Since moving to our office in 1997, we have witnessed a lot of changes in our small corner of Elyria.
Above – When we first moved in, Stewart Advertising was located above us. This has since become a suite of offices for lawyers and a bail bonds man.
East – The City of Elyria Building Department was next to our office on the East. That building has been torn down and replaced by the Elyria Municipal Court
West – A historic home is on our West. For the first few years, we watched the owner work almost every summer day restoring the house. Unfortunately, we also witness the fire that destroyed much of his work. Fortunately, the house was not destroyed and has since been impressively remodeled.
Southeast – We watched the demolition of a church and the rebuilding and expansion of Burger King.
Southwest – Kaplan’s furniture has been remodeled and expanded.
Of these changes, the most impactful on our business has been the opening of the Elyria Municipal Court. On court days every parking spot on the street is filled. You can often see people walking up and down the sidewalk, talking on the cell phone and occasionally in a loud voice letting the person on the other end of the line know their true feelings about the Judge or their lawyer.
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This is part of a series of posts chronicling Emerge’s journey as we move offices and redefine our business.
Emerge started in 1996 out of back two rooms in my house. After a successful first year we had grown to 4 people, Ed Skimin, Mike Skimin, Chris Holko and Michelle Arquillo, and it was time to move into a real office.
It was also an era, late 1997, when the Internet was new and scary. We figured a prominent office space would instill confidence in potential clients and help grow the business. That said, our main criteria at the time was to find something affordable.
We were introduced to the 627 Broad Street building by Stewart Advertising, an advertising agency that moved into the 2nd floor of the building in 1995. We were working jointly on a couple of projects and when I visited their office I noticed the first floor office was vacant.
The space was perfect for our needs, large open area for collaboration, retail storefront windows to provide visibility for clients and the rent that was affordable. The location was helpful also. With I-90 and the Ohio Turnpike to the North and I-10/I-20/I-480 to the South, we were able to quickly get to clients located through Lorain County and in towards Cleveland.
If I remember correctly, the only real negotiation we did was to have a shower installed in the back bathroom so we could ride bikes to work. We signed the lease and moved in around October 1997, almost exactly 1 year to the date we started the business.
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This is part of a series of posts chronicling Emerge’s journey as we move offices and redefine our business.
After 14 years in downtown Elyria, Ohio, it is time for a move. Many times over the past 10 years we debated a move, but always held off for one reason or another. However at the beginning of 2012, we decided it was time. Before we started looking at actual office spaces, we developed a list of criteria that the new space had to meet.
During the past few blog posts, I have discussed technology that has helped me during my Weight Loss/Get Healthy Journey. Some of the technology was created with weight loss in mind, but some was not. Today, I’ll discuss another example of a technology that was not created with weight loss in mind, but helps me with my journey. This technology is Google Docs.
Fat vs. Muscle
There’s a game I play with my 2 year old nephew where I put a dime and a nickel on the table and ask him which one he would prefer. Most times, as 2 years olds will do, he will pick the nickle because it’s bigger. Under this premise, if I put five pounds of muscle and five pounds of fat in front of him, which one would he pick? I assume he would pick the bigger one, which would be five pounds of fat. Five pounds of fat is 3 times the volume of five pounds of muscle. [1]
Over the past few months, my weight has fluctuated +/- five pounds. While these aren’t the results I would like to see on the scale, I have not become discouraged. I know that, while five pounds of fat weighs the same as five pounds of muscle, it’s all about volume. [2]
Google Docs Spreadsheet
During my journey, I have been keeping track of my measurements. I take 12 measurements of my body, including what doctors tell me is one of the most important measurements, the belly. [3] My measurements started with 300 inches across my body. To keep track of these statistics, I created a Google Docs Spreadsheet. I take the measurements about once a month and document them on the spreadsheet.
The spreadsheet automatically saves the updates as I make them and calculates if I have had a successful month or a bad month. I can even graph the results to give myself a picture of my journey.
Since starting my journey, I have loss 19 inches (28 pounds). My chart also tells me I have lost 4 inches of belly fat, which lets me know I am on the right track. If I didn’t use Google Docs, I would get discouraged being in the plateau on the scale during the past few months. Instead, I have been able to see that I am on the right track by tracking the inches I have lost on my Google Docs Spreadsheet.
