Monday, February 28, 2011

your attention please

P90X
I have a big announcement - I am done with P90X. Actually, I have one more day, today, but I can't do it because my knee is still a bit hurt from flag football. So screw it, I'm skipping it and I'm calling it. Technically I'm fine because I actually repeated a week somewhere in the middle, so I'm over 90 days.

Was it worth it? Depends on what you consider worthwhile. By the third month, I was never looking forward to doing it. Working out every single day, for someone like me who doesn't ever "enjoy" working out, started to become a real pain in my ass. Not to mention that the workouts are fairly intense, so by month three my will power was getting pushed to the extreme. I won't be doing it again, that's for sure. I did get some results, although mostly in fitness and not in physique. I gained about 8-10 lbs but I still could use another 15 or so.

At this point, I can really only recommend P90X to those who a) want a true test of endurance and willpower, and b) actually enjoy working out. If you don't enjoy working out, then you're really going to hate P90X by the end, like I did. However, if you are interested, I have pretty much everything you would need to get started, including a pull-up bar, adjustable dumbbells, and a yoga mat.

I'll be taking my fitness test tonight to see what kind of improvements I've made in the past 3 months. I expect solid increases in most areas, but in a couple, like wall squats, probably only minimal improvements.

Last Friday, we played our semi-weekly game of flag football. It was a hard-fought game, and both Andy and I were on our A-game. We had our first semi-serious injury. It didn't end up being a broken bone, but it sure as hell looked like it. I'm not sure what happened, but a hand ended up ramming into someone, and his finger was no longer pointing in the correct direction. Needless to say, it was gross. The update today is that it was simply dislocated.

Friday night, I went to a friend's house-warming party. It ended up being more fun than I expected, but mostly because me and Justin had a heroic and undefeated beer pong run. There was one particularly stellar moment in one game where we started off with the lead, then quickly fell behind. It looked like we were doomed when we made a sudden comeback, and sealed the game by both making it into the same cup at the last moment. It was epic, but probably only for us.

On Saturday, I can't remember doing much. I got a haircut, and played a solid amount of Left 4 Dead 2.

On Sunday, Taylor and I went to Torchy's for breakfast tacos, then Opal Divine's for some yummy Bloody Mary's and lunch. Afterwards, we walked around Fry's for fun. We heard that Borders is closing (not all of them though, like I had thought), so we hopped over there and I ended up buying $50's worth in books, all of which were 20% off. I got some classics and otherwise, including Catcher In The Rye, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (recommended by my dad, but also not recommended by Kelcey — guess I'll find out!), The Godfather (hardcover for only $6!), and the first four installments of The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. I'm looking forward to reading them all, but at the same time I still don't make enough time to read. I've been on my current book for 4 months now, and I've only read half.

After browsing stores, we went to the Drafthouse to watch the animated short films that were nominated for an Oscar. I liked about half of them, but the other half I just couldn't get into. They didn't impress me visually or with the story and plot. Not sure why a couple of them were nominated, when pitted against the competition.

Afterwards, we went home and I did a combination of watch the Oscars while playing some Left 4 Dead 2.

Whew, a long post!

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

confirm email address please

Yesterday I needed to reset my password for American Airline's website. I was trying to look up my frequent flyer number. I was greeted with this lovely page, notice anything wrong?

(click to enlarge)

I can confirm it's correct because I'm obviously the only person using Gmail.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Justin's Show - 2/18

Here are my pics from Justin's show last Friday (at least, some of them). You can find the whole set here.










it's the weekly update!

I'm sorry that the updates are only coming weekly now. I'm just not in the mood lately to sit down and write stuff out. Sometimes it's a chore to come up with topics to write about, even though usually it's just about my day/week.

Last weekend was a bit more eventful than usual for me. On Friday night, I went to Justin's show at Stomping Ground's. I took more pictures for them, and should have an edited set uploaded soon. It's fun to take pictures of them while playing, and sometimes challenging. I'm admittedly not great but I do like some of the shots I get.

Scott, my ex-coworker buddy, had a going-away party Saturday night. He jokingly made a note in the facebook event about tie-dye apparel being suggested. Sure enough, Mark, Andy, Kelcey, and I brought some tie-dye gear to wear at the party. Strangely, we were basically the only group of people rocking that look, in addition to Scott and a couple other people here and there. I haven't hung out with Scott in a long while but he was fun to hang out with. He's moving to Colorado because he's partial to snowy climates.

Who knows what I did on Sunday, because I sure don't. All I know is that I should have cleaned up my room and did laundry, but I didn't. I have a huge pile of clothes in my room and it aggravates me. It aggravates me more that I'm too lazy to do the laundry.

Oh, I remember what I did on Sunday! I setup my computer to work with my TV with an HDMI cable! I installed XBMC, a cool media center program, and configured it with my collection of TV shows and movies. Now, with a cool interface, I can browse and watch my media from my TV. To top it all off, I bought the iPhone app Hipporemote which allows me to use my iPhone as a remote to play/pause, etc. It's a pretty cool setup, I have to admit.

