Blog

Upcoming Eclipse

I barely use social media, but I’m hearing all kinds of things about this upcoming eclipse on Monday.

  • Overheard someone at church say that their school is taking a calamity day on Monday due to the eclipse
  • Our babysitter mentioned using a cereal box to make the viewing lens
  • Someone in Dayton bought all of the eclipse glasses from Kroger stores and is selling them out of random parking lots around the city
  • I’ve read an article about how people regret looking directly at the sun at one of the eclipses in the 1970s and now I’m paranoid that when I see a fuzzy spot in my eye I’ve somehow sunburnt my eye
  • My wife is telling me that my plan of using a welding helmet is not safe enough to look directly at the sun
  • What takes the cake is that my Nest Thermostat wanted to know if I wanted to participate in Eclipse Rush Hour to save energy

Maybe it will be cloudy on Monday and all this hype will be for naught.

Fitness

CrossFit Goals Update

I’ve been working this month on a few CrossFit goals and I’m making good progress on handstand pushups. 

Push Ups – been working on these sporadically. Probably could get 30 straight (in one set only)

Handstand push ups – I got six unbroken today, which is well on my way to my goal of 10 straight 

Handstand walk – blah. This one is hard. I have a hard time committing to the handstand and usually fall back on my feet. 

Muscle Ups – I did a ring MU with a four pound medicine ball between my feet, so I’m definitely getting stronger. Tomorrow’s WOD had 5-4-3-2-1 of muscle ups and I’m going to try to go unbroken. 

#goals

Family

Fifteen Years Later

Got to hang out with some of my buddies from high school and their families (and just happened to be 15 years after graduating high school). 

Growing up we all lived within a mile of each other (in the country this is close 🙂). 

Here we are with all our kids. 

Dad Life

Weekend Trip

Going away for two nights this weekend. 

Here is all my things packed nicely into my Tortuga backpack. 


And here is the back of our car. I’ll be glad when ours kids are old enough to not have to take a bed, food, some toys, a stroller, and a potty. 

Fitness

August CrossFit Goals

I have gotten pretty decent at most CrossFit moves, but I’m focusing on four in particular in August to get better.

  • Push Ups. This is one of the easiest to work on and I always feel dead after about 20 in a WOD. I’d like to be able to get 50 straight by the end of the month
  • Handstand Push Ups. Goal: 10 unbroken kipping 
  • Handstand walk. I’m pretty terrible at this now. Would love to be able to walk 20 feet by the end of the month
  • Muscle ups. 10 unbroken bar muscle ups. My current best is 4, so bit of a work to do

My plan is to stay after class a bit each day to work on a skill. 

Blog

July 2017 Recap

Each month I have a reminder to write down a summary of what happened during the month, and each month, I snooze it until next month. But not today 🙂

Lots went on in July. Here’s some of the highlights.

  • First full* month back to work after paternity leave. *I didn’t actually work the full month and had plenty of days off.
  • I grew some gigantic zucchini
  • Ate donuts and travelled to Nashville for the weekend
  • Started checking my email less, and when I do check it, plow thru all the messages
  • Started working on my Spanish with the Memrise app
  • Hosted a block party at our house to meet some of the neighbors we’ve never talked to in the seven years we’ve lived at our house
  • Celebrated 10 years of marriage
  • Competed in my first ever CrossFit competiton and was sore for a good 5 days
  • Started to up my programming skills by using Apple’s Swift Playgrounds. It’s almost like a game and super fun
  • Our son turned 4 months, began rolling and nearly has two bottom teeth

Books

In July I read two fiction books and parts of several non-fiction books. I completed:

  • Camino Island by John Grisham
  • No Middle Name: short stories about Jack Reacher by Lee Child

I’m still working thru Tim Ferris’ Tools of the Titans and Deep Work by Cal Newport. Let’s see if I can finish these up by the end of the month.

Fitness

1000 Reps

Found with workout that will be great for traveling.

