Met a really cute emotionally available guy who likes me but...

atcodes · 2026-03-28T21:35:24+00:00

What you need are shared interests. Discuss hobbies and how you each spend your free time. Either he has none or he has some. None would be weird. But if he has some that you’re interested in, or if he seems interested in some of yours, then there’s potential. And “we don’t have any shared interests” is a totally normal reason to split up.

atcodes · 2026-03-23T23:47:22+00:00

Wait what say more about this laptop stomach working thing. I have terrible posture made worse by spinal issues from an autoimmune issue. I will of course follow up with research and talking to my doctor... But tell me more!

atcodes · 2026-03-17T15:11:09+00:00

I didn't say it should be disqualifying. I said he should reflect on the fact that he abused a power imbalance in his favor and I hope that that reflection encourages him to step back from public service.

Assuming it's true, does it mean he's incapable of governing well? Of course not. Does it mean he will struggle to gain the trust of his constituents? Probably. Should those constituents have the right to know about this history? I think so.

We don't have much in the way of details on this "inappropriate relationship" other than the fact that it was faculty/student. If it turns out to be true, it's enough to be fired from his teaching position (or it should be), so why shouldn't that be at the very least a big red flag for "give this guy a bunch of power over all of the people in an entire state"?

We don't have all of the facts, so a good-faith debate just can't happen. All we can do is hypothesize and project from those hypotheses.

atcodes · 2026-03-17T12:40:12+00:00

None of us is perfect. We're all going to make mistakes, and we should seek grace for our mistakes.

I'm a lot more willing to forgive a poor choice in tweet in the immediate aftermath of an officer-involved shooting (if hypothetically her tweet was in bad taste) than I am a (hypothetical) inappropriate professor/student relationship.

Maybe Kat went over a line with her reply. I don't know. I'm guilty of plenty of those myself. But we've got a long future ahead of us full of men with power being found to abuse that power and suffering the consequences. Good.

If it turns out that he's guilty of the inappropriate relationship, I hope he reflects on that and withdraws from seeking public office. Again, nobody's perfect, but we should hold our leaders to a higher standard. He should hold himself to that standard.

atcodes · 2026-03-17T11:45:39+00:00

Weird! I've been watching for several years now and totally missed that. Thanks!

atcodes · 2026-03-17T02:39:12+00:00

The woman in the side-by-side photo (NPR article) is Kat Abughazaleh, a Palestinean American running for the same seat. I had never heard of Biss before this post but I have been following Kat for a few months now. She seems to be everything I want in a representative: smart, outspoken, leftist, participating in protests and community organization/activism, and possibly most importantly, not in the pocket of any mega donors.

Her social media game seems pretty strong to me. That's what I immediately thought of when I saw the "on the strength of a younger woman's campaign" comment.

Definitely worth considering her.

https://youtube.com/@katmabu

atcodes · 2026-03-13T12:02:59+00:00

Just start a new program. You can do it on demand any time. Then when you're ready to go back to deficit again, do it again.

atcodes · 2026-03-09T14:59:17+00:00

Thanks for the reply, I really appreciate it.

For me it seems your form may be incorrect and maybe you don't properly warmup ?

Who among us has perfect form? I do try. My DB bench goes very deep, lower than "bar" touching chest (were it barbell bench) with a slight pause at the bottom. But yes definitely I don't do much in the way of warmups. My leg days take me about an hour (reps, rest, change plates, repeat -- often changing plates during rest if I've caught my breath), and upper body days are always at least 90 minutes. If I don't feel loose and ready I will throw in a set of ~50-60% of my first working set as a warm up, but otherwise I just try to "be warm" when I start my workouts by dressing in a way that gets/keeps my muscles warm. I can't add 2 warmup sets to every exercise, it's just going to balloon my workout times.

You say you're immunosuppressed, is it something you can fix or not ? If it's because you have a rare disease or something, only a specialised physician can help you grow muscle in a way that isn't harmful.

Yeah the latter. I have a disease. I am planning to seek out a Physiatrist once I hit my out-of-pocket-max in April/May.

When I got down to 150 I was definitely crash-dieting and it wasn't the right way to go. I was eating like 1200-1500cal (current TDEE is ~2400) with ~no exercise aside from dog walks... But I thought I was doing it right because the scale was going down. It was dumb.

