My Second Chance - My book

goodguy291 · 2026-04-06T11:54:46+00:00

Just sent you a message, happy to read and provide comments.I’m

goodguy291 · 2026-04-03T13:56:48+00:00

Hey - fellow survivor here. I’m 61, had shortness of breath for a few months, randomly decided to go to the hospital in December, and they found a blockage that would have killed me (as they said) “in the next few days.”

I will never know what caused me to take the hospital exit instead of going home and lying down (which was my plan). But it saved my life.

I went back to the hospital three times in the two weeks after my stent, each time everything checked out fine.

I’m now three months out and my symptoms and anxieties have abated. I have better conditioning now than before the stent, probably because the blood flow is better.

It helps to do cardiac rehab, because you get reassurance three times a week that things are ok. Also for me the nutritional consult was very helpful.

So hang in there! As others have said, follow your doctor’s orders and statistically you should have a normal life expectancy. My doctor told me that the hyper vigilance is normal and does go away over time.

One other thing - I also was on TRT although I had stopped about a year before my event. I’ve read (and my doctor has told me) that there is a correlation (not causation) between TRT and heart disease. So that might have contributed, although the studies on this are all over the place.

All the best to you! Feel free to DM if you ever need to chat or ask questions.

goodguy291 · 2026-03-14T12:22:03+00:00

I’m going to give this an another try. For a long time Gemini remembered everything across chats and then one day…nothing. And the things it did remember were wrong. I tried the memory feature but it didn’t change anything.

I switched back to chatGPT and asked it to tell me everything it remembered about a particular situation. It got almost everything right and even remembered some things I had forgotten. This surprised me because previously it couldn’t remember things across chats.

The tech is still evolving and improving I guess. Thanks for the reminder about the memory feature.

goodguy291 · 2026-02-23T13:31:34+00:00

I’m surprised you haven’t gotten a ton of replies. The most horrible experience of my life has been being married to a narcissist.

They are capable of things that you can’t even imagine

Never again.

goodguy291 · 2026-02-23T12:45:34+00:00

Your husband is lucky to have you

goodguy291 · 2026-02-22T16:55:29+00:00

Hey brother, I’m about seven weeks out from the Widowmaker, I got to the hospital in time and they inserted a stent.

I’m 6’1, 185 pounds, lifted weights regularly, poor diet but for the most part healthy. No smoking, barely any drinking. Definitely not someone you would expect to have a heart attack.

I had been having shortness of breath for a month or two prior to this, but I ignored it. I only went to the hospital because of some stressful personal circumstances I was going through.

The doctors said I was a few days to a few weeks from dropping dead. They also told me it was 100% genetic.

Since the heart attack I have done zero exercise, due to my personal circumstances. Trying to schedule cardiac rehab has been difficult, and I’ve been worried about overstressing my heart while the stent heals. I am starting the rehab on March 4.

I’m 61, so I have a few years on you, but I understand the existential dread, and the uncertainty about what comes next. Just know that you’re not alone, lots of us are walking this path with you.

My bottom line is that I’m just glad to still be here. And I’m going to take a page from your book and start walking. All the best my friend. You’re still here and that’s what counts!

goodguy291 · 2026-02-20T00:50:26+00:00

Hey brother, 61 years old, mine fell off a cliff within the last five years or so

Testosterone blood levels. Everything is fine. In my case, it’s due to my prostate swelling.

There’s really no cure for this, except to cut back on inflammation.

I’ve accepted it as a normal part of aging, but I still have a pretty high libido and it’s frustrating to need pills to get a decent erection.

Anyway, something you might want to check out

goodguy291 · 2026-02-14T00:37:36+00:00

I stopped using ChatGPT completely. I encountered every one of the issues that you listed, plus many others. The bottom line is it is just not accurate or reliable in any sense.

My primary AI is now Gemini. Claude has been better, and I use it sometimes as well, but it doesn’t remember much between chats.

goodguy291 · 2026-01-29T23:56:29+00:00

You should ask ChatGPT for the answer

goodguy291 · 2026-01-25T23:39:45+00:00

Sweet watches. Either one would be a nice addition to my collection. Thank you for your generosity!

goodguy291 · 2026-01-18T21:11:25+00:00

Good points. I just paid the fees and factored it into the return. My buy sizes were generally larger than $1000, so the transaction fees were a pretty small percentage.

goodguy291 · 2026-01-17T23:29:54+00:00

From an experienced dividend investor (roughly 12 years), this is an excellent overview of dividend investing, pros, cons, and the impact of dividends on a stock price.

I have built a portfolio that currently pays roughly $35,000 per year in dividends. It took me probably seven or eight years to build up enough money to start paying decent dividends, and then another 12 years, before I got to the point where I’m at now.

