A few times I’ve written referencing videogame reviews in Penthouse magazine at VTOR (the group blog I contribute to) and have received some feedback questioning who reads adult magazines for videogame coverage. This might have been a fair criticism 10 years ago, maybe even five, but not so much any more.

Fact: the videogame audience is getting older.

If you wanted more proof that videogames are attracting an older audience check out the November 2008 Penthouse magazine.

The top story is adult movie actress Tera Patrick talking videogames with a Saints Row 2 full page advertisement on the back cover.

We still are seeing plenty of violent R rated video game content, but how far off are the days of X-rated videogame content on console systems like Xbox 360 and PS3? No way Nintendo breaks the ground first.

Since adult-oriented games like these would carry an AO (Adults Only) rating that means no major retailer like Best Buy would stock the title. This decreases likelihood of seeing any major adult titles any time soon, but I think we’ll see this activity breaking in the user-created content areas first a la Spore.

If adult gamers are allowed to make their own content and levels, it shouldn’t be surprising that some are going to make and share adult content.

Some readers might remember my dismay over what I felt was a frivolous lawsuit: a complaint against the site eHarmony for not offering same sex dating services at their website.

In a court ruling where eHarmony has admitted doing no wrong, it has agreeed to start — yep, you guessed it — a same sex website.

It’s not going to be at eHarmony though (puzzling to say the least) which means the courts didn’t do anything except force eHarmony to start a niche site for same sex partners and give someone $$$ for crying foul.

The new same sex site eHarmony is creating is available at compatiblepartners.net. Now let’s see what the guy who complained, Eric McKinley, says about eHarmony (emphasis mine):

McKinley, 46, said he was shocked when he tried to sign up for the dating site but couldn’t get past the first screen because there was no option for men seeking men.

"It’s very frustrating and it’s very humiliating to think that other people can do it and I can’t," he said. "And the only reason I can’t is because I’m a gay man. That’s very hurtful."

Did he just use the word ‘humilating’ to describe a website that didn’t cater to him? Seriously? I can’t believe Mr. McKinley didn’t just use his browser of choice and choose a different website. Why did he feel it was important to force eHarmony to create a separate niche site so he could find other men to date?

This is not a gay vs. straight issue

Just so I’m not misunderstood, this is not a gay vs. straight issue. I have no problem with gay people being able to find dates online. No problem with bisexual people dating men and women. This isn’t about sexual preference at all to me. This is about a business online that has chosen to only cater to hetero dating being forced to create a site for same sex couples.

I can’t believe the court didn’t just throw this out. It’s not discrimination. Discrimination would be telling gays and lesbians that they can’t use the site to search for the other sex to date. eHarmony did no such thing, did they? Or did I miss that?

At the end of the day all this lawsuit did was give publicity to eHarmony to start a niche site that caters to same sex couples, joining a sea of others that already offer the service online. Mr. McKinley and Ms. Carlson who I wrote about originally could have found plenty of dates at other online dating sites. They were no more discriminated against than I would be if I want to exchange science fiction books at some website that only allows exchanging romance.

Outrageous. The courts got this one wrong. Agree/disagree?

No, really, I’m serious. PracticeSafePolicy.com (warning: when you click that, you’ll hear Obama say: "Fired up. Ready to go!") is selling Obama, McCain and Palin condoms. $12.95 for a tri-pack as of this writing.

Gottal love the taglines for McCain "Old but not expired" and "When abortion is not an option." You can watch a video about the 2008 president/vice president condoms below:

What, no Joe Biden condoms? What would be jolting Joe’s condom tagline? I’m voting for: "There will be a test within 9 months if you don’t put these on." You?

Can’t miss mentioning the sad passing of author Michael Crichton, claimed by cancer, who if you don’t know the man by name like Stephen King, you have to know at least one of his works:

The consistent themes of his work are the consequences of man’s own hubris and a thoroughgoing paranoia. Someone is always coming up with a brilliant notion in Crichton, and it always goes hideously kablooey. Bring dinosaurs back to life? Okay, but they’ll escape and gobble you up. Organ transplants? Fine until the medical establishment starts harvesting them for profit. Robots? Forget about the robots: they’ll shoot you down ("Westworld") or come after you with knives ("Runaway"

Crichton (pronounced "cry-tun") is responsible for some fantastic fiction and movies (Westworld is one of my favorites of all time) over the years including dinodrama Jurassic Park. Although the title of my post suggests there won’t be any posthumous works, I’m hoping he had some more stories in the pipeline or a book of ideas that could be given to somebody else to continue his work.

That’s what the great ones do.

