Welcome!

I'm your host, Bruno (aka John). I am a 49 year old man who lives in North Carolina, USA. I am a computer programmer and moved from "upstate" NY in 1997 to work in Research Triangle Park.

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If you bookmark my page, I recommend you bookmark it as http://pobox.com/~mrbruno. When you open that URL, it resolves to the pages at hostmonster, my current host server. Your browser will show the hostmonster URL (currently: mrbruno.org) but this may not always be the case.

Interests

• Music: Someone once said I was obsessed with music. I think that's a little strong but there are far worse things to be obsessed with. At least I'm passionate about something!

  I listen to a lot of different stuff, but mostly rock. I'll give almost anything a chance except opera, rap, and country/western. I have a real sweet tooth for progressive rock: a genre popularized in the 70's by bands like:

  • Old Genesis (before Phil ruined it)
  • Yes
  • King Crimson
  
  Contrary to popular belief, prog is not dead! There are a lot of newer prog bands that I also like:
  
  
  • Anekdoten - I have my own little tribute to this band
  • Spock's Beard - I preferred them before Neal got religion and went solo
  • IQ
  • The Flower Kings
  • Par Lindh Project

  Bruno does not live by prog alone. I also like a lot of excellent female voices:

  • Kate Bush
  • Joan Armatrading
  • Bjork
  • Jonatha Brooke

  I have a list of my CD/LP collection but I'm afraid I haven't kept it up to date lately. You'll get an idea of what I listen to but I suspect that everyone will scratch their heads about at least one artist and wonder "who the hell are they?"

  last.fm is a cool way to create your own library of music artists you enjoy, listen to songs, and connect with people who share your interests. Here's my profile.

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• Concerts: What would music be without live music? I love going to performances of the music I love. I've been to several progressive rock festivals since 1998:

   

  • NEARFest: 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2009
  • ProgDay: 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006
  • BajaProg: 2004 - The furthest I've ever gone for a festival. I knew I was not going to NEARFest in 2004 and I knew that Anekdoten and IQ were going to be there so I went and had a great time. The language barrier was a problem for me at times but I survived.

  I've also enjoyed several Lilith Fair festivals while it was alive.

   

  • 1997: Hartford, CT
  • 1997: Scranton, PA

    Scranton was the worst show I've ever been to and it was all about the venue. - it was held at Montage Mountain, which was totally unsuited for such an event. It was like a college beer bash with twice as many people as there should be and lots of mud. Think of having to go to hell and finding out there are too few shuttle buses, you decide to walk to the top of the mountain, and miss out on Asmodeus's orientation and you have no fun at all. I guess they've built a permanent venue since then but it was horrible and criminal in 1997. Clearly, the greedy folks who put on the show were just interested in money.

  • 1998: Raleigh, NC
  • 1999: Nashville, TN

  I wish Lilith Fair was still going! They were just scratching the surface! I think McLachlan was spreading herself too thin and perhaps was a control freak. Why did she have to be at every show? Take a break, Sarah, and let someone else shine!

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• Movies

  I love movies, lots of different genres. Check out my page on Yahoo movies for some of my favorites.

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• Cats!

  I adopted two 1-year old cats from the Wake County SPCA in December 2004. They are my girls!! Check out them out on Catster!

  

  Aren't they cute? There's lots more at the wonderful SPCA adoption center. I volunteer there and visit with the other cats a lot. Here's just one of the cats available for adoption at the SPCA:

  And how about dogs? I'm more of a cat person but have been working a lot more with the dogs lately in my volunteer activities. Here's a canine waiting for a home:

• Puzzles and games

  I love crossword puzzles, board games, and card games. I play a lot of strategy games at ItsYourTurn.com. My favorite games are Reversi (aka Othello), Anti-Backgammon, and Battleboats Plus.

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• Kayaking

  

  One of my recent passions has been kayaking... part of it probably deals with the fact that I've lost a lot of weight (see my next section on nutrition) and have more energy. Read about my exploits.

