Oh what, that little trophy?
Oh that’s nothing special. It’s just a little trophy, that’s all.
Trophy
Author robertjames1971
Intermittent Fasting Update
So hey, how’s the intermittent fasting thing going, he asked because he’s kinda feeling lazy when he knows he still has three songs to finish and the dishes need to be done and the dehumidifier in the cellar needs to be emptied and yadda yadda yadda?
It’s still going, if that helps. I still have a tad more than three hours to go in fast #20. I haven’t missed a day since I started this whole screwy thing. I had to mess with it a bit the other day. We had a lunch date with Harry booked for noon on Sunday. My fast period is supposed to end at 1:00. I adjusted things by ending the off period an hour early the night before so that fast was 8:00pm to noon instead of 9:00pm to 1:00pm. No problem. Lunch was eaten on time and all was right with the world. Of course, in order to get back onto the preferred schedule I had to make the next day’s fast 8:00pm to 1:00pm, meaning I had my first official 17 hour fasting period. I did it. It went okay.
Last night I actually didn’t eat anything after dinner. Not because I was being a good boy, but because dinner was HUGE and I never recovered. I think unofficially my current fast probably started before 7:00pm, but that’s okay. I’ll make it. As the clock strikes 10:00am though, I am already fantasizing about lunch. Mmmm, lunch.
It’s Tuesday today, and Tuesday is my self imposed weigh in day. The Zero app, which tracks intermittent fasting (it’s really just a timer with some statistics saved off) has a tie in to the iOS Health app and it allows me to track my weight. It has nice graphs and everything. My first week had a huge weight loss. My second had a very small weight loss. This is the third week and it fell happily in between.
I haven’t set any weight goals yet. Well, other than the lose 250 pounds or so (which is, sadly, not an exaggeration. Robbie is a fatty). I haven’t even started mucking with diet yet. I’m starting this little Autumn-Quarantine experiment with just the intermittent fasting and a little bit of regular exercise. I’ll add diet changes later, but for now chocolate is still on the menu. Let’s see how long that lasts.
In a moment of nerd glory, I setup a Google Spreadsheet with my weigh ins, including a column that tracks weekly changes and a column that tracks total changes, and a line graph… you know, like you do.
Two hours and 56 minutes until it’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch time, babie!
NHL Playoffs Predictions Wrap Up
Oh thank you, thank you, thank you hockey gods. Last night the Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup giving me one final correct prediction and making my full post season record a tiny bit better than flipping a coin.
Whew!
Here are my win/loss records per round:
First round: 6-2
Second round: 1-3
Third round: 1-1
Final round: 1-0
That gives me a record of 9-6. That looks like a 60% success rate to me. Much better than the 53% it would have been if Dallas had won. So even though I hate the Tampa Bay Lightning with a passion because they beat my Bruins in the second round, I have to tip my cap to them, congratulate them on their second(?) franchise championship, and thank them for making me look good in the end.
What Was That?
I think that’s the first time it’s ever happened. At least since 2012. WordPress.com was just down! I couldn’t post and I couldn’t access my page. It was terrible! I started sweating and shaking and seeing little blue men with no feet who were pointing and laughing at me and Tracey Morgan yelled out, “Blue Man, where your feet at!” It was awful!
Anyway, I wanted to make a 50/90 update. I only have three songs left. I did so much work today I actually lost track of it all. Tomorrow I will add lead guitars to the final three songs and then I’ll mix ’em down and then I’ll be done and need to figure out what I want to do in October.
This song is the clear winner for the whole project, even if the guitar is a smidge out of tune:
Office View
Major League Baseball Wild Card Round Predictions
Okay, so it looks like the wild card round is going to be a set of three game series. I can work with that. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am going to flip a coin to make my picks for each series. I tried to use Siri but it gave me four tails in a row. The I started again and it gave me four heads in a row. Okay, let’s not put our trust in randomness.
Let’s start with the American League and hope that the coin doesn’t pick the Yankees. The team with the higher seeding is heads, lower is tails.
Rays vs Blue Jays: Tails. Blue Jays.
