An Alternate Tuning

[loutfard]

I've got more than enough left handed clamping force for barre chords in any case.

Do explore a different way. How can you get a clear sound with as little left hand clamping as possible? Try to use more of your upper body to clamp down your index finger. There too, aim for maximum result with minimal tension.

[Scordatura]

Financial Update/ Ramblings:

I've fully swapped over to the new job combination. In the process I learned that one of the numbers I gave was wrong: The $70,000 in my 401(k). It's more like $55,000-60,000. I read the report wrong, my bad.

The new job is great on the money front. I'm not spending much to drive less than a mile, I'm in the habit of eating lunch at home (big saver), and I lowered my 401(k) contribution to 10%. Why, you ask? They give bonuses every year and part of it goes in the 401(k) manditorily. I'm not looking to overcontribute to the 401(k). So even though my pay rate is technically the same as before, every check feels like a bumper crop.

As of this writing, my plan is to focus on paying my mortgage. It's the highest interest loan I have. The structure of the plan is this: set a cash buffer (number undecided at this point, probably 5000) toward the end of the month any excess over the buffer is a second mortgage payment. I was already paying extra periodically, I expect the payoff rate to skyrocket.

The new job is very positive. I intend to elaborate at some point, but it deserves a concentrated post. What I will say is I work 9-10 hour days but they don't feel like it. I get a short day that feels like a day off. Before, working that 1 day as a CNA just kinda hurt psychologically. It still might get old, but it's good for now.

I don't really need the extra money from the CNA gig, but as of this writing, I still want to do it. It's basically paid charity work, as oxymoronic as that sounds. I will say in the negative category, I've gone home angry twice. I'm not a fan of the for profit care paradigm, though I would readily tell you the socialized paradigm would be worse. It's human nature to only do things that are of self interest to you. But cutting corners has a human cost in care. *sigh* In any case, the extra spending money is nice.

I intend to get my accounting act together at some point and evaluate with hard numbers what FI number I actually need and what is actually accumulating. I know my savings rate is decent by context clues, but I don't have it pinpointed.

Let me know if you have any thoughts, I'm not terribly sensitive.

[white belt]

What is the interest rate on your mortgage? At the moment, money market funds are sitting around 4% and CDs around 4.5%.

Can you bike or walk to work? If your commute is less than a mile then those options seem like they would make more sense. I used to live a mile or 2 away from work and would bike home for lunch breaks.

[Scordatura]

Do explore a different way. How can you get a clear sound with as little left hand clamping as possible? Try to use more of your upper body to clamp down your index finger. There too, aim for maximum result with minimal tension.

Oh, I didn't mean to imply I was gripping the fretboard like a particularly peeved coconut crab. I'm not.

I am working on my music study structure at the moment. I basically have been memorizing everything I play, but I recently got a thermal printer so I can easily print sheet music and tabs. I'm tired of being REQUIRED to boot up electronics to learn new music. I like electronics, but I find that I normally want to play guitar as a break from screens. I figure I'll print new pieces and have them ready.

[Scordatura]

What is the interest rate on your mortgage? At the moment, money market funds are sitting around 4% and CDs around 4.5%.

Can you bike or walk to work? If your commute is less than a mile then those options seem like they would make more sense. I used to live a mile or 2 away from work and would bike home for lunch breaks.

5.75%. I suppose an asset allocation conversation is in order? My allocation is 100% stocks for my retirement funds, I have one piece of property that I think of as bonds, at least in the sense that paying it off is guaranteed income. A small cash buffer, and food stockpile for minor emergencies. For excrement colliding with the turbine scenarios, well, I'm not sure. I'm probably setup for shelter in place scenarios. Evacuate scenarios I'm less confident for. I've thought a small amount in a crypto wallet on an electronic device for the portability, but haven't committed.

I'm not EXACTLY a index and chill bro, but I want returns or use case in emergencies. The middle ground stuff like bonds, I don't understand why it would be useful for me, unless I was worried about sequence of return risk. I don't mean to be recalcitrant.

Yes, I can bike to work, and I intend to some of the time. When I wrote those posts it was February and we had a cold snap in the negatives Fahrenheit. I'm a fairweather biker. You're permitted to tell me to suck it up.

