Kishi

15 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

 

Honestly, I'm not a big fan either. There are lots of layers and nuances in the book that were missed in the movie... and the decision to make the luck dragon look like a giant pink bathroom rug will forever aggravate me.   

Yeah, I can see how that would be. The movie was part of my childhood and I came to like it as I got older, but I didn't know growing up that it was based on a book, and being unfamiliar with the source material I can't really make a call one way or the other. But adaptation is hard. That much is certain.

13 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

I need to read Never Ending story. The movie is not my favorite. The second one I really disliked.

8 hours ago, TimovieMan said:

I've always quite liked the movie. Of course I first saw it when I was five or six, so it may run on nostalgia for me (although I've seen it multiple times over the years).

 

The sequel was a disaster, though.

 

And I never read the book...

Yeah, the sequels weren't ever really necessary, but I've got enough nostalgia for the original that for me it's enjoyable. Even coming back to it after all the time away, I found myself liking it. The film has the shortcomings of an adaptation whose ambitions exceeded its grasp, but I find that refreshing and endearing in this case.

I do think I'd like to read the book, having read summaries of it. Just another one to chuck on the pile!

*

Goal 1: 24/24

Goal 2: 23/24

Goal 3: 12/24

Tuesday down! Not much to report about it. Did not hit up S&S yesterday but did manage to hit the mats. Worked on grapevine from guard and using that to set up sweeps. I wasn't able to hit that in sparring, but I was able to outfight everyone I got the chance to roll with. Passed more than I got passed, and got subs without getting subbed. I don't know what the difference is between now and before, although I have some suspicions that S&S has got something to do with it. What that is exactly, I couldn't say; I'm not sure if I'm actually stronger or if it's a mindset thing where I'm just more comfortable with certain discomforts. Maybe my technique is a bit better too than the people I've been going with lately? Or maybe I'm just playing the game better?

I hoped in writing this out I'd have an answer, but one did not arrive. Maybe it's just time. Maybe I'm breaking through the plateau finally and on my way to the next one.

So, yeah. Things are good. At this point, the main issue is time management. There is enough time to do all the things I want to do, but I'm not really using it very well, and it's frustrating to run up against the limits that imposes.

Also, my body fat percentage has dug in and it's not moving anywhere despite my efforts as far as raising protein and cutting carbs and all that. Part of it is down to a lot of social eating in the past week, but even with moderation, I'm completely stalled out. I'm thinking it might be time to return to the upper end of maintenance for a while and just let my metabolism rest. Part of the struggle might just be down to a lack of energy, since 1) I'm not taking as much energy in, and 2) clearly I'm not getting energy from the release/burn of body fat. So I might just have to be kind to myself and eat more food for a while and just observe. See what happens.

Otherwise, tonight I'll be off the mats. Need to get some batch cooking done, and as long as I'm on the hook for that, I might as well do some cleaning and lift heavy things.

2 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

 

Atreju is a member of a nomadic people called "Greenskins", natives to the grass ocean plains. I'm not sure if Michael Ende meant for them to be green-colored Plains Native Americans or not, but considering Ende himself was born and raised in Germany, I'm a little hesitant to jump to that conclusion without further evidence to support it.

 

 

Well, from what I can find on the Internet, the "Greenskins" are supposed to be green, and there was apparently a scheme to color Noah Hathaway (the actor who played Atreju in the film) green that just didn't work for filming.

The reason I say that he's patterned after a Plains Native specifically is because in the film, when Bastian looks for a picture to give himself an idea of what Atreju looks like, it's a very red Plains Native hunting buffalo. (or at least, that's how I took that part, like he was looking for a reference). We cut back into Fantasia, and up walks this white-presenting kid in skins with a bow and arrow.

It's more complicated by mixed reporting concerning Hathaway. There's one 'source' that says he's Mohawk, and Wolfgang Petersen himself said he's half-Native, but most of what I found in researching it seems to indicate European/Jewish ancestry.

