Fully Blown

so the time has come in my life where my body is telling me I need to get in shape. i've seemed to maintain without any real excercise a pretty decent level of fitness. at least it is a level that i'm comfortable with. i'm able to play the sports I want to play at a reasonably competent level. come to think of it the sports i do play aren't what you would call strenous sports. i play baseball, beach volleyball, squash, mountain bike, inline skate regularly and occasionally skate board. In the winter I snowboard which rarely demands more of me than I can deliver. in each of the sports i play there is certainly room for improvement but i personally don't see any physical restraints holding me back but more mental road blocks (more on that later). for example monday night i was playing baseball and i was playing centre field which is my normal position. a ball was hit at a good clip to exactly half way between centre and left field. now earlier in the year if a ball was hit there more often then not i had the speed to get there and catch the ball. on monday however when the ball was hit i stood there and watched the ball, i'm not sure why but i didn't move, finally something in my head started screaming "wake the fuck up" so then i started moving, even then i was moving half as fast as i can move. we won the game in the end but it was silly to let that happen. again last wednesday my volleyball team was playing the playoffs and we were playing for third place and chance at first. so if we won we secured at least third place and had a chance at second or first (not quite sure how that works). we played a vastly inferior team on paper, everyone of the players on our team were better players individually then the players on the other team. we even seemed to have better team work and better offensive moves and defensive moves. for some reason i just wasn't there mentally, it's like i was there but someone was borrowing my brain to play the banjo somewhere else. what's wierd is the rest of the team picked up on this right away and we seemed to go into this chicken with its head cut off routine, it's like we totally forgot how to play. we lost in the end.

so i'm fairly certain that working out and improving my muscle strength (and mass) will not improve my sports playing capability. what i need is mental sharpness. i need stimulation to keep my mind active and alert. faster thinking will equal faster response times. my job is to blame for my mental degradation, i took this job 3 years ago and to this day i have yet to be challenged even once. everything that i am doing here i have done in one way shape or form in the past, so the most difficult thing i have to do is remember how i did it before. i rarely have to troubleshoot a new problem, research new ideas or come up with new designs. what's interesting is this is the least amount of work i have ever done both physically and mentally but it is the highest paying job i've ever had. i say all that with a grain of salt because i handle stress very poorly so i wouldn't want my job to be any more stressful but i would like to use my brain every now and then. perhaps they could introduce some life threatening element to the world of programming. i've always liked the idea of mixing ninjas and programming but have never really come up with a good solution. "here code this multi-threaded port listener while beating off twenty ninjas. have it done by noon and if there is one bug we'll have a public hanging!" but i digress.

working out and more specifically getting in shape will help but it will only get me to a certain point eventually it will become old hat too and the idea of sitting still and doing repetitive motions isn't my idead of keeping my mind sharp. but I know it will help me feel better and perhaps look better which all helps. once i'm feeling better perhaps i'll have enough energy to figure out a good way to keep my mind sharp.

so dog is at the fine age of four and a half. i thought it was a good time to list some of the nick names he has accumalated in that time frame.

dude
bud
budders
butters
pupz
mr brown
e.dog
blitzkrieg pup
doofoos
dumb ass (rare)
e man
mr wigglesworth
nigel
puppers
brownness
chocolate (as in... who loves the chocolate?
bunny
little man
turd
big brown stain
brown trout
brown canary
in-land beaver
pupster du (as in husker du)
brown bomber
bramalea steamer
andrew barkly
dichotomous turd
poop tard (as in "the boy just shit himself stupid)

just for the record his real name is ender