Tag: reading

March 20, 2025 – Old Habits Die Harder

March 20, 2025 /

I had to do it. When I first heard that the name of Die Hard 2 was Die Harder, I couldn’t believe it. That is the stupidest title I have ever heard. Now I guess that I will make fun of myself a little bit today.

When I think about who I thought I would be at say 15 and who I am now at 50, it seems light years away. The truth is, I found it difficult to really imagine what my life would be ‘when I grew up’. I know that I didn’t imagine that I would be publicly writing everyday and enjoying it. Likewise, I didn’t think that I would be the primary cook with frequent fancy embellishments.

As I have written about in the past, my life changed fairly drastically between 15 and 18. At 15, I had yet to get engaged in sports. I learned that I could push myself beyond my wildest capabilities and really impacted my psyche. Nevertheless, there are still some things that predate all of that.

One of my habits is reading. I used to see how many books I could read in a week. I was constantly at the library checking out books to read. It started off with series books like The Hardy Boys. Then, I moved on to specific authors like Dean Koontz, Steven King and Tom Clancy. There were a lot of others along the way as well.

Of course I still read but I don’t spend all day Saturday doing it anymore. In fact, I try to set a goal of a chapter a day. I probably only hit that twenty-five percent of the time. It would be a rare day that I read more than a chapter however. Probably as long as I can see, I will probably be reading. A book is typically the first thing that I pack when I am getting ready for a trip.

When I was a young teenager, I wanted my life to be hunting in the fall and camping and fishing in the summer. I did a lot of camping as a youth and even more as a Boy Scout. Honestly, what got me soured on camping was the amount of stuff we have to take to get the whole family out. Trust me, I want to be comfortable but I don’t want to take days of packing and putting away.

I’ve got one summer trip like that in me a year. But my recent effort into getting me geared up for backpacking has actually gotten me excited to go camping again. I used to feel guilty about the thought of going alone but my wife takes trips without me all the time. I would love it if she would want to go and I hope that she does but I am just going to start doing it myself.

The fishing has really suffered. I try to do it at least once a year but that is so sad. Can you imagine wanting to do it every weekend as a youth to trying to make time as an adult? Part of why I even do that is because I feel like I paid for the license I owe it to myself to not waste it. Maybe this camping renewal will get me more outings this year.

As to hunting, I thought that I would try for anything that I was allowed when I had the freedom to make my own decisions. I have never done that and probably won’t at this point. Just like fishing, I try to buy a tag and go out at least once. Man it is hard to schedule stuff like hunting in when there are family dinners and sports activities and trap and all that on the schedule.

Even though we spent a lot of time hunting, we didn’t recreationally shoot much. We didn’t have a good place to do it. So, we really didn’t. I guess that this is the one thing that I actually do more of as an adult than I did when I was younger. I pay for a range membership, I volunteer coach for the trap team so I have positioned myself to be around it as much as I can afford.

While I don’t get to the range enough either, I shoot air rifles almost daily. It is a small little thing that I can do that is inexpensive and accessible. In a way, I feel like it is my connection to my youth dreams.

End Your Programming Routine: My dad said that you have to make time if you want to do something. I don’t disagree with that, I am pretty guilty of thinking I want to do this or that and not sharing. Then all of a sudden, my calendar is filled with things that are not what I really want to do. Ultimately, I feel like my commitments as a father and a husband supersede my own desires. This likely stems from my youth when my dad prioritized his hunting and fishing. As I said, old habits die harder.

January 3, 2024 – What Does Time Off Look Like?

January 3, 2024 /

At one point in my life, I had watched every episode of This Old House. I suppose that this is one of my few, guilty pleasure TV habits. I lost track of the show on the switch from analog to digital broadcasting format in 2010. This is because I used to record the show when it was live and watch it later at my convenience.

Around 2016, I realized that it was being streamed and so I started picking the show up again with the episodes that I could. Not every show or season was viewable. In fact, the show had significant technical issues like not enough server bandwidth and clunky commercial interruptions that sometimes never came back. I fought through it picking off hours to watch and restarting.

Somewhere around 2020, I just forgot about it. I think that I was hot and heavy remodeling then I transitioned into driving for Amazon with an irregular schedule and then I started working again and my free time was devoted to writing to AltF4 as well as all the other things I needed to do. Right before my Christmas break, I remembered that I was years behind. A large part of my break was binge watching the last four years of This Old House episodes.

I now have a gap of seasons (I think). Some of my gap years are behind the paywall and so I remember things about certain projects but I can’t actually view them to confirm. I don’t know if I caught an episode here or there during normal broadcast and now I am misremembering things. I have a feeling that I am going to pay for a short subscription so that I can catch back up.

Not all of my time was spent in front of a screen. I did a lot of cooking, reading, and something that is a small family tradition. We usually do some sort of puzzle. This year we bought a very large and expensive Lego set that we spent several evenings building. I also got my electrical run so that I can move my keezer and get started in earnest with my wine cellar project this year.

Home improvement was definitely on the mind. I had the siding in front of my house removed. We have had a leak in the front picture window every since the siding was done in 2015. It has gone on long enough that I was beginning to worry about the damage that it was causing. This actually occurred before Christmas but I had already had many articles queued before my break. I also plan on discussing this more in detail soon.

What I didn’t do was a lot of thinking about AltF4. This was by design. When I need to take a break, I need a real break. I have learned this about myself over the years, I do not give up easily. Because of that, I tend to keep after things too long. That is to say we all reach a point of diminishing returns and it is necessary to take a step back. I have solve many a programming problem in the shower after a late night of working much longer than I should have.

End Your Programming Routine: My break was closer to two weeks than one since I had most of the week before Christmas already written and published ahead of time. I don’t know if that is actually enough time because right now I feel charged and ready to go. That feeling waxes and wanes throughout the year and hopefully this isn’t a veneer. That being said, happy to be back and ready to go.

February 13, 2023 – Books and Reading

February 13, 2023 /

Yes, I am super late today. Let’s just say that I enjoyed my time watching the Super Bowl but not so much the day after. Anyway, I am finally feeling alive again. This isn’t my best work I have congestion and there is a bit of an echo in my recording. I need to try and record in a different location so that I don’t get so much echo. But it is good enough for now.

Today I am talking about books again. It is really me kind of working through my what my Friday book reviews look like long term. I think that they are going to stay pretty much the same this year but I don’t see them going on forever without some tweaks. I haven’t completely made up my mind yet so everything is subject to change of course.

End Your Programming Routine: I won’t steal my podcast thunder but like everything I do, I question the status quo today. I suppose that if I knew the answers to my philosophical questions then I probably wouldn’t have much of an argument. You listen and you tell me if I am off base with what I feel about classics.