Today I will show you how to setup a generic browsing proxy called SOCKS 5. The main reason why I use this is to get around firewalls and gain access to services that aren’t exposed to the public side. If you are on Linux or Mac OS X you should be able to do this with ease, as SSH has this built-in. You need a computer that is on the internal network and you can SSH into.
In this example I will be using a hostname of example.com
What you need to do is SSH into that server with a set of arguments in SSH command:
-D PORT
stands for the dynamic port on the local machine (e.g. the client computer you are issuing the SSH command from).
-C
is for compression, it is always a good idea to use this.
To see what this looks like altogether view below:
ssh -D 8080 -C silas@example.com
This will login you into your SSH server and you should be at a prompt. The only thing left to do is configure the proxy settings on your local browser.
In Firefox you can do this by changing the network settings and where it says SOCKS Host insert localhost and for Port insert 8080.
After clicking “OK” you can now browse any site on the inside (and the outside) of the firewall that your SSH server is in.
Another tip is to remove the “No Proxy for:” settings like in the above image. Removing this will allow you to access services on the SSH server, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to.
After that you can do http://localhost:9292 and access an application that you are running on your SSH server at port 9292.
My last few blog posts have been about my use of websites and technologies which were not designed for weight loss. This week I will discuss websites which were designed for weight loss and explain how I use them for healthy eating ideas and tips to help me throughout my journey.
Getting Healthy? Start with the CDC
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has an entire section dedicated to getting to and maintaining a healthy weight. The site includes BMI calculators, recipes, videos and a getting started guide.
MayoClinic
If you have special dietary needs or are looking for recipes ideas, one site to use is the MayoClinic. The site has recipes listed by meal, course, ingredient, and even the number of servings needed. Each recipe includes the nutritional analysis, which includes the number of calories per serving (great for adding the meal to your LoseIt.com app).
Food Network
When it comes to food, there’s a full television network dedicated to the subject. The Food Network has a website which also includes a full section dedicated to Healthy Eating.
Improving your life one meal at a time
In order to lose weight and get healthy, I need to learn to eat better. Two additional sites I use for recipes and articles are cleaneatingmag.com and eatingwell.com/nutrition_health. Both of these sites include meals that can be prepared quickly, including a section dedicated to 5 ingredient meals and meals that can be prepared in 20 minutes. They also include articles about getting healthy and what to eat and what not to eat.
How To: Video Jug
During my journey, I also discovered a website, which not only helped me with cooking, but also includes information for additional parts of life (and well plain entertainment). Videojug.com includes over 60,000 professionally done “how to” videos ranging from “How to Make Mushroom Risotto,” “How to get better at Remembering,” to “How to stay fit and well.” The cooking videos include step by step instructions of what to do and when.
As you can see, there are many websites out there that are designed to help with weight loss. These sources have helped me to stay on track and be successful in my weight loss journey.
As the adage goes, “It takes a village to raise a child.” I believe weight loss/getting healthy isn’t a one person job. It takes a virtual village and a lot of motivators.
If you follow me on Twitter or are my friend on Facebook, you have seen some of these motivators at work. As discussed in a previous post, I use Foursquare to keep track of when I check-in at the gym. I sometimes post these check-ins. LoseIt.com also includes motivators, which post my work-outs and weight gain/loss to Facebook and Twitter.
The motivation I receive from these postings is from my friends who write comments and “Like” my posts. These comments and “likes” keep me going by showing me the support of my friends during my journey.
This past summer I had an injury that prevented me from working out, which resulted in no work-out postings on Facebook and Twitter. A Facebook friend messaged me and asked why I stopped working out and stopped posting. Someone noticed, and I know now I can’t stop without explaining why. Again, it takes a virtual village, and the support from my friends during my journey keeps me going. My postings keep them informed, which keeps the pressure on me.
I have also received comments from friends offering advice from their experiences losing weight and getting healthy. Advice from those who are actually striving for the same goal is extremely beneficial to me and adds to my motivation. If they have been successful, I can/will too.
