akratic's ERE journal

Where are you and where are you going?
akratic
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Re: akratic's ERE journal

Post by akratic »

The big news this month is I gave notice at my job. I have one week left, and then I'll be unemployed again! I'm glad I pulled this trigger: life is short, the job was mediocre overall, I don’t need the money, I have lots of other good options for my time, and I want to live my life deliberately and in control.

If I had to guess I'll take six months off to focus on things like my family, my health, my house, building a community in our new town, etc. And then after six months or so maybe I'll get another typical dev job or maybe instead I'll try again to create a little independent income stream.

I've decided to try a new approach in my journal this month, which is to be heavy on pictures. Let's begin:

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As you can see, I'm totally kicking ass at cardio this month: 28 workouts averaging 1 hr 20 minutes and 850 calories each. I've been very consistent too, exercising 6 out of 7 days most weeks (my ideal). The far right image has a typical workout.

What I'm less happy about, and kinda actually embarassed, is my measurements: 201.5 lbs, 38" waist (widest point), and approx 24.4% body fat represent the worst shape I've been in my life. I look forward to seeing these numbers improve. Although I did well at cardio all month, I only started watching what I was eating in the last week, and my weight lifting is still interrupted by covid.

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This is my setup: a recumbent bike, a table that I made out of a metal shelf from the garage, and a laptop. I have a system where I let myself play videos games but ONLY if I'm doing cardio. This is how I got such good workout number above! This sounds simple but it's pretty revolutionary for me. Normally when I start to get into a video game it kinda takes over my life, consuming all the free time. Here, I'm naturally limited by the ~1-2hrs/day my body can handle biking with resistance, and the exercise is basically free. I started playing a strategy game called TFT this month and have climbed to Diamond IV on the bike (top 1.7% of player base). I'm now working on getting a second account to Diamond and then climbing higher. It's so much fun and it's amazing to not feel guilty about it.

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Here is a small new hobby: propagating plants. This is my first attempt and it's using a pothos plant we already had. It's so cool that all this plant needs to grow more of itself is tap water and sunlight.

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Here are my kids!! 2.5yr old and 4 months old (both very big for their age).

In the background you can get a small taste of the constant state of disarray our house is in these days. This pains the minimalist inside me. That said, what I like about minimalism is the extra headspace it gives, and one surprise I've found as a parent is the right possession in the kid's hands results in them self-entertaining... which grants headspace. One short term goal I have is to pare down the non-kid possessions to counteract the whirlwind that our kids create.

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My son has two magical abilities: 1) flipping through books 2) and doing jigsaw puzzles. He practices puzzles so much that he can do 24 piece puzzles on his own and 48 piece puzzles with help. He's also able to entertain himself in the yard. These are the exception though: he still takes an incredible amount of his parents' mental energy and resources on the whole, followed only by:

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Here is our daughter, who is teething and is pissed off about it around 80% of her waking hours. Here she has surprised us by falling asleep for the first time in her upright chair. In the background you can see our 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle habit, as well as the sliding door my dad and I added to the house.

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Our backyard has been taken over by this invasive species, which I believe to be creeping charlie (not 100% sure). The previous owners, as well as most neighbors, solve this problem with money by hiring landscapers. I want to solve it myself but haven't been able to finish my research yet. I believe I need to do something like:
1) kill the creeping charlie, either with chemicals (bad for kids) or like a big tarp (kill whole yard)
2) plant new grass seed and help it grow, with the help of a spreader.

Please let me know if you know how to solve this one. It will be one of my next projects.

Cheers,

Edit:

My wife, who lurks in this journal, has informed me that my post makes our lives look substantially more under control than they are. So I'll leave you with this photo a friend took of both our kids having meltdowns at the same time. I'll leave it to your imagination how the same situation plays out when there's only one parent around.

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Last edited by akratic on Sun May 31, 2020 5:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: akratic's ERE journal

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

That sure looks like creeping charlie to me. I have the same problem. I'd like to get rid of it too but I am just keeping it confined to the lawn area for now. I think the only realistic solution for me would be to kill the lawn and start over. Pulling it would take forever and I am not convinced the grass could outcompete it though that would be the first thing I would try. Glad everything else is going OK for you.

daylen
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Re: akratic's ERE journal

Post by daylen »

akratic wrote:
Sun May 31, 2020 3:40 pm
The previous owners, as well as most neighbors, solve this problem with money by hiring landscapers.
Why is it a problem?

