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Putting a song on repeat has always been a thing for me. It helps me get things done and sometimes I just like to listen to the same song over and over again because it reflects the current mood I’m in, or some present feeling.

My current song is this by Sam Smith:

Now if I can just figure out how to get Spottify to repeat a track on the iPhone.

And it looks like Matt agrees where repeating tracks is concerned. I’m in good company.

BTW, there’s a great podcast Matt was interviewed on recently. I’ve gotten a lot out of just this episode and will be adding it to the podcatcher.

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This week I worked my ass off to ensure that I could have a three-day weekend. Thursday night I got some beer in preparation for my birthday. I haven’t spent the last two days in a drunken stupor, but I have spent some time drinking and spending time on Facetime with Wil and Denise, which I haven’t really done for long periods of time since they moved to Charlotte. And I’ve thoroughly enjoyed myself.

I will spend some more time celebrating today and tomorrow. Then I will get back to the grindstone on Monday, refreshed and relaxed and able to concentrate better. I’ve slept very well the last two nights, and expect to do so again tonight and Sunday night, and this will definitely help. I hope the trend continues for a while after this weekend.

I plan to spend the rest of today and tomorrow having fun and doing absolutely nothing related to work. I might even play some games. Maybe even the hated Diceworld. 馃槢

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I weighed in this morning, and learned that I only have twenty-two pounds to go until I reach my goal. Awesome. I won’t reach it by the end of this year, but I don’t have that much further to go, so goal will be a thing by early 2015. This is also awesome.

I’ve gotten back into a workout schedule of sorts, going three times a week for the most part. For right now, since I spent so much time away from the gym, I’m exercising for a half-hour and will gradually lengthen the time starting in January. I don’t want to do it too quickly.

I got myself the Fitbit Aria scale in November. It was a bear to set up but I managed it. So I’m using that scale at home instead of paying Weight Watchers to weigh in every week. I have enough discipline to make sure I exercise and eat reasonably healthy and keep track of my weight, and while Emily, (our favorite Weight Watchers meeting leader) is excellent, her meetings only happen on Saturdays and I wanted to start going to synagogue so a Saturday morning meeting isn’t going to work.

I still need to get myself a mat for the floor so I can exercise at home when I can’t make it to the gym for whatever reason. I like the seven-minute workout. I think it’s great. But concrete is hard. So I think that might be my birthday present to myself for 2015.

Until next time.

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Monday is kicking my ass. I’ve spent all morning on the phone with automated phone systems. I hate automated phone systems. I’m technically-minded, which means I probably hate them more than you do.

I keep my landline around just so I can avoid dialing touchtones on my iPhone because dialing fast enough to get the automated system to take your choices and not tell you that you suck at life and make you go through the whole process again seems like a worthwhile proposition. Except it’s probably not. And paying Comcast $40 a month for the privilege is stupid. So i’ll likely be canceling that and just dealing with touchtone hell on my iPhone.

I log into the WordPresses this morning and find there are updates. This is not a complicated process. I deal with this regularly. But after dealing with the phone this morning, I just wanted to cry when I saw that several plugins need updating. Not rational, I know.

I think maybe I should have just taken today off. It’s halfway over, and I don’t have to deal with people except for one more hour, so I think I can sort this and have a better day tomorrow. I spent some time last week reworking my schedule so there’s a designated beginning and end to the work day. This will help. Not that it’ll work all the time, (crises happen), but it’ll work for the most part. I also scheduled in some me time before sleep. Now I need to redo it again, or at least tweak it so there’s time for the faith aspect, which I’ve let go but would like to re-integrate.

I think I’ll watch a movie this evening and have a few beers.

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I like movies. I’m planning to watch a lot of them over the long weekend, which I’m taking for the most part because break. I also like it when people write really awesome reviews of popular ones so I can read them without having to go and actualy pay to watch them. Here’s one of Love Actually which is one of those chick flicks that I hate because they’re so annoying. I think I can count on one hand the number of chick flicks I’ve liked. The review’s hilarious. Go read it.

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The Giants won the World Series, so naturally, San Francisco has lost its mind. There are honking horns and screaming drunk people all over the place. Today was also the last day of my WordCamp trip, which I spent at Automattic working on WordPress and meeting a few last minute people, as well as raiding the fridge for one last beer on Matt’s dime. It was good beer too. But the fact that it was free makes it even better.

Sleep will likely be fitful tonight, because of pre-flight jitters plus drunk screaming people, and I need to keep the window open because there’s no air conditioner in this room. There is wireless though, and that’s the important thing. Gotta keep the priorities straight.

