Monthly Archives: September 2009

User Queries: It’s good pho you!

Posted on by
5

Image courtesy of stu_spivack

Image courtesy of stu_spivack

While there are some great resources out there for this question  (Dotti’s Weight Loss Zone, Weight Watchers, Daily Burn, etc) , none of them have a clear answer on one of my favorites: Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup).  While I am elevating ShrinkGeek to the level of the oracle on Delphi, do any of you guys know? Or – how about just a Boolean: Is it healthy, or not? BTW: I’m talking about restaurant Pho, not the crap in the ramen noodle aisle.

I tried to take the easy way out of this question and defer the answer to Jaden Hair, Tampa Bay area food celebrity and author of The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook.  I follow her on Twitter and am constantly assaulted by posts about the amazing Asian recipes she talks about so I figured if anyone would know it was her.  Sure enough, she has a recipe for Pho on her site that sounds absolutely amazing.  Unfortunately for me when I asked her if she had ever figured out the nutrition information for the recipe she replied that she had not, and that we should all follow the advice of her Mother who so wisely said “Just eat!  It good for you!”

Which, I suppose, answers the second part of the question.  So much for this being an easy assignment.

Continue reading →

You’re never far from the golden arches

Posted on by
1
Image courtesy of bryangeek

Image courtesy of bryangeek

One of the biggest challenges that we face in the modern era when it comes to having a balanced diet is that cheap, unhealthy food is considerably easier to get than the healthier alternatives.  Low-calorie, low-fat,  and nutritious food is frustratingly expensive when compared to the dollar menu at your local fast food chain, and if you’re dieting on a budget those pennies can add up quickly.   What’s worse is that when you are really hungry it sure seems like it’s a heck of a lot easier to run for the border than actually go through the effort of cooking something that is good for you.

Well, it turns out that perception may not be too terribly far from reality in America.  Unless, that is, you literally live in the middle of nowhere.

Continue reading →

The world gets smaller

Posted on by
Reply

I remember when the internet was still new and shiny.  Back then if you were one of the folks who actually had a computer and, on top of that, the “luxury” of an internet connection you could pick a handle to be known by and spout off whatever you wanted to online without fear of the people in your “real life” finding what you said.  Oh, sure…it happened on occasion.  I’ll bet most of us who were around back in those days had at least one uncomfortable moment where we were confronted with the person who we had slagged up one side and down the other on Live Journal.  There’s nothing quite like that sinking, horrible feeling you get in the pit of your stomach the first time someone says “I read something about me on your blog” when you didn’t know the person in question even could even figure out how to turn a computer ON.  On the whole, though, the internet was a vast anonymous playground in those days.  The people who knew you in meat space were likely in your social circle and could generally be counted on to be trusted confidants.  You could talk about anything you wanted to, and we did.  Oh did we.  We talked about our sexual conquests.  We talked about how insane our families made us.  We talked about our jobs, and what we really thought about them.  We talked about our secret dreams.  We talked about recreational drug use.

We swore a lot, too.

Those days are over.

Continue reading →

Freedom of religion and expression

Posted on by
2

There’s a guy who hangs out in Ybor City on the weekends that stands in the middle of crowded night clubs preaching about Jesus.  At least, there used to be.  I really haven’t been clubbing in a long time so I couldn’t say whether or not he’s still doing it, but to be honest I kind of hope he is.  You see, I kind of admire this guy.  I think he’s a little crazy, of course, and I know he’s made some friends of mine uncomfortable on more than one occasion, but really…you have to kind of give it up for a man who willingly puts himself into what is almost certainly going to be an uncomfortable situation because he believes that doing so will help him save someone’s immortal soul.

There’s another reason why I like this guy, though.

Continue reading →

Exercising with Aion

Posted on by
2

Aion TreadmillA few years ago several World of Warcraft players with way too much time on their hands decided that it would be a good idea to rig their computers to a treadmill so they could virtually “run” across Azeroth.  Unfortunately the video and the page that originally linked to it have vanished into the virtual ether, but suffice it to say that the heroes of the story soon learned that they were not, in fact, nearly as fit as their digital selves.

It seems as though these days you can’t have a conversation about Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Games without someone asking which one is going to be the World of Warcraft killer.  Personally?  I happen to agree with my buddy Kevin Stallard who boldly stated that there would never be a WoW killer.  Regardless of our opinion, though, people still speculate who is going to have the power to dethrone the 800 pound gorilla that Blizzard created, and many folks are wondering if the Asian inspired Aion from NCSoft has what it takes to become King of the Hill.

So what, you may be wondering, does dominance in the MMO industry have to do with a Health and Fitness blog?

Continue reading →

Yet another Health Insurance Reform factoid

Posted on by
7

There are four of us on my insurance policy.  It’s a good insurance policy, by all accounts.  It’s certainly much better than not having insurance.  Most of the time, anyway.

This whole H1N1 scare, though?  If you’re following all of the CDC best practice guidelines if you think you’re exposed you should go immediately to a clinic and be tested and start on Tamiflu.

The Urgent Care clinic co-pay on our plan is $50.

