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90 days ago, I embarked on the less than thrilling adventure of trying to lose weight by way of dieting. I make no judgment against people who are employing the GLP-1 agonists to help them curb their appetite and shed their weight it is simply that I would prefer to at least attempt my weight loss by way of diet first.

What had worked for me in the past, though there had been a few bumps and minor issues that I had found annoying, was using the Weight Watchers app. The program, though not very expensive, is not free and works by a fairly simple process. Each food is assigned a point value, roughly correlating to its calories, fat, and simple carbohydrate composition. Some, like fresh fruits and vegetables, are given a value of zero points. Participants log their meals and snacks, tracking the points and attempting to remain under a daily allotment. To give a person ‘wiggle room’ should they choose the less strict program, which I have, there is also a pool of points known as ‘weeklies’ that can serve as a buffer for any time a dieter exceeds their daily limit. Any surplus points at the end of a day, up to no more than four, rolls over into the weeklies pool, providing a little more flexibility. There is a vast database of processed food that can be easily searched by way of their barcodes on the packaging, making logging them quick and easy. In the newest version of the app, one can even take an image of your food and have the estimated point values located by way of an A.I. engine.

I have been on this program now for 90 days and I have managed to cut out nearly all of the ‘bad’ snacking that had been contributing to my weight gain. To date I have lost 27 lbs and not felt overly deprived except on the occasional day when the craving for something rich and sweet hits particularly hard. The only week where I consumed all my weeklies was my birthday week and all in all I think that one is one I can let slide.

I still have a way to go before I am close to my goal but this time around, I am finding the process a bit easier.

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April and May turned out to be not so great for several of my electronic devices.  The first to give me troubles was my Xbox One, when it began dropping the wireless connection between both my controller and my headset. Once it progressed far enough that I couldn’t watch a complete YouTube video or play a single session of online Call of Duty, I bit the bullet and took the device in for repairs. It took two attempts and replacing the chips and transmitters for both the Bluetooth and WiFi components, but the repairs seem to be holding.

Next went the 55″ LCD Television. I have already documented that journey with a couple of other posts. While the screen had not failed completely, the faint, but growing in intensity, lines across the left quarter of the screen had become too pronounced to ignore. It was a blessing that the replacement OLED set ended up costing less than the set it replaced.

I had thought my device troubles were in the past and then after watching the Blu-ray of The Body Snatcher, still the best performance of Karloff’s career and a criminally underseen film, my region-free player went belly up. The power light remained lit and the tray refused to open. I tried to reset the player, even leaving it unplugged from power for more than a day, but nothing could cause it to cycle. Tomorrow the replacement player, this time one capable of displaying 4K discs in addition to being region-free (I had been using my Xbox One to play4K titles), arrives.

So, that is nearly my entire entertainment system either repaired or replaced in less than six weeks. On the bright side, this OLED television looks fantastic and hopefully the new player will complement it well. I have a birthday gift from my sweetie-wife, the 4K edition of Godzilla Minus One(A film that surpasses the 1954 original) that I look forward to watching once everything is set-up and running.