"You gonna get another job?"...

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
70# has got to be rough. Even 20 is depressing to me. In my mid 20s, I had a roommate--friend since 5th grade--who wanted me to get him in shape. We were living in St. Paul Minnesota at the time--New Year's Resolution time. Before we ever lined something up after about a week of him watching me go out for 2-3 mile runs in below freezing weather he was like "Yeah, forget it. I'm just going to stay fat."

Right now I'm dragging my heels because it is past lunchtime but I don't actually feel hungry. So I'm kind of thinking "do I just run with that or should I eat anyway so I don't gorge later? Or should I go out for a hike to burn some calories first?" I think I mentioned it, but I did my first run in about 9 years...Friday? And I can tell my legs aren't ready for another run just yet. For now I'm looking at pushups and crunches and maybe some USMC calisthenics. Google does not support me, but I swear we did something called the Daily 5, which was 5 calisthenics picked each morning by whoever led the unit in the exercises. It served both to get the blood going at the start of the day and to give training and leadership experience to the newer NCOs.

Anyway, the thing is, I *have* to get some shit done today. And at the rate I'm going, if I go for a hike or spend too much time working out, I'll wind up having wasted the whole weekend. Although that may solve my diet dilemma, because I'll be running out of groceries before Tuesday.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Right now I'm actually gaining weight and my waistline is increasing. I've seen this before and I'm hoping the weight gain is because muscle weighs more than fat, so I'll put on some weight as I rebuild muscle. And that the waistline is because the muscles are growing under the curtain of fat and pushing it further out. Muscle actually burns fat just resting, so I'm hoping as I rebuild muscle, that will help kick-start the weightloss.
 

Oerdin

Active Member
Thursday. My day to TCB. Last Thursday I was supposed to do desk work--calling plumbers and property managers etc; looking for better health insurance options, etc--but I wanted to go work on the vacant rental; clean out the garage, maybe do some raking. So I really should tackle that today. But it's easy to say "well, it's too close to Christmas. Everyone will be out and on vacation. And even if they aren't, they won't want to schedule anything until after New Years." So there's a decent chance that I'll do other things. Things that also need to be done, but that could be done on Friday. Or next week. I dunno. We'll see.

You need to treat rental property like a business and that means putting in 8 hour days until you can turn the place around and get it rented out again. Otherwise you are just wasting time and money.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Yeah, well if you don't have 8 hours... I've got the regular job that I can't just take a week off from. And I got shanghaied into this side job for my friend and I'm not willing to cut him loose while he still needs me. That job pays more for a 16 hour work week than a month's rent so it works out anyway. Besides, I don't actually want to list a place in December... I may be wasting a little money, arguably. But the place is free and clear and I'd rather let it sit empty for a few months than try to find a good renter between Halloween and New Year's. :shrug:
 

Lanzman

No-one of consequence
I took a Dale Carnegie leadership class and I still as my boss at my current job told me "suck at talking to people on the phone." I don't know why they hired me. I guess I faked enough confidence at the interview. I'm just lucky they found me a position doing correspondence and answering emails or I'd be back working retail. Don't know how I didn't get fired from that job. I was the quietest cashier. Hardly spoke to my customers.
Sometime between the ages of 40 and 50 I simply realized that the vast, vast majority of people are idiots and I had no need to worry about what they thought. Lifted me out of my introversion to a large degree, tho I still need alone time to recharge after being social for a while.
 