He was that kind of quality writer that you want to see their work continue. They’ve done it with the James Bond novels, so why not do it with Crichton.

Although some of his book to movie adaptions were lackluster (e.g Congo, Sphere), he had very few bad books. Sphere remains one of my favorite books. The first Jurassic Park movie was great, but it was downhill from there. Not to mention the guy was behind the hit TV series ER.

We’ve lost a good one at age 66. Think I’ll go on a Crichtonthon this weekend in his honor and re-watch some of his great movies over the years.

Damn, who invited the Toxic Avenger over to take a swim in our pool? This photo was taken last week — before the end of summer cleaning.

Not the greatest timing either, it took a couple days to make it swimmer-friendly. Just in time for the scorching heat weekend. Dumping chemicals in, straining and filtering like mad. Go filter, go! Never did it get the water clear, but at least turned it blue.

And this morning, I’m trying the Mountain Dew like soda called Mountain Breeze and am struck by how similar it looks to the pool water last week.

A disgusting (algae-ridden pool) and tasty green (soda), take your choice. I don’t care much for Mountain Dew, but Mountain Breeze isn’t bad. Do you have a favorite soda clone? Or is it all original or nothing? Water or lemonade, heck limeade since we’re talking green, would be better for us.

As a parent with three teenage boys and our oldest at 18, I’ve seen and experienced a lot to date. Still, the parental surprises keep coming: good, bad and indifferent. Recently our oldest son asked me to help him lose weight. I’ve tried to help him with weight loss before, but not under the circumstances or, frankly, pressure facing us today.

He’s been steadily gaining weight and it’s gotten to a point to where this is no longer wishful thinking like it was 3 years ago. Can’t say any more that he’d like to lose some weight like so many of us say when spring rolls around, he must lose some or could begin to start suffering some health consequences.

Weight is also limiting his job opportunities. He has been thinking about going into the service, but he doesn’t meet their current maximum height/weight charts. He had a meeting with a recruiter but backed that off so he could dedicate more time to getting into shape.

I’d do anything to help our children and would gladly take 50 pounds from him and figure out how to work it off myself, but that’s not within my powers. I’m not a spiritual person, but would consider being more spiritual if this would help. Right now, no ideas that are safe and sane are off the table to help reach these weight loss goals.

Start tracking calories, diet at the forefront
Last time I think a major reason we failed to stay on track is because we didn’t alter and track our diet. About every dieting plan on the planet involves keeping track of calories and food types. No excuses, we’re on it this time. It already started when we looked at the chain restaurants we like to eat at and shared back the nutritional links for our common haunts.

First thing done was getting us both set on daily tracking what we eat using TweetWhatYouEat.com and keeping track of our weight using traineo. There are a ton of different calorie trackers out there, I picked these two for us because they were new to me and have sharing functionality. This way he could view my progress and vice versa and, if he desires, get his friends online involved.

Exercise and the Wii
We’re keeping our eyes peeled for the Wii Fit and will be buying that soon. My son likes playing Wii Boxing and has been working out several times a day with that. You can burn some calories with that. We also bought him a bicycle and have made a plan to walk daily. For days when the weather sucks, we’re planning on buying a treadmill. We already have a stationary bicycle and the plan is to break that out.

I have a new deal going with him that every time there is a task that requires going anywhere (in walking or biking distance) to get on the scale and if he weighs the same or more than the last weigh-in, he has to go do the task. Yesterday that didn’t work in his favor, but today it did. This might seem a little corny, but seems to be reinforcing using the scale as an ongoing benchmark of progress.

Week #1 progress
This week so far I’ve lost 3.5 pounds and he’s lost 4 pounds. My goal is to lose 15 pounds and get down to 160 or less by my birthday in September and his is to lose about 75 pounds over the next year. That’s about 6 pounds a month or about 1-2 pounds per week on average, which from what I’ve been reading is a healthy amount of weight for an overweight person to lose. A diet where you are losing huge amounts of weight every week could have serious health consequences, so we’re taking things slow and steady, not trying for any dramatic drops.

If all goes well once I get to my goal weight, my plan is to build some more muscle strength and tone while I continue to work with him on reducing his weight. He’s got a lot harder job since he has more pounds to shed and it’s been several years since he’s been at the weight where his BMI level was normal, but I believe in him. I believe he can do it.

While I’m not planning on increasing my fatblogging frequency, I will try to pass along updates on our progress once in awhile as well as share back any tools, sites, services, etc., that help us in our journey towards shedding the pounds.

Watching and tracking what we eat plus daily activity and exercise is only the beginning.

