indiboi.com

My method to lose weight is working. I’m down fifteen pounds and have lost four inches from my waist.

The method, incidentally, is Wii fit in combination with cycling (though I’m still not going great distances) and most importantly tracking my food intake on livestrong.com/thedailyplate.com. I’ve not really done much of the Wii Fit over the last month, been focusing on the cycling. I’ve also apparently not given any thought to writing about my weight-loss adventures until now.

It turns out that I, officially, have a wide ass… the bones that is. I had my ass measured with the ass-o-meter! I needed to get a new saddle for the bike because of that. I’m still tweaking and making minor adjustments, but at least I’m closer than before. It was pretty terrible when things would start going numb around the two mile mark, which was what prompted new Ergon GR2 handlebar grips and the Specialized Avatar Gel saddle. I’ve only had the saddle since yesterday, but it is immediately obvious that it is an improvement over the stock saddle.

I’ve also purchased new tires, Serfas Drifters. They are also a dramatic improvement, and while I don’t particularly care much about speed, they give me approximately 3-5mph over the standard knobby ones without any increase in effort.

Provided I stay on track, I’ll be back at the weight I was immediately prior to quitting smoking. I then have another significantly smaller chunk of weight to lose in order to get to my lowest weight. Considering I was still a bit chunky then, I figure I could stand to lose even more after that. It’s just this big process. I’m not denying myself anything, not pushing myself to work out like a maniac… just making changes that I’ll be able to stick with for, well, the rest of my life. It is basically learning to appreciate moderation.

I went to Hershey Park (as in the chocolate) earlier this month, it was the Citigroup annual picnic thing, with Mom, (brother) Matt, Tiffany, Layna and (friend) Matthew. It was great fun, Matthew and I rode most all of the roller coasters, the exceptions being the two of them that are dumb (mouse thing and the one you get wet on) and the two we just didn’t have time to get to (Super Duper Looper and Comet). The Fahrenheit was the last ride of the day and was justifiably terrifying.

The restraint systems of these rides was a bit of a wake up call for me. Having been there a couple of years earlier, during my ‘thin’ phase, and then doing a quick mental comparison, well… I’m a fatty.

Something has to be done.

So, I now have a bicycle; a Specialized Hardrock Sport in black with the swooshy “Scythe” thing on it. My first choice was actually the Comp Disc version, but unfortunately for they didn’t have that in the right size. It turns out to have saved me a bundle anyway, as the Sport version was my backup choice anyway. I was wavering on if the somewhat substantial increase in cost was really worth it for me, so in a sense the decision was made for me, yay for that… kind of.

I’m still breaking my muscles in, so to speak. I was actually up to almost a mile yesterday. I know that seems so little, but you have to also take into consideration that either direction out of my driveway is a somewhat steep hill, so by the time I’m at the top I’m more than half worn out. Baby steps, as they say.

Lest one think the bicycle was a spur of the moment thing, it really isn’t. I’ve been wanting one for about a year now, and well, that’s usually how things work with me. I ponder something for a good while and then finally act on it. The exception being the rather random Blu-Ray player purchase recently.

I’ve been on the lookout for a Wii Fit too, finally found one of those at the Kmart in Shippensburg, the store that rarely has more than two cars in the parking lot. The little bitch on the phone said they only had one and they wouldn’t hold it (wretched customer service, so surprising they have so little business isn’t it?). Well, imagine my surprise when after I paid for my surprisingly heavy Wii Fit the guy puts another on the shelf! Asshole.

So far I’ve been trying to ride at least a little bit every day, though it has been a bit difficult with Matt’s family moving into their new house, going up there or them being here; not complaining mind you, except for the trip that took six hours the other day when the interstate was closed due to a traffic incident and the alternate routes were parking lots. That was horrible beyond words.

I very much enjoy the Yoga aspect of Wii Fit, though as my body becomes a bit less creaky the other aspects are becoming more enjoyable.

My general goal is to drop my smoking cessation weight within one year. That doesn’t put me at my ‘ideal’ weight yet, but it’s a goal I’m comfortable with and isn’t outside the realm of reality.

I’ve been a Netflix customer/member since 2003. I’ve never had much trouble with the service, I can only remember one DVD that arrived damaged.

A month ago I switched to Blu-Ray.