Loktar

Pinata Whacker
Sometime between the ages of 40 and 50 I simply realized that the vast, vast majority of people are idiots and I had no need to worry about what they thought. Lifted me out of my introversion to a large degree, tho I still need alone time to recharge after being social for a while.
Well we will see if my friends mission to help me be more confident, assertive, manly and lose weight and my virginity is successful. Maybe I should let him know I'm a part time crossdresser so he knows his mission might partially fail.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Straight-up blog post today: This morning I was 5# under the heaviest I've ever weighed. In other words, I weighed as much as the heaviest I've ever weighed up until 2 weeks ago. The factory was closed yesterday. I knew the factory was closed yesterday. I even asked someone if it would be closed. But because I only work Mondays and Fridays, which meant I'd be off for 2 weeks, couldn't believe it: "Wait, did he mean next Monday? Or the Monday after that?" I knew I didn't work again until the 3rd. 95% sure. But still, I didn't want to be sitting around, "doot-de-doot-de-doo, life is good," and then come in Monday and get written up for no-call-no-show, so I drove over there to be sure. To my credit, this year I took the nearly empty parking lot and the guy by the gate who said it was closed until the 3rd as proof, instead of walking all the way onto the grounds, into the building, and to the line. So if I was wrong, I'll be pissed. And next year I think I'm going to have the supervisor write a note and pin it to my jacket before the Christmas break (God forbid that I'm still there).

So I had a relatively productive afternoon (apart from wasting 30-60 minutes commuting to/from no work). And my friend doesn't need to know I didn't work last night, so I got up at a more regular time this morning and did some work for myself. Nah, I'm kidding. I fucked off online, exercised, and then went for a run. Run was good. Same 4 mile-ish loop as...Saturday? 2nd time running in 8 years. Still didn't run the whole thing, but I managed to shave 8 minutes off my time. Had a nice shower, chicken sammich for lunch, and a little nap and fired up the ol' work computer. Didn't take hardly any time at all to lose 3 games of Solitaire. Then I tackled the 800+ e-mails that had piled up from being gone 6 days. Over 750 were automated garbage generated by the databases. Most of the rest was stuff from things the Indian new hires screwed up. Still have...36 to get through. Haven't seen one that actually applies to me yet. I think before I go farther, I need to fire up a pot of tea. One of the things I'm working on as I'm getting back in shape is better hydration. I figure herb tea is as good a way as any to drink a whole bunch of water without a lot of calories or garbage.
 

Lanzman

No-one of consequence
Then I tackled the 800+ e-mails that had piled up from being gone 6 days. Over 750 were automated garbage generated by the databases.
Sounds like what I deal with. Sharepoint generates a lot of automatic email when you're a Site Collection Administrator on multiple site collections and you're copied on the access requests as well. Not to mention the rubbish that our training system generates, and the daily "Keeping You In The Know," and the requests from our "I Need Help" link, which I also manage. Ugh.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
I don't want to adult anymore. I just don't. Since that isn't an option, I'm seriously (OK, not seriously) considering monastic life. I'm caught up on supporting work on my friend's job, so I really should get into the stuff he technically hired me to do. You know, the stuff that I was absolutely unqualified to do but he insisted on it so I agreed to it to help him out, thinking it was just short term.

So, since it is kind of the Holidays, I clocked out to tackle deferred business tasks. And boy were they unpleasant. Now someone who works for a living or is an extrovert might be underwhelmed, but I talked to a broker to consider selling off my rentals, got my insurance info to an insurance agent to see if I was paying too much with my current provider, talked to the plumber about coming out to look at hooking up a gas fireplace, and reached out to my attorney about a will I wanted to do that seems to have fallen through the cracks. I still need to call a prospective property management company back, but that can wait until after lunch, I think. Because I'm about done right now. If I press, likely I'll get voicemail and then they'll call me right in the middle of lunch.

I will say again, when I took this job back in June I got really good at filling up time, because they didn't have a lot of work for me and everything on my business was running pretty smoothly. But now I'm out of the habit of working and it is so much easier to kill time than to do unpleasant things. I'll have to get back in stride, but this accounting/data analysis stuff is so tiring that I don't want to think any more than I have to the rest of the time, so it's easy to find excuses not to.

On that note, I should go do some pullups.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Again, if I'm ever successful enough to write an autobiography, I shall call it "Failure is ALWAYS an Option." Failed to successfully accomplish anything today. Hard. One of those days where you finally say "why am I even trying, because I could be just as successful without all the effort?" Failed again to get through to the property management company I want to hire (it may be that everyone's out for the holidays, I dunno) so I tried to use the e-mail tool from their Website--and that didn't work.

