Chubby Racer

  Baby boomers who cried “Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30” during the Vietnam War should be scared to death of millennials. Because, at least among the Twitterati, they hate us — they really, really hate us. Last week I took a beating from younger readers over an essay I wrote lamenting the decline of the “power lunch.” Although it only partly blamed the phenomenon on millennial habits — e.g., preferring avocado and kale to beef and baked potatoes — hundreds of thousands on Twitter either posted or retweeted such insults as “Old man yells at lunch table” (I’m 69), “What’s it like to be an antique?” and “We’re the ones doing the actual lunches while you’re having three-martini lunches.” You lament the decline of the power lunch not because it doesn't exist, but because instead of the privilege of getting to take one being assigned to a particular rank  in the corporate hierarchy...boomers decided it should stay with the indvidual (them) instead.  They drug that privilege up the...

 Just did 100 burpess in 10:19.  Last week I didn't time myself, and it felt like it took 18 minutes.  Guess time doesn't fly when you're suffering.

This post is 2 days late because I forgot to write it.  Been busy in the mornings with other crap.  This metcon was just a 2 mile run with a vest.  It's the longest I've done so far, and I survived!  That's about all I can say about it.

My olympic lifting coach doesn't want me doing waiters carries or farmers carries for the time being, so these workouts are going to get pretty simple.  Today's is" survive a 2 mile run with a plate carrier. Also going to do 4 sets of 3 snatch lift-offs @ 135 per my coach.  Good luck!

I figured I'd post a general life update as I sit here drinking my preworkout and watching hour 19 of Le Mans. Training: I'm drinking preworkout on a sunday morning because I've found a new olympic weightlifting coach, and I see him on saturday and sunday morning, and then he programs for me MWF.  I then program for myself some cardio on Tuesday.  I mentioned that in my previous blog, but figured I'd put that here for completeness. Competitive shooting:  dovetailing with my training because I want to start doing tactical games, I have been doing most of my cardio as runs with my plate carrier as that'll be something that shows up in the tactical games.  As far as the shooting goes...well...I've been to the range once, and it was BAD.  My pistol game needs lots of work.  I have a 3gun match this month which will give me some practice, but I need to get to the range too. I've ordered some rubberized grips that I hope will help me hold onto the damn pis...

Today is a pretty simple one:  1.5 mile run with a 20# vest.  For a little warmup coupled with skills work, try some double unders if you have a jumping rope, and afterwords, attempt some rope climbs if you have a climbing rope. This one I'm not going to time.

Best laid plans of mice and men and all that, Metcon Monday is going to have to become metcon tuesday.  I was finally able to connect with my new olympic lifting coach, and he's writing my programming for me for monday wednesday and friday.  In addition to being in his gym saturday and sunday for technique work, I'm left with 1 day a week to program for myself.  So, stay tuned for tomorrow when we resume posting workouts.

A little background for those that have never heard the word "metcon" before, it's a portmanteau of metabolic conditioning used almost exclusively in the crossfit world.  Speaking of that world, I'm out.  I found a new Olympic lifting coach, so I'm headed down that road again which leaves a cardio gap in my training.  See, metcons are really just cardio disguised as...well, anything else. So, in order to fill the cardio gap, I'm going to be writing my own workouts with a bent towards the type of things I might see in a tactical games competition, as I also intend to start trying that out this year.  These workouts will be out of my garage, and will therefore included pretty limited and/or cheap equipment, and no cardio equipment like a treadmill, rower, or air bike as I don't have any of those.  Consequentially, they should be easy for most to duplicate.  So, without further adieu, I give you the very first workout 12 Minutes as many reps as possib...

I've posted several videos now as I've been able, and sadly still the one with the most views is a very short clip I did before truly "launching" the channel.  It's obvious to me now that computer related videos do WAY better than any other content, and especially short ones that demonstrate how to do a specific thing.  I'll keep doing all the videos I think of as, if anything, the practice for filming and editing which should make the videos that actually do well of a better quality. As to other things going on in life: I've finally SBR'ed my 4th and final registered lower.  I went with a 12.5" 5.56 wylde barrel from criterion.  Criterion claims their chrome lining process is more consistent than everyone elses so they are more accurate, but since I currently (and probably always) will have a red dot on it...I'm not sure I'll ever know for sure.  The real reason I went with criterion is that they seemed to be one of the only manufacture...

