Jul 20
ErinGarbage
This morning my body fought back to the weight loss and the scale tipped back into 194 lbs. That was three pounds more than yesterday morning weight and I think the potatoes I ate in the beef nilaga has something to do with it. No biggie though since that would still put my loss at around 3kilos.
With two healthy eaters, the 3/4 kilo beef that went into the pot had no real chance. Couple that with a dipping sauce made of patis and some taiwan chilis. Good thing we had no calamansi in the house otherwise the nilaga wouldn’t have made it out of lunch. 🙂
General Motors Diet for Day 7
Today your food intake will consist of brown rice, fruit juices and all the vegetables you care to consume.
How and Why it works
Day Seven finished off the program like a good cigar used to finish off Victorian meals, except much healthier. You have your system under control and it should thank you for the flushing and cleaning you just gave it.
Last day! Huzzaaahhh!!!!
ciao!
Jul 19
ErinGarbage
The feast day has ended with me licking my fingers to clean up the remaining juices dribbling from the burger I just consumed. 🙂
Fare for breakfast and lunch was the burger patty that Neth prepared the night before, sandwiched between Gardenia whole wheat buns, lettuce and lots of tomatoes. Very delicious and very filling even if the burger preparation is tedious since the buns are a little on the small side. The patties were made to fit but since I have six buns and four patties I had to ration them. There is no shortage on tomatoes though as that is one of the main fare for the day.
For dinner we didn’t push through with ordering burger from Grams because we wouldn’t make it on the showing of the Batman: The Dark Knight movie (yes, we watched it last night and it was great although really dark for kids). We just bought two McDonalds quarter-pounders without cheese and two bottles of mineral water. When we got home I finished the last burger from Neth’s stash and called it a day.
For the weigh-in, I am currently at 191 lbs so the total weight loss is now at 9 lbs. 🙂
General Motors Diet for Day 6
Beef and vegetables. Today you may eat an unlimited amount of beef and vegetables. Eat to your hearts content.
How and Why it works
Day Six is similar to day five, Iron and proteins from beef, Vitamins and fibre from vegetables. By now your system is in a total weight loss inclination. There should be a noticeable difference in the way you look today, compared to day one.
Beef nilaga anyone? 🙂
ciao!
Jul 18
ErinGarbage
I SURVIVED DAY 4!
I don’t know if its the digestive cleansing but I didn’t experience any looseness of bowel movement. That even worried me up to before I went to sleep because I was expecting that I will wake up in the ungodliest hours of the early morning to go to the bathroom and relieve myself of all those fiber. Thankfully I didn’t although what I excreted has a peculiar color. 😛
Anyway, the previous day was all about bananas and milk. Since my stomach has a strong reaction to milk, I opted to go with yogurt. I bought two kinds of yogurt: banana flavored and creamy. My wife favors the creamy variety but I find the flavored yogurts better.
This morning when I weighed in, the needle was between 191 and 192 pounds. My wife jokes that I was cheating with the weight reading because she only lost 3 pounds. I think I just have more excess fat to lose. I am only keeping track so I can have something to post here. In the previous week I didn’t check until the week was over. 🙂
Post Day 4: Weighing in at 192 pounds, total loss is around 8 pounds.
GM Diet for Day 5
Today is feast day. You will eat beef and tomatoes. Eat two 10 oz. portions of lean beef. Hamburger is OK. Combine this with six whole tomatoes. On day five you must increase your water intake by one quart. This is to cleanse your system of the uric acid you will be producing.
How and Why it works
Beef and tomatoes. The beef is for iron and proteins, the tomatoes are for digestion and fibre. Lots and lots of water purifies your system. You should notice colourless urine today. Your allowance calls for the equivalent of five “quarter ponders”. Do not feel you have to eat all this beef. You must eat the six tomatoes.
I like day 5. 🙂
ciao!
Jul 17
ErinGarbage
I was too sleepy this morning when I weighed in so I cannot decide if the scale was tipping at 195 or 196 pounds. No skin off my nose as I am just happy that I am already halfway through this diet week. 🙂
Yesterday’s fare was an apple in the morning, two servings of chopsuey for lunch, some grapes for my afternoon snack, and the stir-fry left-overs and another apple for dinner. As I was saying to my wife, I think the thing that makes this second attempt more tolerable is that I have too many things to do that I am too busy to think of my stomach. I was planning to open up a corn kernel can for my snack but it was too tedious and I ended up finishing the grapes that I was supposed to eat during lunch.
General Motors Diet for Day 4
Bananas and milk. Today you will eat as many as eight bananas and drink three glasses of milk. This will be combined with the special soup which may be eaten in limited quantities.
How and Why it works
Bananas, milk and soup sound the strangest and least desirable. You’re in for a surprise. You probably will not eat all the bananas allowed. But they are there for the potassium you have lost and the sodium you may have missed the past three days. You will notice a definite loss of desire for sweets. You will be surprised how easy this day will go.
Day 4 is the scariest part for me because I have a low tolerance for non-processed milk products. Combine that with bananas and I think I will spend some considerable time in the “john”.
ciao!
