Posted 12:49 PM by Tim
Day 57.  Still no change in anything.  Did the weights yesterday, but I'm starting to get really discouraged with it all.  Guess I've got to find some more incentive somewhere.

Posted 10:02 AM by Tim
Day 56.  Nothing seems to be working.  I don't think I'm sticking to my diet as closely as I should be.  Here's the update.

Starting weight: 210
Last Week's weight: 203
This week's weight: 205
Last Week's change: up 2 pounds!!
Total Change: lost 5 pounds.

Nothing I'm doing seems to be helping.  I'm finding that I'm starting to get bored of my weights.  I've noticed that I seem to be rushing them, and not really focusing on them like I should.  I haven't had a chance to do the swimming thing either.  That's too bad really.  I kinda like the swimming thing.  I do think that I've started to build some muscle, rather than all fat.  I'm just seeing that I've got a little over a month left, and I'm not near any of my goals.  A little depressing.  I figure I've just got to get past it, and I'll be back to going again.

We did a lot of cleaning this weekend.  Bren wanted to get things we don't need out of the house.  I've been getting near that wavelength of thinking all last week, so it wasn't an issue for me to get into the cleaning spirit.  We moved the furniture around, and shuffled things about pretty good.  I got to rearrange my miniatures collection during the move, so I got to set things up nice.

I put the Warhammer army into three groups.  One for each Lieutenant and one for the General.  They look good, but there's a lot of work left to do.

I took the 40K minis, and set them up in little battles.  I absorbed Mark's Marines into my Marines, so I pretty much doubled the army in one swoop.  They need a repaint, but that's something that I can take my time with.  I've also claimed Wayne's Imperial Guard, and they need a paint too.  Shouldn't be too difficult, 'cause there's only a few of them right now.  Hell, most of everything I have needs painting.  I like building and playing and painting, I just don't have time to do all of it.  I really should find some time to focus on one or the other.

In other news, I took a few minutes to do a little drawing.  I don't have a lot of time for it, and well, I'm terrible, but I do enjoy it.  I suppose I've got to do it more often.  I'd show off some of the stuff I've scanned, but I'm really not impressed with my own work, so I'll leave that off.  If you look hard enough,  you can find it on the web.

Posted 3:46 PM by Tim
Day 53.  Did only 1.5 hours of DDR last night but about an hour of it was with ankle weights.  About 6lbs each foot.  Just a little extra effort for me.  Still managed to get an A here and there, but no AA marks.  Just not able to put enough bounce into it with the extra heavy feet.

My left foot has gotten a little bit of a pain in it, and the knee joints have a little bit of a twinge too.  I figure I've overstressed them a little bit.  Maybe do a little less time on DDR tonight.

The weights are going pretty good.  Trying to put a little more effort into it.  The plan is to try to build up the strength a little faster.

Posted 9:57 AM by Tim
Day 52.  More DDR.  Two hours this time.  Legs don't feel too bad today, but I'm going to have to start making sure I do some stretches or something afterwards.  I can feel places where the leg muscles are starting to get a little stiff.

Part of the hope with DDR is that it'll help me learn to coordinate my feet better.  I think its working, but there hasn't been any sort of test to make sure.  Also, because I'm doing it for so long, it should help with my stamina.  I'm thinking of starting to go to clubs again, so it'd be nice if I didn't turn into the great wheezing blob after the first song.

I've been trying to work on making the songs on the DDR wheel go up in ratings.  The first step was to try out every song at least once.  Leave all the D's and E's alone for a bit.  Try to work on a song or two to get them to A or AA or (unlikely) AAA.  Then work on the D's and E's and see if I can make them better.  More than half of the songs are now B or better.  That's not too bad really.  At least, for me, I think that's not too bad.

There are several songs on Light that I can't get past E.  E is the lowest grade, and you only get it if you fail.  If you get even a minimal pass, you get a D.  Why are there songs on Light that have more than 5 feet?  There's a block of 4 or 5 that have something like 6, 6, 7 and 7 feet respectively.  Of course, they're also all over 150BPM songs, so I've no chance of keeping up with them yet.  All quarter steps and jumps.  Gah.  So hard.

I've tried bumping up the difficulty on a few songs to Standard.  These are the low songs.  They go from 3 feet to 4 or 5 feet.  I'm not getting them.  Gonna have to take the 1 footer, and try it on Standard instead.  That should make things go a little better.  Knowing me, it'll probably go from the slow paced 1 footer to a freakish 7 footer at Standard.  It'll move from just Stream and Voltage to Chaos and Air.  If you don't know what any of that means, let me explain.

