Did I mention I'm getting married??

http://lauraplusdavid.blogspot.com

I know I said I was going to be DOWNsizing my blogs, and I still am. There's this one (random me), Lauranette Photo (photography blog) and now the David and Laura family blog :)

(Our wedding website and other projects linked from the above blog, which will be my main one from now on.)

2012 Resolutions

Every year I make a list of resolutions, and at the end of the year, I look back at what I actually achieved. Then I make a list for the coming year. So before moving on to 2012, here's a look at 2011:

1. Do some form of yoga every day.
   
   Didn't happen. 0 for 1. This goal is still on my radar though...
   
2. Join a recipe website and become a better cook.
   
   I joined a number of recipe websites, and learned to cook several new dishes in 2011, some of which I've worked into our dinner routines.
   
3. Find a fitness routine that I can be happy with.
   
   In the latter half of 2012, Marissa and I got into the habit of running on Mondays and Wednesdays together, and at least once on our own over the weekend. It's a schedule that works with training for any race, as well as regular workouts and weight loss maintenance, so we've been pretty happy with it. 2-1.
   
4. Build endurance to run a 5K in 2011.
   
   In March of 2011, we ran the St. Pat's Day Parade Run - a 5-mile race, which I finished in 1:10:01. I also ran a 10K (6.3 miles) in October, a 2-mile race in November and I RAN the ENTIRE Jingle Bell 5K in December in record time.
   
5. Take a Photo-a-Day (365) and post to www.flickr.com/viewsfromlalaland
   
   I only made it like 30+ days in 2011.
   
6. De-clutter my house and life.
   
   Always a struggle.
   
7. Rebuild my savings.
   
   No, but I'm always moving closer to financial health and freedom :)
   
8. Be open to trying new things.
   
   I do try.
   
9. Read more books.
   
   Not so much.
   
10. Listen to more new music in 2011.
    
    Total fail.
    
11. Learn to spike a volleyball (and win another championship).
    
    Check, and check!

Now, onto 2012. I've got fewer this year because I want to focus on getting these things done, and done right!

1. Lose those last 15 pounds to get down to 145 by my wedding day!
2. Eliminate as much debt as possible. 
3. Run the entire 5-mile St. Pat's Day race and complete the Great River Road 10-mile run.  
4. COMPLETE a 365 Photo-a-Day project. 
5. Adopt healthier eating habits. 

Good luck to everyone!!

Downsizing my body and blogs

My official run with Weight Watchers has officially ended, and so I'm putting the Gotta Get Fit blog into hibernation in favor of consolidating my personal blogging efforts here. 

Although weight loss is a lifetime effort - from 180-156.4 lbs. I feel like I've gathered enough knowledge and reference information to go on without paying the monthly fee just so I can use their website when I could be using a notebook to track my meals for free. 

Just more than 10 lbs. to go before I'm at my adult-fittest.

Plus I need a place to house my Supernatural ranting. The TV reviewing didn't go over as well as I'd hoped.

Resistance is Futile: The New Facebook is Coming

I was listening/watching the live feed from Thursday's f8 conference, and I was genuinely impressed with both the new Timeline and Open Graph applications - so when I popped on over to my Twitter feed and read the sheer number of paranoid people throwing fits about the change, I was actually surprised. 

Except for Andy Samburg's lame opening act, what unfolded onstage that day was pure genius - and I think most people will eventually agree - even if it takes a little more time for some people to see it than others.  

People are naturally resistant to change - I get that - but the internet is an ever-changing entity. It has to be, in order to stay relevant these days. We can try and try to maintain consistency in some parts of our lives, but the internet is, and always will be, an arena in which those efforts will fail.

Thursday night I unlocked the developer preview on my own Facebook profile and set out to prove why the naysayers - screaming the death of Facebook, a mass exodus to Google+ and the end of privacy online - don't know what they're talking about. Today, I noticed people are a little more positive about the whole thing. I suspect they're actually unlocking their own profiles and seeing for themselves that change isn't all bad. So here are my initial thoughts after playing around a bit:

Timeline is Going to Be a HUGE Time Suck - At Least At First... 

The first thing I did when I unlocked my timeline was scroll back to 2005 to see who was posting what on my profile back in the early days of Facebook. So far, I've only removed a few of those things from my timeline, but I may hide a lot more in the long run. Not because I want to hide that content, but because it doesn't fit into the new timeline setup, my profile as the story of my life. They're from an earlier day, and a much different version of Facebook. 

