Fitness

Let's Go

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This little gem is one of my workout favorites; it’s like a motivational speech put to song. And it’s just what I need.

(I gather it’s a Calvin Harris song, and maybe there’s some other version of it, but this is the one I like.)

I don’t count myself as a fitness guru, but I blog about it sometimes because the perspective of a fat guy striving to improve at the gym is probably very relatable. And also, it’s part of what’s going on in my life.

Right now, I am just starting getting back to the gym after bone fusion surgery. It’s challenging and painful, but I know it’s part of the healing process.

I get disappointed while hobbling around, or easing myself onto a bike, or gingerly trying out the elliptical. It’s frustrating to watch the fleet-footed runners on the track, gliding as if on the winged feet of Hermes. It’s hard not to try to keep up with the cardio crazies on the machines, pushing and pulling the arms of the elliptical in sprints that seem to last half an hour. And I miss Spinning, with its jumps and hills, isolations and single-leg work.

Part of me wants to look back and think, “I was once a Spin instructor.” I was able to hang with those guys. I could powerwalk a sub 12-minute mile (no easy feat for a fattie!) and own the cardio machines for hours.

I wasn’t gritting my teeth back then, lurching around the track like Frankenstein.

The song reminds me, “It’s not about what you’ve done, it’s about what you’re doin’. It’s all about where you’re going, no matter where you’ve been.”

Part of me looks to the road ahead and sighs, ready to give up. Physical therapy sessions, strenuous exercises, strict dieting, pushing to increase speed just to get back to where I was before… the future looks like hard work.

But the song keeps me in the now. “Let’s go. Let’s make it happen. Make no excuses now, I’m talking here and now. Your time is running out.”

Today is what matters. This workout should be my best. Yesterday’s done, nothing I can do about that. And tomorrow’s problems can wait until then.

Let’s go.

What’s your motivational song? When everything inside says “take it easy,” what kicks you into action? Let me know in a comment, so I can go get some more music.

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Side note: If you’re in the Omaha area and need some screws drilled into your feet, or any other kind of orthopedic care, Dr. Jon Goldsmith is the guy to see.

Gaming

The Happy App

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On Feb 6th, happiness came available in the iTunes App Store.

Ok, not really, right? Because we all know “You can’t buy happiness.”

Wrong.

It sells for $15.99 under the (perhaps confusing) title, Final Fantasy 6.

Want a powerful but flawed and inexperienced female protagonist whose choices may shape the world around her? Forget Katniss and Tris, and go with Terra (or whatever 6-character name you choose).

Need a roguish hero driven by love and loss, torn between the girl he hopes to bring back from the grave and the woman whose life he does manage to save?

Royal twin brothers split up over responsibility and duty? One who took the throne, and one who fled to the hills?

A general cast out by the Empire she loves, because she wouldn’t forsake her ideals, fighting against a madman in charge of a powerful army, willing to murder whole cities to get what he wants?

How about a boy raised in the wild, cast away as a baby by a mad father, seeking restoration of the relationship?

Or a knight who loses his wife, his son, his king, and his kingdom, seeking vengeance on those who would use treachery where they cannot prevail in honorable combat?

Any one of these arcs can make a story worth telling. Not enough selling points?

How about this: Steampunk.

FF6 (FF III when it was released originally in America on the Super Nintendo) introduced a fantasy world with the industrial revolution in full swing. The whole storyline is about mixing magic and technology (and also people). Scenery ranges from rolling plains, dark forests, mountain passes, rural villages, up to the ironclad streets and metal walkways of the Empire’s capital. The game starts you off stomping around in mechanized suits with Magitek lasers.

FF6 was into Steampunk before it was cool.

Then there are the character powers, which tickled my nostalgia oh so right. More varied than any game that springs to mind, FF6 gives each playable character something to set it apart from every other.

