To everyone who now has Kelly Clarkson stuck in your head, you're welcome.
(I know what it is you see, for it is in my mind also.)
Thanks largely to last year's 365 project, I posted a record 382 entries
here on the old blog in 2012. So it feels strange that this is only my third
post for 2013--and I missed February entirely!
What the heck happened to me? Life!
The first half of January was dominated by CodeMash and the eight-hour
Django tutorial that I helped put on.
I've also been crazy-busy preparing for and running our company's annual
Hack Day event. We did a whole secret agent theme, going so far as to
produce some extremely low-budget but nonetheless epic video segments in
the style of the Bond films. Our audio team even made us a theme song,
which I'm not ashamed to admit I enjoyed playing on a loop on my phone
while I walked around the office in a tuxedo during the event.
I've been building lots of Legos with my daughter! She rocks the Lego
Friends sets on her own, and helps me with my Star Wars and Lord of the
Rings sets.
Speaking of Lego Lord of the Rings, I kind of got hooked playing the Xbox
version. So good...
I got a RaspberryPi at PyCon! So the kiddo and I have built a case for it
out of her spare Legos, and I've shown her a little bit of Python and
Scratch. Now we need to find a project, because she's really excited
about building something with it. (Thanks, PyCon!)
I made a little URL shortener for my pirn.at domain before
I realized that bit.ly does it all for free and then some. That's okay.
It gave me a chance to learn about Flask. I'll probably write a little bit
more about it at some point later.
I made a little RSS-to-Twitter gizmo to automatically tweet links
to my blog, using my pirn.at shortener for links. I'll probably write a
little bit about it too.
I got all excited at PyCon and made PythonIpsum, a lorem
ipsum generator with a Python-flavored vocabulary. Patches welcome!
I've been bitten by the site refresh bug and have started tinkering on a
responsive-ish layout so that this place won't look so daft on a phone.
I've got a photography backlog from CodeMash and PyCon that I hope to
address shortly. And then I want to get back to shooting regularly
(though I've got a case of gear fever, so right now I'm mostly obsessing
about which lens I'd like to pick up).
The kiddo and I have been watching Clone Wars and Dr. Who together. She's
been really enjoying watching them with me, and I've really enjoyed helping
to counter the influence of the Princess Industrial Complex.
In short--death by bullet points! Hopefully with the big conference season
behind me, I'll get back into the swing of things shortly and won't be quite so
much of a stranger here.
Want to build a winning streak? Already
on one that you don't want to see disrupted by the holidays, or--an even lamer
excuse--broken by running out of calendar?
Never fear! I've whipped up a convenient one page 2012
calendar, and I'm publishing it early to
make sure you've got plenty of time to get it into place.
Not sure what this is about? No problem--check out my original
post. The short version is that having a
highly visible calendar that I can check gives me a daily jolt to do do what I
need to do to establish better habits. I transform the game from being about
putting off what I know I need to do and focus it on building the longest
winning streak I can.
My advice:
Keep it simple--your criteria for success on any given day should be
straightforward and easy to achieve. "I flossed today."
Put it somewhere visible--you should not be able to evade a daily
confrontation with how you're doing. After just a few days in a row, this
will be something you're excited to see.
Keep a pen or marker nearby and don't let it get out of range--if you don't
mark your wins, you won't have the visual reinforcement.
Have lots of extra calendar available--you don't want your streak to die just
because it's a new month.
Don't freak out if a long streak gets broken; now you have a new high
score to try to beat!
Well, since I didn't manage to do any other blogging in November, I might as
well do this one so that it happens, right?
Physical Health
Exercise 3 times weekly
We've been holed up in a remote part of the AG campus for the last month to
focus on getting some awesome stuff done before Christmas. It's about a quarter
mile walk to the main building, which means any time we need to run back over
there, we're looking at a minimum half mile walk; rather than annoying, I find
this invigorating.
I'm also considering walking in next weekend's "Running of the Santas", but
I may just show up with the camera to take pictures instead.
Weight: 175 pounds
Stalled at 185. Still. Meh. At least it's not going the other way.
