How leaving the Navy may have actually saved my life

All right, now anyone who knows me and sees the title would probably be thinking "fucking let it go man! We get it, the Navy sucked.  You got out."  Yes, I was disgruntled and bitter at the end, but this is about how I found out about a health issue that I most likely wouldn't had discovered had I stayed in the Navy.

A little background: the advice I got when I was getting out was to swing by medical and make sure you get everything checked out so it goes into your record while you're still in the service so it's documented.  Something about being easier to get treated for conditions at the VA and what not.  I'm still not 100% sure why, but better safe than sorry, right?  Anyway, cut to the chase, I read this men's health article about Sleep Apnea.  It's pretty long, so you shouldn't read it, but a couple of lines really stood out to me:

I guess I do have a few symptoms of sleep apnea. Sometimes, for instance, I wake up marinated in sweat, my head pounding as if I had bounced it on cement.

Never had the head pounding, but I've woken up drenched in sweat with no idea why.  Turns out, when you stop breathing in your sleep it's quite a fucking workout for your heart and thus your body sweats.  Pretty scary shit.  This other one was more frightening:

Tom Zehmisch is a big part of why I'm being tested. Five years ago at a national swim meet, I shared a room with Tom, a lean and superbly fit triathlete. Tom had the body type that you could see gracing the cover of this magazine—the diametrical opposite of what doctors have dubbed the Pickwickian syndrome.

Four months after the meet, Tom died of a heart attack during the biking leg of a triathlon. He was 46.

I know this is anecdotal and I shouldn't have a knee-jerk reaction to it, but the fact is, being active and fit doesn't make you immune to something like a heart attack.  That's scary as fuck.  To make matters worse, I was still lazy - I figured I'd just sleep on my side to prevent myself from snoring.  It wasn't until someone who had already gotten out told me all you have to do is request a referral at medical on base and you could get a sleep study conducted at a lab in town and of course it's all covered while you're active duty.  Needless to say, I went and got checked out.

Moral of the story is that I'm glad I did.  I was prescribed a CPAP - something I've been using ever since the diagnosis.  I fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and am generally more refreshed than before I was using it.

To recap, even though I look like this:

I was sleeping like this:

So if someone tells you that you snore like a motherfucker in your sleep, might not be a bad idea to get it checked out.  

I Went to Sydney for 7 Days and all I did was Eat Gelato

Took a little vacation this past week with the folks from Engineered Wanderlust.  They're a married couple doing typical millennial bullshit where they quit their jobs and have been traveling the world for the last nine months.

Australia is cool.  Here's a re-cap of my trip.

Monday, March 13, 2017

Arrived in Sydney around 9AM local time.  Hotel room wasn't ready so I left my bags with the bell desk and decided to wander out into the streets of Sydney smelling like a homeless man that gives handjobs for loose change.  Had some Fish N' Chips for lunch.  Walked by the Opera House and Botanic gardens but stopped because I was sweating my ass off.  Stopped in at a Gelato place and got Mint Chocolate Chip, because it's a fucking crowdpleaser.

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Today's gelato flavor was raspberry sorbet.  This was a fucking mistake.  I can't tell the goddamn difference between regular sorbet and gelato sorbet, so this was a shitty pick on my part.  Never again.

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Peanut Butter Fudge.  I tried this the day before (little sample spoon) and decided to have a whole cone today to rectify yesterday's mistake.  Peanut Butter: Good.  Fudge: Good.  Combined?  I think we may just have found the solution for world peace.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Rest day.  Gotta let those GAINZ settle in.  Hoping to get my dad bod ready for the summer.

Friday, March 17, 2017

Apple Pie.  Did I have Jason Biggs fucking an apple pie on my mind?  Maybe.  Who's to say.

Saturday, March 18, 2017

Just got back to basics today and had Chocolate.  It was fucking delicious.  Boring? Yes.  Do I care? Fuck you.

Sunday, March 19, 2017

Mint Chocolate Chip.  Never lets me down, and I completed the gelato circle of life.

Oh, I guess the other thing I did was have an awesome kangaroo fillet.  Get it medium rare.  It was tasty.  Tell Roo I'm sorry.  99% sure I had his mom for dinner.

The Return of the Spicy Chicken Biscuit Turned out to be a Giant Cocktease

The world is a cruel, cruel, place.

Comcast is up to their old fucking tricks again

I was paying about $75/month for internet, until I decided how fucking stupid it was that Comcast charges $10/month to rent a modem from them.  I went on Amazon and bought one for $60 and then dropped off the modem at a Comcast store last month.  I assumed my bill would go down $10/month, and that would be that.

Of course the assholes at Comcast don't like to make anything easy.  I'm on the Performance 25 Internet plan which is $64.95/month.  Oh, they're giving me a $24.96 service discount.  How nice of them.  But wait, what the fuck is this: Speed increase for $30, and a service discount of $10.  The net result is that I'm paying $5 less than the $64.95 base with the speed increase.  But I never wanted the fucking speed increase, so if I got rid of that, I'd be paying $20 a month less to these dickheads.  You can keep your goddamn $10 service credit.

Got on a customer service chat yesterday, long story short was informed that the speed increase is part of my internet package and can't be removed.  All this means is that I have to remember next January to tell them to go fuck themselves and change my plan.  They're just waiting to jack me for $95 a month after this year is up.  Total dogshit.  What else pisses me off is that "TV" portion at the top.  I don't get TV from them, yet that part makes me weary that it'll change to something else besides zero and they'll try to buttfuck me next year.  I'll be waiting for them.

The Captial One Venture Card is a piece of shit and it's time people realized it

Thanks Jennifer Garner.  I hope you've gotten over the fact that Ben Affleck was fucking your nanny.  Too soon?  Don't care.

My beef with the Capital One Venture card is that it markets itself as a travel reward card by saying you get double miles on every purchase.  Sounds good right?  Except first you have to understand what the fuck a mile is worth.  In this case, 100 miles is worth a dollar.  You might be thinking this isn't bad, but the fact is, you're not getting miles on any airline.  Rather this is the mechanism for how you redeem your "miles":

What this means is that you're basically getting a refund by redeeming your "miles" after you've made the purchase.  To me, this is basically getting 2% cash back, but only being able to use that cash back on travel purchases.  You still might think this doesn't sound bad, except for the fact that this card comes with a $59 dollar annual fee (that's waived the first year).  That's what makes this card a piece of shit.

There are 2% cash back cards on the market with no annual fee like this Citi Card.  It gives 1% cash back on purchases, then 1% back when you pay it off.  Effectively 2%.  If you argue that you have to pay the balance off in full each month to get the 2%, then you shouldn't be using a fucking credit card because you're an irresponsible person who enjoys paying ungodly interest rates.

Now if you were duped by thinking the Captial One Venture card was a travel card and wanted to look into those, Chase Cards are the shit.  Depending on what Card you have, a point on Chase can be redeemed for $1.25 to $1.50 in travel, making that ratio much better than the piece of shit Capital One card.  I explain it a little in this post here.  I'm not going to re-hash everything here, because my point is not to sell anyone on the Chase Cards, but rather talk about what a shitty product the Capital One Venture Card is.

Should Big Ben be mentioned in the same breath as Brady and (Peyton) Manning?

Saw this graphic on Instagram and it really got me thinking.  Is Big Ben underrated?  With the exception of 2012 where that shit stain Joe Flacco managed to win a Super Bowl in a contract year, Brady, Manning and Roethlisberger have monopolized AFC super bowl appearances since 2003.

Before I go on, I'm a Steelers fan, but I'm looking at this objectively.  The last decade plus the rivalry was Manning - Brady.  Football is a team game with 11 guys on the field, so more often than not, QBs get more credit than they should when they win, and more blame than they should when they lose.  One thing great quarterbacks do though, is elevate the play of their receivers.  I would make the argument that Big Ben has done that on the level of Manning and Brady.

Sure Manning got to start his career with Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne, but he also made guys like Austin Collie, Pierre Garcon, Dallas Clark, and Jacob Tamme fantasy relevant.

Brady won Super Bowls in 2003 and 2004 with assclowns such as David Givens, Deon Branch, David Patten and Troy Brown.  That feat to this day is still greater than anything else Brady has accomplished.  Those receivers SUCK, yet are all 2x Super Bowl Champs.  They're to receivers what Trent Dilfer is to being called a "Super Bowl winning QB"

It was really impressive to see Brady's stats go off the charts when he had Randy Moss and Wes Welker to throw to.  But Brady is the constant.  Aaron Hernandez went and decided to murder two people and ruin the Pats two-TE sets?  No problem, the Pats kept winning without him.

