Nerd Fitness Plan
There are many voices online — especially this time of year — giving advice on how to loose weight and get fit. As someone who’s been tubby and/or weak his entire life, I’ve listened to and tried much of this advice. They all absolutely work. But, they are not sustainable.
Observations from the Newly Fit
I thought it might be worthwhile to document my observations of what it’s like to be fit from the perspective of someone who never has been.
Updated Training Routine
Since my last post in October, I’ve made some slight modifications to my strength training routine. I’ve got a new lifting routine that I’d like to share.
Strength Training Snack Routine
Since August of 2024 I’ve been on quite the health journey. I started walking on my desk treadmill that month and, starting January 2025, committed to hitting 50,000 steps per week.
Since January, I’ve consistently exceeded my 50k steps and have had quite the physical transformation. I’ve lost at least 15 pounds and have seen my waist go down by a few inches. I have more energy, my joints hurt less, and — even with an incredibly difficult work situation — my depression and mood are under control. I’m still amazed that something as simple as slowly walking while I’m in meetings has had such a positive effect.
Read more...Daily Supplements
For several months, I was taking this mixture of supplements daily. My goal in this mixture was to target imflamation, depression, and increase my energy and metabolism. I saw great results.
Health Plan Success
The last fifteen years have been a wild health ride for me.
I entered my mid-20s at nearly 200lbs. Which, when you’re only 5'5" is a rather unhealthy place to be.
Thankfuly, my early 20s found me fully immersed in anarcho-capitalism, LewRockwell.com, and — of course — Ron Paul. Radical libertarianism aside, LewRockwell.com in the late aughts was rife with posts and essays on the benefits of the various paleo diets. As one does in their 20s, I went all in.
Read more...Error in Secure Object
Recently I’ve been working with secure data sharing in Snowflake.
We’ve not yet shared our data using a normal private share to another Snowflake account, but I’ve tested everything. Using SIMULATED_DATA_SHARING_CONSUMER and setting the consumer id to my expected account, I was getting data back from the share and everything was working fine.
Today, however, we got a request to share our data to a managed reader account. I created the account, logged in, copied the share into a database, and could see all of my secure views. But, when I went to query the view, some of the views that were previously working, suddenly were not. All I got back was an ominous “Error in secure object.”
Read more...Analogue Mornings
While 2024 was a year of great things in ministry1 and my personal health2, it was also a year of a lot of stress and change in all areas of my life.
Because of this — and, naturally, my deep sinful nature — many of my good morning habits fell to the way side. Though I had banished social media from my phone, set it to B&W, disabled recommended videos & shorts on YouTube, and quite a few other things, by the end of 2024 my mornings were rubish.
Read more...My Dream Minimalist Setup
As is pretty apparent, I’ve been thinking a lot about digitmal minimalism here lately.1 This morning on my walk, I pondered a little what my perfect device setup would be, and I think I’ve got it. Here’s what I want.
- An iPad mini with the Daylight DC1’s screen.
- An iPhone mini with the same screen, no app store (only Safari, iMessage, Apply Pay, Wallet, Mail, Calendar), and a single small camera.
The more I think on it, this would totally solve my many problems.2
Read more...The Fallen Apple
Over the last two years, I’ve completely rethought my use of technology and done a lot of work to simplify my life and avoid distractions and unnecessary stress. A major component of this change has been rethinking how my iPhone is configured.
As it stands today, I’ve deleted all social media apps1, disabled all notifications, switched the phone permanently to silent, disabled the web browser, removed badges from app icons, and uninstalled Slack. Further, until 8a each day, my phone is set to black & white. As configured right now, I’ve pared my phone down to be an engine for sending texts, referencing e-mails, checking the family calendar, reading RSS articles, and taking photos.
Read more...1200 Miles in a Tesla
A few weeks back I had the opportunity to drive a Tesla Model 3 for 1200 miles roundtrip from Nashville to western Pennsylvania. It was a great trip and gave me some clarity around electric cars and what the future might hold. So, continue below and I’ll give you the good, the bad, and my thoughts on what the future of the American road trip might be.
Read more...Take a Walk: 20 Year Review
This morning while I was listening to my top Spotify listens for 2022, Judah & the Lion’s song Take a Walk hit me in a special way.
In the chorus it says:
Let’s go take a walk downtown/ and act like we’re the heroes/ that we dreamed we’d be when we were young/ we can be the giants/ in the streets we learned to drive in/ and we’ll ride away into the sun
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Serverless on LocalStack
I’ve recently had occasion to start writing a series of services on the AWS stack using the Serverless Framework. Serverless is a great framework, but I really don’t like having to deploy stuff to AWS to test DynamoboDB streams, SQS queues, etc. That’s where LocalStack comes in. LocalStack lets you host an entire AWS ecosystem locally so you can test “all the things” without actually deploying anything.
LocalStack works great, but I discovered there are a few undocumented things that you’ll need to know to get your stuff working correctly locally.
Read more...Twitter Mute Filters
Without explanation, above are the keywords, hashtags, and clients I’m blocking on Twitter.
If a topic doesn’t apply to you and/or does nothing but make you anxious, stressed, and/or angry you can block it. If Twitter isn’t bringing you joy or edifying you, it ain’t worth it. No one deserves a space on your timeline!
Z Shell One-Year Update
I’ve been using Z Shell for over a year now and I’ve been very pleased with it. Honestly, I should have moved off macOS’s antiquated default Bash ages ago. Below is an update on where my .zshrc is sitting a while down the road.
Oh My ZSH Plug-ins
I keep the Oh My ZSH plug-ins pretty light. Partially because I want to keep startup times low and partially because I can’t remember the commands anyways.
Read more...
