DarqByte

I’ve never really worked out on a regular basis. I’ve tried in the past for different stretches of time, but ultimately I’ve never been successful at it. The only times I’ve ever lasted any amount of time is when I got to work out with Laura. But with her early-morning schedule of working out conflicting with my work hours, I can’t join her in the morning.

So this month I thought I was making decent enough progress on losing weight that I might actually hit 175 pounds by February 1st. That’s not looking like it’s going to happen, with only even a couple of days late last week that killed some progress I’d made. Apparently my margin for error on losing weight is very small now, so there’s almost no way for me to continue losing weight with what my willpower looks like.

Couple that with the fact that I do generally want to be in better shape, and you’ve got the recipe for me to attempt to work out again. Now keep in mind losing weight via a proper diet and working out are two separate things. You can work out and not really lose weight. But in combination, they can actually work to help you lose even more weight and to get into better shape.

I started working out again last night at the UNLV gym. Being a student I can use the facilities for free, so I gave it a shot last night after my last class ended at 8:15pm. Yeah, that’s kinda late, especially since I get up for work at 6am and only have any kind of a break from 4pm-5:30pm, the time between when work ends and my first class begins. So it was a long, filled day.

But it went well. I’m a bit tired and slightly sore today, which means I pushed my body a bit, which is what you need if you’re trying to get into better shape and lose weight. All I really did was this elliptical-type machine, I don’t know what exactly it was. What I do know is that it required a bit of endurance and some leg strength in muscles I don’t normally use. I was sweaty and tired afterwards.

I’m going to vary my routine up, hitting different equipment at different times. I do want to do some weight training as well, but I need to figure out what muscles I want to focus on and when. In weight training, I’ve learned that you need to leave a day between times when you work out the same muscles, so if I do my upper body one day, I shouldn’t do them the next day. I think this’ll work to my advantage, since I want to combine cardio and fat burn with strength training. Oh, and I need to make sure I work out my abs, since that’s where most of my fat is.

Basically, my workout routine will be on weekdays. I can’t see myself heading up to UNLV on the weekends to work out, since Laura can’t go there, it’s far enough from my house that driving there to work out isn’t palatable, and I’d be taking up time I could be spending with Laura. My schedule will be:

Monday: After work ends at 4pm
Tuesday: After class ends at 8:15pm
Wednesday: Indoor soccer
Thursday: If indoor soccer starts 9pm or later, then indoor soccer. Otherwise, after class ends at 8:15pm
Friday: After work ends at 4pm

All of these times are pretty convenient for me in terms of distance from my last activity of the day and not overlapping with potential Laura time much. I get off of work before Laura does, so working out immediately afterwards doesn’t impact seeing her much. Indoor Soccer overlaps with her church choir practice. The only day that gets impacted much is Thursdays.

So today is day 2. Not sure what exactly I’ll be doing yet. Probably some weight training of some sort and maybe ending with a small dose of cardio.

34 inches? I know what you’re thinking about but no, I’m not talking about that. 34 would be selling myself way short anyway.

The latest chapter in my whole “make myself look and feel better” thing has arrived. I’ve been putting off getting new clothes mainly because I wanted to complete my weight loss first. I didn’t want to have to buy a bunch of clothes in a stopgap fashion. Unfortunately, my last two pairs of jeans bit the dust, so I was forced to replace them. They were Levi’s, and they were built rather well. The only problem was that it was tough to find 38-30s that weren’t below my heels. They weren’t truly 30s so I kept stepping on them and wearing down the bottom of the pant legs. For the record, I really needed 37s, not 38s. They don’t make 37s.

Now I’m in 34s! 34-30s and they aren’t too long. This makes me a very happy person. I’ve lost at least 30 pounds and 3 inches off of my waist. Good stuff. I’ve recently begun making progress again and I anticipate hitting the 175 mark by the end of this month or early February. That would be 35 pounds off since I started nearly a year ago. I think my target is 160, but I won’t really know until I get there.