  • Thieving from monsters.
  • Absorbing magical attacks.
  • Using a variety of tools (including an automatic crossbow, drill, and chainsaw) in battle.
  • Performing martial arts super-combos using button sequences like Street Fighter.
  • Triggering a wait timer to build up and release insane attacks.
  • Throwing stars (or all sorts of other objects)
  • Rolling dice or slot machines for special effects
  • Sketching copies of enemies to fight for you
  • Being a yeti. (‘Nuff said.)
  • Learning to mimic monster special attacks

    • There’s probably more but I haven’t unlocked the rest, and I don’t remember. And yet, each new character unlocked in the story brings the same reaction: “Oh yeah! That guy! He does that awesome thing in combat. Sweet!”

    I was a Hadouken-throwing beast in Street Fighter II, to the dismay of my brother and his friend. Sabin’s SF-style move Aura Cannon won my heart from the get-go, and it’s just as awesome now as it was back then:

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    FF6 includes the requisite slew of magical items and trinkets with various powers. They quickly amass, providing options and opening up combos of benefits to the thoughtful player. There are plenty of FAQs and guides online for character gear optimization, but it’s also not so complex that a new player couldn’t figure their way through.

    The plot and dialogue maintain the right level of humor and avoid being too campy or melodramatic, unlike some JRPGs, which leave me asking “What the heck is going on, and why do I care?” Just as before, I quickly became invested in these characters and interested in their stories.

    The new version provides a helpful clue button and expandable map in the upper left corner, in case you forget your overall goal at the moment, kupo!

    The music is top-notch for the era. It is no overstatement to say absolutely nothing compared to what this game brought to the SNES in the 90s, and the game still holds up well today. (It was ranked #3 on a list of best SNES games ever, right behind Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and Super Metroid. I think there’s some worthy debate to that ranking.)

    On top of all that, FF6 was one of the first games to use the SNES’ graphics scaling capability. And it executes that perfectly. Whether riding a chocobo, marching Magitek armor toward a town, flying an airship across the skies, or following a flying character around the map, FF6 gave gamers a touch of 3D in their usually flat world.

    But if you ever played FF6, you probably already knew all that.

    So, what’s wrong with it?

  • I often have a glitch if other apps are open. The game seems to start then blanks out. In fact, it’s just another open app, and swiping over gets me going on the game. But you can imagine that was disconcerting to see first, after paying 16 bucks.
  • The touch screen controls can be tricksy and false, Precious. This leads to wasting abilities or opportunities, and general frustration when you’re bumping into a wall trying to get down some stairs.
  • There is a “fast forward” arrow button in combat that lets the game run your characters for you. The AI seemed fine at first, but then it started making horrible decisions, like wasting 250 HP potions to heal 3 HP. After advancing the story and trying again in a different area, I am seeing sound decisions from the AI. But I include the above example as a way it sometimes goes wrong, just because it frustrated me.
  • Not really something “wrong,” but I’ll warn any old player who might have forgotten some details, there are decisions you can make with permanent effects. Wait for Shadow to catch up! Also, “save early save often” applies here. No one likes reaccomplishing the same parts of the story.

    • I recall my delight at finding some Final Fantasy games on the App Store a year or more ago. This was the first game I checked for, and I left crestfallen. I kept coming back and hovering over the “Buy” button on different games, in the hopes that perhaps just maybe it might bring back some of the joy teenage me remembered getting out of FF6.

    I never bought any of them, though I’m sure they’re fine games in their own right.

    Then this popped up on the new releases, and my decision to buy was immediate. I started the game with trepidation – what if like so many other “amazing” things from my youth (G.I. Joe and Transformers cartoons, for example), I look at this in horror, realizing all its flaws?

    Those fears were pushed down from the start, and utterly quelled under the feet of Magitek armor marching into Narshe once I reached the initial credits screen.

    This is not just nostalgia. It’s a portal back in time and space to a place of joy filled with people I loved and never thought I’d see again.

    Culture/Politics, Worship

    A Digital Ministry Profile

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    This morning, at church, I felt vindication.

    It’s not a top-of-the-list expected sensation when you walk into a place of worship. But for today, vindication fit.

    The pastors preached on wineskins, using Jesus’ words to the Pharisees as a reference.

    But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results. Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.” (Matthew 9:16, 17 NASB)

    The point for the congregation today is that holding onto our old ways of doing things may keep us from experiencing growth in our relationship with God. And relationships are one area where our pastor sees a new wineskin is needed.

    In today’s culture, so many of us spend our time connected to the Internet, hands almost surgically attached to our cellphones or mobile devices. I personally was shocked at how quickly my iPad got its dark tentacles wrapped around my habits.

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    Here I am typing this onto my iPad while riding a bike at the gym, using my cellphone hotspot to upload. No, I am not addicted to these devices.

    Speaking of modern culture, our pastor declared, “A lot of people have more relationships via the Internet and social media than they have in face-to-face relations.” By unscientific appearances, because I’m too lazy to find data for what seems obvious, this is the case. Everywhere I go, I see people on cell phones, texting, Facebooking, tweeting, Vining, snapchatting, vlogging, and whatever new thing I’m not even aware of yet.

    At least I do when I take my eyes off my iPhone.

    Ok, so why the vindication?

    Because my pastor’s words spoke directly to a form of ministry my wife has labored in for probably over a decade. And his words lent credence and validity to her form of ministry where others rolled eyes, scoffed, patronizingly agreed, or outright walked away.

    My wife ministers the light and love of Christ to people online.

    A stay-at-home mom by choice and homeschooling teacher by choice of four children ranging from three years old to teenagers, my wife doesn’t get a lot of time to spend volunteering for the church or doing whatever small group activities come up. When she gets time, she usually takes advantage of the chance to rest, because she earns those breaks.

    So when the church wants to go door-to-door, or when they’re asking for nursery volunteers, or they want all the women to come out to a midweek Bible study, or to cook up dinners for the family with the new baby, more often than not, my wife isn’t serving there.

    And she gets the looks for it! “Well, if you’re dropping your kid off in the nursery, then we need you to volunteer.” I get that. That makes nursery sustainable. So how about if my excited, willing teenage daughter volunteers in my wife’s place? “Not good enough.”

    “Well, it’s so neat that you talk to people on your computer, but you know, we really need someone to come do street evangelism.” Because pouncing on people is a proven tactic, right.

    My wife may not step foot out the door, but she clicks across the world and types words of love and hope into the hearts of people she’s never met in person. She may not have a foot on the ground, but she has a virtual hand on the shoulder of a grieving woman, of a new divorcee, of a worried parent whose child is in trouble with drugs. She may not be knocking on doors, but God knocks on hearts through the connection my wife makes with friends and strangers.

    Years ago, when I’d log into a chatroom on Yahoo or geocities to debate theology, my wife would talk with people one-on-one to find out what they were going through and share her similar experiences.

    Later, when I hopped on forums to post rants about politics and religion in our culture, my wife would trade private messages with people who had been emotionally or physically abused, whether by family, by acquaintances, by strangers, or even by their church. She gave hurting people an avenue to open up, to trust again, to connect with someone who had walked in their shoes and survived to tell the tale.

    On Facebook, my wife almost always has a chat open with a friend or two, most of the time just staying connected and sharing life across the country or around the world. That constant reliable bond makes it possible to speak into someone’s life when they are in need of a friend. And sometimes it comes back to bless my wife when she needs encouragement.

    Even on World of Warcraft and Farmville, she has made connections to strangers that developed into friends.

    All the while, she’s ignored or brushed away the silent criticism and derisive looks from people who should have been excited and supportive.

    Sure, if you get her going on politics or draw her into an argument, ministry gets lost in the chaos and flame wars. But that’s true of everyone, regardless of how persuasive we all might believe our memes and rants on Facebook to be.

