I may be a loser, but I'm not the biggest loser...

My workplace is having a biggest loser contest - one of those contests where you compete with your coworkers to lose the highest percentage of body weight.

I'm not doing very well. The only good thing I can say is that I haven't actually gained any weight yet, so I haven't had to pay any penalties. But I've lost a grand total of 5 pounds over the course of 6 weeks or so, going from 150.8 to 144.8 . They aren't publishing percent lost beyond the weekly winners, so I have no idea how I'm doing compared to other people besides the people who are winning.

There's a pretty good reason that I'm not doing too well - I'm not trying very hard. I'm not really doing anything additional. I am trying to keep up with my normal eating habits and exercise routines, but I'm not really cutting back any more or exercising anymore. Every now and then I'll do an extra 15 minutes of cardio - an hour and 45 minutes instead of my usual hour and a half - but that's about it.

About 6 months ago, I decided I wanted to lose some weight, and dropped about 10 pounds in a month - by dropping my caloric intake by about 1000 calories, and increasing my exercise to 2 hours a day. The problem was that I was miserable - I was always hungry, I couldn't enjoy any of the foods I liked, and the extra gym time meant I wasn't getting home until 8pm or later. I decided that it wasn't worth it.

Now that I'm taking some grad classes that are eating into my time, the extra exercise really isn't easily achievable. And while I feel like I could stand to lose a few more pounds, and get rid of a little bit of the spare tire I still carry, I'm pretty close to a healthy weight - I'm in the normal category for my height, although I'm very close to the overweight mark. But I'm also within about 5 pounds of being the lightest I've been probably since grade school. I'm a 34" waist - which isn't really something to brag about, but I was a 46" 6 years ago.

So I'm having a hard time convincing myself it's worth trying to lose more. I'm also trying to figure out why I entered in the first place.

Musings from the snowpocalyse..

So except for about an hour spent shoveling my walkway and clearing the two feet of snow off the top of the heat pump in the hopes of keeping my electric bill below what my car payments used to be, I haven't left the house in 36 hours - and except for cleaning off the truck tomorrow, probably won't for the next 36, or more if school is closed on Monday.

So what have I done with my time? Probably not as much as I should have. I got some little things done - set up a laptop for one of our directors at work (it's been backordered, and finally came in 10 minutes before our early closing on Friday), straightened up my home office a little, got some stuff together for a swap meet next weekend, did the reading for my classes, typed up some eBay descriptions, paid some bills, and installed all the OS updates on 3 of my computers. I also made a crock pot of chili and a dozen muffins. If I'm off Monday, I'm baking a cake. Because I have a box of cake mix that's been sitting in my pantry forever, and because I'll be bored. And because I like cake.

Which brings me to one of the perils of being snowed in. When I'm bored, and home, I eat. I also haven't exercised much, since the gym has been closed on account of snow. Which is especially bad since I entered our work "biggest loser" competition. I wasn't planning on putting a whole lot of effort into trying to win, because that would require me to pretty much not eat anything that tastes good and spend all my free time working out. But at this rate I think I'll actually end up gaining weight. I've put in some time on my basement treadmill, but not as much as I would have if I'd went to the gym.

There are plenty of things I should do but haven't - cleaning, starting a paper for one of my classes, figuring out how to move this blog since blogger is shutting off ftp usage at the end of March. But there is something about being snowed in that makes me even lazier than usual, and I've spent most of my free time watching stuff off my DVR, obsessively checking my email and facebook, and letting the cat nap on my lap.

I've lived alone for the last couple years, and most of the time I like not having roommates - I don't need to share freezer space, or clean the bathroom, or wear pants. But on days like today, where the closest thing I have to human contact is facebook, I kind of miss having someone to talk to. It's also one of the times I most hate being single - being snowed in with someone you love would be a whole lot more
enjoyable.

