Google Keyboard

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Michel McDonald

I hate to type with my tiny android phone. The keyboard is literally too small for my fat fingers. Naturally it can take me a long time to type out a simple email which I hate because if it takes too long to type something, you forget what you wanted to say in the first place. That’s why I much prefer to type with my computer, but what if I’m not at home and I need to send a text or write an email to someone? In screwed, right?

So I got an email the other day from Google telling me about Google Keyboard for android. I had seen the swiping keyboard before, but it didn’t come with my phone so I forgot about it. I immediately downloaded the Google keyboard and started using it and I actually love it.

Okay, this is what I love about it… If you are typing and your finger doesn’t go on the right letters, for some reason, it already knows what you wanted to type, so the word comes up anyway. If it’s not the right word, there are choices you can choose from. If you didn’t see that you made a mistake, you just tap the wrong word and you can choose the correct word from the list. It’s literally that easy.

I am typing this out with my android phone right now.

Last night I typed out another post called Patriotic keychains and flag lanyard and it literally only took me like 10 minutes to type it out with Google keyboard.

When I need to type something with my phone, I usually use voice recognition, but then people hear me which makes saying what I have to say more difficult because I don’t want everyone knowing my business. This is actually faster than voice, but you still have that option if you need it. I don’t think I will need that anymore.

Just to clarify, they are not paying me to write this post. I just love Google keyboard that much lol.

Bell No-Mor Flats

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Michel McDonald

I am starting this blog post over from scratch…

Okay, so I have wanted to buy this for such a long time and I finally bought it at Wal-Mart, my favorite store (that was sarcasm). They were the only ones who sold them for $20. I was going to get it on Amazon because of how much I hate going in Wal-Mart, but Amazon wanted $30 plus shipping. Screw that! So I bit the bullet and we went to Wal-Mart.

I didn’t try to install it right away because I was still nursing a broken arm. My arm was all healed up, but it still hurt. I think I waited a week or week and a half before finally attempting it and it was not easy at all. I tried soapy water, but that didn’t work because I didn’t drench it with soapy water. I tried 2 other methods which one didn’t work and the other did, but the tube wasn’t in all the way like it should, and it popped the tire out on both sides. I had a hell of a time getting the tire back in and scratched the hell out of the rim and even punctured the tire bead where it is supposed to fit into the rim. Big mistake. Now if I want to switch to a regular tube I won’t be able to because the tire has metal wires in it that are sticking out, so that will definitely put holes in the tube. I was thinking about returning the No-Mor flats, but naturally I crumbled up and tossed the receipt that same day and that was weeks ago, so it’s long gone.

I did what I should have done the first time and that was Googling for videos on how to install it. I didn’t find any videos, but I did find an “Instructable” where the guy was saying how easy it is and gave detailed instructions on how to do it. My arms were (and still are) too sore to attempt it again, so I put the tube back in it’s box and put the tire and rim in the patio for a few days. I just attempted it again by soaking the heck out of both the tire and the tube and I am still having trouble getting it in. It’s just not working for me. If this was as easy as that guy claims, then perhaps he needs to come install it for me lol.

Well, I have had this bike since 2004 and I think I am ready for a new one. I’ve sunk so much money into this bicycle and it’s just a real pain in my ass. It’s… get ready for this… a Wal-Mart bicycle. Yes, I bought it at Wal-Mart way back when I didn’t know how homophobic they were. So, I think what I will do is keep the tube and perhaps sell it on ebay or my Etsy page for $15 and call it slightly used, since I basically didn’t really use it, I just tried installing it and it didn’t work, but it’s REALLY clean with all the soapy water I put on it lol.

My birthday is coming up, so I think I want to get a cruiser at Target. I know, you get what you pay for, yada yada yada… But Target is a good store and the bicycles are Huffy, and that is a brand I have been familiar with since I was a kid. I have more faith in Huffy than I do with the bike I have now. The cruisers are $104 to $139 which isn’t too bad. Of course I don’t have that much money to spend on well, anything actually, so I will have to set aside half of the money in June and pay for the rest in July. It will be a late birthday present.

