Number 4 down the drain and it was rainy right up until the actual run started, which was awesome. Strava fucked up my GPS again, shorting me a full 5k. My time with it is around a minute faster than my parkrun time, too, which … whatever, it’s parkrun, not the Olympics.
I didn’t bring my headphones this time because I wanted to experience the run on its own. It’s great, I recommend it. People are friendlier when you don’t have headphones on. (Depending on the circumstances at least.) There was a visitor from Scotland this morning who was very sweet. I wanted to chat with her after the run but ran the damn thing again, so I didn’t get to ask her the one thing I wanted to ask: Do you know who Limmy is?
I ran 4/1 splits again, which is what I’ve been doing this whole week as part of my 5k-all-run training. I think, overall, that I nailed it. I cheated a couple of times, stopping 10 seconds earlier than I should, but to be fair, I didn’t bring my headphones so I didn’t have my interval timer app telling me when to walk, which meant I had to keep checking my phone, which was annoying. Again, it’s parkrun, it’s nothing official.
I did end up having to stop a couple times because around mile 2, my left foot pad starts to go numb. Not entirely sure why, other than general wear and tear from this nearly 300lb man. It goes away if I stop and stretch out my ankle a bit, so I think it’s a nerve issue more than a lack of blood flow or anything. I do plan to get it checked out by a doc, though I suppose they’ll just tell me to take ibuprofen and stay off it for a week.
Which I may end up doing anyway! I was thinking about a deload of sorts for the next week. Where I can shift focus a bit on strength training for my legs. I think my goal will just be to run a mile on Monday and Wednesday. That’s it. Do an easy mile on Monday and then maybe try to run a fast mile on Wednesday. Then parkrun #5, and then back to the training schedule.
I have to be careful, because I know recovery and rest is important but I don’t want to overdo the rest to the point where I slide back into being sedentary, or lose my progress. I know that’s kind of hard to do but still. I eventually want to run longer distances, but first I have to ensure that my legs can keep up with me.
After the run I went to the Albertsons nearby and bought the perfect recovery drink:
Chocolate milk! It’s so god damn good you guys. I haven’t had chocolate milk in years but it is nearly perfect. Unless you’re lactose intolerant, of course. But you should still drink it, I think. Just get the shits, it’s worth it.
It’s just my luck that I am considering this year my Marie Kondo year, when she in fact has stopped Marie Kondoing herself. I’m always late to the trends!
I’ve decided to downsize, particularly in the technology category. I’ve been meaning to do this for some time, but this year the exercise and shit like that has pushed my endorphins high enough that I actually feel like doing it. Plus I realized that FreeGeek is just a few blocks away. I have a lot of old tech (and cords … oh god the cords) and electronics that are just gathering dust, when they could go to people who need them.
But it’s funny how, in order to downsize, I actually have to buy things. For example: I have this big asshole gaming desk.
I bought this sometime in 2021, before I moved to my current apartment. It’s pretty big: about 63″ wide and 30″ deep. Large enough to hold all that stuff you see in the picture. It’s also, admittedly, kind of shit. It’s two top pieces (likely particle board) put together and held in place with metal plates. Those then sit on two wobbly metal legs and a cross bar. There are no triangles down there, you know, so it wobbles and the whole thing feels flimsy. But hey, it’s a desk, and it was way better than my desk before it (though that one had extra support to prevent wobbles).
My old apartment was around 600 sq ft; this one is 450. The difference is noticeable but it’s alright. I traded space for location, newer building, better amenities, etc. Ever since the move, though, this desk has been bothering me. It’s just too big. It’s not just too big for this apartment–it’s too big, period. I suppose a year ago I was doing streaming stuff and thought that the space would be helpful, but I can’t stand it anymore. It’s too big, there’s too much going on, I want to downsize.
Well, that means I have to buy a new desk. Which I’ve done. But that desk is probably too small for a computer tower, an ultrawide monitor, and a second monitor. So I thought about it for a bit. What do I do with the second monitor, anyway? Usually I watch YouTube videos while I play video games. Do I need a huge, 1920×1080, 75mhz monitor for that? No, of course not. Well, what if I used my newly refurbished laptop as a second monitor instead? That presents a couple of problems: first, my laptop is so old that I don’t want it to be on that much, and second, it’s so old that the moment it gets anywhere near hot, the loud obnoxious fan inside kicks on. Don’t want that either.