On the plus side, I've noticed that I'm a little trimmer around the middle,
which is kind of a nice surprise.
Floss daily
Mostly back on track, but disrupted by the past week of bad fever and cold.
Fix my sleep cycle
Better. Not perfect. In bed before 1 AM most nights, and sometimes even by
midnight. Up until 2 (or beyond) at least once a week, though. And yes, the
shift off of daylight savings really threw me.
Mental Health: Professional, Nerd, and Hobby Goals
Still haven't uploaded the summer vacation photos, but I'm keeping tabs on
rating and reviewing things, and I just posted a set that I shot last night at
Westlake City
Hall that was
a ton of fun.
And actively working with my boss to continue to grow and refine the
position I'm in. This is good.
Read Clean Code -- done!
Read at least one book per month
I think I'm giving up on this at this point.
Blog twice monthly
Nope, not quite. I've got some thoughts brewing, but really have to make
sure I prioritize my time. Blogging takes a back seat to the urgent work things
and CodeMash talk prep that must happen.
I don't even think there was a meeting in November for me to miss. Kind of
sad about that, actually.
Monthly game night
Finished multiplayer Portal 2. Woohoo!
The lunchtime Dungeons and Dragons group continues; we seem to have settled
into a good, once-a-week rhythm that keeps us all hungry for more.
Monthly photo walk
Didn't manage to get a real walk on the schedule (again, sigh), but did a
nighttime shoot at the German school's St. Martin's lantern parade, as well as
some extensive shooting at Lego Kids Fest, as well as St. Nicholas' visit to the
German school on Saturday, so I'm feeling photographically fulfilled. I miss
the companionship and the distance of the walk, though.
Financial/Capital
New camera body -- done.
Fireplace
Nope. Not in 2011. Other priorities.
Computers
Nope. Old junky ones still sitting around.
Mailbox -- done.
Mattress -- done.
Budget -- almost there.
On the plus side, we're in striking distance of paying off our home equity
debt, last year's washer/dryer purchase is almost done, and Liz's iMac is almost
paid for, so good things are about to happen on the cash flow front.
I feel kind of lame for not being able to hit the "twice a month" blogging
target, but that's how it goes, I guess, when priorities have to shift for the
holidays. I'm half tempted to post our end-of-year letter, but that feels a
little bit like cheating.
The mojo? I guess it's all right. I didn't nail everything, but I did get good
progress, and good results, on a lot of things. I've spoken before a crowd of
over 1400 people. I've launched a personal project.
I'm gaming socially. I'm growing as a photographer as well as a professional
software wrangler. I've lost some weight. I've made my home a better place.
I've made my dentist complain about being bored by my checkups. I've pushed to
actually read a few things that I otherwise would have never gotten to. I'm
loving my job. And I've got some things to keep working on--heck, I wouldn't
want to get bored either, right?
Getting this one in early to make sure it happens...
Physical Health
Exercise 3 times weekly
Finding it too easy to get caught up in work and skipping the daily walk
break. Still finding more motivation to stay up late reading, surfing, writing,
coding, or gaming than in waking up and running on the elliptical. Meh.
Weight: 175 pounds
Stalled at 185. Still. Meh.
Floss daily
Alas, my eight-month winning streak
has been broken, thanks to my laziness in the face of needing to open the
annoying packaging on a new bottle of mouth wash. It turns out that
mise en place is critical to
success!
Fix my sleep cycle
Better. Not perfect. In bed before 1 AM most nights, and sometimes even by
midnight. Up until 2 (or beyond) at least once a week, though. And any time
the kiddo is up in the night, it seems to throw me off for the next few days.
Of course we just shifted off of Daylight Savings Time, and that never does
good things to me, so... Bleah.
Mental Health: Professional, Nerd, and Hobby Goals
Finished uploading photos
from last November's Disney Cruise. Finally got
around to uploading photos of the Jim Gill and Cathy Miller
gig that I
shot over the summer. I've reviewed the first couple thousand shots from our
summer vacations, so I'm starting to make progress climbing out of this hole.