[Scordatura]

I think maybe a work update is due.

I've been at the new job for three weeks, and it's awesome.
It's like one of those fancy work places with a mcdonald's ballpit...
Okay, it doesn't have a ballpit. But it does have a pickleball court (pickleball is just tennis that has been sawed off at the knees) and a basketball hoop. It still feels like adult day care. I'm paid decent money to do whatever my little machinist heart desires. I'm not exaggerating much. I suppose there's a temptation to not do much useful. But my little machinist heart desires more fabrication. I've been a busy beaver, spending about a third of my time training on the job, and the other two thirds tending machines. I really like that setup, since in order to improve, you need to train. It's strange to work for a corporation that seems to understand that.

My self appointed tasks have been make documentation for our setups, practice mastercam, and get the horizontal mill moving. It's been odd for me, coming into a fully functioning machine shop with no documentation. I don't mean bureaucratic paperwork. I mean records for job setups. It's such an obvious time and mental space saver (to me) but they just kept everything in their heads. If I quit tomorrow, I will have done a permanent favor for the company. Setup documentation pays for itself as soon as you do the same job twice.

We have monitoring software and the machines run 24/7. This is what I kept trying to convince my previous employer to do. And it's better than even I thought. While the machines run, you have time to prepare for the next job. More parts are made per man hour. The cost of tooling isn't even much higher in total. It's LOWER per part made.

People are super cordial, and I have freedom to do things without bureaucratic red tape. I will say the ERE mindset isn't prevalent. I didn't expect it to be. That materialist, conspicuous consumption outlook is common. (Level Orange? Spiral Dynamics is on my reading list.) I plan to subtly deflect and let them talk about the engineer's mansions and which large truck they've purchased recently. I don't really have an opinion on truck company rivalries. (I'm told Ford is the same as walking??) People want to talk about what they've got going on in life, and I intend to let them. I hope to skip the large purchases and do the stealth wealth path, personally.

[jacob]

My self appointed tasks have been make documentation for our setups, practice mastercam, and get the horizontal mill moving. It's been odd for me, coming into a fully functioning machine shop with no documentation. I don't mean bureaucratic paperwork. I mean records for job setups. It's such an obvious time and mental space saver (to me) but they just kept everything in their heads. If I quit tomorrow, I will have done a permanent favor for the company. Setup documentation pays for itself as soon as you do the same job twice.

The lack of documentation is also par for the course in research. Perhaps it's because the company keep doing different things. If so, documenting the details of the process in writing is just going to take time away from doing more production. If "keeping the information" in people's head is "good enough", that's where it stays.

This is also why science would never recover if all the world's scientists got fired or hit by a deadly disease that wiped out anyone with a phd. Whatever information is in the product or in the published paper is only half the pieces to the puzzle. They effectively only show that "it can be done" while giving some hints how. The rest is institutional knowledge.

Institutional knowledge best not depend on one single person (the company keeping some old underpaid technician on the payroll because they're the only one who knows how to keep XYZ machine running), but it's pretty much unavoidable that it depends on groups of people and in particular who they know who knows about what and how they work together.

[Scordatura]

The lack of documentation is also par for the course in research. Perhaps it's because the company keep doing different things. If so, documenting the details of the process in writing is just going to take time away from doing more production. If "keeping the information" in people's head is "good enough", that's where it stays.

This is also why science would never recover if all the world's scientists got fired or hit by a deadly disease that wiped out anyone with a phd. Whatever information is in the product or in the published paper is only half the pieces to the puzzle. They effectively only show that "it can be done" while giving some hints how. The rest is institutional knowledge.

Institutional knowledge best not depend on one single person (the company keeping some old underpaid technician on the payroll because they're the only one who knows how to keep XYZ machine running), but it's pretty much unavoidable that it depends on groups of people and in particular who they know who knows about what and how they work together.

You aren't filling me with faith, Jacob. I'm already suspicious of institutional elites, and now you're telling me they don't even document the complete process. No wonder repeating studies is such a problem. Without complete information, it would be hard to be repeatable.