Frita
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Re: akratic's ERE journal

Post by Frita »

Love the pictures!

It is amazing how little kids change your life. People would always advise to enjoy the time because it goes fast. That is very true.

We have creeping bluebells, “hellbells,” or campanula rapunculoides which looks similar (though the leaves are more heart-shaped than what I see in you picture). What kind of flowers does it have?

If the creeping bellflower, it is highly invasive because it produces a tuber a foot down from which a web of runners are produced. One has the option of digging up the whole yard (yep, 12” down), using triple strength Roundup, repeated burnings, or spot pulling and digging. We do the latter as our neighbors have let it flood their yards. Good luck.

LOL My spouse says I make life sound worse than it is.

akratic
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Re: akratic's ERE journal

Post by akratic »

daylen wrote:
Sun May 31, 2020 5:42 pm
Why is it a problem?
Well it's not the end of the world, and in fact my wife is advocating that we just leave it. Here are some things I don't like about it though:
- last year when we moved in it had 20% of the lawn, now it has 60%, probably it will have 100% without intervention
- it's actually kinda nice this very moment, while it's green and flowering purple, but a lot of the rest of the year it is brown. We use the back yard a lot, say 1hr/day on average. When it's brown it's worse to look at, so less serene and less relaxing. I also have dreams for the future like playing soccer with the kids, those dreams are possible without grass but nicer on grass.
- the idea of it spreading to neighbors after being unchecked at our house freaks me out, and our lots are close together.
Frita wrote:
Sun May 31, 2020 6:15 pm
What kind of flowers does it have?
Here's a close up from the part we don't mow:
Image
Frita wrote:
Sun May 31, 2020 6:15 pm
LOL My spouse says I make life sound worse than it is.
That's our normal dynamic too! I think I'm just in a good mood because I quit my job (and my wife is lacking sleep because our infant is up all night recently)

theanimal
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Re: akratic's ERE journal

Post by theanimal »

You have a beautiful family. Great work on the cardio! I really like the desk, very creative.

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C40
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Re: akratic's ERE journal

Post by C40 »

Great work on the exercise!

Your bike and computer setup reminds me of back when I was training for racing and would ride on a trainer inside a lot when it was still too cold for me to ride outside. I used a bike/trainer and played games with a Playstation. One problem I had, and maybe you also do, is that I would focus on the video game much more than the exercising, and find myself at lower intensities than I meant to. Looking at your heart rate chart, it may do you a little better to include some intervals at higher intensities. Perhaps the game has some pauses or lulls that will help facilitate it. For your testosterone and nervous system, intervals of 30 or 60 seconds long will help. You don't have to do a ton. Even if you only do two or three intervals near the end of your workout, it will help (including to lose weight faster)
Last edited by C40 on Mon Jun 01, 2020 1:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Frita
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Re: akratic's ERE journal

Post by Frita »

Thanks for the picture. It is definitely not creeping bluebells, though the flower color is the same and the plant is just as fast-moving. The Charlie is attractive enough when green and blooming. I suppose that is part of what helps these weeds become invasive.

JollyScot
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Re: akratic's ERE journal

Post by JollyScot »

Ah your exercise bike set up is nice, I really need to get myself one infront of my games console for all those times I fall off the wagon of "doing" stuff

akratic
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Re: akratic's ERE journal

Post by akratic »

@c40 I think that's a good suggestion but I'd rather do the high intensity stuff with weights and try to push duration on the bike instead.

My biggest project this month was building a home gym. Normally you'd just enter your credit card and be done, but here in 2020 it's actually quite involved. Gym equipment on craigslist, facebook marketplace, etc is currently marked up for a big profit for the seller. What eventually worked is I found a subreddit, then a discord, then some bots that constantly refreshed websites looking for inventory updates. Then when it's in stock you have to order within 3-60 minutes and forego batched shipping. I'm pretty much done with it all now, here's my home gym:
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(spotter arms in the mail)

I wish I had built this right when we got the house. The ROI is pretty good considering both my wife and myself used to pay for monthly gym memberships, and I like working out at home better so far too.

The community of people who have mastered online home gym purchasing is interesting. They can get $100-300 in profit per item so some of them are flipping a lot of stuff, mostly just to upgrade their personal gym. It strikes me that you could make enough income to support a minimal ERE lifestyle this way but it seems kinda skeezy to me. At least gym equipment is a luxury good not an essential one. If I had a clever, contactless way to do craigslist or Facebook market exchanges without hassle or risk of theft I might consider some light reselling, although maybe it's too skeezy.

