Tag: planning

June 22, 2022 – Time to Look Ahead

June 22, 2022 /

Wasn’t that great? We are a couple days from the end of our time here in Spain. I will spend time next week unpacking the important items from the trip. Today, I am starting to change my mindset into looking forward beyond vacation. And boy, there is work to be done.

  1. My summer project. It is time to start ripping off siding and fixing the rotten siding. In theory, I think that it is going to take a couple of weeks. Those ideas always get waylaid by everything else going on. I am going to estimate that this is going to take all summer.
  2. Fourth of July. Since the fourth is on Monday, this will be an entire weekend fireworks, parades, barbeques and carnivals. I don’t mind a fireworks display or drinking some beer. But, I have to say that one day is enough for me.
  3. Chess in the Park. When my son has a dream, it quickly becomes my dream (responsibility). My son has created eight Saturdays where he is running chess in the park. Basically every Saturday between the Fourth and Labor day has a commitment of several hours in the park to run this event.
  4. Of the age of Summer Jobs. My other son will be driving tractor for five weeks. This entire time will be before having a drivers license and therefore we will have to drop off and pick up every day.
  5. Birthday week. The last week in July is birthday week for my wife and son. This is usually the most hectic week of the summer with activities.

That is just July (mostly). What happened to camping and fishing? I don’t foresee this happening this year. August starts to look ahead to the next school year, harvest time and finishing what we started for the summer. Hopefully, I can sneak some respite and recreation in there before the summer is over.

I do have some other expectations for the summer. My wife wants the lattice replaced on the deck. Now that my son’s car is in the garage, I need to block off some time to see if I can help him get it working. This isn’t mentioning things that I want to do like take my dad out for belated Father’s day and restart my range trips that have fallen off in recent months. Culinary book club has restarted and I am planning on an AltF4 series on Atlas Shrugged. Plus, I wanted to put some time into making Adirondack chairs while we can still enjoy them.

End Your Programming Routine: In many ways, I have put my life on hold for the sake of this vacation. To be clear, I did have a good time but I am glad to be moving on. I am anxious to get my project started that I have been putting off for months. It’s a beautiful country with lovely food and people. It is not just me to live my life as a party and lay on the beach, even on vacation.

May 27, 2022 – I Want to Be Transparent…

May 27, 2022 /

As we head toward Memorial weekend, I was thinking about what I was going to try accomplish over the weekend. I also had a juxtaposing thought that I talk some about things that I am going to do but never any update on where I am at or what ever happened.

I talked about transparency with leadership so you know that I think it is important. Being transparent, most of those things never got started. Here is a list of things that I have introduced but have made no progress

  • Wine Cellar
  • Front Yard Garden
  • Sofa Table for my stereo system
  • Shop siding replacement
  • (Now) Adirondack chairs
  • Build a Kitchen Table
  • AltF4 business plan
  • podcasting testing

You know this subconsciously because if I had done what I said, I would be writing about it more than likely. I have a couple of other things that I have started, but never completed. And like all humans, I pick an choose things I would rather do or are motivated to do. Seems like lately, I just don’t have the energy or the drive to do things after work with so many family activities happening.

To be fair, the siding is going to be done this summer. I had to go to the dump last weekend to clear out my trailer so I had room to do the demo. So, that is progress; that I didn’t report on. In this current week, I have been making trips to Goodwill so I can clean out the garage to get my son’s car in so that we can have some paver work done. Not on my want list, but my need list.

All of that garbage and donation stuff has clogged my garage and shop all winter and spring. This is not an excuse, but a very real obstacle to me working on my projects. That logjam is unclogging finally.

Last year, I replaced the derailleur on my son’s bike but I never did the final gear adjustment, I was getting five of the seven rear gears. He was complaining that the handle grips were sliding off. I bought some new ones and when I went to slide all the mechanicals down the handle bar, the cables came loose. I went to try and fix it by taking the bike to a park and using the stand, but then I found that the derailleur bracket was bent, I didn’t have the tools and I wasn’t sure of the right correction. In my heart, I could have fiddled with it more and gotten it licked. But, not having a stand at home just led me to finally take the bike in.

