Tangent's Tangents is the blog of Kacey Green is a Computer and Electric Car geek, here is where I write about stuff you might see relevant expanded posts at other sites where appropriate.
Not the greatest but this is what it was.
Two unfrosted Pop Tarts
Coke Zero
A couple hard boiled eggs
Another Coke Zero
Tofurky Hoagie
Another
Coke Zero
Three cookies (only needed two but someone insisted I finish the pack) sugar was dipping and two was good to hold me over from all the walking.
Three more cookies after dinner
Which was this half of this bowl of spinach pasta.
Okay so it was a terrible day, other than the hoagies and spinach.
Posted from my phone
Kacey
I'm giving up trying to enter my food into MyFitnessPal or Samsung Health and will instead take pictures of everything each day, post it here and then put as much as I can stand back into the tracker apps. Homemade food has always been a pain to enter and track correctly in these systems for me.
I will be tagging these posts Food Journal at the very least. Including this post.
Hopefully this will help with weight and health management.
Kacey Green
On my drive to the Christmas festivities this year we passed 4 people video chatting while attempting to pilot a vehicle, there were many more simply distracted trying to operate their phones while driving. I pegged every one of them as drunk drivers only to see FaceTime, Facebook messenger or Skype on the screen! They were all trying to hold the phone and steer, not even using any sort of dash mount. I can't wait for self-drivibg options to be standard, we'll probably still see people try not to use them but at least they'll have and option to safely do the distraction when the hit the rumble strip or get beeped at mercilessly by other people on the road trying not to be sidewiped.
Thoughts? Observations?
Kacey Green
My smart scale and my doctor's office use very similar app icons. This has caused a couple false launches of the doctor's app because they're in the same folder and on the same side of the screen.
The SpaceX GPS satellite launch this morning was fun to watch after a week of delays, first for an odd reading in the rocket and then repeatedly for weather. They produced some beautiful shots of the earth with the on board cameras. They also proved their claims for intraplanetary transport timing it crossed over Australia (between there and Antarctica) at just over an hour after leaving Florida, then reached California just past the two hour mark. I'd much prefer that than day-long plane trips.
There are just days to go before Tesla runs out of their $7500 tax deduction and it drops to half, new owners mut pick up their car by 23:59:59 on December 31st local time to qualify. Tesla has released all cars for sale so you can get an inventory, demo, or cancelled/delayed order in time. If you use my code https://ts.la/kacey1109 you will get six months of free Supercharging! We've used tens of thousands of free miles since 2016 it's very nice. Update: 25 December, 2018 if you buy a car without test driving through the 11th of March you get 9 months of free Supercharging, if you take a test drive you'll still get the 6 months free.
Hopefully I get another post and maybe a video or audio recording up before the end of the year. Happy winter holidays and happy new year!
Yet again posted from my phone
Kacey Green
I'm getting back into podcasting, and blogging, I have a YouTube account but it never really had any blog style content but it looks like a new challenge worth attempting.
As anyone who listened to my previous podcasts knows, there was decent equipment, I don't know how much is still in good shape, or even where it all is in storage but I'll be tying that equipment in with a few items I picked up that will allow mobile recording. The reason for the mobile studio gear is I couldn't afford to splurge on camera gear right now so that means making do with my wife's camera and cellphones all of which will sound like talking into a paper towel tube.
YouTube will be a new challenge, as will getting back in front of a microphone since I'm not the boldest, most enunciated person but as we saw with the last podcasts editing/playback forces everyone to improve.
I'm not sure what the topics will be, here I can tag stuff and make sections etc., on YouTube I think it is customary to make channels or sub-channels the podcast is similar to this blog here. I'll try to summarize and put things in the descriptions of the audiovisual stuff. Here I'll write stuff down and may or may not add graphics. I don't like videos that rant or ramble on for more that 15 to 30 minutes unless they're funny or special events so expect everything to be that long or shorter, especially since rendering video takes forever.