So then I thought, what if I had a little tablet? Something smaller that would definitely fit and could act as a second monitor, or just be there if it doesn’t work as a second monitor? I ended up pursuing this idea and bought a cheap Samsung tablet. It’s only a 10″ screen but I don’t think that’ll be an issue, because I can set it up closer to me for watching. Plus, it’s a tablet! I had thought of getting one of those portable LCD screens, which are about the same price but have a larger screen, but I settled on a tablet because it can do other stuff. Plus, it’s much smaller, and that’s what I’m about right now. Downsizing.Big TV is an exception. Big TV is Good.
I could try to sell my monitor and recoup some costs, but I’ll probably just give it to FreeGeek. Selling stuff is a pain in the ass and I want to give some low income kid an opportunity to play some PC games on a decent monitor. I tried selling my other other monitor through Nextdoor and it didn’t sell. At this point I’m just sick of having all this stuff. I want to get rid of as much of it as I can. But unfortunately, that means spending more money. Hopefully, this will be the absolute end of money spending and I can use the rest of 2023 to pay off these damnable credit cards.
So, you know. Growing pains. Or shrinking pains, really. Sometimes in order to pursue the life you want, you have to buy some shit and give away some other shit. C’est la vie.
Hi friends. I just realized I could make a poll and I’d like to know your thoughts on this newsletter.
Would you prefer:
A) One long newsletter every month, or
B) One shorter newsletter every week or two weeks
So far every monthly newsletter has hit the email limit mark, which I don’t mind, but maybe you do! But I also suspect that the longer the newsletter, the less of it is read. So let’s see how you feel.
Vote below!
Thanks for reading! If you have anything else you’d like me to write about, please let me know!
alternate title: josh talks about running too much now
February approacheth, and it’s about time again for that sneaky fucker Phil to tell us if he saw his shadow or not. Are we really judging the future of winter based on a creature’s lack of object permanence? Why couldn’t it be Pittsburgh Phil or something that people know how to spell? Honest to god, what is up with this little shit?
If you raised me up that high, I don’t know that I’d be able to tell my shadow from anyone else’s, guy! Also, why are you wearing a top hat? That groundhog looks like he is so done with this gig.
I love Groundhog Day. Great movie. The type of movie 32 year old film school dropouts on YouTube call a “masterclass on” whatever they need to say to get you to click on their video. But it’s also kind of a sad movie to me, because it was the movie that caused Bill Murray and Harold Ramis to stop talking to each other for 20 years, until Ramis was on death’s door. Apparently Murray is a huge asshole, so it’s not surprising that he would stop talking to someone he didn’t like, but it’s still hard for me to watch this film, knowing that the two were about to cut ties after it was over.1
Anyway. These are the thoughts January gets you, folks.
parkrun
Hey, so my old high school classmate and friend Annie, who lives in Jolly Olde England these days, told me about parkrun recently. I was getting back into running (which I won’t stop talking about, jesus christ) and posted about it on Instagram and Annie was nice enough to DM me and let me know about parkrun!
Parkrun is a free 5k run or walk that lots of people in the UK do every Saturday at around 9am. It started in England but has since moved to all over the world, mostly in western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, Japan, and a smattering in America and Canada. There’s one on the Falkland Islands, which also appears to be the southernmost parkrun. The northernmost one appears to be in Oulu, Finland.
Most of the parkruns in the U.S. are on the east coast, which is not surprising, cause ain’t no damn Commie lefty bastard gonna make me get out of my 2014 Dodge Ram and ruin my pristine TRUMP 204EVER cowboy boots I bought at the Maverik on Chinden2 to take one step anywhere that ain’t closer to the brisket line at a Golden Corral, you hear me?!
However! There is a parkrun in Portland! Well, Somerset West. Which isn’t even a city as far as I can tell. This is Suburbs Territory, people. “Unincorporated Community” territory. They don’t do cities here, okay? These people left the cities, to get away from the riffraff and the copious amount of drugs everyone is doing right on the city streets! I’ve seen it, Margaret! A man, filthy and ragged, sitting on the curb, putting a needle straight into his arm! Land’s sakes!
