Weekly Set – 2010 – Mar. 8

resolution: Drink water

I used to mainline pop, or soda as I’m starting to call it.  I guess I’ve been out of the Midwest for too long.

Another daily habit I’ve adapted and been focusing on so far this year is drinking plenty of water throughout the day.  During college I would drink so much pop that there would be days where I probably didn’t drink more than a sip of water from a drinking fountain. There’s a reason why I put on 20 pounds at Purdue.

I can remember back in 2001 when I was an intern at Caterpillar that I ran into an old friend who was now working at Cat.  He looked completely different since he’d lost a lot of weight.  When I asked him what he did, he said the main thing was stopped drinking Cokes during the day.  I don’t know why it took me seven or so years to realize that wasn’t such a bad idea.

Now I’ve got my little plastic cup and a nice water cooler to walk over to and refill during the day.  It’s too bad that I work with three other software developer / IT types who are in their offices.  I totally miss out on the “water cooler gossip”.

So how much water should I drink?  Well according to the Mayo Clinic:

…if you drink enough fluid so that you rarely feel thirsty and produce 1.5 liters (6.3 cups) or more of colorless or slightly yellow urine a day, your fluid intake is probably adequate.

Now all I need is a 1.5 liter bucket.

Wedding Trip #2

I’ve got a weekend of wedding planning ahead of me.

Christina and I head up to Maryland this weekend to flesh out some of our plans for our event.  Up to this point I’ve been fairly out of the loop.  This is sometimes by choice, sometimes by a simple turn of events.  I think this weekend will find me more involved.

I know that we’ve got the concept of the wedding rehearsal down, but I don’t know if we know all the details.  The idea is that it will be “if you are invited to the wedding, you’re invited to the rehearsal” type of thing.  More casual than the wedding, but I don’t think it’ll be jeans and a t-shirt casual.  More of a cook-out type of environment. The location is a manor near the ceremony and reception spot.  I’m really looking forward to this part of the weekend.  I think that the day of the ceremony and reception will be such a whirlwind that the rehearsal night will really be the time that I can hang out and socialize with everyone.

The ceremony location is set, but I think the most work we have left to do is related to the ceremony and reception.  That’s probably not uncommon.  Who knows, I’ve never been married.  One of the red flags in my head is a back-up location.  The ceremony is going to be outside, and we haven’t looked around for a site in case a storm rolls in.  I’m not sure, but I think we’ll have the reception outside (in tents) regardless.

Christina and I were up in Maryland months ago which I suppose was our first official planning trip.  That consisted of address lists for the folks we were going to invite and a bit of preliminary scouting for hotels and suppliers.  Planning for an event at a remote location has been odd because the actual planning takes place in concentrated spurts with lots of lag time in between.  Usually this  makes me worried as I tend to be a bit OCD when planning things I’m involved in or responsible for.  We’ve gotten some resources up near DC to help us out with a lot of this, so it’s all good.

I’m looking forward to taking some pictures of the different sites, and I was told there will be food tasting as well.

I like food.

your choice was right
no chance to be there now
i swear I’m done
no one to lead you back

it’s yours to find
it’s all you’ve ever done
you’re falling down
you’ll falling back to us

resolution: Update work journal

Do you keep a work journal?  I’ve tried in the past, stopped, and have picked it up as one of my attainable goals this year.

Back in DC I was asked a few times a year to summarize what big projects I’d worked on.  That was mostly for my supervisor to accurately complete a performance review.  Since it was a summary it wasn’t fairly detailed and was updated on demand, not on a regular basis.

In New York I would keep track of my hours worked.  My job in DC was an hourly contract, so that was part the daily grind, but in NYC it was more about showing how much time I had already spent working that week.  Our team was understaffed and our boss would drop projects on us Friday afternoon expecting work over the weekend.  Keeping track of those hours gave me a bit of ammo when we’d ask for more resources, more organization, or just to feel a bit of accomplishment.

Here in Florida I don’t really have any of these requirements.  My boss has asked us to keep track of time (which I need to remember to do along with my work journal!), but in the year I’ve been here there’s been no performance review.  I’ve added the goal of keeping a daily log of what I work on simply for my own sanity.  We tend to jump around from project to project and I’ve found that it’s so much easier to open up my word doc and see exactly where I left off the Friday prior to a Monday.  If I can’t pick it up right away, my notes along with the day or two before can usually catch me up.

