Woman loses 76 pounds on Starbucks diet

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The Starbucks Diet: How One Woman Dropped 
76 Pounds on Coffee and BistroBoxes

 


Christine Hall went from a size Grande to a size Tall. That's Starbucks-speak for a dramatic weight loss. The Virginia-based law librarian has spent the past two years buying almost all of her meals from the coffee chain. On Thursday, in an interview with The Today Show, Hall claimed to have lost 76 pounds by sticking to a self-designed Starbucks-only diet. That's some serious brand-commitment.
It all started some two years back when Hall was rejected as a kidney donor because of her weight. At 200 pounds, an invasive surgery was too risky for her 5 foot 4 inch frame. So she turned to an unexpected place for help: a fast food chain. (And no, it wasn't Subway.)
Starbucks strikes deal with cupcake stars
Starbucks, the home of the whipped cream coffee drink, is not exactly a dieter's haven. But with the chain conveniently located near Hall's two jobs, and a calorie count listed on every item behind the sneeze-guard, the 66-year-old saw the potential.
On an average day, she'd start with a 145 calorie breakfast of oatmeal and coffee and grab a bistro box of fruit and cheese for lunch. For dinner, she'd dig into a panini.


Starbucks is diet-friendly? Really? (Getty Images)


She began tracking her calorie intake in May of 2010 and by November, she had dropped 40 pounds thanks to a lot of bistro boxes.
Restricting her diet to as little as 876 calories a day in order to drop 2 pounds a week, couldn't have been easy for Hall. In the past few years, Starbucks has become more of a milkshake shop than a coffee bar. A 24 oz Iced Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha (Whole Milk, Whipped Cream) will set you back 700 calories, and that's without the side of food. What's another 490 calories from a walnut zucchini muffin at that point?
Starbucks secret menu food
Most of the bakery options glistening behind the counter range between 350 and 450 calories. But heartier offerings are a better investment. Paninis and sandwiches range between 340 and 460 calories, while bistro boxes of fruit and cheese or veggies and chicken range from 220 to 480 calories. It's a great option for a low-calorie quickie lunch, but if you're forking over Starbucks dollars three times a day, it could get pricey.
Still, Hall has zero regrets about her diet. A year after she was rejected from being an organ donor, she was given the okay by doctors to partake in a 32-person altruistic kidney swap.
Two years later, she's another 40 pounds lighter, weighing in at 114 pounds. She says she feels like she's 15 again. "I don't hurt anymore," Hall, who suffered from sleep apnea and joint problems at her heaviest, told The Today show. "I sleep like a baby and I have tons of energy. It's great."
Not everyone is as positive about the Starbucks diet. According to Marjorie Nolan Cohn, the national spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics, the diet is a "set up for disaster." Particularly concerning, says Cohen, is the "lack of variety, which sets you up for malnutrition, even if you are eating enough calories."
"Starbucks has a lot of good options, but if that is all you are eating for two years you are severely limiting your intake," she tells Yahoo! Shine. "I think most other people would get bored and end up binging at some point. Not to mention the cost. This is simply not a realistic 'diet' for most people."
Consider Brett Bruce, a 35-year-old marketing consultant and father of two, who embarked on his own Starbucks diet in March of 2010. On a 30-day challenge to lose weight without exercising, he subsisted strictly on Starbucks food in the hopes of dropping the pounds. His blog starbucksdiet.com, which tracked his progress, ended with a disappointing update.
"I do feel as if I may have plateau'd a bit," he writes on day 21, after dropping about 6 pounds from his 217 pound frame in the first 2 weeks. While he did credit the chain with getting him to eat more fruit than he ordinarily would have, he admits, "my weight has remained the same all week." That post, uploaded 9 days before his challenge ended, was his last update.

Via:Yahoo

Bank of America's site stuck in prolonged slowdown

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Bank of America website slows after cyber attack threat
Bank of America said its website is available but some customers may experience occasional slowness.

