Not surprisingly, my previous post on my Master Cleanse experience garnered reactions that ran the gamut from curious to supportive to "that's a load of woo". Most posts that I've seen on the subject garner the same widespread reaction.

What I've not seen much of is any sort of consistent follow-up posts by people who have done the cleanse. I've seen mostly positive reviews by those who have tried it (a few "I just couldn't do it" too), usually with a good amount of "success". Of course, "success" in these cases can be somewhat of a subjective term. If a person loses 30lbs in 30 days, can that be considered a success if they gain it all back over the next 30? And why is it that so few are willing to post those ongoing entries?

Not sure this will become a "regular thing", but I do want to take the time to address my first 3 weeks post-cleanse, and talk about whether or not I still consider my cleanse a "success".

Today wraps up day 30 of a master cleanse. I dropped a total of 29.1 lbs, and plan to go another day (or maybe two).

Over the past year or so, I've been way too sedentary. More so than usual. I'd sit in front of the computer at work all day, come home, and sit in front of the computer all night working on a side job. I wouldn't say I was obese (altho my Wii Fit would disagree), but I was definitely as heavy as I'd ever been, and I wasn't happy about it.

My wife and I are both Google Calendar users. We like the convenience of having access to our calendars anyplace we have web access, and we like being able to see each other's events on our own calendars.

A few weeks back, I spent the better part of a weekend trying to get my iPhone set up to sync email, contacts, and calendar. For contacts, I'm not quite sold on Google Contacts at this point, so I'm sticking with Outlook. Google Mail syncs easily enough with the iPhone via IMAP. But the calendar... the calendar was a source of great frustration.

Outlook was able to read (but not really sync with) a single Google calendar, but I was unable to get it to do multiple calendars. Additionally, the iPhone would only see the "main" Outlook calendar, and as I hinted at above, the Google calendar events weren't imported into the main calendar, but rather read as a separate calendar. iTunes didn't provide the option to sync with any other calendar but the main Outlook calendar. Strike 1.

After some searching, I found out that Google provides an app that would let you truly sync your Google Calendar events with Outlook (e.g. actually import the events into the main Outlook calendar). It wasn't perfect. It ran at a scheduled interval so lacked "real time" synchronization. If I added a Google calendar event, and then synced my iPhone 5 minutes later (prior to the sync app running), the new event wouldn't make it onto the iPhone. Also, it could only do a single calendar. We'll call that a foul ball. Strike 2.

A couple of nights ago I noticed that Google was now offering Google Sync. It's still in beta (but really, what Google product isn't?), but seemed like it would finally allow me to sync my Google calendar (and my wife's) with my iPhone.

Home run!

Google Sync runs by setting up the account via MS Exchange on the iPhone under "Mail, Contacts, Calendars". After doing this, use the iPhone's Safari browser to navigate to http://m.google.com/sync and choose which calendars you want to sync. Yes, it allows you to sync any calendar to which you have access via the web. Awesome. One note... if you're using Google Apps (or Google for Domains), Google Sync must be set up under the "Manage Your Domain" area.

With Google Sync, there's 2-way synchronization between the iPhone and Google Calendars. Events added to the phone show up online, and events added online show up on the phone. The synchronization is done via Push, so no need to even connect the phone to the computer.

On the phone, events from different calendars are distinguished via little circles with different colors. I'd like to see the ability to assign a specific color to a specific calendar added. But that's really the only qualm I have with the setup. Other than that admittedly minor point, this is a fantastic solution.

After picking up my new iPhone a few weeks back, one of the first things I did was purchase a case. I wanted something to protect it from accidental drops, as well as something to protect the screen from scratches. I'm not a big belt-clip fan, so whatever I chose also needed to be fairly unobtrusive so that I could keep the phone in my front pocket.

The first purchase I made was the iSkin Solo. The Solo offered both a protective case as well as a screen protector. I ordered it online, so didn't have the opportunity to get a good feel for it beforehand other than reading reviews (which were mostly positive). As noted, this was the "first purchase", and not the solution that I ultimately went with.

following up on my mini-review of the iPhone, i thought i'd post a list of the apps that i've installed over the past week, and quick thoughts on each. IMO, it's really the apps that set the device apart from other phones. sure, the touch screen is nice and the accelerometer is cool, but it's the apps that really make the iPhone unique.

in no particular order...

a couple of days after x-mas, with the blessing and well-wishes of my lovely wife, i headed down to the local at&t store to pick up my x-mas present. a shiny new 8GB iPhone 3G.

i hadn't really been big on wanting one in the past. i've had windows mobile based smart phones, which i liked a lot... it felt like i was carrying around a mini-me version of my computer. my assumption had been that the iPhone was the same type of "toy", but for mac users. being a pc person (not to start the inevitable flame war... nothing at all against mac, i've just always used a pc, i'm used to it, and haven't had the issues myself that have driven others to make the switch), i didn't really think a little portable mac (as was my perception) fit well with my desktop pc.

what are fridays good for if not getting a good rant off your chest? this is something that's been bothering me for a while, and i find that i frequently write it in e-mails, so i figure i can write it once here, and in the future when i need it i can simply point folks to this entry.

i purchased my first ebay item back in october of 1998 (if memory serves, it was for a furby). been using it for a while. while i've sold a few items on ebay, i'm primarily a buyer. as a buyer, nothing torques me off more than this:

when you receive your item, please leave feedback for me and then i'll do the same for you.

just a quick update... the weekend camping excursion was a blast, and pitching the tent proved to be far less arduous of a process than i had expected (altho a few NSFW words were involved).

since a picture is worth 1000 words, i'll let the photos speak for themselves.

also posted a 1 minute youtube video of my daughters feeding a wild turkey, which was fairly comical.

today is the last day that i'll be "in my 30's". when i wake up tomorrow, i'll have hit the big four-oh.

i'd like to think i won't be too weirded out by it all, but it's already hitting me a little bit. feeling kinda... dunno really. just weird .

my company gives employees the day off on their birthday, so a three-day weekend will be nice. taking the family camping (our first camping outing). there's a nice campground not too far from here. it's about a 40 minute drive. 20 minutes horizontally, then 20 minutes vertically up a mountain. we drove there a couple of weekends ago to scope out the campsites, and reserved one that overlooks a lake.

should be a fairly serene setting to reflect on being old. i'll be completely "off-the-grid". no computer, no internet, and no cell (i'll have the phone but i'm not expecting any signal). the serenity may not actually start until i finish pitching the tent (which i expect to be wholly comical and probably contain some NSFW language). but the rest of it should be pretty cool.

40. ugh.

i watch one sport.  football (american football to be specific).  16 weeks a year, my wife graciously allows me my sundays (and the occasional monday or thursday or... well, saturday) to watch my giants play.

it's been a while since i've been really happy about that.  i mean, they're my team (i was born and raised in new jersey), so i stick with 'em through good and bad... but past few years there's just not been much more than infrequent flashes of 'good' surrounded by pretty consistent ....well... not so good.

we last made it to the superbowl in 2000, and were embarrassed 34-7 by the ravens.  since then, we got a new coach (who was on the verge of being run out of town last season), traded the farm for eli manning, and in spite of making it to the playoffs the last 3 years, never advanced past the first (wildcard) game.