Category: personal

wrapping up the weekend

Well, I got a lot done this weekend, Friday and Saturday. But I’ve spent most of the day today moping around the apartment and napping, since I now have a cold. Darn. I was really on a roll for a while there.

I have, though, finally gotten all of my old notes out of Backpack and into Evernote, and closed down the Backpack account. I’m still ruminating on whether or not I want to try managing all my tasks in Evernote, or if I want to try using a second app to help with that. I downloaded a trial version of Things, and messed around with it a bit, but I don’t think it’s what I need. For now, I’m just going to keep using the Reminders app on my iPhone for simple reminders, and I’ll keep project lists in Evernote.

Thanksgiving weekend

I spent Thanksgiving day with a friend’s family. It was a good day, but pretty loud and chaotic, which is to be expected when you put sixteen people (including three small children) together in a house on Thanksgiving.

I spent Black Friday home alone, working on some personal organization. I almost managed to update the map on my TomTom GPS, but hit a snag when the new map was too large to copy to the device. That led me on a wild goose chase that ended when I found a notice on the TomTom site that said they were aware of the problem and working on a solution. But it was a fair amount of wasted time. (I’d thought, at one point, that maybe they’d purposely made the new map file just a little too large, to force people with older devices to upgrade to newer ones, but apparently it was an honest mistake.)

I also continued my work on getting stuff out of Backpack and into Evernote. I’m almost done there, and I should be able to close down the Backpack account soon. I’m getting enough stuff into Evernote now that I’m starting to think about how I’m organizing things, and what kind of adjustments I should make. I read the book Evernote Essentials yesterday, and also listened to a podcast with a lot of Evernote tips, so I could hopefully stimulate my brain a bit and come up with some good ideas on how to best use Evernote. I found both the book and the podcast helpful, though there weren’t any earth-shattering revelations in either of them.

I had a page in Backpack titled “GTD”, and I was using it to keep, basically, GTD-related lists, like a “someday/maybe” list, a “waiting for” list, project lists, and stuff like that. But I stopped doing anything resembling a weekly review quite some time ago, and I haven’t really been keeping up the lists. So, for instance, one list item was to use a $10 Best Buy Reward Zone certificate before it expired… in 2011. So I’m not entirely sure how best to clean up and re-structure those lists in such a way that I’ll be more likely to use them.

I really like the general idea of consolidating as much stuff as I can in Evernote, and cutting down on complexity a lot, eliminating OneNote, Backpack,  DevonThink, and whatever else I can. But I also noticed that Things for iPhone and iPad is free this weekend, and the Mac version is 30% off. So maybe keeping my GTD stuff in Things would be a good idea, while using Evernote for reference material and archives. But Things doesn’t have a PC version, or a web version, so I’d only be able to access it on the Mac and iOS. Which probably isn’t really a problem, given the way I’m using my computers these days. (Also, “Things” is a horrible product name, and tends to produce a lot of irrelevant (but amusing) results when Googled.) I’ve already downloaded the iPhone and iPad versions, and have played around a bit, and like what I see. I’m planning on downloading the trial version of the Mac software today, so I can see if it’s going to work for me or not.

Meanwhile, I just ordered two 500GB Samsung SSDs, for $189 each, with the general idea of replacing the old-fashioned drives in my MacBook and ThinkPad. I’ve been meaning to do this for some time now, and I kept putting it off. But I keep hearing, over and over, from friends and random internet sources, about how much difference an SSD will make, so I finally had to go ahead and do it. So next weekend’s project will likely be replacing either the MacBook or ThinkPad drive. Or possibly both, if I have enough time.

I’m also thinking about going to NYC to see The Imitation Game, the new movie about Alan Turing. I don’t think I’ll talk myself into doing that today, given how cold it is outside right now. But maybe tomorrow, if it’s a little warmer.

Fifty pounds

As of last night, I’m officially down fifty pounds since I started my diet. The attached image is from the app LoseIt, which I’ve been using to track my weight loss. For me, counting calories with an app was really the key to making any sustained progress.

I need to figure out now if I want to set a new goal, and stay on the diet, or maybe take a break, and just eat at a “maintenance” level for awhile.

