As most people do, I have a love/hate relationship with my scale.

As I mentioned on Scattercast episode 24, like so many people in the world, one of my New Year’s resolutions is to lose more weight this year.  I was quite happy with the fact that I made it through the holidays with only 1 to 2 pounds in fluctuation.  I worked hard at making sure I didn’t gain, and kept up my work out regimen to make sure that didn’t happen.

Now as we get in to the serious part of the year, I stepped on the scale last night (something I swore I would not obsess about, but yet I step on it every night now it seems), and found I had another of my “What the hell…” moments where I lose 2 – 3 pounds seemingly over night.  I always wait a day or two to declare it “official” because it could be any number of very odd factors.  If this one holds true, though, I will have lost 70 pounds so far.

There is no denying I had allowed my weight to spiral out of control and I had gotten all the way up to the insane weight of 400 lbs.  In my defense, I am built like a brick house.  It was difficult to tell I was that heavy because I have a huge body frame (think linebacker).  When I realized where I had gotten to, that was when I got serious about losing weight.  I cut sodas completely, all fast food was a distant memory, and I began researching “healthy” ways to lose weight.

Pretty much everything I read said you needed to build muscle first, and then concentrate on the actual reduction of fat.  As I chronicled in Working Out back in September 2008, I did start lifting weights, and I am happy to say that I have stuck with it.  I do 45 minutes every other day (there is a long list of reasons why it is best to do it other day that I won’t bore you with, but believe me, it’s true), and I am thrilled I have gotten to that amount of time as it allows me to catch up on one one-hour show on a DVD set, or two 30-minute episodes of a show.  So not only am I building muscle, but I am multi-tasking and catching up on the DVDs I am so far behind on!

On my “off days”, I am trying to go for walks, with the constant reminding that I need to do so from the evil one known as “M”, but the weather has been fighting me hard on that one.  I would love to invest in a treadmill, but I am reluctant to do so until I find that I am going to stick with walking.  With the insane mix of winter weather we’ve had, it has actually been unsafe for me to walk outside, so we will have to see when that resumes.  For now I am speed walking through Walmart whenever I go there.

So, why do I think my scale mocks me?  While I am thrilled I have lost 70 pounds thus far, my original goal was 101 pounds so I could actually break out of the three hundreds.  Looking at the dial on that scale, the space for 31 more pounds looks like the longest space known to man.  Never mind there are 70 lbs behind me so far, that 31 just feels daunting.  I even try to remind myself that 20 of the 70 I have lost has happened in just the past five months (I have no idea why it picked up speed), and that means that I could possibly realize this goal in the next 8 months, it just feels like an insane amount of work.

… and then will come maintaining it.

Black Friday needs to be ended as we know it, and it needs to happen immediately.

This morning in Long Island, NY, a 34-year-old overnight stock clerk was trampled to death as he attempted to assist in holding back the crowds.  According to reports from the Daily News, the crush was powerful enough that the doors were knocked from their hinges, and the clerk was knocked to the floor and crushed to death.

A later report from the Post Chronicle lists that a pregnant woman was knocked to the ground and later miscarried at a local hospital from the trauma.

I’ve done the Black Friday sales in the past, but I’ve given them up because 1) my sleep matter more to me than saving a few dollars and 2) I didn’t enjoy the antics of the other shoppers.  More and more companies are taking their Black Friday sales online, and I am at the point that if it isn’t online, I don’t really know if I need it.

Do I think Black Friday sales will end?  No, they won’t, but precautions are going to have to be taken to prevent situations like this.  Looking at the Walmart, it appears to not be one of their 24/7 stores, and that probably added to the problem, but whatever caused it, it was wrong.  Some reports I saw through out the day said that a few people stopped to check things out once paramedics were trying to save the man, but otherwise people were too focused on their cheap TVs and $1.50 towels to be worried about the man they were trampling over or was laying there in pain as time passed.

Friends of mine worry about the fact I rarely leave my property unless I absolutely have to.  Tell me why I should?  People worry about the fact I like to do my grocery shopping at 12 or 1 AM.  Fewer people, folks, why should I go during the day?  We’ve all seen my feelings about grocery shopping etiquette.  I don’t want to turn in to a hermit to be honest, but can someone tell me what motivation there is to go out in to public with people that will crush a man to get a cheap TV?