Whoever heard of someone buying their own present? Screw that, I’m gonna ask for it and see who gets it for me LOL.

If anyone ever asked me if it’s worth it to buy the Bell No-Mor Flats tube, I would simply say NO! But if you must have one, buy mine LOL.

I can finally fit into my old clothes!

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Michel McDonald

I have lost quite a few pounds since January 5th when I started using the Noom app on my Android phone. The difference is absolutely amazing to me.

I haven’t been able to wear this outfit in such a long time. Actually, I forgot I even had it. It’s a blue shirt that I got 2 years ago, I forgot what I needed it for, but I needed a dress shirt. The neck was tight, so I wasn’t able to wear a tie, but I didn’t need to. I also wore it last year to the grand opening of the Bakersfield Gay & Lesbian Center, but it didn’t really fit me as well as I had hoped. The neck definitely didn’t button, but it was so tight that the button below the neck button was making it too tight, so I had to loosen that one too.

I’ve had the pants since 2004 when we went to my partners mother’s funeral. They are adjustable with elastic so that if I gained or lost weight, I’d still be able to wear them, but I haven’t been able to wear them for a very long time because I was too big. Today they expanded all the way out so they just fit me. I can’t wait for the day when they don’t need to expand to adjust itself.

The tie is a clip on tie because, well, that’s how I roll bitches LOL. I actually don’t mind tying a tie, but why when you can clip it on? I’m not a real estate agent or the CEO of a company, so why the hell should I tie a tie?

Of course I don’t have any dress shoes so if I were to wear this outfit I’d be stuck with my black tennis shoes, which are really old and need to be burned lol. I will focus on new shoes when I am at a point where I’m needing to go on a shopping spree for a new wardrobe. When I do get some new clothes, it’s going to be all dress clothes with collars. I am so tired of always wearing t-shirts and jeans or shorts. I’d like to start dressing with some style. I’m an adult, not a child, so I’d like to start dressing like an adult.

Take a look at these before pictures of me on my Noom page and see the huge difference from then and now. I’m not done with my weight loss, I still have a long way to go.

Lanyard Keychains

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Michel McDonald

I got bored so I started making keychains. I honestly don’t know why I started making these again. I think that I just needed to get my mind off of my weight loss and start focusing on something else for a change. I literally have a worry that if I focus too much on my weight loss, I might put too much stress on my mind and my brain will release Cortisol, a chemical which will stop the weight loss and actually make me gain weight. I read about that. I’m edumacated.

I decided that I want to focus my keychains on the color green for the Noom app. Don’t ask me why. I have a lot of the “Gimp” (as I heard it being called today) so I will be busy for quite a while. What do I plan to do with these Noom colored keychains? I’m not sure. I will have to get back to you on that one. This will give me enough practice that I will become a pro at making keychains at least. Look at my supplies…

Can you say hoarder? I bought these in 2004 when I was nostalgic for my childhood when I was in the cub scouts which is where I learned how to make the lanyard keychains. Who knew I would be so nostalgic that I would buy this many?

We went to Michael’s again recently and I went to the aisle that they have these on and they were only .99 cents for the small tubes and the big ones like the black you see here were only $2.99, so they are really cheap and last a long time. I think that when I bought them, they were half the price, but it was so long ago that I really don’t remember.

So as you can see from the ones I’ve already made, I am doing a square and a round one for each color combination. Green and black, green and patriotic (red, white and blue), green and yellow, green and white, green and glow in the dark… etc. I have so many colors that I could literally just keep making green and whatever color until I’ve run out of colors. I’m sure the green won’t last that long, so perhaps if I run out I might just use random colors.

Again, I have no idea what I’m going to do with all of these keychains. I will most likely give them away to anyone who wants them, or I might just ship them off to Noom in New York. I’m sure they would just love that lol. Here you go, have all of the things that I’m hoarding lol.

A long time friend of mine suggested that I learn the triangle pattern and even sent me a YouTube link. I tried it, it didn’t work out. It doesn’t look as fluid as the ones that I know how to make.