The truth is my own bike has been only partially functional for years. I have always hated the pedal clips, the rider geometry has me too bent over to be comfortable and the worst part is that the shifters have been partially seized. I decided to take both bikes in. Like I was saying a couple of weeks ago, it’s not that I couldn’t do these things but at this point, I would rather ride the bike than work on it. This is especially true because my precious time is going to be focused on my siding project over the summer. Having the ability to just jump on my bike and go makes me much more likely to do so than spend the same time fooling over new parts.

I have no good reason why I haven’t done my business plan or podcast testing. When I have talked about this before, I have talked about my intent by announcing something and accountability. Since no one is really communicating with me over this channel, there is no real accountability. What keeps me writing everyday is my drive to want to do it. Since no one is asking and I am happy with where I am at, I haven’t been motivated to do anything different.

Transparency to me is admitting that I am not perfect. Not everything I write about turns out to be a dream. I have a pile of video on things that I was planning to create video on, but didn’t work out. I am not sure if I should go ahead and edit and publish to be real or just delete them as stuff that didn’t work. For now, I am just holding on to it.

To be sure, I am going to keep being me. I am going to write about things that I intend to do when I write them because maybe they inspire someone to do something similar on their own. I am going to maintain a list of things that someday I want to get to. I am going to keep pushing myself to try things I have no experience doing to learn and try to teach or coach.

I am not going to apologize for follow through until I get some sort of dialog where I find out that I am disappointing people. As far as I know, nobody is routinely reading this anyway. If that day comes, then I will have true accountability and I promise that I will do a more careful job of follow through with my announcements and projects. There is no doubt in my mind that I will have the proper motivation when I know people are waiting for me.

Like everyone, I get tired. I want to check out sometimes. I find things I would rather do. I have obligations that I didn’t realize before I thought I was going to do something. It is cold in my shop without the heat on. I don’t want to start something to get interrupted by something else. I have a myriad of excuses and reasons I haven’t done the things that I probably should have. I also have on my list a bunch of things I don’t want to do but need to, so this problem is not exclusive to just my personal goals.

I feel like I am the true master of none. I am a very amateur woodworker, mechanic, shooter, woodsman, scientist, gardener, brewer, etc. I think I am a decent cook and carpenter but I don’t always have a project or feel like sharing dinner. My interests are in learning, teaching and following my desires are what drive me. I hope that my courage to try is inspiring to others.

End Your Programming Routine: My original title for this site was going to be Polymath Daily, not AltF4 because of the wide variety of topics. I am glad that I went with the latter rather than the former because it allows for more emphasis on opinion and less on hard skills. At this point in my life, I am going to prioritize family and relationship over hardcore projects and skills but that doesn’t mean I am going to quit trying. I hope you have something planned for this holiday weekend that fulfills you.

April 11, 2022 – Where Do I Go From Here?

April 11, 2022 /

I have to admit, April is a month that gets in my head. Going all the way back to high school, there were always some life altering event that happened in the month. Not so much lately, but the feeling is still there. I know it is not real, but I am ‘waiting for the other shoe to drop’ as they say.

I do feel raped with my five figure tax bill every year. But, that is not it. I was thinking about the fact that I haven’t even made a effort into investigating podcasting year to date. I don’t really think so. Maybe it is the weather? We are having a day or two of nice weather with a couple days of wet, cold and freezing.

I know when travel starts to ramp up, I feel it is all I can do to keep up. My projects go on hold because all of my free time is catching up for missing other things during the week. My garage is again becoming a garbage/donation pit. I have a growing dump load in addition to an overflow of items that are slated to be given away. My son’s Go-Cart project is literally strewn all across the remainder of any open space. His car cover is collapsing and my seedlings will be looking for a home in a few weeks.