What else can we do, or should we be planning to do, to accomplish our respective weight loss goals? If you’re reading and been successful losing weight before, especially if you have lost more than 50 pounds with some sort of (safe) plan, how did you do it?

The order of restaurants to eat lunch at if concerned about calorie count below is ranked by most (worst) to least calories (best) using my preferred lunch order at each restaurant. These are well known chain restaurants that you might find in your area as well. The following restaurants were ranked (links to the nutritional pages/guies for other chain restaurants are included after the rankings):

1. Jack In The Box (most calories)
2. Little Caesars Pizza
3. Taco Bell
4. McDonald’s
5. Taco Time
6. Subway (least calories)

You might consider making your own meal calculations using these restaurants and see how the list looks for your dietary and nutritional concerns. All links lead to the nutritional information linked from the official websites of each restaurant.

Jack In The Box
After building my favorite Jack In The Box lunch with calorie count in mind only one word comes to mind: ouch!

My lunch includes the 974 calorie Ultimate Cheeseburger and 642 calorie natural cut fry. Throw in a 32 ounce soda and this badboy goes over 2,100 calories! Let’s forget the soda and maybe drop those three delicious mozzarella sticks and it’s still my whole calorie intake for the day. And I didn’t even factor in the marinara sauce for the mozzy sticks. With small soda: 1,998, without: 1,858.

Little Caesars Pizza

In our area Little Caesars has been making a major comeback by offering $5 cheese and pepperoni pizzas. You just walk in, tell them how man you want, pay and they hand them over. No waiting for the pies, as long as they are stocked. It’s working so well that nearby competitor pizza shops have begun to match their offer. Their nutritional guide:

I can just about devour an entire pizza myself. Let’s say 8 out of 10 servings which clocks in at a whopping 1,840 calories without soda or crazy bread, which I’m in for 1 crazy bread piece (100 calories) and about half the crazy sauce (22 calories). Add this up and it’s a calorie killer for the whole lunch. If I cut back and go with only 5 servings (half a pepperoni pizza), a small soda and no crazy bread, it’s still more than most of the other lunch options. I don’t know if I can cut this one out of my weekly lunch stops, calories be damned. With soda: 1,290, without: 1150.

Taco Bell

When it comes to Taco Bell it’s all about their sauce which according to their nutrition calculator has 0 calories? No way.

Put me in for 3 bean burritoes and a ton (10 at least) of their mild sauce and loads of tabasco sauce. I prefer a small soda to wash this down, but might be able to go with water only. With soda: 1190, without: 1050 (pictured).

McDonald’s
Who doesn’t have the golden arches nearby? According to McDonald’s Nutrition Calculator (link is on page toward bottom) my favorite meal at McDonald’s: quarter pounder with cheese, large fry and large drink is over 1,200 calories.

If I scale it back to a medium fry and small drink, it clocks in at 1020. By skipping the soda and going with water it’s down to 880, almost half my daily calorie intake at my height and weight. Not terrible, but it could be better. With soda: 1020, without: 880.

Taco Time

I love the crisp bean burritoes at Taco Time and my usual order consists of: 1 crisp bean burrito (394 calories), 1 soft bean burrito (377), 1 chips (150) and medium salsa (8), 1 sour cream (85) and small soda (140). I rarely eat the entire soft bean burrito, more like half or not at all, depends on how hungry I am. The calorie figures in parenthesis above use Taco Time’s nutritional info (PDF only).

Like Taco Bell I prefer a small soda to wash this down, but might be able to substitute water. As it turns out looking at the other restaurants, I don’t need to. I probably could not eat the soft bean burrito but the calculation that follows includes half the calorie count of a soft bean burrito. Without the soft burrito this would be among my best lunch choices. With soda: 816, without: 676.

Subway
Subway (nutrition PDF), you know that place where the guy lost weight with his only eat at Subway diet? At least from a calorie counting perspective, it looks like a promising place to eat lunch.

My sandwich of choice: 6" Roast Beef with cucumbers, onions, yellow peppers, mayo, mustard, oil, vinegar, salt and pepper is going to set me back about 350 calories.  I usually go through a small bag of BBQ chips which for every 20 chips is 150 calories. Factor in a small soda (140 calories) and a Subway lunch will clock in at 640 with soda and 500 without soda. I’m going to have to start eating at Subway more often. With soda: 640, without: 500.

