Weigh-In 12/26/07

Weight: 240.8
Week Change: 3.8
Total Change: -68.2

December has been a bust, weight-wise. But in every other aspect, it's been great. :)

Weigh-In 12/19/07

Weight: 237.0
Week Change: 0.4
Total Change: -72.0

Not bad for a week that included more than a few peanut-butter & jelly sandwiches (it was too snowy to get real food!) and a couple slices of cake :)

Weigh-In 12/12/07

Weight: 236.6
Week Change: 0.0
Total Change: -72.4

No news is good news, as they say. I'm still not as disciplined on my eating as I could be, but I feel great and I'm eating what I want. Not much else to ask for, really. :)

Now where'd I put those cookies....

Synclub TV

My gym just added a short video to their site. I appear a couple times, once halfway through and then again near the end. Fun times. :)

Synclub

Weigh-In 12/5/07

Weight: 236.6
Week Change: -0.5
Total Change: -72.4

Down some, which I'll happily accept. While I do like the winter and snow, (especially now that I have my new Jeep), it makes it hard to get outdoors for exercise. Add in that fact that since I'm down 70 pounds of "insulation" I get cold really easily now, so I spend as much time near heat sources as possible.

Weigh-In 11/29/07

Weight: 237.1
Week Change: +1.5
Total Change: -71.9

Up some, but honestly, that's to be expected. Last week was Thanksgiving. :) Hooray for pie!

Weigh-In 11/21/07

Weight: 235.6
Week Change: +1.5
Total Change: -73.4

Up a bunch this week. Couple contributing factors:

1) Sick last week, so I missed the gym on Tuesday and Thursday.
2) Went down to Philly for the weekend to watch my sister-in-law run the Philadelphia Marathon, and I ate at a lot of great restaurants. :) This also means I missed the gym on Saturday.

I'd say that I'll get back on track this week, but tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Guess I'll get back on track in December ;)

Weigh-In 11/15/07

Weight: 234.1
Week Change: -1.1
Total Change: -74.9

I actually weighed myself yesterday but messed up and ate breakfast first, so I was only down 0.1. So I just waited until today :)

Weigh-In 11/7/07

Weight: 235.2
Week Change: -0.6
Total Change: -73.8

I'm pretty happy with this result, given how much leftover Halloween candy I ended up eating. :P

Weigh-In 10/31/07

Happy Halloween!

Weight: 235.8
Week Change: -0.2
Total Change: -73.2

Not down much, but down is always better than up! Now if I can avoid left-over halloween candy for the rest of the week, I'll be good. :)

Weigh-In 10/24/07

Weight: 236.0
Week Change: -2.0
Total Change: -73.0

Kind of hard to believe I've dropped over 70 pounds. Although the huge stack of old clothes I've got bagged up for donation drives it home. They're all so big! :)

And so far so good with the new scale. My official "goal weight" when I was at Weight Watchers was 205. That's BMI of 25 for 6'4" tall. We'll see how close I get now that I'm not counting points like mad, and eating the occasional brownie :)

Street Fighter: The Later Years

Episode 5 of this hilarious series came out recently, and it's hilarious. The internet rules. (Although at this point I bet Capcom marketing is behind the whole thing, it's still worth watching...)


http://www.collegehumor.com/tag:street-fighter-the-later-years

Weigh-In 10/17/07

First the weights, then some pretty hefty disclaimers:

Weight: 238.0
Week Change: -6.2
Total Change: -71.0

Ok, disclaimer time:

1) It's been two weeks since my last weigh-in
2) I quit Weight Watchers last week, and bought a scale
3) Since I have a scale at home now, I can weigh myself when it's most advantageous. By this I mean in the morning, so I don't have to starve myself all day.
4) And since I have the scale in the privacy of my own home, I don't have to wear heavy things like, say, clothes. ;) That's worth a couple of pounds right there.

So this week was a pretty big jump. We'll see how it goes as we move forward.