It's been a busy little while with people coming to visit for my birthday so I haven't spent as much time on my projects as I would like.  So I've been slowly moving them forward.  So far I've received back 3 of 4 approvals from the ATF, the 4th actually was rejected because I didn't have the entire serial number on the form.  Apparently serial numbers can have spaces so I missed the first few characters.  Based on current timing, I'd expect that to come back in a week. I also finally got around to filing for a concealed/open carry permit.  One of those things I talked about literally years ago, but never actually did.  I'd been talking about it so long, J was actually surprised I'd never done it.  It just seemed more important now that I have a midget to protect, and I even drug the wife to apply with me.  Amazingly, my app and background check cleared within 48 hours of subimitting all the documents so I expect to get my license back in a week...

I usuallu write these from starbucks, but today I'm on the couch on midget-duty. Kendra is off riding her horse.  I guess I could have taken midget to the coffee shop, but he's such a monster eater it ends up being a mess. Been spending a lot of time with Kendra's ar9 as it's having cycling issues.  I just figured out what is going on.  Now I'm just hoping that I can actually fix it without having to ditch the dead foot arms side folder. Also, rage quit a trackday last weekend because I was very slow.  One of the reasons why is I basically can't get the car to downshift to second, and when I do, it won't upshift to third.  There's a slim chance I can fix this with a new clutch cable, but I'm betting it'll take a new tranny.

I've "launched" my youtube channel officially.  My first intentional video: 22 views.  This, obviously, pales in comparison to my unintentional video that has 11k views and counting.  That video was garbage, but the content was useful.  I guess my first on-purpose was garbage AND useless.  It's going to take me a while to figure out what people want to see, but I'm enjoying the process of filming the videos (it's basically just me doing what I was going to do anyway with a camera on), and even moreso learning about video editing.  I'm interested to see where this goes! 

Well, maybe not exactly vlog.  I've decided to try to create a youtube channel.  More accurately, the youtube channel that I already have that has a few videos from trackdays, a few videos of my wife's horse, and one really shitty "shakey cam" video I took with my iphone is going to get regular content.  Why?  Well, that really shitty iphone video is now up to 11k views.  Apparently, if you make a video on something that interests people they'll watch it in "droves" even if the vid quality is shit.  That particular video happened to be a quick one on how to enable a feature on a computer that a lot of tech youtubers MENTIONED, but never demonstrated how to ENABLE.  I think I have a few other ideas of videos of that nature I can post, and I'm also going to start filming a lot of everything else I do to see what people are interested in.  One of my old coworkers seems to think I do enough interesting stuff that at least some part of my life will be ...

The wife and I have decided to invest in raw land.  To be honest, we've been looking at this for over a year now.  Initially we attempted to find something close enough to downtown Houston that I could, with a rough commute, continue to work at my current position.  Prices anywhere within about 90 miles of Houston are absurd, though.  We'd spend about as much as a nice suburban home just for the land! Consequentially, we gave up on the keep-my-job approach and started looking elsewhere.  If it was going to be elsewhere, we wanted a place with a winter, and if I wasn't going to be able to keep my current job...why not somewhere with mountain views?  Also, I wanted a lot that was rectangular to the point that I would be able to shoot 1000 yds on my own property.  We looked for a lot that was at least 50 acres.  That amount is relatively arbitrary, but seemed like a good number. We ended up finding a lot in far Northern Wyoming that was 70 acres,...

Yesterday my son hit 4 months old, and shit is getting really interesting.  The biggest thing is he's starting to take long naps.  But developmentally he's also starting to reach for things, and make noises at himself which is great.  We as parents are starting to figure out the difference between gas pain crying and tired crying which means that there's much less of the former. As for me, my olympic lifting is going very poorly.  I don't know what's going on, but the little muscular endurance I had built is GONE.  A session used to be 21 reps of either clean or snatch with ever increasing weights.  Friday I made it to 8 before my hamstrings cratered.  Not sure if this is diet, stress, or just old manness, but it needs to be investigated. On the weapon projects front, I made a post to www.reddit.com/r/ar10 about my 4 MOA palmetto state armory AR10.  The sub was incredulous that the rifle was that bad, and suggested I try a few different loads ...