Jul 16
ErinGarbage
Weighing-in this morning, the rusty scale states that I have lost somewhere between 3 and 4 pounds. Neth says that life is unfair because she isn’t losing anything and I already have this haggard look. I don’t know if I can attribute that to the diet or to the work stress. Maybe it also means that I have more excess fat to burn and my body is starting to convert them into usable energy.
Yesterday was a pain because the local cafeteria only had ampalaya (bitter gourd) dishes and the way they prepare it leaves much of the bitter juices in the slices. I already invested way enough effort that I decided to continue with the diet and swallow the ampalaya slices like a man. *sniff, sniff*
Dinner was a blast since Neth cooked Tofu Stir-Fry which was very delicious and filling at the same time. I think ate too much since I woke this morning with a a pressing need to burp. 🙂
Post Day 2: Weighed in at 197lbs. Feeling groggy due to lack of sleep but that is just about it.
Current weight loss: 3 lbs.
General Motors Diet for Day 3
A mixture of fruits and vegetables of your choice. Any amount, any quantity. No bananas yet. No potatoes today.
How and Why it works
Eliminates the potato because you get your carbohydrates from the fruits. You system is now prepared to start burning excess pounds. You will still have cravings which should start to diminish by day four.
ciao!
Jul 15
ErinGarbage
I opted to write the update on the next day to give my body enough time to process what it has been tortured subjected in the previous day. The diet assumes that the maximum amount of weight that can be lost on the first day is 3 pounds. Our rusty err trusty weighing scale said that I am below 200lbs. I couldn’t see clearly but I think it was at 2 pounds but I would say that losing 1 pound is a safe and conservative bet.
Yesterday I had the craving to eat rice in the morning since I just had a pear. I went to the Robinson’s Pioneer grocery during lunch time and bought some grapes for our dinner and a couple of apples. I also found the cut portions (those that are already near the end of the ripe stage 😉 ) and bought a pack of watermelon, a pack of pineapples, and a pack of turnips. The pre-cut packs only cost me around 50 pesos. I ended up having the watermelon and half of the pineapples for lunch before I was subjected to a sequence of long meetings. At night (during the drive home) my wife was giving me grapes and I finished half of the turnips. It would have been sweet if I wasn’t munching on the turnip strips like a rabbit.
As I have stated in the bitesize posting, the day is pretty much not as painful as the first time I tried the diet. I am off to day 2!
Post Day 1: Weighed in at 199lbs. Not feeling super but not deprived either.
General Motors Diet for Day 2
All vegetables. You are encouraged to eat until you are stuffed with all the raw or cooked vegetables of your choice. There is no limit on the amount or type. For your complex carbohydrate, you will start day two with a large baked potato for breakfast. You may top the potato with one pat of butter.
How and Why it works
Starts with a fix of complex carbo-hydrates coupled with an oil dose. This is taken in the morning for energy and balance. The rest of day two consists of vegetables which are virtually calorie free and provide essential nutrients and fibre.
yum.
ciao!
Jul 13
ErinGarbage
Ok, so I was finally coerced to try going into a diet again by my wife. My weight has plateaued in the 200lbs figure but a lot of people has stated that I look like pufferfish so off I go again into a week-long General Motors Weight Loss Diet. I already went through this last year which was pure pain for a voracious eater like me but then again I lost around 10 pounds in a week which is pretty nifty. Even if I don’t lose any pounds then it is still alright since this is also a cleansing diet, especially the dreaded fourth day wherein I can only take bananas and milk. Ok, replace milk with yogurt since I am lactose intolerant and I don’t want to spend the whole day in the thinking throne. 😉
I decided to blog about it because I read in a getting-it-done blog that it helps to blog something if you need some extra boost in achieving your goals. Even if you don’t have any readers then it would still instill a fear of failure since nobody wants to be a failure in the public eye. I might even use the bitesize blog (located in the far right of this blog) to post some mid-day updates.
So here it goes::)
Day 0: Weighed-in at 200lbs. Still feeling normal. We still have that Shakey’s pizza to finish for dinner. 🙂
General Motors Diet for Day 1
All fruits except bananas. Your first day will consist of all the fruits you want. It is strongly suggested that you consume lots of melons the first day. Especially watermelon and a loupe. If you limit your fruit consumption to melons, your chances of losing three lbs. on first day are very good.
How and Why it works
You are preparing your system for the upcoming programme. Your only source of nutrition is fresh or canned fruits. Fruits are nature’s perfect food. They provide everything you could possibly want to sustain life except total balance and variety.
Unfortunately I hate melons (except watermelon) due to a early childhood psychological event. 🙂
ciao!
Jun 16
ErinFun Stuff, Garbage, Work palmface, Work
I started the day in a bad mood, again due to draconian IT policies in the office but this real-life instance made the day a bit better and worse at the same time.
Noticing that I am always a couple of minutes early for international conference calls, I asked my counterpart for their local time and found out that my system clock is 12 minutes in advance. I asked around and found that we have varying system clocks so I asked Mike, a junior member of my team, to log a support ticket for the steps to configure our machines to synchronize with an office NTP server as I know the local domain server has that service. I know because I already did it once using w32tm on my previous project but I can’t remember the name of the server that I used. Besides, it’s the support personnel’s job.