Indians vs Yankees: I’ve never hoped for one result over the other more than I am hoping right now. Come on heads! HEADS! I promise on all I hold sacred that I didn’t rig that. Indians.
Twins vs Astros: Tails. Astros. That’s too bad.
Athletics vs White Sox: Heads. A’s.
Now for the National League. In the spirit of pageantry I have decided to use a different coin for each league. Dramatic, eh?
Dodgers vs Brewers: Heads. Dodgers.
Padres vs Cardinals: Heads. Padres.
Cubs vs Marlins: Heads. Cubs.
Braves vs Reds: Tails. Reds. I played for the Reds when I was 12. Good choice, National League coin.
So I did hit heads four times in a row. Apologies to Siri.
The playoffs start tomorrow. Happy playoffs, everyone!
Too Small to Read
This week’s That Pedal show covered Octave-Fuzz pedals. Those are fuzz pedals that split the signal in two and double the frequency of one. That way you hear the note you played along with a second note one octave higher. It’s cool, but it was never my thing.
I always preferred the opposite. Split the signal an cut the frequency of one in half. That gives you the note you played plus a note one octave down. You knew that though because math, right?
Back in high school I had a pedal that did the octave down thing without adding in the fuzz. It was a DOD Octapluss. I was never a pedal guy, at least not until five or six years ago. I used to be set with an amp overdrive channel and a wah wah pedal. That’s all I needed. More often than not though I’d have the Octopluss too.
When I joined Lizardfish I wanted to use it but it had died on me somewhere along the way. I was sad, but somehow I’ve survived. I picked up a pitch shift pedal a while ago for times when we cover a song that has guitarmonies. I barely ever use it, but today I switched it on. It can do the same pitch shift my Octopluss did. It’s not the same though. It’s digital and it actually works too well. It’s not ratty and random like the old pedal. It actually makes me sad.
The new pedal is a super cheap knock off of a popular Electro Harmonix pedal (at least I think it is). Someday I’ll probably upgrade to the real thing. Why? The printing on the pedal is too small to read. Even with my glasses on. I just can’t see it. I have to take a picture with my phone and zoom in in order to know how to set it up. Crazy.
43 Down
43 songs finished. Seven to go. Only three days left. Can he do it? Well, the seven songs I still need to finish are all close to done already so… yeah, there’s a good chance.
Thoughts on Playoffs
There was a chance that Tampa Bay could have won the Stanley Cup last night, but Dallas ended up beating them in double overtime. It feels like Tampa has spent so much time in overtime that they’ve played an extra round or two.
In the past few weeks I’ve been making my playoff predictions for each round of the NHL playoffs. I’m going to end up with a positive record no matter who wins in the final round, but I am only slightly better than 50/50. If Dallas wins I will actually effectively be 50/50 at 8 right and 7 wrong. Where am I going with this?
Baseball. The Red Sox have had one of the worst seasons (win/loss percentage wise, the season ends today after game #60 rather than the usual 162) in franchise history. I’ve been paying attention to final scores most days, but generally they were so bad I couldn’t watch. That lead to me sort of taking a pass on the rest of the league too.
Now that the playoffs are about to start, I don’t know anything about any team in the running except that I effin’ loath the effin’ Yankees. Other than that, I’m clueless. That, plus my lack of success in the NHL playoffs gave me an idea…..
I am going to make post-season predictions for Major League Baseball, but I am going to decide my pick for each series with a coin flip. Yup. This is going to be a case of is Robbie luckier than fate. I suspect that I am not.
I don’t even know how they formatted things this year. Is there a one game play-in round? All I know is there are bubbles involved. I’ll figure it out and let you know.
Pain
I was worried about getting my 30 minutes of exercise in today but I was able to pull it off. Did you know that riding a stationary bike uses a different set of muscles than walking in place? Who knew, right? So now I’ve got two different sets of muscles in pain. Nice.
Speaking of pain. I had a slightly positive outlook on the whole tendinitis in my thumb thing this morning. I still can’t really bend it at the knuckle without that weird getting stuck feeling, but the general, constant pain seemed to have passed. Progress, right? Then I put together an exercise bike. Oh, there you are, constant pain. Welcome home, my constant friend.