Meanwhile, when I finally got back on the work computer, Teams was acting up, so I rebooted. That got Teams working. But it also got the computer to tell me it needed to reboot to install updates. (?!) At that point I had about 2 hours to get started on a major project that I don't even understand or remember before being off tomorrow and starting in on month-end close on Friday. So I just said, "fuck it, I'll bang out some household chores and/or go see a movie." Wanna see "The Matrix." I've heard "Spiderman" is really good. I'm kind of burned out on the Marvel movies, but it could be kind of neat to see all the other Spidermen--and villains, pulled into the MCU, so I guess I'll see that too.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
OK. This is going to be unpopular on some fronts, but I just encountered something I need to vent about.

Growing up, the public schools did a very good job of conditioning me that you can't just break bad laws, you have to work to get the laws changed. At some point, around the age of 40, I realized this was BS. If a law is stupid, ignore it. Disagree? When's the last time you drove 55mph on the freeway?

So when someone says you need to be vaccinated to attend an event--or have a negative test result within the past 48 hours--I say "good to know." And I attend the event. I've never had anyone ask me for my papers. If someone did I'd say "I didn't know you needed them. I don't have them with me." Don't ask, don't tell. Everyone's happy.*

But someone just posted something like this to a group and someone decided to argue the point. And of course the people posting the policy couldn't just let that slide. So now it's blown up and there's a big hoopla and the issue of having a card as proof of vaccination is on the table, ruining it for everyone.

*You see, we all can agree a vaccination will not stop you from catching--or spreading the 'Rona, yes? So me being vaccinated has absolutely zero impact on you and whether you choose to vaccinate or not. It has been said--and I will not dispute--that if you're vaccinated you aren't as likely to get a sever case and die or require hospitalization. So me not being vaccinated has absolutely zero impact on you and your health. I'm willingly accepting a risk for myself as opposed to the admittedly rare (but not nonexistent) known side-effects of the vaccine--or the possibility that there will be unknown side-effects discovered decades from now.

Anecdotally I have noticed zero difference in death tolls during the year and a half everyone wore masks and stood 6' apart and everything was closed down and the 7 months or so that everyone has just said "fuck it" and got back to life.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Was going to post this to Facebook, but decided it was too long and flaky.

Yesterday I ran for the 2nd time in 8 years. I shaved 8 minutes off of 4 miles from the 1st time I ran in 8 years, 3 days earlier. And my legs feel as good today, a day after running, as they did yesterday morning, 3 days after running. I'd forgotten how my lungs were supposed to feel too--that's coming back. And strength training, nothing to brag about--after about 2 weeks I'm finally to my baseline starting point of "man, I've really let things go, I need to start working out again." I've got a long way to go but I can't believe how good I felt tonight. Drinking a lot more water too and eating less.

If you're read "The Lord of the Rings," it's much more subtle than the movies. There's only so much time in the movies--and it's a visual medium, so they have to make things obvious. In the books, Theoden isn't a shriveled decrepit hull, he's just bent and worried and feeble. That's kind of the way I've been in retrospect (and still are a bit, probably). I always used to say in life you have to choose between your muscles being sore from working out or being sore because they're atrophying and you're getting weaker. But I ignored my own advice and I always felt sore and tired all the time. I was run down and depressed. I thought it was just from losing The Dog and then The Cat and that releasing all the pent up grief from everyone I've lost before that. And I'm sure that was part of it. But part of it was also that I felt bad because I've been eating too much for my activity level and my activity level has been far too low to feel good.

I've still got to get so I don't wake up at 4am and then toss and turn for 2 hours before gradually dozing off just before it's time to get up--or figure out a way to sleep 4 hours, work for 2 hours, and then sleep 3 more hours, but 1 thing at a time.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
I try to work with the mom and pop companies that sponsor my professional association, but man...

