Category: Life

August 18, 2016

It’s been a little bit, hasn’t it?

Today has Diana and I both taking the train instead of driving to work, a statement that indicates how much has transpired over the intervening months.

Diana’s job search concluded successfully in late June. She’s working with me again, in Santa Fe. Her desk is about a 30-second walk from mine. It’s a significant pay raise, plus a full 40 hours a week. Combine the effects of both and her pay has doubled. But so far, from my position, it’s well more than double the work for double the pay. It’s been a bit difficult to watch. Even if the last job was overall a crappy gig, she was at least able to largely leave work at work. That hasn’t happened with any consistency since. She tells me not to worry about it. That’s, uh, difficult.

With the increase in pay, as well as the fact that we’re now both commuting, I insisted that we get an apartment in Santa Fe to reduce commute time, while we try to find a house. We put a deposit down on a really nice 2-bed deal north of the city, and the house search began again in earnest as we waited for a spot at the apartments to open up. Then I made a mistake, or so I called it at the time.

I saw what houses go for in Albuquerque.

Diana and I will occasionally go to a good-sized park a couple miles away. It’s got a tennis court, basketball hoops, and a nice big area for the dog. It’s a good combination of open and shady. It’s a really nice park.

I could get a 4-bedroom monster of a home, with a front door that faces that park, for less than a dilapidated 1-bedroom in Santa Fe. Seriously. There’d be enough … (More) “It’s been a little bit, hasn’t it?”

June 23, 2016

It’s Been a Long Time Coming

I got to disclose the SNSLocker ransomware fully to the FBI last Friday. I caught a late break in research when someone pointed me to a software package that could decompile the virus, reversing it back to source code. So I was able to give them the attacker’s name, age, email address, IP address, password, and the source code to the virus, website, and database. They were quite impressed, and now I’ve got a point of contact there where I can quickly disclose just about anything going forward, and said agent will also be able to quickly acquire warrants to put us on the right side of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. I meet with them again in three weeks, and in the meantime I’m going to do a partial disclosure on bluesoul.me going over the tactics used.

One thing I was not factoring in while becoming more active: Becoming more tired, which leads to sleeping later, which leads to missing the train. I missed it for quite nearly two solid weeks. It’s cost me one badly cracked windshield from being on the interstate so much more. Sorry about that.

On the health front, things are going quite well. If I wasn’t drinking quite so much water, I might have a better idea of what I actually weigh right now. I got below 170 quickly, but since then I’ve hovered right around it. However, with logging food on the Fitbit app I can get a rough idea of how much fat has burned off. And I can feel a difference physically; squishy parts are becoming less so, my calves have put on a lot of muscle mass. That thing I said about hitting 10,000 steps for three out of three days, when I’d only hit it once in the … (More) “It’s Been a Long Time Coming”

June 9, 2016

Power On

You know, on those power toggles where it’s represented by an I and an O? I remember which is which by saying “O for Off.” Try not to think about it too much.

So I got my Fitbit surge about six months ago, and the goal it sets for you is 10,000 steps per day. I hit that one time, in April on Nutanix day.

I’ve hit it three times in the last three days.

In fact, I’ve only hit the “5 miles walked” goal for the first time this week, which I’ve also done three times in the last three days. Critically, the goal for calories burned was getting met less than once a week, probably 0.3 or 0.4 times a week by eyeballing it, and only over 3,000 calories burned twice in six months. Except, you know, for the last three times in the last three days.

I woke up yesterday feeling half-dead. I preemptively let myself off the hook if I didn’t increase my cardio numbers or even hit 10,000 steps. My legs were worn all the way out. My right calf felt like there was a rock in it. But what surprised me is what a good mood I was in. I think there’s some serious biochemical changes happening, more testosterone if I had to guess. I feel, and this may be out of character for me, significantly more alive. More mentally sharp. More friendly. It’s wild. And despite half-dead, rock-in-calf feeling, I ended up walking over 13,000 steps for 5.5 miles.

I did end up buying some new shoes. It’s not an area where I spare expense but I actually found the low-end of the Asics product line to be more comfortable than anything else. Low-end here meaning about $70 on sale. Prior to that … (More) “Power On”

June 7, 2016

Five Green Rings and Two Dead Doves

So, let’s get this out of the way. I exceeded expectations yesterday.

Crushed yesterday, for real. #fivegreencircles

A photo posted by @bluesoulsez on

I’m making use of every function of the app now. I went ahead and bought the Aria scale as well, it’s not too overpriced for including body fat percentage (even if only a rough approximation) and I know myself well enough to know the integration with the app will make me actually use it. I’m using the food log and tracking water consumed. I’m pretty sure it’s everything the app offers outside of run tracking because I’m not running yet.

