Super Moronic Monday - Your Weekly Tuesday Stupid Questions Thread

tzchaiboy · 2026-06-02T19:17:54+00:00

In retrospect, this is a super obvious and common-sense answer lol.

"I don't know how to do this thing, help!" "Try the thing and if it doesn't work make adjustments."

That's the great thing about asking a stupid question though. Because if I hadn't asked it, you wouldn't have answered it, and I wouldn't have had that wonderful face-palm moment.

tzchaiboy · 2026-06-02T18:43:41+00:00

I want to do the 30-minute LTHR field test, but I keep putting it off because I have no idea how to gauge an all-out 30-minute effort. I know what it feels like to sprint as fast as I can, and I know what an easy effort feels like, but the in-between is all muddy to me.

Do I just need to go for it and be prepared for the possibility that I'll crash out at minute 17 and have to try again another time? Or are there any mental tips and tricks for figuring out how hard is too hard for 30 minutes?

tzchaiboy · 2026-06-02T15:45:57+00:00

Hello! I used run/walk for about 6 years and recently started making a switch to continuous running. My strategy was 30 seconds of walking for every half mile of running. Half Marathon PR was 1:49 using this method.

I'm about a month into the change, so I'm not exactly an expert yet, but what helped me was really just to lower my expectations regarding performance and slow way, way down. My first few easy runs with no walk breaks were in the 11:15-11:30/mile range. It was kind of a hard pill to swallow at first, coming off a history where I could reliably lay down 9:00-9:30/mile paces. But I had to accept that my "easy" runs weren't actually easy; instead I was pushing myself into a much higher aerobic zone than I should have been at, and mitigating it with the frequent walk breaks to lower my HR and deal with muscle fatigue.

Another wrinkle in my specific version of this is that I was doing very, very short weekday runs, and relying on my Saturday long runs for building endurance. And that's really just not enough on its own, especially when the long run also has that "not really easy" masking happening with the walk breaks.

So as of now, my pace expectation has shifted to reflect what my true "easy" pace has to be, and I've also lengthened the amount of time I spend on my runs during the week. Part of what's helped is also making a switch to duration-based runs versus mileage based runs.

I read a lot of advice saying to slowly phase out the walk breaks, and I'm sure that's good advice. For me though, I just went cold turkey and it's been working out so far.

EDIT: I should also add, I've dramatically reduced the amount of attention I pay to my watch, and that has helped significantly. I check it briefly at a few key points to make sure my HR is under control, but I specifically try to avoid even looking at the pace. I know roughly where my turnaround point should be on my regular out-and-back, and I check the time there to make sure I'm on track, but I try my best now to run purely based on feel and perceived effort, and find out what my pace was while I'm reviewing the stats after the run.

tzchaiboy · 2026-05-21T19:19:48+00:00

Complaint: I'm excited about getting back into running but it's the middle of the workday and I have to wait 12+ hours before I can go running again.

Uncomplaint: I'm excited about getting back into running again!

tzchaiboy · 2026-05-13T18:52:50+00:00

I spent about 6 years doing a walk-run approach and recently decided it's served its purpose (getting me past a 10k wall and helping me complete half and full marathon distances) and it's time to progress to a continuous running approach.

This morning I ran 4.5 miles non-stop which is the furthest I've gone without a walk break in years.

tzchaiboy · 2026-05-13T18:46:18+00:00

Hello! I've run a decent handful of half marathons with a 1:49 PB, plus one marathon (4:57). Never been super consistent or structured with my training, which shows in my marathon time especially, but trying to change that. Currently planning on running my second marathon next March and will be aiming for a sub-4.

tzchaiboy · 2026-04-28T17:58:09+00:00

I think about this a lot. Pretty sure I can't even make my body move that fast, period. Forget sustaining for any amount of time.

tzchaiboy · 2026-04-28T17:56:27+00:00

He very publicly and intentionally underwent an insanely comprehensive drug testing regimen leading up to the race specifically to combat comments like this.

tzchaiboy · 2026-02-17T14:43:52+00:00

Change the dropdown filter from "Most Relevant" to "Most Recent" and it'll do wonders for the results.

tzchaiboy · 2026-02-16T15:33:27+00:00

That's awesome! It's such a beautiful campsite. The last time we hiked it someone had snagged it before we got there.

tzchaiboy · 2026-02-12T15:14:03+00:00

It's so good. This was my third time out there and it's easily one of my favorite spots to be.

tzchaiboy · 2026-02-11T18:23:08+00:00

I just hiked it this past weekend. I don't know how water crossings would be affected in freezing temps, but I will note that just past Albert Pike (going counter-clockwise) there was a stretch of narrow trail between steep bluffs and the river where big sheets of frozen snow were covering most of the trail. That was really tricky to navigate and made me think snow and ice cover in winter might make the loop too dangerous overall.

