Rooks

I had very little interactions if any with Mr. Willes, but life is valuable no matter what. Sad to know someone valuable to this community is no more. Rest easy friend.

Oof... it's been a hot minute. I had a rough two weeks, but bounced back strong last week. Week of May 16th: 1/7 days without alcohol. 4/7 days with a cold showers. 2/7 days with home projects progression. 0/7 days with fitness. 2/7 days with reading. Week of May 23rd: 2/7 days without alcohol. 4/7 days with a cold showers. 3/7 days with home projects progression. 0/7 days with fitness. 6/7 days with reading. Week of May 30th: 5/7 days without alcohol. 7/7 days with a cold showers. 5/7 days with home projects progression. 5/7 days with fitness. 7/7 days with reading. I honestly don't really know what happened with those 2 weeks, but the simplistic part of my brain just says alcohol consumption goes up, productivity goes down. It's pretty well established at this that I can't just drink a little. I'm either not drinking, or it's going to 3+ drinks. Which is why I really need to start shooting for 5-6 days off per week. It just makes it too hard to really stay in the swing of things, when it means I'm going to waste a full day feeling groggy and slow after drinking. The weather has been beautiful here the last week or so, and forcing myself to at the very least go sit in the sun every day for 10 minutes. Not sure if it's helping or not, but more sun sure as hell can't hurt me (barring of course me falling asleep out there). My company did a pretty awesome thing, where they have given us every Friday off from Memorial Day to Labor Day, so last Friday was the first of those. Tackled 6 items on the "maintenance" list that I've been meaning to do, and still had time to get some woodworking time in before kiddo got home from school. It's going to be glorious having a day every week where I can pick exactly what I want to get done, and not feel guilty about ditching my kid or wife. Also, my current manager has finally started the official transition out of the team, but he's been skipping like 50% of the team meetings for the last month, so he's been checked out of the managerial role for awhile already. Anyway, him leaving is giving me some hope things will start to turn around soon, but I'm still trying to remain somewhat skeptical until I actually see some improvement.

Week of May 9th: 4/7 days without alcohol. 4/7 days with a cold showers. 4/7 days with home projects progression. 2/7 days with fitness. 5/7 days with reading. Last week was goofy. Felt like I basically did nothing, but looking back, I made some solid progress on some house stuff. Fitness wasn't good, but I'm in the middle of a big project at work, so that's a pretty common trend (want to keep making progress on the project so I skip the workouts to get more time). Been enjoying the 2nd book in the Kingkiller Chronicles, although haven't quite been engulfing the book like I did with the first. Maybe it'll pick up again as I get more into the story. Otherwise, not much else to report.

This is not meant as a slight against you Shello in anyway, but NF needs a way to have like a legend for people's threads. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out who the codewords are in people's threads. Oof. How old is Peach? I know we took our kiddo to a therapist when she was only 5 and I was really struggling to see the benefit of the sessions. Granted we were just getting to the point where was planning to try sessions without us when COVID hit, so maybe those would have been better. Hopefullly things get better. Kids are fun, aren't they?

Your list literally made me go "DANG! She's killing it. I should call the AC place I've meaning to call." So thanks for helping me tackle one of my to-do list tasks.

Those speakers are amazing! Are you CNC'ing each layer or do you just have a template with flush trim router bit? Either way, it's going to look incredible when it's done. Baltic Birch plywood I assume? Hope you have enough to finish as I've heard it's near impossible to get the stuff now due to the Russia / Ukraine situation.

I would love to see these when done. Sounds really cool. What do you use for a heartreate monitor and time tracking on your runs if you don't mind me asking? I had wanted to do this when we splurged on our gym, but my wife ended up convincing me to just get the bigger rack with plate racks built in. Love the look of a nice wall mounted system though, even for just the little stuff.

Definitely something I've been super impressed by with my wife. The amount of deliciousness you can generate from taking a vegetable, chopping it up, putting it on a baking sheet, lightly sprinkling olive oil and salt on it, then baking it for 20 minutes... it's just unreal. How did my parents not know this when I was kid? I would have eaten so many more vegetables. And yeah... the internet and all that, but it's crazy how simple delicious cooking can be.

I hear you on last week. It was a tough one for me as well. Not even sure why, but goals just sort of went out the window.

That's a pretty advanced chicken tender move. Going to have to file that away in the "Something to try some day when I'm responsible for cooking".

For folks wondering, he is posting on Facebook so he's fine. Might just be on a NF break.

This is a good reminder for me. I tend to just want to check the box of "fitness" when I finally get the motivation up to do something. Need remember that sometimes it's probably good to gather up the family and go for a nice walk together.

