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On the way from the hotel to the restaurant for supper tonight, Tim took Josh and I on a short walking tour of what I called “art bars” - two very cool bars/clubs that were one part bar, one part art gallery. Very interesting stuff.

Then, to Osha (a Thai restaurant, coincidentally themed inside with elephants everywhere) for supper with the Pachydermers. I’d been crashing since about 10am, after working with Josh to stem the flow of negative Whuffie created by some miscommunication. (we got the Pachyderm authoring app up and running after an intense round of forensic analysis to find out wtf happened - then got to deal with a different but recurring problem, as described in the previous post)

At this point, I was so tired that I don’t think I could have successfully rubbed two neurons together to save my life. And everyone begins animatedly talking about the latest books they’ve read (I haven’t had any time to read fiction - or non-fiction, for that matter), or books they read as kids (I can hardly remember anything that long ago, nevermind what books I read), etc… I slowly withdrew into the corner of the table, nodding and following maybe 10% of the conversations as they swirled around me. The few comments I’m able to make are totally superficial, or seem to disappear into the background noise of the restaurant. I’m not contributing at all to the conversation, and am having trouble keeping up as a simple lurker, feeling decidedly provincial. And extremely uncultured. Not quite bumpkinesque, but I can see it from here. Truly humbling.

The saving grace is that these are all Truly Nice People. It’s nothing they’re doing - I’m just coming up short today. The irony is that once I get back to my quiet room at the hotel, and sitting in front of a keyboard, I’m almost able to maintain a stream of thought, and to construct something that appears like a coherent sentence.

OK. Now to crash, and hopefully sleep. Perhaps I’ll feel less braindead after more than 3 hours of sleep…

It’s hard. Much harder than I would have guessed. I was upstairs the other night, gathering Evan’s laundry to throw in the wash. The laundry was in the hamper in the home office. The computer was just sitting there, begging me, pleading with me. Just check your email. See if someone’s commented on your blog. Check a couple of blogs. What harm could it do? Who’s gonna know? Come on…. You know you want to….

I think I know how Frodo would have felt, with The One Ring pulling at his neck, begging him to be discovered. … we hates it … tricksy! false! my…. preeeeciousssssssss….

But, I resisted. Somehow. Not sure if it’s going to get easier or harder over time. I know it’s going to be difficult tomorrow - the Learning Commons is being renovated, and our desks are all dismantled, so I’ll be attempting to work from home Friday…

Janice just dared me to go a whole month without checking the computer while at home. Apparently I’m a little addicted to checking in (RSS feeds, email, writing blog posts, etc…).

So… I’m going to give it a shot. No non-work-related computer access from home for one month. I plan on leaving the Powerbook locked up on my desk at work.

Unplugging until Monday morning…

My mom is turning 65 on Sunday, and we’re throwing a big bash at the Tuscany Club - about 75 of her closest friends will be there, and we’re going way over the top with a chocolate-themed party.

I was initially going to attempt to document the event myself, and then it hit me - I use Flickr and the like for collaborative documenting of events/conferences. This isn’t any different, except that many of the people attending may have never heard of Flickr, etc…

So, I started simple. We all gathered the recipes together for the items we’re putting in the buffet, and I put together a simple recipe book .pdf document that everyone can document. Then, the experiment begins. I created a very simple web page to act as a launching point (and download vector for the recipes) to direct people to Flickr to share their photos. I’ll beef up the page a bit after the event.

I was also toying around with the idea of a live wiki to act as the recipe book - even went as far as installing MediaWiki on my Godaddy account and researching recipe templates - then realized there’s no freaking way I should inflict a wiki on this group. I’ll keep the wiki there in case I need it though.

Should be interesting to see if/how people contribute their photos…

From Joshua’s Journals: Meeting Me Meme

Leave your first memory of you and me together. It doesn’t matter if I know you a little or a lot, anything you remember! Next, post this in your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you.

Not sure if this means face-to-face, or online, but this could be interesting…

Just finishing up a great Thanksgiving long weekend. We didn’t get out to do anything too exciting - Evan’s still sick - but it was nice and relaxing. I promised myself I wouldn’t do any work this weekend. I caught myself a couple times launching XCode, or about to check some revisions or something, and forced myself to stop. That felt pretty darned good. I had a bit of an epiphany recently - I could continue to drive myself into the ground chasing the endless stream of demands, or I can just deal with them as I’m able. In the end, I really believe I won’t be any further behind on projects - the time I do put in will likely be higher productivity, etc… - but my “off” time will sure be more rewarding without constantly fretting about the seemingly infinite list of To Do items.

Last night, we had a slightly non-traditional Thanksgiving supper. My father in law came over for the afternoon, and we helpedwatched him install a fancy schmancy humidifier on our furnace. Then, we treated him to barbequed turkey burgers, asparagus wrapped in proscuitto, roasted mini potatoes, etc… and a great apple pie made by my mom’s “Daughters of the Nile” group.

Today’s a holiday, and I’m hanging out with Evan - still forcing myself to Not Work - and am loving it. He’s been changing so much over the last few months, it’s absolutely amazing.

The Norman family took the weekend off, and threw Evan a party for his 3rd birthday. Had a bunch of family over to our house for a birthday party - Evan had fun playing with his cousins, and got his Thomas the Tank Engine obsession taken care of for awhile.

Then, we headed north to Edmonton, to hang out at West Edmonton Mall - staying in the Fantasyland hotel right in the mall. Sounds lame, but it’s the largest indoor shopping mall on the planet (for now), and staying in the mall hotel meant we could hit the amusement park and water park without commuting. Evan had a blast - the wavepool was a bigger hit than the waterslides. There were manmade waves that must have been 2-3′ high, with surf and everything. He didn’t want to get out of the water.

More photos in the Flickr Album for Evan’s Third Birthday.

Of course, I’m only partially decompressed. Although taking an entire weekend actually off was awesome, and long overdue, it did nothing for my deadlines or deliverables. Which I get to catch up on now

Note to self: take a hint…

I got home today to find this postcard in my mailbox, sent by a local church for a series of chill-out workshops coming up this fall…

So, along those lines, I’ll try to finish up what I can tonight after The Boy goes to bed, then I’m going to be mostly off the grid for the weekend. Breathe…

Last night, it totally hit me just how fried I am. I’ve been fighting off burnout for awhile now, but I think I may have finally succumbed to it. I realized this when, at almost midnight, my family was upstairs fast asleep, and and I continued to work on my PowerBook to try to catch up on the backlog of bugs to fix - not feeling like I was making any progress anyway. I’m having to keep working this late so I don’t have to essentially abandon my family, which I refuse to do.

My work is backlogging because of some insanely tight deadlines, on 2 projects that are chronically understaffed. The One Project has been in actual development for over a year now, and while we’re close to being done, the Final Stretch is looming, with all that is entailed with that. The Other Project relies so completely on The One Project that I have had to walk a carefully balanced line between the two. Can’t finish The Other, without The One working well. Can’t work on The One without billing time to The Other, since we’ve used up our budget for The One long long ago… On top of that, I inherited The Other Project after budget cuts led to layoffs here in the spring, and there is no way I would have set the project up the way it is - but it’s waaaaay too late to change anything. The only thing left to do is grit teeth and push through it.

So now, The Other Project is coming due. Like, tomorrow due. And I’m still putting in revisions to content, and tweaking code in The One Project to support what is needed. And working with external contractors on some key supporting files that are basically out of my hands, but I can’t deliver without them working perfectly. And still receiving revisions to content and structure for The Other Project. And bugs/todos piling up for The One Project. Repeat ad nauseam.

Basically, to finish The One Project properly, the three of us programmers need to be able to direct 100% our our energy toward it for about a month. And, to finish The Other Project properly, I need to have the time and energy of about 5 people in order to finish massaging what can only be described as a freaking huge mass of content and resources.

My caffeine intake is waaaay up. My sleep is waaaay down. My cranky rating is off the chart. I feel (rightly or wrongly - doesn’t matter at this point) like I’m placed as a single point of failure for The Other Project, and have had to neglect The One Project more than I’d hoped and promised. It had gotten to the point where I seriously considered leaving, for the first time since I started here in 2001.

Anyway, there endeth the rant. Hopefully there is light at the end of the tunnel (there is an end of the tunnel, isn’t there?). In case anyone from either Projects stumbles across this - this is why I’ve been so pissy/grumpy/silent lately. Trying to keep my head down and pulling out all stops to get this stuff done, but there’s not a sane way to do that.

On the plus side, it’s Evan’s third birthday this weekend. I’ll be forced to take most of the weekend off for that, and we’re heading to West Edmonton Mall on Sunday and Monday (staying at the hotel in the mall). Should be at least a welcome break from the unceasing pressures…

Update: No, I’m not planning on quitting the Learning Commons - it’s just one of the things that go through a person’s head when faced with seamingly endless pressures. I’m staying here - we’ve got lots of ideas that will be fun to be a part of implementing, so I have no reason to go elsewhere.

It took over 2 weeks, but I finally got the pictures off of that Sony funkicam. They’re generally really nice photos, but the camera was apparently set to “auto photo screw up” mode. Every image has a bright red datestamp burned straight into the image like gramma’s camera does. Why on earth would a digital camera burn a timestamp into the image, when EXIF does a better job without screwing up the picture? grrr….

Some nice shots of Evan in the mountains, some nice shots of mountains, and a great shot of Dad. I’ve got some to stitch a pano of the valley, and will post that when it’s ready. There are more photos, but I won’t put them online because they have other family members in them, and they didn’t sign up for this dump-everything-online stuff…

The image quality (despite the lower resolution due to the teeny 32MB Memory Stick) is great. Man, I really have to get a Digital Rebel XT or something

Update: Here’s the pano. It looks much crisper than the ones I made using my little Fujifilm digicam, too!

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