tranceboy

Back to school?

2008-12-30T19:05:56Z

I've been thinking very hard about going back to school and finishing my degree. I'm tired of being stuck in dead-end jobs that I hate, tired of trying to figure out if I can afford going to the dentist or the doctor, tired of feeling like I'm stretched too thin to help friends and family if they need it.

Admittedly, becoming a starving college student for a couple years doesn't strike me as a great way to end that feeling. "If I can only survive this acid bath for two years, I will be able to attend to the annoying rash that has plagued me."

My other difficulty with the idea is that I don't have a real passion at the moment - a CS degree with a focus in systems administration or DBA is a fantastic way to get into a job that I might not particularly like any more than what I'm doing now, but with a bigger paycheck. On the other hand, money can't buy happiness, but it helps to let you choose your misery. *shrug*

I don't know. I'm fucking beat on my current situation, but the roads out seem awfully steep, rocky, and dense with cowpats.

In other news, rung 8 on the introductory exercise ladder this morning went well, and I'm down 30 pounds from start weight. I think when I get to the lifetime ladder in 7 weeks, I will start The One Hundred Push Up Challenge. Which means that 13 weeks from now, I should be able to do 100 push ups in a row without stopping. Check back with me on April 1.

tranceboy @ 2008-12-02T11:53:00

2008-12-02T20:25:01Z

I emerged from Thanksgiving weekend without losing any weight. I didn't wind up gaining weight, and I'll consider it a victory that I went through not one, but TWO delicious thanksgiving feasts and didn't put on any weight.

Exercise ladder continues to be the exercise ladder - slow, steady, easy progress. Cheater pushups are a bit too easy, so I've been alternating between knuckle pushups and diamonds, although still from the knees rather than the toes. Knuckle pushups are dramatically harder than standard pushups, and I'm not sure why. I'm assuming that it has something to do with stabilizing yourself on a smaller surface area and keeping your wrists stationary.

Diamonds are harder still, although that feels more like it's a result of the awkwardness of the position than requiring more muscle exertion. It's weird. It feels like it takes more effort to do them, but I don't feel nearly as much muscle exertion in the process. *headscratch*

Crunches are getting a bit boring, I'll probably start switching them up with some of the terrible core stability exercises my physical terrorist had me doing.

tranceboy @ 2008-11-26T08:08:00

2008-11-26T16:11:59Z

As of this morning, I'm down 25 pounds from my start weight, under 300 pounds for the first time in.. a while. Good progress. :)

Miles to go before I sleep, though. Fitness ladder is working well. Life continues apace.

That is all.

Quantum of Solace...

2008-11-19T18:06:04Z

Watched it last night, and...

A decent movie, but disappointing in comparison to Casino Royale. There's a fucking brilliant pair of scenes in a hotel where Bond takes out 4 guys in an elevator while handcuffed, makes some small talk with M, and then makes a really smooth spy-escape from the hotel. Overall, though, it lacks in the "James Bond is a spy" department, he's more of an action hero in this movie and less of a smooth operator, which I feel is an unfortunate direction.

Top 4 complaints :
1) Way way WAY over-edited - editors/directors need to figure out that cutting every 3 seconds doesn't really add urgency to a scene, it either makes it confusing (not in a good way) or more likely, distracting.
2) They made this huge fucking deal over not using the line "shaken, not stirred", then replaced it with a shitty, awkward product placement. "Shaken, not... BUY GORDON'S GIN IT IS AWESOME GUYS."
3) The finale of the second chase scene is kind of fucking ridiculous. Once again, a situation where tacking on more "dramatic devices" made it just silly. "It's not enough to have them fighting on a precarious rope bridge over an active volcano! There must be lava monkeys! And the lava monkeys should have pistols! And the pistols should have bayonets! And the bayonets should be poisoned!"
4) It felt like literally every single person in the movie was a spy. The dude renting airplanes in the middle of nowhere has a direct line to the Bolivian Air Force, who knows to go after Bond? Honestly? I can appreciate that spies tend to run into other spies a lot, but it felt like a bit much to me. "Yo, Bolivian Air Force? Some guy just rented an airplane from me." "Um, thanks for the hot tip, old dude who rents airplanes in the middle of nowhere. We'll just be sending some jackbooted thugs out there to beat the shit out of you for wasting our time."

