23 June 2022

It’s World Hydration Day!

Be sure to drink water when you’re out in the sun sweating a lot! In my present circumstance, I drink tons of water–gallons–when I’m out in the sun all day in 90 plus degrees weather with high humidity.

Also, if there’s a state that is an actual hell because of weather? I agree with my mom that my nomination of choice would be Nebraska. Very hot but extremely humid as well. It looks real nice, and sometimes there’s even a wind, but then that humidity just wraps it’s arms around you and pulls you to the ground as you grasp your final breaths for that sweet, sweet feel of a breeze. Lol.

Category: Did you know, Health, Uncategorized | Comments Off on It’s World Hydration Day!
19 May 2021

Anxiety

Super real. Ultra real. That’s what it felt like.

Everything was heightened. Not like some sort of superhero thing. No… but a lot of things were heightened.

During the day, everything was frightening. I’d have that feeling in the pit of my guts, that feeling like something terrible was about to happen. A loved one was about to get crushed under a semi. Or fall victim to an elevator that fell from the top floor of the tallest building, never to be caught by the emergency brake.

Waiting was torture. Was I going to lose my job, because I just wasn’t good enough, just like I’d always thought? Or get yelled at because there was some little thing I did in that program I wrote that was against what the client really wanted? Or get judged because of something I posted on Facebook a year ago, something that was racist, or angered somebody, or was one of a thousand different things that felt like a crushing weight.

Not having something to do was pure agony. Like putting a fishing line into my stomach and pulling this way and that, enough to hurt, but somehow not quite enough to rip out my entrails. Do I write the code this way, or that? The first way was clearer, but it might cause problems in the future, and bring down the entire company, bankrupt the whole lot, and I’d be responsible for so many people losing their jobs. Or the other way? The less clear way, but the way that would work, the way that would do exactly what it was supposed to do, even though it somehow felt like it was immoral? I felt like I was being impaled on the scales, driven down into a spike while holding those two platters, each holding a choice.

Running away felt like the only option. Run before they saw me. Before they could judge me. Before they could decide my fate. Before I found out about the latest thing I did that was wrong, the latest thing that would eventually destroy me.

The walk to my car was a hurried one. What if somebody saw me? What if they said something Jesus, WHAT IF THEY ASKED ME WHAT I WAS DOING? What would I say? The possibility was terrifying. I moved as fast as possible, looking far ahead to try to avoid anybody whenever possible. Saying “hi” meant acknowledging that I wasn’t at work. It meant acknowledging that I was fleeing.

At home, it felt terrifying as well. I had left work early. I wasn’t getting paid for those hours. I was taking food out of the mouths of my loved ones. Not making the money I needed to pay those bills that needed to get paid, the ones that would destroy me financially, if not physically.

Sleep. Sleep was the answer. Turn off the world, let time pass by, time that I didn’t have to be terrified about anything. Switch off my brain, so nothing was scary anymore. But sleeping…

During the day, naps were okay. I’d feel a little better, sometimes. Most of the time. It would make the dread go away, the sense that he world was about to melt around me, or come crashing down on top of my head.

Ideas were strange. Any idea that was based upon reality would grow, its roots reaching deep into the depths of my brain, becoming something so close to reality as to become indistinguishable from it.

“The outside world is a reflection of your insides,” or something like that. If you were angry on the inside, the world around you would seem to reflect it. Seem to reflect it. That turned into a world that was malleable, a world that could be changed on a whim. Zombie apocalypse? Just stare at those skies long enough, and the canisters of zombie virus would fall. The world revolves around me? Speak out, tell them you’re the messiah, and the world will fall in order, and God himself will condone your existence as divine.

Bringing a “show and tell” to work became a nightmare. At first, it was to show off my zombie survival kit. A machete the size of a sword, a survival knife, and all kinds of other gear. But bringing it to work turned into something terrifying. My coworkers would be scared of me, and I would not be accepted. Bringing it to work would mean that I’d be cast out, shunned, blocked from ever returning, because how dare I bring such weapons into a place of business?

