...not by much, but a little. I cannot find more than two possible configurations for it. I cannot get any furniture into my bedroom either. Very restricting. If I knew then what I know now i'd have spent £700 on one fairly cheap but reasonable couch rather than a £300 bargain basement three piece suite which simply doesn't fit through doors.
On the bright side, the work thing happened and the result was what I wanted. Ten months of almost getting to the idea of moving to the West Midlands, changing my mind and then starting to think about it again but still being indecisive on have finally paid off. My job is moving to Hinckley. My 80 mile a day round trip becomes under 30. This is big stuff. I will reclaim time and money. Whether I use the time effectively or not, the money side is a big win. The pain of pouring £40 a week into diesel was a killer. It should be more like £50-60 a month when this kicks in, which feels a lot saner, particularly in the current economic climate, although I have to say i'm only feeling a tiny amount of pain so far in that mess. I mentioned the time. The saving is just over an hour a day. My guess is that 30 minutes of it will go to extra sleep, the the other 30 will disappear. We'll see.
So, anyway, I have a shiny new check-list and a slight feeling of having missed something. I started #41 on a Tuesday but didn't complete it until a Sunday. The days after that felt too soon to write again, but now a week later have I not technically missed a week? I guess so. I've always thought I might be a very mild OCD case. Far too sloppy in general to have this in any serious way, I do like complete sets. I think this is also part of aspegers, autism and human nature. It would have been nice to have 52 of these, but I think I already summised that that wouldn't have happened due to the date on which I started. If I fall short of 52 I can still do a recap of the year. My very own clip show.
When I was trying to move that chair a few minutes ago I didn't feel anything, but I have some itchiness in my hands now. I know this feeling. It's fibre-glass. I hate that stuff. What's it doing on the outside of my chair?
Stupid chair. So, this covers everything since the last list. In the case of the earlier goals, way over a week, but about a week for the ones further down.
The 2008 Manifesto
1. I will eat in moderation at all routine meals. The majority of my meals will be essentially healthy. When I snack or overindulge, I will specifically redress the balance later. I will also drink caffeine based drinks in moderation. At the end of a week, if I feel my intake has been too high, the goal has not been met, and I will state this.
I have redeveloped an old weekly fish'n'chip habit. I've kicked this one so many times but it always seems to come back. Most other days I'm doing fine. It's certainly true to say that as long as i'm not buying as I go i'm eating well. My return from Oxford on Sunday morning led me down an early morning bhagi and samosa kick which was followed up by my other redeveloped weekly habit, chips and dip. The Indian food was necessary driving sustainance, and fine, if crappy in quality. The fish'n'chips is a meal, and I do buy the mini, which if it's an option, certainly everybody should be doing as it's still a very solid meal, but the chips and dip are overindulgence that I need to redress. How do I do this? I wrote it without really deciding. Hard to decide how to punish myself. This has taken a turn I didn't anticipate. Okay, here's the deal. If I do chip and dip, I won't do fish'n'chip. Because last week I did both, this week I can do neither. Next week and going forward, just one. Is that enough? It's a start. Caffeine drink moderation going fine. Summary - yes my intake was too high, and this is how I will respond to that.
2. I will not spent extended periods of time focussed on one form of entertainment. If one form of entertainment has consumed an evening or weekend then I have failed. I will vary it, and ensure that I don't neglect the mind expanding.
Varying it nicely. My friend in Japan (who isn't from Japan) has got me into Wordscraper aka Scrabulous this last week and I like it. I'm playing the odd game of poker which is still not going at all well. Being the US fall season theres something worth watching most days at the moment. Partaking in Heroes, Entourage, South Park, American Dad, Family Guy (which is really starting to suck it must be said). The really entertaining thing this week however has been in game form - World Of Goo. I'm not sure when it finally became available, many months after I saw it in a Mahalo Daily game show episode, but there was never any question of me not buying this game, so buy it I did. I'll try to write about that in another post though once i'm a little further on in the game. Trying not to get through it too fast as it prolongs the fun and also contributes towards this goal. That said, WOG is pretty mind expanding, and is likely to get much harder now i'm past the first chapter, so it's quite possible I could overindulge in the game and still take a while to get through it. Pretty inspiring too, escpecially if this thing was really put together by just two guys, which is what I seem to have heard. So, summary - check, all good. I seem to be living for entertaining myself. Is this a problem? Hmmmm.
3. I will talk to people. People I know will not feel I am ignoring them. People I don't know will not forever be people I don't know. If they do, or they are, I have failed. Why all this? Because spending any extended period of time alone is a terrible idea, and the more you initiate, the less likely that is to happen.
I've made a conscious effort to be a bit better at this the last week or so. It's really not very hard and the response is almost always positive. Had a good weekend with a musical trip to Nuneaton and a night out in Oxford involving a in reverse order, a meat market, a rock bar and a gay bar. The meat market was oddly amusing, as I haven't been to one in a few years. Nothing much has changed. The rock bar was cool. Leicester lacks one like this right now. Of the few gay bars i've visited in my life this was my favorite, but that might be because it had live acoustic music. Nice place. More of a gay friendly vibe than the "look at us we're gay" vibe of the few Leicester places I at one time or another I have been dragged into. Have I worded this well enough to leave you in no doubt? Yeah, I think so.
Damn this is taking too long. I thought I got over turning these into essays.
4. I will apply myself to my work. Why? Because all career uncertainty aside, if I'm doing something, I must be doing it well, plus it's the only way I will continue to advance in my current career.
I am trying to do this, really I am, but it's proving a little difficult. For the last few weeks I was juggling balls which I like, but recgonise the inefficiency and therefore ineffectiveness of, but now i'm left with one big ball and a few smaller ones its less exciting. Hmm. I'm not "stealing time" as people like to call it, but I could be a little more applied. Check back next week.
5. I will continue to rethink my career inside and outside my current role weekly. Why? Because I don't want to find myself realising I am on a career treadmill and nothing more. I must ensure what I do is meaningful to me, and ideally others. This doesn't inherently necessitate change, just frequent consideration.
The Hinckley news gives me a good present but makes me think ahead. It's almost a given that eventually my job will decide it has to move somewhere else. This is a nature of the business. Next time i'll have additional expense covered, but i'll still always have to remain prepared to have to move or drive. Hopefully next time i'll feel more like moving. Also a little alarmed at my coding ability. Has 3 years of constant VBA left me dumb? Would be a nice anti-MS or anti-VB story, but no. My syntax and vocab memory of other languages is poor, but my semantic understanding remains strong. It's always beautiful to be able to do the things that the VB6 family just didn't do well in more modern languages. I love VBA for what I can make it do to Excel, because it genuinely impresses people, but it's object model implementation isn't a lot of fun a lot of the time. I tried a bit of primitive AJAX earlier in the week to see just how hard this was. Conclusion seems to be that it's not that hard but somehow i've ballsed up my first real non-stolen attempt to the point where the background httpd request isn't being made, even though the console reports no problems and all code around that statement is being executed. I'll come back to that - it's useful stuff to know, and I can't see being able to talk about having web dev skills anymore without being able to do this stuff. It's not just there because it's flashy - it's a much cleaner way of doing things, if more complicated. It's really quite impressive the way in which it was forged together to suddenly start appearing in browsers one day several years ago.
6. I will find the time to manage a 3 times a week exercise schedule. Why? Much like the eating, it's about long term health gains and short term physical gain. Lose a little weight. Tone up a bit.
I haven't done any specific exercise since I wrote this last Sunday. Doover.
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