*Complete each exercise 25 and repeat circuit 4 times for 1000 reps:

  • Mountain Climbers
  • Body Squats
  • Push-Ups
  • Burpees
  • Left Side Lunges
  • Right Side Lunges
  • V-Ups
  • Body Weight Dips
  • Jumping Jacks
  • Plank Shoulder Taps
Technology

How to Build a JavaScript SlideShow in 3 Easy Steps

Could be a fun weekend project for an upcoming WordCamp talk.

If you’ve read our guide on how to make a website, you may be wondering what to do next to improve your skills. Making a photo slideshow is a surprisingly easy task, and one that can teach you valuable skills needed to get a programming job. Today I’ll be showing you how to build a […]

via How to Build a JavaScript SlideShow in 3 Easy Steps — Tips By Rosie

Programming

Swift Playgrounds

I tried out Apple’s Swift Playgrounds app on my iPad today and I’m surprised at how fun it is. 

It’s a bit sluggish on my iPad Mini 2, but still worth playing. 

I’m now learning how to write functions to make the little creature move, collect gems and toggle switches. 

If you are interested in programming, check out this free app. 

Fitness, Uncategorized

First CrossFit Competition 

Today I participated in our gyms annual CrossFit competition. 

It was really hard. Yeah, really hard. But it was fun too. 

We were on teams of four, two guys and two girls. And I agreed to be on a RX team, which is basically signing up for pain 😜

Here were the four events. 

Event 1 – B17: Flying Fortress

This is a Bombers CrossFit special. I’ve done the workout twice in a scaled fashion, never the RX. 

The workout was five rounds of 17 back squats at 135 lbs and a 400 meter run. 

The tricky part was that we had to all squat in formation at the same time.  The first few rows were okay, but rounds 3, 4, and 5 destroyed my legs. 

Event 2 – Skills Competition

In this round there were four max effort events that each team mate had to do one of the following moves:

  • Max rep muscle ups
  • Max deadlift
  • Max standing high jump
  • Max L Sit hold

I was drafted to do the standing high jump. And even though it was 30+ minutes after the first event, my legs hadn’t recovered. 

I ended up getting 21 inches which was just short of 10 feet in the air. If I could have a step to approach, I’m sure I could have gotten 25+ inches. 


Event 3 – Three Legged Race

This was a partner workout of back-to-back-to-back girl workouts: 

  • Karen (150 wall balls)
  • Annie (50-40-30-20-10 double unders and sit ups)
  • Fran (21-15-9 thrusters and pull ups)

We had a pretty good strategy and I had a super human partner. 

I did 30 wall balls, then Travis did 90, then I finished it off with 30 more and Karen was finished. 

I moved straight to Annie and did 50 double unders and 50 sit ups. Travis did the next two rounds of 40 and 30 and I completed the last rounds of 20 and 10. 

Finally Travis did the hard pars of Fran, 21 thrusters, 21 pull ups and 15 thrusters. Then I did the rest of 15 pull ups and 9 thrusters and 9 pull ups. 

We got second in this workout and we were all exhausted by the end of it. 

Event 4 – The Obstacle Course

This was a goofy short event where we had to pull a sled with 180 lbs on it and maneuver around obstacles and twice pick the sled up and carry it over an obstacle.

The twist on this one was we had to all for be touching the whole time. 

Since we had super strong Travis, he picked the sled up himself and we got first on this one. 


Overall it was a fun, yet exhausting day. I am not looking forward to seeing how my legs feel the next few days!

Family

10 Years!

Today we celebrated our ten year anniversary. 

Usually we would have liked to celebrate with a trip to somewhere with a beach, but with little man only being 4 months old, figured we’d postpone a trip until next year. 

So our every-five-year-picture-in-a-picture was a boring shot in our backyard. 

 

And as a tradition, I didn’t buy any gifts or a card (as cards are an expensive waste of someone else’s words) but wrote a poem in Melody’s book of cards. 

Happy 10 Year Anniversary!

Did you know that we’ve been married for 521 weeks / 315 million seconds?