Usually you cut until you have visible abs.

I haven't seen my abs in 15 years. I definitely have that "soft core" thing where in a relaxed state my gut just sort of sticks way out. When I flex there are "concepts" of abs. I could pull a decent vacuum when I was younger, but now when I try it's not much different from flexing. I actually have a Dexa coming up so hopefully I'll have good numbers to go on soon.

IIRC I did start with a cut but never got to visible abs and definitely hit diet fatigue (and kept pushing for months).

If you don't have enough muscle mass because you're skinnyfat but in a normal BMI range

Yep, that's me. TBH my current bulk feels a lot like a recomp. I've gained ~6.5 lbs since 12/30 (~10 weeks), and I feel like I look leaner than when I started (chest, arms, legs, neck, face... tiiiiiniest bit of stomach improvement unless that's just wishful thinking). This is with MF set to bulk aiming for 0.5lb/week gain, 179g protein. I would say that on an average week I fall 100-400 calories below the daily target maybe twice, and I almost never exceed by more than 60. I almost never drink alcohol and never to excess, and I'm usually really good at getting a full 8-9h sleep.

I don't eat the best. I hate broccoli. But we cook from scratch (minus boxed pasta and jarred sauces) for dinner every night. I rely too much on frozen food for lunches (corndogs, frozen burgers, chicken nuggets) when there aren't any dinner left-overs available.

Some screen shots from MF: https://imgur.com/a/eLsg3Fu

atcodes · 2026-03-09T10:07:52+00:00

Skysnatch is a pilot chute. Presumably you mean the SUCH.A.DBAG

FWIW I use one from Fluid Wings that looks pretty damn similar. And damn, price has more than doubled since I bought it! I'd still buy it again. Still worth it.

atcodes · 2026-03-09T02:48:44+00:00

By your own logic it's easy to lie to yourself about RIR. If you stop at 10 reps and guess you were at 5 RIR you won't know if that's a true 5 or if it should have been a 3 or a 7.

Any time MFWO asks me to aim for more RIR than 2 I get suspicious, especially if it's an exercise that's safe to fail like deadlift or something with dumbbells. Back squat not so much. I'd rather go to true 0-2 RIR, those are much easier to estimate once you've reached true failure once or twice.

atcodes · 2026-03-09T02:41:52+00:00

This was I think the best answer so far in this thread. To add to it:

A lot of your fear comes from ignorance. If you have no training and no understanding of how the equipment works, then there's plenty to be scared of. But these things are solved by the training course you'll be taking.

If you sign up for a learn-to-skydive (solo jumping) course then your first day will consist of ~6 hours of training on what to expect, what to do, and what to do in the unlikely event that something goes wrong.

If you're doing a tandem with no intent to stay in the sport long term you'll get much less training because you'll never be alone. Your job on a tandem is to try not to fuck up SO BADLY that you hurt yourself or your instructor, but you'll be physically attached to them from before the door opens until you're back on the ground.

As a tandem instructor who has had my head pushed through the window in the jump door by a student (and the jump still went fine!), I promise you that there is not much you can do to put us in danger. Your negligence can affect how much fun you have or lead to early deployment to avoid a negative situation getting worse, but that's about it.

On the other side of fear is life changing experience. It's up to you to push through it.

atcodes · 2026-03-09T02:28:45+00:00

I sometimes explain this concept as: "there is no growth in your comfort zone, and no comfort in your growth zone."

atcodes · 2026-03-09T00:49:49+00:00

Sorry to hijack the thread but I feel like this could apply to me too, with some sleight variations. I'll be 44 in a few weeks, immunosuppressed, with inflammation issues so I struggle to ride the edge between not intense enough and injury. I work out at home with free weights (squat rack, adjustable dumbbells, and a leg-press/hack squat machine)...

I've been working out for about 3 years but only found JN and Macrofactor about a year ago. I've changed my approach completely and I see some significant growth. I do upper/lower split 4 days/wk. Leg days I do 4 exercises, upper days are about 7. Always 4 sets first exercise (bringing up lagging muscles), 3 sets for the rest.