I suppose this is what the problem is. I am overwhelmed by all the things I don’t really want to do. Because of that, I feel guilty doing the things I want to do, so I don’t do them. That makes me feel anxious and I get stuck in a circle of inactivity. To be honest, that doesn’t help things either when I look at all of the wasted time after the fact.

I don’t think any of that is strictly April (at this point). But logically, this is a point of transition. We are moving in-between Winter and Summer and we are not quite either. I am moving between strictly work from home and obligations that require travel. I am also in the middle of the seasonal change and other changes at home. I do hold the opinion that people that thrive during turmoil are the next generation of success.

If you think about it, turmoil is the time where there is no particular force or clear winner. Therefore, people that pick a direction and thrive become the status quo when the turmoil settles down. Using one example, we are in rampant inflation. People that are using crypto currency, specifically Bitcoin have seen astronomical deflation in the same period. This is a prediction, but when the dollar finally collapses, those that have picked the new best direction are going to be clear leaders in the financial space.

I have heard and I tend to agree that we are in the midst of a financial collapse. It is kind of like getting fat. You don’t really know it is happening until you wake up and look at where you were a year ago and realize that you are fat. It is the incremental changes that happen every day that matter but it is the trend over a period of time that aggregates the overall result.

What does getting fat, Bitcoin and anxiety have to do with each other? Nothing really. I suppose that I am telling myself that I know where I am at and I know that doing nothing is not really helpful so I need to pick a direction to go. Trust me, I know that it is difficult to get energized for the next thing when you know that every week is jam packed and travel is again looming.

End Your Programming Routine: I didn’t know that I was going to write this today. In fact, I haven’t planned anything for the entire week since I was gone last week and too busy with commitments over the weekend to gather content. Part of why I do this is I find it helpful for me to sort things out as well. I do want be real. Life isn’t always about winning or being the best or knowing everything but adjusting to the circumstances to thrive.

January 19, 2022 – Time to Start Gardening?

January 19, 2022 /

It absolutely is time to start planning. If you know your last average frost date, then that is your target day to aim for getting plants in the ground. Aside from that, this is pruning time. Grape vines, fruit trees, rose bushes need to be started before the budding begins.

If you don’t know your last frost date, start here. Once you know that date, you can plan germination dates for seed starts by back calculating when you want to get plants in the ground. Don’t be a robot, watch the weather around that date so that you don’t put plants in the ground only to freeze.

If you remember last year, I needed to build new beds. That is still the case for me and I am running out of time to get that started. Another reason to start planning now is that this is the downtime. Once the grass starts growing, then you’ve got mowing and weeding to add to the list of yardwork (if you do that kind of thing). That means your free time is significantly reduced.

Recently, I bought some LED grow bulbs. The main reason was that I raided that fixture for light bulbs throughout the summer and fall and now I needed new bulbs anyway. However, I do want to try and grow some greens hydroponically this year so I thought that this upgrade was worth the extra money (to try). They are not cheap, so at $20 per bulb, that is the three times what a T8 daylight bulb costs. I will report on the how they did later in the spring.

It is a good time to make sure tools are in order. Do that oil change on the lawnmower, sharpen blades, replace broken tools before the rush happens. Bare root trees are best planted in the winter. Even if you do not want to work outside this time of year, having a plan to execute when the weather gets nicer is very helpful.

Speaking of seasonality, in this era of shortages, it would be best to get the items like seeds, hose mending, irrigation and other supplies while they are available. I have a feeling that once they are gone, they are gone for the season. That is quite normal actually, I can tell, there have been a number of times that I was looking to mend a hose in August only to find that everything has been sold out.

End Your Programming Routine: In our house, we keep talking about the shortage of everything and the adulteration of the food supply with increased industrialization and additives. We keep saying that this is the year that we will do more, more gardening, maybe some chickens as well. I can’t say 100% for sure that we are going to turn the corner this year, but we will miss the boat on this years harvest if we don’t start soon.

January 4, 2022 – New Year, New Plans

January 4, 2022 /

I won’t deny that I kind of checked out around Christmas time. Yes, I did some obligatory retrospectives and I think that there was a lot of value doing that, I also didn’t spend a lot of time looking ahead. I didn’t really want to, I wanted to make a fresh break.

