Qnarf’s Blog

Well, I wouldn’t have called that one.

On Monday night, I came home in a bit of a bad mood.  Truth be told I came Sunday evening I wasn’t in a great mood that evening either, but the mood was worse Monday night.  Why?  Because I had weighed myself Sunday evening and what I saw I didn’t approve of.  Oh, I knew roughly how much I weighed before that.  This isn’t a post about my great “revelation” that I’m overweight and needed to start exercising more.  I know that I’m overweight and need to exercise.  In fact, thanks in a good part to Jen who has been and I hope continues to be my faithful workout partner, I have actually been going back to the SRSC/HPER 3 or so times a week and exercising.  These exercises started out burning only 200 or so calories and each session lasting around 20-25 minutes, but after nearly two months I’m now up to 500+ calories a session and each session is now lasting around 55-60 minutes.  I’m happy with 500+ calories burned each session and 55-60 minutes is a good total session length, so I’ll probably stick with that for a while.

But why was I unhappy?  Because I’d barely lost any weight at all.  Jen, who admittedly had also greatly changed her food habits, has lost 10+ pounds since we started.  Me?  I’ve lost maybe 2-3 pounds, possibly 4.  Now some of that is 100% my fault, since I don’t exactly remember my starting weight and I haven’t exactly kept track, so I don’t know what I may have lost/not lost for sure.  But given how much I was working out I expected more of a result (FYI, I’m working out mainly on a elliptical machine, and given my good leg strength already I don’t think I’ve gained much muscle; the earlier sessions stopped when they did mainly because Jen couldn’t go on).

So I was grumpy on Sunday night, and after weighing myself at the SRSC (just to make sure it wasn’t just our scale) I came home rather grumpy on Monday night, too.  I decided that something needed to be done or else I was going to get severely discouraged about the whole exercise thing, and I knew I needed to keep exercising even if I wasn’t losing weight (exercise being great for keeping blood pressure down, your heart/lungs in general, etc.).  Sara had been mentioning for the past couple weeks on the side that maybe I should start tracking what I eat, and she increased her gentle prodding on Sunday/Monday given my mood.  So I finally agreed on Monday night to start tracking.

And here’s where we get to the part where I wouldn’t have called that.  I signed up for SparkPeople and put in some goals (changing them slightly the next day, but that didn’t affect my calorie goal all that much).  I put in how much I exercised that day (around 610 calories) and also what my exercise routine is.  With a good deal of help from Sara, I put in what I ate that day.  Then I stared at the screen.  I stared some more.  Then I got out my iPhone, started up the app, looked in there, and stared at it.

With the exercise that I do and my goal in mind (and I want to lose a chunk of weight so this isn’t a small goal (it’s reasonable, but not small)), my daily calorie minimum that I should be eating is 1,950, with a maximum of 2,300.  How many calories had I consumed on Monday throughout the whole day?  Around 1,200.

Sara and I both did some mental calculations and estimations, and though other days will have of course varied, a quick estimation showed that it’s very likely I’ve not been eating enough, something that has been moderately verified in the days since.  Here I thought I had been eating too much and was preparing to lower how much I ate each day because I was certain I was eating too much, and I found that I haven’t been taking in enough food to counter the exercise that I’ve been doing.  Though nothing is for certain, of course, it’s decently likely that my body has been in “starvation” mode this past month or so, holding on to extra calories when it got them because it wasn’t sure what it would get the next day.  This might, surprise surprise, also explain why I’ve been more tired lately.

How did this happen?  Well, you see, Sara is the one who packs my lunch and makes most of the dinners.  I’ve chosen and taken care of my own breakfasts, but in order to at least partially pattern myself after her healthy lifestyle I asked her a long time ago to take care of packing/choosing my lunch (dinner used to be more of a shared task but she’s just taken it over a bit more in the last year or so).  Neither of us thought about it much, but Sara packed my lunch portion similar to her own and for the most part our she portioned out our dinners the same way.

Where this goes wrong is while Sara’s been on a “maintain current weight” diet for a long time now, she doesn’t eat the same way or at the same time I do.  You see, our lunch and dinner portions are pretty much the same, but Sara snacks several times during the day, and those snacks are a part of her daily caloric allowance, sometimes a good chunk of it.  While I might have a fairly small snack while watching TV (the other day it was some grapes and some tea), I don’t snack during the day at all (except for special events like someone’s birthday/etc, and then I usually won’t snack that night).

