Today marks one month without a smoke.

Achoo!

Todd, apparently after being hipped by Nate, hipped me to Quicksilver. If you have used Launchbar, you get the general idea, but this app is even better. Nicer interface, more functionality, and (currently) free. Worth a looksee if you are a Mac OS X user.

I’m guessing, based on Xeni Jardin’s list of RSS readers at the bottom of this Wired article, that she is a Win32 user. It wouldn’t have been too hard to mention one Mac OS X RSS reader.

I’m now at 23 days without a cigarette. It got a lot easier after the first week, and has remained at about the same level of difficulty since then. At the end of this week, I step down to the next level of nicotine patch. I suspect that will be the next hard part, as I have gotten used to the cravings and have relearned how to weather them when they strike.

I’m back from a very enjoyable week off from my everyday life. I completely unplugged, and played golf almost every day while I was in Florida. I returned to overflowing inboxes, a ton of snail mail and a house and yard that are in need of my attention. I, however, remain relaxed for the moment. Oh, and my golf game improved substantially.

halfass: The Jay Z Industry and the Sound Of A Paradigm Shift I have nothing to add.

Heh, we drove by this church sign yesterday on our way to grab some brunch, and one of the people in my car started a whole conversation about the movie because of the sign. Pretty funny to then find it in my RSS Reader this morning.

I had quite a good weekend, Spring is here in Atlanta, and we’re making the most of it. I’m still smoke free, one week in and it is starting to get easier. I’ve had a lot of support from my family and friends, and that’s made a huge difference. My fears about going out to bars were confirmed, but since the weather was so nice, we managed to stay outside on patios, which helped substantially. Yesterday, I went and bought a set of golf clubs for this season. I managed to buy everything except for the putter used, and that saved me a lot of money. Now I just have to get out there and start improving.

Well, I’ve made it to Friday smoke free. It has been pretty rough at times, but I feel really peaceful about things right now. My moodiness hasn’t been nearly as bad I remember it being during previous quit attempts. I’m chalking that up to a combination of my emotional maturity level being higher, and the fact that I am more hard nosed in terms of my quitting mental state. I think the first time that I quit, when I made it a full year before relapsing, I was equally as positive about my desire to quit. The relapse was a moment of mental weakness involving alcohol, and I’ve decided that, instead of avoiding social drinking situations as I did when I quit that time, I’m going to go ahead and put myself in those situations throughout the quitting process because I think that will help me to develop the mental hardness necessary to stay quit months from now. I’m still a bit scared of being in those situations over the next few weeks, this weekend should be an interesting study in how strong my desire is.

Ars Technica: Increase your memory capacity with mental exercise

I’ve been using OmniGraffle Professional quite a bit the last couple of days as I architect a medium sized application that I am currently working on. It’s a fantastic, easy to use application that even a design impaired developer can use to produce nice looking diagrams. There are a couple of Stencils that I have found invaluable that I thought I would point out in case readers weren’t aware of them. For mapping out page content and forms, Charles Parcell’s Wireframe Palette makes specing out page wireframes a very fast and very adaptable process. For mapping out page application flow and technology, I have been using Toxic Toy’s Web Flowchart.

Yanks-Red Sox feud to resume on national TV On April 16th, it’s on.

Day two was much worse than day one. The cravings were pretty bad during the day at work. I went to see the Lakers play the Hawks last night. We had a couple of beers during the game, which didn’t seem to make matters worse, which is surprising to me. Afterwards a nice late supper at a local brewpub, where I ran into an old friend I hadn’t seen in years. It was a nice night. The cravings got much worse at the end of the night, and I felt relieved to wake up this morning knowing that I weathered the storm. Usually, day three has been the worst day for me when quitting, but so far, it hasn’t been that bad. We’ll see as the afternoon wears on. I’ve been working very hard to adapt my mental toolset to deal with the mindgames necessary to convince myself that the cravings will subside.

I am so tired of the word “Extreme.” Please make it stop. Please.

Pitchfork reports that we will see the new Beasties Album will drop in June.

It’s true, I admit it. I watched Average Joe: Hawaii, and I got hooked on it. It culminated last night when Larissa picked Gil over Brian, then admitted to Gil that she had dated Fabio, then got dumped by Gil. I’ll spare you the “she made a stupid mistake” stuff. I would expect no less.

CDC Page on How to Quit smoking.

Well, I made it through the first day sans smokes. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I remembered it being the other times I have quit. That isn’t to say that it was pleasant, far from it. For the most part, the patch sheltered me from the serious physical cravings, so I just had to deal with the mental addiction. At work, where I am on the tenth floor, things went smoothly. I had a headache for a good chunk of the afternoon, and I pushed through the cravings as they presented themselves. When I went home, things got a little rougher, mainly because going out back for a cigarette is such a regualr part of my routine. Day two has been a little worse so far, and I am hoping to stay busy.

Today marks the beginning of my fourth attempt to quit smoking. I hesitate to make a big deal of it here because of my previous attempts, which were blogged here, and which did not succeed. Perhaps, though, the pressure of having everyone know that I am trying will be good for me. The first couple of days are usually difficult, but the third day for me has always seemed to be the worst, so I am bracing myself for Wednesday’s bloodbath. I am wearing the patch again, my most successful attempt to date was with using the patch, and I did make it a full year before relapsing. I’ll blog more about this later, but so far things have been just mildly uncomfortable. I may try to work more hours this week in order to shield myself from temptation.

Heh. The judge in the matter of Apple Computer versus Apple Corp. is an iPod owner.

I got a chance today to inspect the iPod mini at the Atlanta Apple Store. It was even smaller than I thought it would be. For me, it wouldn’t really fill a practical place in my tech arsenal, I already have a 40 Gb regular iPod. I was, however, impressed with it. Afterwards, out of curiousity, I took a run over to my local CompUSA to look at the other music players that are in the same price/size class. There are larger players that are quite a bit bigger, have more storage, and are only a bit more than the mini, but there really aren’t any other players that are in the same class in terms of the overall size and storage capacity of the device. It feels well made, and somehow more durable than the other small players. The controls and display are what I have come to expect from Apple’s music players, usable and readable, and this is one area where many of their competitors have constantly fallen down in design. I would say that, if you have a need for a music player that is the right size for the gym or running, and 4 Gb is enough space for you for your day to day music needs, then the mini is not a bad solution. iPodlounge took one apart.

The ubiquitous XML button created via CSS. Cool.

Got facts? If you are at all interested in politics, arguing about politics, or just being generally well informed about politics, FactCheck.org is the bomb place for debunking material.

More houses have Net access than cable. That, my friends, should be a wake up call. This Internet thing has a lot of potential we haven’t realized yet. So get to work.