NHL Game Center: Cost & Blackout Restrictions

If you are a hockey fan but don't have much love for the cost of NHL Game Center Live or the Blackout restrictions, I've got a couple of tricks to help you see the games you want for much cheaper that the actual publicized cost.

Cheaper Access:
First, NHL Game Center Live allows you to see all of the NHL games during the season, online. This includes: Android, iPhone, Web Browser and many other tools for you viewing pleasure. But for me, paying a hefty cost of $160 for the season or $18.99 a month for 8 months seems like a lot. If you would like to get Game Center for a reduced cost, use a VPN. If you sign up for Game Center from another country except for Canada or the US, you will only pay $99 for the year or $19.99 for 5 payments, a savings of $60 a year.

How to do this:
A VPN allows you to connect through the web and your IP (location) be shown as if you are located somewhere else. I use Strong VPN (see below) and it allows you a secure connection through many different countries for a very low yearly cost. Also with Strong VPN you can set your VPN up on many different platforms and systems. Once you get it installed, you will need to connect and make sure your connection is shown as somewhere else besides Canada or the US, I selected Britain. Once you do this you can now use your browser to connect to NHL Game Center site and the cost will be now be $99.99 for the year or $19.99 for 5 months. Click on the option you prefer and fill in your info. And yes it will accept your Canadian or American credit card with your North American address. 

Stong VPN - Unlimited access $55 / year.

I also use my Strong VPN for many other items as well, including:

• Connecting to the US Netflix;
• Secure Private internet access in the airport and coffee shops;
• To get Hulu in Canada;
• Download apps for my phone that are only available in other countries;
• Ordering items from sites that restrict access based on location.

But it also saved me $60 off of NHL Game Center so that last stuff is just a bonus. See how you can connect Strong to your systems.

Blackout Restrictions:

Second, if you’re like me, you follow the Senators but live in the Senators market; you are subject to Blackout restrictions, meaning games will be blocked if you are in the Senators market area. There are a couple of ways around this:

    VPN: See above on how to connect to a VPN;
    Android 4.3 permissions;

Android Permissions:
In Android 4.3 you can view and change any permissions set on an app. When you install an app it asks for permissions to do different things on your phone in the background. One of these permissions for the NHL Game Center app is to allow your location to be shared with the app. This is used to know where you are located to limit or blackout games in your area that are broadcasted on the TV.

Now since I am paying for a service, I don’t like to be limited to what I can see based on where I am located especially since I want to watch my Senator games in the Ottawa area. So in Android 4.3 you can view each individual app and choose specific permissions of that app and turn them on or off. You can use "App Ops Starter" to get to the permissions. If you edit the NHL Game Center app permissions you can turn off Location Sharing and now you will no longer be blacked out of any games. In older versions of Android you can also accomplish this if your phone is rooted.

Hydro Ottawa and I

This may seem like a strange post, but if you know me, Hydro Ottawa and I have not had the most trusting and agreeable relationship over the years that I have lived in Ontario.

Back in good ol' 2002 when my now wife and I packed up from Newfoundland and headed West to Ontario for work, we moved into a small one bedroom apartment. We got our utilities and perks installed (hydro, phone, cable, ect...). Then we moved into a house in 2006. Here are some of the issues/problems I have with Hydro Ottawa:

Problem

After receiving the first few hydro bills I was outraged about a single line item on the bill; "Debt Retirement Charge". So I called up Hydro Ottawa to get an explanation of this charge, since I did not owe any money past due, why was I being charged for this?

After listing to the representative on the phone explain to me that the Debt Retirement Charge is a charge (tax) on all residents of Ontario hydro bills to repay the debt that was incurred while hydro was managed (I use that term lightly) by the Ontario government. So why must I pay this debt? I did not live here when it was incurred. Nor was I the one who made the poor decisions to to put the organization into debt in the first place.

So back in 1998 the Ontario government decided to break from the power business and have semi-private organizations supply the power to residences and business of Ontario.

At the time, some of the $38.1 billion debt was offset by assets assigned to Ontario Hydro’s successor companies, Hydro One and Ontario Power Generation (OPG).

A portion of the debt was also covered through income the province receives from Hydro One and OPG profits, as well as what amounts to taxes on local hydro utilities.

