Cutting myself down to size

...in which I have joined a slimming club and not blogged about it for 6 months. Yes, really.

Wow, is this blog still here? I really need to use it more often, there's dust all over the place here.

So, first I should probably do that disclosure thing; I have no affiliation with Slimming World, nor any commercial relationship with them, other than the fact that I pay them every week.

This year I decided that I would lose some weight. Not because I was unhealthy (although I was) and not because anybody else told me to (although I'm sure my wife wanted me to), but because I decided that I wanted to be thinner and a bit more healthy. 

So I joined Slimming World just after Christmas because it was the "diet" that my wife lost 3 stone on last year (and has so far kept off, and looks fantastic). Thus far this has been a fairly spectacular success. Since joining in January, I have lost 2 stone and 9.5lbs (17kg according to Google, and nobody argues with them, right)?

 I still have about 8.5 lbs to go to get to my initial target, but that really doesn't seem that much compared to how much I've already lost, especially if I have a couple of good weeks.

This has meant that I am slimmer, and I also feel much better for it and have started running again; I don't get out of breath on brisk walks now, and I have much more stamina for certain other activities. (Like gardening. What? What were you thinking of? Really? Get your mind out of the gutter! But yes, that too, since you ask. Ahem).

I've also discovered that I really, really like cooking. Since joining, I have done almost all of the cooking, which I find very satisfying; Slimming World meals are not what most people would probably think of as diet food, since they focus on letting you eat as much as you need to satisfy your appetite while keeping the calorie count low.

One of the things that happens every week when I stay to the group is that the consultant (who is lovely - hi Claire!) asks me if I've made anything nice that week. Because I have the memory of an amnesiac goldfish I can only ever remember what I made that night, so I nearly always end up saying "err...." and then saying the same thing as I said the previous week.

So I thought this week I would blog what I am eating in the hope that it will jog my hopeless memory.

All of the food below is "free" or "super-free" on the extra easy plan unless I've put a Syn value by it or it's a healthy a or b option. This means you can have as much as you like of it. No, I'm not joking. Yes, I have lost weight eating like this. Yes, this is a fairly typical day for me. No, it's not a prank. Honest.

Note for Slimming World members: I follow the Extra Easy plan and have no idea how many syns any of this would be on any other plan. Sorry about that.

Tuesday 3rd June

Healthy A: 250 ml Semi Skimmed Milk for coffee. You can assume this every day, because I'm a developer and we can't write code without coffee. Seriously, it's true. Find a developer and take their coffee away and see what happens.

Breakfast

Apple, satsuma, pear

Morning Snack

Lean back bacon (all visible fat removed, fried in fry-light) with cherry tomatoes in a 60g wholemeal roll (Healthy b)

Lunch

Mushroom omelette with crushed chillies & spicy potato wedges (2 baking potatoes chopped into wedges, coated with paprika, oregano and sea salt and cooked in the oven for 30 - 35 minutes, turning occasionally).

Dinner

Lamb Rogan Josh (from the "Fakeaways" book - I can't find the recipe online unfortunately) with boiled rice and sweetcorn.

Evening Snacks

Muller Light (Vanilla), 1/4 fresh pineapple.

Exercise

I suppose the picture isn't really complete without a record of the exercise I'm doing too:

~5 miles walking

~2 mile run

15 minutes on exercise bike (200 calories, according to the bike).

Thanks, mum...

...in which I attempt to express deep thoughts and feelings while drunk

It is currently 3:30AM. I have drunk the best part of 3 bottles of wine, and I have no doubt that I am somewhat tipsy. (This may be an understatement).

For some reason, at this point in my life my thoughts have turned to my mum, whose birthday it was just a few days ago. I shall not pull punches here; my mother (and therefore myself and my half brother) has had a hell of a life; my father died in a motorcycle accident before I was born, back when being a single mother was something to be ashamed of. My first stepfather died of a debilitating mental disease that turned him into a walking wreck that could just about ask for money to buy fags and not much else.

It took our house being burned down for local government to realise that we were not equipped to deal with him - and this despite him being sent back from an institution for mentally handicapped patients because they "couldn't cope" with him (apparently it was perfectly OK for a mother and 2 kids of 12 and 8 to cope with him).

