Altivo Overo's Blog, page 6

Fitbit? or is it Fatbit?

Husband got a new Fitbit wristband/smartwatch with more features, and gave me his old one ("Inspire HR" model) to play with. He is a big enthusiast, but I think it's just because the thing produces all kinds of graphics and charts and he has a thing about those.

So I've been wearing this one for about three weeks now, and it has accumulated enough data on my activities, heart rate, and sleep cycles to start making unwanted suggestions. Like that I should sleep more hours a day, because that's the norm. Not because it sees any problems caused by my sleep habits (6 or 7 hours a day) but because "most people your age sleep more." Phooey on that.

The sleep analysis is interesting. I have no idea how accurate it is, but like so many tech things, it seems to believe it is master of everything and I'm just stupid. It divides my sleep time into categories: deep, light, REM, and awake. I get counts of time and charts showing the periods in different colors. Sometimes if I'm awake and reading, it thinks that is REM sleep. If the dog squirms around on the bed, it thinks I'm awake and restless. If I were to sleepwalk, I'm sure it would think I was awake and active.

Much more amusing, though, is the calories counted. Now I'm not bothering to tell it what or how much I eat, though that is possible by going through the associated phone app. By default, however, it looks at my activity levels ("steps," whatever it thinks those are; heart rate changes; breathing rates; and sleep cycle) and calculates how many calories I am "burning" every hour. I did supply it with my age, weight, gender and height figures and I assume those go into the calculation.

Now I have counted calories carefully over several months a couple of years ago. I know what my typical food consumption is. I do pretty well at controlling that, and I don't splurge on sugars, other carbs, or fatty stuff. Since that calorie-conscious diet two years back (I lost 40 pounds) my weight has been stable, varying only by a pound or so up and down. Let me tell you, if I were consuming the number of calories Fitbit thinks I'm burning, I would be gaining weight like crazy. Fortunately, I'm not doing that. It does keep telling me that I should be losing 0.1 pounds each day, though how it knows that without any information on what I actually ate is quite a mystery.

The thing also has an irritating habit of buzzing on my wrist to tell me I need x number of additional steps for the current hour in order to meet its expected minimum activity levels. I suppose that might be good advice if I've been sitting still and writing, but often it just seems absurd. "Quick, you need 87 more steps to reach 250 for this hour." Or worse, at bedtime, "Get 675 more steps to meet your daily quota." Sorry, no. Since it counts steps based on arm movement, playing the piano runs up the step counter rapidly. Likewise, walking with my left hand in my pocket is "silent stepping" that doesn't get counted.

I'm still wearing it to see whether it adjusts its recommendations based on what it measures and the results, as I report my weight once a week. I can't see any changes yet.

Also, there's a contradiction between the wristband and the app on what constitutes "cardio" exercise. I can convince both that I have done some any time I move quickly doing barn chores, or do anything that involves lifting hay bales or feed sacks (most days there's some of that.) But invariably, the two record and report different numbers of minutes of cardio for the day, sometimes differing by as much as a factor of ten.

For additional curiosity, since AARP recommends the Google "Fit" app, I am running that concurrently. The Google app uses only my inputs and what it measures as "steps" using the sensors in my Motorola phone. The step counts are fairly close between Google and Fitbit, surprisingly, with Google counting a bit lower because sometimes I leave the phone on a table and forget to take it with me. Google counts something called "heart points" instead of "cardio" and I rarely get any of those. I assume they are calculated just based on how many steps I get and how fast I am stepping.

Anyway, it's all very amusing, and they make a lot of pretty colored charts filled with what I am convinced is spurious data.

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New vision

Well, nothing revolutionary. I hadn't had an eye exam for several years (I think maybe seven) and knew that I needed some adjustments to my prescription. Nothing major, but it could be improved. Husband Gary is more insistent on perfection, and wanted to redo his own glasses, only about three years old. So he made an appointment for both of us and we went and got our eyes tested and examined. The optometrist warned me that there was a major change in my prescription and that I should go ahead and wear the new glasses for a few days to get used to them, even if they seemed "wrong" for any reason.

New glasses came in after two weeks, as expected. And to be honest, I can tell that they are better in some respects, but I see nothing so drastic as to make me think they are wrong in any way. I have been chronically near sighted for most of my life, and with growing older needed bifocals or "progressive" lenses to correct near vision as well as far. Actually, the new prescription is a lower correction than the last one, with a slight change to the astigmatism adjustment. Problems with focus or double vision that I was having have all gone away. I have no complaints, other than the usual one that these things are essential to many people and should not be so expensive.

Both close up reading and long distance bird watching are improved. I've been particularly having trouble with sight reading music, something I have been quite proficient at in the past. This has made it much easier again.

So... Did you hear about the lens maker who accidentally backed into his grinding machine?

Yeah, he made a spectacle of himself.

Nyuk nyuk nyuk. Spectacular, of course.

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Only the fourth?

November is going to be long. This post will not be.

