[2007.08.28] Weight Loss Report

Well, it has been a somewhat positive week for weight loss. I'm down another 2.4 pounds or 27.2 pounds overall. This leaves me at 333.4 pounds this morning. I am just shy of the first mini-goal of 330 pounds. Maybe next week?

BTW, I also threw up the legend to explain what those little stars mean :)

Hollywood reams the consumer yet again

[LANGUAGE WARNING - Pissed off Badger Alert]

I'm not sure if you've heard by now, but I've been following the latest escalations in the HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray format war. The Digital Bits has had some of the best coverage and it is worth checking out. Basically, Microsoft dropped a chunk of change at Paramount and DreamWorks front door in exchange for them to stop being platform neutral and go HD-DVD exclusive. So, now they going Universal in the HD-DVD camp with the other studios either being Blu-ray exclusive or platform neutral.

What has this done?

Hmmm...how about fucked over the consumer royally? In an idiotic format war that was in no one's best interests, Blu-ray looked to be starting to win and that is when Microsoft acted. Now, it has sown the seeds of confusion within the potential audience and I agree with the prevailing opinion that less people will go with either.

I have been considering my options for some time; cheap MS Xbox HD-DVD drive or stand-alone Blu-ray player (PS3 isn't worth even considering). Now, I can say I have no idea what to do. I think I will likely still with DVD because as usual Hollywood has continued to fuck the consumer and we just continue to bend over and take it...

UPDATE:

So, I have given this more consideration and I've decided they both suck, yet I still want them. Realistically, I will probably not buy either as the waters are just to murky right now :(

I got this of the Digital Bits:

In a poll over at IMDB, fully 63% of the 16,000+ people who responded chose: "I have neither system and this makes [me] want to enter HD media even less. I'll stick with DVD for the time being." The next largest group, 10%, said they had no opinion and another 9% didn't know what HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc were. So that's 82% of people who either just don't care, don't know about the formats or are turned off by the format war.

It's not like we're talking polling people on the street, but this is from a movie junkie website!?!?!? No one (at least in large numbers) wants to go near this mess. That so disappoints me that these two camps our ruining HD optical media for the whole industry...

[2007-08-21] Weight Loss Report

Well, another week in the plan where I made it out and met the plan's requirements. I stuck to my point totals by the thinnest of margins. Free pizza with my favorite toppings at work last Friday nearly did me in :)

So, I am now at 335.8 pounds and that is down 2.4 pounds from last week. Hopefully, by this time next week I can post a graphic showing a coveted "25 pounds lost" star. I could conceivably even hit my mini-goal of 330 pounds. The first major goal of 60+ pounds lost is looking more and more possible by the end of the year. I am concerned what havoc winter may play with my progress. Summer has already made getting out and walking difficult, but I imagine winter may be worse. I guess I will just have to wait to see...

Ben eating Jello for the first time

Dinner tonight at Sweet Tomatoes...Ben loves his Jello ;)

Blockbuster - part deux

Well, Blockbuster has given me something to think about. When I switched to Blockbuster from Netflix, it was due to getting rentals for the same price, but with the added benefit of being able to exchange my online rental returns in store for a free movies. I wasn't thrilled about switching to a company that is an example of much of what is wrong in the movie industry. Well, today, I got the gift of an e-mail from the corporate giant that explains that they want to begin charging me an extra $7 per month for this privilege. Or I can remain at $17.99 per month and only get 5 in-store exchanges a month. I'm not the kind of person that likes being forced to keep track of simple things such as this. I want unlimited and no worries.

Well, in this same timeframe, Netflix cut their costs by $1 per month. Maybe it is time to restart my membership there and dump the evil corporate entity?

Code Monkey

My friend Kirsten posted this to her blog and I have to say that I love this AMV. It's extremely clever and well done. The song also rocks ... well, somewhat softly ;)

and now on weight watch...

So, it's now time for another weight report. With Heather & Ben out of town this past week, I assumed I wouldn't do well as I tend to eat "bad" foods when I am bach'ing it, stuff like potato skins, pizza, chinese, etc. Well, I did do that, but I guess I kept to moderation well enough to still lose weight.

