Wired wirelessly with Bluetooth

I've always had a little bit of spite for those Bluetooth headsets I see everyone and their brother using, but I finally got one.

I remember our last vacation, in the Atlanta airport, this guy was looking right at me and talking. I answered back, but then realized he was on the phone. He wasn't holding a phone - in fact, I couldn't even see his phone. But he had a little contraption on his ear which blinked every few seconds, which was connected wirelessly via the Bluetooth technology, to his cell phone.

It wasn't the first time I'd seen one, of course, but it annoyed the hell out of me. I thought I would never own one. Part of the reason, though, was the cost. I'd looked at them at the US Cellular store (my wireless carrier), even Walmart, and you can't get one for less than $50. They used to be around $75, so they have come down... but a guy I work with said he got one for about $30, shipped.

So I did some research online. I started with Amazon.com, because if you spend $25 or more on certain items, the shipping is free. However, I couldn't find one under $30 I liked. They all had some problem or other. So I went to Newegg.com, where I've spent close to $3,000 over the years in computer hardware. That's no exxageration, either, and I'm almost ashamed of the total. (I spent just under $1,000 at one time buying the parts for this computer when I first built it, and I've probably dumped another $500-$750 into more parts for this computer. The rest must just be miscellaneous purchases.) Anyway, Newegg didn't really impress me with its sub-$30 earpieces. (For the record, Newegg has the least expensive one, at $13.) So I looked a little higher.

Plantronics is a name I know and respect from a few jobs, I know they make corporate-level headsets and speakerphones, but most of their products are too expensive for the casual consumer to own. So I was surprised when I found a Plantronics earpiece for about $25. I wasn't interested though, because it got mostly bad reviews. So when I started looking at slightly more expensive Bluetooth earpieces, their Plantronics Explorer 370 caught my eye. It looked better than their entry-level unit, and only had one review, and it was good. So I Google'd the name, and found more positive reviews on various blogs. I decided to go for it.

$41.98 shipped - it was a little more than I wanted to spend, but still less than the cheapest one at Walmart. And I have the confidence of knowing that I did my homework and found one that is generally well reviewed.

Now that I have it, I have a few complaints, but overall I'm satisfied. It's not a very good fit, for example. It has a molded piece which fits inside the ear, and it's tricky to insert. Once it's set up, it's not entirely comfortable. It's not bad, but I feel it could fit better. By contrast, my coworker's earpiece doesn't have the molded piece, just a speaker, and he says he can't really feel his on his ear. And his is a Motorola, which as he points out, you really can't go wrong with. I've never had a bad experience with Motorola technology, but the Motorola earpieces I researched were of low quality (and I could not find the one he has). Also, the instructions say that if you receive a call and press the "call control" button on the unit, it will accept the call. I tried that when Jen called, and it instead rejected the call. So I have yet to learn all its features.



As you can see, it's kinda discreet, but not as discreet as perhaps some of them. It's also kinda neat-looking, dark blue with a rugged black rubber grip. I had selected the basic 370, which was black and silver, but for some reason Newegg.com upgraded me to the Sport version, which I considered but did not choose because I didn't like the look. Still, I'm not going to complain about the swap - at least it's not yellow and black like some of those "Sport" electronics. (If it were, it would have been sent back unopened.)

Overall I'm happy with the unit, though. I talked to my mother for about 5 minutes, and she hates when I put her on speaker or use a handsfree solution (wired). She claims it sounds bad and complains until I "take her off the speaker". Well, after 5 minutes of talking I finally said "you don't even know I'm using a handsfree do you?". She admitted that I sounded a little different, but she said it wasn't enough to complain about. Also, when Jen called me, I left my phone on the desk and did the Verizon-patented "Can you hear me now?" test. Even in the bedroom, about 30 feet away, she could still hear me fine. But when I laid on the bed, she said I was starting to break up, but it got fine as I got off the bed. So if my phone is in the bathroom or something (where I have the charger) it should be fine. At work I carry my phone in my chest pocket and the Bluetooth in another pocket, and when I take calls I take them on the Bluetooth, so it's within a foot of the phone - shouldn't be a problem then.

Next step - to pair my Bluetooth with my PC and use it as a microphone, e.g. for voice chat.

