A Letter to My Son

Hey Bud.

So it's been almost five weeks now, and while you're settling in quite comfortably in your new domain, I'm still wrapping my head around the fact that when I come home and say "Hey Family!" only three of the four of us are there. It's a time of transition for all of us, and so I thought I'd take a moment, at you set about to embark upon the great adventures that await you, to reflect a moment upon the virtual adventures we've shared.

Getting back into the Swing

Make no mistake, I haven't written much lately.  At all. When you've been blogging as long as I have, you know that there are times - weeks, months, somethings entire years, where it just doesn't strike ya, and you can't put pen to paper - figuratively speaking. Now typically, most bloggers will cap those periods off with renewed promises of increased activity.  It's like when you fall off your exercise program.  After some period of time has passed you begin anew with promises of This time - this time I'll make it stick! I personally try to avoid such promises. Namely because a huge pet peeve of my own is making promises and then breaking them.  I've always felt that no one really wants to read a post about how you're going to turn things around and start writing every day etc etc.  If you want to turn things around, then just do it. Start writing. But I've decided this time I'll allow myself my own exception, and make this post about posting. So here ya go. Breaking my own rules, and talking about things I would like to talk about. 

Exercise & Diet - Terrible Twins

So, by now I'm sure you guys are tired of me posting up exercise posts like I'm some sort of fitness freak.  But the truth is, I'm actually exactly the opposite of a fitness freak.  In fact, I struggle each and every time I have to decide whether or not I'm going to get in a workout for the day or not.  I wish I wasn't that person.  I actually do wish I was the kind of person that just did their daily or tri-weekly workout without a moment's thought - that it was as natural as eating.  I wish I was that person that, while even on vacation or on a business trip they sought out the hotel's weight room and was up at 5:30 am getting in their daily workout.  But no - I'm the person that while on vacation exercise is the furthest thought from my mind.  I'm all.. "Exercise!  Fuck that, I'm on vacation bitches!"  and that's the last thought of exercise that runs through my mind.  Which is why, I suppose, it actually makes it somewhat interesting to write about.

I have though, discovered something.  It's something that most everyone already knows, actually.  But as the great philosopher Morpheus once said.. "There is a difference, Neo, between knowing the path.. and walking the path".  As you probably already know, if you want to get back into some kind of sane human shape, you can't do it with just eating better, or just exercising, alone.  You have to do both.  Believe me I've tried - but exercise all you want, if you ignore your diet, you won't lose any weight.  At least I don't.  And vice versa, even if you successfully clean up your diet, without exercise, you still won't get the heart action you really need.  But the thing that I've discovered, is that one actually directly contributes to your ability to succeed in the other.

Here's what I mean.  I didn't exercise Friday.  Yap - blew it off.  Had a fine morning of leveling my protection warrior in WoW.  But as a result, I additionally felt almost no real motivation to watch my diet throughout the weekend.  So I threw down the beers, had 10,000 calorie pasta dishes on Friday night and Saturday night, and followed up with homemade pizza on Sunday.  Mmmmm.  The thing is, I probably had two weeks worth of normal person calories in three days.  It's a sure fire way back to 230 lbs, to be sure. This morning, despite a huge struggle, I actually somehow found the motivation to get back into the exercise room in front of the kinect and give it a 30 minute workout.  Not much, but it was something.  And the thing is, as I'm lumbering this 210 lb frame through butt-kicks and burpies, I'm thinking.. gawddamn.. this would be a helluva  lot easier if I didn't friggen weigh so much!  See?  One leads to the other.  If you actually can get a little exercise in, suddenly you're a bit more motivated to maybe skip that double package of Dolly Madison Swiss Roles at midnight.

Anyway, I'm writing this this morning to remind me of that motivation later, when I need it.  I dunno if I'll stay on my tri-weekly routine or not, but I need to.  I can't pretend to be even really very good at this, but I keep tellin' myself as long as I continue to try, then it has to be worth something.

Anyhoo.. hope your week shapes up to be a good one.  Peas Out!

Motivation

I remember now what it was that actually got me going on the last exercise program that lasted for more than 6 weeks.  I was watching this Iron Man competition.  And there were.. these 75 year old guys out there.. doing the friggen IronMan.  And they weren't doing like.. the senior citizens version of the Ironman, they were just doing the straight up normal competition.  And I got off my ass and I started working out, and I stayed with it through the better part of six months.

I fell off that program back in October.  And though I have pretty much every weekend since January told myself "Okay.. let's get back on this" I have so far failed to do so.  This morning I'm saying it again.  And I gotta admit, it's the Olympics that are my motivation.  I mean.. make no mistake, it's not like I have any delusions about Olympic grandeur, but every one of those kids out there is out there because they worked their asses off.  And not just for months -- but for years.  And they're kids.  And you just.. you have to appreciate where they are now. 

So this morning I'm motivated to get back on track with a couple of things.  I'm going to game less.  Not much less, but I'm going to make more room in my day for other things too.  I'm going to blog more.  I'm starting this morning, and my promise is to start putting out more, 15 minute blogs.  Because one of the reason I don't blog as much as I should is that any time I sit down it turns into a 2 hour endeavor, and who has time for that?  So I'm going to write a bit more, excersize a bit more, and try to round out the lifestyle a bit.  And if you're all nodding and smiling in empathy and commiseration and thinking "Yeah.. so we all say.." well I don't blame you one bit, and I'm doing a bit of that myself.  But hey, they way I see it, no matter how many times we quit, we only lose if we stop trying to start. 

Have a great monday! 

Someone's Stealing my Content

This'll be a short post.  When I stopped hosting this site on my own, and switched it over to blogger, I let the original domain name for the site expire.  It was immediately picked up by one of those domain name squatting companies.  No biggie I thought, it's not like I was making a huge amount of money off of the domain name.

But now I see that whoever is using the domain name is now also copying my blog content and reproducing it at their location.  Not all of my content, apparently, but they have some of my oldest articles, and they have my most recent article, complete with photos linked directly back to my blogger site.

I'm not sure exactly how to proceed.  I'm going to start with contacting the hosting company and asking them to cease and desist.  And if that doesn't work, maybe file a complaint with the DMCA.  If you have suggestions, thoughts, or comments, please feel free to comment below.

In the mean time, please update your links to the link above, and to delete any references you might have in Reader or anywhere else to the original domain name.  I actually discovered this yesterday when I noticed my twitter profile was still linking to the old original domain name, and I followed the link and discovered to my surprise most of my content.

An Update to this - 3/14/13

I left a message at the number listed at the domain registry asking the owner to take down the content.  Within minutes I received a text reply saying they would pull the content down today.  So there ya go. Hopefully they'll follow through, but I appreciated the quick reply, and am glad to see that people are willing to do the right thing.