Darth Biscuit

Good dog

This guy posts in the tinderbox, I'm sure of it.

OK, now that I'm at an actual keyboard AND have finished all the books... my thoughts.... (this might be kind of random) The good: Martin is one of the best writers I've read. His words just flow and as you're reading it's really easy to get caught up in the story. The books are really hard to put down. I started reading the 3rd week of May and just finished ADwD last night, so that's a testament to the quality of his writing imo. His characters: The development of the characters and how real they feel is outstanding, particularly in light of how many there are. Holy poo there's a lot of characters. Visualizations: It's unbelievable how much detail is in the books as to the scenery, the characters, the castles, even the damn food they're eating. I take it the man loves some food as much as he delves into descriptions of what they're eating. I love the fact that the books are so unadulterated and "raw"... nothing is held back... sex, language, gore, the reality of life in what would amount to our middle ages... it's fantastic. The not so good: Characters: This is a double edged sword... he does do a good job of defining them, but damn... there's too many in reality. Very hard to keep track. Pacing: It's irritating to me to have him go chapters and chapters, even books in some cases and not mention a character and then BAM, he's talking about this person like it was just the last chapter... it doesn't happen all that often, but when it does it's tough to read. Disappearing characters: Beric Dondarrion is a great character... he's in and out of the story and finally just disappears. He wasn't mentioned in the last two books at all IIRC. Rickon: Where the fug is that kid? Samwell: In AFfC, we get more of Samwell than we can take just about... then in ADwD, he's nowhere to be found. This kind of goes to the too many characters deal... The only other real gripe I have is his tendency to repeat things as if he doesn't think you're keeping up. There was a whole section at the end of ADwD where Dany is walking thru the Dothraki Sea and he goes for several pages recalling all the stuff that's happened to her... it's not that it's bad, it's just kind of patronizing imo. So anyway... speculation: As I said, I don't think Jon is dead dead... he may die, but he will come back. I think. He's too integral to the story imo. As far as the whole "song of ice and fire" thing, I think it's pretty literal... Ice being the Jon's wall and fire being Dany's Dragons, Ice being the others/white walkers and fire being R'hllor. I hadn't really given much thought to the whole Tyrion being a Targaryen scenario, I guess that's a possibility... intriguing. I'm sure I'll have more later.... great thread btw.

Sorry for all the old pie but I FINALLY finished ADwD and could read this thread. More tomorrow but Jon isn't dead. If the red priest could bring back Dondarrion seven times why can't Melisandre bring Jon back?

Wow.

I drove 85 miles does that count? I've been out of the gym since friday, got a head cold and been really busy at work... It sucks.

How are his hands, is he a threat coming out of the backfield in the passing game?

She was looking at your butt Jase. You should have said "How you doin'?"

I wouldn't even look at it... He was at the end of his workout and I watched him do two final sets of 4 reps each. This same guy was benching 315 for reps on the flat bench yesterday and 405 on the decline... when I say reps, I mean like sets of 8 or 10. These are young guys too... I'd say early 20s and they don't look roided up, they're just big.

It's not the weight grasshoppa, it's the form. Both of those dudes appear to be in excess of 300 lbs, so him dl'ing 585 is not all that unreasonable. It's just a lot more than normal guys can do.

Dude was in my gym yesterday doing regular barbell deadlifts... With 585... for reps... His buddy was doing over head barbell presses with 225... These are big dudes. It was pretty freaky.

If we get on the topic of assholes at the gym, we may not get off it... Not wiping pisses me off... but the main thing I see in the gym is people just being so inconsiderate of others... The management of my gym moved the dumbbell rack to the wall and put all the benches in line beside it... now you have to walk THRU the benches to get to the weights. People walk right by you paying you no mind... somebody is going to get killed when they get bumped while pressing 90 lb dumbbells over their face.

You mean one of the 10 or 12 cute little brunettes?

Well anything short of doing it where you get in the water and all that... or one of those new high-tech methods is going to be a little off... but that poo is expensive... and I'd just like to have a general idea. I don't want to like track it to the 0.1%. The only two times I ever had mine testing was with the caliper method... back in like 1996 when I first joined a gym. I started out at like 17% and within 6 months it was down to 12%. But this was when I was 23... Being 40 and having put on 20+ pounds after my surgery in 2010 I'm pretty happy with where I'm at fitness wise, at 6'0" and staying right at 212, and being stronger than I've ever been. I've lost at least 20 pounds of my post-surgery weight and probably put 10 back on of muscle... I had to buy all new pants/shorts last year and poke two new holes in my belt. I would like most of all to lose that last bit of belly fat, but that's the hardest part... and my diet isn't always the best, although it's better than it's ever been.

There's a poster at the gym that has a formula on it for men... it was some ratios and stuff based on your weight and height and measurements at the belly button. I used my measurements and did the equations and came out right at 15%, and I'm thinking that I'm probably a tad lower than that because the formula has no way to take muscle weight into account. I need to just get my bodyfat % measured.

I've wondered how those scales work for bodyfat... if they do it off of some weight/height ratio it wouldn't work very well for someone who is muscular... similar to BMI.

Yeah, eat more, lift heavier... that's about it. He's not going to get huge overnight, so a month of doing that will put muscle on for sure.