Favorite team:LSU 
Location:Reno, Nevada
Biography:I created the song behind the Rick Roll
Interests:Browsing
Occupation:
Number of Posts:2152
Registered on:5/1/2011
Online Status:Not Online

Recent Posts

Message
What are some ways you keep yourself active and alert throughout the day and avoid the 2:30 feeling? I will get the occasional sinking spells at times. It's not consistent each day on timing, but I can almost expect it if I eat a big lunch or don't sleep well the night before. However, sometimes it's unpredictable. I'm just looking for some feedback on how people keep themselves level in a given day.

Is it simply something from the following list
- More sleep/better sleep
- Less alcohol
- Increased caffeine
- Introducing new products to your diet such as a pill or mushroom coffee
- Drink an energy drink

The things that I know help me are:
- Better sleep
- Managing caffeine intake
- Avoiding big lunches

I just don't know how to keep myself functioning closer to 100% at all times even when I check those three boxes. My typical workday is sitting behind a desk 6-8 hours just as an added reference.
If you can run more, you'll benefit more as the others are saying. I think simply building the habit outweighs any cons to doing only one run a week. Are you finding time to walk or do any other fitness the other 6 days a week? I've really gotten back into running the last 1.5 years. I typically get about 3 runs in a week, but I'll do my best to walk the days I don't run.

I didn't start out running 3 times a week though. I spent most of my time building endurance and finding what I was comfortable with on a weekly basis. My preference is to gradually get into something, than over do it on the front-end and accidentally injure yourself.
quote:

Everyone here is a millionaire! I hope to get to 200k networth this year.


I started reading this board out of college and it helped set me on the right path financially. Personally it took a long time to hit those magical numbers like a $100k net worth, but building the right habits early on has been the difference maker for me.

One big mistake I made early on was not contributing to my 401k. I was missing out on a 3% company match. Once I started using common sense and broke the fear of investing in the stock market, my goals shifted to seeing if I could contribute 10% of income instead of 6%. All of that to say, I'm squeezing way more out of my paychecks today towards retirement and savings than I would've imagined 10+ years ago. Much of where I am is thanks to the advice of this board. Simply prioritizing investing habits like getting your company's 401k match, contributing to roth IRA, build emergency funds, not buying a brand new car after your first paycheck, etc... will make other goals attainable.

Going back to actuals, I have found that going from $100k to $200k net worth was a lot faster than $0 to $100k. It's the snowball effect we speak of for knocking off debt, but in this case your investments are growing as fast as you can contribute.
My main goal is to stay the course.

- Continue putting as much towards retirement and HSA
- Maintain employment
- Increase emergency fund to 8 - 12 months living expenses

What I would like to do, but not really important:
- Purchase land for recreation
- Dip my toes further into my taxable investments that I've not really touched in 5 years.
- Leverage a financial advisor or some professional advice to evaluate my family's current financial health and help with short-term and long-term goals.

My wife and I had our third child in 2025. Life is moving so fast, I'm prioritizing the stay the course aspect until I get my feet back underneath me.

re: IST 1/3/26

Posted by RickAstley on 1/3/26 at 3:33 pm to
53 degrees and sitting in a sniper tower overlooking a food plot and cutover. By the far the best looking spot I have access to hunt but has been one of the least productive locations over the last 5 years. I've only seen one deer in this spot before. I have no idea if it is that bad or it just gets hunted so rarely making it unproductive.

Good luck to yall this afternoon.
I have an Old Timer folding knife that I've used for as long as I can remember to gut, skin and debone a deer. I'll use it to split the sternum. Just find some of the softer spots to cut and use two hands and a bit of muscle to do the splitting job.

re: IST 1/2

Posted by RickAstley on 1/2/26 at 8:22 pm to
Congrats!

re: IST 1/2

Posted by RickAstley on 1/2/26 at 8:21 pm to
Against the odds we ended up seeing two does. With about 30 minutes left I told my son it was prime time. He dropped his toys, grabbed his grunt call and started ripping them again. Two minutes later a deer walked out and I nearly shite my pants. We watched the doe before she spotted us and ran away.

Then my son asked if he could grunt some more. At this point I was all in with him. Sure enough another doe walked out with about 15 minutes of legal light left. We watched her until it was dark and then we left.

re: IST 1/2

Posted by RickAstley on 1/2/26 at 4:49 pm to
Sitting in a tripod with my 5 year old son overlooking a green field. I'm really just hoping for him to see his first deer from a deer stand. He got a new grunt call for Christmas and has already hit it a couple dozen times since we got here. He's so far batting the same average as me with grunting in a big one which is .000.

