct. But noooo.

See I stumbled across the “target point quiz” purely by accident late last week. I “confirmed” all that information and clicked “save” (Why it’s “save” and not “calculate” or something more descriptive, I don’t know.) and then noticed that my point total changed from 28 points a day to 37. 37?! Good grief! That’s HUGE compared to 28. I could eat like a relative pig and not use up 37 points a day (plus the 35 “extra points” I get per week).

I took the “quiz” several times and the result was always the same: 37. I crawled all over the web site trying to find out how to set it back to 28, how to fix my calculated result from the “quiz”. I even googled the points and found a chart that showed, for my weight, I should be at 28:

225 to 250 pounds = 28 Points

Finally, I relented, and sent an email to support. Two days later, I get this response:

Based on your information 37 POINTS® is your correct POINTS Target. It is possible that you were viewing your POINTS® Target before you took the POINTS quiz. After the sign-up process you would have been assigned a POINTS® Target value that is based solely on your current weight.

So what you’re telling me is that 28 points is correct for a person that weighs 250 pounds, but is… what? …a four-foot-tall, ten-year-old girl? How could they make such a retarded assumption. They already had all the information they needed, but somehow they assigned my points target based on only one criteria. I’vE BEEN EATING LIKE A BIRD FOR THREE WEEKS WHEN I DIDN’t HAVE TO??!!

Never mess with a large, hungry man. He may not have the energy to curtail his ham-sized fists of rage.

So anyway, that was last week. I’m pretty much over being mad. I know I should be happy that I’m allowed to eat more now. But somehow I feel cheated. I feel like three weeks of happy eating has been stolen from me. Granted I’ve lost almost ten pounds, but the victory is as hollow as my stomach has felt for the last three weeks.

I’m going to have some ice cream now. About a half gallon. With a bottle of Hershey’s on top.

An open letter to the guy in the dressing room at Kohl’s this Saturday:

I’m sorry. I guess I just assumed too much. You see, in my mind, it’s always been a simple fact: If the dressing room door is closed, it might be in use, so either knock or use the next dressing room (you know, the one on which the door was standing open at the time).

But, clearly, you did not accept that fact, or at least it had not occurred to you. So, yes, I’m sure it was my fault that you opened the door to my dressing room while I was using it. I should have hung a sock on the door knob, or maybe brought along a Sharpie and scrawled, “ES OCUPADO” on the door on my way in. How could I have been so thoughtless.

Then again, if you did it on purpose, because you’re some kind of freakish pervert, then I only hope it was good for you, cuz I didn’t particularly enjoy it.

At long last fall has arrived in North Texas. As the cold rain falls outside, wearing my first warm sweatshirt of the year, I ponder…

Why don’t sheep shrink in the rain?

You know what I like best about real mexican restaurants? I love those warm, fluffy, hand rolled, love soaked tortillas. Mmm. I could eat a whole batch with a little melted butter and honey.

But I have bad news for you. If you love those little white disks of happiness, stop reading right now. I’m serious. Look away. You have been warned.

Tortillas are made from two basic ingredients: Bleached white flour and lard. That’s right, those yummy little flat breads are 100% fat and carbs. As far as your digestive system is concerned, you might as well, eat a big spoon full of Crisco with sugar on top.

I *LUVS* me some taco bell. I could have a 7-layer burrito and a bean burrito for dinner every day for the rest of my life and I’d die happy. I’d die at 38 years old and 800 pounds, but happy.

Using my handy-dandy WW Points calculator, I discovered that the meal above weighs in at 17.5 points (out of my daily allowance of 37*). Here’s the total, using my previous nutritional notation.

27 grams of fat:

9 grams of sugar (But more importantly, 119 grams of carbohydrates. Remember, you body treats bleached white flour much the same way it treats sugar.):

2540 milligrams of sodium:

And my new measurement, 17.5 WW Points:

Taco Bell has an awesome nutritional calculator (as do all the Yum brand stores). On their calculator, you can add extra or completely remove any of the ingredients in an item. That means that, yes Virginia, you can have a burrito without the tortilla.

I had to give it a shot. Today at lunch I ordered a 7-layer and a bean burrito sans tortilla. The staff was confused, but the manager assured them it was possible. Visualize a short, hispanic woman looking at you with furrowed brow like your just asked her to make a taco with extra crazy on top. “¿Menos tortiyya? ¿¡Por que!?”

Here’s what I got.

And it was delicious!! Even better check out these numbers with the lard pie removed.

17 grams of fat:

4 grams of sugar (And only 49 grams of carbohydrates, down from 119.):

1410 milligrams of sodium:

And only 8 WW Points:

Every value virtually cut in half! That’s SO AWESOME! The tortilla doesn’t add anything to the flavor and really offers nothing more than a handy carrying case, but doubles the gut busting anti-nutrition. From now on I’m a burrito bowl boy, baby!

When I practice juggling, I frequently drop the ball. When I practice playing the guitar, I frequently strike the wrong chord. I pretty much think of practices as screwing up something in the hope that you’ll gain experience from the screw-up and learn how to avoid screwing up again later.

With that in mind, here’s this week’s white board quip:

Doesn’t it bother you that doctors call what they do “practice”?

Hmm.