Brian G. Rice's Journal
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Brian G. Rice's LiveJournal:
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| Tuesday, September 12th, 2006 | | 3:12 pm |
| | 2:04 pm |
| | Tuesday, September 5th, 2006 | | 11:50 am |
bgrice.spaces.live.com I am trying out the new Live spaces from MSFT. I am going to be blogging there for the next little while. bgrice.spaces.live.com. | | Friday, August 4th, 2006 | | 6:00 pm |
www.live.com
So I have been playing with the beta of the Windows Live services, which are going to replace what is now known as MSN.
Wow.
It is a little slow and clunky still (it is a beta), but MSFT have basically created an online RSS agrigator. So I have ste this up like I had my msn, with different tabs for news, business news, tech news, etc. But I have also been able to add tabs for the blogs I read, and the webcomics I read.
I have even been using the live serach over google again, to the point where I uninstalled some of my google gadgets in favour of the microsoft ones.
In terms of a competative response to google, for the first time I think MSFT has a chance of competeing successfully. | | Monday, July 10th, 2006 | | 2:16 pm |
Journeys?
It is so fucking hard for me to enjoy the journey, I always want the destination. This has both hurt me and helped me during my life, but either way, I end up miserably, debilitatingly unhappy from time to time because of it.
My dreams have always had a visceral feel for me. This can be a good thing, because I see myself in situations where I am successful, and I tend to end up in those types of situations. My computer career, for instance, advanced faster (than it should have, probably) because I was working towards where I wanted to be.
The problem is that i get frustrated easily with where i am when i want to be where I dream. It can be difficult for me to write a proposal that has little meaning for me when I want to be in a situation where I have staff to write it for me.
This isn't a case of lazyness, as it may appear to others. I have times of intense effort and focus in which I work constantly and get much done. But then, it evaporates. And I sit staring at my screen, incapable of writing the next line of code, or finishing the next chapter, or of writing the next proposal.
The knowledge that I won't get to my dreamed of position without doing the work, while I am sitting in front of my computer, incapable of doing the work, creates a spiral of self-recrimination that is difficult to get out of.
Untill I do.
And then I spend the enxt month woprking my ass off, getting a lot done.
I suspect that i am as productive in this cyce as most other people. I think, in fact I know, that on a year by year basis, I get as much done as someone who is nore... steady. But I have trouble interfacing with the world around me because they don't understand the way I work, and I don't know how to solve that problem. If something needs to be done right now, and I am in my productive cycle, then you are in luck, it will be done quickly and well (probably faster and better than someone else could do it). If I am not in a productive cycle, then you may be out of luck. This isn't fair to the people who depend on me.
I truly believe in working with my strengths to overcome my weaknesses. I have tried for the past few years to focus on getting as much done and being very pleased with ym productive cycles, and working on maintaining some semblance of a baseline schedule during my unproductive cycles, trusting that i am going to come out the other side quickly.
I have been trying to add to my baseline schedule, actually. Always cook dinner. Do laundry on Saturday. Do yard work on Sunday. Go to the gym each day. Do accounting everyday. These baseline activities keep me more in touch with the world during my shut down periods. I am having some success, but I am still struggling with it. The longer a down cycle goes on, the more of these baseline things slip away from me.
I'm not sure why i have dumped all this here. I have been thinking about this a lot lately, and I think I needed to write it down.... | | Saturday, June 17th, 2006 | | 11:45 am |
Lon time, no post
Err. Hello. I almost forget how to use this damn thing.
Anyway.
Not much to say, just checking in. I am still working out most days, though for the last two or three weeks due to illness and friends visiting, I have missed a couple of days. Next week Shar and I are going to get back into making sure we do it every day again.
I am now cooking every meal we eat, every day. Except for our Saturday Hot Cuisine ritual, that is (BTW, best little place in Vancouver. Great food, good prices, great atmosphere. 4th and Alma). Planning and buying for 7 days of meals is proving to be a somewhat interesting challenge, but one I am truly enjoying. Trying to determine when the left overs (which Shar uses as lunches) from one meal are going to run out so that I can ensure that there are left overs from another meal at the right time is fun too :)
I had been doing really well with not smoking up until this last week, when friends who are smokers visited us for the week. But they are gone now, heading back to California, and I intend to go back to my quitter ways.