I recently looked at photos of me when I went to just the mustache, the Robstache. Wow I’ve lost weight since then. I do look better. Still got further to go. Additionally, I’m going to try to start running in the mornings with Pepper (and potentially Laura). I was supposed to start this week, but being excessively tired when my alarm went off put the kabash on things. Hopefully I’ll start tomorrow.

And if I do start tomorrow, wow what a day it will be. Today I start my next semester of MBA courses. In 50 minutes, actually. I’m in Lied Library right now. But because my classes are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’ve signed up to play soccer on Wednesdays. I was originally waffling on the decision, but Laura’s support for me switching days and the fear of getting really out of shape spurred me to sign up. In any case, tomorrow’s my first Wednesday day of soccer on a new individual coed team, and for some odd reason we have two games tomorrow… What the fuck. Two games? A doubleheader? I’ve done it before, but by choice not by facility scheduling. Running in the morning plus two soccer games in the evening. Wow.

And that’s not the end of it! I told my Thursday soccer team I’d make the games if they were late enough, which is basically 9pm or later. So the 9:10 game this Thursday? Yup, I can make that. And I’m hoping to run on Thursday morning as well. Which would make three runs (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) and three soccer games from Wednesday morning to Friday morning. Wow. See why I think I’ll hit 175 this month?

In other news, I wish I had endless time to do everything I want to do. Not only am I trying to find time to work on OMGN 4, I want to write a memoir about my video game life until, well, now. I think it would be very interesting because I don’t think there’s much of anything like that out now. And I’m a pretty good example of someone who gamed a lot when they were a kid and make the transition to being a responsible (well, at least I think so) adult with a married life and a job and other normal responsibilities.

This brings me to another subject: video games. Specifically, the original Atari joystick. See, my friend Jonathan recently got a tattoo in Elvish from Lord of the Rings. He loves it and I’ve always wanted a tattoo and I’ve always loved video games. I wasn’t 100% set on what tattoo I wanted but I knew I wanted a video game-related one, especially after seeing Anne’s roommate Ed’s “Mario 1up” tattoo he’s got. See, I didn’t want a tattoo that was system- or franchise-specific, I wanted one that represented video games as a whole. Now I know the Atari joystick is still Atari, but it represents so much more than that these days. And I’m asking Jonathan to give me a nice illustration of it so I can verify I indeed want to get it permanently marked on my body.

Laura’s been making sure I really want one, and I do. I am, however, curious to know what you all think of it…

Anyway, that’s it for now. Chat at you all later when I know more about my spring courses and I can let you know if I think I’ll be on track to continue my pursuit of a 4.0.

I’ve been in a bloggy mood lately, so here we go with another round of updates in my mundane life. Maybe I’ll post something other than “here’s what happened!” soon, but who knows. Occasionally I like to have posts like my PHP Soap Timeout post, so maybe I’ll come up with something awesome like that soon. But for now, all you get is life updates.

Arizona

I didn’t mention this before here on my blog, although I did mention it on Twitter and Facebook, but I decided to head down to Arizona for my grandparents’ Christmas Eve party. My grandfather had some health issues this year and I didn’t want to miss a guaranteed time when I’d be able to see him around Christmas. I don’t know how much time he has left with us, be it a few months or fifteen more years (I hope it’s even longer than this!).

In any case, Laura was unable to accompany me on the trip. I took off a half-day on Christmas Eve to make the drive down after I got off of work on the 23rd. My work only had a half-day scheduled for the 24th, so I only had to take off 4 hours. My Dad met me here at work when I got off at 4 and we set off for the Phoenix/Mesa area, replete with gifts and items we’d need to survive the harsh Arizona desert… Rather, clothes and toiletries.

We decided to pit-stop in Boulder City to say hello to Laura. She wasn’t expecting us to drop by before we got out of town, but BC is literally on the route to Phoenix from Vegas, and the diversion from the US-93 to her office isn’t very far. She was happy to see us and we chatted for a bit before finally heading out.

The drive was mostly uneventful. We got held up at the dam for awhile because there were quite a few people driving out south on US-93 and there are security checks at the dam. It took us about 20-25 minutes to get through the checkpoint, then we were off to the races. We didn’t end up behind very many slow people.