Through all of this, though I didn't appreciate it at the time, my mum was there for me. I might have* been a self-centred little bastard with all the empathy of a psychotic maniac, but I never doubted that if I needed to talk to someone my mum was there.

*definitely was.

The point of this blog post is not to bemoan these things; they are part of what has made me who I am, and though I might wish them otherwise I might not have my wife and 3 beautiful kids if it wasn't for these experiences.

The point of this is just to say "thanks, mum". God knows I never said it, but if anybody ever deserved thanks from an ungrateful little sod, it was you.

A list of useful lies

...in which I provide a list of good lies to tell bad people who want to take over your PC

As you may remember, not long ago I was threatened with jail by a nasty man who wanted to get control of my computer, or make me download a virus or somesuch thing (I'm still free, despite my apparently heinous crime of refusing to believe him).  Since I get 2 - 3 of these calls a month, I have started coming up with lies/ploys to use to get them to hang up before I do.

I do this purely for my own amusement - if you get one of these calls that begins with "I'm calling from Microsoft/Windows Service Department/Windows Maintenance Department/some other official sounding organisation" and claims you have a virus and need to immediately install Remove-O-Virus 2012 because McAfee/Norton/AVG/whatever doesn't work, by far your best course of action is to hang up immediately.  I just like the thought of some guy thinking he's getting somewhere and then realising that I'm taking the mickey, plus it stops him calling up and annoying somebody else.


This technique is not unique to me at all - just about any vaguely technical type will probably do something very similar if they have time, because we're a bit sick and twisted like that.
Anyway, here are some lies (or at least they're lies for me - they might not be for you!) you can tell if you're too polite to hang up immediately, or if they are persistent - I've had one guy call me back 5 times after I told him I knew he was trying to scam me - that should get them to hang up:


1) I run Unix/use a Mac (when they ask you to open Windows Event Viewer or click the start button) - this will almost always result in them getting off the phone pretty much instantly.


2) I don't have a computer - they're only calling you because you're on a list of random phone numbers they've got from somewhere.  They don't know you've got a computer, so tell them you haven't and they'll hang up (if you really haven't, this has the merit of not being a lie).


3) I don't have Internet access - if you don't have Internet access they can't do much, since their scam usually relies on you going to a website.  I guess they might try to get you to buy software over the phone, in which case just hang up. Do not under any circumstances give them any information that you would not want to give to a criminal.


4) The computer was taken by the bailiffs - credit to my wife for this one.


5) Ask them to hold while you turn the computer on and wait to see how long it takes before they hang up


If you're fairly tech-savvy yourself I have no doubt you have your own favourite ways to torment these people, but for entertainment's sake here are some of mine:


Pretend to play along while actually playing on the PC on whatever game you feel like. 


Pretend to be on dial up so that whatever site they tell you to go to takes ages to load...then just after you tell them it's loaded, hang up.


Let them get to the part in their script where they show you the *.inf files that they will claim to be infections (because everybody knows virus writers like to make it easy to identify their products) and then tell them that these are device driver information files.


Say that the PC is off and that you need to boot it up, then that it's running Scandisk  because there's an error on your hard disk.  After about 3 minutes tell them it's got to 2%.  They may actually stay on the line until you say it's finished (people have reported them hanging on for anything up to 30 minutes), in which case you could say that Windows won't start because the disk is too badly damaged.  (Credit to Dave at http://lakeuk.blogspot.com/2011/07/cold-phone-call-international-routing.html for the start-up idea).


Pretend to have typed in the code they will give you to let them take control of your computer then scream "It's melting! My computer's melting!" before hanging up.


Note that if you do any of these, they may become aggressive and abusive - just hang up.


On a serious note, some ways you can recognise these calls (if any single one of these is true you can be pretty much sure it's a scam call):

• They mention the "International Routing System"
• They claim to be from "Microsoft's Technical Department", "Windows Troubleshooting" or anything similar (see here and here) 
• They try to get you to go to a website and download any kind of executable file

There's no foolproof list - the best advice is to maintain a healthy level of skepticism about unsolicited calls.  Very few large corporations will call users like this, and Microsoft certainly do not. 


C.