Anyway, that's all for me... | | Thursday, May 18th, 2006 | | 11:16 am |
As heard outside cuppa-joe's from a group of women
"Well, I'm kinda laid back about it, but he keeps wanting to stick his finger in me..." | | Thursday, May 11th, 2006 | | 3:40 pm |
Swimming
So today, after my 20 minutes of cardio and my ab thingies that Shar has been making me do, I did ten lengths, without stopping before every second length... err... so in other words, I managed to do 5 laps only breaking at the end of each lap. My new goal is to be able to do all ten lengths without a break by the end of next week.
Oh. Ya. They re-calibrated the scale in the men's change room. I am at 244. I'm not sure if this means I was at 256 when I started, or if somewhere in the weight loss the scale went out of wack, and I didn't lose as much as I thought I did.
Oh well. Not a big deal. My arms have gotten bigger. I am noticing it with some of my tighter shirts. And my stomache still looks to be shrinking. | | 9:58 am |
| | Wednesday, May 10th, 2006 | | 6:01 pm |
Dinner on Sunday
There is a post coming about the dinner I made on Sunday, but not right now. | | 5:50 pm |
Mid Week 7 Well, I must be doing something right, because after doing cardio for half an hour, and then upper-body weights for an hour, i still decided to go swimming for a while afterwards. I was pathetic though. Once, a long time ago, there was time I could swim many, many laps, and I could do it for a long, long time. Not anymore. I got eight lengths in, and nearly died. And this with taking a break in between each length. So. My new plan is that I am going to swim everyday afetr my workout. By the end of the week, I will be doing ten lengths. Next week, i want to start grouping my lengths so that I am reducing the number of breaks. In three weeks I want to be doing ten lengths without any breaks, and then we can begin to move the number of lengths up. I have no idea why I suddenyl want to be swimming again, but damn it, if I am going to do it, i am going to do it with the same force and enthusiasm that I am doing the rest of my workout with. I'm not sure what i did, but I hurt my knee. I first noticed the pain on Saturday, but I didn't really think too much about it till it was still hurting Monday. I don't think it is fitness related. I can't really think of anything I did on Friday at the gym that could have hurt my knee. Of course, i can't really think of anything at any time that could explain the pain either. Of course, I was so drunk on Friday night that i could have fell down mutliple flights of stairs and have no recollection of it. Good Party ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) spadoink. So anyway, I havne't been doing any leg based weights this week. My cardio hasn't been affected, since the arc trainer doesn't seem to aggrivate whatever I did. So while Shar has kept me busy with my upper body (I am now doing 3 sets of 6 at 120 on the bench press, and on the hammer row I am doing 3 sets of 8 at 80 pounds per arm. We have started doing bicep curls, but I am only doing 2 sets of 10 at 20 pounds. My right arm could do more, but my left arm is failing towards the end of the second set still. There is a mastrubation joke in there somewhere, but I am too lazy to dig it out right now), I have been neglectiong my legs. Hopefulyl I will be able to do them next week. If my knee still hurst on friday, i am going to have to go to a clincin and see if they can tell me what is wrong with it. | | Thursday, May 4th, 2006 | | 3:51 pm |
Outrageous gas prices, a plan.
I have been flip-flopping between feeling smug and irritated lately, both over the same issue. Gas prices. More specifically, peoples reaction to them.
I am feeling smug and because I don't own a car, and I don't drive, and the cost of gas isn't affecting me (yet. I understand the inflationary pressure high gas prices puts on our economy, and what it is going to do to the price of food, etc. But I haven't noticed that yet). This was a decision my wife and I made when we moved into our house, because really, living in Vancouver, you DO NOT NEED a car. Period. Obviously there are exceptions. People who, for work reasons, need a vehicle... painters, construction workers, delivery people, etc. But for the rest of us, whatever you may think of our transit system, you can get around just fine. It is only a convenience issue for you, not a "need". So, to all of you who are mad because gas prices have risen but have no earthly reason to drive... :P
My irritation has risen from the response these people have. "Lower taxes!" "Take GST off of Gas!" "Investigate the Oil companies!". Sorry, but all of this is bullshit. Get out of your fucking SUV and take the bus. If you need a car, then sell your SUV, and buy something that is fuel efficient. It is not the responsibility of our government, nor the tax payers, to protect your SUV driving ass.
So all of these thoughts have led me to a plan. It is not an original idea, I am, in fact, stealing it from L.E. Moddiset Jr.'s book Adiamante. I think it is time that we as a society stand up and insist that we pay the real price of our decadence. How? By taxing all goods based on there environmental impact, not their value.
