In the past couple of days I finished reading the first book of the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” It was fantastic! I saw the movie when it came out years ago, but to summon a cliché, the book was, indeed, better than the movie!

I know this probably sounds like a funny, if not boring accomplishment to most but just like having a bad case of programming ADD, I’ve got the same thing going on with reading books. I pick one up, read the first few chapters with great interest, then something happens that makes me drop the book and start something else.

I’ve been reading the books on my iPad and iPhone. Obviously, I prefer the iPad over the iPhone because of the larger screen which is easier to read and involves less frequent page turns, but already the iPhone ebooks (which I will now be calling iBooks in this article because that’s what Apple calls them) have made my day on a number of occasions. Standing in line is infinitely more enjoyable -er- that’s not right, let me start over: standing in line can be much less boring now that I’m into reading iBooks. I’m not sure everyone knows this, but if you stop reading an iBook on one device, such as the iPad, and then if you’re like me, find yourself standing in line with your iPhone, you can open the same copy of the iBook and it will automatically turn to the page you stopped at on the other device. This is fantastic!

Now that I’m done with the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” I’ve decided to not read the sequels right away. Although I thoroughly enjoyed the book, I’m going to take this new found excitement in reading and start reading a different book. I’ve already started “The Foundation” by Isaac Asimov. I’m already half way through it and so far I recommend it to any sci-fi fan who hasn’t yet read it.

I do welcome recommendations for good books, but I’m going to try to stick with the iBook (ebooks) format since it’s just so much easier to carry around…and read in the dark. Man, I love technology!

Here’s a snapshot of one page of ibooks I’ve got on my iPad right now. I’ve got lots of reading to do.

A select few iBooks currently waiting to be read.

Dictionary.com defines addiction as “the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.” From the same site, obsession is defined as “a persistent idea or impulse that continually forces its way into consciousness, often associated with anxiety and mental illness.” the difference being that if I were addicted to food I would be experiencing withdrawal symptoms, which I’m not. Though, I guess if you want to split hairs, I do consider myself ‘enslaved to the practice’ of eating as much as I am enslaved to the practice of breathing air.

I think about tasty food (and good beer) all week long. The cliché “you don’t know how much you miss something until you lose it” definitely applies to how I feel as I continue my goal of losing weight. You could say a side effect of dieting would be a heightened obsession for food.

Another side effect I’ve noticed is a heightened sensitivity to noticing food. As I watch tv, I catch myself thinking “Oh my, there certainly are a higher number of food commercials on, I wonder why that is?” but after thinking about it longer, I doubt that there is actually more food ads, instead I think I’m just noticing them more. But seriously, ever notice how many there are? Sure, you’ve got your standard fast-food ads from big names like McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Subway, Arby’s. Then the lesser known places like Culver’s (with their delicious Butter Burgers), Taco John’s, Jimmy John’s, Long John Silver’s. Dariy Queen even has a ton of ads for their burgers, though I don’t know of anyone that thinks DQ when they are jonesing for a burger. And of course, pizza places practically get their own category with Pizza Hut, Domino’s, Papa John’s, Papa Murphy’s, Little Caesars (I know! I’m shocked their still around too!). Restaurants are always showing their best food porn…places like Applebee’s, Perkin’s, Red Lobster, Baker Square, Buffalo Wild Wings. And those are just commercials I remember seeing recently! Don’t even get me stated on food product commercials like Pop-Tarts, Go-Gurt, Triscuits, Doritos, Cheetos, Fiber One, Toaster Strudel, Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches, take home pizzas like DiGiorno (would have mentioned it before, but ‘It’s not delivery’ ZING!).

Makes you wonder, when was the last time a food commercial like “Apples, they grow on trees! Try one today!” was on TV? Oh, and why are there so many Asian restaurants but no TV commercials for them? These two things are, of course, unrelated…I think.

Kids these days won't stand for just bright red colors and simple fructose. They want color like a rainbow vomited on their food and sugar that's already been processed!

I’m extremely happy that my slow-carb diet (from Tim Ferris’ book “The 4-Hour Body”) allows for one day off a week to go wild and eat whatever I want, but I’m even more happy that it’s working. It allows me to reason with my obsession in a way that works for me. I’m able to tell myself to keep strong and not cheat on my diet because come Saturday you can go wild. Every week is the longest and shortest week and there have been a couple of times where I’ve slipped and indulged my food obsession. I’m not perfect, but I do my best.

Something the headphones don’t block out, however, and something I would probably call a pet peeve of mine, are people who eat the grocery food while they’re shopping and before they’ve paid for it. Yesterday I saw a woman eating a bag of doughnuts while strolling around the store. Then, a different woman eating a bag of chips, and a totally different person opening a bag of cookies for their kid to stuff in its face! What the heck?! When did that become socially acceptable?

