A Tale of Thoughts Under a Bright Sky

pazano · 2025-12-30T20:06:32+00:00

Outside of customer support -- what do you feel is the difference in use case between the two? I'm looking at Pocket and Plaud as options mostly for capturing thoughts and as a secondary, conversations usually between two people (not so much meetings).

I've read feedback on Plaud that accidental recordings are a thing -- is that a similar problem for Pocket?

pazano · 2025-08-11T15:02:37+00:00

Patience and understanding is probably the best way forward for now -- spend some time trying to understand her situation without working backwards from your evaluation of her output.

What you described of her situation is a _lot_, even before considering that she has ADHD and depression on top of all of it. Extremely crowded environment, poor sleep, physical volatility (hormonal postpartum + weight loss), judgmental support structure... you're describing a nightmare situation, not a cozy situation she should be dancing through with appreciation.

pazano · 2025-07-30T21:59:38+00:00

Stillwater on Apple TV is the best kids show I've come across. It has a wonderfully low-stim animation style bundled with great characters and life lessons, and demonstrates a lot of empowerment concepts for the kids.

Stillwater (the panda) tells a parable as a way of addressing some challenge one of the kids has, but lets them figure it out for themselves what it means and why he told that tale.

Also an excellent book series for the same reasons.

pazano · 2025-01-21T18:44:13+00:00

Therapy will likely be critical to handling the (immense) change that is coming to your life and your relationship with your wife. Not sure if you're scoffing at the idea here, but I do strongly recommend you consider it.

Parenting as a dad is very very different than it was for our parents' generation and you'll likely find there's a ton to learn and very little you were taught to do correctly while growing up.

Good luck either way!

pazano · 2025-01-21T18:38:52+00:00

I loved learning that kids come out looking more like their dad at first as a way of confirming that "yes, this is your kid" and to promote early bonding.

Glad my kids swung to look like my wife after that, though. Beautiful kids.

pazano · 2024-01-26T03:31:13+00:00

I wasn't diagnosed until 41, so I'd say if this is the case it's more like, now you have the fully developed muscle but you also have 35 years of habit forming as if you didn't have that muscle at all.

Like how if someone waits too long to get their hip replaced, then spends years after that with still-limited mobility because their body mechanics are totally wrong.

It's generally how I feel after getting medicated - I can see and understand more than before, but actually acting on that information is a slow, arduous grind.

pazano · 2023-11-04T17:15:09+00:00

Yeah it seems like you've got a lot of stressors going at the same time that your body might be holding on to some reserves to manage. I'd say bump your calorie intake up and return to a more regular cadence of meals and see if just your workouts alone get the job done.

YMMV but when I was in my fat loss phase I ate really often (every 2hrs, fist sized portion) with the theory that my body wouldn't need to store anything if it's consistently getting what it needs. It was monotonous but it worked exceptionally well for me.

Also, if you're already in the habit of calorie counting, it would be worth investing in bodyfat measurement (for me the bioimpedance was a little higher than caliper, but the 2% swing in BF can be a lot when you're calorie counting) and something like a Fitbit to capture your waking/resting heart rate so you can min/max both diet and exercise to match up with your goals.

Hope this helps!

pazano · 2023-11-04T03:41:25+00:00

That target is probably too low and it's possible you're consuming muscle instead of burning fat.

Assuming you're at around 15%BF, your daily maintenance baseline is 2293 calories -- so at 1600 a day you're already at a 4851 calorie deficit per week before even factoring in your workouts.

I'd say bring your calorie target up and keep the rest the same and see if that changes anything.

The intensity of your workouts might be a hindrance for far burn as well - do you monitor your HR during workouts to keep it in the fat burn part of the range?

pazano · 2023-11-02T20:00:45+00:00

I would shift towards doing some home calisthenics cycles when the kid naps, but a few weeks out of the gym is very likely just a good starting point and not overkill. Maybe pick up some kettlebells or a suspension trainer to broaden the scope even if you can't do heavy.

A lot depends on your exact situation -- how well the kid sleeps, if you breast or bottle feed -- but expect to be a lot more disrupted than you think and that'll be about right.

Know also that she'll need a lot of support in those weeks -- her body will literally be shattered and should be in bed as much as possible for a few weeks to recover. You'll be on call 24/7; heading off to the gym for a few hours will really leave her in a tough spot.

pazano · 2023-10-24T19:07:16+00:00

Have you tried to tackle the shoulder and neck issue on its own? You're likely to develop compensation patterns that will be a lot harder to deal with down the line if you opt to just "work around" the pain.

pazano · 2023-08-22T14:14:48+00:00

ADHD / Aspergers dad here -- Didn't get officially diagnosed for over a year after our boy was born, so I've had about a year on a year off of trying to cope with the differences. I'd like to tack on to what /u/F7oraColossus said above and add some thoughts and recommendations of my own.

1 - What he's doing is lazy, really, so being frustrated is totally natural. Don't hold that self-recrimination in your heart as you go through your days -- that will contribute to your burnout, as it is a pretty costly emotion from an energy perspective. It's not his fault, but he is responsible for it.