Scribbled on my phone without an edit or outline.
-KG
PS. No welcome back or sorry I've been gone or promising to do more I find that annoying unless there's something that happened like an emergency etc, I just didn't feel I had anything to share heee and I got lazy about getting my co-hosts online to record shows on the gohypermiling podcast, and never got serious about YouTube.
Yesterday I wanted to wear a pair of green pants, I actually own two pairs of pants this particular shade of green and made of similar material, I actually can't tell them apart for some reason, one fits decent, and the other can't be buttoned, yesterday I attempted to put on the small pair on accident, they almost fit. Soon I'll be able to wear everything in my closet.
Yesterday's weight was 172.2 pounds with 19.5 percent fat, and 55 percent body water.
Food:
Today's weigh-in came to 170.8 pounds with 19% fat and 55.5% water.
Food so far:
Kacey Green
This post brought to you from deep within the thought-stream of Tangent.
Monday I found out the ingredients of the ''eggs" at Subway and McDonald’s for their breakfast sandwiches via a post by David DiSalvo on Forbes.
"Consider the egg. Simple, delicious, and incredibly easy to prepare. And yet, if you peruse the nutritional listings of America's favorite fast food restaurants, quite a different picture of the egg emerges -- and it's anything but simple. I took a look at the published ingredient lists for six fast food mainstays that sell"
This just underscores the importance of knowing what is in your food, the mega corporations do not your best interest in mind, their responsibilities are to maximize profits for their shareholders and to obey the applicable local laws to where they operate.
Now I have a little extra incentive not to hit the snooze button or three extra times in the morning. If I am running late, the plan is now to hit Burger King for my egg sandwich fix, or McDonald’s for their oatmeal. I’d rather not pay what McDonald’s charges for oatmeal, two of those and I can get a box of Quaker, I don’t even know how much the organic stuff costs, but it can’t be too far off from the Quaker.
Yesterday saw a slight reduction in weight, to 173.4 pounds. Body fat measured in at 19 percent body fat. Total body water was 55.5 percent.
Food: Organic oatmeal, bottled water, Taco Bell Taco Locos x3 add tomatoes, sub beans for meat, Large slice of red velvet cake, small Pepsi. Dinner was Whole grain pasta with marinara, filtered water.
Today's workout consisted of 1 set speed-jacks, 3 sets of lunges, 3 sets of pushups, 3 sets side-bridge per side.
Today's weigh-in: 172.2 pounds with 18 percent body fat. 56 percent total body water.
Today's food: 2 to 3 handfuls of French fry wedges, filtered water, 3 slices of Pizza Hut thin crust Pineapple pizza, 3 slices of their Hershey’s desert (not that great and very sticky, plus it had a bit of the oily taste from regular breadsticks), tall glass of Coke, bottled water.
Kacey Green
This post brought to you from deep within the thought-stream of Tangent.
People in general are resistant to change, but they seem to take it to the next level sometimes here in the Southeast. Alternative fueled vehicles, hybrids, and now electric and range-extended electric vehicles don’t seem to get a fair shake here.
People seem to have some sort of idea in their heads about how things work and they don’t care to be informed further than what they think they are. Like my Volt people assume it’s slow, that it consumes monstrous amounts of electricity, that it can explode into a fiery ball of flames or that it works something like the Toyota Prius. Thankfully people try to keep an open mind when seeing the vehicle in the flesh.
My Volt turns into a hybrid when it runs out of charge; it is an electric vehicle the other 93% of the time I’ve owned it. It can do 101 miles per hour in EV mode with no gasoline assistance; until it burns all of the charge (I’m curious how long it can maintain top speed on EV only). The car has more torque than many V6 sedans (273 lb.-ft., the power to get you up to speed) and a similar amount of horsepower (149 horsepower, the power to keep you going) to a 4 cylinder engine. My vehicle hasn’t lost a stoplight to speed limit heat yet (closed course do not attempt). Something I enjoy doing when leaving a stoplight is to leave everyone behind by three or more car-lengths, and the people around here don’t know how to conservatively take off from a stoplight, if you aren’t doing 30mph in one car-length you get all kinds of dirty looks. I prefer to take off at 2 mph per second until I get to the speed limit when I’m driving for fuel economy, people whip around me like I’d just cut them off when I drive like this.