I personally scored a set of Powerblock's that went from 5-90lbs many many years ago off Craigslist. Seems like there a load of adjustable sets targeted at home gyms these days. Any reason you aren't leaning that way? I do realize now is not the best time for finding home gym in the secondary market since it's all still probably absurdly overpriced, but new prices on a lot of sets aren't terrible when you compare true DBs per lb. Some reading if you are so inclined. https://www.garagegymreviews.com/best-adjustable-dumbbells

Week of May 2nd: 4/7 days without alcohol. 6/7 days with a cold showers. 3/7 days with home projects progression. 5/7 days with fitness. 5/7 days with reading. Wow. That was a week. First and foremost, I got in 5 workouts which is quite the record for recent memory. 2 days were just walking on a treadmill with my weight vest, and 3 days were weights. Very happy with that, and hoping I can keep that momentum going for at least a little while. On the work front, I had finally settle on the idea of moving on from my current job, and had sent out at least 4 applications, when my boss's boss (Director of our department) reached out to me asking if I'd like to start running a large meeting that involves our entire Engineering organization. Very good opportunity for getting my face more visibility, but I couldn't really think of how to decline without telling him the scenario. So I did. I've had a good relationship with this gentleman so I knew he'd be understanding about it. Sure enough, he was, and we had a long chat on Friday afternoon about options for me. Needless to say, the most appealing option seems to be staying with my current company for the time being, as I'll end up working under him directly, with him pushing to have me in a management role in 3-4 months. So the pendulum about where my career is headed has swung back drastically. It feels like a no-lose situation at this point. He's going to come work directly with our team in the next few weeks to start setting much clearer expectations of work, and announcing that I'm getting put into a "Lead" role where I'll be his under study while he sorts things out. Then once he feels better about the team, and assuming I've sufficiently meant his standards, I'll be put in as the team manager and he'll go back to his Director role to tackle his next problem. It's going to be a really tough first management gig, but I honestly want to at least try. Another random event that happened was that the widow of the machinist I told you about called me, and said she'd honor her husband's agreement with me. We got to talking a bit, and she actually asked me if I'd do her a favor. Felt a little strange given this was the first time I'd even talked with this lady, but turns out she had bullet cases engraved with her late husband military information, but was struggling to find someone who would drill a hole through them to be able to make them into keychains. I said I was pretty sure I could do that, and so now I'm working on a project to honor the man who I only met once. Feels good being honest. Once I get the bullets done, I'm going to have to figure out how to move this very large heavy machinery over to my shop and start having fun with it. Oh, and my wife wanted sushi for Mother's Day. So we went out to a local joint that actually just re-opened their dining in option (they had been take out only during all of the pandemic). It was amazing, and we ordered too much (per the norm with our family and sushi), but I managed to not overstuff myself and feel miserable for the rest of the evening. Was a complete win. Sushi is amazing. For folks that haven't tried it, please please do. Even a simple Philly Roll will change your life.

As a barbell junkie myself, I both approve of this, but also want to warn you of the slippery slope. One minute you're buying a barbell and 200lbs of weight. Next minute you're eyeballing the Rogue Monster Cave.

A co-worker shares this video every Friday morning in our company Slack, and I can't lie. It's never disappointing.

Good theme! We'll be getting out this coming weekend to finally get started on the garden as well. So darn late, but the stupid freezing temps at night kept getting forecasted. -

I'm all for threads of random folks flexing.

You originally from Wisconsin? Or just like the Packers despite not being the local team? I grew up in Wisconsin, but have basically given up the NFL the last few years with the exception of watching the playoffs. Do you find you are extra irritable at all during these cuts? I know most of time when I look to cut calories by that much, I'm super cranky with both my wife and kid. Hangry is very much a thing with me. That said, I also haven't done much in the way of cutting over the years, so perhaps I just need more practice.

If it's still taking great photos, who cares, right? Agreed. Maintain muscle and staying moving for as long as possible at this point.

Week of April 25th: 7/7 days without alcohol. 6/7 days with a cold showers. 4/7 days with home projects progression. 2/7 days with fitness. 5/7 days with reading. Starting the week out great with 2 workouts (light overhead day, and a heavy squat day), and then just puttered out mainly because of work business and depression. I won't rant about because it doesn't help. I have started looking for other jobs (applied to 3 or 4 so far, but haven't heard back on anything yet). I've been annihilating The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. I'm 400 pages in. 300 pages in a week is pretty great for me. And I've been spending a decent amount of time working on stuff at home. Nothing mind blowing, but I'm at least keeping up with some basic spring tasks. Oddly enough, that's about all I have to report this week.

Sad but true. Sad how political power drives so many things and skews view points drastically to fit their narratives. Glad to hear you are staying safe and at least have Skyrim to keep you entertained.

Glad Ghostess got home. I can imagine a 2 week quarantine would be brutal to deal with, just from a child care perspective. Curious on that myself. I know last time I did any sort deep dive into (which was probably 3-4 months ago, it seemed like a few folks I follow online were trying to call the Omicron strand as a strand that was more endemic since it was less severe. Granted, I don't even know if there are new strands at this point.