I just tweeted this but anyway

The anti-depressant works at keeping me from being depressed. What it doesn’t do is keep me awake, like at all. I have zero energy and can barely keep my eyes open, I’m yawning constantly and also keep doing that “wake up stretch” my body does when I’m fighting off sleep to get something done late at night. Except it is 1630 not 2330. I think my body is reacting to my efforts to put me back on a diurnal schedule rather than a nocturnal one. I keep getting up earlier each day but still end up staying awake until 0300 or 0400, even when I get up at 0800 or 0900 the day before. It’s just not fair, now that I’m not depressed I want to sleep like I am worse depressed than before I started taking the med…

Now I’m gonna force myself to take care of things around the house including myself and the cats. Write to you later.

PSA, Opus

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Interesting perspectives

Today is Day 2 of my anti-depressant med and I have had an epiphany. When I thought I was happy before, I was just Not Depressed as much. Seriously, compared to last week this feels positively giddy. WTF?!? I could have been nearly happy all these years if I had been on the right meds? Forty-some years of my life wasted being depressed because I couldn’t take that damned pill? Because seriously, this is what I used to call “happy”. I am so (bummed, angry, pissed) or I would be if I wasn’t so damned “happy” right now.

Another thing is I’m sitting in my office in front of the AC and sweating like a pig doesn’t. Pigs can’t sweat, did you know that? Anyway AC is blowing directly on me and I’m damp all over. Ambient temp outside the direct blast of the AC is 83°F in the office so that might have something to do with it.

I’m still trying to figure out how to get the body on the Sprint-T around the diagonal braces that run through the cockpit from the top of the rear hoop to the bottom of the front hoop. Every other part of the frame is outside of the body except those two braces and the body would just plop right in without them, but because they are the required (by the SCCA) diagonal braces for the roll over structure, and because leaving them out would compromise the torsional stiffness of the entire frame which is kinda the reason for the entire project (T-Bucket made for handling). I was thinking of cutting the body apart and using flanges and screws to hold it together to get the body around the braces, but that would be ugly if I used enough screws to make it rigid. Not to mention a pain to mock up and install. Especially the mocking up part. That would be at least two installs and removes before paint and powdercoat with at least one installing every screw to make sure all the holes line up. I have also considered using a bolt-in brace instead of welding it in…

And of course this also applies to the Mini Sprint-T only more so, the body I’m using can’t be cut apart because the kerf from the cut leaves a huge gap in the body after it’s installed, unless I use a crap ton of body filler before painting. But I have to install the body after painting, to prevent overspray on the interior and the frame (which are a different color from each other, and from the body) because the frame goes over the body except for those braces I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Anywho it’s like one of those puzzles with the marble inside the carved wooden cage that can supposedly be removed and replaced even though it’s bigger than the holes in the cage and the cage is all one piece of wood. If I had a vacuum-forming machine and a way to make an accurate mold then I could make multiple bodies and cut them apart so the seams would overlap and be invisible, but I no longer have access to that equipment.

Well it looks like I’m starting to ramble around a bunch of different subjects, so Imma put this baby to bed now.

PSA, Opus

Want to be a serial killer with no negative repercussions?

Well, you have to use the right weapon.

This was inspired by a report of a driver on his third conviction for misdemeanor manslaughter for hitting cyclists and pedestrians.

PSA, Opus

Open Carry and Free Beer, let’s really fix the RNC in Cleveland, and do we need a “No Drive” list?

LEO in Cleveland have been asking (pleading, begging, weeping) for a temporary reprieve from OH’s open carry law because it’s impossible to tell the “good guy with a gun” from the deranged maniac out to shoot up the convention. Not wanting to be accused of being anti-gun I have a suggestion: Keep open carry, and set up free beer stations on every corner. The ones not wanting to shoot up the convention will grab a pint or 12, and get happy. The ones wanting massive mayhem and body counts will eschew the alcohol while continuing to carry.

Obviously I don’t want to see someone shoot up the convention. After all those people have families that love them just like the rest of us. I’m just taking things to their logical conclusion. If more guns make us safer then making sure everyone has one means that everyone is perfectly safe, right? And if local (and Federal) LEO want to prevent open carry on the grounds of safety, how can those two statements be reconciled? I mean it’s almost as if more guns don’t make us safer.

I just want to know in the wake of the Nice terror truck attack when the US will adopt a “No Drive” list. Last report I read stated more than 50 of the 84 victims died from getting hit by the truck, and that most of those shot are expected to survive.This attack puts the Orlando Some Asshole to shame, much higher body count over a much larger area (more than a mile!). I mean seriously, how long will people be able to just walk up and put down a credit card and walk away with a WMD with significant room for explosives when you run out of steam from just running people over? I mean it’s like a 2-for-one murder weapon sale. Run over as many as you can, then detonate the massive shrapnel disperser in the back and go out in a literal blaze of glory destroying as many infidels as remain in the blast radius. Of course you will not be around to personally assess the damage…

PSA, Opus

Heck of a week, innit?

Personally this was a busy week for me what with buying new shoes on Monday, and fasting blood draws Wednesday and Thursday and a grocery run Thursday afternoon then that Nice terror attack. The deadliness of the truck just underscores what I have been saying about motor vehicles for years, they are WMD. I mean what else would you call something that killed more than 80 people in one pass? Very few of the victims were shot, most were crushed by the truck.

