Since i've been neglecting my blog here, I have added my twitter feed to the right side of the site. So even when I'm away, you can see some of my randomness.

yay Sox
boo Mets
job is killing me at the moment
enjoying the rainy cooler weather
hockey season has begun again

Got to see Ravi and Jason as The VLA came to NYC to play some shows. It was quite awesome to see them play and bring back the days of HUGE. Now they are back in Los Angeles. If you watch the FX show "Damages", they did the title track for the show.

(Sorry this is lengthy but the runaround has been lengthy as well.)

I know the iPhone does not support MMS. So when someone sends me an MMS message I get a text message saying to go to viewmymessage.com and enter in the messageID and password in order to see it. Great.

Not so great.

Viewmymessage.com is not accessible from the iPhone. When you try and go there from your browser it just hangs and eventually times out (I have no issues with any other websites incidentally). A conversation with an Apple iPhone rep confirmed that the site is not accessible from the iPhone and it is essentially blocked. This seems extremely counter-intuitive to me as it would be a nice backup to be able to just pick up the message directly from my iPhone.

So I try and pick it up via the website but every time I enter in the ID and password, I get an error response that says "Failure encountered during view message."

I deal with this for the 2 months or so I've had my iPhone and figure it's a temporary glitch or something. But today I got two messages and really wanted to see them and the issue is still there. So I got on the AT&T website and got into the LiveForum and asked what was going on. The representative told me that the iPhone cannot receive MMS messages. I responded I was aware of that but was wondering why I couldn't access the message through their viewmymessage.com website. He responded "You can't. Sorry but that is unsupported." Huh? I responded again saying I knew that MMS messages were unsupported on the iPhone, was he saying that the website viewmymessage.com was unsupported? And wasn't that the whole purpose of the site? His response was, "You can send photos from the iPhone but in order to receive them, they must be emailed to you." I was then disconnected.

So then... (yes there's more, sorry) I decide that the support chat maybe wasn't the best place to get my answer. I call the support line and am on the line with a representaive in about 1 minute. I explain the issue to her and she asks me to hold while she inquires with a technician. After a couple of minutes she comes back and asks me if I recently got a new SIM card. I hadn't. So she asked me to hold one more minute while she talked to the technician again. 3 minutes later I hear, "Thank you for calling Apple iPhone support, how may I assist you today?"

Clearly they just dished me off. This is clearly not an iPhone issue. It's an issue with the viewmymessage.com website. I explained my frustration to the Apple rep and he confirmed that it really had nothing to do with them and he couldn't help me much except to affirm that yes, AT&T does block access to the viewmymessage.com website from the iPhone but he could not say why. "They have issues" was his comment.

So now I am here. Hoping to get some answer to explain why the site isn't accessible from the iPhone (via Safari), and why it's impossible to retrieve the messages even from my computer. I couldn't get one in the LiveForum support chat nor from a support phone call.

Here it is... released today in front of the Simpsons Movie (which is awesome) and exclusively online at AOL.

If you have plans to see the Simpsons Movie (and who doesn't), make sure you get there a little early to catch the trailers. The first trailer for our next film, Horton Hears A Who!, starring Jim Carrey and Steve Carell will be showing in front of the Simpsons.

We're getting a screening tomorrow. Mmmmmm popcorn.....

So my friend Peter's 30th birthday was this past week and to celebrate, his family sent me and 6 other lucky guys (including Pete) on a rafting trip down the Colorado River through Cataract Canyon. It was an amazing trip and I will be forever grateful that his family was so generous and thoughtful. Pictures from the actual rafting trip were collected on disposable cameras that are still being developed and Colin's digital camera which he had a waterproof case for. But I had a handful of photos from our first and last days in Moab where the average temperature was 105 degrees.

We spent 3 days on the river with our very cool guides Rob and Tanner who made us some excellent meals and navigated us on two rafts and two duckies through a low but still class 4-ish rocky path down to Lake Powell. It was a perfect mixture of excitement, chill time, predictable events and unpredictable craziness. Absolutely massive trip. the pictures will have to speak for themselves and I can't wait to see and hopefully post the rest.

I have switched my photo gallery choice again. This time to Google's Picasa. It's simple, easy, and slick. And since it's Google, I'm pretty confident it will be around for a while and will continually improve. So check out some of my Costa Rica pictures.

costa rica

I take no credit for this beautifully nice style for Google Reader. I merely took the stylesheet created by Jon Hicks at hicksdesign.com which he provided for the Stylish Firefox extension and made a Greasemonkey version of it. In fact, I just cut and pasted code from another Greasemonkey extension to apply the CSS. So I'm sure it's a horrible implementation, but I just wanted to get the style working with Greasemonkey and not have to install Stylish.

