Thu 16 Jul 26: So... not sure what the deal is with Scamazon -- in a good and / or usual-suspects way Used to be, when you bought things there, all orders would ship on their own timeframes. Someone at Scammie figured out, well if Fyooch is going to order three things 3d apart from each other... why not redirect the shipments from vendors / other warehouses to a central one, where the separate orders can be concatenated into one then shipped to his flaky arse? Saves us headache three ways: 1) former longer-transit items can ride with shorter ones, but shortest ones now get backburnered to mid-schedule -- customer won't care because they'll get a whole bunch of their separate orders all at once with minimal tardines; 2) saves USPS having to deliver all those separate orders in their separate packaging on-time, so it doesn't reflect back on Scammie; 3) free shipping will cost less, esp to AK, Guam and Puerto Rico, as most of the jinking getting orders glommed together, will happen domestically. If that's the driver behind what I'm seeing, well at least this time they've included a benefit for the customer this time I've had so many single orders arrive late, they've stopped apologising for it -- typical of a 'where else you gonna shop?' attitude so ingrained on this island. So glad that's done with... but almost behooves one to order two things a day or so apart, on purpose, if this is what results. And that's part of the problem. If Scammie were properly insuring every order fulfilled exactly as planned, this kind of pivot wouldn't be necessary, thus never implemented. But at the scale Amazon operates at, and the rather flippant things it's funding with its imperfect-and-fine-with-in market dominance? Impossible. But since it's still raking in tens of billions globally, not as if attention to detail has relevance anymore -- not for them anyway. So rather chuffed my furthest-arriving order with a former date of July 27th is now forecast to be here tmw (nah, Sat or Mon -- still a full week ahead of what the first claim was)... if any of that's remotely gonna happen (and Scammie has no qualms about reneging to Hawai'i addresses from exp), a genuine step forward in making its system better. Some am really glad will be here early, as really need them Oh -- and just talked to a Costco rep in-store today -- as far as what the red-vests know, Costco is discontinuing their blue nitrile gloves from Kirkland. Wait -- so now I have to use automotive nitrile gloves to protect myself? Was just gushing about the amazing new properties of these new blue gloves (resistant to chemo drugs, fit better), and they're gone. Wt f***... May be able to get them online still, will check after this post That were a kick in the nads hoping bodywork would be more safe for this prac, given rising temps are making bugs more aggressive in a dominant post-truth society in this country Bodywork-ish... took a walk this AM with a much-less-aggressive route... and feel pretty good. Rather tight in the R hip, so did some aligning and found a TrP forming in the posterior edge of the gluteus medius, a notorious muscle for them, when starting new exercise routines with lower body. Glad to see this the only negative from the new walking location -- have already been scouting out new ones for a future when each 30-min walk will be close to a mini-hike. Our ancestors didn't know the difference even 2 generations ago (for me, not a Zoomer) -- so no f***ing whining Fyooch -- just head down, get it done Need to watch the knee tho -- esp wonky today, having done that half-max walk rather tired and out of it (didn't sleep great last night). Still did the job so not going to equate it to the glute ache... but the closest thing besides that, to putting a hitch in this streak of progress
Fri Jul 17 26: Weird day... Oh weather was fine, as tends to be in the lulls between hurricanes on the space station this time of year. But what struck me were the strange equivalent of catching every red light there is Normally AM commute is okay, card punchers will always speed rather than custodian their lives to get to work on time, and tweakers are a fact of life until they inevitably f*** up and get taken off the road (if I had a video record of the habitual brinksmanshippers, then their sudden disappearance from the commute... it'd be dozens in a year, easy ). But today... just seemed no matter what I did, always a fly to dip its little turd-covered proboscis into soup in my spoon... Had two med appts today... and whilst literally starting a fast for one, receptionist phones me and says the tech doing my work called in sick, sorry need to reschedule -- I'd had this appt for a month, and 2h prior to appt, kiboshed because someone didn't wanted another 3d weekend FFS of course were first reaction... but got downgraded after every other thing I'd plan to do, would be in some way ruined. Morning tea made ignoring every single customisation... construction blocking every path to my secret parking space for the AM walk, but one thru a parking lot of traffic on maze-like narrow side streets... somehow misjudging the time for the walk I'd supposedly carefully curated, only to find it were almost 6 mins over... just snafu'd into a FUBAR-esque* comedy of slapschitck... That said, the 1st -- and now only -- appt at the docs, was okay. Where it seemed to linger in F'BAR was the discovery my release of med data to another provider, were somehow lost... due to a data entry snafu That and the same source of this human error, had also input other info in another situ wrong, causing a cascade of emails, referrals to specialists, and other admin bureaucratic flotsam, completely unnecessary (had wondered what were causing the smol flood of appts last year... f2f meetings with docs I hadn't requested seeing, only to politely shake my head at the rather concerning list of red flags in their hands -- and here I was, thinking the VA were getting its act together somehow, as hadn't seen this much fuss over my health in yrs. So if there's one org in my life I don't want this kind of waste plaguing, it's the Veteran's Administration -- the wait for vets in real need of svcs but refused due to those kinds of mistakes... well, was legion for a reason. But got to meet some sharp new PCPs to replace a quite good retired one, so were pleasant if not, you know... competent Aw, that's too harsh, honest mistake by a normally on-the-ball person. Just another chalk mark for today's motley list of flubs and inauspicious tidings... Forgot my drink at the VA, already too far gone to turn around and get it... so had to get it again (luckily this time were made correctly). Must have the mark on me today, thought to myself. Traffic were also a bit more ornery than expected, and defo did not get mpg in the 90s Where's this taking me to... Rolled up on the USPS truck in front the Dejoy-Let's-Consolidate-20 Mailboxes-10-Steps-From-Your-Door-to-4-100m-to-300m-Away-With-Your-Taxes mail hut ... and remembered I might have a package. Won't hurt to check. Wait-wait-wait -- big box. Could it be...? It did. Had an armful of breakfast to eat, but time to go get my new phone sorted So Scammie delivered, literally. Will have to mark this on a calendar somewhere To make long story short-er... every phone migration has its bugs, this no exception. But holy moly -- not only does this thing blaze on its listed Normal performance setting (with all my crap loaded on it)... but given the headaches endured at my carrier for this once-in-4-5y ritual... this one was by far, the most painless. Now I understand what the universe was doing this morning -- giving me a hard time, in exchange for a boon So yeah -- still have a couple nits to pick and sort to get my old experience back. But 97% of it's done, sitting right here in my hand... and 2%'s waiting for the unique situation to toss a banana peel underfoot. So effectively done and done, in 1 hr. I've sat 6 in the carrier store after waiting in line 2, to do this not that long ago -- 5y ago was twice as long to do as today. Wow Turned off as many AI features as possible, but of course can't do anything about certain ones, as blocking it off ruins a chunk of your experience. Why in the hell should access to camera by the AI be needed for diagnostics access to something other than the camera? But plan view, this phone's pretty snazzy (esp its photo features) -- gonna play with the new toy a bit before clients this afternoon --- * unless you're in Bastogne in '44 with scrotal frostbite and artillery exploding the trees above you days on end, nothing's actually FUBAR
Sat 18 Jul 26: Boy the rising fuel prices must be glassfibre in some of these onlies' shorts -- what's the matter, your ICE-only making you shell for $5.50 bathwater every 4d, 3d, or with the 'dozers, everyday? Driving not like a douchenozzle in a hybrid, suddenly seem like wisdom...? Truth told right lane's filled with onlies, and many many crossies as plaguing the rest of the country. But they either have enough income where already-decent driving's keeping them in black... or just going a reasonable bit slower. This latter group's defo slowed the pace ~3 - 4 mph -- not too bad unless it's one person with a bunch of more triggerable right-laners behind them. Eventually they break, they always do. But 5 - 7 mph slower... I'm coming around too Everyone has their limit for dawdling... and my own driving in the 5G tries to balance pace and throttle application, speed and mpg. About 55 - 58 seems the sweet spot now... and boy are the Gonzales' hating life. Drugs and booze cost money, after all --- Got my covid shot at the VA yesterday -- thank heck it's Pfizer, as the last Moderna shot I were forced into years back resulted in 7 full days feeling like the flu; Pfizer feels more like not sleeping right. So to stack both symptoms atop each other (got only 6h sleep, an hour short for typical)... yeah felt a bit raw on the walk this AM... Decided to change up start time too, as sun rising earlier than a month ago. So rather than get breakfast and tea first, just got tea and headed for Wailuku... Weekend, so not representative of the rest of the week... but can't imagine the lack of people doing their robotic, least-effort driving / stinkies walking around, can be much better than after sunrise (but before it gets hot). Usual start time's just at the edge of the sun blazing down (if obliquely -- but land doesn't care, still heats up and gets muggy)... so this roughly 45-min-earlier stint, ahhh what a relief. Quieter, less dust in the air from cars milling about, and as long as one