One smart thing I did was actually go grocery shopping on Wednesday night, as soon as I heard the threats of Snowmegedon. I had needed to go soon anyway, and figured if I was going to be snowed in I might as well pick up the ingredients to make chili and muffins, and make sure I had enough kibble for Nibbler, my carefully trained attack kitty - plus Diet Mountain Dew was on sale, and I was down to my last 5 or so cases. My 9pm trip to the Weis was surprisingly calm - unlike the stories I've heard of people who went Thursday night. Normally, I suck at planning ahead, so I'm proud of myself for actually doing it for once. If only I could plan my career or my interaction with the opposite sex as well.

In defense of bottom feeding...

I had mentioned the show Pawn Stars a few days ago to a coworker, and he grumbled something about how he hated the store owners on the show because they usually make lowball offers to people selling them stuff - people who often desperately need the money.

I like the show, but I also see a little of myself in the main characters. If you've watched the show, they will often get an estimate from a pro of what something is worth. The person selling the item will then ask for close to that value, and the owners will usually offer them about half. He'll usually point out that the top value is usually what it would fetch at an auction, which would charge a serious commission, that he's got to pay the costs of running a store and still make a profit, and that he may have to sit on the item for a while before a buyer interested in it comes along.

I'm pretty sympathetic to these arguments. And if you've watched the show enough, there are times he's gotten burned - bought something that turned out to be unrepairable, or not sell-able, or stolen.

The way I see it, what he offers is liquidity - cash on the spot, hundred dollar bills. Sure, you could get more on eBay or at an auction, but that takes work. eBay isn't too hard once you get the hang of it, but there is a learning curve if you've never used it, and people are reluctant to buy from someone with no feedback. There are also a ton of ways to get ripped off if you don't know how to protect yourself as a seller. And auction houses and consignment sellers charge heavily - I was surprised when a faculty member at work asked me about selling some stuff on eBay for him - and told me that he had previously used a consignment store that charged 40% of the selling price.

Maybe I'm just rationalizing, though. The thing is that I've bought plenty of things at estate sales and auctions, yard sales, bankruptcy and going out of business auctions, and otherwise profited off people's bad fortunes. But it's not like my actions caused the death of the lady whose Onkyo receiver I bought from her sister for $3 and eBayed for $55, or caused the criminal actions of the bankrupt nonprofit whose 8 rack-mount servers I bought for $5 each and resold for $75 - $150 a piece. The way I see it, I'm offering liquidity, giving individuals and creditors money for something that they otherwise wouldn't want. And I take my share of risk - I've bought tons of stuff that turned out to be broken, missing parts, or not worth what I thought. I've also bought plenty of stuff that turned out to be harder to sell, including a new in box APC rack mount UPS for $250 - despite the fact that it's normally an $800 piece of equipment, it's still sitting in my basement because I haven't found a buyer yet, and it weights a metric crapload.

Pawnshop owners and eBayers might benefit from people's mistakes or bad luck, but they didn't cause it, and they perform a necessary function in converting assets into cash. Much like debt collectors and repo men, they perform a function that isn't always pretty, but is essential to the economy.

Back to school...

When you work for a college like I do, the start of the semester means thousands of students flooding the school, professors coming back to their offices after weeks away, and a flurry of effort to make sure that they are taken care of.

But this semester, it also means I'm going back to school, for the first time in two and half years, when I finished up my MBA.

See, a few months back I looked at my life and decided since it wasn't really going anywhere, personally or professionally, I should try something new. One of the perks of working for a college is that I get to take classes basically free. We've got a number of grad programs, but I didn't really think I wanted to take any more business classes, and I didn't want to get swamped in code in computer science. So I decided to apply for our Educational Technology program, which is aimed at getting teachers familiar enough with using technology in the classroom to take a lead role in their schools. Granted, I'm not a teacher, and the program is aimed at k-12, not college, where I work, but I figured there would be some crossover.

There were other reasons - we got new management a few years back, and one of their priorities has been on how students and faculty use technology in the classroom - much of the new opportunities have been aimed at that. So I figured enrolling in the program would show I was interested in that kind of thing. It also hasn't escaped my thinking that most teachers are women, and that, well, this could be a good way to meet girls. While I don't expect to get a date out of this, I figure meeting new people can't hurt. Plus, it will give me something to do - I like to be busy, and figure time in class or doing homework is probably a better use of my time than random web surfing.