I figured others might be interested in it.
This version is ported from Google Reader Theme v08

download the Google Reader theme for Greasemonkey.

Feel free to improve upon the implementation which I admit is a complete hack. Also, since this isn't my original creation, I may take this down if Jon wishes I do so. If you want to leave comments, you have to login first. I'm still trying to get this drupal installation up and running correctly.

Just plain busy. That's all. But I couldn't not show the world the award I strive for every day. I leave for Costa Rica in a little over a week. Fucking... A...

My hockey team, the Shock, finished our season on an 8-2 run to make it to .500 for the season and squeak into the playoffs. This was a pretty impressive feat considering we were a disaster in the first half of the season going 2-8 and enduring a lot of sloppy play and internal team difficulties. We pulled it together and have become a pretty strong team. I ended my point drought in our last two games scoring 2 goals (one on a breakaway, one on a deflection). Was nice to get them in wins as well. So we eeked into our playoffs against the Phantoms, a team we had been pretty evenly matched with during the season.

Game 1 they came out strong and scored 2 quick goals. We recovered and got 1 back in the 2nd and tied it with 6 minutes left in the 3rd period only to have the goal waved off because the ref said it deflected off of one of our forwards skates while it was in forward motion. He said even though it was not intentional, any forward motion of the skate on a deflection that goes into the goal is no goal. We didn't want to get into a whining war so we finished the game unable to score again and lost 2-1. After further review, the ref was wrong. If the puck is purposely kicked in the net it is no goal, but unintentional forward motion does not nullify the goal. So we were robbed. But that's they way it goes.

Game 2 was last night. We came out stronger and had a good 1st period which ended with us down 1-0. With the score 3-1 in the 2nd I had a shot go off the post. Then midway through the 3rd it started to get a little more desperate and physical. We had to start taking chances and got burned and lost 5-1. I had a few checks and slashed someone in the head in the last few minutes but the refs weren't calling anything so... I took a few more penalties in the last few games trying to use my size a little more on the ice to my advantage which had good results despite putting me in the box more (the website doesn't show all the penalties... I took a couple more than it lists)

Bitter end to the season. We all believed we could win and get to Toronto, but there's always next year.

Life has been busy recently... thus the lack of updates. So just for the sake of updating my blog, I'll give you a couple of very quick updates of what's been going on.

This week was AjaxWorld in NYC which I attended with Jennifer in order to gain some info and perspective for upcoming projects here at Blue Sky. The schedule was kind of brutal with sessions starting at 7:30am and going until 7 or 8pm. And we walked out of there each night with a bit of a headache and a little fried. It's a lot of information to digest at one time. And there's a lot of people pushing a lot of different things. But overall, we got a lot out of it and now we're doing some follow up investigation on our own. A good rundown on the conference can be found here. I'm not about to summarize it all in this entry.

So after a spectacular crash-and-burn in their pre-holiday launch of eStarling's wi-fi enabled photo frame, I held out for a while hearing promises of extended return policies from ThinkGeek and soon-to-be-released firmware upgrades and replacement parts for the 2 frames I ordered. But I finally got fed up and took back the Christmas present I had gotten my parents, boxed it up along with my own, and was ready to send it back to ThinkGeek for my refund.

But then I got an email from ThinkGeek informing me that eStarling would be releasing a new version of their frame (that hopefully actually works and isn't ass-ugly this time). Everyone who purchased the first one, would be able to replace it with the new one at no cost. Here's part of the email...

You are receiving this e-mail because you purchased an eStarling wi-fi enabled photo frame from us.

Upon ThinkGeek's further discussions with the makers of the eStarling, PF Digital, we learned that they will be releasing a new version of the eStarling shortly. Since we know you wouldn't be satisfied with just an
upgrade to your existing frame, PF Digital and ThinkGeek have decided that the best solution is to exchange your existing frame with the new eStarling 2.0. The new version includes the following improvements:

- Full Wi-Fi range of at least 120 feet
- New motherboard and updated firmware
- Internal antenna not visible from the outside of the frame
- New front bezel design with no eStarling logo on the front of the frame
- Standalone feature allows frame to pull photos from any POP e-mail address without needing to connect to the eStarling server
- View photos on a media card without needing a wi-fi Internet connection

So I'm a sucker and I'll hold out to see what happens. But the whole entertainment value of this post is that I went to the eStarling website and read a press release they have about this replacement. In the press release is the following...

