Super Ginormous

GitHub for Mac. Probably the best looking and least intimidating Git GUI I’ve ever used.

Hello again.

It’s been a while since I posted anything of consequence. If you’re subscribed to my RSS feed, you may have noticed a few new short posts were added. In my absence here, I published a few entries on a wordpress.com site. From now on, I plan to keep everything in one central location.

So where have I been? Tomorrow marks exactly one month since I had gastric bypass surgery. I’m happy I went through with it, but I’ve got a very long road ahead of me.

I started my journey at my highest weight ever: 532 lbs. Over the course of six months I attended support group meetings, met with a nutritionist, and met with my primary care physician as I participated in a medically supervised diet. After six months, I lost around 20 pounds. Truth be told, I probably lost the same 20 pounds several times.

On March 11th, I weighed in at 519 lbs. My BMI was at exactly 60% putting me into high risk territory for blood clots in my legs. My surgeon advised me to try to lose more, and I did.

By 3/11 I was down to 511 lbs. Since then I’ve lost 42 pounds. Overall I’ve lost 57 pounds, but this is just the beginning. With gastric bypass, patients can expect to lose 60-80% of their excess weight. For me, this could potentially put me around 250-300lbs after the first year.

Getting smaller, getting healthier means the world to me. I’ve struggled with every diet I’ve ever been on. This is the first time I can honestly say I don’t feel hungry. I don’t feel like a slave to food anymore. I want to be around for my wife and for my son. I want to be around for Emily, the daughter Kim and I are expecting in the next couple of weeks. I want to be around for my friends and family. Some may view the decision to have this type of surgery as taking the easy way out. That couldn’t further from the truth.

I can only eat a fraction of what I used to. I have to thoroughly chew my food to a mush-like consistency so my body can absorb it better. If I eat too much or too fast, I can make myself sick. If I eat or drink something with too much sugar in it, I can trigger something called “dumping”. I have to take quite a few vitamins daily to make up for my malabsorption. I must have at least 60g of protein daily.

It’s not easy. Slacking on any of these things could get me incredibly sick. Sticking with the plan is worth it. I’m worth it.

I recorded this video on March 9th, but neglected to post it here until now. I kind of wish I had taken the time to document more of what I was going through at the time, but hopefully the video’s enough for now.

Well, a tentative surgery date, anyhow.

I met with Lisa, my patient advocate, on Tuesday and assuming I can complete my doctor supervised diet on March 1st – and there are no hangups with insurance – I’ll have WLS on March 23. I’m excited and nervous. Now I just need to make up my mind whether I’ll have gastric bypass or a duodenal switch.

A few thoughts while I was on my way to meet with a dietician for the first time. Pardon my rambling.

In cities across the United States, individuals affected by obesity, their family members and friends, healthcare professionals and many others come together and proudly walk to raise awareness of the disease of obesity, childhood obesity and morbid obesity in the annual Walk from Obesity. On October 9th, I’ll be participating in the Augusta Walk from Obesity. I hope you’ll consider walking with me, or making a small donation to support my effort. I’m trying to raise at least $200 and I’m 10% there already. Would you please consider helping out in some way?

• Augusta Walk from Obesity – Information
• Make a Donation

The BookArc for iPad is a thing of beauty. It’s gorgeous to look at and a perfect companion for the iPad. If you’re considering getting the Apple iPad dock, skip it. Get this instead. It works in portrait or landscape. It’s sturdy. It doubles as a halfpipe for pixies when turned upside down.

You need it.

Want to add a Twitter Tweet button to your WordPress posts? It’s super easy:

Horizontal Button:

Tweet

<a class="twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-url="<?php echo get_permalink(); ?>" data-count="horizontal" data-text="Check out <?php the_title(); ?> on < ?php bloginfo( 'name' ); ?>" data-via="cdharrison">Tweet</a><script type="text/javascript" src="/img/spacer.gif"> 
Vertical Button:
Tweet
<a class="twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-url="<?php echo get_permalink(); ?>" data-count="vertical" data-text="Check out <?php the_title(); ?> on < ?php bloginfo( 'name' ); ?>" data-via="cdharrison">Tweet</a><script type="text/javascript" src="/img/spacer.gif"> 
Simple, No-Count Button:
Tweet
<a class="twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-url="<?php echo get_permalink(); ?>" data-count="none" data-text="Check out <?php the_title(); ?> on < ?php bloginfo( 'name' ); ?>" data-via="cdharrison">Tweet</a><script type="text/javascript" src="/img/spacer.gif"> 
Customizing Output:

Change out data-via="cdharrison" to your your own Twitter handle.
The inclusion of data-text="Check out < ?php the_title(); ?> on < ?php bloginfo( 'name' ); ?>" isn’t necessary, but it’ll give you greater control over the intial text.
I’ve added these to my sidebar.php (and are only displayed on pages using my single.php template) but this can be customized to be included on pages, archive pages, etc.

Updates:

rawurlencode(get_permalink()); isn’t necessary and can actually cause the widget to report incorrectly if placed outside of the loop. Fixed code examples.

							

Based on this quick tip from WPRecipes, I was able to quickly figure out how to count and display the number of Custom Posts (of a particular type) that I had on a site.

<?php
	$numposts = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE (post_status = 'publish' AND post_type = 'listing')");
	if (0 < $numposts) $numposts = number_format($numposts);
?>

Simply replace post_type = 'listing' with whatever you’ve named your custom post type. Then, to get the number to display somewhere on your page, simply insert the following code where appropriate:

<?php echo $numposts ?>