I burn with sickness!

2008-10-25T02:02:13Z

Yesterday, visited the doctor and got flu and pneumonia vaccines. Now, my armpit hurts like hell, I have a palm-sized bruise on my arm, and I alternately shiver and broil as my body fights against the mere corpses of influenza and pneumonia.

At least the nurse didn't soothe me with lies beforehand. I'm looking at you, giantlaser.

Things I think are awesome

2008-10-22T23:14:29Z

Concrete building printer - Apparently they'll be printing their first building in April, an outer shell of a house. Contour Crafting

Scotch tape X-rays - Peeling scotch tape in a vacuum generates a significant amount of X-rays, UCLA and the researchers who discovered this have applied for a patent on a hand-cranked X-Ray machine.

Artificial brain-to-muscle connections - Another step towards ending paralysis resulting from nerve damage.

Also, again...

2008-10-16T23:03:02Z

The new iGoogle layout chugs wang. Fucking horrible.

Left side navigation == huge waste of space if you only have a single tab.

Partial preview of all RSS feeds with no option to expand single stories == ugly and visually confusing.

Partial preview of gMail == maybe I don't want anyone looking at my google homepage to be able to read my mail?

I only hope that there is a tremendous public outcry about this and that it gets reverted soon. My homepage looks like fucking Yahoo now.

Stuff and things, update...

2008-10-16T21:51:52Z

Went to dinner at Shalimar on Tuesday night. Very good food, nice service, clean restaurant. foolbunny gave it a much more thorough review. On the whole, I definitely recommend it if you enjoy Indian food.

We went and watched Religulous afterward. I had mixed feelings about the movie. I feel like it very much comes from the Michael Moore school of documentary, which is to say "this is a documentary about the message I want to send". On the other hand, Bill Maher was intentionally preaching to the choir - the movie is directed at atheists, agnostics, and secularists. The basic message of the movie is "If you don't associate with a faith or if you are more moderate in your faith, you should stand up and denounce crazy fundamentalists as being crazy. Just because madness falls within the bounds of a religion doesn't make it acceptable."

Overall, I agree with that sentiment - extremist religion is dangerous, be it Christians arguing against teaching evolution or sex education in schools, Muslims murdering 'infidels', Amish abusing their children, or any other flavor of inflexible and unthinking faith. Religion is a holdover from times when humans were desperately struggling to make any sense at all of the world, and it does some things really well, but I believe that it's time for humanity to separate the wheat from the chaff and leave the fairy tales for bed time.

In any case, I found it to be a good movie on the whole, but I think that's largely because I agree with the message strongly and was consequently able to tolerate Maher's smirking arrogance. I don't think that he had a serious chance of convincing anyone of faith to see his viewpoint as a result of his tone, but I don't think that was his goal.

After hovering at the same weight for almost two weeks, I suddenly dropped three pounds today, which is a bit odd, but I weighed myself several times to be sure and that's what the scale says. I'm going to start exercising again tonight.

The diet is going reasonably well. I've been having oatmeal for breakfast and it has been a nice way to start the day. I'm moving more towards the theory of "breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper" - it makes a lot of sense to me in terms of how much energy my body is burning throughout the day. I'm also considering going to more of a high-protein diet - not switching back to Atkins, but making an effort to have more of my calories come from protein. It may mean waking up early to cook, though. :P Still, I should be able to have two scrambled eggs and a couple strips of bacon in the same calorie range that I'm having my oatmeal in. We'll see how motivated I am to wake up 15 minutes early, though.

Cue Charlie Brown Theme Music...

2008-10-10T20:52:53Z

I'm not sure if it would be distracting or not, but I think it would be entertaining to write to the Charlie Brown theme song.

