My back has been pretty sore for the last couple of days for some reason. When I went to the gym last night, I told the trainer that we needed to take it easy because of how I was feeling. He told me to let him know if I started feeling any pain at all and that we would stop right then.

I was doing okay for the first couple of sets of assisted squats, but that last set started to feel kinda painful. I told the trainer, so we moved on to other stuff: Shoulders. He handed me 2 15 pound dumbells and had me do a standing shoulder press with them. After the first set of those, I had to stop. I had started to feel really light-headed in a quick hurry, so he had me catch my breath and take a walk around the gym.

By the time I got back to the weights area, he had me do the press from a seated position. I was able to finish out the 2 other sets of 15 reps, but I was really hurting afterwards. When I told the trainer this, he made the call that we should stop and that I should pick up the cardio. On to the elliptical.

My goal was to do 20 minutes of cardio, but after about 8 minutes I was really having a hard time even standing, so I quit for the night. I came home and took a hot shower, then the girlfriend came over for dinner and a movie. Laying on the couch through the movie, I didn't feel too awfully bad. However, when it was time to head to bed I was really hurting.

Granted, we were up late watching the movie and talking, I didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night. I found myself talking in my sleep at one point, which (for me) is a sign that I wasn't sleeping too well. I do recall tossing and turning a fair bit in the night, and when my alarm went off at 7:00 this morning I had a very tough time climbing out of bed.

Another hot shower to start the day and hopefully loosen the stiffness, and I was off to the office. The drive from my apartment to the parking area at work was mildly uncomfortable, but the walk up the steps to my desk was even more painful.

I did find that the pain gave me some sort of odd motivation to work harder and more effectively. I'm thinking it was probably my mind saying, "If we get a bunch done early in the day, maybe the day can end sooner." After a couple of hours, sitting at my desk, I was ready to call it a day. I did stick it out, though.

Luckily at around 3:00, my boss came to my desk to talk about a couple of things. He made a comment about how he was tired and was probably going home soon, and I echoed his comments about being tired. He said, "Well, it's after 3:00 already, so go home." I told him I wasn't going to argue, and I got to a stopping point and left the office.

I'm sitting at the computer now and it feels like my back is swollen, which isn't a very good thing. With that, I think I'm going to go figure out some sort of fulcrum to lay on at the couch and see about catching some sleep. In the meantime though, my spine is for sale. Shoot me an e-mail if you're interested.

As you may remember me mentioning in an earlier post, I have been going to the gym twice a week for a while now. Each time I go, I meet with a trainer for 30 minutes, then I do 20-30 minutes of cardio.Looking at the calendar, I have been keeping up with this for just over a month now.

People have asked me if I am seeing any results yet, but up until the other morning I have answered with a "no". Now, I can look in the mirror and see that I am getting rid of some of the flab and that my body is coming back into a nice form. Also, I have been feeling better, eating less, and I have lost about 6 pounds.

I hope that within the next couple of months I will be able to squeeze into my pants a little easier and that maybe I'll be able to sit with my doctor and see about getting off this stupid blood pressure medicine.

Hooray for health!

It's been a while since I've posted anything in this category. Nevertheless:

Is it me or is my imagination running wild Some things are not what they seem, no You know I'd ask you to come into my world for a while But I know it's only a dream
Stir - Only a Dream

If you read the previous entry, I imagine you're wondering how it's going between me and this lady. Well, I'm not going to give you any explicit detail, but I would like to say that it seems to be going very well at the moment. :)

That is all.

For the last several months, I've been planning to take a trip to Indiana to visit my Dad for his birthday. I did the same for my Mom back in November for her birthday. The only difference this time though was that it was kept a secret from my Dad the entire way.

When I ordered the plane tickets a couple of months ago, I told my sisters to keep it quiet because I didn't want Mom or Dad to know about it until I showed up. A couple of weeks later though, Mom sent me an e-mail and reminded me when Dad's birthday was, and asked if I had any plans of something to do for him. Well crap, I had to spill the beans to her. I made her understand though that nobody else was to know, especially not Dad. She did well.

I landed in Indy around 7:00 local time this evening, and as I was making my way out of town I got a call from my Dad. He asked if I got the message he sent me on the instant messenger, and I told him I hadn't because I was out driving around (not a lie - I was driving around). I got off the phone with him and continued my journey to their house. By the time I got there, he was done for the day and was half asleep in front of the TV.

I don't think he really realized at first that I was really here, but as he woke up he certainly did. After a big hug from him and Mom both, we ate dinner, then Dad and I sat and talked for a couple of hours.

