The Winds of Change

Raise the roof!

2011-06-21T08:17:00.002-04:00

We've got a big addition underway on our house. Check out pictures and daily reports here: joebrandyhouse.blogspot.com

Paris at Night

2010-11-08T09:51:00.000-05:00

Our first real day in Paris was magnificent. This picture is the view right outside of our hotel.

Spoiler Warning

2010-11-08T09:45:00.000-05:00

For those of you who've read "The Da Vinci Code", this double pyramid is particularly significant.

One interesting thing about this feature is that it's not actually in the museum proper. There is an entire Shopping Mall down underground by the Louvre! It has an Apple Store and a McDonalds. I bought the sdcard adapter for my iPad at the Apple store :)

Venus de Milo

2010-11-08T09:36:00.000-05:00

We saw the Venus de Milo at a particularly nice time of day. Sunlight through the window lit her perfectly.

The Mona Lisa

2010-11-08T09:32:00.000-05:00

Brandy sure is happy to be standing in the huge crowd viewing The Mona Lisa!

Brandy outside the Louvre

2010-11-08T09:30:00.000-05:00

On Friday we visited the Louvre. What an incredible museum! So much to look at. We actually skipped about 1/3 of the place. We did hit the highlights though: The Mona Lisa, Venus di Milo, and the underground moat/foundation.

Hotel de Crillion

2010-11-04T10:49:00.000-04:00

Our hotel room...very nice :). However, next time call ahead and arrange early check-in. We had to hang out around Paris for 7 hours before we got into our room. Normally not a bad thing, but after an overnight flight all we really wanted was a shower and a nap!

Heading to Paris!

2010-11-03T16:30:00.000-04:00

Brandy and I are at Logan airport right now, waiting to fly to Paris! This trip is a delayed honeymoon/first-year anniversary trip. Can't wait to get there!

This picture is of Brandy posting a picture of me on her blog :). See links on the right for her blog.

In Other News

2009-10-29T23:43:00.002-04:00

I hit a deer with my car the other night. Darn thing jumped right out in front of me on Concord Road near the Belmont/Lexington line.

It could have been much worse. I just kind of clipped its left hindquarter. The deer ran off, so hopefully it's ok. It took out my left headlight and buckled the hood a bit as you can see in the photo. My car is at the shop now, awaiting the claims adjustor.

I just hope it's fixed by next week! Brandy and I are getting married on Friday! We're going to get married at Boston City Hall in a small ceremony, which is why there hasn't been a lot of fuss made :)

WoZ in the Wild

2009-10-27T23:16:00.004-04:00

Hit my local GameStop this evening, and lo-and-behold, they had a few copies of World of Zoo in stock!

Let's hope this game does better than the last game I helped get to the shelf: Star Trek ConQuest Online way back in 2000. :)

Delivery Successful!

2009-10-15T15:38:00.002-04:00

The appliances arrived yesterday without any problems! The fridge is really nice, and it fit perfectly under the existing cabinets. Hopefully the contractor was able to hook up the dishwasher & washer/dryer today.

The dining room table also arrived. It's a fantastic looking table & chairs we got from Jordan's, made out of mango wood. Here's a picture in the newly painted dining room:

Last night our contractor hooked up the toilets!! It's was so exciting :P I'm heading out of work soon and I can't wait to get home and check on the contractor's progress. If he has the door installed on the shower stall then I could actually move in tonight! Kinda tough to live in a place if you can't shower or go to the bathroom there...

Duck & Cover

2009-10-12T15:16:00.002-04:00

Quick summary of things:

1) House closing went fine. As the attorney said, "You now own a house and a mortgage. Congratulations and condolences!"

2) The contractor has been working away on the bathrooms. Hopefully sometime this week he'll be done and I can finally move in! I've been staying at Brandy's condo in the interim, as I didn't want to pay for another month of rent at my apartment.

3) Brandy and I have been super busy working on the place ourselves. Lots and lots of painting. We're basically repainting the entire interior. We also laid down a new laminate floor in the basement which makes it significantly more livable. Don't be fooled by how easy this stuff claims to be, especially if you're installing on an uneven floor like the basement! It took us about 20 hours for ~250 sq. ft. of floor. Sheesh.

4) We've spent/financed a ton of money at Home Depot :) Our appliances (Fridge, washer/dryer, dishwasher) were supposed to be delivered a few weeks ago, but they showed up damaged so we refused the delivery. New delivery date is this Wednesday.

5) On of my favorite parts of the house so far is this sticker we found in the back of a kitchen drawer:

Ultimately, things are progressing a bit slower than we hoped, mainly because the contractors are still working on the bathrooms. We expected that to be done much sooner, but it is really a big job. The contractor has been working quite hard, and doing quality work, so we don't really have any complaints. Just bad time-estimates. Apart from that, we're quite excited about how well the house is shaping up. Can't wait to move in! (Especially since my PC is languishing unused at the house every night.... I haven't played WoW in weeks!!)