So what does this mean? Well, I am not an economist nor am I an environmental scientist, but I got to think there must be a pretty good way to build a formula to put into dollars what the impact of a hummer has on the environment vs. a smart car. And when someone buys a hummer, they should be paying that dollar figure in tax. If I want to own and drive a hummer, then fine, I should be aloud to do that. But I should be paying 500-600 thousand dollars for that car. On the other hand, a smart car, or a hybrid vehicle, should cost me just about what they do already.
I think we would pretty quickly see people driving more environmentally friendly cars, and I also think that the manufacturers would start finding ways to make their vehicles environmentally friendly PDQ.
Now, there are issues with a plan like this. farmers and the above mentioned tradespeople need larger, less environmentally friendly vehicles to do their jobs. But I am torn on this too. I mean, why can't a painter in Vancouver use a smart car with a small trailer? How long do you think it would be before GM had natural gas powered pick-ups for farm use if we levied an environmental tax on the regular kind?
The real question. Are Canadians enlightened enough to vote for a party that ran on a campaign platform such as this? Or are we simply Americans with a slightly hipper rap? | | Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006 | | 12:13 pm |
Pecs are sore!
Wow! This is what i thought I would be feeling when working out. I have a lot of energy, ready to face my day, but my muscles hurt! This is great!
I think it is possible that I broke something in my brain yesterday.
Didn't smoke yesterday. I had two glasses of wine and three beers, but no cigarettes. I guess we take these things slowly. | | 11:35 am |
Strength Training
So shortly after we started our doing the weights this monring, Shar looked at me and said "I am going to hate doing this with you." This is because I have found what I am good at!
The past 5 weeks we have been doing preperation training to get my muscles used to the idea of doing something other than playing video games. That meant doing as much weight as I could for upwards of 20 reps per set. It was hard, and I always ended up being tired for the rest of the day.
Now, we are doing much higher weight, but for 6-10 reps, for three or more sets. This I am good at. I pile on the weight, and push myself for the six reps, and it is hard, but I haven't exhausted myself in the doing of it. I have had so much energy today! It's great!
So we didn't have as much time as we needed to do our complete workout today, so we only managed to get two different weight exercises in.
We did bench presses and leg presses.
I did 3 sets of 6 reps at 100 pounds on the bench press, and 3 sets of 6 reps at 105 pounds per leg on the leg presses. I WANT MORE! I can't wait till Thursday when we will be able to get our full workout in. And next week, we are going back to three times a week on the weight training! YAY! | | Monday, May 1st, 2006 | | 1:55 pm |
Week 6, thick sidewalks and addictions So. It is the beginning of week six. First week of the new program. Which meant, I thought, that I would be experiancing super sore muscles from the effort to "make them bigger". sharolyn used some big word to describe what we were doing... hyper-something-or-other. Anyway, apparently she wants me to have big muscles... makes her drool or some shit. But she informed today that we were only going to be doing weights two times a week this time, so today was a cardio day. So. Good, i think. But I look forward to cardio only days with a bit of joy, knowing that I won't be working for very long. It gives me a bit of a boost to push myself harder. But whatever, I did the cardio. Had to use the bikes, because the arc trainers were in use (fuckers). The problem with bikes, no matter what the format, is that i find that they really push my legs, but I have a hard time getting my heart rate up on them. I managed to hit 130 today, but my legs really start to burn if I keep that up for too long. Plus, I dug about 12 feet of my front walk up yesterday, and lifted a bunch of lumber, which tired me out a bit, so cardio was pretty hard overall. Interestingly enough, I found the sledge hammering of the sidwalk pretty easy. I didn't get out of breath at all, and nothing really ever started to hurt. On the last two feet of sidewalk, i found that my arms had become weaker, and I was having to push myself to get the same force as I had started with, but the didn't hurt. At all. Maybe this workout shit is having results. I am back down to 140! Yay. So basically, in the last two weeks, I have managed to maintain the resilts I got in the first three weeks. Which leads me to the last part of my title. A few years ago, I quit drinking for a year and a half while taking up fencing at the same time. I lost something like 60 pounds in that time. Since then, I have managed to keep myself within 15-20 pounds of the weight I had gotten myself down to. I think I am probably about where I was at my lightest during that time (Ya, I weighed on the wrong side of 300 pounds there for a while). Now, I don't know if I want to cold-turkey drinking again, I am not overdoing it the same way i was then, and I enjoy a couple of beers after working in the yard, and a few glasses of wine with dinner. But. I have been drinking 2 or 3 beers a night in the past few weeks. Now, this