Why did I quit Weight Watchers? Couple reasons for this:

1) $40 a month. I haven't stayed for a meeting in months, and I stopped using the website to track points awhile ago, so the value of the service has seriously dropped.
2) Now that I don't work at CoreStreet anymore, getting into Park Street by 5:30pm every Wednesday has become a real hassle. I probably could have found a closer meeting in Watertown or Newton or something, but eh.

So that's that. This blog has now become my main motivator. I'm committed to continue weighing myself weekly and posting it here for all to see. So if any of you who read this see me slacking on my weigh-in posts, I hereby give you permission to bug the hell out of me. :)

More FireFox Add-ons

I installed a couple more FireFox Add-ons today that I like so far:

Foxmarks stores your bookmarks on a central server, and automatically synchronizes them. Great way to have one set of bookmarks between home & work.

PermaTabs let's you mark tabs parmanent, so they don't get closed and always stay on the tab bar. I'm currently using this for my iGoogle page.

Tabbrowser Preferences is total vital to me. I really like having addresses I type into the address bar or search bar show up in a new tab, and this addon makes it happen. Among a bunch of other tab-related things (like putting the tabs on the bottom of the browser).

Firefox & ScribeFire

I recently switched from Avant Browser to Firefox as my fulltime web browser. Good choice, firefox is great. Right now I'm testing out the ScribeFire addon which promises to make blogging easier. We'll see if it has any impact on my blogging rate. ;)

Powered by ScribeFire.

ROFL: the line above this one, "Powered by ScribeFire" was automatically inserted by ScribeFire. If I can't figure out a way to turn that off, it's gone.

Weigh-In 10/3/07

Weight: 244.2
Week Change: +0.4
Total Change: -64.8

Well, it was bound to happen eventually. I went up a bit. Guess maybe I better start counting points again. :)

Free (as in beer) Music

I'm a big fan of video games, and sometimes even a bigger fan of video game music. I've probably spent more time listening to Metroid-inspired music that I've spent playing Metroid. Here are a couple of my favorite free-music sites:

Metroid Metal: If I remember right, I think I originally heard of Metroid Metal back in 2004, from a Penny Arcade newspost. This site, and the associated forum, really kicked off my interest in video game music remixes.

Overclocked Remix: This is the biggest Video Game Remix site out there. There's a ton of crap on there, but you can find a few nuggets if you're persistent. However, they've commissioned a few albums that are great. I particularly like Relics of the Chozo (Super Metroid remix) and Final Fantasy VII: Voice of the Lifestream.

Sauce Listing

Action Sauce
Awesome Sauce

Battle Sauce
Bravo Sauce

Combat Sauce

Danger Sauce

Evil Sauce
Enigma Sauce
Extreme Sauce

Fight Sauce
Fail Sauce
Fist Sauce
Force Sauce

Grunt Sauce

Hammer Sauce

Iron Sauce

Jalopy Sauce

Kill Sauce
Knuckle Sauce

Laser Sauce

Mega Sauce

Nitro Sauce

Obelisk Sauce
Oblivion Sauce
Offense Sauce

Power Sauce
Pistol Sauce

Quasar Sauce

Riot Sauce
Revenge Sauce

Snap Sauce
Suspender Sauce

Tasty Sauce
Thor Sauce

Uber Sauce

Vendetta Sauce

War Sauce

Xeno Sauce

Yggdrassil Sauce
Yoda Sauce

Zap Sauce
Zoom Sauce

TGIF

What a great Friday! Went to Neillio's Gourmet Kitchen for lunch and got their world-famous "Turkey Terrific" sub. After work I picked up Brandy and we hung out at my place for a bit, then met Paul and Jenn for dinner at Margaritas. Service was a bit slow, but the food was awesome. Then we had some ice cream, and a quick stop in Danger Planet, as Brandy had never been in there. Normally DP is a beacon of space and cleanliness, but tonight it was seriously rockin' the Smell of Geek Spirit. And not in the good way. Sheesh. We didn't stay long :P

All in all, a fantastic night. Tomorrow BJ is coming over for an all day Anime-fest. Sweet :)

Weigh-In 9/26/07

Weight: 243.8
Week Change: -1
Total Change: -65.2

Down a pound, which I'll happily take. Especially given that I've been bad about food recently. Good thing I'm going to the gym. :)

September 24th, 2007 - Extra Busy

Wow, today is super busy.