Both last year and this year, I didn’t take any extra time off around the holidays.  Last year, I needed to work as much as possible.  This year, I didn’t have the time off to take.  I also happened to catch a sickness New Year’s Eve.  It was really mild, but I took the opportunity to just rest as much as I could (that is a story for another day).  

Now that I am feeling pretty much normal, rested (restless?) and the work week is starting, it is time to start getting serious about 2022.  What do I want to accomplish?  I am going to save most of that for myself this year.  But, I am going to talk about how I am going to go about things.

It is no secret that I dream of spending time on the range.  At the beginning of the year, I try to outline what I want to accomplish each month.  My going in proposition (or goal) is to try to get to the range once a month.  I have a running list of new things to work on so I have a supply of things that I attribute to each month.  It usually takes a little thought as well to orient hunting preparation before hunting season for instance.   

I do the same thing with my other projects.  In fact, they go on the same list.  I am not so neurotic that I schedule everything, but this is the basic technique that I use to push what I want to do for the year.  Often times,  things get moved around or one thing gets priority over other things, like building my office for instance got priority of most every other project.

The process is more dynamic than once a year.  As things get shuffled around, the items that get displaced get shifted.  In other words, the process is ongoing throughout the year.  Occasionally, I also change my mind an remove things, but that is pretty rare.  When that happens, it is something that perennially gets pushed and I ultimately decide that the project I really don’t want to do, hence the reason it gets pushed in the first place.

For example, I have had something on my list since 2005.  Under the kitchen crawlspace, there is a beam that supports the floor joists.  That beam has a post that rests on a foundation of a couple of bricks in the dirt (I am not sure if there is an actual footer or not).  The post itself is not treated and I highly suspect the post is taking water every year in the wet season.  The floor also has some sag to it.  It was one of my goals to jack the floor and raise or replace the post so that it does not eventually rot.  It is my belief that it is only a matter of time before this is a bigger problem.  but it is not enough of a problem that I have been motivated to do it.

There are other problems, like the foundation has failed around the kitchen.  We also have penciled around the idea of a kitchen remodel.  For those reasons plus it is not going to be fun or easy that project has been reprioritized.  Even though it is a matter of time before there is problem in that specific scenario, ultimately there is a larger project somewhere on the horizon.  After pushing this project forward over ten years, I removed it from my list a couple of years ago.

End Your Programming Routine:  There are no hard an fast rules, in fact I don’t schedule all year long because I know that things are going to change.  I have eight to ten months penciled out depending on what task I am looking at.  This is a way that I sort of guide how I want things to go as the year moves on.  Anytime is a good time to start something like this, I choose this time because it is a natural transition.

 

August 16, 2021 – The Little Pastel Book

August 16, 2021 /

Last Friday I passed a milestone. I have a journal that I have been writing in for fourteen years. It is something that I do periodically often weekly, occasionally there were 6 month gaps like last summer when I was busy sun up to sun down. I guess what it has become is kind of a log of what I have done and what I am planning to do with some thoughts and feeling mixed in.

If we go back in the time machine and put myself where I was fourteen years ago, my second son had yet to be born. I was working three jobs ago and I wasn’t happy then either (see a theme here). This was the pre-podcast era for me as well so I was listening to talk radio on AM and I was reading several books on the Dave Ramsey reading list. You can see my references to Dan Miller’s “40 Days to the Work you Love”.

I was going to use this journal to document my thoughts about what I was reading, develop my goals and work on progress as it relates to those goals. This is sort of how it devolved into documenting my work over the years. I will say that it has sometimes been useful. I have been able to figure out when I did the last oil change or a general time frame of events.

One interesting use that I had was to look back on trends. 6-16-14. As predicted, not much has changed. I did move wood out of the garage last weekend. That means that things are pretty much prepped to finish the garage re-org. Vacation was pretty awesome and did the trick of relaxing the mind. I need to do an oil change on the pick-up within the the next few weekends. Serious travel is about to begin and summer will be over. It is a bit disappointing and I am seriously reconsidering my career choice.