Doing a quick Google search, I did read that in some countries it is acceptable. This article says it normal to sample food in Saudi Arabian grocery stores, but acknowledges that this is different than American customs. Besides, there is a difference between sampling and polishing off a bag of doughnuts and Doritos only to wash it down with a bottle of pop. No, I’m not going to be all “[queue fake southern accent] That’s not how we do it in America!”…though, the gluttonous act of feeding yourself food that has yet to be paid for and think that this is perfectly okay, does fit in with the modern “lazy Americans” ethos.

So what’s the big deal? Besides being socially unacceptable (in my opinion), there are other reasons that the store owners, employees and other customers would also disapprove.

For the store owners, who’s interest is to make sure patrons do not steal food, there should be a constant worry toward anyone eating the food while shopping. It’s just too easy for someone to finish a food product and stash the wrapper on a shelf somewhere. Trust me, if you look for empty food wrappers next time you go shopping, you’ll probably see some. The offending people might  also forget to tell the casher about the consumed product. In either case, it’s just plane bad. For example, forgetting to pay for gas before driving off will still get the cops called on you.

For the employees, they are tasked with the added job of cleaning up after these people. The crumbs that are dropped, the empty stolen food wrappers, all of that needs to be cleaned up – all of which came from people who just couldn’t wait to crack open a snack.

And finally, it effects the majority of people who don’t snack and shop because eat-before-you-pay sends the wrong message to kids and other adults who are less inclined to keep up the status-quo.

Eating food in a grocery store before you pay for it leads to higher product losses, a messier store, and unnecessary extra work needed to be done by employees. All of this adds to higher grocery bills for us due to compensation for stolen merchandise and extra work required by employees and store owners.

Simple fix: Don’t eat food while grocery shopping.

As I’m out doing errands last night, I witnessed evidences that supports the claim that we do (sadly). I wish I had a story to tell you about a pack of children misbehaving, but it was adults doing stupid things that made me lose a little faith in humanity (maybe that’s a little harsh; I don’t believe these people represent everyone).

Call me picky, but I hate it when people drive the wrong way down a one way parking lot aisle. Don’t know what I mean? You might be one of them. But just incase I’m not making myself clear, I made a diagram to explain.

The black arrows (cars) are doing it right. The red arrow is doing it wrong.

This shouldn’t be a secret: the rows of a parking lot are angled for a reason: it makes pulling into and out of a spot easier. In fact, there are usually arrows at the beginning of an aisle pointing down the way you should go.

When some goofball decides to go the wrong way he/she causes a few issues for themselves and others. The beauty of angled aisles is that you can make the aisles narrower because you no longer have to accommodate two car widths for traffic coming from both directions. For those who are parking lot savvy, this is a problem, when dumb people decide to show off their special skills of ignoring or otherwise being oblivious to something as simple as one way parking lots. Time is wasted because both cars need to slow down to maneuver around each other.

Another problem for people who respect the parking lot flow is when you are backing out of a spot. The one way’ness of the aisles should guarantee that traffic is only coming from one direction (read: you only need to check one direction for on coming traffic) and the angled rows make it easy to check the on coming traffic and easy to pull out of with little effort or turning. Now, to be clear, you should ALWAYS check both ways for traffic (even on a one way) and more importantly people. Just because it’s a one way for traffic does not mean it’s one way for people. They will be coming from both directions so ALWAYS check. The point I want to make about the angled rows is that while they are easy to check for cars coming from the proper way, it’s very difficult to see idiots coming from the opposite (wrong) direction. I’ve been honked at by people I didn’t see coming from the wrong way, as if I’m the one doing something wrong.

Assuming there are a few people reading this that do drive the wrong direction down a one way parking aisle, I want to ask you, “Why do you do that?” I ask because you could be saving yourself some hassle by not doing what you are doing. When you go the wrong direction but then find an open spot, you can two choices: Back into a spot, or make a very awkward and time consuming ‘backup-and-go-forward-a-few-times’ effort to get into that spot. It’s not just time consuming for you. There are probably people trying to get around you. And backing into a spot, only sets you up for driving the wrong way again after you pull out of the spot, unless you want to do a very similar awkward ’backup-and-go-forward-a-few-times’ move to get out.

I guess what’s missing a “Do Not Enter” sign at the ends of the one way aisles for the dumb people. I doubt that will stop everyone, but perhaps what most of the idiots are missing is for someone to tell them to not do something.

It makes you wonder: what would the world be like without these warning signs.

I’m wondering if this bugs people too. Let’s take a poll.