So far it has been a nice surprise for him, and I hope that the other happenings this weekend will be just as nice for him. :D

Since TSRum complained that I haven't made any posts lately, I figured I'd take his advice and tell you all about my weekend.

As lame as it might sound at first, I've been a member of an online dating community for about the last year. Now that I've said that, let me challenge you to think about how social networking sites, which a dating site really is, have changed how people view the internet and making friends therein.

Anyhow, back to the story. Sometime a couple of months ago, I started talking with a young lady on there and it seemed to be going well. When she suggested that we meet up, I had no qualms with it. We met a couple of weeks ago for a cup of coffee and to meet each other face to face. We spent probably 3 hours or so sitting outside in the perfect evening weather, just talking and getting to know each other a bit. After we went our ways that evening, I got home to find a message from her saying how much she enjoyed it. A couple of days later, she sent me another message, saying that if we didn't plan to get together again, it may not happen. Thus, we made plans to meet up for bowling and dinner, and those plans were executed this past Saturday.

I picked her up and we went to the bowling alley just down the way from my place. The first game was mine, but she leveled the stakes on the next game. We bowled a third game, just for fun, and somehow I threw one of the best games I ever have.

After we got done bowling, we went to find dinner. We had previously discussed what was in the area, and she said that Olive Garden was fine with her. So off we went. As we were finishing dinner, I realized that it was really much earlier in the evening than I thought, so I asked her if she'd like to see a movie. She agreed, so we went down the way to the theater.

We had an hour to kill before the movie started, so we sat on a bench outside in the (again) perfect weather and talked for a bit. We went back in to the theater just in time for the staff to finish cleaning house for the next show. We sat and poked fun at the pre-show advertisements for a bit, then the show started.

The movie, "Up", was pretty entertaining and I think we both enjoyed it equally. By the time it was finished though, I was feeling like the old man that I'm drawing closer to being and figured that 11:00 was probably a good time to call it a night. We jumped in the car and I took her home by way of downtown Houston.

You're probably wondering all the details: Did I kiss her? Did we hold hands? Where did it go from there? Quite frankly, that's not really your business and out of respect for the both of us, only a very limited few shall know the answers.

I think it went quite well. I left her a follow-up message that evening to tell her that I really enjoyed the time together and that I hoped we could do it again soon. I'm not going to make the mistake I did several times in the past and push for an answer, but I am optimisically under the impression that she had a good time and is looking for a repeat soon as well.

If you know me fairly well or if you have been reading my blog for very long, you know this is the end of a proverbial drought for my "love life", for lack of a better term. I'm finding that the social skills I've developed in my career have really been a benefit to my personal life as well, though. Don't get me wrong, I still sometimes wonder what the next topic of discussion should be and feel that brief moment of awkward silence. I don't think that will ever go away, but I only hope that whoever I am in such a relationship with will understand that we're all human and not hold it against me.

Overall though, this has been a great experience and I hope I can get to know this young lady better and build a relationship with her. :)

Yeah, I fail on multiple counts. I just realized that one of them is with how this site renders in Google Chrome, particularly with forms. I guess I'll have to look that over later this weekend...

But really, the other place where I fail is in posting any sort of updates about myself, rather than this site or the government. Time to change that!

A couple of weeks ago I got a card in the mail from LA Fitness with a promotional "$0.00 signup fee" offer. Knowing that I was out of shape and that I needed to do something about it, I decided to go sign up. The gym is less than a mile away, so it's the perfect anti-excuse for getting back in shape.

I met with a trainer the first day I went, and he put me through one of the most intense workouts that I have ever experienced. It wasn't so much about the amount of weight on the stack, but it was about the reps and the type of reps I was doing. Since they're big on anaerobic exercise, it was all about keeping my heart rate up between the sets on the machines. The benefit to this is that it burns fat and builds muscle a lot quicker, but the muscle that is built is the "lean muscle". The figure they gave me was that 1 pound of lean muscle burns 500 calories a day at rest. If I can get rid of the fat and pack on lean muscle, I'll be doing pretty alright, I think. :)

But anyhow, I worked so hard that night that I was just on the verge of fainting and/or losing my lunch. It was a very similar feeling to what I experienced when I was in Las Vegas, but it was different enough for me to know that it wasn't so much a bad thing as that was. I ended up having to sit down, at which point my vision started to get very dark, and my ears felt like they were filling with water. When I was coming back from that, I decided I should get near a suitable receptacle, should I need to expel my lunch. After a couple minutes I knew I was doing okay, so I went back out front to meet with the trainer again. He and I both agreed that I needed to just call it a night, so I did.