For giggles, I submitted the idea of recording an episode live before an
audience at PyCon 2012. We'll see what happens.
Everyone involved seems to be too busy/have other things that are more
pressing/more interesting. I suppose this is probably true for me too, or else
we'd have a whole bunch more episodes this year than we do.
Figure out what my job is -- done.
Read Clean Code -- done!
Read at least one book per month
I owe Doug Hellmann a review of his
book. It's no excuse, but I've managed to put a couple more chapters down, so I
think I may review it without having read the whole thing; I normally don't like
to do that, but the book's format lends itself to that.
Hopefully once I get unjammed on the review this will move a little more. I
think the biggest problem here is that I have enough creativity-based things
that need doing (photography, blogging, presentation prep, coding projects,
etc.) that I don't have a lot of cycles left over for consuming content. I
guess what I'm really looking for here is the right balance.
Technically impossible for calendary year 2011 as I've only attended twice
this year... But that's twice more than I had been attending, so that's
something. Hopefully November's meeting will be exciting enough to draw me away
from the glorious adventures of work.
Monthly game night
Yeah, scheduling grown-ups totally sucks. When did it get so hard to Do
Stuff With People?
I am going to count the tabletop RPG group for this goal, though. The
camaraderie is there, the fun is there, and the feel and sound of dice being
rolled is so very, very full of win. We're playing through the venerable
classic, The Keep on the
Borderlands,
adapting it slightly to fit the first edition AD&D rules. And it's freaking
awesome.
I did get a video game night in a couple weeks ago... I finally got around to
getting a mic stand, so we can now combine guitar and vocals on Rock Band
(harder than it sounds, but totally awesome). And we're almost at the end of
the multiplayer section of Portal 2 (which is just tremendously fun).
Monthly photo walk
Didn't photowalk in October, but instead shot photos for the German school's
fall fundraiser, so I'm giving myself a pass here.
Nobody tweeted at me and @codeshaman about getting a walk on the calendar,
so I'm going to level some blame at you, too, Internet. I'm not mad... Just
disappointed.
Financial/Capital
New camera body -- done.
Fireplace
Still deferring. But it may be time to move it off the back-burner.
Computers
I should just obliterate the things and then there won't be a need to stress
about getting them wiped in time for any particular deadline. Clearly... no
progress yet.
Mailbox -- done.
Mattress -- done.
Budget -- almost there.
It seems like there's a lot of "meh" in mojo-land this month; a lot of items
have stalled, and the backsliding on the health things bothers me.
On the other hand, some kind of switch inside the kiddo seems to have flipped,
and now she's going through a major "I love hanging out with Daddy" phase that
I'm thoroughly enjoying. She's really into having me share "Daddy music"
with her, and ever since she tagged along on the Guitar Center trip to pick up
that mic stand, she's been excited about wanting to learn to play the guitar.
Of course, it helps that the Mini Squier comes in pink.
I've not heard back on my PyCon talk proposals, but I did
have one of my CodeMash talks accepted, so I'll be
spending the next two months prepping (and stressing out about) that. And in
theory I'm on the hook to make some label art for Rassilon's Emphatic
Spittle...
What did I say last month about overcommitment?
Wow, I totally missed my September check-in. I blame a combination of being
really busy with prepping the kiddo's birthday party, being really busy with
work, sick off and on with the infamous Cleveland Death Cold of 2011, and making
the mistake that "these are really easy and fast to write, I'll do one tomorrow
night."
Physical Health
Exercise 3 times weekly
Getting back into the daily walk habit again. Feels good. But need to hit
the elliptical one of these mornings.
Finally started uploading
photos from
last November's Disney Cruise. This has been my
big logjam for a while, so hopefully getting it unblocked will help. Of course,
I still have a couple thousand unreviewed photos from vacations this summer, but
for now I'll pretend those don't exist if you won't say anything.
As stated on our Twitter account, our
five-point plan kind of sucks. Nothing happening here thanks to life. Which is
sad, because there's a lot of great stuff going on in the Python world.
Based on my experience of recording an interview with
Lococast, and the (IMO) surprisingly good quality of the
audio, maybe Skype is the way to go for getting the group "together" even when
we can't get a venue together.