So I'm probably a bit late on this bus, but did you know there is a number to opt-out of all pre-approved credit offers? The number is 1-888-567-8688 or 1-888-5-OPTOUT. You can read more details here. I did this earlier today. It's an automated process, and it can be annoying sometimes because it asks you to speak your address and tries to understand you, which it never does. But eventually if you stick in there, you'll get it done.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

the weekend of looooooove

Okay so, not really. Taylor and I had a brief conversation about a month ago about Valentine's Day plans. We mutually decided that neither of us cared to do anything, because we didn't really believe in this kind of holiday. Valentine's Day, to me, is pretty fake. Does it really mean anything when someone is pretty much obligated to take you out to dinner and get you nice things? Not in our opinions. Therefore our Valentine's Day plans consisted of basically nothing. On the actual day, we went to Freebird's and watched Always Sunny. We're so romantic!

What else happened last weekend? Justin and I had a random thought to go play disc golf at one of the two courses within a few miles of us. We randomly selected the one at Parmer/McNeil. I can't tell if that was the best or worst decision of our lives. The course was buried in the middle of trees, dense shrubbery, and tons of cacti. There was also a posted warning about poison ivy, but luckily we did not encounter any. It was only a 9 hole course, and we somehow couldn't find one of them. The holes were all about 100-150 feet and narrow, so anything but accurate throws would be off in some cacti — sweet! Overall, the course was pretty miserable in terms of comfort and convenience. However — and I don't speak for both of us — I thought the course was fun. The "adventure" of grabbing a big stick and fishing out your disc after every other throw was enjoyable in a masochistic, 8-year-old-boy-looking-for-trouble kind of way. I do recommend wearing long sleeves and pants, though. Otherwise you'll be in for a long day of pricks and thorns. I had pants on and I still managed to get cacti thorns in my leg. Luckily, Justin had his swiss-army knife and busted out the tweezers. Up next: Wells Branch disc golf course.

Aside from above, I can't remember anything else going on. Another weekend of hanging out and going with the flow.

By the way, it took two days for me to get my work computer back, despite their estimate of "a couple hours." What a dumb week at work this turned out to be.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

at work with no pc makes habibi a dull boy

A majority of my blog updating, including new entries and shared links occurs while I'm at work. That isn't to say I'm not busy at work, but since I sit behind a computer for 9+ hours a day at work, there's usually enough time to fit in 5 mins here and there to update things around my blog.

Monday morning, my computer was taken by IT to "re-image." In layman's terms, they're clearing out everything and reinstalling Windows. It was only supposed to take about 2 hours, but we're about a day and a half in and I still have no computer.

It's greatly limiting my ability to do work and update my blog. Why don't I just update my blog at home? The answer is simple: I don't wanna!

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

superbowl weekend

I feel fully recovered from my "flu" incident last week. I'm back on track with P90X, and it's time to start eating big again.

Last weekend was a fun weekend. Friday was casual, nothing to note. On Saturday, Ashley, Ray, and Marisa were in town so we went to Torchy's Tacos, and attempted to go to a Longhorn basketball game. Due to poor planning, we didn't attempt to buy tickets until right before gametime, and it had sold out by then. Oddly, Austin (who was at the game) said that there were a lot of empty seats still. Instead, we went bowling and hung out. I went home and the girls had a girls night.

Sunday was Superbowl Sunday! How... exciting? No, I wasn't that excited because I didn't care much about either team. I decided to root for the Packers because it'd make things more interesting at the house. Both my roommates are Steelers fans, so why not add some tension? I had told people to come over and bring food to grill, and I must say that everything turned out pretty successfully. We had some people over, cooked various foods, drank beer, and enjoyed the Superbowl. It was a pretty close game, but not that exciting; both teams' offenses played poorly.

Since that's all I have to talk about, here are my favorite Superbowl commercials:







Wednesday, February 2, 2011

recovery week: part deux

Last Friday I woke up in the morning and I immediately knew something felt off. For starters, I was confused where I was when I woke up. That's never a good start. I was still sleepy and groggy so I was unable to figure out what exactly was wrong, but I went back to bed for a half hour. After that, I showered and went to work. While eating breakfast with Mark and Andy, I realized it was not worth being at work. I felt very lethargic and fatigued. I went home and slept for a couple hours. I woke up and took my temperature: ah-hah! I had a fever. Unfortunately, cowbell didn't help.

Andy was still at work, and was relaying his paranoia to me. He was going to be leaving for a one week vacation on Saturday, and the news was that a lot of people were out sick at work with flu-like symptoms. In retrospect, it's very likely that I had the flu. Luckily, I had a flu shot a few months ago and it's quite possible that the shot helped me through this. Not to mention that tens of people around my building have been out with the flu (that's a lot of people, by the way). Luckily, Andy did not get sick and he's been presumably enjoying himself skiing or snowboarding in Lake Taho, CA.

The entire weekend was spent lounging around and keeping my fever down with advil (translation: left 4 dead 2 all weekend). I also took off Monday to make sure I was fully healthy before coming back to work.

Since I was sick (again?) the past week, I had to postpone my recovery week in P90X until I was recovered from my short flu stint. Despite having done a couple of days already, I'm going to restart the recovery week again. I need to hurry up and finish P90X. I'm tired of doing it.