iamshendy

It’s been a while since I’ve written a post. Twitter has pretty much killed my need for blogging. Check me out there for more recent updates.

I did want to take some time (and more than 140 characters) to update my progress thus far. I’m back to ‘Vegas Shape’ as I’m calling it – the shape I was in last June went I went to Vegas with the boys. I have been going to the gym 6 days a week now, actually incorporating a Saturday workout for the first time in forever for the last 4-5 weeks. I am very happy with how the gym is going. My arms, chest and shoulders are starting to get more defined (and bigger hopefully), and most importantly – I can start to see those “abdominal muscles” I’ve heard so much about.

Current weight: 223.5 1/2 lbs – My lowest in at least 10 years. My goal is 215 by mid-April.

Diet

• I have stuck to a diet targeting visceral fat for 3 weeks now, and have cut out sugar completely (except for cheat days).
• I have been eating protein right after my workouts
• Water – I have been consuming about 4-5 L of water a day, but not on the weekends

Improvements/Goals

• I want to see if I can get my heart rate to “target” (192 bpm). No matter what I do, I can’t seem to get about 160.
• I want to improve cardio for rugby. This will involve my weekly dry-land training with the team on Mondays, but also including a spin class once a week, and an interval run once a week.
• I want to increase my bench press. My goal is 275lbs for 10 reps for 3 sets
• I want to increase my squats. I currently push between 225lbs and 275lbs for free weight squats. I would like to get this up 315lbs (three 45lb plates).
• I want to consume more water on the weekends.
• Stretching and strengthening my hips – due to sitting all day in front of a computer, my hips become very tight from time to time, and I have a lot of lower back problems that come and go throughout the year. I have really been focusing on squat stretches, squats in general, hip adductors, and also a lot of stretches for this area.

As soon as I charge the batteries in my camera, I will take some progress pictures. I’m very happy with how far I’ve come, but have a lot further to go.

That’s it for now – I’m off to the lake for a poker tourney with the boys, some Prime Rib a la Brandon Boone, and some delicious chicken wings. Cheat meal? I think I deserve one.

Shendy.

I.
Will.
Not.
Lose…

Ever.

Put me anywhere on God’s green earth,
I’ll triple my worth.

275lbs for 2 reps.

When working with a DataSet object, I got this error.

“Failed to enable constraints. One or more rows  contain values violating non-null, unique, or foreign-key  constraints.”

Talk about annoying – this took me the better part of an hour and half to figure out where this error was coming from. Quite descriptive if you ask me <rolling eyes>. It’s as useful as this:

As with any bug the more information you can get on it – the better. The code I put together thanks to a tip from Roy Osherove’s Blog gets into the DataSet object to see which column is actually throwing the error.

foreach( DataTable table in dataSet.Tables)
{
if (table.HasErrors)
{
     foreach ( var error in table.GetErrors())
     {
         if (error.HasErrors)
             throw (new Exception( error.RowError));
     }
}
}

This produced a much more descriptive error that allowed me to track down the problem:

Shendy.

I’m doing the best I ever did.

I’m doing the best that I can.

My food for thought’s so hot, it gives you dudes ulcers.

Since I started using WordPress in January/09, the whole permalinks thing has confused me – mainly because I didn’t spend the time to implement it correctly, but also partly because their documentation is confusing.

I dedicated some time today (ended up taking 10 minutes), to figure this out.

The default for WordPress URLs is http://www.iamshendy.ca?cat=10, or http://www.iamshendy.ca?p=12. This doesn’t fair well for users that want to  access your site directly and can’t remember what “cat” is, or which number “p” was supposed to be set to. More importantly – it prevents search engines from better indexing your content. If a link within your site appears as http://www.iamshendy.ca/fitness/ – a user will have a better chance of remembering it, and a search engine can now index the ‘fitness’ keyword for your site.

With the intro out of the way – here’s a few tips to consider while following through WordPress’ documentation

1. Edit your Permalink Settings by accessing the “Settings” menu, and clicking “Permalinks”
2. Don’t follow the pattern of the “Common Settings” in WordPress’s Permalink Settings
   
   This was the biggest thing that was throwing me off. I had typed in

   http://www.iamshendy.ca/category/postname

   which according to their example – looks like it would work:
   
   But on fact does not – you actually have to use the tags provided.

3. Once you’ve entered your desired custom permalink – you’ll need to update your .htaccess file. This is a file that sits in the same directory as your index.php (usually the root of your site). Create this file, and upload it to your ftp server. Be sure to copy and paste everything that appears in the TextArea after you save:
   

Hope this helps you out – email me if you have any questions.

Shendy.

I done forgot more than you ever learned
What you don’t know will make your home a permanent urn

219lbs… Can’t stop. WON’T stop.