is wary of cloud pileup on the mtns... dry yet cool. Have noticed, tho... a walk route what seems at a glance mostly straight south, feels a lot shorter than it actually is. This is one of the benefits I wanted my flabby-arse uncle-body to grind against and adapt to -- traverse of a path full of even slight elevation changes really puts lower body to the test. First week felt as if 30 mins were too easy... don't feel that way today (even taking into acct lack of sleep and vax s/es). In fact this path, unless were hoofing it roadmarch-style, easily exceeds 35 mins, including the final climb to my secret parking spot. Which is somewhat boggling given its superficial simplicity... On road again -- feels like people are, as with the initial fuel price hike... driving petulantly, as if driving more douche-y, will somehow solve the issue of less distance for the same money. Luckily the majority of drivers aren't these young people, to a person -- welp, like I keep saying from exp, guess they've not tiring of f***ing up yet Oh -- had sensed the 5G were a bit less efficient for some reason -- which timeslipped me back to being a moto tech, and having a senior clue me into a cruel reality: your ICE's not happy, nothing's happy on the bike / ATV / watercraft. So you eff up a carb synch, or put in too much oil... charging system suffers and you get trickle-down flat batteries more often. As long as that ICE's what spins that rotor on a stator, ICE health means electrical health. Something about tip-in felt off the past few days... so decided to take a nice warming drive further south than home... and stop at a place with a decently-level car park, to check oil level. When the car's ICE temp is cool (as 5Gs will always be unless you drive them enough to trip the ICE on)... its thin oil's more compact than when warm. This is esp true in an only, where the mill's on all the time until turned off. So not as much compensation for heat in the oil during a swap for a 5G... but there is still some, given it's not even 20w-like when warm... So used my usual 3 - 4mm shy of full mark on dipstick, just to prevent overfilling (windage which I've already dealt with on this car from a past swap). Protip: if you want to take a smol amt of oil out after an overfill, and don't want to crack the drain plug open... just loosen the oil filter, drain what you want quite neatly vs. messing w\ drain plug, then retighten. If your third point makes diamonds about oil supply, spin off the whole oil filter, fill it back up with fresh oil, then check dipstick for < full. Lot messier, tho Apparently that weren't enough -- as after a 15-mi sortie w\ nice hot oil, the stick showed 3 - 4mm shy -- meaning it needed more. Could've sworn I'd added fresh oil to the new filter doing the swap a few weeks ago... maybe I didn't add enough. Oh yeah -- now tip-in's the same instant drive forward on the ICE it used to be, and doesn't feel like someone's in the car with me, as poor windage feels like. Don't think I damaged anything, just the oil's so thin unless there's sufficient pressure, gonna be more blowby -- bad news for oil longevity. But since recovered nicely on just shy of a cup more oil (still not over the full mark hot), guess the M20A-FXS is pretty fussy about oil level. Good thing its owner's also fussy So... new phone feels heavier than the old despite nearly identical dimensions and fewer physical features so most of its higher price points to its AI-related features -- which I'd toggled OFF, whenever I found one. Sucks phones charge for this useless crap (talking to people who call me in some robotic voice, and ask for name? Who the hell's gonna call me back having endured that?) RT translation of a foreign language? On-fly translations are abt 20y out from feeling anywhere near natural (my gauge being CASE and Murphy in 'Interstellar')... and not as if my phone mfr's some kind of vanguard of competence when it comes to anything but English But turning off these features, really sped up the phone. There's no modes for higher performance, only turning off unnecessary bloat to streamline the exp. So, worth it? Not really -- sort of forced into it with some dying performance on the old phone (and a selling battery). But just glad had the dosh to suddenly shell the grand for one ad hoc -- welp, time to save for another rainy day
Addendum, Sat 18 Jul 26: Had an excellent client today, who reminded me of a case not too long ago, but is no longer on island... When you think 'athlete' or menial labourer'... barbacks or bartenders don't top your list. But esp when mixology involves stunts... very much can be come problems similar to athletes. Think of the training to do a new routine / new drink -- lots of tossing full bottles of 750ml or more around with precision as well... which taxes the muscles of the forearm, upper arm and shoulder girdle a lot. Then standing 8h without sitting, bending over a bar copromised for everyone behind it... and you have the makings of several popular syndromes, feet to neck. My client was a mid-50yo barkeep, and had been training new staff to take over so he could slow down a bit and take some trips with the wife unit. However this also meant free time whilst mentoring them, add'ly cut into his downtime... and by the time they'd heard of