We had an awesome thunderstorm this morning. Lightning flashes bright enough to blind you even with the shades drawn and thunderclaps loud enough to literally shake the house all night long. I love storms like this. Every time we get a decent one, I'm taken back to when I was just a little guy sitting on the back porch with my parents eating cheese puffs and watching the lightning. Good times.

Unfortunately, my computer didn't enjoy the storm as much as I did. When I got up this morning, it was completely frozen and when I tried to reboot, it power cycled itself a few times and then stayed on but never gave any post beeps or video display. Fortunately it was plugged into a battery backup that is still under warranty and offers a $200,000 connected equipment warranty. Unfortunately, it's a Geek Squad power supply so I'll be dealing with Best Buy.

Based on previous dealings with out of store Best Buy warranty issues, I see the process going something like this:

I call Geek Squad/Best Buy and get hung up on when someone tries to transfer me to the correct call center.
I call back and spend 45 minutes arguing with someone reading from a troubleshooting manual about how my computer really is dead and doesn't just need a reboot.
I spend another 45 minutes arguing with his manager about how I'm sure the computer was connected to their battery backup when it died.
After several hours convincing them that the computer 1) is dead, 2) died as a result of the thunderstorm, and 3) was plugged into their UPS when it died, they'll concede and either 1) write me a check for the damaged equipment, or 2) have me ship them the computer so they can verify the damage and determine the value.
From there I'll either be waiting 6 to 8 weeks for the check to get to me or I'll get my computer back in 3 months after some genius somehow manages to reinstall the (probably wrong) operating system without fixing the motherboard.

That's pretty much the best-case scenario.

I can't wait!

 My wife just called and let me know that she's craving food from a relatively inexpensive buffet place near our house.  A friend of mine happens to be in between jobs at the moment, so I invite him and his girlfriend (who just happens to be my sister) to join us, my treat.  My buddy asks if we can take him someplace else instead.

I've always considered myself a bit socially retarded and have never really understood all of the rules that are in play when interacting with other people, but this just seems like it should be an obvious no no.  I remember doing something similar to my Grandma when I was six and I still feel bad about it.

So is this as rude as it seems to me, or am I just expecting too much from people?

I haven't posted anything these last few weeks because I haven't really done anything for the last few weeks.  The last time I bothered to get my fat butt out of my computer chair and go run was probably close to  two months ago.  I've let all of my goals for the year take a backseat to my own laziness.  Instead of practicing kata and working out, I've been playing Half Life.  Instead of keeping up with my daily Bible reading, I've been playing stupid Facebook games.

So after a 2 month hiatus, I'm bouncing back and getting things rolling again, which in itself is a slight improvement over the 6 months to a year it usually takes me to recover when I start slacking off.  This morning I bumped my morning run up to 1 1/2 miles, running to my office and back again.  I did this partly because I figured I should at least be running a full mile by now and partly because I liked the way my mind felt clearer when I ran to work, but hated having to force my coworkers to smell me while I marinated in a pool of sweat until I went back home for lunch.  This way I get to wake up, jog, shower, and still get to work all focused ready to roll, but smelling just slightly better than your average fat sweaty nerd.

Guess I'll close this out with a quick physical update.  My blood pressure seems to be staying down in the normal range. Measured 120/72 just a few minutes ago.  Unfortunately my weight bounced back up a few pounds, but that's to be expected after sitting on my butt all day, every day, for the last couple of months. It definitely could have been worse.

	Weight	Body Fat
Start	248	28%
Current	239	25%
Goal	215	17%

I've tested every new piece of equipment on the shelf, reorganized my desk, finished my last soldering project, and can't think of anything else work related I could do to kill time at the office.  I've also accepted every silly game and quiz request I've gotten in Facebook over the last few weeks, but didn't feel like doing until now, and am completely out of things to do.  So I may as well update my LiveJournal page, right?

Things have been interesting on the exercise front.  I haven't been running to the office as much because I keep waking up late and have to drive to work just to make it on time.  I've got to remember to rig up my ridiculously overcomplicated alarm setup so that I'll wake up on time again.  I miss my morning runs.

On the other hand, I've started going to the gym again.  And by "started" I mean "went two days ago and plan to go again today."  All of my previous workouts have been focused on building strength, so I got to the point where I was a pretty solid dude, but this new workout is kicking my butt.  Since I'm into the whole martial arts thing now and am trying to keep my heart in shape, my workouts are all about endurance.  I've NEVER been a big endurance guy.   Even with a drill instructor on my back every day for 9 weeks straight, I never reached a point where I could even run two miles at any kind of respectable pace.  I'll just have to hope my body adapts a bit faster this time around, but I won't be holding my breath.