House Hunt = Success!

2009-08-27T11:06:00.003-04:00

In less than a month, Brandy and I will own a house! It's a nice little ranch in Lexington, very close to work for both of us. Here are some pictures we took when we had the place inspected: Brandy's Picasa Album

The place needs quite a bit of work (first order of business is tearing out the awful pink-tile-bathroom and making a proper Master-suite), but we can't wait to get started. We've already taken scouting trips to Ikea, Jordan's, and Harbor Freight Tools.

Good thing work isn't a crunch-fest anymore, as I expect to be very busy through the end of the year :)

She Said Yes!

2009-06-29T10:56:00.004-04:00

I proposed to Brandy on Saturday, and she said "Yes!"

It wasn't much of a surprise to her, as I enlisted her help on choosing the ring. I wanted to make sure she got something she'd love. I was able to surprise her a bit with the delivery mechanism: Instead of simply presenting the ring in its box, I bought her a Chanel Zip Wallet and put the ring in that. She seemed to like it ;)

No date yet on when we'll get married. We're going to start house-hunting now....

World of Zoo

2009-06-01T15:55:00.002-04:00

The game I've been working on at Blue Fang Games has finally been announced!

Click here for more details, including a trailer: World of Zoo

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-24T23:58:00.000-05:00

Midnight Mass, Immaculate Conception Church, Newburyport MA

The Met

2008-11-15T13:36:00.000-05:00

Visited the Metropolitan Museum today. Big place. I took some pictures
with my real camera that I'll post later.

I'm waiting outside now while the rest of my group does one last lap.
The weather has cleared up and it's quite nice.

Times Square

2008-11-14T19:33:00.000-05:00

I haven't been to NYC in like 10 years. It's as cool as I remember. :)

NYC Trip

2008-11-14T18:36:00.000-05:00

In New York City for the weekend. First stop: M&M World :)

Hike up Mt. Washington

2008-09-01T07:42:00.004-04:00

I hiked up Mt. Washington with my dad & aunt yesterday. It was...very hard :P That last half mile was a killer. I'll start at the beginning:

Before we started hiking, we had to figure out logistics for coming back down. Lots of people simply hike back down, but we were not interested in that (good thing, too. We would totally have fallen and died if we had tried to go back down.) There is a little shuttle from the top that drives you back down, but it's like $26 per person, and you're not guaranteed to get a seat on one. They fill up really fast.

We decided to drive two cars up and leave one at the top. Worked out great. We drove my car and my aunts car, then the three of us came down in my car and we went to the Pinkham Notch lodge, which is where Tuckerman Ravine Trail starts. We got started on our hike just before 10:30am.

2.4 miles up from Pinkham Notch lodge is the Hermit Lake Shelter area. One of the few shelters on the mountain. This part of the hike felt like it took days. The trail was a pretty steep rock & dirt patch through a tunnel of trees. Every time we got to a turn we were sure we would be at the Hermit Lake Shelter, but no, it just kept going. We did eventually make it, and it took us about two hours. We were encouraged to see a sign indicated that we only had 1.8 miles to the summit. We'd already come 2.4 miles, so we were over halfway!

We stopped for 20 minutes at the Hermit Lake shelter, from 12:10 - 12:30. We had some snacks, a quick breather, and then got back on the trail. I will quote a description of this part of the ride from the Mount Washington Website

Beyond Hermit Lake, the Tuckerman Ravine Trail changes in its character – it becomes much narrower, and has several quite steep sections. It ascends along the "Little Headwall" to the "Connection", and then travels into the "Floor" of the Ravine. The steepest and roughest part of the climb comes next, ascending the "Headwall" of the Ravine. This is an area that is typically wet, and extra caution is needed to avoid slipping. While thousands travel this trail each year without incident, the trail ascends a cliff, and travel off the Trail would bring you over a precipice with disastrous results.

This is where the hike started getting really hard. The 2.4 miles to Hermit Lake Shelter was somewhat tiring, but not particularly difficult. This next stretch was quite tough. We had to use our hands quite often to get over big rocks and maintain balance on wet rocks. I did get some great pictures during this section, which I need to upload from my camera (I didn't us the iPhone for this, it wouldn't have done it justice ;)

Once we we had ascended the headwall, which took roughly 2 hours, we reached Tuckerman Junction. Here's another description from the same site:

After the ascent of the Headwall, the trail becomes marginally less steep, coming to "Tuckerman Junction" (5383 feet), where it turns a bit to the right and ascends the rough boulders of the summit cone of Mount Washington, eventually reaching the summit parking lot and then the summit itself (6288 feet). From Hermit Lake to Tuckerman Junction is 1.2 miles, from Tuckerman Junction to the summit is .6 miles. Total distance from Pinkham Notch to the summit via this trail is 4.2 miles, with 4,250 feet of elevation gained.

