Through a combination of iPhone apps - CalorieSmart and Runkeeper chief among them - I've been able to whittle my weight down significantly - 40 pounds, with another 30 to go. And fast-paced music from the iPhone keeps me running even when my lazy body is SCREAMING to quit my morning run.

I've had this problem. One poor mistake with one account and they farmed it out to a dozen collectors to harass me day and night. I have an iPhone, and I don't want to risk screwing up my legal programs by jailbreaking it. But, I figured out a quick and easy way never to be harassed by their calls.

When I'm working in Adobe documents and I want to make fine changes, I'll frequently save the page as a JPG, open it in MS Paint, and edit the document by hand; then I'll save it and reopen it in Adobe to turn it back into a PDF. The JPG Adobe saves is MASSIVE, so it's easy to do things like clean up the inevitable…

@junkmail: The first reader to offer native PDF support will OWN the market. Want to invent the Kindle Killer? Just allow it to read PDFs.

I purchased my Kindle in late November, with an expected ship date between February 19 and March 12. This morning, I received this from Amazon:

I use the checkbox as a quick and easy way to disable songs that are broken or missing, but that I want to restore or fix later. It's a lot less frustrating than dealing with the "File Not Found" errors or a clipped song when synching to my iPod.

I did it by franchise. I started with McDonald's - I declared I'd never eat at another McDonald's, not matter what the circumstance or excuse. (Super Size Me helped.) Whenever I had a yen for McDonald's, I'd find a healthier alternative; or, if I couldn't or didn't want to eat healthy, I'd pick Wendy's or Taco Bell,…

@JeffDrake: The only way to do this right now (and yes, it's a pain in the butt) is to add a line to ALL your playlists that requires the songs in them to be rated greater than 1. If you have non-auto playlists, you'll have to update them manually.

Hm . . . I've seen a lot of mentions of "tunneling" home to get around work-based blocks, but I know nothing of how I'd accomplish this. Is there a guide for the technologically challenged? (I'm not completely inept mind you, but it seems a little above me.)

95% of my dreams are lucid. I'd love to say I use them for some grand, self-awareness-inducing purpose, but . . . I pretty much just use them for sex. I will say that, following Jung's Collective Unconcious theories, I've always presumed that it's possible that they people in your dreams might occasionally be other…

I laugh just a little too loudly and for a little too long, and just as everyone listening is getting a little uncomfortable I end it with a warm smile and a light-hearted "Racism is fun!" (No, this is not a joke.) I've found it to be off-putting in a way that can only be experienced by doing it - so off-putting that…

Every Christmas for the last ten years or so, I've been traveling to a small town in Mexico where my mother was raised. I live in D.C., so this generally means fighting through a major airport, a lay-over in Floria or Georgia or Texas, and then a direct flight to Mexico City. Now, if you think the headaches in the…

My tip - and it's always worked for me - make sure that your employer knows a lot of information about your personal life. Have pictures of family on your desk, talk about your hobbies, mention your child's Bar Mitzvah, or whatever. Remember the old gag of standing at the frozen food aisle and giving names to the…

I started noticing that I was thinning in my early 20s; by the time I was 26, an undeniable, grotesquely-hideous bald spot had formed on my head. I had a roommate who made a habit of shaving his head on a regular basis, and I wondered if I could pull that off, but I repeatedly decided against it - black people look…

It's called Seasonal Affective Disorder; I have a bit of it, but it was crippling for my mother. She ended up moving to Los Angeles, which cured it completely for her (it's hard to be depressed by the weather when it's always Sunny and 72 degrees), but before she moved, her doctor recommended a light box. It's a box…

AntiNinja: Not much of a catch at all, to raise money for a worthy charity. But are those training groups designed for people like me, who haven't really exercised regularly in years? (I'd rather not belong on the couch, but it's so darned comfortable.)

Hey Adam . . . any recommendations for someone that has "run a marathon" on their 43 Things list but presently can't run 10 feet without wheezing (such as I)? How do you train your body to get to that point?

One of the greatest features of MediaMonkey: it has a fantastic user interface for building new plug-ins. Do a Google search for MediaMonkey plug-ins, and you'll find a ton of great widgets that extend the functionality of an already fantastic product.

Particularly if where you're traveling is a small-to-medium sized city, a well-connected bookstore or bed-and-breakfast will have a book or two, written by a local, serving as an "Insider's Guide". Example: I spend the Holidays in San Miguel de Allende, a small colonial town about six hours northwest of Mexico City -…

Dear God. What a fantastic way to destroy my productivity at work. And the good news: our network, which is generally rather fragile when it comes to streaming data (running bittorrent grinds our T1 to a halt, for some reason) seems to broadcast streams just fine. My only beef is that I can't seem to successfully…