brad garland

Dear Mr. Email,

Our relationship has been going on for almost 15 years now and I feel like you have done an amazing job of slowly becoming an integral part of my life for both my business and personal affairs. We spend so much time together that some would consider it cheating. What I’ve come to realize is that we are too close and I need a break. This closeness has come at the expense of other things (productivity to name one, my attention to name two). You and I need some rules to help continue our relationship. So here’s how this relationship is going to go moving forward. These are the rules:

1) We will ‘talk’ twice daily. - I’ve spent many years thinking I need to talk every fifteen minutes to you but we both know that’s just not true. I’m limiting our chats to twice daily, I’ll review any and all emails that come in during those times and handle them accordingly.

2) No notifications - I’m switching all my email notifications (desktop & mobile) to ‘manual mode’ and will only check them if it aligns with rule one.

3) Deal or no deal - When I do review my emails I will handle it in two ways. If I can answer in two minutes, I’ll handle it now. If not, highlight it for later, delegate it, or follow-up by other means (phone, IM, video).

There is no negotiation here, Mr. Email. I know you don’t like this but I think this will be best for both us. Let’s start with thirty days and see how it goes from there.

Regards,

Brad

It’s last night at about 9:30p and I pull up Apple’s website to see what the availability would be for my Apple store at Willow Bend mall to have an iPhone 3G tomorrow. The website says it would be available in my flavor (white, 16GB) tomorrow so I began wondering what time I had to get there in the morning to be one of the first? They opened at 9am so what? 8:30a? 7am? 5am?!?

I decided on 7am and if the lines were too long then I’d just leave and go to my appointment early. Well, I rolled in at about 6:50a and only one car was in the parking lot and I ended up being number 3 in line. YAY! I had a book, magazine, and my current iPhone to keep me busy. The time went by really quickly. Everyone else waiting were really nice and we chatted each other up while we waited.

The store opened at 8am for those with Genius Bar problems or training and all was looking good that I’d be getting my iPhone 3G today when the store officially opened at 9am. That was until at 8:30a the store manager came out and looked up and down the line (up to about 50 at that point) and announced that despite what the website said they had not received any iPhones yet. WHAT?! She said the website said they were in stock because they had two iPhones on hold for others and it was a glitch in the system. This didn’t make people happy. Some were down right pissed. Come on, guys, what is this little girl going to be able to do about that? “Sorry for the trouble, free iPhones for everyone!” Negative.

She said what she could do is check with FedEx to see if she could get a better indication on when it would arrive today. After about 10 minutes on the phone, she came back and stated with confidence that some would come today no later than 12pm but she didn’t know what kind or how many.

12pm?!? I had a BIG appointment at 10am that I couldn’t miss so that wasn’t going to work. So after that realization I tucked my tail between my legs and headed to work. The only time wasted was my own and it was all ‘sleep time’ so not much lost in my book. But I’ll tell you this, I’m not trying that again. I will either wait until the phone is readily available anywhere or just order it from a AT&T store and go pick it up when it arrives. Fool me once, shame of you. Feel me twice, shame on me!

UPDATE: I walked into an AT&T store this evening, paid & ordered what I wanted, they will email when it arrives (10-21 days), done deal. 5 minutes tops.

UPDATE 2: Ordered it on Wednesday night, it’s Saturday morning and got this email from AT&T.

Looks like they maybe underpromising and hopefully over delivering!

UPDATE 3: Picked up my white 16GB iPhone on Monday, got it all setup and I’m rocking! My wife is loving her new/old iphone, too. Kudos to AT&T on under promising and over delivering.

I couldn’t help myself.

I’m sure there are going to be another thousand reviews on the software but the beauty of the web is that people are also interested in my take. So I did three parts.

1) From a Apple fanboy perspective
2) From a financial services perspective
3) From a private ‘internal only’ to my guys at The Garland Group/Banktastic perspective

Enjoy and if you have any additional thoughts, let me hear from you, k?

Part 1 - Apple Fanboy Perspective


Part 2 - Financial Services Perspective


Part 3 - Private Video to my guys (you gotta be pretty special to get this link, :) )

So it’s almost been 7 months since my surgery and like I stated in my last post, I’m feeling great. If there has been anything that has been a recurring issue it has been the dizziness that I have on a semi-regular basis. It started pretty much right after the surgery and happens probably every other day or so (once or twice that day) since then. It not really bad dizziness, but I do get the light headed feeling and have to slow down a step or two until I come out of it. I also have to wait to stand up from sitting sometimes to get my equilibrium right because I know I will get dizzy. So this has been pretty standard and I don’t really consider it a big deal and have pretty much chalked it up to my rapid weight loss with my body is trying to adjust to less blood in my body, less ‘reserves’, etc….until last night.