With all the extra walking yesterday, I consumed 2100ish calories, but that’s fine because I burned over 3,000. That’s a significant deficit, enough to average 1.3 pounds of fat burned in a five-day work week.

I was talking to Diana about this yesterday, from an evolutionary standpoint, we’re good at a lot of things, but out biggest strength might be walking. Early man would bring down a yak or a goat or what have you by walking behind it, never letting it rest, pelting it with stones and throwing spears until it got back up and the chase began again until the animal finally keeled over from exhaustion. We’re not the best runners, but we’re the best walkers on the planet.

So when I got the scale set up (hey Fitbit, make your applications respect Windows text scaling, please.) I got my first number back. 173.2 pounds and 24.7% body fat percentage. I did some mental arithmetic on where I wanted to be, which is 135 pounds as I was when I was about 18, and let out an audible “Fuuuuuuck.” That’s like 40 pounds. But I did a little more … (More) “Five Green Rings and Two Dead Doves”

June 6, 2016

Dead Dove Dot Jpeg

I don’t know what I expected. I didn’t expect it to go well, this thought of exercising at work. I’m fairly blown away at how well it went. I had a few things I wanted to accomplish.

I wanted to walk at least 250 steps each hour. I almost accomplished that, I did so in 7 of the 9 hours. One hour was entirely taken up by a meeting, and the other was where I had substituted additional resistance band exercise. I don’t think there’s honestly much that can be done for those hour-long meetings, call it a necessary evil.

I wanted to do my exercises, the full 3 sets, 15 reps each, six exercises. That didn’t happen, I only managed one set. It’s going to take a little balancing of my time to manage more. Also, dress pants are not condusive to doing squats. Impossible.

I wanted to try incorporating Pomodoro better in my day. I’d bookmarked Tomato Timer a while back but never really got into it in earnest. Oh, I’ve got way too much to do, I can’t be splitting my day into 25-minute chunks. I used Pomodoro all day today, and I was far more productive than a typical day. During those 5 minute breaks, I figured out a path in the building that not only involves just over 250 steps, but also incorporates four flights of stairs. All total, I climbed 29 flights of stairs today, and I’m going to end the day at about 33 flights. The exercises take about three minutes, so I can actually fit both the walk and the exercise in one five-minute break. I also managed two walks between 15 and 20 minutes.

I need to remember this day, remember how I’m feeling right now, 9400 steps into the day. … (More) “Dead Dove Dot Jpeg”

June 6, 2016

Any Place Aimed, Go

Ever have your stomach bother you so badly that you ended up reconsidering your life choices?

It’s been a rough couple of weeks. Sometimes I feel like I just pinball from one illness to the next. At least on this one, I don’t have to worry about being a hypochondriac. You don’t imagine almost throwing up, having that acid climb all the way up into the back of your mouth.

I’ve been thinking it over and my best guess is it’s a combination of two things. One is acid reflux, brought on from being overweight and overly sedentary. The other is stress.

Isn’t that odd? I don’t feel like I have all that much to be stressed out about. And yet I notice it, carrying way too much tension in my head and my shoulders. The logical place to look for sources of stress would be my job, but I have trouble coming up with much. We finished one big project, the next one is going to be much slower to roll out by design (we don’t get to start in earnest until August). Maybe it’s impostor syndrome. I feel like I’m over that, though.

Maybe it just has to do with getting up earlier than I ever have in my life. The thing with that, I’ve thoroughly acclimated to getting up by 5:15 and certainly no later than 6. Two weeks ago I worked out of the Albuquerque office for two days, meaning I didn’t have to leave the house until 7:35. Contrast that with my 6:05 cutoff to leave most days. I could not bring myself to fall back to sleep that morning.

I think I’ll solve a lot of problems by losing weight. I also remember that common advice, which is don’t announce that you’re going to … (More) “Any Place Aimed, Go”

May 9, 2016

The Department of Clever Ship Names

I finally got over the hump of one of my harder games, beating FTL Advanced Edition, and did so with only four points in weapons. It took 33 hours on Steam and probably another 10 from the “extended demo” prior. It took probably 40 attempts. Maybe I’m just not very good, and surely if I’d broke down and read a guide on the game and some weapon comparisons, I’d have had a better record up to this point than 1-40something.

Diana and I got some tennis in over the weekend, which did more to make it feel like a weekend than beating FTL did. I’ve got some soreness in my index finger, hopefully from too tight a grip rather than old bad habits involving running the index finger down one face of the handle.

