Well. Another week had gone by, sorry for not updating on Monday. I was too ashamed that I didn’t lose that pound that was due on Monday so I decided to just not tell anyone about it. But as of this morning another pound has been shed! It’s actually a huge surprise because on Tuesday I had dinner at the Mongolian BBQ, possibly the worst place to go when trying to lose weight..

I bought a few apples (Gala) this week along with 90 calorie Kelloggs granola bars, just a few more healthy (but delicious) snacks to get me by..

Current weigh in: 164lbs. Only 14 left to go! I’m gettin’ there..

Groupon. What is it? Well it’s sort of like Woot [Woot] but on a much smaller and cheaper scale. Everyday there’s a “featured” item to do at an awesome price, but you are only able to get it if enough people join in that same day. If there isn’t, just wait until tomorrow and give that deal a go!

For example, today I signed up and it had only required 2 more people to signup in order to get a $10 Robeks coupon for $6, I signed up and shortly after they hit their quota so my credit card got charged and about 45 minutes later I received the coupon in my email! The only downside is that you’ll have to wait until the next day to use it.

So sign up! The link is below.

[GROUPON]

If you happened to have just bought a PC or a netbook from well, a store.. You might want to get the PC Decrapifier [PC Decrapifier]! Okay, not “might want to” but you need to. What it does is remove all the junk software off the computer all on it’s own and do it right. It’s what the Geek Squad wants to charge you $130 for. ”Computer Optimization” but in all reality they’ll uninstall some stuff and then add their own stuff in there to bog your machine down, but that’ll be saved for another post.

So. Get it. Link is below.

[PC Decrapifier]

According to the New York Times, counting calories on fast food or even restaurant food isn’t always accurate. Apparently, when the restaurants or whatever give you the nutrition value, there’s always a good possibility it’s up to 20% incorrect, so you may want to give yourself a little buffer if you’re calorie counting.

They sometimes are inaccurate in the sense that they tell you there are more calories than it really is, but that’s not usually the case. I guess they tell you a slice of thin Domino’s pizza (don’t know why you’d want Domino’s in the first place, but…) is 181 calories but apparently it’s only 141. But then they say a bowl of grits at Denny’s (which is gross, ew grits..) is 80 calories but when tested it’s 258.

So. Just a heads up for those calorie counters out there..

[NY Times - Counting of Calories Isn't Always Accurate]

And the battle with the scale continues.. It hasn’t been easy, let me tell ya..

I guess I should give the stats. When I started this program I was 169-170lbs and as of January 11th, 2010 at 7:00PM I am 164lbs. It’s not a TON of progress made in a matter of 4 weeks but it’s something. It’s been very consistent though, every Monday it’s weight in time and I am a pound less so far every Monday. I check the scale daily though and it doesn’t seem like my weight fluctuates as much as it did before either, maybe that’s healthy? *shrug*

What’s the hardest is when you eat a really late lunch because you don’t wake up till the early afternoon (which I’m not complaining about whatsoever) and then you’re not that hungry when it’s dinner time since dinner time is around 7PM and you had lunch at around 3:30PM. But when it’s around 10PM or so you’re starving but is it alright to eat dinner then? I hear it isn’t, so I didn’t do it. Instead I starved myself and didn’t eat anything till lunch the next day which was 24 hours after I had originally had eaten.

I think this week, I’ll be trying to go to the gym a couple times a week. Hey! It’s better than nothing.

This weekend Jamie Lynn and I ventured on a quest to find crepes. This crepe place we had thought to be in “The Arcade” of downtown Cleveland was closed because apparently there’s another location of this crepe place and it’s off 25th and Lorain. So of course we start heading out to go there but then walked pass this place called “The Chocolate Bar”, we looked at the menu posted on the window and the prices looked very reasonable so I say “Let’s eat here!”. Lemme tell ya.. it was delicious! [Chocolate Bar Menu]

I had ordered the “Mac-n-Cheese Bar” with caramelized onions and bacon, it was the best mac n’cheese I’ve ever had! It was ohhhh so creamy! So. If you’re a fan of mac n’cheese, I’d recommend trying it from the Chocolate Bar!

I think Jamie Lynn ordered the Turkey Club and it looked rather appetizing, it was your standard Turkey Club on some panini toast served with a side of delicious potato chips and when I say delicious, I mean delicious! I’m really not sure what was so special about these chips but I found them super tasty.

For dessert we split the Belgian Chocolate Mousse Cake and of course, it was delicious. It was even served with one custard puff on the side!

Additionally, all this was in The Arcade which I had completely forgotten how classy this place was. I definitely have to go back to try out the other places in there. The first 2 floors consists of restaurants and shops and the upper 2 floors are hotels that belong to Hyatt.

