Tag: inventory

Entertainment / Hobby Queue (10/26/2012)

I have found myself with nothing to do tonight.   Not, as in, bored, but more like a moment to breathe.   As I sit back and relax, I realize I have a long queue of stuff that I want to do .. sometime.  I’m making a note of them here.   As I write this, I realize I also have misgivings about some things, they need to leave the list, I do not have the time, I must be picky.

(Creative Commons photo by Simon Law)

Video Editing Queue – Priority

  • Soccer Banquet:  player and coach interviews – mostly done, needs trimming and color correction and some titles.
  • Soccer Banquet: to be determined – JV, V, Seniors, Action shots, Clips of celebrations, Senior Parents flashback – waiting on media from my wife to set the grouping.

Video Editing – Not priority 

  • Now that I have multicam software, finish off the Café Unity Wizard of Oz video .. so I can delete the originals (22G) and replace with a single 4G video stream.   (Also amazing is how Premiere does 2 pass VBR etc – to get crisp high quality video in less space – as compared to consumer MPG generation)
  • Likewise, reburn the surrounding video to a DVD for Noumuas, but I want to attempt color correction on it now that I have learned how.
  • Battle of igNew vs Heartland – Basketball competition – its going down tomorrow.  I won’t be there, but supposedly there will be two GoPro’s in the mix. 
  • Niece Macki’s Oldham vs Shelby competitive girl’s soccer game.

Archiving

  • I *still* have all those old photos that need to be digitized.   I might just find a service and get them sent off.  I really want to color correct some of the stuff from the 70’s.  
  • Of course, none of it is of any use to anybody other than me.. I have no biological offspring who would care.
  • I have about a decade of digital pictures that I could try to organize and comment on.

TV

  • Staying up to date with Grimm, Top Gear Ameriica, Top Gear BBC, Doctor Who. Only one is currently in season.
  • Backlog of seasons: Doctor Who.  I’ve browsed the top 10 so far.  I might let this one go.
  • Battlestar Galactica?  I think they completed their story arc now.   I might let this one go.
  • Richard Hammond Crash Course.   Not started yet. 
  • There’s probably more excellent TV that I have missed, but I don’t know about ‘em, so I can’t list ‘em.
  • I think I’m giving up on Wild Alaska Flying Frozen People with Wind and Visibility Problems and oooo it could be dramatic but it really isn’t, but its pretty and I love watching airplanes fly.
  • Ice Road Truckers, if I get really bored.  Similar to the above. 

Movies

  • The Hobbit.  Oh yeah.   Probably twice, in the theaters.
  • Avengers
  • John Carter of Mars
  • reference Howard Tayler’s yearly reviews of movies, I seem to agree with him (except that I liked Wolverine)
  • Harry Potter!  I stopped watching the movies somewhere between 4 and 5 I think.
  • I once thought I would watch the entire LOTR, but with the directors or some other commentary track.  I might have to shelve this.  I think its beautiful what they did, but its in the past now, let it go, look at the new.
  • There are many feel good important movies about the beauty and challenge in our world —   Racing the Rez is one of them..  I want to watch more of these.   There’s also a movie about high school football that @CoachKennyBurke referenced in one of his videos.

Books

  • I have an active subscription to Schlock Mercenary.
  • I have many non fiction books.. math books, geeky books.. that I have gotten this year, that I can’t even remember.  Some by Martin Gardner.   There’s something about a very peaceful tribe in the Amazon.    I could possibly put these in GoodReads, but I’d rather actually read them.
  • Graphic novels from Humble Bundle that I just bought.  I got through xkcd the other night, it was great.
  • Shannara?  I grabbed 1 and 3, tried re-reading, but I’m finding it too dry and too.. suspicious?  the characters are not deep enough for me to relate any more.  I think I have to pass on it
  • Barbara Hambly is currently on my list.    I have 2 or 3 of her books lined up.
  • 2 anthologies (?) of Science Fiction short stories thanks to my Mother in Law.  I’ve read a few stories from each.
  • I read through the first 6 books in the “Warriors in the Wind” (cat stuff) series.  I am hesitant to start on the next 6.  Same shit, different paw.

Youtube

  • ViHart, CPGrey, VSauce, SlowMoGuys (sorry no links, you can youtube them if you want)
  • I seem to catch up about every month or so.

Music

  • I’m reasonably current now, thanks to Sirius XM. 
  • Mostly will involve banging on drums really loud.  
  • Some day I want to revisit trying to mix two or three songs together to make a mashup.
  • I do want to spend some time and just go through all the music that friends post on facebook, and listen to a bunch of it.  Just to see what’s important to them.

Code projects

  • Burnup/Burndown – currently working on it, at the rate of 1-2 hours every other week (link is to github)
  • Gmail super-archiving program – to delete all but the most recent of a pattern match; moving the most recent to an “Offers” folder.   Access via Imap, probably. 
  • Recovery Program Mapping – to help generate maps of 12 step meetings sorted by Date, Time, and mapped across a city.  Because that’s really hard to do.   Make it donation-based. 
  • LPC revisited in C# and .Net – to pay homage to where I learned OO for real.  

