Back To The Stone Age

Tonight’s PT was Stone Age simple: man lifts rock. Just a simple 10 minutes of Turkish Get Up with the 32 kg kettlebell.

Still hurts my right shoulder a bit. I’m just stimulating it to heal… 🙂

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Random Pic With Friend In It

Is that my mate Rob in the background of this photo on the Utilikilts FB page? 😀

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Being Ready For Fight Or Flight

Great idea to be prepared, have fun, and get a great workout all at the same time:

Wired’s ZombieFit Workout

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Uncle Bill’s Standard Operating Procedures For Knife Combat

The following SOP addresses the Procedures that shall be followed when short bladed combat is imminent or already occuring.

The Procedures are arranged as Plans A through D, with Plan A the default Procedure. Contingency Plans B through D are listed in order of preferential deployment.

Plan A

You shall:
1. Bring to bear a gun, the caliber of which shall be no less than the diameter of your little finger (males) or middle finger (females).
2. Bring all the friends with guns you can manage.
3. Apply tool(s) until desired result occurs*.

Plan B

You shall:
1. Bring to bear a sword, and/or machete, and/or long heavy stick.
2. Apply tool(s) until desired result occurs*.

Plan C

You shall:
1. Control the body part of the opponent that has or potentially may acquire a sharp object (if both hands of the opponent, for instance, come up with sharp objects, it is incumbent upon you to control both).
2. Bring to bear your own sharp object and apply directly to the opponent’s body, point first, as deep as possible and in a percussive manner.
3. Repeat Step 2 until desired result occurs*.
4. If you are denied opportunity to use the point, use the edge in the following manner: apply the edge at a shallow angle and, while keeping contact with the opponent’s body with the blade, slice *away* from yourself in a filleting motion.
5. Re-attempt Steps 2-4 until desired result occurs*.

Plan D

You shall:
1. Follow Step 1 of Plan C.
2.. Similar to Step 2 of Plan C, bring your own improvised object or hard body part to bear against the opponents face, until they agree to give you their own sharp object.
3. Follow Steps 2-5 of Plan C.

Recover.

SOP Note 1: These Procedures indicate a MINIMUM of actions to be taken, in the preferred order, when involved in the scenario.
SOP Note 2: These Procedures cannot hope to encompass the scope of every possible option. Creativity and initiative are encouraged, provided the main content in the order in which it was given are followed.
SOP Note 3: The writer(s) of this SOP cannot be in any way held liable for any negative results gained by following these Procedures either explicitly or approximately. Use these Procedures at your own risk.

* Desired result = cessation of aggressive activity by opponent.

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Into The Zone – Nice Rack

I’m always a sucker for a nice rack… 😛

Zone Rack Pix One

Zone Rack Pix Two

Brother Dahood took these pix of some bikes and their interesting racks.

I likes. Next time I head out to The Zone and have to fight off mutants and/or zombies and/or Tim Thomerson and his band of rag-tag adventurers/pirates whilst looking for my Cherry 2000, I want this.

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Express Post

I want you to take a look at this and marvel. See text below:

Wed, June 24, 2009

Re: Order Number: xyz

Thank you for ordering from Xpress Redi Set Go TM. Your order has been shipped.

Date Shipped: 06/23/09
Via: Express Shipping
Tracking Number: 23451325

Your order has shipped with express shipping and should arrive within 7-10 business days from the day you placed your order. If you would like to track your order, please click the link or copy https://spportal.fedex.com/sp/track.jsp into your browser window. Just copy and paste your tracking number to see where it is.

We sincerely appreciate your business.

Customer service is available 9am-6pm Eastern Time, Monday through Friday.

Xpress Redi Set Go TM Customer Service Team
800-357-9213
customerservice@gtxpress.com

Last week I ordered a thing I saw on TV, something called the Xpress Redi Set Go. I was actually watching TV in my motel room in the Springs and an infomercial of this thing came on, which looks like a good replacement for my George Foreman Grill (GFG). As you may or may not know, one day a few weeks ago I was going to grill some steak; when I put the steak on the GFG, little to my knowledge the little plastic pad on the bottom of the steak went onto the grill with it.

Yuck! It totally melted into the grill (and the steak). With a tear in my eye, I tossed the steak into the trash, and later tried to remove the plastic off of the grill. I never got satisfied with the result… so I told Chris not to use it, and I haven’t used it since. I really like the grill, but no way do I trust this one (aromatized plastic–mmmmm!).