So, for the past three weeks, I’ve been driving out to the Rock Creek Trail parkrun site in the morning to go for a run with a gaggle of other people. It’s fun! The trail itself is lovely, a sort of wetlands area nestled between … suburbs. Really, on all sides, suburbs and upscale apartment complexes. It’s not as bad as it could be, but it does have a creeping NIMBY aspect to it.
There are milestones for going to a certain number of runs (25, 50, 100, etc) or volunteering. You can buy special milestone gear, which is cool. You also get a barcode that gets scanned after every run, which keeps your times and some other stats on their website!
If you’re a runner, I highly recommend seeing if there’s a parkrun near you. There probably isn’t, just be aware. There isn’t one in Boise, which is insane to me. I think a lot of them in the U.S. are started by UK expats, and something tells me there aren’t a lot of UK expats in Idaho who also like to run. Though there isn’t one in NYC OR LA OR Chicago, which blows my mind. Anyway, they’re so chill and everyone is cool and it doesn’t feel haughty or overly pretentious at all. Just some folks looking to get some exercise together. Try it out!
Blazers Game
At the company holiday party last month, the very same which gave me COVID-19, I won the karaoke contest and got tickets to see the Blazers in my boss’s seats which are very close to the court. Just close enough to be good seats, but not one row closer, where you get food and drink service. Ah well.
I went with my friend Ryan because he is a huge Blazers fan and if I’m going to watch a sport I have little interest in, I’m taking someone who is far more interested in it, so I can watch them. Study them.
Here’s Ryan and me in 2016:
And here we are, seven years later:
Well, okay, this is from BeReal and Ryan’s head got cut off. It makes it look like I went there myself and tried to take a selfie with a random person beside me. I assure you that that is not the case.
Anyway, the Blazers won and Damian Lillard scored 60 points and is now the 5th(?) highest scorer of three points or something like that. I’m not a huge fan of basketball but I know how hard it is to get the thing in the dang hoop, and Dame can do it pretty much anywhere at the three point line. In fact I think he only missed one three pointer the entire game. Guy’s a beast.
Anyway when the game was over we went to the Matador and got nachos and beer. The end! Worth the covid!3
Another Gosh Darn 5k
Get used to these, I’m running one every month. Hey, YOU signed up for this newsletter, buddy! You knew what you were getting into.
I ran the Race for Warmth on the 29th. This was in Vancouver, WA. The Couv, baby. This is from my blog.
*sports announcer voice* “And oh what a race for warmth it is today, Todd!”
“That’s right, Jerry, it’s colder than a witch’s tit out here.”
“It’s colder than the balls on a brass monkey.”
“It’s cold as fuck Jerry!”
This morning I left my apartment at around 8:15 am. The Portland air was crisp and cold. I drove to Vancouver, Washington, which took about 15 minutes. I then parked at a high school parking lot. Upon exiting the vehicle, I discovered that Vancouver was WINDY AS HELL.
And that was my opening impression of the Race for Warmth, a 5/10k out in the Couv, put on by Clark (County) Public Utilities to benefit Operation Warm Heart which helps low-income families pay their heating bills during the cold months (or just in general, I guess). The race began and ended at the Clark Public Utilities building, which is right off the I-5 bridge, making for an easy trek. The packet pickup the day before was a drive through event, which reminded me a lot of when I got the covid vaccine, except this time I got the vaccine of … future exercise. How about that.
The “swag bag” (remember when swag was a thing the youths would say?) consisted of some free and discount coupons, two tickets to see a Ridgefield Raptors baseball game in June (hell yeah, why not), and one of those emergency blankets and a hand warmer, which I think people used during or before the race but seems to be more intended for an emergency kit for your car.
The atmosphere of the event was great. It wasn’t too crowded, everyone was fucking freezing, and there were a couple of tents with free stuff. Relevant Coffee provided the morning bean juice, which was very good. They also gave away a $5 gift card in the swag bag, which I fully intend to use in the future. Meanwhile, a tent for Why Racing Events gave away some stuff, including my favorite free thing, some old PDX carpet sunglasses. They had some other stuff too that I totally forgot to grab.