The vehicle has a 16 KWh battery but it only exposes 9.7-10.2 of that for you to use. At 110 volt charging there are more charging losses due to the thinner cables and the increased amount of time the battery heating or cooling system runs vs. the 240 volt charging. This equates to 8-10 hours on 110v for a full charge vs. ~4 on 220v. At the rates I’m charged for electricity it’s about $1.02 per charge (and I don’t often drain the battery upon arriving home) at the rates they pay at work it’s about 75¢ to 80¢ for a full charge, again I don’t often have a completely drained battery, but it can get pretty close. My commute is 42 miles each way. I was spending $200 a month in gas before I got this car, now fuel is under $40 a month.
This is usually based on an unrealistic test conducted on the vehicle in the lab, about three weeks after a severe crash with a completely full battery (my battery starts dropping the minute I leave my driveway) a test vehicle caught fire in the scrapyard. This is similar to doing the same thing with a gasoline powered car and leaving the tank full after a severe crash. Both cars have approved methods to drain their fuel. The possibility of this rare situation happening was eliminated with a fix from General Motors and verified by the same agency that found the possibility. The two fires involving Volts in garages were ruled by their fire marshals to not be the cars or their charging equipment. One of those two cases involved a home-built electric car in addition to the Volt but it was ruled out too.
What’s your point? The Volt doesn’t operate as a hybrid until the battery runs below the usable threshold (EPA ~35 miles, for me ~50 miles) then it operates similar to the Prius. It doesn’t often operate in a mode comparable to the Honda hybrids or GM’s belt assisted hybrids, or GM’s E-assist system. The converted plug-in Prius vehicles and the official Toyota-built Plug-in Prius operate much like the original vehicle, in-fact if you dab the accelerator too hard or go too fast the vehicle will start the engine, and the rated range is only 15 miles. The scenarios where the Volt will start the engine when the battery isn’t empty are:
People
tend to see a car and compare it to the only two reference points they have,
how much gas their car burns (usually in the 25mpg range) or how much their
house air conditioner uses (when they set it to arctic and it runs constantly,
this actually is kind of accurate but it's more like doing this for just 1
hour, the vehicle can only hold so much of either type of fuel, electricity or
gasoline)
Kacey Green
This post brought to you from deep within the thought-stream of Tangent.
This morning’s weigh-in returned 174.0 pounds with 18.5% body fat and 55.5% total body water. I think the goal of getting to 150 before getting serious will be pretty much useless the way I’m going about things now. As much as I loved and miss my grandpa, I don’t want his gut, so the new goal will be to lose that and then re-evaluate. I’m curious how low the body fat can get without becoming a gym rat, as you can see my “workouts” are under 15min each so far, the last time I did this routine the longest was 25 minutes and that was just trying to get all the movements correct, the following two workouts (these come in threes before moving on to the next) were 15 or so minutes. I know 11% will produce some nice looking abs and amateur body builders try to keep to 8 or 9%, the number 5% stands out but I don’t remember what group has that fat target. As a vegetarian this should be an easy enough endeavor, but I love junk food and breads, I do need to cut most other processed foods that don’t fit the description of bread or multivitamin tablets.
