Agents of Empire

New York Comic Con – the biggest and most exciting popular culture convention on the East Coast! – New York Comic Con | October 13 – 16, 2011 | Javits Center.

Another event to keep in mind for next year.  I’d love to attend one of these and one for Anime/Manga.

Putting this here for safe keeping.  Pretty interested to see how many of these episodes actually make it to the outlets that I know about (like Crunchyroll, Funimation, Anime Network, Viz, Hulu, and Netflix).

Winter 2011 Anime Chart

Asylum Afterhours Live on USTREAM

The After Hours is just picking up … I miss my time in the clubs and my buddies.

Installed a new plug-in for cross-site posting … I know some of the more tech savvy peeps would have something to say about that, but I’m bored.

In the end, Habari wasn’t quite what I had hoped it would be.  It is a blog system still in its infancy and seems to be well on its way, however, the features I thought was a defacto part of the system were not quite there, yet.  I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on it as it matures.  That leaves MovableType, however, testing that system will require some finagling on my server since it utilizes CGI to carry out some of its tasks.  Not entirely a Bad Thing™, but it does make installation a little more difficult than just dumping the files into a directory and pointing your web browser at it.  Which leaves me with WordPress and the one prevailing truth of the moment – It Works®.  I may have to look into how one goes about developing a plugins and themes, though the latter would mean that I would also have to somehow manage to find an ounce of artistic ability … something I haven’t the patience for.

Seeing as it’s now mid May 2011 and my last update was made in October 2010, figure I should put something here. (continue reading…)

So just a quick update to say I’m still alive. I’ll post more when I get my new system in. I’ve been converted to Apple, so my next post will be from my new MacBook Pro.

So, I've been growing lax on my commitment to keep this site updated at least on a weekly basis.  Time is moving so very fast these days.  I've been waking up earlier and sleeping less, but the days seem to feel so much more shorter.  Part of it is that I've been so absorbed with this C/C++ class that I've been taking.  The other part of it has been the exercise … though I've been struggling to keep the motivation on the exercise.  I've resolved myself to not sit at the computer first thing in the morning.  I need to knock out the running and the exercise when I wake up.  There can be no exceptions anymore.

I had my first taste of the P90X exercise regimen this past Friday. I think I'm in love with a program and I'm very interested in picking up the DVDs … I still feel a little tight from the workout but I'm looking forward to doing more.  This Tuesday I'll be meeting up with my recruiter to work on my APFT.  I'm worried, but I have until May 18th to get myself into shape.  Right now I'm hoping to meet 50% … I'll be pushing it with my push-ups and sit-ups, but it's not that far from where I'm averaging now.  The running, on the other hand.  I'm having issues controlling my breathing which is leading to early fatigue.

Gaming has come almost to a complete halt. I seem to only play WoW on the weekends anymore – mostly because by the time I'm done with school, it's already 9PM and my wife is usually done with putting baby to sleep by then. Monday is my RPG night, but even that's been intermittent because my recruiter seems to like to schedule everything on Tuesday. Not that I'm really complaining … it's just interesting to note that I don't play as much as I used to.

I've gotten as low as 219 recently while my high is around 224.  I fluctuate five pounds, which I suppose is normal.  I find it discouraging at times when I realize that I've gained weight since I started exercising.  I've gone from 217 to 228, now I'm back down to 222-ish.  Enough of that.  I need to get some rest since I'm going to wake-up at 0800.  Here's a couple sites to keep myself focused on those things that I need to improve upon.

Breathing Tips

• http://www.essortment.com/lifestyle/properbreathing_sbnd.htm
• http://www.the-fitness-motivator.com/breathing-exercises-for-running.html

Exercise today didn’t go exactly as planned. I’m balking at the sprinting and I’m not exactly quite sure how to motivate myself. I had originally thought that game time should be considered, however, my gaming has been virtually eliminated and replaced by my tinkering with C++ coding. How exactly do I “moderate” this when it’s not just entertaining for me but it’s also for my current college course.

