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username17

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Everything posted by username17

  1. Two week mark for me. Woohoo! I find my mind wandering to games. But I quickly re-focus myself on whatever task I was doing and move on.
  2. I had a fairly underwhelming weekend. As soon as I got off work Wednesday morning at 9am I didn't have the energy to work on my house. I did W1D1 C25K, Day 1 of 30 Yoga with Adrienne, 10 minutes of headspace, and I read some. So I did some positive things for myself. And I didn't play video games. But I didn't quite get done what I wanted. The next day I woke up at 7:30 determined to work on the house. I did a 2nd day of C25K, Yoga, etc. But around 10am I just went back to sleep. The rest of my weekend was pretty much sedentary and wasteful. So I'm not too happy with myself. But I've picked myself back up and I'm starting where I left off with C25k, Yoga, headspace, reading, etc. I guess my ego didn't expect me to fail. Or fail so quickly. But I've picked myself back up and I'm keeping on. Note: I am keeping a personal journal on my PC using RedNotebook. So while I'm not posting here as much I am still tracking my progression.
  3. Week 1 is down. Starting on Week 2. I'm starting to miss playing video games. Certain things I hear other people taking about or read online trigger the memories of all the good times I had playing. But I'm quick to remind myself of my goals in life. One of which is to complete the 90 day detox. My co-worker is heavy into gaming and that's pretty much all he talks about. I try to entertain the conversation but not think too much about it. I brought up some more active hobbies we might both be interested in instead of gaming. But I have a feeling things might grow apart with us now that I don't having gaming in common with him. We'll see. Edit: I forgot to mention that I've been doing a lot of reading as well. My goal is 1 book a week for now. Right now I'm reading the Dresden files for the fun of it. But once I get more adjusted to reading I'll start integrating some of the more instructional books I have like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence, 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, etc. I think I've tried to read the Zen book 3 times now but I always let gaming get in the way. Hoping 4th time will be the charm. I initially was splitting the reading up into pomodoro's so I could take a break as needed. But lately I can read for an hour or two with no problem at all. One of my goals was to finish books on my booklist and add more too it. Hopefully I can really get into reading and can start to knock out some of these books that have been on my list for 6+ months.
  4. Thanks Cam. And thanks @Revit Good point. Gaming is always accessible. Even via browser games. It's the decision to stop gaming and do something more valuable with my time that matters.
  5. @Revit Yeah I'm already running Linux (Xubuntu) on my gaming this PC. But this GTX970 is screaming to be used. I've heard about using the GPU instead of the CPU for Bitcoin mining. So I might get into that. Not sure yet.
  6. Code Academy is what I've used in the past. I'll be starting over from scratch there as well. There's a Learn Python the hard way PDF out there which is good. Also, Google released some of their training in Python as well. https://developers.google.com/edu/python/set-up
  7. So I've decided to try and sell off some of the stuff I don't need anymore (Monitor Stand, HOTAS Joystick, TrackIR, Extra monitors, etc) over the next few months. At the end of my 90 Detox I'll purchase a laptop as a reward for myself and stop using the gaming PC. A condition of the new laptop will also be that I used the next 90 days to learn a new skill or master a known one that would help with the advancement of my Career. In the past I've attempted to learn Python twice but failed. I think I might be more successful this time without the constant distraction of gaming. We'll see.
  8. Welp I survived my 1st weekend. Keep in mind I have 3 day weekends because of my schedule. I leave work Wednesday morning at 9am and don't return until 9pm Saturday night. I've had this schedule for years but I'm thinking I might need to switch to Days. It's hard to go outside and work on the house at 3am. I still have a ton of things on my to-do list to keep me busy. I'm also revisiting past hobbies that I enjoyed (Billiards and Yo-yo) and considering some of the ideas on the Hobby Ideas PDF to try out.
  9. Yeah I probably wouldn't be able to sell the PC itself. But I have a $300 4+1 monitor stand and like 5 monitors sitting around. I think I'd like to sell all but the main monitor (144hz 24") and get a laptop. I'm a Linux sysadmin so I don't need anything too fancy graphics wise. I just need something that can power 2 monitors, has some decent RAM, and CPU. My computer at home is overkill if it's not being used for gaming. I was thinking of burning some CPU time with SETI@Home, splitting proteins, or mining for bitcoins. But in all honestly I'd rather take it all down and have a simple laptop + monitor on my desk.