No longer supporting terrorism

It was perhaps too harsh, an ad which ran shortly after the 9/11 attacks; I don't know who sponsored the ad, but it basically said that buying gasoline was the direct equivalent of supporting terrorism. The backlash was huge, the ad got pulled - but dammit, it had a point. We have to buy gas - unless you live in Chicago or New York City or a few other cities where public transportation can be a viable alternative to driving, you must use a car to get to and from work, to do so many things that have become a part of our daily lives. And the gas, of course, comes from the Middle East. Or... does it?

There's been an email going around, also as a bulletin on MySpace and other social networking sites, and other blogs have posted it as well. It claims to be from a petroleum-industry insider who's "fed up" with high gas prices and sits down to share some tips to save money at the pump. Sounds too good to be true... well, it is. It's chock full of lies. What's true and what's not I don't know, but when it said who buys their gas from the Middle East and who does not, I found an error. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it prompted me to head over to the Department of Energy's website. That site is a bloody mess, but after about 30 minutes of research, I found the list the email promised I'd find: A list of all the major oil companies, and how much (if any) oil they buy from the Middle East. That proved the email a hoax, because many gas companies (like Hess - what we call "Trade Mart" here in the South) were listed in the email as not buying gas from the Middle East, while the Department of Energy clearly states that they do.

There are two gas companies around here which, according to the Department of Energy, do not buy any gas from the Middle East: Shell and BP. So, as of a month or so ago, I decided to buy my gas exclusively from Shell and BP whenever possible. (When you're on the road, sometimes your choices are limited.) I've found that there are Shell stations right on my way to and from work.

Now, whether buying gas from the Middle East constitutes supporting terrorism is highly debatable - and I'm certainly not saying that everyone who does get their gas from a station that buys from the Middle East is supporting terrorism, I'm just saying that I'm now sure that I'm not supporting terrorism. I spend about $200 a month on gas, that's about $2400 a year, and I've decided to take that $2400 away from the Middle East and give it to, well, I don't know who, I just know it's not who we're currently at war with. It might be a country that doesn't like the US much, whatever, but it's not from a region in which American troops are being killed or injured on a daily basis.

Some would argue that most of the Middle East gas comes from Saudi Arabia, and that the Saudis are our friends. They may be on good terms with us, but just last week President Bush went to the Saudi king and told him how gas prices are hurting the American people, and asked if he could please take action to get the prices lowered. The Saudi king politely told Bush "no". Again, I'm not entirely sure and I'm not saying that the Saudis are supporting terrorism - I don't know nearly enough about the region and its politics to make that kind of call. (And for the record, I harbour no ill will towards Arabs, living here or over there - unless, of course, they're fighting American troops.) I'm just making a safety call and buying gas elsewhere.

And some would argue that the high gas prices are not a result of the Gulf War II aka the War on Terror, but look - gas was under $1 a gallon before 9/11. I can understand inflation - $2 a gallon is fair, I suppose. But nearly $4 is ridiculous, and anyone saying the prices more than doubling in the last 12-24 months is not a result of our country's actions overseas is overlooking something. I know there's a lot about the fuel industry I don't know, but I know gas prices have doubled as the War on Terror has (more or less) turned in our favour. Call it coincidence - I sure don't.

I don't urge my readers to buy from Shell. That would put me in the same boat as the con artist who wrote the email forward. Rather, I urge you to hit up the Department of Energy's website and find that list yourself, and make a list of gas stations who don't buy from the Middle East, and then strike out gas stations which aren't in your area, and then only buy from those gas stations. In World War II, women back home (this was, of course, before women were allowed to serve in the Armed Forces) supported the war effort by, among other things, taking up their husbands', brothers', and fathers' jobs back home, kept the economy going. Nowadays, those of us (of either gender) who aren't serving in the Armed Forces can support the war effort, by buying gas that doesn't come from the Middle East.

Know your rights during a police encounter

Hey all, I know it's been a long time, but I've been busy. This month marks one year this blog has been up, and I'd like to get into posting more stuff. Natually a lot of it will involve video, whether created by me or found online, as online video is one of the best perks of having broadband (overlooking the world of BitTorrent, that is).

This video falls into the latter category, found online. Not sure how I found it - one minute I was looking at Deus Ex videos, next thing I know I came across this - and watched all 45 minutes of it. (I thought YouTube videos could only be 10 minutes, guess I was wrong.)



Watch and enjoy... and pass the link along to your friends and family. Also remember what the video says: laws vary from place to place, so make sure you know your local laws as well.