They seem to do a lot of triathlon races but also noticed I was wearing my Shamrock Run hoodie and suggested I run sign up for their version, the Couve Clover Run, which happens a week after the Shamrock Run. Maybe I will, Why Racing Events … maybe I will.
(Side note: I always thought it was “Couv,” not “Couve.” Both are colloqualisms, so who cares, but maybe I ought to trust the Washingtonians.)
The tent next to theirs was for NW Personal Training, also based in Vancouver. They gave out INCREDIBLY HELPFUL drawstring bags so I could carry all of my free shit. This was very good. Also, some sunglasses and the Weirdest Free Thing, a license plate frame.
Lastly, there were Franz cookies, which of course were delicious.
As for the race itself: I did good! I managed to run the entire first mile without stopping, which was one of my two goals for the race. According to Strava, my first mile was 11:44 and I was a 25:33 for two miles, both of which are current PRs. I knew running the first mile like I did would cause me to lose energy toward the end. My pace dropped pretty significantly during miles two and three, which is not really what I want, but I wanted to go faster overall and I guess I made that sacrifice.
My other goal was a sub 40 min 5k, which I didn’t hit, but I think I was only about a minute over. My Strava time was 40:54, but that was for 3.07 miles because Strava does that sometimes. I thought I started the app with ample time to hit 3.1 but I guess not! Regardless, I think that’ll be about my chip time. If there was a gun time, it will be about a minute or so slower, because the start was a goddamn choke point, and also because there were a surprising amount of people walking. It was a walk/run event but it seemed like most people around my area were walkers. Ain’t nothing wrong with that, except it was like running through a minefield trying to dodge walkers left and right.
There were some slight uphills along the way, which I tried to run every time. You won’t get better at running inclines unless you actually run them. My grandaddy told me that once. (This is untrue.) Also a nice stretch along the Columbia River and this Vancouver Waterfront section that I think is fairly new. I don’t remember the drive into Vancouver being so nice. Is Vancouver nicer than Portland now? That would be wild.
So, for next time, I think the goal is to actually slow down my first mile pace so that my second and third miles are steadier. Like, if they’re all 13 minutes, that would be great, plus I’d get under 40 minutes. I think the adrenaline of running a race with people made me start out a lot faster. But who knows? Maybe in a month or two from now, 11:44 will be my 5k pace. Here’s hoping.
After the race there was an after party with a live band (god bless you musicians for playing in the cold), some turkey stew which was alright, cans of Michael Bubly, and more cookies. I had a sit and ate my stew and then promptly left. One of these days I’ll make some runner friends, but today is not that day!
Overall, a nice race that I would absolutely run again next year.
See you in a couple weeks for the Providence Heart to Start!
What Else is New?
Not much, honestly! I’m just an Exercise Dude now, I guess. I bought a new GPU for my computer. If you’re a real poindexter you can read about it on my blog. Nerd!
Videos for You
To be honest, I’ve always been kind of a distant fan of dodie. I liked her YouTube videos and generally thought her music was alright (and, to be very honest, I mostly thought she was very cute), but this Tiny Desk Concert got me on board the dodie train. Absolutely lovely set.
Oh, you know, just the Radiohead album In Rainbows done with music from the Nintendo 64. Completely average, normal sort of thing. It’s actually very good, and some stuff sounds weirdly remarkable in the N64 soundscape. The opening of “Nude” could totally be used for some background music in a point-and-click adventure, I think.
I’ve been on a Phoebe Bridgers kick lately. I also recently discovered that she has shown her boobs on Playboy. These two items are related. Anyway, her music is great and her boobs are great too! #FreeTheNipple!
The End
These are always so damn long. Let me know if you’d prefer a weekly version or something. Either way, see you next month!
I would like to acknowledge how neat it is that the movie is about the repetition of a single day over and over and over, and all of the guys who stand up there when Phil gets trotted out are wearing the same outfits they wore when the whole thing began in the 1880s. It’s like a Groundhog Day for THEM, you know? CIRCLES WITHIN CIRCLES.
IMPORTANT NOTE: I know there’s no Maverik on Chinden in Boise. Chinden’s just a funnier street than Ustick or State, you know? Chinden. Say it out loud a couple of times. You’ll get it.
*sports announcer voice* “And oh what a race for warmth it is today, Todd!”