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keeping busy

This will be my first full week unemployed.  I spent time today taking care of a bunch of random things, including entering a bunch of Merrill Lynch statements into Quicken.  They’d been piling up since April 09, so it was almost a year’s worth.  I got through to December, so I’ve gotten to the end of 2009, at least.

When I look at my overall financial picture in Quicken, it doesn’t look too bad.  Unemployment won’t be a big problem for the time being.  My goals for this week include catching up on paperwork (like those Merrill statements), doing whatever I might need to do on my parents’ estates, and studying for my first .Net exam.  I may try to take that exam at the end of this week, if I think I’m ready.

priorities

Yesterday was my last day at my old job. Since I don’t have anything new lined up yet, I’m now officially unemployed. I’ve got three priorities I’m going to work on while I’m unemployed:

  1. finishing up all the work I need to do on my parents’ estates,
  2. finding a new job, and
  3. passing a few .Net certification tests.

The third item is optional.  I’ve been working on studying for the 70-536 exam for the last few weeks, and I still don’t think I’m quite ready to take it.  I learned a lot of valuable stuff by reading the book and working through the exercises, but passing the test itself is really just going to involve a lot of memorization, and I’m not 100% sure that’s the best use of my time.  It might be better to just work through the material, then go on to the next thing without worrying about the exam.  I’m undecided.

Stephen Fry and W.H. Auden

I just finished watching the Craig Ferguson show from a couple of weeks back where he interviewed Stephen Fry. I’ve been watching it in bits and pieces on YouTube. Near the end, Fry mentions Auden’s line “We must love one another or die.” I wasn’t familiar with that poem, so I Googled it, and found it here. Wow.

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade

He was talking about the thirties, of course, but that beginning at least could certainly apply to our most recent decade. I was reading an article in the Economist last week about how the previous decade was the worst (for the US economy) since the thirties. Scary bar charts.

I had lunch yesterday with a group of former co-workers who are all still out of work, since the company we worked for went bankrupt at the end of 2009. At this point, more of my friends are unemployed than employed. I know the unemployment rate is well under 50%, but it looks like a little over 50% from where I’m standing.

The “we must love one another or die” line resonates with me right now, since the support of so many of my friends and relatives is the only thing that’s kept me sane over the last several months, dealing with my Dad’s death, Mom’s dementia, then death, and (to a lesser extent) the “demise” of NMS, the company for which I’d been working for over ten years.

Economically, I’m certainly doing much better than many people right now, as I still have a job (for now) and I have some savings to fall back on if I need to. I’m really hoping the economy picks up, though, as I’d like to see more of my friends working, and I’d like to avoid the unemployment lines myself.

Route 22

I had to drive on Route 22 today, back towards Roselle Park, for the first time in quite a while.  I used to drive on 22 between Somerville and Roselle Park on a fairly regular basis, after I’d moved to Somerville, but my parents hadn’t yet moved to Whiting.  (Looking back at some paperwork, this would have been 1994 – 1997.)  The one thing that stirred the most emotion, unexpectedly, was passing Gertrude Hawk.  I used to stop in there and buy sugar-free chocolates for Mom occasionally.

I was actually taking a trip into Westfield, for my first meeting with the law firm that will be handling Mom’s estate.  We used to go into Westfield occasionally when I was a kid, usually to see a movie.  I passed the Rialto theater, which is amazingly still there.  And I passed by the Town Book Store, which is apparently (and depressingly) the last independent book store in Union County.  Yikes.  (I guess that means that the old Cranford Book Store is gone.)

Lent

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. My mom was always big on not eating meat on Ash Wednesday, and on Fridays during Lent. She didn’t normally call to remind me, but if I was calling down to Whiting for anything, she’d make a point of reminding me, or if it was Friday night, she’d ask if I remembered not to eat meat that day. Mom, I want you to know that I remembered not to eat any meat yesterday. Eggplant for lunch and vegetable pad thai for dinner.

I’ve never been really big on the idea of giving something up for Lent, but I usually at least thought about it. This year, I feel like enough has been taken from me already that I don’t need to feel guilty about not giving anything up for Lent. I remember a homily about Lent one of the priests at our old parish in Roselle Park delivered back when I was kid. He said that maybe we should think about resolving to do something positive during Lent rather than giving something up. I gave a few bucks to the Alzheimer’s Association yesterday and lit a candle for Mom, so that’s a start, right?