Today, I leap into my 8th day of Carnivore. "Gonna fly now, flying high now, gonna fly" to Friday, January 24, 2025 and take the title for my longest diet streak! Yeah, keto-carnivore freak is dead! Yeah, I, uh, I am TOTALLY convinced Randy "Macho Man" Salvage went to the Back to the Future, Part II set in 1989, made Biff like a tree, and got out of there with its DeLorean to rip me off for this YouTube bit.

Don't discount the value of streaks; I find that they also add an additional incentive to my VR fitness apps. I put in a second workout last night with Beat Saber, Les Miles and a sparring session followed by a match in Thrill of the Fight.

And as I write these words, these lyrics begin playing from what is now today's album of the day!

I'm gonna be the best they've ever seen
I know I'll win if I give it all I can
I won't let go
Gotta make the grade, no I won't let go
To be the best man, the best man that I can

In 1994, I was enthralled by Queensrÿche's Empire for the first time from the back of a rumbling, olive green cutlass from the '70s. In those days, its 11 tracks rocked the space from a cassette. On that day, we drove to the Germantown Kmart as its closing and we were hoping to score big. What did I come away with? A TI-82 and an armful of 5 1/4 floppy diskettes! Yeah, as Barbara Mandrell (almost) sang, "I was (geek) when (geek) wasn't cool."

And when I listen to Jet City Woman, all I can think is, "Why wasn't I apart of the Hellfire Club?"

It has been quite awhile since I've caught one of Kelly Hogan's videos, so I picked one out last night: How To Thrive On a High-Fat/Moderate Protein Carnivore Diet. I thought it would be everything I've heard before, but her guest suggested an approach that I'm implementing. Instead of just piling on the meet as needed, be conscience of excess proteins' conversion to sugar. And yes, SOMEHOW, SOMEWAY, the guest, Stephanie Person, is 55 years old (Kelly herself will be 44 in January). I would have guessed Stephanie was 25-30 years younger! My takeaway from the discussion? I NEED MORE BACON!

Today's post title comes from an old favorite album that would reverberate in my high school truck. I played Aerosmith's Big Ones way too loud as I drove way too fast. And what a kind of guy drives shirtless?

I had a momentary relapse: I was ever-so-tempted to design my own Wordpress theme, a bit more of a project than casually coming up with my own HTML/CSS combo to run in Jekyll. As I'm retooling...revamping...organizing—well, whatever you want to call it—for 2023, it makes little sense to hold onto an older approach.

I like Jekyll. I like saving each post in its own text file, not lost in some database. I even like writing in markdown as I tag "**"'s and "##"'s. And rendering those text files into HTML code is an efficient process as it leaves behind a snappy website; the geek side of me just drools over this! But, 2023 will not be about the technical machinations that grow no fruit. It's not about the short and clean bit of CSS code that no one reads. Unbeknownst to the visitor, every tour to my place stamped these words onto their computer's cache:

Try to be best
'Cause you're only a man
And a man's gotta learn to take it
Try to believe
Though the going gets rough
That you gotta hang tough to make it
History repeats itself
Try and you'll succeed
Never doubt that you're the one
And you can have your dreams!

And while I do enjoy weaving this wizardry, why do I do it in of itself? What's the net? It made me think: I don't want to spend 2023 engrossed with the technical over the substance. While there clearly is the tactical is a critical function to support, it is the strategic that's really in play. Or in my case, I just want to be more creative—not slather myself up and launch into a papier-mâché'd hot dog sort of nonsense, but creative in the entire sphere of my life!

The other night I was working on a spreadsheet replacement for my beloved GNUCash, software that I've run for over 11 years. While I don't have a clean solution (yet) for its double-entry accounting aspect, I look forward to creating a system that more readily gives me projections rather than tossing a history tome.

I ask myself, "How should I invest my resources? What is my objective?" Once our air, water and food needs are met (I don't buy into the distinctly separate shelter rhetoric), how do we best address the attainment of those unlimited desires in the context of a limited supply? Setting parameters to desire is critical—the chase has no value; I don't want to live the "Betcha can't eat just one" life. I do NOT want to be Tom Brady as dissatisfaction and entropy overwhelm him.

We don't really treat money as a resource...and add to it, we don't treat TIME as a resource, at least not on a personal level. Maybe we just forget because of their liquidity? I don't know if we think in terms of how these resources are most effectively used to reach our objective. We just..ballet pirouette into a ball pit, slap-happy drunk.