Big Ben has played with some stars like Hines Ward and Plaxico Burress.  But he also made guys like Antwaan Randle El, Santonio Holmes, and Mike Wallace look good.  Randle El left for the Redskins and didn't do much, Santonio Holmes was banished to the Jets and never heard from again, and Wallace was the best deep threat in the league when Big Ben was his quarterback, but since then became a journeyman WR playing for Miami, Minnesota, and now fucking Baltimore.

So should Big Ben be mentioned in the same breath as Brady and Manning?  I think so.  Roethlisberger doesn't have the Super Bowl count Brady does, nor has he stuffed the regular season stat sheet like Manning, but he's been the center piece of a franchise that is a threat in the playoffs nearly every year, and like Brady, the cast around him changes, but he's the constant.

Maybe he doesn't get the same amount of credit because he doesn't have a huge fucking forehead and enjoy eating drunk college kid pizza:

Maybe it's because he's not a fucking dreamboat that wears UGGS:

Bottom line is this: fair or not, quarterbacks are judged by Super Bowls.  If he gets his 3rd this year, he's on the Mount Rushmore of QBs for this era.  He falls short, he's relegated to the good but not great category (after all, he'll only have one more Super Bowl ring than Joe fucking Flacco).

#TBT Wildly Inappropriate Diary Entry #1

Facebook used to have a notes section (remember that?) so I decided to start doing inappropriate diary entries.  Turns out I only got around to doing one because there was no way I could top this one.  So in honor of #TBT, enjoy.

Jan 12, 2013

Dear Diary,

I ran 3.86 miles today.  I know that's a strange number, but there's a reason for that.  I had planned on running 5 miles, but around mile 2 I felt a medium-to-large sized turd tapping at my butt-hole.  "Great," I thought, "all this running should knock the feces loose so I can have a really satisfying colon cleanse when I get home."  I thought I could hold it indefinitely and continued to run.  Bad idea.  I continued to my 2.5 mile turnaround point but was forced to stop at mile 3.86 and proceeded to walk.  If I kept running, all that bouncing would have opened my release valve and plastered shit all over me since I was wearing compression shorts.  I'm being generous when I said I was walking.  More accurately, I was waddling like someone who spent a long weekend in the big-house getting prison-raped with nothing but powdered soap for lube.  At this point, I started to get pissed for running on this bike path because it provided zero cover in case I needed to take an emergency deuce.  There were no woods, no tall bushes, none of that shit available in case I needed to unleash the fury.  Just plenty of cars rolling by at 20 MPH along with other fellow runners and couples out walking their dogs and babies.  Dammit - I started cursing my luck.  I had always made fun of [name redacted] for having to take a shit in someone's front lawn when he was walking home hammered, but at least he had the cover of night.  I was in broad daylight.  Since I didn't want people to start wondering what size of a cock I took up my ass last night, I put my hands on my hips, put my head down and walked slowly so it just looked like I was really tired from a long run.  Sand-bagging at its finest.  Meanwhile, the pressure continued to build.  I contemplated ducking into Shorebreak (Pizza and Taphouse) to use their facilities, but I didn't want to run the risk of extra steps in case they tried to pull that "customers only" bullshit on me and I'm not sure if I could ever patronize this fine establishment again if I horrified the cute 19-year-old waitresses with the scene of a grown man involuntarily defecating in his shorts.  

So the long march home continued.

I came to the end of the bike path and only had to cut through two condo complexes to make it home, but at this point, I really felt like l was going to shit my pants.  I desperately looked for some shrubbery.  There was one that provided light cover and wasn't directly behind anyone's condo so no one would just happen to peer out their window and see some weird dude taking a squat.  I fought my way to the center of the bush and was about to let loose when I turned around...SON OF A BITCH.  There's a runner right there stretching before she starts her run.  While there was a decent chance I could shit without her seeing me, there was no way I could do it without her hearing (or smelling) me.  I take pride in the farts I have that proceed my shits.  Foiled I continued home through the two parking lots repeating to myself over and over "don't shit."  I remember how happy I was to have my condo in view, but also thought how tragic it would be if I lost control of my bowels in the parking lot when I was so close to my goal.  My hands shook as I reached for my keys to unlock my door and I raced inside, stripped off the shorts, and successfully sat down on my toilet and dropped off a load that felt like it was roughly a third of my body weight.  I shuddered a few times as a result of the after-shock shits and let out a sigh of relief.  Moments like this are what makes life worth living.

...'til next time.

Hugs and kisses,

Spencer