See, back then, it was a college-only website, and there were no "status updates." There was only a profile, limited pictures, and a "wall" that served the same purpose as the dry-erase board on my dorm room door, where people could leave me messages. Later, they added the status update - only it was in the form of a sentence "Laura Griffith is ________", during which time all my updates were "-ing" phrases. Those were all good and fine then, but how do they fit into the story of me? Some do, and some don't.

Furthermore, I understand there are some bugs right now, but lots of my photos are out of order, and I feel the need to fix them. Long ago, I hit Facebook's album quota (which I'm not sure exists anymore) and deleted lots of photos only to reload them in "Best of" collections. Now they're showing on my timeline where I re-uploaded them and not where they were taken, which is unfortunate. 

As Mark Zuckerberg said at f8, people feel a strong sense of propriety over their personal profiles, a statement that has never been more true than it's about to be thanks to timeline. I suspect I won't be the only one taking the time (and it's going to be a lot) to go through my old posts, and load new ones along my timeline to "curate" the story of me, exactly the way I want it. 

Prediction: People will be more careful about what they're posting. Or they should be. Moving forward, I'm going to be asking myself this before every post: "Does this fit into the story of my life, or is it just meaningless b.s. I'll want to hide later?" This should weed out a lot of posts (though not all I'm sure) about people's infants' bowel movements. I hope anyway. Too long, people (including myself) have posted too much nonsense and used Facebook as more of a broadcasting tool than anything else - but they've lost track of the whole point, which is the personal profile. Facebook was built for PERSONAL interaction - that's why it was so exclusive in the beginning. I think it's just getting back to its roots, in a good way.


People will LOVE Timeline, because they love to talk about themselves. The whole point of going through my profile and "curating it" the way I want is so that it will be a better reflection of me - like a resume, only with my personal likes and dislikes, etc. Whether  my audience is me or people who know me can be controlled using the new privacy options (I'll get to that later). People, by nature, enjoy talking about themselves - or at least thinking other people care about what we're doing, who we are, and what we care about. The Facebook profile is just a less annoying way of tooting your own horn - and the best part is it's perfectly socially acceptable, unlike bragging into a megaphone - but almost as effective.

More than that, Facebook is a museum of people. My friend mentioned the other day that her girlfriend's husband kept her Facebook page running after she died so that the people who knew her could see pictures of her, thoughts and interests that she had shared, and more. The whole concept of timeline makes that even more interesting because now, with her password, he could potentially go in and organize her entire life on that one profile page by adding photos and milestones and letting her own previous content fill in the rest. Instead of seeing only what she posted shortly before she died, friends could share memories from throughout her entire life on that one profile page. 

Sound like a lot? Don't be paranoid. The new Timeline has MORE, not fewer, privacy controls. The privacy controls and circles that Google+ launched with (and Facebook used to not have) are now on Facebook as well in the form of lists. Users can control a separate privacy setting for each post as they make it, and share with specific groups rather than the catch all, Facebook classic "friends." On the timeline, each post from your past can also be hidden, left alone or featured individually. You can be as private or as public as you want to be, and you can make that call from post to post. 

Realtime feed is news feed 2.0! Same deal, new look. One of the funniest things I stumbled upon when I unlocked my FB past was a note I wrote in 2006 when News Feed first came out. People were freaking out that this information was being pushed out to friends' home pages, even though that same information had always been available to friends who came looking for it. Last week, when I so rabidly defended Facebook (not because I care, but because it seemed like people were being ignorant about change like they were with news feed, which they eventually grew to love), it was total deja vu. 


Realtime is the news feed - in real time (or Twitter, as some people call it). It takes some of the less significant/more time sensitive activity (so and so signed someone's wall; so and so changed their profile pic; so and so is listening to... etc. ) out of the timeline, where it would previously have sat and become old news. I noticed that my profile no longer lists every time I comment on someone's post or when I like something new. Instead, those activity updates run through real time and filter out before too many people even see them, which is fine with me. Those posts always clogged up my old profile and have no real place (except when grouped) on my new timeline as far as I'm concerned. 

Top news stories aren't new, and recent stories aren't gone! They just look different. I don't like top stories either - I always clicked "most recent" before. If you are the same as me, there's good news! Even though more emphasis has been placed on "top stories" recently, the "most recent" functionality is not gone. Instead of tabs, it's just a link you click now, that will take you further down your homepage to recent stories rather than to another view of the homepage. 