I’m not blaming her at all for this, BTW; it just never occurred to either of us.  I’ve always preferred my meals fairly structured, broken in defined breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Sara likes to have the three meals as well, but she has smaller portioned meals because she likes to snack a few times each day.  I didn’t complain about being hungry, so how was she to know?  And I probably should have been tracking what I ate better, especially starting a diet.  I just tried to go with how I felt, but apparently since it’s common for me to feel tired or whatever a bit extra didn’t bother me enough, till now.

So now I’m going to keep closer track of what I eat.  BTW, today is another example of misconceived perceptions.  From past weeks/months/etc. I’ve been told that our weekly “taco night” is high calorie and stuff and that I might need to watch out.  While not completely discounting that advice for future reference, I put in the day’s calories into SparkPeople and the total is….  1,689, still 261 calories shy of the minimum.  I can tell that for some days I’m going to have to snack to fill in the gaps, because (such as for tonight) after I eat my normal dinner portion I will be full and won’t want any more.  But I’ll need to be vigilant, because I’m sure there will be days that I won’t have to hunt for calories; they’ll be hunting (or is it haunting?) me.

Does Canada’s Health Care System Need Fixing?

As I drove to work yesterday morning NPR did a couple of pieces on the nation’s health care plans/policies.  They’ve talked about health care seemingly every day for a while now, but today they talked about something new: Canada’s health care system, and how some political groups (*cough*republicans*cough*) are using it to scare the populace about switching to a nationwide health care system.

As you might as guessed, since I have CKD I’m very interested in how Obama plans on reforming the health care system and, yes, I’m even interested in what the republicans think.  I’m not a complete idiot; Clinton had a plan to balance the budget, but when Bush got into office that plan seemingly was thrown out the window.  Obama may spend his 4 years getting a excellent plan in place just to have it trashed by the next president.

My perspective in this matter is twofold: right now I’m concerned mainly about early/preventative care (what there is to be had), but later on I’ll be more concerned about treatment, whether it be dialysis or transplant (or both).  From my current understanding, a universal health care plan is good for the second part but not for the first, since I have been told in the past that people have died waiting for health care in places like Canada.

Why did they die?  I’ve been told that they died because the illness they had was bad but didn’t need treatment immediately, so they got put on a waiting list, a waiting list so long that months went past before they could even see a specialist.  The most well known illness that people had on this list was cancer, and by the way “people” are talking many Canadians died in the months they were waiting for treatment.  I admit, this does sound scary.  The mental images that are portrayed make you think of people lying around, too weak to move, unable to get the care they need.  But how true is it?  Does Canada’s government just let people die all the time from lack of health care?

Actually, after listening to NPR yesterday morning and doing a little more research, I think it’s the other way around.  I think the U.S. government lets more people die due to lack of health care, while Canada has the right idea.  Have people died in Canada waiting for health care?  Yes, but far fewer than what you might think.   And according to Canadian researchers, the number of Canadians who seek health care in the United States because their own health care is insufficient is very rare.  They say “it’s a bit like getting struck by lighting — it’s extremely rare, but when it happens, everyone talks about it”, and overall the Canadian public still strongly supports universal health care.

However in the U.S., while there technically may not be waiting lists a mile long, you have to deal with something far more evil:  private insurance companies and their list of clauses and exemptions.  I’ll get to those who are completely uninsured in a moment, but for now I want to focus on the “regular guy”, a person who goes to work every day and has health insurance that they pays for every month (either via their employer or privately).  I won’t go through the complete scenario because you’ve probably already heard something like it before, but the short of it is they get majorly sick or have a heart attack or whatever.

Now you would think they would be fine.  They have health care, they are protected, right?  Actually, in far too many cases, no, they aren’t protected enough.  Too many of us, myself included, just sign up for our health insurance plans without a second thought, never reading the fine print.  Why should you?  The insurance company wouldn’t do something that would kill someone, right?  And anyway how could you, since sometimes the legalese in the insurance documents can make your head spin before your past the document’s header date.

But far too many people are finding out after the fact that things just “happen to get left out” for one reason or another, even after they’ve called their insurance provider for a estimate.  I can’t remember where I found that article now, but it wasn’t that long ago that I was reading about a couple who are now bankrupt because the medical costs were thousands more than what they expected.  Why?  It was because while their plan said it covered hospital stays, it only covered the ultra basics like the bed and food.  It failed to cover things like the pain medication the guy was given, or the supplies that the hospital used to clean with (that you get billed for), etc. etc.