I met with him again on Friday, when he had me work my triceps, chest, and abs. I was able to go that workout without feeling faint, but I felt like I had been whipped after I was done. For a couple of days after that, my arms were aching, but not too bad. But the following Monday it was bad enough that I couldn't bend my arms at all. I tried to work from the office for a couple of hours, but due to the arrangement of my desk it just didn't work. I ended up coming home to finish out the day. It made me feel pretty lame because I had to work from home just from post-workout pains, but meh.

I finally got over those aches, and went in to meet with a different trainer on Wednesday. She had me work my biceps and shoulders, which wasn't too bad... or so I thought. I had a little bit of trouble fully extending my left arm the following day, but it didn't really hit me until after Friday's workout.

Friday (yesterday), I met with yet a different trainer. He had me focus on legs and abs, which I did alright with. During the duration of that workout I did feel like I could vomit pretty easily, but I was able to hold it down. I had to cut my 20 minutes of cardio down to 8 minutes because my legs were shot, so I came on home after that.

The trip up the steps to my apartment were murder when I got home. It was so bad that I had to stop and catch my breath part-way up the steps. When I unlocked my door, I dropped the keys on the floor, but didn't have it in me to lean over and pick them up so I just kicked them in the door. :P

This morning when I woke up, I was aching really bad. You'd think it would be my legs that were aching, but it wasn't. See, I've identified that it takes 3 days for the ache of a high intensity workout to hit me. That's right, my biceps are the killers today. I can't lift my arms very far and I can't straighten them out because the muscles ache so bad. I'm even feeling it up in my forearms!

So yeah, that's what's been happening lately for me. Kinda dull, but meh, at least I'm doing something good for my body.

I got bored with the template the site was using and decided to re-introduce the old "Ice Flame" template. Please leave comments and let me know what you think.

Sure, it's possible. I risk getting in some sort of trouble for posting this on the internet, but I would like to point out that at no time did I dismantle any of the products used in this process to achieve the final goal. This was discovered totally by accident, and may already be public knowledge.

One night I was sitting at my computer, trying to debug some jQuery interfaces I was writing. For this, I was watching the network console in the Firebug extension for Firefox, making sure that my $.getJSON() calls were working properly. Somehow, I managed to pull up the network console for the tab where I had my pandora.com station playing, and I noticed where it was retrieving media from audio-sjl-a-1.pandora.com. Poking at it a little bit, I found that the files being retrieved were simple .flv files, with the audio embedded in them. Easy enough, I used ffmpeg to extract the audio stream and save it as an mp3, and there I had local copies of those songs that I can find nowhere other than pandora.com!

The information I gave you above should be sufficient for you to figure it out on your own. I don't endorse doing so though, because stealing is just wrong.

After my last entry about anything political, I got to thinking about this shirt I wanted. It would be a bright orange shirt, similar to those worn by inmates, with the word "TERRORIST" on the back in big, bold lettering.

Tonight I came across one of those "make your own shirt" sites, and they had the color t-shirt I was looking for, so I got busy. The product is this:

This shirt is intended to express my frustration for those in the Republican party who are very passionate about their beliefs, being labeled by the passionate Democrats as "Terrorists".

I believe that this should be tolerated under that whole "freedom of speech" and "equal rights" tag that the liberals are so concerned about right now. However, I would really fear for my own safety in wearing such a shirt. Is that sad?

Well, this Las Vegas thing isn't really turning out to be as fun as I had hoped it would.

Thursday morning while I was sitting at the airport, my back started hurting pretty bad. I kept my mouth shut about it, but I was hurting quite a bit. The flight wasn't too terrible, but I was still in pain. After we landed and got to the hotel, I decided to go wander around a little bit. I tried my hand at the slot machines, then met up with the group and walked across the street to Planet Hollywood. One of the guys and I decided to go find food at the buffet while we were there, which turned out to be pretty good. He wanted to walk to New York New York and ride the roller coaster, so we made the journey and I waited patiently while he went for a ride.

We walked back to the Bellagio and went to meet up with the group and the CEO again for "heavy appetizers and cocktails". I didn't take part in the food end of it, but I did order a drink. I was able to make it through a conversation with the CEO before I started having issues though. While I didn't actually drink much (maybe 2 sips -- it was still a pretty full glass), it must have been enough to mix with my blood pressure medicine. I started getting dizzy and was sweating rather profuesely. Then, I started to black out and felt quite faint. I excused myself and went out to get some air (from the casino floor, no less), but rejoined the group after a few minutes. I thought I was feeling better, so I jumped back up to the table and attempted to join the conversation.