I posted a pic of my old shoes earlier where you could see the insides from the outside. So that was a required trip. I covered that trip with the post I put the picture in.

Wednesday I got up way too early (for me) and barely made a 10 AM appointment for a blood draw, and the (installation, application?) of an Automated Blood Pressure Monitor, and had breakfast at the Wendy’s (the 4 for $4 deal) across the street from the bus stop for the trip home. I had been up for about 5 hours when I finally had breakfast just before noon. I finally got home about 1420 exhausted and desperately thirsty, with my left arm being squeezed to death by the BP monitor every 15 minutes. That continued until 2200 when the frequency dropped to every 20 minutes until 0600. That made for a very restless sleep.

Thursday morning I was able to get up almost an hour later because the connections for DART worked much better even though the appointment was only a half hour later than Wednesday. I had another blood draw, peed in a cup, and had an EKG that took two patches of hair off my chest when the electrodes were removed. When I got out of the office I had a few minutes to catch the next bus, or I could have breakfast and wait an hour more to get the next bus. I decided that I could have a package of Poptarts when I got home, about 1330. Since I got up later than I did the day before I could survive until then without food. So I didn’t eat breakfast until after 1 PM, more than 12 hours since my last meal. This is about 2 hours longer than I normally go before breakfast. The bad thing is I was active for about 6 hours before breakfast when I’m normally much less active before breakfast so my reserves were pretty much depleted by the time I had something to eat. I took a sit-down rest with the kittens after eating and had enough energy to go shopping when that time came up around 1700.

Then yesterday I actually went out and visited with a friend from my RPG group while she went shopping for food for her lizards and snakes, mostly crickets and frozen rat embryos, yay! We mostly made small talk while this was going on. There will be a strong chance I will be having dinner elsewhere sometime next week.

Anyway something else that happened is I got a prescription for an anti-depressant while I was at the Lab Rat Keeper. I have been depressed longer than I have been known my wife, she literally won’t know what to do with me when I get the meds right and am not depressed. Hell I won’t know what to do with myself when I’m not depressed anymore. I have been depressed most of my life, about 45 out of 57 years. I literally do not remember what it feels like to not be depressed a little to a lot.

What caused my depression? Well, I am a military brat from the ’60s and ’70s and got moved frequently, so that I changed schools 7 times from 6th to 8th grades, and 5 times from K-5. This has been found to be as stressful as being in combat for an adult, especially frequent moves between 5th and 9th grades, when I was getting bounced around like a ping-pong ball in a paint shaker. The comparison to combat was because the original study was done by the organization that was responsible for moving me so much, the DoD. Well I can’t do anything about my past, so I’m going to do something about my future.

And I have rambled on quite enough now.

Billed @€0.02, Opus

Did you get your free Slurpee on 7/11?

Yes, I trudged in the heat to get my free Slurpee™ and a bag of chips while I was going to the shoe store to replace the worn-out shoes I was walking in.

In spite of appearances I don’t drag my feet when I walk, this damage is the result of my push-off. And the fact these shoes are ancient, at least 3 and maybe 4 years old, but I doubt they are 4. I have a strong memory of it being summer and after my Dad died when I got these shoes modified for my leg length discrepancy. So that would make them 3 YO. And getting back to the flappy toes, once the sole wears past the vamp it tries to depart the shoe in short order. I went from intact shoe to overly-ventilated in less than 4 weeks. And I had a lot of miles in those 4 weeks, in spite of taking the bus most trips it is still 0.8 miles to get to and from the bus plus whatever walking to get to and from the bus at my destination.

So, anyway getting back to the Slurpee™ I got a Cherry Coke one, and a bag of Cheetos Flaming Hot Puffs™ which dyed my fingers bright red. I had to walk a mile to get to the 7-11 because I only had enough money to buy a 2 hour pass which would have expired before I could catch the bus home from the shoe store. But as I was buying the 2 hour pass the bus driver hit the button for the senior citizen/disabled day pass which is the same price, so I could have saved myself 0.6 miles of walking in a 105°F heat index.

Tomorrow I get to starve myself so they can take blood at the Lab Rat Keeper for this new study med. I don’t like it much myself, it has failed to control my BP within acceptable levels (in fact it barely lowered my BP at all, from 150 systolic to 140) and some of the side effects are distinctly unpleasant. I can’t say what the side effects might be because of my NDA, and stating my systolic pressure publically might be exceeding my NDA as well. But dangit, I normally respond well to BP meds except diuretics and this one is just not doing the job at the dose for my weight.

And because this is still a bike blog we have another commuter race from the still-UK (until Scotland and Wales get their exit votes). Bus vs bike vs car – who wins in the commuting race into Cambridge? The rat-running photographer “won” the race, but as he did not abide by the rules to not “rat run” (drive through residential streets to bypass traffic) his time did not count.

Billed @€0.02, Opus

My church is a Pokestop and other nonsense

It has been a while since the last post, what with all the extrajudicial executions performed by LEO who should know better, and the run-and-gun sniper in Dallas shooting the good cops. That is one thing that Dallas has been good at, when they find out they have a bad cop not only do they fire him they try to get his LEO license removed so they don’t just set up the next town over and do it again, so shooting Dallas cops is not going to get the bad cops that kill with impunity. Long story short, Asshole Sniper picked the wrong city to ambush cops if he wanted to get one that was responsible for giving brown people a bad time.

PSA Opus