Which is all to say that I don't think it was Ende's idea, and I wouldn't ascribe it to him. I think Petersen read the book and made some adaptational choices that haven't aged well. Which tracks, really. Ende apparently wasn't a fan of Petersen's choices in adapting his work.

On 3/5/2023 at 6:21 PM, The Most Loathed said:

This is the challenge of an ortho who doesn't get what you do. You're no less likely to wrench your shoulder in situational sparring than open sparring.

Yeah, that's about what I found. I'm kind of stuck now between wanting to get back to open sparring and wanting to honor my word to the doc that I'd stick to the situationals.

On 3/5/2023 at 6:21 PM, The Most Loathed said:

How do you find yourself successfully passing with your teammates?

At this point it's mostly knee slides/arm weaves and stack passing. I get a lot of mileage out of the "anti-jiu jitsu" method of standing up out of someone's guard, and most of the people I play with at my level don't feel like they have strong sweeps or anything like that.

Honestly, compared to the maulings I endure in tournament, most folk in the Academy are rather tame.

*

Goal 1: 23/23

Goal 2: 22/23

Goal 3: 12/23

Hey y'all!

Sorry for having been absent so long. It's been a pretty busy week. Chores and such on Wednesday meant no mat time. Thursday wasn't anything memorable, although I was able to make mat time and I did write down what I did, so I can refer back to it for study. Friday was my birthday, which I took off and didn't really do anything. Slept late and listened to the rain. It was glorious.

Saturday I met my Dramatic Friends for brunch and then hit up an Escape Room for the first time. It was awesome. We wound up in a kind of cozy murder mystery setting and while we didn't escape, we got damn close and did so without any hints from the gamemaster. We actually got the final puzzle that would have given us the combination to get out of the room and we could have got it if we didn't run out of time; as it was, the GM was so impressed that she actually walked us through the final one to show us what was what.

Sunday, we had a seminar at the Academy! Spent a few hours studying under Gianni Grippo, a black belt under Marcelo Garcia up in New York. I liked him a lot; he's a younger man, but he reminds me of a boss I liked once upon a time before I landed where I am now. Spent 3 hours dissecting the Tripod Pass before going to spar, and I started out feeling like I shouldn't have and finished feeling totally fine and like I'd returned to something I missed very much.

Rolls went pretty evenly; I was able to outfight a couple folk on position and was able to achieve "survival postures" when I couldn't, although these need to be reviewed and I need to re-visit mount escapes. Also, I got the chance to roll with the girl who made blue belt before I did. I was curious to see how that would go. It seems her new belt has not given her any new answers to the problems I present for her. So I did what @The Most Loathed told me to do and tapped her a couple times in 5 minutes. She had no answer. This helped to reinforce the notion that a belt just keeps the uniform together.

I went home to see my folks and watched The Neverending Story for the first time in, like, a decade. I was able to recognize it off a couple frames of film when I got home and that was just a fun trip down nostalgia lane. Music's better than I remember it being too. More sensitive to the fact that Atreyu is supposed to be a Plains Native American and he's whitewashed as hell for this film. Although apparently, in the book the film is based on, Atreyu is supposed to be greenskinned, so I'm not sure if this compounds the erasure or not. Definitely a product of its time in that regard.

Monday I made some mat time where we focused on De La Riva and Single Leg X. Didn't spar. Did go off to visit Sci Fi Friends afterward, where they insisted on honoring my birthday, and so I punished them with some off-kilter smash burger requests, like peanut butter and pineapple and fried egg. (it was dope, by the way. I knew the pineapple and fried egg would be. I've done peanut butter on a burger before and I know it's good, but I didn't know if it would play well with the other two. If you're ever of a mind to try, peanut butter pairs well with honey as a topping. You don't need any cheese, but if you're going to do a cheese, you'll want something sharp to cut through the sweetness, like cheddar or something).

That brings us to today. So far, so good. Gonna hop on the mats some tonight and then get home and lift heavy things.

Challenge overall is going really well, and even the writing, when I do it, is higher-quality stuff than it was before. It's just sitting down to do it that's the trick, but this is a standard problem FWIW.

