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Post by seltzer on Mar 20, 2020 20:51:07 GMT
Dear son is trying to get work to pay for an additional monitor; Wifey's company already bought one for her to use at home. Both will be working from home for an elongated amount of time it's really in their respective companies' best interests to supply them with equipment that will enhance their productivity. Due to the predicted length of them not being able to go into their offices I'm sure the ROI on a monitor investment is high.
I like your philosophy of surrounding yourself with the work tools you need, especially if it's as inexpensive as a $35 whiteboard.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2020 13:34:21 GMT
I too refused to use the keyboard that was provided to me at work and brought in my Apple Keyboard. Seriously, after it all other keyboards feel like shit.
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Post by macdiver on Mar 21, 2020 15:39:11 GMT
I spend so much time on the road using my laptop that I only recently added a full size monitor to my desk at work. I have found it useful as I try to go paperless. Since I will most likely be working from home starting on Monday, I will just be using my laptop. I might use a tv for a second screen if needed.
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Post by M@ on Mar 21, 2020 21:48:05 GMT
I like your philosophy of surrounding yourself with the work tools you need, especially if it's as inexpensive as a $35 whiteboard. Even when it was a $400 monitor, it was still more than worth it to me to take care of it immediately myself. I could have beaten work into providing the equipment that I need, but the time and effort to do so - coupled with the inconvenience of working without the tools I need - made it worth spending my own money. I too refused to use the keyboard that was provided to me at work and brought in my Apple Keyboard. Seriously, after it all other keyboards feel like shit. I don't think I've ever used an Apple keyboard (other than the built-in keyboard on my MacBook Pro) but I'm particular about my keyboards, for sure. All other computer hardware is trash compared to Apple from a build-quality standpoint. I might use a tv for a second screen if needed. Now that almost all laptops/desktops have HDMI ports, it's a brilliant solution. The only problem is if the TV is too huge and you need to work 10-20' away from it. Weight: 287.6 lbsI'm sad about Kenny Rogers passing. I loved Kenny Rogers when I was little and his family-friendly image made him a favorite of my parents in a time where my sister was bringing the evils of Def Leppard and The Police into the house. I must have watched Six Pack a dozen times (the fact that Erin Gray/Col. Wilma Deering was the female lead was a huge bonus as I definitely still have a crush on her). I spent a chunk of the morning learning to play Love Will Turn You Around on my guitar and reminiscing. The number one comment on that song's video at the time was, "I'm a 30 year old black man and I love me some Kenny Rogers." RIP Gambler. Not a lot to report today. I had a good abs/extremities workout. It's cold and the kids are stir crazy and I don't have a whole lot of patience with them. Being asked fifty times to go ride the elevators at the mall and having to explain the Coronavirus situation over and over is nerve-fraying.
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Post by M@ on Mar 24, 2020 0:11:06 GMT
Weight: 284.7 lbs
I decided to pull the trigger on the leg extension/ham curl machine and a seated calf raise machine from Amazon only to find that they’re currently unavailable. Guess I’ll keep on doing calf raises on the stairs. I really hate working calves without machines.
I wore my legs out in today’s lower hypertrophy session. It was tough getting up the stairs out of the basement afterwards. Even tougher getting back down them to get some Kleenex. I saw that tomorrow is a rest day and was disappointed. That’s a good mental state to be in. The drawback is that my workouts are taking nearly two hours when you factor in warm-up time. I hope that’s sustainable. Full-time telework definitely helps since I can get my workout in in the time I would have normally spent getting ready for work and commuting.
The driving range is still open. I may break down and go hit balls tomorrow. I would only need to come into physical contact with the ball dispenser and the handle of the ball basket. I feel like I shouldn’t, but I’m getting really f’ing sick of this house.
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Post by Graham on Mar 24, 2020 11:55:14 GMT
Weight: 284.7 lbsThe driving range is still open. I may break down and go hit balls tomorrow. I would only need to come into physical contact with the ball dispenser and the handle of the ball basket. I feel like I shouldn’t, but I’m getting really f’ing sick of this house. It's really tough to decide what to do. You probably shouldn't go but staying indoors all the time is tough. A driving range seem to be the sort of place (by necessary design) where you can at least practice social distancing.
