52 lbs in 26 weeks challenge – Week 1

My friend Jamie had a read 52 books in 52 weeks challenge in 2008.  For 2009, he has a new challenge, 52 classic movies in 52 weeks.  Although I will not participate in his challenge, it inspired me to create my own. My 2009 challenge is to lose 52 lbs in 26 weeks.  I will post weekly updates about how and what I did during the week.  Each Sunday I will weigh myself and post the results.

In addition to losing the 52 pounds, I have two related goals:

• Get down to a 36″ waist
• Be able to run 5 miles without stopping

In order to reach this goal, I will carry out the following objectives:

• Walk/run 3X a week (Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday).
• Do pull-ups and push-ups at least 3X a week (during commercial breaks in the evening)
• Take my lunch to work and avoid fast food restaurants and over eating during dinner time.

Although I did not weigh myself today (I need to get a battery for the scale), I’ll make an educated guess based on how my clothes fit right now and say I weigh 243 lbs. I did measure my waist and it is a gutbusting 44″.  If anyone else wants to join my challenge, let me know. I can definitely use the moral support.

Blast from the past – Compaq Presario and Windows 95

A few weeks ago, I had lunch with a friend who runs his own consulting company. He asked if I knew structural equation modeling. If I did, there might be some side work I can do for him in the future. In graduate school, my multivariate professor’s specialty was SEM. I signed up to do a directed study to learn more about SEM after getting exposed to it in my multivariate stats class. In the process, I obtained a copy of EQS and a user’s guide.

The only problem is that the copy I have is on my Windows 95 machine, a Compaq Presario from the ‘97 to ‘98 era. After a quick trip to Target and Rite Aid to pick up a keyboard and mouse with PS2 connections (Windows 95 doesn’t support USB) I was up and running. Above are a couple of picures, notice the miniscule amount of RAM this machine has. However, it runs the stats programs I have (see other picture) just fine. Another notable piece of stats software is GANOVA (one of icons in left-hand column). I used this software to perform the matrix algebra calculations for my Master’s thesis.

I haven’t run this machine in probably 8 years. It is like a mini time machine. Although I don’t have a lot of files, the ones I do have take me back a ways. I have a couple of icon sets I created for an MS Access DB program I built for Sempra Energy. I’ll save that for another post since the story behind the icons is pretty funny. I called Michelle up to check out some of her files she still had on the machine. Most were some of her early court reporting school work. I dare not plug this machine to the internet, I don’t know what would happen. Just want to use it to get back up-to-speed on SEM.