Additional restaurant nutritional pages (not ranked)
Links to a few other restaurant websites nutritional calculators and/or guides I looked up and compiled alphabetically sorted:

Arby’s
Burger King - site is in Flash and doesn’t allow direct linking (?), go to this link and then choose "nutrition"
Domino’s (PDF)
KFC (PDF)
Panda Express
Papa Johns (PDF)
Pizza Hut
Quiznos - this guide is incomplete
Wendy’s (PDF)

Brown bagging it beats them all?
Subway looks like my best bet but I’m curious what is your best place to eat lunch at as far as calorie count is concerned? Brown bagging lunch like mom used to do is probably easier on the calories than any of the choices above. Mother knows best.

My wife just brought me some fresh baked cinnamon rolls. A quick Hmm search revealed I’ve never written about cinnamon rolls before. In 5+ years nary a word said about one of my favorite breakfast-time desserts? Sacrilege!

Cinnamon rolls are best with a tall glass of cool milk. Any other cinnamon roll fans reading? If you don’t like cinnamon rolls, what other dessert catches your sweet tooth?

The picture is a bit blurry, BTW, because my growling stomach was shaking the camera

Like every other blogger on the planet with comments enabled, Hmm gets its share of comment spam. A lot of this spam is pharmaceutical. Most of these sites offer very little in the way of value and are likely created by a very small number of people. Don’t see as much blatant spam coming through services like StumbleUpon and FriendFeed.

That’s how I came upon stillsleepy.com which is one of the best looking pharmacy promotion sites I’ve seen to date. It has videos, information, a clean design and is SEO personified. If I ever was to consider going down the dark path of being a spammer — and don’t worry I’m not — this is the type of site I’d want to promote.

It’s almost useful. Even though I don’t have a sleeping disorder, this site makes me go hmm.

Check out the track how sleepy you are widget to the left (the primary reason I made this post). Unfortunately the website mentions the drug Provigil dozens of times (don’t worry I’m only going to mention it in this paragraph) but check out the side effects of this drug:

may cause you to have a serious rash or a serious allergic reaction that may result in hospitalization or be life-threatening. If you develop a rash, hives, sores, swelling, or trouble swallowing or breathing, stop taking PROVIGIL and call your doctor right away or get emergency treatment.

Think I’d rather have sleeping problems than a serious rash or allergic reaction that may result in hospitalization. Not to mention hives, sores or swelling? Being sleepy sucks, yes, but taking this drug sounds potentially worse than, well, just taking a nap.

Are you a power napper?
As I get older I’m finding power naps to be helpful. Just short naps here and there, usually after lunch get me raring to rock and roll for the rest of the day. I don’t know if this is something normal as one gets older, but I’m about 99.5% certain I’d never take any drugs if I was too sleepy. Yes, even if prescribed. I hate taking meds. I’d much rather go natural. Eat more fruit and vegetables, exercise more, swing from vines, whatever.

Last year we bought one of those above ground swimming pools and after setting up in mid July were only able to enjoy a dozen or less good swim days.

This year the weather has been so crappy to date and with June almost over there was some consideration that we may never set the pool up in 2008. I mean, why set something up for only 10 good hot days? A hot day on Wednesday and rumor of 90 degree weekend days coming this weekend quickly changed my mind. Time to switch into pool assembly mode.

Leveling the pool in our backyard proved to be challenging last year. This year I dug a bigger trench than last year and used the dirt from that to bulk up the lower side. You can see the trench in the picture above which was big enough to put the pump in. What happened this year is the pool ended up dipped on both ends and higher in the middle. At least we don’t have the sloping we had last year, but man, why is leveling earth so difficult a concept for me?

What’s buried in your backyard?
A side bonus from the excavation was finding a 1948 shilling. My son went to the internet to research the coin.

Tools for leveling land?
There must be some sort of tool for excavators to be able to easily level land, yes/no? I remember when being in the restaurant business and seeing some laser red light used by contractors to show a level line across an area. I wonder if there is something like that contractors use to get the ground level?

Anywhere, here is how it looks from the side. You can see it’s not a great leveling job:

Guessing I won’t get any pool setup jobs any time soon, but the process did go much faster this year than last. We were able to setup the pool in less than three hours, including digging the small trench. Filling the pool took about 8 hours and cost us $25 extra on our water bill last year.

Our three sons took a dip yesterday when it wasn’t even 70 degrees outside. The pool water in the morning was at 50 degrees but had warmed up to 56 degrees by the time they climbed in. I told them they were nuts. How they managed to last in that frigid water for 30 minutes is beyond me, but they splashed around and had a good time. My son’s girlfriend was the only smart one of the bunch, like us parents, she stayed out.

The final picture at 6:59am PST.

The skies are blue, it’s gonna be a scorcher. Glad that the work is done. Now all we have to do once the heat sets in is get in and enjoy.