According to the National Coalition on Health Care:

“A recent study by Harvard University researchers found that the average out-of-pocket medical debt for those who filed for bankruptcy was $12,000. The study noted that 68 percent of those who filed for bankruptcy had health insurance. In addition, the study found that 50 percent of all bankruptcy filings were partly the result of medical expenses.⁹ Every 30 seconds in the United States someone files for bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious health problem.”

Every time I read that I shudder inside.  Every 30 seconds someone in the U.S. goes bankrupt because of a serious health problem.  68 percent of those who filed had health insurance.  And what do you think happens when you go bankrupt?  Your life gets tossed upside down, stress levels go through the roof, you now may have trouble just buying the basic necessities of life like food or affording a place to live.  If you are older your whole life savings (or a lot of it) might have just gone up in smoke.  If you are young you might bounce back eventually but now you have that dreaded of all things: a pre-existing health condition.  You will now have trouble getting any kind of health/life insurance for the rest of your life.  Trust me, I know about that last bit.

And what about those people who don’t have health insurance?  Oh, if you have a heart attack you’ll probably be rushed to the hospital and treated, but without insurance you’re probably going to be a lot poorer for the experience (just check this chart out).  But what about those who develop cancer?  Once diagnosed, it’s now a pre-existing condition as far as the private health insurance companies are concerned, so they won’t cover you.  There are options, yes, but none of them are cheap, and a lot of people who don’t have health care insurance don’t have it because they can’t afford the cost of premiums.  Instead of a waiting list, some of these people are faced with a terrible choice: become a financial burden on their family, or die.

Do I think Canada’s health insurance policies are the greatest ever?  No, there is of course room for improvement.  Obviously they think so too, as they have dumped billions of dollars into fixing the problems.  But really the problems they do have are being blown completely out of proportion, and they are working on them.  Would I dread the thought of waiting for necessary health care?  Sure.  But you know what?  I have to wait now anyway.  It took me months to get my initial appointment with a specialist, and that was just so he could basically say hi and order some tests.  So far I haven’t seen these awesome benefits of the U.S. way of doing things.  All I know is that I pay for medical insurance at work, I still have to pay a chunk to the doctor every time I see him, I have to pay for all of my medical tests, and I still have to wait most everywhere I go.  So far my medical insurance is like a GameStop discount card: every once in a while it really comes in handy to lower the costs, but I still end up paying more than I feel I should be.

So I say bring on universal health care.  Not only do I have a feeling that it can’t be any worse that what we already have, if necessary I will gladly step forth to be on a waiting list for health care.  Why?  Because I know when I get the treatment I’ll be covered.  No bullshit about pre-existing conditions or eligibility or approved expenses.  Just covered.  And not only that, but Sara will be covered, and Ne as well.  I am more than willing to step up and go through a bit of pain waiting if it means my wife, daughter, and I will have the health care we need without having to worry about going bankrupt to pay for it.

I’m going to be going through pain living anyway. 

Microsoft Takes Aim at the iPod

Microsoft is back at it again.  Last time they misrepresented Apple laptops in the lovely “Laptop Hunters” commercials, and now they are going after the iPod.  The advertisement has a “Certified Financial Planner” tell the viewer that basically if you want to fill up a 120GB iPod it will cost you $30,000, whereas you can have unlimited music from Zune for only $15 (a month).

Wait…..what?  $30,000?  Is he serious?  Ah, he’s not telling the whole story.  What the dude says is technically true.  Theoretically, the 120GB iPod can hold 30,000 songs, and if you bought all of your songs from the iTunes store at $1 apeice, that would equal $30,000.  But in order to be true, the iPod owner would have to be massively stupid.

Why?  Well, for one, if nothing else the iTunes store does sell songs by the album for a discount, so you could pick up many more songs for the same amount of money.  But that would be ignoring the most obvious point:  ripping your music off of your own CDs is perfectly legal and costs nothing!  Pretty much everybody I know owns CDs, usually quite a few.  For ourselves, when we bought our first iPods we had a library of music ready before we even had to purchase a single track.  In theory, you could fill up the whole iPod without ever purchasing a single song from the iTunes store.

Also, lets not forget that there are plenty of independent music sites out there where you can get music completely for free, or the occasional artist who releases a track or two for free.  Oh, and of course he forgot to mention podcasts, another completely free source of music, news, and etc. for the pod, or other places where you can acquire free audiobooks and such.

