GAME05

I like my google smart speakers and lights. Lights turn on and off on schedule, plus it's nice to have lights on a timer when I'm away. The speakers are just used for music and podcasts, for which they're pretty handy.

That's awesome. I may look into that in a few years. My flat gaming has just about died because I like VR so much more, but I don't love VR so much that I want to buy a $400 PS5 just to buy a $400 PSVR2 when it comes out.

I only have the PSVR. Assuming you have a great computer to be able to run the Oculus, I do like that as opposed to the PSVR because Oculus will come out with a new headset more often.

I don't know how a Bogdan trade is even possible without Ersan's salary in the mix anymore.

That does make me wonder if going forward there may be more novel ways in which the money will be spent. It's not only more money for a shrinking pool of undecided voters, but fewer people are watching traditional network TV to see the ads, too. I can't say I was much swayed by all the text messages I got, either. Maybe Ross Perot was way ahead of his time and the paid 30-minute lectures will be the better way to go.

I've heard Myles Turner for Brook Lopez before. Indiana really needs scoring. For us, Turner is one of those defensive players who does all the little things really well and he's good at defending the pick-and-roll.

I don't mean to suggest that trading Giannis would net equal value. Certainly quantity doesn't equal quality in the NBA. More that when you're headed for a non-Giannis rebuild, getting something back would cut down those rebuild years by a third. We've all seen just how long a rebuild can take.

A few weeks into 19:5 fasting. It's become much easier to make it to dinner and not have that gnawing hunger. But as yet no real results to show for it, even though I've been fine in terms of eating at a calorie deficit. Not really sure if I'm doing something wrong or if I just need more time. Also a little perplexed in terms of lifting weights while fasted, or more specifically lifting and not eating anything afterward. Seems to indicate that there's a lot of muscle breakdown and that they just won't recover waiting so long to eat any protein. So it's looking more like workouts will have to move to doing more cardio and the weightlifting will have to wait until I lose the weight I want and I can transition to bulking.

Bleacher Report saying the Bucks are committed to keeping Giannis next year even if he doesn't sign an extension. The idea is the Bucks will be doing what they can to improve the team and to spend money to demonstrate to Giannis that they're committed to winning. I think that would be a mistake. If Giannis doesn't think the Bucks are committed to winning now, I don't see how one more season suddenly changes his mind. Mostly though, losing Giannis for nothing would kickstart a rebuilding process, and considering big-name FAs don't tend to want to come to Milwaukee, the rebuilding could well take a very long time--not to mention the team is a fringe playoff team without Giannis, and so we'd be stuck in that middle-ground of being too good for top draft picks but not good enough to do anything in the playoffs. But considering how desperate every team in the League would be to trade for the best player in the NBA, that should net us a boatload of young up-and-coming players and draft picks. It's more what OKC finally did with George Paul and Westbrook after learning their lesson about letting Durant and Harden walk for nothing. OKC is now a team with a ton of draft capital built up and it won't be long before they're a great team again. One can only guess what a bidding war between Miami and the Knicks and a couple other teams would get us. Moving forward I wouldn't mind seeing the Bucks move to be a stronger perimeter defending team. What they currently do works well in the regular season but the team can get killed in the playoffs when one or two players on the other side get hot from 3 and we can't move to stop that shot. If that means giving up more inside scoring, so be it. The Bucks keep saying "Surround Giannis with shooters" but I think that's not quite right. It should be more "Surround Giannis with scorers," and those two are fairly different things.

I wonder if there's a bigger desire to re-sign Bakh just on the idea of having a likely HOFer play his whole career in GB.

What I keep thinking about Love, and why I don't mind the pick at all, is that when the QB transition does eventually come in GB, we'll have a new guy who MLF was obviously high on talent-wise and who'll had years learning the system. Plus maybe some high picks if Rodgers is traded. That's sure a lot better than being a team like Jacksonville or Chicago who've been wasting a lot of seasons looking for that next QB. And while great players like Lamar Jackson can be found late, they're still the exception. I view the Love pick as possibly/hopefully saving us 4-7 years of mediocrity post-Rodgers. Patrick Queen also allowed 12 catches on 16 targets one or two weeks ago, and he's also still overrunning plays. So I'm not quite ready to say we missed out on a Pro Bowl LB just yet. Plus isn't that what Kirksey was signed for, so that LB wasn't a must in the first round?

I've heard McCollum's name come up as a possibility for the Bucks, and I think he'd be just as good of an option as Beal since he's another type of guy who can create scoring. I'd love to see the ball be taken out of Giannis' hands more. That should really help improve the half-court game if Giannis can move around more and off-ball picks can be set to get him favorable matchups instead of the current strategy where he tries to drive a couple of times and if it doesn't work, just dump it off for somebody else's jumper. I'm starting to accept the possibility that Middleton won't be on the team next year, and I don't totally hate the thought. He's a good #3, but if him leaving brings us a more appropriate #2 I'm all for it.