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Post by M@ on Mar 24, 2020 19:48:51 GMT
You probably shouldn't go but staying indoors all the time is tough. You're right, I shouldn't have gone. I did, but I felt really uncomfortable the whole time. I saw a single human being on the drive there: A construction worker on the median putting up a theodolite. Halfway there, an ambulance rushed past in the opposite direction with its lights on, but no siren. It was very dystopian. The range was almost empty. There were only two other people hitting balls when I got there. I wish I could say that at least I gave the place some business but I bought a membership last July so they've had my money for 3/4 of a year. The plus side of that is that I only had to touch my range key to the ball dispenser and carry my bucket out to the bay. The owner of the range was taking advantage of the downtime to have maintenance work done on the awnings that cover most of the bays. I rushed through my bucket to get out of the way of the steadily approaching workmen. They were latin american guys with surgical masks and Carhart clothes. I was tense and didn't get a very good practice session in. It was really nice to get outside, though. Lesson learned. I won't be going to the range again until the all-clear is sounded. Weight: 284.7 lbsRest day. I'm fighting the urge to go workout calves because they feel 100% recovered while the rest of my body is happily sore. It's awesome to flex my biceps or quads and feel the muscle get rock hard. I won't actually work out any more today because I've already showered. I'm making roasted brussels sprouts and bacon, roasted potatoes, asparagus, and New York strip steak for dinner tonight, so I need to get an early start if we want to eat at a reasonable time. Last night, Sara took some duct tape and made a racetrack for the kids to run around in on the floor of the garage. I had gotten some ice cream at the store on my last outing and made everyone some chocolate milkshakes after dinner. We all had a great time and, as I was putting him to bed, Alex said, "I had a fun today." High praise. I just read an article in the Post about families coming together in isolation. Seems to be working here, as long as we're not on the verge of killing one another. I'll leave you with the video that made me feel awful about leaving the house (i.e. if you shouldn't be playing ping-pong on an empty beach, I shouldn't have been at the driving range). [/quote]
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Post by seltzer on Mar 24, 2020 20:05:36 GMT
Dinner sounds delish!
Nice to read that you and Sara are doing what you can to keep your kids engaged and sheltering them from the adult anxieties that are prevalent.
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Post by M@ on Mar 25, 2020 21:39:51 GMT
Nice to read that you and Sara are doing what you can to keep your kids engaged and sheltering them from the adult anxieties that are prevalent. Yeah, apart from them being annoyed at not being able to go to the playground, trampoline park, etc. they're oblivious to everything that's going on. The algorithms on YouTube keep showing them hygiene cartoons so they're really fired up about washing their hands and sneezing. They're fake sneezing a lot. Weight: 285.4 lbsWork got busy towards the end of the day. I'm actually still logged in and moving files around. Neither Sara or I have established any plans for dinner and we're pretty low on provisions. The kids drove her crazy today so she's in a bad mood. I'm assuming she'll go out for groceries and take out just to get out of the house for a bit. Wish I could help out more but I'm kind of stuck to my laptop for the moment. I feel kind of crappy. I'm tired and have some sinus pain. My tongue is tingling like I'm about to have a migraine. I hope that's what it is: The thought of getting the virus is kind of terrifying.
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Post by macdiver on Mar 25, 2020 21:55:41 GMT
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Post by seltzer on Mar 26, 2020 12:45:20 GMT
Hope you're feeling better today M@.
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Post by M@ on Mar 26, 2020 17:25:44 GMT
My senses of smell and taste were fine, which was somewhat reassuring. Hope you're feeling better today M@. Thanks - I felt OK this morning and have been steadily improving throughout the day. I'm pretty sure I know the culprit. I have one of these non-marking chalk balls that I was using for plate pinches/farmers walks. It puffs out a cloud of whatever the hell is in there whenever you use it. That would bother my sinuses and explain the runny nose/sneezing/headache. I'm suspecting the ingredients were what was causing the metallic taste in my mouth. My symptoms came on immediately after my workout. I think I'll go back to regular chalk. I didn't feel like testing it out today. Weight: 286.8 lbsLife goes on. I had an anxious, crappy night's sleep last night. Sara found Bay's English Muffins at the store when she went out for provisions yesterday, but forgot to get blackberry jam so I have the greatest muffins in the world in the 'fridge and nothing to put on them. It's a beautiful day out. The landscapers are everywhere and the chorus of small engines fills the neighborhood. There's a reassuring article in the Post on how it's OK to buy groceries, get takeout, and accept deliveries based on the life of the virus on surfaces. If the paywall stops you, the TLDR is that all of the above are safe if you take precautions, particularly letting things sit for a little while and washing your hands after you've first touched them. One of the tips I liked most was to get your package, empty the contents, and dispose of the packing materials then wash your hands. Safety.