When I was in the diminishing days of my last job, I was reading what I wrote through the years. I realized that my first mention of job unhappiness was in 2012. I started wondering why I was still working somewhere seven years later where I was still unhappy and that is what ultimately made me pull the trigger on putting in my notice. I figured it was just as insane to quit without a plan as it was to continue to work in misery.

Most things that I write are not really private, but they are personal. I have noted births, deaths, projects and statuses in story form. In some ways, this blog is a continuation or expansion of that. My last entry in this book was going to summarize my journey over the last fourteen years. That was of course interrupted with the passing of my father-in-law so I needed to get that documented instead.

My son gave me a new journal for Christmas so I am about to get started in this one. I don’t think that I will do anything differently. I will probably keep doing it the way that it has been going. I suppose it is another form of therapy for me. I don’t really plan on what I am going to say, I just say things about where I am at at the moment.

End Your Programming Routine: I am not saying that this is for everyone. I think that it helps me keep perspective on life and a record of what I have done. It is part of that self reflection kind of time that I spend. Once I have sorted out where I am at, I can make plans to move forward.

May 12, 2021 – One Track Mind

May 12, 2021 /

Yesterday I revealed my affliction. I am in quarantine until Sunday by request of the county. I definitely have stuff that I want to get done and not over do it at the same time. So, I will keep going on my office project.

I have three walls up and I don’t have enough lumber to finish the fourth wall. As much as I want to finish the framing, I can’t leave to get what I need. Fortunately, I can shift gears and work on other aspects. To wait it out, I am going do the following things.

  1. Box in the HVAC duct with rigid insulation
  2. Start the rough wiring, High and Low voltage
  3. Cobble leftover rigid insulation into the bays that are less than 14 1/2″ in width, but after the wiring
  4. Start working on the door. Remove door from the jamb and all hardware. Clean-up loose and flaking stain. Sand and prime door. Cut to height.

I am going to keep it short today for a number of reasons. But there are some pictures of my progress so far.

End Your Programming Routine: Always have contingency plans in your back pocket because you never know when your circumstances will change. As I have been trying to cashflow this project, I had already had thoughts about overrunning my current material stock until the next payday. My real surprise is that I have moved much quicker through the framing than I estimated. I am going about twice as fast as I projected.

October 8, 2020 – ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

October 8, 2020 /

“Shoot or don’t shoot”. No, I am not talking tactics, I am talking the price and availability of ammunition at the moment.

These magazines have been loaded since March. It was my plan to do this next range trip before all the pandemic hullabaloo, before the six month remodeling project and before ammunition disappeared and the price skyrocketed. In fact, I bought the Sig Sauer ammunition pictured in March.

I have been periodically checking local stores for inventory of ammunition. There are shotgun shells, most typical hunting calibers and 17HMR rimfire ammunition available. What is not available is any handgun ammunition except some really weird ones like 50AE and no rifle ammunition that fits semi-automatics and no 22 rimfire.

On a whim, I checked an online source for 5.56×45 and a case (of 1000) was available at $724. That is $0.72/round and that in a bulk price. For the individual packages, it is running from $0.80-1.00/ round. The last time I bought any I paid $0.33/round. So, I guess on the one hand it is available just maybe it is not at the price I want to pay.

My grand plan was to rely on reloading as my ammunition source. During the last run (2012-2015) primers were impossible to find. Good news for me is that I have plenty of primers but not bullets. I do have some powder but it definitely depends on what I am reloading. I think I could reload 30-06 for the rest of my life but I have almost no powder for .223 Remington.

What I really am weighing here is should I shoot some of the ammunition I have given it’s scarcity and my scarcity of money? Don’t get me wrong, I am not empty in either case but it is preparedness mindset. Well, I have decided that I am going to and here are my reasons.