That last 0.6 miles was absolutely brutal. It was literally just boulder-to-boulder climbing. And if you do the math, you'll see that in that last 0.6 miles we ascended 900 feet. It took us about an hour to traverse this last stretch. By the time we got to the top, I was completely spent. I'm not sure I've ever been so physically exhausted. Plenty of people climb this mountain without any issues, but they are all in much better shape than I am ;)

We did make a final push to climb some stairs and touch the "Mt Washington Summit" sign, which I guess now I'm glad I did. At the time I was perfectly willing to just wait in the car ;) Speaking of which, it was such a relief to have a car waiting for us. There is no way I could have walked down. I never would have made it in one piece.

Anyway, it was a great trip, and I'm glad I did it. However, I won't be attempting anything similar without getting in significantly better shape. Time to hit the gym!

I'll try and post some more pictures soon. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the actually summit. I was so out of it I completely forgot :P

Mt. Washington

2008-08-31T09:14:00.000-04:00

Heading up!

Goodbye GenCon

2008-08-17T18:49:00.000-04:00

GenCon 2008 is over! As usual, it was a great time. Sad to leave,
happy to be heading home.

Last Game

2008-08-17T13:19:00.001-04:00

The final dungeon delve. Earned enough tokens to get an RPGA creation card, which is cool. The delves are very fun. I look forward to more next year :)

Warning: Mature Content

2008-08-16T22:07:00.001-04:00

Watching Machine Girl. Hyper Violent . Can't see it in the pic, but
that's a dudes face being blown off :)

Boba Jawa

2008-08-16T18:21:00.001-04:00

Finally done with the annoying RPGA game. Those players were so annoying. And it's really a shame since the DM was quite good.

This is a random photo from the dealers hall. The big cardboard ships behind them are really cool.

Second fight

2008-08-16T16:41:00.000-04:00

Somehow I don't think were going to finish this adventure in 20
minutes. These people need to stop BSing and just play.

Slowest group ever

2008-08-16T16:02:00.001-04:00

This event is scheduled to run until 5 and we just got to the dungeon at 4. Sigh. I hoped to get back to the dealer hall before it closes at 6 , but I guess I'll have to wait until tomorrow. :(

Final RPGA Event

2008-08-16T13:52:00.001-04:00

Last scheduled event of this gencon. After this I expect to play a few more dungeon delves.

Huge Success

2008-08-15T23:24:00.000-04:00

The dungeon delve was great fun. Earned two tokens towards prizes.
I'm definitely going to do more tomorrow.

I don't know how the chocolate cake got there ;)

Dungeon Delve

2008-08-15T21:37:00.000-04:00

Back in the RPGA hall waiting in line for some pickup D&D. This Dragon
Banner is a regular fixture at gencon, and it's totally awesome.

Team Blu -- Roll Out!

2008-08-15T16:48:00.000-04:00

Heroscape Team Fortress

2008-08-15T16:32:00.000-04:00

Getting setup for the game. Customized heroscape rules based on the
video game :)

Dragonage: Origins

2008-08-15T14:40:00.000-04:00

Now at the demo for biowares upcoming game. Hope it's good. :)

Taking a break

2008-08-15T13:02:00.000-04:00

Taking a break from the chaos of the convention center to sit outside
and relax. My only event today is a heroscape game from 4-8, so I have
some time to chill out and read some of the books I've bought.

Sultan gaming table

2008-08-15T11:58:00.000-04:00

This gaming table is fantastic. I'm totally going to build an entire
basement around sonething like this someday

Hymyu

2008-08-15T11:26:00.000-04:00

Found some likely hymyu minis at the con:

Day 2

2008-08-15T11:11:00.000-04:00

Gencon exhibit hall

Bloodied and Marked

2008-08-14T22:43:00.001-04:00

The red rings indicate the target is bloodied (half hp). Pink is
marked. That's harder to describe, but basically the monster incurs
serious penalties for attack anyone other than the one who marked them.

4th edition is pretty fun :)

Going swimming

2008-08-14T20:52:00.000-04:00

There was something shiney in the pool, so I dove in. Now a bunch of
monsters appeared and we get fight. Everybody wins!

Energy

2008-08-14T20:37:00.000-04:00

Very important to keep up energy while adventuring. ;)

Outdoor combat

2008-08-14T20:10:00.000-04:00

Outdoor combat is kind of a novelty in RPGA, so this is nice. What you
don't see are the 6 orcs we already killed :)

Prepping for more D&D

2008-08-14T18:31:00.001-04:00

BJ and I are getting ready for more RPGA. These are our minis, Vactor the rogue and Matlokk the Paladin.