Despite what may or may not be happening elsewhere in North America, Houston is still hot.  Not just hot, but fucking hot.  Why make the distinction?  Because fucking hot requires a/c always.  Regular hot means I can drive the jeep around with the doors off, and not look like I swam to my destination.  The change from fucking hot to hot is coming, though, and I'm trying to find time to get the leaf springs on the jeep replaced in time for it.  So far, have after 6 weeks, I've found time to replace 2.  On the bright side: she no longer sits lopsided.  I'm starting to settle into the job and parenthood.  Getting out of banking was the right call both for me from a phyiscal and mental health standpoint as well as for my family.  My kid will actually know who I am.  He's growing fast, and is hilariously mega gassy. The olympic lifting is coming along.  It's such a slow process.  There's no breakthroughs, it's just tiny i...

Welp, I am no longer an employee of Wells Fargo.  On a hormonal level, I don't think that has set in yet.  It's funny to think that I might be LESS stressed at this new job WITH A NEWBORN.  Yea, Wells was bad.  There was literally no way to unplug from that place.  They expected you to be on call 24/7 except 1 weekend a month...that they would cancel at their convenience. So I guess the thing to do now is refocus on personal pursuits.  To me, this means my fitness and my guitar playing.  Fitness means signing up for crossfit again (did friday), and clearing some clutter out of the garage for more workout space.  This brings us to the title:  Last week I tried and failed to rebuild the lawn mower.  The hardest part of that rebuild was getting the self propel drive pulley off the crankshaft.  It had to move about 4" down a shaft that had swelled with rust.  It literally took every once of bicep I had and several days of pain to...

The wedding went off really well.  The worst thing about the whole thing was that the cake wasn't nearly what Kendra expected it to be.  The jeep and baby Felice survived 2 days of VERY bouncy terrain.  I'm going to have to replace all the leaf springs, but I had kind of expected that anyway.  Luckily the previous owner gave me a set, and I've spent the last few weeks pressing out the shot rubber bushings in them, and installing urethane replacements.  Let me tell you: that's a bitch without a hydraulic press.  I nigger rigged something with a 2-tooth gear puller that worked, but it was a LOT of muscle to get it done. Simultaneously, I've been attempting to rebuild the motor on my mower.  I got that back in today and...no compression.  I don't know if the head is warped or if there's just no valve seal, but it's toast.  Kind of embarassing and a giant waste of money. Now that the mower project is done, I can go get the jeep out of the loc...

Well, sort of.  Or not really at all.  Tomorrow starts the road trip to our wedding destination.  Of course, I'm going to try to do Murph first at Kendra's request.  That'll certainly make 12 hours in the car fun as everything tightens up. I hit a new PR in snatch yesterday: 110 lbs (49.9 kgs).  If "successful" snatch still feels like a complete mistake, and my coach telling me to "get back on the bar, and do it 2 more times just like that" proves it as I never can, The jeep is as done as it's going to get.  The vacuum actuated front axle disconnect is still a question mark in my mind, and I guess it always will be until it's gone.  The t-case shifter linkage is too, but that's a 30 second trail fix. I loaded up Trooper, my athlon fx machine, into the truck.  Thanks to wild software issues, it ended up being my most reliable machine after finally reading up on how to OC properly.  Who would have thought with as much trouble as I had wit...

It has been over a year since my last blogpost.  Cray.  I'll blame that, as I do everything, on my job.  the entirety of my life has taken a backseat to this gig.  So.  Many. Hours.  And it will never get better. Anyway, in the tiny fraction of my waking hours that ISN'T spend in my cubicle, life has changed a lot. I'm engaged Baby due in a few months I (or I guess really, we) bought a jeep wrangler.  In all honesty, it's kind of a turd because it had been left to rot in the PO's driveway for quite some time, but amazingly there's nothing seriously wrong.  Sure, the front driveshaft was rolling around in the bed area, the transfer case linkage wasn't connected, and the battery had no hold-down, but those were all easily addressed.  The fate's have aligned and we are having some unusually cool weather for late April in Houston so I'm currently driving her (we named her Ouray as that's where we're getting married and the reason w...