Monthly Archives: June 2009

26th Time Around the Sun

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I made it!  I made it around the sun for the 26th time.  Quite amazing that I made it in one piece too, considering how fast the Earth travels around the Sun.  Hopefully, I’ll repeat the same feat next year.

Caroline asked as we walked on the Toronto Island on Saturday, how do I feel about being one year older.  I went into a long winded philosophical debate with myself.  And then I shortened it down to: I don’t feel differently than I was a year before.  I gained some more experience.  I feel that I’ll better handle the future thanks to said knowledge.  And I’m fairly happy with where I am in life.  It could be better, but I can’t complain.  Still I look around me, and can’t help but feel a tinge of anxiety.  Many of my friends have moved on to the next stage in their life.  And I’m just drifting along, occasionally kicking forward frantically without much success.  And the inertia worries me, because one doesn’t grow if one is not moving forward.  But again I’m not in a bad position or place.  So I have mixed feelings about my reaching 26 years of age.

I did enjoy my weekend though.  I saw my brother succeed in Air Cadets.  I walked around the gorgeous Toronto Islands with my friend Caroline.  I got to play a wargame with my coworker Shehan and his wife yesterday.  I didn’t conqueror the Polynesian Islands as I planned to, and the game dragged on.  But I enjoyed myself throughly.

So what do I want to do before I hit 27?  I guess more of the same.  Get closer to achieving my long term goals.  Work on being a better person.  And experience in the world more.  This next year should be fun.

Upgraded to WordPress 2.8

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I am continually amazed by the ease of working with WordPress.  Not only do the themes and plugins just work, so does everything else.  I upgraded my WordPress install to the latest and greatest 2.8 .  Simple, clean and issue-less upgrade.  This is how technology should work.  Get out of the way and perform the tasks the user needs to do.  And perform the tasks quickly, efficiently and perfectly everytime all the time.

In addition to that, I can proudly say that less than 20% of the older blog entries remain “Uncategorized”.  I plan on tagging, categorizing and editing the remaining entries.  With any luck, I have this blog configured perfectly before my upcoming birthday.  Hurrah!

We Are Away

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Yesterday my fears of things going horribly wrong again were reenforced.  Humanity today looks like a weathered statue, eroded by years of folly, insanity and evil.  In half a century, this world will look very alien to what it seems today.  Those who know what I speak of, know what to fear.  Those that don’t, won’t understand why their world fell apart.  I fear that these experiments will bring ruin to all.  I don’t fear that no one will be left.  I fear that those that will be left, will mourn the loss of civilization.  Now is not the time to run or hide.  Now it is the time to act wisely and decisively.

Yet Another Morning

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I’m awake and terrified.  OK, not terrified as in senseless shaking.  No rather I take a look at my various todo lists, and my non-empty inbox, and that brings terror in the form of urgency.  I guess I should be used to that already.  In the past I just ignored tasks, like one ignores imperfections.  But once you get them written down and place said list beside you… then they just sit there, glaring at you all gnarly and troll-like.  And the question that comes down to which do I deal with first?  GTD methodology says prioritize, assign to projects, delegate and so on.  Easy to say, but tasks all look alike at times.  And since I decided I wouldn’t sweep things under the rug, I wring my hands trying to deal with the underlying issue.

It was a busy weekend.  Plants got planted.  Allergic reactions came and went.  Some attempts at cleaning house occurred.  Some attempts proved more successful than others.  I hope no one felt ignored.  I rushed around but all my own work rested on the side.  And as I look at the upcoming days, and the decisions, and the work…  I feel exasperated.  And I’m going to be a bit older, very, very soon also adds a bit more motivation to my work.

Fortunately, I feel upbeat and positive today.  I realized yesterday that one of my anxieties proved unfound, and unlikely to occur.  Dealing with this anxiety should bring much serenity, peace and calm into my life.  This in turn will give me more energy and help me iron those last few wrinkles in my character.  Sigh…  Anyways I turn to watch the sun shimmer in the steel, grey sky and I know today will be a good day.

Heel Dragging

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Oh man… today is one of those days.  Not because it is a Friday.  Not because that this weekend too looks busy.  No.  I just can’t seem to wake up and come with anything cohesive today.  And yet I have a staggering amount of work to get done today.  So everything feels a bit forced.  Including this update.  I’m really just dragging my heels today, because it feels like they couldn’t be bothered to get up today.

I still have a few e-mails to finish, and phone calls to make.  And there goes my chair.  Frack.  Today will be a long day, with lots of things to setup and get right.  But I just that things will kind of go my way today.

Upgraded to Yellow Stripe

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A quick little update, cause I want to concentrate on my personal work today before the workday begins.  Finally caught up on my immediate projects, and I can concentrate a bit more on my personal and professional development.  Also I’ll crank out a good deal of writing and code in the next few days hopefully.  Hence the brievity of my upcoming blogs.  I need to reserve more time toward things other than blogging.

Speaking of personal development, yesterday I traded in my white belt for a yellow stripe in taekwondo.  Keep in mind though, that in the past I’ve trained up to yellow belt.  And I’m still some way before I can don on a black belt.  But I’ll keep at as long as I don’t seriously injure myself.