The slowdown in writing isn’t really one, it’s just a question of who is seeing it. I’m about 2500 words into a guide on my new GTD implementation, and it’s been quite helpful to write it out, too. It gives you an opportunity to stop and ask yourself why you did something a particular way.

I really don’t have much this morning, pretty tired even with coffee. It’s just as well Mondays aren’t too demanding.… (More) “The Department of Clever Ship Names”

May 4, 2016

The Richard Simmons of Productivity

I ended up not being able to get a seat on the train with a table at all yesterday morning, hence no writing. Then on the way back, I had the table and was putting my own spin on a GTD system. ZenDone isn’t going to work out. They gave me a beta pass for their new site and app. It’s an improvement but it’s not going to work. I indicated that the next step was going to a paper-based system, but I lied. There’s one more option, which is Trello.

This will be my 4th attempt at building a GTD system, and each one has been more successful than the last. The big thing this iteration gives me is the ability to task my employees straight from my system, and we are in constant sync on where each of their tasks are. This was the biggest thing I was missing before.

The full article will be a separate blog post. I’m not 100% finished with the plan, I’m about 85% done, the rest is brainstorming if I’ve left out any tags or contexts. The post will go up after I’ve had a few weeks with the system and made any necessary changes. But I’m really excited for it.

Isn’t that a weird grown-up thing? Being really excited about a project management system? Maybe, maybe not. At the risk of badly paraphrasing David Allen, the work has changed. Fifty years ago, most work had a clearly defined beginning and end. Now a lot of what I do, it’s not obvious when I’ve actually started working on something, and it’s even less clear when I can wash my hands of it. Having a trusted system to track the work is, I think, mandatory to be the most efficient, and all … (More) “The Richard Simmons of Productivity”

May 2, 2016

Assprints In The Sand

I think we’re all creatures of habit, when you get down to it. I was bummed this morning because someone was in my usual morning seat. And I get that this isn’t school, there are no assigned seats…but if that’s not my seat, whose assprint is that?

We’re off to a much better start to the week, despite being on the wrong end of this train car. I feel altogether healthy, and ready to get to work. I’m ready to start working with ZenDone and see if it’s the answer or not. I’m cautiously optimistic about it.

Speaking of feeling altogether healthy, I wonder if I can convince myself to do this all the time, like a reverse hypochondria. Might save more sick leave that way.

I’m sad to report the loss of 0.201 bitcoin, which probably happened in 2013. I didn’t care when they were $17/BTC. Now that they’re at about $450/BTC it’s an irritation. That’s 90 bucks, man. If I’d bothered to keep mining I’d probably have a couple thousand dollars from it. I did cash out some Dogecoin, about six bucks worth. I’m on to a new cryptocurrency, Ethereum. I’m gonna stay with it this time. Every time I’ve gotten into mining, I’ve backed a good horse. The currency appreciated in value. And if I had bothered to stay with it, I’d have more money than I have now for roughly the same amount of work.

My presentation on the new file server infrastructure is finished up and approved by the sysadmin that’s actually going to be in charge of building the thing. I think we’ve got a good handle on how it’s going to go. It’s gotta go to the other managers now. This is their first time seeing me present an idea of my own … (More) “Assprints In The Sand”

April 27, 2016

Prorated

Partial credit is being issued today. I spent most of the day feeling ill and the resulting work and effort kind of reflected that. I should be better about that, but I’m a simple creature sometimes. Just like I don’t regret staying home yesterday, I don’t regret going in today. I was far more capable, but it just didn’t amount to much. I could’ve accomplished an equivalent amount in probably two hours any other day.

One of the odd things I’m wrestling with is a note that came out in my first evaluation. I need to delegate more, more managing of the work and employees and less technical involvement. That’s a totally reasonable request, but it’s a tough transition. In the last gig, I was doing most of the technical work at this tier, most of the time. At the same time, I resented not getting some assistance, though honestly most of the time there wasn’t anyone else available that was capable of doing the work. Now I’ve got guys that can do the work, but I don’t want to bother them with it. I’d rather keep them fresh and relaxed for those times where I need 100% out of them. I’m fine with taking on the intervening stuff myself. But that’s counter to the direction I’m being asked to go.

It’s part of that professional transition that I summarized as “making it.” Now that I’ve got a pretty good idea of how everything here works, I need to step back and let the sysadmins work. My focus needs to be in keeping track of all the work they’ve been tasked with, triaging the severity thereof, and letting them know what should get worked on at what time, and that’s the primary responsibility. The secondary responsibility is being the “Tier … (More) “Prorated”