“That’s right, Jerry, it’s colder than a witch’s tit out here.”
“It’s colder than the balls on a brass monkey.”
“It’s cold as fuck Jerry!”
This morning I left my apartment at around 8:15 am. The Portland air was crisp and cold. I drove to Vancouver, Washington, which took about 15 minutes. I then parked at a high school parking lot. Upon exiting the vehicle, I discovered that Vancouver was WINDY AS HELL.
And that was my opening impression of the Race for Warmth, a 5/10k out in the Couv, put on by Clark (County) Public Utilities to benefit Operation Warm Heart which helps low-income families pay their heating bills during the cold months (or just in general, I guess). The race began and ended at the Clark Public Utilities building, which is right off the I-5 bridge, making for an easy trek. The packet pickup the day before was a drive through event, which reminded me a lot of when I got the covid vaccine, except this time I got the vaccine of … future exercise. How about that.
The “swag bag” (remember when swag was a thing the youths would say?) consisted of some free and discount coupons, two tickets to see a Ridgefield Raptors baseball game in June (hell yeah, why not), and one of those emergency blankets and a hand warmer, which I think people used during or before the race but seems to be more intended for an emergency kit for your car.
The atmosphere of the event was great. It wasn’t too crowded, everyone was fucking freezing, and there were a couple of tents with free stuff. Relevant Coffee provided the morning bean juice, which was very good. They also gave away a $5 gift card in the swag bag, which I fully intend to use in the future. Meanwhile, a tent for Why Racing Events gave away some stuff, including my favorite free thing, some old PDX carpet sunglasses. They had some other stuff too that I totally forgot to grab.
“I make this look good.” Remember Men in Black?
They seem to do a lot of triathlon races but also noticed I was wearing my Shamrock Run hoodie and suggested I run sign up for their version, the Couve Clover Run, which happens a week after the Shamrock Run. Maybe I will, Why Racing Events … maybe I will.
(Side note: I always thought it was “Couv,” not “Couve.” Both are colloqualisms, so who cares, but maybe I ought to trust the Washingtonians.)
The tent next to theirs was for NW Personal Training, also based in Vancouver. They gave out INCREDIBLY HELPFUL drawstring bags so I could carry all of my free shit. This was very good. Also, some sunglasses and the Weirdest Free Thing, a license plate frame.
Lastly, there were Franz cookies, which of course were delicious.
As for the race itself: I did good! I managed to run the entire first mile without stopping, which was one of my two goals for the race. According to Strava, my first mile was 11:44 and I was a 25:33 for two miles, both of which are current PRs. I knew running the first mile like I did would cause me to lose energy toward the end. My pace dropped pretty significantly during miles two and three, which is not really what I want, but I wanted to go faster overall and I guess I made that sacrifice.
My other goal was a sub 40 min 5k, which I didn’t hit, but I think I was only about a minute over. My Strava time was 40:54, but that was for 3.07 miles because Strava does that sometimes. I thought I started the app with ample time to hit 3.1 but I guess not! Regardless, I think that’ll be about my chip time. If there was a gun time, it will be about a minute or so slower, because the start was a goddamn choke point, and also because there were a surprising amount of people walking. It was a walk/run event but it seemed like most people around my area were walkers. Ain’t nothing wrong with that, except it was like running through a minefield trying to dodge walkers left and right.
UPDATE: My chip time was 40:44, 10 sec faster than Strava, which is weird. Gun time was as expected, 42:24.
There were some slight uphills along the way, which I tried to run every time. You won’t get better at running inclines unless you actually run them. My grandaddy told me that once. (This is untrue.) Also a nice stretch along the Columbia River and this Vancouver Waterfront section that I think is fairly new. I don’t remember the drive into Vancouver being so nice. Is Vancouver nicer than Portland now? That would be wild.
So, for next time, I think the goal is to actually slow down my first mile pace so that my second and third miles are steadier. Like, if they’re all 13 minutes, that would be great, plus I’d get under 40 minutes. I think the adrenaline of running a race with people made me start out a lot faster. But who knows? Maybe in a month or two from now, 11:44 will be my 5k pace. Here’s hoping.
After the race there was an after party with a live band (god bless you musicians for playing in the cold), some turkey stew which was alright, cans of Michael Bubly, and more cookies. I had a sit and ate my stew and then promptly left. One of these days I’ll make some runner friends, but today is not that day!
