Week 4: 187 lbs
Not much to report here for Week 4. It’s Christmas, I’m still not 100% health wise, I’m not worried about it this week.
I’ll probably do my best to avoid junk/fried food this week, so hopefully I can avoid packing any weight on.
Archive for December, 2008
Weight loss diary – Week 4 (+/-0 lbs)
December 23rd, 2008SQL Server (2008) Performance Tuning Resources
December 23rd, 2008Here is a (running) list of some SQL Server Performance Tuning resources that I’ve compiled over the past week or so. These have been helpful in educating me on the black art of database performance tuning. I realize the title states SQL Server 2008, but really most of these probably apply for SQL Server 2005 and 2008. I, particularly am working with 2008, which is why I’ve put them into that category.
General
- SQL Server Central – Scripts with tag Index Management
- SQL Server Performance Tuning Tips
- SQL Server queries with DMVs for examining bottlenecks
- General Tips on Optimizing SQL Server Indexes
Missing Indexes
- The Ultimate Missing Index Finder
- Using SQL Server DMVs to Identify Missing Indexes
- Using Missing Index Information to Write CREATE INDEX Statements
- Limitations of the Missing Indexes Feature
- sys.dm_db_missing_index_group_stats – Returns summary information about groups of missing indexes, excluding spatial indexes
- Are you using SQL’s Missing Index DMVs?
Duplicate Indexes
Unused Indexes/Index Usage
- The Ultimate Index Usage Reporter
- Deeper insight into unused indexes for SQL Server
- Using SQL Server DMVs to Identify Missing Indexes
- Finding a better candidate for your clustered indexes
- Index with Included Columns
- The Ultimate Index Lister (Pivoted)
- Find Unused Indexes of Current Database
Re-indexing
Inefficient Queries
Performance Counters
- SQL Server Database Specific Performance Counters
- Introduction to Three Important Performance Counters
Performance Data Collector
Database Engine Tuning Advisor
Updating Statistics
Deadlocks
Weight loss diary – Week 3 (+2 lbs)
December 18th, 2008Week 3: 187 lbs
This week has been horrible. I’ve been sick and I haven’t even considered going to the gym. The only thing that actually seemed appealing was going to the steam room and sitting in there for 10 minutes to clear my congested head. But, that’s not worth all the other nonsense involved with going to the gym, so it ain’t gonna happen.
My eating habits have been a bit off this week. Stupid CDW, where we buy computer hardware at work, sent us a 50 gallon drum of holiday cookies. And for a while they were in our main IT area, which was bad news. I got them oved into the main kitchen area where they’ve been quickly disappearing. Unfortunately it hasn’t been quick enough because I’ve been grabbing a few here and there.
As far as me being sick goes, I’m the last one in the house to come down with something. All of the kids had some kind of stomach bugs two weeks ago and Adam and Avery both transitioned into having ear infections. Poor Adam had a double ear infection and it was rated a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 by the nurse at the doctor’s office on Monday. Man, that paired up with the fact that he’s got 4 of his first teeth all in a race to see which one(s) will make it out first. Needless to say, I shouldn’t be complaining about my sore throat, headace and congestion. It could be worse!
With Christmas next week and next week being a short week, I’m sure I’ll shoot back up to the weight where I started. It’s going to be hard to keep weight off when I can’t go to the gym and we’re bouncing back and forth between people’s houses eating holiday dinner. I guess I’ll have to try, and at a minimum stick to my no fried foods rule. That should at least help, somewhat.
On a sad note, we had to put our dog Kenna down on Monday. I won’t go into it much here, Jen did a great job on our family blog.
New Mac Hardware
December 12th, 2008Earlier this year I decided that I wanted to get a new laptop. I really was interested in the Macbook Pro line from Apple but knew they were in the middle of a release cycle so I started to do my homework. As the months passed rumors started to circulate containing details about the new Macbook Pros that were going to be out in the fourth quarter of 2008. So I kept waiting and doing my homework, and finally the product launch event came where they released the details.