Yeah, I know of this "institutional knowledge" of which you speak. At my previous workplace it was referred to as "tribal knowledge" and said in a tone similar to telling someone their mother wasn't exclusive, and the paternity was a coinflip. Always, ALWAYS was this a problem. Some guy would be sick, and some part was needed not right now, but yesterday, and you would be the poor sap running an unfamiliar part on an unfamiliar machine. Inevitably, something would be wrong. My personal favorite of these is when I was asked to make a saw part with a compound angle cut. This isn't terribly complicated. You have a fixture for one angle (I found it) and you cut the other angle while the part is in the fixture (I did this). What was wrong? The angle on the print. The normal operator knew this, and knew what to adjust it by. Apparently, he had tried to get engineering to change the print, but after significant resistance gave up, and didn't write anything down for the other operators. So I scrapped a lot of steel that day.

There's a mindset to the underpaid (i think overpaid, actually) technician here, too. If only they know how to do something, they have job security, even if they aren't a terribly motivated worker. Personally, I hate this. I want to move on from jobs I've completed. That's why I LIKE automation, if you get everything figured out and state it explicitly, the power grid can do massive amounts of work for you, and you get new projects. The institutional knowledge phenomenon is directly antithetical to effective automation.

The funny thing to me, is accounting for cost of documentation. It's dirt cheap. What I did specifically at the new company is physically print the active parts directory blueprints, stick them in a binder with protective sleeves and make a setup sheet template in excel. This took me two hours. When I was done, I got hems and haws of approval. None of these people were stupid. They just have a set way of thinking and doing things. Those two hours will pay dividends in small ways as long as the documentation exists. I'm aware there are diminishing returns and tradeoffs to documentation, but we aren't anywhere close to seriously contending with that. Most of this could have been done upon the invention of a photocopier.

Thanks for stopping by, Jacob. I feel a bit like a feudal page welcoming the lord to his own domain.

[jacob]

You aren't filling me with faith, Jacob. I'm already suspicious of institutional elites, and now you're telling me they don't even document the complete process. No wonder repeating studies is such a problem. Without complete information, it would be hard to be repeatable.

Academics do do the equivalent of what you do with the blueprints. What they don't do and what you likely don't do either is to document the quirks of the specific lathe they used or the process of setting it up. They would also not document how to make a given cut or the operator-experience required to reach the appropriate tolerance. All that is "institutional knowledge" that would in principle be found in any institution. However, if you gave me a random lathe and your blueprints, I would be stuck because I don't know how to use a lathe and the blueprints don't tell me.

Taking out all the phds or the "institutional knowledge" is like removing rungs in the latter. It makes the top part inaccessible. I suspect the reason that the exact steps for all the quirks and cuts aren't written down because it's simply not a useful way of keeping that knowledge.

In the old days there was a website called mapquest. You typed in a starting point and a destination and it would give you a 50-100 page list of instructions of when and where to turn. In principle, it should get you there, but in practice if you missed a turn or misinterpreted an instructions, the rest would be useless.

A much better approach was to provide a map (the blueprint), a tool (the car), and then leave the rest to the institutional wetware knowledge (knowing how to use a map).

The result is that in practice, results can be repeated but that it often takes so much time that it's not worthwhile. This is a BIG problem with the reward structure in research. People get promoted based on new discoveries, not on verifying old discoveries. This is an incentive problem more than anything else. It's at its worst, where the "results don't matter". Astrophysics comes to mind. If results matter, for example solid state physics for materials design or hydrodynamics for weather forecasting, verification&validation gets appreciated more. The analog in fabrication would be how a bolt that will be used for a Formula-1 car or a spaceship likely gets measured and checked more than a bolt that goes into a toaster.

This also goes towards the idea of writing documentation or leaving notes. If it's not rewarded, then it becomes an innately altruistic action, often at the expense of one's own job performance. Time spent documenting for others is time not spent "making product". In astrophysics, the job security inherent in leaving out critical details from one's documentation used to be known as the "Soviet approach". Why write beautiful code if nobody cares vis-a-vis writing spaghetti code that only you can understand? In the latter case, if anyone wants to use your code, they have to include you in the credits. And if it's critical they can't fire you either.

You'll basically find these incentives in various forms everywhere.

