Just in time for the six-month mark, a day of starvation in the city got me down to 204.4 for this morning.  First reading under 205, which moves November's progress from "practically zero" to "fluke 1%".

I'm installing Linux Mint 12 on my laptop. The release notes contain a link to a tips and tricks page for figuring out the new desktop, which is necessary because it's rather non-obvious ... and which is down to reduce load on their servers on the occasion of the release.

The live DVD runs well and activates all the features of the Thinkpad T61, as I expected. I'll add notes through the day. Updates to follow.

Update: 119 MB of updates on the day of release, including a completely new Firefox. Fair enough for me, in the US with high-speed access, but I feel a little silly bothering to burn the DVD with that much to download after installation anyway. Thing is I doubt this is my final installation. I let it resize Windows and install on the inner ⅔ of the hard drive, but I don't think I really want to stay dual-boot.

1820 update: The resized Windows XP installation boots OK. With all the Lenovo software it's pretty big even with not much else installed. I have over 41 GiB used, admittedly with one game and a good essentials pack from Ninite installed. I only have a 160 GB drive. I don't think I want to give up all that space to Windows just to boot it up for an occaisional game.

2205 update: Writing this from FF8 on the laptop. Copied my .mozilla folder and let it upgrade me; it restored this editor tab along with the others. Need to check a Flash site ... check. Had to update Stylish myself for whatever reason, but it's working now.

I've crashed GNOME a couple times while playing with theme settings. Otherwise I'm happy with all the extensions Mint made. I have downloaded LXDE and XFCE and will give them a try too. Really, I'm not much into fine tuning my desktop these days. I did enough of that 15 years ago.

Also, I found my downloaded .debs in /var/cache/apt/archives; copied them to a flash drive for reinstallation assuming I reinstall everything.

Next time I get to decide how to break a diet, I want to ask for just one moderate slice ... of cherpumple.

I had nothing that great last night, but I did have apple strudel. Oddly, no effect on blood sugar this morning, but tonight's was high despite eating normally all day. I had small amounts of dressing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole (with fried onions), and brocolli with dinner. Also one cracker underneath cheese, and one baby carrot. Most of those things tasted how I remembered them, and weren't anything special that I feel like I'm missing. The cracker was at the bottom of the desirability list: the only purpose is to avoid touching other foods as much. The carrot was near the top: avoiding raw vegetables forever isn't good, just a special-purpose phase I'm going through.

But the desert ... I do miss having some at the end of the day. Yet I felt the effect immediately in the morning: I was hungry like I generally haven't been recently. It's something that passes quickly, but right after getting up, in addition to sending me into the bathroom, my body would tell me that my blood sugar was much lower now than it was when I went to bed, and is this a cause for action, sir? My standard breakfast still worked.

Interesting revelations, all in all. I don't miss most carbs, I'm just annoyed by the lack of convenient food that meets strict low-carb requirements. I miss vegetables, but I think I knew that. I really miss sweet deserts, which I didn't really suspect. And the sum total of whatever I ate had an effect on my blood sugar for at least 24 hours.

The cat with the dead eye was sitting still enough for a few in-focus photos today, and I was playing with my newly handed down camera, learning how to enable DNG files with CHDK. So here's the sick, injured, but happy and active creature:

Felt like I just sat through a meeting of an ADD support group planning a party ... no one had a short-term memory today. Starting Blackout Wednesday early? It's the new thing, according to the news.

206.8 this morning. Up a pound since last week, which would not be a good note on which to transition out of Atkins Induction into OWL .... Overall I'm not concerned, but I am indecisive about whether it's time to move forward or not. After almost six months I'm ready to start introducing more food, but the weight loss is also slow enough that I don't particularly want to slow it down any more. Not sure what I'll do this weekend.

Short term, Thanksgiving is with my mother, and I plan to have a bit of everything. So that's a day off if nothing else, which may just negate any other November progress. I realistically plan the same for Xmas and not having any net progress at the end of December. But no pizza party until I make 195, whenever that is.

After missing a week with server downtime, the weekly ritual is back. And it's monthly tape measure time again. Mesaurements were done last night, just not until right before bed, so I'm posting now:

• Neck: 17½"
• Chest: 41½"
• Bicep: 12½"
• Stomach: 39"
• Waist: 37¼"
• Hips: 40½"
• Thigh: 17¾ -24"
• Weight: 205.6#

Several had no change from October. The lack of change, actually a quarter inch gain, in the waist bothers me most. I'm getting to the point where I need to know whether to buy size 36 or 38 pants.

As expected, my old web host went out of business. I'm devoting all the time and attention that this site deserves to getting it back up.

208.8 this^* morning: no change. Got some info Friday on how 12-hour fasting glucose numbers are interpreted. 126 = diabetes. 100+ = pre-diabetes. She told me to be concerned around 110. Right now they're averaging below 90, but that's easy on a highly restricted diet.

^* This was written 11/2 even though I forgot to publish it until 11/4.