Someone claiming to represent "cyber fighters of Izz ad-din Al qassam" said it would attack the Bank of America and the New York Stock Exchange as a "first step" in a campaign against properties of "American-Zionist Capitalists."
"This attack will continue until the erasing of that nasty movie. Beware this attack can vary in type," said the statement on an internet bulletin board known as pastebin.com, where cyber criminals often post such threats. It was not possible to verify the identity of the person who posted the statement.
A short film mocking the Prophet Mohammad, made with private funds in the United States and posted on the internet, has ignited days of demonstrations in the Arab world, Africa, Asia and in some Western countries.
Bank of America said its website is available but some customers may experience occasional slowness. "We are working to ensure full availability," bank spokesman Mark Pipitone said.
Asked whether the website was the victim of a denial-of-service attack, he said: "I can tell you that we continuously take proactive measures to secure our systems."
The New York Stock Exchange, operated by NYSE Euronext, declined to comment.

Bank of America customers reached by Reuters in New York, Georgia, Ohio and Michigan said they could not access the website.

Last year, the second largest US bank experienced six days of problems with its website, which it blamed on heavy traffic and an upgrade of its systems. The site allows customers to check balances, transfer money and make payments.





Bank of America's site stuck in prolonged slowdown
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Bank of America's website was sluggish and intermittently unavailable for many users on Tuesday, in an outage that the bank hadn't explained by the end of the day.


Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) spokesman Mark Pipitone said the company is "working to ensure full availability," and that online banking is available "although some customers may experience occasional slowness."
The bank's official Twitter account sent similar messages to customers who complained about the issues.
The majority of Bank of America's customers were able to access the site, which remained online throughout the day, Pipitone said. Still, many customers were unable to connect because of the site's slowness.
Data from Keynote, a testing and monitoring company, showed that the problems began around 10 a.m. ET and were still ongoing as of 6:10 p.m.
"It's possible that something Bank of America has done on its end, some kind of change, caused the problem," said Aaron Rudger, Keynote's senior marketing manager of Web performance. The bank's homepage looked different before the trouble began, he said.
As of about 6 p.m., Rudger said, a "small percentage" of website requests were being fulfilled successfully, but the majority were still met with errors.
If the problem is indeed due to system updates that Bank of America rolled out, it wouldn't be the first time. The bank experienced nearly a full week of outages in October 2011, and later explained that the problems stemmed from a combination of technical difficulties and heavier than normal traffic. The bank had been migrating its online banking to a new platform and deploying new tools for customers when the problems began.
On blogs and Twitter, some hacker groups were claiming responsibility for the outage. But there was no evidence to support those claims, and several recent ones turned out to be hoaxes.
Earlier this month, a person affiliated with the hacktivist collective Anonymous said the group took down the web hosting service GoDaddy, and in June the group UGNazi claimed responsibility for downing Twitter. Both outages were later revealed to be technical issues.
"I can assure you we continuously take proactive measures to secure our systems," Bank of America's spokesman said in response to a question about whether the company had seen any signs on Tuesday of a cyberattack.
Via:CNN  Via:Telegraph

Space shuttle Endeavour makes final flight

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The US space shuttle Endeavour took its final flight on Friday, making a spectacular series of flypasts over California before landing in Los Angeles where it will retire near its birthplace.  
 Shuttle Endeavour lands in Los Angeles Space shuttle Endeavour flew over California landmarks including the Hollywood sign and Griffith Observatory before landing at the airport. (Raw Vision).
 
Piggy backed by a specially fitted Boeing 747, the shuttle flew over San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge before heading south to take in the Hollywood sign and Disneyland, later landing at LA International Airport (LAX).

"It's so cool, and so sad," said Todd Unger, 28, who was among thousands who camped out from the early hours at the Griffith Observatory overlooking the city and the nearby iconic hilltop Tinseltown sign.

 Cars were parked bumper-to-bumper up the winding roads leading up to the observatory, as Los Angeles residents turned out en masse in several parts of the city to witness Endeavour's final flight.

The shuttle had spent the night at Edwards Air Force Base north of Los Angeles, the last leg after a two-day trip across the country from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.