But that still left $7.8 billion uncovered, so the province imposed a debt retirement charge of 0.7 cents a kilowatt hour on hydro bills until it is “defeased”, which means paid off."

This is where some basic math comes into play with my abacus.

1998 - 2013
Ontario Hydro Debt:  $7,800,000,000.00
Number of Households in Ontario:  4,887,510
Bi-monthly billing = ~ 90 billing cycles
Debt Retirement Charge per house, per bill: $17.00
Total for 15 years per household: $1550.00
Total for all households paid: $7,575,640,500.00

Remaining:  $224,359,500.00*

*No business were taken account for in these numbers, so the Ontario government should now be in the GREEN and we should no longer be paying this. But alas the numbers that the politicians throw out, is that the charge "should" be removed by 2015 - 2018.

Issue / Questionable Hydro Ottawa Knowledge

This only started once we moved into our house in 2006 and I really should not blame it on Hydro Ottawa, but they could have given me some advise or guidance since they are trying to get people to be "greener". Now I understand that a house consumes more power, due to its size. But when we moved we began to get power bills that ranged from $200 bi-monthly to $600 bi-monthly. That's a hefty increase from our normal $100 - $200 bi-monthly bill. I had contacted Hydro Ottawa on many occasions to try and help with my situation since all of my neighbors in similar houses were reporting bills around $150. The best they would say is that we were running too much stuff too long.

In our house we had a gas furnace and gas stove and the AC, dishwasher, dryer and other small items ran on hydro. So we began limiting the use of these items or only using them during the off peak hours when hydro is cheaper. This still did nothing (very little) for the power bills. I was convinced the wires were mixed and there was another house on our line so I hired a  electrician who in-turn charged me and confirmed I was wrong.

So at this point I was defeated and I felt like I should bend over and take it like a Hydro Ottawa customer and continue to pay up. This was up until the spring when my father visited and was wondering what fan was going at night because he could not sleep. After some quick investigation, it was the Venmar system in the house that was running 24*7. Now my first thought was a small fan in a Venmar system could not possibly be causing this increase, but I decided to turn it off and watch the daily power readings. To my surprise the daily hydro usage dropped by about 15 - 20 kWH a day. That's and average of 1050kWH over 60 days. But we needed some longer time stats before we make a conclusion.

Now I am ready to conclude that yes the Venmar system running was what was causing such high power bills over 7 years and below are a few numbers to validate my conclusion:


Date Period: 2012-06-20 - 2012-08-22
Period Usage: 3147.983333kWH
Per Day Usage: 49.97kWH

Date Period: 2013-06-18 - 2013-08-20
Period Usage: 1919.589789kWH
Per Day Usage: 30.47kWH

A whopping difference of 1228.393544kWH a month. A 39% savings.

It was further confirmation last week when all of my neighbors reported much higher hydro bills than we had for the same billing period. Now to get that number even lower. 

Hydro Ottawa's advise to customers is that by changing the small things in your house such as the time you turn the dishwasher on to turning off lights. In my opinion these things do not make a big difference to your overall bill. What I suggest is for you to look at the more non-obvious things in your house, as these things could be running 24*7 and eating up much more hydro than many small things running every few days during peak time.

Epic Journey Month 4.5

Ah, I feel like I have been slacking off lately in terms of both exercise and in this blog. But the time has come to change all of that, so this will be my second blog post in two days. Don't expect that all the time.

As for the gym, exercising, trying to get into shape and all of that fun jazz, I'm back to the gym and into the third week now. This may not seem like much, but I was not there for about 2.5 months due to a knee injury I sustained at hockey. My knee has been getting better so I have been slowly (twice a week) visiting the gym to get back into a routine and I think this is harder than what it was in the beginning to start. Next week I plan on starting to do three days a week. On top of the Epic visiting, I have been doing daily walks now that it is nice out with the dog.

Although getting back into going to the gym in the mornings (5:30 am) has been hard, the benefits from it have been enormous. I have been feeling much more alert and awake during the day, easier to sleep at night and still wake up feeling refreshed the next day. I think the below comic pretty much sums up how I feel after completing a workout.