Anyway, updates:
Diet continues apace. I'm hitting a plateau at the moment, which is a little bit disheartening but the laws of thermodynamics rarely change to spite me, so I suspect that as long as I stick with it the weight will start coming off again.

I bought new sheets last night, $40 for 400 thread count sheet sets from Wal-Mart, I wound up picking up two sets in the hopes that it will make it more likely that I'll wash my sheets with something approaching regularity. Also, the preceding sentence is brought to you by the National Association for Maybe Occasionally Using Qualifiers Slightly Too Often In Certain Sentences Sometimes.

Krishna and I went and watched Nick & Nora's Infinite Playlist, which was a nice movie. Michael Cera, as usual, plays a painfully awkward but likable dork, and does so with his typical exceptional timing. Worth watching, probably can wait for video.

Progress report...

2008-09-30T20:35:28Z

I hung out with Joel for a bit last night, had some decent conversation, and then we went downstairs to hang out with Jax, Cindy, and Tory. Very interesting conversations ensued about our current financial predicament, religion, and government.

I am profoundly grateful to have friends who can carry on a spirited and intelligent discussion on a wide variety of topics. I was perhaps more vehement in my statements about religion than I should have been, as usual, but it's a subject I feel strongly about.

As of this morning I'm down 15 pounds from start weight. Diet continues to be pretty manageable, although I have recently been less disciplined about keeping my food diary, which is a slight cause for concern, and something I'll have to be better about.

Having two high-calorie days a week is nice, just in the sense that it allows me to do things like go out for a nice dinner with Krishna or have a treat without feeling bad about cheating on the diet.

Life continues apace. Most things are pretty good, other things drive me crazy. So it is.

Update on spore for aikien and anyone else interested...

2008-09-09T17:18:32Z

So the final verdict, at least for me is :

The cell stage is a fun mini-game similar to flOw or other free flash games you can find on the web. Swim around, eat stuff, don't get eaten.

The creature stage is a longer mini-game where you either track down people who will frequently give you blue or green buttons in a simon-says game or run up and kill creatures and eat them.

The tribe stage actually has enough variety that it could be a game on its own. Think populous without the cool diety powers and the ability to ally with friendly tribes by playing maracas and didgeridoos for them.

The civilization stage is an RTS/Civ hybrid - you can either culturally conquer other nations by propaganda bombing them, militarily conquer other nations by physically bombing them, or economically conquer other nations by buying them out.

The space stage is an interesting exploration/RPGish game that quickly turns into a horror of micromanagement as your empire grows and then every 3 minutes one of your member planets can't handle a single pirate ship and you have to fly across the galaxy personally to blow it up. Sometimes they have an eco disaster and you have to fly across the galaxy to blow up a diseased cowlephant. There's an economic aspect of the game where you can personally fly across the galaxy and have a city on a planet build houses to increase their spice production. You design the houses and place them by hand, which is interesting once or twice, but then you have to do it for every single planet that you want to be productive.

Want to leverage your massive spice production into finances for your growing space empire? It's a good thing that nobody in your goddamned empire has a cargo ship, otherwise you wouldn't get to personally handle every single shipping transaction.

You can also build alliances, which are awesome until you realize that your new friends, like your member planets, will expect you to wipe their asses for them. "Help us, we have a sick cow on our planet!" "Oh god, there's a guy over here with a board with a nail in it, save us!"

Anyway. Basically, the game is is fun at the beginning and gradually gets less and less fun as the game progresses until I was longing to go grind some rep in WOW to save me from the tedium of Spore.

Stuff... and things... and foo... and bar...

2008-09-08T19:19:39Z

Turned 31 this weekend.

Old!

About 20 people ambushed me on Friday night for my birthday, I had a nice time and it's good to know that my friends care about me.

That being said, I felt bad that Trish and Jeff couldn't really eat any of the food at the restaurant I arbitrarily decided to go to thinking that it would just be me and Krishna. As this is the second such ambush I have experienced, I would just like to state for the record that I am not opposed to birthday celebration, I just hate making a big deal of things like that.