Before reaching the West Coast, it flew over Tucson, Arizona, to honour former lawmaker Gabrielle Giffords, who survived a horrific shooting last year and whose astronaut husband Mark Kelly commanded Endeavour's final mission.

"It was pretty spectacular...the people of Tucson got an incredible view of this remarkable machine," Kelly told CNN.

"It's really a testament to American ingenuity," he said.

The shuttle will now spend a few weeks at a United Airlines hangar at LAX, before being transferred to the California Science Center, where it will go on display on October 30.

Endeavour, which flew more than 115 million miles (185 million kilometres) in its two-decade career, completed its final mission last year.

After NASA brought an end to the 30-year shuttle program last year, major US cities battled for the right to house the shuttles. Enterprise, the prototype that never flew into space, is now on permanent display on the runway of the Intrepid aircraft carrier in New York.

The Kennedy Space Center will keep Atlantis, and Discovery is on display at a museum outside Washington.

Two other shuttles were destroyed in flight. Challenger disintegrated shortly after liftoff in 1986 and Columbia broke apart on re-entry to Earth in 2003. Both disasters killed everyone on board.

Endeavour's trip to Los Angeles is a homecoming of sorts. It was built in Palmdale, north of Los Angeles, as a replacement for Challenger.

Its last, 12-mile road trip to its final destination is scheduled to take two days, starting on October 12.

That operation is not without controversy: locals have protested because some 400 trees are being cut down along the route, and power lines and other obstacles reconfigured, to make way for the giant winged space craft.

The California Science Center has promised to replant four times as many trees as are removed.

"Before the Endeavour lands at its final destination, there's one more leg on its amazing journey," LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said on Friday.

"In less than a month, we'll have a chance to see a site as impressive as today's flyover - the Endeavour travelling through our streets and hundreds of thousands of people cheer it on."



Space shuttle Endeavour: Thousands await final pass over L.A.
As the space shuttle Endeavour passed over Northern California on its farewell tour, hundreds of people poured into Griffith Park, lined up on the bluffs at El Segundo and crammed onto the Santa Monica Pier in anticipation of witnessing the shuttle's final flight before it lands at LAX and is groomed to become a museum showpiece.




Along the bluffs at El Segundo, dozens of people arrived as dawn broke, some camped out, others seated on folding chairs, others standing. By midmorning, hundreds looked out over the south runway at LAX.
Patrick Hill, 53, of Sunland, said he came to honor of his father-in-law, who worked on the shuttle at the Palmdale facility. Hill said he and his wife created a collage of photographs of all the space shuttles but especially Endeavour.
TIMELOG: Endeavour's final journey


