Brian Minor

So the last 2-3 months I have completely falling off the “getting healthy” wagon, but starting last night I am forcing myself to get back on track. With working out, eating better. and tracking calories through the website LiveStrong.com. No I have mentioned LiveStrong in the past, but mostly I just talked about their iPhone app, which I still believe to be the best calorie tracking app out there (even with the bugs it has).

But this post isn’t about the App. I wanna talk more about their site.

As a web designer, I must first say that the layout and browsing of the site is as close to horrible as possible. There’s a lot of things that should take a click or 2 tops that ends up taking 4-5, if not more to get to. But at the same time the site is a huge benefit. Their food database is second to none (in my opinion), they have a lot of duplicates on some things, but usually will have a “verified” image on the one that is accurate.

They allow you to put in your current height, weight and how much you want to lose a week and they will automatically calculate the amount of calories that you are allowed to eat a day to stick to your goal. They also build their entire site around a community this way you can work together with others and have they extra support group. They also have a ton of recipes and what they call “Dares” to try and help get and keep you motivated.

I have had the account for I believe almost a year now and have lost a total of 30lbs (so it does work), but as I mentioned before I haven’t been doing so well the last few months. So, it should be a lot more, but if you are interested and want to join feel free to look me up.

I’ve been using VMWare’s Fusion application for the last few years and at the $79.99 dollar price tag, it is well worth the it, but as I was installing all the programs on my new Mac Mini for work I figured I would give Sun’s free VirtualBox a shot.

VirtualBox is a free program that allows you to install virtual machines on your mac. To be honest it is pretty amazing and has all the features that I needed and used in VMWare and its all for free.

It allows you to do the fullscreen and seamless modes just like Fusion and it loads everything fas. I honestly don’t notice a performance hit with the Mac Mini, which to me is a big praise.

But, just so you all know, VMWare did just recently released a new version and I haven’t really looked at the additional feature it adds, but I really doubt that I will give it a look, cause as for work related items I am all about going with VirtualBox.

So it took me 3 years and 11 months, but it has finally happened! I was actually able to talk work into buying me a Mac Mini to use as my full time computer!

The Mini is an amazing little device, not the most powerful, but more then enough for coding websites, doing some minor video editing and installing a virtual XP box so I can still troubleshoot all the annoying phone support calls I get.

Most of you know I have been working with the Hackint0sh installer and actually had a decent amount of luck with it, but no matter how much I put into it, my performance always seemed lacking. I am sure if you built your PC with just the right equipment you may actually not even notice.

I have had the Mini for 3 work days now and I just finally got everything I believe I need installed. And the thing is still running like a top. Lets just say I am one happy employee.

Anyways enough about it here is the unboxing if your interested. Sorry for the poor camera work I really need to get one of those tripod things for my iPhone.

Last Tuesday I headed in the dentist to have a tooth removed, well one tooth turned into two, which I wasn’t really planning on.

The reason for having the teeth removed was from me clinching my teeth while I slept. This is something that, I’m guessing I’ve developed in the last year (for unknown reasons). Well, by adding this annoying habit to my life, I’ve clinched my teeth so much and so hard that I cracked two of my teeth including the roots, which led into infection and the only option of having them removed.

For all those getting worried it was teeth in the back of my mouth so I still have my pretty smile and I’ve purchased a mouth-guard to wear at night to prevent damage to any more teeth.

All I gotta say is I really hope I never have to have any others pulled cause this last week has been filled with pain and this annoying lack of availability to chew anything on the one side of my mouth.

So basically, this post is nothing more then a warning and info that if you do clinch or grind your teeth. Buy a mouth-guard before it’s too late, they are cheap ($20-$30 bucks max) and really not all that annoying to sleep in.

Now for all my nerd friends/followers, I know there have been a ton of these already posted on the internet, but I had a few reason why I wanted to still post my own.

1. I am just really excited to have one to unbox (even if it’s works and not my own personal one.)
2. I figure it would give me another post to describe how much I love the Drobo
3. Because I can.

So some of you may be wondering what in the world a DroboPro is:

The easiest way to explain it, is a device that you can put multiple hard drives in that creates one large drive but remove some of the entire storage space for automatically keeping all your files backed up. So a drive or 2 (in the case of the Pro) can go completely bad and all your files are still safe and sound.

So without any further ado here is the DorboPro unboxing…

This has gotta be the best iPhone costume I have ever seen. If only I had the money to make my own.