Getting FAT to get fit, a college football nightmare ends and all fear the Black Screen of death - courtest of Microsoft, of course

- Paul James is a bit of a freak. While most people are looking to shed pounds and live a healthier lifestyle, James was looking to go the opposite direction – albeit with an ulterior motive. James, a personal trainer from Melbourne, Australia, was a chiseled 176 pounds of muscle a year ago. He is a trainer at Doherty's Gym in Melbourne, where dozens of like-minded, athletic specimens go to get their workout on. Yet when New Year’s Eve rolled around, James decided to make a resolution that could make only people like Mark Mangino and Rosie O’Donnell proud: gain weight and live a less-healthy lifestyle. James decided to stop working out, start eating junk food and pack on the pounds because he was having a difficult time relating to heavier gym patrons. "I always got along well with my clients, but there was a little bit of a bridge that I couldn't cross," James said. "Having never been overweight myself, it was really hard to understand what people go through -- what it feels like to go to the gym for the first time and how to get motivated. These are things I thought were real easy to address." To better empathize with those chunky gym-goers, James literally stopped working out entirely, began downing fast food habitually (he once ate four large pizzas in one sitting - 14,400 calories in an hour and a half, by his calculation) and filmed the experiment for an upcoming documentary titled "Fat and Back." He insists that his project is not a copycat of Morgan Spurlock’s McDonald’s expose, Supersize Me, and claims that he went to great lengths not to mirror Spurlock’s work. Instead, his purpose was to understand what overweight people go through and the struggles they face in changing their lifestyle – wherever they get their unhealthy food. In order to reach his bizarro-goal weight of 265 pounds, James ate a lot of crap and once he hit that mark, he spent three months maintaining it. Besides packing 12 inches on his waistline, he also found himself experiencing muscle pain, increased fatigue and dangerous spikes in cholesterol and blood sugar. Doctors worried about the impact on his spine from having to support his newly bulging stomach. Friends talked junk to him about his growing man boobs and James admits that the emotional toll from gaining 89 pounds and living as a fat guy was more than he expected. “I definitely overlooked the mental side of things and didn't realize how difficult it would really be," he explained. Come July, it was time to turn things around and get back to working out so he could complete the second half of his journey. Working out for the first time in six months proved to be a major adjustment as well. "The transition back into training was the hardest moment for me because I just didn't have any desire to train at all, and I was addicted to fat and sugar at the same time so my motivation was at an all-time low," James stated. After six weeks of training and shifting his focus, he managed to kick his junk-food habit and get back to healthy eating and regular workouts. Today, James is under 220 pounds and confident he can work his way back to his former physique by the end of the year. "It's all about motivation," James explained. "I want to move on and do more training on a wider scale with people from all over the world." Filming for "Fat And Back" will conclude in January and from there, James hopes to see it released in theaters or on television within a few months. It’s a truly bizarre journey and not one that anyone out there would be well-advised to follow. Get rid of
the junk food and fast food, start getting regular physical activity before it’s too late………

- Thank God, the nightmare is over. While I may be viewed as a jackass by some for celebrating the end of one of the most celebrated tenures in college football history, I’m not saying anything that a) isn't true and b) a lot of you aren’t thinking anyhow. Legendary Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, who built one of college football's greatest dynasties in 34 seasons with the Seminoles announced his retirement today in a written statement. He will coach FSU in whatever bowl game gets stuck with his 6-6 Seminoles, then ride off into the proverbial sunset. My problem with Bowden is simple and it’s also complicated. The simple part is that he’s one of those self-centered sports figures who cannot admit that they’ve outlived their usefulness and should call it quits. The story with Florida State football now is not the team on the field or the players; it’s all Bobby Bowden, all the time. Will he continue coaching? Will he retire? Can he still get the job done? It’a all about him and would be for as long as he was the head coach at Florida State. The bottom line is that his team’s on-field performance is worse from year to year and shows no signs of improvement. In light of this, Bowden should be able to, assuming he actually believes the messages of team-first thinking all coaches spout to their players all the time, admit that the program needs new leadership and step aside. But Bowden’s ego won't allow him to graciously step aside and this old codger still thinks that at age 80, he can make FSU an elite program once again. Not happening, B. The complicated side of the issue is that due to his immense legacy at FSU, getting rid of him is next to impossible. Firing the great Bobby Bowden would be unconscionable at best and his loyal supports would be looking to tar and feather anyone involved with such a move. So how do you get rid of a coach you can’t fire while simultaneously respecting all he’s done for your school and football program? The answer, as FSU president TK Wetherell and athletic director Randy Spetman discovered, is shaming Bowden into retirement by allowing him to return for one more season only if he accepted a severely reduced role that would make him little more than a figurehead for the 2010 season. Faced with this choice, Bowden’s ego clearly drove the bus and told him to retire. He made it official today and will leave the game as the second-winningest coach of all-time with 388 career victories, trailing only Penn State's Joe. Offensive coordinator Jimbo Fisher, who was named Bowden's eventual successor near the end of the 2007 season, has agreed to contract terms to replace Bowden after this season. I hate the trend of naming a coach-in-waiting two or three years before a head coach retires as well, but that’s another argument for another day. The bottom line here is that this season marked the third time in four seasons that FSU lost six games and if Bobby Bowden couldn’t take an objective look at the state of his football program and admit that the time had come for him to leave, then whatever means the university took to force him into retirement were justified and wholly acceptable……..

