sarakingdom

Go to Google and type/paste this: site:rebellion.nerdfitness.com intitle:recruit "krav maga" OR judo OR "tai chi" OR aikido OR karate OR hapkido OR "tae kwon do" OR taekwondo OR kendo OR boxing OR hema OR fencing OR "kung fu" OR shaolin OR bagua OR escrima OR bjj OR jiujitsu OR "jiu jitsu" OR capoeira OR "martial art" OR mma Then click "Search Tools", open the "Any time" menu, and select "Past week" or "Custom Range". It can't be limited to recruits, because there's nothing in the URL of a thread that marks it as being in a subforum. But it's easy to see when you have them all listed in a page. Google will show you which forum it's in. Figured out how to limit it to Recruits - corrected above. (It's not in the URL, but the forum does insert the forum name into the page title, and Google has a keyword for that.) That search is hitting the limit of search terms for Google, so if you want to search for more arts, it'll need two searches, or you'll need to remove some of those terms.

My suggestion on the guys and the cooking is to make things really damn simple for them, even if it means some compromises on your cooking goals for now. Like, buy large packs of chicken drumsticks and a bottle of spice mix, and leave instructions for one of them to stick them all in the oven for half an hour so you're stocked up for the week. Then two days later, repeat the same basic instructions with a couple of bags of frozen brussell sprouts and olive oil. If you treat it like a simple chore along the lines of shoving clothes in the dryer, your odds of getting it done go up, even if the end product is not your ideal. It won't get the cheesecake made, but it will get the fridge stocked with some nutritious basics that can be pulled out when you're short on time. And they'll start getting in the habit of helping out with the cooking. It sounds like they really need the baby steps right now.

You are at your goal! Yaaaaay! Waggle your arms in the air! For adulting, I recommend a soothing cup of tea before bed tonight. Iroh-approved.

I've got the book! Gonna read it and see what I think, though it doesn't seem like it'll be on the list for next challenge. I'm trying to reduce any actual thinking for next challenge.

I'm thinking about my next challenge today. The things I've been thinking about: I've been reading the book "Spark" about exercise and the brain, mainly for the chapter on ADHD. Spark has a general recommendation for exercise that looks quite a bit like the Primal Blueprint exercise pattern, but in the ADHD chapter, the initial recommendation he makes to a patient is 15 minutes of hard exercise in the morning, to shift your neurochemistry for that first part of the day. I need more meditation for the ADHD. I haven't been seeing a lot of weight change. I track my food and exercise very carefully, and it's been hard for me to find what the additional factors are. I have a suspicion it might be rest. The periods when I get a lot of sleep and have a lot of rest seem to be when my weight goes down. Related to that, I have a lot of data points that I spend a lot of time physically and mentally stressed and my cortisol levels are chronically high. I've picked this article as my reference point. Psychology Today is usually pretty good on academic cites, and this one meshes well with the recommendations from "Spark" that I want to look at.Exercise The exercise-cortisol relationship seems to be this: some exercise helps, a lot hurts. What exactly "too much" is seems to vary, though everyone seems to agree that 20 minutes is about the cutoff per cardio session (longer for strength training). Some recommend limiting to 2-3 times a week, others every day. Well, I'm working with an ADHD recommendation of 15-minutes every day, so I'll go with that one, but will consider 2-3 times a week a pass. My thoughts are 3-4 sessions of HIIT/strength, the rest something lighter like yoga. I can get a good rowing HIIT session into about 20 minutes if I pull back the warmup a little. I have a DVD of martial arts conditioning, which is a mix of strength and cardio in interval format, and I've ripped that to MP3, so I can do that anywhere. That's about 22 minutes. I like it, and I want to get more strength training in, so I'd like to do that 3 times a week. I have a handful of 15-minute yoga workouts. That's probably enough to start with. I'd like to do this when I get up, since the ADHD rec suggests that, and it's a nice place to put it. The problem to solve: It usually takes me a little while to warm up physically in the morning. I'll need to see if it works, but scheduling 15 minutes to wander around and drink some water might help with that. Meditation I've been thinking about a morning meditation routine. I sometimes meditate in bed before I get up, to transition to being awake a little more easily, and that's not bad, though perhaps after I get out of bed would be better. Would probably be a good idea to get a short session in before bed. Sleep The big thing I need: more sleep. My schedule makes this tough. What I'd like to do is spend ten hours in bed, and sleep for at least eight of those. (That's a lot. But I really need to encourage more rest. Really generous amounts of rest.) It's almost possible, at least nine hours, though it means moving my exercise much earlier in the day and rearranging my evening quite a lot to get to bed by 10. (Given that dinner is at 9pm a lot of days, this is tight.) I'd also ideally like to get ten minutes of tai chi in there, because I sleep better if I've done some movement before bed. Again, tricky for scheduling reasons. Ten minutes is short, but there's DVDs involved. The problems to solve: Rearranging things so I'm ready for bed earlier. Figuring out how to get the tai chi in there. Limiting online time. The Extras That article recommends a few extra things for lowering cortisol that'd make reasonable life goals: music, humor, and social engagement. That last one is definitely a problem for me. I live in a place where I'm pretty socially isolated, and I'm starting to feel it a bit. So I think I will need to use the internet to scratch that itch. I'll have to create some metrics for making sure I've recently had high-value interactions with friends and professional colleagues and so on. Easy face to face, takes some more thought when you're not. I think late at night is one of the points this really hits, too. The problem to solve: Deciding how best to overcome the geographic issues I've got right now. So what the challenge is looking like is The Monk Bookends Challenge, getting morning and evening routines to implement the stress reduction stuff in that article, work on the ADHD, and still get my exercise goals on track.

