Some "after" photos

I know I haven't posted some progress photos in a while....to be honest...there hasn't been a whole lot of progress since my last (only 5-7 lbs)...So I thought I would spice it up by doing some of those cheesy "wear your old clothes to show how many inches have come off" shots:

To be honest, these size 38's are probably the loosest 38's I own. So you get the greatest effect. But I think it still looks cool. I switched back to wearing size 36's and those fit comfortably to slightly loose now. I would guess I could probably fit into a size 35 waist if I wanted...

One last bonus pic for everyone out there in blogland. A year ago, I was in Phoenix and decided to pick myself up an authentic black cowboy hat. With my chubbier face and lack of facial hair, I don't think I did the hat proud. Fast forward to today:

Don't think I'll ever be a true cowboy, but I think I look a lot better in the hat these days at least.

BTW...I hate my camera...I need a new one...those are some blurry pics above!

Weigh In - Week 19

To those hoping that I would not lose weight this week (yes I'm talking to you Diet Coke and Zingers :), I have some good news for you...

I held even this week at 193.

Another week of doing all the right things during the weekdays and then blowing it all on the weekends (See Musikfest post below).

I shouldn't be too hard...Still down 43 lbs. and that is nothing to sneeze at. I must say that Summer is a tough season to lose weight. There are just too many parties, summer festivals, summer trips, etc... All with the temptation to eat too much...I'm somewhat amazed that I still managed to drop 10 lbs through it all...

Turbotax, Turbotax, Turbotax

Here is truly the last post on my TurboTax issue...

I tried one last time to convince them that their program led me down the incorrect path, but they trotted out their same excuse that I must be dumb as a brick to have committed the error I committed. Apparently no other users ever have a problem with TurboTax...

Did I say they were professional in their response? I take that back as well. Essentially, the response was professional in the use of grammar, etc., but essentially calling your customers stupid is far from professional.

I'm too tired to keep fighting a charge of a few hundred dollars, and every new response from Anita just gets my blood boiling again.

Here is my bottom line to everyone out there in blog-land. I STRONGLY advise not to use TurboTax to do your tax preparation. In my opinion, they do not stand behind their user interface at all and will blame you for any error in using their product. I will be going back to using H&R TaxCut. It may not look as pretty as TurboTax, but it always did the job RIGHT.

P.S. - To Bob Meighan: I have deleted all of your comments and will continue to remove your comments in the future. While I can not do anything to make your company repay the money I lost, I am under no obligation to give you space on my website to push your side of the story. If you wish to stay and contribute to the weight loss discussion, please do so. From what I can gather though, your paid job is to seek out negative TurboTax comments on the web and attempt to refute them. I'm pretty sure this must be a full time job that hopefully pays overtime for you.

Why I will probably not lose weight this week...

In a word...Musikfest!

I actually did pretty good this week, until my wife and I did our traditional trek up to Musikfest in Bethlehem, PA.

For those of you in eastern Pennsylvania, I highly recommend making a trip to this week long festival. Lots of good music, good food, and beer (notice I left off the good part).

I've been going every year since 1996 when I was a junior at Moravian College. Heck, back when I lived in Bethlehem after college, I would actually take days off work to just hang out down at the festival, drink beer, and be with friends. These days, I usually will head up for a few hours and rehash old times and then have to drive back. But it's still a great time and only as expensive as you wish to make it (admission is free...you only need to pay for food, drink, and the premium acts).

For me, there are certain eating traditions that aren't exactly the best in terms of weight loss. Here was my diet between 12-4PM on Saturday:

• Loaded nachos (Shared)
• 2 Pints of Beer
• Pulled pork sandwich
• Roasted Ear of Corn with Butter, Parmesan, and Spices (Shared)
• Bratwurst on a Roll (Shared a little)
• Chocolate Ice Cream between 2 Belgian Waffles (Shared a little)

So you can see why I'm not feeling too confident this week. I'm betting I break even this week and I will take it...

Personal Pushup Challenge

I hate upper body strength conditioning. Probably the one thing that I feel I have no idea what I'm doing and feel absolutely silly doing it. I hate doing free weights at the gym.

Even something as simple as the push up frustrates me. How could something so simple give me so much trouble?

Hearkening back to my college and fraternity days, one of the hazing methods was forced push ups for doing things wrong. I know, I know...hazing is an evil, evil thing...but I will tell you that I was never in such good shape as I was at that point in my life. My arm muscles looked pretty damn good!

So my personal challenge involves something of a forced push up. I will challenge myself to do 150 push ups this week (Monday through Sunday). That is 30 push ups for 5 days this week with 2 days of rest... I do not have to do 30 in one sitting or even 30 in one day (but I should a minimum of 10 in one sitting). The goal is to knock out 150 whatever it takes...

