First workout completed…and I’m not dead

Well I did my first weight workout of 2009 tonight. Warmed up with a bit of stretching and a 10-minute run, then a series of free-weight exercises that I’ll do twice a week, increasing the weight each time, finishing off with a couple of ab exercises and a long hot shower ) I know I’ll feel it in the morning! Off to eat now…

Not going to plan already

Last night was supposed to be the first night of my new weight workout plan, but I realized I can’t do it on a Sunday night after driving back from my GF’s and wanting to catch up on internet and TV (I know, it’s sad), so instead of 3 days a week I’ll just do it Tuesdays and Thursdays with a run or bike ride on Monday and/or Saturday.

Bleah. It’s basically ‘just do it’ because I have everything I need (the info, weights, shoes, clothes & time), I just need to get started doing it and git ‘er done.

Bleah. I’m back. Finally.

So the plan for today was to wake up early (about 6 AM), have some breakfast and be on our way for the 3 hr drive to Frankfurt.

Instead, what happened was:

• wake-up call at 4:30 from
• wake up at 5, shower and meet in the lobby
• drive on the autobahn (for the first time) in snow/wet/cold conditions
• meet up with 2 lots of heavy roadworks
• not finding a petrol station to fill up the rental cars (so extra charges on the car hire)
• wolfing down a burger before hitting the security checkpoint
• plane is a little turboprop (noisier, but at least not even 1/5 full)
• find out the nose gear isn’t working so we have to circle for ages while it’s manually lowered
• a tow off the main runway in Birmingham while the fire truck holds station on us and no other planes can land, and finally
• a long taxi ride back
• oh, and a £300 car repair bill

Fallout 3 and the perils of PC gaming

Well I’ve been really enjoying my playing of Fallout 3, it’s an amazing game and the first ‘current’ game I’ve played in ages. Usually I’m happy to play older games with good content, such as Colin McRae: Dirt, Civilization 4, Colonization and other games, but a chance purchase of Fallout 3 back in December has prompted me to upgrade my computer, which I’ve got fully planned out, but not actually spent the money on yet.

The problem is, with my computer being 4 years old, not even dual-core, still on AGP graphics and DDR RAM – all of which adds up to it being slow compared to most of the ‘recommended’ spec of today’s PC games. Basically I’ll ‘have’ to spend about £450 to bring it up to current spec so that games are playable with good detail and quick speed. (The plan right now is to spend about £300 getting a new motherboard, RAM and CPU, use an AGP graphics card I have already, then upgrade to a £150 graphics card when I can.)

So where do the ‘perils of PC gaming’ come into play?

Easy – I could spend the £450 on a PS3 and a copy of Fallout 3 for that console, or spend £30-45 on a copy for the Xbox 360 (which I have already). When I picked up the game I thought, ‘Cool! £20, that’s way cheaper than the console versions.’ – but now comes the sting in the tail. If you’re not up to date with your PC hardware and are a generation or two behind like I am, you’re buggered because it then becomes cheaper to have a console on hand already, that you don’t have to spend money to upgrade (until a new one comes along).

I suppose if you’re a regular gamer, consistently picking up the newest releases, it makes sense to have one of the latest consoles. If you’re a regular PC gamer, you have to spend more over the long run because every 18-24 months you need to do a moderate-to-major upgrade of your hardware. When you consider how much this costs (for me it’s about £450, as I said above, over  4 years), the cost of a brand new next-gen console platform is roughly the same I suppose…360’s and PS3’s were going for 350-450 when they were released, depending if you had to get them on eBay or not. If you factor in the cost of games, for consoles they cost slightly more, so that extra £10 per game adds up as well.

An additional but not as major consideration are platform-exclusive games, like Gran Turismo 5 and others – granted, these are less common (Fallout 3 and many other new games are out on all 3 major platforms) but they still happen. I suppose that’s the additional cost of sticking with one platform only – how many people actually have the money and time to have 3 or 4 current-generation gaming platforms (yeah, I’m including the Wii there)? and what about playing them all online? People have lost families and jobs just playing constantly on just one platforum (WoW addicts, anyone?)! It’s just impossible.

I haven’t touched my 360 in months, and I’ve been considering selling it. I’ve only had it a year, but who knows. There just hasn’t been anything on it that I really had to have, other than Forza Motorsport 2, and there are PC games that are way more customizable and even more realistic (like Grand Prix Legends, which I recentlygot off Freecycle).

This could easily be called ‘PC vs. console gaming’, I realize…but these are just my individual factors. Add all this up and consider everything else you can do on a PC and to me it’s a no-brainer.

A new era starts today

Well, Obama’s in and Bush is out, starting today around noon, Eastern Central Time. That’s about 5 PM my time, and while I won’t feel a physical or spiritual anything that tells me when it’s happened, at least I know there’s a change and a new sheriff in town…err, the White House.

I’m even wearing my ‘Obama is my homeboy’ shirt! Underneath a longsleeve tee, though – it’s still cold!

