2019.07.06 – Been a while

I know I have not been posting to my blog for a while. Most of the posts I have made to Social Media have been superficial selfies. This really has not been my intent. The challenges over the year have made it really hard for me to figure out how much I want to disclose and how I want to write about it.

Morning Chores (eg selifes) from earlier in the week

This is the year of my life that everything fell on me and forced me to make decisions to better my life. Between health issues, work/career issues, and family issues – there has not been much free time to deal with the greater community as a whole. The reality is I have made it a top priority to get my health in order. And when so much of the local community events involves being in a bar surrounded by alcohol and loud music – it can sometimes be hard to find the motivation to go out. The act of going to Pride this year was a big decision for me since I really have felt distant for the past nine months. In the end I glad I went.

The reality is I have made it a top priority to get my health in order.

I think it is worth talking about how I ended up in this state over the past few months.

Just over two years ago, I got down to 191 lbs. But then the work stress started going up and I slowly regained weight and stopped running and cycling regularly. No one really noticed or said anything, and I went into denial about it. When looking back that the data, it was clear how much I was telling myself a lie. I stopped weighing myself daily and didn’t even let the BIA cycle of the scale finish when I hit a peak of 220 – I didn’t want to know the body fat percentage.

Over the holidays I decided that I needed to do something when I no longer could fit in to the Rev’it leathers, my Dainese leathers were getting tight again, and I could no longer zip up the green and black race suit. And looking back at last year – I fell into so many American Fat Logic traps. These traps for me included: I was getting enough exercise; the weight is muscle (Given how I stopped letting the scale finish a body fat reading I knew it was a lie); My diet is healthy.

The ironic part is, getting a Costco membership in February helped get my diet more healthy. I kept around more frozen fish and chicken that could be quickly de-thawed and cooked resulting in me cooking way more often at home even after I commute back from Santa Clara. It also was forcing me to plan a bit more. I will have to go in to this in another post since I never associated warehouse clubs with getting more healthy before.

Starting in March, I got more serious about running. Forcing myself to get out a minimum of 4 times a week and do at least a 5k daily. Near the end of the month, I tripped on the awful repaving job they were doing and bruised my ribs. This provided the catalyst for change. I had to slow myself down to avoid pain – so I compensated with adding some distance. Before I knew it, I went from 5k being my minimum to 4 miles to 5 miles being my typical short run.

But that wasn’t enough to really kick off the weight loss, which became more important after the round of doctor appointments that happened in March. I noticed I was really starting to have problems scale my distance up and had issues with energy through the day. I started supplementing with protein bars and noticed that immediately helped. Then I decided to try out some calorie tracking applications. I found out that I was not eating enough since my cooking was too low in calories to sustain the activity level I was seeking. It’s taken me a few months to figure out what the macro ratio that works for me.

The day I finally went below 190!

Even with the family issues that have arisen during this period, the progress has been really showing. Just seven weeks ago, I fell below 200lbs. This week, my scale now reads below 190lbs. Rash Guards that used to be tight on me at 220 are now fitting right or even a bit loose today and I am pretty sure I have not been that light since Middle School. I can now sustain running 28 miles per week and almost hit my goal of sustaining 30 miles per week. More impressive is that my tempo pace is starting to go below a 8:00 min/mile pace. And I am doing something that I never thought I would ever do (since cycling was my primary endurance sport) – sign up for a half-marathon.

I am going to write some more posts on the various things I have learned and found out over the past few months, including my disgust with this trend of glorifying unhealthy eating and lifestyles. There have been times I have debated about doing some spandex clad cooking videos. Maybe I should do some since I think people overestimate the work required to cook at home healthy food. But hope that sheds some light on what has been going on in my life.

2019.02.11 – Feeling inadequate

Making sure I don’t screw up the recipe

Last night something interesting hit me while scrolling through Instagram – even Olympic athletes are not perfect 24×7. His luge suit showed that fold between the waist and hips that you often get when you don’t have that perfect washboard abs. It’s clear that he gained a bit of a gut since the Olympics last year yet, he is still sexy AF. This is when I realized that thirst trapping people with sexy bodies on IG is a very unhealthy habit for myself and many others.