    So to those who laughed at my wife and her “so-called ministry,” I’d like to rise above and be the better man. But she’s the better half.

    That means I get to laugh back, feel vindicated, and point out that she’s so ahead of the curve, no wonder they couldn’t see her from way back there.

    Poetry, Writing

    Artful Inspiration: Trying Out Storybird

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    My writers’ group recently posted a link to Storybird and asked if anyone had tried the service.

    I hadn’t, but I volunteered to be the creative guinea pig.

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    Storybird is a site full of artwork meant to inspire creative writing, both poems and prose. The idea is that you find a piece or series of art that spurs your imagination, and then you write or “unlock” the story contained within the pictures.

    It’s meant to reverse the usual process, where a writer has a story to tell and then scrounges around for the right picture to match it.

    I tried to do all this on my iPad since my laptop hard drive perished. That decision led to some frustration.

    First I explored the site a bit. They have some highlighted submissions from their users, akin to WordPress with the Freshly Pressed. Everything is broken up into genres and categories, and almost everything is tagged for searching.

    When you pick a story, you get a flipbook on iPad with pages that turn with a swipe of the finger. On my wife’s PC, she got arrows to turn pages.

    When you pick a piece of art, you can learn about the artist and see the rest of their portfolio on the site. This becomes useful when looking for a consistent style of art for a project.

    I admit, the grammar nazi in me rose up at the spelling errors and bad grammar in some of the “new and noted” highlighted pieces. But I realize the point is creativity and free expression, not necessarily perfection.

    I also found it interesting that everything is moderated. When you publish a story or poem, it gets reviewed before being submitted into the public library. This helps ensure a certain level of propriety and minimizes mean content. Or at least that’s the stated reason behind it.

    Signing up is easy and free. There are various accounts based on how you’d like to use the site. Teachers and students can use it for assignments. There are options for professional writers and artists. There’s a “parent” option as well, though I didn’t search to find out exactly what that does.

    I chose “regular” as a safe starting point.

    I was quickly hit with prompts to upgrade to a premium membership. If you want options for themes and layouts, if you want faster moderation, if you want varied options for responding to people’s projects, then you’ll need an upgrade. It’s $3.99 a month, or $2.99 a month if you pay for a full year.

    I held firm to my free membership, and started searching through art. Once I found a picture I wanted, I hit the “Use This Art” button, selected story instead of poem, and found myself at the creative desktop.

    I got the picture I wanted, and a set of other pictures by the same artist in the same theme. Then it got difficult.

    I had an idea for where I wanted to go, but I was limited by the pictures I started with. Once you choose a set of art, you can’t go back and search for more. The stated reason is this will help you focus on writing the story you unlocked in the picture, instead of looking for just-right pictures to match your already-written story.

    Well that didn’t work for me!

    I backed up and searched for art in some themes, but it took a while to find a set that had all the pieces I wanted. I ended up with a set of 302 pictures to wade through in order to find perhaps 20 that matched my intent.

    They warn users that if you do it the way I did, you will probably be frustrated. They were right.

    Now I had the set I wanted… all 300+ pictures loaded into the workspace. I shifted some around, sorted through all of them, and set aside the ones I planned to use.

    Then I had to hit refresh, and I lost all that sorting effort.

    I had to refresh because my browser became another source of frustration. I used Safari on the iPad at first… but the menu in the workspace kept disappearing. I would have to update a bit, then refresh after waiting around long enough for the project to autosave.

    Unsatisfied with that, I tried Chrome. Same result at first, but then I saw the option under Chrome’s menu to “request desktop site.” That made the workspace function properly, and I was able to complete my project.

    With all the lost effort due to browser issues and the process of figuring out how to get a selection of artwork that I wanted, not to mention the actual writing, it took me about three or four hours to produce my first effort.

    It’s called Not In a Nice Way and it’s a love story of sorts.