10am-Noon: Go to the Jeep dealer in Woburn and pick up my new 2007 Grand Cherokee Laredo
Noon-6pm: Work
6pm-10:15pm: 7th Sea Adventure (aka Dungeons & Dragons)
10:30pm-11:30pm: Watch Heroes on DVR
11:45pm-12:15am: Go to GameStop to pick up my Halo 3 pre-order

I'll have more details (and pictures) of all of this later. :)

Weigh-In 9/19/07

Yay I finally went for a weigh-in two weeks in a row! Huzzah! However, Elaine (the group leader) did ask, "How come you and Megan never stay for meetings anymore? Should I take this personally? ;)" I just blamed Megan. :)

Weight: 244.8
Week Change: -1.6
Total Change: -64.2

Honestly, I was pretty happy to lose at all. I ate a lot of great food last week. :) Good thing I started going to the gym.

I celebrated losing weight by going to the cupcake store and eating four not-worth-it-cupcakes. Even though the cupcakes weren't worth the price, they were still cupcakes, which means they were the sugary-est things I've eaten in a long time. :)

Cupcake Catastrophe

I am sad to have to report that the cupcakes produced by Kickass Cupcakes are decidedly inferior. Not only do they possess unremarkable flavor and are very small (smaller than Hostess Cupcakes), they cost around $2.50 each. Totally not worth it.

However, anticipating the cupcakes was awesome. Having something to look forward to is always nice. Now I just need to find a new delicious bakery, and plan to go there someday. :)

Running, Video Games, and Cupcakes

Last night was an awesome workout at the gym. Upped the weights on some of the exercises during the circuit weight training, which is always nice, but the real win was on the treadmill. I ran for 20 minutes straight on the treadmill. Previous best was 10 minutes. I've got the 5k coming up in 11 days, so I gotta make sure I'm good to go.

On the video game front, I picked up Metroid Prime 3 over the weekend, and it's really slick. Controls feel great on the Wii. Moving and shooting is almost natural. Certainly the best shooter I've ever played without a keyboard & mouse. The beta for Team Fortress 2 has also started. This game is a riot. The artistic style of the game is amazing, and the gameplay is super smooth. Runs great on my 2 year old PC. And finally I've been playing a bit of Warcraft recently. The game is a lot of fun when you play with a friend :)

Tonight after the weigh-in Megan is forcing me to go with her to Kickass Cupcakes in Davis Square. It'll be torture, I'm sure. But somehow I'll make it through... [homer] mmmm... chocolate... [/homer]

Weigh-In 9/12/07

3 weeks since my last weigh-in, 'cause I've been busy/lazy/takeyourpick.

Weight: 246.4
Week Change: -7.2
Total Change: -62.6

Chugging right along. It's amazing how much changing yourself physically can affect yourself mentally and emotionally. I've changed enough that I've even started
hanging out with a girl. And isn't that every guy's goal? :)

Ford Sportka ad

Ok, this is hilarious. If you really like cats and/or have no sense of humor, don't click below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5KgZPNVKAg

GenCon 2007 Day 2

Day 2, Friday, was my lightest day this trip. Only one event. Here's the flickr photoset: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8810078@N06/sets/72157601888542379/

I got to play the brand new Starcraft Board Game. This game was even more ridiculous than the Warcraft Board Game. Waaaay too many little bits all over the board.



When you have fight in this game, you gotta line up all your units against the opponent, and there was barely room for it on this big table. Totally out of control. Perfect type of game to play at a convention, but I'd never buy it, 'cause I'd never play it.

Apart from playing Starcraft, I did a lot of walking around the dealer's room, and you can see the pictures in the flickr set.

Weigh-In 8/22/07

Been 2 weeks since my last weigh-in, thanks to my trip to Gen Con.

Weight: 253.6
Week Change: -6.2
Total Change: -55.4

Yay I beat the 50 pound mark! Now I've only got another 50 to go ;)

Gen Con 2007 Arrival

Man, youtube really kills video quality. Anyone got a better suggestion?