Mankind never ceases to amaze me.  My deepest condolonces to this man’s family and to the woman who had her miscarriage.  To those who trampled and crushed forward… I have no words for you.

While I’ve mentioned on this site a few times that I’ve been working to lose weight, but I don’t think I ever mentioned what I was doing for exercise.

Well, as you might guess from the graphic, I’ve been lifting weights.  Nothing fancy, just barbells, but it is amazing how many different things you can do with them.  While I’m certainly not looking to turn into some massive body builder, I will say it’s nice finally having some actual muscles, something I have never really had before.

Therein lies the dilemmas, though.  First off, muscle weighs more than fat, so my weight number is holding fairly steady while my body mass is obviously massively shifting.  My clothes are constantly getting looser, so I know that I’m making progress.  Dilemma number 2 being that I am some definite muscle definition forming, but I have to find a balance between losing weight, getting good definition, and not looking like a total muscle builder.

I guess I should be thankful that I am actually making progress, it’s something I’ve struggled with for a long time, but now that it’s working, where do you stop?  Darn these catch-22 situations!

I think the most shocking thing is that I have actually gotten to a point where I enjoy doing it.  Sure there are some days I dread it, but once I get going, I guess I hit that “runner’s high” type of thing and I actually get to where I enjoy it.  Considering how many years I avoided all forms of exercise like a plague, it’s just surprising to me to finally see why people say it’s a good time.  How odd.

So does all of this have a point, or am I just rambling at you all?  Eh, yes and no.  I would say the point is if you keep putting off doing exercise for yourself, stop it.  I always used excuses like not enough time, too busy, all of the usual ones, but here I am working two full-time jobs with a host of other responsibilities, and I find the time.  If I can do it, I can just about guarantee you that you can also.

What do you do for exercise?  How do you fight those “blogger 15″, or any weight you gain from a sitting job.  How do you keep in shape?

There is no denying I am a coffee junkie.  I think I got serious about coffee around 14, and I’ve been drinking it ever since.  I grind my own beans at home, I know the perfect ratio of water to beans, in short, I am not just a casual drinker of the elixir of life.  Heck, I even buy it in cans from vending machines when I’m in Japan… I just love coffee… period.

That being said, I’m trying to cut back.  It’s not so much the coffee, but my caffeine intake in general.  I was drinking anywhere from 3 – 6 cups of coffee a day, 2 – 3 glasses of iced tea and then a cup of green tea per day.  After talking with a friend of mine who is a registered nurse this weekend, and being admonished for my trying to lose weight/gain muscle while consuming that much caffeine, I am trying to cut back.

My current consumption is down to no more than 3 cups of coffee (studies show 2 cups a day will lower your risk of diabetes, something that runs in my family) and my 1 cup of green tea (caffeine or not, the health benefits of green tea make it worth it)  Now you would think just cutting back wouldn’t be that bad, but I am finding it really difficult to get to sleep.  Apparently my body is not “crashing” like it was, and the past two nights I have laid in bed, trying to will myself to sleep, for over an hour.  Prior to the cutback it would take me seconds to fall asleep, but now I just feel too awake when I hit the sack.

I know this is for the better, and if it wasn’t for the diabetes angle, I would cut the coffee completely, only keeping the green tea.  However, I know my body will adjust with some time, it’s just sucking having trouble getting to sleep due to a LACK of caffeine, I always thought it was supposed to be the other way around!

Why does it take a sporting event such as the Olympics to make the people of the world get along?

I am not speaking to the fact that the games are in China, not the controversy this fact has bred, but I am speaking to the basic Olympic values and principles.  While watching the opening ceremonies last night, I wasn’t struck by the grandeur of the show, which was magnificent, but by the athletes themselves.  As each country would finish the parade into the stadium, and then stand in the center area, I was struck by the camaraderie of it all.

Different ethniticities, political backgrounds, upbringings, pretty much any difference you could think of did not seem to exist for these men and women who had gathered from 206 different nations of the world.  They mingled, took photos, shaking hands and sharing in the moment they were sharing.  You would see basketball stars like Kobe Bryant having his picture taken with other athletes, then when he was done he would shake their hands and though you couldn’t hear him, his body language that he was asking them their names.  Why?  At least to my thought process, it was just an example that he may be a megastar in the United States, but on the global stage he is just another Olympian.