Then again, there are moments when for effect, we apply our resources toward achieving that which...has all the value of a carefree stumble down a cotton-candy-and-fruitcake staircase. Mark Rober's attempt of dropping an egg from space immediately comes to mind. While his optics may be that his subtext is something different; it has nothing to do about eggs reaching terminal velocity, but everything to do with showing kids (and me) the value of learning physics, mathematics and engineering (then there's that whole click thing). Clearly, no one has asked for an untracked egg from space. But, I suspect the payload aspect comes into play for future colonization. It's not the destination. As Aerosmith sings:

And how high can you fly with broken wings?
Life's a journey, not a destination
And I just can't tell just what tomorrow brings

OK, admittedly the journey bit is a cliché, but I find the line above it to be rather haunting...or at least underscores the value of parametric expectations...and the third line just comes off as Cast Away to me.

What are our eggs—do we even have an egg? Why? And why (and how) do we launch (then drop them) if we do?

I'm burning for (bacon), filled with desire
I can't stand the heat and my heart's on fire
I can't get enough [burning (bacon)], it's down to the wire
I'm making my move, I'm looking for you
I'm burning for (bacon)

Today's title is inspired by Bon Jovi's first, self-entitled album. I purchased it at the Walmart over by State Tech, with the former replaced by a Bass Pro and the latter...well, I can never keep track of the name—oh yeah, Slacker School (or that place where adjunct professors have to teach in addition to their day job to have a livable wage). As a kid, I bought this album, not knowing I should have picked up Slippery When Wet. In my defense, the album features the song Shot Through the Heart which seems a whole lot like the lyrics of the song I wanted, "Shot through the heart / And you're to blame / Darlin', you give love a bad name!" But, I'm glad I picked this cassette up for its a great classic album. I was no stranger to Runaway when I heard it in Stranger Things. And She Don't Know Me is the classic high school anthem! All I'm missing is my locker on the 2nd floor next to Mr. Stewart's biology class.

And yes, bacon is back on the menu for me! Along with the lb of beef, I'm putting in a half package of bacon and all of its bacon butter goodness I can pull from the air fryer for the meet. And my weight just falls off!

I remain enthralled within my Player One space, driven by the potentials of not only what lies ahead with my own growth, but the metaverse of the future of virtual reality. When I pull over my set, I get the same vibe as I did when I first played a Nintendo in the back the Kmart on Austin Peay. Super Mario Bros was so far beyond my ATARI games of Pitfall and Adventure! I feel that way about my Quest 2. And like our 8-bit hero, there is an adventure of VR development that will be coming in the decade to come. The Nintendo came out in 1985. Where was Mario in 1996? In 3D on the N64. Don't take my word for it, check out Mario's evolution.

And in time, I look forward to a virtual space room in our houses. Look, it's just a matter of time before somebody can apply to VR the idea of the mirascopes I sold at World of Science back when Titantic played down the hall at Wolfchase. In practice, I don't suppose it'll be a whole lot different from a surround sound system. And it will fundamentally alter the way we approach our living rooms. That said, long gone are the days where we sit around the radio together.

And who knows: one day perhaps we'll create a Dyson sphere, convert energy into matter and just sit down in front of a bowl of gumbo after playing bingo all day and be right on point to quote this line from The Matrix, "There is no spoon."

But, where many solutions of VR is not unlike the 90s meme gags for a handsfree cell phone that involved a rubber band. Yeah, the existential threat in Bruce Willis' Surrogates is WAY down the line from now—well from a commercial perspective. However, what does it mean for the drone command near Vegas to guide UAVs to kill across the globe? And yes, there are VR drones available in the public sphere. But, I'd have to pop back a Costco barrel of anti-nausea meds to turn that into a reality!

And again, what will it mean if AI develops to the point when it takes over the hardware and yanks the leash from its master. Ahh, as long as it involves a pair of shades and a leather jacket! OK, OK, so maybe just an augmented reality? "Dead or alive, you're coming with me." The dream of the 80s is alive!

Dialing it down to my virtual world, I put in 75 minutes in with my workout before sitting down to write this. It was 25 minutes of Supernatural, followed by 30 minutes of Les Mills and ending with 20 minutes of Ragnarock. The Supernatural playlist was this classic rock.