If you think you can clean it up to your standards, by the way, I’ll give it to you. Otherwise, it’s going to the dump.

So, anyway, I figured I’d just get another one, newer and/or bigger, perhaps, though the size seemed okay my normal applications.

However–back to the story–I saw this on TV and thought, “Cool, just what I need, and it looks like it even has more functionality than the GFG!” So I ordered it.

Okay–note that I ordered it last Thursday or Friday. With the “Free Express Shipping!” Also, I ordered via phone, and nowadays they make you go through–I’m not kidding–an extra 15 min to half an hour of a person’s automated voice saying, “And in addition, for 19.95 a month, you can subscribe to her recipes. You get the first month free, and you can keep it. After that you can cancel at any time, or send it back and you won’t have to pay for it.”

And I say–“No,” of course. Then the voice says, “Don’t say no, yet! Remember, you can cancel at any time, and blahblahblahblah…”

So I say, “No,” and then they go on to the next thing for, like I said, 15-30 minutes, until I start cutting “her” off with a belligerent “NO!” And they finally say, “Thank you for your order, and we’ll express this to you right away.” Click. Must’ve had a voice stress monitor or some logic that said if “he starts cutting off the voice, then he’s finally had enough…”

Anyway, the shaggy dog of the post is to let you notice that:
a) I ordered last week, and they’re just now getting it shipped, and
B) they say I’ll be getting it in 7-10 days. “Business days!” What sort of “Express Shipping” is that? It had *better* have been free! Holy Geez…

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It’s the ‘Stache, I Tell You

I was just at my friend Nicki’s, and her cousin Amanda’s combined birthday party. Apparently, Tom Selleck is well thought of here:

Tom Selleck cake at Nicki and Amanda's birthday party.

😀

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BBB

I guess there is something to be said about being so annoying that people will solve your problem just to shut you up.

My friend and former co-worker N called this the “BBB” principle, for “Better Business by Bugging.” I politely didn’t point out that that’s actually four “B’s”. 😀 Anyways…

And she was masterful at constantly, but cheerfully and politely bugging someone until they finally got her the info or service that they owed her.

Last night, after making a trip to Chantilly, I called her to see if her and her spousal unit wanted to meet for some grubbage before I had the normal Friday night longsword class. They did, and we agreed to meet in Manassas at a Red, Hot, and Blue. I am not familiar at all with that area of Northern Virginia, so I asked her for directions to get there. She tried, and grew frustrated, and had her husband W call me. We went back and forth a couple of times until we had points of reference I could understand, and then, boom, I was off. This reflects similar interchanges that happen every now and then.

Made it to the RHB no problem. Turned out to be a quick and easy trip. After a bit, they showed up. Whilst we were eating, they mentioned that they needed to go over to the nearby Sears and pick up something, and would I help? Of course, sez I. Love being helpful and useful.

We go over there and W says that he’s looking to get a flatscreen for the home office, etc., so we go about looking at them while N wanders off. I’m also looking at TV’s too, ‘coz the one I have is an old tube, not super huge, that was given to me by one of my brother’s friends. It’s so old that the only connection to it is through coax. It does have a remote, but doesn’t work (yes, even with batteries). The resolution’s not too good, and we can’t get the captioning to go off. So yeah, I’ve been thinking about getting a newer TV.

As we’re looking about, Nancy comes back and say’s, “Here ya go!”

I’m like, “uh, what?”

“It’s a GPS. Like the one we got recently, but not quite as big. The Garmin. We love it.”

“What? No way!”

“Yup. Now you won’t have to call us and bug us whenever we’re going to meet somewhere!”

And the TV? Just a ruse. It’s been a long time since I’ve been suckered like that.

Ah, friends. Gotta love ’em. Thanks again, guys. 😀

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Hooker Boots

I loooove a good review, usually of the ripping the movie apart variety, but done in a funny way. Here’s one I found that was pretty hysterical, similar to two of my all-time favorite reviews, the one of The Perils of Gwendoline, and the one for John Ringo’s Paladin of Shadows series.

Now, understand, even though this review had me guffawing, I LOVE this movie. For a lot of reasons that don’t make sense to anyone, really, but it’s one of my favorites. Unfortunately, I seem to be the only one, so I can’t enjoy it with anyone. Ah, more’s the pity…

But for your viewing pleasure, here’s the trailer:

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Watt?

