Fighting the Flab IV

Today’s walk was awesome, the fall temperatures were amazingly comfortable.  The cool, soft, autumn breeze was just enough to keep my temperatures down and I did not feel like a grungy caveman after arriving back home, I had a thin layer of perspiration and felt the effects of a light workout but without ending up feeling disgusting.  I did get some of the light strength training in, with a bonus, today I helped several customers with their luggage but they were all flying with bricks, their heavy belongings were my free bonus strength training!  At “Tech with a twist of lime!”, I will discuss my upcoming business trip.  I think Tuesday, I close at work, and this enables me to have the morning off to write some more substantial content for both websites.

Kacey Green
KaceyGreen.com
"This post brought to you by Tangent's randomly firing synapses."

Fighting the Flab III

Day off

I am enjoying my only day off in a week.  Today’s installment of Fighting the Flab was a bike ride; I borrowed a self-shifting bike and rode it for about half an hour.  The hills put up quite a fight, I triumphed, winded and humbled.  The self-shifting bike didn’t like shifting in to high gear on straight downhill or level sections, and uphill didn’t want to shift down to my liking, but it didn’t allow me to over exert myself on an uphill stretch.  If this was all I would say, the bike did a great job. However, the seat was extremely uncomfortable and I will have to figure out how to adjust it for a better fit or get bike of my own, the seat will not allow me to make my goal of riding to the fountain at the other side of my housing development.

Tomorrow is back to walking and other miscellaneous exercising escalating into a real workout or disappearance of belly fat and man boobs, whichever comes first.  The ultimate goal of this plan is to achieve great fitness and to achieve a body image I’ll be satisfied with I’ll detail this goal later but now I have to post to keep up with my pledge.

Kacey Green
KaceyGreen.com
"This post brought to you by Tangent's randomly firing synapses."

Quick update

Today was a light day, I could not do my walk because of the rain, but I did play mini golf and Ping-Pong with my neighbor’s son, an exercise on its own.  Tomorrow is a day off, I plan to do chores, catch up on feed reading and blog posting, as well as getting my walk in, and working on the light strength training, I’ll be back here tomorrow, until then have a great weekend.

Kacey Green
KaceyGreen.com
"This post brought to you by Tangent's randomly firing synapses."

Quick update on Fighting the Flab

Today I had a sore ankle and decided to just go for a short walk, keep up a good habit, but the music was so uplifting, I ended up doing a full walk.  Tomorrow I should do more light strength training, I just need one of you to lean into me a bit, don’t let me slack off and progress will be steady.

Kacey Green
KaceyGreen.com
"This post brought to you by Tangent's randomly firing synapses."

Fighting the Flab II

I am making slow progress on my self-improvement/fitness plan; remember that is a good thing.  I did get the pushups and such done; the stair climbing never did come to fruition, although I did get a few climbs in outside of the plan.  I also didn’t get any of the jumping jacks and such done, though I did get some dancing in (I feel that counts if done right) and there was an unexpected jog of respectable distance too!

The jog only reminded me of how much I hate walking, I’ve always been a jogger/runner even when I walk it is done at a wicked-brisk pace.  After I get some more money saved up I’ll get some trainers (tennis shoes) and get back in my element, by then the walking and such should bring the lung capacity back to where it needs to be.  Eventually I want to be able to sprint (I don’t know of anyone who can sprint for miles) run/jog the entire distance I’ve been walking.

Over at "Tech with a twist of lime!" I talked about my first day back trading hours for dollars, and I already have a story about a brush with utter danger!

Kacey Green
KaceyGreen.com
"This post brought to you by Tangent's randomly firing synapses."

Homer Simpson ImpressionWhich Wich - Sandhill - Columbia - SCMy ClubMy Meal (spelled my name wrong)The Dreaded Brownie.jpg

Which Wich?

In pursuit of full disclosure, I paid for the following meal out of pocket; GCustom will reimburse me the full amount of my expenditure.  The following review is not a sponsored post.

I had never heard of Which Wich before moving to Columbia, I thought others might like a preview. Yesterday, I ate at Which Wich (WW) at Sand Hills, in Columbia, SC.  My brother has applied for a job here twice (the first time they lost his application), their applications are the traditional paper application plus one of their order bags.   This was unique enough that when combined with the spontaneous sounding name and decorations outside the building, that I made up my mind to try them out (that and my T-Mobile Wing picked up a free WIFI signal [802.11g unsecured]).  Now you know how I discovered this unique(ish it is a franchise) sandwich shop.

