The Emperor’s New Clothes

Much as expected when I started my weight loss crusade, my clothes no longer fit me right. More specifically, Large shirts look a little big on me, I had to add a new notch in my belt and my jeans hang loose and shapeless off my hips. So, instead of looking trim and attractive, I look like I don’t know how to dress myself, which of course, wasn’t my goal. I’m currently 175 pounds, 20 pound lighter than when I started all this, and it’s very noticeable; I still continue to get comments on my size from people I know.

Anyway, I was planning to stave off buying new clothes (specifically jeans) until I got even close to my target weight. Let’s face it, I’ve still got 15 pounds to go, and if 20 pounds caused such a huge change in my figure, another 15 was sure to do the same. Still, it sucks to have lost all this weight and look scrubby as a result, and since I had some clothes to return from Christmas to return to Kohl’s and Old Navy, I figured I would splurge on at least one pair of new jeans. And there in lies the reason for this post.

Now, I hate buying jeans. I will do just about anything I can to avoid doing so. Not that I hate jeans, it’s just so hard to find jeans I like and, more importantly, jeans that fit right. I know women have this problem more so than men, but just cause they have it worse doesn’t mean it’s any more fun for men. Every pair of jeans I could find were either loose fit, boot cut or some kind of combination of the two. I know part of this is just the style of clothes these days, but I think it also speaks to the overwhelming obesity of Americans. Very sad indeed, and very frustrating when you want jeans that actually fit. I have loose fitting jeans, that’s why I’m in the store buying new ones in the first place!

Another thing that bothers me is jeans that already have holes in them. I also already have jeans with holes in them, which, again, is why I’m at the store buying new ones. Faded I’m find with, in fact I prefer them, but rips and holes and all that mess I think is ridiculous. If you want jeans that look “worn” you can save a lot of money by buying them second hand. But, I guess that also speaks to the spending nature of Americans too. People rather spend $40 (and often more) on a “designer” pair of worn jeans when they can get the same look for $5 (or often less) at a thrift store.

So, of all the many, many different brands and styles of jeans available at Kohl’s, I managed to find one pair that looked good, had no holes in them and were a color I liked. Surprisingly enough, they were Levi’s jeans, a brand I usually skip over since they never fit right. The label said they were “Slim Straight” and that fit what I was looking for; not baggy, not boot cut, something that might actually look good. And look good they did! I even grabbed a medium t-shirt to try on with them, and they looked great together. I need to break them in a little, but I’m extremely happy with them.

I’m also starting to think that I was never 160 pounds in high school, instead I was 180 as I previously thought I may have been. The reason being that these new jeans are not only slim fit, but they are a 32 waist. Ever since I’ve been picking out my own clothes, I can’t ever remember buying anything with a 32 waist, it’s always been 34. Now, 32 fits me great. I just hope when I finally reach 160 that I do drop to a 30 waist….

I also took the time to get a belt. I managed to find one that has holes all the way up the belt, an extremely novel idea. And it’s done very tastefully as part of the design, so the belt should last all the way through my weight loss and look good doing so. A true miracle! I has hoped to also find some shirts I liked, but that was expecting to much I guess. Overall, my Kohl’s trip turned out to be a pretty good shopping experience.

Old Navy, on the other hand, was a total bust. First, when I returned the couple shirts I had, they told me they needed to mail me a gift card; store policy apparently when you don’t have a receipt (which I didn’t as these were from Christmas). I spent enough time at Kohl’s anyway so I was happy to be done shopping for the day. So I had an idea of what to spend my refund money on though, I took a quick walk through the clothes they had out. Everything was on clearance, and it was pretty clear why; they were all terrible clothes. And of course, all of their pants were loose and baggy fit and nearly all had holes in them, exactly what I didn’t want. Needless to say, I don’t look forward to going back there. I hope their summer collection is a little better…..

That pretty much sums up my plight for new pants. In other news, I finally upgraded my RAID box with 4 new 500GB drives. Of course, on par with the low-cost, low-quality manufacturing process these days, 1 of the 4 drives was DOA when it was shipped to me. It doesn’t give me much faith in the other 3 drives (or the replacement, once that comes). I had considered buying some enterprise class drives, but they were more than twice the price, so even if I have to replace all 4 of the drives I’m using now I’ll still end up paying less.

For the record, these are the drives I bought. I expect the exchange from Newegg to go well, but it saddens me that Seagate’s quality has slipped so much in the last 3 or 4 years. They used to be bullet-proof, and that’s clearly changed (especially, I find, in their perpendicular storage drives). We’ll see how they pan out, but it’s always frustrating when the last quality hard drive manufacturer goes down the tubes. At least they still have a 5-year warranty, 2 years more than the next highest warranty offered by anyone else. My track record with the “re-manufactured” drives they end up using for replacements has been extremely poor though. I’m really hoping to get a couple years out of the drives without any failures, which I don’t think is asking too much.

I also ordered an Invisible Shield for my Nokia N800. The little screen cover that the device shipped with is starting to show some serious wear. It’s not surprising, it was never meant to me a screen protector. Still, it’s time to replace it, and at the recommendation of Aaron, I ordered mine up. He gets his this week, I still got 2 weeks of waiting ahead of me. Still, I expect to be impressed. We’ll also see how his ProPorta case (which I recommended after reading so many good things) pans out too; might end up picking up one of those too.

Lastly, I installed WP Hashcode, which has the goal of creating a machine-based CAPTCHA for comments, instead of a user-based one. Instead of relying on the user typing in some letters that are impossible to read, it relies on some tricky Javascript code to make sure the comment post is coming from a user with a real browser and not some SPAM script. If it works really well, I’ll be able to disable email confirmations and possibly even comment reviewing, which is pretty exciting.