At least I get to wrap up this post with some slightly good news:

	Weight	Body Fat
Start	248	28%
Current	232	24%
Goal	215	17%

So this Monday update got pushed back to Friday.  Pretty soon I'll be a whole week behind and it'll look like I'm updating  on time!

Finally got my blood pressure monitor in and was really disappointed the first time I ran it.  It read something like 128/75 which would be really cool since that would put my systolic pressure where my diastolic pressure used to be, but that was pretty darn unlikely.  So just to make sure, I used one of the machines you see in the Wal-Mart pharmacy (still probably not the most accurate thing in the world, but at least it's a full cuff unit), and sure enough, I got nearly the same reading.  I somehow went from "Stage 3 Hypertension - Consult your physician immediately" to just almost healthy.  Turns out this whole diet and exercise thing works after all!

I'm still making my morning run to the office most days and can make the 0.7 mile trip in 6 1/2 minutes wearing a backpack loaded with water, snacks, whatever tools I need that day, and about 7 pounds of crap I still haven't taken out of my bag from the last tournament.  Pretty soon I'm hoping to be able to get myself up early enough to run to the office and back right after I get up so I can shower before I go in instead of sitting in a pool of my own sweat all day.

I had hoped to be a couple of weeks into the hundred pushups challenge by now, but I somehow managed to screw up my right shoulder at the tournament and then screwed up my left shoulder trying to do something bass-ackwards to compensate for the bad right arm.  Now my right side hurts like hell lowering myself to the ground, and my left side locks up completely trying to push myself back up. Hopefully I'll have all the kinks worked out in a couple of weeks will be able to start back up again.

Forgot to jump on the scales this morning so no update in that area.  I'm assuming my weight and body fat percentage are probably still bout the same, though.  I may come back through and edit this with the correct info if I happen to think about it later.

I had planned on updating this thing every Monday, but I'm horrible at keeping any kind of schedule.  So we'll just say I'll try to post at least once a week on whatever day I happen to have the time.

Had my 2nd karate tournament last weekend.  Had a lot more people there so it was a lot more fun, although I didn't place quite as well this time.  I finished 4th in forms (performing a kata I'd just learned 6 days ago, so I'm not too disappointed) and 3rd in sparring.  And even though I didn't get my big first place sparring trophy like last time, I think I like my little 3rd place trophy even better.

Last time there was no one in my division to fight so I just fought an exhibition match against someone from the intermediate group (myself being just a rookie yellow belt).  It was a fun fight, and I got to beat someone two belts above me, but it was just one fight and there was no consequence for losing because I was taking home 1st place no matter what.  This time, however, we had a real bracket and anyone who brought home a trophy really earned it.

In the first round, I pretty easily beat a guy who had never been in a tournament like this before.  He was a great competitor and even managed to land a couple of good blows despite being a lot shorter than me giving his attacks a lot less range.  The second round was an absolute blast! I went up against a Kung Fu yellow belt and went point for point with him until the very end of the match.  We were tied at the end of the match, so we had a sudden death round.  After a lot of good attacks and just as many good blocks, he took me out with a backfist to the top of the head (which I've had trouble blocking since day 1).  Another great match against a great competitor.  My next match however, would be  a little different.

The kung fu guy (I really should have gotten his name) would go on to win the finals, but I had to fight against the other one loss guy for 3rd.  I had seen his two previous matches and he seemed to rely on one very douchebaggy tactic: smash your opponent in the face at the very start (in a points match where face contact is not only worth no points, but illegal), take your first foul, then take some easy points while your lowly white or yellow belt opponent cowers in his corner.  If your opponent starts to get brave again, land a spinning heel kick to his face, take your second of three fouls, and proceed to clean up.  This got him a win in the first round and a close match in the second.  His match with me was a bit more interesting.

He started off just like usual, leaping in with a roundhouse that I blocked, but comboed nicely into a solid punch to the face, that even though I knew it was coming, I still failed block (did I mention I suck at head blocks?). He managed to knock my contact lens out of my head, but I just picked it up, licked it, stuck it back in, and smiled at him.  He was a very angry little man and this just pissed him off so much more.  He tried to kill me with his spinning heel kick, which is pretty impressive for a white belt to pull off in the first place, and his had plenty of power and was remarkably accurate to boot.  Fortunately for me it was also incredibly slow, so if you're not still flinching from just getting your face smashed in, you have plenty of time to block.  So I did, and followed up with a solid jab to his ribs for an easy point.  A bit more irritated, he pulled off the same roundhouse/jab combo he started the match with, knocking my other contact lens loose and earning his second foul.  I smiled over my gloves at him and started bouncing around having fun, he just got more irritated.  As soon as the next round started, I delivered quick low snapkick to his ribs and snagged another two points.  Really pissed off now, he jumps right into the next round with that same roundhouse/jab combo hitting me in the face, knocking off my helmet this time, and earning him his 3rd and final foul and sending me home with my spiffy little 3rd place trophy.