I sat in my car, the gear sitting in the passenger seat. And I cried. I was terrified of the possibilities that I’d manufactured. I howled, literally howled in anguish, crying like I’d never cried before. I had to go to the hospital! I had to be committed again, had to be brought before the doctors again, so they could tell me what was wrong with me.

I couldn’t take it anymore. No way I could go home in defeat, unable to present my show and tell. But I couldn’t go to work either. So there I sat, in horrifying anguish, sitting in that terrible place between decisions. I put my car into gear and let it go. I’d slam into the side of the parking garage, go through that cement, and the end would take me as the car slammed into the asphalt below.

But when nothing happened, everything changed. I sat there, howling in agony, screaming and crying. The radio told me to roll the window down, because that’s what Florida Georgia Line meant when they talked about cruising. Leave the window down; my savior would find me that way, ask me what was wrong, and I would end up in the hospital, where all they cared about was that I was okay.

I was rolling down the hallway, then. Laying on one of those gurneys, the kind that folded up when pushed into the back of an ambulance. Somebody asking if I was okay, all while urgently bringing me to safety.

But going to the hospital made it worse. Because they didn’t really listen to me there. They heard the words I said, but they didn’t listen. They twisted my words into something else. Stress had become depression, which had become bipolar disorder. They would give me drugs that would make me worse… or maybe they’d turn me into what I was right then, in that moment, the crazy man that howled at the roof of his car in tears of anguish.

Sleep. A nap helped. Laying in my chair, in the afternoon, made things better. Made them bearable. Playing a game, or watching Netflix, was finally okay. Nothing terrible happened. I didn’t will the End of Days into existence.

Night came, and things changed again. I’d take my pills, and things would go bad again. My legs felt like they were being attacked by a thousand hot needles, sending jolts of electricity into my calves. A maddening sensation. I would sit, head thrown back, mouth wide open, while reaching toward my legs with my hands as they thrashed about.

Rubbing them made them ache in a way I’d never felt before, like they’d been cramped for an hour. Walking around made the shocking faster, or maybe less shocks and more needles. Laying down made it that much worse, but standing was nearly impossible. An hour of this madness finally left me too exhausted to stay awake.

But then the fear of suffocating. Because I couldn’t breathe unless I consciously did it. I stopped trying, and then stopped breathing. The fear of drowning in a room full of air was horrifying. I’d start to relax, then I’d stop breathing, and the fear of suffocation struck hard.

Category: Health | Comments Off on Anxiety
30 September 2015

How I Got Here…

I posted something on Facebook the other day, with a couple of pictures (last year vs this year) and a brief statement that I’d gone from 324 lbs to 287 (37 pounds lost). A co-worker asked me how I’d done it, and I gave a short answer… which later I realized was far too short.

So what has changed?  What did I do to get here?

That’s a good question.  And there’s a lot to think about, and I probably won’t give credit where it’s due, but I’ll try.

First, I drew my line in the sand.  I was in the fight of my life, for my life, a fight just to survive.  My health was spiraling out of control, and I needed to do something, not just plan and think, but DO something.

I started going to the gym.  I got a membership at the YMCA, went there with a buddy (thanks, Prophet), and put my nose to the grindstone.

I logged every trip to the gym, with very few exceptions.  The only way you can see change is if you track it.

I started seeing some changes, added some muscle and lost some weight…. but I needed more.

I added racquetball to the mix, because it was fun and got me moving.  Even though Prophet (and later my son) kicked the snot out of me, I had fun.

I learned to sweat, and to enjoy sweating.  I learned that it was okay to huff and puff, to have to stop to catch my breath, because that pounding in my chest was my heart telling me I was still alive.

