My surface thoughts and musings…
We got bikes out today. I rode my hybrid and Vikash rode his road bike. I had put 2 new sensors on. One broke (cadence) in the first 10min forcing me to go back to find it on the street. We carried on though and finished the standard trail (Tinley Creek North) in about an hour and a half. Our normal time is around an hour. There was still a bit of snow in places – not on the trail. Although it hit 72, the water in the ponds and lakes was still frozen over. It was awesome to get out today.
-Rat
Ah, it’s “Fat Tuesday” better known as “Paczki Day” in my Polish household. I almost ran into Ana Balaval this morning from “Channel 9” at the Orland Bakery. She was parked in the car beside me waiting for her segment time. I missed it by about 10min, but I had to get to work. Speaking of work, this celebrates my March First tie to all those “divine” friends I had who were “Xqsite”. You know who you are. What is it, 20 years or so?
Seems to be getting nicer outside and I’m tempted to bust out the hybrid. A much better prospect than riding in the basement. Tomorrow is a high of 54F at 4:00pm.
This is my first post of the new year and I have art class tonight (watercolor with John). Maybe I can enlist him in a leisurely ride tomorrow afternoon.
This Gutenberg editor is what I have been using all along or at least for the past year. Doesn’t seem like much of a change for WordPress. Ill have to dig into my WordPress classes to review the differences. Truth to tell, I don’t remember.
For the first time in over a year, I finally feel like I’m catching up at work. Just in time for audit to knock me down a peg or two. Its been a long, strange, trip. 2 Data Center moves, splitting the AS400 up, upgrading JDE – wow.
My thoughts feel fragmented this afternoon.
-Rat
Ok, so I’m a bit late. I have been busy. Been working like a “dog” lately. I’m taking a watercolor class with John at McCord. I’m reading 2 books [Karma by Sadguru, Yiquan 360 by Ling Seto] and and listening to 3 audio books [The Cyclist’s Training Bible by Joe Friel, Breathing for Warriors by Dr. Belisa Vranich, and The Healthy Mind Toolkit by Alice Boyles]. I’m working out when I can squeeze in a 1.5hr time slot – which is almost never.
This is interesting because I wrote most of this on Jan 19th but only saved it as a draft. I’m posting it now.
-Rat
Lets see… updates… It’s been a while… I got the new Whoop 4.0 which adds a couple of extra metrics to the 3.0 group – skin temperature and blood oxygen level, which reminds me… when I needed the metrics most, I didn’t have them. I got a cold on Monday evening, upgraded my Whoop. Felt like total crap on Tuesday thru Thursday, feel 10 times better today. But, I wanted to check my metrics to see if I had possibly contracted COVID. Don’t think so. I was worried for my wife who as you may or may not know, has a suppressed immune system. It’s Friday and I have no idea where the week went. I felt like the lights were on, but no one was home from a work perspective. I did work from home most of this week and got quite a bit done, but yesterday… I don’t recall most of yesterday – I do know I was listening to music and doing busywork.
Vikash will be heading back home on December 31, which will put quite a bit of pressure on me for most of January. I’ll have to do his stuff, plus my stuff. On the flip side, I am taking the last 2 weeks of this year off – stay-cation. Yay! Ryan is coming home on approximately the 20th. He’s scheduled to stay here. I’m excited to see him and get updates. I really haven’t spoke with him for what seems like forever.
The 4th of December was my last official bike ride of the year (yep, mother nature was kind that Saturday) and rode our typical path – but in the reverse direction. It was like a new path. I knew exactly were we were but the scenery was different! It was kind of weird – I admit. It’s only 13mi but for a weekend warrior, it was enough. I have too get a bike stand so I can change the wheels.
Watercolor class has been fun and interesting. I have done a couple of paintings lately. I’ve been working on smaller paper (8.5″ x 11″), so while color control is difficult, owing to the smaller path on the paper, the paintings are accomplished more quickly.
-Rat
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.
-Rat
Can’t believe that we are still riding into October. Saturday (wow, that is tomorrow) we are riding to the quarry and back – roughly 33mi. I had to chuckle this morning since the sun was just barely up and it was already quarter to 8 (7:45am). Sunrise this morning was at 6:58am, it will be the same for tomorrow. So we will be riding in the dark tomorrow almost all the way to the quarry. I think we have ridden 2 days this week so far – Monday 10/4 and Tuesday 10/5. Monday morning was really dark and there was just a sliver of moon in the Eastern sky around 5am.
This has also been a stressful week at work (it always is before vacation) since i had to get so many things completed before I am out of there. In addition, a couple of weeks ago, I got a new iPhone 13Pro. That was actually a mixed blessing since it came with a new set of problems that was unanticipated – the elimination of all my fingerprint associations with a change to facial recognition. All my QR codes via Microsoft Authentication app were garbage. All those needed to be rebuilt.
-Rat
You know, I am the consummate optimist – trying to keep things in perspective but somehow I feel like I got screwed at work. The only real saving grace is that I tried the managerial path and always despised being a manager. What gets me going in the morning is the prospect of learning lots of new things. It’s what I like about technology, specifically computers. Now I know that I could have chosen the management route, sold my soul, made money and hated my life. However, I chose the technical route and decided to keep my roots fully immersed in software administration and technology. My happy place. It’s not programming – boring. It’s not database administration – also boring. It’s not OS BS – again, also boring. It’s not hardware – lame plus boring. It’s a smattering of all of those plus a “side” of application administration! And, I get the added benefit of Moore’s Law applied to technology – it doubles every 18 – 24 months at this point. Change is good.
Ah, the therapy of writing…
-Rat
Hard to believe that this is the last day of August 2021. Hard to believe that I hit a milestone birthday this year. I don’t feel or see myself as old as I am. I still think of myself as 20 years younger. Kinda weird. Too bad that COVID crapped on my birthday gathering this year.
I am trying another UDEMY course on WordPress and it’s not PHP oriented. Ha!! It still bugs me that if I go to the latest PHP version that my hosting provider provides, all my stuff breaks. That’ll learn ya… There are not enough hours in the day for me to do all the stuff I want to work on. Damn job always gets in the way 😉 I need to just keep motoring thru it.
I still need to follow up on my old buddy – the Italian, Rad-Tech one. Maybe we can get together and hit the shooting range. Oh yeah, I got my FOID card finally. On another note, I am a step closer getting my road bike fitted with carbon wheels. Well, off to bed… the whoop says i need to rest. I’ll talk about that next time.
-Rat
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
So tomorrow is Monday and another weekend gone. On the positive side, there are a couple of things to report – first, i signed up for watercolor at McCord with John. I can’t wait! I first have to finish up my last watercolor – ugh. The basement is still a wreck, however, I did get a new lamp for my art space. It’s like a surgical suite now. It’s awesome. Plenty of light. At least I can see now in that dingy space. Time to clean things up.
Second, I tried to put the clipless pedals on the airdyne – no dice! First, the pedals were a bitch to get off. Can you believe that they were threaded standard? Pedals are usually reverse threads, it took me almost an hour until I changed my frame of reference and thought “what if these are not threaded the same way”? Voila, pedals came off. Didn’t matter for 2 reasons though, first of all the damn pedals are slightly difference diameter. And, there was clearly as sticker that said “Warning, do not use toe clips or straps”. After a couple of minutes of analysis, there is no way to glide or stop immediately on the airdyne. You’d risk tendon or joint damage if something were to happen. Been there. If you know me, you know the story. I have to bring the Schwinn downstairs and get it set up as a stationary bike. I have 2 Cyclops bike trainers that someone gave me. I think that only one works though. No matter – something for tomorrow night.
-Rat