Had a followup with my primary care physician, and got a decent blood pressure reading. So this whole diet/exercise thing is working. And that was after spending 5 days in Austin visiting my brother with the entire family. They preordered Franklin Barbecue 2 months ago, so I had to eat that, and it was good. But I tried to be as healthy as I could. Hoping I can keep this up. Spent the majority of the time, while the cousins played, organizing all their LEGO and putting together a few choice sets. A very enjoyable way to spend my vacation. Wish I could have put more of them together. And completely jealous of all the LEGO they have. Kids definitely had fun playing together. The iPhone/iPad didn't come out until the very last day. Thanks to Al and Nicole for hosting and organizing all the fun activities. Last night had a playdate for Jackson's classmates and parents. But I had to leave early to see David Robert King at Uncommon Ground and see Bryan and the gang. Special shout out to El for organizing. Since I'm trying to learn guitar, I was paying attention to the guitar playing, and David's stunning. Really really good. Good to see all of them, but had to leave early to help put the kids to bed. Really nice to just be able to walk over and back though. Had the last week off, which was really nice. Being on vacation is nice. On Friday after my doctor's appointment, met up with Tracy on the Brown Line since she had to get her expired driver's license renewed, had lunch together, then walked over to Magnolia Bakery to get some treats, then up to see the new Apple Michigan Ave store, which was pretty nice, then continued up to The LEGO Store to check out all the sets with my new found appreciation of them. Could easily spend thousands there. They had like 5 different Modulars, and the Ninjago City, and the UCS Millennium Falcon, and and and....

So I’ve been all in on the lifestyle changes to try and deal with my high blood pressure. Went ahead and got a Kinetic Smart Road Trainer so I can do my bike riding in the crawl space in the basement. Actually worked up a sweat yesterday, which is really something I don’t do when commuting. I installed and started using My Fitness Pal on my iPhone. Last time I tried using a food tracking app/service, there really wasn’t that much preloaded, but now? Pretty much everything is. Super easy to track. Also, a low sodium diet sucks. Kind of shocking how much I was probably taking in before actually keeping track. Also installed Gulps on the iPhone. Reminders and tracking for drinking water. Trying to stay hydrated. Haven’t quite switched to eating more often in smaller servings, but it’s getting tempting. Pretty much because when I do eat a meal, I’m still hungry afterwards. Not used to the smaller portions yet. In the midst of it all, did my double red blood donation on Monday. Apparently Red Cross doesn’t think I have high blood pressure. Crazy snows as well the last week or two. Wondering how much of it goes away as temps are above freezing and it’s supposed to rain tomorrow. I expect lots of giant puddles. Oh, speaking of food, my new favorite place to get it at work is Pret A Manger. Pretty healthy stuff, and a good variety for breakfast. Haven’t actually tried them for lunch yet, but I should. Lots of salads in my future.

Yeah, completely missed a month. Whoops. Again. Happy New Year! Let's see, AT&T Fiber is great. Used way too much electricity the last month (hoping it was the extra heaters I put in the basement and the mud room). Christmas was good. Lots of in-law family time with the cousins. Started biking again. Joined the clipless revolution. Mostly because I wanted to be able to use my Japanthers without dealing with toe clips/Powergrips. Working well, haven't had my fall yet. Waiting for it to happen though, since everyone does. Got diagnosed with high blood pressure. Trying to control with lifestyle for now, and hoping I don't have to start taking pills. Otherwise, health is good. Labs all came back normal, except for the still elevated Creatinine. Still not sure what that's from. Maybe too much meat? Will find out if diet/exercise makes a difference. Been wanting to change the site to be more Micro.blog friendly, maybe update to using some posting standards. But haven't gotten around to it. Did switch to Micro.blog from Twitter. Just got too annoying and infuriating reading over there. I think I've successfully weaned myself off it. Been off Facebook for a while now. Seems like it's trending away from those, and especially Micro.blog might be reaching some critical mass. Works been crazy busy, rollout of a new product at the start of the year, lots of late nights. But getting better. Watched Patriot on Amazon Prime Video after a couple podcast recommendations. Good, but after a comment about it being Wes Anderson like, couldn't stop seeing it. Good, but not great. Been watching Happy Endings, now that is a good show. And started LA to Vegas recently. I like that one too. Marvel's Runaways on Hulu is one of my Best of 2017 picks. Pretty much the reason I got the subscription to Hulu. After Amazon Prime Video came out for tvOS, got a new Apple TV 4K to replace the old 3rd Generation I had as a source. Kids have been watching a lot of gameplay videos on it by Zebra Gamer, mostly LEGO City Undercover. Looks great, got LEGO City since Undercover isn't available on tvOS, but getting tempted to get a Nintendo Switch to play Undercover. It looks that cool. Also got a Steelseries Nimbus Wireless Gaming Controller for LEGO City; much better than the Apple TV Remote for gameplay. Tracy ordered up a rug and a settee for the parlor, so we've got actual furniture there now. Been practicing guitar a bit, remembered I should be learning Peter, Paul & Mary songs like Puff the Magic Dragon and Leaving on a Jet Plane. Lucy's been taking ice skating lessons over at Winterland at the Park. Jackson started up swimming lessons again.

Fitting, on the day the FCC decided to repeal Net Neutrality, I got my AT&T Fiber up and running. I had the SCI guys come out on Monday for a regular tune up, see if they could fix a couple issues, install some new hardware, see if they wanted to handle getting AT&T Gigapower installed. Turns out I could go ahead, so I chatted and got an install scheduled for Tuesday. Tuesday comes around, and they run fiber to the home. All the way into my data closet. Although I get an IP and a gateway IP, I get no further. Also the corresponding digital voice service isn't working either. So I get a tech to come out today to check it out, and after swapping the router/gateway, and cables, and so on, gets put on hold with the backend, and they get it up and running eventually. Took them about 3 hours to get it up and running. And running it is. Couldn't swap it out until Tracy got off working tonight, but it's fast. And symmetrical. So we shouldn't notice any slowdowns, anywhere. Not quite getting the full 1Gpbs up/down, and not sure how much tweaking I need to do, but just going to enjoy it for a bit. Will downgrade the Comcast line to something basic as a failover, since we'll keep it for cable TV. Wonder how long I'll be able to enjoy this unfettered access to the entire net. Plex users should hopefully have no issues streaming anymore. Next best thing from the SCI visit was the Lutron Connect Bridge install. Means the whole house lighting got hooked up into HomeKit. Which means I can control lighting by voice. And can trigger other lights via switches (ex: the Christmas tree lights are on a Lutron lamp dimmer, which is controlled by a nearby keypad. HomeKit automation triggers when the Christmas tree lights go on/off and turns the front outdoor lights on/off via an iDevices Outdoor Switch, as well as a string light in the family room on a railing on another iDevices Switch). It's like an early Christmas. Got accepted into the Apple Heart Study. Picked up an iPhone 8 for Tracy yesterday on my way home from work, she was tired of the battery running low on her iPhone 6S.