Monday May 16, 2011

The experiment has concluded. It took me long enough to get this post up, what’s it been, four days? Sorry to keep you all in suspense…now onto it. My results are as follows. 1. I see itty bitty nothing to brag about changes in my hair. There are very faint thin hairs in my front where the widows peak is, however the crown still looks like shit. 2. I feel a lot better when I don’t smoke. 3. I definitely need more than 30 days to generate any substantial difference. What’s next? I have been taking two fish oil pills daily for the last few days and to accelerate my hair growth, I’ll be ordering some Propecia and see if that makes it any better. There isn’t much else to mention other than I’m glad I quit smoking. I feel much better, not like shit on a daily basis as I used to.

Below is my last head shot (sunburned). You can’t see any difference for the last four weeks (in my opinion).

Sunday May 15, 2011

Not much in the theatres, however I did want to see Priest, but we had one of those free ticket things but it only works for non-special engagement. We had to pick something that’s been out for a while – our choice, Fast Five. It was cool, typical action movie.

Chores were the rest of my day. Spent an hour cleaning the cat boxes thoroughly, then another couple hours vacuuming the house and Swiffer Wet-Jetting the floors. By the time I finished it was 5:30pm, that means dinner time. The woman chose In-N-Out.

Blah, blah, blah… that was my day. Mr. Sour said he wanted to go to the mountain today, but didn’t call. It rained in the AM so that was likely the reason. I didn’t feel like getting muddy anyways.

Tomorrow is the last day of the experiment. To be continued…

Saturday May 14, 2011

I woke up late this morning, after 11am, which is unusual. Normally I’m up at least by 9am. So tired I am…

The day starts with lunch at Islands, then errand runs for a couple hours. First stop is Target to pick up nicotine patches and household stuff, BUT they were out of my Step 2, DOH! Well, there are other Targets, so we got everything else and left.

On our way to the car, I hear someone call my name. Well well well, it’s someone I used to work with several eons ago – BenF. We spent 15 mins talking about the company, houses, mortgages, and other catchup things. He promised to stop by work sometime soon. We shall see.

Next stop was to pick up kitty litter from the local Pet Depot. 24 bucks for a 17 pound bag. Expensive… damn cats! I know they don’t appreciate it.

Third stop is Albertsons for groceries. Milk, bread, cheese, fruit cups, and lunches. I’m sending the woman to Trader Joe’s for the dinners on Monday.

The final stop is another Target for the patches. Lucky me, they have the Step I need. The woman wanted Animal Crackers, so I had to get those too. Shopping now completed, time for home.

Because we ate so late, no dinner, but I warmed up some leftover pizza. After food, coded some more, bed at 1:45am-ish.

Now, normally because this marks the end of a week I would include a photo, but since there are only two days left, I’ll add the bald eagle shot on the last day. Check back on Monday for the conclusion.

Friday May 13, 2011

I’m going to fast forward passed 5pm. Work is work, nothing exciting even though it’s a Friday the 13th. For dinner the woman and I picked up a Costco pizza. The rest of the night I watched TV, relaxing, not thinking about anything. Around 11pm or so, I went back to working on the demo port, creating a audio class file for music, a wrapper around SDL Mixer. That basically wraps up the class files, the next phase is converting the main program. I got some of it done and am going to try and finish this weekend.

Tomorrow will be four weeks on nicotine patches, my 30 are almost over (Monday is the finish line). I can’t believe time went this fast.

Thursday May 12, 2011

Another trip to the mountain after work, but this time the Wise Man and I took Mr. Sour. Wise Man’s father also came along which was cool. Mr. Sour was unaware that the Wise Man and I had a little wager going, a friendly bet with the stakes being a Gatorade. Now I say that Mr. Sour can do the hike and finish whereas the Wise Man felt differently. Mr. Sour didn’t let me down, I had faith in him, I won the bet, he completed the five mile hike.

