Phil online

I love the Richard Muller lectures over at UCBerkeley. You can enjoy them too, for free.

I was stumbling through Dr. Muller’s web site today and I ran across this article on weight loss. He basically says the same things I’ve repeated here before (which I learned and repeated from The Hacker’s Diet). To wit,

1. Exercise will not help you lose weight the way you think it will.
2. Hunger is the way to lose.
3. Learn to appreciate the feeling of hunger as your body burning fat.

I’ve been challenged on these assertions before, sometimes by emotionally-charged lose-by-exercising proponents who are certain they needn’t be hungry. I hope they’re right, for their sakes. But it’s nice to see these ideas reiterated by a respected physicist. I wonder if I’ll ever see a nutritionist say the same thing.

If not, maybe it’s because it’s not true.

Want to lose a pound of fat? You can work it off by hiking to the top of a 2,500-story building. Or by running 60 miles. Or by spending 7 hours cleaning animal stalls.

According to Google and this site, I only have to run 22 miles to lose 1 lb of fat (or 25 miles if you go by Muller’s rounded-up 4000 kcals/lb).

I found a handy chart on this Fitness Software site which gives calories burned per hour for various activities based on a person’s weight. I’ll use the 190 lb column, and I run about a 6-minute mile, drop it in Excel [download my Calorie Burning Worksheet (Excel XLS)] and calculate the amount of running I have to do just to lose 1 lb.

Results:

1. 1 pound/week: eat 500-600 fewer calories/day, or run 3.5 miles per day (24 miles per week).
2. 2 pounds/week: eat 1000-1200 fewer calories/day, or run 7 miles per day (49 miles per week).

I’ll keep running (10 miles per week), but it’s not to lose weight.

Lake Lanier north of Atlanta is at record low levels, for various reasons.

I took this first panorama photo of a sunrise at the north end of the lake in October 2006.

This is the same area of the lake in December, 2007.  It’s about 15 feet lower.

Here’s a zoom in on some mobile boat docks.  Some of them made it in time, some of them didn’t.

A neighbor threw away a pair of Master brand padlocks, the kind you always used in school on your locker. She said she had lost the combination for both of them. My son had heard about a technique for picking them, and so had Google. It turns out there are several videos on how to crack these locks in under 15 minutes. Here’s the first one I found:

YouTube Master Lock Picking Video

Long story short, I cracked the first lock pretty easily using the instructions in the video.

Hint not found in the video: I noticed that the lock hasp moved more on 0-2-24 and on 4-2-24 than any others I tried up to that point. So I assumed that the 2nd number was 2. This left me with 8 numbers to try. 36-2-24 was the combination. It took me about 2 minutes to crack this lock.

I set out to crack the 2nd lock. The “notch” numbers were all the same, so I didn’t have to write anything down. Huh, that’s weird. Then I noticed the serial number was the same on both of these locks. Could it be the same combination?

Yes, it could. And it is.

I Googled for a serial number database for Master Locks because surely someone has noticed this before. (There can only be 4000 different combinations.) But I didn’t find it. Time for a Master Lock Wiki?

Does anyone reading this have Serial Number 910368? What is the serial number and combination to your Master lock?

Update: Apparently not.  I have come across another lock with a “serial number” 910368.  Its combo is 37-3-24.  So it’s not a serial number or combo number reference.  What is it, a model number?

I saw that the ISS and the Space Shuttle mission 117 would be visible briefly over my neighborhood tonight. Since the pass was so low (they both entered the earth’s shadow at only 45 degrees up) I went up the hill to watch from “Summit Lane”. And I took my camera. Not a bad shot, considering that I didn’t do any prep work to get my camera set up until I could already see the pair going overhead. And I’m pretty impressed with the star colors. My eyes never see those colors!

In this shot you can see the 15 second exposure trails of the Space Shuttle Atlantis (the brighter, higher trail) and the International Space Station.

Here’s the full image.

Update: The Bad Astronomer (aka Phil Plait) got a nice shot, too.

