Ron Guest

Checking into the hospital for my exam.

Oh, no, not that kind! My amateur radio license exam 😉

Swirls

We have heavy fog this morning. Driving is a bit dangerous but so far everyone is being sensible.

In October a tornado went through my childhood area. The elementary, middle and high school were damaged and are closed. Last week I drove down. What had been my parents’ home had some major damage but is being renovated by the current owners. Some neighboring homes destroyed.📷

Tiny bubbles

A wall out the restaurant.

I had to break out my old USB keyboard, and USB mouse, to set up the new Raspbery Pi 4. The keyboard looks and feels like a relic from the age of dinosaurs. Paired Bluetooth devices as soon as the OS was ready. 🦖

We left the kids at home while we went to a meeting at school. So this was the natural follow on, right?

Yes they have supervision.

_ Lost in a sea of leaves_

Saw this lonely dandelion blossom when I was exercising today. The only one on the whole trail.

We made good use of the cold weather outside to tackle a project indoors. My wife and I re-upholstered the bench we use in the kitchen. ✔️

The forecast had a chance of snow for this morning. Unfortunately all we’ve gotten so far is some graupel. ❄️

A warm start before a couple of days of rain ☕️ ☔️

Rest easy my children for soon you shall bud

Something old and something even older. These are two items I couldn’t part with when recently cleaning out a box of old cables and gadgets.

That device on the left is called a “telephone”, possibly unrecognizable to some. The one on the right is a TI SR-11 calculator.

Wooden obelisk

A pattern change

Look, there’s 2020 on the other side of the bridge. Shall we walk into the new year together? 💥 🎉 🎈 🎊

For several years I’ve done those things people say you should to track and manage diet and exercise/fitness. For over a year I logged everything I ate in MyFitnessPal, logged my weight daily, and used my iPhone/Apple Watch to track standing, movement and exercise. Each was helpful, at least in short bursts, but after each of my pushes the outcome was pretty disappointing. Flaws, to me, include the information being disjointed across these apps even though I could pull it all into the Health app on my iPhone. The data was just that - a bunch for data with a limited clue as to compliance and history. It was hard to see trends and to see how these different aspects of my life interacted. And MyFitnessPal (and it’s ilk) are really tedious to do for any length of time. I also tried using automated tools in apps like Things and Day One to have me keep track myself and those didn’t “stick” and didn’t satisfy my complaints either.

Since I wasn’t happy with where I was health-wise and didn’t feel like these tools were working for me I decided to take a different approach. And, once again proving I’m a nerd, I decided a spreadsheet would better allow me to document my activity and dietary goals for each day and then to track compliance. So about a month ago I created a spreadsheet table with a column for each day and 4 rows of activities and 7 rows of dietary objectives. Even though it is a spreadsheet the cells are simply checkboxes. When I am compliance for the row I check off the box. Some items are positives like getting in my aerobic exercise for the day and others are negatives such as not eating a carb snack in the morning. The bottom row of the spreadsheet totals up the check marked cells. Achieving 7 is the bare minimum and earns a yellow status while 8 or more is good compliance and is a green status. I can quickly open and update the day’s status on any device and in doing so also get a reminder of what I am supposed to be doing and how today compares to previous days.

So far I’m really happy with this approach - it suits my style and personality quite well. Below is a an example of a one week snapshot. Wednesday’s is colored green because that was Christmas Day and I made that a complete cheat day. Friday and Saturday’s compliance is poor due to a road trip (noted in a comment on Friday). Monday (today as I draft this post) hasn’t yet met the objective (but there’s still time!). And Tuesday is blank because it isn’t Tuesday yet. Fortunately my compliance was better leading up to Christmas week!

The actual spreadsheet has more personal details about my objectives as well as having one tab for each month and one column for every day of the month.

N.B. I still use and value Apple’s health related apps for tracking the details and for it’s gamification of compliance but overall this spreadsheet is now the key for me. Also I considered making some items in the spreadsheet worth more than others. But I elected to keep it simple and also stay conscious of the fact that the core purpose was to come close to 100% compliance each day.

Broken infinity

Wall art from a local cafe

Sunset

I bought our son 7 Wonders Duel, a card-style game for two, as one of his Christmas board games. We’ve played two times so far and each won once. This game lives up to its strong reputation - it’s a blast to play.

Thanks to my lovely wife, I am now the happy owner of a second HomePod. I’m adding it to my study so I’ll have a pair set up for stereo. 🎶

Merry Christmas to all 🎄! Best wishes for some golden moments and Happy Hanukkah to those celebrating that holiday this week.

Globes

From the local coffee shop

Lovely sky while out exercising today. ☀️ ⛅️ 📷

Missing Someone

Haven’t posted a photo from this local indie coffee shop in a long time. ☕️ 📷