“The eStarling team was very eager to make our breakthrough product available to consumers for the 2006 holiday season, and while the overall reaction was overwhelmingly positive, we were not completed satisfied with some key features of the product,” said Jeff Luo, founder and CEO of PF Digital Inc.

Overall reaction was overwhelmingly positive??? I think that statement is overwhelming a load of shit. Anyone out there want to show me one positive reaction to the eStarling frame? I dare you... So that made me laugh, but they may have the last laugh on me, because I'm still sitting here waiting patiently for my new frames to be delivered in 6 weeks. Stay tuned....

I'm not sure how I missed this. Virgin America has been attempting to launch their new airline in the U.S. but has been stymied by the DOT as well as other US airline carriers. Now I'll admit that I haven't read up too much on the reasons, but it seems to center around accusations that since it is spawned by the Virgin empire, it is therefore controlled by a majority (more accurately, more than 25%) of non-American citizens.

According to their website, VA simply points out the accusation is untrue and the documents they submitted to the DOT meet all of the requirements. Yet, their initial petition to operate in the U.S. was slowly and painfully denied. Now they are petitioning and appealing the initial decision.

I think it's clear that the other US airlines that are making VA's life difficult (specifically Continental, American, United, and Delta) are the ones that are sucking wind right now and in danger of going under. I mean... Delta? This country would be better without them. And United has been going downhill for a long time.

Interestingly, there is no mention or work about jetBlue or any stance they have. They seem to be the obvious direct competitor since VA is based in San Francisco and, pending approval, would initially launch non-stop service between SFO and New York (they have also now announced their initial service would cover San Francisco, New York, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, San Diego and Las Vegas). VA's other main appeal that jetBlue capitalized on was style, attitude, and entertainment. Virgin America boasts about their highly advanced in-flight entertainment system (which was recently featured on Engadget). Their branding is cool, and everyone likes brand new planes.

So with airline prices going up, and quality drastically sucking more and more, I say let them fly. If it causes some shitty airline like Delta to go out of business... good riddance. We deserve better airlines in this country anyway.

After a long period of wanting to move my ailing blog from Movable Type to Drupal, I have finally made the move and imported my past content with some help (link to friendly import script creator to come, I have to find it again). Things look a little generic right now, but I'll be adding to it as we go along. I have also attempted to integrate the feed with FeedBurner as best as I can for now. There were many suggestions of how to do it. Some involved hacking node.module which, while easy, is hacking the core of Drupal and not something I wanted to do. So what I did was add a couple of lines to my .htaccess file.

I don't claim that it is perfect, and am happy to take corrections. There's still the question of how to handle dynamically generated feeds based on taxonomy which I don't see there has been really any good answer to, but this has me content for now.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^FeedBurner.*
RewriteRule ^(.*)(index\.|rss\.)xml$ http://feeds.feedburner.com/orangehat [R]


Why did I move to Drupal?

There are a number of reasons I moved to Drupal.

• Movable Type was great when it started but it's clunky, cumbersome, and not nearly as powerful as Drupal.
• We use Drupal at work for our Intranet and documentation system and this will allow me to play around even more with it
• We just finished re-launching the Adirondack Camp website and moved it all into Drupal 4.7. There are a ton of things we want to do more with this site, so again, another reason to play around more with it.
• I'm much more comfortable with PHP than with Perl
• Drupal has an enormous community of developers and support
• It's easier to use

Those are the brief answers anyway. So expect to see lot of changes as I settle in to the new site. Enjoy.

10 days, 352oz. of salt water, about 83 glasses of lemonade, and 11 cups of senna tea later I am now done with my first master cleanse and transitioning back to normal food. This is an important process since I haven't eaten anything real in 10 days, my body would have an extremely adverse reaction if I went out and had a burger right now. So this morning I went out and bought three 1/2 gallon jugs of fresh orange juice from Hay Day. The first sip was like a mouthgasm. My tastebuds didn't know what to do with themselves. Sheer heaven.

Today I drink nothing but orange juice. Tomorrow I continue on the OJ and for dinner I will cook a homemade vegetable soup and eat mostly the broth but a couple of veggies too. Then on my third day, OJ for breakfast, some soup for lunch, and probably a salad for dinner (but sadly no goat cheese). And then... I'm on my own.