[Chocolate Bar Cleveland]

In one of my older posts, I had described to you how to tether your iPhone using iPhoneModem [iPhone tethering with iPhone Modem] but as of today I had discovered how to get native tethering on the iPhone 3G and 3GS running version 3.1.2.

Redmond Pie provided a very good tutorial on how to do this. Warning though, you may need a Mac to do so. There’s a link on there if you’re using Windows but it involves you downloading an app off Cydia in which you’d have to pay for. But if you’d like, contact me and I’ll be able to provide you with the file for your 3GS because I have that saved and regardless of the OS you’re on, all you have to do is SFTP in and drop this file in. [Remond Pie]

But. I got it up and running, it works great! I ran a Speed Test on it and it got 1.9MBPS over Bluetooth, I’d say that’s pretty good for tethering..

The first is the “necessity” item. 2 new video cards. The reason being is that when I first got my PC 2 and a half years I ago, I started out with some XFX GeForce 7600 GTs, well.. they’re dying. One of them has already crapped out on me and the other is ticking a whole lot. I can’t imagine it will last much longer. I need video cards in order to well, use my computer.. which is why I am categorizing this under “necessity item”. I am considering coming out of XFX and going with EVGA and getting a pair of EVGA GeForce 9800 GT [Newegg] with maybe a gig of ram but if I can find one with 512mb of GDDR3 ram, I’d be alright with that too. Cost? About $130 a piece. Not too bad I suppose. It’s justified with one of these days I’ll be putting together another computer for myself, I can always reuse them. Well, unless they’ve crapped out on me too of course but let’s hope they last.

My next goal is purchasing a netbook. As of right now (which I’m sure will change a million times before I buy one) I have my eye on either the Nokia Booklet 3G or the Toshiba NB-205. They both have outstanding battery lives, decently sized (non-SSD) hard drives, and a 1GB of RAM. Out of the two at the very moment would I go with? Probably the Toshiba because it’s cheaper and has much less unnecessary features such as 3G and GPS. [Nokia Booklet 3G] [Toshiba NB-205]

Lastly, my favorite laptop as of right now is the HP Envy 15. With it’s i7 mobile processor, 6GB of RAM, thin, sleek.. I’m in love. Unfortunately it’s $2,000 and it’s probably not all that practical for me to get a laptop this year. But! If I’m able to, I’ll do it! It’d be nice to be able to do anything I do on my desktop… on the road. And actually have it out perform my quad-core desktop. [HP Envy]

I don’t know about you, but whenever I think about buying the lottery ticket or when I do actually buy a lottery ticket.. I legitimately think I’m going to win. I have more confidence about winning than anything else. It’s quite ridiculous because I only play when the jackpot is at least $100 million. Anything less? Not worth it. Haha.

The first 3 things I’d do if I were to win the lottery would be:
1. Go out, the next day after claiming my cash and buying an Evo.
2. Invest a million into Vector Bridge [Vector Bridge].
3. Go on a month long vacation to someplace moderately tempered.

What’s the first 3 things you would do? How confident are you about winning the lottery?

I gotta say, it’s one of the most distracting thoughts to have when you’re trying to concentrate on anything important.. or not important at all. The thought process of millions of dollars is definitely very time consuming, well, for me anyway..

What’s the jackpot right now? $48 million [Mega Millions]? Pshh. I’ll wait a couple of weeks. Oh. And I only ever spend $1 on a ticket. Anything more is a waste of money.

I keep coming across articles on how you should keep your data safe, backing your data up, having multiple copies of backups to have a retention of your data.. I just don’t know what to back up and what method is ideal. Let me explain how my computer storage works. I have 2 partitions, 1 is for data and 1 is for the OS. The OS partition is 250GB and the data partition is a 500GB hard drive in which 300GB is used right now. Now, do I backup my data? Or do I backup my Users directory in my OS partition? If I do backup my data hard drive, what method should I use seeing as it’s so many gigs?

I considered doing an online backup to Amazon S3 [Amazon S3] but seeing as if I upload over 300GB, the cost will be over $50 a month, which in my opinion isn’t worth it for an online backup. Then I considered if I were to just backup to my 160GB Firewire external with the stock Windows tools that it comes with, but I know 160GB wouldn’t be enough for my data drive but it could just as easily backup my Users directory in my OS partition.

While trying to come up with conclusions on what I should do, I did encounter an online backup company called Carbonite [Carbonite], for $55 a year they offer unlimited storage space for backups of your computer. They even have accidental deletion recovery. It seems like a good idea, but is $55 a year worth it just to backup all your stuff to a remote location? Are we all just being too paranoid? Or am I just being paranoid?