As you can see, even though Facebook and Twitter were not designed specifically for helping people get healthy, they are helping me.
Thanks go out to all my friends (and a few strangers) who comment/like and provide support and motivation during this journey. Please keep the pressure on me and continue offering advice and support.
Installing Embed Github Gist plugin on a hosted Wordpress is as easy as following these images. First open up the administrative page and look for the Plugins drop down.
Click Add New
Then search for the plugin, I typed “Embed Gist”
Search for Embed Gist Plugin
Then browse through the search results until you find it. Once you find it click the “Install” button as I highlighted in the picture below.
Click me to view a larger image.
Follow the directions in the popup window and after you activate the plugin you can insert gists into your posts by inserting in this shortcode:
A few years ago, I downloaded the Foursquare app to my iphone/ipod touch. Foursquare is a web 2.0 application where friends indicate where they are by checking in. The more you check-in, the more points you earn. If you check in to the same place enough times, you become the mayor of the location. [1]
Stores and restaurants offer discounts to the people who check-in and to the mayor of the location, but for the most part being mayor is for bragging rights.
Three years ago, I visited my brother in India. While there, I checked in with Foursquare so my friends could visit India vicariously through me. A benefit of Foursquare in India was the ability to map where I was. I didn’t know Mumbai, so I didn’t really know where in the city I was. Foursquare showed me my location on a map and showed where I’d been.
Now you may be asking, “Mike how does Foursquare relate to your weight loss/getting healthy journey?”
Well, I check-in each time I go to the gym, and Foursquare keeps track. According to Foursquare, I have checked in to the gym 57 times (29 in last 2 months). Foursquare also shows that I have been to the gym 19 straight weeks.
Foursquare has awarded me with a mayor-ship of the gym and has even awarded me a badge for being a Gym Rat (10 trips in 30 days). As a bonus, Foursquare gives me extra points when I check-in multiple times in the same week (I checked in 8 days in a row to end 2011).
As I have discussed in previous postings, I “trick” myself into working out. Foursquare helps me by keeping track of my workouts and giving me badges and points, which is use as motivators. In next week’s post I’ll discuss additional motivators Foursquare and LoseIt provide me that help me with my weight loss journey.
In a project I was working on, there were two sites on different servers with their own versions of the same table. On one site, the table was only being read from and the contents were static. On the other site, the table was actively being changed by the users. The task was to keep the data in sync on both servers.
One idea was to create a view, but I had never created a view from one server to another, so I looked for a solution for something like a remote view, if there was such a thing. It turns out there is with the MySQL federated storage engine. If you copy the create table syntax of the table you want to view remotely, you can create it on the other server with the federated storage engine and the connection details, and the table will be read from remotely.
First, setup each MySQL server to support the federated engine by turning it on. You can see which storage engines are supported by executing SHOW engines; in MySQL. If it is not supported, then you can turn it on by adding federated=ON to the MySQL configuration file (my.cnf) and then restarting MySQL.
Next, using the create table syntax of the table you want to view, change the engine to federated and add the connection details. For example, ENGINE=FEDERATED CONNECTION='mysql://fed_user@remote_host:9306/federated/test_table'
Once setup, you can view the contents of the table on the other server. There are some drawbacks though. The biggest drawback is the lack of speed. This is due to the remote connection and the fact that the federated engine does not support indexes. If the table is used in a lot of joins, the performance will definitely reflect it.
There’s a game I play with my 2 year old nephew where I put a dime and a nickel on the table and ask him which one he would prefer. Most times, as 2 years olds will do, he will pick the nickle because it’s bigger. Under this premise, if I put five pounds of muscle and five pounds of fat in front of him, which one would he pick? I assume he would pick the bigger one, which would be five pounds of fat. Five pounds of fat is 3 times the volume of five pounds of muscle. 
As the adage goes, “It takes a village to raise a child.” I believe weight loss/getting healthy isn’t a one person job. It takes a virtual village and a lot of motivators.
Well, I check-in each time I go to the gym, and Foursquare keeps track. According to Foursquare, I have checked in to the gym 57 times (29 in last 2 months). Foursquare also shows that I have been to the gym 19 straight weeks.
