what i love ... college chicks at the gym.

what i hate ... douchebag college guys at the gym. 1) dont wear a hat to the gym. 2) if you still wear a hat ... do NOT tilt it. so i'm lifting heavier and wearing sleeveless shirts more frequently to mark my territory. cant help it ... testosterone.

now the new years resolutions are in full swing ... which is fun to watch : 1) new years day, saw an out of shape older lady whose face was entirely red and looked like she was going to pass out. she was stopped at the stairs, trying to talk, while a trainer was asking her if she was ok and if she wanted to take the elevator. aside, a gym elevator should only be used by injured/handicap people ... and maybe the older lady that tried to make up for years of neglect by almost killing herself at the gym on new years. chances are she wont be back til next year. 2) another guy came in and it looked like he tried to relive his high school bench pressing days. he lifted it off, lowered it to his chest, and he was pinned. then he left in shame ... doubt he'll be coming back. 3) kid standing in front of the dumbbell rack while he lifted. he puts the weights down and is talking to a friend. its the weight i need, so i lean over and grab it. he says 'but i'm using it'. i point to the other set of dumbbells that are the same weight on the lower rack, that i could not get to while he was standing in front of them. he says 'oh, i guess they weigh the same'. yep, i guess they do. 4) guy walks up to a bench press with 45 lb plates on each side. he takes off the plates and drops them flat to the floor. the bench press has 2 empty weight trees on each side ... he just ignored them. jack ass. then he proceeds to do 'good mornings' with the empty bar, facing in the direction of a raised platform for 'good mornings' and other lifts. so he's also a dumb ass. 5) lady using cables to work on her tennis elbow. the problem is she's using the only open squat rack in the gym ... and its leg day! 6) the oblivious/obnoxious headphone guy. got his headphones cranked up loud enough for those around him to hear and actually recognize the song. even worse, he's singing along. plus he's not paying attention to what's going on around him, so he's just getting in peoples way. 7) the weekend warrior. i swear one guy showed up wearing : thin soled lifting shoes, matching under armour shirt and shorts, lifting gloves, 2 tennis elbow straps, wrist straps, weight belt, ipod, do-rag (is that how you spell do-rag?), while carrying around his keys, cell phone, towel, and water bottle. the beautiful thing ... the guy looks like the animated character from 'the critic'. NOTE to self, dont ever use another sentence that requires the use of the word 'do-rag'. 8) chalky. i didnt see this person, but i know they were there, because they left broken chalk in front of the dumbbells. so i'm looking at the dumbbells, and the set that is chalky ... the 80s. er, um ... if you cant grip 80 lb dumbbells without chalk, then you dont need chalk. 9) the 1/4 squat/bench guy. this guys actually a regular, but he just pissed me off. i finish up on bench at 315 for reps. controlled down-up ... would have been 3 green lights in a powerlifting meet. guy next to me has 315 on the bar. he gets a spotter and then proceeds to lower the bar about 3 inches and then lifts it up again ... for reps. then he gets up with a proud smile on his face and gives me a look like he thinks he is just as strong. i laughed. whenever i unknowlingly provide a spot for one of these guys, i tell them to never ask me for a spot again. its just a waste of both our time.

the good news is all the people that dont really belong at the gym will be gone by february. over 17 years of being a gym rat, the new faces that i've seen show up and actually transform their body in a 'new years resolution' sort of manner ... did not start on new years day, they show up randomly throughout the year when they have really decided to commit.

like to incorporate body weight movements when strength training. it seems to force my body to keep the muscle and shed fat. i've been doing chin ups and pull ups regularly for about the last 4 months, and i finally reached my goal of 15 reps on each (210 lbs bodyweight). yea! what seems to be working is to do at least 3 sets of each when i'm training for size, and only do 1 set to warm up when training for strength. on the other hand, i need to stop doing dips altogether, because i did a set of 40+ on the same day. still, i haven't felt like i've been getting good tricep workouts at this gym. my only guess is because they dont have a true V-bar. pretty sure every gym i've ever been at has had a V-bar. some of the bars are close, but wider (like a U) or straight, and i dont get as a good contraction with them. might have to bring in a weighted dip belt, but then i run the risk of mooning everybody. there is no good way to get in or out of a dip belt with a couple plates on it. anyway, i'm thinking about starting to work on 1 armed chin/pull ups. not the 1 handed-assisted style; can already do multiple reps of those. already tried 1 arm, and i can just feel the weight of my body on each joint. at least i already have the hand strength. hmm, might start trying after i lose some more weight.

met the goal to get below 210 lbs. the lowest i got was 208, but then xmas cookies brought me back to 209. i have a serious weakness for xmas cookies. bodyfat percentage wise, i hit 10% (the goal) a couple days, but i've been measuring 11-12% most of the time. strength is down right now. this is partly because i've been off most supplements for the last couple weeks. i think the other part is because i didnt eat so well at xmas ... too much sugar, too many empty calories. anyway, i cant wait to get back on creatine. heading to the gym without a pre-drink of creatine is tough.

the new plan is to continue reduced calories for 3 more months to get below 200 lbs. that should put me below 10% bodyfat. losing 3 lbs a month is easy, so the challenging part is 2 of those months will be strength training, which will force some quality weight gain. figure that i'll try alternating lifting for strength/size each month for all of 2009. the workouts needs a changeup too, so i think legs are getting an extra day. something like : chest, legs (heavy), arms, back, legs (light). that also gives arms priority over back. will add in weighted ab work too. probably need to hold off on shoulders/traps for a while.

working on a pet project that involves multi-zone audio. been fighting a bug for the last 2 days where one of the zones would just stop working. it would initially work, and then just disappear. no exception ... of course. so i added more logging ... and everything was as expected. wasn't getting hung up anywhere and all methods were completing. next guess was threading, because i was using an object that was potentially not thread safe. so i changed the code to prevent a race condition, and that seemed to help, but did not fix the problem. then i went and added some test code to check my audio settings were correct. everything was fine, but it did find a noisy audio line. so i change out some wires and the noise is gone ... but the zone still drops off. continued mucking with hardware and tested each USB sound card individually ... they all work fine. totally out of ideas, then for kicks, i take out the hub ... the zone doesnt drop out. dont have another hub on hand to test with, but i 'think' the hub wasnt providing enough power to the USB sound cards, and that was causing them to malfunction. but they wouldnt fail completely. they still show up and their property pages show activity; they would even continue the final task, but all new tasks were ignored. that sucked! ... on the bright side, i've got tons of diagnostic code now.

started this month at 213 and weighed in at 209 today. that's 2 lbs a week. managed that by changing the caloric deficit to 750-1000 calories. had only been losing 1 lb a week, but i wanted to see what 2 lbs was like ... it wasnt too bad. there were a couple times that my sugar levels were low and i took unplanned naps (old person style). the bad news is its pretty hard to lift heavy without those calories, and getting through cardio after lifting took some willpower. glad that experiment is over and i'm switching back to a 500 deficit for the rest of this month. if i kept up the 2 lbs a week, i think it would really start to chew up muscle mass.

total weight loss is now 35 lbs (started at 245). the first week took off about 7 lbs of water and glycogen. caliper measurements have me losing about 5 lbs of muscle in the process. so i guess that means 23 lbs of total fat has been lost? i don't have a good understanding of how much water weight is lost with fat. i also dont have good 'before' caliper measurements, not to mention my own measurements have gotten more aggressive, but the guess is i started out at 22+% bodyfat. current measurements are 11-12%, and its been mainly coming off my belly. chest and thigh measurements have remained constant, while belly measurements have been dropping consistently.

i am taking such a beating right now. need to install Speech Server 2007 to find a tool i need. cant install on my main dev machine because its VS2008 only. wont get VS2008 support from Speech Server until R2 ... probably early next year (too long to wait). already asked to be on the beta, they said no. ok, try to install on a secondary machine. doh, need to install VS2005 first. wait for that to finish, and do Windows Update. restart machine ... and it wont boot. WTF! insert original Vista disk and repair. amazingly, it comes back up, and VS2005 is actually working too. ok, try to install Speech Server 2007 ... Installation Failed, cant install on this version of Windows. WTF! its running Windows Vista SP1. that machine can no longer be trusted, its going to get a new harddisk and a full wipe. and i've still got to get another machine setup with XP to install VS2005 and Speech Server 2007. at this point i've almost forgotten why i needed to install Speech Server 2007 in the first place. crap ... writing this didnt help blow off much steam at all

did not meet the initial goal to get below 210 lbs, but thats ok. instead, i concentrated on strength and might have changed body composition slightly. squat is back to 365 for reps and bench is back to 315 for reps. everything went into strength, such that i skipped out early on some cardio sessions, because my muscles were starving and i had to go eat. put on a couple pounds the first couple weeks to peak at 217, and now i've gotten down to 213 for a couple days in a row (er, um ... 214 after thanksgiving). next month will be back to high reps and weight loss. i will get below 210 next month.

got measured by a trainer again ... 13.6% at 217lbs. measurements were chest (11), belly (25), and thigh (8). compared to my self measurements, they are identical, except chest is doubled. i've been measuring around 5 on chest (which made the percentage around 12%). the difference is my trainer measured more to the side and closer to the armpit, while i've been measuring lower down and towards the front of my chest where the skin is tighter. so that still puts my bodyweight at 205 to 210 to hit 10%. the trend seems to be (i hope) that my chest and thigh measurements are staying mostly constant, and now my lower belly is finally thinning up.

had a chance to play. its much easier to find content, and this was really needed, because the last fall update made it overly complex. avatars are cute, but not interesting until they make their way into alot of games. harddisk installs are nice too, but sorely limited by requiring a disk. community games ... bad ass! they've still got to come up with a way to support multi unit households without requiring sneakernetting a memory unit around. and where is a browser ... the chatpad is begging for it. also surprised they havent come out with motion controllers by now.

but what about media? Netflix is cool ... if i subscribed to Netflix, if i was compelled to be a gold member, and if there weren't weekly announcements about other devices getting Netflix. other than that, i dont see any media enhancements. thats a full year with no new media functionality for the xbox 360. no new codecs, no video playlists, no music seeking, no audio book resume, no zipped image archive support, no new slideshow display options, no additional MCE extender support. you've got to be kidding me ... especially after HD-DVD lost out. so the xbox 360 isnt going to make it back into my media setup. its great for gaming, but its media functionality is nothing compared to XBMC or the Popcorn Hour. what has MS done for the living room this year? Windows Home Server got a new UPnP server, and OEMs got the TV Pack for MCE ... is that it?