Category: Work

Work

Monday, March 25th…I will admit…

Yeah, I’m kinda bummed that I haven’t rode since last weekend. I need to do something for cardio and strength training between my sparse rides and my one night at the gym. We shall see. I am going to my brother’s house to celebrate Easter this next weekend. All the family should be there – can’t wait! I love family get togethers.

My arm tendonitis has been bugging me lately and my pectoral/shoulder tie in has been painful, which may be some more tendonitis. It’s hell getting old. I’ll see this evening. I am going to head downstairs to my home-gym. Also, I have some work to do after work – a CDC table synch that should improve performance on the portal.

I got my blood draw this morning but as luck would have it, I forgot about it, and I ate breakfast – doh!

-Rat

Sunday, March 20th 2022… A beautiful day…

And i didn’t get the bike out! Instead I made soup, went and washed the car, washed the mats and shampooed some spots, and took Anne to Walmart. Came home, had soup and played Rummikub. It was gorgeous out today – a balmy 61 degrees, clear sky and lots of sun.

Which got me thinking about “Daylight Savings Time” that occurred last weekend. Would I rather have it CDT year round, or CST year round? I hate the yearly time changes, but would I want to change? Probably not. I’ve been railing on this for a while now. But now that it’s a possibility, i really hope it doesn’t go. Lets look at the extremes, what would sunrise look on the Winter Solstice day? Currently with things the way they are, sunrise would be at 7:15am CST. If it was CDT, it would be 8:15am. That would kind of suck if I got up early – its cold and dark. On the plus side, that day (the shortest day of the year), the sun sets at 4:24pm CST, would now set at 5:24pm . Not a huge bonus, but id rather have sunrise earlier. Looking at the summer solstice (the longest day of the year) with the same optics, sunrise which is currently at 5:17am CDT, but CST would put it at 4:17am. Sunset which is 8:29pm CDT would now be 7:29pm. The day seems really long if you get up early. Hmm, the jury is out on this…

At least I didn’t have to work today – it’s a good day.

-Rat

Friday, December 10th 2021… It’s been a while…

Lets see… updates… It’s been a while… I got the new Whoop 4.0 which adds a couple of extra metrics to the 3.0 group – skin temperature and blood oxygen level, which reminds me… when I needed the metrics most, I didn’t have them. I got a cold on Monday evening, upgraded my Whoop. Felt like total crap on Tuesday thru Thursday, feel 10 times better today. But, I wanted to check my metrics to see if I had possibly contracted COVID. Don’t think so. I was worried for my wife who as you may or may not know, has a suppressed immune system. It’s Friday and I have no idea where the week went. I felt like the lights were on, but no one was home from a work perspective. I did work from home most of this week and got quite a bit done, but yesterday… I don’t recall most of yesterday – I do know I was listening to music and doing busywork.

Vikash will be heading back home on December 31, which will put quite a bit of pressure on me for most of January. I’ll have to do his stuff, plus my stuff. On the flip side, I am taking the last 2 weeks of this year off – stay-cation. Yay! Ryan is coming home on approximately the 20th. He’s scheduled to stay here. I’m excited to see him and get updates. I really haven’t spoke with him for what seems like forever.

The 4th of December was my last official bike ride of the year (yep, mother nature was kind that Saturday) and rode our typical path – but in the reverse direction. It was like a new path. I knew exactly were we were but the scenery was different! It was kind of weird – I admit. It’s only 13mi but for a weekend warrior, it was enough. I have too get a bike stand so I can change the wheels.

Watercolor class has been fun and interesting. I have done a couple of paintings lately. I’ve been working on smaller paper (8.5″ x 11″), so while color control is difficult, owing to the smaller path on the paper, the paintings are accomplished more quickly.

Architecture from Santa Fe
Little wagon

-Rat

Monday, September 20th 2021…Trying to not be bitter…but feeling better…

You know, I am the consummate optimist – trying to keep things in perspective but somehow I feel like I got screwed at work. The only real saving grace is that I tried the managerial path and always despised being a manager. What gets me going in the morning is the prospect of learning lots of new things. It’s what I like about technology, specifically computers. Now I know that I could have chosen the management route, sold my soul, made money and hated my life. However, I chose the technical route and decided to keep my roots fully immersed in software administration and technology. My happy place. It’s not programming – boring. It’s not database administration – also boring. It’s not OS BS – again, also boring. It’s not hardware – lame plus boring. It’s a smattering of all of those plus a “side” of application administration! And, I get the added benefit of Moore’s Law applied to technology – it doubles every 18 – 24 months at this point. Change is good.

Ah, the therapy of writing…

-Rat

Thursday, July 29th 2021…It’s been a while…

Hi All!

It’s been a bit since I last posted and while out on a bus coming home from a Cubs game, I was reminded (as i viewed the site) that I haven’t posted since May.

We went to one of those rooftop venues across from Wrigley field to watch the Cubs lose. This evening out was sponsored by my employer in celebration of a successful rollout of 2 projects, one to move our main legacy business applications to a managed service provider in Michigan and second, the successful move of our major business application to an external data center. These both were quite large projects and were a culmination of six months effort of planning, long hours, many people, and several companies. Not to mention almost flawless execution resulting in a minimal of downtime. Was it costly? Yeah, but the company is quite large and it affected all our North America operations and global connections. So it was pretty important.

I feel like I can finally breathe and relax a bit and focus on audit and our tickets that I have been putting to the side. Oh, and do a bit of training. I decided that I am going to go get my A+ again just for fun and not let it lapse, which is what i did the first time. Ideally I want to get the full suite of CompTIA’s certs. I feel like I have been so busy and have had no time to learn anything new that I could apply to business. Well, learn anything that I want to learn from a broad spectrum. I learn a lot of very specific, very targeted things all the time. And it makes me highly specific.

I’ve been riding road quite a lot lately and have really been enjoying it this year. I always wish I could ride more, but something always suffers since there are only so many hours in a day. I have been fascinated with trying to increase my power in riding and bought a relatively cheap power meter for a kind of baseline. My bud, bought me a new bike computer and I have been using it a lot. He gives me a bunch of crap for it since – really, what am I going to do with the numbers? Well, hell, my goal is to improve! Raise my VO2 max, raise my power. Kick some butt. I also bought some new clip pedals and new clip shoes. I’m going to use and install them on the air dyne in the basement and get used to them before I go out on the path and risk life and limb. I already have one reconstructed joint, I’m not willing to risk more just yet. Maybe next year 🙂

I have not taken any art classes recently (since late May) and have been dying to take one or two. I haven’t really had any disposable time. I still need to finish my painting i started. I feel like I’ve been neglecting my future.

I have a retirement class this evening. We signed up for a 2 part class through the local college. It should be interesting.

-Rat