I've moved up to a daily 19-hour fast. I think I've lost maybe 2-3 lbs but it's hard to tell. Day 7 I got tired of being hungry all the time and cheated badly. Back at it and this second week so far I haven't felt near as hungry around lunch. I'd read that after 2-3 weeks the hunger starts to go away and hopefully that's what's going on. The biggest positive is that when I'm only eating in a five-hour window, it's not terribly hard to stick to around 1800 calories. I can still have that cocktail or a treat and I'm not way up in terms of calories per day.

Why would you go over and apologize for that? You didn't do anything wrong. Plus they're already convinced you're the one who called the cops on them, so it's unlikely they'll be particularly friendly if you paid another visit. Apologizing to them also says that next time they make noise you won't do anything, which only encourages it.

Boy, I'd love a Super Bowl in March. It'd be a great way to end the winter season and bring on summertime baseball. Football starts a month too early as it is. Plus that gives baseball more time to finish up once it adopts a permanent 16-team playoff format.

Lawrence will be start his career on a bad team one way or the other. I'd certainly rather be a Jet than with Washington or Jacksonville. Always possible that if the new Jets coaching staff doesn't totally dislike Darnold that they'll love the idea of an extra few first-round picks to trade the pick. Jacksonville has #4 and #22, and they'd be a good candidate to want Lawrence.

I'm still plowing ahead to become a hot dog vendor.

I started doing a daily 19-hour fast on Monday, up from every third day. I've definitely been able to stick to 1800 calories per day since it's such a short eating window. I don't know if 'stomach shrinking' is a thing, but I can't pack as much into a single meal as I once could. I still get hungry around 11-2, but I think most of that has to do with 40+ years of me training myself to eat lunch around that time. I'm conditioned to be hungry then, because after about 2:00 I'm fine again.

Two bye weeks would have been a great idea. I even like the idea on a permanent basis. Players get so beat up and injured that an extra bye would help. Plus it extends the football season out another week which would boost NFL revenues.

If I'm the Jets I'm definitely taking Lawrence. Can anyone look at Darnold and say he's the QB who can get you to a SB? Carolina will probably finish worse than Minnesota, too, and I can't imagine they're looking at Bridgewater as a long-term answer. If they grab Justin Fields that leaves Washington, Detroit and Minnesota to battle it out for that QB from North Dakota.

Thanks, that was actually going to be my next question, what specialist to see next. I'll schedule a physical therapist soon. I'm realizing I didn't take into account the nature of the chiropractor and doctor's jobs. Chiropractors aren't in the business of "here's your problem now go away" but more "I need to see you for three years," and I'm after a more "now go away" answer. edit: On the "discussion of findings" chiropractic visit, the chiropractor never made mention of my posture issue even though he did mention twice the fact that I was coming in for a diagnosis. He plowed through with what was wrong with me and without much of what would be fixed apart from stopping nerves from getting pinched.

I made it clear I was looking for a diagnosis to continue betterment exercises at home. The chiropractor did his usual pokes and prods and x-rays. He never checked out my posture. I even got an "It's a $225 value" out of the assistant, which just gave me visions of Ron Popeil. I go in again next week where I'm expecting to hear about all the things I need to fix, how he'll fix them, and nothing about my posture.

You're not wrong so I hope I'm not sounding defensive. My thought was that the calculator says mountain biking for 70 minutes is -1000 calories, so we'll say -800 to be fair. And the calculator says -400 for weightlifting. So I'm thinking just that -400 difference every day assuming an equal diet could well represent the difference between maintaining and loss. But yeah I've got to be more dedicated to carrot sticks and cutting back. Well done TurboRicky! That's a really impressive loss.

How often were you guys fasting when you were doing it? I've been doing 21 hours every third day, but last night was reading that daily was recommended and that daily would better curb hunger pangs. Plus if daily is best, skipping breakfast and lunch every day seems a bit....extreme to the point of unreasonable. I could do skipping breakfast, but since they say a small protein to break the fast and a normal meal an hour later, I don't know how I would work that in with an hour lunchbreak. Cocktails and the occasional small ice cream are still killing my losses. Right now I'm lifting weights and enjoying that, but there's a mountain bike trail next door and I'm getting tempted to switch to that to really push the fat-loss mode, and then only once it's off go back to lifting as more of a bulking phase. Mountain biking would be 800-1000 calories burned vs. about 200 for weightlifting, so that's an almost surefire calorie deficit to switch. Being somewhat skinny-fat I want to stick to weightlifting, but then I wonder if I'm aiming for a calorie deficit but lifting weights, then that means I'm not really gaining size/muscle and therefore I'm almost working against myself.

I was born with half a vertebrae, which was removed and the rest nailed together. That and a healthy amount of scoliosis. If my back were good I'd be 5" taller. I've always chalked up back problems to that, but especially for posture issues there's a lot that can be corrected and is more about muscle imbalance. I guess I'm paying someone $75 to figure out which of the two it is.