Even though I didn’t like the triangle one, learning it did come in handy because one of the patriotic ones (the square one) messed up as I was finishing it off; one of the green strands of gimp broke. Just as I was about to toss it in the trash I thought, “when life brings you lemons, make lemonade,” so I used the triangle method to finish it off. Although it looks horrible, but it’s doable. The green is sticking out so I will have to super glue it.

Some of the gimp that I have are wider than the normal gimp, and I have tried making them into keychains, but they are difficult as heck to make. I have solid black, green with a pattern on it and an orange with a pattern on it. Since the green is almost the same color as the Noom green, I might see if I can make it with the black and the green and orange. I will attempt it, but I can’t promise much. It would be cool to see how it would look though, so I want to try it. I might try it soon.

So that’s my “Gimp” LOL I don’t like calling it that. The box calls it Rexlace. I like to think of it as just lace or plastic lanyard lace. Whatever, gimp is fine. It’s just that when I think of the word Gimp, I think of my photoshopping program lol.

There is a YouTube channel called Laneyards and they have a video for making a hexagon keychain which uses 6 colors. OMG! I thought the triangle was hard, I can’t imagine making one with 6. I actually tried it last night and failed miserably. I would like to learn how to do it though so I can make a rainbow colored keychain. That would be really cool.

You know, I was starting to think that I was doing something that was too juvenile or childish, but seeing that guys videos made me realize that it’s not. I mean, if this guy is making lanyard keychains, and I’m sure many other adults throughout the world are making them, then it’s not so childish after all. Although, the simple ones I make are probably a bit childish since they are the easier ones that children start out learning, but hey, it’s all I know how to do. I will try to get better at it though because I want that rainbow hexagon one now lol.

Those cookies were how many calories?

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Michel McDonald

We all know that cookies aren’t the best things in the world to eat and that we should eat them as a treat and only in moderation, right? My mother used to give us 2 cookies at night before we went to bed. We always wanted more, but she insisted that 2 were enough. Now I know why.

One of the reasons I got so fat was because I didn’t care how many calories were in my cookies. We would buy 2 bags of Albertson’s cookies when they were on sale for 2 for $5 because that’s a pretty good deal right? We each had our own bag and we would both finish our respective bags by the end of the day.

In the words of Julia Roberts from Pretty Woman “Big mistake, big, HUGE!”

One single cookie is 130 calories and even though 130 doesn’t sound like a lot, can you imagine eating a whole bag in a single day? Those calories add up. I can see eating 2 cookies for 260 calories and that should be the limit, right? Oh no, we ate THE WHOLE BAG! That whole bag of 18 cookies at 130 calories per cookie adds up to 2340 calories. In ONE day!

Using the Noom app, I have learned that to lose weight you must eat a limit of 1400 calories, that is depending on if you are exercising, those days the Noom app lets me eat 1700 – 1800 calories. But if I’m not exercising because A.) I’m too lazy or B.) my back and my still broken, but healing arm are in pain, then I should really stick to 1400 calories. That is how I have been so successful that I have lost 50lbs in less than 4 months.

What brought this up is that we bought a bag of cookies yesterday because it was on the reduced (stale) rack for $1.99 and we figured that we haven’t had cookies in a long time so why not, right? Well, last night I had 2 cookies and even though it was very good, I knew that 2 were my absolute limit. I looked in the bag today and there are only 3 cookies left. My partner is also trying to lose weight, but apparently he isn’t counting as many calories as I am lol. I think that is okay for him because he isn’t really taking it too seriously, but I am very strict with myself, so if he wants those last 3 cookies, he can help himself because I don’t want them.

I have to practice complete self control at all times otherwise I am going to fail. Without self control, who knows where I would be today. I might still be 263lbs or who knows, I might be 270 by now.

Cookies are a great treat once in awhile, but I try to stay as far away from them as I can because as far as I’m concerned, they are a diet killer.