First video blog

You know, I've been on broadband for almost 3 weeks now, I think, and I have only just made my YouTube account today. Click the link, if you'd like to go to my YouTube profile, which should contain links to all my videos, not sure what all it'll have at this point as it's still pretty new to me.

So without further adue, here's my first video blog:



And the follow-up to it, which is incomplete, but provided anyway:



My sincerest apologies to those on Dial-Up. Trust me, I feel your pain. I used dialup for about 2 years before getting on DSL. If you can get on broadband, trust me it's worth it. Even if you don't use filesharing (BitTorrent, e.g.) just the fact that your pages load quicker and you can take full advantage of sites like YouTube and other video-powered sites, it's worth it. And these days you pay about the same; if you don't mind, a little shout-out to my ISP, Embarq; for about $65 a month (first bill hasn't come yet) we're getting 3MB DSL and home phone, which is awesome compared to $55 a month for basic home service PLUS $22 a month for Dialup - as you can see we're actually saving money by getting broadband. If it's not available in your area, you need to hound the cable and DSL providers in your area. They want to make money, so they need to know about potential customers.

May 2008 Check-In (misc. stuff)

Wow, it's been a while since I've wrote up here. Well, a lot's changed, got a lot to cover. Kept meaning to post, but never got around to it. My normal practice would be to write 4-5 separate blog entries, but what ends up happening then is, one gets written and the rest get forgotten, so here goes.

So far I've lost about 25 pounds, in a little over a month. I gained about that much after the holidays, and I've worked hard to get rid of it. I had a bit of a panic at the end of January; after eating a whole pizza to myself, I weighed 330 pounds. I now weigh 305 and I'm losing about 1-3 pounds a week between a lowfat diet and regular exercise. Oh, and those Alli pills Jen takes, but I'm not so sure they work so good into my plan as diet and exercise alone. Maybe they are, maybe not. I pretty much replaced regular soda with Coke's "Zero" line, drinking more water, etc. When I do eat candy, it's the lower fat ones. There's a big difference between a 3 Musketeers (7g/fat) and a Hershey's chocolate bar (13g/fat) and a York peppermint pattie is better still (4.5g/fat). And I've sworn off seasonal candy starting with Halloween last year. No candy corn, no Christmas candy, no Necco hearts for Valentines Day, and no creme eggs for Easter. I put back an embarassing amount of that stuff the last couple years. I'm not really on a diet, I'm just making better choices. It's a gradual process but I am making progress.

We got DSL the week before last, and it's awesome. We're paying Embarq for DSL and home phone about what we were paying the local phone company for just the home phone service, PLUS we were paying EarthLink $23 a month for dial-up internet. So we're saving money and our Internet is about 100X faster. Maybe more maybe less, but about that. I've downloaded a ton of cool stuff, and we can watch video on YouTube without waiting.

We've been playing Guitar Hero and Rock Band over at Jen's brother's place, and getting into it. I downloaded Guitar Hero III on the PC, and it's crap. Just a really bad game, and people with computers twice as good as mine have the same problems. It skips, it lags. We were borrowing my brother-in-law's guitar (he has an extra one), but we bought Guitar Hero III for the Xbox 360, so now we have our own guitar, and when we get out 360, we'll already have one game for it. And we can delete the download. I feel sorry for anyone who paid for the PC version. It was shipped broken, and shame on Aspyr and Activision for selling faulty software. It's fine on the 360 and the PS2 and PS3, all inferior technologically to my computer, so it should play on the computer just as well. The only thing we can do on the PC is play on Easy - Medium difficulty is unplayable because the extra notes lag the game to the point of making it unplayable. This is a common problem over on the GameFAQs board for GH3 on the PC. People with godly computers have this problem. Everyone's saying at least get a cheap PS2 and play it on that. Well, we're getting a 360 anyway (Jen says by the end of March we can afford it) and we have the 360 version of Guitar Hero III, so we're set.

I was a complete idiot and cut my finger, bad. I was crushing soda cans at the same brother-in-law's place, ripping the pop tabs off and saving them (apparently they're worth more recycled as they're purer aluminum or something) and then crushing the cans. Well, I got some Mountain Dew on my fingers (it's practically all he drinks, heh), and went to pop a tab off, and my finger slipped in, and hit the lid of the can at a bad angle. Blood everywhere and it wouldn't stop bleeding. Almost a week later and it's not quite healed. I'm not even sure it's closed up! I've had band-aids on it, I've even been doing chores, even though every impact hurts like hell. I just did the dishes, luckily we have finger cots to keep the soapy water out. I can put rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide on a cut, but I can't put a cut hand in dish water.

