Like a Horseshoe to the Brain!

The past few weeks have been crazy! I've begun the much needed remodeling of my house. It's been a lot of hard work and is going to continue that way for some time. Kat and my sister-in-law had some fun in Florida before bring everything up from our storage unit. My dad for the very first time came up for the past week to help oversee the remodeling. Since I'm a relative noob to remodeling, I made some mistakes. My dad was able to rescue my projects and get them back on track. I couldn't have done it with out him.

An added bonus is having my nephew here with me. He's grown up so fast and the amount of help he has provided has been priceless. He has worked his ass off since getting here and I appreciate all the help he's given me. He'll be pretty suprised at the pay day I'm about to give him.

On a final note I've been jamming to the new Alice In Chains song "A Looking In View" all morning. This song rocks so hard like a horseshoe to the brain!!!

Sent from Android

Beware the Nine Ball

A nice little gem this Nine Ball is. According to Websense there have been over 40k web sites hit by a mass-compromise attacked called, none other than, Nine Ball. This compromise hits web servers that will redirect it's victims to a site that will then attempt to download trojans, viri, keyloggers oh my. 

The kicker with this new threat is the server hosting the malware (www.nine2rack.in) will scan the victim for vulnerabilities in their web browser, Adobe or Quicktime software. It finds a whole it will download a trojan along with a keylogger that most anti-virus software won't find. These trojan's are especially nasty because they are hard to detect because they are created and compiled on the fly. 

Now on the server side, people who have been lax on security, and their secure coding practices will allow their server to be compromised. Nine Ball will use SQL-Injection attacks and brute force  intrusion with stolen user names and passwords of the administrators of the website. 

So while your out surfing the intertubes be careful what your surfing.

The Weigh-in

So today my trainer wanted to go ahead and do a weigh-in. I suddenly got nervous. I wasn't expecting it so soon, as a matter of fact I was thinking it would happen Thursday. I didn't have time to prepare myself mentally for any bad news that may crop up. We did the deed and as I said in a previous post, here is the update on my quest. 

First Weigh-in 05/22/09

Weight: 357lbs

Body Fat%: 44.1%

Lean Body Mass: 199.56 lbs

Last Weigh-in 

06/04/09

Weight: 354 lbs

Body Fat%: 42.4%

Lean Body Mass: 196.43 lbs

Todays Weigh-in

06/16/09

Weight: 350 lbs

Body Fat% 39%

Lean Body Mass: 213.5 lbs

I'm kicking ass! A loss of 7lbs altogether, even after gaining muscle! My trainer couldn't be happier with those numbers. Even while I'm still struggling with my diet and keeping my schedule, my daily calorie intake % is getting better. According to my trainer I need to get my carbs and protein up. Which I have been working on but so far only gradually. 

Due to my eating so little, which is normal for me, I have supplemented my caloric intake with Ensure. This has given me a better spread between carbs, protein and fat. This week I have started a core protein supplement to increase my protein to help boost my muscle repair after workouts and nights of sleep. I purchased two supplements at GNC. First is CytoSport Muscle Milk, which I drink when I wake up in the morning, and before I go to bed on cardio nights, and then an hour before my weight training. The second is GNC Amplified Wheybolic Extreme 60 that I drink post workout.

Yesterday was the first day I have started on the new supplements I purchased at GNC and it's already made a difference in my weight training workout I had today. I had a lot more stamina that I had the last few weeks. I felt stronger, which is probably due to the fact that I gained muscle anyway. So I'm pretty happy with the results I have seen so far. Now I just need to keep it up. That's going to be the real challenge for me.  

Going Strong

So far the big life style change is starting to sink in. I'm getting a grasp of my new daily routines and I have noticed some pretty significant changes in my moods and mental alertness

I have't been as moody or brooding, and it's taking a lot less motivation to get me moving. It used to be that when I woke up in the morning it took an act of god to bet my fat ass up to get ready for work. Without the sleep study yet I'm already feeling rested when I wake up in the morning.

I'm still having issues with my diet. Missing my snacks here or there and some times just not having any time to remember to log what I ate. I need to start focusing on that.

All in all the experience has been going much better. I feel better physically and mentally. I don't spend a lot of time on scales but rather listening to my body. Just this week I noticed my clothes feeling loose on me. The shorts I bought before the St Louis Ren Faire fit perfectly then. Yesterday they are starting to feel baggy. Pants that used to be tight around the legs when I crossed them feel loose. This is obviously working now if I can just fit my food documentation and snacks into my routine I should be doing even better.