We finished the hike in 1:27 this time. A good time since this is Mr. Sour’s first time being introduced to The Sharmuta. My first time I couldn’t even finish – 100 degree heat, not having done anything physical in several years, and 16 years of cigarette smoke polluting my lungs, yeah yeah, excuses excuses… I’m a wimp.

The time now being 11:10pm as I write this, just finished watching old school Star Trek, episode “The Doomsday Machine” and getting caught up on these blog postings, goodnight for now. What kind of surprises are in store for tomorrow? After all, it’ll be Friday the 13th.

Wednesday May 11, 2011

Today I’m feeling the pain from yesterday. Sore & aching, legs, back, and feet. It was worth it! We’re going back again tomorrow. This time we’re taking a coworker, Mr. Sour.

Looking at the calendar I see only five days left for this little experiment. I’ve decided to extend it for a while longer, however I won’t be doing daily blog posts. For 30 days I’ll try the fish oil thing then if there are no changes, I’ll give Propecia a go.

In other news, earlier this week I shaved my head – finally. Sometimes I can be such a slacker.

Tuesday May 10, 2011

After last Thursday’s embarrassing moment of puking on the hike (twice that is), I decided to do things differently. First being going to bed the night before at a somewhat decent hour (11pm) and second, going to lunch an hour earlier (1pm instead of my predictable 2pm or later routine). Wise decision.

We picked up a couple extra bodies for the hike, a couple coworkers. I felt more energetic this time, not sure why, possibly because it’s earlier in the week. We made it up the Sharmuta, the wise man and I did some speed sprints, and we jogged some of the downhill. Much more of a workout than previous times in my opinion. The wise man says I’ve popped my cherry after the puking event – I’ve pushed myself harder.

We finished in 1:36 (clocked from my Stop Watch Android app on my phone). Good workout everyone.

I haven’t mentioned my hair lately. I don’t see any changes, 30 days may not be long enough, plus it doesn’t look like I’m losing anything new either. Stalemate.

Monday May 9, 2011

So another week begins. The first eight hours of the day, typical Monday work stuff, you know. Having wrapped up the rest of the class files I moved on to one tidbit that needed to be rewritten – Fonts in OpenGL under Linux. Anyways, I wrote the code using SDL_ttf, replicating the demo’s use as closely as possible. It works for the most part, but there is an issue. Gonna need to work on it when I have more time.

The wise man wants to go to the mountain tomorrow. Not gonna pass that up!

Sunday May 8, 2011

This marks the first day of the last week of this experiment. Time flies by…

It’s been a few weeks since the woman and I have gone to the movies. Nothing but junk has been out and we’ve been waiting for this weekend to come so we could see Thor. I liked it, she liked it, so we had fun. Typically we go to the first showing on Sunday’s to avoid the chair kickers and other dumbasses. Most of the time it works out.

The rest of the day I worked on the OpenGL demo conversion. I got a lot done with five class files left to go. Porting from Windows to Linux can be painful at times.

Saturday May 7, 2011

I have things to do this morning, namely get the truck gas, a somewhat decent car wash, and go help my coworker with his WiFi at his house. There’s no point getting into the first two, so onto the WiFi part (briefly). Techie stuff is boring, but I help him determine his router’s username and password and WEP key. Told you, boring, and it took five minutes. I hung out till noon there watching a basketball game recap (Boston vs. Miami).

Okay, now lunch time. I’ll give you three guesses where I went (this should be easy, it’s the same place I go every Saturday). This time I had the Northshore Tacos. After the grub, the woman and I went home. I pretty much spent the rest of the day reading up on Ogre3D, building the source on OSX, and then doing it on Ubuntu. It’s my distraction from the demo I’ve been converting (one of my major flaws, bouncing between projects). I promised myself I’d lay off Ogre until I finish the demo, so that’ll happen tomorrow.

Okay, so it’s now the end of week three. I haven’t touched a cigarette and my head is still bald. In some ways I think it actually looks worse, but the woman says it’s because the rest of my hair is growing so the bald spot is sticking out like a sore thumb. Well, my point is, it isn’t growing or maybe it is and I just can’t see it. Regardless, below is my 3rd week head photo.