I'm sure whatever's going on right now is Entirely Too Much, so I just want to let you know that that stuff is going to pass. We'll be here for you when it does and you're ready for us.

Gonna echo @Scaly Freak. I don't really have expertise there, but it sounds sensible and I'm hopeful that it works.

Phew! So glad to hear you're in a position to take care of yourself. And just touching base with things consistently is awesome; you'd be surprised at how much you can preserve/progress with a comparatively minor investment of energy as long as you keep showing up. And taking care of yourself will give you the energy you need to do it. Cool!

Man, I'm incredibly struck these days by the relationship of bodies and position. Went over some back-take from guard vs pendulum sweep work and the difference is in where the top partner's head is located. It's truly wild stuff.

On 2/28/2023 at 8:00 AM, The Most Loathed said:

That annoying work project has taken on a life of its own. Despite my leadership chain not really being interested, people have heard I can now do this and are asking me to start flagging accounts based on transaction descriptions for all kinds of things. This week I'm rewriting my code to see if I can speed the process up and documenting what it takes to do this. I'm also socializing it within the team in hopes that they can learn to do it too and it's just a new offering from the team.

Yeah, they do that. I'm facing something similar, having found a hyper-efficient work process that's rendered me super-effective. Boss wants me to demonstrate for folk, and I'm kind of concerned that upper management is going to eventually hear about it, standardize it, and then push us to the grindstone even harder. There's no timeframe for it; just a kind of ongoing dread, but things coming to life beyond my control is kind of a thing I deal with around here anyway, so. I can relate.

3 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

 

Yes, but,

  Hide contents

what did you do with the tie?

 

*

Goal 1: 16/16

Goal 2: 15/16

Goal 3: 10/16

Yesterday, I got good news! While my ortho does think that my shoulder needs to heal some more yet, he cleared me for "situational sparring" in BJJ; i.e., starting from a position and working out one way or the other. I got my fix last night at the fundamentals class, and did pretty well with everyone I rolled with. Mostly it was just guard work - one person starts out in the other's guard and top person has to pass while the bottom person has to sweep or submit. At least held my own in all three rolls and outfoxed my partner in two of the three. I think I have S&S to thank for that; there were a couple places where I had to grind for what I wanted and I was comfortable doing so in a way that I don't recall having been in recent memory. So. Good times.

Afterward, went out with friends and watched Cocaine Bear. It's... okay. All the good bits are in the trailers, but they only comprise 10 minutes tops and there's another 85 minutes of movie to go. Too many single note characters and not enough story or stakes to make them necessary, so while the high points are high, they don't last and it's a long slog from one to the next. Also, the film is very tonally confused.  It starts off wanting to be some kind of horror/thriller comedy, like Jaws with jokes, but then it starts to muddle. Is it a cop comedy? Is it a drug comedy? Is it a touching motherhood story? Are we supposed to root for the Cocaine Bear? I don't know. And I don't think the movie does either.

But maybe I'm being too hard on a movie that doesn't want to be taken seriously. Sure, okay. But I think back to my nearest point of reference, which would be something like Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz. These are chaotic, character-centric comedies with lots of comically bloody violence, and they're good. If I had to guess why I think so, I think I'd say that they actually have a core cast of characters to actually build a narrative around. Cocaine Bear really doesn't have that, and I think the movie suffers for it.

Still, it was an excuse to get together with friends and be social. I'm not really down or negative on the film. Like I said, its good bits are good. Just not enough of 'em. Leaves me kind of meh about it.

Anyway, that's that. Had to come into the office today. Got enough work done to feel like I'm in a good place for mat time, but I missed out on S&S and I've got some batch cooking to do, so I'm probably going to ease off tonight. Should be good, I think.

Goal 1: 15/15

Goal 2: 14/15

Goal 3: 9/15

Managed to beat the game this weekend! I was curious about what the game would reflect back to me and it turns out that I'm both an ardent communist and a very good cop. Or, as my character yells at the very end: "I AM A POLICEMAN OF THE STATE TO COME!"