For giggles, I submitted the idea of recording an episode live before an
audience at PyCon 2012. We'll see what happens.
Figure out what my job is
At this point, done. Check. Yay.
Read Clean Code -- done!
Read at least one book per month
I owe Doug Hellmann a review of his
book.
I'm making progress, but it's unfortunately taken a back seat to everything else
that's competing for my evenings and weekends.
Blog twice monthly
Kind of blew that in September. Seems like I'm getting back on track now,
though.
Went to the September meeting, so now I'm two-for-nine. October's was
canceled, and since 2011 doesn't have many months left, meeting this goal is now
impossible. C'est la vie, I suppose.
Monthly game night
I somewhat accidentally caused the formation of a tabletop RPG group at work
this month. We're playing old-school AD&D (first edition, baby!) over lunch.
So far it's pretty great, and should only get better as we get into the rhythm
of the game. It's not exactly what I had intended "monthly game night" to be,
but it may turn out to be a reasonable substitute.
Monthly photo walk
Gave myself a pass in September due to my photography duties at the kiddo's
birthday party, but I really, really need to get something on the schedule for
October. Somebody, please tweet at me and @codeshaman and yell at us about it.
Financial/Capital
New camera body
Done. Still happy.
Fireplace
Nada. Deferring even thinking about this for now.
Computers
Need to figure out when our next "Old Computer Round-Up" is so that I can
put a deadline on wiping the old machines that need to leave.
Mailbox
Done.
Mattress
Found a really good sale around Labor Day, and now we have a new mattress!
Yay!
Budget
Have put together a rough budget and discussed it with Liz. Still need to
get some numbers from her so that we can have better clarity. But it's
progress, at long last, and I feel vaguely like an adult.
I won't lie to you, Marge, the mojo has been in kind of a funk lately. I'm
really hoping I can get it back on track soon.
On the plus side, I've barely touched Turntable.fm over
the past month, and being sick for a week gave me an interesting opportunity to
marathon every Tom Baker episode of Doctor Who that Netflix is streaming, as
well as to experiment with facial hair (shaved after two weeks due to the itch
factor). And given the reality of our upcoming Hack Day coming ever closer,
I've finally found the motivation to start building the web apps to help run it
that I've been wanting for years, and am making some good progress in only a
couple of nights. So there's that.
I also submitted four talks to CodeMash and two talks to
PyCon, which I think demonstrates that if there's
one thing I really excel at, it's overcommitment. Live and learn, right?
I had meant to write this when Steve Jobs announced his departure from
day-to-day operations at Apple, but life, as it tends to, intervened, and I
never quite found the time. Now that he's gone, I'm compelled to get this out
while it's still fresh in my mind.
I learned about Steve's passing on my iPhone.
Music is an integral part of my life, for years before and after my time as a
radio DJ, and it's a large part of how I process the emotional ebb and flow of
my life. After I put my phone down, I picked up my iPad, fired up the Remote
app, and in seconds I had Lisa Gerrard and Patrick Cassidy's Immortal Memory
going on the AppleTV, while a smart album of my favorite photos--of my wife, of
my daughter, of vacations and adventures--scrolled by.
I felt the urgent need to type, reached into my backpack, and drew forth my
trusty unibody MacBook, felt the familiar keys under my fingertips, activated
the Python virtualenv that houses my writing, fired up vim.
It's worth a moment of pause to realize that in a matter of minutes, I've had a
personal interaction with four devices that wouldn't have been without Steve's
vision of personal computing. Reflecting on these magical, science-fictional
devices--I still maintain that the iPhone plus Wikipedia is the Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy made real--I am dumbstruck with the realization that I
don't just owe Steve my thanks for my favorite shiny toys.
I literally owe him everything.
Once upon a time, my parents bought an Apple II+. Must have been about 1981.
