Tag Archives: goals

Today I choose to stop making choices for 2 weeks (TIC00017b)

The PolyBlog
August 6 2020

While the date of this post will be July 24th, a Friday, I am actually writing it on August 6, a Thursday, two weeks later.

On that Friday, I was looking at my “Today I choose” chain and wondering how I was going to keep it going while I was on vacation at the inlaws’ cottage. Making conscious choices is hard enough on a given day, and when you’re thrown into a shared-space environment of joint decision-making about meals and times, or even activities, it is sometimes less stressful and more harmonious to just choose to go with the collective flow rather than try to make conscious decisions to “go my way”. On top of that, I wasn’t sure how I was going to be able to keep blogging consistently. And there is the escape phrase of “it’s a vacation” to excuse all laziness.

The short answer as it turned out was that I wasn’t going to be able to do either very well. So I made a conscious decision, a “choice” on the 24th of July, to break the chain at 9 days of choices, a new record.

Over the course of my vacation, and my return, I still made some conscious choices. One of them is about my computer setup, which I’ll post about later tonight.

I also actively tried to read “more”, and ended up binge-reading 7 books in a series (I Am Number Four, by Pittacus Lore, which is way better than the movie). Jacob was reading them too so it was fun to go through them sort of together.

I did some photography of the night sky just with my tripod and iPhone, no telescope involved. NEOWISE was missing in action, but I got to play with shots of the moon, Saturn and Jupiter, the Big Dipper, and star trails around Polaris. I’ll post about those sometime soon too.

And I reached out to my family in Peterborough to try and get together for a socially distanced lunch, and managed to do so with my brother Don. Not the most uplifting of experiences, but it was good to see him.

Oh, and Andrea and I got to check out a pub in Norland near the cottage that we’ve been wanting to go to for a couple of years and timing was never quite right. Plus, no word of a lie, you normally need reservations. It’s small and popular. One of Jacob’s short-term bucket list items was to go to a restaurant again, so we ate on the patio at the pub and the food was quite good.

A good vacation, extended by an extra day on the end, and then back to work this week on the Tuesday. A little rough on the re-integration, and I’ve been feeling a bit of separation anxiety, so to speak, with my computer being in the shop. I wanted to work on a couple of projects that are just way too painful to try and do on the laptop, and when I was at the cottage, my laptop’s wifi wasn’t even connecting. Now that I have the PC back and can get going again, I feel like I’m able to work on a couple of fun things. Just as soon as I reinstall all the software. Sigh.

Today (okay, actually 13 days ago from when I’m writing it) I choose to break the chain and just “be” for the next two weeks.

What choices are you making?

Today I choose to push myself on astronomy (TIC00014b)

The PolyBlog
July 22 2020

I mentioned earlier that I was going to buy new binoculars, and I will eventually get around to writing about them. However, in the meantime, I now “have” them, and can use them. So over a few nights, I have gone out to the backyard, setup in 30s, and just looked. I’m not going with a specific goal in mind, nor surfing the sky, just looking.

Unrelated, but I’ve also taken a few pics with my smartphone to see what I can get, and I’m looking forward to experimenting more at the in-laws’ cottage later this summer. Another area to push myself on.

But tonight around 9:00 p.m., I hopped in the car, went down to the river where the horizons are good, and waited to see if I could see the comet again. However, I also had an ulterior or secondary objective in mind. I wanted to see what I would see on the moon with the new binos.

Unfortunately, the clouds were terrible, and I didn’t think I would even find the moon. I had already figured out it was the smallest of slivers, just 2.2% of the surface was lit, the smallest I’ve ever tried for honestly. And BAM! Between my app and the binos, I nailed it. That was super cool. I’ve never seen it that small of a sliver before. There is a small set of astrophotographers who specialize in trying to get the smallest sliver possible. Someone even set a record a few years ago, the smallest possible sliver that can still be seen. I’m not even close to those small numbers, but I saw the 2.2% sliver. Quite cool.

The comet? Not so cool. It is much higher in the sky now, almost three fists up, and almost directly under the middle of the Big Dipper’s basket. Or, in Ottawa prose, EXACTLY where a huge swath of clouds were going by. Another guy and I were there waiting, and I pointed out the moon to him, plus Jupiter and Saturn, but he was only really surprised by the moon and looked for about half a second. He was there for the comet. But it was not to be. It socked in really well and no comet was to be had anytime soon.