  10. Yeah. My hope is that I never go back to gaming in that way. My goal is to have replaced all the things I used to seek in Gaming with things in real life by the time my 90 day Detox is over. I think I can sell my 3 monitor stand to a co-worker. The monitors will go up on craigslist and the PC I'd probably keep but have it powered off/disconnected. Might give it to my Sister who is into gaming but isn't hooked like I was.
  11. Right now I have a pretty beefy desktop with Triple monitors. It SCREAMS gaming. Seems kind of like a waste of a PC if it's not being used for Gaming. I'm contemplating selling off what I can and buying a Laptop instead. I understand that anything, even my Smartphone, can be used for gaming. But from a point of minimalism, frugal-ness, and space saving I think I might want to switch to a Laptop instead. Has anyone done this? Any thoughts? Note: My entire career and livelihood is built on computers/the internet. So I cannot go without a computer or the internet. That is not an option.
  12. Welp day 4 is here. No gaming so far. This home improvement project of painting the eaves is going to be a lot bigger job than I thought. My house isn't big at all but it's OLD (~100 years) so it's got that many years of paint on it. I spent all afternoon yesterday and only got one side of the house done. In my resting hours last night I setup Linux on my Gaming PC so right now I don't have a single device with a game on it. I got another side of the house/eaves done. Also did some yard work. Tomorrow I think I'm gonna take a break from it and go to the Botanical garden. I wanna watch the new Divergent movie too.
  13. +1 to Elliot Hulse. I've been a long time subscriber to him. I'm no body builder so that side of him doesn't interest me but he has a lot of really good things to day.
  14. Hey Kad, I'm only on Day 3 of my Detox so this might not be the best advice, but you can login to the Steam website and chat with your friends from there. The web chat isn't quite as good as the Steam client. But if you uninstall Steam and use the web interface the games in your Library aren't 'just a click away' from installation like in the full Steam client. It might be a good intermediary step so you can get 1 step further away from your games but not 1 step further away from your friends. GL and thanks for your post.
  15. Yeah I downloaded the PDF. Lots of good ideas. I don't think I'll have too many issues using some of the suggestions in the Acting, Resting, and Achievement categories. But I have a lot of anxiety about social settings so some of the things I've been wanting to do (Yoga in a studio, Aikido, etc) have been dropped. Public speaking would be torture at this point in my life. There's is a Linux/UNIX User Group in my area which I want to start attending again. There's little to no anxiety there because it's just me and a bunch of other nerds. Maybe I can use that to break out of my shell and then shoot for something a little bit more out of my comfort zone. As far as what I'm doing this weekend I only have one thing really planned so far. I need to paint the eaves of my house. I recently had a new roof put on my house. A lot of the wood was replaced (old house, planks. Not plywood) so it really stands out. That's been on my to-do list for a long time. Even from before I got the roof replaced. So that's my first goal for the weekend. That'll probably only take a day though. I'll have to think up some other things to do for day 2 and 3. There's a Botanical garden with walking/running trails near my house. I initially planned to do all my running/walking in front of netflix on a treadmill. But quitting gaming just to start watching TV in it's stead isn't shooting as high as I'd like to shoot. So I'm thinking of getting a membership there. It'll be something that will get me out of the house, it's a beautiful area,it'll get some sun in me (I'm quite pale), and it's a more inspiring form of exercise (in my opinion) compared to treadmilling in a room with a TV. The suggestion to get a part time job was especially good. Although in all honestly I'd rather volunteer on my weekends then get a 2nd job. I'm signed up on volunteermatch.org but never really got any hits. I may have to be more aggressive about finding volunteer opportunities if I do end up with too much free time on my weekends. I'll see how it goes.
  16. Day 3 begins. This is my friday. I have Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off (I work an overnight 4x10 schedule). This is when the real challenge starts I feel. My weekends are typically consumed and ruined by gaming. I made sure to uninstall the games Xubuntu pre-installed on my Alt Linux PC.
  17. Day two has ended. Still going good fueled by the long to-do list. Got Linux setup on my alternate PC in my Bedroom. Gaming PC going to be powered off for a while now. Will probably try my hand at Gentoo as recommended once I really run out of to-do's and need something to occupy my time.