So I guess that is the update for now, I hope to have another post up in the next few weeks, since I have been falling behind on this. But the next post hopefully will include a good progress report on the increase in Epic Fitness visits, the beginning of the running season (for me), before and after numbers, and possibility some before and after pictures (this could be scary).

Bitcoin Links and Information

This page is work in progress as I find more information.

BitCoin

I have found myself recently reading allot about BitCoins, though I have not wanted to invest my own money
into them. I have been taking a few minuets each night to click on a few links to make a small amount, though one day the small amount may be a large amount. See below for my full list of the BitCoins sites I like if you already know what they are and do not want to continue reading.


Bitcoin (BTC) is a digital currency first described in a 2008 paper by pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto, who called it an anonymous, peer-to-peer, electronic payments system. Bitcoin creation and transfer is based on an open source encryption protocol and is not managed by any central authority. The creation of new bitcoins is automated and may be accomplished by servers, called bitcoin miners that run on an internet-based network and confirm bitcoin transactions by adding codes to a decentralized log, which is updated and archived periodically. Each bitcoin is subdivided into 100 million smaller units called satoshis, defined by eight decimal places.

Bitcoins can be transferred through a computer or smartphone without an intermediate financial institution. Interested parties can authenticate the ownership of bitcoin balances by using dedicated servers (the bitcoin miners) to authenticate the bitcoin transaction log using a public-key encryption scheme. Each 10-minute portion or "block" of the transaction log also allows for a predetermined number of new bitcoins to be awarded to miners based on computational data added to the log and confirmed by other miners. The creation of a new bitcoin is thus a special case of a transaction in which the new bitcoin deemed issued in exchange for solving a computationally intensive encryption problem. The number of newly created bitcoins per period depends on how long the network has been running. Currently, 25 new bitcoins are generated with every 10-minute block. This will be halved to 12.5 BTC during the year 2017 and halved continuously every 4 years after until a hard limit of 21 million bitcoins is reached during the year 2140.

More Information

BitCoin.org - Full description on what bitcoins are and the details behind the.

Mt .Gox - A bitcoin exchange much like the NYSE, TSX, or NASDAQ but for bitcoins. See the current exchange rates and you can also store your wallet here.

BitCoin Charts - Shows the current price for bitcoins from different exchanges around the world.

BitCoin Wallets

Your Bitcoin wallet is what allows you to transact with the world. It gives you ownership of Bitcoin addresses that you can use to receive coins from other users, and then lets you send those coins onwards. Just like email, you can receive Bitcoins when you are offline and all wallets are compatible with each other.

Software Wallets

Software wallets are installed on your computer. They give you complete control of your wallet. You are responsible for doing backups and protecting your money.

1. BitCoin-QT:  

Mobile Wallets

Mobile wallets allow you to bring Bitcoin with you in your pocket. You can exchange coins easily and pay in physical stores by scanning a QR code or using NFC "tap to pay".

1. Bitcoin Wallet - Android:

Web Wallets

Web wallets allow you to use Bitcoin anywhere with less effort to protect your wallet. However, you must choose your web wallet service with care as they host your bitcoins.

1. BlockChain: 

BitCoin Sites

Coin Visitor - This is the one I like the most. It allows for you to answer a simple image captcha every 10 seconds  to gain bitcoins and every so often you will get a prize.

BitVisitor - 5 minuet viewing of a page to get bit coins. 

Daily Bitcoins - Once every hour and you have to answer a captcha 

Happy collecting!

All Systems Go... Epic Journey Month 3.5

Last night I got the go ahead from my physiotherapist to resume or I should say to "test" my knee out at hockey which I plan on doing this Sunday. For the last week I have been doing light workouts at home to try and get strength back in my knee.

These workouts included:

• Exercise Ball: Lying on the floor with legs on the ball then lifting my body off of the floor by pushing down on the ball;
• Exercise Bands: Attaching the band to a door or something than moving my leg in different directions (positions) and holding;
• Balance Box: Try to stand on the box to keep it level;
• Squats: This is self explanatory;
• Sit-ups: This is self explanatory;
• Push-ups: This is self explanatory;

These are not much of exercises but it has helped me put strength back into my knee and legs as my knee is not giving out now and it does not feel so tight. I will continue with a couple of more days of home exercising and one more day of physio before giving hockey a go on Sunday. Than hopefully fully back to Epic Fitness on Monday to keep this journey going.