I have a new setup at work where I’m now using a laptop and an external display in a dual-monitor setup.  I’ve heard everyone rave for years about how MultiMon is an “must-have” utility for dual-screen users, but I wanted something very specific.  I looked around and MultiMon actually claims to do what I want. I downloaded it, but so far I am not impressed.
What I want is for my laptop to automatically switch into dual-monitor mode when I plug the external monitor in, and switch back to single monitor mode when I unplug it.  I’ve looked around and I can’t find anything that will tell me when I unplug the monitor.  I can see that the Laptop knows when the monitor is connected because it won’t let me enable the external monitor unless it is plugged in.  Once it is enabled, however, it does not automatically disable it when I unplug it.    So failing this, a hotkey is my next best option.  That maybe better, even, since it puts the switching under my control.

Here’s what I want for my own setup:

Single-monitor mode:

• Taskbar on the left of the laptop screen.
• All applications moved onto the laptop screen

Dual-monitor mode:

• Taskbar on the left of the secondary monitor (in the middle of my workspace)
• Applications allowed to move to secondary monitor, but not forced

UltraMon tries to do a good job.  But it puts a new taskbar on the second screen just for those application buttons.  I don’t want this.  I can disable it, I think, but I haven’t found out how yet.

Also when I switch to a single-monitor mode, it sometimes makes my taskbar half as wide as the laptop screen (that’s max-width for a taskbar).  This is just a bug, and I haven’t fully characterized it yet.
When I switch back to dual-monitor mode, UltraMon does a good job remember which apps should move back to the 2nd screen.  That’s a nice touch.  But it doesn’t move my taskbar back where I want it.  And that’s a primary feature I want.

So I think I’ll hack up my own.  It should be easy.  I have experience moving taskbars around and hiding and showing windows.  So in my spare time, I’ll try to make a better UltraMon.  But not with so many features.  I don’t particularly care for the extra buttons it puts on the windows and how they look.  Nice, but unnecessary.  I can do that with a system menu or a hotkey.

I don’t want to worry with shareware regs on this applet, so I’ll make it open-source, I guess.  Then when someone figures out how to do monitor-connection-sensing, they can add it for me.  Bonus.

I bought my first house in Atlanta 12 years ago.  It came with a 2000 square foot carpet disaster.  I was broke and the house was all I could afford.  I couldn’t afford new carpeting for 2000 sq feet of house!  Or so I thought.

A friend told me to call Tom McAllister.  I am so glad I did.  Tom is a special sort of character peculiar to the south.  He runs a successful flooring business almost completely off his personality.  As far as I know, he doesn’t have any storefront anywhere.  And he’ll do a job almost anywhere around Atlanta.  But the service I got for the price is what makes Tom so great.

Tom sells all kinds of flooring.  What I needed was good cheap carpet.  And here’s what Tom did.  He went down to the carpet mills in Dalton and found me some seafoam green carpet that was on a seconds roll.  A seconds roll is one that has something wrong with it, like a seconds shirt is one that’s missing a button or something.  Tom told me that they might have changed the dye pack in the middle of that roll, so there’s a dark area that he has to cut around.  But he inspects every roll completely before he buys it to make sure he can use it.  And because of his installation techniques, you’ll never know it had a problem.

Oh my god, it was beautiful!  It was high-quality, too.  Tom took a lot of time explaining to me how the higher density and the twist of the fibers would make the carpet last longer.  And it did!  It held out until we sold the house last year, and it was still beautiful.

Over the years, I lost Tom’s phone number.  I had carpet installed from two other companies.  They were discounters, and the price was good.  The installation was ok.  But the quality was nowhere near what I got from Tom.

So, we sold the house.  Bought a new house.  New house, new carpet. We put new carpet in upstairs.  We used another local discounter.  It’s nice, but it’s just ordinary.

