All posts by Brent Seehafer

Food + Wine + Beer, Life, Nonsense

Pilates, Protien and Windows 98

2 Comments

So I’m on a new get healthy journey, one that involves me working out at home in my undies and drinking fruit shakes with powder in them. I’ve been on a smoothie kick ever since figuring out that a good smoothie can be made with frozen fruit, yogurt and juice. Not to dismiss the goodness that is a fresh fruit smoothie but I don’t have the time to prep all that fruit or the storage space for it all. They’re a good accompaniment to my morning cereal, which is typically Grape Nuts, and then of course my morning coffee. I recently got a new client who’s an Herbalife distributor and among other things, a wellness coach. I went to his shop and had a body scan (I’m not sure on the technical name but it wasn’t a BMI scan) and I found out that out of the 210 pounds of my coffee drinking self, 175 pounds of it is muscle. I thought that was kinda cool and he was even surprised. Based on that, I need more protein. So, I went home with a nice big tub of protein powder that I include in with my smoothie routine. Since then I’ve been feeling pretty good, the muscle aches I’ve been getting off and on are minimized. Nice!

Another part of me getting into a shape that isn’t round, is a Pilates workout regime that my wife talked me into. I am now a convert when it comes to working out at home. I used to hate it, you couldn’t pay me to do it. I felt crappy no matter how good I felt afterward. It always seemed to make me itchy or I’d find something else to complain about and just back away from the idea of it. Now that we’re cleaning up the house constantly—and vacuuming especially—I don’t feel like I’m rolling around in dust and also don’t feel the need to complain about it as much. Sure, working out sucks pretty much wherever but it’s nice when I’ve got a buddy. Especially one who’s cute.

Oh, and Windows 98. I’ve been itching to play some old games lately and don’t have a good way to play them. I came across Earthworm Jim for the iPhone awhile back and the interface was kinda clunky. It didn’t really navigate all that well and it took up about 200 MB of space on my 4GB iPhone. Poor thing can’t take that much for just a game that isn’t played all that often. So basically, I went digging through my disc archives for a solution and I came up with a few old install CDs for Windows. I’ve yet to successfully install it on VMWare Fusion, it keeps yelling at me about not having a bootable disk installed. It’s been so long that I’ve installed anything but XP in a PC environment that I’m taxing my memory banks trying to figure out what to do. There’s games to be played!

Charlie, Life

Early to bed…

Leave a comment

So, Mr. Baby has decided that the best time to wake up lately is around 5 in the morning. This usually happens right before he does something new, like learn how to climb up onto the television. Given that I’m posting this from the bed at 5:30 means that I’m not on board with the idea of 5:00 as the best time to start the day, thankfully I’m able to put him back to bed without too much of a hassle. Although, he’s in the other room sleeping, I’m wide awake clumsily typing this on a iPhone. I have no illusions as to who rules the house.

Design, Life

Deftness

Leave a comment

I’ve been trying to keep myself busy lately. It’s been a mixed bag of work, reading, Javascript Live! and fun with the fam. Since the weather’s been all screwy and everyone seems to be traveling for the month of May, I’m going to concentrate on the remainder of the month as a catch up time. Hopefully if I can get caught up on client work there’ll be room for some personal projects, you know they kind I talk about all the time in very little detail and then forget about? Yep, those. One is an artistic project, I’ve been rendering a typeface off and on for the better part of a year and now that there’s a Cintiq in the house it might be time to investigate the possibilities. The other project’s a little less clear, but it’ll be here when it’s done. Probably a web comic, but I’m not sure yet.

One last thing, I came up with a company name (yeah!). We’ll be operating under the name Defthouse as an art and design agency and I’m set to get things going and build that identity (double yeah!). Got a domain name secured, but that’s about it so far.

Life, Movies

Ebert 180°

Leave a comment

I typically never agree with Roger Ebert’s movie reviews. I can understand why he’s a good reviewer with his tendency to look at all of a movie’s components prior to passing final judgment, meaning it’s cinematography, writing, acting, production value, etc. instead of just “did it make me laugh.” I don’t think that the general public views movies like this either and for my money, I’ll head out for the latest horror flick instead of the latest David Mamet. The reasons why are for another discussion, as they are plentiful.

I started following Ebert on Twitter awhile back and much to my surprise, have found a genuine liking for the man and his writing, interests and general take on Hollywood. Aside from the belief that John Cusack hasn’t made a bad movie I find myself agreeing with his general stances on the way movies and the Hollywood money machine are only looking out for itself and doesn’t give us good movies, just crap that looks pretty.

I had the same general reaction to the Transformers movie (the first one). I went to see it in the theatre with friends and walked away stunned at how bad it was, yet everyone still seemed to like it because of the effects. Effects can’t make a movie stand on its own and shouldn’t, yet it’s come down to that. Disaster movies seem to be the worst perpetrators of this phenomenon. I’ve got 2012 burned onto my media center but just can’t bring myself to watch it, or remember why I rented it in the first place given that I’m so disenchanted with the glut of effects porn in movies today. Perhaps the pretty moving picture and nothing else aspect isn’t so hard to take when I’ve got nothing to lose, but lately two hours is a lot for me and I intend to use those hours wisely. Have a good day, I’m gonna go delete 2012 from my hard drive.