I'm now down 2.8 additional pounds at 338.2 that brings my running total to -22.4 pounds. This has not been my best week, but I will gladly take a loss any week. If I can at least stay moving in the right direction, hopefully I'll get to the end goal sooner or later and I'm just a wee bit off of my first goal of 330 pounds.

Review: Hot Fuzz

As Heather and Ben are off at the beach, I had a quiet day at home today. Last night, Matt came down and we grabbed some dinner (stuck to my WW point goals) and then we played Tennis & Golf on the Wii. The Wii definitely shines when paired with other people. It is fully a social game system.

Anywho, back to the review. As it has been a quiet day, I have spent my time, uhm ... sleeping :) In between waking up and napping, I watched Hot Fuzz. I wish I had seen this one at the theater like I had wanted, but life/work conspired against me. It's great, absolutely fun. Not the same movie as Shaun of the Dead, but there are a lot of similarities and you can catch occasional references. It's just a fun movie and Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Timothy Dalton (still my third favorite Bond) are all fun in their roles.

Simon Pegg's Nicholas Angel on the movie Point Break:

Well, I wouldn't argue that it wasn't a no holds barred, adrenaline fueled thrill ride. But, there is no way you can perpetrate that amount of carnage and mayhem and not incur a considerable amount of paperwork.

It's hard to pull out great quotes as much of the movie, like Shaun of the Dead is subtle, dark humor. I definitely recommend both. They can be a bit violent in places, but their great spoofs of their respective mixed up genres.

Just as an aside, I REALLY want the DVD library room shown in this flick :)

To stash away for Ben

I think Heather and I may have to pre-order this for Ben. I really want him to have the opportunity to read these as he gets older and it seems like a great deal at $117 for all seven books.

Weight Watchers progress

For those of you that know, I have been getting involved with Weight Watchers in the past couple of months.

Well, I have now decided to stop attending the meetings. They simply weren't doing anything for me and to be quite honest, Weight Watchers isn't tuned at all for men (at least from the meetings I have seen). I am still doing the program and am quite happy with it so far, but that is due to the fact that they have some nice for-pay web tools that allow me to geek out over my diet tracking. Well, in an effort to remain accountable, not just to myself, but also others, I have decided to start posting some of my results here. At one point I may have been embarrassed or considered this too personal, but the reality is that I am a big guy, but I am making decent progress towards being a smaller bug guy.

So, without further ado, here is my latest weight chart...



I started at 360.6 pounds and as of my weigh-in this morning, I am at 341 pounds or a 19.6 pound loss.

The goal listed above is definitely not my end goal, but it is where I would like to be at the end of 2007. It is aggressive and I'm not fully sure it is attainable, but hey, they don't call them "stretch" goals for nothing. My next goal is to hit 330 pounds with the year end goal to be 299 pounds.

I'll update every week or two with were I am.

[UPDATE: Just for info, the stars in the chart above are milestones within the Weight Watchers system, i.e. first 5 pounds, additional 5 pounds, etc.]

Got some new games for the Wii

Wow, another weekend has come and gone :(

Still enjoying the Wii and yes, I am still working on more review details, but I just haven't had the time to finish yet. Yesterday, I traded in some Xbox 360 games that just hadn't done it for me and picked up the following Wii titles:

Excite Truck
Super Paper Mario
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

I also took the Wii over to our friend's Matt & Chrissy's house and he and I spent some time with Wii Sports and Excite Truck. Just like man video games, you really need more than 1 person to truly enjoy it as much as possible.

I've also spent some time with Super Paper Mario and it is fun and has some neat tricks, but wow is the dialogue in the game HORRIBLE. It is B-grade at best :)

The Simpsons Movie - Spider Pig Clip Download

The Simpsons Movie - Spider Pig Clip Download at demp.se/y - Adam Dempseys Blog

Check out this site to get the great "Spider Pig"! song from the Simpsons movie. It makes a great ringtone :)

Simpson Bill

Go here to build your own Simpsons avatar...