Saturday, March 25, 2017

My first Failure of 2017

For those following along you know I have had a challenge going on for myself to get a min8of 10k steps in every single day. 

Today is March 25th and I am experiencing my first Failure. 
Today I was lazy all day as I had a trying day yesterday that ended up giving me a huge stress headache. 

Today that headache refused to go away and I am currently over 24 hours and not feeling any better. 

It sucks and I have no desire to leave my bed let alone accomplish anything.

Tomorrow is a new day and I will get back on track but for the sake of accountability I wanted to put it out there that today was a loss. 

Healthy 2017 - February

***Somehow through the Chaos that has been March, February did not get posted until near the end of March... My bad.   However, below is what I had written and now will be posted.  Please continue***


I was very happy with the way January worked out for me and now that February is done I feel justified saying that I am bloody stoked about how the month went.


So lets look back on February and see how everything worked out for me based on the goals I had set.


1 - Not have any days below 10,500 steps.
    - I failed on this as on Feb 19th I had 10,175 and it was a horrible bloody struggle just to even get that and make sure I was over my 10k min for every day this year.   I believe that I was sick and run down and the rest of the family also wasn't feeling well.  I put on my best face and went for a little walk at the end of the night just to get over 10k and I collapsed knowing I was going to fail this goal but at least still hit the main objective for the year.

2 - Two days over 20,000 steps.
   - Flying F'n Colors man.   Feb 7th was my first day over with 20,016 and I pushed myself at the end of the day because I was so close to the 20k mark.  Feb 12th I racked up 22,323 and hit my goal for the month.  Then as the month went on I added 20,024 on the 15th, 21,813 on the 16th 20,127 on the 17th (3 days in a row), 21,329 on the 22nd, 20,149 on the 25th and 20,114 on the 27th.
   - In total I had 8 days over 20k steps for February which I would have thought was out of reach for at least a few more months.

3 - Raise my Average to 14k per day and I achieved this as well.
4 - Stretch goal of getting to 15k per day and I also nailed this one.


So, before I get into my total - a look back at the years I have had my Fitbit.

February 2014 - 331,817
February 2015 - 260,749
February 2016 - 312,897


February 2017
464,492 Steps
16,589 steps per day




Shawn who is playing the Home Game and is my frequent competitor on Fitbit put up 410,878 steps in the month of February.  This averages out to 14,674 steps per day which is higher than he had in January.


So, I'm sorry that this is not that good of a post.
Somehow I forgot to post it when I should have and then when I dug into it I realized that half the post was missing.  I don't know if I typed it up elsewhere or if I just didn't save.


But, for those following along at home:
Steps so far this year
Serge: 896,965
Shawn: 841,969

Both of us will have over 1 million steps by the end of March.
Will our averages have gone up? Gone down? Stayed about the same?
Tune in in just a week or two to find out.

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Retro Rewind - Double Dragon

Hello Everybody, Back again with another companion piece to the Nintendo Dad's RetroRewind series and this time around it is the amazing masterpiece that is Double Dragon.


In order to prepare for what might be your favorite gaming memory you should start with the cinematic masterpiece which is the Double Dragon Movie, at least that is how I started preparing.


For simplicity sake I will just embed the YouTube video right here for you, unless you want to run out and buy the VHS, DVD or Blu Ray version of it so you can add it to your permanent collection.



The Double Dragon Movie is only 82 minutes long and in theory that is long enough to beat the entire Double Dragon game multiple times over.  In theory the game is probably only 20-30 minutes long which is a common theme for games made in this time frame.

However, in actuality the game is much longer because of amped up difficulties, multiple deaths and limited continues.
With that said, when I first started this Journey I got as far as the second stage before I had to start all over from the beginning.  My second and third play's went very similar and after that I decided that I wanted to beat the game so I had to become a Save State Warrior....er... Abuser.


Playing this game brought back great memories from when I was a kid.  Double Dragon was one of my favorite games growing up because of the replay-ability.  I loved Side Scrolling beat-em-ups and this was a game you could enjoy with buddies for hours (and never accomplish much).


Ever forget how much you absolutely hated something until years later?
Abobo.
Screw this big bald muscular destroyer of hopes and dreams.
Yeah, sure, after you figure a few things out again he becomes much easier but this guy, and the Mean Green version of him caused me a lot of heart-ache both as a child and then again a month ago as an adult.
Ugh.
Too bad the movie version was primarily comic relief, because he didn't do the game version justice.



So, there I was abusing my save states, Reload-Reload-Reload-Re... oh, did I just beat that section without taking any damage? Excellent....  Oh crap, I just died and forgot to do a save state..... summabich.

Slowly advancing.  Saving every time a new stage loaded or reloading to see if I could get to that next part taking less damage or taking no damage when finally I get to the ending portion.

For those of you who beat the game I am sure you can feel my frustration when I (re) discovered that if you die on any of the bad-guys in that last section (before the final Big Bad Reveal) that you start over at the beginning of the whole sequence of fights (which, oddly enough, includes about 300 Abobo's) instead of starting where you died.
And when you find out that this doesn't change when you are fighting the guy with the BF Machine Gun.....

This might be why I am now balding

And, then to top it all off, You (I) finally work my way through that line of fights (half a billion reloads) to get to the final boss (and I was not surprised because I remembered my gaming youth) only to beat the Final Boss on my second attempt....
The pain in the arse was getting to him, not beating him.

But, in the end, was it all worth it?

I got the girl, so I guess so.


Clocking in at only 2 hours and 23 minutes I beat Double Dragon and I am happy to put it away again.  I played this on the 3DS at home before bed and during my lunch breaks.  It was frustrating as hell at times but it brought back a piece of my youth that I didn't know was missing.

Sometime this year I plan on playing the rest of the games that were released just to see if they share the same feeling that I didn't even know I was missing with this game.   I know as a child I played 2 and 3 (I think 2 introduced two player) with friends and put countless hours into them.

Sadly, I'm having trouble with next month's RetroRewind because I have a new Zelda Machine that is dominating my time, all of it.  It won't let me go.


Hope you all enjoyed playing this as much as I did and I'm damn glad I found that horribly cheesy 80's movie to go along with it.