That wonderful machine, connected first to a fairly awful '70s TV, was my
introduction to computing. We played games on it at first; my parents and I
took turns reading aloud from the text output of Zork and all the other great
Infocom games, to which I credit my precociously early literacy, my goofy
vocabulary, and my love of puns and puzzles. Then I discovered BASIC, and the
die was cast. I loved typing in programs from magazine code listings, seeing
what they did and how they worked, and even more fell in love with writing my
own programs. From that moment, the die was cast--while I excelled in many
subjects in school, I was always happiest when tinkering with computers.
Over the years, the Apple II+ gave way to the IIe, and eventually to a long
series of Macintoshes. I got into BBSes, and that eventually got me into a
(ahem) borrowed VAX account at the local college, where the natural outlet for
my text adventuring was playing MUDs, which I turned into class credit by
landing an independent study project on writing code for MUDs. When it was time
to pick a college, I knew that I was looking for a computer science program. A
long-distance friend that I kept in touch with via VargonMUD got me introduced
to Case Western.
Case got me to leave southwest Colorado, arguably the most beautiful place on
earth, for Cleveland, Ohio. Not only did I survive the grueling computer
engineering curriculum, but I came out on the other side with a job at IBM and a
fiancée.
The IBM travel schedule and its impact on my personal life drove me into the
arms of American Greetings and its spunky internet startup, AG.com, just as the
first bubble was beginning to burst. We had some rough years on the road to
profitability, but I hunkered down, got stuff done, and thankfully held onto my
job, where I became increasingly enamored with our primary language, Python.
Python's "it fits your brain" feels a lot to me like Apple's "it Just Works",
and I see easy parallels between Apple's design aesthetics and Python's Zen. Is
it any wonder that the number of Macs at PyCon has exploded over the past five
or six years? Working with Python led me to helping David Stanek start up a
local user group, and then to attending PyCon, which in turn brought me to
speaking and volunteering at PyCon, which have been some of the most satisfying
experiences of my life thus far. Moreover, PyCon is responsible for getting me
serious about quality and craftsmanship, and has rewarded my risk-taking with
friendships, self-confidence, and composure under pressure.
Thanks in part to this earnest desire to grow in my craft, the growth from my
speaking experiences, and that Infocom-kindled love for tinkering with a puzzle
until solved, I've come to a pretty awesome place in my career--basically I go
where I'm needed most, to get hard things done, to shake things up, to band
people together, to transform, to raise the bar. On good days, it feels
like being Doctor Who in a Kurosawa movie, all flashing swords and sonic
screwdrivers and the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and
cynicism. It definitely never gets boring--I'm coming up on twelve years at
AG, and in some ways I feel like I'm just getting started.
And on the home front? Things have been good; house, cars, cats, good food,
great travel adventures, some of the best friends I could ever ask for.
Liz and I have been married for almost eleven years.
Our daughter is four and already enchanted by computers and iPads.
Her entire concept of what a telephone is will be rooted not in rotary
dials and POTS but in a kind of mobile computing that was science fiction
when I was a kid. She may not remember it, but I used to read
Learning Python to her as a baby, and I've got the photos on my AppleTV
to prove it to her. But that's not what's really amazing about her--it's
that she's been so instrumental in overcoming the depression that plagued my
20s; she blew into my life like a fresh breeze and swept away so much garbage.
Sure, parenting hasn't been easy, but when I stop to take a breath, I'm struck
by how much better I've become for the experience.
Education, career, friends, family, community--literally my entire world--all
because of that Apple II and Steve's vision. Surely in some alternate,
Steveless universe, similar patterns might have emerged, but this one,
these friends, this path, this wife, this child, I can trace
very clearly to his influence.
Words seem useless to express my gratitude for the profound effect Steve has had
on my life. My sadness that this titan is gone. My regret that we'll never
know what other transformations he would have brought to the world.
So, how then to cope with this sudden absence, the sinking of the rock that has
so rippled the waters of my life? My inner child will hold to the illusion that
Steve's gone to the same tropical island paradise as Jim Henson, Isaac Asimov,
Richard Feynman, and Carl Sagan. My outer adult will try, even if it's only
in small ways, to make the world a better place, to touch the lives of those
around me, to encourage them to grow, to become, and to help them in turn shape
the lives of others. And hopefully that will be all right.