Continue reading →

Trish Stratus gets in the fitness gaming ring

Posted on by
2

Trish StratusYou know, it’s not very often that I get the opportunity to post a picture of a rather attractive and scantily clad woman here on ShrinkGeek and still have the right to claim that my doing so is in the realm of “legitimate” reporting.  Today just happens to be one of those days.

Fitness model and former World Wrestling Entertainment superstar Trish Stratus announced on Thursday that she is partnering up with Frima Studios to produce Stratusphere, an exergame that will focus on using Yoga as a “real workout.”  The game will use the Wii Balance Board along with other peripherals and include video segments of Stratus encouraging the players on.

Continue reading →

The more things change…

Posted on by
Reply

So I’ve made another shift on the old blog here.  I have moved away from WordPress.com and set up a hosting account with HostGator.  WordPress.com is a great value, but the limited amount of stuff that you can do with your site there really got on my nerves.  HostGator is, quite frankly, a stunningly good deal.  $9.95 a month gets me unlimited disk space, bandwidth, databases, and domains.  I could theoretically move all of my domains to the one account and give them completely different sites with the same monthly fee.  It’s kinda crazy.  I’m probably going to end up moving ShrinkGeek here, too.  I just need to figure out what to do with the ColdFusion application we’re using on the back end.

For those of you following my RSS feeds, this now means that I can start using the <More> tag again and my epic length posts won’t clog up your feeds.

You’re welcome!

Hands-free fitness gaming with Your Shape for the Wii

Posted on by
1

Your ShapeThere was a lot of buzz on the floor of E3 this year after Microsoft unveiled Project Natal, and rightly so.  The potential to have a game system that can track your movements so precisely that it can actually recognize who you are when you walk into the room is pretty amazing (and, admittedly, pretty creepy at the same time).  While attaching a camera to a console to use in a video game is nothing new, the level of interactivity that Project Natal is promising is going to be a huge leap forward if it ever actually makes it out of development.  Needless to say, this kind of tool could totally revolutionize the fitness gaming industry.

Ubisoft, however, isn’t waiting around for Microsoft to finish development of Project Natal.  This Christmas they are bringing the hands-free fitness gaming concept to the Nintendo Wii.

Continue reading →

Yup. Still alive.

Posted on by
1

Yeah, August was insane.  This is the first weekend in a long time that I’ve been able to pretty much just chill out at home and not do much of anything.  Unfortunately, for some reason, I had a monkey wrench thrown in that last night with a bout of nausea that turned into vomiting.  I have NO idea what happened there.  The only thing I can think is that I ate a few Weight Watchers quesadilla’s after doing a 50 minute workout with EA SPORTS Active.  Regardless of why I got ill, a few hours after I was sick I felt fine and seem to be peachy keen again today.

Ok, yeah.  I started this post talking about puke.  Where the hell do I go from here?

We’ve wrapped up another Dragon*Con, and all told I think it was a pretty smashing success.  We have some thing we want to improve on for next year for sure, but considering the monumental task we attempted to achieve I feel good about the work we did.  On my day off I hit the dealer rooms and picked up some new snarky shirts.  I also got my kilt belt re-sized (That was a nice ego boost in and of itself.  The leather worker took a big chunk off of the belt to make it fit properly).  I saw some good friends, had a chance to see the William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy panel, and I got to hang out for a few minutes with Felicia Day backstage before her panel on Monday morning (and yes, if you’re wondering, she’s just as nice and funny as you’d expect her to be).

On the weight front I had the satisfaction of knowing that when I left for the convention I was two pounds less than I was when I went to my first one back in 2002.   I noticed a few ladies giving me the once over, and had one woman make what was (to Krystalle) a very obvious pass at me.  Me?  I continue my long-standing tradition of being fairly clueless in that regard and thought she was just being funny when she told me I should find someone to cover for my shift so I could come over to the Marriott at midnight to “get blown.”  She was referring to Jennie Breeden’s annual kilt-blowing get together, but the directness and the way she said it apparently meant more.

I have to be told these things, you see.

Speaking of kilts – I wore my utilikilt the entire weekend, mostly because a) it makes me look good and b) it is probably going to be the last year I’m able to wear this particular kilt.  It’s getting very loose at this point.  Before I had my belt re-sized on Friday I thought it might actually fall off.  Mind you, I’m not complaining about the fact that I’m losing weight at all.  Utilikilts are expensive, though!

In other health related news I have purchased a shiny new pair of running shoes with gift cards I got through the Virgin Healthmiles program and tomorrow I’m going to start training to run a 5k.  Like pull ups, running is something that my weight has always thrown up a barrier to, and it is time I knocked that barrier down.  The 5k I have picked out takes place about 2 weeks after my 37th birthday, and I think that would be a delightful way to ring in the start of my next trip around the sun.

Can’t really say I have much more interesting to say at the moment.  Alex and I have started rehearsals for Night of the Living Dead.  I’m playing the free to play Dungeons and Dragons Online as well as Kingdom of Loathing.  Now that convention season is done sticking our heads back in the sand financially and working on paying down some more debt.  I still have my job, and while our company is doing everything they can to cut costs we’re still not cutting benefits or employees.  All in all, life is still pretty good on my end.

Exciting?  Maybe not.  But adventure?  Excitement?  A Jedi seeks not these things.

And on that extremely nerdy note I bid you adieu.