I'm planning to put a gas fireplace in my vacant rental, in the hopes that this will discourage renters from building fires in it (no, they're told not to build fires in the fireplace and they say they understand, but renters lie. And they don't understand.)

Well I had one of the plumber's guys out to gather data for an estimate back at the end of September. Never heard back from them. Pestered them a couple times and finally got through. They'd lost the initial info so they were sending the owner out to make a new estimate.

Just to set the stage, the fireplace is in the room adjacent to the kitchen. The stove and the fireplace are on the same wall with a tiny utility closet for laundry, furnace, water heater, and maybe a few brooms. Electric dryer but there is a stub down in the crawlspace that, based on its placement, is for a gas dryer. So there's a gas stub in the crawlspace maybe 10' from the fireplace. The actual fireplace has a little cleanout door in the hearth and a corresponding door outside by the driveway--you open the one in the hearth, sweep all your ashes into it, and the go shovel them out of the little trap from outside. So I'm thinking it isn't going to be too much work to run a gas line from the stub, drill a hole down in the crawlspace, and run the line up through the cleanout area. You'd have to either drill a hole in the inside door or just replace it with fiberglass insulation but fairly simple and straightforward.

So. The guy shows up. He's the "expert" so I let him decide what he needs to see. I offer to show him the crawlspace and he's like "That's OK. I don't need to see the crawlspace."* (?!?!) So instead he farts around in the utility closet and comes up with some plan to drill a hole inside the adjoining wall to run a gas line and then through the side of the fireplace (still inside the wall) to bring through the gas. Although he doesn't think that will be possible, practically. His alternative is to have the gas line come outside the house and run on the ground in the driveway and then go in the outside cleanout door. There are so many obvious problems with this plan that I'll just let you consider it.

So I've sadly decided to stop calling this guy and just use the competent plumbers that I've used for other stuff.

*This is the second time I've had this guy to a house for an estimate on something in the crawlspace and he's been like "No, I don't need to see the crawlspace." I'm like, "bitch, if I have work that needs to be done in a crawlspace, how are you going to estimate what it takes if you won't go in a crawlspace? For that matter, how are you going to do it?

Now, there's probably enough business for a plumber that they can pick and choose what work they take, but unless your prices are significantly lower than other plumbers (and they aren't) I'm not going to have my plumber that doesn't go in crawlspaces and my plumber that will. I'm going to have my plumber. And he will need to be willing to go in crawlspaces. Because that's where they put the 80% of the plumbing in houses.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
The other thing is how I lose a day so quickly. It would be manageable if I hadn't gotten soft and weak and heavy. But I need to fit in workout time every day now (at least until I get back into some kind of shape). Got up, went and dealt with this disappointing plumber, came home and had breakfast and did some desk work. Then I did a month-end kickoff meeting for my job for my friend, read some work e-mails and took care of a few things there before calling a plumber who actually solves my problemns. Now I'm 2 hours late for lunch and I've only just started my exercises. And I've gotta go for a 4 mile run today. By the time that's done, I'll have burned through the day, just about. :(
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Sitting around with my thumb up my butt while in a call to tech support because my VPN access "has been temporarily disabled for security reasons". Can't do anything else because I need to be here to work with the tech guy.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
And after 30-40 minutes on the phone with IT, now I cannot get into anything except the hard drive/desktop.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
What a goddamned stupid, wasted day. Didn't get anything done for my business--in part because no one's working today that I need to talk to, but mostly because I was supposed to be working for my friend. But because they locked out my access I couldn't do any work there. But I also couldn't do any other work while I was either on the phone with tech support or waiting for tech support to call back after the ticket got escalated (they never did). I mean, I'm still going to bill them for 3-4 hours of my time. Shit, I should bill them for 8. But I'm generous like that.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
That's The Plan. Although I don't need to get Stinking Rich, just modestly rich. I'm shooting for a million. Or stable consistent positive net cash flow without actual work.
 
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