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Welcome, Month of May. New Parkrun Strategies

 Now that I woke up around 3:30 this morning and have already done my 16 minute routine of running-in-place on the rug on our living room floor, I am now seated at our dining room table, sipping on some freshly brewed coffee in front of this computer console. I'm looking ahead at the day to come.  Some more reading is in order, and it's a distinct possibility that Melissa and I will be heading down to our community pool to hang out and walk (and possibly float on my back) while the country music on FM 103.7 booms in the background on this first of weekdays. We might also just pay a visit to the post office I once worked at to check into a money matter we were contacted about. I intend to do some more slow-as-all Bowie running in the back yard, letting the day slowly envelope me without letting time constraints stress me out.  Reading, a little bit at a time, is something I can easily handle, as long as I bookmark my progress with the chapter and pages read...with today's date.  As for running, I will run my yard laps nice and easy, keeping track of the time i take to accomplish them before my mind counsels me to cut them short before i get too uncomfortable.  There's more live major league baseball in store on television, so I'll be able to groove into that.  I'm keeping up with Mr. Martinus Evans by working on my running without trying to lose weight or pigging out on sweets.  As for this approaching Saturday morning's Depot Parkrun 5k in Gainesville, my plan is to run when I can...slow AF...and be willing to end my run/walk with my head held high.  In other words, I want to show up there and, to my limiting mind's greatest extent possible, follow through and just see how far I can go.  I don't care how long it takes or who the other people are, i'll just try to avoid colliding with them. If my slow running efforts lead me to mentally interpret it all as too stressful to my body, then this will be a successful, albeit learning, experience no failure here.  Looks like I'll be trying some more Amazon Prime music albums, and foreign language and self-help podcasts, perfect for a weekly Parkrun.  And I'll be sure to be amenable to walking a lot of it, practicing a better attitude and keeping properly hydrated carrying a small Propel bottle... 

ipf 58 min Early Morning Hope and Thanks for Day

 This morning I got up early...it's between 6;30 and 7.  I did 8 minutes of ipf, and feel encouraged to try some more.  Anita and Jim should come over for a while a little later...very much looking forward to that.  As the day goes on, I'd like to straighten out getting printed translations in Russian, German and French for me to practice on.  Doing some backyard walking on this day in which the weather temperature will be turning much colder will help out, I believe.  main thing is to be loving, content and grateful and enjoy life...

About Bad Computer Keyboard, Running Training Plans

 In this world of expeted instant stimulation and gratification, i hope for the time in which I can just sit around somewhere and think, write and study...along with a nice little hot or decaf coffee.  I want to get back into regular journaling, where I type out my thoughts offline on my word processor and save them to computer without any need to be online.  Assuming I hopefully have10-15 years ahead of me to live on a decently mentally and physically active level, to start learning new language sounds like a good idea, as does getting back to long-distance running.  n participating in hal-marathons, along with training sessions focusing on my home and surrounding neighborhoods. I'm very tired of these defective old keyboards that don't properly translate my keying efforts to the screen or file. More to come, maybe. Today I exercised enough to pick I pick up1.0 virtual miles. Let's see what happens tomorrow...

At Depot Parkrun Today, Melissa and I Show Up and Walk a Lap

 My total virtual miles for today: 7.0. Melissa, who felt sore this morning, still drove me on down to Depot Park for their Parkrun.  After the first .7-mile lap, though, we agreed to end it for this week.Throughout today's event, I felt out of shape.  Later today I was up for a brisk walk around our block, and exercised while watching some YouTube. We're planning on going to the beach on Sunday, so we'll see how that goes. Writing blog articles on this Chromebook has become very frustrating for me because the keyboard has become almost impossible to type on.. it's probably time for a new computer with a decent keyboard...

Game of the Week: Minesweeper

 

For years Minesweeper was an embedded game in every desktop or laptop computer, usually along with Solitaire representing the "free" games.  How many of us have gotten sucked into playing this game over and over again when we instead should have been tending to what we were SUPPOSED to do on the computer...or, better, "just say no" and switch off the contraption?  The premise of Minesweeper, which can be played on different-sized game grids with variable difficulty, involves filling up the squares with "steps"...if a number appears, you're safe, but if you just stepped on a mine, then "game over".  Each number indicates exactly how many mines surround it vertically, horizontally or diagnally...so the highest number theoretically would be "8"...if such a "safe" square has no surrounding mines, the game automatically compensates for it so that you are always presented with choices.  There is some strategy and skill to Minesweeper, but luck sometimes is involved whenever no clear safe move is available and you just have to make your best guess.  The program usually keeps account of how quickly you successfully get through a game...I always got a kick out of playing it.  It also makes me feel a bit old in that there is probably an increasing number of people on this planet who have never heard of Minesweeper, much less having experienced playing it since computers nowadays tend not to include it in their packages...

Game of the Week: Qix

 

Qix was an old Atari video game from the 1980s, later adapted to arcade game format...at least that's the way I remember it.  After Pong of the late 1970s, it became my favorite computer game...all because my brother-in-law Keith had left it with Melissa and me after we married in 1986.  When I applied to the Postal Service in late 1986 for a clerk position with their new letter-sorting machine (LSM), I realized after taking the exam that I would need to practice my dexterity with the keyboard.  Qix was played on the Atari (attachable through cables to the back of any TV then) as a small cartridge you jam into the top of the console...this computer also had the Basic computer language built into it, so I was able to program it to throw iterations of random number chains on the screen at time intervals roughly emulating the procession of letters with their addresses on the LSM...in the summer of '87 this greatly helped me gain that manual dexterity required for the job I was hired for in late September that year.  But when I wasn't training for my job on the Atari, I enjoyed playing Qix...and I got pretty doggone good at it!  The game's object is to draw Etch-a-Sketch-like lines enclosing spaces on the screen's rectangular grid, trying to avoid the randomly-moving Qix in the process while amassing as high a score as possible: should Qix cut through a line in progress the game is over! In the arcade game version above, the player is going up on the left part of the screen, trying to connect to another side before that fluctuating pattern on the right can hit it.  And time is of the essence: another icon, Sparx, moves along the lines already drawn and can end the game if it ever catches up with the player.  Over the course of time I developed some pretty nifty strategies for victory, but I don't even know if we still have the game or that ancient console: too bad, I feel a sentimental attachment to it all...

Using AlphaSmart Word Processor for Writing Once Again

During the first several years of this blog, I tended to write out my articles using a primitive portable word processor called AlphaSmart.  I'm returning to it now because it is small and lightweight, runs what seems like forever on three AA batteries, is independent of the Internet so I can use in anywhere, and I can then send all of my writings to my blog while at home on my secure Internet connection. It quickly starts up...none of that annoying waiting time like on my laptop...and automatically saves files as I write.  It contains eight files, so I can easily go back and forth on various writing projects as well...and it has a large storage capacity.   In the past I've worn out a number of these very handy devices, so I went to Amazon to get another one...this version is called Neo2.  They are sadly no longer in production, and supplies are limited...if in the future I can't buy another one, then I guess I'll just have to adjust to it.  But for now I'm getting a kick out of using this sweet little word processor...