Results from my Fitness Assessment

I met with my personal trainer for the first time today to conduct the fitness assessment that they do before we start. If anyone is interested the details and my thoughts can be found over on the blog that I just set up for myself at http://dragonsandtech.blogspot.com/

I'll be using that site to document my progress as well as any other random thoughts that I feel like sharing.

Even More Priorities

Tonight was a huge eye opener for me. I'll fully admit that I was late due to playing disc golf with a friend tonight. I apologize for this and I feel bad that I wasted your guys' time tonight, but I honestly can't say that I'm disappointed that I didn't get to raid tonight. With it being summer now I find myself not wanting to be indoors nearly as much. Coupled with the fact that I'm seriously trying to lose weight and playing WoW is not really conducive to that. On top of that I've found that I am really burnt out on WoW to the point that since the last time we raided I haven't logged on until tonight.

I really enjoy playing with you guys and want to continue, but I need a break from WoW to both enjoy life in a different way for a while and to try to keep my priorities in line. So for now I have to drop my commitment to raiding for at least the next two or three months. I hate to do this to you guys, but it's something that I need to do. I'll still be hanging out in Vent when I'm home and I'll definitely be staying in touch and playing DnD if we ever get it going, but I'm not going to firmly commit to doing anything online for the remainder of the summer.

Crazy Schedule or Lack of Routine

I have heard of people who get addicted to their routine. Some actually become borderline obsessive compulsive about it and freak out when they fall off. I’m pretty sure if I had continued a few more years on the schedule that I have had for, say the last 10 years or so. I would be that bad as well. With all the changes in my life this past two weeks, I have drastically changed my routine and I am finding it very difficult to stay focused and keep track of time because of it. My attention deficit disorder is getting unreasonable, and so I’m going to have to do something about it sooner than later. I am seeing in my daily work that I am having a very hard time focusing on the task at hand, and my mind wanders something awful. This is going to start impacting my job performance.

I will say that my change in diet has actually been helping me. I don’t feel as tired all the time, I seem to have a bit more of a hop in my step and I can actually walk up the stairs to my 4^th floor office without puking up a lung now. I did change my diet drastically and really it isn’t that bad. I’m now eating four times a day, maybe a fifth depending on how many calories I had throughout the day. The food is good, and it’s giving me plenty of carbs for energy without massively overdoing it like I have in the past. The cool thing is I’m not going through ANY hunger pains.

I may have mentioned this before, but it’s clear that my calorie intake was not where it was supposed to be before I started this quest. I was in major starvation mode, not eating enough calories throughout the day, then binging during lunch and dinner. So everything that I was eating was going straight to my stomach and ass. Worse of all, is I have burned through so much muscle that everything I had gained with I was in my early twenties, is now gone. At that time I had spent an enormous amount of time sculpting my body and I blew it. Now not only do I get to start over, I have to loose all this fat too.

I’ll be weighing myself this Friday, let’s hope the math that I have learned reflects in my actual weight loss.

Photo of the Body Bugg

I meant to send this with the blog post.

Sent from Android

I've Been Bugged!

Today I got set up with my body bugg. This thing is wicked cool! Check this out..This thing monitors heart flux, accelerometer, galvanic skin response, and skin temperature. All of this data is stored in the device until I connect it to a usb port on my computer. The data gets uploaded to a website and is annalyzed to display lots of data about my physical well being. If your interested in reading more about this item check out www.bodybugg.com.

Next week I start my training classes. Just as I thought the two nights I would get stuck with are Tuesdays and Thursdays. Not that I'm complaining, I knew that it would effect my raid nights if I were still playing wow. I was right lol.

It doesn't appear that my diet is going to be too tough. I'm still getting to eat the foods I like just not as much and spread out to 6 meals a day. When I first heard that my jaw dropped to the floor. "Six meals a day!? Are they on crack!?" Actually no they aren't. I'll be eating less and small portions throughout the day. I do however have to cut out the fastfood and high sodium foods. I'm eating way too much of it as it is.

Here are my current stats
Current Weight: 357 lbs
Current Body Fat: 44.1%
Current Lean Body Mass: 199.56 lbs

I'll post my goals as I work them out with the trainer. All I know right now is that I need to get below 19% body fat which I assume is around 156 lbs. I don't want to be THAT small so if I can bulk up some decent muscle mass I should look pretty good at around 180 but we'll see how things go.

Sent from Android

More Priorities

I would like to thank everyone for the opportunity you all gave me in allowing me to raid with you, but before I become a detriment to the raid, I must resign. I know this isn't good timing, what with Grexis' post below, but it would be unfair to the raid to just suddenly drop out without warning.