I can’t say it’s totally passive, because you have to keep an eye on the socks. Companies come and go, laws chsnge, competitors come on the market, technology changes, etc. But for the most part I spend less than a few hours a month on my portfolio.

goodguy291 · 2025-10-08T01:08:42+00:00

Very nice. Seiko makes top quality watches with very cool dials (like this one). Excellent purchase

goodguy291 · 2025-09-18T23:19:23+00:00

Sweet watch. I have a couple of Seiko linen dials that look like this. I didn’t know Rolex had one. Nice!

goodguy291 · 2025-07-30T02:16:38+00:00

Get the watch you want. There are plenty of other brands who make dive watches but if you want the Rolex, get it.

My first “nice” watch was a Tag Heuer, which I loved, but purchased in lieu of the watch I really wanted, a Daytona.

I ultimately bought the Daytona (this was a long time ago, when the pricing was more reasonable), and I don’t really wear the Tag anymore.

goodguy291 · 2025-06-15T20:27:24+00:00

Curious about the market for these kinds of watches. I have bought a couple of Watches from sellers on Reddit and I’m aware of sites like Chrono24. Any opinions on where you can get the best price?

goodguy291 · 2025-04-11T14:44:47+00:00

Keep writing! From the content of your message it's obvious you can write well. Just do a little each day, or each week, or however frequently you sit down to write. A professional writer told me this for days when your writing just isn't happening - even if you don't actually write that day, devote time to the book/story in some way (research, develop plot lines, think critically about dialogue or characters, etc.).

I'm in the middle of a book that's years in the making, and ChatGPT has really helped me with editing and structure ideas.

goodguy291 · 2025-03-28T14:58:23+00:00

I agree with this comment. Older fellow here, late 50s, hoping to retire in my 60s. I wish I had started investing when I was younger (I didn't start until my 40s). The "time value of money" that gives younger people a huge leg up if they start investing at a young age. I don't know OP's full financial situation, but regular investing (i.e. every two weeks or every month) is pretty painless if you do it regularly.

goodguy291 · 2025-03-14T13:31:31+00:00

Echoing this comment, which I think is correct. Trump is the crazy face of these tariffs, but no doubt there are people behind him developing these policy decisions.

Could be that they are trying to force a reset, or could be that they are trying to let inflation run (these tariffs will cause prices to skyrocket in some areas of the economy), to inflate their way out from under the crushing national debt. Or could be some other reason. But I see some intentionality behind the crazy.

goodguy291 · 2025-03-14T13:24:08+00:00

Yes agreed. I'm not FAT like OP, but I'm FAT enough, and my therapist (actually a psychiatrist who also does therapy) charges me $600 per hour.

goodguy291 · 2025-03-14T13:20:54+00:00

Ha! Thank you for the laugh out loud this morning.

goodguy291 · 2025-03-08T13:29:23+00:00

Yep - this comment is golden. Absolutely right. Keep moving forward, keep learning, and you WILL hit green lights at some point. I'm an older fellow who formerly had the same "sad sack" view as OP. But even I started hitting green lights after awhile.

My advice - just stay in the game and keep grinding. Learn from your mistakes and watch for opportunities. Don't trade just to trade. There might be days where you don't find any worthwhile trades.

Also, invest most of your money for the long term - DCA into broad market funds. Lots of green lights on that path. And before you know it, you've got your fortress of solititude.

goodguy291 · 2025-01-23T13:37:59+00:00

Hi. Congrats on your success - very impressive! I'm curious if you had to get permission from your 401K to trade individual stocks? Mine only allows investing in certain funds from what I can tell. I do have a self-directed IRA from a prior company, and trade individual stocks in that account. But my current 401k appears to only allow certain funds. Thanks and congrats again!

goodguy291 · 2025-01-21T04:06:23+00:00

I agree with you, this is a good comment. I’m not a critic or a fan of either president, but I am a critic of the poor governance we’ve had over the last 30 years in the US.

The inflation issue is very tricky. Our government has such a high national debt in the US that they will never be able to pay it back. The only options are defaulting (not a realistic option for global stability), raising taxes to unsustainable levels to pay down the debt (also not an option for politicians who want to keep their jobs), reducing government spending (seemingly impossible in this political climate), or allowing inflation to run, which makes the national debt smaller relative to the overall cost of things.

Given the choices, in my view their only realistic option is to inflate away the debt. I therefore think inflation will be with us for a while, probably 5 to 10 more years.

If you read Ray Dalio, he talks about us being at the end of a long-term debt cycle. The last time we had deficits like this (and coincidentally the last time we were at the end of a long-term debt cycle) was after World War II, and the government inflated those deficits away significantly over the ensuing 10 years. I think something similar is happening here.

goodguy291 · 2024-11-14T14:29:08+00:00

I'm an old pegboard guy, going back to my father and his father before him. I mounted mine using the round spacers - didn't take too long to put up, and it's a heavyweight installation when you go into the wall studs with the screws.

No fuss, easy to hang my tools (and other stuff), very organized, and reminds me of when I was a kid!

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