Epic Journey Month 3 or is it a Epic Disappointment ?

So this is now my third post of my road to better health and fitness and to document my path there from my gym visit perspective. But I think this month has been more of a disappointment than a journey.

During the end of January and the first week of February we took a winter trip to Florida to get away from the cold of Ottawa this time of year but also to visit my parents since they live in Florida six months of the year. Its a great way to break up the winter and make spring seem like its arriving quicker when you return. As with all or at least most vacations that I go on I tend to gain a few pounds from the lack of exercise and the gain of food eating and beer drinking and this time was no different since I went back up to about 195lbs after it was all done.

But during my visit I did purchase a neat new scale, the Withings wi-fi scale. This scale will weigh up to eight different people and keep track of their body weight, lean mass, fat mass and BMI. It will also send that data securely over wi-fi to each persons account so they can keep track of their weight loss progress. It gives you a nice little graph of your progress and you can set goals to where you want to be. You can also share the data with your doctor, trainer, friends or even on your website. I have posted one of the many sharable widgets below.

You may be reading this and wondering where the disappointment of this month is, well here it is. We got back from Florida on Saturday the 9th of February and had a nice relaxing night. I was planning on going to hockey on Sunday and right back at the gym Monday morning. I headed off to hockey the next night only to go hard into the net and hear a snap from my knee and I went down like a ton of feathers. I knew this sound all too well and I knew it wasn't good and I was finished for the rest of the game. After icing it that night, it still did not feel the best the next day so I visited the doctor and got confirmation to my suspicions that it was a torn meniscus in my left knee.

Even though I have been unable up to this point to go to the gym I have still been doing light exercises at home that has been given to me by my physiotherapist and continuing to eat healthy and I have been able to get back to my pre-vacation weight of 189lbs. But as of tonight after my physio appointment I have been given the green light to resume light carido exercising so now I must look forward to the upcoming month of March to get fully back into the gym, back on track, to heal my knee back to normal and to back to my goal of getting back into shape.  

Epic Journey month 2

Well just hours after writing my first Epic Journey blog to follow my progress of weight loss and fitness I got the worst stomach bug I have had in many years. It was the first time I have, for lack of better words, tossed the cookies in about 15 years that has not been self induced. Although having a 24hr stomach bug did result in loosing 6.5lbs over night but this is not the proper way to weight loss. I'd like to report that this only lasted 24hrs and I have regained that weight back quickly which is nice.

I must admit, I missed a few days at the gym and it really makes it hard to jump back in. During the second week of January (BTW my weeks start on the Monday), I was on work training on the other side of the city from Epic so I did skip a week due to this, though I keep working at home to make sure I done some sort of physical activity each day. This was also the week when I wrote the first Epic Journey blog as a motivational way to push myself to achieve this goal.

Now as I begin to write this blog post at the start of the third week, (I try to write my progress has it happens, daily/weekly, but post monthly) I will say it was so difficult to drag my ass out of the bed this morning. I like to do my workouts in the morning, it makes me feel refreshed and energized for the day ahead, so as I lay there this morning and hit snooze the first time and think to myself I'll just sleep in and go to the gym later knowing full well that would not happen. Knowing I would end up going to work, and at the end of the day I would be tired and head home, missing the gym again. So painfully I hauled myself out of the bed, drove across the city at 5am and hit the gym. And do you know what? It was a pain to convince myself to get up and go, but I felt awesome once I done it and I had a productive, energy filled day. So rule number 1, if I'm going to commit to something like going to the gym, I need to have the internal strength to push myself when no one else is available or awake for that matter to push me.

So it is now day two of week 3, this morning I woke up at 4 am I am not sure if I was wanting to go to the gym in my sub-conscious but I was up and ready to go. I also set a new way to wake in the morning and it seems to be going quite well with good results. You can read more about that here. This morning I done my core body routine. It was a great workout but each time I do the core body I find it hard during the routine but I lack feeling the pain later as I do with my other routines. Now I am not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing... guess I'll have to bring it up with someone else.

