Tag 300

I cringed as I walked back to do my 300 and saw Mr Exercise ball back there again.  I looked at the guys face more this time.  He typically has a look on his face like a toad that ate a sour fly.  Once again as I am busting ass trying to go from one ass breaking exercise to another, this guy is doing his stupid, worthless ball moves, taking extended nap’s in between.  I was so annoyed.  I resorted to banging shit around.  If he won’t leave on his own, maybe I can drive him out from the sound of a 135 pound barbell banging off the floor 50 times.  No such luck, he stayed the entire time.  I WILL drive him out, one way or another.  I can’t take looking at this guy f’ing off.

So one of the big reasons I wanted to upgrade Ali’s Treo 750 to Windows Mobile 6 was because WM6 supports HTML email, you know, the type of email that has embedded graphics and pictures in it.  With WM5, when you get an HTML email you get the text links to these images but not the images themselves.  It’s a bit annoying. So anyway I was confused when I was looking at HTML email on Ali’s phone and still saw it had the annoying text links in it.  I did a little digging around and found out the perturbing facts.  WM6 does support html email as long as you are pulling via POP or something along those lines.  However if you are activesynching with Exchange, ONLY Exchange 2007 will allow you to see html email.  That is bullshit.  To require someone to migrate to Exchange 2007 to do this is an obvious ploy by MSFT to force upgrades that have no real reason to occur. Small Businesses don’t need ENTERPRISE level messaging but yet that is the only option MSFT has left for those wishing to upgrade.

  It wouldn’t be such a big deal if MSFT didn’t make Exchange 2007 such a huge pain in the ass pig to deploy.  It REQUIRES that you install it on a 64 bit version of Windows Server which means new, expensive 64 bit compatible hardware and no easy upgrade path for someone running any of the prior Exchange versions.  You basically have to install Exchange 2007 on it’s own dedicated box and migrate mailboxes across.  Well in my little home network running on rubber bands and paper clips, this isn’t going to work very well.  It pisses me off.  Ali could care less about not having html email on her phone, it bugs me though.  All the MSFT would have to do is change a couple lines of code and Exchange 2003 could deliver HTML email just fine and dandy. 

Luckily I forgot my watch today for the 300.  I’m sure I didn’t clock in at a 23:20, I bet it was closer to 25 minutes.  My energy level was low.  I had to struggle just to get get to 300 reps.  The last set of 25 pull ups was broken into 4 sets, I just had no gas in the tank.

It was another one of those days when I had another annoying individual back in my cave.  This time it was an old guy that was incredibly average looking.  Horseshoe pattern baldness, middle aged, average height, average weight.  Well this guy was doing this ridiculous workout that looked to be a click or two above sleeping in terms of calories burned.  He had a padded mat and one of the balance balls.  He would do sets of very simple, slow, easy rolls on the ball and then would relax for 5 minutes in between sets, practically taking a nap on the mat while his feet were propped up on the ball.  I found this incredibly annoying as I was busting my ass.  After he got done with his casual ball routine a couple times he got up and put on padded gloves and hit the heavy bag that is in the cave.  Again this was ridiculous looking.  He hit with no force, instead he just fired rapid fire little love taps while standing flat footed.  It looked like what a 5 year old does when he puts on his first pair of Socker Boppers.

Now of course logically I know that this guy is entitled to work out in as silly as a manner as he pleases.  But when I am in the middle of a 300, the stress and strain I am putting my body through short circuits the patience portion of my brain.  I really had the urge to just turn to the guy and yell “Will you just get the F out of here??!!!” 

So I get a call yesterday afternoon from Ali who was home.  She first asked if I could hear her, which I could.  Then she starts on a rant about how much she can’t stand Vonage.  She said today during several calls the other person would not be able to hear her or the call would just disconnect.  Ever since we got Vonage Ali has been pretty vocal about her dislike for it.  Unlike myself whom keeps the majority of my phone calls under a minute, Ali will sometimes spend longer amounts of time on the phone.  I have had a few problems even during my brief calls like reverb, garbled audio and some of the drop outs Ali was bitching about but not a ton of them.  We are not alone with Vonage problems.  A 30 second Google search will turn up many, many pages of people complaining about Vonage service.  The scary part is when you read the drama these people had to go through to get out of Vonage.