After some time, I was already in the call. I noticed that somebody was hovering near my station. He said something about a clock so I let him do his stuff on my machine since I only need the phone. I had to restrain from laughing when the support engineer started moving my trackball like a wireless mouse. Since if I let this continue I might blurt out laughing in the call, I just pointed to the clock and when he nodded I took over the trackball and double-clicked the system tray clock. I was already wondering what options are there for NTP synchronization since I already inspected it a while ago and didn’t see anything.
And then the unthinkable happened, the support engineer adjusted my clock by 8 minutes and pressed the Apply button. I was shocked but couldn’t say anything as my Madrid counterpart was discussing something important. I just heard the engineer talking to Mike about closing the ticket so I frantically waved my hand to get their attention, and hastily scribbled the characters “N T P ?” in a scratch paper. I just let Mike do the talking as I needed to focus on the call.
After the call I asked Mike what happened and he said the engineer stated that he just took a look at his system time before coming over and synchronized all of our machine clocks. Our system clocks are still surprisingly different (duhh!) but the engineer apparently said that it’s OK to have some discrepancies. Millisecond discrepancies perhaps may be alright but a full minute? And I didn’t know that we have a gifted engineer in the company that has his body clock attuned with the network’s NTP server.
I feel so safe in the reliable hands of our support personnel. /lol
ciao!
Jun 06
ErinGarbage, Work
Scenario At Work: A required resource service is not functioning properly.
Manager: Get somebody to fix it. ASAP!
Me: Will do.
[Me contacts internal support]
Me: Did we change something in the configuration? Product X is borked.
Internal Support: Nope. Everything is dandy. Try contacting the provider.
[Me contacts provider’s support hot line]
Me: Your service is not working properly. Please check.
ABC Support: Thank you for contacting Company ABC’s support hotline where (long spiel about how they are $DEITY’s gift to my poor existence). We’ll ask our technical team to look at it. Here is your cookie reference number.
[after an hour]
Manager: Well?
Me: (looking up from the pile of tasks being worked on) Err, ABC support hasn’t called back yet. Ill follow it up.
Manager: Should have done that eons ago…
Me: right! (whispering inside my head: and i am just twiddling my thumbs here… )
[calls ABC hot line]
Me: Im calling regarding reference number 123456. Any updates?
ABC Support: Thank you for contacting Company ABC’s support hot line where (long spiel about how they are $DEITY’s gift to my poor existence). Tech team has stated that they don’t see any problem with your service. It must be something internal (read between the lines: you are a stupid customer. all of your problems are your imagination. ITS NOT OUR FAULT, ITS YOURS). Please check your lines again.
Me: [groan]
[calls internal support]
Me:ABC said there is no problem from their side. Are you sure there isn’t any test that we need to do to isolate this?
Internal Support: We already executed all tests. Everything is still dandy.
Me: (whispering in my head: Oh crap) Uhhh, ok.
[puts down phone, somebody speaks up from behind]
Manager: Well?
Me: (startled) uhh, wait a second.
[pulls open the drawer, takes out the gun, points it in my temple and pulls the trigger]
Problem solved.
Note: Manager, ABC company, and Internal support are all fictitious characters. But they represent somebody real though may not be their literal counterparts.
ciao!
May 11
ErinFLOSS, Garbage
I just learned that German word and wanted to use it in a post. Upon Google search reveals that it meant current intellectual trend. 🙂
The current Philippine Linux User Group site is experiencing a slow renaissance of some sorts thanks to the efforts of Gabriel Mercado and company. The latest addition to the site is the aggregation F/LOSS related posts of some PLUGger bloggers. In a post to the list, Gabriel posted the FAQ of the aggregation as
- *What the heck is this?* - This is the aggregated feed of a few
gentlemen PLUGgers / Bloggers who've been kind enough to share their Linux /
FOSS or otherwise PLUG related feeds with the rest of us. Namely, they are
Messrs. Anuerin Diaz, Elijah Alcantara, Manny Amador (Phnix), Michael Cole,
Migs Paraz, Noel Bautista and Zak B. Elep.
- *What's it for?* - Several purposes. Primarily, to achieve 'zeitgest'
so that we may be able to know what things are going on in and around
PLUGgers minds, what's keeping them occupied, and so on. Secondarily, it
provides content for our website. Once syndicated, said content will also
help promote PLUG by spreading our news, info, howtos, etc., onto the
general blogosphere. It can also help us figure out who are actively doing
FOSS work out there, as well as provide a central repository of all things
PLUG related. Not to mention of course, end hunger and promote world peace.
Take note however that each post still belongs to each author and does not reflect the official stand of PLUG (the organization). If I mess up here in the capsule then the blame will all stop here.
Subscribe now! It’s a fun way to get an insight on what is currently happening on the local Linux mindsphere. Unless you have a local RSS reader, I am recommending the Google Reader since it is free and pretty nifty.
ciao!
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