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Post by M@ on Mar 27, 2020 19:23:20 GMT
Weight: 286.1 lbs
Hard lower-body power workout today. I hit an HR of 147 during Romanian Deadlifts. I'm exhausted. I'm making some chicken and rice before I head out to put down some fertilizer since we're about to get a couple days of rain.
I've been doing direct grip/forearm work twice a week: Underhand wrist curls, overhand wrist curls, and plate pinches/farmers walks. The last has significantly improved my pinch grip strength. Today I needed to move two plastic folding sawhorses that were in my way in the basement. I casually pinch-gripped both of them and easily carried them to a new spot about fifty feet away. They're not super-heavy or anything, but it was cool to be able to pinch two things that ungainly in one hand and easily carry them for a distance.
My workout times are now hitting 1:50:00 (including 12-15 minute warmup on the treadmill) and I still feel like I want to devote more time to them.
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Post by seltzer on Mar 27, 2020 19:58:19 GMT
Gotta love it when you see the functional benefits of exercise.
Fertilizer before rain.....written as a true land owner. :-) I did the same earlier this week.
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Post by M@ on Mar 30, 2020 20:21:58 GMT
Fertilizer before rain.....written as a true land owner. :-) I did the same earlier this week. Worked out perfectly, too. All the rain we got dissolved all the little orange beads by the next day so they're not sitting around for my kids to pick up/play with. Weight: 289.7 lbsMy weight spiked up above 290 lbs on Saturday and is taking its sweet time coming back down. I was on point with nutrition and didn't pig out or binge drink anything. Everything I've eaten has been home made with not too much salt. No idea what's going on with that. Maybe it's my muscles growing. The seated calf machine that I ordered shipped this morning and should arrive this week. I'm excited about it and so is Sara. She's been having some knee problems and is looking for was to train legs without a lot of repetitive bodyweight hinging. For that reason I also have carte blanche to buy a leg extension/leg curl machine if they ever come back in stock. I printed out a few of my favorite photos of Arnold along with a couple of his quotes about exercise and put them up in my home gym. It seems silly but I've actually found it motivating. Keeping focused during my workouts has made a tremendous difference in their effectiveness. It's also the hardest damn thing I've tried to do in the gym. Today's lower hypertrophy workout was a killer. I was drenched with sweat and my legs felt so pumped that they would explode at the end, but it was one of those intense workouts where I felt energized at the end rather than spent. Exhausted, but on an endorphin high and contemplating doing a little more. I did the bent-over dumbbell/donkey calf exercise Jeff Cavaliere describes in the video below for calves and they really did a number on me. I'd love to try the knee-launch thing he describes, too, but I cannot find anything I can hook my feet under. My tape measure shows that my calves and forearms are growing. My chest is measuring almost a full inch more than last week and I take the measurement with no pump. That's too crazy to be actual growth, but I measured repeatedly and the size is legit. My pecs do feel huge. We've added to the playroom/obstacle course that Sara set up in the garage and the kids are burning energy there, which is good considering the new stay-at-home order in VA. Not sure what that entails but it doesn't sound good. We also got a Playstation Camera for the PS4 and downloaded Just Dance 2020. It has some of the kids' favorite songs on it and the whole family is enjoying dance time together in the living room. The game plays an abridged replay of what the camera sees at the end of every song, so you get to see yourself flailing around to the music. It's really cute and funny. It also reinforces the fact that I am absolutely fucking huge. Not only am I about 100 lbs overweight, I'm just a big guy overall. My wife looks small next to me and my kids look microscopic. If I ever figure out how to download the videos, I may post one here just for the lulz. The game is also a workout! I showered after my weight training yesterday, then we all played JD2020 and I sweat through my shirt again. I may come out of this quarantine leaner and more energetic than I went into it.
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