I’m sort-of surprised I’ve managed to stick the landing on this for a second week. My own weak sauce version of week notes… WEAK NOTES. I probably don’t have to do an intro paragraph every time.

There were some minor fitness milestones reached this week. Apple Health now indicates that my VO2 max cardiac fitness doohicky has moved from “Below Average” to “Above Average”. It’s also been two calendar months (commencing May 15th) since I started eating less and moving more and I’m nearly 9kg lighter than I was. It hasn’t been easy, but it hasn’t been stunningly difficult either. Most of my meals have been fairly similar to what they were before (usually fairly healthy) but I’m only eating between 11am and 7pm and that alone has cut out most of the snacking.

Getting myself moving more is probably the biggest win here… I’ve been doing at least 30 minutes of something every day (on days without a run there’s either a post-school run walk or indoor bike sesh with added Steam Deck gaming). I’m especially happy with the running though - I honestly thought as I approached 50 I’d never get back to my “glory days” but the pace is beginning to come back. Just after I pressed send last week I ran 10km at 5m 46s per kilometer which is 3km further than I’ve managed so far this go round. (Should’ve definitely stretched though.) I’ve also knocked in another 30km (in four stints) since then.

I am also desperately close to the Official Body Mass Index Threshold™ for “not fat”. 0.3 over. Two weeks, I reckon.

Work has been annoying, I have a client who wants something and need a lot of support doing the scoping, costing and sorting through potential designs for the something (which requires a fair amount of time from us, the supplier) but aren’t yet in a sufficiently advanced position to commit to starting the something so we can knuckle down and actually DO CODE. And they’re proceeding so slowly through their approval gates that I’m not actually billing a great deal despite having to be very available.

Also, my remote access expired, no-one told me in advance it was expriring and it took a lengthy phone call (I hate phone calls) and six people on an email chain over three hours to get it back. I do sort of miss the days when I could just wander round to IT and harrass them directly.

Still… I have turned one of my former collegues over to the Dark Side - he’s quit to go contracting. He’s got all this to look forward to. Bwah ha ha, etc.

I always have at least one guitar hacking project on the go, and the Esquire resolved itself very quickly (it’s so good out of the box). Time for a new thing.

Instead of scouting for something new, I’m revisting a Fender Duo-Sonic (as previously mentioned) I bought a while back that I haven’t really bonded with. A couple of weeks ago it was earmarked for eBay, but I keep seeing them around in the beige guitar equivalent of blue car syndrome so it’s the next on the block. New pickups are ordered, but I do want to keep a lot of the original look. I’m going to investigate chucking a Free-Way Switch in there. I’m thinking beefy new pickups, standard pickup selection on the one row and phase/series options on the other. They actually do quite a good pre-wired one that fits the bill…

I’m also considering control knobs in Safety Orange. (The guitar is VERY beige.)

Goals achieved from the previous week:

  • lose another kilo of lard: starting weight 78.7kg, last weigh in was 77.6kg
  • nail down a loop performance of Medusa (an old Superhet tune): guitar bits, vocal and arrangement nailed down. Needs some FX programming and rolling in glitter.
  • get some employment clarity: nope, but I have a lot of meetings scheduled to achieve clarity in the coming weeks

Goals for the coming week:

  • spec out new innards for the Duo-Sonic
  • do some FX programming for Medusa
  • wipe out all the itty bitty cruft on the to-do list (chasing down courier refunds, posting some stuff)

Until next time.