Late again due to lots of distractions (vacation, computer maintenance, too much
time on Turntable.fm). Let's see where I'm at...
Physical Health
Exercise 3 times weekly
Mixed results, though now that I'm back from vacation, and the worst of the
heat/humidity seems to be done, and Chris is done with triathlon training
(congrats on completing it, by the way), I'm getting the walk breaks in again.
Also, did some silly back-yard soccer while on vacation; lots of fun even though
it reminded me exactly how out of shape I am.
Thanks to our vacation in Canada, where my AT&T data plan is no good, and
the house we rented had no internet, I've somewhat rebooted my sleep cycle.
Going cold turkey from Turntable was painful for the first couple of nights,
I'll admit... Now to see if I can keep to something reasonable.
Mental Health: Professional, Nerd, and Hobby Goals
I've got all the underwater photos from last fall's cruise fixed up with GPS
data and corrected dates, so I can move forward on that stuff at some point. Of
course now I've got about 4000 photos from our July and August vacation weeks
that I haven't even rated, let alone processed and uploaded, so I'm more behind
here than ever.
As stated on our Twitter account, our
five-point plan kind of sucks. Nothing happening here thanks to life. Which is
sad, because there's a lot of great stuff going on in the Python world.
I used vacation as an excuse to dive into some things that I've been wanting
to read for a while; in the past week or so, I've read Cory
Doctorow's Little
Brother and Futuristic Tales of the
Here and Now as well as Tom
Scalzi's Old Man's War. All were excellent.
Reading three books in a week also felt really, really good--I don't think I've
been able to read anything at that pace since the mid-90s.
This puts me somewhere around five-and-a-bit out of twelve, so there's still
work to do here. And I should work on pacing so that it's not all
binge-reading.
Blog twice monthly
Probably on target, if I can get around to writing the handful of posts that
I've been putting off for the past couple of weeks.
The August meeting was while I was out of town, so... Still one for eight.
Monthly game night
Nope. Totally not happening lately. Life. Busy. Yeah.
Monthly photo walk
I'm giving myself a pass on this since I shot about 20 gigs of photos while
on vacation. But Chris and I should get something on the schedule.
Financial/Capital
New camera body
Done. Still happy.
Fireplace
Nada. Deferring even thinking about this for now.
Computers
Need to figure out when our next "Old Computer Round-Up" is so that I can
put a deadline on wiping the old machines that need to leave.
Mailbox
Done.
Mattress
Nada. Hopefully sometime this summer. We'll see.
Budget
Still no progress. I need to figure out how this can be a priority for both
of us instead of something we eternally put off.
Progress on the sleep and reading fronts kind of caught me by surprise, but it's
nice, and I'll take it. If I can get past computer maintenance and photo
backlog and overcoming the Turntable addiction...
I'm late with this, which clearly can't mean good things for my overall
progress. Let's see, here...
Physical Health
Exercise 3 times weekly
My motivation for participating in the walking challenge at work has totally
cratered. First, when the official competition part started, all of our data
got nuked. Then the weather has gone straight to hell; the humidity is
tolerable in our offices, but there are significant parts of my walking route
(through the warehouse) that aren't climate controlled, so they're downright
swampy. And when I'm being good about getting all my steps in, I find that I'm
not delivering enough on my work tasks. On top of all of that, the damn
pedometer likes nothing more than to fall off at every opportunity. So. Yeah.
Totally slacking. I haven't worn the pedometer in weeks, and I'm genuinely
happier without being shackled to it.
Looks like I'm still missing some scans from the underwater photos, so this
has stalled again, but I've at least got most of the underwater stuff fixed up
with correct dates and GPS locations. Ever closer to getting somewhere...
This is getting to be an embarrassing goal. Of course, I could always try
to blame Chris's so-called "five point plan" that was alluded to on our last
episode. Really, life is happening to everyone involved, and hard.
Doing poorly here. My June attendance fell through at the last minute, and
it wasn't clear whether there would be a July meeting until after I'd gotten
locked into other plans. So... One. Hmm.
