about me: heavy music, fishing, video games

Hey all, I'm a white, long-haired Christian male, aged 30. I've been married for over 10 years to my high school sweetheart. We have no kids, one awesome ferret, and one stupid cat (if you want her, let me know and I'll box her up - I offer free ground shipping anywhere in North America. Expect delivery within 5 to 10 business days).

I topped out my scale for a few years and finally started working out back in March 2011, and I have no clue how much weight I lost in total, I only know how much I've lost since my weight started registering at under 330 again on April 25th. This morning I weighed in at 274. Tonight I am going to buy a new pair of jeans because the ones I have are too big now and need to be retired. I'd frame them if they made frames that big.

I started using MFP on December 29th, when I got an Android tablet, and now my nutrition is on track. I'm not doing anything drastic, just being aware of what I eat, trying to hit goals, and keep my every-other-day workouts going. It's a lifestyle change, not a quick-fix diet or crazy weight-loss fest for me. Slow and steady.

Here are some things I like to spend my time on:

Fishing in the great Ontario outdoors, especially from my Sportspal canoe, but off shore is OK too. I am a big fan of trout for eating, but catching bass is a rush sometimes too. Not big on pike, but I'm really happy reeling in anything. I pretty much stopped fishing in high school, but took it back up last summer in June. I set a goal of catching 100 fish by the end of 2011, and I hit 109 I believe by the time I packed away my canoe for the winter. I didn't think I'd catch that many, but I did it. For 2012, I decided my goal would be to catch one of each trout in my area - one brook/speckled trout, one lake trout, one rainbow trout, and one splake (hybrid speck/laker). I've gone ice fishing a few times in the last week and managed to get one speck and one splake, so I'm already 50% of the way to my goal.

Playing games on my PlayStation 3 (and soon the Vita). Since taking up fishing again, my gaming time has gone down quite a bit, but I did still manage to platinum Skyrim after 210 hours. My favorite game of all time is ActRaiser for SNES, followed by Nier for PS3 (and Xbox 360). I like a couple board games too, primarily Wits & Wagers.

I play guitar, drums, bass, and other instruments. I record my own music that is kinda grungy rock. Sometimes my wife sings, but since she doesn't write the lyrics, most of them are sung from my perspective and don't make sense for her to sing. Otherwise, I'd get her to sing all of them since I suck. Some of my favorite musical influences are bands like Nirvana, Iron Maiden, Local H, Megadeth, Skinny Puppy, MDM, Neil Young, Over the Rhine, Demon Hunter, Norma Jean, Zao, and tons more.

I don't have cable or satellite TV service. I use Netflix and the Internet, and I listen to quite a lot of radio (particularly CBC, and sometimes I scan the shortwave radio stations). I love The Biggest Loser, as far as TV shows go. It's inspirational and motivational, and I tear up in the season's opening episode usually. One of the very few reality shows I could name that is worth the air time. My favorite comedian is, easily, Jim Gaffigan, but I like a lot.

I like to try doing photography sometimes, but I'm certainly no pro. Mostly pics of nature, usually water and sunsets are my targets.

I'm a computer programmer, and I run Linux on my PCs.

My basement is like a gym/recording studio/laundry room. My workouts are primarily with EA Sports Active 2.0, but I mix it up sometimes with my treadmill, free weights, heavy bag, bench press.

OK, so, all that said, if you share some of my interests and need a friend on MFP, shoot me a request! I also have some room on my PS3 friend list, but I don't really do much online gaming at the moment, and I prune my list periodically of people who I don't know/forget or don't log in much.