I’m sad that both baseball and WordCamp are ending at the same time. WordPress will continue unabated, but I’ll have to wait for baseball until next spring. The weather’s been nice here. It didn’t get hot until today. For the rest of the time, it’s been pleasantly cool. I’ve walked a ton, and I’ll be surprised if I’ve lost no weight. I plan on sleeping for as long as possible as soon as I get home tomorrow evening.

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Today has been very full. I walked from the hotel to the conference center, which was about a thirty-minute walk. Then the talks began. Everything I saw was full of information, and I’m still trying to process it all. Taking notes is pretty much out of the question, because the talks go by so fast. So I’ll take the notes when the talks go up on WPTV. I’ve met lots of cool and interesting people, but I’ve met so many of them that everything’s a blur. There are so many of them that trying to pair voices with names with Twitter profiles is daunting. But don’t worry, you’re still all special snowflakes. 馃槢

I was featured in Joseph O’Connor’s lightning talk on remote user testing, so I need to recalculate how many minutes I have left in my fifteen minutes of fame. After WordCamp was over for today, I and the accessibility team (well, part of us anyway) went out for dinner, and then I stopped by the afterparty being thrown at Automattic headquarters and drank more beer. I also met more people, including dre Armeda from the dradcast, which is a podcast you should be listening to if you’re in to WordPress, beer, or both.

tomorrow, there’s a blogging track and a contributor track, and I’ll be attending a little of both like I did today with the developer track and the designer track. I’m looking forward to it.

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I got into San Francisco at about 11:40 their time. It took a little while to find my luggage, but we found it, and then it took another little while for the Automattic Bus (which is really a big white van, and no, no one’s handing candy out the back) but my ride found me and we drove around the airport for a while until we realized that the other people riding along were stuck in customs. So we headed over to the Automattic Lounge to wait until we can all check into our hotels. I’ve met a lot of people, and everyone’s been very nice and helpful. I’m charging my iPhone now. Automattic has all the cords. And apparently all the Australians except Kerry. There’s a ton of them hanging around here. A very international place. The lounge is also very well laid-out, with not that much in the way, and what is in the way can serve as mobility landmarks. So yay more independent travel, at least here. As I mentioned on the professional Twitter earlier, I have audio from the first leg of the trip and I will get that up when I get to my hotel and get a minute. But so far, the trip’s been awesome, and WordCamp hasn’t even officially started yet.

Beverly Hills, California, United States
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The trip I made to Charlotte with Wil and Denise has paid off.


Wil getting this job is incredibly awesome. I’m excited for Wil and Denise, and I’m sad at the same time because they’re leaving and so Augusta is going to become a lot less fun. But I’ll move away from here quicker than at some nebulous point in the future, and the next move I make is going to be to a place that has a working public transportation system and all the other amenities that spell independence for blind people. It’s not that good things haven’t happened for me in Augusta. Lots of great things have. And Augusta has been a stepping stone for me that has produced some very valuable results. But I never intended for Augusta to be my permanent home. I’ve had a lot of good times with Wil and Denise and the puppies, and it’s been nice to know that I could hang out with them on a regular basis. But I’m also curious to see how life evolves once they’ve moved on to much better things. And it will definitely be better for them, I can feel it. And better for me too. So good luck, Wil and Denise, and I’m looking forward to the returning independence you’ll experience.

Evans, Georgia, United States
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There’s been a linkstorm on Twitter, and by linkstorm, I mean a metric ton of really good links to excellent material that I’d like to share in either a roundup post of some sort, or expand upon myself. Problem is, nothinglike Evernote that’s accessible where I can file them away for later reading or reference. Typing URLs into Drafts on one of the iThings just isn’t cutting it. I might have to start using WordPress for this purpose. I haven’t figured out how I’m going to execute that yet, and it’s not like I need another project, but this one could turn out to be helpful to other people so I might give it a go. Results/progress will happen over at here.

Evans, Georgia, United States
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Last week was absolutely amazing. I got in three workouts instead of the five I wanted, but despite that, I had a 2.8 pound loss on the scale, took a total of 41,333 steps with an average of 5,905 per day, walked a total distance of 17.46 miles, burned a total of TOTAL CALS BURNED
14,155 calories with total calories in versus out being -7217, and managed to have an average fall-asleep time of seven minutes. Yeah, that’s awesome. Thank you for playing, Lupus.

This week is lighter on the workout front so far. I didn’t get one in yesterday, and will not be getting one today because I’m in the middle of the Tishah B’Av fast, but there’s still tomorrow, Thursday and Friday. And I will get a workout in on at least Thursday. If I lose a pound this week, I will be at the 25-pound loss mark, which will get me a new lucky charm to add to the collection. As members of Weight Watchers, we get little charms and keychains when we reach certain milestones along the journey. They aren’t the be-all/end-all for me, but they’re kind of cool.