Is this sugar coated sentimentality on my part?  Of course it is.  I have no delusions of everyone holding hands and singing campfire songs together, but couldn’t we at least try to get along this well all of the time?  Does it have to be a special event every two years at the various Olympic events?  At the end of the day we are all human beings, we just have differing beliefs, but that doesn’t mean one is necessairly better than the other, and this does nothing but demonstrate that when we can all get on the same page, we can all act like the brothers and sisters we are.  How about taking this thought process we show every two years and extending it through out every day?

Feel free to mock, I know this is me just being caught up in the moment, but that doesn’t make it any less of a good idea.

Hard to believe it, but Splash Page Comics/AnimeUSA turns 22-years-old today.

Since I have gained so many followers over this past year, many of you may not even know about “my other life”.  Besides writing for Mashable, I have a “day job” working on the family business, AnimeUSA.  The store officially opened on August 4th, 1986 as a comic book store, but quickly started morphing over the years.

My mother had a costume shop in an old house on one of the major streets in Kirksville, and only 4 blocks from Truman University.  She didn’t have any use for the old garage, so at the age of 14, I asked if I could convert it into a comic book store.  After some convincing, the parents gave in and Splash Page Comics was born.  (For those who don’t know, a “splash page” is any page of a comic book that consists of only 1 panel taking up the entire page)

In 1993, mom was tiring of the costume business having been involved in it since she was 18, and I was quickly outgrowing the garage.  She opted to close the costume shop and give the bigger portion of the building over to the comic store.  We quickly outgrew that space and expanded into even more of the building.

1999 saw us doing so much business in anime products from Japan, we opened a sub-division named AnimeUSA.  We were traveling to more and more conventions around the country, and showing up at an anime show calling ourselves “Splash Page Comics” just didn’t make much sense.

By 2000, I was getting more involved with ecommerce, and our convention business was picking up so much that I was contemplating closing the retail store as it was holding its own, but was becoming a very small portion of our gross take, but the majority of our headaches.  I talked it over with a good friend of mine while we were flying to Japan together on a buying trip in August 2000, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

We were again on our way to Japan in August 2001, and he was with me again.  Again the subject came up (hey, it’s a 10 and 1/2 hour flight from Los Angeles), and after much hemming and hawing, I called my parents from Tokyo and told them to get ready to do it by the end of the year.

I returned from Tokyo just a little over a week before the events of 9/11, and that extended the time frame as we had other issues to deal with in regards to my dad’s job, and it just not being a priority on our minds.  I finally closed the retail store in December of 2001 after 15 years and 21 weeks of it being open.

We finally sold the building that in late 2002 when the gas station next door offered to buy it to expand their parking lot.  They offered us enough we could build a 3,000 square foot warehouse (the old building was 1,800 square feet and very broken up as it had been a house) on property we already owned, and we moved out in March 2003.

The warehouse is doing a beautiful job of keeping us contained, and it is so nice not going, “Which room is product x in?”  The old building was demolished in 2003, but I still smile every time I drive by it as I spent so much of my life there, but now I actually like the building we’re in as the old one was impossible to heat.

There are a million little facts about the history of the business I’ve left out as you would with any 22 year history, but this is a good general over view of the history.  Still, it’s impossible I’ve been doing this for well over two decades now.  Yikes!

I’m not thrilled to report that the Missouri flooding is finally in my general vicinity.

Remember back in March I told you I was in no danger from the Missouri flooding?  Well, the Chariton River, a normally very tiny river you can throw a rock across, has gone eight feet above its flood stage, as you can see in the picture to the right.  (you can click on it for a slightly larger view)  It has begun to receded some, but now it is currently raining again, so who knows what it’s going to do now.

Some roads in my area have shut down, naturally, but luckily this is all still six miles from me, with little chance of reaching me due to distance and the number of valleys and such between me and it.

At the oppisite end of my town, the golf course’s private lake is breaking through it’s retaining wall, and they are having the city police shutting off roads and directing traffic.  It’s one thing for a river to flood, but I would love to know who is paying for protection from a private lake flooding out a section of town.

