digitalBush

According to this USA Today article from 2005,31% of the US is obese (30+ lbs above a healthy weight).  In 2002, employers and privately insured families spent $36.5 billion on obesity linked illness.

All of that money is going to treat illness that is largely avoidable.  Seriously, we are doing this to ourselves.  If you want to know why healthcare costs so much, look in the mirror.  Are you obese?  If so, you are placing yourself at a higher risk for all sorts of nasty diseases and adding to the problem that is rising healthcare costs.

I'm sad to say that I'm in that obese category.  It sucks, but it's just the facts.  I've already expressed my feelings about obesity and how I see it.  The good news is that I'm young and that I was able to see where my lifestyle was taking me.  I have time.  We all have time.  We all just need to realize that we can do something about it and move in that direction.

I'm making an effort to improve my health.  Not only will I have a longer life for it, I'll have more money in my pockets.  Please join me, the world will be a better place for it.

If you want to follow my weight loss journey, please have a look at my other blog, geek into shape.

Ashley and I used to eat out way too much.  It was more of a time thing to us.  By the time we worked 8 hours and did our hour commute home, neither of us wanted to cook a meal.  There was a point where I sat down and realized that we were spending at least $25 per meal for dinner at least 4 times a week!  For those of you counting at home, we were spending $100 or more per week eating out.  Somehow we were doing that and still spending $100/week at the grocery store.

Now we're down to spending $100 per week for groceries and eating out only once a week.  We're easily saving $75/week just by eating at home.  Over the span of a year, that's $3,900 saved!  So, eat at home and save some dough.  You'll have a fatter wallet and eat healthier, more reasonable portions.

I read this post from Ted Dziuba and got a chuckle.  After laughing for a bit, I started thinking about my recent pains in making the switch to 64 bitness.

I recently got the opportunity to upgrade development machines at work.  Finally, I was able to free myself from a 4-year old handed down laptop from the CEO!  Nothing short of a quad core machine would do.  While I'm at it, why not throw 4 gigs of memory in there and go to town.  Going 64 bit became a must if I was going to make use of the entire 4 gigs.

In the past, I had heard horror stories of driver issues involved with going x64.  Knowing what I might be getting into, I was pleasantly surprised when the install of Vista went off without a hitch.  More importantly, all of the drivers installed without issue.  Sweet!

Being in my x86 world, I never had to think about the ramifications of leaving the default platform target to "Any CPU".  Once you venture into x64 land, strange things will happen.  My favorite Visual Studio feature, Edit and Continue, won't work when the app is running 64-bit.  Oledb connections to csv files won't work for me unless I'm running 32-bit.  Also, every once in a while an app I'm debugging will just kill over unexpectedly.  100% of the time I can fix any kind of weird unexplained issue I'm having can be fixed just by switching the platform target to x86.

With all of that said, I'm still very happy with the performance of my system.  It's not a big deal to change the default platform target.  Eventually all of these wrinkles will be ironed out and 32-bit systems will be a thing of the past.  It might take a while, but at least I'm helping move in that direction.

One thing that I firmly believe in is buying quality things.  I tend to do this on more expensive things, particularly tools and electronics.  Quality pieces just outlast cheaper made products.  In the end you save money by not buying things twice.  As a general rule, I try to buy items made in the USA.

This Sunday is a bonus for you because I have a second Sunday saver to share.  Not only should you buy quality equipment, but you need to take care of it.  Keep your stuff clean and maintained and you will have it around for a long time.  I have tools from my grandfather that I still use.  I hope one day I can pass them on to my kids.

So, buy good stuff and take care of it.  I don't have a dollar value for you on this.  Just do your research and make your purchases wisely.  Pay a little more up front and enjoy twice the life compared to inferior products.

Earlier in the year, I had been toying around with the idea of starting up a separate blog just dedicated to my weight loss.  I got together with a friend of mine and we've started just that.  My goals for the new site are simple:

• Have a better outlet to share my weight loss story.
• Discuss online tools for tracking weight loss, nutrition, and/or exercise.
• Share information that works and is based on facts.  No snake oil.

With that said, I present to you: GeekIntoShape.com

Please head on over there and check it out.  Hopefully you will find George as funny as I do.  If you are interested, please subscribe to the Geek Into Shape Feed.  The site is very much a work in progress, so please keep that in mind.  George and I are very excited about this project and we hope that it will be a useful resource.