Not my week for sports

This has definitely not been my week when it comes to sports and sportslike activities. It all started Tuesday when our softball game got rained out. Myself and a coworker decided that we would take the opportunity to play some disc (frisbee) golf on the campus course. We had both just gotten new discs and wanted to try them out. We start playing and my new disc is working out pretty well. Then about halfway through the course I decide to go for it all on my tee shot and watch in horror as my disc curves off the fairway and heads towards a building.

We heard something that sounded like glass breaking, but it had an odd sound and we couldn't immediately seen any broken windows so we thought that maybe I had gotten lucky and hit an air conditioner or just the window frame. However when I located my disc and looked behind me I could definitely see the hole in the window. The disc had pushed the screen back into the window and broke it before bouncing my disc back out. Since I know the campus police phone number from work, I called them up and told them what happened. An officer showed up and took down my name and everything for the report. He made it sound like it wasn't that big of a deal since we reported it, but I haven't heard anything else officially yet.

Fast forward to tonight and we're playing a makeup softball game from last week. My first 3 at bats weren't terrible with a good single and a couple other good hits that the fielders made better plays on. Then in the top of the last inning with the bases loaded and two outs, I come up to bat again and go into a full count. The last pitch comes in and winds up about 6 inches outside the plate. I let it go thinking I'll take the easy run and let the top of the lineup come up to bat again. Out of nowhere the umpire calls it a strike and that's the end of that. One of my teamates who was on second base definitely agreed that the pitch was way outside and said that the ump had done the exact same thing to him on one of them. The worst part was, I was playing catcher and saw closer pitches than that called balls.

*sigh*

Champions Online

Hey all,

Just an FYI that I will be giving Champions Online a go when it releases in September. Nykk has advised he will probably be checking it out as well. No idea on how long we will be playing and I have no specifics on server, etc at this time.

The pre-order just opened for the game this week. If you decide to pre-order, Gamestop has the best bonus items in my opinion, but you can check them all out on the champions website and decide for yourself. Best part is the pre-order includes an early start and beta key. Gamestop is supposed to have the cards for it all in-store by the first week in August. Not sure if that means 8/1 or the first Monday...

More info to come on servers, superteam (guild), etc

Starting Over

I'm essentially starting over in my health program. I'm back up to 219 and totally out of shape. I've been really a slacker about going to the gym. Since I was on vacation I didn't really worry about what I was eating either.

This is the 1st week of my going back to the gym full time and pumping up my workout routine. I'm hoping to get my schedule to look like:
Monday: Crunches, Treadmill, Aqua-aerobics
Tuesday: Body Pump, Cardio
Wednesday: Crunches, Treadmill, Aqua-aerobics
Thursday: Body Pump, Zumba (Latin aerobics)

Body Pump (weight lifting to music) kicked my ass (showed me that I had really let myself slide again). Body Pump has lots of squats and lunges. This schedule should get me 8 hours of workout a week and leave my weekends free. It'll mix some weight lifting in with the fat burning aerobics and doesn't leave me too much to my own devices. I seem to do better in classes that on my own.

It won't leave me much time in the evenings during the week for WoW, but I'm having a hard time being sad about that.

The Latest Weigh In

So far I've been doing pretty good on my weight loss. After the past week, I had stepped up my training a bit, but had fallen on my diet some. So Lets see the numbers. 

When I started

5/19/2009

357.4 lbs Total Weight 

157.6 lbs of Fat weight 

199.8 lbs of FFM (Fat Free Mass)

Yesterday

7/16/2009

343.2 lbs Total Weight 

123.2 Fat Weight

220.0 FFM (Fat Free Mass)

So far I have lost 14.2 lbs over all, I have lost 34.4 lbs of Fat and have gained 20.2 lbs of Muscle.

Goal #1 Achieved

Today when I weighed in I discovered that I have officially broken the 300lb barrier. This is 18lbs down from where I started back before RenFaire. I've still got a long way to go, but reaching this first milestone definitely gives hope for the future.

How much time I spend on backups

If this photo is any indication I spend a lot of time on backups. Each of the tapes in the big stack is 400 gbs of data. I spent the day cataloging the tapes for reissue.

Sent from Android

Of furry things and cheap build quality

So I'm relaxing in my recliner tonight only to hear my cats hiss behind me. Not an uncommon occurance, but the fact that they were both staring at my washer made me get out of my chair. A couple of weeks ago I found a opposum in that exact spot when one of my cats did the same thing. Luckily it's right by my back door so I managed to chase him out. $150 vet bill later making sure my cats were up to date on their rabies shots and replacing an access panel behind the washer I thought the problem was solved.

So I get out of my chair and go look, pretty well knowing what I'm going to find and I once again find a opposum behind my washer. I kick the cats into my bedroom and shut the door behind them to keep them out of the way. Open the back door again and try to sweep him out with a broom, but this time he takes off through my house! Cursing rather loudly I chase him into my office to watch him disappear into the hole I had ripped in my sheetrock in there a few months back when I had some plumbing problems. About that time I was wishing for a small caliber fire arm to take care of the problem once and for all, but sadly my .22 is at my dad's place and I decide the 20-guage is probably going to do far too much damage to my house. (Not to mention it's somewhat illegal to discharge a firearm in the city limits.)

