Random ramblings

[camwyn]

New default icon based on yesternight's post. Thank you, jothra.

Yesterday's time for the stairs: basement level 1 to 45th floor roof access, 13:12. No pauses. The trip back down, including the pause for stretching and walking in circles and one or two pauses along the way down, was about 10:22. If I kepe this up this week I should be able to do respectably with the two rest stops in the 66-floor building. Then I've got my niece's and nephew's joint birthday party (not twins, just similar timing) in the afternoon.

Had a realization yesterday about Fallout 3, and by extension the rest of the Fallout world. I could be wrong, but... well. When you go through the ruined houses of Washington, DC, you often find crutches. Almost any house that has a child's bedroom in it has crutches in it. Not in a storage room or something, either, but the kid's bedroom. There's usually a big clunky brace, too, and some surgical tubing. Now, on an OOC level, this is to provide you with components to build homemade custom weapons. The crutches are part of the Railway Rifle, aka I Just Killed The Incredible Hulk With A Gun That Makes Choo-Choo Noises. The tubing and toy cars get made into part of the poison dart gun that can cripple any enemy's legs. And the brace gets combined with a leather belt, some wonderglue, and a deathclaw's hand to make a Freddy Krueger gauntlet. But on an IC level... well, this is a world where the Fifties never really ended, right? And there are crutches all over the breaking place, to a degree beyond what I would expect from normal childhood injury rates. What if the prevalence of crutches is meant to indicate that the pre-war world never conquered polio?

Anyway. Not that much else going on at the moment. Back to work with me.

Comments

[duane-kc.livejournal.com]

I would tend to agree; Dr. Salk never developed his vaccine. What I want to know is how all those portable fusion generators work without integrated circuits or even transistors to control them? I don't see a mainframe room connected up to them...

[camwyn]

Myself, I tend to disregard most of them. If I'm RPing or writing fic for the game, I handwave away the portable generators that produce light for the player's benefit and just admit that my character is fumbling through the dark- this means a lot of melee combat in the metro tunnels, because there's no point in drawing a gun when the first time you can see your target is the moment it comes into range of your Pip-Boy light. That doesn't explain all of them, but it cuts down somewhat on the "... that doesn't work" factor.

[miss-yt.livejournal.com]

Regarding the exercise you're doing, I've learned (the hard way) that you really need to make sure to stretch your legs properly. One thing that really helps is a full-round foam roller that you can use to loosen up your leg muscles - like the hamstrings, which you are probably using a lot.

I don't know that I can explain properly how to use it without an actual demonstration, so you might want to get advice from a personal trainer or something. I've found that I get a lot less ow in my hamstrings from exercise if I stretch them with a foam roller first.

[camwyn]

Actually, my hamstrings don't seem to have much of an issue with what I'm doing. The majority of my soreness- and therefore the majority of my stretching- shows up in my quads and my calves. I've adjusted my stride on the stairs so that I walk using my whole foot instead of climbing the stairs on the balls of my feet; that takes some of the strain off my calves. I make very sure to stretch for a good while both before and after, though. Did track and cross-country in high school, so I remember the good bits.

[miss-yt.livejournal.com]

Okay, that's good. As you may remember, I did a number on my own hamstrings recently, so naturally that's what came to mind. ;)

[camwyn]

Of course! I might also note that I'm using walking shoes for this. A, because I'm not actually doing it at a running pace, and b, because I need more side support than you generally get with a running shoe. Even running laps you don't turn as often during most running activity as you do with something like this.