A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup

Listen Up!
Work is still a little touch and go here. I've got 3 jobs that are all an on-call basis. The machine shop I've been working at is hitting a slow spot and as such can't pay me all the time, I'm still running as an extra for Universal Talent whenever they get jobs, and I'm waiting on calls for juggling gigs. :: I hate mowing the lawn. I just had to say that. :: I'm barely getting in enough practice juggling. The problem? I've only got a small window of time in which I can practice between the time I wake up and the time when everyone gets home and goes to sleep. That's the time I don't feel like juggling anyways. Damnit, I'm still managing to come up with stuff though. :: I HATE my ISP. They've still got bittorrent and p2p type connections blocked. So I still can't play any of my Wii Games online or download Revision3 shows without having to wait for their servers to catch up. I fucking hate Verizon Online DSL. :: Yup.


Reeses2150's Reviews For The Intelligent Human
Wii Fit: scoreless
Well, Wii Fit. The next in Nintendo's series of general Wii games (Wii Sports, Wii Play, Wii Fit), and another attempt at life-gaming (Brain Age). Does it work? Hard to say. It's an interesting game to say the least. It's a great idea, and it's been done really well with how it works and how hard most of the games in it are. It's definitely done something I thought to be impossible, make me motivated to work out and lose weight (more-so than I have been). Basically, the core idea behind the game was someone at Nintendo going "how can I make working out fun?" and somehow finding a way to make it work. It's a great thing, but the problem I can foresee is the same problem I had after a while with Brain Age. It's great and really motivating at first, and then it gets repetitive and you feel less and less like playing every day. But then again, how is that different than sticking to a diet, keeping a new years resolution, or some other form of long term plan? You just have to stay committed to it, and after a while, you will go back to it if you stop playing.

What I will complain about is the lack of games at the beginning, since I don't think that doing push-ups is exactly fun, the only real things I found to be more fun than just using the Bowflex down in the basement were the balance games and yoga. There's plenty of those to go around, but the problem is that you have to unlock a lot of them. Not to say that it's bad, just a bit annoying.

Another complaint I have about the game is about how it's simply the balance board and that's it. I don't have a lot of control over my legs and lower body so much, but thanks to the juggling I do, my upper body control is awesome, but that doesn't come into play in Wii Fit at all, and it's again, a minor annoyance.

One last complaint about it before I praise it, is that I found the board to be not wide enough. I've got a wide stance with my legs, and I just absolutely hate having to keep my feet close together. It's not comfortable for me at all, and I's have preferred at least another few inches in width. But since I can't customize the hardware, I just stand on the edges of the board off of the marked rectangles for the feet, and it seems to work fine. That's just me though, you probably won't have that problem.

Now, what I DO like about the game is how loose the rules really are. You start the game, and you set a goal immediately as to what you want either your weight and/or BMI to be by when. It doesn't scream at you "YOU NEED TO DO THIS NOW!", it lets you control the pace. Play for 10 minutes a day or 2 hours, it's completely up to you. What I found strange was that you can set your goal to be negative, or that you'd increase your BMI. Just an interesting thing.

I think the difficulty curve is absolutely perfect for this type of game. There is no gradual curve or slow progressing into it with easy games and tests, you smack the pavement face-first the first game you play. The games are easy enough to play and understand, a lot of them even showing you exactly where you need to move your center of gravity to to get the best results, the trouble is getting there. That's the beauty of it. It's not that some games are easier than others, they're all the same difficulty, and you get a rating depending on how well you do. You'll be frustrated for a while because the game is telling you the truth just after you missed 7 flags in the slalom course, you are unbalanced. So you're now even more determined to do well and more motivated to play. It's absolutely genius.

Another great thing about the game, and possibly the best, is that the game actually WORKS. Somehow, after a week I've actually managed to lose a pound off my weight, and I'm getting much better with my balance. Plus, after some of the games, especially the hula hoop game (which I recommend everyone who does not have female genitalia do in private with the shades drawn) you feel tired and a burning sensation. You actually feel like you've just done a huge workout, because you have. It's awesome.

Overall, Wii Fit has a few minor problems, that may or may not have been fleshed out given more dev time, but the bottom line is that it's a great game that does something even better, gets you working out. I'd say get it while you can, especially if you're in my position, 270 lbs and with a posture leaning somewhat to the right. It's worth it, trust me.

Juggle This:
So, for those in the know, I am working on two big juggling projects right now. The first to be finished is going to be a series of box tutorials that I'll put out to Youtube as soon as they're done. I recorded them all on World Juggling Day, and hopefully I'll record a few more before I finish editing everything so I've got more than 5, but we'll see what happens.

Next up is the third season of JoJ. I'm a little bit confused as to whether I should bring back a co-host or not. I thought I was sure of my decision to make it a solo cast, but then I went back and listened to some of my earlier episodes and an episode of Juggling Podcast, and I'm not sure now.

After listening to Luke's podcast, I almost had to stop listening, and I hate being confrontational, but I have to point it out, Pola is a bad co-host to Luke and the reason why I almost stopped listening. Sorry Pola, but I listened to a few episodes, and she seems to not only bicker about things that don't matter ("Luke, the topic of the podcast is supposed to be TRICKS for non-juggling audiences, the point about facing and looking at the audience is PERFORMANCE." followed by them arguing about it for a minute or so), but also sidetrack the podcast in the beginning. Usually, I could care less about who's being on TV for what or aspects of your life that don't relate to the topic of the podcast or the podcast itself. Granted, I'll admit that at the beginning of a lot of episodes of JoJ I talk about something other than the main topic for a while before we get into the topics, but I'd usually be talking about the podcast itself and my plans for it.

Looking at the other side of the coin though, the solo episodes where it's just me ranting about something, despite filling one of the basic needs of a podcast (thorough explanations of one's point of view), feels like it's missing something, and I am not good at injecting comedy into practically anything, so I don't bother trying and fucking everything up. Back in the beginning when Marty was co-hosting, I thought it was perfect because he was a good co-host to match me. He was the one that was good at comedy, but not the most technical juggler or concerned about getting all the facts right. Basically, I was the serious one, he was the comic one. A classic combination that's used EVERYWHERE. A great example is Monday Night Raw (wrestling), JR is the serious one, trying his best to keep the talking focused on the match and the facts, and Jerry Lawler is more focused on making jokes and keeping things much less serious. It's the fighting between them that makes for a good set of hosts, but only if they're fighting for the tone of the talking (a looser or more serious tone). If the hosts are fighting with each other, or about anything else for that matter other than trying to make the tone more or less serious, it just sounds like bickering, and people don't want to listen to it.

Wow, that was a nice rant. Bottom line, I'm not sure whether JoJ should have a co-host or not again. Basically, I'm going to be doing video podcasts from now on, bottom line. The thing is, There's really only 2 jugglers close enough to me that they can be at my house once a week or however often to sit down for an hour and be skilled enough to be knowledgeable. But the thing is that they also have to be that good co-host that argues the topic, not with the co-host. As you can see, it's complicated. Basically, I need to find someone that fits the criteria of being close enough to where I live to record episodes, be knowledgeable and experienced enough to know what's getting talked about, and be the right personality to match with mine where they'll have a different enough viewpoint and know how to inject (good) comedy and satire into a conversation. I have got a few people that I've met in mind, but I'm not sure. Ideally, I think the perfect personality would be Paris, but he's got a schedule to keep and he's got a bit of travel time between me and him. We'll see what happens, I'll probably end up going solo, or having a co-host somewhere else that will just be on audio only, but as you can see, I've still got a while before anything gets set in concrete.

A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150