I took a few more pics at home, trying to see what I can get with my smartphone on a tripod, and I really need to spend some time setting up a bigger tripod option and to have it figured out before the cottage. I REALLY want to try imaging a bunch of constellations and I need stability to do that.

But overall, I was mostly pushing myself to use the binos to just get out and observe, even without a plan at this point. To engage, to search, to view, to learn.

Today I choose to push myself on my astronomy hobby.

What choices are you making today?

Today I choose to prioritize safety over style (TIC00012b)

The PolyBlog
July 20 2020

I am not now, nor have I never been, a member of the Commun…oh wait, wrong denial speech. I was GOING to say that I’m not a style maven in any way, shape or (literal) form. I don’t dress well, I’m not built for showing off clothes, and I don’t have high-end manners. On a good day, I’m a schlub.

That doesn’t stop at the body or clothes, it continues up into my hair. I had bowl cuts as a kid, with my father using his skills from the Army to give us various hair cuts. I really don’t know what happened in earlier years as he did a decent job sometimes in the teen years, but from about age 16, I just went to the barbershop and paid with my own money. And that continued right up until Covid.

For Jacob, we’ve never been ones to try and cut his hair. Why traumatize him when we can take him some place that has videos on TV screens right in front of him to distract him? Chiquicuts covered us for a long while, but he outgrew them, and most of the time we go together to a place like First Choice and get it done some night when nobody is busy. Or a Sunday afternoon. Similar cuts for both of us, quite short, above the ear, square back, high bangs, lots of clipper action. He likes it, I like it, but if he wanted a Mohawk, I’d probably get him one. He doesn’t, he likes low maintenance like I do. Until Covid.

We waited until our hair got long in April/May and then did the home special with Andrea cutting mine, and mostly me cutting Jacob’s. Mine was a bit rough, but fine by me, and Jacob’s turned out passable as our second attempt.

Yet things are open again. We COULD go. But honestly, do I REALLY care if my hair isn’t perfect? Only my work team really sees me on Zoom, and half the time I leave the camera off to increase stability of the network. Jacob is in the same boat, he doesn’t really go anywhere and his last haircut at home turned out really well in his view, he was quite happy with it. I gave him the option of considering going out, but he said that we should just do it at home.

And to be honest? I was willing to let him go as a mild risk if everyone is masked, but I wasn’t loving the idea. Risk goes up with proximity and time with other people who aren’t in your bubble, and you can’t do haircuts without both of those violating the normal social distancing routine. Hard to cut hair from 6-feet away, and you are literally breathing in the other person’s air as they get close to your head. And while everyone says, “Yeah, but you’re wearing a mask.” Yeah, a mask sewn together by your friend, not a PPE device that actually blocks any water molecules. Ever worn a scarf or balaclava and breathed out while it covered your nose and face? It still steams up the air pretty strongly. The cloth masks work, but they’re not PPEs. There’s a reason why doctors and nurses are not just throwing on a cloth mask.

But I digress. The point? We chose safety over style. Are our resulting haircuts as amazing as we could get from any barber in Canada? Nope, not really. Andrea did a good job on mine, but my head is a bit misshapen, and you can see it very clearly on top of my head. It’s like there’s a sunken area and when you do a general clipper cut, it contours to the shape of your head more than a scissors-based cut would likely do. Jacob’s turned out okay, but not as good as the last time. I feel like the sideburns didn’t cooperate as much as the previous time.

On the positive side, the clippers have now paid for themselves in terms of the money we’ve saved on four haircuts (Jacob and I x 2 each). Definitely on the savings side of the equation now, baby! I’m curious to see Jacob’s choices when we get back into regular outings if/when there’s a vaccine. For me, I’m fine either way. I’d just prefer that when Andrea’s cutting my hair that she would stop saying “oops” so often; it is VERY disconcerting and not at all related to the final outcome.

In the meantime, today I choose to prioritize safety over style.

What choices are you making?