Cold weather continues. One of the five heated buckets installed yesterday proved to have failed. It had ice on top. That one was two seasons old. Our experience has been that after two winters they start failing in the third cold season. The darned things are not built to be repairable either. Thermostat and heating element are enclosed and sealed so you can't even see them, much less replace them.

So I drove up to Harvard's Tractor Supply to get a replacement. At $45, their brand is not cheap. But they are more heavy and durable.

SiriusXM sent me a complicated message about how they are reshuffling a bunch of channel numbers. Many of those channels are among the ones I programmed into the presets of my car radio. Redoing that is cumbersome and would not be fast or fun. So I was pleased when I turned the ignition key and the radio display lit up with "Reconfiguring SiriusXM. Please wait." It took about two minutes, and all the preset numbers on the dash still had the same station content as before, but the channel numbers on the display were different. Slick job, Sirius. Thanks.

One good thing about the colder weather: I will be wearing mittens to do chores. My hands were getting hard calluses from carrying water buckets.

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The party's over ...

Last night was the third night in a row that temperatures dipped below freezing. In fact, this morning it was 20°F when I got up at 5 am. We went out to feed horses, cats, and ducks at about 8 am and found a film (sometimes more) of ice on every water bucket, indoors or out. Indeed, the boys' outdoor watering trough had a thin glassy layer of hard ice covered with fallen leaves.

The catalpa trees around the house have been holding onto their leaves for dear life, but this was the last straw for them. The leaves are hanging like limp rags from the branches, and will likely all be on the ground by evening. This event for the catalpas is generally decisive and quick. Often I wake in the morning of a first hard frost to find that all their leaves that were still green and healthy the day before have already dropped to the ground. When I lived in Lansing, Michigan, I rented a small house with several very large catalpas in the front yard. When they jetisoned their leaves, the result was an entire yard knee deep with leaves and all at once. That means winter is imminent.

We will be swapping out ordinary buckets for electric heated ones today. Have to put the floating defroster into the boys' water trough as well. Make sure the duck house has plenty of good straw on the floor, increase the amount of wood shavings in the horses' stalls, make sure the woodpile in the garage is replenished if it is down (it may be OK for now) and clean out the woodstove. Before using that, I have to relocate all my string instruments (guitars, banjos, mandolin, ukuleles, violin) from where the cases have settled over the spring and summer. They are too close to the woodstove and its brick hearth and would be damaged for sure by the heat.

I'm not exactly complaining about any of this, though. Now that I don't have to get up before dawn in order to shower, eat, and start off my 15 mile commute to work in the dark and snow, I find that I don't mind winter nearly as much. Taking care of the animals in the cold is not exactly pleasant, but I love having them and they mostly appreciate what we do so it's worthwhile. (Reminder to self: Asher needs a new stall blanket for this cold weather. Have to order that.)

The truth is, I love having four distinct seasons in my year. The variety in weather and changes in the landscape are fascinating to me. I grew up with that in Michigan, and unlike most of my family, I'm not inclined to move to somewhere that has no clearly identifiable winter. In fact, to my younger brother's credit, I laud the decision by himself and my sister-in-law to build a retirement home in Michigan and live with the shifting seasons. They had spent time in Japan and several homes in the southeastern part of the US where the weather is somewhat milder during the years when he was in the Navy. They still decided to return to Michigan and to the area of Traverse City, where our grandparents last lived.

Here, on the wall behind the woodstove, we have four large ceramic plates depicting the four seasons. Those were painted and fired by my mother when she was taking ceramics classes about 40 years ago. She and my step-father retired to Florida not too many years later, but those plates still hung in her kitchen. Once when I was visiting them she asked if there was anything in the house that I wanted to keep after she was gone, and I asked for those plates. She laughed and said she would put my name on them. What actually happened though is that after Ted passed away, Mom decided to move to live with my older brother in Texas. He went to Florida and helped her pack up or dispose of her house contents and sell the house. And at that time, around 20 years ago, those plates showed up in the mail here, packed in pizza boxes. Fortunately, they survived the trip intact and are mine to cherish now.

They hang on the other side of the stove from my grandmother's cuckoo clock that I loved so much when I was a child. Granny gave that to me while she was still living, saying she couldn't keep it running any more and the local clock shop said they couldn't fix it. But years later, after she was long gone and it had lain in a box in a closet for all that time, my dear husband sneaked it off to a clock shop here in Illinois and they got it running again. I have to wind it twice a day (no eight day movement for that one, it's nearly a century old) but the clock and those plates keep my Mom and Granny alive in my memory still.

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Ford understimates its own marketplace

This is something I never would have expected, but it really happened this year. I wish my Dad were still around to comment on it. (He worked for GM, actually, which would have made it entertaining.)

Some are undoubtedly aware that Ford introduced a completely new model this year (2022, since automobile/truck model years generally run six months ahead or so.) That would be the Maverick.

What? Wait, didn't they market the Maverick some 40 years ago or more? Yeah, but that was something else. They apparently have run out of names and trademarks and are recycling some that were long retired. This Maverick is a compact pick-up truck. No kidding.