Monthly game night
Did some Portal and Rock Band over July 4th, so that counts a little bit,
but I'd still really like to get this back to what I'd wanted to do in the first
place--an established, regular, non-videogame evening.
Monthly photo walk
I got two walks in during June--a day at the zoo with my
family and a walk around
Medina Town Square with Chris (post forthcoming).
Financial/Capital
New camera body
Done. Still happy.
Fireplace
Nada. Deferring even thinking about this for now.
Computers
Need to figure out when our next "Old Computer Round-Up" is so that I can
put a deadline on wiping the old machines that need to leave.
Mailbox
Done.
Mattress
Nada. Hopefully sometime this summer. We'll see.
Budget
Still no progress. I need to figure out how this can be a priority for both
of us instead of something we eternally put off.
So. Not as much progress as I would have liked to see by this point in the year.
Work, family, life... Just getting through from day to day and week to week is
eating all my focus. Argh.
It's hard to believe how fast the months are flying by this year. I swear it
was only March the other day...
Physical Health
Exercise 3 times weekly
Our workplace has started a walking challenge using Walker
Tracker, which has netted us all free pedometers. So
now I get great feedback about how (badly) I'm doing day to day. But it helps
get me moving at least a little bit, which helps. The weather's been too awful
to walk outside much during the day, so it's probably time to add the stairs
that I keep putting off.
Weight: 175 pounds
Moving slower on this than I want to, but I'm now regularly at 185 instead
of 186, so I'll claim some progress there. It feels like a good benchmark,
psychologically. More than ten down, only ten to go!
Floss daily
My winning streak paid dividends
this week at my dental checkup. It's still unbroken since March, so I'm pretty
happy about this.
Fix my sleep cycle
This is still a mess. Maybe time to start a separate "winning streak"
calendar for sleep.
Mental Health: Professional, Nerd, and Hobby Goals
I'm current on everything except Disney Cruise stuff from last fall; the
blocker there seems to be fixing the dates and locations in the scans that I
ended up needing to do to fix problems with the initial film processing. I've
at least created a smart album to help winnow down the upload selections, so
maybe that'll all start to happen soon.
No recording in April or May, and nothing yet scheduled for June. This seems
to be falling apart as we all have more pressing or interesting distractions.
Meh.
Figure out what my job is
I think I more or less have this covered, at least for now. Whew!
Read Clean Code -- done!
If you haven't, you should.
Read at least one book per month
I just finished The Making of the Empire Strikes Back today. It was
long, but thoroughly excellent. But I should probably find something lighter or
faster to read so that I can start catching up. I'm excited to dig into Doug
Hellmann's The Python Standard Library by
Example,
but at over 1200 pages, I don't think it qualifies as anything close to
"light"--heck, the THUMP it makes when I set it on my desk is downright
intimidating!
Blog twice monthly
This no longer seems to be an issue; it's interesting to see how much it's
become dominated by the photography posts over the past couple of months. Not
sure that's a bad thing, just... different.
Finally made it to a meeting last month; but I haven't heard what the plan
is for June, so who knows if I'll go tomorrow or not.
Monthly game night
Hasn't happened in the sense I was planning on, but I did spend an evening
with friends playing Rock Band and Portal 2, so at least I've done something
social and gamey.
Monthly photo walk
Almost derailed, but managed to get on track at the very end of may with
a walk around Ohio City. I got in an
additional walk last weekend at the zoo with my family, and Chris and I are
scheduled to go shooting next weekend, so I'm feeling pretty good on this front.
Financial/Capital
New camera body
After lots of waffling, I splurged on a Canon 60D and an upgrade to my
walkabout lens--replacing my five-year-old, non-stabilized Tamron 18-200 with
Canon's 18-200 IS lens. The stabilization is a huge win, allowing an extra
couple of stops of flexibility, and the lens seems to be a lot sharper than its
predecessor, so I'm really pleased. Overall I'm loving everything about the
60D, and am pleasantly surprised by how much I'm enjoying shooting some
limited amounts of video with it.
Fireplace
Nada. Deferring even thinking about this for now.