Overall, a nice race that I would absolutely run again next year.
See you in a couple weeks for the Providence Heart to Start!
Happy Cup, Portland, OR Medium Roast, Single Origin (Guatemala) Tasting Notes: Cherry cordial, hazelnut butter, rosewater, vanilla
Happy Cup is awesome. It is a roaster here in Portland which employs people with developmental disabilities, at a competitive wave. I don’t know what else to say about that other than it’s awesome.
These beans are sufficiently roasty for a medium roast, without being ashy or sour. (I think fixing my grind helped this though.) Otherwise, pretty mellow with some fruity notes. I didn’t taste vanilla but I did get an umami flavor in there at one point, which I enjoyed. Happy Cup has never really wowed me with its beans but they’ve never been terrible, either.
Look, if you live in Portland and you like coffee, buy a bag of Happy Cup beans every once in a while. Make it part of your rotation.
Thanks Alix for my beans!
Overall, a nice, middle of the road bag of beans that you should absolutely buy so you can help support people with developmental disabilities. 6/10
Last week, at the end of the last parkrun, I, after running for three miles in a steady downpour, said to one of the volunteers, “Well, at least it’s not snowing.”
“Don’t say that!” she replied. “You’ll curse us for next week.”
Well … this morning it snowed. In fact, this morning was the only day we’ve had real precipitation in about three or four days, and it is sunny now and will be mostly rain-free until Friday.
So yes. I did curse this week’s parkrun. My penance, I think, will be to keep running.
It was cold this morning, too. Does not bode well for the rest of the winter. A couple of degrees above freezing (I’ll let you decide what that means in Celsius or Fahrenheit). The snow was really more like a small, light hail. These were not snowflakes, they were a recon mission for future bombardment.
I Came, I Ran, I … Did Alright. Shaved a couple seconds off my pace. Today’s interval training was three minutes running, two minutes walking, nine times. I thought that would be grueling, but it actually wasn’t too bad at all. Even the uphill runs were better than I expected.
Hell, I even made the Local Legend of the Rock Creek Trail parkrun on Strava. What does that mean? Well, it means I’ve logged the run the most in the last 90 days, I think. I’ve logged it three times, which means … the other people must’ve stopped using Strava.
I’m getting better, and I feel better, and yet … that near 14 minute mile pace is driving me nuts. I had my mouse hovering over the Half-Marathon registration for the July 4th Foot Traffic Flat on Sauvie Island. I was gonna do it. I was very close to doing it. But I did some sort of pace extrapolation thing on another site which told me that at my current pace, it would be a 3 hour half (a 3 hour half) — an over 3 hour half, technically, I just wanted to get that joke in. That’s just too fucking long to be running a half marathon.
So I signed up for the 5k instead and my 2023 is now hellbent on reducing my pace to under 12 minutes. Twelve was the bane of my existence back in the day, too. My fasted pace was 11:44, on an 8k in 2013, which is weird as it’s the only 8k I’ve ever run. Everything else has been over 12 minutes. I don’t like it. I’m okay with being a slow runner, but, like, a 10 minute mile slow.
Thus, the training continues…
Next week I will likely be walking my parkrun as the Race for Warmth is the next day. I’m also hellbent on going to parkrun every week, even if I have races. Sometimes the habit is more important than the impact.
I’m doing fine. My pace is getting lower with almost each run. I’ve got two parkruns under my belt and about a week and a half from this post will be my first 5k race for 2023, the Run for Warmth in Vancouver, WA (The Couv). Judging by a recent email I received from them, their goodies bag will be very good. You know I’m sucker for a goodies bag. Medals are nice and all, but a bag with goodies in it? Get out of the city!
But still, running is hard. The motivation is hard. Especially as I hit that part in January where it’s cold and the realization that it’s another year doing all this sinks in. This is going to by my 40th year on this Earth, which doesn’t help. (It sort of helps.)
Like I said, I have two parkruns left in January. Tomorrow will be normal but the one after I will have to walk, because I am running the Run for Warmth the next day. I’ve been thinking about volunteering that week, but it also feels weird to jump into volunteering so soon. We’ll see.