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My cardio + video game project is still going great. Gaining muscle and losing fat. I've ramped up the duration a bit. I tried to ramp it up a lot but overdid it and had to take some rest days to recover. Back of the envelope math for thru-hiking the AT is we did about 5-6 hours per day at this intensity (walking up hills with backpack), so that seems like an upper bound for what I can do here. I hit Master in my game -- top 0.3% of playerbase, #1640 of about 550k players -- with all games on bike. My second account is up to Diamond I (top 0.6%). The top 10 or so player in this game make an ERE lifestyle income from playing it. It would be really cool to try for that, but I suspect there's more skill separation between #10 and #1640 than #1640 and someone who hasn't even played, so I have a ways to go.

I typically have a problem with video games where I burn myself out playing too much and trying too quickly to race up the ladder. Here I'm limited by my body though, which continues to keep me on a more sustainable pace, and I'm finding all sorts of leg muscles I didn't have before. This and scheduled slots for taking care of the kids is adding a nice structure to my unemployed life.

My five month old is starting to sit up and crawl, which is an exciting time, it's the key to unlocking her ability to entertain herself. Unfortunately she continues to struggle with sleep.

I have some homework to do to figure out health insurance for the family. My options are COBRA, which is kinda expensive, or signing up for a new Obamacare style plan. I'm working out the details on that now.

We expanded our "quaran-team" to include my sister's immediate family. I've been going to her house weekly and dumping both of my kids on her while I play video games with her 9 yr old for two hours. This is like a win-win-win-win-win situation: she loves playing with my kids, they love playing with her, me and the 9yr old are happy playing video games (Minecraft Dungeons currently) and my wife gets precious alone time.

Somehow I've managed to finagle my biggest vice -- video games -- into productive exercise time, a stronger connection with my sister's family, and a break for my wife. Let's see if we can keep this up.

Kriegsspiel
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Re: akratic's ERE journal

Post by Kriegsspiel »

So you bought your gym setup from a retailer? Can you tell me more about what you did there?

I like the idea of doing the recumbent bike while on the computer, I've been looking for one (that looks stable and not cheap) on craigslist for a while with no luck. I remember a guy doing very low intensity biking while on a computer for hours and hours a day and he had great results. I've been playing Civilization VI, and I do pushup ladders between turns.

akratic
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Re: akratic's ERE journal

Post by akratic »

Sure, I'll give you all the infos. The weight lifting equipment is all from Rogue -- https://www.roguefitness.com/ -- which fits my generic long term buying strategy of paying a little extra for quality, but not trying to get 100% top of the line either. I got the SML-1, ohio power bar, mil spec bumper plates, and the flat bench. The flooring is horse stall mats from Tractor Supply Company. Here are some links to get you started:
- subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/homegym
- homegym discord: https://discord.gg/8mqXPjy
- facebook messenger bot: http://roguestockbot.com/
- nice web page from the bot listing Rogue inventory changes: https://roguestockbot.com/stock-updates

I used mainly the discord.

The bike is the cheapest recumbent from Amazon, see it for $160 new here. The bike is the opposite strategy I use when I'm not sure if I'm going to like something: I buy the bare minimum and prove to myself I'm going to stick with it. That said, the true bare minimum is a free bike on craigslist, but I could only find regular ones there not recumbent. Anyway, my hope for this bike is it makes it a few thousands miles before dying and I replace it with a commercial gym quality recumbent bike.

That guy biking the whole work day is pretty interesting. When I got off the Appalachian Trail I was in such ridiculous cardiovascular shape, I could plow right up a mountain without stopping. I lost it pretty quick though because it wasn't part of my normal routine, but I'd love to work back up to that with this approach.

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C40
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Re: akratic's ERE journal

Post by C40 »

Great work with your fitness progress. And - yeah, that sounds like a fantastic web-of-goals success with the exercising, games, and kid watching.

