Mike Jandreau

Writer.Musician. MovieSnob. Web Guy.

I weighed myself a couple of weeks ago and was very unhappy with what the scale reported back to me.  After it mocked me for a bit, it told me that I currently weigh more than I’ve ever weighed before.  And that’s not cool.

So I did what anyone would do: I went out and bought an exercise bike.  It’s in the corner of my office, conveniently aimed at the TV that sits on my desk.  Coupled with a pair of wireless headphones and my trusty TiVo remote, I’ve been pedaling like crazy while I watch some TV.  It works out pretty well.

I also bought an ab roller based on the advice of a buddy.  I’ve used it a few times, but I’m pretty convinced it’s a device thought up and constructed by the devil himself, so I haven’t been using it as much as I should.  If you’ve never used one before, it’s basically a wheel with handles.  You roll it out in front of you, causing your body to stretch out and your abs have to support your entire body weight.  The first time I did it, I could barely get out of bed the next morning.  My abs haven’t been used like that in years. Probably ever in my lifetime, actually.

But it’s a “good pain”, or so someone who isn’t me might say.

I’ve also been cutting back on my soda intake, to stop having so much caffeine in my system.  Or at least trying to.  After years of drinking mostly nothing but Coke (and Coke Zero in recent years), it’s tough to cut back.  I’ve been getting splitting headaches from the withdrawal that only more caffeine get rid of. It’s kind of terrible. I can’t even imagine weening off something stronger.  Good thing I never tried drugs.

I’m hoping the exercise and less soda will help drop a few pounds.  I figure anything’s gotta be better than nothing, so I’m taking baby steps.

Once I move out of this apartment and can setup my drums again (and actually play them), I’ll get more exercise regularly. And that’s never a bad thing.

It’s not secret that Fitbits are taking over the world.  Everywhere you look, someone’s got one on their wrist or in their pocket.  It’s a great little invention and one that’s being made by dozens of other manufacturers now.

If you don’t know, a Fitbit is essentially a glorified pedometer.  It counts your steps, calories burned and stairs climbed and syncs them (through either your computer or your smart phone) to the web.  You then get pretty graphs about how far you’ve traveled, how many flights you’ve climbed, and a bunch of other stuff that’s supposed to motivate you to be healthier.

Here’s what a random day in January looked like for me.  Yes, I blurred out my weight, ’cause I’m chubby right now. (We’ll get to that shortly.)

I’ve had one for about four years now.  I started with the original on, putting it in my pocket every day, feverishly checking my steps to see how far I’d gone.  I upgraded as new ones came out and they got smaller and smaller.  They now have bracelets that you can wear, but I’m not big into that idea, so I never got that one.

About six weeks ago, I looked at my step history.  It was clear which days were weekends and which days I was out of town for business.  On an ordinary day, since I work from my home office, I didn’t walk all that much.  Most days less than 4,000 steps.  Which, for working at home, is still a lot.

The reason I stopped wearing the Fitbit was because it didn’t do anything for me.  I wasn’t motivated to walk more or be more active in any way.  It was just this thing that sat in my pocket and I’d occasionally go to the Fitbit site and see how poorly I was doing.  Some days, when I’d go out shopping, I’d break 10,000 steps.  Health professionals say that 10,000 is the magic number to stay healthy, but it’s kind of insane if you work an office job.  For me, a mile is about 2,000 steps based on my height and my gate.  That’s 5 miles a day that you should be walking.  FIVE MILES.  That’s a lot of freaking walking every single day.

The other reason I stopped carrying it?  I keep things in my pockets. I’m a guy, that’s normal.  Left pocket is my iPhone, right pocket is my keys.  Imagine worrying that you’re going to drop this tiny little device every single time you reach into your pocket to take your keys out.  Losing it’s a bit deal, too, because it runs you about $100 for one. Here’s the one I was last using for scale (mine was black, but you get the idea)

 

It’s pretty freaking tiny.  Imagine the panic every time you reach into your pocket and it’s not there.  You feel like you’ve essentially thrown away a crisp $100 bill.  Granted, not using it is essentially like throwing it away, too.  But at least I can re-sell it and get some of my money back.