Nutrition

I've never been very interested in nutrition and my body has paid the price but I have seen the light! I joined Weight Watchers and am astonished at what I was doing to myself. I'm a big believer in Weight Watchers now and highly encourage anyone to look at the program if they're serious about losing more than a few vanity pounds. The best thing is that you eat whatever you want as long as you make sure it fits your daily budget. It truly makes sense and is easy to commit to. Your results may vary but I lost over 8 pounds in just my first week and in about four months, I've lost 60 pounds! I've gotten my BMI down eight points over this time. I've got a ways to go but I think I've already made significant improvement and will continue losing. Again, your results may vary but my transition has been very smooth and what cravings I've had, I've been able to control.

Thoughts on Nutrition

• I think children in grade school and young adults in high school should have mandatory nutrition education beyond just the food pyramid stuff which really doesn't help. I don't think the cafeterias are helping either! My problem was I never had guidance for how much was too much. I guess things are easier now with internet resources but I wish I knew more about nutritional a long time ago.
• It's criminal that all restaurants aren't required to divulge accurate nutrition information for their food - calories and fat content would be a start but all of the information from a traditional nutrition label would be best.
• Some restaurants have a lot of nerve selling products that have horrible nutrition, contributing to the obesity epidemic. I won't even touch the easy targets such as McDonald's (which I never went to except for breakfast anyway - but not anymore!):
  • Check out an Italian Combo at Panera's. You would think that anything at such a restaurant would be pretty healthy but think again. At a towering 1110 calories and 56 grams of total fat, this little jewel equates to 26 Weight Watchers points! This is more than a lot of people on Weight Watchers are supposed to eat in a single day! It doesn't even factor in but this sandwich also has 3220mg of sodium. That's over 3 grams! How can the folks at Panera's be proud of this? I shudder to think that I've actually eaten this sandwich - more than once!
  • From the "you've got to be joking" section: Jersey Mike's has a line of products called "sub in a tub" - basically, it's all the makings without the bread. Sounds good, huh? Well, guess what? It's the old shell game... the nutrition information might sound good until you realize that one "sub in a tub" counts as two servings. Nutrition information is for one serving. Hello? What's the sense in having a two-serving plate? What two people are going to share a plate? A couple, perhaps? Let's see, hey, they have a vegetarian sub in a tub! Let's try that. Ok, that will be 450 calories and 31 grams of fat. In just half of the "tub"! That's 11 Weight Watchers points and, trust me, that's not their worst selection. No thanks, Jersey Mike's!

Nutrition Kudos and Tools

• Follow this link for some useful tools. There are sites that list nutrition information for various food offerings from well-known restaurants and food companies, nutrition information for all manner of ingredients which you can use in your own cooking, etc.
• I've always liked Subway and I like it even better now. I hate the Jared guy from the commercials but I usually find myself "pulling a Jared" at least once a week.
• Roly Poly has some nice offerings and I think every restaurant has a big chart with complete nutrition information for everything they make. They've done a good job! A lot of other chains only have their nutrition posted somehow on their website but I can't think of another chain that has it right in the store! Their charts even include the Weight Watcher points so you don't have to figure it!
• Domino's has a pretty nifty set of tables with which you can estimate the nutrition of many types of pizzas. Using these tables, you can order a sensible delicious custom pizza. Skip their specials and stick with something that won't break your nutrition budget. I hope you like thin crust! Personally, I love thick crust but have been settling for thinner crusts because they don't "cost as much" in terms of calories and fat.

Social communities

I joined SocialGrid this a site where you can list interests, background, etc. and search for people by their interest and background for friendship, activities, etc. Here's my profile. On it, you'll find lists of my favorite music artists, music genres, movies and more.

Here's my Yahoo profile.

Photos

I've uploaded a lot of photos to Flickr.

www.flickr.com Go to mrbruno's photostream

Links

I use iKeepBookmarks to store some bookmark links for my own use and also to share them with others.

Page design

This web page was created by John using Adobe® Dreamweaver® CS5. Rather than paying full price, I bought this at a student discount because I'm using the product for classes such as WEB140 at Wake Tech.