October 2005 Archives

well, i did it.

3x5x300 in the squat. i still had some left in me so i pulled off a double with 315. the double was even pretty good depth, though i could have done better. i will do better.

i've been making above-average progress lately. i attribute it to two main factors:

1) rest. i've really been working on this for a change. quality rest most nights of the week, not doing too many sets, not doing too much crap on my off days. true, 2 days ago i did a 12 mile hike follewed the next day by an hour and a half of orienteering. the point is that i know now that i can do that and still make progress in weights. i lift twice a week: monday and thursday. sometimes i run about 3 miles on tuesday. always i hike on saturday. the rest is rest.

2) focusing on my strength. i've got strong legs. that's been known to me forever. instead of struggling with bench pressing (my weakness), this cycle i've been focusing on improving my squat. furthermore, i do better in the low-rep range. so instead of trying to progress with 8 or 10 or 12 reps, i kept it to five. and it worked. by focusing on my strengths (and not neglecting my weaknesses, to be sure) i blew away my previous personal bests (squat of 1x280).

i was going to hit the 300 mark on thursday but i got impatient and i was full of energy today. so i went and did it. i was going to reward myself for reaching my goal by switching to deadlifts, but now i think i'll keep on squatting. i'm taking off for thanksgiving and won't be lifting over the break. i'll use the rest of my workouts to get to or past competition depth.

yeah.

it's funny, whenever i read about people doing stuff (like the busy lifestyle of james bond or steve martin or such) i wonder: when do they have time to lift?

it's a fundamental part of my life now, and i've been making good progress -- sort of.

i've finally put my money where my mind is and actually used mcrobert's abbreviated style of training. i'm lifting twice a week for double or triple sets and getting done in an hour. as usual, my bench press is lagging, but my squat is going amazingly well.

i'm aiming for a double or triple set of 5x300. last night i did 3x5x290, and on monday i did 3x5x285. i'll be unsurprised if I reach my goal by next thursday.

on the one hand, that's great: i'm reaching a goal, and it's a nice round number like 300. on the other hand, i should be at 400 by now, especially with my genetics. still, i won't complain. it's taken longer than it should have to get me to where i am, but i learned a thing or two along the way.

It's said that the problem with looking only backwards is that you never see what's in front of you or even what's under your feet. But that's a misstatement of the problem. The real danger lies with fixing your gaze in any particular direction: up, down, behind, ahead. We've got to look in all directions, from all perspectives.

this afternoon, while i was thinking -- again -- about my upcoming set of 300, it dawned on me: this week I squatted 290 for 15 reps (yeah, not continuous, and yeah, some of them didn't really count).

i beat my previous best by 5 pounds and 14 reps.

chefjef: casa grande is only 65
chefjef: econolodge is 125
chefjef: splain that
maury_cohen: splanation denied.

someone just around the corner and out of sight is using an annoying fucking nextel phone, with the walkie-talkie-bleep feature turned way the hell up.

up putting on my mp3 player, but if i can still hear that shit, there's going to be death soon.

so i've got 1lb and 3oz of slightly rubbery banana "chips". i paid about 5 bucks for the starting bananas, at $.79/lb that means I started out with about 6lbs of bananas.

2.5oz of my banana chips cost 65 cents if my math is correct, which it probably isn't, but the point, dammit, is that my banana chips are cheaper than the store bought ones.

they don't taste as good though. :/

This card was obviously designed with ascetics in mind.

my new PS1:

( 21:00:54 ):( CPU @ 37.00C )
.oO([ osiris@horus ]:[ ~ ]: >

f33r m3 big time.

found out how to check my system temps:

( 20:37:43 ):[ osiris@horus ]:[ ~ ]: > sysctl -a|grep degC
hw.sensors.12=it0, Temp1, temp, 25.00 degC / 77.00 degF
hw.sensors.13=it0, Temp2, temp, 37.00 degC / 98.60 degF
hw.sensors.14=it0, Temp3, temp, 37.00 degC / 98.60 degF

maybe i'll do something cool with this, like hourly emails of CPU temp average.

or.... maybe not.

linky

there are two things for which i must thank mister art bell:

1) scaring the ever loving shit out of me on more than one occasion. i'm talking trembling, can't-fall-asleep-because-the-lights-are-on, majorly big-time spooked.

2) introducing me to the Highwaymen's "Highwayman". damn that's good music.

one, two... three?

was at the grocery with W last night. saw some "banana chips". i like banana chips. i even have some at home, but they're covered in canola oil and taste gross.

the banana chips at the store were > $5 for 2.5 oz. "Fuck that!" I eloquently exclaimed, "I'll make my own damned banana chips". So I loaded up my basket with 15 or so bananas and when we got home, the two of us sliced up the bananas, causing me much Freudian distress.

They're continuing their drying right now. It's my first time dehydrating bananas (I've done mostly just meat-jerky in the dehydrator). I'm guessing they won't look as nice as the store-bought chips, but they sure as shit won't cost five bucks an ounce.

okay, once you factor in labor and electricty, they'll probably be 10 bucks on the half ounce, but you know what i mean.

david bowie's "a new career in a new town" is pure, liquid joy pouring into my ears.

musical perfection.

i hadn't realized that this was the title of the song. perhaps it is a message.

well, i lasted longer than i thought i would.

it's over. last night, at 2:30am, i went into the medicine cabinet and slurped down some nyquill so i could stop scratching and get some sleep.

this morning i took my prescription antihistamine (though not the one with the decongestant, my BP will appreciate that).

it wasn't just the divine rash, i also had itching all over my skin, everywhere. maddening. the nyquill contained an antihistamine, but more importantly: alcohol. it knocked me right out and i awoke feeling... awake. crappy, but awake.

the divine rash is not poison oak, after all, and now it's just a lotion-covered patch of dry skin.

i guess i now know two things: i am destined to be on antihistamines the rest of my life. i will succumb to torture if the torturer cuts off my supply of allegra.

sigh.

