DKIM are working even better than expected for our emails

I’m going to look into the testing, but I also started looking at some of the heart rate monitors (I have a cheap one now but it doesn’t have any of the fancy functions like the higher end units). I started looking at the Polar FT80 but almost every review is very bad. It seems like most of them are about the GPS unit though, and I’m not much into running. Have you had any issues with yours?

Thanks again for the write up and the info!!
John

Wow, we have a few things in common, our appreciation of the 2nd amendment, a 3D approach to solve problems (I am logic driven to the point my wife thinks I am a robot), and healthcare/fitness interests . I have lost about 50 lbs in the last 6-8 months with very little change in my habits (I don’t workout *yet* for example), most of it was made possible by change in diet and the below story.

For the last 10 years I have been working for a company called Cerner, where our mission is to transform healthcare, where today our system is reactive, inefficient, and isn’t taking advantage of technology to the degree that it could to fix all of these problems.

Some more specific pointers, in addition to your work out routine (which is great, once you work that routine into your life don’t let it go, it is so hard to get into a routine, but once you have one it is pretty easy to maintain, but if you let it go, once again you have to fight to get it back into your schedule).

Turn EVERYTHING you can into a work out, where your goal is to continue to increase the ratio of caloric burn/caloric intake.

In the interest of preventative healthcare (healthier people cost the healthcare system less, not to mention the overall benefit of being happier people ), my company works with a lot of different companies, programs, and ideas on preventative health care. One of the most successful has been using a device called a “Fitbit”. It is a pedometer device, but so much more than that. It is using cutting edge technology to turn a pedometer into an almost too easy to use device that tracks ALL of your daily activities, automatically wirelessly uploads all of your data to their website http://www.fitbit.com/ so that you can see what you have done on a daily, weekly, monthly either with summary or detail data, etc. They also have a huge community with regular competitions with prizes offered for the winner (or winners if it is a group competition).

The really cool thing about the fitbit is that you wear it 24/7 (it is extremely convenient to wear), and you learn to turn almost everything into exercise. Examples include taking stairs, parking farther away from work or stores or wherever you park to walk somewhere, pacing during meetings, conference calls, or just thinking about something instead of sitting, getting one of those yoga sitting balls instead of a chair for your workstation (which requires constant balance and “walking” to maintain your balance, and those balls (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FH2W54) also contributes to working on your core strength, a great thing to do for so many reasons, especially if you have chronic back pain.

Anyway, and the Fitbit tracks how many flights of stairs you have taken, how many normal steps you have taken, how many miles you have walked, how many calories you have burned, it even greets you and tells you what time it is. It is very small and convenient to carry with you no matter what activity you are involved in (except water sports). The battery lasts between 7-10 days, and it will text you when its battery needs to be recharged . Another awesome feature is it helps you measure the quality of your sleep, where you start a timer when you go to bed (just hold the one button down until the timer starts), and then you stop the timer when you wake up. It tracks how active you were through out the night and for how long, and calculates your “sleep effectiveness” percentage, helping to diagnose any number of conditions that could lead to unnecessary fatigue, lower immunity, etc.

The Fitbit wirelessly and automatically transmits all of the data is has captured up to their website where they use the data to give you hundreds of different perspectives / data analysis on your activity, more than I want to go into here, just suffice to say that how ever I have wanted to look at the data, it is a click or two away. The Fitbit only needs to be from the wireless base station (which is also the recharger), and it doesn’t have to be YOUR base station to upload it can be any ones! Since these fit bits are so popular at my jobs, There are hundreds of base stations around, meaning that my data is constantly updating to the Fitbit site almost real-time.

That same website also allows you to log other activity (any other exercise routines, manually log steps if you didn’t bring your Fitbit with you on an outing), ENTER your meals eaten for the day (where it already has a great DB on common foods and their caloric intake, i.e. I pick Big Mac, fries, and a Coke, and it automatically populates the fact that I just ingested 100,000 calories . It uses all of this data to give you net caloric intake for the day. They also have apps compatible with all major mobile devices so that you can manage your fitbit account from anywhere if you have a smart phone, iPad, etc.

Finally, their online community is huge, and they have competitions on a regular basis to help motivate the usage and the transition to a new life style where you try to become more mobile. They even have achievements like the X-Box where as you reach milestones, you earn achievements (like 1000 flights of steps is an achievement, your first 10 miles is an achievement, etc.). You also have the ability to set all types of goals (number of steps per day/week or whatever, caloric burn, weight loss, etc.) and their site will track your progress and adjustments you need to make to meet your original goal.

FINALLY, they just released a new product called the Aria, a BT enabled scale / body fat % analyzer, which is the perfect companion to the Fitbit IMO. In the past, you had to manually enter your weight in your Fitbit profile, now you can have a scale that can do it automatically and wirelessly for you along with your body fat % (and one Aria can support several people), I am not sure about what other features it has because I haven’t researched it yet, but just the auto weight updates are enough for me to put my hard earned $ down on one . Entering my weight into the web page every day I never got good at, but weighing myself every day after my shower is something I do already anyway, so super easy to now get my weight into my tracking program, I don’t have to change anything in my habits . I have tried electrical resistance body fat analyzers in the past and they were not very accurate or even consistent compared to say the caliper method, hopefully the Aria will be better than those ones I have tried in the past, I will get both caliper and Aria done and see.

FINALLY, the best part is Fitbit’s customer service. In addition to having a great community to help you with whatever you need 24/7, they are GREAT when it comes to customer service. I have several examples both personally and with others at work where people have had issues with their devices, and within a couple of days they have had brand new Fitbits (not refurbs) in their hands via overnight delivery with no charge. Fitbit recently went to a new generation of Fitbit (called the ultra, which is what added counting flights of stairs among other things), and even though I am assuming they still had gen 1 stock to liquidate, the day they announced Gen 2, people were getting those as replacements when their gen 1′s broke (usually smashed, completely submerged, or other things that shouldn’t be covered by warranty anyway). They never even ask you for the old Fitbit back. My favorite one… I called because I lost my Fitbit to order another… they sent me a new one for free… and I heard later I wasn’t the only one, how cool is that!!!

To make a REALLY long story short, technology and fitness are coming together in new ways to make fitness much more convenient to accomplish in our exceedingly busy lives, and I just wanted to share my experiences with a company who is excelling in doing just that.

Any more updates? I was looking for White Glove Service and hopefully a better name for this type of service and read through your entire post. Brilliant. I simply cannot believe that responsibility dropped after the sale and not one person really cared enough to take ownership of this fiasco. Perhaps had someone stepped up from the beginning, you would have saved yourself a great deal of aggravation. From my standpoint, I’m glad you shared your experience. I’ve bookmarked it for future reference. Sounds like many companies, which is sad. Once I read that one point of contact no longer works for the company and the other had a day off, I couldn’t stop laughing. I hope you and your family can finally enjoy your bedroom set now that we are in the month of May!

On day three of zquiet, no snoring. Slight headeach that I wonder is related to new jaw placement. Will continue to use.