digitalBush

I'm typing this blog post from Google's new Chrome browser.  The interface is aesthetically pleasing, but there's more under the hood that will get us where we're going.  

Google's latest development looks to enhance the overall browsing experience by sand-boxing the sites that you visit.  This is important because no longer will a poorly coded site take down the entire browser no more than a poorly coded program will crash the OS.  In my eyes that comparison is ultimately where this browser is heading.  I foresee Google turning Chrome into a bootable browser making low powered machines a thin-client to their web offerings.  

Everyone has been gawking at the built-in task manager, but it's important to notice some of the subtle things this browser is doing.  Right clicking on the url bar gives an option for paste and go.  Doing a find in the document gives indicators in the scroll bar to help you find your way to what you want.  Tabs are draggable and can even be detached from the current window.  There's quite a few goodies here for a beta product.

I'm glad to see so much competition in the browser market.  This encourages innovation and emphasizes the importance of standards compliance.  Right now Google Chrome is just beta, but it shows some promise.  I'm looking forward to watching it's progress.

This is cross-posted from geekintoshape.com.  Since I started this weight loss goal on this blog, I'll continue to post my monthly updates through the end of the year.  If you want to read more about my weight loss adventures, please head on over to Geek Into Shape.

So, last month I sucked it up and only lost one pound. Since I decided to run a 5K race today (more on that later), I spent all of August getting ready for it so I wouldn't die. 3 runs a week sure does help the weight come off! See for yourself.

269.2 lbs! That makes my weight loss for the month about 5.5 lbs. I'm very satisfied with the results and hope that I can continue my momentum into September.

It's not all good news though. I fell off towards the end of the month due to me stressing out. I ended up eating out a lot more than usual at lunch as a result. Also, the running makes me want to snack more and that's not too good either.

My plan for this month is to continue with the running and to try to cut back my eating to what it was. For this month my goal is to lose another 5 lbs.

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.