Today is day 15 and I still haven’t had any coffee, but I haven’t blogged or worked out every day. Lets keep up no coffee at least for 30 days I’m excited about this.

Yesterday was again successful. Ran 2.7 miles in 30 mins and did legs and abs after that. I slept a lot last night and took a nap for lunch yesterday. I had 3 diet cokes yesterday… but I stayed away from coffee. Hopefully today I can get by on 2

Feeling less stress/anxiety and the less coffee + more exercise I think is making me want to sleep more…

I took a few pictures today, not quite 12… 6 to be exact. I wrote 2 other posts last night however, so that will have to do!

Scalin’	Breakfast of Champions
Skype, with Jared	My favorite book yesterday
Hope they don’t mind that it got ripped…	Frustration, how can I make this work on my machine!

My 12 of 12 Archives.

Check out the Uri! Zone for his 12 of 12.

Today had been a majorly frustrating day with learning how to use JSPs the “right” way.

The model I was working with:

List moviesList = new ArrayList();
moviesList.add("Top Gun");
moviesList.add("Terminator");
request.setAttribute("movieList", moviesList);

And my JSP code…

<table>
<c:forEach var="movie" items="${movieList}" >
<tr>
<td>${movie}</td>
</tr>
</c:forEach>
</table>


First off Tomcat wasn’t really working and I couldn’t figure out why. This had led me down the road to using Glassfish for a while, but I wanted to try and steer clear due to previous scars I still have from using Glassfish.

In Tomcat, it turns out had I had setup the password to be different than our other computer and that was throwing me off. After that, it still wouldn’t launch because it got a file not found (invalid permissions) error. So, i did a sudo chmod -R +x apache-tomcat-6.0.20 and finally it started up! Now, after all this I tried to run some of the samples and found that there were not sufficient permissions for the tomcat directory. So I said screw it and did a chmod 777. I know that’s the worst thing in the world, but hey, it works, right?

So now I could run the example jsp pages that used Tags, but I couldn’t get my pages to work. Frustration! Luckily mid-day I decided to go grab my book (picture shown above) that helped break down JSP tags for me. It recommended to copy the jslt.jar and standard.jar files from the examples into my /WEB-INF/lib directory. That seemed like it should be easy enough. It was easier than looking digging for the libraries in the global Maven repositories (searches that were coming up empty), however it still wouldn’t work. Total frustration!!!

Now, it’s confusing enough that when there seems to be specific implementations of the JSTL (Java Standard Tag Library) for each container i.e. Tomcat, Glassfish, etc. But now I was using the Tomcat Libraries, on Tomcat and the same exact libraries that the samples were using. What gives?? Why isn’t it working?

Finally, after a clear head from the gym and a plan of action I came back and pieced things together piece by piece.

The culprit… well a lot of things it seems, but it all came down to one attribute.

What??? Just a version number? All of my web.xml files had been machine generated so that was the last place I looked. At least I got to the bottom of it and can move on to actually using JSP Tags in the morning.

Lesson of the day: Use a version number in your web.xml file. It’s obviously important.

Today was a success (No clue? Read Yesterday). I had zero coffee, although I had 3 diet sodas (1 diet pepsi, and 2 diet cokes). Weening down still from 5 cups of joe yesterday. Tomorrow will be 2, and I might do that for two days, then finish off the last 4 days of weening with just one a day. As far as the gym, I got in 45 minutes and I owe it to Kristen who launched my ass outside and got us to the gym. Excellent.

Forewarning

No one wants to hear about resolutions that include the gym or anything like that during the month of January, so if you want to not read that… go somewhere else. I’m sorry. This is my only apology.

The Next 30 Days

I’ve been telling myself since the end of fall soccer season that I would start being healthier and in better shape by the time the winter indoor season started. Tonight was my first indoor soccer game, and I nearly died. It’s true, I’m not that great at soccer, since I haven’t played since I was 13, but really? I can’t even play 1/2 a game (that’s 20 minutes total) without literally feeling like I was going to keel over? I’m 26 years old, and it’s absolutely pathetic. I guess the following factors really set up me for not being the most prepared person for a soccer game.

• Not having worked out since last Thursday, and then who knows before that
• Having 5 cups of coffee today (one at the Social Media Club meeting this morning, one at Spill the Beans, and three? at home)
• Eating delicious and spicy Thai food for dinner
• Sitting on my ass a lot in front of the computer

Oh, and in case you were thinking the last week was just bad, that’s not the case. It’s been like this for a few months now.

More than just Physical Health

For the last few months after starting to be in South Carolina nearly full-time, I have changed. Obviously there are a lot of reasons why that could happen when you move 500 miles away, but it’s not good change at the moment. Yes, I am incredibly grateful for now being engaged, and still having a job among other things, but as of late, I’m simply “not feeling it” (it being the way I’m living life).

Granted I have been doing a good job on focusing more on learning new things on the computer, and applying those in fun projects, but that’s about all I do outside of work. Which leaves me in front of the computer for… 10?-16? hours a day.

For 30 for 30 Days

I’m not going extreme, but I am going to be firm with this. It’s one of those things where it is only 30 days, so I’m not talking about a lifelong change. Anyone can survive such “harsh things” for 30 days, so therefore this is moreso a test of my ability to commit to something for 30 days more than anything else. I know Steve Pavilina is kind of a nut, but he does stick to things such as his Raw Food Diet, and it seems like you’d learn a lot about yourself by doing something like this.

So,

• I’m going to ween off caffeine (slowly the first 7 days, so I don’t end up with massive headaches) Tea will still be acceptable but absolutely 0 coffee, and after the first 7 days, no soda.
• I’m going to work out for at least 30 minutes a day for the next 30 days. That is going to be tough when I’m traveling in February, but it’s do-able, really. Even if it’s a combination of pushups/sit-ups/stretching that will suffice on traveling days.
• I’m going to post here every day

Anyways, I’m doing this for more than me now. I’m engaged, and I need my sanity and health not only for myself, but for everyone around me. Tomorrow is 12 for 12. This whole “thing” starts then. It will go through the next 12 of 12, so if I give up on this? What happens? Well it will show that I can’t commit to something for 30 days. And that’s pretty damn lame. So buck up son! Lets do something different.

Sincerly,
-Sam