In the years that I wore the Fitbit I stayed relatively the same weight.  More than I want to weigh, hence having this little device to try to help me be healthier.  The fact that I didn’t lose any weight at all is a testament that this little guy isn’t for me.  Will it work for other people? Sure.  Could it work for you? Maybe.  Did it do anything for me? Not a thing.

I’ve fluctuated +/- 5 pounds over the last 3 years, but have stayed relatively the same.  Fitbit didn’t do much for me that I couldn’t do on my own.  Keeping track of my steps and my eating and calories I could easily do on my own, I just don’t care to.  I’m not that type of person.

Is the Fitbit a good product? Sure.  I never had any troubles with them, and the one time I broke part of it, their support sent me an entirely brand new one. (Great experience with their support team, that one time, three years ago.)  For now, Fitbit (or Fitty, as I called him) shall sit in a drawer and collect dust.

Tomorrow morning I’ll head into Disappearing Inc for my third treatment in having my tattoos removed. Note to self: take photos before going in, to photo-document the effectiveness of the second round.  I’m pretty excited about that, especially given how little discomfort there was after the last treatment.

If my math serves me correctly, by the end of the year my treatments should be completely done and all three tattoos should be removed.  It’ll be a weird thing to look in the mirror and not see them, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it in some way.

Other than that, I’ve been chugging away at life.  The two biggest things I’ve been working on are the re-brand of my business and finishing my first book so I can get it up for sale.  Both of which are taking up most of my free time (and some of my not free time, too!)

It’ll be nice to check those items off the never-ending nag of a todo list that I keep.

My standing desk effort has been going quite well.  I got my NextDesk (http://www.nextdesks.com) just over 3 months ago now and I’m still loving it.  Sometimes my knees hurt a bit from standing too still, but then my brain reminds me to shuffle my feet or move around my office a tiny bit, and I feel better.  The addition of a gel mat under my feet when I’m standing has done wonders.

I generally sit for an hour in the morning and then stand until lunch.  Most afternoons are over before I realize I stood the entire thing.  The only time I force myself to sit down is when I’m doing a labor intensive task that requires my full attention — like Excel or editing.  For some reason, my brain prefers to sit while I’m doing those tasks.

I haven’t lost much weight from standing (despite the claims that you burn more calories doing it), but I do feel a lot more healthy.  I wouldn’t say I’m more tired at the end of the day, but I definitely feel fatigued on days where I stand more than I sit. Overall, though, I’m glad I made the purchase.

Here’s a photo of my setup, in case you were curious:

I’m not quite sure why everything seems crooked. Maybe I’m drunk this morning.  Not to mention how cluttered everything is.  But this is how I spend my days working.

On the far left is my new computer (the little black cylinder), behind it is my external hard drive.  My phone sits to the right of that, then some cereal, screens, keyboard (solar powered!) my beverage, speakers and a TV on the far right (for days I want to slack off and watch trashy daytime TV.)

Just your average ordinary run of the mill desk that goes up and down at the push of a button.  One minute I’m standing, the next I’m sitting. Like magic.

 

By now you’ve likely heard of the new Mac Pro — whether you’ve heard to it referred to as a trash can or Darth Vader, you’ve likely heard of it.  If not, it looks like this:

That’s actually mine, from the unboxing photos that were taken.

According to Apple’s original specs — and many of the reviews you may read online — it’s a powerhouse of a machine.  The specs on this outdo my previous generation (from late 2009) Mac Pro by oodles and oodles. Yes, that’s a technical term.

Here’s the model I went with:

• 3.5 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon X5 (the upgraded model)
• 16 GB 1867 DDR3 ECC RAM
• Dual AMD FirePro D500 3072MB graphics cards
• 256GB Flash Storage (I added a 2TB external drive, via Thunderbolt, as well.)

Leaps and bounds above and beyond the last generation’s computer.

Many of the reviews I’ve been seeing online focus on how quickly the new Mac Pro can output, compress, or process video — which is kind of what it’s intended for.  I don’t do any real video work — mostly web development, web browsing, email, etc — so this machine is complete overkill for my needs.  But, if you know me, I always like to have the biggest, best, newest and shiniest.