I'll spare y'all my gushing about it. It's a damn good game. I'll probably come back to it as a yearly thing, try out different builds and see what happens. But as it is, I got what I wanted out of this first playthrough and then some. It was a really good time.

My writing numbers don't necessarily reflect it but I've been productive 2 of the last 3 days since, so this is going to improve with time.

Saturday and Sunday were fairly unremarkable. I wound up taking a rest on Saturday and got up earlier on Sunday, which was good!

Sunday night, I did not get to bed on time despite all my best efforts and I wound up getting up at the normal time.

And then I decided to hell with it and snuck out to do mat shenanigans anyway.

And guys. It was totally fine. Didn't affect anything one way or the other. I went out and studied and came back and worked and everything was fine. I was every bit as productive as I would have otherwise been had I not gone. I finished my work ahead of schedule, even. The difference was, I didn't hit up Simple and Sinister beforehand, and I wound up slacking off at the end of the day, but I could have done that too if I'd really wanted to.

You might have noticed that I adjusted Goal 1 to full compliance because I've since come around to thinking that organic rest is a part of the program. It tracks with Pavel's observations and it makes sense to me, since all responsible programs have a rest period of some kind built in. Only thing is, if every day is actually contributing to training in some way, then the goal really doesn't mean anything. OTOH, I don't really care. My whole thing right now is logging and tweaking, and this challenge has been useful already for that. I have no complaints.

Looking at the schedule that I laid out for additional work with S&S, I found myself feeling like the "Rest" day was weird, so I'm probably going to start doing neck work again. It fits in neatly right now since my handstand work is just focused on hand and wrist prep ATM rather than total inversions, and a strong neck is actually really vital for both striking and grappling. This will have to be revisited once I start in on inversions again because they open up with tripod stands and head stands and things of that nature, and I'm not sure how all that would play together, but that's a problem for Later, and I gotta get there first.

Um, also! After reviewing this article and its programming, I've started to work in "Original Strength" resets. This is something @Shotokan used to do, and while I'm skeptical of their qualifications and a lot of the claims that they make, I can't deny that I feel better doing what they say than I have in a while. It's not the cureall it claims to be, but it's also been helpful with some lower back issues I've been dealing with, and it's even got my elbow feeling so good that I've actually been forgetting to do that program. I honestly wonder if I should adjust things a bit and maybe just take another 6 weeks; do resets and use the flex bars to work on the elbow, and then resume my pulling work? I dunno. This is a deviation from the plan, but it may be a worthy one.

Of course, that also means I'm going to be without easy access to heavy bags, but like...? I don't really have a meaningful way to incorporate them anyway? It may not actually be a loss.

Anyway. Today is today. Training and then wish me luck because I'm off to the orthopedist today. I'm not sure if I'm going to be cleared to spar or not. Shoulder feels way better than it did months ago, but there's still some stiffness/discomfort in the range that I know he's gonna test. Dunno how it's gonna play out. Guess we'll see.

Goal 1: 12/13

Goal 2: 12/13

Goal 3: 7/13

Training happened. Meditation and writing did not. It's not The Problem's fault; I misunderstood how much time I needed to get stuff cooked and eaten and so I got to bed at about the same time as normal, which is entirely too late for getting up early. I elected not to sleep or write to get something like "enough" rest.

Good news is, it was enough! I got up relatively early, for me; if I can hit an earlier bedtime, this will get better/easier and things will improve. It remains to be seen how well this works, but I'd estimate it's a good sign overall.

Anyway, today is a quiet day. Work some overtime, play some games, train, and see what shakes out.

Goal 1: 11/12

Goal 2: 12/12

Goal 3: 7/12

Caseload didn't cooperate.

I hate being a responsible adult. Used to be that I would sneak out and get mat time at lunch, but it's just not possible now, not with the things I'm responsible for and how everything balances out. Used to be that I'd just make the time up in OT, but I'm running out of those cases to work and even if I had them, they'd bork my processing time and I'd fall out of compliance. My work from home is at stake. I can't let that go.

Unless... well...

