Tag Archives: goals

Today I choose to rearrange our office space (TIC00032d)

The PolyBlog
August 22 2020

Well, the second great migration of the year is underway. Migration #1 was me moving my desks from the office on the second floor to the basement. Yes, I said desks. I’ll post pictures when everything is done (sorry Matt, you’ll have to wait), but basically I have a desk for my personal computer, monitor, scanner, label printer, etc. It’s a pretty full space, unfortunately. More on that later.

In addition, I have a second desk that has all my work stuff on it — tablet from work, two monitors from work, keyboard, mouse, etc. Plus a bunch of dead space with miscellaneous crap on it.

But it’s in a good L, and it’s not like the desk surface is small — both are old Ikea desks that are 30″x60″-ish. I say “old Ikea” because I knocked them apart long ago and replaced the heavy wooden and non-adjustable height sides and cross beams with simple adjustable height legs.

So it’s a decent amount of space. The L shape isn’t really working well for me, it’s just what I had available in the space I designed. But a casual conversation with Andrea a week or two ago led to some interesting thoughts bouncing around my head in the “What if … ” category. Like, for instance, “What if I put my desk right in that far corner where all that other stuff is? Where would it go? How could I go back to maximizing floor space while finding room for my desks?”.

The solution in part is to take a bunch of Jacob’s toys (mostly Lego), and move them into storage space along the wall in the old office and bring another desk down. Yeah, you heard me. Another old Ikea desk with the same size top. Two sides down, everything cannibalized, and in theory, I might actually have the space for my dream setup. A giant U with desk all the way around the end of my basement. Space for printers and scanners, space for my computers, space for storage underneath, and most important of all? Simple space to spread out a project, work on it, and not have to pick it all back up when I’m done for the day. A workspace to do things like a Lego build. Or taking apart a set of binoculars. Or even just sorting a whack of magazines (if it wasn’t already done) or books.

I could, in theory, end up with desk space the equivalent of 30″ deep by 15′ long. I think my nipples just got hard. Could just be the cold in the basement. Andrea’s flexibility with the office is making a bunch of it happen, as the toys needed to go somewhere at least until Jacob might decide he no longer wants to keep them.

Three pieces of other furniture left the basement today too — two white tables that Jacob used for a while for his train sets (very large coffee tables, that I did think about cannibalizing for the tops hehehe). And if they don’t sell, I may still cannibalize them for something in the garage I want to do at some point.

And the old TV stand we had in the basement, recently replaced with something taller.

In short, we moved a lot of stuff around today. I have a small snag that I’m working on, which is the legs I mentioned earlier. One desk has four legs on it, simple adjustable ones from Ikea. Easy to find, easy to install, easy-ish to adjust. But, for the U, I would prefer not to have legs in the middle of a long desk. I just end up whacking my knees on them. Instead, I would love a set of legs like I have on the other desk.

It has a wide base, and then only one leg coming up each end of the desk. More like an inverted T, it appeared. There was NOTHING like it on the Ikea website. But when I looked at the desk again tonight, I realized it is way more elaborate than I remember. It actually has cross beams running underneath for added support. That is a MUCH different design than I remember, and now I can’t even remember if this one ever HAD full sides. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe this is the support it always had. Well, pooh. Cuz I would LOVE two more. 🙂

I’m also trying to figure out what the space actually looks like when I put the desks in. I might, and this is just crazy talk, have a bit of room for corner squares to make a really complete U, leaving the desks almost as connectors. Or almost like getting another 5′ of space for things like scanners and printers to sit out of the way. Kind of like the angled corners you see for TV stands, ideally, or simply just blocking off the corner with a square 30″x30″. Which of course would require separate legs. If I can FIND the right ones that will work. I really don’t want the simple legs from Ikea.

Well, off to search. And to cross my fingers that my longer Ethernet cable arrives tomorrow. The new location is about 15′ farther than my current setup, and I’m going to need a bigger cable. But I’m optimistic everything will fit where it is supposed to in the end.

Today I choose to rearrange our office space to give me a potentially dream office layout. Yes, it is in the basement. Yes, it might be somewhat cold down here. But a shot at my dream functional space? That just might be worth it.

What choices are you making today?

Today I choose a new approach to blogging (TIC00031d)

The PolyBlog
August 22 2020

I have only written the title of this post, eight measly words, and already I’m wondering if I want to word it differently. I suppose it is more that I am choosing a new workflow, perhaps?

Here’s the deal. Frequently, I have a large number of pending posts that I want to write. And if they include photos of some kind, I frequently balk at the order. For example, suppose I went to a park today (I didn’t, but work with me). And I took pictures. So I might want to write about it tonight, but the photos are going to be a surprising sticking point. Obviously I will want to include them.

But my workflow is pretty sophisticated. Detailed. Oh, alright, it’s anal-retentive, batshit crazy time.

I have 1000s of photos, and I am slowly migrating them from a general folder (albeit well-organized) into a formal app called Mylio. Once in Mylio, photos get sorted generally by date first and foremost, but they also have tags, filenames, facial recognition and more tagging, and sorting between “things to post” and “things to archive”. I rarely delete photos, at least not usually, unless there is nothing of value anywhere in it. If it is a photo of four people, for example, and one of them isn’t very flattering, I usually won’t include it. But the photo of the second person might be decent. Since I often have 5-6 usable ones, I don’t really need to include the one with a bad portion, but on the other hand, I don’t want to toss it either. So I always have two sub folders — one for “active” posting, one for “extra” archiving. If I edit a photo, the original goes to Extras, the one for posting goes to Active. Clear enough?

Step two though is to upload the photos that I’m using, after saving their meta data of course, and loading them on to my website. I managed to get 2005-2008 up on the side before deciding to redo my entire website some time ago, and while all the photos are good, I realized the other day I need to edit about 50 pages for format and consistency of layout. Normally I don’t have to do that, so I just create a new gallery, upload the photos for a given month, and then bam, they’re available for inserting into posts.

Yet therein lies the rub. I normally do a month at a time, once the month is complete. And, to be honest, I am often using photos that I took, plus those that Andrea had on her phone, and now, Jacob is in the mix too. He took some really good ones of sunsets at the cottage recently, plus some other ones earlier in the year. If I’m going to post photos from an event, like an outing to a park, shouldn’t I use the best photos from ALL THREE OF US, rather than just from me?

Perfection is the enemy of progress though, and it has been for certain posts. One of my posts some time back was about my haircut, but since I hadn’t completed the month, and hadn’t backed everything up from Andrea’s computer to mine, with the photos she took of me, I didn’t have my workflow nailed for how to get recent photos in the queue and on the site without risking needing to re-upload them later, or swap out new ones, or generally just having to update it later once I have processed the other files. Or simply confusing myself to the point where I accidentally delete something or miss it altogether.

And even without Andrea and Jacob in the mix, I don’t normally back up my phone every night to my desktop.

Enter the change

I had to “let it go”, essentially. Some of those processes are great at ensuring nothing gets missed but not so good at ensuring I can stay current with something interesting in photos. Today I wrote a post about smartphones and astronomy, and to do it properly, I needed to do about ten screen captures on two different devices PLUS four more photos of my phone and tablet with the other device. And then sort the photos, upload them to the site, embed them in the post, all while ensuring that neither the place they are stored in the website nor the way they are stored in the program application Mylio causes me to duplicate anything. A place for every photo and every photo in its place.

Whereas I used to do a month at a time, the major change in my workflow is adding a “status” tag to the folder name in Mylio. So, even if it is mid-month, I can create a folder called “22 Walk in the park” and then add a little acronym after the folder name to track the steps that are finished so far:

  • P = Files transferred from my phone
  • A = Files transferred from Andrea
  • J = Files transferred from Jacob
  • I = Photos imported into Mylio
  • S = Photos sorted
  • T = Faces tagged
  • M = Metadata saved
  • U = Photos uploaded to my WordPress site
  • G = Galleries grouped together in WordPress
  • B = Blogged

I don’t blog about everything of course, but most of the stages in PAJISTMUGB are common. Once all 10 are done, I can just rename the folder with a simple “_y” that yes, that folder is all done. It doesn’t solve my problem with not having Jacob or Andrea’s photos ready to go (A,J), but it solves MY photo processing (P).

I’ve been testing out various iterations of the work process and this one worked well today. I took the 10-15 photos, processed them, saved and stored them in Mylio, uploaded them to the site, and sent a draft of the post to someone in the local astronomy club to see if they want a copy of the article for their monthly newsletter. All of it turned out pretty well.

Anal-retentive? Sure. And that’s one of my good points! 🙂 But flexible anal-retentiveness apparently.

Today I choose a new approach or work process to blogging.