[Scordatura]

Some future aspirations for my posts here:

I'm using this as a consistency tool for myself, so I think I'll add some numbers and such. My finances for sure, but if I changed NOTHING financially, I'd still hit FI with but a short grind. I'm thinking physical fitness numbers. It's easily my worst category as a human, and I'd like to bring it in line. I have some yearly goals in this category, and we've now hit March.

This is contrast to what I've had as a guiding principle so far. I've tried, as much as I can, to make my life at least passively interesting to a would be reader. I will continue to do so, plus boring numbers. (Yay!?)

Alright, the imperfect numbers for February. I did this to get a rough calculation on savings rate, and baseline idea what I should be shooting for on cash buffer. I *probably* will not post these every month, unless it does some sort of magic for me I haven't predicted as of this writing. I don't overly love accounting.

February (in dollars)
3600.08 Ending Total
1170.12 Beginning Total
2429.96 Difference Gained
5166.47 Total Credits
47% "Saved" in checking account.
This does not include what goes in 401(k)(~10% gross), or taxes(this is after tax calculation), or the paydown on the mortgage principle. Also, I wasn't completely on the new job combination in February. I suspect the rate will go up, rather than down. I expect 5000 is fine for a cash buffer, which I should easily hit this month, starting Operation Extra Mortgage Payoff. (assuming I don't change my mind)

I know that my worst category from an systems efficiency standpoint is food. I don't eat out much, but I do go. I buy convenience meals for home. The hounds get fed homemade chow out of this category, too. Some of this I'm willing to change, some I probably won't be. (Hint: The dogs) I'll experiment. I weighed in at 198.1lbs recently, and that deserves reversal. Food is the obvious change for my financial and fitness goals. I very recently went back to being vegetarian, I expect that will help. I also intend to limit intake, probably with a feeding window like @delay suggested. I plan to update regularly on the physical component.

[delay]

2429.96 Difference Gained
5166.47 Total Credits
47% "Saved" in checking account.

Thanks for your journal update! The above puts your monthly expenses at around 2,600. A good cash buffer is six times that, or around 15,600. A better way is to look at your twelve month trailing expenses, rather than last month's expenses.

It only took me 23 years to get weight loss right Looking forward to read about your weight loss project. Best of luck!

[frugaldoc]

I am right there with you on wanting to track health metrics and turn that area of my life around. Now that we have finished the winter patrol and I likely never have to go out to sea again, I am ready to tackle this goal. 198lbs isn't a bad place to be starting from. I would love to be 198lbs. I'll be interested in seeing what metrics you choose. I may try to mirror them a bit.

[Scordatura]

Academics do do the equivalent of what you do with the blueprints. What they don't do and what you likely don't do either is to document the quirks of the specific lathe they used or the process of setting it up. They would also not document how to make a given cut or the operator-experience required to reach the appropriate tolerance. All that is "institutional knowledge" that would in principle be found in any institution. However, if you gave me a random lathe and your blueprints, I would be stuck because I don't know how to use a lathe and the blueprints don't tell me.

Taking out all the phds or the "institutional knowledge" is like removing rungs in the latter. It makes the top part inaccessible. I suspect the reason that the exact steps for all the quirks and cuts aren't written down because it's simply not a useful way of keeping that knowledge.

In the old days there was a website called mapquest. You typed in a starting point and a destination and it would give you a 50-100 page list of instructions of when and where to turn. In principle, it should get you there, but in practice if you missed a turn or misinterpreted an instructions, the rest would be useless.

A much better approach was to provide a map (the blueprint), a tool (the car), and then leave the rest to the institutional wetware knowledge (knowing how to use a map).

The result is that in practice, results can be repeated but that it often takes so much time that it's not worthwhile. This is a BIG problem with the reward structure in research. People get promoted based on new discoveries, not on verifying old discoveries. This is an incentive problem more than anything else. It's at its worst, where the "results don't matter". Astrophysics comes to mind. If results matter, for example solid state physics for materials design or hydrodynamics for weather forecasting, verification&validation gets appreciated more. The analog in fabrication would be how a bolt that will be used for a Formula-1 car or a spaceship likely gets measured and checked more than a bolt that goes into a toaster.