I don't want to be the guy who goes around saying "Guess who's birthday is coming up? That's right, me! My birthday is coming up in 6 weeks! Pay attention everyone, extremely important birthday announcement!"

And while it was nice to have dinner with a bunch of my friends present, I would much rather have an actual party where I can talk to more than 4 people, I don't have to worry about giving our poor waiter a heart attack, and accommodations can be made for all of the members of Camp "I can't eat that."

It was a very nice dinner, the food/appetizers at the Roadhouse Grill are great, and it's nice to know that people will go out of their way to ambush me for a birthday celebration.

Saturday was overall pretty mellow, and then on Sunday I went over to Kurt & Candace's anniversary barbecue. Food was delicious, good company, and I even mostly managed to stick to my diet.

Then I picked up Spore, which is interesting, in that it's like 5 fairly different games rolled into one. It was good enough that I wound up playing it for something like 8 hours straight. Not sure how long it will hold my interest, the "galactic empire" stage seems a bit tedious to me so far, and it seems like it will become more annoying as my empire grows.

Doo be doo be doo...

2008-09-04T18:02:48Z

Life updates :
My diet is going well, although I may be losing weight a little bit too quickly. I'm down 7.5 pounds from start weight, but given my current weight I'm not too concerned about it. I am not feeling any weakness or any other strange symptoms. It's nice to be able to eat sandwiches and ramen and all of the delicious carb-y things I enjoy.

I still haven't gotten off my ass and started exercising, other than my morning walk to work. Perhaps tonight is a good night to start, we'll see how motivated I am when I get home, though.

Watched Man on Wire last week, that was an enjoyable movie. Nothing earth-shattering, just a pleasant film about a bunch of crazy kids who decided to string a high wire between the towers of the WTC and put on an unauthorized no-net high-wire act at 1500 feet.

All things considered, I'm surprisingly energetic today considering that I probably got about 4 hours of sleep last night.

Ongoing updates on diet and fuss

2008-08-25T22:41:33Z

Had [Heroic Instant Grits of the Champion] for breakfast this morning. I'd never eaten grits before yesterday. They're good. Fairly similar to Cream of Wheat, a bit of honey and some cinnamon and they make a delicious breakfast.

The diet in general is going well. I've been using FitDay to keep track of my diet, and it's pretty awesome for that. Thanks to missloo12 for the suggestion. I'm down a couple pounds from start weight, which is nice, but mostly I'm just feeling a lot better now that I'm paying attention to the elephant in the middle of the room.

Not too much to add to that. I'm going to try to be meticulous about diet updates and keeping my food journal in the hopes that it will make it easier to stick with.

Oh I am a Knight in Shining Armor, yes I am!

2008-08-25T02:53:59Z

Huh. I just rescued the cashier at the local market after she managed to lock herself in a supply closet in the back of the store. My hero's reward : a free box of instant grits. *flex*

It's kind of cool - not often you get to save the day. She was the only one there and might have been stuck in that closet until morning. I felt sort of awkward that she insisted on buying something for me, but I didn't really feel like being a jerk about it.

Day 2, the adventure continues

2008-08-22T19:35:46Z

I had couscous for dinner last night, and it was delicious. Krishna had made the suggestion of cooking it using chicken broth instead of water. She is brilliant.

One of the nice things about a calorie counting diet is that it does offer me much more flexibility in what I eat. After my recent lapse in the crazy cheater diet, I rediscovered my love of ramen. So good. In fact, I suspect ramen is the reason I decided to stay off of Atkins. I think my reasoning went something like "if I can't eat delicious delicious tasty ramen on this diet, it is for the birds. The carnivorous birds."

I wound up at about 300 calories over my target yesterday, thanks to two shots of vodka and a nectarine from the unexpected Farmer's trip, but overall, not bad. That still puts me at about 2000 calories under what I'm expected to be burning at my current weight.

Today is one of my 2250 calorie days. I've eaten basically the same things that I did yesterday, but I'll be having dinner with Krishna and those extra calories allow for a lot more flexibility in what I can eat.