This may sound weak to some of you, but it's a start towards rehabbing my weak upper body...

FYI...not feeling too confident about tonight's weigh in...we'll see...

Trackbacks and Backlinks...

Anyone care to give the history and usefulness of track backs and back links?

Do people really use these functions on their blogs?

It seems like an interesting comment and an easy way to both comment on someone's site and add content to my blog at the same time...

It's funny...I used to be the "Go To Guy" for all things tech related, but this blog thing has made me realize how far my tech knowledge has receded over the years...

This will interest nobody but me...

But I'll post it anyways...trying to get Google Video to work on the blog...

Like cheap t-shirts?

I'm a big t-shirt guy. You know...the hip ones the kids are wearing these days that is heavy on graphic design, cultural satire, etc...

Here's a sampling of sites to give you an idea of what I mean:

http://www.threadless.com/

http://www.palmercash.com/

http://www.unetee.com/

Well...the fine folks over at woot.com have decided to get into the biz as well. The picture above is today's shirt that is already sold out. The site follows the same woot model of one shirt per day until it sells out and a majority of them do sell out rather quickly.

I especially like the fact that each shirt to this point has been only $10 w/ free s&h! With the other places, I find a shirt that I like, but can bear myself to spend $17 + 5 s&h for a t-shirt. At $10 total cost, I see myself becoming a woot t-shirt guy very soon.

Fun with my new scale...

I forgot...the point of this blog is journal about weight loss, right?

First off...I am 95% happy with my purchase at this point. It does everything as advertised, looks stylish, and now I can know my weight down to the tenth.

The only downside is the flimsy piece of plastic they use to cover the battery area. I can't just jump on the scale and need to move it whenever I weigh myself. In the short time I've had it, the battery cover on the bottom has already come off twice. A piece of scotch tape may be in order.

I like it so much, that I've become somewhat obsessive with checking my weight these days. I probably will jump on 2 -3 times daily. And here is the interesting thing. My weight fluctuates 2 - 4 pounds within any given day! The biggest difference is between weighing my self when I go to bed (Been as high as 195) and when I wake up in the morning (been as low as 191).

I have two questions for the group:

• Any thoughts on what causes such a shift in weight? Water weight?
• Is there a recognized "best time" that you should be weighing yourself?

Obviously, I will continue my Monday after working out ritual weigh in to keep consistent. Just curious what the common wisdom is...

Poking the bear...

Did I say I was done talking about the tax issue? Well our good friend Bob Meighan, a VP over at TurboTax, keeps leaving me comments that supposedly prove I am in the wrong on this issue.

So, instead of letting this lie, I feel compelled to respond yet again to Bob and the folks at TurboTax. On the advice of Customer Service Rep Anita and VP Bob, I actually went into my current 2006 return and attempted to add a bogus W2 to see what would happen...

First off, Bob is correct on one point. TurboTax doesn't ask you to fill in the SS# by W2. Instead it asks who to associate with each W2 at the beginning of entry. I probably incorrectly chose myself for both W2's. Therefore, it was not incorrectly viewing 2 different SS#s as one person. Score one for Bob...

But after I enter in another bogus W2 on my 2006 return and associate it with me, here is the screen that pops up:

I don't claim to be a tax guy. That's why I pay TurboTax $50 to do it for me. If I knew the intricacies of social security witholding and that you only have to pay up to a certain point and that this applies to each individual filing on a joint return, I WOULD HAVE DONE THE DAMN RETURN MYSELF! But I don't know these things and that is why I relied on TurboTax to ask the right questions in order to fill out the return properly.

So when TurboTax tells me that my company may have withheld too much SS tax, I would believe them. TurboTax only asks that I check to make sure the numbers on the W2 I am entering match what they have on the screen. I DID THAT AND THEY MATCHED! At no point did they question whether I chose the correct person for the W2. So I went forward believing that I indeed paid too much in SS tax and was entitled to a refund. What reason would I have to think otherwise?

BTW, Bob (if you're still listening)...no need to send me software...I'm pretty confident it will only confirm what I am stating above.

Bottom Line (for me...again): TurboTax should flagged this error and instructed me how to fix. The point of the software is to make accurate tax preparation an easy process. I'll admit TurboTax is an easy process but I'd question the accuracy piece.

Bonus: I'm going to label all of these posts as "My TurboTax / IRS Rant" so that these posts do not get lost in time.

Bonus #2: Bob states the following in the comments section:

"Just to reiterate what Anita already stated, if you entered one or more W-2s for the same spouse that exceeded the limits above, TurboTax flags you with a warning and error flag. The warning allows you to change the "ownership" of the W-2 to either spouse."

My response...see the actual screen print above...you are incorrect.