Category: Uncategorized

Having a lot of tools can be great. Too many and it becomes not inly a storage and management issue, but even harder to really know what the right tool is for the right job.

With computers it can be even worse. Apps turned thousands of programs into hundreds of thousands, and worse yet, made long term and future development for the ones you really loved a sketchy proposition at times.

This is one thing I never worry about with Vim. Text editing is about as quintessential of a task as it gets with computers and I have yet to see anything than can do that task better than Vim. Even better yet, you can have Vim on just about any device using any OS that you can imagine. From it’s tiny installs (in KB) to large installs (in GB, plugins included) it’s about as dynamic as it gets. It has it’s own programming language and well built extensibility to interact with both shell/terminals as well as other languages and programs. I haven’t found anything that Vim can’t do. Vim has a learning curve like a cliff, but if you learn to climb it, you won’t regret it. It’ll start climbing cliffs for you. 😉

Learn Vim if you use computers. You’ll need a lot less software than you did before and if you truly understand computers (and aren’t an emacs user), you’ll understand why it’s worth it.

(Here’s the article/post/whatever that inspired me to wrote this:)

https://qz.com/1378298/forget-easy-to-use-design-choose-something-hard-instead/

 I am not a proponent of birth order psychology but this one makes me chuckle…

Clara, my youngest daughter, has quietly made feelings know about her status in the pecking order… 

Admittedly, I haven’t been working my heart rate. It tends to be on of those things you don’t notice to much (unless it’s at an extreme). I haven’t checked my max. heart rate in well over a year, maybe two. I stopped when I had found my max. HR to be depressing low due to the high blood pressure medication I was prescribed and taking.

Last year I had noticed a significant drop in my resting rate when I saw that one day it had dropped down to 50 bpm (beats per minute). Ever since I made the move on my health and decided that taking high blood pressure medication was no longer an option, it’s been getting better. Just take a look for yourself…

It was around March/April of 2019 that I decided I needed to do something about my blood pressure. It was when my doctor recommended that due to another unexplainable rise in my systolic pressure and unchanged (elevated) diastolic pressure that I should start taking a 2nd high blood pressure medication. I said I would wait a few months, see if I could fix it, and then if it was necessary and unavoidable, I would.

Well, it wasn’t.

I changed my activities, I changed my diet, I revamped my life and stress in many ways (of which I’ll have to cover later). Here’s what happened one year later…

You can already see the immediate drop that started in the first image. Here you can see that progress continue all the way until I hit my target weight (188lbs) in November/December. Keep going and you also see exactly what happened when I stopped doing regular cardio (Elliptical/Biking/Running).

March/April of this year I had enough. Driven by my weight going up once again, I took action. Fasting, clean diet, and exercising to the limit of stress that I could keep my body healthy.

How am I doing now? Well Im glad you asked. As of this morning, I am 191lbs, and my resting heart rate is fantastic.

I don’t take blood pressure medications, or have the need for any medications at all anymore. My blood pressure has become so consistently stable, I don’t even check it anymore; it’s always in the green.

It’s not hard to assume that lowering your resting heart rate is good for you. Let’s assume it is, and let’s further assume that our hearts are impacted and wear out more from the number beats they have to perform over our lifetime.

10bpm x 60 minutes x 24 hours x 365 days = …

5,256,000 beats

… of additional strain my heart did not have to endure.

Today is a true day for personal celebration, and personal achievement. My daughters and wife can have the expectation of a long living father and husband. I am happily enjoying the multitude of benefits that comes from being in great shape, having a healthy diet, and sleeping well. All because I made the decision to become non-negotiable about my health and no longer compromise that which truly matters.

Some things on this website should probably be less focused. Like this blog for example. It might as well be what’s on my mind because otherwise I am very rarely posting to it. So let’s change that.

Time to talk more about what’s going on in my life.

Fitness has become a new central focus in my life. When your fitness/diet changes have cured yourself of high blood pressure, metabolic syndrome, pre-diabetes (undiagnosed), various hip/leg/back aches and pains, and you no longer need to take AD-HD medication, it tends to grab your attention.

What is even more surprising is that these changes didn’t come about from some crazy workout routine or by vast majority, any special diet plan. By no small contribution, these changes have come about from one change, that was and is the simple effort of doing something that is actually the act of ‘not’ doing something. 

I’m Fasting.

… and it’s utterly amazing.

I don’t want to rant on fasting right now. Blog posts should be somewhat short and limited.

Personally, I am recommending that everyone read the ‘Obesity Code’ by Dr. Fung. While this book primarily focuses on insulin and it’s far reaching effects in the body, it sets the stage that a life without periods of fasting (even short ones) is damaging to our health.

So if you want to join me on my path, start there. Read the book. It’s one of the best Ive read in my life.

As we were falling asleep, my wife Sarah (concerned) asks me if there’s any chance that I would have a mouse she could use with her computer tomorrow.

Silently, I roll over and handed her an $80 bluetooth mouse that I don’t need.

This is me in my life. 🙂

#TechnologyHusband

(As we were heading out the door to a family thing on Sarah’s side…)

Me: “Can I bring my laptop?”

Sarah: “You know where you put it, how would I know?”

Me: “Hunny, I don’t think that’s a sensical answer to my question.”

Sarah: ***stares at me blankly****

Me: “I’m asking if I can bring my laptop.”

Sarah: “You’ve been in the family for 10 years. You can bring your laptop.”

????????????

Never had a blog before. Well that’s not really true. I did create one perhaps 10 or more years ago, but I’d be shocked if it was still online, or if I remembered how to even log into it.

Hey, would you look at that! It does still exist. (just typed the URL to it)

http://checkwithalex.blogspot.com

A site before my degree, kids, home and just after I got married. A decent effort when I felt like I should be able to help the world with computer problems. A time when my need to have something, anything, a part of IT become a truly formal part of my life. It was short lived, and now we’re even more advanced with 4k monitors (actually UHD, but only the cool kids know that).

So this is my first post. It’s my site this time. I hosted it. It’s not about computers, but life in general. It’s about how limits are more important than having and getting everything you want because it’s your limits in life that shape and truly determine who you are. (I know, how mundane right?)

This is my first post, so I don’t have much more to say tonight than that.

More to come! (Hopefully …)