Shortly after the launch event in October I placed my order for one of the new 15″ Macbook Pros. Some of the cool new features that made this model worth waiting for were:
- Precision aluminum unibody enclosure
- Ultrathin 15-inch LED-backlit display
- High-performance NVIDIA graphics
- All-new, smooth glass Multi-Touch trackpad
The standard technical specifications show what you get out of the box. The options that I configured my 15″ with are:
- Processor – 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
- Memory – 4GB 1066Mz DDR3 SDRM-2×2GB
- Hard Drive – 320GB Serial ATA @ 7200
The machine has definitely shown that it’s quick and very solid. I have no problems running VMWare Fusion with Windows 2008 Server for my Windows development (using Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008). I was initially a little disappointed that they didn’t revamp the 17″ Macbook Pro at the same time, but after further consideration I figured that it would probably be smarter to get the 15″, which will save me some money, and probably pickup an external display later. Because I was going to use this laptop as a desktop replacement, I definitely needed some way to work with more screen real estate than the 15″ display offers.
Fortunately (or un-fortunately) for me Apple also previewed a new 24″ LED Cinema Display at their October 2008 launch event (a review can be found here). And while it wasn’t going to be available to ship until late November, it’s features made it a perfect match with the new Macbook Pro line. Not only is it a stunning display but it also basically works as a docking station for your Macbook or Macbook Pro (the new ones, that is). So while the price tag may seem high initially, by the time you factor in buying a display adapter so you can hook your new Macbook’s mini-display port to a non-Apple monitor, and another power brick that you can leave at home, you’re probably in the same ballpark as any other non-Apple monitor with comporable specs. And, none of those models will be LED backlit (which, as you can see here is very good with power usage and environmently friendly – like the Macbook).
Anyways, luckily for me I’ve done pretty well in Fantasy Football this year. My winnings from that at the end of the season will probably cover most of the price for the display. Maybe I’ll get lucky and it will go on sale or I’ll find some coupon code by then 
More reviews of the LED display can be found here.
Weight loss diary – Week 2 (-5 lbs)
December 9th, 2008Week 2: 185 lbs
As mentioned previous in my State of My Fat Ass Address, I am trying to lose some weight. Week 1 started off pretty well with me going to the gym Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday before work. I ate pretty good for most of the week and just couldn’t make it to the gym Friday.
It’s Tuesday of week 2 and I haven’t made it to the gym yet. I was going to try to go this morning but ended up working (from home) later than I had anticipated so I didn’t get into bed until almost 11pm. And with going to bed that late, it’s just not worth waking up at 5am to head to the gym. I’ll push myself to go tomorrow and Thursday, and maybe Friday too.
Stupid or not, part of what I’m not looking forward to is listening to the music that’s already on my iPod. I need to get on the desktop at home and re-load a bunch of stuff that I can listen to at the gym. Also, going with no music (and no, I don’t consider the crap they play over the speakers through the whole gym music) is not an option. I just get too bored exercising with no music.
Cutting out junky food hasn’t been too hard. My key things are going to be avoiding fried food and just pure junk (candy, cookies, cakes, ice cream, etc). I know that just by doing those I can easily get myself down below 180lbs. The hard part will be cutting down (or ideally out) beer. If I could actually pull the trigger and cut out beer/alcohol completely I’d easily drop weight. And, as a result, I’m sure I’d be more motivated to get to the gym. Ah, if it were only that easy.
Baby steps I guess, baby steps.
JavaScript Reporting Services ReportViewer control error fix
December 8th, 2008I have been going back and forth banging my head against a wall trying to fix a JavaScript error that was happening on my Reporting Services ReportViewer control when the View Report button is clicked. The error was a JavaScript error and seemed to be related to using something AJAX related on the same page as the ReportViewer control, but it took me a while to figure out what it was and fix it. All of the problems I saw on the web related to using either an AJAX update panel or one of the extenders in the AJAX Control Toolkit. Unfortunately for me I wasn’t using either one of them so trying to figure this one out was tricky.
