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Archive for October, 2011

Cluck, cluck!

October 31st, 2011 No comments

I present you, first, with a clucking chicken:



I then present you with the entire Hearn crew, post-trick-or-treating:

20111031-211046.jpg

Hope your Halloween was rad, and devoid of horrible peanut-allergy reactions!

Categories: charles, josephine Tags:

Whiiiiiiiine

October 18th, 2011 No comments

I haven’t been sick in almost a year (I attribute this to clean livin’ and sweatin’ to the Oldies, and also making sure I get my weekly ration of medicinal alcohol), but then I get a little sleep-deprived and BOOM I’ve come down with a cold almost instantly. It suuuuuuuuucks. Josephine’s sick too, which has led to her waking up in the middle of the night and refusing to go back to sleep. Last night’s activities:


  • 3:30am – William woke up to be fed, and Josephine woke up simultaneously, demanding…well, who knows. She just cried. Mommy got her some water, and I attempted to console her. Got her calmed down, and went back to bed, at which point she started moaning again.

  • 4am – She started screaming again, so I went back in to try and calm her. Sarah came in shortly thereafter, and convinced her to lie down and cover up with her blanket. We left, and she immediately started whining again.

  • 4:30am – Screaming once again, so I went in, ask her what’s wrong, offer some water, lay her down, but she doesn’t respond well to this so I close the door so maybe the rest of us can get some sleep. She commenced shrilly screaming, but screw it I’m exhausted so I’m going back to bed. I walked back in our bedroom and Sarah said, “Why is she screaming?”


    “Because I closed her door.”


    “SHE’S SICK, MATT!” Sarah yelled. At that hour, I didn’t see any connection between her being sick and me closing her door so the rest of us could possibly sleep, but I also don’t want Sarah to smother me with a Boppy while I’m sleeping, so I went back in, got Josephine, and sat with her while in the rocking chair.


    After 10 minutes or so, she calmed, and crawled out of my arms to stand on the floor. She said something I couldn’t understand, but pointed to the changing table, so I put her on their and changed her diaper, which was dry. When I tried to put her pajama pants back on, she cried “No! No!”


    “You don’t want your pajama pants?”


    “No!”


    “Okay.” She started pulling on her shirt, so I figured “She’s overheated” and pulled that off too. Then she said,


    “Thomas shirt!”


    She is a HUGE Thomas the Tank Engine fan, and recently was given a couple shirts with Thomas and some of his friends on the front, and wants to wear them at every opportunity. At 5am, actual parenting becomes useless and you do whatever you think will get the child to go back to bed, so I put her Thomas shirt on, and then, at her request, her jeans. I drew the line at socks and shoes, and rocked her a bit more, at which point Sarah came in and took over so I could try and get some sleep.


    After 90 minutes of fitful sleep, I showered, and when I came back to the bedroom Sarah was feeding William and Josephine was once again just whining, standing in the doorway.


    “Josephine, are you hungry?”


    “Mmmm….uh-huh..mmmmmnnnn”


    “Stop whining. Let’s go downstairs and get breakfast.” I put my shoes on, and then Josephine did one of her super cute things, which is to simply grab my forefinger and lead me off to the kitchen, where I gave her a cereal bar and some Froot Loops.


    I have no idea how much sleep Sarah got, but I think I got 4.5 non-contiguous hours, so if you’re thinking “Wow this post really sucks,” that’d be why. I would like a nap. Forgive the crappiness. I ain’t even gonna proofreed this.

one year

October 11th, 2011 No comments

Last week, Tuesday to be precise, was the anniversary of the day I finally decided that I’d better start taking my health seriously before I hit three bills and had a heart attack climbing up to the third floor of my house, if only because that staircase is really narrow and I’d probably get stuck and they’d have to either cut away pieces of the house, or pieces of me, to get me out, and my corpse is worth less than the house, so we know what HW would be advising.


If you need help parsing that sentence, shoot me a comment and I’ll break it down for you.