We are living in a culture of perfection and most people are not perfect. Due to social media, the line between good and healthy and perfection is so blurry. I know many people who think I look fantastic. Yet when I compare myself to others on social media, I feel inadequate. And it is hard to stop doing.

Maybe I should make a Just for Fans for this…
Searing my meat!

While I was cooking my meals for the week last night part of me was thinking I should do a Just for Fans or YouTube stream of me cooking and doing meal prep in Spandex and Latex. Yet every time I think about it, I feel inadequate comparing myself to the perfect men on that site and that voice inside of me goes ‘You are not good enough for that’

I am thinking to myself, maybe I should say fuck it and just do it. See if it gains any traction. Get the reactions from people. Additional passive income is never a bad thing. But then the devil on the other side of my shoulder goes ‘Who would want to watch that?’ It’s a mentally destructive cycle. I need to break this cycle.

Showing off the chopped apples!

If I was do start doing some sort of stream or channel of me in spandex meal prepping/cooking what type of food would you want to see? Comment back to me on Twitter @PupShiny with suggestions.

Admiring the pork loin roast before it goes into the slow cooker

2019.01.26 – Traffic

Post run coffee after a less stressful run

On Thursday – I nearly got hit by a car during my morning run. This was in the residential part of the neighborhood where every intersection is a four way stop, and all of the speed limits are 25mph. Yet, it is such a common sight for people to speed down the roads doing 40mph and blowing through the stop signs. This is what nearly happened to me. Given the vast amount of crazy spandex I have, I rarely wear clothing out that would make me hard to see.

What I was wearing on my run Thursday

As you can see, it is not like I am going to blend into the urban jungle of concrete with this. Lots of contrast and crazy colors. And it is not like I run at an ultra-fast pace where it would be hard to judge how fast I am going. Between 8:30-9:00 min/mile is what is sustainable for me – and honestly given my weight and build it is a pretty respectable time to sustain.

Nearly every week someone doesn’t stop or yield and gives this “I’m sorry” wave thinking that will make everything better. It’s 50:50 if they continue going or stop giving you that look like they are doing you a favor. To me this is the part that just makes my blood boil. SF already has one of the highest pedestrian accident rates in the nation.

The only time you should ever give that “I’m sorry” wave is when you honestly fucked up. Not stopping for a stop sign or not yielding for pedestrian traffic in a marked crosswalk (especially in a residential neighborhood) are times when you can’t claim you are sorry. You actively made a decision that could put others in harm – own up to it.

People also want to treat the neighborhood roads like raceways. I see this nearly every day when I commute to the office. Every day on Fulton I see people speeding down doing 50+ mph on a 30mph road that is next to Golden Gate Park. I see more and more people running _really_ red lights. Or the best are people who race from light to light on the times roads like Great Highway, Sunset, and Oak/Fell. Just go the speed limit and you hit everyone green without stopping. All I can think of is where are you in a rush to get to?

SF wants to reduce deaths and injuries on the streets, but there is never enforcement. When are we going to say enough is enough? But enough of this – here is more of my ass.

2019.01.10 – My new machine

Test #2 in progress

Over the rainy weekend I started back up a bondage project that I have been kicking around for a while. Over the years I have started and stopped it. In the past, it has been mostly due to the fact that I needed to make some sort of embedded electronics device to execute the plan. Because I really don’t have a workshop or often the time to tinker at that level it just always got put on the back burner. But things have changed.

The first big piece in this puzzle is I ordered a Gas Mask hose that was modified to use a hand pump to dispense poppers. I was finding this very effective so far, but wanted to make the process a bit more automated. Another recent development is that I noticed that I was a lot more comfortable in bondage when we hooked up an old CPAP machine to my gas mask. I don’t like the feeling of having to breathe hard or struggle that way, it puts me in an uncomfortable panic state and the easy breathing allowed me to melt right into the sleepsack. That is when things hit me.