Sweet! Be forgiving on the first couple of episodes. It really does become amazingly good.

Week 5: Day 6 1. Waterbending Did I swim: Not yet. (Current total: 27/50 stars) Did I do strength training: No. (Current total: 8/50 stars) Did I practice butterfly: No. (Brownie points: 3) Can I do butterfly yet: No. But getting pretty close. 54%54% 16%16% 2. Airbending Did I irimi or tenkan the shit out of something today: :star: (Current total: 25/50 stars) Am I the leaf: No I think so. I think I'm doing a slow tenkan. 50%50% 3. Earthbending Did I do some Lin-like shit today: Yes. :star: (Current total: 30/50 stars) Did I work on my course: No. (Brownie points: 5) Is the course done: No Working on some training plans. 60%60% 4. Firebending Did I meditate: Yes. (Current total: 24/50 stars) Why don't you enjoy a calming cup of tea: No. (Brownie points: 15) Current count of planned relaxation sessions: 1/3 I'm not doing too well on those planned relaxation sessions. But I'm going to give myself one point, because for the past few days, I have been building a little more rest into my daily routine. I think a few days of that is worth a point. 48%48% Challenge Reward Points Balance: 10 Shit accomplished during the challenge: I crocheted my first thing. I reduced my to-do list by 30%. I need to remind myself to be more like the leaf.

Yeah, you really do not need to program to use the word processor. Especially that. It's as polished as Microsoft Office. If the Firefox thing is annoying and you don't need lots of plugins, go into the software center and look for Midori. It's a lightweight browser, and it's said to be very good. Looking at the FAQ, I think it may not be a full-time solution for you, at least till you're more comfortable with tweaking things. (It looks like some people need to go through some steps to get, say, Flash working, though Ubuntu might have it working out of the box.) But if you just need to look some shit up while reading NF, it could work out better for you than Firefox. On paper, I don't think this version of Ubuntu should run on a machine as old as that, but in my experience, it always does. It's kind of magic. It just hits some issues like running low on memory. The good news is, this is the heaviest version of Linux with the highest hardware expectations, so this is also worst performance you can get on that laptop. There are two easy options for getting better performance. We should be able to get something that runs at least as well as XP ran on it. (I'd hope for better than, but will promise "at least as well as".)