But now that it's starting, I'm starting to second-guess myself. I figure I won't fit in - the only non-teacher in a class of teachers - and that probably won't endear me to the faculty either. My final in one of the classes is the first day of a conference that I would otherwise be able to go to in Vegas, related to my job- so now the classes are hurting my career, because I can't seem to make my boss understand why skipping a final is not a good idea.

But we'll see. I figure if I'm too miserable or suck too much at it, I can always stop taking classes - all I basically lose are a few hours twice a week for class, plus however long I spend doing homework. And maybe it won't suck and I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Business models that puzzle me... GPS companies...

On New Year's Day, I went on a hike with an old college roommate and a bunch of his friends. Afterwords, we went out to grab something to eat. Since I had my Tom-Tom, and drive a bright yellow truck, one of the women who went followed me. Unfortunately, the interchange that Tom-Tom sent me on was redesigned after my maps were made. I went the wrong way, she went the right way, and I ended up gettting there about 15 minutes late, although part of that was that I had to stop and get gas since I was almost out.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that I ended up ordering a new Tom-Tom. eCost had a refurbed Tom-Tom One - a slightly updated version of the one I have now, with a better mounting bracket - for ~$60 shipped after rebate. It includes new maps for the first 30 days, so I'll get a current map. I figure that I can probably sell my old TomTom for $30 or so at a Hamfest or on eBay, so I'll have a new GPS with new maps for $30.

What is odd is if I wanted to buy new maps for my existing TomTom, it's $55. They do have a map update service where you get 4 new maps in a year for $40, which sounds like a great deal until you read the fine print and realize that it makes you pay full price for the first map.

I'm really puzzled by this business model. Why is it cheaper for me to buy the hardware and software than just the software? After all, software has a near-zero marginal cost - it costs next to nothing to distribute an additional copy, especially as a download. If I could get an updated map for $20 or so, I'd buy it - it would save me the hassle of transferring all my favorites to the new device, installing POI's, ect. But when it's the same price for a new device as the maps, and I can resell my old device, it's a no-brainer.

The only thing I can come up with is that TomTom wants to keep up/increase market share, and they figure that means keeping the price of the device low so that new customers buy it. Since they can't separate new customers from old ones - there's no way to price-discriminate, as an economist would say - existing customers like me get an advantage. The other thing I can think of is that they figure that people who insist on super-up-to-date maps are people who really need them - businesses, people who drive for a living, ect - and they are willing to pay whatever to get them. To use another econ term, they are price-inelastic.

I do wonder if a GPS company would do better if they sold the maps cheap instead of making it cheaper to buy a new device. I feel like I'm buying a new PC just to get a copy of Windows, but if it works...

New Year's resolutions, 2010...

Well, I do this every year - make a list of the things that I'm going to try to do this year. I end up sticking with the couple I would have done anyway, and failing at the rest. But what are holidays without tradition?

The big ones:

1. Lose, or at least maintain weight - Several years ago I lost a significant amount of weight - about 100 pounds over the course of two years. Since then, my weight has fluctuated a little, but not a whole lot. I'm actually probably about 15 pounds lighter and 2" slimmer in the waist than I was a year ago. I could stand to lose a few more pounds - I've packed on a couple over the holidays, and I've still got a bit of a belly - but it also seems to me that the extra weight isn't having a huge affect on my appearance or my health, so I'm not willing to put all that much effort into losing it. I also want to start lifting - I do a lot of cardio, but no weight training. Once again, it would be nice to have a little more muscle, but I'm fairly sure that it won't send the ladies swooning or enable me to have a second career on the parallel bars.

2. Save money - another resolution that hasn't been much of a problem to keep in the last few years. I'm in decent shape - I've got some savings, and my only debt is my giant underwater mortgage and a small, very low interest student loan. Still, I've been doing a lot of spending of late on small things ranging from sneakers to gadgets to tasty coffee-based beverages, and I do want to slow down on that and try to put more in the bank, where it will earn an interest rate that is probably less than inflation.