Just like last year, I rang in my birthday by working on a list for Mashable.

Man I hate being predictable!

It was a butt-kicker of a list though, and took over eleven hours to complete (I can’t say what the subject was until it’s published), but it’s finally done.  The funny thing was I didn’t look up at the clock until it was done, and then it took me a second to go, “Oh… I’m 37 now… wheee”, and I went back to hand coding some special image codes we use.

I am a wild man unleashed, let me tell ya.

Anyway, I always find it amusing now what my big plans are for my birthday, and I honestly can’t remember the last time I even cared about it.  At some point it just becomes another day, and all it changes is me double checking when I fill out a survey if I’m marking the right age-range section.

The good news is that I am actually probably in the best shape of my life.  Despite still being heavy set, I am lifting weights 3 – 4 times a week, and have more muscle mass than I’ve ever had.  My pants are about at the point of falling off of me, but I don’t want to buy new ones quite yet.  And in a true test of weight loss… my airplane seat belt was the loosest on my last weekend than it has been in a long, long time.  So, despite my creeping age, I seem to be doing okay.

Either way, it’s my 37th… the countdown to 40 continues.

We’ve lived in my current house for 23 years. Also on my property is my maternal grandmother’s house and my company warehouse. All three buildings are serviced by the same county water account, so when we pay the bill, it covers all three buildings at once.

The water meter is about 500 feet from my front door, deep in the woods, buried in a ground canister.  To read it, you have to lift the lid, kneel down, reach in to wipe muck and dirt off the glass, and then cover it back up.  Well, several years ago my father went to check it out, and sure enough there was a large snake in the hole.  From then on out, we got the water district to agree to allow us to do an annual reading where we paid them a large sum up front, we would read the meter before the next annual payment, and at that time we would settle up any difference.

All of this was done strictly for safety as none of us wanted to be reaching in to a ground hole with potential snakes more than we absolutely had to.  I know… we’re crazy like that.

This all has worked out without any hiccups for several years now, but at some point the water district has decided to suspend this sort of payment plan without telling us.  As we have been waiting on our annual “go read your meter” letter, we didn’t get anything, so we thought we had the date wrong.  Today I had to run to town to meet a semi truck bringing us a large shipment, and they couldn’t get down our road to deliver it, when done, I called the folks to check in with them since they are on the road, only to learn the property had no water.

It seems my grandmother, who turned 88 today, had called her and informed her that she had no water.  Well, it turned out we had no water at all, and the reason was that we hadn’t received a letter telling us we have to return to reading the meter, and we have to pay by check.

Now, here are my problems with this:

1) In 23 years, we have never missed a payment, but you miss one payment by a week or so when you aren’t even aware the system has changed, and they turn you off?  I am all for paying bills, but seeing as water is essential for life, and there are states passing laws saying you can’t turn off electricity to the elderly in the winter no matter what, there has to be a different system than turning off water.

2) It’s the 21st century and I can’t set up an automatic bank draw or put a credit/debit card on file?  No, I had to run back to town with a check and pay it in person to get the water turned back on by this evening.  It has been so long since I wrote a check, I had to actually think about it as I did it.

3) Supposedly we will be getting wireless meters which will allow them to read the meter remotely, great concept, but why not just let us finally move the stupid meter out of the hole?  It’s been there since before we bought the property, so it pre-dates us, but they’ve never allowed us to move it to someplace more sensible, like the side of a building.

So, yes, I only lost water for a few hours, but considering I have an 88-year-old grandmother to watch over, it’s annoying and worrisome.  What annoys the most is how many companies insist on not updating their system.  We have the same problem with our trash collection in that they only take checks.  I know this sounds incredibely whiny, but… I don’t have time to write checks.  As of today I am the only one home for three weeks solid, I’m working two jobs, and I adore companies that just allow me to use a debit card to pay so I don’t have to think about it.  It’s off my mind, they get their money and everyone gets to go home happy.

Come on folks, its 2008, catch the heck up with the rest of us would ya?

I’ve been getting numerous phone calls and emails asking if I am near the current flooding in my state, and I can thankfully report that I am not. All of it is at the opposite end of the state from me, and seems to be fairly isolated.

