Ravings of an Undead Cheese Minion

Still upset over losing one of my writing groups.  My other one is fantastic, so I'll be just fine, but I still keep spinning over this. Did those six years mean nothing  to you people? I thought we were friends.  I guess not.  But the weak will purge themselves. If you weren't dedicated, and you quit when it got hard, then you didn't care enough and you will reap the consequences of that.  When you love something, you dedicate yourself to the pursuit of excellence in it. There is no other option. There is no other choice. You do not bend or break when it gets difficult. It does not matter if you suck. It does not matter if you fail. You pursue and you charge forward and you do not make exceptions or excuses.  In the end, the ones who did not quit are the one who will achieve their dreams.  "It's not the tree that forsakes the flower, But the flower that forsakes the tree."  I don't have a lot of patience for quitters. There is no forgiveness for ...

The hardest part was honestly the ordering of various steps, such as the steps of TLS. I feel that I need to review it a lot more, especially for when I do CompTIA. Since unlike THM, it is fully closed-book and closed-internet. RIP.  TIME BREAKDOWN Part 1 12:10-12:25 Part 2 1:00-1:15.  Part 3:  1:26-1:36  Part 4 1:41-1:58 (17 minutes, RIP)  Part 5 2:09-2:28 (19 minutes; oof)  Part 6 2:35-2:55 or so SCORE: 580/600

I can't do the Serpentine Slides anymore. The backscratching is worse this year than ever before. All the duct tape is gone, replaced by what appears to be new caulking that has not been properly sanded. It cut into my back and left me with welts all across it. It hurt to lay down shirtless, but having a shirt on made it generally okay.  I don't know what the hell is going on, but it looks like it's going to be just me, the speed slides, and the pipeline tower from now on.  Oh and Pipeline was only running ONE. SLIDE. What the heck? Two of them were totally dry. 

Before the Farmington Half, both the night before and the morning of, I drank a packet of LMNT electrolyte drink mix. My mom had gotten me them for Easter.  Cramping? None. Calves felt a tiny bit weird last 2 miles so I didn't pick up the pace that much. But I still cut down from around 6:50/mile to 6:40/mile. No feelings of being faint either, which is huge as someone who can't really eat a lot before races and has to eat everything after finishing.  They are REALLY salty, and that's the whole point. I'm converted. 

every time I listen to "Flashing Lights" by Kanye and he goes I'm more of the Trips to Florida I think about how I'm going to WDW in January and want to go to Orlando as much as possible. This pushes me to work harder. So, yay I guess? Let's feed the machine of CAPITALISM, apparently.  But the morning sun over Epic Universe or walking through the trees in Animal Kingdom or walking into Fun Spot on a starry night...or eating at the End Zone food court, browsing the menus, figuring out which line is the shortest, standing in MK mobile ordering cheeseburger spring rolls and a volcano dole whip... Hell yeah.  And the weather's so breezy Man, why can't life always be this easy? 

I'm sticking with Duolingo for Spanish and Norwegian, but with something like Japanese, Duolingo was just NOT working. The kana writing was disjointed and the grammar was not taught. I could not intuit it.  So even with the weird AI voice and AI generated images, Airlearn is legitimately better than Duo for Japanese. I might even try it for Tagalog just because I was burning out on Mango. Mango is super dry and I am pretty sure it's also  AI-generated. Or spoken by the most bored voice instructor known to mankind.  I need bite-sized, tiny tiny TINY lessons that fit into a busy day. I'm in no rush with language study, whereas I kind of am with other stuff, like art, writing, and code. Hell, I might even use AirLearn for chess instead of chess.com, but we will see. 

This starts tomorrow after lunch. So the 8 AM start and time requirements stuff do not count for that first day.  If I get a job this week, awesome. I'll accept it. But we cannot plan on such things.  Continue morning engineering block pre-gym, but make it a little bit longer. Focus strongly on PLCs, math, and Arduino.  Must start at 8 AM, but can do CYBERSECURITY first! Extreme focus on Leetcode/DSA/System Design/SQL (at least 3 hours) Bonus: Kaggle Bonus: Data Engineering upskill cloud certs? Then: Daily CS studies (at least 1 hour) This is our actual curriculum, AND we will do it AGAIN in the evening Secondary focus as a “Bonus personal projects block” Then: Daily graphics studies (at least 1 hour) again, do it AGAIN in the evening Yep, you guessed it. Daily games studies. (at least 1 hour) 1 hour only for job apps, but MUST do 5: 3 hybrid, 2 remote OR vice versa STRONG PRIORITY with GOVERNMENT When I say "again in the evening", it's because 7...