me, were well into not being able to sleep, due to the pain. Since was '24 of thereabouts... was already well underway understanding nerve and tissue adhesion... so started with the feet. Just toe-ward of the heel in the rear of the longitudinal arch of the foot... is a pair of muscles: flexor digitorum brevis, and quadratus plantae. FDB flexes all toes save the big toe, and QP assists w\ same. One of the things they do when standing long hours with minimal full-gait movement, is raise the arch -- attachment points are heel (calcaneus bone) and either toes or tendons attached to toes... so since the forefoot's full of joints, guess what gives and bends -- upwards. This may last a while... but given enough time, can severely limit the amt of weight the foot can bear, plus limits the ankles strength to keep the whole body stable when standing. Those muscles usually come into play, when the big toe's support muscles -- flexor hallucis longus / brevis -- stop working properly. We didn't evolve to stand long hours. We evolved in nature, where moving constantly were a fact of life (been over this countless times before, apologies) So when those two muscles -- not the largest in the body nor even the lower leg -- get bored of contracting constantly with no relaxation to flush itself of metabolites and toxic compounds like lactic acid -- it will trigger-point, weakening both badly. The body then has no option but recruit muscles serving similar roles into being the #1 on the call sheet... and sure they can do so - badly, and only temporarily before failing themselves and TrP-ing. Thus the problem walks up the leg, into the core and lower back and from there, right to the shoulder and neck. Client had a neck stiffer than 90% of anyone on the table -- but the neck was nothing vs. the feet. Howling pain as I worked 3 TrPs in FDP and QP -- and once they'd finally relented... the foot seemed to lengthen a cm or so -- awesome to watch irt. Big toe flexors were also full of TrPs... so got them a paper towel to wipe their brows and face, as this -- as expected of someone who'd barback'd / bartended as a stunter thru '90s, Y2Ks, and 2010s -- was going to be a while. Colour in the feet returning was striking... but also because there was insufficient bloodflow in parts of their feet so long due to constrictor-knotting themselves (thru typical type-A behaviour) into ischemia... it wasn't returning evenly -- and in fact, caused the same kind of pain you get when your foot falls asleep a long time -- just at the level of the bones. Anyone who's broken a bone knows the exquisite f***fest bone pain can be -- and this client's foot bones had chronic ischemia. Lasted about 20 mins, then faded. Urged them not to do anything on their feet for a while, even if they had to return to work the next day. Advised they call in at least one day -- all that returning bloodflow is going to knock some stuff loose decades-old in your feet and lower leg. Take it easy, then ramp into your old schedule if you can. Moving to the knee, thigh, hip, and core... found was only really poorly, up to the core -- everything else was relatively new re: not decades-old. Which credit to work ethic, but of course highly-imbalanced and diminishing-returns. They could be a lot worse -- could be a drunk with diabetes or cirrhosis or lipidemia atop this all, which would've forced an entirely new (and more expensive) path in. Their wrists were useless, they mentioned. Twirling and juggling full 750ml bottles of heavy-glass-wrapped booze, takes strength and precision in the hands -- which unless you know how to maintain the forearm, is going to lock up of you. Oddly enough you diets the last thing on some of these performers' minds... but proper Mg, Ca, and K are vital to good small muscle performance. Problem weren't in the forearm tho -- were in the medial nerve, which runs above the knob on the inside of the elbow. Tested -- stuck. Broke it loose, and felt around its path to the center of teh palm-side forearm -- stuck. Took a couple of highly-painful passes (see a pattern? ) and had them grip my hand as hard they could a la handshake grip -- much stronger. Aligned carpals and elbow, and got strength back flexing it. Then to the shoulder -- oy this was going to need a separate session... 4d later, said forearm was fine but still felt weak lifting stuff -- good info. Subscapularis in the armpit, were both rock-hard and stuck to the ribcage -- peeled that off -- bringing tears to their eyes despite lots of breaks -- not the worst, but defo up there. Some parts had progressed to the scar tissue phase, so left those alone and got them what was left -- which luckily was plenty. Worked the knots in pec major, lat, teres major / minor, and serratus anterior... and got them to touch upper arm to ear. Sat them up to test -- golden. Look of unmistakeable relief on their face. Sometimes you don't know how bad you're busted up, because your mind has greater ability than median, to move goalposts to register as 'normal'. Defo that day showed them the inevitable backside to that atittude... Today's client was far less severe, but much of the same things. Younger as well, so has time to change course to avoid the 50yo's fate. Satisfying... and both were great clients. Highlight of a good day on the table