This also goes towards the idea of writing documentation or leaving notes. If it's not rewarded, then it becomes an innately altruistic action, often at the expense of one's own job performance. Time spent documenting for others is time not spent "making product". In astrophysics, the job security inherent in leaving out critical details from one's documentation used to be known as the "Soviet approach". Why write beautiful code if nobody cares vis-a-vis writing spaghetti code that only you can understand? In the latter case, if anyone wants to use your code, they have to include you in the credits. And if it's critical they can't fire you either.

You'll basically find these incentives in various forms everywhere.

You're right, and I think I understand your point. We don't literally document how to push the button sequences on the machines. It's funny, there ARE scenarios that would benefit from that level of granularity (or pretty close). One of my previous workplaces had old machines set to do speciality items unmakeable on their newer machines. There was one guy in the shop who knew how to run them, and the parts made on them. In situations like that, it really does behoove you to document literally everything. Eventually, someone will be running those parts with no help, because the one guy that knows is incapacitated or quit.

I expect the human body of knowledge is in the same boat. Tangential, probably, but this makes me think of the frailty of human memory. I expect the trend of recording things to accelerate even more than it already has. You could have a record of your entire life, if you'd like. I already see cameras everywhere I go anyway. The technology is there, the culture just doesn't go for no privacy.

The mapquest bit reminds me of how CNC machines are programmed. There is absolute mode, which is in reference to an explicit offset on the grid (the map) and incremental mode, where every move is from the current position. (Explicit turning directions). Absolute is the much more common mode.

Oh yeah, I do know of one guy who has a CNC shop that has four high end machining centers that he documents granularly the physical tweaks of each machine. They are the same model, and he is doing this so that he (one man) can run the entire machine shop through CAM software and automation. I'm at least passively envious of that business model. One man and his machines, making money hand over fist. From what I remember he said the hardest part was actually turning away interesting work, because he has competitive advantage in a specific machining volume, but not above or below that. He'd like to expand types of work, but that isn't what his machines or business model facilitate.

There are uses for granularity, and I find in my experience, the best machinists take the best notes. And they think more about machining. I have a hard time expressing how much better I got as a machinist when I got serious about note writing, and from my note writing extracted little chunks for an electronic flashcard system. I need to get back to using flashcards, it's such a spike in effectiveness in combination with contemplation. And I need to get back into this in all the domains I want performance, not only just work. There's just too much to remember without a system.

Yeah, I see those incentives. People don't change unless they're forced to. The horse buggy was put mostly out of business by the car. It wasn't as if the horse buggy people all decided to go out of business at the same time. The spaghetti code people will need to contend with the AI writing code. We may not be there now, but I expect creative normal people with AI to outcompete the spaghetti coders. If you want something done right, maybe do it yourself?

[Scordatura]

Thanks for your journal update! The above puts your monthly expenses at around 2,600. A good cash buffer is six times that, or around 15,600. A better way is to look at your twelve month trailing expenses, rather than last month's expenses.

It only took me 23 years to get weight loss right Looking forward to read about your weight loss project. Best of luck!

Hey, delay! Thanks for stopping in again!

I WAS thinking either 5000 or 7500 for my buffer. I might bump it up to 7500 after reading your words. I don't think a massive cash buffer is appropriate for me.
1) Childless man with few responsibilities.
2) I'm over employed, in two different industries that I can get another job tomorrow in.
3) I have a bias against cash as I have a basic understanding of how the reserve manufactures inflation to function as a second tax. I could (probably) be convinced I need more buffer, but I'm unlikely to keep it in actively degrading value stores. I could be totally wrong here.

In response to your trailing expenses comment: I might do the monthy accounting from now on. I really don't care for the task, however. As a funny irony, I have two uncles with accounting degrees. One is an actual accountant, the other didn't like accounting and went into business for himself. The businessman is solvent, and is the closest real life person I know who doesn't know of the FIRE movement, but inherently acts like a member of it. The accountant lives in mountains of debt, and despite the fact he's in his 50s has not broken out of adolescence. Different strokes, eh?

I'll keep you posted on the weight loss project. Still thinking.

[Scordatura]

I am right there with you on wanting to track health metrics and turn that area of my life around. Now that we have finished the winter patrol and I likely never have to go out to sea again, I am ready to tackle this goal. 198lbs isn't a bad place to be starting from. I would love to be 198lbs. I'll be interested in seeing what metrics you choose. I may try to mirror them a bit.