I was also feeling a little unsatisfied with my laissez faire run schedule so I grabbed a training … kit? Training schedule? Whatever. I got it from the Runner’s World website.
This is meant to help boost me up to running 5k without walking. I just started–tomorrow will be the Week 1 Saturday–and it seems like it’s working. I’ve realized that I was cheating myself out of the longer runs, because I had no timer to keep me on track. I would run, think I had run for, what, five minutes?, but really it was like one minute. Timing keeps me honest, which I appreciate. The training will get harder going forward, but I’ve been paying attention to my food intake and making sure I eat enough to fuel me, which is important. I had this problem when I was weightlifting too; I want to lose weight but you actually kind of have to increase your food intake in order to have the energy to exercise in the first place. So my weight loss will be slower than I’d like, but that’s alright.
I’ll be back here tomorrow with my parkrun #3 update!
My second week of parkrun was as you might expect for the Portland Metro area in January: cold and rainy. Again was I virtually at the end of the pack, a cross of running and walking, and despite running out of gas early on, and despite thinking that I was slower this week than last week, I was actually faster, by 27 seconds (on Strava at least). That seems like nothing but it’s actually a pretty good jump in time.
I was concerned that my last night, late night workout would impede my ability to run this morning, slowed down by sore muscles and whatnot. But I woke up this morning virtually sore-free (Soreless? Sans sore?). The opening mile of the run felt like my legs might give out a bit, and for some reason I was sucking in air early on, which is what happened last week too; my 2 mi run on the track on Thursday saw me running two whole laps (around 8 min), so having to stop at around 4 min this morning was a little discouraging. But it’s not about the walk, or the run, really. It’s just about moving. So I kept moving. I walked when I needed too, I ran when I wanted to. I’m glad to have a Pixel Watch because I can check my heart rate, allowing me to pick up into a run when my heart fell to around 140 bpm.
My goal for the year is twofold, but is essentially the same: one, to get my time down to 10 min/mile, and two, to run the entire 5k without walking. It’s going to be an uphill battle against age and the past few years of sedentary lifestyle, but I think I can do it, and honestly, I think I can do it a lot earlier than I realize. Every time I run I get a little faster. It’s only a matter of time.
It may come as no surprise that I have been gaming for a very long time. Over 30 years at this point! From sepia-toned Space Invaders on my dad’s old computer, to Super Mario Bros on the NES, all the way to today. Video games are important to me, not just because they’re fun, but because they help me calm down and chill out. When I’m particularly stressed or anxious, video games give me an outlet to vegetate and just work on simple tasks, like puzzles, or follow a story that I am guiding with my choices. They’re good, is what I’m trying to say.
And all along my journey of gaming, one near constant has been graphics cards. See, back in the 90s, 2d gaming was commonplace, but 3d games were becoming more and more popular, thanks to games like Doom and, perhaps more importantly, Quake. Quake was one of the first real 3d games (not just 2d sprites put in a 3d environment). As such, it was very resource heavy and slow. Lots of games were slow back then; FPS wasn’t really a concept because a lot of games couldn’t get up to 30 FPS in the first place.
Then a company came along called 3dfx. They began selling what were basically proto-graphics cards to help boost graphics for intensive games like Quake by allowing the card to process the graphics (known as hardware acceleration), allowing the CPU to process everything else. 3dfx made a graphics card called Voodoo, way back in the late 90s. I had one! Specifically I had the Diamond Monster II (I think), which used the Voodoo graphics chipset that 3dfx created. It changed everything. Suddenly games were running great, with little hiccups, just in time to play classics like Unreal and Quake III Arena.
The box for the Diamond Monster II. Look at that angry car!
3dfx later made the Banshee, which was a cheaper alternative, and then in 2000 the company was bought by Nvidia. Nvidia, by the way, claims to have made the first real GPU, the Geforce 256, but to me, the Diamond Monster II will always be the first GPU, even if it didn’t have all the modern bells and whistles.
The DMII was installed on my father’s computer, but once I started college I bought my first computer: ALBATROSS, aka the Fortress of Consternation. This computer came with an integrated GPU, a S3 ProSavage with a whopping 32MB of RAM. Integrated GPUs still exist but they have fallen out of style, which makes sense when you think about it. I thought I had upgraded the GPU on this one but if I did, I didn’t make a note of it anywhere. (My emails only go back to 2004, sadly.)