There was a point in Wickenburg where US-93 ends and that section was totally rebuilt and included two traffic circles. My Dad was leading the way and hadn’t encountered the rebuild before, so there was a little stopped-in-the-circle action before he figured out what direction was what. Apparently, he also needed to fill up in Wickenburg and he’s got a Chevron card, so he was originally going to stop and get gas there. Unfortunately, his regular Chevron had become a Shell station, so he ended up skipping it. Once we were on the AZ-74, he called me up to use my GPS or iPhone to find the nearest Chevron. We ended up hitting up a Chevron at our connection point from the AZ-74 to the I-17.

The rest of the drive was all highways inside the metro area basically until we got to my grandparents’ place. Once we got there, we unloaded a few things, talked with my grandma for a bit, then headed to bed.

Note: I just noticed I’m already over 500 words. I have three topics to cover and I’m only about 1/4 through the first topic… Are you ready for a much longer read?? I sure am!

The next day was obviously eventful as it was Christmas Eve! The day of the party, the day I’d finally get to see a lot of my Dad’s side of the family that I never get to see. The morning started off slow, with my Dad, my grandma, my cousin Cody and myself all talking about stuff and whatnot. Cody’s still pretty young so I guess he didn’t talk much, rather than act like a kid, but hey. I ended up playing a game of Stratego with him, and he’s pretty good. I haven’t really ever played before and he had some good tactics.

My cousin Dani showed up a bit after noon. She’s turning 18 on New Year’s Eve this year, and holy crap she got tall. Not quite as tall as me, but taller than Laura. We didn’t have a whole lot going on at the time because my Dad was puttering around on his laptop and my grandma was cooking up food for the party that evening. She suggested for Dani and I to go catch a movie, so we did. Ended up seeing The Blind Side. Good flick, I particularly enjoyed it.

Even though I had my iPhone and the GPS in the Prius, I decided to just follow Dani to her place so I could see her parents earlier than they would have made it to the party. Mark & Ricki, I hadn’t seen them in quite some time either, so it was really nice to see them. Mark’s lost quite a bit of weight, I’ve never seen him as light as he is now. I’m not sure how much, but I’m fairly certain it’s around 50 pounds.

Oh, did I forget to mention my grandma also lost over 50 pounds? She’s looking much better too. What is it with all of the weight loss in my family? Apparently my Dad is the only one gaining weight, haha. Love ya Dad.

So I helped them load up gifts and whatnot and we drove on back to my grandparents’ place. My grandfather was finally home from work when we got back, so I caught up with him for awhile. It was really good to, since he was the primary reason I decided to take this trip in the first place and miss Christmas Eve with Laura and potentially screw up time with her on Christmas.

My uncle Brad was also finally there, so we got to trade shots and banter around a bit. It was fun, he always is. He’s one of the four of us look-alikes: My grandfather, my Dad, Brad and me. I dare say I’m the best looking of the group!

The look-alikes! From left: Me, my grandfather, my Dad, Brad. Lower-right, my cousin Cody managed to get part of himself in the photo.

From there the party really started. My cousin Matthew and his wife Danielle showed up, and even he’s lost weight! 60 pounds! He officially weighs less than me, the first time in our lives that had ever happened. Unbelievable. He really looks different, being that light. He’s thinking of entering the police force in Phoenix or, if that doesn’t work out, he’ll see if the military will give him a job. I’d rather him be in the police force myself.

I apologize to the rest of the party attendants, but my short-term memory can be bad and in this case, I can’t remember who all else was there! I suck, I know. Oh, my great-grandma Sigourney was there as well. She’s still going strong, I can’t believe it. She’s in her 80s.

The white elephant gift exchange went well, I ended up walking away with three items. I originally nabbed this storage net you can mount to a wall. At one point during the exchange I mentioned that Laura would like this nice carafe that was out there. My aunt Ricki is the one who originally bought it, and she nabbed it at the end with the expressed purpose of getting it for me. She’s awesome. My grandma also had an ice cream bowl & toppings set she opened that never got stolen, and she let me have it because she knew Laura and I would like it and she wouldn’t use it. Interesting stuff. A few other small gifts were passed out and the party ended.