isn't an alcaholic issue, since for someone my size 2 or 3 beers is about the equivilent of 1-2 for most people. But I am sure that the added calories are hindering my weight loss effort. SO. I am going to try this. No beer on weekdays (excpet for tonight, I have two cans in the fridge that I am looking forward to :)). Only one glass of wine with dinner during the week (sorry, dear, you'll just have to drink the rest of the bottle :)). I have also been trying to quit smoking for the past little while. This is something I have done, with good results, a few times before. The first time I quit, I was (mostly) smoke free for like 6 years. My problem is that is I have access to them, I smoke them. Both my roommate and best friend smoke. Both are eager to share them with me. This has been causing me some problems in the not smoking department. I have managed, for the most art, to keep myself to 2 or 3 a day, but I want them out of my life. It is rediculous to be working this hard to get in shape and still smoke. Sometime this week I am going to try and quit. I think. Maybe. God I need a smoke... Current Mood: awakeCurrent Music: Jakalope -- It Dreams | | Wednesday, April 26th, 2006 | | 9:13 pm |
Spadoink on the tube I was watching TV tonight, and an ad for tomorrow's global national came on, and in one of those cut scenes of people walking down the street, spadoink and his wife were walking down the street. Cool. | | 11:52 am |
Braised Beef with Rosemary Garlic Potato Slices and Caramelized Pears 
| | 10:47 am |
An introduction to my cooking posts...
Now that I am starting to adjust to the routine of working out, I suspect that my workout posts will become less frequent, and less humorous (Though, remind me at some point to tell you about the change room cerfufle involving men blow-drying their gonads). So, I am going to start posting more food stuff.
For those that don't know, I took over doing the majority of our cooking a few months ago. I have always enjoyed cooking. But I have always tended to cook like a man. That is, once in a long while, at a huge cost, using every dish in the house, and leaving the mess for my wife to clean up.
But now I have to cook at least four times a week, and on a budget of about $100 a week. So I have taken it as a challenge to consistantly create high quality, tasty meals on said $100 budget.
I should probably mention that the only way I am even coming close to my budget is thanks to Costco. Being able to buy a month's supply of meat for ~$60 makes it much easier to keep my weekly budgets under the $100 mark. Also, I have a very well stocked kitchen, which I did when I was making more money than was proper.
All this is a lead-up to posting my first recipee (sort-of) here. I tend to just toss things in the pot as I am making shit, and not bother with measures. So everything in any of my recipees is an approximation of what I think I remember dumping in the pot.
Err... Maybe I should put the actual recipee in another post. This is getting long... | | 10:39 am |
A Quiz thingy Hmm... I'm not sure how to take this... I would have preferred little shop, for some reason :)
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You scored as Hairspray. You are HAIRSPRAY! You believe in equality for all, and want to prove to the world that you can do anything that anyone else can, if not better than them. You might not find yourself to be the most beautiful person ever, but you are happy with who you are and work with what you have got. Everyone in life needs to have someone to love.
Your song: Without Love
Your color: Blue
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Hairspray
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63% |
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Wicked
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56% |
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Avenue Q
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50% |
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Rent
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50% |
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Little Shop of Horrors
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50% |
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Phantom of the Opera
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25% |
Which musical are you?
created with QuizFarm.com |
PS. I like this add based account upgrade that LJ has done, but on my screen, with all my toolbars and shit, posts like this one with a large, set table, force the post down below the adds.... Hey sharolyn, any chance I can get a new, bigger monitor? | | Monday, April 24th, 2006 | | 8:36 pm |
Week 5
Oh My. I hurt. My left calf hurts, and my middle-lower back hurts on my right side. This, i expect, has much to do with my weilding of a sledge hammer on Sunday as I started removing our front sidewalk. However, it did make todays workout a bit harder.
Having said that, however, I pushed myself up in terms of weight and/or reps today. My program changes on Monday, Shar says, so I am going to push it to my absolute maximum this week before that happens.
I could only get about fifteen minutes of cardio in today, five minutes before I did weights, and ten after. My legs were burning so bad that I just couldn't go a full twenty minutes after my weights. I guess I will also have to push that this week to make up for it. |
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