Week four started off not too good. I have once again come down with a bug of some kind and has removed all motivation and energy from my body. But on the good side it seems it has almost run its course. Also this week its the end of the month and I will be heading to Florida for a week vacation with the family and heres to hoping that the warm Florida sun can clean my system of the bugs that I came down with in January.

So my rule to live by or at least for the gym: Set a schedule: Set reminders and alarms for that schedule, for you will only disappoint yourself for breaking your schedule.

Next Month: Before and After pictures. Prepare to be scared.


Weight: 189.6 lbs - Down a full 10lbs since November :-)
Body Fat: 24.6% - Down 1.3% :-)

Idle No More? Why are we falling victim.

I will preface this blog post with the caveat that this is mine and only my point of view. I am entitled to this point of view. You may agree or disagree with what I have to say and you are free to leave comments. Also be aware that there may be some images in this post that may be disturbing.

Should I be questioning this?

Am I wrong in asking what Idle No More is? I have read and heard more about Idle No More in the last two months than I have heard about most any other topic and that would not be a bad thing if Idle No More was a genuine cause with a clear common focus with clear goals. But and I say this with a capital B that the movement has not had any of this in the two months. Further more the media continues to give these people the attention that even a mother of a two year old screaming for candy in the store knows better than to do.... Give in and answer to there beckon call to shut them up.

Now I may seem harsh and possibly be called racist and other terms since I am speaking out mainly about one group of people here but I can honestly say I don't take myself as falling into that category because I am speaking about a movement and not a people but please read all of this before you make judgement on me.

Idle No More seemed to have popped up out of no where back in December, though it was in full swing much prior to this. You see in December was when one person decided to be the star in this slap stick comedy that we now know as Idle No More. This star was none other than the Chief of the Attawapiskat  reserve Theresa Spence. Since Parliament was now convening for Christmas and there was going to be not much political news on the hill for a month Chief Spence decided to set up on an island a short canoe ride from Parliament Hill, perfect since the itchy typing fingers of the reporters would be near by. Chief Spence couldn't just sit there and wait for reporters because that's not news, she decided she was going on a hunger strike.

Now if you have ever heard of a hunger strike you will certainly know it can and is a dangerous thing you are essentially saying that you will die for this cause. Again problem one, what is the cause Idle No More is fighting for? We don't know, no one knows that has not be announced or relayed. Chief Spence is continuing to call her so called protest a hunger strike and the media continues to portray this term. I find this to be a slap in the face to all other people around the world who have taken on a hunger strike. A hunger strike is when you are on a water (H2O) only diet, with water only you will begin to wither away to nothing in about a week and death usually ensues within a few weeks. Chief Spence is not on a hunger strike she is on a liquid only diet, which I can assure you many other people are on now especially after Christmas and trying to loose a few lb's. With a liquid diet you are still receiving all of the essential nutrients that the body needs to survive and live. I may be 60 by the time Chief Spence would die for her cause on a liquid diet and it would not be from the diet but because of old age for her at that point. Below are few images some of Chief Spence over 4 weeks on her so called hunger strike and the other is of a young man after 7 days on a Tibetan hunger strike. As you can see these hunger strikes are not the same.

Week 2

Week 3

7 Days

Week 4

Now as you can see that is not much of a hunger strike that Chief Spence is on. But it is getting the attention of the media and some politicians. Chief Spence has demanded that she will not stop her hunger strike until she has a face to face with the Prime Minister and the Governor General. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has gone much further than I would have given this temper tantrum two year old, he has agreed to meet with the Chiefs of the First Nations including Chief Spence. This seemed to appease Chief Spence for a few days and she agreed to attend but not stop her "Hunger Strike" until after the meeting. Wow great we gave into the child, maybe we can continue our days without her name in the news for a day..... Wrong. She has since said she will not attend since the Governor General would not be there. 