There is a possibility. If I got up and got to work early, and I mean early, it would be possible for me to get enough done in the morning to make noontime mat time, then come back and finish everything out.

I can even jumpstart this. I'm going out to breakfast with my family tomorrow at a good place that doesn't take reservations. Meaning I'mma have to be up early to get there to snag a spot. If I just got that shit going and kept it going, I think... maybe... just maybe...

Well. There's really only one way to find out.

Still, yesterday wasn't all bad. Managed to jump a couple of sets of swings and get ups from 8 to 12 kg, which is exciting. And I realized that I was jumping my Farmer's Walks a little too fast; I have lots and lots of kettlebells, and I can make slower, more gradual adaptive adjustments instead of just having to jump 8-16 kgs every time. Given the nature of the work - rehab for all the little muscles of my back, which are responding well - a more gradual approach is probably indicated.

Meditation went well. Writing did not on account of the aforementioned problem. Eff me, but I love this game. I have to admit, the week hasn't gone very smooth in terms of my personal training, but it actually kind of feels like a vacation, which I've been needing for a while. I feel kind of rested now, which is good. But I know I'm going to get restive if this goes any longer, hence my reason for jumpstarting things and getting up early.

Cool.

Wait, did I miscount? Again!? Phaw.

Goal 1: 10/11

Goal 2: 11/11

Goal 3: 7/11

Corrections made to account for the missing day.

So, yesterday we had a work breakfast to celebrate the arrival of our unit's new secretary. It was fun times. Lots of good food. I ate too much and didn't really feel like training when I got off work, so I didn't. Took the night off the mats too. Did meditate, didn't write. Did play. A lot.

TBF, I'm actually kind of glad I missed a day of training. It kind of gives me some opportunity to think about the programming and how I'm doing a gymnastic move on top of the other stuff and how I want to schedule that stuff. It used to be that each day would be broken off into its own discrete thing so that Monday would be handstand work, Tuesday would be Leg work, Thursday would be Core work, etc. Since I've simplified a lot of that and just dropped it down to a few moves, I now get to think about whether I want those to be their own discrete days or if I want to just hit them as I have the opportunity to. There is precedent for this both in my own training journey and in daily programming I've seen before elsewhere, where the training program is 7 different routines and they're just done one after the other with breaks coming in as needed. So, like, Workout #1, #2, #3, missed, #4, missed, #5 for a whole week and you just cycle on through.

I think I like that idea, although the next trick is figuring out the most constructive arrangement of movements. It's all rather top heavy at the moment, no pun intended, since it's all pressing movements and handstand work and only one leg movement to balance out. No core movement to break this up. But, handstand work is relatively restful as it's practice-focused rather than being its own kind of strength and conditioning, so sticking that in-between (hollow back press progression->handstands->single leg squat->handstand->straddle planche->rest->hollow back press...) probably works okay for now. Seeing it written out like this, I suspect that in the long run I'll be able to double up on some days and hit core work as well, but by the time core work is indicated, things are going to look very different, and I don't really know what responsible programming will look like then.

Oh well. Tomorrow is sufficient for its own troubles.

Writing Friend is not down for getting together tonight, so it'll be a mat night tonight if I can get my cases worked. Best be about it.

1 hour ago, Loveable_Bouncer said:

Following... for the extra dose of gratitude reflection and wowza some of these food ideas!

Yeah, come to think of it: Tank, how do you get your ideas? Is this just stuff you've picked up or are you cooking from recipes? If so, where are you getting these recipes?

"I wish you would step back from that ledge, my friend~..."

On 2/21/2023 at 9:34 AM, Treva said:

I’m running into chronic exhaustion and sleep deprivation again, which is probably why it’s hard to get in shape.  The bonus of stopping to practice at 8 means I can go to bed between 9-10 pm. So, a secret third discipline. 

Right? It's the one that feeds the others. Life is genuinely better the better-rested you are.