Nerd Fitness - Join the Rebellion
Nerd Fitness – Join the Rebellion

I found this awesome website jam-packed with information, called Nerd Fitness.  No pushy sales, no need to buy anything to get help.  It actually took me a while to figure out what there was to buy.

I started investing in my health: I gave up going out to eat every morning so I could afford a gym membership.  I asked for–and received–a membership to the “Nerd Fitness Academy”, a one-time fee that’s turned into the best investment I’ve made.

Logging stuff was a huge thing, so I finally took an interest in an awesome little app called My Fitness Pal.  I used it to track food intake, and to track carbohydrates, so I knew how much insulin to take.  Insulin and blood sugar levels have all been logged religiously in a cool little app called OnTrack by Medivo.

gallery_5603_173_202964 gallery_5603_173_125417

The graphs above show what tracking progress really means.  The one on the left has all the individual readings, while the one on the right uses daily averages.  They cover slightly different time frames, but that little gap–the funny little line between October & January–is when I started caring.  When things started turning around.  That was the end of 2013, into the beginning of 2014.

I started walking more.  I embraced the Walk to Mordor challenge, going so far as to start work on my own app to track it (yeah, it’s still in the works).

When my knees started giving me problems from walking too much (especially with stairs), I got myself a bike.  When I started, I could barely get around the block… now I feel like I’m slacking if I only get 15 miles a week.  I only feel really accomplished when I hit the 4 mile mark on a single ride, though I generally limit myself to an hour a night.

So that’s what I’ve got so far.

It wasn’t a simple thing.  It wasn’t some crash diet.  No “juicing” or 90-day crash diets.

I hope you enjoyed reading about it.  Feel free to ask questions or whatever in the comments below.

Category: Health, Rant | Comments Off on How I Got Here…
18 March 2015

More Insights on the Hobbit Walk

This is sort of in line with my previous post, as I was a little frustrated (with myself) that I’d not had any progress on the Hobbit Walk (there’s another reason, too).

Anyway, on to what I’ve found.

First, it’s a little frustrating to name a race.  Naming is one of the hardest tasks there is… well, besides cache invalidation.  I should be able to dynamically set the name of the race, because I’ve already stored the list of participants.  I kept teetering between dynamic versus static naming.  Ultimately, though, it seems like static (or maybe “arbitrary” would be more apt) naming.

Second, it’s nice to know who created the race.  Right?  That allows explicit listing of the races I’ve created, allowing “creator” permissions (like deleting them).  Maybe I’m waiting on the other person to accept (which I may not have considered yet).  Or I want to see all of my races, including all the ended ones.

Third, sometimes I try to normalize the data too much.  This one’s another tough one.  When I started working on TTORP, I had very non-normalized data: I wanted to get something up and running fast, so I just threw a bunch of arbitrarily-named fields in a database, all of which were just text… I was bit by this laziness later, because I had to pay the technical debt.

I found all kinds of other little things in the process.  Countless little nuances that I could spend all night enumerating, finding even more in the process.

Anyway, the bottom line is that I’ve made progress.  I’ve got more information in my test database, which will help me to visualize things.  At this point, unless I find more problems, I should be able to start spitting out some progress information in the very near future.  Stay tuned!

Category: Code, Health, Hobbit Walk, Software Development | Comments Off on More Insights on the Hobbit Walk
2 March 2015

We Have Milestones!

After much waiting: there are now milestones!

Yep.  A bit of a let-down.  I know.  Sorry.

In creating the milestones, I noticed there were some things that were probably missed… setting up an order to the milestones (so I don’t necessarily have to insert them in the proper order), etc.  Nothing mind-blowing here.

I’m working on the code and associated SQL to figure out a contestant’s progress in relation to milestones.  Nothing exceptionaly difficult, just takes a little time to do.

But there are MILESTONES now, people!

Category: Code, Health, Hobbit Walk, PHP, Software Development | Comments Off on We Have Milestones!
4 February 2015

Project Hobbit Walk: There’s a Database

That’s right, now Project Hobbit Walk actually has a database behind it.  And that database is actually getting data put into it.  Automatically.  Huzaaaa!