This year, however, I’m on a diet. The slow-carb diet allows for one day off a week to eat whatever I want, but I’ve already had that day off (yesterday). And Friday I cheated and stuffed my face full of chinese food…it was a buffet. :/ So my previous advice I dispensed in my last blog post was ignored and I cheated, and I’m paying for it. I’ll admit, I nearly convinced myself that I would cheat for the Super Bowl, but that’s not happening now. Oh well. I’ve got a goal and I’m sticking to it. I guess to add a happy “night cap” to this topic, Friday morning the scale showed I was below 200 lbs. First time I’ve seen that in a long time, and I take it as a sign that I’m doing something right.

In other news, this past Thursday I bowled a 269. A fantastic score considering that my previous high score was 195 (about two weeks ago). It was a crazy surprise. One I hope to repeat soon.

High score; 269.

So what’s the new “learn something half-ass” today? Objective-C. Or more specifically iOS programming. The book of choice? “iPhone Programming – Big Nerd Ranch Guides”. There really isn’t much to say about the book, and this blog post wasn’t going to be about programming anyway.

I was going to write about my progress for losing weight.

Ahhh, progress..

Sadly, this past Friday, I cheated on the diet by having a medium chicken-nuggets meal (yes, with fries) at Wendy’s late at night and that clearly shows. What I’m super surprised about is that that one meal late at night put about 3 lbs. on my by the  morning, but so did a full Saturday of “off-diet-fun”. So, lesson learned…don’t cheat on the diet.

I remember reading in a different book that new programmers are at an advantage when learning a new programming methodology like OOP (object oriented programming) versus procedural programming because you don’t need to unlearn or let go of what you learned in the past. Thank god because I’m having a hard enough time learning OOP as it is!

In a previous post I mentioned that one of my road blocks to learning programming is coming up with ideas for small test programs that I can try out what I learned. Another thing I also struggle with is “how” to program something. I do fine with learning syntax, but I feel like most books that I read get done with syntax and then expect that you just know the ‘how and why’ of define classes. Again, I know how to define a class, but what should I put into the class? Or rather, what do I need to be thinking about to consider making a class a certain why?

Needless to say, “The Object-Orient Thought Process” is helping. If I remember, I’ll let you know what I thought of the book once/if I finish it. I have a nasty habit of starting a book and not finishing it before moving on to the next one…Yeah, I do that with most thing in my life. :/

I have access to Lynda.com which is both awesome and partly why it’s so easy to drop one thing and start learning something else. I haven’t gotten through the whole thing yet, but it sort of reminds me of Python. I know the Python and Ruby loyalists are probably raging that I said that, and when/if I learn more I’ll probably realize how noob that really sounds.

In other news. I dropped my MobileMe subscription. No, I really wasn’t paying for it anyway since I got a free account for working at an Apple Reseller. Since I’m no longer working there, and it’s time to renew the subscription, I decided “no thanks.” Why? Because I can get almost everything it offers for free from other services. Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, Dropbox, WordPress, and FaceBook are all free alternatives for email, calendar, synced contacts, online storage, website and photo sharing. The ONLY reason why I would justify spending the yearly $99 would be for Find My iPhone feature, but even that is free now (Thank you Apple!).

And finally, as cliché as this sounds, I’m going to lose weight. Started a slow-carb diet (see book called “The 4-Hour Body” by Tim Ferriss for an idea of what that is and what I’m going). I started it this past Monday. The next day I was down 4 lbs. Next day, only 1 lb. and this morning I hadn’t lost any thing. :/ Oh well. I’m going to keep at it.

I keep thinking that I’m going to have a ton of things to say about what I’ve learned, but each time my mind comes up with nothing. It’s as if I’m looking at a baron desert landscape. I could say that I know how to assign variables, and make functions, but that’s not interesting.

What is interesting about Python, though obvious to experienced Python programmers, is that space matters. Indenting code is how you show that code is apart of a function, or control statement (if, while, for loops). At first I thought this was really dumb, but a book that I read pointed out that you normally indent code that is apart of a control statement anyway, why not just get rid of the braces that you see in just about any other language. Interesting. Took about two minutes for me to realize that, yeah, it’s alright to get rid of those braces…they aren’t really needed! Of course, this means that you really need to make sure that you are indenting correctly, but that’s a bit easier to catch than a missing closing or opening bracket.

My biggest problem I encounter when I get started learning to program is that I draw a blank on what I want to program. I get to a point that I know the basics, but then have a really had time thinking about what to make and if I somehow think of something to make I can’t get my tiny brain to think of a good way to program it.

*sigh*

I wish I had taken a class on this. Maybe I need to enroll my tiny brain into a community college course. We shall see.