The not quite bigger, bigger update.

 It’s been meh this weekend.

I was excited because it’s a weigh week. The first of each month I weigh myself to see the effect of weight loss. Well TLDR; I gained 4 pounds this month, gained half an inch on the waist. 

That is on top of my weekly intermittent fasting.

Each morning I wake up, get ready, and leave the apartment without food. My only companion for the day is black coffee or water. All day until around 5:30 to 6:00PM

I then eat dinner with my wife, and then don’t eat again until the next day’s dinner. Monday thru Friday. Eat one meal a day at roughly 6 PM

But I’ve been lax the past probably month and a half. Still only eating once a day, but usually also snacking or having sweets and sodas and sugary drinks with and after dinner.

I also eat what I want on the weekend, usually 2 meals a day a breakfast and a dinner, but sometimes all 3 meals.

I recognize my shortcoming the last 2 months is the increased consumption of sugar, but it’s still a big bummer to see no progress in the scale, or not feel progress in the belt size.

Which since March has gone from the first rung to the 4th rung.

So gotta cut that sugar back out, gotta start putting the borders back on the meals, so when I stop eating dinner, no more snacks or other stuff, back to water and nothing that would increase insulin.

If you’ve never read the obesity code I would highly recommend it as a ... well for some an eye opener, but for others it’s a book that is good about connecting the obvious information about weight gain and obesity.

I used to be a fad diet follower, loosely at least, b that came from my parents I think.

I have to go into work now buts they’re still a lot more I want to tell you including what actually happened this weekend and how it distracted me from posting the multiple posts I had originally planned. Maybe I’ll write another post tonight, I dunno. Feeling pretty de-motivated right now.

Love you guys talk to you later.

Ack, I did it again

 Another weekend update missed! But at least I’m catching myself a couple of days later. This weekend was an hour trip to my barber/beard trimmer. It’s so hard to find “new” good ... what are they properly called? Service? Daily life? I mean what do you call your hairdresser, dentist, doctor, chiropractor, etc? You spend years trying to find a reliable, competent, and amazing person to provide X service/luxury and then when you move, at least any distance away, you have to start over again. It’s no bueno man. But I distress I currently live about 2.5 hours from my hairdresser. Where I used to live was 1 hour away from my beard barber, where I currently live is still about 1.25 hours from the beard barber so I woke up crack of dawn on Saturday to get there in time for the only available slot he had, and also got him to trim my hair, which he did amazingly by the way. 

In writing all of this I can see how some people would probably mark me down as snooty or rich because I have a beard trimmer AND barber and drive long distance to go to him.

Keep in mind previously I lived in the middle of nowhere, where your choice of hair cuts was either some sport cuts that only buzzes all your hair off well, or an extremely overpriced salon that focuses on perms for little white haired old ladies (including the little white hair old ladies who refuse to acknowledge they have white hair and instead pay untold amounts of money to have someone put god knows what on their head to help them lie to themselves and others around them. ... but I digress)

Where was I? I’m not rich. Far from it. I struggled with depression a couple of years ago, and through some self discovery you didn’t that a good massage, a good scalp rub, a good anything that is self-pampering or hygiene related does wonders for how you feel. At least it does for me. I hope it might help others too.

Growing up I feel like I was around a lot of people who were “a tip is 10% max, 5% if they could have done better, and nothing if they didn’t earn it” which is ludicrous. And I mean I didn’t get that entirely from my father because he was never that bad, but I still feel it’s a good example. Kind of. Aside jaunt but I tip 20% flat, but my “personal care companions?”

Get much larger tips, usually around 30-40%

As time for me to clock in quickly approaches I must wrap up.

TLDR you become attached to the lives of others who help you be a better you. You go out of your way to be with those people and to show them you appreciate them. I go far for my personal care companions because they take care of me, and do it well, and it’s worth a larger chunk of my money to feel good about the job, the people, and enriching each other.

Bigger update this weekend. I promise.

Hectic mid-week

 So I missed the weekend update. It’s going to happen, but I’m here with why. Family visited this weekend. Parents and my sisters family. Entertaining and eating out pretty much was the order of the day for Saturday and Sunday. 

Which went fairly smoothly aside from a tiny stomach bug on my niece’s part. My wife and I have been trying new restaurants at a rate of at least 1 per weekend, so we’re well prepared with tasty locations around our new apartment and workplace.

But that was the weekend you say, what about Monday? Well the rest of the delay is my own fault. Sort of, my car popped up another warning message and I figured it was time to put it in the shop instead of ignoring it. 

