Author Archives: Michael C. McGreevy

End Of An Era

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Well, I finally decided to put my money where my mouth was.  After I wrote my last post I continued thinking about my feelings about World of Warcraft and opted to finally cancel my account.  I did so this morning.  The last day my account will be active is April 7th.

I realize that those of you who don’t play the game will never understand why this is such a big deal, and that’s ok.  I can try to explain, but the best analogy I can come up with is that I feel like I just broke up with someone I have been dating for the last four years.  I consider many of the folks I play with to be close friends, and frankly it is those friendships that have kept me playing for as long as I have.

I just can’t do it anymore, though.  I can’t justify spending the money to basically use the game as a chat interface, and I truly detest what they have done with the game.  It’s not fun for me anymore.  I’m getting a similar experience playing Runes of Magic and it is free.  As much as I’m enjoying that game, though, I’m determined not to get sucked in as much as I have been in any other MMO in the past.  I just don’t have the time for it.  I’m going to do things like, oh, yard work….house cleaning…home improvements.  You know, that stuff that you don’t do when you’re spending 5-6 hours a day playing a video game?

I’m also concentrating on [Super Secret Project], which I’ll be able to talk about more in a month or so.

So, yeah.  So long, World of Warcraft.  It was great fun while it lasted, but this cowboy needs to be moving along.

Blizzard and Pepsi Announce Plans for WoW Themed Soft Drinks

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Horde RedOne of the things that I have to struggle with here at ShrinkGeek is the fact that healthy living is, quite frankly, not a fundamental aspect of the geek culture.  As a matter of fact, it’s fairly safe to say that geeks tend to revel in their love of deliciously unhealthy food and drink.  Stereotypes exist for a reason, and the truth is that most “normal” people wouldn’t picture the overweight slob sitting on his couch with a cheese powder stained controller in one hand and a two liter of Jolt Cola in the other if it weren’t for the fact that a good number of us really do treat ourselves that way.  I can recall countless evenings growing up where the most intense physical activity involved seeing how many times I could get my hand from the Doritos bag to my mouth.

Mind you, it’s that kind of “conscientious living” that contributed to my weighing 420 pounds and having two strokes before I turned 30.  Eating like crap and never exercising may very well be a fun, and possibly even integral, part of the geek lifestyle, but it certainly doesn’t lead to long and healthy lives.  Unfortunately, getting that across to the geek crowd is a difficult task.  To many it seems like the idea of being healthy is a form of “selling out”; That in order to maintain their edge they have to have a diet full of caffeine, sugar, and questionably “safe” chemicals.

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On The Death Of Community In WoW

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Back in December I wrote about how I wasn’t excited about getting back into the World of Warcraft raid game.  At the time, part of my reasoning behind that is because I did not feel that there was much of a challenge in it for me, and the hope was that future expansions would ramp up the difficulty a bit.

Well, that has and has not happened.  From everything I’ve read, they are going to continue to have “hard mode” versions of certain encounters in the raids that are optional but keep the base difficulty level fairly low.

This, along with some fairly drastic changes in my work schedule recently, has pretty much killed any remaining interest I have in raiding (and may honestly be the final nail in the coffin that gets me to cancel my subscription to the game).

I’ve seen a lot written about how the game has changed for the worse (and, in all fairness, how some think it is much better now), but to date I haven’t seen anyone really put their finger on why that has disappointed me.

I can sum it up in a three word sentence : Difficulty builds community.

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Captain Random Strikes Again

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I think I might need to take another look at The Artist’s Way. Sam got me a copy of it several years ago, but the touchy-feely aspects of the book really turned me off and I put it down.  I don’t even know where my copy is.  Krystalle picked up a copy of it for herself a few weeks ago, and while she was just as put off by those aspects as I was she has been working with the program and it seems to be making a big difference for her.

I need to do something, though. I feel like I’m out of touch with my writing.  I’ve gotten used to communicating via 140 character messages on Twitter and I seem to lose cohesion on my longer posts very quickly.  Yesterday, for example, I started writing a piece on super hero archetypes as leaders and why Bush, who could be compared to Batman, failed.  It started out strongly enough but I just kinda fizzled out and ended up saving it to a text file on my desktop.  I may or may not pick it back up again at some point.

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Parenting Ramble

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I don’t like being a dick.

Ok, I’m sure there are some people who may read the above statement and say to themselves “then maybe you shouldn’t be one,” but those people suck and probably don’t read my blog anyway.

I digress.

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[Insert Fish Related Pun Here]

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The selection of an image with two blowfish next to each other is completely coincidental. Honest.

Image by fischerhuder

Sometimes you have to find witty ways to write about a subject and other times the stories just kinda write themselves.  Case in point?  The following headline from an article over at The Guardian.