Breakfast: McDonald’s Egg & Cheese bagel with small orange juice
Lunch: Pasta and sauce, bottled water, cinnamon apple sauce, chocolate chip granola bar
This morning’s workout:
Kacey Green
This post brought to you from deep within the thought-stream of Tangent.A good way to think of me is like Mr. Spock from Star Trek,
my emotions are there below the surface and very strong, but I often refuse to
acknowledge or show them, many times it's because I can't describe them or
perhaps I feel I'll be ridiculed or thought weak. Unfortunately, unlike Spock
there is no cool death-grip and a much shorter short-term memory. Like Spock I value
logic, truth, and enlightenment over the touchy feely stuff, particularly when someone’s
gut feeling is wrong and nor even close. That isn’t to say I don’t appreciate or
have feelings, but the other concepts of logic and truth are easier to grok.
Just like Spock, I am at my best when I embrace both my
social/emotional and my logical sides. It seems this will be a life journey,
especially since I went from being extremely shy to working with the public,
albeit in small groups at a time. Progress is being made integrating my logical,
analytical self with the side that wants to jump with joy, or weep sorrowfully.
My sense of humor taps both sides already, I love a good joke, but many
involving social situations aren’t funny to me and I need someone to explain
these jokes to me sometimes.
After a day "socializing" I do need alone time to
regenerate (oh snap, this is like Spock's meditating) and recover. I process
much of what I see of other people’s interactions, and how to react social
situations using my analytical brain. My social brain skates trough life like a
super spoiled kid, or a kid dropped on its head with its favorite sibling or a
close friend covering for all its little mistakes.
Just like a real naïve kid, my social brain sometimes really
screws things up when its champion (the sibling or understanding friend, aka my
logical brain) has their back turned for a moment. An example is how I have
learned most questions where a female asks me about her looks are loaded, I cannot
tell which situations warrant a particular answer, and which are traps. I don’t
know when to say or not to say, “oh that looks good,” and “you don't look fat”,
so my default is not to answer and try to change the subject to more familiar
turf.
Obviously social brain tried to answer these queries once or
twice while logical brain was preoccupied with something else or logical didn't
correctly flag the questions for deeper review. So now logical brain sounds the
klaxon in these situations making me lock-up like a rusty mechanism, this prevents one type of harm while making me look very goofy rather than taking
the time to re-analyze the situation for what type of answer is required.
Why the alone time? Logical brain uses more energy. If a
typical person sits around doing math equations for hours straight, they will
want to relax by vegging or socializing. Remember anytime I am socializing, I'm
running figures and stats through my analytical brain, and if I was already
doing mentally exhausting work, hanging out with more than one or two close
friends pushes me past capacity, making me more error prone or agitated. This
is the same as if a typical person is pushed just a bit too far on those same equations,
they get angry and short with people, they make more mistakes on the task, and
if pushed far enough, they don't socialize either, naptime.
I didn't fit in with the normal kids and I was not truly
special-ed, I was both gifted and in need of remedial organizational skills. In
middle school, the teachers and my parents agreed it was best I just type
everything rather than deal with the hand written stuff. You can see how much
more I write with a keyboard, even the virtual keyboard on a phone.
Oh my!, this was supposed to be a quick note on the phone so I didn't forget what I ate; I'll polish the rough edges and post this.
Yesterday’s other foods 4/13
Today’s foods and workout 4/14
Workout:
172.8 pounds with 19.5% fat and 55% total body water
Breakfast: Cocoa - two sleeves of Swiss Miss
Lunch: Bottle water, Japanese vegetables, and rice plate
(Osaka in Sumter) can of coke
Dinner: Three pretzels with dipping sauce, 1.75 cokes with
restaurant amount of ice both today's and yesterday’s cokes were in the
standard coke and restaurant co-branded plastic glasses (plastic)
Maureen and I saw “Mirror Mirror”, I enjoyed it but it felt
like the story dragged in a few places and it had a good amount of funny bits.
4/15
Pami, John Robert, Gabby & I saw the new 3 Stooges movie, it was pretty funny, it probably would have been even better for someone who remembers any of the original program.
Today's "foods" were all processed junk food, this morning's weigh-in: 173.0 pounds, 19.5% fat, 55% total body water.
Kacey Green
This post brought to you from deep within the thought-stream of Tangent.