One thing I did discover during the party — my cousin Dani is a nut. She fits in with this family well. Dani and I have been messaging back and forth in Facebook for awhile now and I never realized just how much like the rest of us crazy people in my family she’s like.

Actually, she was my first recruit into getting my family to call me Robert, and she never slipped up once while I was down there. When I was younger, I went by Bob (and even further back, Bobby) and I’ve long been trying to get my family to make the switch and call me by what I want to be called, Robert (even Rob works, although I never introduce myself as Rob… still get called Rob more than Robert…). My aunt Ricki made an effort, so that was cool. My Dad was also making an effort.

Interestingly, my grandma had always wanted my older sister Katie and me to call her Gran. I had no idea until she mentioned it to me during the trip. Thus, I am now calling her Gran.

I got up at 3:30am Vegas time on Christmas and left at about 4:20am Vegas time. Arizona doesn’t participate in daylight savings time, so they share the Pacific time zone during the summer, and during the winger they share the Mountain time zone. So they were ahead at this point. I filled up my car to the brim with more gas before getting out of town, and I was off!

The drive up was again, relatively uneventful, but as I got closer and closer to Vegas I felt the pressure of making sure I got into town in time to shave, change and get to mass in a presentable manner. I was unkempt and didn’t have a change of good clothes with me, so I was trying to avoid driving straight to mass. So I sped, as we did speed going down to Arizona.

At one point, the US-93 was switching between a single road with a dividing line between north and south lanes and having a median between the two. During one stretch of the median, suddenly there was a car coming head-on at me! Thankfully, I was still barely inside a two-lane stretch so there was room around him, but if I had been about ten seconds further ahead, we would have met in a very narrow one-lane spot… Doofus. Needs to learn how to drive.

Getting through the dam at this point was a breeze. I ended up getting home at 9am with basically 30 minutes to shave & change and get out the door. I went a little longer than I wanted, leaving the house at 9:40, but I still got to mass with about 10 minutes to spare. Thus, Christmas had truly begun for me!

Ah, but wait! A note on miles-per-gallon for the trip for the Prius before I start section 2 for Christmas. Going down to Arizona I got about 48 MPG. Pretty good for highway driving in a Prius, it made me happy! But that should have been an omen. It turns out most of the driving down to Arizona is literally down. Downhill, that is. Driving back to Vegas is pretty much all uphill. I effectively got 36 MPG going back to Vegas, which is abysmal for a Prius. I actually had to fill the tank in Kingman to make it all the way back. It sucked.

Christmas

Note: over 1,800 words so far! Wow… Long.

Mass was good. It was a nice Christmas Mass. I got to sit next to Ron & Priscilla, Laura’s stepdad and mom. Laura sang cantor at Mass as she always does and had an excellent solo near the end. It actually elicited applause from the congregation, which isn’t really supposed to happen. Haha.

Laura and I headed back home after Mass to collect the gifts we needed to track back on over to the Waltons’ place and to change into non-Mass clothes. So we did all that and headed back out.

Opening gifts was fun. Laura got to open her new Amazon Kindle from me, which I wrapped in triplicate — I wrapped the Kindle and its cover, put it in a box, heavily taped that box and wrapped it, then put that box in another, heavily taped and wrapped again. It was pretty funny, if I do say so myself.

I had a pretty good haul myself. Got this new component shelf I was wanting for the bedroom so we could put an “entertainment center” in there with the TV I scored from work for $50. Laura got me this awesome new Harmony remote to replace the one downstairs and move the existing one to the bedroom. I need to customize the new one with a background image and a new font theme. Hells to the yeah! Other goodies came my way, such as a Bionicle Lego set, Left 4 Dead 2, The Hangover and more. I also got this nice cube of photos from Katie and my other Parkers up in upstate New York, which was totally awesome. I love hand-made gifts.

We transitioned to dinner, which was excellent as always. Unfortunately, the Waltons don’t get the NFL Network, so I kept up with the Titans-Chargers game online via the NFL’s website. Unfortunately for the Titans and their playoff hopes, it wasn’t a very merry Christmas and they got handled, so no playoffs this year. Maybe next year, we’ll see.