Tomorrow is my weigh in day so I am hoping for some good results. Until then…

My Noom weight chart from the beginning

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Michel McDonald

I have been blogging about my weight loss over the last few months, and I have been updating my Noom page every week to show my current progress, but I thought I would share the full weight chart. I have wanted to create this chart, but it took me a long time to figure out how I was going to do it because I had to take multiple screenshots on my phone and then blend them together layer by layer. The thought bubbles were overlapping each other, so I had to erase them and put them back in, some upside down, and then manually type in the weight with the date (minus the day of the week for space issues). I finally did it and here it is.

As you can see, I have not gone up throughout my entire process, it’s all down. There were some weigh-in’s where I had only gone down maybe 1lb or 1.8lbs, but I didn’t mind that because at least I didn’t go up.

I started out at 263lbs on January 5th 2013 and my last weigh-in shows 212.6lbs in less than 4 months. That’s 50.4lbs. My first weigh in was on a Saturday, but the first week the app asked me to weigh in on a Wednesday, then again and for some reason I got confused and started weighing in on Wednesdays. I decided after a few weeks that I wanted to go back to weighing in on Saturdays at the end of the week instead of the middle, so that’s why there are some oddities in the chart.

They say that bragging about something is going to make it stop, and normally I would agree, but I just can’t help it because I am so proud of myself. I know it won’t stop because I am going to continue to work as hard as I have been to get this weight off of me.

I just have 12.6lbs to go to meet my goal of 200lbs, and then I will extend this goal so that I go down to 170lbs. Once I reach that goal, I will continue this hard work to maintain my weight. I would hate to work this hard to lose all that weight just to end up back where I was by going back to my old eating habits.

This is a lifestyle change which I will continue because I don’t want to end up as fat as I was, or fatter. For me it’s a health issue because I had sleep apnea and type-2 diabetes. I say had because I am no longer at risk for diabetes and I am hoping that the weight loss will reverse or end my sleep apnea. I’ll admit that I haven’t been wearing my bipap mask the whole night every night like I should, but the reason is because some nights I have trouble falling asleep with it on, so I will take it off after an hour. I can usually go 2 days without it before I start waking up with acid reflux and then a few more days before I gasp for air, but I haven’t been going through that. I think that I might be in the safe zone where I probably don’t have sleep apnea anymore, or it’s going away, but I’m not a doctor so I can’t say that for sure. I will probably need to get a new sleep study to find out.

The responsible adult in me should warn that if you have sleep apnea, DO NOT go a single night without your mask, even if you can’t fall asleep. Sleep apnea could cause death from heart attack or a stroke and is a serious matter, so make sure you wear your mask.

I remain positive because that is the only way to be successful. I couldn’t be more happy with my progress and I look forward to my next weigh in on Saturday.

Plastic Canvas TARDIS Box

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Michel McDonald

I have wanted to do this for a very long time and I finally did it. I made a plastic canvas pattern of a TARDIS. I have seen some good patterns, but I’m very happy with this. It’s 10 mesh plastic canvas so you might find it easier to use embroidery floss instead of yarn.

I realize the top is missing a piece, but you could buy a battery-powered light set and stick 1 light through the middle of the roof with hot glue, then stick the rest of the lights around the Police Box signs all the way around as well as the windows on the doors. You will have to use the roof as a lid and not sew it together so you can turn the lights on and off and change the batteries. You could also line the inside with felt if you wanted to so you could put things inside and not have to see the stitches and the wires for the light set. If that is the case, you could also cover the battery pack for the light set with felt so that you could still change the batteries and turn it on/off. Simply line the battery pack and cut around the door and make the switch visible.

Anyway, I’m a huge nerd and love Doctor Who, so naturally I would want to have my very own TARDIS sitting on my desk and I wanted to share it so you could have one too. I hope you enjoy it, and if you share it, please give me credit and not take my name out.

UPDATE: I wasn’t paying attention when I made this pattern. There are windows on all of the walls, not just the front with the doors. Also, instead of using a lighter blue color for the squares, just do it in the dark blue, but add a black border or cut those pieces out and sew them to the inside giving it more dimension.

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