Mostly Game

Got this link from a friend and it is a chock full of life-saving information. It is from the blog of Mario Vittone, a marine safety expert for the Coast Guard. I recommend everyone read it, including parents.

Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning

Man, this blog has been badly neglected the last few months. I actually feel like getting back to it, but my free time is eaten up with a lot of World Cup soccer right now, and various summer activities. Okay, July 12th I’ll get back on the wagon!

• Jan 2010 = 196.5
• Mar 2010 = 194.5
• Apr 2010 = 190.5
• May 2010 = 193.0
• June 2010 = 193.0

I have been pretty spotty on the exercise (running and pushups) but I feel we’ve made some solid progress on improving our diet. I’m putting tons more veggies in everything I cook (my chili this month was outstanding, if I do say so myself, with yellow bell pepper, onion and shaved carrot that practically dissolved after simmering). I’ve also started logging my food intake on SparkPeople.

Both Wii Fit and the bathroom scale are showing me with a good weight loss in the last 35 days.

• Jan 2010 = 196.5
• Mar 2010 = 194.5
• Apr 2010 = 190.5

Sweet! I’ll be rocking if I can keep up 2-4 pound monthly loss for the rest of the year.

Phew, my posting has been sucking hind teat this year. I’ve been meaning to get back to it, really I have.

Anyhoo, weighed in at the end of February and was surprised to see I was down a couple pounds. We’ve been making an effort to eat more veggies, which is going really well — it just sucks doing dishes a lot more because we’re cooking at home more, but that’s a good problem to have. We’ve also decided to start cutting high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) from our diet, especially in products the kids consume. I’ve actually started using the Wii Fit for some daily exercise, although that is far from a habit yet.  I went running once when the weather warmed up, then we’ve had a few weeks of illness in household that put a damper on things.

• Jan 2010 = 196.5
• Mar 2010 = 194.5

I need to get a habit going for both exercise and blogging. I think my eating is under decent control, if I could just get the exercise going along with it.

• Jan = 197.5
• Feb = 194.0
• Mar = 193.0
• Apr = 192.0
• May = 196.0
• June = 196.0
• July = 193.5
• August = 195.0
• September = 196.0
• October = 198.0
• November = 196.5
• 2009 Goal = 180.0

Well, holding steady at the end of the year again. I actually didn’t weigh till last week, so I’m behind on that — I won’t weigh at the start of December and will just have the final end-of-year weigh-in after New Year. I feel like I’m back in control of the eating and I’m running and doing push-ups a couple times a week, so I’ve got a modicum of exercise going on now. Maybe I can step it up for the next 6 weeks and make it to at least 190.

I’ve been eying the Couch-to-5K program for a while now. A friend on Facebook is doing it, and now Brian V. has challenged me to completing the program. Well, actually he wanted someone else to do it with him, and he guarantees my participation by making it a challenge. Apparently, I’m competitive or something.

We’re building in some repeat time. The program, originated at CoolRunning.com, is a 9 week regimen but we’re setting our deadline as Sunday, January 10th, 2010. It is a pass/fail challenge — we don’t really want to do a footrace — with the sole criterion being able to do 3 miles in 30 minutes. Not terribly difficult, I don’t think, if one just jogs regularly.

We haven’t discussed the stakes yet, but based on past challenges, it will probably be a game for the winner if one of us can’t meet the goal.

I did W1D1 today. Lessons learned:

• Don’t eat at the pizza buffet just 15 minutes before starting the exercise.
• Don’t start the exercise less than 40 minutes before you have to go pick up your kid from preschool.
• If the weather is cold-ish and you like it, it will be even colder once you start running — wear a hat and gloves, dumbarse.

Or, as I am famed for saying in my local gaming group: Dammit, I did that wrong.

Yeah, I’ve got a gimp wrist right now. Carpal tunnel or RSI or whatever… it’s my own fault. I’ve been writing a lot of documentation and reports the last couple weeks at work, plus I’ve been typing like a mad man on game design. It’s not just a matter of over-doing it, though, I think it’s also when I don’t sit properly and/or type with the laptop in an awkward position.

Now my wrist hurts quite a bit. I’m sitting with my forearms flat on the table so I don’t have my wrist at a funny angle (”It was at a funny angle!”), and I’ve been dosing up on ibuprofen and staying away from the Xbox. I just can’t stop working on game design, though. I might have to type one-handed for a while, or maybe switch to a notebook while working early stuff.