In my last weigh in I noted that I had lost muscle mass from the weight lifting. This was very discouraging. Because I'm not getting enough protein in my diet. It caused me to lose muscle.  To combat this problem I've starting some high protein suppliments from GNC. I'm hoping this will help curb the muscle loss.

This Thursday is my weigh in. I'll be posting the results as soon as I get them.

Sent from Android

Advent Knights Is Now On Steam.

Since my Xbox was stolen and returned broken. I have been getting my gaming fix on Steam lately. Playing around with the community features I created our gaming group there if any one is interested in joining let me know. This weekend if we can get the time Goroxx and myself will be attempting a co-op run through thecampaign mode in Unreal Tournament 3.

On a side note, Dungeons and Dragons Online is going free to play. The game was pretty lacking when it first came out but since then the media (ie massively) have been reporting the game has been much improved since. Soon it will be a good time to try it out.

-Grexis out

Sent from Android

Semi-conclusions

The past couple of weeks have been a very bad roller-coaster ride to say the least. Our house bring broken into not once but twice, my wife scared and on edge, the loss of property, a new puppy. It's all enough to drive a person insane.

 Yesterday at around 3:00pm David Wagonblast was arrested. Let me tell you about this piece of shit. This is the father of my step-daughters two boys. Doesn't pay child support, and certainly isn't doing anything to be apart of his son's lives. During a time when Kat and I were separated, he impregnated my step-daughter, and they moved into our house against my objections. I knew this guys of shit, but my wife being as kind as she is, took them in and tried to help them get on their feet. After a few months of seeing how much of a lazy piece of shit he was, she kicked him out, and if my memory serves me correctly, Brittany and David ended up moving in with her dad. Where he was given another chance and STILL wouldn't do anything. Around this time he got himself addicted to drug, chance after chance to do the right thing, another son later and Brittany finally getting some brains and threw him out permanently.

 On a side note, Brittany has since found herself a nice guy, and is now happily married. He has even taken to caring for those boys as if they were his own. I really applaud the guy for that and have great respect for him doing so.

 Since being thrown out, he hasn't paid any child support, and has made no effort what so ever to be in those kids lives. He has since continued down the road of drugs, losing all of his friends and family by stealing and ripping them off. Now he has violated those who had tried to help them the most, My wife and her ex-husband both. First it started last month when David shows up to Brittany's fathers house, who is also named David. Brittany's father will be named DB for the sake of this post. Asking for help and what not, DB goes into another room in the house, David snatch and grabs some things out of the living room and takes off. Strike one

 Shortly after, based on what the police have told me, he has proceeded to rip and thieve off gas stations, stores. He even managed to get himself a girlfriend, and began ripping her family off! I'll learn more about what he has been doing when I see his ass in court. Oh yes, I will be in court taunting him the whole way. For some reason the judge released him from jail on some promise to appear in court on a felony charge. Strike two.

Two weeks ago, he walks right into my house and steals my wife's favorite camera, and my debit card. Proceeds to go to Wal-mart and with my money buys, a nice Visio HD TV. He also breaks into my house a second time a week later, this time stealing my TV, all of my video games, movies, tablet pc, etc. I'm not so much upset about the loss of property, though it sucks, it's just stuff. It's the fact that this piece of shit violated the safety my wife felt about our home. In my opinion it's no different that rape. Strike Three.

 Now that he has been arrested, and confessed to everything he has done to me and my wife. My wife feels a bit easier now. Though she doesn't have the sense of safety she once had. For me the fun begins. Now I know exactly where he is, when he gets out, and what he's doing. Just because he's been arrested, doesn't mean I have closure, just because he is going to be doing time in prison, doesn't mean his punishment is over. For the violation he set upon my wife and my house he now gets to deal with a life time of misery and pain. I will see to it his son's will grow up knowing exactly what kind of piece of shit this guy really is, and they will spit and despise this man for just being alive. If I ever get my hands physically on him, I will carve a pound of flesh from is body for what he has done. He will know every time he looks in the mirror that you don't fuck with me, my wife or my friends. Real life or virtual.

 

 

*MP* They got him!!

The piece of shit that broke into my house and robbed us has been arrested! More news to follow….

Backups with a My Book drive.

A while back I purchased a 1tb external hard drive. The My Book from Western Digital was a great buy, even at Best Buy who had it on sale for a little over $60. If I had the extra money, I would have bought more! So I had to settle on one. Anyway, I forgot one thing about these external hard drives. They are always Fat32. So if I wanted to do backups I had to use Western Digitals lousy backup software instead of my own Backup Exec software. Reason being is Fat32 only supports files sizes up to 4 gb in size. If I want to have files more than 4gb on My Book, I have to convert the drive to NTFS. Which is a fairly painless operations. The only headaches I have had with Windows drive conversion is when there is an application or two accessing the drive or if there are any bit level errors. So here is how I did it.