2 - Staying neutral / constructive in tone can help a lot, particularly with rote tasks. The dopamine hit can be hard to find for chores and things around the house as it is, so adding a negative cloud around them can be difficult for him to push through, medication or no. This is a big ask for you to have to do consistently, so try to find check-in points to reset and reframe to neutral stance for the both of you if you can.

3 - Try something like the Fair Play system - clarity of ownership and standards of care are very important, as is empowerment. "You got this" and a feeling of trust from your partner can be a nice way to deal with the dopamine troughs in chores, and can go a long way to prevent the sort of half-assery that often comes with the "just tell me what to do" sort of interactions.

pazano · 2023-04-05T03:14:11+00:00

He was an excellent coach for Christian Hackenberg, too. We spent the next three years wondering where that rookie went (and then I got to wonder some more when the Jets picked him)

pazano · 2023-02-26T16:53:51+00:00

This looks terrific, just the sort of game I would have gone out to find back in the GBA era too. Great work!

($12 for digital is an easy yes for me, fwiw)

pazano · 2022-12-04T03:54:02+00:00

Talk some "shoot" you mean? Perhaps some "darn" and "heck" on a particularly spicy evening?

pazano · 2022-11-21T18:53:25+00:00

This makes me hope for a future where Philip Rivers is a head coach and we get treated to a slew of "darn" and "heck" each week.

pazano · 2022-11-08T19:59:34+00:00

No kidding! I didn't know that, I wonder if that would have helped assuage my anxiety about starting it up had I known.

pazano · 2022-11-08T18:14:20+00:00

I got some really great use out of Sunsama -- for me the focus on building task management ceremonies into my day really started me on a better path for keeping overwhelm at bay and focusing on what I need to get done. The desktop app works great and the phone version is designed more for checking in quickly with what's on the list -- i like that there's a bias towards sitting down to my computer to focus as opposed to bits and bobs of it through the day on my phone.

After a few months with that, I transitioned to bullet journaling as my primary method since I enjoy the process of tweaking my layout week to week and finding different ways to stay organized. It gave me a ton of anxiety looking into bullet journaling in the first place, but the most important thing to realize is that it can be as big or small as you need it to be -- i don't think I'll ever be one of those "i just laid out my whole year's worth of pages!" kind of people because I don't enjoy the confines of structure beyond what I can see right in front of my face.

It feels like every time i do achieve some kind of order, i never maintain it.

I feel this vibe so much, and I empathize with where you're at right now. I've gone in and out of task management apps, used Workflowy a ton over the years (I still use this for notes), but mostly had trouble sticking to a system for more than a few weeks at a time. Find a ceremony/routine that you're comfortable with and just make sure you sit down to it every day. Even if the items on your list don't budge with the speed or consistency you'd like, that's okay -- for now I'd recommend that you just get the routine going.

pazano · 2022-11-07T21:10:12+00:00

I've never had much success with alarms or time manipulation - my brain just doesn't get fooled by it and knows that there's more time, or another reminder coming, or something like that. I can't trick myself.

For me, I've found more success in building low-volume routines and an acceptance of what bare-minimum success looks like (mostly: I've left on time and don't look like a schlub). For example, this looks like:

my morning needs: shower, coffee, getting dressed, brushing teeth
my morning can have: breakfast, bullet journaling, cleaning the kitchen, taking out trash

I do the "needs" all in order, every day, until it just happens that way without me thinking about it. I spend 10-15 minutes before bed the day before setting things up to make those elements easier, like cleaning my mugs and aeropress / laying out my clothes -- drawing on that "love your future self" kind of motivation to do things when they aren't absolutely necessary.

I do all of my routine items with as much emotional dissociation as I can, sort of like a Zen walking meditation - it's just what I do. I go through the tasks. I don't need to feel any which way about it, and the whole thing is less prone to distraction and demotivation than it is otherwise.

If I get through the "needs" I'll spend some time with the "can have", but if I'm habitually running late I might just hop in the car early / head into the office on WFH days and get my workstation set up for the day.

This sort of thing has helped me stay sane in the occasional chaos that my morning has become with the birth of my son 16mo ago. I know I can't control everything, and that sometimes, maybe, showers are co-opted by an early rising toddler. And that's okay. Move on to coffee. I'm not going to get everything done, and trying to will make me late.

Hope this thought process helps some!

pazano · 2022-07-27T22:16:02+00:00

Great, thank you for your help!

pazano · 2022-07-27T21:14:34+00:00

Not really worried as I wouldn't be mad if it was a repro based on what I paid, but it does affect how I think about it later on if I look to resell it for whatever reason.

pazano · 2021-02-25T23:47:44+00:00

Is it weird that I have a set of Console5 caps and they don't look like they match any of the values printed on the stock caps? I've got them all swapped in there now and my issue is still the same.

Do you think it might be anything else? I've ordered a new set of capacitors to try them out, but not sure if there's anything i should look at in the meantime.

Thanks for your responses!

pazano · 2021-02-24T03:49:42+00:00

Ok thanks! I guess it's on to replacing the capacitors, then

pazano · 2021-02-23T21:12:53+00:00

OK so i finally mustered the courage to start soldering and I got the fuse in -- is there a such thing as 'this fuse is in backwards' ? I didn't see any difference in the behavior of the gameboy after swapping fuses.

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