I’ve still got a bit of work to do.  But this is an incredibly important foundational piece of the puzzle.  With a single query, I can see how far everyone has traveled.

The only numbers I have to worry about are each user’s grand total, and their progress since the race against me started.  So it’s pretty non-complicated right now.  WOOO!!!

I’ve still got more stuff to do.  Here’s a pretty short list, in no particular order:

  • a URL scheme for showing race data:
    • for anyone (e.g. “/race/{id}/current”)
    • for all races of the currently logged-in user (e.g. “/races/”)
    • for progress on a specific race, up to a given date (e.g. “/race/{id}/20150104)
  • a URL scheme for handling open invitations (anyone can click it, sign up, and enter the race): (e.g. “/race/challenge/open/{id}“)
  • a URL scheme for handling user-specific invitations (only for a selected user, others get an error) (e.g. “/race/challenge/closed/{id}“)
  • some way to graphically show progress generically, without milestones
  • a way to show, graphically, progress with milestones (e.g. progress to Mordor)

Okay, that’s probably enough for now.  I’ll probably dream about this stuff now, since I’m thinking about it so close to bedtime… d’oh!

Category: Health, Hobbit Walk, Software Development | Comments Off on Project Hobbit Walk: There’s a Database
21 January 2015

Project Hobbit Walk: Yay, Progress!

I had a little time last night to hammer out some code.

I’ve got a database layout done basically done, so I can store data.   There’s already a script in place that will download a set of spreadsheets in CSV (“comma separated values,” basically just really simple text).

Now I need to get some more code written to interact with it, create reports, and send emails.  And eventually put in some “fun” text into those emails, like, “whoa, you overtook John last night by a staggering 3.45 miles! Hope you told him to eat your dust on the way by!

I’ve spent some time figuring out how to layout the data, where the data comes from, what it looks like, and how to store what I need to make “Project Hobbit Walk” something worthwhile.  In order for me to consider the application truly useful, it has to do a couple of things.  For users (including me), it must:

  1. Be Intuitive.  Like picking up the controller for a game, and having every button and key combination work exactly the way you expect, so you can have fun right away.
  2. Stay Out of the Way. Once it’s configured, it can just stay out of your way.  No muss, no fuss.
  3. Be Useful.  Probably the most important part, it needs to show you what you want to know, and help motivate you to get healthier by gamifying life.
  4. Be Fun.  Seriously, it has to create enjoyment.

But let’s be honest.  There’s other considerations for me.:

  • Easy to Maintain.  I can’t spend all my time fixing/updating code, since that would keep me from moving around… I’d fall behind in all my races!
  • Easy to Get Started.  I don’t have time to walk every single user through the process of setting it up.  This goes hand-in-hand with the Be Intuitive part from above.
  • Help Pay for Itself.  I have a server that I pay for each month out of pocket; if this can generate enough money (through some hopefully innocuous ads) to pay for that, I’d have less stuff to worry about.
  • Grow On It’s Own.  There will hopefully be enough tools available that it’ll just grow “virally,” like users sending emails to their friends with messages like, “I challenge you to race me to Mordor,” or “I challenge you to climb Mount Everest with me.”

Let me know what you think in the comments below.  And a special thanks to all those that have signed up for testing!

Category: Code, Health, Hobbit Walk | Comments Off on Project Hobbit Walk: Yay, Progress!
19 December 2014

Project Hobbit Walk: Preliminary Ideas

I’ve got some data from a few other people, so I’ve been thinking about it.  And be sure to read the teaser.

The Basics…

I’m going to setup the system so each user can compete in multiple “races.”  I’ll automatically keep track of each person’s complete history, and I’m thinking each will get put into a separate race that will be just them.  So I’ll be in my own race, showing my own progress from whenever I first got data into the system.