So anyway, last night after work I did a number of things that supposedly address some of these issues.  I dialed back the bandwidth Vonage looks for from 90k to 50k, I relocated the VOIP box from the computer room to one of the spare bedroom to get it away from the cordless phone and wireless router that supposedly can cause problems and finally I went into my Linksys router and set up QOS (quality of service) for the Vonage adapter, giving it priority over all other internet traffic.  If after all of those changes we still have regular issues I will be forced to endure what is sure to be a customer service nightmare and try to cancel Vonage and port my number back to the shitty POTS system.  My favorite thing about Vonage is getting my voicemail’s mailed to me.

The weekend has no major shining stars.  I have various things to do already lined up in my head.  I want to swing over to mom’s to caulk around the ceiling on the lanai.  I was going to swap out vehicles with her too.  She told me yesterday that she took her Rav4 to the dealer to have them look at an issue with it wanting to stall until it warms up.  Of course once they get their hands on it they come back with a laundry list of “suggested” maintenance to be done which potentially could cost my mom 1700 bucks or more.  I told mom that I wished she would consult me before making decisions on mechanical repairs on her car.  However her car ownership history is filled with her getting socked with huge repair bills and me finding out after the fact. I guess some things never change.

The Eagles play the Cowboys this weekend.  I wish I had a more optimistic outlook for the game.  It sucks going into a Cowboys game with a feeling that a losing outcome is all but ensured.

It’s time for the voting for the Spartan Halloween contest, go there and vote for me!!!! My evaluation of each finishing Spartan is posted here.

See all of em here. This is a damn fine photo shopping if I do say so myself.

Spartan CAM!!

Yes the big day has finally come.  It’s a relief in many ways.  I get to finally shave off the mess on my face.  I can have less dinners that look like dog food and the self inflicted pressure I have been putting on myself to get to this point can be relaxed a bit.  Last night I took my pictures for the Spartan Halloween contest.  Some of them are pretty decent.  Today I need to do some photoshopping to them so I appear to be in the middle of a Greek battlefield instead of our bedroom.

My vball buddy Jeremy reads my blog pretty regularly and sometimes will comment on it.  Unfortunately he makes his comments through my Facebook page so the comments are only visible via Facebook.

So anyway, Jeremy commented on yesterday’s entries.  He found my run in with the guy at the gym comical but noted that I probably could have taken steps to defuse the situation, presumably being more apologetic or whatever.  He’s probably right, I probably could have done that but there is no way I would have.  I am the type that will very rarely initiate hostility or conflict. However, if someone initiates it with me, a switch flips and I will not back down, to a fault I’m sure.

Jeremy also asked if I had looked into some of the Loose Change debunking information.  The answer is yes.  I read the entire Popular Mechanic article that supposedly addressed the majority of the questions.  After seeing the film I realized that it actually didn’t address nearly all of them.  basically what I read were scientific scenarios to explain certain aspects of the disaster.  What they don’t account for is all of the eyewitness accounts that depict occurrences that would point to the Loose Change conclusion.  I also saw nothing that explained why there was no 757 wreckage found at the Pentagon or the “crash site” of flight 93.

  Speaking of flight 93, did you know that in 2001 it was nearly impossible for a person to make a cell phone call from a plane with the technology that was in place? A study placed the odds of a successful call going out at like one half of one percent, yet supposedly there were all of these cell calls placed from the plane.

In the video of the towers collapsing, Loose Change points out that you can see small explosions blowing out windows below as the buildings start to fall.  Debunkers say this was because of air pressure from the floors above pancaking down.  There are two things that make me not believe that.  First, if it was air pressure why would only small sections of windows break out instead of the pressure popping windows throughout the floors?  Second some of those explosions were 30 or 40 floors BELOW the collapsing area.  Air pressure would not be blowing out the windows that far down. 

Loose Change Final Cut will be released November 11 th.  You can bet I will be downloading that one as well.  It seems that the real evil here isn’t necessarily from W. He is just a puppet figurehead that is dumb enough to be the front man for the powerful people in government that lie at every opportunity to further their agendas.  Watch the documentary, please.

Just in case you didn’t think I was taking my Spartan Halloween contest seriously, here is what I ate last night.  A family size pack of tuna mixed with a few chips for crunch, a glass of ice water and a fruit smoothie made of bananas, frozen blueberries, raspberries and a scoop of protein powder. That’s it.