The carpet on the main floor was expensive looking stuff.  Patterned wool berber.  Here’s the problem with berber: it runs.  Catch a thread with the vacuum and you’ll pull a strip out of your floor 10 feet long.  We had three such strips in our carpet already.  It had to go.  Luckily, I found Tom’s number on an obscure realtor’s page through Google.
But I didn’t think Tom would come so far to where I live now, so I shopped around locally for a deal on carpet.  I was pretty disappointed with what I found, but I can afford more these days so I was prepared to pay around $40/yard for decent carpet that would last. And looking around gave me ideas about what I wanted.
I called Tom again.  He said the location would be no problem and wanted me to come what he had and discuss ideas.  I met him at a Home Depot near work to show him what I’d found.  There was a prominent display of their most popular carpet on the end-cap.  Tom squinted at me and said, “Phil, I wouldn’t install that crap in your house.”  Then he proceeded to “shave” the carpet with a pen knife.  After a few strokes, there were great piles of carpet fuzz everywhere.  Tom said, “You don’t want that crap in your house.  It’ll clog up your vacuum cleaner for a year!”  He showed me the carpet that he had in “seconds” — it was a brand that was also at Home Depot, but it was $58/yard installed, a bit out of my range.

He told me he was perplexed that it was a seconds roll that he had because he couldn’t find anything wrong with it.  But we figured out what it was looking over the selection at HD.  It was too dark.  I mean, it didn’t match any of the sample colors there.  It was a nice medium coffee color, but it wasn’t any of the colors that HD had on display.  Can’t sell it if it’s not standard, so it goes to seconds.

Long story short, Tom installed this carpet in my house for an ungodly small amount of money.  He made me promise not to tell anyone what a deal I got, but — well, let’s just say it was less than half of Home Depot’s price.  And I got an upgraded pad.  And I got a professional installer crew who came out and installed it two days later.

I was so pleased, I even tipped Tom a couple hundred bucks.  And then I blogged about it so I won’t lose his number again and so you can find him too.  If you need carpet in Atlanta, whether it’s the top quality stuff or just some cheap crap so you can sell your house, call Tom on his cell phone at 770-934-7707.  Tell him Phil Hord gave you his number.  He’ll treat you extra nice.

He treats everyone extra nice.

Here are some tips on dealing with Tom:

1. When he quotes a price, it includes installation and an 8# pad.  You want the 8 pound pad. Walking on the carpet in my house is like walking on a cloud!
2. If you want crap, he’ll put it in for you for cheap.  If you want the good stuff, he’ll do that too.  Just tell him up front.
3. Go find the carpet you like at your local carpet store.  Get some ideas of colors and features.  Then call Tom and see what he has.  He may even be able to match the exact style (get the style and color numbers off the display).  Chances are, though, that he’ll have something better.
4. Tom likes to talk.  Be prepared to hear some stories.  Get your ideas through to him and then arrange to meet him to see some samples.
5. Be ready to buy some carpet when you meet Tom, because he is the man you will buy it from.  No one else I’ve found comes close for service or price.  I hope he doesn’t retire before I need carpet again.

I like to use coloring rules, such as they are, in Outlook at work.  I want to use coloring rules in Thunderbird, too, but I find them limiting.  Thunderbird colors email when it is given a label.  But you can only have five different labels in Thunderbird.

The default labels are Work, Personal, Important, To Do, and Later.  I don’t care so much about the names since I don’t normally display them, but the colors for these are rather garish.

But I discovered that you can change not only the label name but also the color.  Someone even posted a Chrome hack to change the color from the foreground color to the background color.  Neat — I may try that later.

But for now, I just needed a few little changes.  First, the list.  Open up Tools -> Options and click on the Display icon, then the Labels tab.
Work - I’ll put all my server notices here like Cron reports
Groups - I’ve been putting group mail in “Later”.  Now I’ll rename it. 
Important - Email from my 2am friends.
Impersonal - “Newsletters” that aren’t quite spam
To Do - Not sure what to do with this yet, since I use the IMAP flag.

Now the colors.  I want Impersonal stuff and groups to be muted, so I set those to pastel colors.  Work is a pastel orange.  Important is Fire Engine Red.