More Chiefs acting as two year old's

Up to this point I was getting ticked off to turn on one of the daily three to four newscasts that I watch, CBC, CTV, SUN national news and CTV and CBC for the local news and time-shifting for the CBC Newfoundland news. As you can tell I am a news junkie so seeing day in day out Chief Spence acting like a two year old for not getting her own way to getting a meeting with the Prime Minister and Governor General for a cause the is non existent is really annoying. Finally and not to my approval the PM agreed to meet with the First Nations Chiefs, they seemed happy and all was well. Not so fast, the Manitoba First Nations Chiefs have decided to back Chief Spence and not attend the meetings unless the Governor General attends. So we now have a class of two year old crying for attention for that sweet candy treat. What does this show to anybody? Adults and children? The more you have a temper tantrum and the louder you scream the quicker you will get results.

The Governor General had no plans on attending these meetings, he has now just recently agreed to meet with the chiefs Friday night for a meeting and essentially giving into their demands.  Again setting a precedent on how to resolve issues in our society no matter how silly the demands.

Time for the people to speak out

Please take this with a grain of salt but this is a saying that I have heard many of times in many different situations, Too many Chiefs and not enough Indians. Now I know you are reading this and saying holy shit did he just write that, yes I certainly did and I do not mean it in a bad way. Right now many of the reserves are very closely knit with the same group (family) running the band council. This council much like any town council within this country is elected and different levels of government sends money which the council spends on the appropriate things. But here lays a major difference: The band council does not need to produce any financials or prove for an audit where and how the money is spent. This is a major problem, as where any normal city council across the country would be up on charges, locked up and booted off of council, within the bands the money is spent with no questions asked. And I am not speaking of small amounts of money here people. I am speaking of millions and millions to reserves that are as small as 300 people. Some of the chiefs are making 200 - 300 thousand dollars tax free for running a town of 300. Most small towns across the country get little to no money for being on the council or mayor, they do it for the love of their community.

Now where was I going with this heading? Ah yes, the people of these communities and I do not mean the band council, must and have to stand up to your council first and not the country. Your band council needs to answer for you how your money, the people's money, is getting spent with most of your residential peers suffering to survive. Because this country and all the people of this country cannot continue to send money to a black hole with no accounting has to where and how the money is spent, as that will not solve any issues even the non existent ones that the Idle No More cause is fighting for. All I ask is to please speak up to your leaders (Band Council) first, ask questions to where all of the money is going and has gone.

More to say, just no time

I do have much more to say but I don't have that much time to write more. Maybe I'll do a part two to this to outline some other items of concern but for now this will be all, you may like it or you may hate it, but like I said in the beginning, this is mine and only my point of view, feel free to express yours below.

Epic Fitness and my road to a better health (Epic Journey #1)

So I joined a gym, but before you laugh and think this is a new years resolution you'll be wrong. You see just because I am posting this in the first couple of weeks of 2013 don't mean I just started the gym as a new years resolution what it does mean is I am still lazy in posting blogs.

I joined a new smaller, privately owned gym near work called Epic Fitness near the middle of November. My main reason to joining was to get into a better shape other than round and to also continue my fight to lower my cholesterol. You see last spring prior to beginning running I was told I had high cholesterol and being the off-spring of two families where heart disease runs rapid, having high cholesterol is not a good thing. So I began running and started watching what I was eating much more to lower my cholesterol and it worked.

So now you ask where Epic Fitness has come from? During the summer I had a goal, to run in the Sears Great Canadian Run to End Kids Cancers in October, that is now over and I have reached my goal. I was now noticing myself doing nothing again because I had no goal and fall/winter months in Ottawa are quite cold to be running in.

So I decided to visit Epic Fitness and get an overview and have some questions answered for myself:

1. How large is the gym?
2. Are the trainers there to help you or just take your money?
3. How clean is the gym?
4. How much does it cost?

1: The gym square footage wise it not as large as some of the major gym brands out there, but they also have a limited membership so they are not trying to pack the place full just to get more money. They also do not have a lot of machines that do the workout for you, what you will see is a lot of weights to help you do any exercise you may want to do.

2: This is a difficult question to answer since all trainers and gyms will want your money, its how they make their living. But what I will say is that the gym owner has called me personally before when I missed a couple of weeks to see where I was. I take this as going the extra little bit to help motivate someone to get there ass back in the door. 

3: The gym is spotless is the best and easiest answer I can give for this. It is well maintained, well lit, free of obstacles, and the members seem to keep the place clean.