Kriegsspiel
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Re: akratic's ERE journal

Post by Kriegsspiel »

akratic wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:12 pm
Sure, I'll give you all the infos. The weight lifting equipment is all from Rogue -- https://www.roguefitness.com/ -- which fits my generic long term buying strategy of paying a little extra for quality, but not trying to get 100% top of the line either. I got the SML-1, ohio power bar, mil spec bumper plates, and the flat bench. The flooring is horse stall mats from Tractor Supply Company. Here are some links to get you started:
- subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/homegym
- homegym discord: https://discord.gg/8mqXPjy
- facebook messenger bot: http://roguestockbot.com/
- nice web page from the bot listing Rogue inventory changes: https://roguestockbot.com/stock-updates

I used mainly the discord.
So is the idea to buy from the retailer (Rogue, in this case) when they complete a production run and need to free up inventory space? Because they can ship it directly to you, and thus turn their inventory almost immediately, they'll give you a discount?

akratic
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Re: akratic's ERE journal

Post by akratic »

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Fri Jul 03, 2020 6:17 am
So is the idea to buy from the retailer (Rogue, in this case) when they complete a production run and need to free up inventory space? Because they can ship it directly to you, and thus turn their inventory almost immediately, they'll give you a discount?
Rogue is stocking and shipping 100s of items a day. But the casual buyer, like myself two months ago, just assumes there's no stock because when you casually check the Rogue website you'll almost never be lucky enough to see something you can order.

The money making opportunity that's easy to see is to buy basic items that everyone wants like 25lb plates, 45lb plates and barbells, then resell them locally. The facebook / craigslist market rate for those is higher than the cost to buy them new and ship them. Just because not a lot of people know how to get the items and lots of people still want them. As gyms start to reopen this should dry up. But some people have been at this flipping game since March. They joke about being banned from ordering from Rogue for it, but it doesn't to have happened to many people.

You don't need a discount from Rogue at all. The local markets are still broken as people are desperate for gym equipment and there's nothing listed. I mean just check your local craigslist or facebook market place for these items to see. Rogue could capture this extra demand themselves by raising their prices to match demand, but they're probably taking the long term strategy of not wanting to be seen as taking advantage of people during pandemic.

And it's not that Rogue needs to free up inventory space, they're selling their items almost instantly. Basically the resellers are snapping up the items before casual buyers can see them and capturing some profit for themselves because they know how. That's the skeezy part, no real value is being offered by the reseller, but they're profiting anyway. The perfect capitalist income stream. /s
Last edited by akratic on Fri Jul 03, 2020 9:35 am, edited 2 times in total.

akratic
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Re: akratic's ERE journal

Post by akratic »

C40 wrote:
Thu Jul 02, 2020 1:38 am
Great work with your fitness progress. And - yeah, that sounds like a fantastic web-of-goals success with the exercising, games, and kid watching.
Yeah there's even more web-of-goal stuff going on than I've journaled about so far.

I wear a heart rate monitor while doing cardio and allow myself to eat chocolate etc up to that calorie total. I've since found myself nudging up this calorie total in new ways, for example, if I transition immediately from the bike to quickly mowing the lawn with the push mower then I can keep my heart rate up and extend the workout. My lizard brain things it's winning since it gets an extra nutella wrap this way, but really the lawn got mowed for free (no activation energy spent on getting myself to do it).

I think this system is working because I'm finally modeling myself accurately: a big child driven by things like sweets and gaming, but with one redeeming feature which is the ability to follow rules. Earlier attempts either saw the child part, but tried to control the child in the wrong way by taking things away like the WIFI router. Or denied the child, and tried to pretend that willpower or simply deciding to do something could sustain good behavior.

Or maybe I'm over thinking this and the real secret to my recent successful is I've recently removed the two biggest stressors of my life:
1) my job
2) social interaction (via social distancing and guilt-free alone time that other people assume is me being a good pandemic citizen)

Stahlmann
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Re: akratic's ERE journal

Post by Stahlmann »

hmm. I'm gonna steal this bike setup to my web of goals. thanks for the idea :)

anyway, what's ur quantify self set up?
does anyone recognize the app and possible band?

in my case I measure no BS parameters as:
- sleep time
- weight

I also track the quality of my stool.

Still haven't find viable way to track the mood. Writing down it on 1-10 every 3hr seems longterm unviable.

____

as for:
I think this system is working because I'm finally modeling myself accurately: a big child driven by things like sweets and gaming, but with one redeeming feature which is the ability to follow rules. Earlier attempts either saw the child part, but tried to control the child in the wrong way by taking things away like the WIFI router. Or denied the child, and tried to pretend that willpower or simply deciding to do something could sustain good behavior.
https://www.nirandfar.com/creating-behavior-change/
check what you haven't used and roll dice

Kriegsspiel
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Re: akratic's ERE journal

Post by Kriegsspiel »

:D It makes perfect sense now. I like the minimalist setup; add in a weight tree to keep everything tidy (OCD lyfe) & protect your walls and you're complete. Stay swole bro.

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