What choices are you making today?

Today I choose to take the day off to spend with family (TIC00030d)

The PolyBlog
August 20 2020

Since I broke my TIC series chain at 12 yesterday, I start series D today. And today’s is about taking the day off to spend time with Jacob and Andrea. Our original intent was Parc Omega as the main plan, and we didn’t plan it very well earlier. You need to buy timed entry tickets, and by the time we realized that, the only openings were for lunch or afterwards. I would have preferred to be there earlier in the day, eat lunch afterwards or during, and then stop somewhere like Petrie Island on the way back. But no worries, we bought for 2:00 and planned to go mini-golfing in the morning after basic errands like groceries.

Except by the time we were ready for mini-golf, it looked like it was about to rain. And the forecast for the afternoon for both here and Montebello showed a high probability of showers. Would the animals be equally “out and about” if it was raining? Was it worth the trip? In the end, we rescheduled both activities and stayed home.

For the morning, we went with playing board games, namely Centrix (which we bought through a kickstarter campaign). Plus a few games of Squarrels (like “squirrels” but you are having quarrels over acorns, hence the name). Then we had a brain wave…what about Lone Star for lunch? We had been talking about it for dinner sometime soon-ish, at Jacob’s request but with no objection from Andrea or I, and we substituted in lunch. While it wasn’t “fast” for prep, it was really good, as always.

By the time we were done, it was time for a chess class for Jacob that we had expected to have to skip but he could do since our vacation day was now a staycation day. When we finished that, Andrea and I were ready to play Dice Forge, the big board game we play when we have extra time for setup and play. But Jacob wasn’t up to it, and instead wanted to play video games.

Generally, that doesn’t work well for three of us with a big split screen, and the first attempt — regular Minecraft — was a bust for screen size. But we could play Minecraft Dungeons together, and Andrea didn’t mind it. It’s a bit mindless running around stabbing and shooting things with arrows, but as a cooperative game play, it’s highly functional. It worked well, and we played together for 90 minutes or so. Jacob was happy. 🙂

In other news, while Jacob was doing his chess class, I wrote a blog entry for my big astro reading project, Astro Echoes. And it turned out okay, even with 2500 words to cover the year 1941. Some really interesting stuff, and I think the project will be really fun and enlightening as I go. I even edited it slightly and sent it off as a draft submission for our local astronomy club’s monthly newsletter.

I feel good about the variety of choices made today for family, for my blog, for fun in general.

Today I choose to take the day off to spend time with family.

What choices are you making today?

Alas, my TIC streak stops again, this time at 12

The PolyBlog
August 20 2020

My “Today I choose” chain broke today after 12 updates. My previous records were 8 days straight, and then 9. But today, I don’t feel like I was making any real “choices”. More just trying to keep my head above water, and I’m not sure I even did that.

I slept badly, again, but finally got some decent sleep around 6/7, and woke up feeling like another 12 hours would have been great. Read some stuff for work while eating my breakfast at my desk, had trouble connecting to the network, but didn’t fuss too much until I realized my morning conference call was coming up, and then I couldn’t get it to connect at all, only to find out the call was actually on the regular conference line instead of a video call. Nice going, Mr. Planner.

Good conversations at work today, but for lunch, I was running late on the work stuff and so just dashed over to Tim Horton’s for sandwiches for Jacob and I, as I was too late to get one for Andrea. And she never wants anything for snackies, so I get back, and she’s still eating her lunch so could have had a snack with us i.e. doughnut or TimBit which of course I didn’t get her one. We split mine, all good.

By late afternoon, I was feeling like yesterday’s breakfast, so ended up taking a nap. I thought I would be an hour, if that, but I actually managed to sleep and woke up feeling great at 6:00. We need groceries, and our fridge was uninspiring, so we defaulted to food at the local pub and we actually went over and ate there. A whole section of the restaurant to ourselves, it seemed. But, tbh, that’s a default script, not a choice. Sometimes it IS a choice, this one wasn’t, it was just the path of least resistance to fuel.

Back home, we played cards for awhile which was nice, but that choice is now habit and routine, not a conscious “unique” choice to celebrate. Or rather, I made that choice a long time ago.

Afterwards, I thought about blogging about my new astronomy project, I really enjoyed some stuff I was reading yesterday, but I just wasn’t feeling it. I thought I would go to bed early, but it is now after midnight, and I’m still typing and screwing around on my computer accomplishing nothing. I was just randomly surfing and reading news stuff.