The specific JavaScript error was:
Microsoft JScript runtime error: ‘this._postBackSettings.async’ is null or not an object
My page was setup where I had a master page with an AJAX menu on it (Radmenu to be specific). In order to use the Radmenu you need a ScriptManager object. Other than the menu, I didn’t have any AJAX related controls on either the master page or the content page.
What I eventually figured out was that my report pages (which use a base class) needed to disable partial rendering. To do this, you must do it in your page’s init event. If you do it after the init you’ll get an invalid operation exception. Here’s the code in the base class (you can put this in your code behind if you’re not using a base class):
Private Sub Page_Init1(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Init ' Make sure this page has a master page If Not IsNothing(Me.Master) Then Dim masterScriptManager As ScriptManager masterScriptManager = CType(Master.FindControl("MasterScriptManager"), ScriptManager) ' Make sure our master page has the script manager we're looking for If Not IsNothing(masterScriptManager) Then ' Turn off partial page postbacks for this page masterScriptManager.EnablePartialRendering = False End If End If End Sub
Just in case others stumble across this and are trying to solve their problem, here are some of the links I landed on when trying to solve the problem:
Songbird – a new iTunes rival on the block
December 3rd, 2008Mozilla today released Songbird, a new cross-platform open-source media player to rival iTunes. It’s based on the same software engine as Firefox and much like Firefox, it’s extensible via add-ons. It was quick and easy to download and setup and looks a lot like iTunes. You can get the free download here.
You can check out a more extensive review of it here.
State of My Fat Ass Address
December 3rd, 2008Week 1: 190 lbs
I hate to admit it but I have been going without disability insurance for some time now (well, actually I’ve never had it). Seeing as how I’m the only one working and with benefits for my family I finally got off my lazy ass and put the wheels in motion to get some disability insurance. Actually, to be honest, I actually inquired and started to put the wheels in motion back in February 2008, they just didn’t roll very far. So finally in October I contacted the same disability company again and asked for them to renew my quote and adjust a few things.
I took about a month and a half to two months from start to finish from the paperwork phase to the approval phase. Last week (a few days before my birthday) I got some paperwork from the insurance company. I assumed it was the final paperwork that I needed to review, sign and send back. What it turned out being were the test results for my blood work, which they send out as a formality and “for my records.” The strange thing was how many things fell into the abnormal or high column (I forget the exact working at the moment). Aparantly my cholesterol is pretty high (total was like 250 or 254). I guess from what I’ve seen from my research that over 200 total is in the “high” category.
I’ve never really had any problems with cholesterol, high blood pressure, etc. I guess the past few months of not going to the gym and eating like total crap have really caught up with me. I haven’t yet gotten the final paperwork from the insurance company based on these results, but I’m assuming that these “risk factors” will probably make the rate they quoted me slightly higher. I guess I’ll now need to decide if I go and get re-tested in a few weeks or just pay the higher rate, hoping that I can get re-assed and lowered later when I’m in better health.
My previous excuse for the exercising at least has been that I’ve been working a ton of hours lately (~65). I used to go during lunch on work days which was a nice break in the day. Now I’ve been working through lunch and not leaving myself any time to exercise. Starting this week I’ve decided that I need to stop making excuses and to get my ass up an hour earlier during the week to get to the gym.
As stated at the start of the post, my weight at the start of this week was 190 lbs. My ultimate goal would be to get down to 170, but I don’t think that’s realistic. I’d be happy with 175. We’ll see how it goes. Not only am I going to get back into the gym habit but I’m going to cut out fried food and really watch what I eat. The biggest problem for me will be trying to cut out beer. I may just have to work out a little more/harder to make up for that vice. I guess we’ll see how things go!