Gen Con 2007 Day 1

Gen Con 2007 was a another great trip to Indianapolis. This is the 4th year in a row I've gone, and it's always fun. Here's the flickr photo set for the first day: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8810078@N06/sets/72157601597665039/

My events for the first day included the World of Warcraft Board Game, and a rousing session of RPGA Dungeons & Dragons.

The WoW Board Game was pretty fun to play in a convention environment, where there is a lot of space and someone there to teach you how to play. But I would never want to buy the game. First of all, it's got way too many pieces. It's borderline insane. And by the end game, the dice-rolling rules get really overwhelming. Rolling 6 blue dice, 8 red, and 6 green, then rerolling any 4 of them, then flipping any of the blues to 8s, etc. etc. etc. It's nuts. If I want to play a game with that much math, I'll play it online and let the computer handle it for me.



Second, the game is a team game -- Alliance vs. Horde. And we basically never interact. We ended up doing nearly all of our turns simultaneously, until the last part of the game where we each needed all the dice to perform combat. We might as well have played on 2 boards, then at the end said, "What turn did you kill the Baron on? 22? We got him on 19. We win."

In the evening we went to the RPGA hall for the 4dventure announcement and our MacGoohens game. The 4dventure announcement was hilariously pathetic. Wizards of the Coast announced 4th edition D&D, to a whole lot of silence. When they started describing the online components of the new edition, you could have heard a pin drop. I suppose it's inevitable, but it doesn't mean we have to like our last bastion of table-top gaming going online.



The MacGoohens RPGA adventure was fun, if easy. We teamed up with some level 2 players (Paul, BJ and I are all level 3) so we ran the adventure at APL 2 (Average Party Level), and it was a cakewalk. Who are the MacGoohens, you ask? Excellent question!



The MacGoohens are a group of dwarven brothers who formed a mercenary team to seek adventure and fortune. We've got Angus the sorcerer (played by Paul), Gunnar the fighter (played by BJ) and Charleston the lawyer (played by myself. Ok, he's really a rogue). Our eldest brother Thorgrim retired after one year of adventuring. What a pantywaist. (Dan stopped coming to Gen Con).

We've played the MacGoohens in at least 2 RPGA adventures each year for the last 4 years. They're definitely the events I look forward to most.

After the MacGoohens had conquered all available foes, we retired to the hotel for some much needed sleep. Gen Con requires a lot of energy!

Gencon Bound!

Tomorrow I fly out to Indianapolis for Gen Con 2007. This is the fourth year in a row I'm going, along with some good friends. Here's my schedule:

• Thursday Noon - 4pm: World of Warcraft The Board Game
• Thursday 7pm - Midnight: RPGA COR7-12 Heart's Desire
• Friday Noon - 4pm: Starcraft The Board Game
• Saturday Noon - 4pm: LEGO Pirate Wars
• Saturday 7pm - Midnight: RPGA COR7-13 Journey to the Hidden Shrine

Got myself a brand new Canon PowerShot SD850 to take with me, so expect pictures when I get back :)

Weigh-In 8/8/07

I'm not gonna fill up this blog with individual posts for my old weigh ins, so I'll just start with today's. There's also a link on the right to a spreadsheet I made to track all my weigh-ins. And a chart, for those of you who like visuals.

Weight: 259.8
Week Change: -2.2
Total Change: -49.2

Just missed the 50 pound mark...oh well, there's always next week ;)

After the weigh-in Megan and I bailed on the meeting and headed back to Somerville to walk the route of the 5K we're gonna run next month: http://www.shapeupsomerville5k.org/ We walked the entire 5k is just under an hour. The route isn't too bad from a hilly standpoint, although it could stand to be in a nicer section of Somerville. We figured nobody will care when they close the roads in this part of town for the 5k, as opposed to someplace like Davis or Porter.

First Post!

Today was the first day at my new job: http://www.trustpl.us

Folks at my old job: http://www.corestreet.com expressed interest in being kept up to date with my weight loss, so I've started this blog. Ok, so only Emerick expressed any interest, but that's good enough for me!

Weight updates to come!