As a graduation gift, I gave my buddy Shannon (congrats, by the way!) a Wii Fit this morning. We’ve been using the living hell out of it ever since. This is by far the most entertaining peripheral for a game system I’ve ever used, and it’s definitely an absolute blast to exercise with.

We’ve both put in 60 minutes of “exercise time” (i.e. it’s given us 60 “Fit Credits” each) on the game so far. This thing is kicking our asses (probably mine more than hers, as she’s in better shape than I am). Unlike the folks who got offended when this thing called their kids “obese,” I blinked and realized it’s officially time to lose some weight when this thing sized me up and said “overweight,” with the line just barely hovering beneath “obese” (less than 1 point away from the obese line according to its BMI calculation).

The way this game is put together and presented in a lighthearted, goofy, and entirely non-threatening style. It permits multiple participants to create their own profiles, and the game tracks daily progress (your recorded weight and your daily activity in the game) for everybody. Each player can set a weight loss goal and track their progress towards it.

It does a pretty good job of creating incentives and motivation to keep going, both by unlocking new games and modes as you put in more time (it doles these bonuses out pretty frequently, too — in just a “credit hour” of exercise, at least five things opened up for us) and by unlocking more difficult/advanced options for the modes already available (more reps, longer routes, etc.).

This is definitely worth the price of admission. And yes, I lucked out in finding one — Wal-Mart had just set out a whopping two of them (ugh) during the nightly restock and I happened to be looking around that section at the right moment to spot it. I scooped it up the instant I saw it. I am proud to report I did not scoop up the other one to scalp on eBay

Technorati Tags: Happy Life Video Games

I occasionally think back on my teenage years, when I (very briefly) embarked on two very stupid fanboy-like arguments with a friend of mine, almost simultaneously. It was never the kind of “serious,” friendship-destroying “wars” that the truly stupid fanboys of today actually have, so we always ended up playing devil’s advocate.

One was the classic Mac versus PC debate. Sadly, I lost that conflict, because at the time, I hadn’t been exposed to Linux yet. MacOS (especially System 7 and System 8 ) versus the then-current Linux? Heh. No contest, folks — GUI or not Macs were unstable monstrosities with few software-based repair paths before OS X came along. But MacOS versus Windows? Snicker There’s never been a contest there either — MacOS just wins. Deal with it. It remains true today — OS X kicks the living shit out of XP and Vista. It’s even more salt in the wound that it now runs on the same gear Vista and XP can run on. If Apple would loosen their death-grip on the imagined “control” of the platform a little and let Mac OS X try to run on whatever gear is thrown at it (without some bullshit “is this a Blessed, Official Apple Computer Product™?” check), Microsoft would be out of business, damn near overnight. Read the full story...