Saturday, April 28, 2012

Marching On...

The weather and life commitments have been working against my exercise for the last 2 weeks but I've continued to march on with the weight loss. I weighed in at 288.8 when I was having my health issues at the end of December. Today I weighed in at 270.2 and that was after being up and eating, etc. So I'm excited as that means I'll be in the high 260s next week and I'm nearing 20 lbs. down.

I'm moving our exercise bike to the basement so I have some options for when it rains and is cold. Kelly and I got a little spoiled in February and March with the weather but reality has set in as April has progressed. My plan is to walk on the nice days and use the bike on rainy days. I'm going to stick to 4-5 days a week for my exercise.

I'm not super eager to go back to the gym until winter. I prefer being outside for working out, it feels less like a workout. I watch the clock less and an hour doesn't feel like an hour. On a treadmill or an exercise bike I feel every minute that goes by and I just hate the experience. Plus gym rats annoy me to no end.

So here's to my continued weight loss. 20 lbs. is on the horizon.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Advice...

Well, more a rant of sorts.

I've posted on a series of message boards and it's offshoots since roughly 2002. I've known a lot of these people, as far as their online persona, for a decade now. Anyways, one of the guys asked us for advice about a year ago. He realized he was doing nothing with his life and was living in his parents basement at 30 with no job. We tried to help him out and give some advice, he didn't listen.

He did what he thought was right and made his situation worse. Came back, asked for more advice and again didn't listen when we gave it.

Things like that piss me off greatly. I've come to learn that when someone asks for you advice; 9 times out of 10 they really aren't seeking your advice. When someone is coming to ask for advice they usually want you to validate their life decisions or the decision they want to make. People tend to react poorly when you tell them something they don't want to hear.

The next time someone asks me for advice I plan to run out of the room while screaming "I'M NOT LISTENING LALALALALALALA".

I'm not going to turn this into a giant essay or anything. I just wanted to vent a bit on the stupid things people do at times.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Misc. Thoughts

Weight is still dropping. I only got to walk 5-6 miles last week much to my dismay. But the scale is still edging ever lower much to my joy. I still have a long way to go but I'm starting to look good in a mirror at least.

I listened to a couple of episodes of Fear the Boot this week and it's really been making that D&D itch start to tingle a bit. I've put some consideration into going to a local shop and trying out some ads for 3.5 groups but I haven't decided yet. I really don't want to go through the turmoil of a new group of people and deal with the possibility of personality clashes and such. Plus, nerds and geeks can tend to get on my nerves and I'm not sure about subjecting myself to that. I'll see how that itch feels in another couple of weeks and go from there though. I don't think a weekly game would fit my schedule well. Maybe a once or twice a month deal.

I finally finished my Futurama watch a couple of weeks ago. It took me about a year and a half of catching an episode here and there. And... I started over at episode 1 today. I love Futurama, it's easily a top 5 show for me. I've probably seen the original season episodes around 10 times a piece. But I love the characters so much that I can just continually watch the show. I should probably finish buying the DVD sets at some point since Netflix might now be around forever.

Life has been busy lately, hence my lack of updates recently. Kelly and I are literally struggling to cram everything into the days that we need to currently. The house is a total mess right now because we just don't have the time to clean. I'm hoping things even out a little as the spring progresses.

My new obsession on my phone is Foursquare. It's really a stupid little app that lets you get points for the places you visit but it hits the right spots with me.

Kelly and I went out with her friend Emily and finding food was a disaster. We went to Planks only to realize they don't open on Sundays. We then went to Hound Dogs only to sit there for 20 minutes waiting for the waitress to take our order. So we bailed from there and went to Graffiti Burger. It was a decent place. Very similar to 5 Guys in how it works. The burgers were good but not amazing. I'd say a solid B grade for the burgers. Fries were about a B- on the scale but I think the staff overcooked them. Overall, a worthwhile place if you live on campus to try but go to 5 Guys if given the choice.