Week 5: Day 5 Getting this up, even though I haven't done anything on it yet, because I think it will help me not accidentally miss, oh, a week of updates, if I just post them and edit at the end of the day. 1. Waterbending Did I swim: Tai chi. (Current total: 27/50 stars) Did I do strength training: No. (Current total: 8/50 stars) Did I practice butterfly: No. (Brownie points: 3) Can I do butterfly yet: No. But getting pretty close. 54%54% 16%16% 2. Airbending Did I irimi or tenkan the shit out of something today: (Current total: 23/50 stars) Am I the leaf: No 46%46% 3. Earthbending Did I do some Lin-like shit today: No. (Current total: 28/50 stars) Did I work on my course: No. But I did do some related work, that I've decided to count. And have done four times this challenge. (Brownie points: 5) Is the course done: No 56%56% 4. Firebending Did I meditate: No. (Current total: 22/50 stars) Why don't you enjoy a calming cup of tea: Yes. (Brownie points: 15) Current count of planned relaxation sessions: 0/3 44%44% Challenge Reward Points Balance: 10 Shit accomplished during the challenge: I crocheted my first thing. I reduced my to-do list by 30%.

Week 5: Day 4 1. Waterbending Did I swim: Yes. :star: (Current total: 26/50 stars) Did I do strength training: No. (Current total: 8/50 stars) Did I practice butterfly: No. (Brownie points: 3) Can I do butterfly yet: No Most of my exercise was on foot, but I went for a late swim, too. It's an experiment. I'm usually pretty wiped from spending all day on my feet at work when I'm at that office, so I did a very gentle mostly-floating hour in the pool to relax, and got some extra rest. It was an improvement, I think. 52%52% 16%16% 2. Airbending Did I irimi or tenkan the shit out of something today: (Current total: 22/50 stars) Am I the leaf: No This is not a super irimi/tenkan week for me. I need to be leafier. 44%44% 3. Earthbending Did I do some Lin-like shit today: Yes. (Current total: 28/50 stars) Did I work on my course: No. (Brownie points: 1) Is the course done: No Tried a new evening routine. Got some shit done. 56%56% 4. Firebending Did I meditate: :star: (Current total: 22/50 stars) Why don't you enjoy a calming cup of tea: Yes. (Brownie points: 14) Current count of planned relaxation sessions: 0/3 44%44% Challenge Reward Points Balance: 9 Shit accomplished during the challenge: I crocheted my first thing. I reduced my to-do list by 30%.

WTF, how did I fall a whole week behind in updates. Week 4: Day 4 - Week 5: Day 3 1. Waterbending Did I swim: Yes. x4 (Current total: 23/50 stars) Did I do strength training: x2 (Current total: 8/50 stars) Did I practice butterfly: No. (Brownie points: 3) Can I do butterfly yet: No 46%46% 16%16% 2. Airbending Did I irimi or tenkan the shit out of something today: x4 (Current total: 21/50 stars) Am I the leaf: No 42%42% 3. Earthbending Did I do some Lin-like shit today: Yes. x4 (Current total: 26/50 stars) Did I work on my course: No. (Brownie points: 1) Is the course done: No 52%52% 4. Firebending Did I meditate: x2 (Current total: 20/50 stars) Why don't you enjoy a calming cup of tea: Yes. (Brownie points: 13) Current count of planned relaxation sessions: 0/3 40%40% Challenge Reward Points Balance: 8 Shit accomplished during the challenge: I crocheted my first thing. I reduced my to-do list by 30%.

Then stick with Unity, it takes a lot of the config out of your hands. It's designed to be very low-effort for the user. Honestly, the first step to learning about Linux is just to use it. And you don't ever have to move onto a step 2, if you don't want to. There's no crazy tech-master requirement or anything. One restart could be a fluke. Say something if there are more. You shouldn't hit too many limitations from asking it to do too much. If that happens, what you'll see is the system slowing down really noticeably, maybe even freezing. It may not be amazing performance, but it shouldn't feel slow, or too limiting. I have a little trouble running regular Ubuntu on laptops that are less old than that one, so it wouldn't surprise me if yours struggles a bit. (But it's Firefox that gets me into trouble, mostly, so you may be fine.) Once you've got the other one running again, I'd recommend moving this one to a lighter version of Linux anyway, because it'll run better and be usable longer. But don't worry about it now, if it's getting the job done. I should tell you about few things. First is the software updates. They're much easier and quicker on Linux than on anything else (although your first one might take a long time), but they're very frequent, and the notification is subtle. It's somewhere up on your top toolbar, and there may also be a little notification popup. The second, if you didn't tick the box that said something about proprietary formats during your installation, we'll have to hunt that down in the software center so you can play MP3s and see Microsoft fonts. It's just a licensing weirdness about Linux, that it makes you separately agree to install that stuff. (It's called "ubuntu-restricted-extras", if you need it.)Third, pop into the software center and install "gufw". That's a graphical front for the firewall, which for some reason isn't default anymore. Then hit the gear icon and look for "firewall" to enable your firewall. Good security practice, no idea what it isn't default anymore.