This seems like an interesting time to bring up the 1993 floods though. Now there were some floods.  The picture to the left is the capital of Missouri, Jefferson City, as it appeared at the height of those floods.  It’s not normally quite that water logged, not by a long shot.

What essentially happened back then was a higher than normal snowfall in the north of the country started melting in the spring, and that started raising the river levels at the top of the Mississippi river.  As it started moving south we saw rising levels, but not anything horrible.  Where we got screwed was when we had insane amounts of rain, like months with no break in the rains.  That added to the already swollen rivers, and then they joined with others and it turned into a domino effect.

Kirksville is luckily not close to any major rivers, but we  got turned into a virtual island, and actually started having problems getting mail and groceries due to routes being cut off.

I knew we were screwed when I headed to Quincy, IL on July 1st to take the train to Chicago for a business trip.  Quincy has two major bridges across the Mississippi, and as I crossed the east bound one, I saw the water way, WAY higher than it should have been.  I called my family and told them I was sure the bridge would be closed while I was gone, they laughed.

On July 3rd they called me and told me the bridge was closed.  I still remind them of this.

When I was headed back on July 5th, my train was 90 minutes late leaving Chicago, we then were stopped on the tracks for another 90 minutes as it turned out our original crew never made it due to flooding, and our replacement crew had worked too long, so yet another replacement crew had to be brought out to us.  Three hours late I got to Quincy, and I made the dumbest drive of my life to get home as it looked like I was going to lose the west bound bridge soon and be stuck on the wrong side of the river for several hundred miles.

So, after the stupidest drive of my life due to being far too tired, it turned out the west bound didn’t close for a few days, but it did finally.   As more time passed, we ended up with hundreds of miles where there was no way to cross the river, an this lasted for months.  By the time we were done, we had worked our way up to it being “a thousand year flood”.  In other words, in theory, we would only see floods of this magnitude once in a thousand years, but that doesn’t stop us from all getting nervous if we have two days in a row of rain come spring time.

Luckily the current floods are far south, so it will be difficult for them to feed any of the other major rivers.  This isn’t to dismiss the damage they are doing, not by a long shot, but with everyone asking me if we’re okay, it’s just to much of a chance to look back 15 years.

Why, or why, must cheese lure me in like a sailor, crashing against the rocks to the Siren’s song?

I have been trying to lose weight for a little over a year, and while I have lost 50+ pounds, slimmed up quite a bit, lost several pants sizes, toned up, and drastically changed my eating habits… I CAN’T GIVE UP CHEESE!  It’s like a lovely dairy infused drug, and no matter how many times I say to myself, “this is horrible for me,” I can’t stop eating it!

Yes, this is the entire point of the post… my cheese addiction.  I love it sliced… melted… cold… room temperature… as a sauce… as a side… fried… as a main course, I don’t care, I just love cheese.  Cheddar, Mozzarella, Jack, American, Bleu, Provolone, Parmesan… it doesn’t really matter, if it’s classified as cheese, I want to consume it.

Except cheese in a can, that stuff is just nasty.  You can keep that.

So, yes, I am a man on a diet who can’t give up his life-long cheese “problem”, but don’t they say that’s the first step?  Admitting you have the problem?  Is there such a thing as a “cheese intervention”?

Adam Ostrow over at Mashable.com was the one to bring the “beta” coffee offer from Joffrey’s Coffee to my attention.

The idea is simple in that up to 10,000 bloggers can go to their site, fill out the form, and not only will you get some free coffee, but you’ll also get a link back to your blog from them. The links are a little momentous to pick through, but Google should pick it up and count it as a little bit of link love for you.

The free coffee you’ll receive is a new flavor named “Jamican Me Crazy” which is a blend of caramel, vanilla and coffee liqueur. I’m not one to thrill to flavored coffee, but it’s free, and I’m a sucker for free. Hopefully it will be good, but if it’s not, I’m out 30-seconds of my time filling out their form.

Last time I looked, they were still under 1,000 slots filled, so there is still plenty of time for my readers to run over and snap up one of those 10,000 spots.

I have mocked the idea of “beta” tests before, and this one is such an obvious gimmick to get bloggers to talk about it, and… wait… aw man! I fell for their obvious marketing gimmick! -sips coffee- Curses.