Entries Tagged 'meta' ↓

One of the more interesting challenges I’ll face in the coming months is finding a new professional rhythm. How will my day start? What markers will there be throughout the day? How will I know when I’m “done”?

My old rhythm had it’s traditional components: train to the office, coffee, kickoff meetings early in the week, lunch, post lunch food coma, leave to make the train and then get on the train. This excludes all the extras: early (and I mean early) morning email processing, catch up in the evening, etc.

The new job will be missing the commute and the omnipresent coworkers. Since I’ll be working out of the house, I’ll need to have both “head to the basement” and “turn the computer off” times that I stick to without the external pressure of a train schedule. What about the rest of it?

Last time I worked from home — pre marriage, pre kid, pre dogs — the basic flow was get up, work until I noticed I was hungry, eat something and keep working until it was time to go to the gym. I’d like to get that gym thing back in but for the rest of that schedule, I don’t know that I’ll be able to be as singularly focused on it this go around.

All of this will shake out over the next few weeks. This in between time, these couple of weeks where I’m done with the old but haven’t yet started the new, there’s no real cadence to the days. This is good and bad. As much as I like the daily adventure of figuring out what I’m going to do, I’m eager to get back to the comfort of a predictable and productive rhythm.

I woke this morning to the realization that I don’t have a job to go to on Monday. I have one less email account to check obsessively. I have one less team to lead. I have two fewer keys on my keyring. This is by design, but it still caught me off guard. I’m not used to not having anything to do for a couple of weeks.

Have I ever had this degree of confident lack of responsibility? In other words, have I ever had a period of time where I was free from the last thing and confident enough in the next thing that I wasn’t engaged in a pretty solid search? I don’t think so.

It’s not that I won’t have *anything* to do. I still have a wife, a kid and a couple of dogs, all of which come with a (pleasant) obligation (or seven). But two weeks should be enough to learn a programming language I have avoided, eat a burrito or two from a taqueria (or two) that I haven’t tried yet or maybe polish off a short story.

We’ll see. I don’t want to get to the end of these two weeks and simply be caught up on Jersey Shore. I don’t want it to be about consumption.

I’ll keep you posted.

So I’ve had a few more successes after my Metra Lotto post the other day.  But earlier this week, on a later train that I’ve generally managed to be skipped over on, I had a bit of an adventure.

The conductor walked right by.  It was perfect.  I was convinced.

And then, just after the last stop before Union Station, he came around again.  I’m playing Texas Hold ‘Em on my iPhone.  And he stops right by me. In fact, just over my left shoulder.  I can see him out of the corner of my eye, try as I might to win a hand.

And he says, “Oh, I don’t think I got you yet, did I?”

He was clearly within the rules.  Almost like he knows about them and wanted to flaunt that knowledge.

I handed my over my 10 ride.  Damn.

So close.

He’s a clever one he is.

Or, and I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for those meddling kids!

I bumped into my ex-wife on the way home from work yesterday.

No one was more surprised than the two of us. It had to be 7 maybe 8 years since the last time we actually saw each other or spoke in real time. So we grabbed a drink and caught up as much as we could before our 6p trains.*

Short version (which is all we had time for): we’re both fine; her kids are cute, my kid is cute; our extended families are fine.

So: “Angry”? Yeah. We married young, and for the wrong reasons.** It wasn’t exactly a train wreck but close enough. When it ended, I was angry. I had a lifetime of anger stored up and it came out. And it stayed out. I wasn’t just angry at her, but she caught most of it.

To put things in some temporal perspective, my masters degree took longer than the marriage. The marriage has now been over for more than three times longer than it lasted. I practiced karate (and have now not practiced it) longer than we were married.*** I have several shirts in daily rotation that I’ve owned for longer than we were together.****

At 24, no one in the world could have talked me out marrying her–not even a ghost of divorce future. It was a mistake, but one that I needed to make.

It’s nice to be far enough away from all that — one of my personal growing pains — to have been glad to run into her, to have enjoyed a few minutes catching up.

It’s nice to be not angry.

–

* No, gentle readers, I did not attempt to induct her into The Cult of The Metra Lotto.

** Other people who marry young do it for the right reasons and are fine — that just wasn’t us. What was mine? Other people were doing it. It seemed like “the next thing”. There were probably more but they don’t really matter at this distance.

*** Which, coincidentally, means that the time since my last bench press and now is not quite twice as long as we were married.

**** Upcoming post: Reid Carlberg, fashion icon.

When you get bored of my rambling skip to the end for a radical idea and some light TMI.

Lately, I’ve been troubled by the sheer quantity of End User License Agreements, Terms & Conditions statements and other contractual notices — contracts of adhesion — I must agree to prior to doing anything. If, for example, I want to order from Pizza Hut using a little AIR app they have, I have to agree to pages of terms and conditions

Really?  To order a pizza?

My concern is that reading each one of these items in any type of thorough way would take a significant amount of time.  So I don’t — I just click agree and move on with it.  And I’ll guarantee I’m not unique.  I don’t know a single person who reads all that stuff on items they download and try for everyday use.  In fact, I’ll bet companies like Pizza Hut don’t even think twice about putting it in because our standard behavior these days is to just agree.