Computers
Need to figure out when our next "Old Computer Round-Up" is so that I can
put a deadline on wiping the old machines that need to leave.
Mailbox
The replacement is in and rock-solid. My house-based self-image is now
doing a lot better.
Mattress
Nada. Hopefully sometime this summer. We'll see.
Budget
Zilch, but Liz is done with her big exam, and we've talked about needing to
do this, so I think we have a good chance of sorting this out soon.
Minor progress overall, with a few breakthroughs, but I need to figure out if
I'm really motivated to make the podcast happen or not; I'm getting tired of
flogging the "hey, let's record" message and getting nowhere with it.
Another month has passed since my last check-in, so let's see how I'm doing...
Physical Health
Exercise 3 times weekly
The daily walk break has become pretty irregular over the past couple of weeks as Chris's work stress level has ratcheted up. We need to add stairs to the walk (or outdoors now that the weather is occasionally decent). But I also need to start doing something independent as well if I'm really going to do this for real.
Weight: 175 pounds
Stalled around 186, largely due to the poor results above.
Floss daily
I'm on a winning streak since March; I think I've got this one licked. Vigilance, of course, is key.
Fix my sleep cycle
I still seem to stay up until I hit the wall (and sometimes even beyond), but where that wall is seems to be in a bit of flux. Disappointed by my lack of change here.
Mental Health: Professional, Nerd, and Hobby Goals
We failed to record in April, so we need to schedule something this month. Need to. Need, need, need to.
Figure out what my job is
This seems to actually be happening, albeit in a somewhat organic and not always planned way--but that's probably okay since it's working out well enough.
Read Clean Code
Turns out there was less of this left to finish than I thought there was. Done! I can't recommend it enough--I can already tell that it's one of those "formative experiences" that will shape my approach to programming for the rest of my life. If I had a time machine, I'd send this back to the me of 1995 and save myself a lot of hard lessons.
Read at least one book per month
I need to double down on The Making of the Empire Strikes Back and then find some lighter/faster reading that I can catch up with. And maybe play Dragon Age a little less.
Blog twice monthly
Five posts in April. This is a new record for the resurrected blog (discounting the daily posts from last November's Disney cruise). Woot.
Launch at least one personal code project
Done! Of course, I've racked up at least three other things that I want to start, as well as having a number of features that I want to add to How Old Is My Kid. Frankly, I'm ready for a Thunderbolt port in the back of my head so that I can just dream all these other things into existence without them having to come out of my fingers.
Total fail so far--three missed opportunities. I'm totally going next week, though, and I did attend the first of the Cleveland Mobile Monday meetups in April...
Monthly game night
Total scheduling fail continues. Amid Liz's travel schedule and all the other things going on, this just isn't getting prioritized. Maybe in May...?
Monthly photo walk
Kind of back on track. Chris and I got in a good [three-mile walk in downtown Cleveland(/2011/04/24/april-photo-walk-downtown-cleveland/) last month. Hopefully we can make something happen in May.
Financial/Capital
Car
I got 46.2 mpg on my drive home tonight. Loving the TDI. Still, I really dislike having a car payment again.
New camera body
Keeping my eyes out for any sales as we get close to Memorial Day or Father's Day--I'm thinking about a Canon T2i or T3i, but might be convinced to do something else... I like the 7D but in fairness to my wife (and random strangers who I might have to hand the camera to and say "take our picture, please!") I feel like the automatic/cheater modes are really useful (or at least polite).
Fireplace
No progress. Probably won't be any until Autumn.
Computers
Nope, still haven't wiped the old computers. Missed our "Old Computer Round-Up". Sigh.
Mailbox
The wind and weather over the past couple weeks have pretty much killed the old mailbox. The good news is that a replacement is lined up and will be properly, professionally installed soon--maybe even tomorrow if the weather holds up long enough!
Mattress
No progress. Sigh.
Budget
No progress. Probably won't be any until after Liz's exam in June. Sigh.
Doing okay, I suppose, and starting to crack a couple of the long-standing issues like the mailbox, but I'd like to be doing better. Harrumph.