NASA's Shuttle Carrier Aircraft with the space shuttle Endeavour securely mounted on top touches down at Edwards Air Force Base after third leg of its four-segment final ferry flight from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Los Angeles International Airport on Sept. 20, 2012. (Credit: NASA)
“He would be proud to see all this,” Hill said of his father-in-law, who died in March. “I’m overwhelmed. He loved this stuff.”
Nearby were three women who set up their viewing spot at 4 a.m. Kristin Jarman, 41, from Brea, her sister Karin Landry, 38, of Danville, Calif., and their friend Maria Lang 47, who lives in Trabuco Canyon. Jarman said they’re “traveling space geeks,” noting that Landry interned in 1999 at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Dan Roufberg, 49, works as a heavy equipment mechanic at LAX but said he wasn’t about to miss this. He planned to take Endeavour’s journey, part of a scrapbook he is making for his 6-month-old son.
“There’ll be something nice for my son to have. This is the end of an era. I want my son to be aware of it.”
PHOTOS: Space shuttle Endeavour 1991-2012
At Griffith Park, enthusiasm swelled as the flyover drew closer.
When Artin Gharibian, an assistant park services attendant, arrived for work about 5:45 a.m., there were already hundreds of people waiting to pick out their seats to view Endeavour's passage over the observatory.
"This is the job to have," he said, smiling. "I would have been here anyway."
Carla Torres of La Mirada arrived with her husband and four of her five children, parking nearly half a mile down the road from the observatory, even though she arrived at 7 a.m.Matthew Jordan Smith of Los Angeles showed up around 6:30 a.m. with a new mega-zoom lens he bought to capture the moment. "It's not every day you see this,” Smith said.
On the Queen Mary, shuttle fans parked themselves on the sun deck, along the historic ship's right flank.
Francisco and Toni Perez of Cerritos took the day off to watch Endeavour's final airborne minutes.
"I'm extremely happy," Toni Perez said. "It's not packed, we'll get a good view of it and we won't have to fight traffic when we leave."
SUBMIT PHOTOS: Upload your shuttle photos here
Greg Low pulled his two daughters, Crystal and Kiana, from school to watch what he figured would be both a historic and educational moment.
"It's an educational field trip," Low said. "They can learn about this in a classroom, but it's nice to see it fly and then see it at a museum."
And at the Santa Monica Pier, long before the signature Ferris wheel began spinning, scores of people waited to witness the flyover.
Richard Castro of La Puente arrived early to snap photos for his grandson, who he said is fascinated by space. Ethan Lee, 8, had to be in school, but Castro said he was enjoying the benefits of retirement.
"Before I couldn't miss a day of work," the former truck driver said. "But now it's simple. This is the last flight, and if you can make it, you've got to be there."
Join the Times’ William Hennigan and Scott Gold at 11:30 a.m. for a live discussion with Marco Caceres, senior analyst and director of space studies at aerospace defense industry consultant Teal Group, and Ron Garan, a retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force and NASA astronaut who flew on the Endeavour and lived on the International Space Station.

Via:Smh
Via:LAtimesBlog

A Veteran's Day

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Leather patch of the 561st Bomb Squadron of the 388th Bomb Group.

My father entered the Army Air Force in January 1943. The flight records in his folder show training flights at Gulfport Army Air Field MS from July to October 1944 and Hunter Field GA in October 1944.

The next record is from December 1944 at an unstated location for "8th, 3d Air Div, 388th, 561st". We know from other records now public that he was at RAF Knettishall in Suffolk County, England. Technically a Royal Air Force base, it was used exclusively by the United States Army Air Force's 388th Bombardment Group from June 1943 to August 1945. Its only other use was for a few years more as British army supply base. There is a monument at the site.

Peter Brennan flew 33 missions from Knettishall, from November 16, 1944 to March 29, 1945. His role was togglier in a B-17 "Flying Fortress" aircraft. The togglier sat in the glass nosecone, next to the navigator who was behind and to the left. He released the bombs, and he also had a forward-pointing gun. This late in the war, my father said, the Luftwaffe were almost gone, so almost all the enemy fire was from anti-aircraft guns on the ground.

He is sometimes described on paper as a bombardier, and on a rare occasion that he talked about it, he said that technically the lead plane in the formation had a bombardier who determined when to drop, and that the toggliers in the other planes just dropped when they saw lead plane drop. A few days ago I got a better description from Dick Henggeler, 388th Bomb Group historian:

A bombardier was an officer who was able to use the Noden bombsight. A toggilier was able to arm and release the bombs manually. In the group the bombardier in the lead plane released his bombs using the bombsight. All other planes released their bombs when they saw the lead ship release.

The bombsight was very complicated to use and required a lot of training. It actually took into account air speed, ground speed, altitude, and humidity. The bombardier actually flew the plane on the bomb run remotely. I am sure that it is easier to tell people bombardier (which they could understand) rather than toggelier.

The Good Conduct Medal.

It is awarded for exemplary behavior, efficiency, and fidelity in active Federal military service. It is awarded on a selective basis to each Soldier who distinguishes himself or herself from among his or her fellow Soldiers by their exemplary conduct, efficiency, and fidelity throughout a specified period of continuous enlisted active Federal military service, as outlined in this chapter. There is no right or entitlement to the medal until the immediate commander has approved the award and the award has been announced in permanent orders. — Army Regulation, Military Awards

Peter Brennan's 33 missions are all listed on the 388th web page.