No NBBA World Series for me this year, which kind of makes me sad, because the amount of steps and activity would have been totally awesome. But I’m gearing up for next year, because I’m sure everyone’s having lots of fun and I love being a part of that.

I am going to love looking back on this post in a year and seeing how far I’ve come. I’ll have reached goal by then. And by this time next year, I plan to not be living in Augusta. It’s been real, and it’s been fun, but the public transportation sucks for a town that is the second largest metropolis in Georgia, (hell, let’s face it, it sucks even by small-town standards), and I think it’s about time to go.

I’m planning to get a haircut this week, because I seriously need one and it’s time to take some new pictures. If there’s enough after the snip, I’ll be donating it to Locks of Love, which is an amazing organization that helps create wigs for people suffering from hair loss because of cancer. I haven’t had a haircut in years, so I’m pretty sure there will be plenty.

I’ll end here for now, but I’ll be back next week with more personal awesomeness. Until next time.

Evans, Georgia, United States
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Apparently this weeks extra workouts have paid off. My Fitbit now says that my average is 4000 steps per day instead of 2000 steps per day. This is a good thing. The scale also says I have lost 0.8 pounds, and since it’s showing a loss, I will give it the benefit of the doubt for the time being and assume it’s not lying like it usually does.

I managed three workouts instead of my planned five. On Thursday I was extremely tired after the Charlotte trip, and on Friday we skipped our usual visit to the gym because Denise and Barbara spent the day doing hard labor at Barbara’s new house. The brought Wil along for the ride as well, and if the tales are to be believed, he was actually useful. I haven’t seen Barbara’s new digs yet. One of these days I will make it over there.

I have a short appointment tomorrow but am hoping to start the week with a workout and continue with the additional four so I can get all five in and have a more significant loss when we have our weekly date with the scale, enemy of mankind that it is. I will also spend some time with the Seven ap this week, because I need to spend some time strengthening my core among other muscle groups.

One of the reasons I’m ramping up the workout schedule is because I want to reach my goal weight somewhat quicker. I’ve been doing well over the last two years, but I would love it if I could give myself the end-of-the-secular-year present of being at my goal weight. This will require being very good in the food department, and so I will also begin tracking what I consume more diligently this week. It’s not like I have an excuse to not track, because the Fitbit app makes it so easy to do.

I’ll end this post with a bit of humor from yesterday’s Weightwatchers meeting. One of the questions that was discussed was whether or not food distracts us when we’re in social situations from the company of the friends around us. I had to smile and say no to this. Hunger distracts me, but food has never distracted me from having a good time, and, let’s face it, food, drink, and good times always go good together.

Until Next week.

Evans, Georgia, United States
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A new week has begun. The recharge was wonderful. I read a bit, played some games, caught up on the weekly Torah portion along with the portion from the Prophets (haftarah), and generally had a restful day. I hope your day was everything you hoped it would be. And I would like to take the time to wish everyone a good and full week, with plenty of prosperity, goodness and sweetness, however you define those things. I mention goodness and sweetness because what is good for us isn’t always sweet, (see: Getting a shot, having a good advisor or mentor take steps to help keep the ego in check), while what is sweet isn’t always good (see: chocolate, eating a fabulous meal that contains a ton of calories). So I hope everyone gets enough sweetness to make things enjoyable, while at the same time getting enough goodness to balance things out. For me, it’s time to start on some work.

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Another week has finally ended. Work is done. It’s time for twenty-five hours of recharge, spiritual and otherwise. I hope everyone in the U.S. Has had a fun and meaningful July 4th and that your weekend is restful and enjoyable. May there be plenty of things for your grills to cook, even if you use gas instead of the proper charcoal.