Back on the topic of Guitar Hero, I helped our four-year-old niece play bass guitar in Rock Band. If you've been living under a rock for the past four years, Guitar Hero is a beat-synchronization game where you press colored buttons in sync with colored lights that appear on screen, travelling down a "road". When the colored light goes under your "fret bar" you hit (or be holding) the colored button that matches it, and strum the guitar. It doesn't have strings, but it does have a switch you can flip up or down to simulate strings. It's not an easy thing to do, and it's harder to master. Rock Band is the same thing but with two guitars, a drum set (4 drums and a foot pedal), and a microphone to sing into - you have to match pitch and tone with your voice. Anyway, I traditionally play bass. I put bass on easy; lead guitar, drums, and vocals were all on Expert, I think. I sat her on my right leg and let her strum (when I told her to) and I handled the colors. That worked OK for one song, but for the next two she sat on my left leg and held the colors I told her to, and I took over the strumming. On the third song, we got 90%. Not bad for a 4 year old being helped out by an adult.

The tradition of me doing the laundry continues for the third week in a row. Jen and I used to do the laundry together, on Sunday, but now on Monday nights, I go to Greenville and do it myself. I have a routine down and everything. I thought that we would do it yesterday, as Jen took the day off, but she stayed at her brother's place to play Rock Band (and drink) while I went off on my own and did laundry alone. On one hand I wish she would have been there to keep me company, but on the other hand it's my time alone and I have fun.

Finally got TV (DirecTV)

Oh no, not another diet update! No wait, this is something else entirely...

By the title, I don't mean that we finally got A TV... We got our 32" HDTV last summer, but we've only watched movies on it, and briefly used it as a computer monitor. But when people say "watch TV", they usually mean cable or satellite, TV shows, broadcast TV, etc. Well we live out in the middle of nowhere, so what comes over the antenna usually sucks - low picture quality, audio in and out, not worth messing with. I was really hoping to get cable hooked up, but the cable company pretty much strung us along, sent people out to check out the area, told us we could have it in a couple months, kept saying they'd call us back, then finally told us they'd decided they didn't need our money, but they'd reevaluate the area in three months. And if come April they decide our money's good enough for their pockets, it'd take them another couple months to get stuff set up. I told them I have an HDTV, I'd like to watch WrestleMania this year in my own living room in HD. They told me I needed satellite to do that, so that's what I did.

Forget a couple of months, DirecTV came out in about a week. They originally scheduled us on a Sunday, but later realized they don't install on Sundays (ya think?! - this IS the Bible Belt!) so rescheduled us for Tuesday - that's the Tuesday before last, 9 days ago. They said between noon and 4pm. I set my alarm for noon thinking I'd be waiting at least a few hours. But no. I wake up, the guy's already out there and ready to install at my command.

There's just one problem. The dish can't be up against our trailer like everyone else's. It's gotta be 20 feet out into the yard! At first it was a huge letdown. I'm thinking there's no way. I wake Jen up, and she has the solution. Call the landlord. Duh, why didn't I think of that? So I call, then call again, both times, no answer. The DirecTV guy says he'll do it without the landlord's permission, but the problem with that is if we have to have it taken out, we're still stuck with a 24-month contract. (Yep, satellite service is as bad as or worse than cell phones when it comes to contracts.) I'm about to tell him go for it, when I realize we also have the landlord's cellphone number. I call that and he answers on the third ring. Nice, cheerful older guy, I hate to bother him, but he is pretty accomodating when we do. He says no problem. I'm more than a little surprised. What the hell, I think. The landlord signed off on it, so why not? I tell the guy to go for it.

Barely an hour and a half later, we're all set up. He dug a hole about 2 feet deep, then pounded a pole into the ground, mounted the two satellite dishes (the big oval one is for the national channels and hi-def stuff, the small round one is for local channels), and somehow peeled up a bit of ground, and ran thick coax cables (some special fiber optic kind that can carry HD signal) under and into our living room, set up the receiver, and that alone took about 20 minutes, as it had to download firmware and stuff.