I'm looking forward to the weekend, and hopefully after another mellow weekend my foot will be back to the point where I can walk to work again. I also need to start exercising again, so I will restart 5BX this weekend (minus running and jumping jacks until my foot heals).

I've also started taking 5-HTP to help combat some of my depression issues. It's difficult to judge if it's the 5-HTP, a general mood lift from feeling like I'm doing something to improve myself, or (most likely) some combination of the two, but I am in a better mood today than I've been in for some time. Huzzah for not feeling like crap, whatever the source!

Step 1 : Collect Underpants

2008-08-21T19:35:12Z

Well, it's a slightly more reasonable plan than that. First day of the new diet. I just wasn't able to stick with the crazy cheater diet.

1500 calories a day, 2250 calories two days a week.

Bowl of cheerios in skim milk for breakfast, large navel orange for my first snack at about 10:30 AM.

Moderately hungry, but not unbearable. Just about to head to lunch, where I will eat a salami and cheese sandwich.

I recently read an article that compared weight watchers to an RPG. The xkcd strip about exercise is also appropriate. We'll see if it's a game that holds my interest, but I'm hopeful.

Boo, fuss, wah, fuss, meh, fuss, boo, etcetera.

2008-08-18T19:29:45Z

I've been feeling out of control and self-destructive lately. A combination of depression, "fuck it", and a lack of direction. Same old story. I don't like it. Same old story there, too. Other stresses in my life right now as well, but sometimes you just have to soldier on and hope things get better.

The main problems in my life are of my own creation, or a result of my own inaction. The real question is, "what am I going to do about it?" And the answer, for the moment, is "I don't know." I know that I need to get my weight under control, exercise and diet will do that, but I've completely fallen off the wagon on those fronts and it feels very futile to me at the moment.

There have been times in my life where I felt like I could just bend the universe to my will, and by and large, was successful. Right now, that feels very far away and impossible for me. But I felt that way once, and I can reach that point again. For the time being, I think that I may just have to fake it, trick myself into believing that I can succeed, and if I can pull the wool over my own eyes long enough, I will find that I have succeeded in spite of myself.

"The way it works is, you do the thing you're scared shitless of, and you get the courage AFTER you do it, not before you do it."
"That's a dumbass way to work. It should be the other way around."
"I know. That's the way it works."

And that pretty much sums it up. It's a dumbass way to work, but that's the way it is. :P

tranceboy @ 2008-07-17T13:34:00

2008-07-17T21:06:19Z

I'm tired of this job, but torn by not knowing what I would do if I quit. I could go back to school, but for what? Without a plan, without passion, it feels like a stalling tactic. I envy the driven.

Feeling directionless, depressed, listless. Haven't been doing the diet, haven't been exercising. I should be doing more. Of anything.

In the plus column, I have been studying for my MCITP certification. It's difficult to feel excited about it given that I'm not excited about continuing to work in computer repair.

Bleh

Ug, WTF?

2008-07-09T22:56:19Z

Seriously.

What.
The.
Fuck.

Retroactive immunity for the telephone companies who illegally participated in warrantless wiretapping. And a blank check for further warrantless wiretapping until 2012.

It passed in the Senate 69-28 - not even close. How does this even happen? Don't you at least have to read the Constitution once before you're sworn into office? Words can scarcely convey my profound and bitter disappointment in the fucking clowns in our government.

*sigh*

I has a bottle... Can has lightnings?

2008-05-15T16:27:33Z

So I bought a ticket to LIB this week, in spite of the fact that it's probably not a great financial choice for me to blow a couple hundred bucks right now. Now it's a matter of figuring out transportation/camping/party supplies. There's free floating fun out there, and it must be stopped, no matter the personal cost.

Go go gadget last minute decisions!

[Goals] Keep on keepin' on...

2008-05-05T17:49:41Z

Rung 6: 8 Bends, 10 crunches, 10 leg lifts, 6 sissy pushups, 255 steps running in place, 21 jumping jacks. As per usual, not dramatically harder than the previous rungs were at the start.