Interior:

The interior is like that of Chipotle, stainless steel and pine, but the walls were drywall, painted shades of yellow, with an exposed black painted ceiling and infrastructure (air ducts and electrical conduits etc.).  There is outside dining with umbrella-equipped tables, they seem to be close enough that you would easily hear any concerts that go on in Sand Hills' performance area.  I walked in and identified the only table with a power outlet (in the back grrr), then ordered my food. Like most trendy eateries, they had no issues with me plugging in my laptop; though I would like to see at least one or two more places with outlets.

The Food:

To order your food you pick up a baggie for the staff to put your meal in, on the front are the ordering options, there are over nine types of order baggies, you need to choose the type that corresponds to the sandwich you want, I wanted a Bacon Club so I chose number 8 or 9 "Classics".  After you place your order and pay, fill your drink (unless you ordered a shake), and pick a table, next you wait.  When the order is ready, staff members call your name (they spelled mine all kinds of wrong see photo) and some other words I could not comprehend. You can see the baggie in the picture below.  When they have finished prepping your food they put it in your order baggie, so far everything looked promising. 

Anyone who knows about me and Chipotle or Moe's will know that putting my hot food in an aluminum foil wrapper will activate some of my Pavlovian responses.  The food was pleasantly warm and not scalding, about what you would find at other Tex-Mex joints.

Inside the foil is a wrapped sandwich like you'd expect to find at Subway, Quisnos, or any other sandwich place.  The sandwich was nicely toasted and not overcooked or wilted in any way.  It could have used more flavor, but that might be due to the way I ordered it.  For instance, I don't care for whole tomatoes so if I can request not having any without offending, I will.  The Coke was well chilled and not overly carbonated (cough, Subway, cough) so I did not have to wait long for the bubbles to subside to the point where I could put more beverage in the cup before putting the top on.  I don't care for ice in my drinks due to my teeth's cold sensitivity, but I will tolerate it if not done excessively (here's lookin' at you Sonic) or if I have a straw.  I do not recommend the brownie, it tastes just like any other pre-made, pre-wrapped brownie, just tolerable, at least it was moist, most of these things taste the same but some establishments have notably dry brownies.

Final words:
I would visit again; WW has tasty, warm, wholesome foods. I might even add them to my lunch rotation but the food isn't at a level where I'd make specific trips out to go visit them, they do have a satisfaction guarantee, but I didn't have time to try it out, and it may have been my fault like I said.   I have gone on trips to other sandwich places when I am a craving for a turkey bacon club they might be one of these if my next Wich is better than the one today. The WW website indicates Sand Hills is the only location in the state; you can find all you want about them, with an obvious positive bias from their site.

Returning from the review, I spotted one Highlander hybrid, and three Prius (one twice for four sightings), if any of you are reading this, hello.

Kacey Green
KaceyGreen.com
"This post brought to you by Tangent's randomly firing synapses."

Fighting the flab

I have been neglecting my fitness lately and decided to get back on the ball extremely slowly, tonight I walked and listened to my Creative Zen Vision:M for a smidge over an hour.  In the morning I plan to do a handful of sit-ups/crunches (whichever is easier tomorrow), and pushups. Then, some jumping jacks and stair climbing (on a real flight of stairs) maybe a jog, I’d take the dog too but she’s too easily distracted for bringing along for fitness and she too needs some fitness training, (she’ll be next after I make some progress beyond laughable).  I will then do my blogging and set some fitness goals for the next week and two weeks, then some long-term goals, using the short-term goals to achieve the distant ones.

Wish me well.

I've enabled the Contact Us buttons/pages on this site and GRLT, so readers can interact directly with me (mostly because this blog doesn't have a comment feature yet).

Kacey Green
KaceyGreen.com
"This post brought to you by Tangent's randomly firing synapses."

My first website review

SuperStar blog's logo

SuperStar blog's logo

Update 2:
The site reviewed below no longer exists and was replaced by a site containing objectionable content (to both myself and the person who pointed this out). The links have been removed and the article will remain for posterity.

Superstar's Blog asked for a review of her blog, so here goes. Like many Americans, I only know the English language, although I can recognize bits of French. At first glance I see a very clean layout, and a great color scheme. The pages take way too long to load, but I'm sure that's an easy fix. There is plenty of content and that's the key to a successful blog. She also doesn't use the No-Follow tag. Allowing links to be followed is a great way to get other bloggers to take an extra second to post on topics they have opinions about but not necessarily strong enough to take the time to craft a response. This also gives the visiting blogger a bit of a reward for participating, and the original blogger gets additional intelligent responses that contribute to the sense of community at their site.

The site looked so good that I took the time to run it through Google translation, which made the site even slower to load than it was originally. Google gave up twice, seriously Google, it only took 35 seconds to load each page, why give up? Therefore, I can't comment on what the translated site looks like because it never translated.