So it's here, day 10. And I woke up this morning feeling great. I decided after re-reading parts of the book and looking at forums posts online, I am pretty happy with where I am in the cleanse and today will be my last day. One of the main signs that the cleanse has run its course is when your tongue turns fully pink again. As you're on the cleanse, it gets kind of coated and "furry", yeah, it's kind of gross. But then it will return to pink as the toxins in your body have been well purged. For first-time cleansers, this rarely will happen within 10 days.

But this morning as I was SWF-ing and getting ready for my day I did a quick tongue check and was surprised to see it much clearer than normal. It's not fully pink but it's looking good. I think yesterday was a really good toxin day for me. Having flushed that batch out, today I'm feeling good and ready to complete this first trip down lemony lane.

Day 9 was a bit of a toxic day I think. I felt like things were amuck in my system which is a little late in the game for a second toxic cycle when compared to most people doing the cleanse. I've read day 7 or 8 can be a second toxic day usually. But I am attributing the delay to the fact that I wasn't drinking a ton of water. I should have been drinking a lot more. I was drinking water but not consciously. It's a lot of liquid to be chugging down in a day when you are drinking 6-12 glasses of lemonade and then trying to drink at least half that in water as well.

Anyway, no harm done. But I did drink plenty of water yesterday as well as 9 glasses of our favorite cajun lemonade. I was buying a few more lemons to finish out my cleanse at the supermarket and the lady in front of me saw my sack-o-lemons and said, "oh... are ya making lemonade? That's so nice!" Yep.

Yesterday was status quo. I didn't have any severe toxic reaction or anything that made me feel too bad. It was kind of like a normal lazy Sunday minus the food. Hockey last night went well. I had so much energy that I skated for a good 40 minutes after the game was over (we lost 4-2 boo). It really felt great.

Now that day 8 is almost over, I am getting anxious to reach the end of this. But overall I feel good. I was just talking to Fresh about how while I feel good, I'm not experiencing that sense of "I feel amazing!". but when I got home I realized a few things. I am feeling above average. I'm sleeping better. I don't crash mid-afternoon. I've been very alert and without the aid of my large caffeine intake. The one thing I haven't been doing is drinking a whole lot of water (something I wanted to do). But when you are trying to get 6-12 glasses of spicy lemonade... let's call it Cajun Lemonade, it's hard to also drink a whole lot of water.

I have read several people's accounts of being on the cleanse and many say their sleep was restless and they woke up often and early but felt bright eyed and bushy tailed when they got up. I'm not having that same experience. I'm sleeping well, which is a significant accomplishment for me as I have mentioned before so I'm not complaining. But when I wake up, I feel like I need to sleep for another 4 hours. Not that I could if I tried, but I certainly don't feel bushy tailed. Once I've been awake for a little bit I feel good, but I don't pop out of bed in the morning like an Eggo waffle out of the toaster.

No, not my feeding update. Har har. I updated the RSS feed on orangehat and am now serving my feed from FeedBurner

It's something I have been meaning to do so I can keep better track of feeds and test out FeedBurner a little bit for some other projects. I have removed the old feeds and am redirecting any requests for them to the new address. So if you haven't update already, you can update your subscription by subscribing to http://feeds.feedburner.com/orangehat

The fact that I only have to go through the salt water flush 4 more times is a driving force in my life right now. It's not one of those things that's really the end of the world or bad like that, but it's so gross, and you have to get over the fact that you are voluntarily putting yourself through each gulp of it. ech. Yesterday was pretty smooth sailing. I felt pretty good all day long. I'm still cold a lot but that's what the new orange hat is for. I'm noticing more signs of internal progress... which is pretty encouraging.

This is just too funny not to share with everyone. My brother showed it to me a a few months ago but the episode just aired this past weekend here in the U.S. and it just reminded me of how it feels to laugh so hard you hurt.

During warm-ups last night at my hockey game I experienced what few people will get the chance to in their lifetime. Our captain, Billy, unloaded his powerful slapshot from the blue line. It was a bit high and off target and caught me right in the head, about where my left temple is. It ricocheted off and jarred me a little but didn't knock me over. It was just LOUD. I heard a bunch of voices yell, "ohhhhh!". It took me a second to realize what had happened, and then I continued skating. What the hell were players thinking in the 70's with their 70's hairdos playing without a helmet? wacko. 

