The weather is changing. The cool rains of Fall have arrived after a brutal “hottest on record” Summer. My wife is back working at the school, family adjusted to the new routine, kids plodding through the days with school and sports. Baseball is already wrapping up while my daughter continues her routine of infinite backflips at the cheer gym. The kids are officially another year older, which brings up all kinds of emotions. I can’t believe spooky season is already over.

Focusing on personal health

Since my last vibe check (Aug 13th) the majority of my life has been about the public release of Luro. It’s been a busy season of releases, onboarding, bug fixing, as well as switching over to a quasi-marketing/advocate role where I do weekly livestreams. A whirlwind three months but I set aside some time to focus on my personal health and resolved two medical maladies that have been bothering me for awhile.

  1. A recent visit to the dentist told me that an old root canal in my front tooth (bike accident, 1999) got bacteria in it and the bacteria had started eating away at my skull. Yikes. Got that fixed with another root canal. Proud to say there’s no more skull eating bacteria and my front tooth is no longer purple.
  2. I found a cure for my incurable foot fungus (it wasn’t foot fungus after all!)

The biggest health-related change is my continued weight loss journey which I wrote a big post on my diet plan and how I’ve hit the inevitable plateau. I’m down about 30 pounds which is wonderful even though I’m grumpy about food all the time. Jokes aside, I’m happy to be on this journey and it feels like I’m paying back technical debt on my body and that’s a good thing.

Heading into the end of year / holiday season is always difficult to maintain a diet, but we’ll do our best. The universe is foreshadowing some life changes as well and it will be an interesting next couple of months I’m sure.

Stats

Getting straight to the data. I think bullet points will tell the story more than paragraphs ever would.

🧠 Learning

  • Climate Change - Inspired by this summer, I got through three books on climate change, read countless articles and papers, watched countless videos. Learned a lot about how dire the situation is.
  • Dyslexia - Learning about my daughter’s dyslexia some more.
  • Russia’s invasion of Ukraine - Still following this obsessively.
  • Hardware - Started on some Arduino-style electrical engineering project for the school’s haunted house, but ended up making a webpage soundboard which I’ve done a thousand times before.

💪 Fitness

  • Total weight loss: 32 pounds
  • Working on increasing my minutes o’ fitness a week up to 100 mins/wk (at least)
  • Played in a pickleball tournament for a school fundraiser. Did not win.

📖 Reading

📝 Blogging

Added a new Stories page to my site to highlight my short speculative fiction. Here’s all my stories so far.

2 mini-manifestos over on the Luro blog

And 22 posts since last time. Wow. Even got a couple streaks in there.

📺 Media

  • Movies - Rewatched the original Gundam series
    • Gundam I (Netflix)
    • Gundam II (Netflix)
    • Gundam III (Netflix)
    • Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan’s Island (Crunchy Roll)
  • TV - My daughter got into reality competition TV, which is a nice changeup from cartoons.
    • America’s Got Talent (Peacock) - Avantgarde stan.
    • Welcome to Wrexham S2 (Hulu) - I love Deadpool and Rob.
  • Anime
    • Gundam: The Origin (Hulu) - Astonishing prequel to the original series, modern but evokes the original style.
    • Gundam: The 08th MS Team (Hulu) - Great off-shoot storyline
  • Podcasts

🎙 Recording

🧶 Crafts

  • Mech Keys
    • Repaired my Moonlander which had a cracked casing on the left unit.
  • Gunpla
    • MGSD Freedom - The first Master Grade SD kit ever produced. Such an incredibly fun build with its “chibi” small form factor super-deformed style, but as complex as a regular Master Grade build.
    • HGGBB Blazing Gundam - My son made me make this one. The Gundam Breaker Battlogue series is not my favorite, but this was a fun little build.

⌨️ Open source

  • <fit-vids> - it’s baaaaack, this time as a web component
  • PR’d the WCAG website, still waiting to hear back
  • Started on a secret web component related project as well

👾 Video games

  • Started making a game for the Playdate - Nothing to show yet
  • Gundam UC Engage (iOS App Store) - Gachapon-style tapping simulator game. Zero skill, but has robots.
  • Counter Strike 2 (Steam) - Tried this with the boys… was okay.
  • Finals (Steam) - Tried this with the boys… it’s GREAT! But then the play test ended.

Thus concludes the retelling of the vibes.