Ok, now I need some rules.  I already have rules for most of the labels; let me add one for Impersonal mail.

Whoa…  That’s a lot of impersonal mail.  I think I should start unsubscribing from these (or sending them to /dev/null).  That’s a job for another day…
Next, I go to the Tools -> Filter Messages dialog and Run the new filter on my email.   Voila, my email is all magically colored.

Now Thunderbird will automatically label (and color) the email as it arrives on my computer.  I like how it does this even for my IMAP messages.  (My friend Bob Rankin says it doesn’t do this for him, but I guess this is a feature they’ve “fixed” since then.)

Last year I hired a man to install a rock wall in my front yard. It would be about a foot high and a foot wide and 75 feet long.  I asked him for a price.  He quoted me $6 per foot.  I did the math quickly in my head, came up with $450, and I shook his hand.  It seemed like a good rate and he seemed like an honest guy.

When he was finished I wrote him a check.  He told me I owed him much more than the check.  In fact, he said, I owed him $1300+.   I explained to him how $6 times 75 feet is $450.  He thought about this for a long while.  Then he said, “See, you’re paying me for the 75 feet long. But you’re forgetting about the 75 feet tall, and the 75 feet front to back.”
I assumed he was wanting to charge me per cubic foot.  But he actually wanted to charge me per square foot of surface area! It was crazy.   I explained it all to him in elaborate detail about how his math was off.  I showed him how he had misquoted his rate to begin with.  But I never could dissuade him of the notion that $6/foot is the same as $18/cubic foot.

I could forgive the poor, uneducated rocklayer for not understanding volumetric math.  But George Vaccaro had a similar conversation with Verizon last week.  It seems they are quoting their data bandwidth rates as “point zero zero two cents per kilobyte,” but what they meant to say, was “point zero zero two dollars per kilobyte,” or $0.002 per kb.

What is so extremely laughable is that George recorded the phone conversation he had with all the CSRs, right up to the floor manager, and they all can’t understand his beef and how the rate they quoted was wrong!  Is math really this hard?

I’ve hit another plateau, but this one was expected. I went “off-diet” for the weekend for various personal reasons.

Coincidentally when I was looking at Oatmeal Calories today, I found this article about plateaus. It has some other interesting tips about managing a weight loss program. Some of them I’ve been dismissive of before, but they do actually make sense.

Speaking of dismissive, I’ve been exercising a bit more. Some days I walk the stairs at the kayak center for 30 minutes. They’re big steps and it’s quite aerobic. I calculated that it’s the equivalent of walking up and down 28 flights of stairs, two at a time. According to some sources, that’s only 450 calories burned.

But I’ve noticed that I don’t even get winded walking up stairs at work anymore. I take them two at a time and carry on conversations while I’m doing it. I attributed this to my carrying less weight these days before, but now I think it’s the “stair training” I’ve been doing. I noticed the same effect walking up hills.
So, yes I do exercise, and yes I see some real benefits. But I’m not doing it for the weight loss. I’m doing it for my health.

Pity the poor remnants of Ma Bell. They can’t help but be bureaucratic after decades of over-regulation and “5 nines” of reliability requirements. But Oh My God, it’s hard to deal with them.

And this is why Cable Modems will win.

Consider these examples:

In 2001 I ported my phone number from Bellsouth service to Comcast. It was so easy I don’t remember what I had to do to make it happen. Or maybe the physical wire hookup was so difficult that I don’t remember the pain of the LNP (Local Number Portability).

In 2003 I ported my number from Comcast to Vonage. I remember exactly what I had to do. It took me less than 5 minutes.
Step 1. I clicked a button on Vonage.com telling them I wanted to switch.

Step 2. I printed out the confirmation form for them to use to pressure Comcast to let my number go.

Step 3. I signed and faxed the form.

Step 4. I waited three weeks, and my Vonage account magically got a new phone number.

So now my wife is fed up with Vonage (too much unreliability, possibly the fault of Adelphia, our new cable modem service provider). She wants an old-fashioned landline. So I switched back to Bellsouth.