Speaking of Christmas sports, the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels had a basketball game against USC. Unfortunately for them as well, they lost, bringing their non-conference record to 12-2. That’s a pretty good record and I think they’ll make some noise in the Mountain West Conference this season. I think, unless they totally implode, they’ll make the NCAA tournament this year, making it three times in four years. Getting back to where the program needs to be!

After dinner we just sat and talked and watched TV. Ron and Laura read books from their Kindles and Julia worked on her Christmas gift to her boyfriend Alex. Laura and I got sleepy, so we headed home to get some sleep.

Cleaning

We didn’t end up going to bed right away. Our house was an absolute disaster at this point. Neither of us had any time to keep things clean and neat while we were both getting Christmas gifts ready for people and I was prepping to head out to Arizona, so the place was very messy. I ended up doing a little tidying up and organizing and breaking down boxes while Laura read a bit more on her Kindle. Then we headed to bed.

The 26th wasn’t a day for straight cleaning. I still did a bit here and there throughout the day, but we had a lot going on that didn’t involve cleaning. Laura had breakfast with her friend David, we both had lunch with some of my old friends from high school and we had dinner with her parents at White Chocolate Grill. Tasty goodness, I had this great penne alfredo. Afterwards, we came home and I hooked up our new bedroom “entertainment center.” It contains the TV I bought from work, as well as a Blu-Ray player and DirecTV HD receiver I got from Best Buy (using gift cards from both the Tuckers and Waltons) while Laura was having breakfast with David. To mount the component shelf on the wall, I used this new DeWalt 14.4V drill I got with a Lowe’s gift card my Dad got for me. The drill was very nice, but some of the studs in my house are so difficult to screw into that I actually have to use slightly shorter screws…

I got all that setup and reconfigured our old Harmony remote from downstairs for the new system upstairs, and voila! I’m particularly happy about the Blu-Ray player, as it can connect to Netflix, Pandora and YouTube. So we can now also watch Netflix streaming in the bedroom off of the Blu-Ray player, while downstairs we do that using the Xbox 360. We can’t use Pandora downstairs, so that’s a plus. Although I’m sure I could find a way to stream Pandora downstairs if I wanted to, maybe via a laptop or something. Maybe I will…

Thus, the 27th! Cleaning day! Collected all of our trash, including the now-empty boxes from our new components and gifts. Broke down the rest of our Amazon boxes and stored those and the packing materials away. Cleaned off the living room and dining room tables, put all of our new gifts away, stored our wrapping materials (well, what’s left of them). Cleaned some straggler dishes, put the previously-clean ones sitting int he dishwasher away. Tidied up the bedroom slightly, but there are still some straggler clothes in there. Did cable management on the new “entertainment center” in the bedroom. Took the closet door off (we’re replacing it with a curtain, it got in the way of some racks of clothes and was more of a bother than anything useful). Cleaned up and organized both the library and loft. The library had my bin of cables and technology parts strewn about because I needed to find cables for the components in the bedroom, so that was a chore. Vacuumed downstairs and upstairs, dealt with piles of mail, dealt with piles of stuff to shred.

We still haven’t gotten the empty boxes and non-food trash bags out of the house. Our trash days are Tuesday and Friday and our trash bins were already 100% full, so there’s nowhere outside to put the new trash. We’re taking it to the curb tonight, thankfully.

Hmm… Anything else? Might be, but trust me, that list I just gave you took quite a long time to do. We ended up having people over in the evening, so we were happy we got all of that squared away. We still need to do hard floor cleaning and some dusting and have a new, smaller stack of things to shred, but other than that I think our house actually looks good again.

Anything else you want to know about my four-day weekend? Oh, I’m pending some more CD/DVD/BD jewel cases because we’re really low and I’ve got paintable cable covers for the bedroom coming soon so that’ll look better. Phew. And I need to cut down our coaxial satellite cable, because it’s too long and it’ll look bad because I can’t figure out how to make it look goo otherwise.

Hmm… I do still have a Home Depot card to use…

Over 3,000 words! WTF!

So it’s the end of the year, and you know what that means! Yes, it means final exams at the end of my first MBA semester and self evaluations at work!