Here are some of the things that you may be interested in, in a real world environment for the new Mac Pro.  Every day tasks that can be done faster with a machine of this caliber.

• Startup time: 5.1 seconds.  That’s the amount of time between pressing the power button, all of my start up applications opening, and being able to do stuff.
• Opening Photoshop CC: 3.1 seconds.  In fact, here’s a video I made this morning of me opening Photoshop CC

• Reading and writing data:
  • Reading data to the internal Flash drive is pretty fast.  According to Blackmagic’s Disk Speed Test (a widely used application to benchmark drive speeds), the write speed averages 775 MB/s and the read speed averages 950 MB/s
  • For the external drive (over Thunderbolt), it’s a bit slower, but still pretty quick: Write: 335 MB/s. Read: 390 MB/s (averages)
• That means that you could copy a 4.7 gig movie file from the internal drive to the external drive in about 12 seconds. Give or take.  Impressive.

I picked my machine (named Pennyworth, as its predecessor was named Alfred.  I like Batman, sue me) on January 3rd after a bit of a snafu at the Apple Store I had it shipped to.  From what I’ve been seeing on Twitter, I’m one of the few every day people that has one of these.  Most of the other people I’ve seen with them are either people who work for tech companies who wanted to review them, video production companies, recording studios, or other industry professionals.  I’m just some guy with good taste, so I guess that’s good for me.

You’ve likely seen (or heard) people complaining about how expensive the machine is.  And you’re right, it is costly.  But if you’re complaining that $4000 is a lot of money, you’re not the target audience for this computer.  This isn’t a $400 Dell that you can keep for a year and not care if it dies.  This is a high end, professional, and extremely powerful machine.  It’s not for the faint of heart, nor the faint of wallet.  That said, you get every penny’s worth of your money.  I haven’t had a single issue in the 3 weeks I’ve had this machine (not that I had any issues with the previous Mac Pro, either), and have been very glad that I spent the money.

I haven’t upgraded my monitors yet for two reasons:

1. Apple hasn’t released a new monitor in a while and their current monitor doesn’t support 4K, UltraHD or Retina resolutions.  Nor does it support USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt 2, both of which are important to me.
2. There’s nothing wrong with the screens I have now.  I’m still working with a 30″ Apple Cinema Display (from 2009) and a 24″ Dell display as my secondary (in portrait mode) to my left.

Once a newer display becomes available from Apple, I’ll likely upgrade to get the new toys.  But for now, I’m a-okay with what I’ve got.

Why does this post exist? No real reason.  I love my new computer and wanted to help answer any questions about the performance of a machine so high end that anyone considering buying one may have had.  Hopefully this helps in some way.

I didn’t realize that it’d been two plus months since my last update.  They aren’t lying when they say that time flies when you get older.  Who says that? I don’t know, they.  The arbitrary “they”.

Anyway, since the last update, I’ve gone in for another treatment (the second of ten scheduled) to have these stupid tattoos zapped off my body.

The second treatment was less enjoyable that the first.  Rob kicked the frequency of the laser up a bit to help accelerate the process of the removal.  It made for a less enjoyable 45 minutes during the treatment.

On the upside, there was no residual pain or heat once I left.  A little discomfort walking through Boston Common back to the parking garage, but once I got out of the car at home, I was more or less fine.  Either the deeper laser wasn’t as painful as the first treatment, or I just got used to it after one treatment.

There isn’t a whole lot to show — the tattoos look mostly the same after the second treatment as they did after the first, unless you look really closely. The tattoo on my right shoulder, of the famed skull & drumsticks, is starting to fade around the edges. The ends of the drumsticks are almost completely gone, as well as most of the black.  It’s a slow process, but it’s fading pretty well.

I can’t see my back that well, but when I twist and turn in a mirror, I can see some of the lettering at the bottom starting to fade — right near the middle of my spine.

The more I look at how quickly they’re going away, the happier I am that I decided to do this.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — I’m not the same person I was 16+ years ago.  Removing these from my body now is the right thing to do for me.  I’m also thankful that I’m financially able to afford it, as it’s not exactly the cheapest voluntary thing to have done to yourself.

My next treatment is scheduled for early February.