Archive for September, 2005

30
Sep

Happy Sereniday!

Today is opening day for the Big Damn Firefly Movie “Serenity“. If you haven’t listened to me in the last four months telling you to watch Firefly before the movie you’re pretty much out of luck now, so just go watch the movie anyway.

It’s at 80% positive rating over at RottenTomatoes, so don’t just take my word for it.

We’ll be going to the 9:55 show (nobody wanted to see the 7:10) at Silvercity Mission tonight. Nobody responded to my callout for a shindig so it’s probably just Mel and myself.

23
Sep

Serenity Shindig

We’re now one measly week away from the Firefly Big Damn Movie, “Serenity”. I’ve seen it twice in unfinished previews, but as a card-carrying Browncoat I’m still excited as hell to see the movie in its completed form.

Planning for the Opening Night Shindig begins now. I’m certain it’ll be showing at the Mission Silver City Cinema (though movietickets.com has no listings anywhere yet) and we should get some mighty fine grub either before or after. It’s a Friday, so if most people head there after work they’ll be there in time for the early show, so we should eat afterwards.

If you’re joining us, post a comment here!

21
Sep

Medifast Completed

Update: Lots of people are finding this through Google while searching for Medifast.  This is my first Medifast run, my latest you can find here (I lost another 30 lbs!) 

I’ve finished my three month Medifast diet and the results have been phenomenal. I started exactly twelve weeks ago at 248.5 lbs and this morning I weighed in at 201.2 lbs. I graduated high school at 210 lbs! I haven’t been this thin for over twenty years!

That’s not to say I’m done this transformation. At around 200 lbs I still have about 20 lbs left to lose to be the right weight. I’m now weaning myself off of Medifast and on to real food, but I’m going to eat right and now ramp up the exercise. Tonight or tomorrow I’m going to the Chilliwack Aquatic Centre and renewing my membership. I’ll be hitting the cross-trainer there at least every two days, and probably more. In a few weeks I’ll start adding some weights to my program, and will be pretty much doing Body For Life again, though with my schedule I’m not sure now if I can actually do it as strictly as I should.

Ok, want to see the fatty I was next to the not-quite-so-fatty that I am? Here you go:

Crazy!

Here’s a quick animation I did between the beginning and ending poses:

And for those who give a crap, here’s the graph of my weight loss and body fat loss:

As the weight and body fat readings fluctuate (the big spikes in weight/bf on the graph are almost always right after my road hockey nights, showing the intense exercise does in fact not work well with the Medifast diet) so I’ve had Excel add in a standard line showing the average rate of decline. The dots are the actual readings.

16
Sep

Monk no longer

Well I gave him a few days to put it on his own blog that I made for him that he hasn’t used in ages, but I’m going to say a big “Congratulations” to my good buddy David Schneider for proposing to his girlfriend Rita. Apparently she was temporarily insane and said “Yes” and they’ll probably get married in about a year.

Congrats Dave and Rita!

12
Sep

Get Firefly on DVD, Ok?

For those of you who haven’t caved in and bought (or at least WATCHED) the Firefly series on DVD, here’s a wonderful post from a fellow City of Heroes gamer on my Supergroup forum (we have a Firefly/Serenity thread there because we’re cool like that):

Saturday: Saw “Firefly” for sale in Best Buy, remembered something in my Battlestar Galactica set with a DVD about it. Figured “Eh, maybe some sci-fi from TV I never saw might be good.” Bought it, though I’ve never seen anything from Josh Whedon ever.

Sunday Night: Got bored, slit open the wrapping.

Monday Morning, 4:30AM: Finished watching 3 of the 4 discs. Forced myself to catch an hour’s sleep.

Monday 5:00PM: Forced myself to wait after finishing work before I watched the last two episodes, got coffee. Gave in to temptation before the pot had finished brewing.

Only thing I can say is “Fuck. Why didn’t I listen to my friends about this series?”

Never had any of the coffee.

I really hope this movie goes blockbuster. I’m waiting for Sept 30th anxiously.

08
Sep

Blizzard says dead babies are a race

So I’ve been playing World of Warcraft for the past month or so. It’s very good, though I’m not loving it as much as I loved City of Heroes when I started playing that. Still, it’s a fun distraction and I do enjoy playing it.

Last night I was playing on Kilrogg with my Tauren Warrior “Shaftaur” in the Barrens and people in General Chat start telling jokes, which leads to Dead Baby Jokes. I joined in and told one of my favorites and today I found this in my email inbox:

Realm: Kilrogg
Character Name: Shaftaur

Account Action: 72 Hour Suspension

Offense: Racial/Ethnic
This category includes both clear and masked language which:
. Promotes racial/ethnic hatred
. Is recognized as a racial/ethnic slur
. Alludes to symbols of racial/ethnic hatred

Details (Note - Times are listed in Greenwich Mean Time, GMT):
9/8/2005 6:41(GMT) Shaftaur General - The Barrens “What’s grosser than a million dead babies piled on top of each other?”
9/8/2005 6:41(GMT) Shaftaur General - The Barrens “One live one on the bottom eating his way out.”

The actions detailed above have been deemed inappropriate for the World of Warcraft by the In-Game Support staff of Blizzard Entertainment. For further information, please view the World of Warcraft Policies and Terms of Use Agreement: (http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm01712p) and (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/termsofuse.shtml).

For any concerns or disputes on this matter, please E-Mail WoWAccountAdmin@Blizzard.com mailto:WoWAccountAdmin@Blizzard.com and our Account Administration team will be happy to assist you.

Be aware that additional inappropriate actions may result in further disciplinary action, leading up to or including account closure. We thank you in advance for respecting our position.

First off, I strongly protest the Racial/Ethnic tag. Putting that tag there is offensive to me. Certainly my joke was in bad taste, and now that I look at it, probably worthy of a warning to not do it again in a public channel. But even then, it’s BARELY worth a warning.

Look, this game has Undead characters who have rotting body parts, and every single one of them has the “Cannibalize” ability — to eat dead bodies to recuperate their own health.

And I get a 72 hour ban for a joke!

Boo, Blizzard GM who made that call, boo!

06
Sep

Not A Fluke

Paul B, Kelly Beckett, Jim Allison and I played golf at Kinkora’s yesterday (58 par, just like Cheam Golf) and I shot a solid 75 (39 on the front nine and 36 on the back) and only lost one ball.

I guess I’m getting better at this game!

Thanks to Jeff Kasper for the discount!

01
Sep

Neil Gaiman in Vancouver

Neil Gaiman will be in Vancouver, BC on October 6th for his Anansi Boys promotional tour! Tickets are on sale now! I’ll see you there!

Edit: Yeah, Ticketmaster doesn’t say where, but the info was available on Neil’s Journal a while ago:

7:00 PM PDT
VANCOUVER, CANADA
(In Connection with the Vancouver International Writers Festival)
Magee Secondary School
6360 Maple Street
Vancouver, British Columbia
604-681-6330

If you use Google Earth (why not, it’s free!) you can see exactly where this is by opening this file.