The old DDR system measured all dance difficulty by "feet"  or how much foot movement was involved.  The system went from 1 to 10 feet.  10 being freakish, and 1 being pretty slow.  I have trouble with anything needing more than 4 feet.  5 feet is possible for me, but I'm pretty bad.  6 and 7 are right out.

The new DDR song rating system uses 5 key areas.  Stream, Voltage, Freeze, Air and Chaos.  Steam and Voltage are sort of related.  Stream is a measure of the longest run of steps.  Voltage is a measure of the maximum density of steps.  Freeze measures the amount of freeze steps in the song, and Air measures the amount of jump steps (thus, the amount of "air" you get in the dance).  Chaos is a measure of how many complicated moves there are (where you'd need to cross feet over, or double/quick step around the arrows.  A song can be high in any or all of these areas, and it's all relative to itself.  So, a slow song can have a very high Air, if most of the moves are jumps.  It wouldn't be as difficult as a fast song would though.

DDR Ultramix for XBox uses both systems, so you get an impression of both how hard certain portions of the song is, as well as the overall difficulty.  There!  Now you know!

Posted 11:04 PM by Tim
Day 51.  I managed to start following my own advice and put on DDR.  Did a little over an hour of dancing, various speeds and songs.  Not too bad, managed to try out every song on the wheel.  Improved a few, still totally flabbergasted by others.  Some of them have beats that are very hard to figure out, and others simply have step patterns so complicated that I have no idea what moves I'm supposed to be doing.

I've tried out a few of the dances on Standard mode too, but they're all far and away over my abilities right now.  More practice is what I need.

Posted 3:07 PM by Tim
Some thinking out loud follows:
 
So, I'm trying to figure out how to lose more weight.  Main thinking is that I should just be doing more exercise.  That's a fine idea, as it'll help me accomplish my other main goal - fitness.  More exercise should mean more fitness, right?
 
What have I got for fitness stuff then.  Well, there's the pool, my bike, the free weights, DDR, running and housework.  Yes, even housework is something.  All that lifting and sweeping and tidying up.
 
I can see making housework part of the routine.  After all, the house is always messy, and there's always things to be done.  Besides, cleaning up gives me a place to do all of the other things I want to do indoors.
 
Time is a major limiting factor.  I'm away at work for around 10+ hours a day (counting commute time) and that means that I'm really limited to about 6 available hours of time to get everything else done.  That should be more than enough time for most people, but I'm a world-class time waster.  I can make copious amounts of time vanish into nothingness and unproductivity on a scale only seen in the Bible.
 
Still, I'm not limited by my fitness options.  I'm only limited by their availability.  I can't DDR early in the morning or really late at night.  All the hopping keeps the roomies unhappy.  The pool has certain hours of use, and it's been rainy nearly every day, so there's not been a lot of opportunity for use there.
 
The weights I can use, but I don't have a weight bench, which would be very good for things like pectoral muscles and so on.  I am limited in the type of exercises I can do.  Still I can do them almost any time of day when I'm home, so that's fine.
 
The bike is good to use, but also limited to days that aren't too wet, and where there isn't anything more pressing that needs to be done.   I really should get out on it more.
 
I do need to step it up a bit.  I'd really love to reach my goals.

Posted 9:49 AM by Tim
Day 50.  Missed the update yesterday.  Here's the current status:
 
Starting Weight: 210
Last Week's Weight: 203
This Week's Weight: 203
Change Since Last Week: 0 pounds!
Total Change: lsost 7 pounds.
 
I just can't seem to lose any more weight.  Not sure why.  I'm far more active than I was 50 days ago, and I'm certainly not eating more.  I figure I'm eating less over all.  I'd love to think that maybe I'm just building up muscle, but I doubt that's the case.  I think I'd have noticed.
 
I've got to figure out something.  Maybe it's time to really start with the serious exercise.

Posted 10:42 AM by Tim
Day 43. I put DDR on last night, and got into the groove a bit. Got a mark of AA on one of the songs, which unlocked another song for me. Only 6 left to unlock. A couple of them are going to be hard to get.

Waking up the morning had me feeling pretty bad. I've had some sinus thing that's been bothering me, and a lot of tight muscles. I'm going to have to start adding in a regimen of stretches. Maybe even get Brenda to show me some of her yoga. She'll be happy about that.

I was happy with the dancing last night too. Got sweaty, but not tired. That's a good thing. I'm kinda hoping that it will teach me better rhythm, and help me with coordination. After all, I'm a pretty discoordinated guy. Dancing's never been my strong area. I tend to describe myself as "spastic monkey stylee."