Good. I'll keep an eye on your journal for after winter patrol updates.

My thinking is so far incomplete, but here's what I've got so far:

Weigh in once a week. Weight is a lagging measure of bmi, which is what I care about.
Do a feeding window. It's harder to overeat.
I need to figure out a food prep system.
Hit more exercise. I think Sunday is my swim day, and I've been going to BJJ. I need to set up my endurance and weight training, it's sporadic right now. I need structure.

I might track macros. I overeat carbs.
I might track calories. Just like in finance, I don't love accounting.
These two are maybes. I will be reckoning with my scale once a week for sure.

I'm not willing to psychologically whip myself, but I want to be the type of person who has a handle on physical health.

[sodatrain]

Fwiw, I'm having great success with Intermittent Fasting, and using a paid app called Marco factor to track calories to Macro Targets. I'm loving it and the $75 I paid for a year is well worth it for the success I've had. It helps to also have a partner that is an excellent cook!

We eat to a higher protein macro target in the app. There are different models/diets available. It asks you to track your intake (easy tool) and to track to specific macro targets (this was a game changer for me/us, I believe). It knows calories in and basically calories out, based on weight changes and it adjusts your calorie/macro targets based on results. One psychological bump for me is thst it shows my trend weight line atop the daily fluctuations. So .. except a 2 week period over Christmas, I've been loosing weight steadily. I'm down about 15% of my body weight since November. And it's been mostly delicious and easy. Usually a 18-20 hour fast. Sometimes longer, almost always at least 16. Some days, not at all.

[Scordatura]

I've been working as a CNA for 7 weeks now, one day each week. It's a very unique beast. Do you know those jobs where the whole shebang is abstracted to the point where you have no practical idea of whether your work even matters? Yeah, this ain't that. Everything matters, and every ounce of your own incompetence slaps you in the face later. It's as tightly coupled as she gets.

I'm on my own now, the training wheels are off. Last week, I was the float.. Okay I need to describe the operation of the facility: There are four halls very creatively named 100 hall, 200 hall, etc. Then the unit, which is a locked dementia ward, and the pods which is a mirror to the dementia ward, but unlocked. The pods are associated with the 300 hall, so naturally the 300 hall is the heaviest from a workload stand point. From what i gather, the second heaviest is the 400 hall. There are two people assigned each to the 300 hall and the unit, one to every other hall. Then there's the float. This person is to float between the 300 hall (the heaviest) and the 400 hall (the second heaviest). I was the float last week. Except the lady that was in 400 hall just plain left. So I was in the second heaviest hall, by myself. On my sixth day. Yikes. The night nurse helped me. It went okay. Worse than I would have liked though.

I apparently did a sufficiently good enough job to where this week they didn't even bother placing me as float. They just assigned me the 400 hall outright. (..hooray?) I do not know but suspect this is because the night nurse told them she was impressed. She very clearly thinks highly of me in any case. I guess give a damn IS one of my strongest virtues.

Would you like some short CNA anecdotes, dear reader? Well before you read on, be warned some may be funny, some sweet, and some just dark.

After working that hall by myself I went to the front desk for something, and one of the young gen z aides goes, "Hey, Scord, how'd your night go?" Me: "It was an absolute Fuster Cluck. Feathers everywhere." She laughs and says she'd never heard that one before. I'm thrilled to be passing down wisdom my father bestowed to me to the next generation.

One of the things I like about the CNA gig is just how much psychological armor the staff in particular has. I got frustrated one of my training days when I was with the best CNA I've met so far. I have pretty strong opinions on teaching (I might elaborate on them at some point) as I have trained a LOT of people in my career. And I have read a surprising amount of literature on the psychology of learning and pedagogy. So when I am with the best CNA you would think everything would go swimmingly, right? Not exactly. We did get done with our mandatory tasks an hour before shift end. But I was constantly separated from my 'trainer' and doing things on my own. I am at the CNA equivalent of counting marbles, whilst she can do differential equations in her head whilst skipping rope. Not a compatible duo. I walked by the nurses' station, and must've had a dour face on, because the charge nurse asked me what was up. I had been working alone most of the night, so I just said. "I don't even know what the fuck she wants me to do." The nurse doesn't even flinch. She gives me (useful) advice on how to work with my trainer. I have worked in environments where you need to walk on eggshells, and this isn't one of them. I appreciate that.