  18. Thanks for the info. My issue was I used a Xubuntu 14 Vbox to create a USB boot disk for Xubuntu 15. When I went to boot off USB it works but threw all sorts of nasty errors because of the differing versions of syslinux. I spooled up another Virtualbox on my Gaming PC, installed Xubuntu 15, and created a boot disk from there. I had to leave for work but that's where I'll be picking up when I get home. Once I get Xubuntu 15 running on the side PC I'll just power off my Gaming PC and leave it off. I really do have a long since neglected to-do list which should keep me busy for a while. So far I'm not really missing gaming. The challenge will be when the first craving hits. My 3 day weekend starts tomorrow. I'm going to have to get creative to find something to fill those newly free-d up 36 hours of my life.
  19. Day two here we go. I'm using my Gaming PC still until I get Linux fully setup (USB Boot issues). So to be on the safe side I uninstalled Battle net, Origin, Steam, and all games within. My real addiction was Everquest though. I deleted and removed that as well. @mli I have a few co-workers that use Gentoo. The initial setup was always too daunting for me. On this side PC I'm just installing Xubuntu. The plan was to put this small side PC in front of my treadmill for watching Netflix while on the Treadmill. But from my Introduction post it seems like that's a bad idea. I might just do some audio books instead. Now that I've uninstalled all my games I've got this beast of a machine with no use for it. So I might try Gentoo on this as a learning experience. But that'll probably have to wait for now.
  20. Well day 1 is just about over. I was able to busy myself with a long neglected to-do list. We'll see how I do once I am out of to-do's.
  21. Thanks for the suggestions Falky! My gaming PC has so many games on it I think I'm just going to power it down and unplug it. I have an alternate PC I can hook up and install Linux on. Gaming is the only reason I don't use Linux at home so without gaming this'll give me a chance to play with Linux some more. I use Linux on a daily basis at Work but I've been wanting to use it at Home too. Setting up and tweaking a fresh Linux install can give me something to do during my downtime as well. I have a short term to-do list which I'm planning on tackling aggressively with all this new free time I will end up having. But I think the real challenge will come when I run out of short term goals to work on and have to choose to focus on the long term stuff like Yoga, Meditation, Exercise, Reading, or Learning a new programming language. Question, what do you guys think about using TV as a replacement time consumer for gaming? I have a Treadmill in my bedroom facing my TV. My goal is to walk on it while watching whatever TV show/movie I'm watching on Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. Should I be cautious about this as isn't another stimulus that isn't out in the real world? I was thinking instead of watching TV/Movies while on the treadmill I could listen to audiobooks. Thoughts?
  22. Welp, I'm giving this a shot. I'm at work right now. I Get off in 7 hours. I've already uninstalled all the games on my Cellphone because those are just distractions. I have so many games on my PC at home I might just power it off. If it weren't for Games I'd use Linux at home so I might spend some time setting up a Linux PC to use in lieu of my Windows gaming PC.
  23. Quitting video games? Why would I ever do that? Gaming is what I do and up until recently I believed it was who I am. I've been struggling with my identity, my goals, and my purpose for a long time. I recently stumbled upon the idea of separating the stories I tell myself and from who I really am. Ego death, as it were. This disassociation with gaming and myself allowed me to take a step back and look at my life, where I get my sense of self worth from (gaming), and who I really am. I've been trying to move my sense of self worth from goals I achieve in a video game to goals I achieve in real life. I have a list of goals. Of things I want to do. Even in the short term. But the problem was time. I really didn't see how much gaming was consuming of my time and energy. I read a book the Pomodoro technique and picked it up. I was able to get so much done using this technique I actually checked off most of my short term goals. But then I grew bored and went back to video games. That was 1-2 months ago. The Pomodoro technique helped me to see how much time gaming is consuming. But I didn't really have the desire to quit. Especially not cold turkey. I sought out some new things to hold my attention instead (reading, yoga, even TV shows) but because video games were still an option I went back to them. Quitting video games will probably be the single most challenging thing I've ever done in my life. I've been playing PC Games since my teenage years. I'm 34 now. I wasted a solid decade of 8 hour days/12 hour weekends on WoW. My day was split into 3rds. 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of WoW. I played with co-workers so it was all we talked about at work as well. I've moved on from WoW but I do still play a LOT of video games. And I can still spend a solid weekend of not leaving the house and playing video games. I have almost 1,000 hours played on Skyrim. I work a 4x10 schedule. 4 days on, 3 days off. I'm good, motivated, and energized on my work days. But as soon as the weekend hits the lethargic me awakens and my weekend is ruined. My main challenge right now is letting video games ruin my weekend. I stumbled across the Gamequitters videos on youtube when, like Cam, I googled how to quit video games. And now here I am.
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