On 2/20/2023 at 11:24 AM, Mistr said:

The biggest change so far in this challenge is in my mental health. The last few days I have been waking up with things I am looking forward to doing. For the last six months or so, I have had to convince myself to face getting out of bed and doing all the things again.  Choosing not to do so many things and having a few really fun things to look forward to is making a huge difference in my state of mind. I am looking to see how I can keep this going and not fall back into old patterns.

Yeah, tell me about it. It's nice to have non-obligatory fun things to look forward to.

On 2/18/2023 at 4:39 PM, Sovalis said:

So glad to hear that things are going well, especially with your writing. I haven’t touched mine since NaNo and really should prioritize it. Maybe next challenge. 

Well, in fairness to you, you've got a lot of art stuff going on as is. I've always admired it whenever I've got the chance to stop by. I imagine the creativity muscle gets worked plenty as is; no hurry to get back.

Or alternately, do! I'm always glad to see more writers.

On 2/20/2023 at 1:13 PM, Mistr said:

Great discovery that qigong puts you in the right headspace for drills!

Yeah that was an absolute delight of a discovery. Didn't see it coming.

On 2/20/2023 at 1:13 PM, Mistr said:

Tough news about having to wait a week to get cleared for your shoulder. How is it feeling?

Um...? Feels pretty good. It's a little stiffer than my left shoulder now, but I don't think that's gonna be permanent. It's also in a range of motion that I barely ever use, so... no biggie?

*

Goal 1: 9/9

Goal 2: 9/9

Goal 3: 6/9

Y'all, I got a problem. And its name is Disco Elysium.

I've been able to exercise and meditate, which, hey, it's 2 out of 3. That's good. But I'm wanting to give every spare moment over to the game right now. It's just that good. If I was going to describe it to my IRL friends, I'd say it was like if Detroit: Become Human was written by Hunter S. Thompson, only way less cinematic and way more focused on narrative. I make this specific comparison because of the branching nature of that narrative and how the game itself responds to player's choices, similar to D:BH, except with a higher degree of craft and with actual skillful writing that makes you feel something. What makes it particularly compelling is the ability to customize the character's skills and personality to reflect the player and I'm positively unnerved by how well it's worked. The character feels like it's me; the mistakes he makes are the mistakes that I know I'd make, and the places where he falls short are places where I've fallen short. Conversely, the things he does well are things I do well too.  And what's really fascinating is that there's genuinely no wrong way to do this - even if you dump everything into your physical skills, the game uses those skills to justify a whole bunch of nuance and perspective to a higher degree than you might think was possible.

I honestly want more people to play it. One of my friends from the Dramatic Friends Group really got into D:BH and she tried to get as many of us to play as she could because she wanted to see how the story branched out and how we'd achieve different outcomes. I couldn't do anything like that with this game - it's way slower and there's no practical way to get all those folks to sit down and read a novel together in the same room - but that doesn't stop me from wanting it.

Anyway, it's eaten into my writing. And it's eating into drill time too, which is no good. So I've got to draw some lines somewhere or else restore this to its proper balance. Eventually. Somehow.

Back to work in the meantime.

On 2/15/2023 at 3:21 PM, Mistr said:

I know this is not your class, but maybe you could pass along a suggestion to the teacher. One effective way to handle big, crowded classes is to break up the class into groups of 3 or 4. Have two people do the assigned movement and have the other people watch and give feedback. The observers can say things like "your feet were moving well, but you let your back hand drop". After a couple minutes, they stop, give feedback, then rotate through the roles. People learn a lot by watching, and everyone benefits from personal feedback.

Might not be a bad idea. Sparring is a somewhat different animal, but if we could set up a bunch of tiny "rings" to keep everyone out of everyone's way, maybe that would work. Not really sure how feedback would work, especially if we had a lot of people in there because they don't necessarily know what they're talking about. And that's not me being prideful, it's just a fact. But, it would still be good to have some safe spaces for this kind of thing.

4 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

How did that day of being well reseted turn out?

It was okay. I missed class because I had to get a requisite amount of cases worked. So I got paid more for the work, but I didn't want to be doing it. 🤷‍♂️

*

Goal 1: 6/6

Goal 2: 6/6

Goal 3: 5/6

So, this week, I went off caffeine starting on the 15th. This is a thing I do every month and a half or so where I give my body a break and let myself readjust to baseline so I can get good response to stimulants again. First day was rocky, but that's normal. Things got better after.