    Was it worth the effort? Sure. Storybird seems like an interesting way to get creative, something nice to take a break from my usual projects. For someone who writes children’s books, it might be very useful. And it seems like a fun community of people, although I think they’re a little too flattering with their comments on silly or sub-standard work.

    At the free price, it’s worth a try.

    But a monthly subscription? That remains to be seen.

    Give it a shot. If you create a project, post it in a comment. I’d love to see how others use the site. And let me know what you think of “Not In A Nice Way” too.

    Culture/Politics

    Social Media Auditing

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    It’s tax season. Imagine you finish your 1040 and send it off, only to learn that your taxes are being audited.

    In the initial notification of a tax audit, you find this request:

    As part of this audit process, please produce a copy of every 140-character message, commonly referred to as “tweet,” ever posted to your account on the social media website Twitter, as well as a copy of every post ever made to your Facebook profile.

    How would you respond to such a request by an agency of the Federal government? How would you feel?

    Today on C-SPAN, my wife watched the ongoing House investigation into the IRS scandal. Representative Ted Poe of Texas asked the representative of True the Vote, for confirmation, whether she was asked by the federal government to produce the following as part of her organization’s application for 501 c 4 status:

    All tweets ever tweeted.
    All Facebook posts, ever.
    All the places she’s ever spoken publicly.
    Copies of all speeches in those public places.
    All the places she would speak in the future.
    All the names or groups who heard her speak.
    The mailing lists and attendee lists at each location.

    Imagine running into that kind of request from the federal government, for just one moment.

    I’m trying to think of what it would take to sit at the computer, copy and paste, and put together a Word document containing literally every tweet I have ever posted, every Facebook status update.

    Every tweet from my recent road trip. Every status about something my kids did wrong. Every post I made about whatever interested me that day. Every expression of frustration at something political. Every comment I’ve made on anyone else’s status. Every celebration of how beautiful my wife and children are, and how grateful I am for my family.

    I can’t imagine compiling and providing that to the federal government, mainly because why do they need to know all of that?

    Critics dismiss these proceedings as made-up scandals, a spectacle, theater pandering to opponents of this Administration. On Sunday before the Super Bowl, the President famously commented on the ongoing investigation saying there’s no sign of corruption at the IRS. Much like discussion of misinformation intentionally released by government officials to the public concerning the attack at Benghazi, this IRS business is a non-issue, and the only reason people are still talking about it is because Fox News keeps telling them to. So the President believes.

    I’m sorry. I get concerned when I listen to a list of special visits the rep from True the Vote enjoyed – as a supposed natural part of the process and not as any sort of government oppression at all, because clearly there was none.

    Picture these folk knocking on your door:
    SIX visits from the FBI investigating potential terror ties.
    One visit from OSHA.
    One from your state branch of the EPA.
    One from the ATF.

    Does that seem oppressive? Does that seem corrupt? Or does that sound like a made-up scandal?

    I stop to think, “Hey, if we have a government that can do that to somebody and never have to answer for it, they will probably do it to anybody they choose.”

    And that deeply concerns me.

    And that, Mr. President, is why I’m still talking about it. Because it happened, and we’re all still wondering not how but if our government will keep it from happening again.

    Awesome Children

    Sleeping In… NEVAR!!

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    What to do with a little man who consistently wakes up at 6:30 AM… even on the weekends!

    Today’s answer was to give up, get out, grab coffee, and bring home breakfast for the family.

    Our little dude is still on Central time, I think, while we are visiting Washington state. So his wake-up is timed for 8:30 back home, which is pleasant and generally reasonable (unless you ask my teenage daughter).

    I heard him sniffling and making some scared noises when I woke up, so I checked on him to see if he was ok. Tucked him in, laid down next to him for a minute, made sure he wasn’t upset. Then I hugged his brother, and left the room.

    Seconds later, I heard the “thum-thum-thum-thum-thump” of toddler feet jogging (clearly wide awake) down the hall toward the play room full of toys.

    No hope for sleeping in, I decided it was a good time for a pajama-clad trip to a coffee shop (first things first) and then fast food breakfast. We hopped into the van as the first touches of sunrise lit the sky.

    We got coffee at Dutch Brothers, where I made a smooth impression by knocking over their cup display at the drive through window with my side mirror.

    We grabbed some McD’s for the Mommy and the brother staying with us (the two teenagers are sleeping at Grandma’s). Then we got a Jack-in-the-Box sammich for the kindly Uncle who has welcomed us into his home for the week-long trip.

    I filled up the gas tank, coordinated a bit with my Chief back home, and got back to the house to dig in to some yums.

    All the while, the energetic Dude sat in his car seat, chatting with me, cheering and clapping at our success, and watching the brightening morning sky with wide eyes.

    8:45 AM and we’re off to a good start.

    Maybe I can get a nap now.

    General

    Bad Disk is BAD

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    Since I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night, I am hoping that this story magically ends well, the way it always does in their commercials.

    I watched my computer restart after it froze. The familiar Windows startup screen appeared, then the screen blanked and blacked out. But there in the split second between hope and despair, I saw it:

    The blue screen of death.

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    (image from os2museum.com because maybe I can blame Bill Gates for this)

    After multiple attempts at startup recovery, my computer tells me the hard disk is bad.

    A few recovery options presented themselves after that terminal diagnosis… placebos and experimental procedures, things to try when none of the traditional options help. One diagnostic test is running now.

    And all I can think is, “How much have I lost?”

    I have an external drive for backup storage, but I haven’t kept it up to date. It has some documents salvaged from previous laptops, which perished on long temporary duty trips or were disabled by lapses of judgment.

    It’s tax season, I have my W-2, and I want to get onto Turbo Tax to get that refund. Last year’s taxes PDF? Probably gone.

    (I’m an email packrat and I probably have the document in my inbox still.)

    Movies and music purchased off iTunes? Some are saved on the external drive, but I should be able to download anything lost.

    Writing projects? Some snippets from this year might be gone forever, but long-term notes and projects are mostly stored on my drive.

    You’d think I would have learned from the great iCloud disaster of 2013 when my wife and I weren’t in sync about how that storage method worked. Literally every document I had in Pages was deleted due to misunderstanding. Apple Support was extremely polite and helpful, except for the actually recovering deleted documents part.

    Program files, games I’ve purchased, those can be reinstalled as long as I can find access keys or disks. World of Warcraft mods can be downloaded and plugged in again. (Thank goodness for Steam. I can log in and presto, everything is back.)

    None of these losses are huge.

    “My Pictures” – that’s the loss that stings. I know there are plenty of photos on my Facebook account, and some older pictures are saved on that external drive. But there are several months of iPhone pics and videos saved onto the laptop which I will probably never get back. Months of memories. Special moments that maybe weren’t “ready for prime time” on social media, but were important enough to snap a picture for posterity. Videos of kids being silly, or pet fish that have passed on since then.

    Those images, like the moments they captured, are preserved only in memories.

    And sadly, our biological memory storage systems are just as prone to loss.

    The old computer programming adage is still true, though slightly modified. “Save early, save often.”

    Fitness

    Steppin' Out

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    I have a foot again I have a foot again I get to walk and put weight on it and walk and shower or even put my foot in the bath and I have a foot!

    So the pain is pretty intense, as my foot adjusts to the process of holding up my ponderous bulk instead of hanging in the air behind me as useful as a second appendix. I have a walking support boot (the one from earlier this year with the sweet Reebok Air pump action), and I have a cane.

    And motrin. Lots of motrin.

    But I get to actually walk.

    And there was great rejoicing… because I also weighed myself this week and learned that convalescent leave and laying around post-surgery do wonders for my figure, in a bad way.

    So here’s to starting the physical recovery once again.