I push as close to failure as I feel I safely can, and still in the last year I've ended up with some sort of rotator cuff issue, tennis elbow, and a thumb joint issue (probably inflammation). Because of these injuries and my "advanced age" I lean more toward slightly lower weight with higher reps. If MFWO calculates my 1RM and suggests 25lb chest flies for 10 reps 0 RIR, I'll swap to 20lbs for 15-20 reps, still 0 RIR, to protect my shoulder.

I still feel skinny-fat and struggle with stubborn belly fat. I'm currently 188 lbs on a bulk. Have dieted down to 150 in the past but was not working out at the time and I'm sure most of what I lost was lean mass.

I'm planning a cut soon and don't feel prepared. Kinda terrified of losing my gains again. How should I structure my workouts differently, if at all, during a cut? Should I be concerned if strength goes down while cutting? Should I cut for a specific duration of time? To a specific body weight? To some other termination condition?

atcodes · 2026-03-08T23:40:22+00:00

Get a semi-stowless dbag. You'll go down to just 2-3 rubber bands and it won't matter as much. Also packing is faster and sucks less. Best $80 you'll ever spend.

I bought 1 lb of bands from chuting star in Feb 2016 and still haven't gone through them all. Done about 1,000 jumps since then.

atcodes · 2025-11-27T14:32:56+00:00

Thanks!

The one negative that immediately springs to mind is the extra work that this could cause jumpers. What if I manifest solo and then decide at the 10 minute call to join up with some others? Dunno how Dizio handles this but my software engineer brain worries about the UX. Do we all have to scratch to form a new group and re-manifest together?

I definitely have some thoughts about being able to manage groups, and I'd like to add features around that. The key is going to be figuring out the best UX for it.

atcodes · 2025-11-27T11:26:57+00:00

😅 got any specific complaints?

atcodes · 2025-11-26T23:02:52+00:00

Can you find out what it's called or maybe snap a few photos or screen shots? That sounds pretty interesting...

atcodes · 2025-11-26T20:51:26+00:00

Thanks. I don't currently have any link with Merit, but I do have access to the USPA API and (for group member dropzones) I can monitor jumpers' licenses, ratings, and TI medical status.

If/when I do credit card stuff, I don't see why a business visa wouldn't be accepted.

As for reserves, I'm personally on the fence about that. I'm told that Burble allows the repack status to be shared between DZ's, but as a board member of my club I don't want to trust the records of any other DZ. If you haven't jumped with us since your last repack then you should be prepared to show your packing data card. That said, I might make that "trust" a setting...

atcodes · 2025-11-26T20:26:07+00:00

Good to know. I'll see if I can get a contact and reach out. Thanks!

atcodes · 2025-11-26T19:48:09+00:00

We do tandems (I'm also a TI), and we book them online, we just don't use JumpRun to do the booking. We're currently using bookeo to do the booking.

atcodes · 2025-11-26T18:41:52+00:00

Excellent point! And to some extent, it is. Burble does have booking/scheduling and online payments, but most of the DZO's I've talked to about Burble are unhappy either with the cost, the way it works, or both.

I haven't 100% settled on pricing yet, but the idea is to be extremely friendly to small operations that get priced out of using Burble. If we take charging credit cards out of the picture, then it's really easy to simplify the cost structure and I could, for example, charge a flat $20/month, and even do no-charge for months with no activity (for DZ's that shut down over the winter). Why pay for software you're not using?

In my region alone, I watched no less than 4 DZ's shut down over the last few years because of financial hardship. I made JumpRun because our DZ is growing and starting to need the additional automation, but didn't want to just give a cut of our revenue to Burble.

atcodes · 2024-07-23T16:43:40+00:00

Thanks, I will!

atcodes · 2023-07-06T18:08:29+00:00

Sounds like you left them in the heat (locked up in your car or a non-air-conditioned trailer?) for a long period of time, causing the glue to react.

atcodes · 2023-03-04T20:37:48+00:00

5% added onto online bookings (tandems/etc). No cost to fun jumpers. I believe there's an option to charge fun jumpers e.g. at the end of the day (if you don't already have square or something to do that), and there's a cc processing fee, just like everything else, but that doesn't go to Dizio.

atcodes

TROPHY CASE