I'm getting a little tired of explaining to people what I'm doing. But some people are really interested and supportive. Anyway, the rest of Day 3 continued to improve. I was feeling better throughout the day and decided to go for a run again. I went to the gym and ran 5 miles and then sat in the steam room for 15 minutes. The run felt about as good as it would have felt if I weren't on the cleanse. when I got back to work, I realized I felt great. I'm not sure if it was the exercise, or the steam, or sweating out toxins or what but I felt really good. By the time I got home I was feeling the best I've felt and was pretty wired. Yet managed to fall asleep with little problem.I woke up once during the night because of the tea, that was a first. It wasn't a big deal really, kind of uncomfortable but I was back in slumberland shortly after. Yesterday I woke up feeling good, but not quite as good as I had. My legs were sore, not from running, but they ached in a few places. The salt water flush is just as gnarly as day 1, but I can get it down in about 2 minutes. I decided to go to the gym again for a light run and a steam because it had made me feel so good the day before and thought it might loosen up my leg aches. I didn't want to exert myself too much though because I was going to try and play my hockey game later if I felt up to it. The run felt good but didn't quite get rid of the aches. I came home after work and wasn't feeling 100% but decided I felt good enough to go play. It was an important game as we were playing the top team in our division and we're battling for 2nd place. The lemonade has gotten more palatable. After I got over my nausea from Day 2, I have been able to tolerate it much more. It's so regular now. Not that I'm not sick of it a little, but it's not making me want to make a face every time I take a swig. I've been mixing a Nalgene bottle of it at a time which is about three 10 oz. glasses. They say drink 6-12 glasses a day and I thought that would be no problem to max out, but it's amazing how difficult it actually is to do. Day 3 I had 7 glasses. Day 4 I managed 9. I'm using a bit more cayenne pepper than the 1/10 tsp for each glass because I can tolerate it and they say the more the better as cayenne pepper has many good healthy qualities. So the hockey game went really well. By gametime (9pm) I had had 6 glasses of lemonade and had a Nalgene made up for my post-game refuel as well as a quart of water for during the game. I figured I'd be a little sluggish and would take it easy, and heed the advice of Todd and Sarah to be careful. After my first shift, I felt great, just like any other game. We ended up winning 4-1 and after the game I felt absolutely great. I wasn't tired, but felt pretty energized. We stuck around to watch the next game which was important in our division as well and our goalie Larry was subbing for the goalie on one of their teams. While everyone else was drinking ther beers in the stands, I was sluging down some good old fashioned lemonade and cayenne pepper... yeeehaw!I got home and had some tea and immediately felt very sleepy. Off to bed I went. didn't sleep quite as well as I have in previous nights, but I plan to be sleep in a little tomorrow which will be nice. I just had my salt water breakfast. smooth. I don't have any cravings right now, but the ones I have had are steamed dumplings, which I eat frequently and love, Honeycomb cereal, which I haven't eaten in maybe 18 years, and orange juice.  I actually enjoy smelling food even if I can't have it. I walked into Whole Foods last night to get some more lemons and was blown away by the smell of cilantro (which I don't like) mixed with other herbs and I looked around and the cilantro was a good 20-30 feet away from me. I guess my sense of smell is picking up too. Sarah and I laughed about how it's a good thing I'm not doing this during the summer in Chinatown in the city. yuck.almost halfway there...SummaryFeeling good, good energy, mild cravings but enjoying them, aches have disappeared, my tongue is white, my mood is good but its Friday so of course it is. 

Well something's going on. After I wrote my entry yesterday, everything went downhill. My headache returned and as the day went on, I was feeling more and more "feverish" during the day. By the time I left work, I felt a little nauseous, my head was pounding, and I was ready to crash for the night. But I wasn't hungry... :) I got home and finished off my 7th glass of lemonade, watched a little TV, drank my tea and fell hard into bed. I slept well. Very well. Again, this is very unusual for me so regardless of how I felt yesterday it was nice to fall into a very deep sleep. I feel better this morning for sure, but the salt water flush was staring me down. I conquered that once again, mixed up my lemonade for breakfast and left for work. I'm still feeling a bit like I got run over by a truck, not unlike having the post flu or fever feeling but not quite the same. Not quite as bad really. I have been noticeably cold since starting the cleanse. It's pointed out this can happen, but I am usually a furnace-- always complaining about the heat. I'm bundled up all the time now. My sense of smell has been boosted. I can smell things much more clearly and pungently for better or worse.  I enjoy my morning shower like it is the greatest luxury in the world. Strange. It's seriously almost my favorite part of the day... cleaning and relaxing. Inevitably I am getting a bit sick of the lemonade. This is partially due to my slight nausea... maybe totally who knows. But I could do with a tall glass of OJ instead once in a while. Tomorrow night I have a hockey game. I'm hoping to play in it, but I'm not going to force the issue. If I'm not feeling up to it, I will pull out, but I think at a moderate push it would be nice to get out and exert some energy and hit people.Summary:Feeling a bit sluggish, relaxed, not hungry, slightly nauseous, craving orange juice, normal mood.  

