Disaster Averted

I experienced a mild freak out on Tuesday while I was reformatting my primary hard drive and updating my computer to Windows 7 (Ultimate 64). I knew I had a long wait ahead of me, so I took a nap once it started installing. I set my alarm for 9:30pm and planned on waking up and doing the Shoulders and Arms routine before it got too late.

All of my music, pictures, videos, and p90x information was on an internal 1 terabyte storage drive, which shouldn't have been affected by the new install. The primary drive would be reformatted and would contain all OS and Software files. I figured that I would be able to just hop onto my new version of windows and start up a video on my backup drive without issue. I've done this kind of thing before.










Bill Gates threw me a curve ball, though, and upon finalizing the installation, my hard drive was invisible. I couldn't find about 800 gigabytes of media that I count on to keep me happy and sane every day of my life...and that included the p90x videos. After cracking open my computer case, rewiring SATA cables, fucking with my system BIOS, fearing that I accidentally reformatted the wrong hard drive, and generally freaking out, I learned that I simply needed to activate the drive and assign it a letter in Windows 7.


















What in the fuck is the point of making people do that? Previous versions of Windows bring in extra hard drives without any extra effort. Fuck you Bill Gates. Fuck you straight to hell.

On the plus side, I'm not the only one boosting performance. While messing with the BIOS I saw an option to overclock my dual core AMD 2.6 ghz cpu and got it close to 2.9 ghz. The recommended resolution for my games got bumped up and I haven't had any stability issues. Score one for experimenting.

All was well once I finally got my hard drive to show up, and I was able to complete the disc by about 12:30am.

As of today, I will have been following Phase 1 of p90x for 3 weeks (even though I don't really count that first week since I couldn't finish any of the routines). This might be surprising to some people since following some stupid workout DVD program sounds monotonous, annoying, and easy to quit. I'll try to explain why it's working.









A) I devoted myself to honestly recapping my progress from day 1. The fear of public failure is a strong motivator.

B) The workout routine is hard and you only do each workout once per week. Because of this, I still haven't perfected my form on all of the exercises, so it continues to be a challenge just to get in line with the people demonstrating the moves. I have yet to memorize each routine. Repetitive boredom has yet to set in.

C) I'm still getting sore after workouts, which means I'm still doing difficult, strenuous exercise that will produce results. If these routines didn't feel like a lot of work, I wouldn't be interested in continuing.

D) I've remained injury free. My wrists would be holding me back if I didn't buy the pushup bars. The lack of other injuries may be attributable to the fact that each routine starts with a warm up.

E) I have devoted myself to following a strict food plan and haven't eaten anything other than salad from a fast food joint. Also, cutting out drinking.

E) Tony Horton, the instructor, is not nearly as much of a prickish, intolerable asshole as he could be. You can tell that he really believes in the program and his nearly psychotic love of pushing the limits of exercise is both humorous and infectious. They even do occasional fun stuff like a "Groucho Marx" exercise/walk.

















Here are some classic Tony Horton lines from the videos.

"Look at his triceps, do you see those? Jimmy, get in here and get a shot of those tri's. Diamonds of gold my friend!"

"Do your best and...?"
"Forget the rest."

"Like a pteradactyl backing out of trouble. Cawwwwwww."

"Tip of the day: Don't smash your face. Let someone else do that to you."

"Just keep showin up, keep showing up, keep pressing play, keep pressing play."

"Now if you need a break while we keep going, take it. Just don't go off running into the kitchen to grab yourself a donut. Keep moving."

"I'm going to be on the cover of Downward Dog magazine."

"Ab ripper X....I hate it, but I love it!"

"That's the face...BRING IT!...of a girl who's working hard."


So, all in all it has gone pretty well. I expected that I'd want to shoot a hole in my skull by now, but things have been going smoothly.

I weighed in at 155 lbs the last two mornings (162 lbs start), so it looks like I'm starting to hit that sweet spot where fat starts melting off at alarming rates. I'm expecting to see a good chunk of my excess fat weight to be shed over the next 2 weeks. I'm also developing more width (along with some definition) in my biceps than I've ever seen before. Maybe you'll get treated to some sexy bicep flexing pictures along with the standard fare in another week.

Also, I want an iPad with 3g, so I'd like to encourage the early adopters to beat the shit out of their new toys so I can buy one refurbished.