World Championship Wrestling 2-4-89

Results:

NWA United States Tag Team Champions Kevin Sullivan and "Dr. Death" Steve Williams d. George South and Bob Emery with an armbar.
The Fantastics d. Trent Knight and Eddie Sweat with the Tower of Quebec
Abdullah the Butcher d. David Heath with an elbow drop
NWA TV Champion Rick Steiner d. Mike Thor with a belly to belly suplex
Barry and Kendall Windham d. Mike Justice and Robbie Wise with a bulldog
Midnight Express d. the Terminators with the Flapjack
Butch Reed d. Jerry Price w/ a top rope clothesline
NWA World Tag Team Champions Road Warriors d. Mike Jackson and Kip Montana with the Hart Attack
Dick Murdoch d. Mike Thor with a brainbuster
Mike Rotunda d. Mike Allen with a butterfly suplex
Michael Hayes, Junkyard Dog and Sting d. Max MGuyver and the Cruel Connection with the DDT

The Horsemen changed hands from JJ Dillion to Hiro Matsuta on this episode. Flair and Windham cut pretty good promos about it. Flair's exact words:

Until you have experienced a beautiful Japanese woman, you have no idea idea of how gracious the Japanese culture is.

Nice.

Tony Schiavone leaves with this episode for the WWF and gets replaced by Magnum TA. Magnum isn't quite the announcer but he's still okay.

The company is kind of in a transition here. When we get to April/May timeframe, the company will look a lot different than it does now. Windham will be gone, Luger will be heel, they'll be taping the shows in an arena instead of a tv studio, the Great Muta joins the company, etc. So things are a little slow right now but they'll start picking up quickly when March rolls around.

Overall, this show was kind of slow and boring. They're mostly hyping the upcoming Clash of the Champions and Chi-Town Rumble shows. I will be watching those and posting results and thoughts as well.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

My Journey as an RPG fan...

I had been a video game player for a long time, dating back to the Atari 2600 days. The summer before I was to enter 7th grade I stayed at my friend's Dan house. He had a game called Final Fantasy and it was like a a new door was opened to me. Here was this game where you gained experience and your characters progressed. And combat was about tactical thinking and resource management vs. pure reflex and controller skill.

Needless to say, I bought the game a short time later and beat it over the course of a few months. I have fond memories of the game and I've even played a couple of the remakes and enjoyed them a lot. The remakes are a lot better as the spells actually work like they're supposed to and it removes some of the clunky parts of the original.

My love of the genre was born after finishing the game. I went and sought out any games I could find that were RPGs. Thankfully, NES games weren't considered collectible at the time so it was a matter of going to the local video game shop and lucking into some old NES RPGs. The internet wasn't a big thing yet so I had to rely on Nintendo Power back issues to figure out what the worthwhile RPGs were.

I remember that I quickly came into possession of Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy II (better known as IV), Ultima Quest of the Avatar and several others I probably can't remember. Thankfully, I got in at the right time as the next few years saw the releases of Final Fantasy III (VI), Lufia II, Earthbound, Ogre Battle, Chrono Trigger and Mario RPG.

My fandom waned as the PSX and PS2 eras progressed. The games all started trying to be 100 hour epics and I found myself getting caught up in side quests and never actually finishing the game. I still haven't beaten Final Fantasy VII because of trying to breed the stupid Chocobo to get the Knights of the Round materia.

Thankfully there were still PC games like Diablo 2 to keep me going during this time frame.

As the 360 era dawned, games like Mass Effect and the Bio Ware games seemed to draw me back in. I finished Mass Effect, Dragon Age, etc. It's hard to find the time to put into 40-60 hour games though. That's really more of a hindrance to my love of the genre currently than anything else.

This is probably my top 10 favorites though:

1. Chrono Trigger
2. Final Fantasy VI
3. Mario RPG
4. Earthbound
5. Planescape Torment
6. Diablo 2
7. Phantasy Star IV
8. Knights of the Old Republic
9. Dragon Warrior IV
10. Dragon Age Origins

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Stabby kind of day...

I don't know if there was something in the air today but everyone around me was acting crazy and stupid today. I was ready to just randomly start stabbing people.

I was going to post a video of Roberto from Futurama saying he's "gotta practice his stabbing" but Youtube has failed me yet again.

It was a good day to get home and away from humanity. I try to not be a grouch or an ass, I just fail at it from time to time. Today was a prime example of that. I wasn't mean to anyone or anything like that, I was just content staying to myself and interacting as little as possible.

Thankfully, I got home without incident and despite it being a little chilly I got in a 3.1 mile walk. That brings my weekly total to 5.1 miles walked and 800 calories burned due to exercise. I'll hopefully get a 2 mile walk in tomorrow, take Thursday off and then hit the weekend hard. I think getting 11 or 12 miles in for the week is pretty doable from where I'm sitting right now. Hopefully I'll see some difference on the scale Saturday and creep into the 17 or 18 lb total range.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Hit my goal!

I walked 3.1 miles yesterday and hit my goal for walking 10 miles for the week. Today starts a new week and I may or may not get a chance to walk today. It will depend on how my afternoon pans out. I'm hoping to sneak in 1.5 to 2 miles with some luck and good planning though.

More Dungeon Defenders this morning. The game continues to keep me on my toes as I was attacked by my first boss this morning. It wasn't a huge disaster like the first ogre was though. I had a far better understanding of the game and my towers and the boss was taken down with relative ease. The game is now expanding to having to defend two crystals. I believe that this break provides a good opportunity for me to stop and grind a few levels. I think going forward at level 12 would be a good idea.

I went and visited my friend Justin last night. It was kind of a spur of the moment thing as we hadn't seen each other for several months. We live very different lives at this point. I'm married and working and he owns a store that takes up 100% of his attention. Justin has the right attitude about it though. He understands that life just gets in the way sometimes and that you can mean to text, call or visit all you want but sometimes it just slips by the wayside. I know I can always text and visit no matter how long it's been and we pick right back up where we left off.

Actually, those are the people I keep up with the most. Some friends really lay a guilt trip on me for getting busy and disappearing for awhile. That tends to lead to me just avoiding them because I'm busy and I don't need to hear it. I try to fit people in and sometimes that means some passage of time. I don't need to feel guilty about the fact that I have a life and I can't constantly be in contact with people.

Rant over there. It was nice to get out and hang out with a bunch of guys though. I work with all women and I'm married so I spend most of my time around women. Sometimes it's just nice to be around a bunch of guys and just let loose a little.

I'm going to try and visit my friend more. As I wrote about last week, I'm treating life like it's short and finite. That means no more putting off things like driving a bit to visit my friend at his store.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Warren Sapp files for bankruptcy

Click here to read the story.

This has been kind of a common trend the last year or so. Allen Iverson and Charles Rogers are in the same boat as far as their finances. I always have the same question when this comes up...

what the hell did you do with all of that money?!?!

The guy played 13 years in the NFL and he made at least 30 million dollars playing football. It's ridiculous to think that he couldn't live off of that money for a long time. I wish more of these guys would make better use of their money and hire a financial planner right off the bat. You can still buy nice stuff and be saving money for the future. I guess people will never learn.

Dungeon Defenders, Exercise and Stuff...

I took a 2.5 mile walk last night to bring my weekly total to 7 miles on the week. I also hit a new low on my weight to bring my weight loss total to 16 lbs. total. Sickness and a funeral made the transition from 15 to 16 take a really long time unfortunately. But I feel like I'm back on track and ready to start cutting into the other 72 lbs. that I have on the slate to lose over how long it takes. I'm currently trying to talk myself into a 3 mile walk today so I can retire this week at an even 10 walked.

My fitness level is in a really good place. I didn't even blink after my walk last night and when I started in January I was pretty winded after a mile. I'll never be able to run because my knees are trashed but I'm fine with walking and eventually biking.

A week or two ago I bought Dungeon Defenders off of Steam. It's a tower defense game with a lot of RPG elements attached to it. I'm not a huge fan of tower defense games. They always seem like a good concept but I never really find myself sticking with them. I think I hit that inevitable point where I just can't manage my defenses well enough to handle the mass of enemies coming at me.

Dungeon Defenders and I have done a dance for several months. I would see it on Steam, watch the trailer and like what I saw, then decide against it because tower defense games and I don't end well together. Finally, it was on sale for $7 on weekend so I took the dive and bought it. I've slowly added some of the DLC over the course of a few weeks too.

I'm actually really enjoying the game. The tower defense portions are really played down in this game. You have your character, one of four classes in the regular game but you can add probably 5-6 classes through DLC. You set up your defenses and then open the gates. The difference here is that you can use your character to also battle the invading enemies. So if your defenses fail or aren't enough you still have your character to defeat the enemies that broke through.

It also has a lot of loot drops during the missions which I like. Most of it is useless but you get one or two useful pieces of equipment per mission. You can also level up your gear as time progresses as well. Usually a new piece of useful gear means sitting there and thinking about the merits of it over what you have. I like the strategic thinking involved with your equipment in this game vs. the obvious choices other games presents tuo you.

The game does keep you on your toes. The first time an ogre showed up I was not prepared for it and it cost me the mission. The second time, I approached the mission with the specific purpose of beating the ogre and I pulled it off. I'm looking forward to putting some more time into the game.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Opening Day Tomorrow!

Well, technically the season started last week as Oakland and Seattle played a 2 game series in Japan. Plus Miami and St. Louis square off tonight. I have the day off work tomorrow and I plan to gorge myself on baseball to kick the season off right. I invested in the MLB.tv package so I get all of the games on my PS3 in HD for the affordable price of $125.

I started my baseball season off last night by watching the first 5 innings of the first Seattle/Oakland game from Japan. Felix Hernandez started a little slow but the Oakland offense was too inept to really take advantage of it. What did I take away from the 5 innings of play? Seattle and Oakland have really bad offenses. Which kind of surprises me on the Seattle front. They've had offensive woes for years and years now. Really, I don't think their offense has ever really been the same since A-Rod left almost a decade ago. Seattle has kind of been the masters at throwing a ton of money at the wrong players. Oakland, who knows.

I plan to watch the second game of their Japan trip and Miami/St. Louis before the season kicks off tomorrow. I'm fairly excited for the Miami/St. Louis games because the teams have had a lot of turnover since last year.

Of course, the main event is the Cincinnati Reds tomorrow.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

The mystery of life...

Okay, not really. I just couldn't think of another title for this post.

Kelly discovered a bike trail near our house over the weekend and we decided to do a little exploring tonight. We walked 1.8 miles and crossed a bridge over a sizable creek and there was also a cemetery off the trail but we decided to not put in another mile worth of walking tonight. That puts me off to a good start this week as I've walked 4.5 miles thus far and it's only Tuesday.

My fitness level is up and I'm easily logging 2-3 miles of walking compared to what walking a mile was in January. My weight loss stalled because of a sickness followed by a death in the family but I'm still going strong. It's April, I'm in good shape and I'm ready to tackle even more weight loss in the coming months. I have a long way to go but I've got my body ready to do it.

As a follow up to my post yesterday, this is what my wife wrote on her Facebook fitness group page Virtual Workout Buddies:

My family suffered a tragedy this week. The lesson was clear. We don't have tomorrow, we have today. That's it. I want to be proud of all of my todays.The year is a quarter of the way over. What have you accomplished? What are your goals for the next three months? I am going to be getting my April goals ready this week, please share yours as well. We can do whatever we put our minds to, so it is time to get to it. At least for me.

As you can see, we've both kind of caught the carpe diem fever after last week. I half jokingly told my wife after our walk that it was hard to not turn this blog into a blog about seizing the day. So I might to a degree. It's kind of my new mission in life. Last week was like having my eyes opened for the first time to what I was doing wrong in life. You can hear those seize the day words a million times but it really takes something extra to bring those words home to roost. I received my message loud and clear.

Today I seized the day and went for an adventure with my wife. Now I plan to go outside and read and watch the rest of the As/Mariners game from Japan last week.

Monday, April 2, 2012

Dreaming, Life, etc...

Lots of life events happened for Kelly and me last week. Most of them were negative as there was a death in the family and we spent from Tuesday till Saturday dealing with the initial ramifications of that death.

This death for me really hit on some cords that had been swirling around in my head for a couple of months previous. Namely, I gave up on dreaming and aspiring a long time ago. I tend to think this happened when I started working full time. I started making some money and life was comfortable. I had friends, a life of sorts and money to buy and do things with. Dreams kind of went out the window as I became comfortable and complacent.

Now, don't get me wrong. I went out and achieved a modest amount of success for myself past that. I bought a house, I jumped from a blue collar to a white collar job and I of course married my beautiful wife Kelly. All of this was good and I'm proud of where I've gotten in life. Not everyone ever achieves what I've pulled off at 31.

But, where are my greater dreams. I've always wanted to write a book and continue putting it off. I want to travel and see the world. Why did I suddenly give up on those dreams? Why is it that when my wife asked what my dream job is did I just stare at her stupidly and not have an answer? I honestly don't know and I'm slowly trying to weed through it all in my head.

On top of that, I've been taking being alive for granted. I think we as humans tend to think we have more time on this Earth than we really do. We measure our lives in the metrics of years and decades. That leads us to put things off because there's always tomorrow or next year. This also leads us to let the little stresses of day to day life overwhelm us and we forget the now. How many times have I had a bad day and shut myself off from Kelly or the dog or my family in general? My honest answer is, more times than I'm comfortable with.

Now I see how I should view life. Life should be measured in days and seconds. You can do all the exercise you want, you can eat all the right things, you can be rich or poor but the truth of the matter is... none of it matters. Those things effect your quality of life but none of them will save you when your time comes. Your time is your time and it could come at any time. I could live to be 90 or I could die when I'm 32 of some unknown disease hiding within my body.

The moral of this story is. My life is short. I don't necessarily have those decades that I anticipated having. I might only have days or weeks in reality. I need to live my life as though that's the case. I need to chase my dreams with the fiery passion of someone that has a limited time on this planet. I need to get off my ass and write my book. And I need to remember that my job is just there as a means to feed myself and keep the lights on. My wife Kelly, my family, my friends and my passions are why I'm here. My job is just a place I go for 8 hours a day to fuel my true reasons for living. I'm not going to sweat the small stuff anymore. Life is too short. I have places to go, dreams to find and a beautiful wife to walk the path of life with.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

World Championship Wrestling 1-28-89

Back again as we finish up the month of January for 1989. Just a side note, I've acquired the Clash of the Champions shows and the PPVs for 1989 so I'll throw those in as they happen too.

Results:

Michael P.S. Hayes and Junkyard Dog d. Max McGiver and Bob Emery when Hayes pinned McGiver with the DDT
Butch Reed pinned Alan Kensey with a side headlock
Kendall Windham pinned George South with the Bulldog
Eddie Gilbert pinned Agent Steel with the Hot Shot
Mike Rotunda and "Dr. Death" Steve Williams d. Trent Knight and Mike Jackson when Williams pinned Knight with the Oklahoma Stampede
Ricky Steamboat pinned Russian Assassin #2 with the cross body block
Dick Murdoch pinned Mike Justice with an elbow drop
Lex Luger submits Jerry Price with the Torture Rack
Midnight Express d. Rick Allen and Keith Steinborn when Eaton pins Allen after the Veg-O-Matic
NWA Television Champion Rick Steiner pinned Eddie Sweat with the belly to belly suplex
NWA World Tag Team Champions Road Warriors d. Randy Hogan and Bill Holliday when Hawk pins Holliday after the Doomsday Device
Ivan Koloff submits Gene Miller with the Boston Crab

Overall Thoughts:

Jim Ross and Tony Schiavone were really pushing the Road Warriors as heels during this show and it's still not working. The Road Warriors are doing the exact same act that they were doing as good guys. Why would the fans boo them? Just because they're beating up faces too now? I mean, it's really in character for them to go after anyone that got in their way. Thankfully, they stop this nonsense really soon.

Ricky Steamboat's "I'm doing this for my family" act isn't really working. It makes him seem lame when it should be getting the fans behind him. This act is especially tough to pull off when you're standing across the ring from Ric Flair. Flair's the bad guy here but he flaunts being a bad boy and you kind of grudgingly respect it. As this progresses you'll see how this dynamic really starts to work against Steamboat.

Windham and Flair took out Gilbert this week. It was a nice bit of brutality as Windham held him face down on the cement and Flair dropped a knee to the back of his head.

The Kendall Windham match was hard to sit through. He really just did boring arm work for several minutes before hitting the Bulldog for the win.