PS, yours is called "redshift" (and "redshift-gtk" for the applet) and it's in the software center. I ship it.

That is so exciting. I will watch a few in honor of the occasion.

I don't do the day of hibernation very often, but the couple of times I made a point of it, it was the most amazing thing for my well-being ever. I should do it more often.

It's a good way to do it! I was actually more cautious than that - you can use it on your older computer without installing it, by hitting the "try" button instead of the "install" button. It works just like if you had it installed, and then if you hated it, you'd have your same old computer back when you shut down and removed the stick. But if you're pretty into a switch already, installing it is also a great way to go. People usually get a few years more of useful life out of an older computer with Linux on it. So I probably would have recommended it at some point. I was just easing you in slower, and being extra-cautious since I'm not there to fix anything. If you do genuinely prefer the Windows look and feel, you can get that, by the way. Linux is super, super configurable. You're not stuck with Unity, which is the desktop you're using now. I just like advising people to try it for a little while, because it's really interesting, has some good design, and you might be one of the people who really enjoys it. So you got the wifi working and you've got Firefox running, and you've probably found the office suite and things. Have you found everything else you need? Is your computer running well?

Well, go to it, then! I really do recommend Airbender first. So good. Speed past the first two (I liked 'em, just not as good) and you're into a fabulous martial arts quest. (Aikido only shows up briefly, but you hit it relatively soon in the series.) I might join you for a few of them, too. (Also, updates coming soon, folks. Promise.)

Nice! That Ubuntu desktop is definitely a bit of a change for Windows users, and even a bit for Mac users. I grew to really like it. It's really, really smart about finding what you're looking for, and that only shows up when you've been using it a little while. (Didn't know you were going for an install on that older one, too - very cool! Should work out pretty well, and if you run into performance issues, you have some options with Linux versions that'll be kinder to older hardware.)

Oh, I'm so glad! The things you're doing sound like an amazing win. Comparing oneself to other people, especially guys, can be tough. Guys will always lose that weight more easily, and that discourages a lot of people. I think the thing to focus on is that now he's working on the same sort of quest to be healthier that you are, and there's more support there for you. Eating better and exercise are things you can do together, and things you can help him with as much as he'll help you with. So take that as a win, rather than making it a race. I wouldn't even worry about the pressure of the weight loss right now. You're doing so much for your health and fitness. The weight might be slow to come off, and it might not come off till your body feels healthier, but improvement is improvement. You can still make fitness goals, and spend days pain-free, and feel calmer and happier. That's huge.

I'd be curious to see a sample. I considered it, but decided against, because I have a bunch of yoga DVDs that I think are pretty good, but don't do nearly enough anyway. (I also really did not like the hard sell tactics. "Buy in this four-day period, before it goes away and we jack the price." Yeah, no. The product is probably good, but that's a sleazy sales tactic, designed to mess with people's ability to weigh cost and value. That's the first time I've been disappointed in NF's treatment of its customers/members.)

