Good Mourning Hardware Failure

I ask for a few moments of silence for a hard drive, who’s time with us was all too short. Barracuda Seagate was a generous drive, always accommodating, and fast to respond when you needed anything. Barracuda is survived by Western Digital, Pentium the 3rd, and two clients who will miss Seagate’s music terribly.

I will always wonder what I could have done better to protect Seagate from this harsh world, but regretting mistakes in the past will not bring the music back. All I can do now is take what I’ve learned to prepare for the future, pray, and implement redundancy.

Memorial services will be held on the back porch with the sledgehammer.

Productivity

I try to generally work an 8-5 day at the office, which is somewhat flexible as long as the time is put in and work is getting done. Unfortunately, I’m finding that recently I’m most available, productive and driven for this particular project starting sometime between 3 and 4pm, which encourages that work to come home with me to continue a task, or for catching up. I’m trying to figure out if this is a side-effect of having other smaller things to do during the day that I can’t block out a zone for major productivity until that late, or if I’m procrastinating.

I’ve certainly been guilty of the latter in the past, but I think I get to rule it out this time. I’m actually getting plenty of things done during the rest of the day, and later at night finding that I’m behind on the research and personal things I want to do since I was busy during the day.

It looks like it’s time to re-organize some task priorities and try and schedule times for getting certain things done. This doesn’t seem like it’s a practical approach as at least half of my day is addressing things that come up that week, but without changing something I anticipate the daily distractions (work or otherwise) will continue to delay the window of ideal productivity until it’s outside work completely. Soon it could be when I should be sleeping. I can do the nocturnal thing, but it doesn’t match well with everyone else’s schedule. Perhaps I should just let it continue until it rolls around to starting during the morning at work. Maybe things may reset once this project is rolled up and tasks change again.

I need to work on my time management.

I addressed a few things this morning and found myself with time to initiate the zone. It didn’t work out. That window isn’t here yet. So I post this, as a reminder to try again soon before other tasks hit me and the day is over.

I vote for longer days.

Imagery Feeds

Today I came across the photobloggies site where they host an annual awards ceremony for photoblogging. I’ve done some photography, but don’t have near enough skill to regularly show off any work, and I don’t take enough pictures to get better. Someday if I obtain a more portable digital I may take photos more regularly, but for now, I settle for being a spectator while others capture and share their worlds.

I clicked through this year’s photobloggies category finalists and added the ones with XML feeds that included inline images to my imagery collection in my aggregator. I didn’t like excluding those feeds that simply linked to their work since they’re all quite good, but I can’t stand it when people do that.

I’ve attached the imagery OPML for my current collection so you to easily import some imagery into your feed aggregator if you wish. I figure the people I’d share it with will see this and know what to do with it.

More photo blogs can be found at the appropriately named photoblogs.org.

Mourning Grandma’s Death

This morning we attended the funeral services for my grandmother (Mom’s mom). This is the first time I’ve done this for blood-related family – the only other funeral I’ve been to was for my wife’s grandfather. I’ve been fortunate to spend my entire life with a healthy set of relatives, but that’s one of the things that has made the past several days difficult.

I’d like to write more on the recent events (I’ve certainly journaled a significant amount privately), but emotions and thoughts are trickling in with the recent finality of it all, and I’m going to take some time for that to sink in.

Thank you to those keeping us in your thoughts. Thank you to work making this trip easy to take. Thank you to family and friends for your support.

Frozen Fingers

Snuck in a short 10 mile ride today to clear my head and focus on something else. I really wanted to go longer, but since it was 72 degrees yesterday, it had to be 42 today. Wearing the arm warmers and a t-shirt under my jersey kept me warm enough, but the exposed fingertips went numb pretty quickly. I need to get some full-fingered gloves for conditions like today. I was a bit sore from riding yesterday; I need to ride more to kill those nerves.

2005 Tour de Cure Team Forming

If you’re interested in riding in the St. Louis Tour de Cure this year and are looking for a team, or if you just need an excuse to donate to the American Diabetes Association, look no further:

Velocity Charity Cycling Team

What is the Tour de Cure?

Each year, the American Diabetes Association organizes the Tour de Cure across the country. This is not a race, but a fund-raising event to support the treatment for Diabetes and the research for a cure.

The American Diabetes Association’s mission: to prevent and cure diabetes and to improve the lives of all people affected by diabetes.

Riders select a distance that is comfortable for them, but ideally one that proves challenging enough to encourage you to support their effort. Please join us in the fight against Diabetes.

Please sign up to ride with us or support me with a donation to the American Diabetes Association.

Thank you.


Year Miles Team
2004 100 Velocity
2003 50 Velocity