I do think the idea of top stories is cool, if they can get it right. Clicking and unclicking stories in the meantime to let Facebook know what's interesting and what isn't is kind of a pain in the butt, but it's not at all different from what Pandora does with songs it plays on its custom radio stations. (If you mark that you hate it, they won't play it. If you mark that you love it, they'll play it more often along with other songs like it. It's a learning process.) One day I hope top stories can actually show me what I want to see so I don't have to wade through 600+ friends' and pages' updates to read the good stuff.

Open Graph applications aren't stalkers - they're just better for us lazy people.

Personally, I like the idea of allowing an application to access my profile for posting whenever. I am one of those people who like to share anyway, which before required me to allow access every single time I wanted to post something, and a lot of manual posting. This way, I can give an app I like permission one time, and then it's out of my hands. I've done this already with Spotify. The great thing is that if I decide later that I don't want every song I listen to posted to my profile, I can revoke Spotify's access at any time. I plan to do the same with various running apps, entertainment apps, news apps and more. They'll make my profile look cleaner in the long run, and my content will be better organized. And then one day I can look back at 2011 and see what I was listening to/doing/interested in then.


G+ doesn't stand a chance. Except for Hangouts, which I still think would be cool if everyone had a webcam (and you'd be surprised how many people nowadays don't), Facebook now has everything G+ does - not to mention the fact that people have networks on FB with hundreds upon hundreds of people and pages that they would have to completely rebuild if they migrated over. This is not to say no one will migrate, but I'm guessing that as long as Facebook keeps up with the times (and since they've been a leader up through this point I'd say they're in good shape in that area), and doesn't grow stale like MySpace, Facebook won't be going anywhere anytime soon. 


Those are some initial thoughts... I'm sure I'll have more as I play with this and learn the ropes. Anyone else have the new profile yet? Anyone have any thoughts on the issue?


Mostly, I love that they're going back to the root of the social network - the personal focus - along with the new, impressive imagery and clean layout, and the way the application content looks on the timeline (see Spotify in my screen shot above). It looks very modern, and it's so easy to have everything you love all in one place. 

Biggest Loser: A Competition for the Ages

So this year's "Biggest Loser" is not about couples - it's about ages. This could get interesting - this show already makes me cry and now there are a bunch of senior citizens competing! I am such a sucker for seniors. How cute. 


Premiere night opened with the contestants in a desert, and the introduction of the two new trainers - Anna Kournikova and celebrity trainer Dolvett Quince. No more Jillian Michaels (although I just started watching last year, so I wasn't all that attached in the first place).

Tear jerker moment #1 was when the contestants did a mile run/walk to choose their trainers. The seniors were way behind after the other two teams had already crossed the finish line and chosen - and the trainer they were left with, Anna, ran out to meet them.... and then everyone else followed suit. I think she's going to be really sweet - I just hope she doesn't get taken advantage of. (BTW, right after typing this, not even an hour in, the seniors had already started trying to get sympathy from her, and she wasn't having it - you go, girl!)


As always, Bob was awesome. I have a feeling he might get a little mean this season though - kind of like Randy after Simon left American Idol. I'm not sure what I think about Dolvett yet, except that he's going to be hardcore. ("Why are you holding onto my treadmill?!?")
It's still too early in the game to keep tabs on all the contestants and their names - especially as a casual viewer, but I do have a few thoughts about the ones who stood out: I see Anton as this year's Rulon - but I hope to like him a whole lot more - and I think that I will. 


My heart absolutely broke (tear jerker moment #2) when a contestant named Becky got a call about the death of her father from congestive heart failure. Knowing the struggles these people are already facing, and then this? I almost expected her to break down and drown her emotions in food (like I probably would - but instead, she did the show proud hit the gym. Good woman.  


I have a feeling my favorite contestant though is going to be Ramon. He seems like a cool guy, and he really struck me as genuine talking about how he wants a girlfriend and to go on dates. No one deserves to be that unhappy with themselves, so I hope he does well. 