WRONG ANSWER.

I started to black out again, so I excused myself from the gathering. As I was on my way to the door, I felt my lunch start to churn. I made a detour for the restroom, but I couldn't hold it all back. A little bit of it made it past my tightly closed lips while I was in the lobby, then the rest as soon as I made it in the door of the restroom. By the time I was able to see somewhat straight, I quickly made my way back to the room and spent the rest of the night there.

This morning I went back down to the casino floor and played the slots a little more. I met up with one of other guys in the group and we made a lap around the hotel (which had to have been close to a mile), then my back started to kill me again. I came back to the room and laid down on the bed and apparently fell asleep for several hours again.

I just got back from another walk outside, where I watched the water show for a little bit, but my back started in AGAIN. So now I'm sitting in my room until I have to meet up with the group again then go see the Cirque du Soleil show.

I have to say, this trip really hasn't been too enjoyable. I think I'm going to call the doctor first thing Monday morning and get an appointment to see what's going on with my back, really.

Since I got back from my weekend on Galveston's beachfront, I find myself sitting in silence when I can. There was just something about the serene crash of the waves, the brisk gulf breeze, and the perfect combination of temperature and humidity that satisfied my every need.

Each workday at the office is filled with the clickity-clack of keyboards, the ringing of phones, and the chatter of the other staff around me. My commute to and from the office is generally stained by wreckless and unobservant motorists, so I drown out my anger and lack of patience with music from the 90's, a la Sirius channel 24.

By the time I get home, I just have no desire to listen to any more music or other noise. Even the television is starving for attention these days, as it just feels like too much work to watch anything.

Am I turning into a grumpy old man? Am I burned out? Do I just need a vacation? Whatever the case may be, I'm perfectly content with the ambient noise from my refrigerator.

Is it a bad thing when I load all my food down with black pepper? I am even sometimes tempted to put it on my cereal.

Anyone who wishes to discuss something with me from this point forward will be required to do so while applying tact to the conversation. Failure to comply will likely result in me calling out your ability to converse in a grown up, civil manner, a rather angry response from me, a kick in the shin, or all of the above.

While I have had a good bit of good things happening in my life lately, there have been several things that are really frustrating me. These range from stupid code-related issues at work all the way to turmoil in the government. I don't want to spend all evening detailing every little thing, but let me give you a taste of it, starting with the code.

I have been using jQuery in a lot of my project lately, thanks to Dustin's recommendation in a previous blog entry I can't seem to locate. At any rate, jQuery offers a user interface library that makes sprucing up your applications really easy. In the UI is a dialog "widget". While establishing the widget is really easy to do, styling it is nigh impossible. I spent about an hour on it this morning, which overlapped with our quarterly conference call at work, and I gave up in favor of the dhtmlwindow widget provided by another group entirely.

The government issues are pretty touchy for me right now. Now, I have been given a lot of names according to my beliefs and values, some as demeaning as "redneck" or "hick", and others downright shameful, such as "bigot" or "racist". I'm sorry, but if you want to stereotype me, I believe I should be granted the same rights and liberties of labeling other groups and individuals according to their respective stereotypes. I mean, as you're reading this and thinking I'm being a whiney redneck republican, you're just as wrong as I am for asking for this right. Why? Because you're doing what I would like to, but are getting away with it.

Let's take this government thing further though. I'm sure you've seen the reports about the Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment report issued by the DHS over the last few days. What really irks me about this report is the fact that many of the claims they make in the report are unfounded, or at least have no cited references, but also that they are calling the beliefs that this country originally lived by propaganda. I mean, come on; "end times prophecies" are in the book that Christians call the "divine word". If I remember right, the pilgrims fled to what is now known as the U.S.A. to flee the religious restraints that the Church of England had on them, and to continue practicing Christianity. Thus, this "divine word" has a lot of historic value to the country: The USA would probably not exist as it does today without the belief of Christianity and that the Bible is truth in its prophecies. So why are those beliefs now being called radical or extremist?

I maintain that I am not associated with any single political party. However, many recent profiles on my beliefs have shown that I am "extremely republican". Let's set that label aside though. I just want to know why the "Leftwing Extremists" are not being placed under such fire? Do we really want this country to become the socialist nation it is heading towards? I said I would give the new president a chance, and I continue to do so, but it is very hard when these things are happening in our government. To date, I have yet to see any benefit from any of his choices and orders.

These things really frustrate me.