Weight/Diet: Cheated by going to Old Juan's on my Wednesday date night, put on 2.5 pounds from my Wednesday morning weight by Friday, still down 4 pounds net since last update. I think the walking is making a pretty big difference.

Overall, I'm down about 30 pounds from my initial weigh-in, still have about 120 pounds to go (if I were to set weight as a goal). It's a big hill, but I'm making progress. Clothes fitting better, more stamina, all that good stuff.

[Goals] And now, your regularly scheduled boring Hank fitness news...

2008-04-26T21:32:48Z

Rung 5 today. 225 steps running in place, 21 jumping jacks, 7 bends, 9 leg lifts, 9 crunches, 5 push ups (sissy style). It was harder than the previous weeks, but I suspect that's because I wound up getting very little sleep last night. Still, nothing crippling.

Down 1.5 pounds from last week. I think I'm going to stick with my "mostly water" drinking plan. Previously, I was drinking 24-30 diet sodas per week, I've had .. maybe 4? since cutting back, primarily as caffeine supplements.

I've been thinking about documenting with photos, taking some slump-shouldered, frowning "before" pictures, preferably in front of the wreckage of a burning car, with the background littered with empty ice cream boxes. You know, just to really capture the standard "diet supplement before picture" feel.. :)

Stuff...

2008-04-24T23:25:49Z

I've been walking to work for the past couple days, it's about a 1.5 mile walk, not too tough, mostly downhill. Walking through an active construction zone is interesting, a good exercise in awareness - when one is surrounded by active construction equipment, the equation (Hydraulics + Mass > Flesh) is always mentally present. Overall, it's a nice walk in the morning. My experience has been that walking home in the afternoon is less pleasant, since it's a) hotter and b) mostly uphill.

All the same, it's a nice supplement to my exercise program, which will probably expand in scope as foolbunny graduates from school and may not be in San Luis with regularity to give me rides home.

As slownewsday suggested might be the case, the peeing has become more normal and less of an all-consuming requirement. I think I may keep this "no or little soda, mostly water" habit.

In other, non-fitness/health/peeing related news, I am pondering a situation with my landlord. Sometime in December, I let her know our roof was leaking. She has subsequently failed to address the issue. She claimed in a phone conversation that she had sent the roofing company out and they had looked at it without going inside, but I am skeptical of this.

So I'm pondering what the best way to handle the situation is - I'm guessing the appropriate thing to do is the whole "registered letter" business, but it just feels very formal and confrontational to me. On the other hand, I am more interested in having to deal with a confrontation with my landlord than in having to deal with massive bills for water damage that she failed to address. :P

[Goals] Progress report...

2008-04-20T01:08:24Z

After eating at the delicious Basque restaurant on Friday, I had a bit of a willpower problem, and proceeded to cheat on my diet all weekend (mmm, baked potato slathered in sour cream and butter and bacon). I succeeded in putting on 3 pounds for my trouble.

I then decided to remove diet soda and "low-carb" sweets from my diet, and subsequently lost 4.5 pounds over the course of the week, so despite my decision to cheat like crazy, I'm still a pound and a half down from last week.

I've been drinking a lot of water, probably close to the mythical eight-glasses-a-day, which is good for me, I hear. If you believe in diet advice which nobody can actually source to any sort of scientific research. However, I now feel like I'm literally pissing my life away.

Just finished my first day of Rung 4 of the exercise ladder. 200 steps running in place, 14 jumping jacks, 6 bends, 4 push ups, 8 leg lifts, 7 sit ups. Almost exactly double the amount of exercise I was doing when I first started, and aside from being winded at the end of my 5 minutes of exercise, I'm not suffering for it.

I can definitely tell that I'm improving in stamina - I'm getting to about 120 steps before I'm starting to breathe harder, where it was closer to 40 or 50 steps at the start of the program. It's probably time to pick up the pace a bit more so I'm getting my heart rate up earlier in the exercises.