I was glad we had our HDTV set up with DirecTV for the Super Bowl, but three things kinda brought the day down (on top of Jen having a really crappy day Friday). First, the three people we invited (a couple, and her sister) all flaked on us or found other places to be. Second, the broadcast kept cutting in and out. I heard this happened to people without HDTV and people with cable as well. Third, the Patriots lost. No, just kidding, I didn't favor either team, let alone know anything about either. No, third, the game wasn't even in HD. We have I think around 80 HD channels. News, movies, music, and regular stuff like USA, Sci-Fi, TNT, etc. Even Discovery and History channels are HD now. We have a dozen or so ESPN channels, most in HD, but the Super Bowl was on Fox and there's no Fox HD channel yet. Maybe next year, everyone's saying.

But WrestleMania, most likely, will be broadcast in HD. Monday Night RAW (USA, Monday, 9pm), ECW (Sci-Fi, Tuesday, 10pm), and Friday Night SmackDown! (CW, Friday, 8pm) are all shot in HD. The WWE went HD a couple weeks ago on all their brands and Pay-Per-Views (starting with Royal Rumble 2008). RAW and ECW come in in HD, however the CW is not in HD yet, so it still comes in in widescreen, but the quality is a little lower. It seems like a third of the PPV channels are in HD, so all it takes is one of the HD PPVs to carry WrestleMania (and for $49.99, it had better be!). Yep, it costs $50 to order WrestleMania, in case you didn't know. It's not cheap. But it's longer than a boxing match and cheaper than some of those. It's a 4 hour event and their creative team put on the best matches. (The other WWE PPVs range from $30 to $50 - I think the SmackDown-only and ECW-only PPVs are $30, and SummerSlam and Royal Rumble are probably the same price as 'Mania, but I'm not sure, just guessing.) But even if 'Mania goes up to $60, I'm pretty sure Jen will still want it.

Anyway, I don't think we'll be doing other PPVs. They're all predictable, basically John Cena's going to win the match he's in, and about 75% of the time, other champions retain their title; title changes have gotten pretty rare even at the buy-in PPVs. And as for movies, sure they're only about $5, but there's a Redbox where I work, so I can get movies for a buck apiece.

Oh, we got the whole package, too. We not only have their "Choice Xtra" package (which basically includes everything but the "pay" channels), we have a 3 month free trial of all the pay channels, we have all the HD channels, and we have DVR. For the uninitiated, that's digital video recording. Like TiVo. Like the future of VCR. A hard drive, we don't know how big, that will supposedly hold 50 hours of HD programming or 200 hours of SD (that's what they call that which is not HD) programming, or any combination (I guess using the formula that 4SD=1HD, so we could have, say, 20 hours of HD and 120 hours of SD). Also, it always records, I think the past 15 minutes, so you can pause and rewind live TV. (You just can't fast forward, unless you've previously paused, in which case you can catch up to live.)

Here's an example of how I used DVR. I was watching Law & Order: SVU, which, if you know it, you know it's a real engaging program, you can't look away from. Jen calls. Without DVR, I might have ignored the call, and being an SVU fan, she probably would have understood. (Is that sad or what?) But no, I just paused it. We talked for about 10-12 minutes. After I got off the phone, I resumed and kept watching. When the ads came on, I skipped past them. I have four stages each of fast forward and rewind, plus "jump 30 seconds forward" and "jump 8 seconds back" buttons. By the time I caught up, the next show had already started, but it was just Criminal Intent, which I don't care as much about. The only bad thing was, if there was something on another channel I wanted to watch, I'm already 6-7 minutes into the timeslot.

One other thing about DirecTV. Power outages really kill their receivers. Sure, it doesn't work when the power's out - that's to be expected. But when the power comes back on, you've got to turn the receiver back on, and it's gotta take its 15-20 minutes to contact DirecTV and download stuff like the first startup, but it doesn't need to be configured, and it doesn't lose DVR'd shows. It does, however, become unable to DVR until you do this, so I missed RAW this past Monday. Power went out in the morning and I didn't mess with it until that night, after RAW was over. I wanted to cuss someone out at DirecTV for not giving me a heads up on that (seems like a problem they should point out to people), but I cooled it, figured I'd just be smarter about it next time.

Now here's some pictures. The first three show just how far away it is, and the fourth shows the dishes themselves, close up. As always, click on these to see them fullsized.


