Articulating My Superficial Sentimentalities

Busy 2011

2011-02-16T19:45:00.000-08:00

Well I decided to not post here until I had something that was worth posting about. And now it seem that I do. 2011 is shaping up to be a busy year. I seriously wonder sometimes what gets into the heads of perfectly sane people. I considered myself to be such a person (perfectly sane that is) and yet I find myself creating more work for myself. This time in the name of mental exercise.

So I'm going to get into the business of creating apps for my phone. Why? Because I can't seem to find any of the apps for my chosen platform yet. Considering that the currently catalog is only 6000+ apps this is not that surprising. To this end I'm going through all of the process to get properly registered. New domain. Check. New domain name that I think is cool.. Check. Start preliminary website design. Check. Have first 3 apps decided upon.. check. Set ridiculous deadlines for completion. and.. check.

Guess we'll see where this goes. Considering that it costs money though to do all of this (not much, but with how cheap my wife tells me that I've become it has become the principle of spending that motivates me to not waste said money) I think I'm in for the long haul.

Plus.. I figure I might as well use that Comp Sci degree finally. For far too long I've managed to escape closet coder destiny.

more to come

Workout Progress #2

2010-09-16T22:53:00.000-07:00

Oh.. did I forget to mention that I probably won't make my weight goal for this week.. yes. I have managed to not lose a single pound. Probably has to do with my bad habit of staying up (like now for instance). We'll see tomorrow though. I'm back there for hardcore cardio and core session. Might as well make myself be happy that it's Friday (and my workout is over).

Workout Progress

2010-09-16T22:43:00.001-07:00

Fun day at the gym today. I had one of those days where the gym decided it was time to kick my ass. I knew i was in for trouble right from the start during my warm up run. It occurred to me as I trudged through it that the feeling that I was experiencing (that would be feeling like I had cement shoes and was thrown into the river) was one that I distinctly remember right before I started making any progress the last time that I had to get myself back together and not be lazy.

So I managed to trudge through it in spite of everything thing. I think what really helped today was my new running music. Tracks from DJ Tiesto's Kaleidoscope Remixed and the first track (well first section anyway) of Armin Van Buuren's Mirage totally got me through my workout today.

If you haven't heard the latter (Mirage) then do yourself a favour and grab that bad boy. Might be the best slow building cardio/running track I've heard in a long time. Even though I was doggin' it today that track helped me dog it going uphill for my entire warm up run. Definitely awesome track.

2010-09-12T20:56:00.001-07:00

Sounds like video game music...

Really? Well check out the vid. You see, I have heard many remarks over the years (generally about bad, repetitious music) about things that sound like video game music. It has always bothered me because all of my favourite games have had their musical scores be one of the most memorable parts of the gaming experience.

Take my favourite series. Final Fantasy. Since the first iteration of that game the music produced has been great. I will admit that in the 8bit days you really couldn't always capture the essence of the music from the modulated music that accompanied those games, but look into the future at the progression of the same theme, the same underlying score and now the essence is fully captured and generally requires symphonies to properly reproduce.

The vid I posted to me shows that video game music is true music, which can be improvised and changed around stylistically while still maintaining its essence. The theme from Mario is a piece of music that I grew up with and I love that it will be as popular for my kids as it was for me. I know this because currently both of my kids love to sing the theme from spider man. Neither have read the comic (not surprising since at 3 and 4 neither can read), and also have not seen the cartoon.

My daughter has just recently found video games. This will eventually lead to her wanting to play mario... because everyone.. everyone plays mario at some point at which point her love of the theme song will begin. Her love of good music. Usually when I hear really good music. I think.. "Now that would be really GOOD video game music!"

Jazzy Super Mario Bros!

2010-09-12T20:56:00.000-07:00

2010-09-11T19:49:00.001-07:00

And back to the gym. Lots of work to do (again). I've crept up to 218lbs. No worry. I'm hoping by christmas I will have dropped at least 20lbs. I can tell I'm getting older. Myoflex is my new best friend.

Vegas Baby...

2010-07-07T21:40:00.001-07:00

So I get the phrase "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!" now..

wait..

First things first.. Lisa (my beautiful wife).. I have NO Vegas stories that have to stay in Vegas.

