Tag: Apple Watch

Daylight Savings Had Me for a Minute There

Daylight Savings is over for another year. Back to standard time for our sorry asses. Did everyone remember to turn their clocks back at 2:00am this morning?

I had a moment early today where I realized how spoiled being an Apple user has made me. I woke up to go to the bathroom, like ya do. I looked at my watch, but without my glasses it was kind of a lost cause. It looked like it was 4:00am or so, but I really couldn’t tell. The little clock I bought for Harry’s room next to my bed and it said 5:00am. Okay, that works. The alarm clock next to Jen said 5:00am too, and my CPAP said I’d been using it for five hours. So it’s 5:00am, right?

Dumbass.

As I was getting back to bed again after doing me biz (TMI, right?) I remembered about the whole turning back the clock thing and for a minute or two there I was a confused, 90% asleep red head. How could the CPAP machine say five hours if we turned the clocks back. If the clock said 5:00am, shouldn’t the CPAP have said six hours? I know 100% that I turned it on at about midnight. Weird. That’s when I remembered I’m an idiot and clocks that aren’t connected to the internet the way my Apple Watch and my iPhone are don’t magically turn themselves back.

I said it before, I’ll say it again. Dumbass.

Dumb. Ass.

Jen and I just went through the house and fixed all the non-internet connected clocks. Is this the first time in memory that on daylight savings day all of the clocks are showing the correct time? I mean, all except for the cars. It’ll take years go get those suckers right.

Happy Back to Standard Time, everyone. Enjoy the sunset at 4:29pm today.

Wait, what?

Ouch, babie… Ouch

I was sitting at my desk at 8:30am, 30 minutes before I start work, and I thought: Robert, you are going to do 15 minutes of exercise by walking very briskly in place. Hells yeah, you are.

Five minutes later I stopped because my back was hurting like crazy. Hells yeah, it was.

The same thing happened yesterday while I Was trying to do a second round of 15 minutes to close the 30 minute exercise ring on my Apple Watch. I powered through that time, but I couldn’t today.

In the immortal words of Austin Danger Powers, ouch babie… ouch.

I need to keep an eye on this today. I don’t want to hurt myself, but there’s a bag of Hershey’s Kisses off to my left and karmically speaking I need to do the 30 minutes so I can eat those suckers. I do understand that this arrangement makes no actual physiological sense, but shut up and leave me alone.

Here’s to a back pain free day… as if.

Attenuation

Usually when we go up to Vermont we leave as early as humanly possible so that we can spend as much time there as we can and still get home at a non-ridiculous hour. Today is a little different. I have to time my arrival to match up with his class schedule. That means I have another hour or so before I have to leave.

I was thinking about playing some guitar before I go, but Jen is working and a few minutes from now she’ll be in a meeting. Better for me to keep quiet. It got me thinking about gear though. The amplifier I am going to use for November is a Vox MV50 Clean. There are a ton of MV50 models, but the Clean is the only one that comes with an attenuator. The others have a master volume. Blah.

It’s supposed to be a 50 watt amp and the attenuator has three settings; Off, 1/10th power, and 1/100th power. So it can be 50 watts, five watts, or 0.5 watts. At 50 watts it is loud. Great googlymoogly it is loud. At 0.5 watts it’s not. It’s a nice, useable at home volume. Well… still maybe a smidge loud, but not bad. I keep it at 0.5 all the time.

But should I? I was complaining the other day about it caving in when I bomb it with signal out of one of my overdrive pedals. Maybe I should set it to 1/10th power and just keep the volume control really low. Hell, maybe I should turn the attenuator off and see if I can use the volume control to keep things manageable. It’s doubtful, but maybe worth a try?

Huh… we’ll see.

Change of subject: Last night I don’t know what I was thinking. Two nights ago I had a memory lapse and got into bed without putting my CPAP mask on. Dumb ass. I realized the mistake before my head was on the pillow and all was right with the world again. Last night I missed two things. I forgot to top off the CPAP machine’s humidifier tank. Oops. It didn’t run out, but it’s close to empty.

I also forgot to charge my friggin’ watch. I finished my 30 minutes of exercise and just forgot to put it on the charger. Next thing I know I’m dozing off and my battery is at 30 something percent. Crap. Well, if it dies it dies. What’s a red head to do? I went to sleep. When I woke up today it was at 12%. It’s good to know that I can go 24 hours without a charge. The downside of course is that it’s been on the charger for about 90 minutes and it’s only back up to 52%. It’s probably not going to be fully charged by the time I have to leave. That’s okay. It’ll be charged enough.

I still need to top off the gas tank (it’s about 190 miles each way. In my hybrid Kia, if I start with a full tank I can get there and back and still have about a quarter of a tank left. I friggin’ love science) and pick up some caffeinated beverages for the ride. After that the only question is music or podcasts? If it’s music I might go with the new live record from The Pineapple Thief. I first stumbled across them a couple of years ago and it’s all good stuff, just nothing that sets the world on fire for me. Their new live record (they couldn’t tour last year so they did one show in an empty room and webcast it everywhere. The new record is that show) does it. It sets the red head’s head right on fire. Great album. I was seeing all this potential and waiting for a record that lived up to it. The last one was close. This new one nails it. Having said that though… I’ll still probably go with podcasts. That’s just kinda where I’m at this morning.

Happy travels, folks!

What Was I Going to Say?

I was planning on writing something here this morning and I completely forget what it was. Getting old sucks, kids. Stay young as long as you can, said the 50 year old asshole who still plays in a cover band.

What was it that I was going to mention? I honestly can’t remember.

I did something this morning that I haven’t been doing but should probably do more. I did part of my daily exercise first thing in the morning. I have 15 minutes of my 30 minute goal done. I’ll probably do the final 15 minutes at lunch. I also did something else related that I don’t want to do if I can avoid it. I took some Advil. My back is killing me. I don’t want to get into the habit of doing that, but I also want my back to not be a problem during the work day.

This morning when I put my t-shirt on my left ring finger caught on something. Weird. I was pretty sure I knew what it was, but I stopped to investigate. Yup. It was a little piece of what is left of the callus on that finger, the finger responsible for most of my guitar string bending. It’s been so long since I’ve practiced that I have lost the calluses on my finger tips. When I do work up the energy to play again I’m going to have to start from scratch, and it’s going to hurt. Sigh.

Okay, time for the work day. Maybe I’ll remember whatever it was I was planning to write about.

Closed It

I closed my exercise ring tonight. It was difficult. Very difficult. I guess I over did it yesterday or something because my legs were screaming in agony the whole time. There were a few moments where I was pretty convinced I wasn’t going to make it.

I did it though. Let’s see how it feels tomorrow.

Missed a Chance

I feel like I missed a chance tonight. I didn’t play guitar even though I had plenty of time to. I just popped an episode of The Walking Dead on Netflix and flaked. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have been productive. I still haven’t even finished my exercise for the day. I am at 17 minutes. 13 minutes to go. Why am I sitting here talking to all of you when I should be walking?

It’s gonna be a late night, but at least I get to watch the scene where Dale argues to save Randal’s life*.

*The Walking Dead, season two episode 11 Judge Jury and Executioner. Season two isn’t the best season**, but Jeffrey DeMunn kicked this episode’s ass.

**Get back in the damn house, Carl!