Each time I do this, I tell myself it's the last time. Hopefully, this time I really mean it.  What do I mean by this? Art, writing, coding, music, and such should all be done with extreme consistency and high duration, just like fitness. Sometimes I am forced to cut them short in order to interview prep, but I hate doing this, because my coding self-study should keep me sharp enough to not have to. And I think it would -- if I had mastered the routine a lot earlier.  I hate cramming and that's what it feels like I'm doing. I think after this one, I just want to stop. I want to study MY way. Concepts building on concepts. Nice and slow. No derails. Daily blocks as non-negotiable. I wouldn't skip the gym so why do I skip creating?

May and June are my favorite months of the year.  Taking a 1-mile walk at Lakeside Park, 80F. I am physically incapable of going at a fast pace. Instead, I feel weirdly calm and sedate. I feel like everything is going to be all right. I watch the lightest of warm breezes rustle through the flags and windcatchers of the nearby houses. The trees are all light or deep green, their flowers mostly gone. The first bits of cotton blow by, but only one or two.  I look at the pavilions of the baseball diamond, their blue cloth mostly still, and feel so at peace. It reminds me of kites at the beach. It makes me feel like I'm okay. I walk through a patch of shade and it is euphoric.   Soon, in two weeks or so, I'll be walking to Cherry Hill and looking at the little white flowers in the grass. I'll feel the rush of cold water pouring down on me as I sit on my tube and board Kodiak Canyon, with over 5 months of beautiful summer and fall ahead.  I just wish I knew why it felt so ...

...will never not be super confusing to me.  Why do people think that Apple Watches still have poor battery life like it's 2020? They no longer do. Apple Watch Ultra 2 lasts all day.  I ran the Disney 10K, including a wakeup in the 2 AM hour, in 41:05. I did return to my room for a brief charge while I speed-showered, and had fully charged it the night before. Even so, early entry to post close, until about 1 AM, the watch was fine. 23 waking hours.  And it charges for about the duration of me showering and getting dressed. Why would I want a watch on for a shower? The only showers that I have my watch on for are campground showers where I don't want it stolen.  I'm not a backpacker going out into the wilderness for days at a time, either.  Also, I get my HR, elevation, minutes per mile. What more do I need than this data?  I do 3 sports:  Running Lifting Yoga/Prehab And my Apple Watch Ultra 2 works out great for all three.  Plus, I'm a major geek...

I love stuff like this.  Just like all those little details. I want to step into this world. 

~ draft ~  I've been forced to taper (despite this being like...my D race) because of my plantar fasciitis (gross). Time to build a bulletproof soleus and gigantic dad-calves  Thursday tonight (Thursday), will prepare most of my gear, the rest will be prepared on Friday after laundry  continue PT for plantar fasciitis  Friday sleep extra (#funemployment)  study race course and make mental map only run 1-2 miles pack everything for race that I didn't pack on Thursday pack everything for Lagoon after, including wallet $$$ Friday night, make sure to eat something carb-heavy. pasta, noodles, pizza, etc.  Saturday Morning  very light core/yoga, about 15-30 minutes, in the AM trying to find the sweet spot between "not getting sick" and "not being weak". will attempt an electrolyte mix with 3 or 4 mini Honey Stinger waffles + 180mg caffeine. WELL BEFORE the race, ideally at around 4:00 AM  leave house at around 4:45 AM to arrive at 5:35-5:40 AM  5:4...

shitty, shitty course. I'm quitting this one faster than Dell IT because I want to actually learn, not spin my wheels  Coursera is starting to lose me. I don't know how much longer I will be paying for Plus.  No. No, we did NOT look at the lab environment in the previous section. The previous section was an intro to the course with no links and nothing... There was no website to access, no software to download, he opens a lab environment and does NOT tell us how to use it. This was clearly a lazy port and someone didn't bother to include the URL or software download.  Embarrassing.  Back to the drawing board for my Linux hypervisor quest.  Probably just going to do Linux Basics for Hackers and be a real edgelord