- Sorry to all of the Alex O'Loughlin fans out there – both of you. For a second time, they must say a premature farewell to their favorite actor after CBS announced the cancellation of his new medical drama, Three Rivers. The organ-donor drama has been bottoming out in the ratings, drawing an average of 7.5 million viewers, and the network simply decided that it was wiser to air repeats of Criminal Minds and NCIS: Los Angeles instead Rivers. Effective immediately, the network will yank the show from the air, even though Rivers will complete production on all 13 episodes from the show's original order. No decisions have been made on whether they will air, but I wouldn’t be looking for them to show up any time soon. On the positive side for CBS, it did have two successful new series this fall with NCIS: LA and The Good Wife. Wife and LA averaged 13.7 million and 17.5 million viewers, respectively. Those are strong numbers even for shows I have no interest whatsoever in. Then again, I don’t regularly watch any shows on the supposed most-watched network on television, so that’s no surprise. Come to think of it, I’m not even sure why I’m talking about this at all, so let’s just move on and pretend this never happened…….

- All fear the Black Screen of Death! And if I’m talking black screens of death, of course I’m talking about the world’s worst operating system, Microsoft Windows. Microsoft admitted on Monday that it is looking into reports that its latest security updates are causing some serious problems for certain users, a problem that has been dubbed the "black screen of death." It leaves users with a black desktop and little else on their screen – ironically, this is an improvement over the travesty that is any version if Windows. "Microsoft is investigating reports that its latest release of security updates is resulting in system issues for some customers," the company said in a statement. "Once we complete our investigation, we will provide detailed guidance on how to prevent or address these issues. " Allow me to translate that from business-ese: We have no damn idea what the problem is with our sh**ty operating system. The issue was first identified by security firm Prevx on its blog on Friday. Ironically, Prevx actually did have a clue what the problem was. "The symptoms are very distinctive and troublesome," Prevx said. "After logging on there is no desktop, task bar, system tray or sidebar. Instead you are left with a totally black screen and a single My Computer Explorer window." Prevx suggested that the black screen issue can occur on a wide range of Windows machines from Windows NT through Windows 7 and that not all causes of the black-screen issue are related to the security update. "In researching this issue we have identified at least 10 different scenarios which will trigger the same black screen conditions," Prevx said. "These appear to have been around for years now." Well, most problems with Windows have been around for years – since its creation, actually. When Microsoft released its latest security updates on November 10 and issued six bulletins addressing 15 flaws, it succeeded in doing what it does best – making matters worse. Worse yet, a Microsoft representative said that the company continues to recommend that customers "test and deploy" the November security updates. Yes, deploy security updates that will bring the Black Screen of Death to your computer, well said…………

- This isn't going over well. President Obama announced Tuesday that he is sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and as you’d expect, the sh*t immediately hit the fan. Liberals railed against the decision to seemingly further a war that Obama had vowed to end and conservatives ripped him for a) the manner in which he made the decision, b) the speech he gave to announce it and c) sending only 30,000 troops when the military leaders on the ground in Afghanistan had asked for more. The president attempted to cushion the blow by insisting that he plans to conclude the war and withdraw most U.S. service members within three years. The military reinforcements are scheduled to arrive in Afghanistan within six months, marking Obama’s second escalation of U.S. forces in the war-torn country since he came to power in January. In another attempt to make his flip-flop on the war look less douche-baggish, Obama is also seeking further troop commitments from NATO allies as part of a counterinsurgency strategy aimed at wiping out al Qaeda, stabilizing the country and training Afghan forces. With these new troops, the American presence in Afghanistan will now surpass 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, with only about 45,000 NATO forces by their side. And what speech would be complete without bashing the other side of the political spectrum? Obama accomplished this by firing back at Republicans who had accused him of "dithering" over the decision. In the end, it’s a difficult decision that will ramp up the one war we’ve fought this decade that actually had some justification at some point in its existence. Not that the situation in Afghanistan is any better for it, but I suppose you can’t ask for too much…….