I told them I wanted to port my number from Vonage, but I want to have the Bellsouth service hooed up first. I don’t trust them to port the number first and also have my new service hooked up all on the same day. (That’s how they wanted to do it.)

So I have a new line with a new phone number from BS. Oh, but does it come with long distance? No… I have to add that. I wanted to add it from some other company, but that’s not so easy. So I chose to add the BS LD (online) until I can find the time to choose a better LD company. (To their credit, I only had to click a few buttons to complete this request, and I was assured it would take no more than three days to add BSLD to my line. Whoopee!)
Later I emailed them and asked them to port my old number from Vonage. They wrote back and asked why I wanted to port my new number to Vonage. No, no, I want this old number ported FROM Vonage to Bellsouth. They wrote back and told me I had to call in to speak with someone. This I did, after several rounds of voicemail tag.
I received an email that they would finish my request within 15 days.

42 days later, I emailed them again. I was told I would have to call in to complete this request.

I called. Someone who was far too happy to speak with me spoke with me. I explained what I wanted to do. She was confused. “Do you want two lines or is the second number going to be a RingMaster(tm) line?” No, I want to lose the current number and port the old number from Vonage.

She puzzled over this for a couple of minutes. Then she explained that on the day of the switch I would be without service for a few hours at the most.

Without service?! WTF? Why will I be without service?

“Sir, you did say you want to disconnect the old number, right?” Yeah, but what if I add the Vonage number as a RingMaster(tm) number. Then I would have two numbers on the line, right? Then couldn’t I just turn off the other number and still keep my service active? “No sir, when the first line is switched off, you would still be without service for a few hours.”

Holy Shit. I can’t imagine any VOIP provider treating their service like this. I told her so, too. But there’s nothing she can do about it.

Oh, but then we spent the next 20 minutes discussing my service options (yes, I want to keep them the same; I think I spend less than $25/month on long distance service; no, I do not want unlimited long distance from BellSouth; no, I do not need a 900-number block; yes, I understand there is a long list of alternative LD providers, and no I do not want you to read them to me; no, I still do not want one of the three internal wiring maintenance plans you are offering; etc.; etc.)

And finally I was forwarded to someone in India who acted as an independent third party to verify that I am who I say I am (or at least I know my birthdate) and that I really do want to make all these changes (which are really not changes at all) and that I really do want to port this phone number from Vonage (finally!).

And then I was done. It only took about 40 minutes on the phone, and I’ll only lose service for a few hours. (And a helpful recording will inform callers what is happening.)

What a joke!

And guess what? Comcast bought Adelphia. I’m thinking about switching my phone service to Comcast again as soon as they offer it in my neighborhood.

The sooner the better.

11-13-2006: Update:  They sent me a letter in the mail.  I think it says they won’t port my number until I pay the outstanding balance of 43 cents.  I think it says that because it’s all in Spanish.  I don’t read Spanish well. This is not raising my confidence.

Digital cameras have an interesting photographer-effect on people;  they make everyone trigger-happy.  When the film doesn’t cost me anything — in film, prints, or physical transport of rolls to the store — I am much more willing to shoot photos with wild abandon.  Not only that, but I’ll take 5 or 10 photos of the same subject, looking for the “right” angle, with the intent (if not the follow-through) to “delete the bad ones later.”

My first digital camera lasted for 6 years.  I shot over 12,000 photos in 6 years.  That’s incredible, considering I’ve probably shot under 1,000 in my life before I got that camera.  But my 2nd digital camera is about a year old and I’ve already shot over 5,000 shots with it. The difference? It takes pictures faster.  My old camera required 2 seconds between shots, and it could take no more than 6 shots per minute.  My new camera can shoot more than 2 frames per second, continuously.  The shutterbug in me has been set free!

Now what do I do with all these pixels?