Last night’s Heroes episode was ok, nothing all that dramatic went down.  I really don’t quite get how Syler is still alive and furthermore how he somehow lost his powers, at least for now.  It’s funny how they killed off Suluu from the show but immediately replaced him with Uhura, the lady that was the communications officer in Star Trek.  There are so many “heroes” on the show now it is nearly impossible to keep track of them all.  Many of the episodes simply don’t have some of the characters in it.  It would be tough to maintain storylines on a dozen characters in a one hour show with 20 minutes of freakin commercials.

I added a “Most Viewed” thinger in the side bar that lists the 10 most viewed posts.  I have to scratch my head when I look at some of them.  Not sure why they would be popular.

I knocked a full 3 minutes off my 300 time from Monday.  F, I was a tired, smelly, sweaty mess afterwards.  I piled on the deodorant and shower to shower afterwards.

Jeremy and I normally talk back and forth about our fitness routines.  He has been intrigued by my 300 routine and has even tried it once or twice himself.  On Friday I was describing the various exercises and how with some of them I pause to take small 10-15 second breaks in the middle of them.  I told him how I was only 16 reps from that magical 300 I have been working towards since the beginning of April. He suggested that I should just throw in whatever additional rest I needed and add those last 16 reps in and then just work at getting the time down from there.  After a brief pause, I agreed, I should do that! Today I did.

My energy level was not high due to a weekend of hard work.  My shoulders were especially tired. It didn’t matter, I had my goal laid out.  Just as I was getting my stuff ready, I was annoyed to see the trainer the gym employs back in my room, stealing my Reebok steps for his “client”, a young girl he does nothing but flirt with the entire time he is training her.  He is the worst trainer I ever have seen at the gym.  With this cute young girl he flirts constantly and is very attentive.  However when I have seen him with other people like older folks and fat guys he acts totally disinterested and just directs them to machines and tells them to do some reps while he looks around the room, checks his phone, etc… He is really bad.

Well anyway I knew there was going to be an issue when I got to the box jump/floor wiper sections of my routine since I use the steps for both of them.  I started the torture anyway.  When It was time to do the box jumps they were still on the steps so I mixed up the order of the exercises for the first time ever.  I did the one handed clean and presses after push ups. By the time I got done with those, which were a mighty struggle with my tired shoulders, the happy couple had moved on to other things.  I grunted out 50 box jumps and then set up for the wipers.  I threw in one extra mini-break to get to 50 reps.  Sweat was running down my arms as I finished.  All that was left were the last 25 pull ups.  

I was so tired already, I was taking an extra long break before starting.  I knocked out 15, dropped off the bar and rested for a bit.  I hopped back on and was able to get another 5 before the muscles started seizing so I dropped off again.  Another panting rest period and then back on the bar to get the last 5 reps. 296, 297, 298, 299, 300! I stopped the watch which read a disappointing 30:32 but I didn’t care all that much.  The routine got thrown out of whack from the lousy trainer so I think I would have easily been sub 30 if things went normally.  It felt good to hit the number, the number that 7 months ago seemed impossible to hit when I struggled to squeak out 156 reps.  Damn, I finally did it. Now I just have to get my time down.

I plan to continue on doing the 300 for the foreseeable future.  I like the changes in my body since implementing it.  As tough as it is, the effort is worth the satisfaction of completing the routine.  I like the looks from people at the gym, wondering what the hell the hairy faced guy back in the corner is doing. 

I have had an impressive run as an early Alzheimer’s candidate this week, I have been forgetting things like mad.  So far this week I have forgottten:

My gym shorts
My watch to take to the gym
My water bottle
My gym towel
My keys to my office

Impressive huh?

Today’s 300 results are up. Two notable numbers.  I finally got my 25th pull up on the first set and my 284 reps is a new personal best.

Well I firmly stepped into my commitment for the Spartan Halloween contest by ordering my costume today.  The costume is only one part of the prep.  Starting next week I plan to begin my all October long ritual of not shaving.  I also plan to make a significant reduction in my carb intake to lean out as much possible as well as pick up the intensity on my non-300 workout days.  I need to get the abs showing as much as possible since I’m not going to develop tree trunk arms in 30 days. Yes I know, there is no real point in all of this, no real payoff except whatever self satisfaction I derive from it.  Sometimes that is enough.