Today I choose to learn about astronomy (TIC00009b)

The PolyBlog
July 16 2020

About two weeks ago, I started a new challenge for myself — to blog each day about forward-looking choices I was making. Things that involved some extra effort to “create my reality” beyond drifting through the day. I went for the Seinfeld method — how many days in a row could I keep the chain going — and I crashed at 8 days. On the ninth day, I made poor choices or let my scripts push me through the day. So what do I do with a broken chain? Start a new chain.

That new chain starts today, and I’m maintaining my numerical sequence (so today is #9) but I’ve added a “b” after it for my second series. Let’s see how far I get, particularly with holidays coming up. Will I still blog while I’m at the cottage?

I don’t know either, but today I was still at home, and I registered for a RASC Speaker Series presentation by Zoom from the President of the Vancouver Centre. He was billed as talking about how to get going in astronomy, navigate the sky, star hop, etc., but it really didn’t seem to be what he was talking about for most of the night.

I arrived a bit late to the call, and he was already in about 9 slides and talking about how you plan what you are going to see. He had talked already about learning the constellations of the sky, and he was demonstrating a table he had made that listed all the constellations you could see throughout the year and at what times of the day, if at all. The goal was to use this in an Excel spreadsheet so you could decide with a bit of sorting, which constellations to try for in any given month of the year, and prioritize those that were the best for seeing.

Other tools he showed were weather apps and light pollution maps, plus a chart to track moon rise/sets and how much viewing time you would have between astronomical twilight after sunset and astronomical twilight before sunrise.

Was it the best presentation ever? Not even close, to be honest, but that isn’t as harsh a criticism as you might think. There are a LOT of bits and pieces in there to share, and while the presenter has a background in education, I did not get a feeling that he had a set vision of what he wanted everyone to know at the end. I see this as a common failing in the explanations we give people on astro stuff as a community. We give them info, we do not set out to teach them how to think about things.

Let me digress for a moment. I see lots of people who are trying to help people understand how to get going with their new telescope. And the explanations are all over the place…start with the moon, start with manual sky charts, start with an app, etc. No one, well except maybe me, seems to look at those questions and say, “How can I teach this person in a way that they will get it logically and coherently in a way they will remember tomorrow?”.

When I explain similar stuff, I start with an explanation that they need to learn how to do three things. First, they need to set up their telescope physically, including aligning their finder tool to their scope. Second, they need to know how to navigate the sky to find key stars. Finally, they need to to align their scope to the sky and start observing. Step one gives them elements they need for step two. Step two gives them elements for step three. And step three adds some other elements to build on their learning. They can literally do step one only the first night and they’re golden for several outings. Then they can learn step 2 and do more. And finally, they can pull it all together for step 3.

I’m not some exceptional brainiac that figured this out where no one else could, more that most people don’t seem to think about how to explain it to others in a way that is easy to understand — and thus easy to replicate. I have a few pages on this site that explain some hot topics in astronomy, and other people have found them useful and then referred still others to my site for the same info. There are certainly people who are far more knowledgeable about the issues than I, yet people still come to my site to read my version.

And as I expand my offerings, some of it will cover the same ground that the guy did tonight. I need to see different ways of explaining the same material, even if I don’t completely agree with the methodology. Nor even some of the content. The speaker tonight has views about digital tools that border on Luddite in my view, but that’s also not uncommon in the community. Mostly it comes from people who learned a specific way and therefore think that is the best or only way everyone should learn too.

However, that didn’t stop me from posing questions in areas directly related to those beliefs to get the classicist answer. In particular, I’m facing a small dilemma on buying some binoculars for astronomy. I’ve held off for 7 years, and have finally decided I need a pair, particularly if I am going to to be writing about these topics, including binoculars. By coincidence, we went out as a family to see Comet Neowise the other night, and used some old binos that I had accumulated for a DIY project. They worked well enough, and convinced me even further to splurge on some new ones. And this was a perfect guy to ask about the functional differences between two common types. It’s clearly in his wheelhouse and his answer was perfect, exactly what I wanted to know. I almost wish he did his whole presentation about binoculars.

But in the end, the real point is that I could just drift along on my own, doing my own thing. Instead, I am choosing to learn more formally about astronomy through these presentations and to soak up all the perspectives.

I don’t have to do it, I choose to do it to expand my reality. Which is also why I am blogging about my choices.

So, what choices are you making to expand your reality?