3. Find love. This is the one that I fail at every year. It also is the one that requires at least some outside force - I'm responsible for how much I spend and how much time I put in on the elliptical instead of eating bacon, but I can't make women like me. On the plus side, in the last year I've had more dates than I have in the rest of my life. On the negative side, that number was 3, none of which turned into a second date. I've tried online dating, and I think it's time for me to take a break from it, because I find it's done little but frustrate me. I want to try some more in-person things, like some of the swing dances that are around, but the thought of showing up alone at them doesn't exactly thrill me. I'm starting grad school classes in a few weeks, and I figure even if I don't meet anyone there, at least being around other people, some of them female, might help me socially - or at least keep me busy enough that I won't have time to think about the fact that I seem to be on a path to die alone and unloved.

There are also plenty of smaller things that I hope to accomplish this year. I've got a number of small things that need to be done around the house - electrical wiring, carpet laying, fencing in the back yard. Pretty much all of these are things I've needed to get done since I bought the house almost 3 and a half years ago, but I'm hoping that this is the year I actually go through with getting them done. Obviously, succeeding in grad school and at work are things I hope to do, although I have yet to unlock the mystery of how to do the latter - evidently, hard work, taking on new responsibilities, and learning new skills are not part of that. I do want to try to take a vacation this year, but work, time, money, and life will determine if that actually happens. And I'd like to figure out how to balance helping my parents with living my own life, but I doubt I will.

And maybe I'll adopt another cat or two.

A half-decade of madanthony, in pictures

So back in 2004, I had a family member take a picture of me at Christmastime while I was up for Christmas break. A few months later, I made a concious decision to start losing weight and taking better care of myself, so since then every year I've had them take another picture. I like to post them around New Year's - losing and keeping weight off has been one of the few things I can say I've been successful at..

madanthony, December 2004:



madanthony, December 2005:



madanthony, December 2006




madanthony, December 2007:



madanthony, December 2008:



madanthony, December 2009:

We can never repay the debt we owe our parents. So how hard should we try?

I'm up in NJ for Christmas, spending a few days with the parents. Since I work for a college, every year I have the same dilemma - how much time should I spend there? The paradox is that as the reasons for me to want to spend more time in Maryland grow, so do the reasons that I should spend more time with the parents. Several years ago, when I was living in a rented room, spending most of the break with the parents wasn't a big deal. Now, though, I own a house and a cat and have more roots in MD than when I first moved there. But now, my parents are also older and have health problems - my dad has MS, my mom has bad arthritis. They struggle to do basic tasks, and could really use the extra help. And I feel like a horrible person for not staying around to give it to them - they seem so greatful for the smallest thing. I also am the son who went away - my brother lives close by, about 20 minutes away, so he frequently comes over to do things like mow the lawn, shovel snow, ect. I don't, because I live 4 hours way, so I feel bad that I'm not doing as much.

Yesterday, I drove my mom to 7:30AM Christmas morning mass. As I stepped out of my truck, I realized that there was a bunch of black ice where I had parked - snow had melted, started to run to a drain, and froze. So I walked around and held my mom's hand as she got out of the truck. It was a reversal of roles - the child holding the parent's hand. But in the short amount of time I'm up here, I've found myself doing a lot of things that used to be done for me - cooking, driving, mopping the floors, running errands. It's weird and depressing to be doing stuff for your parents.

And I find myself conflicted about how much I should be doing - sometimes I think that since my parents sacrificed so much to raise me, I owe them the same - that I should sell my house and quit my job and move back in with them. Other times, I think that I don't really HAVE to do anything for them, so anything I do is, well, better than nothing. Reality lies somewhere between these two extremes, of course - but the question is, closer to which?

I don't have a girlfriend or wife or kids or any other obligations, so I have more time and fewer excuses not to help them out. Still, I want those things, and spending every waking free hour driving to and from NJ isn't going to help me get them (although I may be beyond help).

I'm thinking that I'll probably end up leaving NJ sometime in the next few days, which will give me basically 5 full days with them, plus 2 partial days spent traveling, and 4 days in MD to myself to relax/do stuff around the house/play with the cat/run errands/hang out with friends. I'm not sure if this is the "right" amount - if I'm a sinner, a saint, or just a typical son.