Games

  • XCom – I only played a few levels.  It was fun.   I probably won’t go back to it.
  • DayZ – I only played a bit; won’t go back to it unless its with a group of buddies
  • Civ5 – I did everything I wanted to do with it; I can shelve this
  • XPlane – I did all the travelling to places that I already know; I still have my cross country trip to do, however, I’m not feeling it right now.  Maybe in the dead of winter.   I have a TrackIr now, should be fun.
  • SPAZ – meh, it was interesting for a night.  Probably shelved
  • Borderlands – curiosity satisfied, shelved
  • SimCity – curios, might download demo, then shelve.
  • Portal – I really should play this.   Its so famous.

Then there’s another part of life.. that’s not work, its not family, and its not entertainment…  Its been ignored.  It’s the segment that I only seem to find the desire to work on, after I’ve spent some energy getting charged back up using entertainment.   It is:

Exercise

  • Get back to Yoga
  • Get back to resistance training / toning all muscles in general
  • Get back to running
  • Bonus: Swimming (== toning core muscles)
  • Bonus: Bicycling
  • Bonus: Soccer

If I ever say I am bored.. I need to come back and read (and freshen) this post.   And I’m not even listing the other areas of life I could get more involved in – recovery work (going to more meetings, taking on more sponsors), teaching (I think I would enjoy it, one on one, for those who want to be better developers), yardwork, house fixing, etc etc etc…

Life is Full.   That’s probably good.

Where did my time go?

This week i’ve felt hurried.. it felt like life kept getting in the way, preventing me from working the work hours I should to be working.

I can’t argue with a feeling, so I took an inventory, and mapped it out. With some help from my wife, and a history of text messages, I could mostly put together what was going on. (Harvest, the time keeping app for work, helps)

Inventory Result

The Blue is work.  Most of it was Working-At-the-Office (WAO), though some was Working-At-Home.. (WAH).. either in the Basement, or Outside. (Outside = it was a beautiful day)

The Yellow (yellow) is hanging with my spouselet .. which also happens to be very good for me, I enjoy that time immensely.   We’ve been watching Season 6 of Doctor Who.

The Orange is hanging out with people – my spouse’s family on Monday, and with a buddy for breakfast on Wednesday.  Note: Monday and Tuesday lunches should have been in Orange as well, I’m trying to make it a point to hang with the guys at work.

The Other Warm Color is “stuff I had to do”.  Some of it is house hold related stuff – some of it is being of service to other people.

And lastly – there’s Purple, the stuff I do for me.  Which includes writing this blog post, and my little jog around the block, and puttering around on whatever I want to do.

Analysis

Monday was bleah.  I had a family thing to go to, didn’t get my hours in.

Tuesday, I tried to catch up.  It was fairly training.  Wife and I recovered it well though.

Wednesday was shot – My son needed some assistance with homework, so there was some time lost to transit.  The good news there is, I could work from home – I multitasked – I had the dogs out, and the cat out, as I worked from my laptop.  It feels good to crittersit the critters and spend a little time with them.

What’s the problem? What’s missing? What needs to change?

I find myself lagging behind in my work hours and spending Friday, the day when I get 4 hours to work on anything I want (including this blog) — I spend it on catching up the hours I didn’t get done earlier in the week.

What causes this lag?    Its usually “household” things.  Sometimes its “people” things. Both of those are important, and they’re not going to budge.

The good news is, the days that I don’t have “life” going on, I can easily stay at work to get caught up.    Or even work from home to get caught up.  (I find that I can only work from home when I’m alone there – otherwise, my family drags me into their lives).    If I stay extra at work, I can usually put a workout in there as well.

Other Optimizations

I might try sleeping in till 7am, and not tossing and turning for an hour.

As mentioned earlier, I would like to add more exercise.   I’m not sure where – the current idea is, on days that “life” isn’t going on, work late, and add in a jog there.

Random thoughts: The YMCA is on my way to/from work, but the time needed after a workout to take a shower is a detriment; yet my chances this week of doing something on the way home .. there was only Tuesday.  I did jog on Tuesday.   So.. mission successful? Operating as designed?   Maybe the Late Night Jog is the best way to go, i used to jog at about 10pm or so, when I first started jogging.   After dinner, even, help with absorbing all those calories (diabetes related).

The Big Picture

I’m not seeing a lot of wasted time in there.. hours spent in front of a TV, flipping channels.

I am operating at 90% capacity, easily – with the remaining 10% necessary for buffer, sanity.   The occasional breaks – in white, with question marks – are signs of sanity, not places to cram more stuff in.

As a very wise person once told me – as my life progresses, I am going to find more and more good stuff that doesn’t fit.

What If I Were Retired

If I were retired, how would the ingredients change?

I suspect there would be a lot more puttering, and helping, and hanging with people going on.  And probably a lot less “creating” things (my current work).