Food Poisoning

Unfortunately, it also means I got food poisoning… Not that it happens every year around this time. The last time this happened, Laura was either a Copy Editor or the News Editor for The Rebel Yell back when we were both in our undergrad studies at UNLV. That time was really awful, this one was just as bad.

To be truly honest, I’m not sure 100% that it was indeed food poisoning, just as back then I’m not sure what it was either. All I know is that I couldn’t keep any food or water down for very long and there were times (specifically, when I wasn’t keeping said food or water down) that I felt I was going to die. Not the most remarkable experience ever. Thus, I had to stay home from work yesterday, which I didn’t want to do, but hey… Not much I could do about it. I was pretty incapacitated.

Hell, I even considered playing some Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 that Laura got for me as a just-because surprise gift (She rocks! Love her!), but I couldn’t focus or concentrate enough to even do that. So I just laid on the couch, intermittently sleeping and “watching” TV and trying to eat and failing.

Today, though, I’m mostly back to normal. Still don’t feel quite right, but I can eat & drink and operate like a regular human being again. I anticipate tomorrow being 100% again.

Final Exams

So enough about food poisoning! Let’s address final exams. Rather, final exam. Just one this time around.

My Organizational Behavior class was structured with an optional final. This means that if you ended up with a decent grade, you shouldn’t take the final simply because if you do worse on the final than the grade you had going into it, you could seriously damage your grade. Thus, I checked my grade. Yeah, with that big beaming A staring me in the face, I’m not taking the final. Boo-yah!

So I only have one final then, and that’s Stats. Ugh. Not the class I want to be taking a final in. I’ve been doing alright in there and I have a shot at an A, it seems, but my group project needs to be pretty solid and I need to get roughly a C or so on the final to get the A. I think I can do it, and I really want to. I’m aiming to have the best grades of my educational career in the MBA program. So far I’ve accomplished bettering my grades at every level, having gotten a 3.4 (unweighted) in high school and a 3.56 in undergrad. If I can better that getting my MBA, then you could say I get better with age.

Self Evaluation

So it’s the end of the year and self evaluations are floating around work. That doesn’t really make me the happiest man on the planet, as I get to sift through an entire year’s worth of work to figure out what I’ve done well, what I haven’t and to note any accomplishments. That, and I’m not particularly good at being assertive and promoting myself very well.

These are things I’ve been working on improving in myself lately, with some mixed success. I figure this self evaluation will be one of my first opportunities to be more assertive and sell myself better within the company. I still haven’t moved up and I want to, so this is a prime opportunity to voice that.

I’m also never really sure how to rate myself. I never have been, really. Like when asked what my level of experience is with different technologies, such as HTML, CSS, PHP, Java, etc. I never know what to say beyond Intermediate. I want to say Expert, but when I say Expert, I take that as meaning I’m leaps and bounds better than your average programmer with those skills and technologies. When I say I’m an expert at something, I intend to convey that I’m THE FUCKING MAN.

Indeed, that feeds into my assertiveness and self promotion. I really should give myself more credit than I usually do. I know that I’m an integral, vital part of my department here at work and that a lot of the stability here is due to me (and my tremendous boss Randy Kochis, to be sure).

I do feel that since I’ve got such an effective boss that I’m a bit overshadowed and get pigeonholed too easily. I just feel that it’s difficult to really shine in my department here at work because Randy is so good at what he does and can take on more and more responsibilities easily. He’s actually one of the people I’m trying to model some of my career after, not a bad example if I do say so myself.

So yeah, my whole point here is that self evaluations are around again and I just hope I don’t over- or under-value myself too much this year. The first year I did these I undervalued myself pretty badly when compared to my superiors’ evaluations of me, and last year I overvalued myself just slightly…

Maybe I’m just destined to be a code monkey the rest of my life??

Unfortunately, OMGN has languished over the last couple years. Really, it’s been in the doldrums since the summer of 2005 when we hit up E3.  That was a fun time, let me tell ya.