Final words, Superstar, you have a great looking site, improve the page load times and you'll be on your way to becoming an A-List blogger in your language.

Update:

Superstar has responded on her site, I have copied it over to GRLT.com for archival.  She has improved load times of her site in FireFox, after her site was down for a while this morning, I think it was the whole server because I can't access the root of her domain either.

Thank you Superstar, we really appreciate the review.

 

Kacey Green
KaceyGreen.com
"This post brought to you by Tangent's randomly firing synapses."

No bagel for you! In South Carolina

McDonald's Bacon Egg and Cheese Bagel

McDonald's Bacon Egg and Cheese Bagel

According to one employee, most of the McDonald's in South Carolina no longer offer bagels for breakfast. Personally, I did not care for the taste the bagels at first because of what I thought was butter, McDonald's actually calls this breakfast sauce. Once I started ordering the bagels without the "breakfast sauce", the bacon egg and cheese bagel became my favorite McDonald's breakfast. For now, I'm going to say this is just a rumor because I have no way for me to verify this claim. She also said that they're no longer going to carry the steak products either. I know McDonald's is not very environmentally friendly, or socially responsible as a restaurant, but they're fast cheap and easy. What is your preferred fast food breakfast when you're on the run? When you're in a hurry do you still take into account the environmental, or social responsibility of the establishment? Would you do when a merchant stops carrying a product you like?

Kacey Green
KaceyGreen.com
"This post brought to you by Tangent's randomly firing synapses."

Google finally figures out people associate them with search

Google Reader gets updates and polish

I logged into Google reader yesterday and noticed that the "loading" screen was different, but that's not all the numbers of items available have been bumped up from 100+ to 1000+. "But wait there's more!" this little gem was also on the screen

You might say yeah, so what, Google's businesses are search and advertising, and you would be right. Finally, they have made it possible to search within the Google Reader (GR) interface. This couldn't have come at a better time, as I was about to dump GR because I'd fallen behind on my feed reading and they were auto expiring my content, but now all I have to do is whip up a quick query and my posts come streaming back faster than I can blink. There also seems to be a smidge more vertical space to work with, and when you are working on an entry-level wide-screen, you need all the vertical space savings you can get.

google-reader-has-search-now.jpg

I'm not quite sure what I'm going to use this blog for yet, it still needs a focus, right now it is holding musings that are far too random for GRLT or GChybrid. Maybe this will become like John Chow's site where I post whatever the hell I feel like. I'm nearly positive this should be a personal blog seeing the domain name is somewhat personal. I am not a cussing person but also not a saint so I may let some PG phrases slip here, unlike on the business pages where language needs to be rated E or G, if I cross the line, just let me know. 

Speaking of JC, as an entry to his latest contest, I'd have to say what's holding me back from daily posting is: I've picked a semi-restrictive niche and sometimes I'm too timid to post what's on my mind, I don't know where this came from, because at GRLT's old incarnation I'd do it in a heartbeat. The other thing holding me back is I do too much tweaking, one day I'd post and the next I'd tweak, on an alternating fashion like that, but if I'd post more, more people would show and I can tweak and get better feedback in batches like every Saturday or something like that. Therefore, from now, I resolve to post once a day for 20 days straight here and on GRLT.com. The goal is to form a new habit that feels as natural as waking up, and eating. I will not let work or family distract me from my goal. (Family is still before all else, I'm just going to protect some time) Please understand if I put up shorter posts, I will still be thoughtful but possibly more brief than normal, this is all for you the readers.

This site is also the testing site for GCustom, GRLT and the hybrid sisters (GC and FL hybrid). As a testing site you will notice it is slightly fresher looking but also lacking some of the features you've come to expect at a GCustom (GC) site. More importantly this place probably has features you have been asking me for at the other sites. You have come to expect quality form GCustom (GC) sites, so I am working on ease-of-access making all the content highly accessible, useful functionality, and lastly making it all look good, this will soon be one of the most advanced and pleasurable GC sites on the web.

I will be re-enabling the contact pages on all of my GC sites shortly, so that readers will be able to send me email right from the sites. The benefit is that this webmaster won't have to worry about spam bots picking up his email address (even though the older sites all have anti spam technology for when someone posts an email addy right on the page) Spam-bots just make me queasy, you?

Until I get comments enabled on this site, feel free to contact me any way you know how, ex. Email, phone, on the street, I would particularly like blog-to-blog communication to happen every now and again.

Kacey Green
KaceyGreen.com
"This post brought to you by Tangent's randomly firing synapses."