But in the interests of being fair, I did have to admit that the dude had a point.  He was advocating that for $15 a month I could listen to as much music as I wanted, and further looking on the web revealed that you get to choose 10 songs to “keep” each month (usually as MP3s).  This seemed to be a pretty awesome offer.  I could listen to anything I wanted, and I get to keep 10 songs a month (so basically you’re only paying $5 for the song rentals each month).

So I downloaded Zune to give it a shot, and signed up for the free 14 day trial.  At first, all was nice, even though the install program is something like 3 times the size of the iTunes install.  Setting up my account was easy because I already have a Microsoft Passport (though I do remember that setting that up was a bitch, but that’s a different story), and within minutes I was downloading music……

….and then I ran into the first stumbling block.  It seems that Microsoft is a little bit reticent to inform you that your “unlimited listening” would be limited in some ways.  Oh, if you can download a song you can listen to it all you want.  However, not all the songs in the store are available for subscription listening, and it’s not just certain albums.  No, they have certain songs you can’t listen to unless you buy the whole album.

I looked up the Fantasia 2000 soundtrack.  I could listen to about 75% of it.  Green Day?  The odd song here and there was blocked, usually right in the middle of an album.  Three Days Grace?  A album with 4 songs on it had 3 of them blocked.  Great Big Sea?  They had nearly every album that GBS has released, and about half of them were blocked.

That’s just bullshit, and it was instantly the death of the service for me.  But I had the trial period, so I went ahead and looked around some more.  Other issues I found?  Let’s see, of course, the next major problem was the fact that the service was completely and utterly incompatible with both the Mac and iPod.  Hmm, next up is that Microsoft’s music library isn’t actually as extensive as it seems.

Oh, and let’s not forget the final nail in the coffin:  if you ever stop paying, all the music is gone.  True, it’s initially more expensive to get the music from the iTunes store, but that music will work anywhere, and I can burn it to a CD.  Furthermore, I own the music, and purchasing specific items ensures that at least part of the proceeds makes it back to the actual artists.

So I’m sorry, Microsoft and Zune.  I gave you another shot.  I tried your service out, and I was actually hopeful there for a little while.  But once again, you disappointed.

Stop spending money on ad campaigns.  Try using that money to hire some people from Apple to tell you what you need to do to fix your problems instead of masking them with badly done PR.

[Before I get started, I realize that technically I missed a couple of BEDA days.  After my web/database server got hacked and I had to spend a lot of frantic time putting it back together, I decided that what rest I could find was worth more than getting a blog entry up.]

This post was inspired by Sara’s post “The Truth about Motherhood“, as well as the Oprah article that was linked from it and another Oprah article that was linked from there.

I have to agree with Sara.  I don’t get it.  True, I’m a father and not a mother, so there are plenty of women out there who will immediately roll their eyes at me because how could I get it, I’m male.  I’m not the mom, so obviously I’m relegated to the typical “husband” pile, the ones who just don’t get it after a woman becomes a mother and basically feels sorry for myself.

There were a couple parts of the relevant articles that I had a real hard time with:

How are our husbands doing, happiness-wise? Slightly better than we are. Today, men are ranked happier than women overall. According to a 2007 Wharton study, men spend less time on things that they report as “stressful,” and are less stressed-out as a result. We know from our own research that men don’t put the same kind of pressure on themselves that we do to get it all done, and done perfectly. So putting their feet up once in a while and relaxing doesn’t bring on the guilt pangs like it does for us.

::snort::  I’m not sure who they talked to here, but I bet they focused mostly on things at home.  And I’m betting the two women who wrote this article mainly talked to women when they did their “research”.  What I’ll mainly argue with here is the implication that men find it easy to skip out on doing stuff because we can innately ignore the pangs of guilt that would rob a woman of her happiness, and that we don’t put the same kind of pressure on ourselves do to things perfectly.

I personally am constantly doing things around the house and etc. that need done because I either feel guilty that I’m not doing it, or because I just want to get “just one more thing” done before I sit down to rest (which has led to several child-free days suddenly being eaten up with all manor of chores).  And when I do finally sit down and rest, I bet that I’m feeling at least the same amount of “guilt” as Sara.

I’ll admit, there are times that Sara and I have sat down and discussed what each of us do when one of us feels like we are doing more than our fair share, which has gone both ways.  What it normally comes down to, though, is that the other person doesn’t realize how much the other person is doing, or at what time.  Yes, I may have “my feet up” while Sara’s doing the dishes, and that might make her feel bad.  But while she was resting and messing around on the computer earlier, for example, I might have been working on the finances for an hour.  We both “worked” for the same amount of time, but since we weren’t working during the same time period a misunderstanding can happen.