Ok with that out of the way, back to what I was saying. I suspect that the reason the saying exists is because the people who go to Vegas seem to temporarily lose their minds in search of the Vegas experience. I can't tell you how many people I saw in Vegas that were "hunting". Of more interest was that lots were middle aged women. Of course there were tons of guys doing what guys do, but that is just normal and doesn't require the setting of Vegas. But.. the women.. the blatant "How yoo Doin.." vibe coming off the women was some scary stuff.

And my ego has been thoroughly stroked after my trip. I guess that was nice, but it just made me miss my wife. I almost felt like I had no business being in Vegas without my wife. The whole place is geared to get people in lots of trouble. That being said. I had a great time. I got to hang out with one of my Mentors (MikeS) and that was really cool. Not to say we don't have some funny stories (some of which I might mention later).

Overall.. Vegas was cool.. Ridiculous.. but cool.

Cisco Live

2010-06-30T17:46:00.000-07:00

So I managed to finally get to Cisco Live this year.

2010-01-07T20:49:00.000-08:00

Blog revivial!

LOL. I think I've said this before. Nobody who knows me knows about this blog.. which makes it interesting.

So.. for 2010 I'll be using it for a few things.

1. My constant and often ridiculous mishaps when it comes to cars. I have been told that I'm simply unlucky when it comes to cars. This might be true. In the last 4 years I've spent about 30,000 fixing my cars (25k of that was 1 car alone). Yes.. I will detail my madness here.

2. Regular foolishness of a married man with 2 very small kids. Since I have no idea who will read this I am not going to put down anything that will end my marriage or anything, but much like with cars, most of my friends often say "OMG that could only happen to you!" when I tell some stories. So here I will not only recount the tale, but might even give my rarely given feelings on said subjects.

3. My hobby progress. Yes.. Silly as it sounds I need to keep track of this stuff.
Current projects are:
Learning regular guitar - will be taken much more seriously this year
Acquiring and learning bass guitar
Operation back to the gym - no sense in wasting the last few years of good hard work!
Project car Rio - lets show people really how geeky you are!

Final thoughts:
I guess it doesn't matter if anyone reads this or not. In fact, I'm pretter sure no one has ever read this blog. Interesting to see if I get any randoms though.

Let the rumpus begin!

Let's see how I do!

2006-11-07T10:56:00.000-08:00

I’m NOT the biggest loser!

Update. My workout plan is still underway. I have not lost any traction in terms of how often I get to the gym. When I’m there I’m doing all the right stuff. And my results.. well.. now I understand why dieting/working out when the goal is weightloss is such a difficult thing to accomplish. I supposed the hard part is to remember that if your body is like mine, your weight will go up and down as your body figures out what to do now that you are doing all of this exercise and a modified diet.

All this being said, currently I’m about 1.5 pounds behind.

Weight Goal for this week: 211.5 lbs
Current weight: 213 lbs

I’m quite happy with the progress. If you had asked me yesterday I would have not been so excited though. Sunday, the babysitter that we had wanted McDonalds for lunch (a normal thing for teenagers) and Lisa and I each had some. What a mistake!!! I've officially now banned McDonalds. My weight on Sunday - 218!!!! Wahh all of my progress? Where did you go? On to better things.

I’ve got the best problem in the world at the moment. All of my pants are TOO BIG!!! It is starting to look ridiculous, but I don’t care. It is the look of SUCCESS!!

I had a visit with my personal trainer. She is a young woman who is trying to kill me. I’m sure it is all for my own good, but now every time I’m doing my circuit training I can hear her saying “You can do more than that! How about more weight… More weight!”

I even felt compelled to up my weight on all of my circuit training exercises this week lest I get email (yes she leaves messages on the fitlinxx system for me and checks my progress – www.fitlinxx.com ). So just in case she happens to see this..

Anna I’ve been going I swear!!!

Tomorrow I’m going to up my weight by another 5lbs on most machines.. Today was pretty easy (I had upped it again by 5lbs on most of the machines). Pushing myself is something I’ve never had any issues with (once I get the ball rolling that is).

Ugh.. just remembered… Tomorrow is a cardio only day. Guess I’ll have to run like a banshee. I think I need some new music for the mp3 player.

