Michael McDaniel’s Dawning Awareness

Weight lost: 3.4 lbs
Total: 8.4 lbs

I’ve added yogurt and milk to my list of available foods. So far, I’ve had no trouble with hunger to report, as long as I don’t exceed 4 hours between “meals.” I am experiencing a lot of sight-hunger—food I really want when I see it. Things like Swiss chocolate, hummus, and cookie dough. Oh, and good ice cream. Just thinking about going to the Outback Steakhouse (which has lots of meat and vegetable options) makes me want their premium vanilla ice cream rolled in toasted coconut and placed on a warm, chewy, pecan brownie! Mmmm.

But I have done a good job resisting temptation thus far—only 1/2 tsp chocolate consumed in violation of plan.

Joel Spolsky has a fun-to-read article on how everyone thinks they’re hiring the top 1% of software engineers, but nobody actually is.

I started the 20/20 Lifestyles program at the Pro Club last week. It’s a nutrition and exercise lifestyle modification program that lasts a total of 20 weeks.

On the exercise front, I meet with a personal trainer 3 times a week for cardio and weight training. It’s a big time commitment, but I expect it to be ultimately worth it.

For nutrition, I’m following a protocol designed to identify which foods trigger hunger especially quickly for me. I’ll be able to limit or avoid those foods going forward. It starts with a week of detox (during which I ate only protein shakes and meat). Today, I’m adding back in most vegetables and next week, I’ll add dairy. It’s kinda fun doing a science experiment with my own body. I wouldn’t have the discipline to do this without the structure of the program.

During the first week, I lost 5 pounds, which is probably mostly water (I’m drinking 64oz/day which causes the body to stop retaining water), but I’ll take it!

As my reward, I’ll be having baklava for dinner.

Sorry, MapQuest, your lunch has just been eaten by Google. Check out the pretty drop shadows and fancy drag-scrolling.

It doesn’t allow zooming to a specific location nor does it link directly to the Terra Server for satellite views, but they could have that done by dinnertime if they thought about it.

Update: Joel Webber has a great look under the covers at how this works.

The U.S. mints 10 billion pennies every year. What does that look like? Have a look.

I’m no artist, but this guy definitely is. He’s got a sand table on top of an overhead projector. He paints pictures in the sand over the course of several minutes, transforming one picture into the next. Very cool.