Regret and Rejoice

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Lets play a little game that I know call “Regret and Rejoice”.  I regret not posting an update yesterday to my blog.  I rejoice that this morning my mind thought cloudy and numb, is alert enough to come up with a post.  I regret staying up so late, cause my mind is foggy now.  Yet I rejoice since I overslept yesterday evening and still managed to perform most of the tasks I sat out for myself.  Still, I regret not coming up with saner sleep/wake schedules that would avoid my crashing and sleeping at strange times.  I should rejoice since I probably won’t have to think too much and maybe can reset my errant schedule today.

I regret that the first two pieces of news I heard of today is that of the anniversary of Tiananmen Square and the finding of debris of the recently disappeared jetliner.  I rejoice that the Chinese enjoy more freedom today than before.  I regret that the Chinese government still does evil to its society.  I rejoice that in the West, we can talk freely about and remember the massacre.  I regret that in China, no one seems to remember or care.  I rejoice that parts of the plane were found in the ocean today.  I regret that this story happened, I’d rather hear no such story and have all the parts of the plane and its passenger landed safely in their intended destination.

I rejoice that I can end this silly post now, and now will finally catch up on work yet not done.

Measuring Progress

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I apologize for the lack of an earlier update.  A writer with a mindnumbing case of writer’s block, is  a terrible thing to behold.  Hence I put off writing until I regained my bearings and inspiration.  Thinking before writing should apply to all who write.

I want to touch upon something I write about often: time management.  The question that often comes to my mind, is how effective are my techniques.  Do I gain anything from them?  Or do they simply hinder me from achieving what I planned to achieve?  How can I judge if a technique that I apply to my life hinders or helps?  I claim there is a manner in which one can measure if a technique works or not.

But how should measure effectiveness?  I rather not use the metric of amount of free time.  The simplest way to attain free time, is to get rid of work.  Rather we need a metric of work achieved.

Measuring work in general is a tricky business.  If it were a simple task, we could then attempt to measure the value of work.  And then we could base a sane economic model on work performed based various criteria.  Regrettibly the Austrian school of business shows that this is a difficult if not impossible task.  Also work for the sake of work is foolish.  And one of the root causes of the present economic crisis, is the fallacy of Keynes, that so long as people and capital work and are consumed, all will be well.  Hence, we indirectly valuate work by pricing the services rendered and good produced by said work, against other goods and services.  I propose we approach our original problem in a similar, indirect fashion.

Lets measure effectiveness not only by the number of tasks completed.  We could weight the task by their complexity, size and difficult in realization.  But even such a weighing is not the true cost of a task.  I noticed an improvement to simply measuring tasks.   We include measurements how quickly one can work on those important but oft-put off projects and goals.  If a technique lets one approach more such long-term projects and goal than before, then the technique is effective.

I am happy to report, that I put effective time and spatial organizational techniques into practice.  The ones that I could maintain or could help me, I stopped using.  And I know they are effective, since I can finally get to work on all those important projects and goals.  And all those projects I put off for months and years, I can now approach.  So I can comfortably say that progress is being made.  And these techniques do pay off.

Trekking through a Paintballed Wasteland

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Wow, this weekend was a busy one.  This week it looks like I have to start on those long term goals and not just talk about them.  So I’ll keep the next couple of posts relatively short.

Friday

What better way to end the workweek and begin the weekend, but with friends.  I went out with Rudy and Olga after work.  The original plan of hanging out in Toronto somehow morphed into hanging out in Mississauga.  We started off with dinner at Prince, a great Japanese restaurant near my work (I had lunch there too, for which the waitress gave me some grief for).  Teriyaki made at the cooking table, drowned with sake.  Yum!  After that we wanted to catch a showing of the new Star Trek movie.  But we needed to kill time first.  So coffee and pastries at the Panera Bread bakery near SquareOne mall was in order.  After that we all watched Star Trek.  Now I’m not a big Star Trek fan.  I watched a few of the movies and a bit of the series, but never religiously like I do with the Stargate series.  The new Star Trek was definitely not very Trekky.  The movie essentially boiled down to a science fiction action flick in the Star Trek universe.  Fun, enjoyable and rather pointless.  And to finish the night a slice of pizza and a nighttime stroll along Mississauga’s Lakeshore.

Saturday

Saturday turned out more relaxed.  Got up late, played a round of volleyball and did some work around the house.  Went to church in the evening, because my Sunday was already booked.

Sunday

Apres Saturday, the deluge.  A deluge of paintballs flying in my general direction.  A bunch of us VisionMAXers went up to Wasaga Paintball Park for a few rounds of paintball.  The weather was cold, but warm enough for paintball.  Having never done paintball, I thought I would do worse.  However all those hours of FPS and archery paid off.  The initial games saw me get shot early on (airplay attack & defence, Wild West and Tank Attack).  As a scout/attacking player I naturally push up to engage my opponents.  Which meant I drew fire first, while the rest of the team held back (as happened on Ridge Runner).  But all this culminated in my taking out most of the enemy team in close quarters in one round of Blackhawk Town.  Team work and cover fire enabled me to outflank the enemy.  Once inside the fort, I made my way around the fort singling out and eliminating players.  At the end of the round I wound up with my own collection of kills. 🙂  I ended the day with a suicidal charge in the last round.  This may explain the large number of welts on my legs and hands 😀

After paintball, most of us grabbed a bite to eat at Wasaga Beach and headed home.  A few minutes after I got home, I passed out in exhaustion.  I’m just hoping that next weekend will be as fun as this weekend.