Anyway, I know I’ve already done a post listing some of the things I’ve learned about diet and exercise, but I wanted to offer one more bit of handy advice, then talk a bit about my current workout routine(s), and then, the pièce de résistance, a few before-and-after shots of my husky torso.


Advice: if you are currently out of shape, do not listen much to advice from someone who has never been out of shape. The reason for this is that they simply do not understand how difficult it is to get from “fairly chubby” to “crazy ripped,” and they will say “It’s easy! Just make a few dietary changes, add some simple exercises, you’ll be there before you know it!”


Horsecrap. If it was easy, the average American BMI would be 20, not 30. Admittedly, it is easy to start the process. If your current diet consists primarily of Whopper Juniors, Mr. Pibb, and Devil Dogs, simply replacing one meal a day with a light salad is going to lose you some pounds. If you also start walking a mile a day, that’ll also lose you some pounds. But after you lose 10, maybe even 20 pounds, the weight will level off. 20 pounds is no mean accomplishment, but if you went from 280 to 260, and you’re 5’3″, you’re going to be irritated when you can’t get further without making bigger sacrifices.


Eating right to lose weight is really, really hard. I really only manage to do it about half the time; weekends are a REAL challenge. I’m trying to limit myself to about 2300 calories a day, while getting 250 grams of protein, which means I get to have 1300 calories of carbs and fat. That ain’t much. When I eat what I want to, I can reach 4000 calories a day without thinking (something that will come in handy later in the year when I switch to bulking). Taking myself from 265 to 245 was easy; going from 245 to 225 has been really hard, and I’ve barely gotten started (although the creatine I take throws off the weight measurements).


The problem is that guys who look like this:



have never been seriously overweight. They’ve been making good food choices and working out for so long it’s not really an effort anymore; the idea of having a large McDonald’s extra value meal revolts them. These are people who ENJOY eating salads. If they have spare time, they go running, instead of watching TV or surfing the internet.


Ideally, if you need some weight coaching, you need to find someone who can show you a picture like this one:



That young woman had an ass the size of a Renault and it is GONE. She knows what it takes to get this done, and won’t sugar coat her advice.


Here are the important facts: don’t expect to lose more than, say, 40 pounds of fat in a year. That’s basically the top, and accounts for holidays and other weeks where you just can’t meet your goals, along with other minor setbacks. If you’re six feet tall and weigh 260, you’re looking at a two-year process of remodelling yourself. If you’re a lazy turd like me, it’ll take even longer. I don’t say this to discourage you, but to make you aware of what you’re in for.


What’s my diet and exercise routine, you ask? Well, I eat a lot of chicken, and I go through a lot of protein powder because it’s super convenient. 4 scoops a day, usually, which is about 96 grams of protein. I was drinking it with milk, but the extra carbs in the morning meant I’d be hungry at night and couldn’t eat more without going over the calorie limit. Those big bags of frozen veggies are the bomb; usually about 4-5 cups of broccoli in each, totalling maybe 120 calories. I pretty much eat one of those at every meal, or a big ol’ mixed salad, but to be honest raw vegetables suck without ranch dressing. I was eating a lot of pretzels for a mid-day snack, but cut that out too. I still do usually have a banana and a granola bar in the late morning, particularly if I plan to do some cardio over lunch.


As far as workout, I do:

  • Cardio: a couple times a week, I’ll go for a run, or do some “speedwork” (short sprints with walking in between). If my legs are sore I’ll stick with the exercise bike to limit impact on my knees and feet. If I have time, which is not frequent, I like to bring my road bike and do a short ride over lunch. To be honest, I don’t really like the cardio; I just do it so I can eat a little more. If I set a limit of 2300 calories, but I run 3 miles and burn 400-ish calories, guess who has two thumbs and can now eat 2700 calories that day? MATT HEARN.

  • Weights: I do standard “Starting Strength,” which looks like this:


    Workout A: Back squat 3×5, bench press 3×5, deadlift 1×5.


    Workout B: Back squat 3×5, overhead press 3×5, powerclean 3×5.


