Always amazes me ~

One of the things I'm learning is that I'm always amazed when I actually do what I set out to do. Today's example:

I've wanted to create a breathing exercise timer reminder for a while. I wanted Genie to notify me and then I wanted to be able to tap the notification to start the timer without me having to open the clock app and set the timer to the amount of time I wanted to do my breathing exercise.

Seems silly, I know, but it's one of those automation things that I think will help me do breathing exercises like I've wanted to do for a couple of years now. Just 5 minutes, no big deal, but big benefits if I start doing them regularly.

I had set up a checklist in my lessons to do the Wim Hoff breathing exercise but I just don't do it. I tell myself it's too long, too intense, and that I'll just get interrupted so why even start? A sad but repeating theme in my life.

So I put a task on my calendar a few days ago to do this while I was sitting at Clayton State. My thinking was that while Sue is working I can concentrate without interruption and actually get it done.

I did it! It works the way I want, sending a notification on my phone that when I tap the notification it starts a timer named "Breathing exercise" set for 5 minutes. I can then start doing my breathing exercise and stop when the timer fires.

When it all worked the way I wanted it to it's like fireworks of happiness were going off in my brain! I guess that's the dopamine of accomplishment rushing through my system.

Love it!

Digital Blasphemy ~

One of the sites that I've looked at for wallpaper for a really long time is digital blasphemy. I've watched Ryan Bliss grow from a novice user of 3D modeling software to a master user and artist creating images in the digital realm that are amazing.

It scares me to think that he may try to drive an AI to start creating images because his images are already so amazing. But I've used his background wallpaper images since 1998 or so. I've joined his website.

I've downloaded his pictures. I've paid Patreon fees and I highly recommend that you follow him on social media or even just on his website. One of the funniest things is how he started.

He had bought a PC and he had 3D modeling software on there and had no idea what it did and he started working with it and fell in love. Now he's gone through multiple iterations with multiple versions of software and different companies to produce some of the most amazing art out on the internet.

Check out his story at https://digitalblasphemy.com

Shed was moved ~

I've witnessed some miracles in my life. People might say that it's silly to consider this a miracle but I still do.

When I was going to college I lived in a small one-bedroom home on my grandparents' property in Florida. There was a lake on the property, and the view of the lake from the field was always enjoyable. It was a small lake, but grandpa always said that it was spring-fed.

The little house had been built so that the sliding-glass doors in the back had a good view across the field of the lake. But people that had lived in the little house put a shed back there, and lots of trees and vines grew up and around the shed so that the view of the lake was almost completely blocked.

While I lived in the little house my grandmother would always comment about how she wished that I could have a better view of the lake. Looking back on it I think she might have been hinting really hard for me to do the work of cleaning the shed out and getting rid of it, but I was going to college 90 minutes away, working a lot hours, and seeing my girlfriend. So I just didn't make any time to do any cleaning or moving.

But I did pray about it. I prayed several times that the shed would be moved. I prayed for me to have a better view of the lake so Grandma would be happy. I prayed.

One afternoon a really big storm blew through while I was at work. Dad told me that the storm was terrible and that it had sounded like there was a tornado closeby. My parents and grandparents were often concerned about tornados because of the all the trailers on nearby property and they were concerned about what would happen if tornado touched down and destroyed the homes in the area.

When I got home after work that night I discovered that the shed was gone! Whatever else the storm had done the shed had been blown away completely. Grandpa said he had never seen anything like this. My dad said it was amazing.

But at some point I realized what I had prayed and that this was an answer to my prayer. A miracle had happened!
 

I love it when we can find evidence that God answers prayers. I firmly believe this was a case of answered prayer. Woohoo!

#thingsivewitnessed #prayer #miracle

Dart throwing ~

I love to throw darts while I'm working out. It started when I was in high school and when I started exercising on a somewhat regular basis. I needed an outlet and I wanted to be strong and my parents bought me a weight set and weight bench that we kept out in the garage.

We had an old dart board out there with darts so I rigged it up with a nail on an old exit door going out the side entrance of the garage. I would throw darts at it in between my sets. I wasn't very good so there were a lot of holes in the door and the frame around the door.

The walls were concrete so there weren't any holes in it. But I enjoyed throwing the darts. I learned to toss them in an arc rather than trying to turn them into bullets and throw them straight at the board. I got to where I could get the drop and get close to a bullseye pretty often. It was a lot of fun!

When I moved away I couldn't have a dart board at my apartment with my wife and that was hard. But when we got our house and we got everything set up, I did set up a dart board out in the garage.

I put it on a big piece of plywood and put cork board on the plywood so that I wouldn't have as many holes in the walls. I didn't get any holes in the walls of the garage there.

But I had a lot of fun flipping through Muscle and Fitness and then throwing some darts and then do a set of weights while my neighbor across the street watched me. (That's a different story.) When we moved to our new house, I put my weights in the basement and I didn't work out for a long time.

But as the kids got older, I started needing some alone time and wanted to get strong again. So I set up my weights and weight bench and I set up the dart board. It was actually a lot of fun. I have a lot of good memories throwing darts with the boys when they would come down and learn how I worked out.

I wasn't very good at teaching that and so they didn't stick around for very long. Plus it was boring for them. They thought I was down there doing heavy weights and I was just doing light weights. Plus me working out was often a quiet time to where I could get alone with my thoughts and puzzle through things.