Upon further examination I find that there is a giant hole in the floor of my house below the bathtub. Apparently instead of cutting a proper sized hole for the drain pipe, they just made it 2-3 times as big as needed so they didn't have to work very hard. Damned cheap bastards. (I'm going to pause right here to premptively tell Geeon and Kira to refrain from the trailer jokes and jabs, I should have known something like this would happen.) So I found some bookcase shelves I had laying around that I haven't gotten around to putting together and plugged the hole in the wall for the time being. Looks like this weekend involves a trip to the Home Depot to grab some plywood and construction adhesive to fix the hole in the floor. I need to get the wall fixed permanently too, but the lack of a truck to haul a 4'x8' piece of sheetrock means I'm stuck with the temp solution for a while. I'd borrow one, but sadly I don't know anyone around that has one so I have to wait on my dad to come visit.

D&D

So are we going to get an online D&D game going? I know Grex has been very busy and everyone else has had stuff going on so this is just a general inquiry.

(((HUGS))) to all.

Update Run Through

With my induction into Google Voice, Google has officially assimilated my world.

YAY Dev's back!! Let us know how your trip went!

I promise I'll get to each and every one of you guy's emails. I've had no time to get to personal stuff this past week!

Holy shit do I have heartburn after eating Popeyes chicken!

So not looking forword to weight training tonight!

LucasArts Back Catalog now on Steam

Apparently LucasArts has fixed a lot of their old games to now be compatible with XP/Vista and have released the updated versions through Steam. I haven't yet had a chance to browse through them and see exactly which ones are up there and which aren't, but I'm personally liking this. As a huge Star Wars nut I owned a large collection of LucasArts games back in the day and have been disappointed that they don't run on XP and trying to run them in DosBox has been a nightmare as well. TIE Fighter was the best space combat sim ever in my opinion.

Hell on Earth

Well to say that these past few weeks have been trying would be an understatement. Three weeks ago I went down to visit family and ended up helping my grandfather mulch his garden. He got tired more quickly than usual, but my grandmother told me that his diabetes had been acting up a lot more as of recently so I put it all down to a combination of that and simply the fact that he's getting older. When I talked to him on the phone on the following Monday he sounded absolutely exhausted, but said he'd had a hard, hot day. A week later I got a call from my grandmother asking me to come down for lunch on Sunday because my mom was going to be up there visiting. Her voice sounded a little strained on the phone, but since I hadn't heard anything, I figured she was just tired.

When I showed up for lunch, I was told that my grandfather had been diagnosed with cancer that Tuesday and he was rapidly deteriorating. This all happened less than a week after we had been happily working on his garden which is absolute favorite hobby. Yesterday I was informed that the cancer is terminal and inoperable. He is going to start chemo on Tuesday. If successful the doctors give him 6 months to 2 years. If it is not they give him 3 to 6 months.

It probably goes without saying that I am going to be even more scarce for a while than I have been. Most of my weekends are going to be spent helping out with maintenance on my grandparents' property. Maintaining the garden, mowing the lawn, and just generally doing whatever needs to be done to help out. This whole thing is taking a major toll on my grandmother as well. She's not sleeping and hardly eating herself, so she's going to need all the help she can get to get through it. This is doubly hard on me after having lost my grandmother on the other side of the family to cancer barely a year ago.

I just wanted to let you guys know why I'm not around much and why I might seem a little distracted if you do see me online.

Nykk

Reason to Stay

As some, if not all, of you know, the game has taken a turn for the not-so-interesting. I have had offers to join other guilds and am struggling with whether or not I want to go.

Let me start by saying that this is not a reflection in any way, shape, or form on this group and I am asking for a reason to stay, if there is one. For the past few weeks, there has been a lack of any activity on the game, that is, nothing that I have been invited to partake in, and suffice it to say I am getting bored with the politics and changing of the rules that I see happening, even if it hasn't been said openly.

There is more ppl showing up from Imaginary Friends that have been invited into the Geri's and most of them are out of Frazz's 25 man run. One of these individuals has 13 and 16 yr old sons who have been brought into the Geri's. I know that the mission statement says that family members are automatically invited, but lets be real. I do not see a 13 and 16 yr old behaving as adults, I have 13 yr olds on my buses, they don't know how to act accordingly.

This is in no way disregarding me from the 10 man that we run or any other run/runs that we do, I am simply looking for a reason to stay in Geri's and frankly, as I rack my brain, am not finding much to work with(the reasons...not my brain). The politics change so often that the reasons that I joined this guild are drifting out of my reach and are being reinforced by ppl doing nothing but what is in their best interests.

All I am asking is that I be provided with something, besides, "Well I/ We are here", for reason to stay. I understand that real life gets in the way and there are activities that must be done b4 game time can be considered and in that fact I completely understand if this mail goes unheard for a bit, but don't take too long. I hope that I haven't hurt anyone with this posting, but everyone needs to know what they are worth, in this game its a question of how much you are needed, and so far I am not impressed with the Geri's, not one bit.

Even if I do go to another guild, know that I will keep to the same schedule and any other that is posted for the group. Know that this group of friends means more than most other things in this game. I/we have made great friends here and I wouldn't want something as small as a guild tag to change that.