Last week I took a squash lesson and purchased a squash racquet and shoes. My manager and I are usually evenly matched, but this week I beat him 9-1. It may be time for me to start participating in the CMU squash ladder. :-)

• Went to the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix and Car Show.
• Saw Pirates of the Caribbean 2.
• Went kayaking on the Allegheny River.
• Ate at D's, Aiello's, and Five Guys.
• Played the improbably excellent battle mode of the Dreamcast version of San Francisco Rush 2049.

I'm looking forward to visiting Phil, Angie, Tim, and the rest of the gang in Cleveland sometime before the end of the summer.

I searched online for places around Pittsburgh that offered classes, and found Steel City Martial Arts. I've now been taking classes for 3 weeks, and it's great, both as a workout and a discipline. After the first class I participated in, I was so sore that I could barely move, but my condition has improved with each class, and I've enjoyed learning the strategy behind the matches I've seen on TV. Sensei Achille and all of the students at Steel City have been very helpful and encouraging.

I posted a picture of myself wearing my new KF Fighter gi on Flickr.

My guides to the world of thrifting were Cathy and Peter, who are seasoned vets at the game, and have more fashion sense than I. We started off at Peter's house and headed over to Pamela's for breakfast. I had never been there before, so I was glad to go, since Pamela's is one of those places where you must eat at least once if you want to call yourself a true Pittsburgher.

Filled with delicious strawberry hotcakes, we made our way to the first thrift store on the circuit, the Red, White, and Blue Thrift Store. This place had tons of clothes. Alas, there were no dressing rooms, and I didn't feel comfortable buying pants without trying them on. Peter helped me find a nice Patagonia short-sleeved button down shirt, though.

The next stop was the Salvation Army thrift store on the South Side. I found a couple of button down shirts and a pair of yellow dress pants. Peter warned me that, due to their color, the yellow pants were a "limited use item", but they were only 50 cents, so I bought them anyway.

The final stop on our tour was the Goodwill thrift store on Carson Street. While we were there, Cathy threw a pair of blue jeans over the dressing room door and told me to try them on. I did, and Cathy said she liked the fit, so I decided to buy them. I didn't realize until I was out of the dressing room that they were actually women's jeans. I suppose it doesn't really matter, but I would have never tried them on if I had gone to the store alone, so I'm glad Cathy was there to pick them out.

All told, I got 4 short-sleeved button down shirts, a pair of dress pants, a pair of jeans, and 2 pairs of shorts for under $25. Since I'm pretty cheap when it comes to clothing, I remarked to Peter and Cathy that I might start buying all of my clothes at thrift stores, which elicited a horrified response. According to them, that would be taking things a bit too far. I'm afraid they may have unleashed a monster. :-)

Japan Vacation Slideshow (70 MB, requires Quicktime 7)

Speaking of zoos, on Saturday we went to the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium. Many of the animals were not out, due to the cold, but we still got to see leopards, lions, elephants, and monkeys, among other animals. And, of course, the aquarium was fully operational. The zoo was larger and nicer than I expected, and we didn't have to fight crowds, so I enjoyed it. After the zoo, we ate lunch at The Church Brew Works. Later in the day, we went to the Carnegie Science Center and saw Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D at the Omnimax theater.

It was great to see Mike again, and it gave me a reason to get out and see some parts of Pittsburgh I hadn't visited before. Hopefully he'll be able to visit again soon.

1. Burn more calories than you consume. If you want to lose weight, ignore stupid fad diets like Atkins, South Beach, or pretty much any other diet that has been promoted in the last 30 years. It's really simple: you lose weight by burning more calories than you consume. You can accomplish this by either burning more calories or consuming fewer calories. Most people will want to do some of both.

2. Be analytical. When you start out, you need to slow things down and think about everything you eat and how many calories you are consuming. You also need to keep track of how many calories you are burning. This is the only way you're going to know if you're burning more calories than you consume. You should also keep a log of your weight, as a check of your calculations. It doesn't matter how you keep track of this information. Use a piece of paper, or a spreadsheet, or whatever you like. I use a program called Calorie King that runs on my Treo, which makes this simple and lets me enter data no matter where I am.

3. Make it routine. Many people claim that motivation and willpower are a key part of losing weight and getting in shape. These people are wrong. The most important thing is routine. I didn't suddenly become super-motivated to lose weight one year ago. What happened is I moved to a new city and a new job, so I had no established routine. I used this opportunity to make going to the gym part of my daily routine. Now, I go to the gym after work out of habit.

   People like to spend a lot of time talking about the downsides of habit and routine, but they can just as easily be used to accomplish something great. I find it easier to form new routines when I change a bunch of things at once, so if you have been thinking of making changes to your schedule other than working out regularly, just make all of the changes at once, and within a few weeks going to the gym will be a habit and you won't have to think about it.

4. Drink lots of water. If you think you are hungry, drink a glass of water and wait a few minutes. If you are still hungry after that, then eat. It's very easy to confuse being thirsty/dehydrated and being hungry.

5. Live alone. This has dual benefits. First, you aren't obligated to eat on any sort of schedule. When you are hungry, you eat, and when you're not, you don't. Second, it means that you control all of the food coming into your household. You won't be tempted by foods that other people happen to be eating.

I'm probably forgetting a few things, but this is the core of my fitness program. It's pretty simple and mostly common sense. If this post becomes popular, then maybe I will get a fake Ph.D. and write a book that has phrases on the cover like, "Dr. Hunter's revolutionary weight loss program!" Until then, you can email me for free advice.

To solve these problems, I've been working on a Carnegie Library RSS Feed Generator for the past few months. It works by screen-scraping your account information web page. By doing this, it can add entries to your feed a few days before a checked out item is due and immediately after a requested item is available.

This feed generator was mainly written for my personal use, but since some other people might also useful, I'm pleased to make it publicly available. If you decide to use it, please send me feedback and suggestions, so that I can improve it in the future.

(Sidenote: The feed generator was also an excuse to learn Ruby on Rails. Ruby and Rails are both fun to work with. As a desktop application developer, I used to loathe web apps due to the prevalence of spaghetti code. Rails makes it very easy to create a cleanly factored Model-View-Controller application, so I plan to use it for all of my future web development needs.)

I also cancelled my membership at the JCC. I don't need it anymore, because I can now use the fitness facilities at Carnegie Mellon (one of the perks of Apple moving into a building on CMU's campus). That's going to save me another $600/year.

Combined, I'll be saving about $1,200/year, or, as Mark Cuban likes to think about it, I'll be earning the equivalent of a 12% return on a $10,000 investment. That's pretty hard to beat.

I'd write more, but I'm too busy rocking out to Generic Crunk Rap.

After that I bummed around Cleveland Heights for awhile, then met Dave, Angie, Tim, Chris, Dana, and Phil for dinner at Tommy's. I had my standard "Big M" meat pie and Power Smoothie. After dinner we went to Chris and Dana's apartment in Ohio City (home of the West Side Market).

Pictures (and video!) are available on Flickr.