PC dies an untimely death, man mourns its loss...

Well as most of my friends know, I am a hard core WOW fan.. Its basically my only hobby, and so when my computer started acting up, I started sweating... Its been two weeks since our raids have gone off, and so wtih the raid last night a little sketchy I was feeling shitty that I couldn't get online.

The pc was freezing, and causing BSOD periodically. After a restart it would sometimes start up, sometimes not. I went and got a windows 7 cd thinking maybe that would solve things, um no.. it looked like it but didn't last more than 15 minutes before the PC crashed again.

I took it apart, took out the video card and blew some compressed air on it. blew out everything else, let it cool off and tried again. Now it doesn't even get into the windows is loading please wait... Jenn talked me into going to Best buy to take a look at what a computer costs.. I didn't want to go because I knew I wouldn't leave without a computer... and sure enough, here I am typing on my brand new dell inspiron... they aren't that expensive when you don't need anything but the tower... Now comes the hours long task of downloading and installing wow, and trying to recover all my documents and pictures from the old shell...

We don't think it will happen to us, but it does. So find some regular routine that backsup everything that is important to you, either to DVD, one of those online upload cloud computing sites, or a USB drive, but do it before your computers magic blue smoke escapes like mine did...

Jillian Michael's 30 Day shred: Day 4 and 5

This post is a touch late, but day 4 went without too much different. I am making it all the way to round 3 without having to cheat, my weakness continues to be ab's...

This morning, I had a minor conversation with myself about how I shouldn't get up at 6am on a saturday just to exercise... needless to say, I did. That little voice is tough to ignore at times, but its worth it.. One thing I would NOT recommend, is after your work out, don't go back to bed... it seems that I did something to my ciatic nerve and now lifting my left leg hurts.. sitting is fine, standing is OK but walking is tough...

I'll weigh in tomorrow and see how day 6 treats me... I don't expect to have lost much if anything, but it is starting to get much easier and this morning (day 5) was the first time I woke up without any lingering pain in my shoulders or legs... something is going well anyways.

Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred: Day 3

Well the day started out like any, looking at the alarm clock in disbelief, but once I got started I was pleasantly surprised that I got all the way to the third cycle before I had to stop and take the 5s break on the ab section. Still having to go girly on pushups but whatever.

This is the first time, literally, in my life that I have been doing any kind of work out routine. Didn't do it in college (Does lifting a toddler count?) didn't do much in highschool (I was so naturally buffed I didn't have to, LOL more like I was more interested in computer games..) so some of this is not coming as much of a surprise to me.

My plan is to work on level 1 until either its so easy that I can get through it without much of a problem or I hit day 10. This morning, incidentally, was also the first time I broke into a full on sweat during the work out, so maybe this morning is the first time I am actually doing all the exercises right? Then I will move to round 2 and see what that brings. I'll be weighing in once a week, more often is kinda pointless in my mind and won't show much, if any change... I doubt I will see any big numbers but I am hoping to see some kind of change. I already feel better than I have felt in a long time, since the summer when Jenn and I were walking 4 miles a day, if for a different reason..:)

Again, my biggest problem is me and making sure I make the time. I was talking to Jenn last night and was saying that while missing my bus sucked, it was because I putzed around in the morning and didn't get started until 5:25. I will NOT use (and this is more positive re-inforcement for me than you really) missing my bus as an excuse to not work out. This is hard, breaking my sloth routine is hard, I won't kid you. I don't kid myself, I know its hard, and I know my biggest challenger in all of this is me. If I give myself the out of have to catch the bus, if I miss one day I'll probably fall apart again and not continue. Oh, btw, I didn't miss my bus this morning..;)

This is a grand plan, and you are helping me by making me accountable to the countless people who are checking this every day (Hey put it on follow so I know how many of you are out there, especially the 4 people from holland and the two from Australia...O.O) and I appreciate your helping me through this with just your digital interest.

The lady behind me decided that it was a good time to get in touch with everyone she knows instead of letting the rest of us sleep, so early post today...:) See you all tomorrow.

Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred: Day 2

Day 2: Alarm went off at 5 am and I managed to only stall for 15 minutes before getting to the basement. End result, missed my bus by about 2 minutes...

Figured out why I keep waking up at 2am, on a side note, Love you tristen, but stop setting your alarm clock for 2am...

So everyone (meaning Jenn) wants to know how its going, and its going. Thanks to a downgrade in the weights, have I mention recently how much I love my wife?, I made it through all the strength exercises without having to cheat, still having a little trouble on the pushups to my chagrin.

I made it all the way to cycle three without cheating on anything, and by cheating I take the allowed 5 second pause and then get back to it... Your biggest problem in all of this, is yourself... If you skip your walk (sorry sawyer) or stop exercising, or "phone it in" a term Jillian uses often, then you're not goin to get anywhere and I'm doing this to get somewhere... so off to pop some advil and a walk with the big dumb blond.

Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred: Day 1

OK so day one complete.

Alarm went off at 5am, I stared at it (having woken up at 2am, 3am, 3:30, 4 thinking about work because I forgot to bring my laptop home) and thought go away bother me tomorrow. Then my groggy conscience kicked me in the butt and I lunged out of bed before I could change my mind, surprising Sawyer to no end...