The process is pretty easy.  I just have a Word document sitting on my desktop, enter a date line, and add bullets for each major task.  Simple tracking and organization.

Weekly Set – 2010- Feb. 22

resolution: Blogging

Last night I saw Julie & Julia and began thinking more about my blog, so I’m starting a new series of posts based on my last post,  A New Year’s revolution.

In order to get up to speed, I’ll be making some posts about goals that I’ve already set for myself, why I chose that goal, and anything else that comes to mind on the topic.

What makes this so meta is that the goal I’m talking about in this entry is “blog entry within 3 days.”

Those of you who have actually kept this site bookmarked and come back after the extended hiatus know that this blog’s gone through several iterations.  It started when I was back at Purdue, through my time in DC, and was particularly absent while I was living in New York City.  It was around that time that I suppose I was turned off to the idea of blogging.  For whatever reasons I didn’t feel any motivation to chime in with my thoughts on annoying co-workers, bad jobs, or how much I couldn’t wait for Friday.

While those posts may still show up from time to time, I plan on trying to add a bit more depth or at least keep things interesting.  I also want to add themed series of posts over the next year (such as this resolution series).  I’ll try to find ways to keep this interesting for those who take the time to check it out as well as use it as an outlet for whatever’s on my mind.

A New Year’s revolution

A lot of people have New Year’s resolutions.  I’m trying to go about it a different way this year.  Instead of coming up with a few large goals for the whole year, I’m focusing on many, small, positive habits.  Each week of 2010 I’m going to add one or two new habits and focus on them that week, while also remembering the prior week’s habits.

Some examples include: “<550 calories at lunch”, “drinking at least five cups of water at work”, “flossing”.

I’m keeping track of these habits using Joe’s Goals.

I’ll update a few months from now with my progress.

“As usual”

I saw this Carl Sagan video a while back, and got a chuckle when I saw this picture today.

New year

The holidays have passed.  I spent them mostly eating various roasts and celebrating several birthdays.  There’s one more birthday coming up that I’m eagerly anticipating.  My sister is expecting her second child sometime in the next few weeks.  I can’t wait to have another nephew or niece.

2009 was a complex year.

It started with moving to a new state, a new city, and a new job.  Today is my one year anniversary at my current job.  I’ve learned a lot, and hope that a year from now I’ll be celebrating two years of programming in an airport hangar.  For the next year, I hope to get a few software development certifications, increase my income with my side consulting business, and finish development on a few for-profit projects I have begun.

Christina and I have gone through a lot this year too.  We purchased a house together, we adapted to living in a smaller town, and we got engaged.  The wedding is being planned for late September 2010 and will probably be located near Crisfield, MD.  Our house is coming along and we’re still putting on some of the finishing touches, including painting our bedroom near-black.  Aside from planning and hosting a fun and unique wedding, I think I’ll have plenty to do around the house to get to a point where we feel “finished” with moving in.

Regarding hardware and air filters…

There’s something I never quite understood about the excitement surrounding a trip to Home Depot or Lowe’s on a weekend afternoon that so many men seem to share.  Was I lacking some male component that this didn’t appeal to me, or I thought of a trip to the hardware store as a chore?

No.  What I was missing was a garage.

The little, covered, unfinished, shelf-filled, peg-board-wall-covered haven that came with our house has unlocked a long-dormant manlier-man hidden inside this hardwired computer geek.  All of a sudden my to-do list is filled with things like “buy a shop vac”, “buy bike hooks”, “buy a dry-wall saw”.  All tasks lovingly checked off after a trip to the store.

Ever since we moved into the house I’ve found so many little things to do that aren’t actually necessary for me to get through my day, but the act of completing these tasks are tiny victories in a life that is filled less and less with free time.  These days projects at work span months and years, there are long time-spans between vacations, and a car loan that has years to go until that feeling of accomplishment with the final payment.

I wired my house for CAT6 Ethernet even though I have a wireless router.  I changed the air filter on my little Mazda 3 instead of having it done during my last service.  I organized all of my tools on the peg-board wall in my garage even though getting them out of my toolbox took no effort.

Does the fact that these tasks have to do with the house or car (as opposed to my computer) make them more acceptable to my fiancee?  Do I undertake these low return-on-investment projects simply because I know it’ll be a task I do on my own and can take care of my introvert?

Next stop: oil changes.