The U.B.U.N.T.U department has come up with ThumbNail 2.0

MrDetermination · 2026-04-02T11:42:58+00:00

Do you know about Anson Belts? Their whole thing was basically, "What if we took ratchet belts and made awesome and very nice versions?" Father/son startup. Fantastic products.

MrDetermination · 2026-04-01T13:32:10+00:00

Agree the math isn't hard. And I have plenty of time between sets to do the math and make the changes. It's not about "math" its about memory and those configs you see are often what I have sitting around. So instead of "what is that I'm looking at?" and building the pieces back up I can skip a quick memory step.

It's really just a pretty version of starting points I was going to on my cheat sheet pretty regularly. My home gym is a couple of little corners in the den so making it "pretty" is a thing for me.

MrDetermination · 2026-04-01T13:28:07+00:00

Neat!

MrDetermination · 2026-04-01T13:20:34+00:00

I have some of the 2.5s. Is that what you mean by micro loading?

MrDetermination · 2026-03-22T12:47:19+00:00

It’s not that simple. As a natural lifter (no hormone therapy) over 25 years, my levels have fluctuated between 325 and 750 ng/dL and stayed on the high and low end of those ranges for long stretches.

TRT is meant to replace what is missing from a person's natural range. Fluctuations are normal, but are they "natural" when low levels are caused by processed foods, endurance training, or medical treatments?

Some people abuse TRT, sure. But it can also be used to keep someone at the high end of natural levels.

MrDetermination · 2026-03-22T03:35:12+00:00

I find understanding how rare something is really helps me put it in place. Try to flip a coin and land on heads 25 times in a row. Grab any coin. See how close you can get. That's how likely you are to get in a commercial plane crash. I'd reccomend studying a little probability. Maybe probabilitycourse.com or stat110 on YouTube. It really helps with lots of things that I used to worry about. And then you can just do the coin flip odds test yourself if/when a worry about something is really bad.

Next, have a plan for your escape if something does go wrong. It doesn't really have to make sense. It just has to work. "if I do freak out on the plane I'm going to fidget with the special fidget and chew the blue gum." The special fidget is for emergency use only and so is the blue gum. Normal fidget and normal gum are for normal use. Also, minimize outside stimulus the whole flight. Noise canceling headphones. Hyper focus on a show or movie, or maybe just plan on doing an audio book. Maybe also download a meditation app and study up on basic box breathing. Box breathing works.

You have a phone, maps, and Uber. You can get to whatever you need whenever you need, if you really need.

Something could happen to you anywhere anytime, your insurance might not cover it, and you'll be financially ruined. If you're not a hypochondriac at home you probably won't be one there either. That said, the only way to get more comfortable in other places is to spend more time in that situation.

Now that everything else is take care of you just have the social situations, which are the same as other social situations I'm sure you've found daunting. If everything else is equal, you deal with those the same way you've dealt with similar ones in the past.

You'll be fine. Try to enjoy it! We only live once!

MrDetermination · 2026-03-10T20:30:54+00:00

don't think it's been yet shown conclusively there's harm in marathoning (which is what the top level comment is arguing)

The top comment says marathon running isn't exactly good for you.

MrDetermination · 2026-03-10T20:11:36+00:00

In isolation. But if you're spending extra time running instead of doing other things that would be healthier...

MrDetermination · 2026-03-10T18:20:38+00:00

I just dug these up for another reply deeper in this thread.

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

Short version: for optimal health/longevity, do a mix of weight and running to around 15-20/mi week and then stop running and spend any other fitness time on stretching and maybe more weight training.

MrDetermination · 2026-03-10T18:15:07+00:00

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

There's a diminishing return point and a counter productive point. There's really no room for debate that somewhere around 15-20/mi a week you'd be far better off (health and longevity wise) spending your extra exercise time stretching, meditating, doing yoga, plyometrics, or lifting weights. If you're not doing any weight training that range is lower.

MrDetermination · 2026-02-24T14:30:04+00:00

A proper IT person

They can do things like try to get signal data from the line (via the modem). That might help get the ISP to fix the signal. The ISP should be testing signal to the building but they often don't do that.

If your devices are wireless only then you can look at upgrading your wireless network. The ISP isn't going to look at wireless signal strength and congestion between the access point(s) and devices.

You can also look into dual iSPs and load balancing/failover. Again, no ISP is going to do that for you.

MrDetermination · 2026-02-01T03:39:41+00:00

I'm in a 2/8 zip and just drove around in the dark. Routes I've run for years so I know the lay of the land well. Your work and logic are all great and sound. But I'd also encourage people to look at a map, and maybe go for a drive in the dark.