There's always more to the story than a list of data. The longest gap he had was between December 31 and Jan 20, a full 18 days. Any reason? Yes.

The December 31 mission, his tenth, was a bad one. Co-pilot Stevens was killed in action. Ball turret gunner Martin and waist gunner Sevy did not fly again. This must be the mission my father told my brother about once. He said only he and the pilot came back in good shape, and that he helped carry out a dead crew member.

He and engineer Huntzinger reappear in a new crew on January 20, and tail gunner Woods joined them January 29.

The crew they joined, Edelman, hadn't had it easy either. They crashed on January 5, apparently in Germany, attributed to flak. None died. Three men became POWs and did not fly again, but they survived the war. The six others are listed as "evadee" but that word is all we get from the available record. Did they get out together? How? Whatever happened, they were not all back in action until February 15. They were put together into their old crew as they became available for duty. The three men from the SmithO crew, including my father, replaced the POWs.

The plane from the December 31 mission, now flown by another crew, met its end in a crash on January 20, and the men were all taken as POWs.




The Air Medal.

The Air Medal is awarded to any person who, while serving in any capacity in or with the U.S. Army, will have distinguished himself or herself by meritorious achievement while participating in aerial flight. Awards may be made to recognize single acts of merit or heroism, or for meritorious service... — Army Regulation, Military Awards

The exact requirements for this medal varied. To some degree the "meritorious achievement" was measured by ships and aircraft destroyed and by number of missions flown in combat. The relevant example was that the Eighth Air Force Third Bombardment Division defined the criteria in April 1944 as six "Bomber, Bomber-Fighter, Photographic, Air Transport, or Observation sorties with distinction" for the medal, and then an oak leaf cluster for each six additional sorties.

At the completion of his tour my father had the Air Medal with four oak leaf clusters, which makes five awards. As stated on a typed document dated April 4, the dates follow his missions 6, 12, 19, 28, and 32. Characteristically, I feel, he did not bother to attach the oak leaf clusters to the ribbon! Allowing for delays, the six awards correspond to the first 30 missions completed "with distinction".



My father completed 33 missions. The standard by this date was 35, and you better believe the men counted those missions. My sister has the paper where our father wrote out each mission, one per line, make that one per numbered line. There wasn't going to be any mistake!

Of the original Edelman crew, two had reached 35, three 34, and one 33. The three added to replace the original crew POWs, including my father, were at 33, 33, and 30. I suppose the commander could have kept most of them around to see if they could fill in another mission or two with other crews, but there must not have been enough need. And besides the main reason they weren't all at 35 together was that six of them had "evaded" after a crash and the other three had escaped serious injury from flak. They'd done enough.

But my brother recalls our father being astonished. As he told my brother, when they came in after the mission and were told that their tour of duty was complete, he felt the need to point out to the officer that he had only 33. And when told again, he actually repeated that he had only 33, causing the officer to firmly say he was all done. And then he said to my brother, still not believing it some sixty years later, "but I only had 33!".





More information at the 388th BG Association web site.

Ball's Bluff

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It was nice day today, Sunday, so we went wandering in the woods in South Mountain Reservation in search of two places. There was a place called Ball's or Balls Bluff that I had never been able to find, and not far from it is Hemlock Falls, our own local natural wonder, which we've found many times but not approaching from the south.

According to the local journal Matters Magazine (originally Maplewood Matters, which was a nice pun, but hard to adapt when they decided to cover South Orange too),

On March 18, 1896, Philander Ball, who lived in Maplewood at 172 Parker Avenue, sold three and a half acres of nearby wooded property to the recently created Essex County Parks Commission. This transaction is remarkable because Ball's parcel of land was the first to be acquired for what would become South Mountain Reservation.

He was of the same family as Timothy Ball, whose colonial-era house I've mentioned in posts about stone houses and the Crooked Brook.

Here's a quick awful map of where we walked. Like many local maps the county's park map follows Dutch tradition and has west at the top.