We used to joke that you could lose 30 pounds in a day if you had your leg amputated. But here I did the old-fashioned way: I dieted. And it wasn’t hard. Last week I saw the scale show up with a 1 as the first digit. 199. Woo hoo!
I started in mid-July. Here it is mid-October and I’m actually 30 pounds slimmer. I don’t don’t know what I expected when I started, but it was pretty easy overall. I’ve had a few slides backwards; this week I’m at a conference and food is plentiful, so I’m probably up a few pounds.

“I should exercise more, but not for weight loss.” That’s been my mantra. Exercise for health; diet for weight loss. Dieting has made me drop 2 pounds per week, which coincidentally, is what most people seem to agree is the healthy loss rate.

Most of my exercise comes from climbing stairs at my office and at home. It’s not so much exercise anymore, because I feel like I stopped carrying 30 pounds of luggage with me everywhere. And I did!

I really did it just by eating less. Specifically, I ate about 1,250 calories less per day. 8,750 calories per week X 12 weeks = 105,000 calories. 105,000 / 3,500 calories per pound = 30 pounds. Dieting through algebra.

Yay! I’m into the “single digits” of the 200’s. And I appear no longer to be stalled. What’s more, my weight loss trendline looks spot on still, if slightly less steep.

I got this email today. It purports to be from MBNA, and it even has their logo linked from their corporate web site. Except for some red flags (like the dorky wording and punctuation), it appears legit. I might have believed it myself if it hadn’t come to one of my spam-trap email addresses. Read the rest of this entry »

I got a pingback from Andy who’s trying to lose weight — and has made it the focus of his blog. He’s making decent progress sometimes, but he also gets somewhat frustrated about the numbers on the scale. See, they’re not going down for him like he wants. He (probably correctly) attributes this to his build-up of muscle mass to replace his fat.

Muscle weighs more than fat per unit volume. That is, it’s denser. So a pound of muscle is smaller (better looking, better for you) than a pound of fat. If you lose inches by building muscle, Read the rest of this entry »

I just got the strangest email from the History Channel (A&E): Read the rest of this entry »

Just stop eatin’ so fuckin’ much! — Jonesy’s one-step weight loss program on Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!

There is one, simple, unavoidable fact of dieting. To lose weight you have to eat less food than your body needs. — John Walker, The Hacker’s Diet

Another unpleasant fact of dieting it’s worth facing up front is that while you don’t need to go hungry to maintain your weight, you will need to go hungry in order to lose it. — John Walker, The Hacker’s Diet

These seem like simple rules to me, but I learned a lot in the last few months about weight loss. It’s stuff most of you know if you’ve already been on diets before. I’ve never seriously been on a diet. I’m 5′10 and weigh about 225 pounds. That means I weigh between 220 and 230, but it varies around there. That’s considered “seriously overweight” by all the health scales I can find. But am I fat?

Yeah. A little.

A couple of years ago I was training in Tae Kwon Do. I lost about 10 pounds over the course of a year, during which I continued my normal diet for the most part. I did cut out fries for a while, but they crept back in. When I dropped TKD (I broke my toe) the pounds came back.

So I’ve been reading The Hacker’s Diet in my spare time. I stopped reading it around March, actually. Life got in the way. But I started watching how much I ate, and how much I needed to eat. I remembered that John’s book told me these simple facts:

• Fat, carbs, protein don’t matter to weight loss. Calories are all that matter.
• 3,500 food calories (kcal) is equal to one pound of body fat.
• Therefore if you eat 3,500 calories less every week (500 per day) you will lose a pound. Every week.

Simple right?

Some days I’ll work through lunch without noticing. Once I’m past the normal noon hunger level, it doesn’t get much worse. I’ll bet that’s about 800+ calories I missed that day.

I don’t have food around me, so I don’t eat compulsively. But when I do eat, I go to the cafeteria and get a sandwich, some chips, and Oooh!Look-they-have-cobbler-today! Here come the pounds.

When I do eat lunch (most days) I noticed that I could eat just half a sandwich and no chips and be satisfied until dinner. So I could save half a sandwich for tomorrow. I even did it a few times. But not often. But I knew I could.

I also noticed that that little bag of chips was 180 calories. That’s a pound and a half per month, right there!

