I Don't Like Sundays

Day +6.

Sundays seem to be my hardest day of the week. This one actually started off well as I focused in on the variety of household chores that had accumulated over the past few days. Being a Human Doing is always so much easier for me than a Human Being :).

Once all the finances were tracked, garbage was taken out and dishes cleaned up, I started working on my design for splitting up LQPL, my quantum programming language. My big goal for January is to actually get it working as four separate modules rather than the monolithic beast it has become. The Compiler is already available as a separate piece, so that is easy. The Assembler is not intertwined with the current UI or emulator, so that also is easy. The issue becomes when I try to pry apart the emulator from the UI. Those buggers are like conjoined twins. Separate major organs, mostly, but the circulation system is like one. I thought my first step would be to document the messages that should go back and forth, but after writing out a very few I quickly started feeling stuck. I'm going to switch it up over the next few days and reread the intertwined code again to think more about the actual connection points.

The reason for the title started soon after that. I find I often get vague feelings of crapiness on Sundays. When I get stuck like that on a task, it just makes it worse. I am expecting that as I get more in shape over the next few months, that will significantly decrease or go away. One can only hope!

A somewhat weird thing has been starting the last few days and grew quite noticeable today. Every once in a while it felt like I was stepping on something with my right heel. Whenever I would check, there was nothing there. As it turns out, I think it is actually the tendons pulling at my heel when I bend a bit. My right calf and tendon are so tight these days, it is always uncomfortable and offer a bit painful.

So, tomorrow, back to work for three days. I think things will be starting to wind down a bit, we'll have to see.

Until tomorrow!

Good stuff, Dissapointing stuff

Day +5.


The good stuff was that I finalized the first draft of my three month plan this morning. I tell you, working with LaTeX is the greatest thing since sliced bread. The ability to actually control exactly what you will see in the final copy is so nice. Using Git for the versioning management with a SubVersion backend worked perfectly as well. Nice stuff.

The disappointing stuff was that we got some upsetting news in the afternoon. It took up a lot of energy through the rest of the day, which is not how I wanted to spend our time on a Saturday. Ah well, we'll just have to figure it out.

Small stuff – I love the way that OSX Lion allows you to type accented characters.(Hold the key down, choice appear, type the number of the one you want.)

Other stuff – I felt horrid first thing in the morning. Damn Flu!

I'm going to wait a week or so before publishing the three month plan, just to let it sink in.

Plan Progress

Day +4.

I felt much better this morning, although not completely well. One of the most interesting things for me about this flu is that I don't feel depressed. Nice change from the usual when I am under the weather.

I spent most of the AM completing a small iOS app for my sweetheart. She has to learn those wonderful US measures like cup, pint and fluid ounce for some chef trying. Being raised in a metric worl makes that somewhat challenging, so I whipped up a converter for her iPhone and iPad. At the same time it gave me a chance to practice good use of the DRY principle as I abstracted the various view controller functions into reusable classes.

After that, I managed to flesh out the January plans of my Q1 plans. Currently fitness, updates to LQPL and some background reading are on the block.

I'm finding the planning quite difficult. It has been so long since I accomplished anything significant on my research, I'm just not sure what I can get done in a month, especially while still working. To counteract that, hopefully, I'm going to spend a bit more time on detailing it out, just to see what is realistic.

Finally, I will be getting all the three month goals to SMART status. (Specific, Measurable, Acheivable, Realistic, Trackable). I'm curious to see if using JIRA can help with a couple of those...

Frustration, frustration

One would think that I'd be old enough and wise enough to avoid frustration at work.

The issue is, when you care about things you don't have control over, that is like a magic recipe for frustration, irritation and stress.

The latest example for me is the irritation that I no longer have enough staff to keep up with the work coming in and because of that, some of the work is being done by others. These others don't follow our standards in technology and probably in other areas as well.

I need to remember that old Mantra:
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:9 Ave SW,Calgary,Canada

Vauge feelings and expressing them

As a recent tweet mentioned:

Lately, I've had a vague feeling that I'm not accomplishing all that I want to - difficult to put it in words, though.

So - perhaps more than 140 characters will help...
Vague feelings. This is something that seems to occur regularly in my life. (Get ready for the usual "It all started when I ..." story :).

I don't remember ever talking about feelings as a kid, vague or otherwise. Likely had a lot to do with the mores of my family. They didn't learn how to chat about them, so how could they teach a kid to do so?

After my first divorce, I lucked out and started attending various self-help groups and going to counseling. Amazing transformations happen at these places.

The first few years after the divorce, the best I could do was to actually start identifying that I had some uncomfortable feelings. It took a while longer to actually identify them. The worst were when there was just the vague mass of blechh floating around somewhere in my gut. I don't think I ever really understood where that came from, it just started to fade out over time.

So, why is this germane at the moment?

Lately, I've been thinking about what I really want to do with the next few years of my career. My wife and I had come up with a plan and I was quite excited about moving it forward.

Then, the company I am working at now decided to go through a major physical re-organization. I've been assigned a role in the re-org process and it takes up all of my time and energy - or at least it has for the last two months. When you add that together with my obligations on research / school, I'm left with negative free time.

So this builds up and I start to resent it, but it is from a decision I made / accepted / agreed to, so I don't feel like I can complain / talk about it. Uggh!

I remember a book written by Heinlein that I read in my teens about a twin who is tricked into going on a star voyage by his other twin. Everyone, including the twin who goes, professes that it is so lucky and fantastic that he gets to go. Unfortunately, subconsciously, he doesn't want to go. Because of that, and that he can not voice that feeling, he becomes suicidal. Life works out (He gets the girl in the end, as is usual with Heinlein), after some psychotherapy.

So, how would I really like to spend my week? (After a few weeks of resting / relaxation / sleeping)

That's easy - programming. I adore programming - the creative aspects, the blend of "big picture" and multiple tiny details, the immediate feedback, the feeling of creating something useful.

Given that I've now burned up 30+ minutes just talking about this (to no one :), what am I going to do about it? Answer - get programming. I have a day off tomorrow and I intend to spend the day writing and creating. Let's see how I feel after that.