So I had that computer for seven or eight years, but it eventually went kaput (I swear I wrote about this somewhere but I can’t find it) and I bought my next computer, called MAGRAGEEVES. This is when I started naming my computers demon names. It’s just … you gotta spice up the little things, you know what I mean? Old Mags was a prebuilt computer and came with this GPU:
I swear I have dust and/or cat hair everywhere. I’m sorry.
I still have this for some reason! The Radeon HD 3650, Over-clocked Edition (guitar riff). This was my first official foray into AMD territory, although this was after AMD bought ATI but before they stopped using the ATI name, so this is technically an ATI Radeon card. This was, as always is with these things, a very good GPU to have at the time.Fun fact: I still had this computer tower until a friend of mine needed a computer. I repurposed it with an old SSD and sold it to her for, I think, $50. She used it for a few months before rightly thinking, “Why the fuck did I buy this?” It served me well … for a couple of years, before I bought another computer called CABERTOSS in 2011. Cabertoss was a very cheap Chinese prebuilt computer — seriously, it cost $280 at the time. I’m surprised didn’t explode on me. I splurged and spent $70 on an ATI Radeon 4650 with 1gb of ram to go with it. A whole 1000 higher than the last GPU! Wow. I suspect it ran about the same as the 3650.This computer was given or sold or whatever to my friend Nate many years ago. Again, I would be surprised if it still worked.
At this point I was living in Portland and was getting A) student loans and B) free unemployment checks (thanks Obama!) and so I decided to finally build my own computer. And thus, GARGAROTH was born. Gargaroth had too many fucking fans and in the early 2010s these big fucking heavy as shit computer towers were en vogue so there you go. The GPU I bought with this was the MSI Radeon 6950 Twin Frozr III with 1gb of ram. But then I quickly upgraded it to this, the Radeon 7950 with 3gb of ram:
Twin Frozr III at top, with the VisionTek below for comparison.
For the record, the 3gb and 1gb versions of the Twin Frozr look the same. This was my first real “Jesus Christ, look at the size of that graphics card” GPU. It really is very big, and heavy! This card was nearly top of the line at the time, which isn’t saying much because the line would jump like 50 notches higher every three months. Still, it handled pretty much any game thrown at it and let me watch HD videos with no problem. This card still works; I recently installed it into my HTPC and it would play HD videos up to 4k without a problem.
The Twin Frozr III was my card for nearly ten years, and showed its age about two years into my owning it. The 2010s were like an arms race for GPUs (and computer tech in general), and soon AMD and Nvidia were battling it out for supremacy. I, meanwhile, graduated from Portland State with a nigh-worthless Theatre Arts graduate degree and was broke, and continued to be mostly broke until…
The pandemic! I was lucky to have a job and get stimulus checks, which I used to begin construction on a new PC, the one I currently use: THARGORAD. For this computer I bought a Radeon RX 580 with 8gb of ram. It worked great! And then, like I mentioned earlier, I took the Twin Frozr and added it to some other parts from Gargaroth, bought a old mini-ATX motherboard and a small form case to make my HTPC, known as SMÖLCOMP because it is small.
And that was my setup for the past two years, until recently, when I decided to splurge again and upgrade my GPU, purchasing a Radeon RX 6700 XT (look at all those letters), with 12gb of ram. This is probably the most top of the line card I think I’ve ever bought, as it was released about two years ago. Thus, the RX 580 was moved to Smölcomp, and the Twin Frozr III has now, officially, been decommissioned, because I really have no reason to build another computer. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. The 3gb 7950 is selling on ebay for $80-90, while the 1gb 6950 is going for much lower, around $30-40. Even the 3650 is going for $30. These things aren’t collectors items. I think I’ll just take them to FreeGeek and give them away.
Anyway, this is all just a nostalgic trip through my history with a silly component to a computer. But it’s important to me, because these cards helped me play video games, and video games keep me alive. So thank you, MSI Radeon 7950 with 3gb of ram, for playing all my favorite games over nearly a decade, with maybe a few hiccups and some lowered graphics settings to assuage poor framerates. You did your job well and I hope you and your brethren enjoy retirement.