Pop in the DVD and grab the 5lbs weights ( HAHAHA you're thinking, 5lb weights, what a wimp... wait for it, it gets better) and start out the shred. Jilian has an interesting tactic, 3 minutes of strength, 2 of cardio and 1 of abs, constant motion is the key for 20 minutes. 20 minutes, of non stop agony... from the first 1 minute of push ups, and no I am not cheating, I am trying to keep up with the skinny bitches on the TV, to the last 15 seconds of "stretching" its non stop pain and suffering.

After the first set, I couldn't lift the 5lb weights anymore. They do lunges where you have to lunge and lify the weights up to your shoulders, sounds like cake right. Well cake is what got me into this mess, and now I'm dealing with it. By the time that particular activity was over, nothing but willpower was making those weights go up and down... my arms sure as hell weren't. I couldn't get my shaving cream out of the cabinet when I was done... All I kept telling myself, and she does an excellent job of this as well, was that 400 lbs people on biggest loser do this all the time (they want a million dollars, but shh) I can do it.

Day 1: over.
Results: Mild pain for about an hour, once I got to work I just had a residual "yep your alive and that was stupid" feeling in a couple of places
Weight: 200 lbs on the button.
Goal: 180 lbs (should be 170, but meh, I'll deal with that last 10 lbs)

Next up.. Day 2. If memory serves its Day 4 and 5 that were the real bitch last time...

Pre-emptive strike against holiday nom noms

Alright well the time has come for me to re-vitalize my efforts at losing weight... our department had a biggest loser challenge, and shockingly I won... of course I beat out Madhukar, my skinny ass employee, everyone else seemed to give up when they realized that people were actually trying, but anyways, since coming down to Coach I have lost 20 lbs... now, I just have to lose the last 20....

One thing we were doing, that had relative success when I had more time, was Jillian Michaels (from the biggest loser) 30 day shred... and tell you what, make fun of my all you want, joke about exercising with cans of beans all you want, by day 5 that shit hurt.... then part 1 got yanked from utube and we lost interest. Well I bought the damn CD, so tomorrow, December 1, will be day 1 of the 30 day shred for me... be interesting trying to keep it up through Christmas, but I have every intention of posting my results here as I go.

I will save you from picture.
I will provide critical details such as my weight as I go through this.
I am also adding a walk for me and "the big dumb blond" a.k.a Sawyer our Golden retriever, every day for at least an hour. I have the route, just a matter of actually doing it.. Time to get off my ass and do something about my ever increasing ass... Jenn re-confirmed over the weekend that she actually wants me to survive until I retire so we can have some us time (I hope to the powers that be that I don't have to wait 28 years for some alone time..) so time to get serious about it....

What's it mean to me in reality?

Getting up at 5am instead of 5:30 for a 30 minute workout in the morning.
Pain, suffering....

Whats it mean to you?
Endless hours of me complaining, and regaling you about how much I hurt... until it stops hurting and I start seeing effects, then endless hours of me selling the DVD to you...;)

Anyways, wish me luck, and I'll check back more often now that I actually have something to talk about!

I'm in love, again....

OK so it should come as no surprise that I am a gadget junky... I'm sure those of you who know Jenn have heard the many tales of my purchases... I bought a laptop back when they were ridiculously expensive, bought an Iphone when you couldn't use them in Canada (successfully hacked it, used it for a month, and ended up with a HUGE cell phone bill, now use it as no more than a glorified i touch) I'm a geek, and proud of it...

My most recent infatuation is a star trek type tablet PC. I spend 3-4 hours a day on a bus going to and from work, and while the Iphone is nice, its small and you have to deal with itunes to get stuff onto and off of it. Some of the stuff I watch doesn't work with itunes, for one reason or another... What I really want (don't need, I know better than that, I want it) is something like this....

Thats Archos's new tablet PC, it runs windows 7 (yeah well if mac would finally come out with their tablet PC I might consider them instead) and looks super sexy... Also its not retardedly expensive at around 600$... (http://www.archos.com/products/nb/archos_9/index.html?country=us&lang=en) Now.... I don't have 100$ to rub together at the moment, but if I can hold off my crazy impulse buy tendancy until I can actually afford this baby it would be cool! Maybe everyone I know will get together and buy it for me for xmas, who knows...:)

I came up with this crazy idea while I was sitting here waiting for my next meeting, why don't laptop manufacturers come out with upgradeable laptops... I know what you are going to say, they don't do it because they want to sell more laptops, but a lot of people don't buy laptops because they can't upgrade them.... Food for thought, what if you could upgrade the video card, and CPU to a certain extent, what if the card was in a compact module like the hard drive that could just be unscrewed and replaced... The next step would be to replace the screen as well, which is possible now if you drop it, but it would be important to be able to replace it with a better one... though not as important...

Anyways Dell/IBM/Cisco executives that read my posts avidly looking for technological advances, have at it, idea is all yours, just send me an email when you are done so I can buy one!

Off to another meeting...