Nobody here is surprised that we did not get nominated for Best Animated Film in the Oscars this year. Especially since the field was limited to 3 films. But we're all pretty proud that the follow-up animated short, "No Time For Nuts", featuring Scrat was nominated for Best Short Film (animated). 

Yay, at least we get to win something

Although Scrat and his preshistoric buddies from Fox/Blue Sky’s Ice Age: The Meltdown may have been snubbed by many of the year-end critics and awards groups, they are laughing all the way to the bank. According to a report released last week by Kagan Research, the movie was the most profitable, widely released feature of 2006. Produced with an estimated price tag of $256.4 million, Ice Age: The Meltdown brought in $1.1 billion during its all-release windows, placing it high on the list of Kagan’s profitability index.

read the entire story on Animation Magazine  

 Yesterday was more challenging because of work than anything else. I was bombarded with stuff all day long which was probably good and helped keep my mind off the fact that I'm drinking nothing but lemonade. I had 7 or 8 drinks throughout the day and to my surprise, I honestly wasn't hungry at all at any point during the day. This really threw me. I love food and have a pretty good appetite. But I wasn't just "not hungry", I was truly not hungry. Something about the acidity of the lemon and the cayenne pepper which helps me feel full maybe. I felt good throughout the day. I had a mild headache, likely because I can no longer drink my wonderful coffee, but it went away. I was feeling so good, I went for a run at lunch. Making the lemonade "on-demand" is a little inconvenient to do every hour or two, but it's not that bad. I was at work until almost midnight, so when I got home I was pretty tired. I drank my tea and fell asleep pretty fast. I slept well again last night... which is also encouraging. I have been having a lot of difficulty sleeping for months and a good night of sleep is a treat these days. Two in a row is awesome. No real cravings for anything and overall it's been pretty manageable, but it was just Day 1. They say that Day 2 and 3 can be very difficult. Yay. The salt water flush is really the last thing I want to do as I roll out of bed and its easy to ride the line between chugging it down as fast as possible, and feeling your stomach tense up to begin refusal of delivery. I just keep trying to convince myself its really salty chicken soup.On with day 2. Summary:Feeling good, no hunger or cravings, good energy, normal mood. 

So last night I started the journey by drinking a cup of Senna based laxative tea. It is actually not bad for tea. I zonked out pretty quickly after a very fun but tiring weekend in Chicago. I woke up at one point with a rumbling tummy but went back to sleep and had one of my better nights of sleep actually. I woke up this morning and mixed myself a quart of salt water and chugged it down (the Salt Water Flush). everyone says this is the worst part of the cleanse. It's definitely not enjoyable, but I just didn't think about it too much and got through it. I cut off the air to my nose to help diminish the taste. It supposedly gets easier to drink as the days go on. The purpose of it is to flush your system... and 20 minutes later, it was um... working.I mixed a bit of the lemonade before work. 8oz of water, 2 tbsp fresh squeezed lemon juice, 1-2 tbsp of grade B maple syrup, and 1/10 tsp of cayenne pepper for a little kick. The cayenne pepper tickled my nose when I was drinking it and made me sneeze, which I think is funny. It's not a bad drink... I'm sure i'll be used to it very quickly, and sick of it soon after that, but for now it's fine. And I can see how the lemon and pepper can also help control the feeling of hunger too.I'm mostly concerned about 2 things. I am a coffee person. I love not only the caffeine in the morning as a wake-me-up, but the ritual of coffee too. So I am anticipating a headache or two over the next couple of days as the caffeine withdrawl asserts itself. Then there's the time at night when I am home eating dinner, TV, and relaxing. I tend to snack a bit on the sweets at that time. Not having that will be a challenge I'm sure. For now, I'm feeling fine (it's been a whole 6 hours...). But it won't be long before this will present more of a challenge. Summary:I'm not hungry at all. Slight mild headache. Good energy. Alert. Average mood.