There are three steps to this process, steps 2 and 3 are all done from the command line.

1. Verify there are no open files or programs from the drive you want to convert.

2. Run a Check disk (chkdsk /f) to verify/fix if there are any bad sectors or any issues with the drive.

3. Run Convert (convert DRIVELETTER: /fs:NTFS). This converts the drive into the file system of choice. Since I'm a windows junky, NTFS it is.

Now, I can backup to my hearts content, with the software of my choice. :)

- Draok Out

*MP* My house is broken into again!!

Can things get any fucking worse!?

Sent from Android

A Bit of Frustration

Physically I have been feeling pretty good lately. Still tired, and will probably continue to feel that way until I get my sleep study done. Regardless, I have been feeling pretty good and have noticed how I feel after I eat certain foods that I used to eat enmass. The other day, I was in a crunch for time and had to get my calorie intake up and so I stopped by The Feed Store for soup and a sandwich. I had the Wisconsin Cheese soup and hero sandwich. Needless to say I felt like crap after I ate it. The quality of food I eat definitely has an effect on how I feel. The healthier to the food, the better I feel throughout the day. This is a good thing. :)

So with all the changes I have made in my nutrition, and the exercise I have lost 5 lbs in one week. I found this out in my first weigh in last night. I was really excited until I got the bad news. 3.5 lbs of the 5 lbs I lost was MUSCLE LOSS. My excitement turned to disappointment in the blink of an eye. How the hell did I lose muscle, and not fat!? My trainer told me not to worry about the first weigh in. We will get a better picture as we get more weigh ins and we see a trend in my weight loss. Right now at a glance, it appears its my lack of calorie intake. I'm supposed to have over 4k calories per day. I'm getting no where near that right now. I'm at least getting over 2k easy every day, but my carbs and protein intake is still low. Mostly my protein, which most likely is the culprit. Well see how things go by next week's weigh in.

Last Week

To say last week was stressful, would be an understatement. I had hoped to have gotten everything ready for Dungeons and Dragons on Sunday but things didn't pan out the way I had hoped. Everything is pretty much ready with the help of Goroxx, you rock man!, I need to get my situation at home worked out.

With all the changes in my life, the fitness and nutrition changes, greatly reduced gaming time, I have changed A LOT in my life. Little did I know that my life would be changing even more drastically. Pretty much flipping my life completely upside down. Last week after my weekly D&D sessions, I went home, had a late snack, and passed out on the couch. Next thing I know, I'm being aroused from my deep sleep by Kat (My wife). She frantically tells me someone was in her room. I looked around, and everything was clear. Let me point out that I have a long history of light sleeping, and anyone who's ever been in our house knows our floors are noisy to walk on. Old hardwood floors do that. So that sort of thing has always woke me up in the past so Kat and I wrote it off as a freakish vivid dream on her part. Kat was thoroughly freaked by the whole thing, and rightly so. It was an overly realistic dream right?

Thursday morning, I noticed my bank check card, and my FitClub membership card missing. With my change in schedule, working out, etc I have been exhausted and thoughts of Kat's dream and my missing card was just coincidence. When I'm exhausted, I tend to lose things. Later that day I decided to just cancel the card, and get a new one. I couldn't shake the thought that someone may have actually came into our house and snagged those items.

Friday rolls around and Kat is still freaked about the "dream" and so am I to be honest. That afternoon I do my usually checks of my bank accounts, and find a fairly large charge on my account. Someone actually bought a $500+ item at Walmart WITH MY CARD. What Kat and I had written off as a very vivid dream could have been real. We still wasn't officially sure.

So on Saturday, we decide it's time to get another dog. Our last dog Allie, was a huge part of our family and always woke us up when someone was near the house. I guess we got used to that luxury and didn't let go of it when we should have. It hit us hard when we had to put her down last year. Our new boxer pup has already made his way into our lives and is now entrenched quite well. I also stopped off at the bank to discuss the rogue transaction on my account and come to find out the guy charged close to $800 in total. Then back at home while Kat and I are enjoying the company of our new family member, Kat goes to look for her camera. The one I bought her for her birthday and her most valued possession is now missing. Gone. No where to be found, and then the realization that someone was actually in the house officially sets in.

I haven't had much sleep due to Kat's worrying and her wigging out every time I get up to use the restroom or grabbing a drink in the middle of the night. Which is my usual routine as I don't sleep well anyway. I don't blame her a bit. I failed in my responsibility to protect her, and our home. I reassure Kat that if someone is in the house, and especially while I'm awake, god better save them, because I'll put the bastard in the morgue.