Are there times when I should be doing more?  Of course!  Are there times when Sara should be doing more?  Probably!  But I don’t like the general assumption that men have this innate ability to basically slack off without the guilt.  Just because I’m not sitting there with a frown on my face moaning about what I should be doing doesn’t mean I don’t feel guilty.

Armstrong’s blog, Dooce.com, became so popular that she’s been called the “mother of all bloggers.” The site brings in a reported $40,000 a month in advertising and has become the family business. “I think people are really hungry for that honesty,” Armstrong says.

One popular topic on Armstrong’s blog is sex and how it changes when you are a mom. “It took seven months [before I had sex after giving birth]. No one had told me that it was going to take that long after what the baby did to me,” Armstrong says. “Any guy who wants to have unprotected sex? Seven months without it. Just think about that for a minute. Let that number circulate in your head for a little bit.”

I guess it must be nice to pull in $40,000 a month for blogging, though I kinda question the title “mother of all bloggers”.  The “I think people are really hungry for that honesty” part is amusing to me, though, because like Sara I have no trouble finding other parents who have no problems whatsoever talking about the difficulties raising children.

But anyway, the main point of contention here is what Armstrong says about sex, and the implications about what men are thinking about in that department.  And she is not alone.  When Sara was pregnant, I read various articles and books on babies and how they changed your lives and such, and inevitably if the book/article was written primarily by women (which most of them were) there would be a section “for just the men”.  The topic 99.9% of the time?  Sex.

Argh!  I can’t tell you just how annoyed I got time after time trying to find good resources about being a good father where the focus was primarily about sex.  Is that the only thing women think men think about?  Sex, and just how soon after the baby is born can you start having it again?   There were sometimes whole chapters devoted to this, and if it wasn’t devoted to just sex it was usually about how you need to take care of the new mother.  Note the emphasis there, mother, not baby.  You now have this new entity in the house whose primary purpose is input and output with some screaming thrown in, and what do the articles for fathers focus on?  Not how to change diapers or how to calm a baby, but that I should be patient for sex and take care of the mother.

Grrrrr.  I cannot be the only guy out there who innately knew that the mother was going to need time to heal and feel better before having sex again, and that there was a strong chance that sex wasn’t going to happen late in pregnancy.  It only made sense.  What I wanted to know and find out were the practical parts of having a baby, how to bathe, diaper, clothe, and generally care for one.

The really annoying part?  When I ventured into the “women’s” section of the books and articles, over half of them simply dealt with what the woman was supposed to be feeling.  I’m not surprised that some women felt totally unprepared for what happened when they got the child home (frankly, nothing is going to prepare you for that first night, but anyway), since there were a good number of articles on how you were supposed to be “gazing into your child’s eyes” as you were breastfeeding so as to enhance “the bond”.

::snort::  You know what I find enhanced “the bond” in those first few weeks?  Not  a whole hell of a lot.  You are taking care of something around the clock whose main good aspect is that they are adorable.  The rest you suffer through.  Eventually things do get better, a lot better, especially once your child starts developing a true personality, but that initial time in the hospital and early after we got her home?  I wanted a sincere bond with sleep more than I wanted it with my daughter.   And sex?  Forget about it, I was too damn tired myself.  What the books should say to the fathers to be is that if you are doing your part right you’ll probably be too damn tired to care about not getting sex.

I did, however, find some good articles and resources out there for guys, but it took some looking.  And when Sara and I compared notes, she was actually a bit miffed.  She told me that such and such great resource didn’t really tell her about something, and I’d say “but this guide over here for fathers says it right out!”.  From my experience, when I did find a good resource for a father to be, it was usually written by a dad who took part in their kid’s lives, and it was frank and to the point.

But I should really wrap this up as I’ve rambled on for quite a bit.  Basically, being a parent is hard work.  Sara and I agree 100% on that.  But the thing is, no matter how much I tell somebody about it, no matter how frank or “honest” I am, they aren’t going to truly understand it until they become  a parent.  The sleepless nights, the lack of time…  It truly is one of those “you don’t know what you have till it’s gone” sort of things.

And as for the women like Armstrong who said “she wasn’t told”?  Welcome to the real world.

Just grab a towel and don’t panic. 

….isn’t going to be much of one.  I think for tonight I need to focus on relaxing and not trying to meet a arbitrary goal that, at least for this evening, will only serve to stress me out more as I try to find something to talk about.  So this is my BEDA post for today.  It’s not really much of a post, but it will have to do for tonight.