Chronx?!?!!

2008-08-14T16:55:00.000-04:00

It lives!

Slava

2008-08-14T16:00:00.001-04:00

Slava is at gencon this year, promoting his game SAGA. www.playsaga.com

WoW minis

2008-08-14T15:54:00.000-04:00

D&D is done for now so I'm in the dealers hall, spending money. Here a
shot of some of the pieces from the upcoming World of Warcraft minis
game. Fortunately it's not for sake yet, or I'd be in a lot of
trouble. They look so cool!

Zhentarim farewell

2008-08-14T14:15:00.001-04:00

Stupid guards don't want us to leave town with all the stuff we found
in the catacombs. Guess we'll get to add their gear to our pile of
loot :)

Thagdol

2008-08-14T13:46:00.000-04:00

This poor servant of mystra is convinced he's still alive. Too bad
we'll have to kick his butt to prove him wrong :)

Boss fight

2008-08-14T13:22:00.001-04:00

Guardians of mystra. Good thing we took an extended rest before this
fight :)

Undead

2008-08-14T12:23:00.001-04:00

Fighting some undead. Thankfully, sneak attack applies to undead now,
so they're going down fast.

More combat

2008-08-14T10:15:00.000-04:00

Rpga adventures are full of combat. This is our third fight of the
adventure, second in this room :). Pretty fun having two rogues in the
party. Lots of flanking.

Let the games begin!

2008-08-14T08:24:00.000-04:00

4th edition combat #1

The dwarf decided to fight instead of talk. :)

Wednesday dinner

2008-08-13T19:49:00.000-04:00

The Indian restaurant we planned to go to is gone so we ended up
here! Yay pasta! Good for the upcoming gaming marathon :)

Welcome to Indy

2008-08-13T18:39:00.000-04:00

We have arrived. And what a view!

To GenCon!!

2008-08-13T13:57:00.000-04:00

Waiting at the airport!

Blurry Workout

2008-02-11T18:59:00.000-05:00

Today's workout. I know the picture is blurry, but I'm lucky to be
able to lift my arms at all.

Dad = Lucky!

2008-02-11T10:39:00.001-05:00

Yesterday my dad had a very lucky escape! He was driving home after taking the dogs out for a jog when a sudden snowstorm whipped up that knocked a tree onto his car! He and the dogs are all ok, thankfully. There's a writeup in the local paper:

http://www.newburyportnews.com/punews/local_story_042002239.html

Because I can

2008-02-09T15:24:00.000-05:00

Did some shopping. Posting this pic from the iPhone. ;)

My Desk

2008-02-09T00:14:00.000-05:00

Here's a photo of my desk that I took with my iPhone. I'm also
submitting this post directly from the iphone. This rules :)

Weigh-In 1/10/08

2008-01-10T10:52:00.000-05:00

Weight: 241.2
Week Change: -0.7
Total Change: -67.8

Good to be losing again!

Weigh-In 1/2/08

2008-01-02T10:33:00.000-05:00

Weight: 241.9
Week Change: 1.1
Total Change: -67.1

Ok, it's the New Year. That means it's time to get back on track. First challenge: 5 fruits & vegetables a day. I have definitely let that habit slide.

Weigh-In 12/26/07

2007-12-26T10:29:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-19T14:37:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-12T16:29:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-11T17:56:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-05T12:43:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-29T12:21:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-21T11:39:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-15T21:52:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-07T09:50:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-31T17:46:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-24T14:39:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-23T15:38:00.001-04:00

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

2007-10-17T10:31:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-09T16:45:00.001-04:00

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

2007-10-04T16:04:00.001-04:00

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. ;)

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

2007-10-04T10:15:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-01T15:29:00.001-04:00

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

2007-09-29T23:06:00.001-04:00

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

2007-09-28T22:58:00.000-04:00

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

2007-09-28T15:35:00.000-04:00

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

2007-09-24T16:38:00.001-04:00

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

2007-09-20T11:59:00.000-04:00

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

2007-09-20T11:41:00.000-04:00

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

2007-09-19T10:19:00.000-04:00

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

2007-09-13T10:16:00.000-04:00

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

2007-09-08T11:21:00.001-04:00

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

2007-09-05T21:03:00.000-04:00

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

2007-08-23T15:35:00.000-04:00

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

2007-08-22T13:27:00.000-04:00

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

Gen Con 2007 Day 1

2007-08-22T11:42:00.001-04:00

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!

2007-08-14T22:47:00.000-04:00

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

2007-08-08T22:56:00.000-04:00

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!

2007-08-08T22:18:00.000-04:00

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!