Over the past few years, WiFi and Bluetooth connected devices for home automation have become inexpensive and readily available. Either the local APIs for the devices were published or reverse engineered. And after replacing my lights at home with Phillips Hue bulbs, I thought, “is this the way I should go”. I tested to see if the CPAP machine auto started after a power loss and it did. Gears turned and last week I ordered some Wemo outlet switches and started this all back up.

It’s only fitting to wear this for today’s selfies

On Sunday, I started from a clean slate and had first iteration of the system up and running. In short time, I found some maintained and well written Wemo and Hue libraries for Python and got those all working. There was a few GitHub projects to handle reading the heart rate monitor, I found one that seemed to work just fine on the Pi and quickly added support for it to log into Influx DB. By Sunday afternoon and one of my lovers came over and test 1 was executed.

Test 1 – Basic Fuzzy Logic with Air and Poppers

  • CPAP on for minimum of 90 seconds
  • After 90 seconds it will switches over to poppers after a target heart rate is hit.
  • CPAP is the switched off and the aquarium pump turns on to start dispensing the Poppers into the gas mask hose
  • Between 15 and 45 seconds after when the target heart rate is hit we switch back over to the CPAP.
  • Repeat until Maximum number of cycles is hit
  • All data is logged into Influx

From that test it was clear I was nervous. The thought going through my mind is “I am insane, I am a systems architect! I know how buggy software is and I am going to trust myself to my own creation. I am fucking insane.” And when I looked at the data, it was really hard to get my heart rate below 90 because I was so concerned about will the system work as expected. Can I tell lover how to do things. Will the cleanup code work if things go sideways and I get way too much poppers?

Instead everything worked flawlessly. During the middle of it, we did modify some of the values to see how my body reacted and realized that some of the minimums needed to be upped.

Test #1 in progress! That was insane.

On Monday I ordered another switch. This time for the milker. And from a programming standpoint I wanted to get the Hush plug integrated in. That’s when my nerd rage built up. Dealing with the Bluetooth LE stack should not be this hard – and it was a struggle. However I did work through it and on Tuesday I have written my own processes to deal with the BLE stack in Python 3. I made it so that the processes were aggressive about reconnecting and it seemed promising.

I also added in a basic milker routine that would start when the poppers started and go on for 90 seconds and then stop. We can call this tease mode. The buttplug was set to be off when below the target air HR threshold and rise to the max as it reached the target poppers cutoff level. We are all ready to go, and test 2 is executed.

Test 2 – Now with cock milking action!

  • CPAP on for 2 minutes minimum and switch over to poppers when the target HR is reached
  • CPAP turns off and the Poppers and milker go on
  • Poppers stop after target HR is hit (and I lowered it this time from test 1)
  • Milker goes off after a fixed 90 seconds.
  • Continue until max cycles are hit (or in this case, we run out of time on a school night)

The biggest issue was the Hush just wouldn’t stay connected. It would connect go to 80% and then disconnect. I really in the end just wanted it on, and it was torture when it reconnected only to get a turn off command! When I was testing the range on BLE was insane for it. But once inserted I had all of the same problems as the phone. Luckily there may be other ways to deal with that I need to debate about.

But other than the Hush issues – Oh… My… God… I still have issues relaxing but I was less nervous. The reduced cutoff for the poppers was effective since it didn’t feel like I was getting overloaded. The 90 seconds on the milker was such a tease. I had my first orgasm quickly, but then the teasing started. About 5 more cycles in I just had one of those never ending orgasms as the poppers hit. Felt like my cock was cumming until it stopped. #3 was impossible to get in my mental state. 90 seconds was not long enough to get me there. Maybe I need a mode that increases the duration every cycle.