But what are we agreeing to?  And how enforceable are they?  I don’t know.

Some WikiP articles are interesting here: Click Wrap (some of the case detail is interesting) and then there’s the section on EULA enforceability.

I’m generally supportive of copyrights and intellectual property, etc., but I think we need some reform around this issue.  For example, a standard agreement that says — here’s the agreement — something I could read once and then know that I’m comfortable with what it says and how it applies.  Like some of the open source licensing that’s out there.

The other idea I had was some sort of EULA Advisor website.  You cut and paste the contents into it and get a rating on whether or not it’s appropriate for you.  Hey look — EulaAdvisor.com is open.  Someone should go do this.  C’mon.  You know you want to.

The final idea I’d like to see someone run with is that the increasing complexity and quantity of these type of agreements them, as a whole, largely unenforceable and meaningless.  In other words, a forced simplification. Some requirement that the agreement’s complexity be proportional to the transaction.  A $9 pizza ordered via free software would allow something like 100 words.  $250k software used to run a $25m enterprise could have a few thousand words.

Maybe the formula is simple: a word per $1.  $99 iPod?  99 word agreement.  I like.

We need to do something.  It’s just too many agreements, too much fine print.

* Apparently you can order from Pizza Hut by text message as well.  Having delivered for them (I was young and poor) and eaten way too much of their pizza, I’m not interested, but it’s still a neat idea.  (Which was apparently covered earlier this year by everyone else but that’s another story.)

I tweeted about Nicholas Carr’s article in the Atlantic and while thinking about it stumbled across this excellent other post: The Great Unread. Overlooking the fact that this pathetic entry (mine, not his) will fall into that there category, what I like about the post (and about a lot of his writing), is the linkage to the non-blogging world. In this case, to the concept of “Innocent Fraud”. If you don’t know what that is (I didn’t), click over — you’ll enjoy it.

I had some stuff to take care of last night and so my cell ringer was off.  In checking this AM, I found one VM and six missed calls.

5:39p – from A

5:41p – from A

5:42p – Voice Mail from A

5:51p – from A

6:12p – from A

6:29p – from A

7:07p – from B

It’s nice to be loved/wanted/needed/in an unhealthy codependent relationship/whatever, but sometimes its even nicer to have the ringer off.

BTW, no, the calls were not about Burrito Baby.

It’s been a long few days and as Kate points out my Twitters lack any real content (it’s true–except for the one about maple syrup), here goes;

* Spent Thursday and Friday in NY/NJ.  I didn’t plan on being there for two days, but the day before I left I decided it made sense to be there an extra day.  Glad I did.  The customer meetings were very worth it.  Why?  Really challenging project that has the potential to make a huge difference to the customer.  Awesome.  Interesting tension: I hate being away from the family, but I love big challenging projects.

* A friend of mine called Thursday night.  Her sister had just died.  It was about 10 weeks from diagnosis until she passed. Unbelievable.  Just sad.  She was 41.  Carpe diem.

* Yesterday was Mother’s Day. It was awesome, the first one I can say I enjoyed in a lot of years.

* The Critter (who yes I assure you is of the two legged human variety) had his first shots yesterday.  Well, the first since the barrage of poking and proding he suffered immediately after delivery.  It was pathetic.  He’s holding up, but it’s clear he didn’t feel great.  Yuck.

* It having been a while since my last check up, I took the opportunity to get a physical yesterday myself.  No hernia, blood pressure fine, a bit heavier than I would like. In other words, all stuff that I knew.
Cholesterol and other genetic risk related tests come back tomorrow.  They’re usually fine, so I’ll be interested to see if anything has changed.

* Up early this morning on the new elliptical in an effort to stave of an early death of my own.  The Schwinn I bought isn’t quite the cheapest (and it was on sale), but its close.  And it’s pretty decent.  I’m surprised.  And grateful because I hate gyms.  (I didn’t always.)

There once was a girl from Chicago

Who had a cute little white dog-o

She entered a sun times limerick contest

Where her work was declared among the best

And now she gets a congratulations on my little blog-o.

So I know a guy who always has The Hook Up.  Example?  Cheap parking downtown.  Quality meats.

I’m always skeptical of hook ups like that but when he said he knows a guy that knows a guy who travels around the world taking measurements and then making custom clothes in Hong Kong, I figured I’d give it a shot.

We met in a hotel on the south side.  There were a few other people there (all people I knew).  I picked out fabrics and was measured head to toe.  It’s about a month later and my first suit arrived.  That’s it in the picture.  Pretty sweet.

And while I’m mentioning the picture, I should point out that it was taken last night, 1AM, by the Lovely J who was simultaneously feeding The Critter.  So no judgments, OK?
And speaking of multi-tasking, blogging while holding him is also a bit difficult, but that’s another story.

Where was I?  Oh yeah: the suit.  It comes with two pair of pants and a monogrammed jacket.  Lots of great features.  Hidden pocket in the waistband. Reinforced rear side of the bottom of the pant leg near the cuff.

Pretty cool.  A totally worthwhile hookup.