Beyond that, there really hasn't been much to report this week. Wednesday I had to skip out of class for to get my laundry done. Thursday I got back to the mats, but nothing particularly exciting about it. Friday was good in that I figured that my computer's actually able to play Disco Elysium after all, so I bought that and started playing. It's really engrossing and a lot of fun.

Meditation and writing have both carried off remarkably smoothly this go round. I messed up the writing yesterday due to gaming, but even that's been really productive on the whole, what with figuring out more about the Snowflake Method and applying it better. It's getting to the point where I have to roll up my sleeves and get into the dirt, and I'm loving it.

Also had a bit of a breakthrough in training when I realized that doing qigong puts me in a good headspace to do drills, which I've had a hard time complying with this week. So I did that last night too and it turned out well, really.

Made some dietary adjustments when I realized that my cut wasn't going right - basically dropped carbs and upped protein while keeping fats in a safe range. Good response via measurements today, but the next week is going to have a lot of social occasions and I just don't know how that's gonna play out. I imagine I'll probably wind up in maintenance phase for a week, which given that I've been trying to cut for 4-5 weeks really isn't bad.

Um, one piece of negative news: Ortho pushed back my appointment. I was supposed to see them on the 21st but it got moved back to the 28th. Not cool, man. I'm sure I could start rolling again, but I don't really want to until I've been medically cleared, and the extra week's healing isn't gonna hurt anything.

Reading news! Finished off Sanderson's Words of Radiance and now I'm on to Alloy of Law. I swear, I keep telling myself I'm going to step away, but by the end of each book, he's drawn me back in! So that's been fun.

So... yeah. I guess a lot of little stuff happened this week but nothing big. Worked a remarkable amount of OT this week, and that usually throws me off of being here and general life rhythm, but that's how it goes sometimes.

On 2/9/2023 at 6:50 PM, Scaly Freak said:

Earlier this week, I learned the hard way that being absolutely brilliant at my job did not actually make me immune to the cost savings driven layoffs happening at work.

 

I'm officially “on the books” until the end of February, and will continue to get paid during this period. There is also a severance thing that gives more money to help me out while looking for a new employer, and a bunch of stuff I need to do and deal with... they helpfully emailed me a checklist, that Husband and I spent today going over together, to make sure I'm getting every single little crumb these ungrateful weasels owe me.

 

So now I need to find a new job. Happy fucking birthday to me.

As usual, I'd say you're understating how busy you are, but if you're comfortable with the load and want to add more, then there's no reason not to, yeah?

So! Let's get after it, then.

Yeah man, how're the marbles stacking up at this point?

22 hours ago, Mistr said:

Make your evening drink with warm milk and brandy? Probably not hot chocolate, because chocolate has a non-trivial amount of active alkaloids.

Well I thought I saw earlier that golden turmeric milk was an area of study and exploration? Maybe loading that up with a shot or two of spirits would be useful, although I don't really know what would pair well there. My gut reflex is vodka, just because it's got a relatively clean taste, but workable != optimal.

Yeah, echoing the others in hoping for a smooth recovery. Glad to hear you're on the other side of this thing.

Goal 1: 2/2

Goal 2: 2/2

Goal 3: 2/2

Woot! A 2-fer! I'll take it.

Training, writing, and meditating all happened. Writing was notable in that I've basically finished my cast of characters. I say that because my antagonist is going to be a, ah, one-book-only kind of antagonist, and he's honestly more of a prop/driving force in the story than he is an actual person who needs a story arc. At least, that's what I think at the moment. If more winds up being necessary, that can be adjusted.

But, yeah, the other stuff went well. Training's carrying off really well. My elbow's responding incredibly well to the flexbar work and the goblet squat curls that are used to warm up for S&S. When I dig into the hurt area with my gua sha, it doesn't hurt anywhere near the way it used to either, and while I still experience some discomfort with certain ranges of motion and demands it's much more dull than it used to be and some days I don't feel it at all.

