In the waning hours of a Friday night, I applied stylistic changes to this site—a rem here, a text-align there, none of it actually improves means anything. Perhaps the only part of design that matters is to just get out of the way of the message. How often do we waste our time!

I ressurected my New Year's Resolutions, but repurposed the page as Goals. Goals matter; they ought to be directly considered and not approached like life in an intertube on the Spring River.

I have discarded the Mid Year's Resolutions because it never reached critical mass due to the lack of fanfare that a new year provides.

I took down my 2024 resolutions because I forecasted that I wasn't going to hit my moonshots. Moonshots! I don't have just one, but THREE. I wield magic, but c'mon, like what was once said for the imaginatively brilliant mark, I do these things "not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

So, I'm bringing everything back. Things haven't changed; I'm still on my diet streak...still slimming down...still dropping weight to run. I just need to pick up the weights and crank these arms and delts to at least launch the rocket in the right direction!

There are a couple of new sections as well as I want to hammer out things for 2025 and what I want to grab for the rest of my life. That sort of thing needs intense mindmapping to lay some serious mental firepower down. But, it is critical to look ahead and begin journeying toward those objectives.

Too often, the day-to-day blinds us—I know it does me; before I know it, 2018 turns to 2025. Nevertheless, there's a voice inside of me. As it has been sung over and over again, "There is a light that never goes out."

Training

Today was another yardwork day at 8 AM, this time, a heavy workhorse application of my weedwacker for my backyard followed by my motor. I never ran those Atlas batteries or my own dry. I took a different approach: I made it a workout. I punched my Garmin 935 to kick off a 1:09 cardio workout.

While my skin started off at 84℉, it finished off at 93℉. My heart rate average was 101 bpm, though toward the end was a mountain that summitted to 147. As I plan a weekly training agenda, non-traditional training ought to be a part of that! Too often, we think a silly pair of nylon shorts in front of a mirror surrounded by folks mindlessly spinning their hamster wheels is a workout. No, it's totally Rocky 4 montage! And yes, this combination of every Rocky training scene has gotta be up there for one of the top videos on YouTube for me.

It makes me want to get out and train RIGHT now even if the Sun has already colored my skin. It's why I signed up for a year of UFC Fight Pass.

Small Victory Conditions

The other day I made a point to Bring Back Small Victory Win Conditions. Thus, I want to create thresholds that when crossed, open up my playbook:

• @199 lbs - Black Pepper & Cayenne
• @189 lbs - Lousiana Hot Sauce & Vinegar
• @179 lbs - All the Seasonings & Flavored Water
• @169 lbs - Limited Heavy Whipping Cream (oopsie cake) & Cheeses
• @159 lbs - Store-bought Beef Jerky

Database

I do so much with data, but its always in a spreadsheet or something more flatfile like Gnucash. I want to change that. I want to wield my late 90s skills of Microsoft Access.

Cue Collective Soul's self-entitled release from 1995, something I heard a TON in my buddy's turquoise metallic Toyota Paseo.

I working on building my own relational database with LibeOffice Base. My IT core strength was never in database, yes, I've done plenty of stuff with DB and their integration thereof—running a self-hosted World of Warcraft server on my LAN immediately comes to mind—but I just never slogged through MySQL.

So, the LibreOffice is a step forward. Perhaps down the road, I'll run a DB server thing for my LAN like I did for WordPress dev sites or even post it online if I want to dabble into security, too. Quite honestly, however, my usage is really for an audience of one. This ol' laptop I hammer upon is all I need.

So what am I thinking? In the past, I have used a lot of the functionality of Garmin—the GarminDB project looks curious. But, there are a lot of unused data fields on Garmin's site that I know I'll never use (why do they push golf so hard). Plus, there are things that are just not encapsulated by a fitness watch like tracking dumbbell weights over time, specific TKD forms or whatever.

So why not make a database? I would love a fitness database, to include both food entries and specific training regimen. Then have it spit out pie graphs, line charts, trendlines...well, all the things!

And again, I've been wanting to replace my use of GNUCash for years. I love the program and have been using it for over 13 years, but its audience is really a small business. I just run my monthly budget like a manager does over his department.

I just think it would be cool. And the sort of thing I'd have to backup!

Google

I'm drawing closer to integrating Google more in my life. I find my phone more useful with it being associated with an address. The Aurora project is helpful regarding downloading apps off of Google's Play Store without an account, but I take a quarterstaff to my phone's legs when I deGoogle it. It cannot even run a local search.

And my plans for 2025 is to run things cheaper, shave off pennies of my life. I paid just under $40 for a year's worth of email service. Set aside the costs of domain renewal and privacy, I paid for the 1st half of this year is something like $3.50—pretty sure I can swing that. Then again, there's value in migrating over CloudFlare Pages for its management tools.

As much as I like my schema of creating an email address for each of my Internet logins, it may be best to simplify things. I'm disinterested in vanity alone.

Three hundred? Two hundred? Nope!

I'm back!

After dragging my feet across the plateau in The 39 Expedition, I decided to weigh myself this morning, a week into The 40th. The result? A loss of THREE lbs. OK, I promise I won't take another sneak peek of the scale. I was just checkin' to see if I had to do another four rounds with old Jose Sardino!

How good was that last kerklunk though?!

I hope I'm out of this slump and get back to these double-digit weight losses. And if I'm mirroring the past in these days, I can fully expect a hefty weight drop.

So, I'm Back in Time: the 100s! Now, there’s only 19 pounds left to beat my 2021 record. My ultimate goal, just 37 miles away, is to challenge 1995.

And you KNOW I got this.