Almost half of my Blu-Rays are arriving damaged. There is a characteristic crack at the edge, sometimes they’re still playable, sometimes they’re not. It’s the ones that aren’t that is really the problem, because they’ll play up to about an hour into the movie and then the picture will suddenly freeze.

It’s really a shame that Netflix is ignoring the problem. It seems to me, and quite frankly I’m certain of it, that Blu-Ray discs are just not as durable (or more precisely, not as flexible) as DVDs. This apparent brittleness makes them much more prone to damage when they pass through the USPS processing machinery. The result is that very distinctive crack at the edge.

Netflix could very easily resolve the issue by putting a thicker cardboard overwrap around the disc sleeve. Gamefly does this in order to avoid damage, but I suppose it simply isn’t cost effective since Blu-Ray renters are such a small portion of the overall customer base and even then not all areas of the country seem to be effected by this cracking.

To make matters worse when trying to discuss the issue on places like avscience.com, posters not experiencing the problem are typically adversarial and prone to blame the problem on the person experiencing it and refuse to put any blame on Netflix or the USPS. Bad luck and sabotage seem to be the only possible reasons, they’re not willing to consider that if hundreds of DVDs arrive okay, but a good portion of BDs arrive damaged, that perhaps it’s the BDs that are the defining variable. They’d much rather have you believe that the actual postman (not the machinery) is somehow able to determine that it’s a Blu-Ray and they’ll break only those, leaving DVDs okay, I’m personally insulted by the behavior there. Heaven forbid anyone suggest that Blu-Ray is imperfect in some way.

In any case, it looks like my days as a Netflix customer are coming to an end. It doesn’t matter where the blame lies at this point, I’m throwing my money away renting from Netflix when nearing the majority of my BDs are unplayable. I’m even considering just returning my Blu-Ray player; the thought of using Blockbuster, even with their online service, is quite repugnant.

It appears my Philips DVP-5990 DVD player is simply incompatible with my Monoprice 4×1 HDMI switch. I finally did get everything working by connecting my DVR & Blu-Ray player to the switch and the DVD player separately to the receiver. That’s not how I wanted to do it, but at least it works. I do wish I had paid more mind to the naysayers ranting about the limitation of 2 HDMI ports on the Yamaha 663 though. I may very well get a new receiver within the next year, because this switch business is quite annoying.

The Blu-Ray player is quite nice though, moreso for the lossless audio than the HD picture, sadly. I still haven’t really been blown away by anything HD. It seems that one simply needs HD to get a picture close to what SD is like on a smaller TV, it’s like this big scam on everyone. I suppose I could say that the differences between an upconverted DVD and a Blu-Ray are subtle at best. I also suppose I could say that the improvement is worth the $200 I spent on the player, but it certainly wouldn’t have been worth $300 or even the $450 that most of the standalone players cost. The improvement being worth $200 is a bit sketchy though, especially that I spent most of that $100 I saved on those damned HDMI cables and switch.

It’s just my little technological struggle… which I’d rather deal with than being social.

So my Monoprice switch and a couple of HDMI cables arrived today. I bought that so I could have my DVD player and Blu-Ray player connected to my AVR at the same time.

It seems one of the cables is faulty, whenever the DVD player switches to output 1080p there are video sparkles and the audio crackles. It doesn’t happen with the other cables, so I can conclude it isn’t the switch or the device, so… I just had to order another cable.

It’s annoying though, it’ll cost as much to return the cable as it would to just buy another one. The money spent on shipping the first one is lost forever, so I might as well just toss it in the trash. Granted, at least it isn’t one of those ridiculously expensive (for no reason other than they can) cables from a retail store.

It later occurred to me that if the cable would pass 1080i without issue, I could just swap the one from the DVR, but then… I’m not disparately in need of the DVD player (and the Blu-Ray player will play DVDs too). I’m also not thrilled about having a malfunctioning cable in the system anywhere. The funny thing is that the DVR’s HDMI cable could suffer from the same 1080p transmission problem anyway. Thankfully the other cables all seem to be fine. My new cables will ship tomorrow, so it’ll probably be Monday before I have them. I ordered more than one, just to be ahead of the game. One of them is just 3′ long, so that might be better to use for connecting the switch to the AVR anyway, 6′ of cable is quite unnecessary for that purpose.