Ugh, so annoying.

• Jan = 197.5
• Feb = 194.0
• Mar = 193.0
• Apr = 192.0
• May = 196.0
• June = 196.0
• July = 193.5
• August = 195.0
• September = 196.0
• 2009 Goal = 180.0

I don’t think I’m going to make much progress until I start exercising regularly. I know I ate “heavy” this month, although I’ve been sticking with my pushups. Maybe I gained a pound of muscle? lol

A friend linked this on Facebook and it’s such a good article, I relinked it on FB and am posting it here as well.

This article is neither left/right, nor public/private, tort reform, health care rights, etc. It looks at a fundamental issue in the rising cost and declining quality of health care in the US — and it has nothing to do with politics. It’s business. From the New Yorker:

McAllen, Texas and the high cost of health care

It is quite long, but very well worth your time to read and think about.

I consider myself a moderate, insofar as I believe issues should be examined on a case by case basis and, more specifically, that strict adherence to a “party line” is willfully ignorant at best. If it seems like I am anti-Republican and/or pro-Democrat these days, it’s largely because most so-called Republicans are acting like jackasses these days, made worse by the fact that it follows 8+ years of jackassery by their party leadership.

So, here are the latest ways they are pissing me off.

Lies

Town-hall heckler lies about her political background – yep, she’s a party official, not “just a mom” as she claimed.

Damn Lies

Provision for End-of-Life Counseling Is Described by Right as ‘Death Care’ - this is just crazy. Brian M. and I occasionally spar on political issues – to his credit, he is one of the most rational people I debate with when it comes to political matters – and rebutted this by calling the referenced legislation “purposely vague” regarding mandated hospice care and deferral of life-extending medical care. I read pages 425 to 430 of HR 3200 and found nothing of the sort. Read it for yourself. It sounds to me like they are mandating that physicians make sure patients know about the benefits of living wills and medical directives, and of the availability of hospice care, and nothing at all about the physician actually making a decision on whether to stop life-extending treatments. On page 430, there are four specific situations that may require a judgment call, and none of them explicitly deal with “killing granny.”

Bear in mind, also, that this document is 1017 pages long, and the right-wingers have managed to pick 9 lines (lines 9 to 17 on page 430) on which to hinge their anti-healthcare scare-tactics. As far as I can tell, these 9 lines, the only ones that could possibly be “vague”, have yielded these quotes from the right:

• “guiding you in how to die”
• “an ORDER from the Government to end your life”
• promoting “death care”
• in the words of antiabortion leader Randall Terry, an attempt to “kill Granny”
• “tell them how to end their life sooner”
• teach the elderly how to “decline nutrition . . . and cut your life short”
• “may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia”

Working As Designed

Health Insurance Woes: My $22,000 Bill for Having a Baby – and she HAS INSURANCE. Nice. GG, Republicans. Working as intended.

Hypocrites – and proud of it

Here’s this interview of Rick Scott by CNN’s Rick Sanchez. Oh my lord, you can’t make this up. This is pure comedy gold, or would be if it weren’t true. By the way, Rick Scott is leader of CPR – Conservatives for Patients’ Rights – basically the guy responsible for “regular people” showing up at healthcare town halls and protesting, etc.

Scott was ousted by his own board of directors in 1997 in the midst of the biggest health care fraud scandal in U.S. history, a scandal that ultimately led to a payment of $1.7 billion to settle charges including the overbilling of state and federal health programs.

Scott defended his former company, saying other health care companies had paid fines too. Sanchez cut in: “You are the guy that is sitting here telling us we can’t allow the government to do this because it won’t work and they might take over or do some things that are wrong. How much more wrong can you be than what you just said? Not only has your company screwed up and you just admitted it … You are saying, look at all the other companies, they did the same thing.”

Shameless. And let’s not forget the people that Obama joked about: “I don’t want government-run health care. I don’t want socialized medicine. And don’t touch my Medicare.”

Or people who are anti-socialist programs, but were happy to take a $4500 government handout when they needed a new car. You know who you are

Politics As Usual

This video is one for the ages in political posturing, or anti-posturing as the case may be. Let’s watch Rep. Anthony Weiner kick the Republicans in the nuts.

Gee, did the Republicans vote for the proposed end of Medicare? Didn’t think so. Is it because they’d be voted out of office if they had to tell their constituents they took away their Medicare? Yeah… big talk, until it’s time to put up or shut up.

Suck it, Republicans.