Mona and I did end up going to Tae Bo. Oddly enough, as I was working my shoulders last night, tonight’s Tae Bo class was all about the shoulders and the legs. Funny how that works. Last week Thursday I decided to do as many sit-ups as my body would allow, that Friday we do abdominal work … Tuesday I decide to do as many chin-ups as I can do, Wednesday was shoulder work. My muscles are planning a revolt … I can sense it.  All in all, it was a very nice 60 minute workout, regardless of the complaints being made by my shoulders.

So, I still need to figure out my motivation. If I can’t find the discipline now, I’ll be in for a rude awakening when I can’t quit. Tomorrow I need to do 10 push-ups / 10 sit-ups / 5 chin-ups — should be pull-ups, I know, but they’re causing me too much trouble … I really hope my shoulder’s don’t decide to go on strike on me. Friday, I’ll attempt to do the 5 reps of 4 minutes walking/2 minutes running for 30 minutes of activity … and then Saturday I’ll give the sprints an attempt … I just need to figure out where I can do them.

May 18th, 2010 is the new date set for my ship out to Basic Combat Training. My contract has been renegotiated and I will be moving on to my chosen career path. Words cannot describe the overwhelming sense of relief that washed over me when I left MEPS yesterday. Honestly, I wouldn't be happy with my life in the military if I were a cook. Not that it isn't an important career – however, cooking and computing are two vastly different skill sets. In one, I have nearly 30 years of practical experience … in the other I have practically no good experiences. No, cooking is not a demeaning job … but I was a cook once at McDonald's and found myself disgusted with life … the only good that came of it was that the pay was tremendously superior to my weekly allowance.

So now that I am going down this path, I will be changing my major in UAT to Network Security. Of course, after I finish this current course – C/C++ Programming I. This class is just so much fun – the geek in my has been writhing in so much ecstasy that it has been extremely difficult to conceal my dorkgasms. We're already into our third week and while I'm lagging a little behind on the reading, I'm enjoying every moment of this class … more so than the entire year, last year. Coding seems to complete my soul in such a way that DJing has definitely taken a back seat … yes, really.

I also ran across some of my mother's writings today. There are so many similarities in the manner through which we see the world – it's uncanny. I miss my mom … I really miss being able to talk to her about life in general and it breaks my heart to know that my daughter will never know the greatness of the character whom her name is derived from. I didn't get depressed … but I did feel the empty pang in my heart for awhile …

My daughter is walking now … has been for over a week. It's crazy how these skills just seem to sprout overnight. She still isn't talking but she does understand distinctions in verbal intonation as well as reacting to a few simple commands (Hello, Goodbye, Arms Up, Arms Down, Where's Dada?, Go to Mama, Get your wahwah) … I really hope that I'll get to hear her make some simple Neanderthal sentences before I leave for Basic, but that may be expecting a bit much. We all want our children to be intellectually superior than every other child … I want mine to make me feel stupid with her powers of reasoning and recall like a couple of my friends do … though, I suppose, I should be careful for what I wish for.

So with the change in dates on my boot camp ship out, I've also decided to reboot my physical training regimen.  I'm still going to Tae Bo on Wednesdays and Fridays, however, I've decided to start over on my Pre-BCT Walk to Run PT schedule. I've swapped to Training Schedule #2 which, surprisingly, is very similar to the regimen that I'm on now BUT it reboots the running portion. The reason why I rebooted, really, is so that I can actually do the regimen as intended instead of my modified version which only had me going around the nearly mile block once … I need to go around at least twice which would condition me to run over a mile and closer to that two miles.  The block is about 0.7 miles which means twice around is only 1.4 miles … which means, really, I should be making three laps for the 2.1 miles.  If I can shoot for 17 minutes 30 seconds, I'll be good to go.  So to track my progress I'll be writing a daily entry.

Thursday last week I was able to pull out 30 sit-ups and 20 push-ups. Unfortunately, the next Curtis decided to do an abdominal workout … Yikes, that was painful. Yesterday I did 20 push-ups and 25 sit-ups.  Today I did 10 push-ups, 10 sit-ups, and 5 chin-ups.  Tomorrow I'll need to start doing my sprints and then later I have Tae Bo.  So I'll need to do my sprints soon after waking up so that I can be some what capable of keeping up with Curtis' class … things have been getting crazy over there.