The other day, I forget what brought it up–but I ended up looking up some formulae for power, both electrical and units of work. I found them on Wikipedia, and ended up writing a couple of them in a little pocket calendar I had bought. When we were kids, my dad used to bring us those from the plant (Dupont plastics plant) where he worked. Little pocket calendar; planners as they might be called these days.

As a kid, I thought it was the coolest thing ever, with all sorts of cool conversion charts, handy mathematical formulae for engineers, that kind of thing. And–maps!! The only thing cooler I had as a kid was a circular slide rule with all these neat formulae on the back of it. Okay, so I never said I was normal… 😀

Well anyway, the little calendar I got is pretty cool. I had seen some moleskine calendar/planner books at Borders before Christmas. I was thinking about getting some for my nephews, but I got other stuff. And I thought about getting one myself. For some reason I’ve been looking for a handy, pocket-sized way to start planning/keeping abreast of my appointments. I guess because people will mention stuff to me, and I always have to say that I’ll get back with them, because I don’t know how their invite fits into my overall schedule.

I also wanted one that had some good spaces for taking notes. And you usually don’t see sort of a journal plus a scheduler together like they had them. These moleskines *were* nice, with a choice of daily or weekly paged calendars, *and* space for note-taking. So that I can write down tasks and such, and thoughts, drawings, reminders, etc. I didn’t get one then, because I was pressed for time and they’re a bit expensive.

My brother got one of the City moleskines, and it’s really neat. I looked around for some of D.C., but to no avail.

Later though, when I looked for them at a few different Borders, they didn’t have them. I searched, but did not find. I saw all sorts of others. Finally, I decided to just buy a cheap one and try it out. It’s pretty neat, a little what-seemed-like-no-name UK brand from Johnson Diaries, Ltd. Hmm. I just looked them up on the web. Guess they’re known out there somewhere…

In any case this one has maps! And a little room for notes, some conversion charts, etc. But what it was really missing was some of those handy formulae for power, energy, voltage, etc (sometimes it’s handy to know, for my job). Oh–that’s why I was looking those up… I remembered I wanted to put them in the little pocket diary. So, I went to Wikipedia, looked up a few formula, and wrote them down on the inside cover. Some of these, I used to know, but disuse has mangled them in my mind. I figure this way, if I pull them out every now and again, I’ll have them down permanently and not have to worry ’bout it.

Anyway–cut to last night. I worked out, as documented in previous posts. Just for funsies, after the workout I got to wondering what the wattage was of one of the lifts I was doing, the snatch.

So, I pulled out the little diary, used the conversion from force to watts. I used the 16 kg bell, I swing it through about a 2 meter arc, and it takes at most, a second.

So the formula is:

1 kg x meters squared
—————— = 1 W
seconds squared

So, inserting the values I have it’s:

16 kg x (2m x 2m)
—————- = 64 W
1 second

I don’t quite remember how many of those I did in a minute, but seems like 25 could be about right (that’s much less than one a second, of course):

64 W x 25 = 1600 W = 1.6 kW (kilowatts)

So, it appears you would expend about 1.6 kW doing around a minute of those. I didn’t do the calculation for long cycle clean and jerk. It takes a little longer than a second to go from the bottom of the swing to the top position, but you have to rack in between, and sometimes I stay in the rack for at least a second. But it isn’t constant anyway, so I don’t know that I would get a good calculation.

I have also computed tonnage for my other days, though lately I’ve not been worried about it. Mainly because I’ve been going by time, not by count (I need someone to count for me when I do longer sets. You know, more than three… 😉 ). But out of curiosity:

16 kg x 25 snatches = 400 kg

400 kilos = 881.84905 lbs

Let’s add that to say, 10 reps for the 32 kg (for the one minute), and 15 for the 24 kg (one minute) and 20 from the last LCCJ from yesterday @ 16 kg for a minute:

32 kg x 10 = 320 kg (of course)
24 kg x 15 = 360 kg
16 kg x 20 = 320 kg (again), plus the snatch set:
16 kg x 25 = 400 kg (snatches), add these up, and you get
——————-
1400 kg = 3,086.4717 lbs

Call it 3,086 lbs. One and half tons. Mind you, I’m only estimating for what each set of both arms resulted in. But that’s, what… seven minutes of work. Not too bad for a workout that only used three little weights. And that doesn’t include the pre-fatigue, post fatigue, or velocity sets, which have their own work expenditure.

Anyway, that’s what you get for being a geek…

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