Back in NJ, and I only got pulled over once...

So I'm up in NJ for the holidays, spending the next few days with the parents celebrating Christmas. I drove up today - it was a fairly uneventful trip, except for hitting some traffic near Harrisburg - and for getting pulled over on suspicion of drunk driving on I-78 in central PA.

I'm driving, right hand lane, going maybe a few miles above the speed limit, and I see a cop car behind me. Naturally, I slow down to a couple miles per hour below the speed limit. Cop is still there, and another one next to him in the left lane. This goes on for a mile or two, and then cop throws his lights on. I pull over, and he pulls behind me. I'm not sure why I'm getting pulled over - I actually wasn't speeding.

Officer comes to my window and tells me that someone called in a complaint that I was driving erratically, weaving in and out of traffic, and that they thought I was drunk. I'm rather puzzled, since 1) I hadn't drank anything except about a half-gallon of coffee and 2) I wasn't driving erratically - while I will admit to not being the world's most careful driver, I'm generally pretty patient - I don't generally lane-hop or anything, and I can't remember cutting anyone off or anything.

The officer was actually pretty cool - he says he can tell I'm not drunk, and that as long as I'm not wanted and my truck isn't stolen he'll let me go with a warning - and he does. I'm not sure he really could have done anything - I'm not a lawyer, but I suspect it would be pretty hard to convict me of any traffic violations just on someone's say-so.

So I'm puzzled who called me in - if I did cut someone off and not notice, or if someone just was overly paranoid, or decided they didn't like me. I'm certainly glad that I didn't get a ticket, and I understand that the police can't really ignore calls about suspected drunk drivers - if I was drinking and hit a busfull of nuns or something they would look pretty bad. But I'm annoyed that someone would call in about me in the first place - I mean, I'm not that bad a driver.

A tax credit for everyone except me...

I was reading the auction listings today in the newspaper, which is at the end of the real estate section. So I happened to see an ad for a new homebuilder mentioning the tax credit for existing homebuyers, which made my blood boil.

The fine print is that if you have owned a home for 5 continuous years out of the last 8, you are elgible for a $6500 tax credit if you buy a new home.

I've grumbled about previous handouts - from the mortgage bailout for people whose mortgages happened to be owned by the right agency to cash for clunkers, for people who happened to own the right cars - being handed out pretty randomly, and to groups that never seem to include me.

But this one takes the cake - it includes huge groups of people, but is especially written to exclude people like me - I bought my house in 2006, at the exact peak of the market. Now, it's not a huge deal because I have no plans to move anytime soon - besides the fact that I'd probably have to bring a check to closing if I sold my house, I have no desire to pack up 3 floors of crap or to keep my house showing ready.

But it seems odd to have a tax break that benefits people who bought their house in 2004 or before - when housing prices were still pretty reasonable - but excludes people who bought their houses when prices had gone up, and most likely are having to sacrifice more to pay their mortgages. While few of these people might be looking to sell and buy a new house, there are probably some who have to - because of financial reasons, job transfers, marriage/kids/ect - who are probably taking a loss selling their house, and would benefit more than someone who sold their house 3 years ago at the peak of the market and has been renting since - who would be qualified under the bill.

Of course, bills like this mean that those who don't receive it will be kicking in the extra taxes for those who benefit - to the tune of $10.6 billion, according to this article. Now, I don't harbor any ill will against someone who was in the right place at the right time and bought a house before prices climbed - that's life. But I do question why people who weren't so lucky are paying to give those lucky people even more money.

As a borderline libertarian, I've never really liked programs like welfare, but I grudgingly accept that there is merit to helping, say, to make sure poor kids have food and shelter. But government of late has pretty much just been handing random piles of money to random people and businesses in the hopes that it will spur the economy. In that, they've got a weird reverse kind of Robin Hood thing going on, where they often give people who are in pretty good shape a bunch of money, paid for by people who aren't so well off. And that strikes me as unfair, illogical, and frustrating.