Last night I actually had another one of my spells but totally blacked out afterwards. All I remember is me saying, “Whoa, whoa…” and next thing I remember is my wife is patting me on the face saying, “You’re okay Brad, you’re okay.” My wife said that after my ‘whoa, whoa’ comment I fell forward and smashed my head against the wall and proceeded to fall to the ground where she tried to hold me but due to my size she wasn’t able to and we both fell to the floor. Afterwards, I felt fine (little woozy mixed with a little embarrassment) but we went on with the rest of our night. Just to be cautious I went to the doc’s today to make sure it wasn’t anything bad and I’m getting my blood taken tomorrow. The doctor seems to think it might still an issue with not enough protein (which I think I’m doing alright on) but I got the feeling that they really didn’t know what was going on so they suggested the blood work. Anyway, I’m definitely no expert so we’ll see what the results are from me getting my blood drawn tomorrow.

On a more uplifting note, while I was at the doctors office the funniest thing happened to me. My appointment just happened to be scheduled just before a ‘pre-op’ group meeting was about to start and they started asking me questions. I popped out my IPhone and showed them my Flickr page with the recent weight loss progression. They couldn’t believe that I had lost that amount of weight in so little time and wanted to know everything about how I did it. Questions like: “How do you feel? Was your scarring bad? What type of working out do you do? How much are you eating now and what types of foods? Did you have lots of extra skin?”

It made me feel pretty good because I love helping others out and I know what it felt like to be in their shoes. I actually considered saying something to the doctors office about having me speak about my experience and telling them the how I have my own support group through my blog. The last thing one of the guys considering the surgery said was, “Man, if I didn’t know…I would’ve thought you would have always been skinny.” That made me feel pretty great, and I thanked him for the kind words.

Time sure does fly but it is still amazing to me it’s only been seven months. I wish all the pre-op’s well and I’ll definitely update everyone with what’s the latest with my dizziness. All for now!

It’s been exactly 5 months, 27 days since my surgery and today I’m excited to tell everyone that I’ve officially hit the 100 pound weight loss mark. WOOHOO! I am totally stoked for multiple reasons but most of all my health. I’ve never felt this good and I’m easily in the best shape of my life. It probably sounds silly but I feel like I’m in a better position now to take care of my family, life, and business than before. So, what’s next?

Skydiving! I told myself that if I could get below 200 pounds (the minimum requirement for skydiving at the place I’m going to) that I’d go. A buddy of mine has gone before and he’s going to join me but he’s a stud and going solo, I’m going tandem (I rather have the pro’s handle it). We haven’t decided when but hopefully soon enough. I’m definitely getting the video and will throw it up on Viddler once I do.

Anyways, thanks for all the support from everyone and for those that are just starting out, don’t give up!

I had a comment today by Maria that I thought would work great as a blog post instead of me just commenting for her. It’s about post-surgery issues in regards to going back to work. Here is her comment & questions below:

Thank you for all the useful comments and info.

I miss 1 major: I am in business, and would like to know:

1. When could you be again efficient in work? I need to be highly productive asap, and not be miserable
2. How to deal in business dinners.
3. By being over 10 hours per day at work, my colleagues see me more than my family. Q: How can you keep the procedure and the new way of eating discret w/o too many comments?
4. How many weeks after the surgery is reasonable to have business trips (fly abroad)?

Take care and your answers will really help
Maria

Great questions Maria and thanks for commenting! I want to answer all these but let me state this first on my work. I run a business, which is a IT consultancy business for financial institutions, and spend a great amount of time running the business, spend lots of the time on the computer, and with clients on site. And it was pretty important to me to be able to get back to work ASAP.

OK, let’s get into her questions:

When could you be again efficient in work?

1) My doctor suggested giving yourself at least a week AFTER you get out of the hospital before getting back to work related activities. Now, if you’re working construction or something very physical it might need to be longer but for me, he suggested a week.

What I actually did was since our company is a technology company and are very web-oriented I was able to work out of the house from the day I got home. I did have to take more breaks than usual during the day but I was at least able to get stuff done.

How to deal in business dinners.

2) I actually had this happen to me twice within two weeks from my surgery when I was on a liquid diet at the time. The first time I just didn’t say anything and tried to say I wasn’t feeling well and wasn’t all that hungry, stayed chatty. The second time I took another approach. I was completely honest about it. I realized that I can’t be ashamed about my procedure, I have to embrace it. So when the waitress came up I said, “Hi there, I just had gastric bypass surgery and can only have liquid based food, what do you recommend?” I ended up with French Onion soup (just the broth)…the clients were totally cool with it.

How can you keep the procedure and the new way of eating discret w/o too many comments?

3) I know how you feel there, I feel like my employees are part of our family. Again, I would just be honest about it, they are going to notice the weight loss anyway (I promise you). If you aren’t honest about it, they might start thinking your anorexic or on crack! :)

How many weeks after the surgery is reasonable to have business trips (fly abroad)?

4) You might check with your doctor on this one because my doctor wanted me up and walking around at least every hour so a real long trans-atlantic type of trip might hinder your healing. You might could get up and walk the aisles I suppose but I felt ok to do that sort of stuff after a week or two.

I should also mention that my procedure was laproscopically done, if the surgery is a fully open surgery, your healing time will be far longer.