Throwing darts at a dart board helped me think through a lot. And when I go to the basement to do any kind of exercise, I still tend to head for the dart board and throw the darts a couple of times. Fun!

Categorized days ~

One of the gurus that I have read online for several years posted something recently about not being able to maintain consistency in his actions. It was interesting and he noted the irony of saying that he was inconsistent on a blog that he had posted 24 more than 10 years every week.

I can understand where he is coming from. What I've learned over the years from his post is that he does things in spurts, sets aside a week to develop a theme and a bunch of posts around that theme, and then automates it so that those posts happen without him. So I understand the being inconsistent concern.

Having worked shift work most of my life I dealt with that every week. The shiftwork I did was not like so many other people's schedules, a set of days off with either straight days, straight evening shifts or swings, or straight mid shifts overnight. Or a shift with rotating days off that moved according to the calendar.

No, I called my shiftwork schedule the permanent jet lag schedule. First day back was a late evening shift, second day back was a little bit earlier but still an evening shift usually until 9 PM. Third day back could be another evening shift or could be a dayshift like 84 or 7 to 3. Fourth the back was an early dayshift, as early as six in the morning or seven in the morning. And then the last day was either another early morning shift or a midnight shift where I got off on my fourth day, went home and took a nap, and then went in and worked from 1030 until 630 the next morning. And then I was off for 2 1/2 days and started the whole thing over.

It took me so many years to finally just categorize my days as either a day shift, and evening shift, or a day off. And then to prioritize what I was gonna do depending on what type of day it was.

That helped me a lot!

The other thing that I did was instead of being focused on specific rituals I would just focus on keeping things going in the direction that I wanted them to go. Always choosing to climb the mountain instead of taking so many steps down on them and taking more steps back up. This helped me a lot and led to a much more stable consistency as my kids grew up and moved out of the house and as I got to the schedule that was much more consistent than I've ever had in my life.

Categorize the day and always choose higher. Simple on paper, very challenging to pull off. I still work at!

#shiftwork #us

Effects of the internet ~

As time goes by I fear the effects of the Internet on our society more and more.

This incredible tool has brought people together from across the planet. It's been used to communicate, to improve life, to opening up a good thing to so many good people.

But an attitude many take when using the Internet, especially under-age teenagers, is that it's OK to lie about your age so that you can do whatever you want to do. And you learn as a user of the Internet that you don't have to tell the truth to get something that you want. You learn to maintain your anonymity, but often times it's better to lie or provide information that can be disconnected from you rapidly.

In a lot of cases, especially on social media sites, this leads to people making comments that would get them punched in the mouth if you made those comments in person.

I remember someone had left a comment on a YouTube video about how the creator's mother's birth canal was like a cave and that image haunts me today.

For a long time but wasn't so concerned about is the fact the Internet has the but as it seems deeper and deeper into the cracks of our society concerning the sprouts very dangerous fruit

Here more and more people are caught doing something that there not supposed to be doing the phrase they didn't say I couldn't do that! Because our society thrives on Cortese's blitz court decisions drive real life activities lawyers get paid lots of money to write stupid freezes like caution contents of this cup of hot coffee may be hot.

Where I work we have to have parking stickers to get in the gate. Recently we had one of our employees drive through the gate and be allowed to drive through the gate and parked in a brand-new vehicle that he had bought the night before. No parking sticker at all. When he came up to get a new parking sticker he told us about it and said you didn't think they let me in but I went ahead and pulled up at the ages, waived the right through. He tried it just to see if he would be stopped. And because performance levels so many jobs and the expectations are set so low the repercussions of not just doing a job correctly are hardly ever meted out this guy just made it right through the door secure facility.

I remember we had a exchange student from China for all that was a totally different experience for us as a family, but one of my observations was that he was more than willing to falsify anything to get what he will. When he was told that he had to apply for something he just kinda filled out the application with whatever information he felt like inside it were the parent or guardian was supposed to sign it because he just figured nobody would check.

I know that we've had this throughout our history is a country in the society. They just seem to be getting a lot worse. Because trust is already so low the trust level of our society is going lower and lower and lower nobody trusts their own family and lawlessness continues to use.

I hope that people will strive to do the right thing and be honorable. Especially the people that I'm around. Because that's what I'm doing.

Plating food ~

The continual changing of the English language is perturbing at times. But sometimes it's just funny!

I've been thinking about the word "plate" and how people serve up food. I was thinking about how the English language gets used incorrectly and nouns become verbs.

When someone is taking food out of a dish I learned that was dishing out the food. In the past few years, though, "plating" food has become the way people have said this concept. "I put it on your plate" gets shortened to " I plated the food". "I am plating it for you."

What happens if someone calls a plate a dish? Then they would have to say that I dished food for you and if someone were to say that the others would look at them and wondered if you insulted or talk bad about it? An initial thought would not be that you took food from a pan and put it on a dish so that someone could eat a portion of it.

I guess what's happening is more and more words are visual and everything is in context. But if you don't know the context of how something is being used and you can't see what they're doing if they say they're doing it for you can you keep up with the language?

I guess I need to calendar some time so that I can capture my thoughts on this. Funny!