Ok but what about Tuesday?! Now y’all are being only demanding between family and expensive car issues you still giving me lip? Well  I had a presentation at work on Wednesday and it occupied a good portion of my mind once family left. It’s over now. And NOW after I’ve had a little mid week stress/anxiety eating I am getting to my post.

Which is a fairly good segue into what will be this weekend’s post. Food. Eating. And my intermittent fasting philosophy.

I have to go out of town to get a hair and beard trim early on Saturday, but after that I hope to have a stream and talk about intermittent fasting a little bit. And then post.

Anyways, it’s time for me to go clock in to work, so y’all take care. As always, Love ya!

Its Saturday!

Good Morning!

Wow, a post. Technically early, but I had a free moment, figured I would use it for the weekly blog post. Although it likely won't be as long as the last one. 

Through this week I've had a million idea of information I wanted to put on the blog, Recipes, Meal Pictures, Talking about my intermittent fasting, weight loss, The podcast, what "Uniquely Uninformed" actually means.

I haven't gotten around to digging through the old notebooks to find the old topics I wrote down for a potential Podcast with TrekFox and Luhsteesay; who are two of my friends. Do people even say "internet friends" anymore.

I haven't streamed much in the last couple of months either, sorry for that. I guess a "happy update" is in order since the last one was a bit ... dark and ranty.

I am thoroughly enjoying my new job, which is in technology again. If I have any worries associated with it, it's about stability. Change is natural, and I am flexible, but there was a major change after only about a month, and I worry another one is coming. I feel I have every right to be wary, right? Historically changes at Soul Cancer weren't for the best, and quite often screwed me over one way or the other. So yea, I have some emotional baggage with worry, stress, and anxiety carrying over to my current job. But that is of my own creation, the job itself is fun.

Getting my brain back into technology, getting to learn new things, writing some guides and tutorials, using multiple facets of my expensive ole Masters Degree. 

And that's ultimately why you haven't seen me streaming. After I get home from work and have dinner, I typically either watch some videos online, or spend free time learning and studying to get certifications. So instead of learning a new video game, I'm studying for Tests for certifications like the A+, CCNA, Network +, MS Associate stuff. We can talk about those in more details later.

Keep an eye out for more updates (I hope) and possibly some Regulars like meal pictures, recipes, and "diet theory" from my intermittent fasting.

Until then, I love you and take care of yourself!

The only thing I'm consistently good at ... seem to be inconsistency.

Here we go again

I figure if I keep trying to be consistent, eventually it'll start ... right ... maybe?

As you (non-existent person who passionately follows my utterly unused blog) may have noticed, I tweaked the Style Template, got my favorite font (Finger Paint from Google Fonts) installed, and am once again typing blog posts ... or at least this one.

A lot has changed, farewell Soul Cancer

The last posts on the blog were just records of a walking challenge happening at my previous job. So it sorta makes sense that I need to bring you up to date with the bare minimum facts.

• I refer that job, and employer as "Soul Cancer"; a moniker I might add I actually began using in my day to day interactions with my friends and family, to the point that it actually became a part of their vocabulary.
  
  Professional Re-enactment
• Friend: "Hey you still at Soul Cancer?"
• Me: "Yup."

• Soul Cancer never really had their act in order. From the beginning (of at least my time there), they had old impractical practices, It was common for me to say that the only thing the company did competently, was incompetence. And horrid managers, dear lord don't get me started on that. (Think 80's management style a la Office Space Lumberg, only not comedic, full of micromanagement, nepotism, active career sabotage, you name it, I saw it there.)
  
  But I hear you say 
  You: "You're being pretty harsh there Tangent"
  Me: -enunciating slowly- "SOOOOOOULLLLLL CANNNNNCERRRRRRRRRRRR"
  
  
• Soul Cancer got bought out twice in 2 years. That's where it gets difficult to explain because if I start using the names of who bought who, it becomes BLATANTLY obvious who I'm calling Soul Cancer (Originally it was just the original Soul Cancer, but then the 2 other companies that did the buying also were ... jerks. (let's use the PG-13 friendly naming conventions for this post.)
  
  Soul Cancer went from a Private Company to  Public One. (Losing Value in the Process, we'd know because the retirement plan was in Employee Owned Stock, which tanked.) Rhopalocera bought Soul Cancer, but Rhopalocera pretty much shot themselves in the foot financially doing it, putting them in a position where CORVUS CHEESE'S bought them, as well as a bunch of other online printing/design companies. All of this in the span of about 2 years.
  
  
• DUN DUN DUN! COVID!
  
