ShrinkGeek Staff

Rafe Brox is ShrinkGeek’s resident lifter of heavy things and strategic sarcasm reserve. He plays a healer in most MMOs, but is much more Ranger/Barbarian in real life. He blames this on the ready availability of running shoes, hockey sticks, and barbells, and a keen lack of spell-casting ability and nanotechnology.

Over the last couple of years, Rafe has put in time at the gym towards reaching several different goals–lowering his cholesterol by a hundred points, improving his 5k time by five minutes, losing thirty pounds, and being able to lift more weight more times than he could the day before. He’s informally organized a monthly fitness challenge at his company gym, and can frequently be caught answering coworkers’ questions about nutrition and exercise even though he’s supposed to be fixing their computers. He can usually be found in front of his own home-built PC, either working, reading, or gaming; if he’s not there, he’s either exercising, making sure he gets enough sleep, or is stuck in traffic.

Strengths: Motivation, intuition, tenacity, really big words
Weaknesses: Almond M&M’s, Cool Ranch Doritos, impatience
Identifying Features: Back tattoo, coarse language, orange camo Utilikilt

Contact:

Email: rafe [at] shrinkgeek [dot] com
Twitter: etcet
Blog: Digital Discipline
XBox LIVE: Rafe

As much as this picture might make you think otherwise, Mike loves the camera.

Michael C. McGreevy rapidly feels himself becoming a geriatric geek. He fondly remembers the days of colored in Dungeons and Dragons dice, Pong, and programming games in BASIC that came from magazines (and never worked). Like many of his peers from the “Latch Key” generation he spent a good number of years feeding himself when he was growing up and developed a weight problem that lasted for a good portion of his adult life. At the age of 28 he had two minor strokes and decided it was time to get his life together. He joined Weight Watchers and dropped down from 419 pounds to his current weight (around 240). He mixes in a good deal of exercise with his healthy eating habits, and he recently ran his first ever 5k. He is also a big fan of fitness based video games and Yoga.

Strengths: Comforting, understanding, witty repartee, stubborn determination
Weaknesses: Fried and/or salty foods, self-doubt, upper body strength
Identifying Features: Bald, goatee, dashing good looks, hair in unusual places

Contact:

Email: michael.mcgreevy [at] shrinkgeek [dot] com
Twitter: Critus
Blog: My Name is Michael

Krystalle Voecks is Editor in Chief and newly-appointed code monkey for ShrinkGeek. When she’s not doing editing/writing work, working out, or dreaming up new projects to work on, she likes to play video games, check out new music, read, travel, and dance. (One could argue that video games are work for her and she’s just a workaholic. She’d agree.)

A seasoned veteran of fighting thirty-something pudge tooth and nail, Krystalle has tried almost every fad diet out there at least once. Ultimately, she has had the best success to date with the no-nonsense “don’t eat like crap, exercise, and drink lots of water” plan. While still not at her goal weight yet, she has learned to take her victories in small increments, and her days one at a time. After all, the extra pudge didn’t all get there overnight, either!

Strengths: Determination, creativity, nurturing, hard-work
Weaknesses: Ice cream, self-flagellation (the two together are deadly), sushi, cute things
Identifying Features: Colorful forelock, iPhone, headphones

Contact: