Workin out – Tao and Zen

Thursday, February 27th 2025…Can’t wait!…

So, when I get home today, I am going to do 2 things – first, replace my Energy 22 Reference tweeter (I just got an extra one used via eBay) and second, pack up my other tweeters and get them ready to ship off to the guy who will recondition them. And while I’m doing that listen to some music. I need to treadmill it and sling some weights around – I have MEPS to get! (flipping MyZone). I am also doing a class centered on electronic circuits – it’s funny how much stuff I forgot. Also, it’s kind of interesting using this software called Tinkercad that can do some of the circuit analysis – it’s all virtual! It kind of floors me – yeah, I know that I should expect things like this, but I remember doing all this stuff by hand – meaning with pencil and paper. My original electronics teacher from COD was an engineer at Bell Labs and was on one of the teams that worked on a part the development of the integrated semiconductor. He was probably in his 70s at that time. He had some interesting tales.

-Rat

Friday, January 17th, 2025 – Happy New Year!

Hello Gutenberg! This is definitely different. I didn’t think that I installed this plug-in but I’m glad I did and that it’s working now. I remember it crashing my site and having to disable it.

In any event, Happy New Year 2025 readers!

Update: I hit the 100K point mark in Duo Lingo for Russian! Making it my most studied language. However, I have to start furthering myself in the Russian language and not just working on points ;p. I am also going to start to try and learn Hindi. I have a new goal – keep my Russian up and learn Hindi at the same time. I can try and practice with Vikash and Pooja.

Update: I had a doctors appt on Jan 3rd and I got the directive that I have to lose some weight, and my doctor recommended that I start limiting my carbs. So, that is what I am doing. I did some keto stuff last year and although it wasn’t sustainable, I used a pretty good app on the iPhone (Carb Manager). I am using the same app this time but adjusting my carbs to the recommended amount. I mentioned trying to diet last year and was using the “Lumen” to try and get my body into fat burning mode. While I could never get it there, I could only burn carbs or glucose. I got frustrated and ditched the Lumen after 2 or 3 months and figured that I was metabolically inflexible and had no idea how to combat it. Well, this time I have a strategy. This time, I am trying to be “Ideologically Flexible” (flexible in thought) so, I will see what I can do to adjust my diet and exercise this time. Anyway, the last time was a stupid time to diet – right before a 12-day cruise to the “ABC Islands”. Yeah, I know – stupid. I haven’t busted out the Lumen yet. I had a bunch of concerns for the doctor on resting heart rate and metabolic inflexibility – since diabetes runs in the family. I am taking 6 weeks off from watercolor painting and trying to get a jump start on exercise (my art teacher was not feeling well and is taking the first 6 weeks of this year off – at night). Hopefully, he is feeling better and will resume night teaching. I retired my old weight bench and bought a new one – it is much safer. I don’t have to worry about weights crushing my larynx.

Update: After almost a year of audio frustration, I rewired my Klipsch speakers I got from my brother and decided to bi-amp them. My theory is that the crossovers are fried so I will use the receiver’s crossover to bypass the speaker’s crossover. That should increase the speaker’s performance as well as cut out the distortion and attenuation. I went to a record show and bought 2 new albums (vinyl) – Evanescence – Fallen (2003) , Triumph – Just A Game (1979) and some record cover sleaves. I also found some replacement needles for my turntable. Around Christmas, I purchased an audio streamer so I can rip all my CD’s to it. Currently, they are all in the cloud (Apple). I also have a NAD streamer, but I lost all the data someway, So I am not very keen on re-burning my CD’s. The cloud is bullet proof, but you are beholden to apple forever. I was also looking at ROON. I love the MAC mini. I may try something like that – if I can ever figure out how ROON works.

-Rat

Wednesday, May 15th 2024… dodged the COVID bullet but was hit in the shoulder by the Ortho…

My shoulder has been bothering me since last year. I have been sleeping with a pillow wedged in my armpit (thanks YouTube). Figuring a rotator cuff issue, I begrudgingly went to see an orthopedic guy. He said that I currently have 2 choices – 1st, is get a cortisone shot and in 6 weeks, either get an MRI or be satisfied with the progress if it doesn’t hurt. Or 2nd, go to P.T. and take NSAIDs for 6 weeks and make a judgement call if it still hurts, do an MRI and go from there. Either way, it’s MRI if pain after approximately 6 weeks. I chose P.T. So, that is the direction I am heading.

The kids are in town this weekend and its farty’s (I lovingly call Leo that…) baptism. Hopefully Anne Marie will be good from a COVID perspective.

-Rat

Sunday, October 10th 2021…It’s never too late to learn…

So yesterday I went on a 33mi ride with some friends, and then went to “Scarecrow Fest” and walked around outside. My whoop reported my daily strain as 18.0 out of 20 which for me was a royal “ass-kicking”. Thank god that I am taking it easy today. After I slept for 8.5 hrs, my recovery was at 46% this morning. As “Dirty Harry” said: ‘A man’s got to know his limitations…’. What I learned is that after a 30mi bike ride, I shouldn’t walk for 3hrs out in the sun at a craft fair later in the day. I should only do a 15mi ride in the morning- max. I need to keep perspective.

Here is a debut of some of my iPhone pix. It was a beautiful morning yesterday.

Cal-Sag_Quarry — The quarry at the West end of Cal-Sag Trail

The baby bridge that comprises the logo of the “Cal-Sag Trail”

The group, minus Vikash… who slept in… because he was out with his MBA cronies playing darts…

-Rat

Wednesday, August 25th 2021…Change is sometimes good…

So earlier this week, I retired my Fitbit. I have decided I am changing to a “whoop” band. It’s similar but it supposedly has better metrics (at least that is that is what I am told). I discontinued the advanced Fitbit metrics. It was a bitter pill to swallow, since it really gave me my first detailed look at my sleep, activity metrics, and step counts. Those 3 were what gave Fitbit value to me. The rest was fluff. I liked resting heart rate, heart rate variation, average respiration, average heart rate, sleep characteristics (REM, deep sleep, and light sleep), and step count. These to me, are what made Fitbit worth while and hopefully, whoop will be next level better in analytics. That is my hope. I will give it to the end of the year and make my determination if it was worth it or should i go back? One thing I still can’t shake is the damn heart rate strap while riding the bike or exercising due to the “MyZone” commitment. MyZone is supported by my health club and it incentivizes competition within my club. My Garmin won’t recognize the whoop but recognizes the MyZone puck and strap. Today was that first day in a week that everything in the Garmin 530 (sensors) was functional – heart rate monitor, power meter, cadence meter, and speedometer were all perfectly matching. One surprising piece of data that I got today was respiration during the ride. That must have come from my whoop band.

-Rat

Thursday, July 29th 2021…It’s been a while…

Hi All!

It’s been a bit since I last posted and while out on a bus coming home from a Cubs game, I was reminded (as i viewed the site) that I haven’t posted since May.

We went to one of those rooftop venues across from Wrigley field to watch the Cubs lose. This evening out was sponsored by my employer in celebration of a successful rollout of 2 projects, one to move our main legacy business applications to a managed service provider in Michigan and second, the successful move of our major business application to an external data center. These both were quite large projects and were a culmination of six months effort of planning, long hours, many people, and several companies. Not to mention almost flawless execution resulting in a minimal of downtime. Was it costly? Yeah, but the company is quite large and it affected all our North America operations and global connections. So it was pretty important.

I feel like I can finally breathe and relax a bit and focus on audit and our tickets that I have been putting to the side. Oh, and do a bit of training. I decided that I am going to go get my A+ again just for fun and not let it lapse, which is what i did the first time. Ideally I want to get the full suite of CompTIA’s certs. I feel like I have been so busy and have had no time to learn anything new that I could apply to business. Well, learn anything that I want to learn from a broad spectrum. I learn a lot of very specific, very targeted things all the time. And it makes me highly specific.

I’ve been riding road quite a lot lately and have really been enjoying it this year. I always wish I could ride more, but something always suffers since there are only so many hours in a day. I have been fascinated with trying to increase my power in riding and bought a relatively cheap power meter for a kind of baseline. My bud, bought me a new bike computer and I have been using it a lot. He gives me a bunch of crap for it since – really, what am I going to do with the numbers? Well, hell, my goal is to improve! Raise my VO2 max, raise my power. Kick some butt. I also bought some new clip pedals and new clip shoes. I’m going to use and install them on the air dyne in the basement and get used to them before I go out on the path and risk life and limb. I already have one reconstructed joint, I’m not willing to risk more just yet. Maybe next year 🙂

I have not taken any art classes recently (since late May) and have been dying to take one or two. I haven’t really had any disposable time. I still need to finish my painting i started. I feel like I’ve been neglecting my future.

I have a retirement class this evening. We signed up for a 2 part class through the local college. It should be interesting.

-Rat

Saturday, May 15th 2021… I got to ride for one week. I guess I should be excited…

Its been a month of toil. The weather has been crappy – only a week of rides. I got a new bike computer (thanks, buddy!) that pairs with my MyZone heart rate sensor, and bought a speed sensor, a cadence sensor, and a power sensor. And since its a Garmin and ant+ compatible, it gives a crap-load of information and integrates with GPS. On a related note, we will be going back to the gym in a bit (can’t wait to get back in some semblance of shape). I’ve been reading a book on breathing – again (a different book) and, am still trying to improve my breath. It’s hell getting older. Wim and Sam went right out the window after working almost a month straight. Projects at work will be slowing fairly soon for a couple of months.

Last weekend we went to Madison and finally got some R&R. I’ll post pix next week after I download them and finish my taxes today. My compadre graduates today with an Executive MBA! Way to go!

-Rat

Monday, March 1st 2021… it came in like a lamb…

Today I started my metamorphosis at 5am. I started with my breath training, riding the octane with my mouth closed. I am trying to lower my resting heart rate by not exceeding my aerobic/anerobic threshold (it was a total pain in the ass trying to keep my heart rate at 121 bpm) during exercise and its especially difficult because I am motivated by my “MyZone” heart rate monitor. I finished up my pre-work morning with Oatmeal and a shower, ending with cold water for 30s (it really sucked). Oh, and I wasn’t so hot with my diet on my way into work – thank you very much… (I’m still human). I will admit I did have a boatload of energy. I went in to work today to send a tape to our VAR, I designed my logo for my new Photography business and even created a tag line for it. I’ll put it below. I have my camera ready, I’m downloading firmware updates for it, my everyday lens will be in soon. I still think I need another subject lens. I have to get my light setup ready too.

3saintsartstudio.com Orland Park, Illinois (URL coming soon)

This is what I had envisioned for my business logo. We shall see where it goes. I worked till noon, drove home, stopped for 5$ Sushi Monday at a fav store of mine, ate lunch, and worked again till 5:30pm. My Day.

-Rat