He packed up his gear and was out of the building before they even had the lineup to announce the winners at the end.  Talk about a sore loser.

People like him bug me.  I met a lot of really cool guys that day.  Some of them dominated their events and gave pointers to people who didn't do so well. Some of them were beaten pretty badly, but were really gracious for matches they were given.  Then there's this guy.  He had to win at all costs, and when he couldn't pull off a win, he couldn't even be bothered to stick around to congratulate the guys who fought hard pull out a win. 

From what I've heard, his instructor is actually a pretty good guy.  It wouldn't surprise me at all to hear that he refused to teach him anymore after this tournament.

EDIT: Used "to" in place of "too"  I just committed one of my own biggest pet peeves.

So here's where I'm at.  I've started this whole process of making a better me because the current me has a tendency to be a fat, angry, lazy a-hole, who will likely have a stroke before he turns 30.  To become the person I want to be, the person my wife and kids need me to be, I have to find a way to fix some of this junk.

My main goal is to, quite simply, not die this year.  Even when I was fresh out of basic training, running  6 miles a day, and had only 8% body fat, I had higher than normal blood pressure.  Now that I'm a computer geek and have my butt parked in front of an LCD screen all day, my BP hovers around 180/100 which I've been told is pretty much stroke level.  If I get too irritated with someone I'm working with, or just too excited about a project I'm working on, things start to get a bit fuzzy and I have to waste entirely too much energy on just not blacking out.

I've got a bit of a game plan to bring this thing down to more survivable levels, though.  I run to work and back every day (only a mile and a half round trip, but that's still a mile and a half more than I was doing before),  I've started studying martial arts (goju ryu karate primarily with bits of the other disciplines sprinkled in here and there), and I've changed my eating habits.  I'm still eating the same things as before, aside from paying more attention to my sodium intake, but I'm eating less food more frequently instead of stuffing myself twice a day.  I've also tried getting an exercise plan going (mainly the HundredPushups challenge), but I've had a hard time finding someone who will verbally kick my ass every time I start slacking off.

I've already seen the benefits of the new plan creep up in a few places.  I have a lot more energy at work even without the usual morning Starbucks run, and I've lost a fair amount of weight over the past few weeks.  And winning my first martial arts tournament (beating students with years more experience in the process) has been a huge confidence booster.  In a few days I should have my new blood pressure monitor so I can see if I've made any progress in that area.

There's a bit more to this, but in an effort to keep these things from becoming ridiculously long, I'll throw in my status update and call it a night.

Progress

	Weight	Body fat
Start	248	?
Current	235	28%
Goal	215	17%

So I pretty much abandoned LiveJournal when I started using Twitter, and then stopped using Twitter when I landed on Facebook.  Now that I think I've learned where everything fits in, you may see me around here a bit more often.

I've got a lot of things rolling now that I really need to keep a journal of if only to be able to look back when it's all over with and see what happened those few times I managed to succeed, or where things went horribly wrong every other time.  With any luck, I'll be able to do this without being all Whiney McEmopants all the time, and maybe some of you will get to laugh at what I'm sure will be some colossal screw ups on my part.

In an effort to keep my LJ posts looking more like tweets and less like novels, I'll go ahead and cut this off here with an obligatory "I'm back. Stay tuned for more updates."

I somehow never noticed that there are muscles under my arms surrounding my ribs.  They announced their presence today by screaming out in pain.  That pretty much sums out my experience so far with the One Hundred Push Ups Challenge.  When I was still in the military, I could do 60 push ups without much trouble.  When I did the initial test for this program, I barely eeked out 20.  I've let myself get way to far out of shape.

As sore as I am right now, I'm actually really enjoying my new workout plan.  I forgot how good it feels to push your muscles to their failing point.  I'm definitely sore and I'm sure it's going to be even worse tomorrow, but I feel awesome at the same time.  It almost makes me miss basic training...almost.  I can't wait to see the difference in how I feel in six weeks when (hopefully) I wrap this thing up.  If all goes well, I may try doing the same program with situps and maybe move on to the twenty pull ups challenge later on.  It should be interesting to see me trying to pull my fat behind up over a bar that first day.  I'll try to have the camera rolling.  I could be the next afro ninja!

On a completely unrelated note, I'm loving the avatar I made at FaceYourManga.com.  It's pretty darn close to the real me, right down to the Wolverine hair cut I start sporting if I go more than 2 weeks without a haircut.  If I could move the scar to be above the eye instead of through it, it'd be spot on.

Need to go through my katas one more time, then it's off to bed for me.  Gotta make sure I get up early enough to make my cappuccino so I'm not completely worthless at work tomorrow.

This is the one time of year I actually regret not having the G4 network.  It was great back in the day when it was TechTV, but now every time I get a chance to watch it my thought process is, "Please be Xplay, Pleeeeease be Xplay.  CRAP!  Another freakin' Cops marathon."  I kid you not, the last 4 times I've had an opportunity to watch G4 it's either been a Cops marathon or a Cheaters marathon.  I don't think I've actually been able to watch a tech or even gaming related show in almost a year.  Which is why I didn't care to upgrade when I noticed our free cable (I didn't ask for it.  The tech apparently thought we were getting cable and when I told him we weren't, he decided it wasn't necessary to fix it). 

But now it's time for E3.  The one time of year G4TV isn't completely worhless.  They broadcast all of the press conferences live, have tons of great interviews with developers, and manage to cover a pretty good chunk of everything going on there.

But like I said, I don't have G4.

So, I'm looking for info from my fellow gamer geeks out there.  Has anyone found a good site that is both broadcasting live and archiving conferences to watch later?  I caught the MS press conference yesterday on IGN. There's about a 2 minuted delay which seemed to keep the feed smooth, but you can't watch full screen.  G4's stream lets you watch full screen, but their feed is choppy.  Gamespot was supposed to be streaming the conferences as well, but they were apparently not prepared for the traffic and they went down pretty quick yesterday. 

Anyone have any further suggestions?

Stolen from ubersaurus:

Your result for The Attachment Style Test...

The Cuddleslut

33% Anxiety Over Abandonment and 32% Avoidance Of Intimacy

This Gizmodo article brought about one of my favorite comments ever:


The article itself it possibly worth reading as well.  It'll be cool to see where this goes.

OK.  Did anyone else happen to see the Pendragons on America's Got Talent?  I remember watching them perform with acts like David Copperfield and Penn and Teller in just about every magic show that aired during the 90s.  It seems like there should be some rule about being one of the top professional acts in your field and competing in an amateur talent competition. 

I already posted this on twitter, but I thought I'd have the LJ crowd weigh in as well. 

I finally managed to finish watching Cowboy Bebop while I was home sick yesterday and am looking for another good anime series to check out next.  I've seen all of Evangelion, Full Metal Alchemist, Trigun, Paranoia Agent, Scryed, Guyver (which I'm hoping spun off a second series that I don't know about and had a REAL ending), all the Dragonball series, and I'm up to date on Bleach.  I've also got Samurai Champloo, Baki the Grappler and .hack downloaded and on standby.  I'm sure there are more, but I can't seem to think of them at the moment.

incyr gave me some great recommendations already (Vandread, Hellsing, and Escaflowne) and a link to a great place for ideas. But I'd still like to know what everyone else has enjoyed. I may even take a poll at some point to find out what the top anime series in the LJ 'verse is.  This should give me a list long enough to last me a good long while :)

Got the flu Tuesday night.  Left work early exhausted and suffering from one of the biggest migraines I've had in a while.  By the time I made it home (that 0.75 mile drive was brutal (: ) my legs didn't want to support my weight anymore so I kind of pinballed off the walls in the hallway until I crash landed in my bed.

When I woke up Wednesday, I could barely breathe and I felt like I'd been hit by a truck.  My entire body felt like one giant bruise.  On top of that, I could feel another migraine coming on.  It was beginning to look like an awesome morning.  Needless to say, I called in sick.

I took a single migraine pill hoping to ward off the impending skull pounding before it arrived and took a near scalding hot shower hoping to flash fry the germs and scrub away the sick.  I actually felt pretty good just from the shower, but I couldn't stop there.  I HAD to kill this thing.  So after the shower I ran out and grabbed a ton of fruit and some cough drops with some cold stuff mixed in.  From there I picked up some sushi for lunch and grabbed a new (or at least new to me) Acai Super Anti-Oxident smoothie from Jamba Juice with their immunity boost thrown in for good measure. 

Once I made it back home (just in time for lunch!) I spent the day drinking a crapload of water and alternating between my Ricola and my Halls Defense cough drops while watching the last few episodes of Cowboy Bebop.  By the time the wife and kids made it home, I was already feeling a lot better, but still not quite up to dealing with people.  So while Sarah and the kiddos went to church for the evening, I stayed home and slept through Casshern (one of these days I swear I'm actually going to watch that movie). 

After overloading my system yesterday with Vitamin C and other good-for-you stuff, I woke up today a little stuffy but otherwise feeling pretty awesome.  I think it was the sushi that did the trick. ;P

Does this guy have an album? If so, I've got to get me a copy.

This is just classic. The guy who's been going around for last couple of years broadcasting his social security number to the world, proving how secure his service was, is now a victim of identity theft. Even better than that, despite seeing first hand that his service is not as secure as he advertises it to be, he continued to advertise his "unbreakable" system, and is now being sued by customers in 3 states.  That's good stuff.