I’ve been working on a new database structure and recoding for OMGN over the last 4 months. I still have a long ways to go, but I’m hoping that OMGN4, which is what I’m calling the new system, will work very well. The new codebase is much better and more modern, the database design is also much better and streamlined. And the new design in the works is shaping up nicely so far.

I’m really at a crossroads for what to do with the existing content on the site. I keep flipping back and forth on whether or not I want to retain existing content when migrating to the new site. And if I do retain existing content, what to retain.

See, I’m transitioning OMGN to a more fully-fledged video game information website. No more exclusive focus on small-market games, more professional writing and content management systems, better design, etc. A lot of the stuff in OMGN that exists now is either outdated, not even real video game content or just plain bad. The URLs are all going to change and I’m stripping the new site of a lot of functionality that existed before.

I’m just not sure where to go. There’s some content on the site that I kinda want to retain, such as some of the newer reviews of games, like Shadow Complex. But there’s just so much junk in the old data and issues with old URLs to new URLs and functionality lost, I think the new site might just be brand-new and clean. I’m just not sure what I want to do yet.

Please, this time I want your feedback and ideas.

Alright folks, I’m finally here with Halloween 2009 pics! As you all know by now, my quest to have Laura and I dress as Dr. Mrs. The Monarch and The Monarch, respectively, from Venture Bros. came to be. She finally acquiesced and we coordinated with two people to get our costumes built. Andy Taylor built my eyebrows and our crowns, while Ardath Painter handled virtually everything else, including my wings. She did a tremendous job!

So without further ado, here’s the pics! I’ll make sure these make their way onto Facebook as well.

Me! As The Monarch.

Another me!

They wanted to get a full shot at my work.

Looking villainous!

One of The Monarch's favorite poses -- ordering his minions into battle!

My wings are up for once! That's Jane in the back with the assist.

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for… Laura’s costume! Dr. Mrs. The Monarch!

The Monarch and Dr. Mrs. The Monarch! Hotness on the left!

Another shot of the two of us. Although I'm trying to be villainous again.

Alright, so here’s a couple of just Laura. Sorry there aren’t more, because she was totally hotter!

Formerly Dr. Girlfried...

Yeah, she's hot.

So I seriously can’t stress enough how awesome of a job Ardath did on these things! Tremendous, I think they came out very, very well. We were very happy with them. Andy has mentioned to us that we should wear them to Comic Con this next year, but I doubt it’ll happen. Too many issues involved with that, but it would be pretty hot nonetheless.

Also, there are a few more pics that I don’t have in yet, so here in the future I may either add them to this post or just make a new one… I’ll probably make a new one.

[Update 1]

Ok, so those extra pics I was telling you about, here they are!

Laura and Jane.

Us again! I look old.

I have no idea how this happened, but it's kinda hotter with the gun. And even more villainous!

So I’ve been struggling over the course of the last… hell, five months, with continuing to lose weight. Laura and I have been losing weight and dieting since sometime in February, I think, and Laura’s hit her mark and actually gone under it a bit. Me, on the other hand, I never really set a mark to meet. I’ve been more interested in shrinking my man-jugs and belly.

The first 20 pounds went relatively easy, actually. I dropped from 210 to 190 pretty quick, by early May. It was a cinch, essentially. But the last 10 have been hell so far. In May, Laura and I took a trip to San Francisco and I regained my larger appetite as well as lost some of my willpower to eat properly during that trip, and it’s been haunting me since. It took forever to lose another 5 pounds to hit 185.

Well, I’ve recently rediscovered my willpower and lower appetite, or so I hope. And today I stepped on the scale, and despite eating a poor lunch yesterday, it read:

179.7!!

Man oh man. The last 5 pounds were tougher than the first 20, but they were easier than going from 20-25, so I think I have some momentum. I’ve also identified that I think I’ll end up at the 160-165 range, which means I have another 15-20 pounds to go. But since I’ve already lost 30, I’ve lost at least 60% of the weight I need to lose already, which means I’m definitely more than halfway there. I just need to keep working at it! It’s tough, avoiding all those Pizookies…

In other news, I’m on Facebook and Twitter a lot, so if you’re looking for the random day-to-day stuff that doesn’t warrant a full blog post, check me out there to keep up with me.