I went out to roast up some Puro Scuro for espresso this morning and when I put the green beans in the roaster the arm came loose. Crud. So I fiddled and diddled with it for a while, and scraped off the (pretty useless) RTV500 food-grade silicon cement that was supposed to hold the arm assembly in place. I tried using some copper wire to hold the thing together, I tried using the tinfoil, all to no avail.

Then I tried just removing the washer that I had in between the wingnut and the rotating arm. The wingnut then was able to screw further and tighter onto the plastic screw and held the arm rather firmly in place.

I got the beans well into second crack without a roaster failure. Nice.

I suppose pretty soon I will have to replace the plastic bolt altogether, or maybe I'll just be super lazy and buy another popcorn popper. Nah. I'll replace the bolt -- that's cheaper and way more fun.

The top of the roaster (which is the expensive part) isn't giving me any trouble (yet), although the glass is getting rather opaque from the oily bean-smoke. Huzzah.

could have been me

ugh. on this weekend's hike i played a little trick on the xtians.

i won't go into details. when i did it, i felt evil with a capital E. Eeeeevil. I was on mount diablo, i was entitled to some eeeevil.

since then, yhwh has visited upon me some plagues: sunburn (meh) a rash on my neck (ugh) an itchy beard (gonna solve that tomorrow) and some problems in hades (glurk). plus, my new sunglasses don't really fit, but that's really my doing and not god's.

this sucks.

telepopmusik has a new cd.

note to self: get it.

a guy at work has been feeding me unsweetened chocolate. the kind that's 800 million Calories per ounce, without any added sugar. the kind that real chocolate conn-oh-soors eat. the good stuff.

i hated the first dose. by the second dose, i'd developed cravings for the stuff.

so today when i accidentally left rocky on setting "9" for the first shot of a new batch of beans (usually i set rocky on "11" or "12" and then dial him in), i pulled an unbelievably thick ristretto and finally found out what people mean when they call espresso chocolatey. they're not talking about hershey's kisses or twix bars or tootsie rolls. no, they're talking about the real thing. the good stuff.

holy shit was this the good stuff.

it was gooey, barely-liquid, 85% cocoa imported chocolate. normally i'd have 3 shots in the morning but i powered silvia down after just this one. one does not need a "chaser" for a shot like that.

and that's when i decided that i don't need the andreja.

the secret to a happy life is to develop new ways to appreciate the things that already surround you, rather than indulging a lust for shiney new toys.

don't tell anyone i told you that.

(and don't ask me about the shiney new toys i ordered yesterday. heh.)

i am now entering the third week of my experiment in misery.

the first week went surprisingly well. this weekend went unsurprisingly poorly. today i awoke with a persistent allergy headache. yesterday i enjoyed a persistent runny nose. head pressure, sore eyes, lack of focus... all the things i've missed out on these past five years as an allergy drug addict.

i wonder if they'll get better or worse?

one thing i have now that i didn't have back then is an iron willpower.

except when it comes to certain indulgences, that is.

went to rei and returned some stuff, total value of return: $158.

today is the first day of their fall sale, with lots of stuff on sale, including a hydration pack.

i didn't buy anything at all.

wtf?

i've talked about music-memory before. it's something that always amazes me: the way that my memories are strongly tied to music. in college, i'd listen to my favorite CDs while studying (never a new, unknown CD) and then during the test, I'd play back the music in my head. Along with the music would come recall of the material I'd studied. It worked very well.

Right now I'm listening to the Pet Shop Boys discography. It always brings back the same set of memories, in vivid non-verbal detail.

When I got this album, I was in high school. I'd put it in my player, put my headphones on, lie stomach down on my bed with my head and shins and arms hanging off the edges of the bed, and read from my copy of The Dragonlance Chronicles, which was laying on the floor.

Listening to the album now brings back memories of the various things that happened in the books (i.e. scenes of battle and images of the characters) and the sensation of lying on the bed reading the stuff.

Some of the songs evoke memories from further back. "It's a Sin" used to be a favorite of mine even before I'd known who sung it. I recall listening to this song in the bathroom with my little yellow handheld FM radio. I loved that thingy and took it everywhere. Once, when the song came on the radio, I sang along with it with the babysitter (uh, not in the bathroom this time).

Sometimes when I want to produce, enhance, or suppress a certain mood, I'll put on a particular piece and surrender to the memories.

Knowing how to manipulate ones own brain for fun and profit is a neat trick.

okay, okay... maybe not my first step...

pulled some shots out of silvia this morning for the first time in quite a while (okay, I tried last week also but the roast was too light and they were awful).

by the third shot i was quite close to what i wanted. i've been thinking of getting the mazzer mini E, not because i drink tons of espresso, but because i like solving upgraditis. of course, if i were to get the mini-E, i'd also have to throw in an andreja premium, because how else could i get a package discount?

and that, dear readers, adds up to too much money for an occasional shot of espresso, for which i've already shelled out dough to get silvia, rocky, and a shitload of other stuff.

but still....

i don't like rocky for espresso. i want infinite grind adjustment. even with a PID, it's tough to get consistently great shots out of silvia, especially with stepped grind adjustment. bleh.

bling