The satellite dishes on the far left. Then two cars the landlord presumably owns that were dumped off last year or the year before, across the driveway. Then my car, then Jen's... Then a couch we really need to haul off, then there's our place.


Walking out a little farther...


...And from behind the dishes...


...And here they are. Kinda funny-looking, eh?

First week of my diet

First things first. My scale is very inaccurate (it's digital, wonder if that matters) but I'm definitely under 320. Last Thursday when I started this, I said I weighed 330 pounds, but I had also just consumed an entire stuffed crust supreme DiGiorno. Still kicking myself for that. On Tuesday I met with the "Healthy Weigh" group at my gym and was weighed and recorded at 327. I don't think I lost 7 pounds in 2 days, but I was also fully dressed at that point. Today I weighed in in my underwear. But I've still lost weight.

I have actually cheated on my diet twice, both at Jen's encouraging, although I did order my own food and could have, both times, made better choices. Sunday we ate at Chico's, our favorite Mexican restaurant, and I got my nachos. To be fair, I didn't get the sour cream, but they did have a lot of Cheddar cheese and they had ground beef. And I ate the whole plate. Tuesday we went to Chinese, and I got General Tso's Chicken, which was mostly chicken - and fried rice. Ate most of that. However on both days, that was most of what I ate all day, so it kind of balances out.

In better news, Monday night I made some awesome "spaghetti". Last year Jen discovered spaghetti squash, which when cooked, you scoop out strands like spaghetti noodles. Fat free. Over that we poured Prego spaghetti sauce with zucchini, yellow crookneck squash, and mushrooms chopped up, and garlic. It was certainly vegetarian, and would have been vegan (no animal by-products, e.g. eggs) if not for the cheese in the Prego. And it was at least as good as my non-vegetarian dishes I've prepared. I was very pleased with myself and this meal.

Other winners for me include the following:

• Bagels. I have mini bagels which are only 1gram/fat apiece and they're a good snack.
• Fruit. I prefer the oranges but I'll eat the apples, too.
• Applesauce. Loved it since day one and it's fat free.
• Del Monte Chunky Mixed Fruit in 100% Juice. Easy winner.
• Michelina's Lean Gourmet meals - every one I've tried (which is like 3 so far) are delicious.

However there is one honorable mention I would like to point out that pretty much wins over all, at least for meals. Tai Pei Chinese dinners, they're delicious, low in fat, and filling! Look at the picture below; click it to see it bigger. That's a standard cereal bowl, and it's holding 14oz. of chinese food. About 500 calories and under 10g/f (I think that one was 7.5g/f) and it was pretty good. Not perfect - too much sauce and not quite enough meat - but tasty and healthy.



So far I've had two of those: Bourbon Street Chicken (above) and Broccoli, Chicken, and Rice, I think it was called. The latter got its broccoli a little too soft, and that's coming from a guy who needs broccoli steamed soft so his teeth can handle it. But, you know, overall these are pretty good. I can't have them every night, but they're helping me a lot. $2 at Walmart; Harris-Teeter has them for $3, so they're probably in between everywhere else.

As far as exercise, I've been going to the gym every day save for yesterday. I didn't feel like it, but I went this morning. I learned in my weight loss class that the most fat/calories burned will be doing aerobic type stuff. The treadmill, the stairmaster, the bike, etc. So I am now focusing 95% of my workout there. I start on the treadmill and try to put in at least 15 minutes, and then about 5 on the bike. My workout goal now is to get up to 30 minutes of such exercise, say 20 on the treadmill and 10 on the bike. And I'm trying to stand/walk more at work, but my mobility is limited as I have to stay in a small area, but I'm working with what I got. And I'm going again tomorrow morning, when I get off work.

So even though I didn't really lose 10 pounds, the fact that it appears that I did is great incentive to continue. I have a long way to go - my healthy weight for my height is about 180, so I'm about 140 pounds over that. 250 is my first "major" goal (with smaller increments as stepping stones) because I weighed about that when I first started talking to Jen. But I don't feel as though I'm much bigger than I was back in '03, though I guess the numbers say otherwise. But once I hit 250, you can be sure I won't be taking it easy - from there the goal is 175, another loss of 75 pounds. I know I can do it, it'll just take time. I just hope I can do it by Sept. 2009, when I next visit California, to shock the hell out of everyone.