I tried being semi-productive, but I can’t get my tablet to synch properly with my desktop to transfer some pictures over and this glitch of connecting to the network is really beginning to piss me off. I think I’m going to have to switch Jacob’s phone over to synching with the cloud constantly rather than manually, since his didn’t synch, and since my tablet wouldn’t synch either, I’ll likely do the same for it. But that wasn’t a choice I made tonight, it was just me pushing a decision off to a time when I have more headspace.

About the only thing I felt was a “choice” today was that I started migrating my astronomy resources from my bedroom shelves to the basement to go with all the other astro mags. I would kind of like to move a bunch more stuff out of the bedroom shelves to the basement, if only to free up the space and let me move one of two large bookshelves to the basement for added storage. I might be able to move both, which would be nice. Neither one really belongs in the bedroom, I just didn’t have good options in the office previously.

But honestly, I just moved about 20 books to the basement. That’s it. Not exactly giving me goose bumps. Seems more like simple housework than a conscious choice about how I live my life or stay in the moment.

I know some of my blah feeling is likely a result of my sinuses going haywire with the change in temps, although I thought my BP was going wonky too. Except that I have tested it twice, and it’s actually lower than normal.

I toyed with the idea today of re-kickstarting my quote collection but even though it wouldn’t have been much work either, I still wasn’t into it.

Just a blah day. But I couldn’t feel even like making a choice to feel blah was a choice. It was just the lowest common form of existence I could muster today.

Hope you made conscious choices today…my daily streak ends at 12 days.

Today I choose to offer astronomy training (TIC00029c)

The PolyBlog
August 18 2020

As readers of my blog know, I am an amateur astronomer. And my road into astronomy has not been paved with the remains of rainbows or yesterday’s sunbeams. I have struggled mightily over the last 7 years, including some epic battles with my scope to get aligned.

In the end, two people in the club really helped me nail down my wayward astro gremlins, and now I try to pay it back whenever I can. I have a couple of posts that get a lot of foot traffic about the “proper” way to do alignment of a Celestron GoTo scope, and I’m of the firm belief that users of the SE series of scopes fall into very set categories:

  • 75% of owners will use their scopes right out of the box without any trouble, it will work as intended, no gremlins;
  • 10% will not get it to work, but it is more user error than anything else, and they will never get ANY scope to work, because it just doesn’t make sense to them;
  • 10% will struggle mightily but will learn how to make it work; and,
  • 5% will have serious gremlins that they won’t be able to banish, or even know what gremlins they face.

So I know that my type of scopes are popular, and I want to make sure no one is left dangling. It’s a horrible feeling. And since I have experience with it, I tried to do some training tonight for 4 intrepid souls looking for some assistance. Three made it out, betting the fourth might not of expected us to go ahead as it was looking almost like a thunderstorm was coming

One of the three has had a scope before, relatively understanding of the stars, just new to goto scopes; another was relatively new to astronomy but had set up a couple of times; and the third was brand new and had no idea how to get his scope going.

Unfortunately, both the last one I listed and me were not prepared properly for tonight. I started to set up my scope, and after a little bit of time, realized that I totally forgot my diagonal. I normally have it attached, but I did some stuff awhile ago and there was no joy in Mudville tonight. It wasn’t attached and I didn’t think to bring it, thinking the old one was still on there. Nope, removed it some time ago. Sigh. So I didn’t get very far. For the other fellow, the battery on his Red Dot Finder died. For the more experienced guy, something is off with his handset or scope, not sure which. So his worked, but not as well as it should have.

And honestly? That’s the type of thing that can drive you crazy…you think it isn’t quite right, but start to doubt yourself, so having an experienced person say, “No, you’re right, it isn’t supposed to do THAT!” is helpful, if not a solution. We’ll work on fixing that over time though.

I was surprised though about the training. I expected to run through pretty quick, and everybody would be able to replicate my steps. But it didn’t take long for that plan to fall by the wayside. One had problems with his red dot finder, another had problems understanding what he had to do, third was having equipment problems. Each of these meant stopping to help JUST that person. A fourth person would have messed that up.

Others had suggested only doing 1:1 but that seemed SO inefficient. I’m going to do some videos at some point, so this was a bit of a test, and as a test, I would say we’re going to be in beta mode for a long time. But one went away “solved”, more or less.

Today I choose to offer some astro training.

What choices are you making?