It's tempting to jump into heavier work than what I'm doing now, but what healing's taking place needs to consolidate for a bit longer before I do that. And I'm still not done with the program yet. There's no telling if I'd set myself back by trying to jump back into my pulling work and that thought fills me with a sense of dread. As silly as it feels to take up a gym membership for a single piece of equipment, I really need to keep a longer view of this whole thing. Once that's done, I'll have access again to heavy bags and lots of different kinds of training props and tools. I might be able to talk to the striking coach about good bag work and get that worked into rotation again.

So there's a lot more good for me if I stay the course than if I do my thing where I jump ship early because I want to. Need to be mindful of that.

Qigong is going well. I've added some new stances to my vocabulary there and I'm able to find video references for the moves the author spells out, which is good. I kind of homebrewed it a bit where I do stancework, work through the qigong sequence as far as I know it, and then do GB's daily stretches after, which feels quite easy to comply with. If I can do that for a long enough period of time, I might get ambitious and try to work some of the longer stretch sessions in too, but right now it's best to just keep this simple and consolidate. Once everything's consistent, I can adjust.

Speaking of adjustments, one thing that I need to work on is hitting drills back at home. I've fallen off on my work, mostly because I've been focused on S&S. I think it's the shiny thing effect at work or something. There's an answer to this, of course: I could just set up a timer and get up to move every half hour or so. Plenty of time to do that and no harm at all. It's just doing it that's the trick. And TBF, I'm not doing myself any favors at home just sitting around for 8 hours a day. I may not be able to responsibly go for a walk right now, but I don't have to be sedentary either.

Today... ah, if I still had hair, I would say it's on fire.  I'm doing fine, but I forgot to set my alarm and so I got a full night's sleep and was a couple hours late to the job. The job has some really ornery tasks lined up, too, which I really couldn't afford to sleep through, and there's a chance I miss mat time tonight in the name of working the requisite amount of cases to keep things moving.

The good news is, between a full night's sleep, some dedicated meditation, and lots and lots of caffeine, I feel pretty great.  So we're gonna see what the day holds and roll with it. Nothing else to do.

17 hours ago, The Most Loathed said:

This week I got pulled of all of my regular work and put on a project that amounts to "everyone wants to know where money is being transferred to, all we have are the vague description field of the transaction, can you do it"? I honestly didn't know so I set out to see if I could do it. I settled on a method used by AI for Natural Language Processing, call tokenization. The idea is that you break out all of the pieces (words, letters, numbers) and see if they tell you anything. Unfortunately, no one I know has ever done this before so I just had to invent it from a mere concept. Weirdly, I succeeded. I built an entirely new way of processing data for which we had no system before and I did it in 2-3 days. 

I ran into a few challenges. My system is not efficient (it's brand new, I wouldn't expect it to be). To run it on one month of data take 4-6 hours. It generates something like a million rows of data per month. In the future that would be no problem as we'd screen for some things up front, cut some things out, but it's brand new, so it's a lot to deal with. The other challenge is that in this process they want me to find a magic bullet as to why these transactions are occurring. From a gross level, there is both and obvious reason and no obvious reasons. The obvious reason is cultural and no one likes it. The non-obvious reasons are in the data. There is not magic bullet in the data but it fits the pattern of the cultural reason(s). 

So I created a whole new system that we can use over and over and improve on but also, no one cares because it doesn't deliver the magical answer. 

Anyway. That was a huge push this week and kept me from sparing the mental cycles to come over here and post or keep up.

I feel this in my soul. A lot of the issues we've had with my job lately have been tied to a bunch of people wanting simplified, magic bullet answers to a bunch of processing statistical problems and how they're tied to our incentives. Thing is, there actually is a simple, magic bullet answer to our problems, but nobody with any authority wants it done. 

But hey, that's huge that you found the answer. And even if they don't care now, they might just as this new process iterates and improves, and you'll be the one who gets to take credit for it. That's really cool.