Other Types of Competitions

There will of course be other races.  I might challenge my buddy “John” to a race that will start on January 1st, and simultaneously begin a race today with my other buddy “David” right away today.  So those are examples of one-on-one races, though there could be multiple participants: if another person wanted to jump into an existing race, they could, though they’d be at a disadvantage (but a marathon runner joining late in a race with a couple of geeks might end up having a much larger advantage).

Another race type would be pairs.  In the vein of Lord of the Rings, you know, like Frodo and Samwise.  Each pair would have their daily totals averaged… think of it like Samwise carrying Frodo when he couldn’t walk on his own.

For Now…

Right now I don’t have anything setup to automatically track progress.  I’ve got some spreadsheets that have been shared with me, but that’s pretty much it… so I’m probably going to send out emails manually, stating results.  I’ll refine them as I go.

Into the Future!

That seems like a quote.  Anyway, the initial races will be based on the Walk to Mordor from Nerd Fitness, which has milestones along the way that I can use.  I hope to incorporate an ACTUAL map from LoTR, with something that shows where each team is on the trail.  Because that’s awesome.

Once I’ve got that down, it’s time to open it up to accept ANY map.  I have no idea how that would work… but I would imagine I’ll have a lot more to go off of after I’ve done that with the LoTR map.

Are You Ready to Get Started?

If you’re interested in joining the fun, I’m accepting a limited number of participants right now.  Send me an email (if you’re privy to that info), or just drop a comment below, I’ll get to you as soon as I can. 🙂

Category: Health, Hobbit Walk, Software Development | Comments Off on Project Hobbit Walk: Preliminary Ideas
17 December 2014

Project “Hobbit Walk”: The Teaser

I’m working on a new project that combines fitness, programming, and technology (the last two seem a bit redundant… but whatever).

The project is based upon the “Walk to Mordor” post on NerdFitness.com.  Anybody that’s interested just needs to setup a spreadsheet on Google Docs that I can access, with some basic information:

  1. Date
  2. Steps
  3. Distance (in miles)

There’s a bunch of different ways to get that information logged… manually is an option, but I think that kinds sucks.  Not a big deal, but it’s a pain to remember, especially when you can use something like a Fitbit with IFTTT on a smart phone (or tablet) to automate that stuff.   More on that later.

If you’re interested, send me an email, say something in the comments below, or in some other way express interest to me.  I’ll send you instructions on how to get started.

The application is in ALPHA testing now.  Alpha testing means pre-beta… basically, that means that I’m still building it.  I’m letting a handful of people in right now.

UPDATE: see “Preliminary Ideas

UPDATE: see “Yay Progress

UPDATE: see “There’s a Database

(if you wanna see all updates, in case I missed a link, check out the “Hobbit Walk” category).

Category: Code, Health, Hobbit Walk, Software Development | Comments Off on Project “Hobbit Walk”: The Teaser
21 November 2014

The Fight of My Life

There was this guy.  I used to hang out with him.  He was big, fat, lazy, and stubborn.

He was the guy that always told me that I couldn’t do it.  That I couldn’t go to the gym.  I couldn’t work out anymore, I couldn’t keep up  He was the guy that shoved that nasty, greasy “fast” food in my mouth every morning, telling me it was good and that it was normal and that what we were doing was normal, because everybody else was doing it.

He was the guy that taught me the secret of not being ashamed of how much I ordered: just order for two.  If I made it seem like I was ordering for myself and another person, I didn’t have to be ashamed at how much I plowed down.  Two thousand calories in a sitting wasn’t that much.  Just toss that second 32-ounce pop… unless you want it in case of a refill.

Today I beat the hell out of that bastard.  I smashed his head between the bars of the butterfly machine sixty times.  I dropped my feet on his head after every pull-up, all sixty of them.  I kicked, screamed, grunted, and groaned that nasty bastard out of my life.