Time for a poem to celebrate 🙂


Ten years ago it was a day

straight from heaven

We got to celebrate with our

friends in 2007


Nine years ago we 

adjusted to married life,

we lived on a college campus

as husband and wife


Eight years ago we 

bought something new

a new car for us

that definitely wasn’t blue


Seven years ago we

moved to the city

that place in Galena

sure was pretty


Six years ago we

moved out ‘west’

so far I can say

I like this house best


Five years ago we

took a trip to paradise

the hiking and the beaches

certainly were nice


Four years ago we

went to Spain and more

lugged suitcases around

and wished to stay on the first floor 


Three years ago we

got ready for baby one

before kids, remember

how much we could get done?


Two years ago we 

had fun with our first baby

oh that time was a delight,

but she was such a crybaby


One year ago we

were in Spain on a fun trip

we explored a lot on planes,

trains, busses but not a ship


Now it’s time to 

celebrate year number ten

I can believe how much

has happened since then


Junk stores, blogs, and 

speaking gigs oh my

I’m excited to see the other

things that will make the years pass by


Thank you for being 

on this journey with me

maybe on our 20th

we can spend it in Hawaii


Productivity

Transmit 5 Released — chorus.fm

Transmit is my favorite utility for FTP and connecting to other cloud accounts and today Transmit 5 make things so much nicer!

Panic at have released a great update to my favorite file transfer app: Seven years after the first release of Transmit 4, our well-loved and widely-used macOS file transfer app, we sat down with an incredibly exhaustive list of ideas, and — this’ll sound like I’m exaggerating but I’m mostly sure I’m not — we […]

via Transmit 5 Released — chorus.fm

Fitness

Death by Shuttle Run

It’s one of my favorite CrossFit workouts and today I was the fastest 😃

In the first minute, you run one shuttle run length. The next minute you do two, then three and so on. 

I finished round 15 as time expired and got 9 of the round of 16. 

Family

Community Weekend

We’ve been saying for awhile that we need to form relationships with people who live near us and this weekend we got an opportunity to do that. 

On Saturday morning, my wife hosted a group of moms who came over, with their kids and let the kids roam free in our backyard. 

Then, in the evening, we hosted a block party for our whole street. I’m ashamed to say, we met some of neighbors for the very first time, even though we’ve lived here for nearly seven years. 

Of the 21 houses on our cul-de-sac, we had seven families stop in throughout the evening. It was a lot of fun and we will have to do it again. 

We are going to be intentional about getting to know more of our neighborhood and spend at least part of a weekend each month hosting neighbors at our house.   

Travel

Learn Spanish with Memrise

I’ve been using Duolingo for about the last two years trying to up my Spanish fluency. 

Yesterday I downloaded Memrise (again, as I’ve used it before) to my phone again to give me a new challenge. 

This app seems to focus on listening, which is usually the hardest part about learning a language, able to hear was a fast native tongue says. 

I haven’t outgrown the free plan yet, so it’s free to try 🙂

Productivity

Email Free

I checked my personal email for the first time since Saturday this evening. 

My inbox was full with nearly 200 messages, but nothing was urgent and only needed to send a few replies. Plus I was able to process them all in about 30 minutes. 

I’m going to start checking my inbox only a few times per week and see how that goes 🙂

How often do you check email?

Productivity

Deep Work

Since returning back to work from paternity leave, I’ve found it hard to concentrate for long periods of time. It seems like there is so much going and my mind goes in a zillion directions.  

Today, I started reading Deep Work by Cal Newport in hopes of learning some techniques to exercise my brain muscles so I can concentrate better. 

I’ll report back when I’m finished reading 😁

Family

Boys Pic

Just got home from Nashville and too tired to write a post about our weekend trip. 

Here’s a shot of me and the little guy at brunch. 


(He wasn’t this smiley the whole 5+ hours home, but we only had to make one stop!)

Food

Donut Cheat Day

A few weeks ago, I mentioned I had completely cut out all forms of sugar and grains/gluten. 

I didn’t have a plan to stop or cheat on my plan but when in Nashville this weekend we found a great bakery that had paleo donuts. By definition a paleo donut fits into my criteria for food and I was excited to have a treat. 


Their was some miscommunication between me and the donut lady and only one of the donuts we got was paleo (the smallest one in the box). 

So I ended up having a cheat day and boy was it a good one. I had a S’more one that had chocolate icing and marshmallow filling. 

Back on track tomorrow 🙂