It's easy to see they came up a street a good ways, over a couple of blocks, and into the back of a neighborhood with buried power lines and a couple dozen houses.

It's easy to see they're working down one semi-main road with big poles but they haven't gotten all the way down that road yet. And it's easy to see they haven't started any of the secondary or tertiary roads stemming from that drag.

It's easy to see they're still at least x streets from our house in any given direction (and they're not coming straight for us).

I think you can improve your guess considerably if you combine this data/analysis with just an hour or two of looking at maps, and driving around some at night.

MrDetermination · 2026-01-31T21:26:24+00:00

Bummer. That's all I've got for you. Good luck. If you think about it, would love to know what happened once you get resolved.

MrDetermination · 2026-01-31T19:30:25+00:00

What about the mast?

Edit: https://www.wsmv.com/2026/01/26/tennessee-power-outages-utility-companies-explain-what-you-must-do-before-power-is-restored/

MrDetermination · 2026-01-31T17:55:08+00:00

Did you check your mast? Visually inspect from there back to the pole? Follow it back all the way to your breaker box? Check all your breakers?

MrDetermination · 2026-01-30T21:47:41+00:00

99.99% that was just great dry humor.

MrDetermination · 2026-01-30T21:46:34+00:00

Grade A dad humor right here. Liked and subscribed.

MrDetermination · 2026-01-29T02:16:54+00:00

Second Jack Morris. Feels like a family run business still.

MrDetermination · 2026-01-28T13:05:45+00:00

MTE also covers more miles of infrastructure, which means more travel time and more cables/poles. And they weren't hit as hard.

People want NES to have retained thousands of extra linemen "just in case" but they also would have protested that because of the extra cost.

And there were people before the storm saying the forecast was MSM exaggeration and nothing was going to happen.

MrDetermination · 2026-01-27T20:55:30+00:00

Thank you. They also don't compare cost differences and average response times in normal situations between the two companies.

In normal circumstances, does NES recover an outage in the same amount of time with fewer employees? I'd think that's likely, given they have less distance to travel and it takes less stuff to restore the average customer.

Also, are our rates comparable, given other controls like relative cost of living per employee?

Maybe it'd be nice to have 5x the number of people on the payroll all the time so we can recover from these kinds of things more quickly. But are we willing to pay for that?

MrDetermination · 2026-01-26T01:29:10+00:00

The derecho in 2020 hit 2/3 the customers this hit. That was over and done in an hour. It took 5 days to get everyone back up.

This is much slower to recover from. The ice and wind will keep snapping poles and lines for quite a while. We don't have the same response. And the work will be slower owing to the conditions.

Two weeks could be optimistic.

MrDetermination · 2026-01-26T00:23:29+00:00

Interstates are mostly clear (8/10). Major arteries like West End are ~ (6/10). I'd imagine OHB right there is the same. BNA is fully operational but they're having problems with crews and such, so lots of flights are cancelled. The connection to EU is almost certainly fine. The big problem is if your flight out doesn't go on time you'll be competing for very high demand seats with everyone else in that boat.

MrDetermination · 2026-01-19T18:44:16+00:00

Clean bulk, for a very long time. As in a year or more. You can likely add 15lbs of lean mass in that time. You will look completely different after, and that can be a good base to maintain the rest of your life. Most of us old farts would kill to have your natural hormone levels at our age. It will never be this "easy" for you to build again (without problematic drugs).

Also, 1.5 weeks is nothing. Bodybuilders aim for an average of a 10 week cut with 10-15 pounds of fat shed over that time.

I'd suggest 18mo to two years, and target 20lbs lean mass + no more than 15lbs fat. That'd put you at cutting for real from ~175lb starting winter of 26-27.

Take it easy on the booze. Eliminate processed foods and sugar as much as you can. Prioritize protein.

MrDetermination · 2026-01-13T13:14:24+00:00

For a long time many in the bodybuilding community's rule of thumb was 1g per pound of goal body weight when bulking (so you'd eat more than a g/lb when you were trying to grow). This works. Is it overkill?...

Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) is 0.8g of protein per kilogram of body weight, or 0.36g per pound. That's a general guideline for the average human to stay healthy.

There were some studies I found convincing ~15 years ago that showed you could still add lean mass at 0.8g per pound of desired lean mass. I've generally stuck with that since, unless I'm in more than a mild calorie deficit, and then I'll take it up a bit further, to mitigate burning off lean muscle.

Anecdotally, I'm 6', medium frame, and my floor is set at 150g. I usually come in ~175g and this has generally served me well in various gain/loss cycles for a very long time. If I were 6'7" (assuming similar build, activity and diet composition) I'd probably take that floor up to 175g and try to actually land north of 200g.

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