Well, I do have to work today 🙁

But there are more devices and sensors to come and I will be posting more about the journey. I will be soon working with another friend/lover on modifying a brainwave scanner to integrate this in and see what fun machine learning we can do. And some future tests will also be done in other activities seeing how this could work there.

2019.01.03 – Yay for slow tablets

Before Coffee

Last night was a disaster. On the way home I decided to stop by Trader Joe’s in Stonestown and grab stuff to make dinner, or so I thought. The students from SFSU were back in town and that store was picked over of nearly everything I needed. Time for plan b – Smart and Final and even that backfired. The only chicken left were breasts, ether with ribs or boneless/skinless and I needed drumsticks and thighs. On top of that, I have never seen the meat section in such disarray that it wasn’t worth it.

I should have taken a picture and sent something to their HQ since this was rather unacceptable. But instead I decided to just put back the one item I already grabbed and head home to drop off my car and grab some Ramen. Only to find out that the place I wanted to go to was closed for the night for some reason – sigh.

After hitting up a taqueria I head back home and realized I didn’t have much to do. Instead of playing a game or watching stuff on TV/Netflix/YouTube I decided to grab the Kindle Fire that is velcroed to the kitchen cabinet and read.

After coffee

This is something I really just haven’t done in a while. I have been trying to read more on my phone, but I quickly realized tonight it is not the same experience. The biggest change is that the Kindle Fire is so slow that I have nearly no apps on it outside of the Amazon ecosystem (Hey – it is used mainly to look up recipes and for timers).

Before I knew it I was halfway through reading a book that has been on my queue to read. There was something mentally uplifting about this. It has felt like my ADD has taken over my life for the last year and has been hard to just focus. I think a lot of the distraction is the constant notifications or the need to check if someone has responded on social media.

Then it hit me – Technology is one part of why my ADD has been worse. The constant notifications. The barrage of emails. The constant @channel abuse on slack. And worse, the addiction of apps that designers knowingly do to make sure you go back to that application to get your dopamine hit.

Time to face the day

Removing Facebook from my Phone is something I had to do out of keeping my mind sane due to the negative feedback cycle. Twitter is easy avoid since I can’t open it in public or work due to the mass amount of adult content I have on my feed there. Even though Instagram is still there – it doesn’t seem to consume my time or cause the rage I get from Facebook. Lastly, MeWe is just too new to have enough of a distraction aspect to it that I feel like I can safely ignore it (I might have to revisit that if it gains more steam).

Maybe 2019 will be the year of Phone App bankruptcy. Removing all of the distraction whore apps from it. The phone and social media are not 100% to blame for my focus issues, but they are as slice of it.

Just knowing that I was able to sit down last night and read made a big difference.

2019.01.02 – Fear of Facebook

You are not going to see this one on Facebook.

Typically I will post up my selfies to Facebook without fear most of the time. But recently more and more people I know are getting wrangled in Facebook jail over images that used to be fine. Having read the current rules, there is part of me that wants to post this and argue with them that my penis is not erect and that I am not soliciting sex. But I know this will be a lost cause since the human reviewers do not share the same social norms as my community. Maybe I should get some wrestling mats and then say I have the toughest sport of them all, wrestling with getting up in the morning.

Yet, this will go on to Instagram and not trigger off any warnings. It is crazy how the two platforms owned by the same company can have different norms and algorithms.

More wrestling with my coffee

Other than worries about getting the ban hammer over spandex selfies – my motivation is nearly zero. Which ironically is the temperature by the office. According to my weather app it is 0 Celsius by the office. My debate right now is do I want to deal with cold on the motorcycle or drive the cage. I’ll probably take Matte in, but I will have to bundle up.

I love how my ass looks in singlets

After watching the news for a bit while writing this, it reminded me that I still have no major New Year resolutions. The question is, should I come up with some? I am thinking no. Outside of attempting a Triathlon this year I don’t think I have anything that warrants a big goal.

Don’t come between and my coffee, it’s the only thing keeping me sane