We parked in a small lot with only two cars in it, the one where the red lines touch the solid black automobile road.

We struck off through the woods following vaguely the so-called trail shown by a dashed line on the map, and found the "bridle path" shown as Overlook Trail. The bridle paths are wide, unpaved, and well eroded. No one rides horses on them.

As shown the bridle path divides at "Balls Bluff". The location is a high knob overlooking the valley to the west, through which flows the West Branch of the Rahway River. It was probably a fine overlook 200 years ago when all the trees had been cut down for lumber.

Here's the same area on the 1902 map, when the reservation was new. The so-called bridle paths are shown by solid lines, which the legend calls "Temporary Drives / Old Woods Roads Improved". The double lines are "Proposed Drives" that were never built.


On the 1902 map, Balls Bluff is called Overlook Point, which matches nicely with the name Overlook Trail on the county's park map.

We started down the Lenape Trail, shown by a dotted line on the map, and found the remains of the Balls Bluff shelter. There's probably an old photograph of it somewhere but I can't find it. (By the way it is hard to search the web for Balls Bluff because there was a Civil War battle of the same name.)

Although we failed to bring a camera with us, all is not lost. Last September the blog Gone Hikin' ran photographs of scenes from a pretty long hike in the res including where we walked today. Before I send you there, let me describe the ruins. Pillars of rounded stones cemented together form a circle around sloping ground. The pillars on the uphill side are very short while those on the downhill side (seen in the photograph) are the tallest. After a moment we realized the tops of the pillars, or at least the unbroken ones, are all level. They must be supports for a wooden floor that is now gone.

Now go look. About halfway down is a photograph of the ruins at Balls Bluff, and right below it is also a photograph of Hemlock Falls.

That's about it. We took the Lenape Trail over hill and through dale and reached the falls. It hasn't rained a lot lately so it was less impressive than it could be. There are new benches. We went back up the grade on the bridle path, past Balls Bluff again, and again had to make our own way from there to the parking lot. We saw a pileated woodpecker working a hole in a tree, a warbler, and some chickadees. It was good.


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RailBandit for iPhone 2.6 Released!

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RailBandit iPhone users, we are happy to announce that new version 2.6 of RailBandit is available from iTunes store! The update is free. Please install it when you can.

What is new in version 2.6?

Station search by name

Type-ahead Search

The "New Trip" screen now includes an option to look up a station by typing just a few first letters of the station name. Turn on "Make search default" switch on the bottom of the "New Trip" screen to display the station search screen every time you tap on departure or arrival fields.

Long-haul trains (trip planning option)

This option lets you more effectively plan trips involving long-distance trains such as Amtrak. We plan to include more long Amtrak routes later this year. This feature is necessary for the trip planning function of the new upcoming schedules.

Am I On Time?

"Am I on time?" feature
You can use your device GPS to track yourself while on board a train to check if the train is delayed. Please see the application help pages (bundled within the app) for details.
Support for retina-display graphics

All application graphics are updated to take advantage of the new retina display. We hope all users who own the latest iPhone 4.0 or the latest iPod touch will find the new graphics better.

Usability enhancements

Multiple user interface additions, such as two-line headings in "Stations and Times" screen, schedule download progress indicator, "Contact developer" button and built-in help pages, just to name a few.

Last but not the least - we fixed a few bugs that were present in version 2.5.

We would appreciate your feedback and more of your great reviews of our app in the iTunes store!RailBandit is a mobile app for train, light rail and subway schedules throughout the US. Supported on BlackBerry, iPhone and Android phones.

New SEPTA rail schedules effective June 12, 2010 - delayed

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RailBandit users!
SEPTA once again failed to provide the new schedules to developers on time. We will post new rail schedules when they become available from SEPTA (hopefully this week). In case SEPTA schedules will not be updated during the week, all SEPTA schedules will be removed from RailBandit schedules permanently.
Sorry for the inconvenience.RailBandit is a mobile app for train, light rail and subway schedules throughout the US. Supported on BlackBerry, iPhone and Android phones.