In the beginning … I mostly sat on my ass all day and coded, with brief periods of providing customer support via email. Some days I even saw my family, who were in the next room [1]. I’ve talked some about this before.

 

Last year, most of my physical exercise came in 2 forms. First, walking around ridiculously large furniture stores, time after time, trying to find furniture we liked and could afford. [2] Second, moving from one house to another. And then moving stuff around in the new house.

 

Came my birthday in December–my last “approaching 40″ birthday–I realized (a) that I no longer lived in a skate-friendly neighborhood [3]; and (b) that I was probably too old–and would be embarrassing my family–if I tried to resuscitate that particular form of exercise. Oh, and (c) that I didn’t want to look so … chubby. The rest of me is too thin for the middle be so … not thin.

 

So I claimed a 6′ x 8′ section of the new game room and bought a weight bench to fill it with. Serendipitously, and almost simultaneously, I found a workout plan that seemed both simple and effective. I rearranged the workout (as Mark suggested) to reflect my own priorities [4] and called it mine.

 

 

Just an FYI: I didn’t buy all of that equipment at once. That would’ve been damn expensive. And likely premature.

 

I started following my “personalized” workout plan in January with just the bench, the barbell (borrowed), and a few cast iron dumbbells. I added some free vinyl weights and a curl bar that someone had left at my folks’s house years ago (when teenagers still lived there). Those are gone now, replaced (because they just didn’t match the rest of the equipment; and were ugly). And I’ve added dumbbells that take free weights (much cheaper than individual cast iron dumbbells once you get to the 20-25 lb mark).

 

I’m finishing my fifth month of following the plan and working out 5 times a week. I lost a couple weeks back in late January due to illness, but that’s it. Even when on vacation I missed only a couple days because the hotel where we stayed had a gym.

 

I call this my new hobby. Because:

 

So, after 5 months, what results have I seen? First, I’ve lost almost no weight at all. Possibly none. But that’s OK. I wasn’t trying to lose weight (my weight isn’t the problem, it’s my shape). My waist has shrunk a couple inches, though, and I’ve put on muscle weight in my shoulders, chest, back and arms. I’m stronger.

 

It may not seem like much after 5 months, but I have no complaints. And I look forward to the next 5 months, and further. I don’t plan to be entering bodybuilding contests, but I have to admit I’m curious: What will I look like with shoulders?

 

Here’s why this works for me:

 

And it’s cheap. (As hobbies go.)

 

In a sense, this is just like everything else I do: Highly (maybe overly) organized, with slow and steady progress toward a (possibly vague) goal. And it happens at home. I’m such a homebody these days.

 

I do miss skating, though. Some.

 

-David

 

[1] It was a really small house.

 

[2] I lost about 5 lbs doing that throughout the spring and summer. My wife and I started calling it our “retail walk”.

 

[3] Great house, great neighborhood, rather shitty, potholed asphalt streets. Some parts of the neighborhood are being repaved, though, so I have hope that mine will one day be as well.

 

[4] Abs, shoulders, chest, arms, and legs, in that order. Back gets lumped in with abs to fill out my Mondays.

 

[5] But mostly because I spend money on it. That’s what hobbies are for. They’re money sinks.

 

Article (with Truly Stupid Title) on MSNBC.com:

 

Let us swoon, for we are noticed.

 

-David

 

Been working (a lot) on Project Vee since I got back from New Orleans. Almost obsessively.

 

I’ve spent hours researching the Windows side-by-side (SxS) API. I probably won’t use it. I’ve diligently hunted (and serendipitously found) bugs caused by a legacy of code that dates back to the previous century. I’ve profiled code that I thought was performing quite snappily, and discovered I was wrong (there is a limit to how much you can do between keystrokes; who knew?) In making the new version properly upgrade data from the old, I’ve bumped into database artifacts of an obscure bug that was fixed over five years ago (and discovered information in my own data that I thought I had lost to that bug). I’ve streamlined the complexity of internal data structures–which took guts, since most of the original data structure design decisions were made just after the turn of the current century. And more.

 

May sound boring to you. But I love programming. That’s why I’m here.

 

Circumstances created by the catastrophic hard drive crash in March, though, have caused me to review–and revise–the project plan for Vee. Most of the revision is in the form of moving bullet points from implementation phases and lodging them under “Future Development”. Because I need this project out the door much faster now.

 

Strategic features are being retained, of course, but tactical features are being pruned to the minimum. “Minimum” being mostly defined as “will the users notice the lack?” With a few shades of “what have I promised most loudly?” So long as I get the strategic features implemented, I figure I can roll out minor updates (after Vee’s initial release) that build tactical features on top of the foundation created by the new strategic features.

 

It’s a plan, anyway. And I’m checking off bullet points (or moving them to the future) one by one.

 

-David

 

Took my first real vacation in 8 years last week. The wife & I went to New Orleans. Her mother watched the kids while we were out and about. Which, according to the kids, means we now owe them a vacation. Big time.

 

 

This has very little to do with New Orleans, but it’s one of my favorite pictures of the trip.

 

 

So, anyway, now I’m back.

 

Project Vee is my main focus. With a bit of luck–and more than a bit of obsessive-compulsive behavior–it should be into testing before the middle of summer.

 

More news as it happens.

 

-David

 

I’m an easy-going guy. Really. Possessed of strong opinions, yes, and ready to talk about anything on a moment’s notice. But I’m also willing to listen, and most of my beliefs and convictions and opinions are open to discussion. Because I know I don’t know everything.

 

As I continue my education, I find out even more that I don’t know about. An endless cycle of revealed ignorance. I like learning, though. I like improving myself and my projects.

 

But … (you saw this coming, didn’t you?) … if someone wants to tell/offer me suggestions about/for:

 

I’ll listen politely (more or less).

 

And then ignore them, unless they have:

 

Which likely makes me seem a bit snobbish.

 

As I’ve read more and more broadly, I’ve started to see how much of the “advice” and “information” you encounter on most life topics is the same stuff, regurgitated over and over. And most often regurgitated by someone who is just paraphrasing something he heard regurgitated by someone else, with very little practical experience gained on his own.

 

I’ve said before how much I like to learn from books. Book-learning is great. But only if you then use that knowledge, and expand on it with your own experience.

Without experience to convert knowledge to wisdom, all you have is a lot of Trivial Pursuit ™ answers. And without the board setup between us, and colorful little pie-shaped pieces to keep score, it’s just hard to be impressed.

 

-David