OMG so busy.. Catchup time

2006-10-16T05:34:00.000-07:00

Hehe, listen to me... Making it sound like I do this blog thing regularly and now all of a sudden I've missed my regular posting.

So lately, I've been so busy with work that everything else has gone by the wayside. I have a bunch of stuff to put up and now that I'm in a brief lull in the project I'm working on at work maybe I can start actually write stuff. Here is the first of the catchup.

September 28th, 2006

The weak man’s combo!

I’ve been called out!!

It’s the equivalent of being told to meet at the back of the school. Drop the gloves its fight night!! So I’m all riled up! If that E-Dzee guy thinks he can get under my skin then he’s right. And I’m totally not going to admit it (nor give him the url to this blog).

Some back story.

I have a very quick formula which describes the situation.

High stress all encompassing IT job +
new born baby +
no exercise +
still drinking beer
= a BMI (body mass index) that is hovering just below obese.

Taken from Msn.com diet and fitness section:

http://health.msn.com/dietfitness/bmicalculator.aspx

Your BMI is 29.2
What does it all mean?

BMIWeight Status
Below 18.5 Underweight
18.5 - 24.9 Normal
25.0 - 29.9 Overweight
30.0 and Above Obese
A BMI of less than 19 indicates you are underweight. A BMI between 20 and 24 is usually considered normal. A person with a BMI of 25 to 29 is considered overweight, and a person with a BMI of 30 or above is considered obese. Obesity is associated with an increased risk for heart disease, diabetes, and other life-threatening diseases.

*****

I’ve never been overweight before. I’ve always played more sports than I should. I guess I should have noticed when I had to buy my 1’st pair of size 38 pants.

Anyways…
So the wife and I decided that we really needed to do something about this and buying bigger clothes was NOT the answer. Time to get back in shape!!! We decided to really look at it as more of a lifestyle change than a diet. A couple months ago off we went to get a family membership and the brand new YMCA that was build fairly close to our house. So.. first month after getting the membership passes and we haven’t gone even once! Ok.. we were.. ummm…. busy!? For the entire month.. with not even one hour to spare.. yeah.. that’s’s it!!! So after a brief trip to the mall to remind ourselves why we are doing this (sifting through XXL and clothing is an experience if you’ve never done it before. Two words: Limited Choices!), we stop at a store called the Running Room and get some new shoes for the gym. And it’s off to the YMCA we go!

The happenings of that first attempt at exercise were pure comedy. Anyone who hasn’t seriously exercised for a prolonged period will completely understand what I’m about the talk about here. (and I’m talking real prolonged here, not prolonged that you gym rat heads who complain after missing 1 week – prolonged measured in years thanks!) I feel fortunate that I’m not the Al Bundy type from that old sitcom Married with Children who continually relived past athletic glory. I thought going in that I had fairly decent expectations. Of course, I was so very wrong. And the worst, some hellish exercise that my wife knows involving one of those exercise balls. Damn exercise ball from Hell!

So lets get this started: Starting weight as of September 28th, 2006: 228 lbs

Update: October 16th, 2006
So far so good. I still hate the exercise ball. At this point whenever I see it I say something that comes out similar to the way Jerry Seinfeld says “Newman”. Who knew that I’d actually LIKE the gym so much. Last time I spent anytime at a gym was in university and back then I liked everything so I’m not sure it counts.
So far I’m keeping on track….

Friday October 13th, 2006 weigh in: 215 lbs

I’ll keep you posted…. Damn exercise ball from hell!

Whipping it out in the middle of conversation.

2006-09-25T08:30:00.000-07:00

Mad frenzy. My wife informs me that her "Mommy Baby Group" is coming over. I'm not sure I appreciated how clean a house needs to be before such a group congregates at one's house. Now to my wife's credit, she is not as crazy as some that I've seen when faced hosting a party. Wait.. what was the point of this. Oh yes. My involvement is little tale. I can remember as a teenager how many times I saw "real" in the flesh breasts. Other guys stop shut it. I know you can too. None of us were as cool as we would like to have thought. It WAS a rare occurance, and most ALL of our stories from that time are heavily embellished! So lucky me, I just happened to be working from home on the fated day (something that I will make sure not to repeat the next go around of the Mommy Baby group) of my wife's turn for hosting.