I told him that two thousand calories wasn’t even as much as I should eat in a day, let alone one sitting.  I told him that I don’t really like those nasty hash browns from Burger King, or those ridiculously sweet cinnamon things, or those soggy sandwiches.  I told him I was done with that shit, that I’d had it and I was moving on  I pushed him away and told him to never come back.

Who was that guy, you ask?  If you haven’t figured it out by now, that guy was me.  It was the me of 2013.  It was the me that almost killed me.

Toward the end of 2013, I was in a death spiral  My blood sugar was out of control, with my “lows” barely hitting what should have been the upper limits of OK.  I was taking mood stabilizers to combat the roller coaster of emotions that I was wreaking upon myself, medicine that ended up destroying my memory.

I was laying in bed with my wife.  And I started crying.  Just to myself, praying she would hear me, hoping she wouldn’t.  She asked me what was wrong, and I told her I couldn’t remember.

I’d had a blow-up that night while playing a board game that involved remembering things and trying to guess who answered what: I tried writing it down, but I couldn’t remember the answers long enough to get them to the paper, so I’d write it down wrong.  And when someone joked that I couldn’t remember shit, I flew off the handle.  He was my best friend, but that sudden burst of adrenaline nearly blocked that out.  And the sad part was that this friend knew how to handle himself… if he’d gotten hurt, it would have been because he didn’t believe I’d do something like that.  And if I’d gotten hurt, it would probably have broken his heart.

So we sat there in bed, my wife and I, going over the events of the night.  She had to fill in a lot of gaps, which upset me even more.  Then we started piecing things together, figuring out what had brought this on, and realized it was my medication.  We looked at the side-effects, and one of them was memory loss… in fact, in the long list of side-effects, there was only one or two that hadn’t affected me.  I stopped taking them altogether, and got an appointment with my doctor right away.

Now, my doctor is an awesome guy.  He’s been our family doctor since I can remember… I think he’s been my doctor for at least two decades now.  Anyway, we explained the problem, and told him that we thought the problem was actually from my blood sugar being all out of whack.  And he agreed.  He told me a bunch of things that I didn’t want to hear, but needed to.

I decided I was going to change my life.  Not “right then and there,” but over the course of a few days, or maybe weeks, I’m not sure.  I got a membership to the YMCA, and started going on a regular basis with one of my best friends.  I decided I wasn’t going to live to eat anymore, but that I was going to eat to live.

Toward the beginning of the journey, I stumbled across a website called “Nerd Fitness,” which talked about this “Paleo Diet” and how to get in better shape.  I kept reading the articles, trying to find that punchline, thinking to myself, “jeez, at some point, he’s gotta hold something back for whatever he’s trying to sell me.”  But that never came.  Good old Steve Kamb wasn’t trying to sell me anything at all.  This website, all these articles, these PDF’s, these videos, they were all there to help people like me learn how to get into shape on their own.

I paid to join the “academy” there on my birthday.  It’s funny how excited I was about it: a year prior, I’d have thought something like that was worse than getting ugly/non-fitting socks.

In fact, it’s kinda bizarre that I was having so much fun getting into shape.  I played racquetball weekly.  I went to the gym three times a week, lifting weights and riding a stationary bike, and walking.

So here I am today, just freshly having beaten the crap out of the old version of me.  I’ve logged more than 100 visits to the gym, despite not having logged much of anything for the first few months.

When I started, I couldn’t do a single proper push-up, even on my knees; now I can do ten in a row.  I couldn’t do a pull-up, even with over 100 lbs of assistance; now I can do them unassisted (not very many, but still).  I used to worry about not fitting in at the gym, now I help friends to fit in.  Now I move an order of magnitude more than when I started, and I have fun breaking a sweat.

Whatever you do, do something.  Just start moving.  Don’t sweat the small stuff, but make sure you sweat.  Don’t worry about what other people think.  Just do what you do.  Be the change you want to see in others.

Category: Health, Uncategorized | Comments Off on The Fight of My Life