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As a rule, I can’t complain. My ears work fine, and I haven’t had any problems since 2005. That streak is apparently over. I woke up Friday morning with muffled hearing on the left side, and pain. Out of the blue, because everything was working fine on Thursday, but whatever. So I called the doctor, went in in, learned that I had an ear infection, and afterwords went and got anti-biotic eardrops and anti-biotic pills. Things stayed the same for the weekend, but that sort of thing takes time, so I figured no big deal. Until yesterday morning. Now both ears are hosed. I can’t hear out of either of them, so I’m having to do everything using a braille display because no sound, or very little, and it’s gotten worse. I could still hear sort of yesterday, but it was hard. But by yesterday afternoon, absolutely nothing, and both ears are swollen and there’s lots of pain shooting through my head. Admittedly, I freaked out a little, because I depend on my hearing, a lot. So it’s really hard to deal with complete silence and ringing when you’re not used to it, and I’ve been bumping into a lot of shit because it’s hard to navigate. I know my deaf and hard-of-hearing friends deal with this all the time, but when you’re not used to it some new challenges are presented and I ask my deaf and hard-of-hearing friends to be patient with me until this is fixed, which will hopefully be tomorrow, because if the doctor doesn’t have any openings, then it’s Urgent Care World time, and I don’t care how long I have to wait. I’m pretty particular about keeping my ears cleaned out, which is probably why this hasn’t happened in such a long time. So I suppose I should be thankful for that at least. I wonder if they’ll use the hook this time. Last time, that’s what it took to fix it, along with enough anti-biotics to kill several science experiments. Someone needs to hurry up and invent that easy button, so when shit like this happens I can just press it and everything’s back to normal. I briefly thought about sending Denise an email to ask if I could borrow her Dison so I could put it up to my ears and turn it on so hopefully it would just suck everything out. But she probably wouldn’t let me do it because it would be dangerous, and I’m exhausted because I haven’t been able to sleep very well, and these are the sort of nonsensical things that pop into my head when I’m sleep-deprived. Of course first and second Seder didn’t happen. And 9AM can’t get here fast enough. And I feel like I’d like to launch a drone strike against my ears because they’re not being good citizens and making things difficult. But hopefully this will be fixed soon and I can get back to my normal life.

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Until next time.

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Evans, Georgia, United States
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I did not make it to the gym today. Still dealing with the crud. Cough, hack, cough, hack. Our bad weather isn’t supposed to get here until after 11 tomorrow morning, so I may get in there tomorrow, but I’ll definitely be coasting. I skipped breakfast, ate some lunch, and had a little dinner. I wasn’t very hungry today. Oh well, here’s to a better tomorrow.

Evans, Georgia, United States
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As I mentioned previously in my last Badd Weight Watcher post, I was hoping to lose one pound, which would have ensured that I arrived at my current goal of a ten percent weight loss. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t lose that one pound. I was up 0.8 pounds when I went to last Saturday’s Weight Watchers meeting. But there was an intangible victory to go with it. I have a pair of jeans which, (when I first got them), didn’t fit. Then, as I progressed, they fit, but were tighter than I would have liked. Now, they are still a little tight, but not a problem to wear all day. I didn’t go yesterday because I’ve managed to come down with the crud in the form of a cold, complete with a cough. I’m feeling a little better today, but everything still tastes weird and breathing is difficult. I slept a good chunk of yesterday away, and got up later than I usually do this morning as well. I’m hoping I feel a little better so I can make my workout tomorrow afternoon, because I didn’t get any workout time in last week. The plan for this week is to of course eat reasonably well, and workout Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Since I missed working out last week, I’m not going to try to go whole hog and work out five days this week, and I will probably coast at least tomorrow. But that will depend on how I’m feeling when I get on the machine. If I get on the machine and start going and am feeling like the Zone is a good place to be, then it’s on and no coasting. But I won’t know that until tomorrow. And of course, barring the crud, I’ll be at next week’s Weight Watchers meeting and will hopefully have lost what I need to in order to reach my ten percent goal. Denise will be back, and she’ll have the new puppy with her, and knowing her will probably have lost a ton, which will make me slightly jealous.

Basis released some new sleep metrics this week. Now, not only can we track how much sleep we got, we can also look at how much REM, deep and light sleep we got in a night along with how many tosses and turns there were. I looked at this for the first time yesterday, and was surprised as how bad my sleep Friday night actually looked. Twenty-eight tosses and turns, sixteen percent REM (which is apparently OK), and the rest light sleep. That would probably explain why I slept so much yesterday. I think four hours or so of sleep were recorded for Friday night, then I got up for a while and then went back to sleep. I haven’t looked at today’s data, but I seem to have slept better last night and, although still tired today, I’m feeling more rested. I suppose I’ll see once I run the numbers. I went to bed late last night, so tonight I’ll probably go to bed earlier and try to get myself back to my normal waking time of around 6 in the morning by the end of this week.

I’ll end here for now, and hope that next week’s report will show better results all around. Until next time.