The whole ritual of working a day a week at the nursing home is like the stoic exercise of memento mori. For those that don't know: memento mori is essentially Latin for "remember that you will die." and the intention isn't to wallow, but to focus on the essentials and the here-and-now. The nursing home presents likely outcomes to me on a weekly basis of the end of life. I had better appreciate what I have, even if it is imperfect. I regularly interact with people who in a literal sense have lost their minds with dementia. I don't mean they're crazy. I mean they have lost entire components of their personality. Emotional control is a common thing to evaporate. Crying is not uncommon in the dementia ward. Anger is much less common, but is present. I really thought there would be more violence than there is, but I see crying and frustration represented more. You can lose your mobility. There are many who are in the care facility because they can't move independently. These people may be of perfectly sound mind, yet need to be literally hoisted onto the toilet. And finally, many are contending with deep pain. I have a little old lady I take care of, she's nonverbal. I've not heard her speak a word. I can't tell you how mentally present she is or what is wrong with her. But when I transfer her from bed to chair or chair to bed she cries. I was talking to one of my machinist buddies, and he said he couldn't do this job, he'd get too attached. He's absolutely right. I'm not a person prone to emotion, but I can't help but feel for some of these people.

I promised the old lady that gave me a good night hug oh so long ago that I'd come see her before I left. I didn't make it. I was too busy all night in my hall to go to hers. So I came in and visited her on my day off. One of the medical aides asked me why I was present on my day off and I told her. She just responded to the effect of, "she has dementia, she would have forgotten." I asked if it was a problem and she said no. Sometimes I detect fundamental world view differences with people, and that was one. Who cares if the old lady forgot? I didn't forget. I spent about 45 minutes listening to her about her family. I got a goodnight hug for my troubles.

[ertyu]

Sounds like you're finding the gig fulfilling - you seem to be getting a lot of it in terms of skill, meaning, and personal growth. Cool beans. Congrats and good for you. Keep the stories coming - as someone without such esperices, it's interesting.

[delay]

Thanks for sharing the CNA stories! That's so interesting. A switch of job every week. Perhaps you can move ideas between worlds.

You wrote you do CNA one day a week. How meaningful is CNA work compared to machinist work? How does the pay compare? How do you keep the work schedules compatible?

[Scordatura]

Fwiw, I'm having great success with Intermittent Fasting, and using a paid app called Marco factor to track calories to Macro Targets. I'm loving it and the $75 I paid for a year is well worth it for the success I've had. It helps to also have a partner that is an excellent cook!

We eat to a higher protein macro target in the app. There are different models/diets available. It asks you to track your intake (easy tool) and to track to specific macro targets (this was a game changer for me/us, I believe). It knows calories in and basically calories out, based on weight changes and it adjusts your calorie/macro targets based on results. One psychological bump for me is thst it shows my trend weight line atop the daily fluctuations. So .. except a 2 week period over Christmas, I've been loosing weight steadily. I'm down about 15% of my body weight since November. And it's been mostly delicious and easy. Usually a 18-20 hour fast. Sometimes longer, almost always at least 16. Some days, not at all.

Oh, I intend to make use of intermittent fasting. I've successfully cut breakfast from the docket all week. I broke my fast early twice this week, I'm getting used to it. I'm aiming for a window tighter than eight hours when I'm set, but it's eight for right now. I got back from a work trip for Mastercam training last week, and *ugh* we ate out every night on that trip. Company paid. I didn't like that. My weight was above 198 when I stood on the scale. Been doing MUCH better this week, I have sole control of where I eat. Luckily training trips are an oddity. I intend to post my weights for my weigh ins, it'll keep me honest.

A James Clear quote comes to mind: "You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."

My food system sucks. It's the low hanging fruit in my life. I intend to give it the attention it deserves. In moments of weakness, I take the easy path. More preparation would reduce that, I think.

Are you restricting carbs or fats at all?

Congratulations on those results. Keep after it.