Christmas is HELL!!!

I tried to pick up an iTrip for a friend for Christmas and I got to see wanton chaos in retail settings at an unprecedented scale. The shop next to my office had the iPod section striped BARE. You had remains of the peg board and some torn cartons just left. A second mass merchant yielded much of the same… The electronics specialty shop looked like a tornado ripped through it. You had children fighting with parents on “Mommy, I want [insert name of toy/electronic gadget here]!!!”, people on the phones with the person they were attempting to gift for, and the terrible checkout lines.

I understand the need to shop last second is apparent, but for the love of all that’s holy… People should have the courtesy of being polite to each other, not this frenzy of “I gotta buy this or my kids won’t love me!” If a parent is worrying about how much a child will love them, then they should have a better parent through out the entire year rather than be a jackass to the entire world for the last few days of Christmas shopping due to procrastination.

Workout Log 12/22/2007

Crossramp Machine

  • 60 minutes with 5 minutes of cooldown
  • Crossramp level 6
  • Resistance level 8, level 6 on cooldown
  • 585 calories
  • 5.27 miles

Torso Rotation Machine

  • 40 lbs resistance
  • 2 sets
  • 8 reps a set

Overhead Press Machine

  • 40 lbs
  • 2 sets
  • 9 reps a set

Rowing Machine

  • 40 lbs
  • 2 sets
  • 12 reps a set

Today’s session was rather impressive on the cardio end. The caloric burn off today was amazing and that was a pure hour of feeling and loving the burn. It was great to accomplish that much work from just 1 hour. On weigh-in before starting my session, I was at 150 lbs. That was exciting to see me lose 3 lbs from proper diet and exercise. Who’d have thought that adding something as simple as yogurt, more grains, and eating more often with smaller portions could achieve that end… I took it easy on the weights as I was just beat after that hard session of cardio.

Tomorrow, Monday, and Tuesday I am out of action due to work and the gym’s holiday hours. Expect me to resume on Wednesday and carry onwards! Happy holidays to those who are fans of my progress!

(So…) Victory is mine!

…My blog seems to be fucked to hell. Pardon my language, but I can’t bloody figure out why the main page is constantly going to hell, while the individual pages are fine. I have thrown my question to the WordPress support community and hopefully an answer will be coming soon. I can say one thing, I have not mucked about with any of the sites files other than dropping in new themes and plug-ins.

Here’s to hoping that someone can help me.

UPDATE @ 9:24am: It seems to be triggered by my “Personal” category. I can’t seem to put a finger on anything else but that… I don’t know if I should kill the tag and recreate it or what, but that seems to be the root of the problem… I am going to attempt to delete that tag and see if it remedy’s things and then try to recreate a category in hopes of the problem fixing itself. If anyone is a WordPress fanatic who may know something about my issue, feel free to comment. Part of me thinks that it could be a damaged MySQL database and I’d be too damn scared to even begin touching that…

UPDATE @ 9:35am: Deleting the “Personal” category tag seemed to excaberate the problem to the “Uncategorized” category. I have recreated the category and will reorganize the posts to where they belong. It probably may not fix a thing, unfortunately.

How sweet it is to establish control on the blog again… Turns out that doing a copy-paste from a .doc file opened in Abiword borked my entire blog. I will be saving my mobile works from my phone in .txt files next time. I still have a few W3C errors, but I can’t quite pinpoint them. All I can say is… it’s good to have the blog fixed.

Inject, Infuse, and Fight.

It’s almost the end of the year and what a rocky road it has been. I confronted my debts, almost paid the toll of my life a few times, embraced open source software, and went a spiritual journey. There were a few times where I almost lost my soul from everything muddling the water, but with a few good friends they had pulled me through. I am thankful for meeting my friends because I know that fate brought me to them for a good reason.

My friends helped me find solace in myself. I had to change who my friends were to ones who could give me a new view of life. A stale view from friends stagnating in their fallacy of foolish living just seemed to constantly put me in the wrong. Once I realized I knew what I had to do, the only thing I lacked were mentors. When I found my mentors, I knew that I could finally begin the path to the way of perfection.

With my job and the positive changes, I found that my new boss and my assistant manager would become somewhat like a brother and sister of mine, albeit older. They wanted to be a little involved with my life, because they knew the pain of struggling and suffering without anyone to offer a listening ear. With their concern, I felt like I had a second home to speak my mind. That second home being a fusion of a hall of learning and a hall of healing. My clients and their happiness also served as another pillar of strength as that was the “fuel” I used to keep on fighting. When things looked absolutely dismal, just to see one of my clients smile and say something as simple as “Thank you Zero, your persistence is very much appreciated!” makes me feel great that I could positively impact their lives.

As far as myself is concerned, I am in a unique predicament due to my sketchy finances. With owing my family on a loan that pulled me out of debt, they are seeking restitution at a faster rate. I have 2 more minor debts that I must polish off and after that… I will be clean from those. I also have a few vital things that must be taken care of on my car Devil which will run me a few hundred there. I am prohibited from accepting any more loans from my family and any banking establishments until I have repaid 85% of their initial loan as part of their agreement. This leaves me in a bind as I am paying for my classes out of my own pocket. From the matter of fact, I may just spend the next 5 months working to death to amass a sum of money and get all of my financial work straightened out. After all sides are square, then the money will go into savings and be nested up. The IRS should be giving back cash, rather than demanding it from me for once. Lastly, I have a wild gamble that may pay off but I must bide my time until summer but that requires some capital. To be honest, I could care less if my family wants to offer to reduce my car note to nothing, because the term is almost over and it’s pointless. If my gamble pays off… then my efforts to reduce my debts to nothing on my own will demonstrate my abilities to control my own financial destiny again.

If I haven’t made mention already… Family is making a ruckus about Christmas gifts and all. For me, I know I deserve no gift from them and that’s perfectly fine. As long as I can hang with my cousin Sol, work out like a maniac, and write for this holiday, I could care less about being told that I need to hurry with repayment or have a Christmas where I am being yelled to death with my family. I do wish for some better things, but I won’t fight it.

I would like to close this post with a challenge to myself: If I can burn off 15 lbs (from 155 lbs) by February 11th of 2008, I will buy myself a media player of some sort with an armband strap to take with me to my gym sessions.