    “3×5” means 3 sets, with 5 reps in each set. I also do warmups of each exercise, usually a set of 5, then a set of 3, then 2, then 1, with weights increasing up to the work weight. I increment the work weights every workout, unless I miss reps. My current maxes are:


    Back squat: 250×5

    Bench press: 175×5 (was up to 190, but my arms are really starting to suffer from the caloric deficit and I just couldn’t handle the weight anymore)

    Deadlift: 340×5

    Overhead press: 125×5 (Probably my max until I start eating more to gain mass)

    Powerclean: 115×5


    I workout three times a week, MWF, and the workouts simply alternate.


  • Bodyweight: I’ve started adding a simple workout called “PLP,” which stands for Pullups, Lunges, Pushups (although technically I do chinups, not pullups; the former have the palms facing you, the latter, away). On the first day of the month, I do one of each (one lunge with each leg). Second day, I do 2. Et cetera. I find it’s a nice way to get a little pump in the arms and legs, even on days when I don’t lift weights, and also I just like that I can actually do chinups now. Obviously the reps get broken up into sets, I can’t do that many chins in a row.

And now, with no further ado, you can look at pictures demonstrating how I am somewhat less fat than a year ago. Try not to get too excited, ladies.

Categories: rolling with the fatness Tags:

iMoan

October 6th, 2011 No comments

I don’t know what the hell is wrong with people. Okay, I get it, there’s no iPhone 5 this October. I guess if you’re a complete idiot who knows nothing more about technology than “5 is a bigger number than 4,” this is a serious disappointment. But let’s go over a few important facts:





iPhone 4iPhone 4S
ProcessorApple A4Dual-core Apple A5
Still camera5MP8MP
Video720p HD1080p HD
Incredible AI-Voice Recognition applicationnoneSiri

I’ve left out memory comparisons (because we don’t know what the memory in the 4S is, yet) and the new dual-antenna wireless connection (because I’m not sure how big a grain of salt to take with the prediction of doubling cellular data speeds). Still: in what ridiculous crack-den world are folks living in that this is anything less than a major upgrade? They could call it “iPhone Zero” and it would be completely awesome. Sure, if I already had an iPhone 4, I wouldn’t feel the need to upgrade. But if you have to upgrade your smartphone every single year, I’m going to predict that you’re a major douchekabibble anyway. Like, you know, this guy:
There’s nothing really notable, physically, about the iPhone 4S in comparison to the iPhone 4. Do you have an iPhone 4? Pick it up. Look at it. Turn it over. There, you’ve just done an iPhone 4S hands-on. Congratulations!

Seriously? Your initial reaction to the release of a new phone with twice the CPU is “Sigh, it’s the same shape!” I wonder if this idiot refuses to buy DVDs or BlueRays because they’re the same form-factor as a CD.


This phone is obviously an upgrade over the iPhone 4, and if you’re like me and still floundering along on an old 3G, it’s like going from an IBM XT to an Alienware scream machine. I’m not sure when Apple will actually open the store to get this phone, but I plan to stay up until midnight in case they’ll take my order at 12:01 on October 7th. A few other notes on the subject:


The “back” (or primary) camera went from 5 to 8 megapixels, but that may be the least of its improvements. They’ve opened the aperture to f/2.4 for better low-light shooting (I prefer using a fast aperture over using a flash), and the new lens has 5 elements to sharpen the photos. Plus, image stabilization in the video mode, which is now 1080p (better HD resolution than my Flip).


Siri looks totally rad, although I need to use it to really see if it’s useful. I’ve had other phones with voice recognition, and it was little more than a gimmick. I also don’t fully trust AI after being boned so many times over by that damned paperclip.


I’m largely indifferent to this iCloud thing as well; we’ll see how well it works. Having only 5GB of free storage makes it next to useless, really, although I guess being able to use it to back up your phone before doing a PC-less upgrade is pretty win.


Mostly, frankly, I’m just excited to have a phone that can background apps, do Facetime, and not have things constantly crash because 128MB of DRAM doesn’t cut it with iOS4 apps.

Categories: FirstWorldProblems, techno, wtf Tags: