Football Epilogue

Image by Pexels from Pixabay Friday May 27, 2022. My last day of work for the company I've been with for over 13 years. By most accounts, I should be still heading into the office today. After some toying with the idea of making a job change over much of the pandemic, I had decided to be content. The work was challenging and there were new opportunities to advance the state-of-the-art (in magnetic sensing) for some potentially big customers falling into place. Despite the usual grumbles that come with any workplace, I was happy-ish.  Enter the cliche irony of opportunity presenting itself when not looking. One of my colleagues, and former customers, had moved from his previous company to a much larger entity. As fate would have it, his division was spun off into a private company via a merger. The spin-off was to create investor opportunity for a now hot technology: Quantum computing. The company, Quantinuum, is poised to grow fast and their hardware development side was in need o...

My allergies are making life a challenge right now. Frankly, they're kicking my butt. The more I'm observing myself, the more I'm realizing that this inconvenience of stuffiness, grogginess and overall feeling uncomfortable is really a debilitation on several levels. Sufficient Rest The irritation leads to snoring, plugged sinuses, lots of waking up and late starts. Naturally, this affects the waking hours as I'm less punctual, more groggy resulting in decreased productivity. I spent a good chunk of last night waking up and rolling over, inducing sneezing. I imagine there are some sleep apnea-esque effects as well due to inflamation. Asthma I've dealt with asthma symptoms since I was little. Their severity comes and goes, but is often worst when I'm sick or having some allergic reaction. The asthma symptoms stem beyond air allergies to things I enjoy, mayonnaise is one example. In general, I take a daily medication which, when I'm feeling "...

Step totals from Feb. 1 until now. Red lines separate the data by week and the black line is a linear fit. I'd like to stay on the upward trajectory. I've been using the Samsung Health(tm) feature on my phone over the last little while to track my steps. Yesterday was an event as I amassed over 17,000 steps!  The error in a lot of these days is pretty big as I often rest my phone on the treadmill at the gym, so a wearable might be in order. Even still, there's lots of room for improvement. Ideally, I'd like hold that coveted 10,000 steps/day goal. I'm also itching to play some golf and this is a good way to start getting warmed up for the courses.

This weekend was a lot of fun. I played a round of golf on frozen Lake Minnetonka in what is dubbed the "Chilly Open" . Essentially nine holes of golf on Ice. They had a chili tasting contest and lots of free stuff from the sponsors. It was a perfect (for winter) 30ish degrees F. I look forward to playing in it again next year.

I found an old hard drive with a big archive of old pictures. Thought I'd throw this one up largely for my reference that I've come a long way compared to my biggest.  This is from New Years Eve 2004. I was in full-grad school/study mode and apparently I hadn't figured out what cardio was yet. Note, I picked the most gawd-awful one I could find. There are a few where I make big look good, but I didn't want to set a precedence.

I totally needed it. Tension had built up in my back until I had nerve pain coming down both arms. Now I'm a ball of jelly. The pressure was awesome, I felt the triggering of pain going away. An hour got a good start, but I could have used two.  Now to not re-tense myself too quickly before the next one.