  It became apparent with the slow but sure firing, restructuring, sending in professionals that Ultimately CORVUS CHEESE'S knew what they were doing (business acumen-ly speaking). They were going to make Soul Cancer and Rhopalocera profitable once again. And a process that would probably have taken 3 to 5 years of restructuring, replacing key management, and understanding the systems became instead ...
  
  
• You're laid off.
• You can't use your Paid Time Off
• Oh and you have to pay US for this because we're not paying for your Health Insurance while you're on COVID layoff.
  
  A few MONTHS of unemployment later
  
  
• We're changed our minds, you'll come back for 2 months, then you're all permanently fire.
  
• No joke, brought a couple of us back literally to tell us they were firing us.
• OH BTW, since you didn't use your PTO from last year, we're not rolling it over.
  
• Yup, people who had earned PTO from the previous year, only got a small fraction of it. They kept the rest.

So yea, they had business acumen, the cut throat, use COVID as a reason to fire everyone that we were going to fire over the next 3 years anyways.

• But I am Finally Free of Soul Cancer
  
  It seems like I've been fairly specific here, but please recognize that this is less than 10% of what I could say on the subject. Laws in the State and laws passed to protect businesses during COVID federally pretty much allowed the corporations in question to do whatever they wanted to do. The whole thing still reaks of private and public lawsuits, which will only get worse as time reveals exactly how many client contracts were breached in the hasty but PURPOSEFUL shutdown.
  
  You: "Hasty but purposeful?"
  Me: "Like ... send out an email that we're not going to finish projects we've already started, give them a phone number and email address to contact for refunds or to complete their projects quickly, then fire all of the people who check those email accounts, and disconnect that phone system the next day."
  You: "But how are they ..."
  Me: "What? I can't hear you, you have to use this email address no-one looks at or call this number that literally is "out of service" now."
  

Stimulus and the Job Hunt

I spent a good portion of the layoff at the start of COVID when we thought we'd be back in 2 months job hunting, working on my resume, playing video games, streaming. That 2 Months became 9 Months, they brought a few of us back to tell us we'd be fired in 2 months (Strangely just enough time for all of the previous year's owed PTO to get past the "You lose it" cut-off due date. effing anyone they didn't bring back out of lots of money)

The job hunt was a fairly depressing time for me. Originally a tech person, I'd now been out of technology for nearly 8 years. I can't remember how many "You don't have any certifications" (Apparently a Master's Degree in Technology doesn't count for anything); "We're pursuing other candidates" and other permutations of "You have no skills, your degrees mean nothing, and so forth"

Which I mean, when you're struggling through all of this, of course your brain makes every polite comment and application that doesn't go anywhere into a directed attack against your person.

So I hope you're taking what I say with some salt, cuz I complain about it; but I'm sure it wasn't that bad. I KNOW that I was lucky and well off for the entire thing. Between stimulus money, savings, low rent and so forth ... There's a lot of people out there who lost their homes, went hungry, and were destroyed by their own emotions and turmoil about not being able to provide for their kids.

A new Job, a new apartment, a newer new job

I got a position back in technology. I won't talk about a whole lot of details on the new job just yet, because while its exciting, sometimes I worry about stability.

And let's face it, when a company hires you; they will invade your life.

It's not entirely their fault, we live in a society when any faux-pas or social media misstep will get hundreds of thousands to millions of people tweeting the company that employs said person to fire them. In the last 30 years culturally we've blurred the line between after-hours, personal opinion, and corporate identity.

I don't like it, but as a streamer, and a blogger (at least today) What I say and do is a public forum.

So if you're my employer reading my blog or watching my stream, realize you are my employer. You pay me to be someplace and do something from 8-5. You do not get to dictate what I do or say outside of those hours. We're not a family. Our identities are not connected. You are defined by the service you provide to others, not by the identities of those you employ.

And that's why they call me Tangent ... what were we talking about?

The Blog!

Its back!

The Future!

I want to have at least monthly updates, but I think I would like weekly updates 

Why?

• I'm losing weight doing intermittent fasting, I think: 
• People would like to see pictures of what I eat
• Maybe some recipes too
• and Explanations of how I'm fasting
• I'm studying for a whole bunch of technology certifications!
• A place to track that, as well as talk about it would be fun.
• I want to stream and or record a pod-cast
• Seriously, there's this guy named Luhsteesay ... its probably best if you don't think about the pronunciation on that one, but he's funny as hell.
• I've done radio-esque things in the past and have a million topics in a notebook to bring up.
• As well as a place to share my innermost darkest thoughts for anyone to read and judge!

Intermittent Fasting, Tech Certifications, Podcast, Stream

Exciting no?