It might be a few years before he sees a deer while hunting. He's too busy pounding snacks and playing with toys to pay attention. I can't blame him one bit.

re: A statistical anomaly

Posted by RickAstley on 1/1/26 at 10:15 pm to
You're about to get swindled out of your life savings to some kid in Nigeria

re: IST New Years Day

Posted by RickAstley on 1/1/26 at 10:04 pm to
I didn't see anything. The sound travels real well in those hollows. The squirrels definitely sound 10x bigger where I was sitting than most of the other spots I've hunted. I could hear what sounded like someone running a mower off and on and people talking pretty clearly. The nearest homesite is roughly .3 - .4 miles away from where I was sitting.

Of course while I was sitting on edge thanks to those squirrels running around, the cell camera in one of our food plots was going off non stop during legal shooting light with the deer throwing a rut party.

re: IST New Years Day

Posted by RickAstley on 1/1/26 at 4:34 pm to
Snuck out for the last 2 hours this evening. Pleasant afternoon at 63 degrees. I'm hunting on top of a steep ridge overlooking an assortment of logging roads that intersect here. The noise just carries through here.

I'm both excited and nervous about shooting one here. If you don't drop it and it slips down a ridge, it'll be a miserable drag.

re: IST 12-27-2025

Posted by RickAstley on 12/27/25 at 7:36 am to
Hunting a creek bottom with my 30-06. Hot and foggy here. I made it in very late. It's been unusually quiet sp far outside of squirrels and birds making their usual noises.

This fog reminds me of a deer hunt my dad did during muzzleloader season a long time ago that we named the Foggy Bottom Massacre. He killed a doe and two yearlings with his muzzleloader in a creek bottom one foggy morning when deer were hard to come by. I'm not hoping to repeat but I'd love to see a set of antlers creeping by this morning.
My grocery store already has the Little Debbies valentine's display out. All of the Christmas cakes were gone. Only a few dozen gingerbread men and nutty buddies remained. I claimed three boxes of the nutty buddies to wallow over the next few weeks (probably days).
Snuck into a food plot for the last hour near a creek bottom. It's 71 degrees and I'm being swarmed by mosquitoes. Probably should've stayed home, but I'm itching bad to do some hunting.

Family and work life have gotten way busier this year than previous years. It's almost suffocating juggling work and 3 young kids. There is still plenty of season left but the opportunities are much fewer. I just need one more deer for the freezer. Looking for a buck now and will hunt does again after the rut.
quote:

how do you find the time?


You have to make the time. I think making the time and carving out a routine are the best bets to starting the habit. The third component is picking material that you are genuinely interested in versus a book that bores you to death. Combine those three factors and you'll be off and running.

I'm on track to finish 8.5 books this year, which is not my goal of 9, but better than nothing. I get a weekly update from my phone and iPad telling me the amount of usage each week that I used the device. For example, I might've averaged 2 hours a days on the devices last week and maybe 25% of it was text messaging and phone calls. It's hard to read if you allow yourself to constantly fall into the TV/social media trap. I could've easily exceeded my 9 book goal if I laid off the devices.

I don't have any other advice outside of what I shared at the beginning. I really did a poor job of consistently reading before having kids. Now I have 3 young kids and somehow manage to read more books on an annual basis than before. I think a lot of this is we are on such a routine in my household and I am more willing to put the device down and make the time than before. There is also that bit of motivation of you would rather have your kid see you reading a book than staring at a phone.
This doesn't rank up there as craziest, but I found this one interesting when reading about Daniel Boone in the book Blood and Treasure:

Daniel Boone was known for taking hunts that could last years. In one instance he was gone for over a year and came back home and his wife had given birth to a girl named Jemima. It was obvious to everyone that Daniel could not be the father based on when she was born. This was known as "Boone's Surprise."

His wife Rebecca thought he was dead and ended up having a child with Daniel's younger brother Edward. Daniel's response about Jemima was "So much the better, it's all in the family." And they stayed together.

re: IST - 11/30

Posted by RickAstley on 11/30/25 at 7:47 am to
Good luck out there. No hunting here today for me. Of course the cell cameras have pictures of legal bucks coming in right now during daylight. I've filled my freezer mostly full this week. Going to dial back to mainly squirrels and hopefully a nice buck or a late season doe.

re: IST 11-29-25

Posted by RickAstley on 11/29/25 at 9:36 am to
I've got a deer down. I thought it was a doe but turns out it's a button buck.

re: IST 11-29-25

Posted by RickAstley on 11/29/25 at 7:28 am to
I'm hunting in some pines this morning with my .30-06. Hoping to catch one strolling by on its way to a nearby cutover. I got in late and brought my coffee with me. I'm keeping my expectations low this morning at this rate. I really need to come back to this spot and work on thinning out the squirrel population. Way too many of them running around.

I have heard a ton of gunshots this morning so far. Sounded like a bunch of duck hunters kicked things off and then I've heard rifle shots off and on since sunrise.