I think I'm still trying to get over the odd effect it is to see women you've just met breastfeeding. I know I know. Its completely natural. I know.. There should be nothing strange about it. BUT! those comments are made by women! They are.. Its different for men (or at least for me). I calmly walk into the dining room to raid the spread my wife put out for the lunch portion of this gathering, and when I look up and into the living room to add a quite comment to the current conversation I find my self stopped dead in my tracks. That's not my wife's ....

What do I do.. pretend I didn't see.. ( I mean this the wife of some other man we are talking about here) just do what I was doing.. acknowledge that I did see and appologize while hastily backing out of the room? Or you could do what I did.. which was nothing!

and I mean nothing. For a full 10 seconds nothing. Shock will do that to you. Strange considering in my adult life that it really isn't such a big deal to see a naked woman. Somehow though it was different. I started to consider the number of times my wife has open breast fed our baby (something I have always fully supported) and how perhaps some other unsuspecting guy has looked and found himself also stopped in his tracks. Why, because when women do openly breast feed, the effect that it might have on the nearby men is the last thing of concern. I think for me the strangeness is due to the only partial disconnection of a women's breast as a sexual object even when breastfeeding. Believe me.. sexy? not so much, but it doesn't stop the fact that in my entire life up until my wife started breastfeeding I've only ever seen breasts in a sexual fashion. And that's WHY I (and every other guy) can remember the exact number of times that he saw real boobs in highschool!

Oh where was I.. that's right, holding a cold cut in one hand, knife with mayo on it in the other staring and some other woman's boob who is comfortably chatting away in my living room. Yes. I'm still stuck in the doing nothing portion of this. It occurs to me at somepoint that she has not looked up in my direction yet and if I get a move on I can escape and totally miss that "Were you just staring at my breast - wow that guy is kinda creepy!" entire drama!

Flash back to the movie the matrix. A new appreciation of the opening scene where Trinity has to tell her self to MOVE while staring at the broken window. MOVE!

Yeah.. that sandwich sucked. Considering how good of a spread was put out. My state of shock constructed sandwich really was pathetic. I have no doubt that one of the other women saw this entire thing and I was made fun of. I can just see that happening. That being said though I consider my fast retreat to have maintained some dignity. And I keep telling myself this as I remember the burst of laughter from the living room as I disappeared back up the stairs to my home office.

Number of times I've seen a woman's breasts: 296
Just kidding.

I hereby declare this description field null and void!

2006-09-25T08:26:00.000-07:00

Who would have figured that I would be posting so fast? Not I that is for sure. And about something so pointless at that. Below is what I had wanted to put in the description field for this page:

>>>
How do you describe something about nothing (aside from calling it a show called "Seinfeld")? Perhaps the english language is lacking such words. Consider the list of synonyms that I found for the word nothing:
annihilation, aught, bagatelle, blank, cipher, crumb, diddly, duck egg, extinction, fly speck, goose egg, insignificancy, naught, nihility, nix, no thing, nobody, nonbeing, nonentity, nonexistence, not anything, nothingness, nought, nullity, obliteration, oblivion, scratch, shutout, trifle, void, wind, zero, zilch, zip, zippo, zot (Source: Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.3.1))
I can't pick from these words.. In a word I find them all.. Lacking. So instead how about I not attempt to classify this (my first blog attempt) in such a general manner. In fact, officially I declare this description field to be null and void.. Oh wait, doesn't that translate out to nothing? Nice! A full circle of nothing!
>>>

Too long! I beg your pardon. WTH is that about? Isn't the point of mindnumblingly longwindedness supposed to be having to painfully sit through every aching word of it? Sigh to be shunted. As you can clearly see, I am having a rather slow day at work!

N

Sigh.. humble beginnings of mindless blather!

2006-09-25T08:05:00.000-07:00

Well,

Officially as someone who doesn't spend a lot (read any) time writing, I suspect that this might be a pitiful exercise in blogging execution. In plain english: Let's see how long this lasts!

Now on to the show. I figure I'll just jump right in. Somewhat like those movies that seemingly start mid story. So don't bother trying to go back to find the beginning of the story, as it doesn't exist.

N