Blowfish Testicles poison seven in Japanese restaurant

You know, I get that there is a certain amount of appeal in eating food that is kind of edgy, and blowfish certainly falls into that category.  You’re talking about a “delicacy” that, if not prepared properly, is about 100 times more deadly than cyanide.  There comes a point, however, when even those who like eating on the wild side have to stop and say “is this really a good idea?”

For me that line just happens to be poisonous testicles.

Quote Of The Day

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It is my belief that when man is given a choice to work, or not to work, he will choose not to.  That is why the invention of a machine that will do all of man’s work for him will be the destruction of our society.  The human condition is not prepared for the drastic change that will be inflicted by such a machine.  It will remove the sense of purpose that man has unknowingly needed throughout all of recorded time.

– Joe Popp, Maxwell :  A New Rock Musical by Joe Popp

Retro Dieting – The Bad Old Days

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icanhascheezurger.com

icanhascheezurger.com

It has been often said that being optimistic is incredibly helpful when you are struggling to lose weight.  Admittedly, it is hard to be optimistic when you are faced with choking down that eighth glass of water for the day or you are trying to learn to love vegetables, but the fact of the matter is that modern dieters have it easy.  Not only do we have a plethora of products that are packaged to help us with portion control, but many diets these days are loaded with foods that are, quite frankly, delicious.

It wasn’t always this way, my friends.

I grew up in a dieting household.  When I was growing up my Mother (and, by extension, her children) took part in just about every diet craze that was out there.  I can recall tuna fish diets, grape fruit diets, diets that involved granular shakes, and diets that with daily calorie intakes that would have the Olsen Twins duking it out in a cage match over a Snickers at the end of the day.

But what I remember the most is the liver.

A lot has been said over the years about the medical benefits of eating liver.  From a health perspective, it is one of the best sources of Vitamin A, a compound that promotes healthy vision, bone growth, and assists in fighting off infections.  It is also thought to help regulate blood sugar and aid weight loss efforts.

It is also…well…liver.

Please understand – I don’t want to take anything away from those of you who actually like eating liver, but you have to admit that for a large number of people even the thought of eating liver is enough to bring on a serious case of the DO NOT WANTS.  That being said, there was a time when it was a regular staple in our household.  You see, back in the early 70’s the folks over at Weight Watchers decided it was so important to eat liver that it was REQUIRED that you do so at least once a week.  My Mother cleverly disguised it of course.  She never told us we were eating liver, but that we were eating braunschweiger.  It worked for a while, too, but eventually one of us actually read the packaging when she brought it in from the store and the jig was up.

The other day my Mom gave me a Weight Watchers cookbook from the early 80’s.  By this point in the program history they had moved away from requiring liver, but it was still a pretty big focus of the recipe book – so much so that Liver has its very own section.  Now I’m all for trying new things, but some of these recipes sound downright revolting, but my “favorite” has to be the Fruit ‘N’ Rice-Filled Liver.

In fact, I’m so grossed out by this particular recipe I’m gonna share the love.

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Twitterpated

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I haven’t made a post here in almost a month, and all I have is the really lame excuse of “I was busy with the holidays and rehearsing for a show.”  I’m still really busy, actually.  I just started a new semester of classes at Saint Petersburg College (I’m taking the classes necessary to get into their B.S. Technology Management program).

That being said, my creativity is kind of at an all time low – which really sucks because I’m working on a super-secret new project with some friends that is going to require quite a bit of creativity from me in very short order.

The preceding two paragraphs were a lame setup for the cheesy premise of the post that follows.  I’m going to take some of my tweets from the last month and expand on them.

So lame.

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Fitness Related Video Games Installed In Schools

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Image courtesy of ajimixx

Image courtesy of ajimixx

Video game players do not have a reputation for being paragons of physical fitness (with the possible exception of freakishly strong thumbs). In recent years, though, there has been a growing trend of console based games that have gotten us up off the couch. From party games like Dance Dance Revolution, Rock Band, and Samba de Amigo to games specifically designed for physical fitness like Yourself Fitness and Wii Fit, the video game industry seems determined to help us shake off our couch potato reputation.

Hoping to capitalize on the popularity of these trends, many youth oriented activity centers are using video games to entice children into burning more calories. Not only are fitness centers like the YMCA installing consoles to appeal to kids, the school board of Stafford County, Virginia, has jumped on the bandwagon as well. Over a dozen schools in the district now have fitness centers with a “technology twist.”

It seems likely that this trend will only continue to grow. Despite its lack of “next gen” graphics and titles designed to appeal to traditional hard core gamers the Nintendo Wii was yet again the hottest selling console during the most recent holiday shopping season. It is only a matter of time before Sony and Microsoft jump on the bandwagon and expand their catalog of games that get us moving, and while they may not turn us into super models they might help to counter all those Doritos we suck down while playing.