One – I have owned this rifle since 2015 and only fired it once. This was kind of an impulse purchase. To tell you the truth, I was convinced that the Hillary Clinton was going to win the presidential election and that I would lose the opportunity to make this kind of purchase in the future. It turns out that I can get caught up in ‘tin foil hat-ness’ too.

Two – it has an optic on it that has never been sighted in. Having a tool that isn’t calibrated or has unknown accuracy is not reliable or useful for the intended purpose. I thought that it might be useful to start my son out hunting on because of the low recoil and adjustability. It turns out, he can shoot my old rifle that I started on just fine and it is sighted in well. Nevertheless, I want to have some confidence that I can hit where I am aiming.

Three – Despite the fact that I have only shot this rifle once, I have made some modifications and changes. At this point, I do not know if it is functional or reliable as a result. This is the biggest reason that I want to take it out now. Swapping out parts can have some pretty negative consequences. It is best to find out before you really want to use it.

I do feel like I have some compelling reasons to shoot up some of my hard to acquire at this time ammunition. Throughout all of the shortages, it seems like shotgun ammunition has always been consistently available. Probably a good time to focus on trap, skeet and sporting clays (as well as hunting).

September 23, 2020 – Fall is here

September 23, 2020 /

It feels like there are a lot of half done or almost done things around here. I have got apples in buckets waiting to get canned, I am halfway through last month’s book, the dog’s invisible fence wire is laying on the ground, the trailer is almost filled with a load to go to Habitat for Humanity, my leaf blower is kind of working, my dirt pile is waiting to get moved away from the house, the shop is almost cleaned up from my last project and I am in the middle of troubleshooting a new/used CD carousel as examples.

I have said multiple times that this is the harvest time and it very well can be the most busy time of year. Obviously, some things have a greater sense of urgency than others. For instance, the apples need to get dealt with in the next day or two. Items outside would be better served doing now before the weather turns. We are expecting rain for the next four days but we should get some nice weather after that. Temporarily, it seems like the outside to-do’s need to wait.

Sometimes I suffer from too many interests and a focus on the wrong priorities. Take for instance the CD player, I bought that on a whim at Goodwill and I figured at eight dollars, it would be no sweat if it really didn’t work. Well, it almost works, I replaced the belt to open the drawer and with a little finger pressure it opens and closes but not by itself. This leads me into a spiral of research and more testing. I keep thinking one more quick test before I move onto other things and pretty soon, those quick things add up to real time and certainly focus on the wrong things.

I also tend to be very single minded. I focus on one project to the exclusion of most everything else. Take for instance my remodeling project. That was everyday, all day. I suppose some of my urgency was knowing that was the kind of effort necessary to get it done it a timely fashion. However, I really did prioritize it over many things, including eating at times. I definitely couldn’t relax knowing how much work was to be done.

One thing that has usually worked for me is keeping a list of things that need to get done. That list get’s prioritized and then steps are broken up into subtasks on a calendar. I have had projects get stalled for years sometimes like when I built my potting bench. After I finally got tired of the lumber being in my way, I broke down the remaining to dos and assigned tasks into daily achievable milestones on the calendar. I gave myself about a month to finish and I completed the project in two weeks.

The advantage to using a calendar format is that it also integrates planning into all the other life commitments as well making a more realistic plan for completion. I usually only do it intensively for a couple of weeks out or the duration of one project otherwise it is too cumbersome to shift around on an Excel document frequently. The disadvantage is that it is time intensive. One of the reasons that I don’t use this format as much as I would like is that it takes a lot of time to plan successfully. I could probably spend thirty minutes a day going over this file if I tried. So, I try to set a rough plan for the week and adjust it next week.

I have been using this file since 2003. My active use waxes and wanes depending on how much I have to do and how much planning time I spend. There are times when I open it every day and there are times when I open it once every month. I just depends. I guess that this is my version of a project management program.

I feel like this would be a good mobile app to build, I would certainly use it. I would also be interested in hearing about other productivity tools. Let me know if there is something better out there with goalsetting and project management. As you can see, I have a lot of work to do.