One fat geek's SUCCESSFUL attempt to regenerate into a not-so-fat geek by watching the entirety of Doctor Who while walking on a treadmill

There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes

Aug 21 2018
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes

Usually when I title these posts, I pick my favorite line of dialog from the episode(s) I watched that day. At first I would always try to give the title some context in my post, but eventually I gave up on that as being more effort than it was worth. In any case, I had no trouble at all picking the title for this post, at the point where the Brig exasperatingly says, "Just once I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets..." As it turns out, I like that line so much that I picked it as the title for when I watched this episode the first time around. Oops. So instead I went with my second favorite bit of dialog, from the end of the story when the Doctor decides he is tired of UNIT and wants to scamper off and see the universe again.

So let's talk about that.

Robot - Parts 3 & 4

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

(My previous watch)

Actually, nah, let's not talk about it. The truth is there just isn't much to talk about. Previous script editor Terrence Dicks bluffed his way into getting a freelance gig, writing the first episode of the new season after handing over the reigns to new script editor Robert Holmes. Although the story introduces the new Doctor, it is very much written as a Third Doctor story. It is a classic UNIT story (very nearly the last of the bunch, with only the following season's Terror of the Zygons remaining), and it features the Doctor rushing around from place to place in Bessie. Sure, Tom Baker puts his own mark on the character, but from a plotting standpoint it might as well have been the Third Doctor and Jo Grant doing their respective things. It's not a bad story, it's just not a particularly good story. The following one is where Robert Holmes really steps up and takes ownership of the show, and guides it into arguably the single best run in the classic show's history.

So the other thing that happened today is that I repaired the Time Treadmill. See, I am really hard on that dang thing. I have a bad habit of putting too much weight on the arms, and there is a fatal structural design flaw in that the focus of that weight goes directly onto a stupidly thin welded joint.

Back in December I broke that exact weld, and had to order a replacement part. When the part came, I discovered that the wiring in the arm had to be disconnected, which I did (as it turns out) from the wrong end. It worked fine, I got it all repaired and working again, but along the way I lost one of the screws that held together the hand grip. Which, no big deal. Except, because it was missing that screw, the hand grip flexed in a way that it wasn't supposed to, which led to a fracture point in the top of the grip, which led to me wrapping it up in packing tape so my hand wouldn't land on pointy bits of plastic, which was stupid and ugly and it was just a bad repair. But at least the broken weld was replaced and I was good to go.

Until about two weeks before I crossed the finish line on phase one of this ridiculous project. I put off dealing with it because I had a ton of stuff going on in my day job, but it was really awkward using the treadmill without being able to put any weight at all on the hand rest. So last week, once I had come out the other side of my big work project, I ordered another replacement of the pillar with the fractured weld. It turned out that getting a replacement for the broken hand grip was dirt cheap, so I got one of those as well. Today I replaced both, and I was back in business and good as new.

So now I just need to learn how to not put so much pressure on that stupid weld. I am seriously considering building a support post to go under it, so that any weight I do put on it will be transferred downward to the ground instead of laterally to the pivot point on that weld. It should be easy enough to fabricate. Maybe I will do that tomorrow. Otherwise, I have no doubt that in another nine months I'll be buying that stupid pillar for the third time. (Which is still way way cheaper than buying a new treadmill....)

So anyway, that's my day on the Time Treadmill. I think tomorrow I might skip the treadmill and try to get out on my bike instead and get some fresh air. We'll see how the day goes.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Fourth
Companion(s): Sarah Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan, Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart
Episode(s): Robot - Parts 3 & 4
Steps Walked: 7,372 today, 3,652,995 total
Distance Walked: 3.82 miles today, 1,909.17 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 0 today, 6,747 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 1,029 total
Weight: 250.64 lbs (five day moving average), net change -56.66 lbs


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