And then I had a Breakstones Cottage Doubles cottage cheese snack one day. 140 calories. I thought, hey, I bet I could just eat this for lunch and nothing else, just to get me through the day. So I tried it one day. And it worked. Then I bought a week’s worth of these little snacks and kept them in the fridge at work. Every day, I don’t go near the cafeteria. I get my Breakstone’s and a cup of water and eat in my cubicle.

I didn’t change the rest of my diet. I didn’t change my activity levels. I do try not to overeat at dinner, but I don’t try to avoid calorie-rich foods any more than I used to. I have a dark chocolate bar at my desk that I nibble on sometimes (one square = 67 calories), and a pack of sugarless gum to help clean my teeth and tide my hunger (5 calories).

The results were immediate. Day by day, the scale began to show a decline. I began to lose almost three pounds a week. I’ve been at it for four weeks now, and I’m proud to say I’m 10 pounds (35,000 calories) lighter today.

Am I hungry right now? You bet. But it’s lunch time. Time for some cottage cheese.

Things that helped me

I encourage you to read the The Hacker’s Diet book (read it online for free!), especially if you’re an engineer. Read it all the way through. Then start thinking about your diet. John Walker only eats one meal a day, so he had to cut it back to lose weight. I eat three meals per day, but I only cut one of them back (and I became more sensible about indulging at other times).

I use the FitDay online software (it’s free!). It tracks my daily calories and nutrients as well as my weight. You can see my progress here.

And for those foods that FitDay doesn’t know about, I go to DietFacts.com. It will even add foods there to my FitDay account automatically.

Update [07-11-07]: I’ve been tracking weight and food with Calorie-Count.com instead of FitDay.com. I tried to find some php script that implemented weight loss tracking like John Walker’s Excel spreadsheets (Excel is too buggy for me); I didn’t find any I liked, but Calorie-Count.com comes very close. I was able to write a script to import my data from FitDay right into Calorie-Count. (Don’t ask me for it; I lost it. But it’s simple with Curl or even wget.)

I’m pretty sure I wrote here before about how great FlowersFast customer service was. I was reminded of this again when I screwed up a new order. My mom’s birthday is next week, and I used the FlowersFast reminder service (hopefully not a secret link) to remind me to send her flowers.

I got the reminder this week and went to order flowers. It’s a quick two-step process, so I got the order filled in and sent in under 2 minutes. I ordered her the Premium upgrade for better flowers. She’s always really impressed by that.

Then when I got the order confirmation, I realized that her birthday is the 16th, not the 18th. Oh crap! I checked my email, and there it is, right at the top:

Thanks for ordering from FlowersFast! Please look over the details below and contact us right away if you have any questions. You can email us by replying to this message.

Simple, straightforward instructions on what to do if there’s a problem. No “click here” or “be sure to reference order number 01759″. Just “reply and we’ll take care of it.” Easy-schmeasy. All customer service should be like this.

If you have customers, you should treat them just like this.

I replied.

Oh man — I screwed the date up. These should be delivered on Aug 16, not 18.

Can you fix this for me and let me know?

Thanks,
Phil

30 seconds later I received a reply from their autobot telling me they received my email and would act on it soon. 3 minutes later I received a reply from a human telling me they had indeed corrected the problem.

Woo hoo! These people are on the ball!

Thank you, FlowersFast.com!

I have my PCs at home behind THREE firewalls (all NAT Routers). At work, my PC is behind a corporate router over which I have no control. They turn off almost all outbound services, and no inbound services are allowed.

I want to be able to VPN to my machine at work from home, and vice versa. My office provides enterprise VPN, but I hate the software and hoops they use. Also, it doesn’t help me connect to my PC at home. So I started looking for a free alternative. And I found one. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a cool math trick I saw once.

The number 789789 is a multiple of 13.  789789 = 60573 * 13
The number 123123 is also a multiple 13.  123123 = 9471 * 13
Assertion: Any number of the form ABCABC is a multiple of 13.

The assertion is true.  I can prove it.  Can you?