Power On

You know, on those power toggles where it’s represented by an I and an O? I remember which is which by saying “O for Off.” Try not to think about it too much.

So I got my Fitbit surge about six months ago, and the goal it sets for you is 10,000 steps per day. I hit that one time, in April on Nutanix day.

I’ve hit it three times in the last three days.

In fact, I’ve only hit the “5 miles walked” goal for the first time this week, which I’ve also done three times in the last three days. Critically, the goal for calories burned was getting met less than once a week, probably 0.3 or 0.4 times a week by eyeballing it, and only over 3,000 calories burned twice in six months. Except, you know, for the last three times in the last three days.

I woke up yesterday feeling half-dead. I preemptively let myself off the hook if I didn’t increase my cardio numbers or even hit 10,000 steps. My legs were worn all the way out. My right calf felt like there was a rock in it. But what surprised me is what a good mood I was in. I think there’s some serious biochemical changes happening, more testosterone if I had to guess. I feel, and this may be out of character for me, significantly more alive. More mentally sharp. More friendly. It’s wild. And despite half-dead, rock-in-calf feeling, I ended up walking over 13,000 steps for 5.5 miles.

I did end up buying some new shoes. It’s not an area where I spare expense but I actually found the low-end of the Asics product line to be more comfortable than anything else. Low-end here meaning about $70 on sale. Prior to that I’ve been wearing some Olukai slip-ons that were little more than dressy skate shoes. I didn’t plan much of this out very well, it’s been rather spontaneous.

Yesterday was also the first day in recent memory where I went all day without any stomach issues. I think we’re onto something. Outside of being lactose intolerant, I was still having a lot of problems. It’s looking like the Clif Builder’s bars I’ve been eating are out. They’re lactose-free, but soy protein isolate is notoriously hard for the body to digest, and it’s the first ingredient in said bars. I picked up some Kind bars and had one yesterday instead. It still did a good job as an afternoon snack and while it has soy protein isolate, it’s towards the middle-to-bottom of the ingredient list. That amount seems doable for my body.

I gotta say, that makes the protein bar section of the grocery even more of a word search. Probably 75% of the bars are out right off the top due to the use of whey protein isolate. Now the ones with soy protein isolate high up the list are out too. You don’t see a lot of casein whey bars. Maybe I’ll give up and go to jerky or something.

So in other news, I’m turning over all the info I got on the SNSLocker ransomware to the FBI. It was a particularly inept job of ransomware, and the final result is I have the guy’s full name, age, email address, IP address, the source code to the payment & decryption website, a dump of the database of victims including their IP address, and a number of them are in the US, meaning the FBI can at least start the ball rolling. I’m supposed to meet a couple agents for lunch in a week or two, whenever they can squeeze in the hour trip up from Albuquerque. It’ll be a nice attaboy to put on my list of accomplishments. The Trend Micro blog covered the story and at least linked the tweet that I wrote at the time of the initial research.

There will be a full post-mortem of SNSLocker on bluesoul.me after I finish the disclosure process.

One of my self-serving complaints that kept me from getting anywhere fitness-wise was that “I don’t have that much time when I’m home, so I want to spend it how I want.” Which is partly true, I don’t have a lot of time when you subtract dinner and a shower. But I was not using the time in a productive manner, and I’m using productive very loosely. Anything that would make me happy could be considered productive. It was mostly time spent dicking around on Reddit. The last 3 nights, I’ve been on the computer for maybe a total of 15 minutes. I do not feel deprived. Right now the plan is for the weekend to be the time for rest, recuperation, and fucking around. We’ll see what happens, the weekend isn’t too far away at this point.