Evans, Georgia, United States
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I did my usual thing yesterday and went to Weight Watchers. It was incredibly crowded so I didn’t get to weigh in before the meeting. Denise and I stepped out while everyone else was doing a written exercise about planning times for meals to go weigh in, and I was down two pounds. I only have one more pound to lose in order to make my ten percent weight loss mark. This, I think, is pretty damn awesome. I’ve been keeping on track with things so far this week, (which started Saturday according to the app), so I’m hoping to lose at least that one pound. But I’m also looking out for those intangible victories I spoke about earlier. I think it’s important to keep in mind that even if there’s not a tangible result you can look at, (a number on a scale, for example), you can still win. For me, this has been a very slow process given my health issues. So for a lot of the time I’ve been keeping track of this thing, the intangible victories are what I’ve had to sustain myself, or at least my self-esteem, which is something I’ve also had to watch, especially when depression sets in. But of course, I always shoot for the tangible victories because I like those for the proof I can show to myself that I’m still on track and doing what’s best for me.

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As I mentioned above, it was quite crowded yesterday. The crowd was made up, I’m assuming, of those I’m calling the Resolutionaries. Resolutionaries are people who set New Year’s resolutions for themselves, usually involving weight loss and getting fit, and then crowd your local gym or Weight Watchers store in order to carry those out. Most of them usually disappear after about three months at which point everything returns to normal. This group of people presents me with two conflicting emotions. On one hand, I’m glad to see others trying to succeed, and I wish them success. It’s always a good thing to try to improve oneself. But on the other hand, they make my life a little hectic and inconvenient. And when I’m having a less-charitable moment, it’s this, (and the fact that most of them will be gone in three months or less), that takes center stage. I know that this is selfish on my part. After all, there was a time in my life that I was a Resolutionary too, and I was just as bad, if not worse, at keeping up with the goals I set for myself. But now that I’m sort of on the other side, I’m wondering if other regulars at those gyms and stores I mentioned feel the same way I do about the beginning of the year and everything that comes with it. So I’m trying to keep all this in mind when I encounter this group of people, and when I do encounter them, I say a simple prayer that they will have the resolve necessary to achieve their goals, and thereby be successful. I think this attitude is something all of us regulars can benefit from. If you’re not the praying kind, take a moment to think at least one good thought about these people. And while neither the prayers nor the good thoughts in themselves will grant these people success, it will at least put you in a better mood and you can go about the rest of your day not stewing over the Resolutionaries.

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Evans, Georgia, United States
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I’m sitting at the computer working, and I have the TV on Discovery II in the background. They’ve been running these shows all morning about super humans, people who can do all this amazing stuff that normal people can’t do. And sure enough, we’ve come to an episode with a superblink, one of these blind people who are just so damn amazing. This guy’s apparently superhuman because he uses sonar and makes clicky noises with his tongue in order to determine what’s around him.

I really, really hate this sort of thing. Maybe “normal” people find this amazing, but I, and most of the other blind people I know, find people who do things like make random noises for whatever reason, (specifically, going around clicking with their tongues), to be incredibly annoying.

Why is it annoying, you ask? Because it’s the exact opposite of something I posted on Facebook the other day that discussed the irrational fear by others that blind people have to deal with and combat on a pretty frequent basis. But where this article portrayed the feared blind bogyman as being extra stupid or extra poor or extra afflicted, this show flips the coin and puts blind people on an unnaturally high pedestal. But either way, we’re dealing with objectification of the blind, which is bad, and, whether good or bad, it’s something that’s dealt with by blind people all the time. We’re either incredibly stupid or so awesome that it defies explanation, which spirals into “you’re just so inspiring, I don’t know how you do it, Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God,” porn for the light slaves.

This might be cool if we could use it to our advantage, like maybe convincing sighted people that we’re all gods in disguise and therefore we need all sorts of offerings or whatever, and those offerings had to consist of lots of money and tech and big houses and such. But since that’s not the case, I figure we should just keep it at normal for all of our sakes.

As blind people, a lot of us complain when others treat us differently from “normal” people. And in a lot of cases, those complaints are justified. But we’re not doing ourselves any favors by contributing to that mistreatment. There’s a Hebrew phrase that seems apt here, Kol eravim zeh l’zeh, which basically means “we’re all responsible for each other.” It means that what one of us does has an effect on everyone else in the community, whether good or bad. In these cases, where the blind community meets the press, it isn’t the good we do for each other that gets the influence, it’s the bad. And that means every time someone puts themselves out there to be revered by sighted people, the rest of us are expected to either do that, or we’re assumed to have special powers, (which we don’t), or it goes the opposite way and it has adverse effects on our daily interactions, our travel, our business dealings, and anything else it can possibly touch. So I’m asking my fellow blinks to please keep that in mind if you’re ever tempted to put yourself out there for sighted awe, because the benefits just aren’t worth it.

Evans, Georgia, United States