Less of Me

It is officially the weekend and I’ve made my trip out to get sausage rolls once more.  We have a bunch of stuff to do to get ready for my wife going out of town for a week..  So I am assuming that I really need to speed my way through this mornings blog post, so we can get on with that stuff.  Additionally I forgot to pick up the cleaners on the way home… so we have to go do that as well.  I’ve had breakfast at this point, showered, and had a 5 hour energy… so I am ready to confront anything.

Less of Me

This morning is a pretty monumental day for me.  Not the date or anything about the day itself… but the fact that I weighed this morning and I am at my lowest point since I can remember.  Back in 2003 we went on a pretty epic diet and were extremely successful with it.  However we went on a cruise… and with in ability to really watch what we eat we fell completely off the bandwagon.  We maintained a decent weight until a death in the family, then we completely fell apart.  At that point we lost all the progress we made and then some.

Last year as a new years resolution we attempted to get back on the wagon… but for reasons that I honestly cannot remember the fell off the wagon again.  The first week in march this year we started a new, and treated it as a completely new process.  We have not been doing much of anything special, other than just religiously keeping track of our food intake.  The process has finally reached a point where it is ingrained in our nature now.  For once I feel like I am not really missing anything, and I have been able to log the food without actually feeling shame about what I am eating.  If I eat something expensive calorie wise, I can still be okay with being under for the week.

This new view towards food and out intake has really paid off.  The reason why today is so monumental is the fact that as of this morning we are on week 14 and I have lost 42 pounds since starting.  That is an average of 3 pounds per week, which has been a fairly breakneck process.  There have been so many changes as a result of this.  In general I feel better about myself, and I think the result has been my willingness to continue to blog daily… and open up more about myself.  I will never be small, it is just not a thing in the cards for me.  I come from a family of big people, but I can be smaller.  The stupid thing is… the only thing I really want is the ability to wear geeky t-shirts…  which is ironic that they don’t really make those in big and tall sizes.  You can get them in big sizes… but at 6’4” there will never be a time at which I do not require that T added onto whatever size I wear.

Survivalism

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Last night I spent some more time with the  survivals of State of Decay.  I have to say the more I play the game the more I love it.  This game really tweaks whatever instinct there is in me that comes out when I play Fallout and Skyrim.  I was given a task of meeting up with some other survivors at a church…  the objective was marked on my map… but I had hell bringing myself to keep driving the station wagon I had pilfered past all the houses I could be clearing.  The whole “I wonder what is in that building over there” is so ingrained in me at this point.

The two big negatives I have encountered… and just personal ones.  First off… melee weapons will always be what I favor for ease of use and ability to keep from drawing extra attention with gunshots.  The only problem is melee weapons break super fast… I am really hoping that I either find a way to repair them… or find stronger melee weapons.  I have an assortment of guns, but since ammo is so limited I really don’t want to use them.  The second negative is that night is really dark… you can turn on a flashlight but it really doesn’t do much of anything to help you out.  It is really only effective when you are exploring a building during the night.

One resounding positive is the fact that I managed to successfully make my way to the church without a melee weapon at all.  I ended up just taking it very slowly and relying on kicks to finish off the zombies.  I am sure there would have been no way for me to deal with a horde of zombies… but so long as I took them on one at a time I could kick them down without much issue.  I found the flashlight extremely helpful as a way to draw attention to random shamblers that happened to be in my path.  I could flash them with the light, and get them to charge me… at which point me and my entourage finished the job.

So another huge thing I have to say about the game… is how gracious and personal the response from Undead Labs has been to the success so far.  I watched twitter for awhile yesterday afternoon… and sent my congratulations to Undead Labs for just how overwhelmingly positive the response has been.  Before I knew it I was being tweeted by Annie Strain… wife of Jeff Strain the founder of Undead Labs… thanking me for my kind words.  This has only made me want even more success for them… because that kind of personal touch is really unheard of these days.

It added a completely different dimension to this whole process… it feels very much like I am rooting for the little guy and when they win it feels like we win as well.  The game really is amazing, and so far I have only encountered a couple of bugs.  The entire experience is extremely polished and feels better than most traditional AAA release titles I have played.  If they can follow up with a PC release, multiplayer, and DLC content packs… I feel it will continue to be an amazing success.  The figures I saw floating around yesterday put it at just over 130,000 sales on the first day, which I believe puts it in the  top ten of XBLA releases.

Come Back Haunted

 

So another big thing that happened this week, is that the new Nine Inch Nails single has been released… Come Back Haunted.  This was a massive surprise since at one point Trent Reznor had said that Nine Inch Nails was essentially over.  The upcoming album is the aptly labeled “Hesitation Marks” which is scheduled for release September 3rd.  NIN will always have a special place for me, it is one of those projects that has been so much to me over the years.  There always seems to be something that speaks to me, regardless of which “Halo” we are listening to.  Every doubt, every fear, every indecision seems to be reflected somewhere in his library of songs.

I’ve been a loyal devotee since the Pretty Hate Machine days, and Down In It is still among my favorite songs.  This new era feels like a blending of everything that has come before, into a new sound…  almost retrospective.  More than anything it feels like a strong mix of the Downward Spiral era mixed with the Pretty Hate Machine.  Whatever it is, it feels fresh, vibrant and new… and I am in love with it.  I will be anxiously waiting for September when we can get the full Halo.  Here is hoping that a few more tracks get leaked in the process.

Wrapping Up

So in the name of full disclosure… I have been listening to Nine Inch Nails Year Zero while writing this mornings post.  I have found that if I listen to something, I can tune out the television and other background noise and focus on what I am writing easier.  The same thing goes for when I really need to crunch through  code at work… but in that case I tend to listen to movie and video game soundtracks.  Otherwise I find myself naming my variables after songs… the same way I named the SoD section above after a NIN song.  Anyways… I hope you all have a great day… and I hope we can find all the things needed to get my wife on her way this week.

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