Aside from not coming up with a new name, the idea seemed viable. Trucks seem to grow in size even faster than luxury SUVs. The ones that used to be single row seating utility vehicles 20 years ago have grown into super cab-crew monster trucks with huge gas guzzling engines and tires that at least seem as big as the ones that used to be on my uncle's farm tractor when I was a kid.

According to some sources, the idea was to market a less expensive truck with available off-road features and better fuel economy that might (they hoped) appeal to a younger audience who care about climate change, pollution, and (not to mention) expenses. So...

The new 2022 Maverick was born. The base model has a fuel efficient hybrid power train to help Ford with those overall figures needed to meet Federal standards, and has a price (before adding any extras) to be under $20K. Unbelievable. But they did it, came up with the designs in part by recycling ideas and parts they had already used in other models. The unibody design is based on a Bronco design. The power train (IC engine and electric motors) had already been used in the Escape, etc. They promoted this idea well, opened up a queue for "reservations" that lead to actual firm orders, and the circus train was on the road.

Their mistakes were big, though. They clearly underestimated the popularity of the idea, and were quickly swamped with orders. They also seem to have expected that most customers would opt for the EcoBoost turbocharged engine rather than the hybrid (at about $1200 more in cost) since everyone knows that truck buyers like the biggest, noisiest engines they can get. They planned to produce only 30 to 35% hybrids and the rest would have the EcoBoost engine. Production was scheduled for the plant in Hermosillo, Mexico, which has handled the Escape, the Bronco, and the Ranger pick-up in the past (and still does.)

Surprise, though. The orders that poured in ran more like 70% for the less expensive, more efficient hybrid engine. The buyers were often first-time truck buyers, but also older than the expected market slice. These were people who actually cared about pollution, climate change, and waste, who had been waiting for an affordable hybrid or electric vehicle.

Ford's supply chains for some of the hybrid parts, like the larger batteries needed, were not up to meeting the demands. Hybrid production (when it started at last) was a trickle while the plant kept cranking out EcoBoost version vehicles to meet orders only a couple of weeks old while hybrid buyers were kept waiting for months. Only now, in November, is Ford starting to move along to actually fulfill its promises to those who placed orders; and they find themselves forced to apologize for their misjudgments and poor projections.

There are good lessons here, though. Firstly, whether politicians and plutocrats admit it or not, more people do feel concern about climate change and fossil fuel consumption than expected. Vehicle buyers are not impressed only by big roaring engines and sleek designs. And, most importantly, if you announce a better mousetrap, you'd better be prepared to deliver it on the schedule you promise or you'll end up looking like a foolish skunk with stolen eggshells stuck to its face.

Edit: I should have mentioned this. The EPA fuel economy numbers for the Maverick hybrid, when they came out, were 42 mpg city driving, 33 mpg highway, and 37 mpg combined. That only increased the demand, of course. Conservative drivers like myself often can get two or three more miles per gallon than the EPA tests show, too.

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NoMo NaNoWrimo

Today marks the start of National Novel Writing Month, infamous for its ability to turn would-be authors into snarling piles of stress as they try to draft a 50 thousand word novel in 30 days. I admit I've been through that several times, and have the [unfinished but at least 50K words each] manuscripts to prove it. I'm not doing it this year. Life is too short, and at my age, shorter yet most likely.

However, with the inspiration from singer-songwriter Charlie Monterey (Twitter: songdogmi ) and furry friend Casey (Twitter: casey_382 ), I will attempt the NaBloPoMo this year. That's National Blog Posting Month (est. 2013 I think,) and an invention of Casey's that I had forgotten. We will attempt to post every day for thirty days. Here is day one before you. Wish us luck.

No promises as to content, other than mine will certainly be safe to read at work and boring to children if read to them.

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Yikes! Interviewed...

Selected for a spotlight interview from among the members of Furry Writers' Guild, I was surprised, flattered, and a little embarrassed. However, Writer Dog Robert Baird (also the Dingo Librarian Sandy, matrioshkadog on Telegram and Twitter) did a masterful job of pulling it together from a couple of weeks of chat and e-mails.

Interview is here complete with a somewhat embarrassing old photo from my days as an undergraduate in religious studies over half a century ago. I offered a choice between something more recent showing myself with a bearded collie and an old black and white photo of myself playing a guitar with my ass on an ass. You can guess which one was selected.

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Cucumber Wars

Attack of the cucumbers! I like cucumbers, and last year my little garden produced very few. So this year I planted more. Oops! One week's worth, more to come.

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Thoughts Chelonian

On today's Voice of Dog podcast, hear Madison Scott-Clary read my poem, "Thoughts Chelonian," with both grace and power. Under three minutes, give a listen here.

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Poetry, Anglo-Saxon Style

Crimson Ruari, the Mountain Smith, has made a very fine reading of my poem, "Procyon Prowling." You can hear it now on The Voice of Dog Podcast right here.

The poem is in the alliterative verse style typified by the famous "Beowulf." Rather than rhyming lines, Anglo-Saxon bardic verse is characterized by a rhythmic stress pattern and alliteration that links the phrases of a line together. Crimson did a masterful job of showcasing those patterns. Only two minutes long, so worth a listen for sure.

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