Posted 9:53 AM by Tim
Day 42. I'm physically tired today. Really beat. Ran the tourney this weekend, which always means several hours (like 20-several) of standing. I really wanted to play some DDR, but I also really did not want to look like a total idiot in front of all the tourney people. So, I held off until I got home on Sunday.

Of course, before I could play, I had to wait for the TV to be free. Also, I had to vacuum the floor to get rid of all the food on there, and clean out all the toys, loose screws and other garbage that had collected. How all that stuff gets there, I really can't comprehend.

Anyway, I tried out DDR. It is fun, though it took me a while to not feel like I was going to fall over during certain moves (ones like stepping left, or moving my feet). Its not as easy as it looks from the outside, which I more or less expected. The girls got into it a bit, but they didn't really pay any attention to the game, just hopped around on the pad and had fun. Which is fine, that's partly the reason that I bought it.

I had to put on the workout mode, as that was another part of the reason I bought it, which was nice. Gave a bunch of random songs a try and burnt off 150 calories at the same time. The cola I'm drinking right now is 1 calorie, so I guess that's the equivalent of 150 colas... or about the same as looking at pizza for more than 2 minutes. :)

So today, my legs are all tired. Not used to do so much hopping about and stepping all at once. The plan is to try to play, or at least put on workout mode once a day. If I can get that kind of time and handle the exercise.

One other note. Found out the the scale at home is off by 10 pounds (it underweighs us). Not sure if we should make a correction or not. Also, here's the weight update:

Starting weight: 210
Last Week's Weight: 200
This Week's Weight: 201
Change Since Last : up 1 pound!
Total Change: lost 9 pounds.

I've got to really start doing some exercises if I'm going to manage to burn off 21 more pounds in in the next 48 days.

Posted 4:18 PM by Tim
Day 37. Did not post yesterday. Did some weights yesterday which was good. I needed to wait a day because my elbow was sore from pushing the car after it broke down. Feeling good about myself today. That's always nice.

Posted 10:21 AM by Tim
Day 35. Monday again. This week's stats:

Starting weight: 210
Last week's weight: 200
This week's weight: 200
Change since last week: 0! Zip! Nada!
Total change: 10 pounds. Not so exciting for the third week in a row.

Right. So I haven't lost anything. Not that I've been sticking to the "eat less" diet very well. I'm getting the weights and pool stuff in there, but I think I've finally adjusted to the total activity.

I've been playing a lot of XIII lately. It's not a bad game really. You don't get a lot of first person shooters that are story driven, and also partly stealth missions. Its got me following along the storyline and trying to keep up with everything. Its cool.

Today is the last day for me to work here at this office. After this I'll have things to do elsewhere, but I've got to start asking a few questions around to find out just what I should be doing. I hope they put me onto something interesting. The work in NY hasn't started up yet, so there's nothing for me to be doing on that. I'm hoping that they start doing that soon so that I can really get going on it. I've never been to NY after all, and it'd be cool to live down there for a while.

Posted 11:31 AM by Tim
Day 32. Did a good set on the weights yesterday. Feeling good today. Not sure if the overall increase in activity or the supplements are working on the width issue. Either way, I decided to measure myself, and I'm down to 44" at the wide bit. I was 44.5" Yes, a half inch isn't much, but it's something. Taken me 4 weeks to lose that half inch, so I don't know if I'll meet my goal of a 4" lose. Maybe once DDR gets here and I start doing the dance thing it'll start to burn off.

Work is going to be an issue today. I just know it. It's one thing to get into a problem and get really, really stuck. That at least keeps you busy all day. It's quite another to get into a problem and suddenly figure it all out. That leaves you with 7 hours of nothing to do. Not at all what I was hoping for today.

To complicate matters, we're running out of things to get Wayne to do. On one hand, that's a good thing. It means that he's getting close to being fully trained. On the other, it means he's got nothing to do too. Gah. So much, yet so little.

Posted 10:06 AM by Tim
Day 31. I decided that this being the start of the month, I should weigh myself to see how I'm doing a full 30 days later. I weight 203 this morning. That's a total loss of 7 pounds. Of course, if you look back at Monday's post, you'll see that I was 200 pounds, which means that I've gained 3 pounds over the week so far. I'm going to have to get either more physically active, eat better, or both.

Today is Canada Day. I'm a proud Canadian, so it's always been one of my favourite holidays. I think we're going to go by the historical park and celebrate Dominion Day, which was the name of the holiday before confederation.

Rosa, my main home system, has finally be fixed. We had to bulldoze the original install and start over, so we went with Win2K instead of Win98SE. This, for some reason, left the system unable to detect ps/2 keyboards and mice. Fortunately, it could detect USB devices fine. So, I've got a new keyboard and mouse to use. They work really nice.

That's all for right now, maybe I'll say something else later.