I began my technological career with a job in technical support. I used to work for CSN (called CCSN back then, for Community College of Southern Nevada). I was a lab assistant, where I helped college students with their computer issues. Scanning a picture, email not loading, basically anything that a paying college student needed help with on the computers.

This is a similar start in tech support for just about any techie. Almost all of us have a job doing tech support at some point, and it’s usually one of the first jobs that a techie will have, since it’s an entry-level-type position.

I moved on from that job after about 2 1/2 years to start my first programming job. So I’d progressed in my career to doing what I really wanted to do, and I didn’t have to do tech support anymore. This made me very happy, as tech support isn’t something very many people enjoy. In fact, a lot of techies hate it. I’m now in my second programming job and have been programming for over 5 years professionally now, 9 years personally. I’m also pursuing my MBA.

So why do people still consider me their tech support? Most of the people these days that consider me their personal tech support never knew me in my lab assistant capacity, although Robert Silas (a friend of mine) first met me when I started as a lab assistant, and I still help him with computer things from time to time. I did earlier this week, actually. But he’s an exception because I’ve known him so long and have been helping him for years.

But seeing as most people that ask me for tech support these days never knew me back then, it stands to reason that they assume I’m good at tech support because I’m into computers and am a programmer. Fine, in my case, that’s a valid assumption. But it doesn’t always hold true. I’ve known plenty of computer-savvy people that weren’t good with the people side of tech support. And there are some programmers that really just aren’t very good at general tech support.

So this is starting to irritate me. I apologize if you feel that you, the reader, are the reason I’m posting this particular post on my blog, but this feeling has just been accumulating within me. I really don’t like the fact that friends and family will often just assume that if they have a computer issue, they can call me up whenever to ask me to look at the issue or run things by me in a call. Often, this advice I give is free, and sometimes the actual work on a computer I’ll do is free.

But do you really think that a professional programmer and MBA student wants to do tech support all of the time? I get paid well as a programmer and tech support does not pay nearly as well, especially since people come to me because they don’t want to go pay the outrageous fees that Geek Squad charges, which means they’re expecting me to cut them a deal. My time is worth money, and doing tech support is underpaying me for my time.

Really, what bothers me is people asking if I’m busy on any given night because they need tech support help. I had that asked of me today, actually. And yes, I am really damn busy today. Today is a mega-busy day for me. I have a doctor’s appointment, work, an MBA career services appointment, Julia’s birthday dinner and, depending on how long dinner goes, indoor soccer (unlikely, unfortunately). So yes, I’m busy tonight and cannot be at your beck and call to fix your computer issue, the third one you’ve had this year.

I’m not trying to come across as a jackass here, but I just want people to understand that techies get irritated at being asked for tech support all the time, especially if that’s not their professional field (like me), and especially if they’re busy. I’m curious to see what happens when I’m a technological manager someday (yes, I’m assuming it will happen, but hey, I will get my MBA!).

That’s like asking some manager at a GM plant to come over and work on your car. Seriously folks, that’s what that would be like.

In any case, I’m not averse to helping friends and family with tech support issues, especially not averse to helping family. Just don’t assume that I have all this free time lying around to help you get that virus off your computer, and don’t assume that I have to help you out of the goodness of my heart and get paid very little. It’s not fair to me.

[Update 1]

After a comment from Andrew, I need to amend this article. Well, really, just make sure to read the comments!

[Update 2]

Some people are confused as to what I’m talking about in this post. Don’t be alarmed! If you’re a totally cool person that appreciates any help I give you and tries to pay me back in some or other (even if it’s just, say, lunch), then I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about people that take advantage of the fact that they know me and that I know technology, yet never really offer me anything in return, despite repeatedly asking for help.

Really, I’m just irritated at people that use and abuse my kindness. Most people don’t.

Sorry I haven’t posted more lately. I’ve just been so busy with work & school and trying to retain my sanity that I haven’t had much time to think about what to talk about, besides being so busy.

Oh! I nearly forgot to mention… Laura has agreed to my Halloween plans! This is going to be awesome.

I’ll talk more later. At least, I’ll try to!