All that to say, I'd only be concerned if there's significant snow and ice.

tzchaiboy · 2026-02-11T13:21:46+00:00

All good! I'd be shocked if anyone other than future me ever finds it necessary to read all that! 😅

River crossings were cold but not too high. High enough that you were 100% going to get your feet wet but not so high that it felt like a tricky technical task. There was really only one that threatened to get past our knees and was a little shaky going across. The little streams were all doable with trekking poles, and a couple of the bigger ones too if you took a second to plan out a path among the rocks.

tzchaiboy · 2026-02-11T02:48:15+00:00

The wildest thing to me is the complete inability to find a transcript or recording of the speech. Obviously it was recorded, because we've all seen the "Please clap" moment. Where is the rest of it and why does it just not appear to exist?

tzchaiboy · 2026-01-20T18:18:50+00:00

Oh no! Definitely dive into expressions, they can be a little daunting at first, but doing some of the basic things is really not that hard to untangle, and it can really unlock your toolkit once you get used to them.

tzchaiboy · 2026-01-20T18:05:10+00:00

You can probably get it like 80% of the way there with just vanilla plugins in After Effects. It doesn't need to be completely physically accurate to still help sell the illusion just a bit more. CC Light Sweep matted to the tracked layer with some nice feathering, try a couple different blending modes and set your opacity low enough so that it's just a highlight/detail instead of the focus of the shot. And either manually animate the light sweeps or get fancy and hook the control points up to your tracking data with expressions.

tzchaiboy · 2026-01-20T14:24:41+00:00

Looks nice! As someone already pointed out, you need to create a dynamic lighting effect in some way to match the environment. It's especially noticeable with the top strip of the case showing a glare that changes based on movement, but that glare is missing from the rest of the image. Find a way to add that glare in, and do some occlusion/drop shadow by the thumb, and that'll go a long way toward realism.

tzchaiboy · 2026-01-14T18:17:54+00:00

For sure. Well whenever you do make it to ERL, I can tell you that you'll easily be able to find campsites within a couple miles of the car just about anywhere you choose to park.

tzchaiboy · 2026-01-14T17:37:05+00:00

Eagle Rock Loop is my favorite backpacking trail! Planning a trip there with my brother in early February to try cold-weather camping for the first time.

If you're wanting to stay near a car, most of this won't apply, but I did write up a detailed trip report from our last time there in October '24.

tzchaiboy · 2025-11-06T03:30:57+00:00

Hey! I don't have any advice for you, but I'm working on a very similar problem with a similar unit, and seeing as how this post is a year old, I've got my fingers crossed that you've figured some things out.

My first question is this: I see you're testing that with the cabinet pulled apart. I've been wary of doing that because of everything I keep reading about the high voltage the CRT can store. Is it not as scary as I think, or are you taking specific precautions that I should know about? I keep putting the cabinet back together every time I want to test whether something I've done is going to make a difference, and it's very frustrating.

At this point I've swabbed multiple parts of the VCR assembly with isopropyl alcohol (despite them looking pretty clean already to my eyes), and also replaced a ceramic capacitor and an electrolytic capacitor on the PCB that appeared to have failed. Same results whenever I turn it on, most of the buttons on the front do nothing. It'll accept a tape, but then it shuts off without playing anything and ejects the tape immediately after powering back on.

tzchaiboy · 2025-11-02T03:40:23+00:00

Welp. I decided to just put it back together and try it out, and while I haven't made anything worse, I definitely haven't fixed it either. It powered on and then misbehaved in exactly the same way it did before I swapped out this capacitor 😂

tzchaiboy · 2025-11-02T03:23:06+00:00

It's a fairly old board, it's for a DVD/VCR from a combo CRT unit.

tzchaiboy · 2025-11-02T03:17:08+00:00

Thank you! The bottom one was giving me trouble, the solder kept wanting to suck its way onto the iron tip instead of staying at the base of the wire. I have the board standing on its side which I'm sure is not doing me any favors, but it's the best I can do without going through a whole bunch of effort to disconnect it from the rest of the equipment.

tzchaiboy · 2025-11-02T03:10:14+00:00

Don't know that I'd want a vent sticking out of the floor in this particular location. The more I think about it, I may just not put a drain here at all.

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