Anyways, great questions and I hope that helps out!

[tags]gastric bypass, back to work, bradgarland, anorexic, flying abroad, business, lunch meetings[/tags]

Today I just happened to be in Old Navy and wanted a dark pair of pants. I had grabbed 36’s, since that’s what I’ve been wearing for the last couple of months, but when I went to try them on they felt big. So I went and grabbed a 34” pair and tried them on and by god, they fit! It’s been easily a decade since I could put on a pair of 34”! I am definitely excited at the amount of change I’ve gone through the past 4 months. Hopefully more changes to come!

[tags]gastric bypass, bradgarland, wardrobe, new clothes[/tags]

Yesterday, I was going to my 1-year follow-up appointment since LASIK surgery and as I was wrapping up the lady at the desk said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but have you lost weight?” I said, “Yes, 70 pounds actually.” She went on to ask what I was doing and if I was taking any sort of magic pill (if she only knew). She finished up by sweetly saying, “Well, whatever your doing, you look great!”

I didn’t really get into the details, just mentioned running, eating less/better, and working out. But it was kinda cool to have a complete stranger come up and say something like that. I been getting more and more compliments recently and it feels great to hear but I’m definitely not done yet. I’ve set a goal for 200 pounds or less and I want to hit it! So I’m running, doing weights, and about to start playing soccer again next month.

It’s at this point, post ‘honeymoon’ phase, that I really want to pick it up and ensure that I never go back to the way I was before. I also want to ensure that my mind is in the right place. I don’t want to be one of those gastric bypass patients that change their vice from food to something else like shopping, cigarettes, or alcohol. That’s what I fear these days. I hope my vice becomes being healthy and continuing to push myself for results in the gym. Right now, I’m really enjoy going to the gym but I don’t get myself down if i don’t make it (just go the next day).

Anyways, for those in various stages of the GB process, keep your chin up, stories like this will be happening to you soon enough.

[tags]gastric bypass, success story, life after gastric bypass, feeling good, bradgarland[/tags]

Today marks the 3 month anniversary since my surgery. I can’t believe it’s already/only been 3 months.

Looking back to that day, it’s still once of the scariest, most expensive, yet best decisions I’ve made in my life. I was nervous going into the surgery, wondering what the hell I did to myself just after the surgery, and thinking if it would ever be normal again weeks after. It wasn’t until a good month and a half to two months post surgery until I realized I made the right choice. People started noticing my weight loss within the first few weeks but I didn’t. It wasn’t until about two months that I started noticing my face was thinner, my stomach was getting smaller, and my clothes were getting loose.

Today, I stand at 65 pounds lost and I’m not done yet. I’ve been losing about 20 pounds a month or so and the doctor said I’m losing weight faster than the norm. They said GB patients should lose between 80% - 90% of their excess weight. Who knows if that’s true or not but I want to be on the higher end.

Despite the surgery doing its magic, I have also been busting my arse in the gym. 3-4 times per week with weights and running. I’m trying to get down to 200 pounds despite others thinking I can’t get down to that weight since, “You have too big a build to get down to that weight.” When I was bigger, I would just get pissed off at those that said stuff like that and give up on myself…but now, it motivates me. I feel like I can, despite their critique, and that’s a huge difference mentality than before. Today I was also cleared to do sports which is great for me because I played soccer twice a week before the surgery. I’m going to join a outdoor co-ed team for starters and then ease back onto my mens team at the end of the summer. Until then, I’m training and building my strength up to be ready for the season. I’m excited I get to play again, I love soccer.

Also at my doctor’s appt. we discussed my supplement situation. I actually took all the vitamins I take down to the doctor’s office to have them look them over the jars and give them my blessing. Glad I did too because they said I need to move from taking my B12 sublingual daily to once a week now. And to take only half of a serving of calcium nitrate supplements. I’m also taking an omega-3 and my multivitamin that they thought looked perfectly fine. So I’m glad to know I was doing most things right, a little too right in some cases. :)

The last thing I wanted to share is the surprising help this blog has become to others. And if I am able to lend a helping hand to all of you that find it, I’m just as grateful for you guys following me along. I was looking at my stats, via Mint, and noticed that someone came to my blog by doing a search for ‘gastric bypass encouragement’ so I did the search myself and look what I found:



I’m the top link in Google for that? Wow!

I’m happy to know that my positive outlook on this surgery is helping others but I believe it’s the comments of the readers that make this blog useful to the new people that drop by. So please comment and share your experiences with us!

Thanks everyone! Keep on, keepin’ on!

[tags]gastric bypass, weight loss surgert, wls, soccer, weight loss, diet, surgery, roux n y[/tags]

How you like me now?!?!

I’m excited to tell everyone that I’ve just passed the fifty pound weight loss mark. I was holding on right at 50 for about a week but wanted to wait until I passed it to post this. Very excited and feeling better and better everyday! WOOHOO!


Click the picture for a larger image:


[tags]gastric bypass, weight loss, diet, working out, sports, bradgarland, wls[/tags]