Today I failed to make choices

The PolyBlog
July 12 2020

I feel like from the time I woke up, to the time I’m writing this at night (9:33 pm.), I failed to make any good choices at all. There were choices in there, but I wasn’t conscious of most of them, and for the ones where I tried to make better choices, I feel like my internal scripts ran stronger than personal will.

The morning was relatively simple, since I had ordered groceries yesterday for pickup today. Nothing exceptional, basic stuff. Then I drove to a friend’s house who makes masks for friends and picked up new ones for Andrea, Jacob and myself. I had two, but had broken the strap on one, and the other is a bit small, plus Jacob had kid-sized ones that were too small. The new ones are both larger for the face (women’s sizes for both Andrea and Jacob, since they have virtually the same dimensions) and adjustable for the loop length. Neither activity is really an “active choice” type of blog entry though, more passive reception (for the groceries and the mask).

Then I headed out to Bell’s Corners to Dusty’s, a local fresh fruit and vegetable stand. I considered claiming that as a “choice” in that I’m going out of my way to support a local business, but it is not even really “new”. I did it last Sunday too, and while I did it today, I don’t feel that committed to it. I could easily go to any stand, it’s just a little more work to go to that one in order to support them. We’ve shopped there for a couple of years, so I’m happy to see them open again. I didn’t need much — some fresh strawberries, some blueberries, cherry tomatoes and a red pepper just because they seemed fresh and we might do nachos this week. As I said, I considered it for the blog, but I wasn’t really feeling it as an empowering choice. I have to buy the stuff somewhere, and it’s minor to buy it there. If they weren’t open, I’d buy it somewhere else.

For lunch, I used up some leftovers, nothing exciting there. I thought I might have something from the afternoon, as a week ago we went to Preston Street for gelato and I was thinking of it as a potential Sunday night tradition we could do in the summers. Except tonight, Andrea was booked for a call, so I was thinking this afternoon. Which meant Jacob had to come with us for the two deliveries and then we would go for the gelato.

And TBH, I think this is where I started to completely crash. Jacob has been lethargic for a bit now, doesn’t want to go outside, and just about everything we suggest, his response is basically “I guess”. Even when it is things that he chooses. Honestly/candidly? As understanding as I try to be of mental stuff, as lord knows I have my own motivational issues, it’s beginning to piss me off. Today, to get him to go out, since gelato isn’t his favorite, I gave him the choice of what we would have…Dairy Queen, gelato, Baskin Robbins, Chocolats Favoris. Something he could choose. He grudgingly went. We did the deliveries, he prefers soft serve ice cream most of the time so DQ wasn’t a surprise, and we started thinking about what we wanted. Jacob’s choice? A slushie. Really? We’re going to DQ just for him, so he can have the ice cream he wants, and he’s choosing a slushie? Sigh.

Whatever, moving on.

We get back home, Jacob miraculously feels better (who knows, maybe he was actually feeling off in the car because he does get car sick, and playing on his phone the whole time doesn’t help with that). So I need to do some electronic reconfiguration for his room, with a new power bar, charging station setups, etc. Nope, he wasn’t feeling it, he just wanted to crash.

Okay, why not? It’s Sunday, I crashed too. Recharge the batteries. Except I didn’t. I woke up with a splitting headache, everyone’s in a crappy mood, and despite the fact that I work really hard to never let my true temper show, I came pretty close to just letting fly at one point.

I shake it off, play Rovio’s new Angry Birds 2 (what was the earlier sequels called? Seasons?), distract myself. Go upstairs, Jacob is just lounging, doing nothing basically, and I wanted to do the charger setup. Nope, not interested right now. Let’s do it tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong, I gave him the choice, and probably 8:30 p.m. is not the best time to interest him in something new for the day, but I would have liked to make progress on SOMETHING today.

So I’m giving up for the day. I don’t know what the “choices” are that I have left to make today, but I am not optimistic that I’ll make any progress, so I am definitely resetting the clock on this Seinfeld chain. My record for consecutive blocking on choices stands at: 8 days.

I’ll take a 2 day hiatus for Monday and Tuesday to get my brain ready to go again, and restart on Wednesday. Let’s see if I have better luck for my next attempt.

What choices are you choosing to make today?