Unfortunately, the time commitment is too much for me to meet, and the pressures of family coupled with my wife going back to work teaching this year just don't afford me the amount of free time to devote to raiding three days a week. I thought I could make it work, but I found out that I couldn't. As much as I love WoW and really enjoyed playing with everyone in this raid, my first priority must be to my wife and daughters (Miriam, Hannah & Rebekah here in this pic). Someday the kids will be grown and there will be plenty of time to game. Having a friend almost lose his job, kids, and marriage to Everquest showed me what happens when a guy fails to keep his priorities straight. I don't want to be that guy, no matter how much I love the game and friends I've made there.

I was honored to be accepted by you and was proud to be there when we took down Kel Thuzad. You all are phenomenal WoW players, but above that, everyone in this raid are just plain great people. I am glad Grexis introduced us, and hope to keep in contact with you in and out of game.

Priorities

To say the last two days were eye openers is an understatement. In light of the news I have received from my fitness evaluation and my doctor, I am stepping down as raid leader and going on an indefinte raid hiatus to focus on my mental and physical health. This isn't something I am doing by choice. Its something I have to do not just for my family and friends but most importantly for myself.

This doesn't mean you guys aren't going to see me around. I will still be popping into vent, playing D&D or even hanging out here and in emails. I love all my friends and do not wish to give you up for anything.

I'll be post regularly here but most importantly on my other blog regarding my new adventure and how its all working out. I want to chronicle yhe quest quest for my goals and will share everything I learn on it. To get to my blog go to http:ipsandd20s.blogspot.com

- grexis out

Sent from Android

Possible Schedule Change

It appears that we may need to change our raid schedule to accommodate some team members. What is everyones thoughts of going back to our original raid schedule of Tuesday, thursday, and sunday?

Sent from Android

Last Night's Raid/Sunday Raid

Well, it didn't go quite how I'd hoped but we can thank Bliz and their wonderful weirdness for that. From mob resets to spontaneous character freezes and spells not doing their job causing insta-death to a tank it was one strange night.

Thanks to Darchon and Fyr for filling in the spots. Great job. I will be sending the combat log to Nykk tonight (if I remember) to parse and set up on WWS.

As a reminder, please remember that Sunday's raid is cancelled since as of last night it looks like over half of us have plans for Mother's Day. However, at this time I fully intend for us to run Monday.

Raid UI

Just curious as to what everyone is using for a raid UI. Most people know I'm an addon nut and change my UI around every couple of months; I counted 46 different mods tonight. I know a lot of people still use a fairly standard UI setup and the minimum number of mods.


Unfortunately it looks like Google won't post the full 1900x1200 image. :/

WWS from this week

Sunday and Monday's reports can be found at the following links

Sunday: http://wowwebstats.com/y1ovtsllhahqu
Monday: http://wowwebstats.com/g3ikpmfskuqya

Apologies for Being a Jerk

Last night during raid I was in a really pissy mood and exhausted. This translated into me being a jerk to you guys and you definitely did not deserve that and I want to apologize for it.

I'm sorry

My mouse messed up on the boney dragon, still not sure what happened. On top of that I was just off my game it seems. My sincere appologies for a very sloppy night.

Performance Rankings from Be.Imba

Below is a list of what instance Be.Imba believes you could perform adequately. Order is Naxx 10 < Naxx25 < Uld10 < Uld25

Grexis: Ulduar 10
Grarlynn: Ulduar 25
Goredd: Naxx 25
Devandra: Ulduar 25
Kirathis: Ulduar 10, close to 25
Squeanet: Ulduar 25
Geeon: Ulduar 25
Dratss: Ulduar 25
Modon: Ulduar 25
Omik: Ulduar 25

Be.Imba Findings

I just ran a group report on be.imba similar to what Grexis did with Warcrafter, but for a different reason. Below is a list of things that I found that can be corrected for better performance.

Grexis: Missing Leg Enchant - Icescale Armor
Grarlynn: Missing Boot Enchant - Icewalker
Devandra: Missing Boot Enchant - Greater Spirit
Kirathis: Missing Gem in Chest Piece - Red Socket
Squeanet: Not hit capped 14.36/17%
Geeon: Over hit capped 18.36/17%
Dratss: Improper Bracer Enchant (Brawn) - Greater Assault needed
Modon: Missing Enchants: Chest & Shoulder - Powerful Stats & Greater Inscription of the Axe
Omik: Missing Shoulder Enchant & Low quality gem in pants - Greater Inscription of the Axe
Goroxx: Improper Leg Enchant - Frosthide Leg Armor