Car parts are in!

Holycrapit’sonlybeenamonthsincemycarwasbrokeninto!

Well the mechanic/garage called up yesterday and said they’d be over today to pick up my car, because the parts they ordered have finally reached them. I know my car’s old, but damn! I didn’t think it’d be this hard to get ‘foreign’ car parts. I realize if it were a Ford or Vauxhall the parts probably would have been here much sooner, but two weeks? I guess it was a hard-to-find part.

Oh well. Apparently they’ll be taking the White Lightning away on a flatbed later today from work, so I’ve arrange a lift home and will cycle into work tomorrow…

Nope, I haven’t cycled into work in months, and especially not in this weather! Although today has turned out nice, it’s still plenty dark after 5 for the ride home. But I have a new cycle computer I got for Christmas, plus a new light and tight-fitting longsleeve underwear (wicking performance shirt basically) so I’m ready to go – just need to do it.

Now, as far as getting out of the house by 6:30 AM…that’s another matter…

First ‘fitness update’

Well it’s been a week and I’ve lost a bit of weight already – I’m down to 96.8kg this morning.

This is just through portion control, I haven’t started exercising yet. I’m not eating any special foods or cutting anything out except candy bars & soda. I still have dessert but only a small bit at a time, I’m following the 80/20 diet rule – for example I bought a pack of Mini Magnum ice cream lollies for example, instead of normal-size ones. Also, when having a curry at home I’ll have about one and a half serving spoons each of rice and curry, instead of two or three spoons of both. So just cutting down a bit and having more water (and NO soda) helps me!

This week I’ll start exercising – I’m so bad at getting started! Plus it’s freakin’ cold and wet when I get home, especially today. I’ve been waiting for my car to get fixed (it’s that old that parts are taking forever to order) so I could see how cycling to work will go, but I just need to get off my ass and exercise. Plus I want to try out how the cold/wet weather gear I have will work, plus try out my light setup.

James Patterson novels

I just finished ‘The Lake House’ by James Patterson, the guy who wrote The Bone Collector and Kiss the Girls, both made into money-making movies, one or both of them with Morgan Freeman (the Oscar winner).

I don’t know how this guy sells the kind of shit he writes – chapters literally 2 or 3 pages long, no more than 10 chapters that were 5 or more pages. Comically bad plot holes, dialogue, internal monologue, ugh it just went on and on. But I finished it! Paid half price for it 3 years ago and it’s been sitting on the shelf along with the rest of the bookshelf waiting for me to get to it. So when I finished V for Vendetta I started this one up as a light read before diving into something else and boy oh boy was it ever light. 3 nights of reading, maybe 6 hours max. By the end I was skimming through the action climax (such as it was) just to get the stink of it off my fingers.

So I didn’t like it.

Happy New Year

Wassup folks, Happy New Year!

I hope everyone reading this had a liesurely holiday time doing stuff they enjoyed. Me, I:

• read a lot (finished I think 4 books plus a graphic novel (V for Vendetta)),
• played a lot on the Nintendo DS (mostly Age of Empires),
• watched several DVDs (including Wall-E, Dara O’Briain, Shawn Lock, Curb Your Enthusiasm season 7 and a few others),
• went to an animal park in the Lake District (saw baby rhinos, bears from Peru, tigers from Sumatra and Russia, lions, loads of screeching lemurs, various little monkeys, wallabies, penguins, emus and more),
• and I can’t remember what else, really – it was a terrifically long time away from work!

Now, of course, though, starts the annual migration to gyms and jogging tracks around the Western world, and it’s no different with me. I’ll be starting up an exercise program this week with a big of free weights and jogging/cycling to get started on losing weight.

…I know, I know! I’ve said all this before, however last year when the weather was good and I was cycling to work a couple of times a week I lost about 8-10 pounds in a couple of months, which is damned good! And that without really controlling my eating portions. A couple of years previous, when I was strict about my portion sizes but I wasn’t exercising, I lost about the same amount of weight. If I can control both the amount of food I eat AND my exercise, I’ll be well on my way to losing all the weight I want to lose (7.3kg or 17 lbs) in the time I want to (end of June).

I chose the halfway point of the year as my time goal instead of the end of the year because a goal 12 months away is too easy to lose focus on. I may even change it up and make my time goal the end of March (and adjust the weight loss goal accordingly) just to make it that much easier to focus.

In fact, I think I will – end of March, down to 210 lbs. So instead of losing 17 lbs in 6 months my goal is to lose 7 lbs in 3 months. This should be relatively easy, and sets me up for the harder bit of losing 10 lbs over the following 3 months. If all goes to plan then I’ll try to maintain the weight for the rest of the year.

Star Wars + Christmas = really bad vintage TV

I never saw the Star Wars Christmas Holiday Special when it was originally released, and only recently have I had a chance to watch bits of it…click the link below if you dare to see Chewbacca’s family celebrate Life Day or hear Princess Leia sing!

Do it!