Last chance workout was kind of hilarious, (Bob just loves it, and it seems kind of evil), and then it was time for final weigh-ins:  

• Johnny, who almost walked out the first day, lost 17 pounds!
• Bonnie, one of the seniors, only lost 4 pounds. Not a good showing the first week.  
• Mike, another senior, lost 12. Good showing, but nothing special.
• Debbie, of the senior team, lost 6. Maybe Anna needs to step it up. 
• Becky, who spent part of the week at home at her dad's funeral, lost... oh wait, a commercial break! .........Ok we're back! She lost 10 pounds, and I was so happy for her!
• Joe, a 40-something, lost 22 pounds!! Holy crap! In one week, he trashed his blood pressure medication. What a start!
• Anton (started at 447 lbs.) put up an ENORMOUS 32 pounds!! Bob got just what he wanted for Christmas. 
• Sunny, who I didn't see at all until the weigh in, lost 16. Bob, apparently, was the proper choice. 
• John (445 lbs.) lost 37 pounds (37 pounds!!!!) 
• Jennifer lost 19!!!!!!! 
• Vinny, the first of Dolvett's team, lost 21 pounds :) Apparently Toby Keith (on Twitter) was saying to watch out for this dude. Maybe he knows him?
• 17 pounds for Ramon. After Bob's team's showing, I could see why they weren't happy with their numbers, but are they crazy?! They did great!!
• Jessica lost 15. 
• Patrick, who showed a complete lack of self confidence (I felt so sorry for this guy), even got kicked out of the gym at one point this week, but he ended up losing 20 :) I really like this guy! Maybe now he can gain some confidence. 
• Courtney dropped 16 lbs. 

Unfortunately, someone had to go home. Johnny was safe as the biggest loser on the senior team, but the sun set early for Debbie. 


I thought, "GOOD RIDDANCE!!"


I wanted to smack that woman for saying Bonnie was annoying, and I don't even know Bonnie! That was just rude. Since Debbie only lost 2 more pounds than Bonnie, she pretty much sealed her fate by opening her big trap. No one needs that negativity, especially on this show. 


It is worth noting that there were some pretty hilarious tweets being posted tonight. Gotta love the #fattweet #fatshow and #fatfatfat hashtags...

HIMYM and 2 Broke Girls: Good Start to Premiere Week/Month(s)

So I didn't liveblog last night - that much is obvious. But I'm here to tell you that last night was a really good start to my personal premiere season, and I'm super excited for the rest of the week!

"How I Met Your Mother" saw the return of BEERCULES! Of course, I didn't remember Beercules in the first place, but that doesn't make him any less awesome. 

Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD!

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We found out that Barney DOES eventually get married, that Robin still loves him, that Marshall is going to start his dream job soon, that he and Lily are becoming parents and that Victoria is back!! But I'll get to that. 

First, I love when TV shows give nods to pop culture - I thought the whole "autotune Ted's wedding toast" idea was genius, and the YouTube theme of the night, which included Marshall's streaking escapades as "Beercules," was equally entertaining.

Moving onto relationships, I loved finding out that Robin still has feelings for Barney, but it broke my heart when the whole Nora dilemma came into play. Of course, it wouldn't be a television show if everyone fell in love easily and lasted forever. I admire Barney's efforts, and his attempts to change, but it kills me that they're clearly aimed in the wrong direction. 

Finally, I really truly thought Victoria might the mother once upon a time, and now I have a glimmer of hope that it's still possible. I can't say much more about that... I just can't wait to see where all this goes this season.  

Anyway, moving on - 

I always wonder when a new show starts if it's going to be able to keep my attention. There's always a chance, of course, that it keeps my attention but not America's and it gets canceled before its time, but that's none of my concern just yet. 

"2 Broke Girls" came out swinging last night. My first reaction was shock at the vulgarity of some of the jokes, but I really settled into it quickly, and it definitely kept my attention. 

The main characters are witty - but not annoying witty like the "Gilmore Girls" were - and are, for the most part quite likeable. "Max" is played by Kat Dennings, whom I remember fondly from "40-Year-Old Virgin."

I can't say much else because I have a terrible memory and should have done this last night - except that I'm intrigued by the concept of a running "cash total" at the end of the episode. 

TV Premiere Season Starts Tomorrow!

Television premiere series starts tomorrow with How I Met Your Mother at 7 p.m. on CBS. I am not entirely sure what's supposed to go down this episode. All I know is there's a wedding, and that Barney has apparently not cut his fingernails in 36 years.

I am hoping to do some liveblogging during the commercial breaks of most of the season premieres on my calendar, but I'm not making any promises. I keep a pretty tight schedule these days. Anyway, you can keep up with that on Twitter @lauranette.