4: Epic Fitness has two different options for monthly memberships depending on what time of day you would need access. For full hours access it costs $45 a month and I think a time limited access is somewhere around $30. When/if you do first sign up you need to also purchase three training sessions with a trainer to get an understanding of the gym and equipment. This actually works out to four sessions and costs somewhere around $240 for the four sessions and the first month membership fees. Visit Epic Fitness for further information.

So after you have now read this I guess its safe to assume that yes I did sign up and was lucky enough to have the owner of the gym as my trainer, Neil Frotten who was also on the Red Bull Crashed Ice. I have done all of my training sessions with him so far and I have learned a lot. At the time I could not afford to keep Neil as a personal trainer but I hope to change this in the near future. In the meantime I have been using an Android app called JE-Fit to help keep track of my progress and stats. 

In case you are wondering, below are my stats that were recorded in November. I am already down to 193lbs so I have some progress. Once I receive my initial pictures from Neil, I will also post them.

Waist @ bellybutton: 40.5"

Hips: 45"
Right Quad: 25.5"

Chest: 43.75"

Right Arm no flex: 14"

Weight: 199.6lbs

Body Fat: 25.9%

I will be posting progress reports here monthly on how my progress is going at Epic Fitness with Neil.

Christmas and New Years 2012/2013

I seem to say it every time I post a new post here that I haven't done it in a while and I will try to write more, so here I am saying it again with a new post full of a lot of information.

So where do I begin, December was a busy month with the typical work/personal Christmas parties throughout the month, I was also able to score myself a new phone the much hyped and difficult to get, Google Nexus 4. I was able to get a order placed on Google through much F5ing to get the page to work properly. I think Google will need to get their act together the next time they decide to do a product launch. After waiting two weeks after the order was placed I received my shiny new +Google phone and I must say it rocks and it is quite speedy. I hope* to do a full review of this in the near future but in the mean time do a quick Google Search to find more information on it. 

Christmas & Traveling

Santa has arrived

This Christmas we decided to do a bit of traveling and a short trip to my sisters in Bowmanville. We left on Christmas Eve after leaving work at 11 and made the short trip of three hours. We spent two nights and one day there since we had to be back for work on the 27th. Christmas day was fun to spend time not only with my own family but with my sister, her boyfriend Ken and her kids (my niece and nephew), Hope and Ryan. Christmas is so much more fun where there are kids involved and now that Paige is stating to get to the age where she was having fun opening gifts and playing with all her new toys and did she ever get a lot of toys. As for Jodi and I we mainly got clothes but we also purchased a new Kitchen Aid Mixer, which is awesome.

Paige excited opening her gifts

Boxing day we arose early to hit the road back to Ottawa early. A storm was coming and we didn't want to get stuck or to be driving through it on the 401. We got on the road at about 10 am hoping to make a stop in Trenton and Sterling to visit friends and family. After making the first stop in Trenton and getting back on the 401 we decided to truck on through since the traffic was getting heavy. We made it back to Ottawa safe and sound at 3 pm.

New Years and Resolutions

Now its that time of year again, you know, day 365 the end of our calendar year, time to reflect on what we have all done in 2012 and what we would like to achieve and accomplish in 2013. Every so often at work we will watch a few different Ted Talks and a multitude to topics which are often very interesting and informative. The one below I watched in December and got me thinking about something that I do all too often, but that will change this year, take a look at the video, its only 3-4 minuets long and it may change your outlook on resolutions.


Oh and its also time to party and celebrate with friends and family to enjoy all we have and love around us. It is different this year for us, we have yet to make plans due to the lack of a babysitter and wanting to spend time with the family, so this year may be a quiet one where we will sit home order in some Chinese or Indian, and watch a few movies together.

Since I have been slow in actually finishing up this post, New Years has now passed and we managed to get out for a few hours and to see some friends, Paige was all dressed up for the occasion and here she is below ready to party.

New Years day was spent relaxing and taking down the Christmas decoration and preparing a Turkey with all the fixings and having a few friends over for a nice supper. After taking down the tree and seeing a neat idea on the internet, I have decided to start a new tradition for us. To cut a small 1 cm piece from the bottom of our tree each year and make an ornament for the tree the following year with the date burned into it. I'll post pictures in another blog when this is done.

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