This is the mentally tough part. And it's good you're noticing it, because this is also where it's way too easy to fall into some very damaging ways of thinking about food and weight loss. So let's see here. First: the scale is going to be the last thing that shows your progress. If you've been inactive, even walking may be building some muscle, and your scale readings will be inconclusive for a while. (Women also have a lot of scale fluctuations over the course of a month, which is a long time to not know what's really going on.) So your scale is not the whole story. Knowing that can help. (Normally I'd recommend measurements instead of weighing, but I don't know to what degree your lipedema would make that difficult. If you do have measurements you trust, that would be a good idea instead of the scale.) Second: health. Improving fitness and food quality is so good for you that it's worth doing in its own right. It has value. You can be healthy and overweight. You can be very fit and overweight. Pursuing health and fitness is a fantastic thing to do for yourself. Weight isn't the only measure of what you're doing for yourself right now. Concentrate on things like performance and fitness, find ways to measure it that feel real to you. Third: Weight loss can be a healthy or an unhealthy mental pressure. If it's becoming an unhealthy mental pressure, make something else your guide. Make the weight loss a concern for another day. Now is about "building good habits". Now is about "building a good base of fitness". Now is about "managing health issues". Weight loss will be the thing you worry about later. Fourth: All bodies are different, and it may take some trial and error to figure out what works for yours. Especially for women, I'm not sure it's quite as straightforward as counting calories and exercising, without doing some experimentation to see what's affecting your metabolism. Women tend to take more medications that affect how their bodies handle weight, tend to have histories of chronic dieting, tend to have higher rates of chronic illnesses that affect weight than men, and women's bodies tend to hang on to fat a little harder in general. So the missing piece might not show up right away. There are some things that affect metabolism that get overlooked: enough water, enough sleep. Perhaps even having that solid fitness base, because exercise is a source of stress on the body, and stress impacts weight loss. Your body may still be getting to the point where it responds to it like a mild stress rather than a large stress. If you want to get into your own trial and error, spend some time improving what you can improve, then measure for a month to see what happens. That's your baseline. Then make a small change, and measure for a month. You don't need to worry about weight loss during this process, because you're observing. You're improving your process. Do any of those help?

The secret of Ubuntu versions is that the 14 means 2014, and the number afterwards is the month it came out, which is always either April or October. In this case, April. Sweet! Clicking a thing is the most exciting part. You testing now? If you're testing on the older machine, don't be too worried about slowness, especially booting up. The amount of RAM is a big part of how the USB sticks run, and your older computer probably doesn't have much, so it might be a little tough. (My limited experience is that even quite old machines will run the newer USB sticks, but they can take a VERY long time to boot up.) You'll find the main apps down the left-hand side, and the internet connection in the top right, if you want to try getting online. (You'll have to see how it runs on the older machine, Firefox is a little RAM-intensive but you might get away with it. It'll probably be fine, but the older machine is in that gray area of "no promises made", so I want to be cautious in what I'm telling you will happen on that one.) The thing that looks like a folder on the left is your file manager. You'll have an empty default user directory, that's your Home, and down the list a ways, you should see a list of Devices, one of which is going to be your computer's actual hard drive. Clicking on it will mount it, then clicking the "eject" button there will unmount it. (I don't recall if Windows uses other terms for that. The eject button is like the "safely remove" you get for USB sticks and things.) If you're testing on your newer machine, don't mount that drive until you're ready to take the data off it. Don't ask that drive to spin up at all, because if it's damaged, that won't help things. The beauty of the USB stick is that you can keep that drive totally idle and unpowered until you're ready to get your data. If you're testing on the older one, you can mount it and try to find the directory path to where your user directory is and, I dunno, write it down somewhere, so you're fast when doing the real thing. I think it'll be one of these: Microsoft Windows NT <root>\WINNT\Profiles\<username> Microsoft Windows 2000, XP and 2003 <root>\Documents and Settings\<username> Microsoft Windows Vista, 7 and 8 <root>\Users\<username>

Do not be afraid of the computer! What step are you on?

So sorry about the soy sauce. You might find fish sauce relatively easily, the sort that's used for Thai food (though most east Asian countries have a version). It's usually just anchovies and salt, fermented. Very similar sort of salty umami flavor, though subtly fishier. (It's not at all subtle in the bottle, and in fact is somewhat worrying, but it's great in food.)

No worries, I'm a few years behind, so I can't be too picky about spoilers. I'd say it's not quite outside the statute of limitations, given that the show just ended last year, but it's moving into territory where I can't complain much, especially when I am aware the character exists. I have heard of peoples starting with the second series just fine, but they were the parents of fans, not the fans themselves, so it was not really their experience being optimized. It would probably drive me nuts, knowing that there was so much backstory built into a series and not quite knowing what it was. But I am a bit of a completist.