One hundred what?
To move forward on my goal to get healthier, I have started doing two programs that will get me in the habit of exercising: One hundred pushups and Two hundred sit-ups. Both of these programs take you steadily towards the goal of being able to do one hundred pushups and two hundred sit-ups over the course of six weeks. I have just finished the two week mark on both of them. For a desk-jockey that has not consistently done any form of exercise in eight years, both programs are tough, even in the early weeks.
Each program starts you out doing five sets, three days a week. After the two week mark, I am doing 30 pushups total and 48 sit-ups. Since each program is only three days a week, I am staggering them so that I do pushups one day and sit-ups the next. Sunday, I get to rest from both programs.
Now, I realize that just doing pushups and sit-ups will not make me any healthier. Sure, it will build my upper body strength some and strengthen my core, but it is not going to help me lose and weight and it will not work on my spare tire at all. Ultimately, that is not the point. The point is, it is getting me in the habit of doing some exercise. I really have no excuse to skip doing these; I just get up in the morning and do them before I do anything else. It does not matter if it is raining or cold outside; all I need is a bit of floor space. The key is to make exercise a part of my routine.
With the upcoming, beautiful spring weather, I am going to integrate some cardio into my exercise routine. Starting Monday, I am going to begin working on the American Running Association's 12-week Walk/Run Program. This will be a little more difficult because it will be a greater time commitment and I will have to work around the weather. My goal is to do my pushups or sit-ups and then head out to walk or run. In a couple of weeks, I hope to post a positive update.
Task Management – Ubiquitous Capture
What do I use to get things done? My memory is garbage, so I have to use lots of tools to help me keep things straight. I have gotten into a daily routine; this is the process I go through to keep everything straight and to encourage me to get tasks done. It is a modified version of GTD as described in Getting Things Done
The most important part of my process is ubiquitous capture — if I have a thought, I had better get it written down somewhere so that I can do something about it in the future. Currently, Evernote is my tool of choice for ubiquitous capture. I have the Evernote application installed on my iPhone so I can quickly dump text or photos (or voice, which I do not use) into Evernote when I am not at a computer. Likewise, I can use the Evernote desktop applications for Windows and Mac OS X to dump text notes into whether I am at work or at home. Additionally, I have Evernote extensions plugged into Firefox and Outlook so that I can save snippets of webpages and emails straight into Evernote. Lastly, I have written a very basic extension to Emacs that hooks the wonderful RememberMode into Evernote so that I minimize the amount of time it takes me to stash something away while I am editing code. That is the key to how I use Evernote — record something as quickly as possible and get back to what I was doing. I will deal with it later.
When I add something to Evernote, it goes straight into my default notebook, the Inbox notebook. It will not stay there long; generally just until I can review my notes in the evening. When I process the notes that have been stashed into my Inbox, I decide what to do with each note based on the type of note. I have three basic types of notes:
- Informational Notes — if a note is purely informational, I move it into my Archive notebook and possibly tag it with some metadata to help me find it again. Since I can search Evernote from anywhere, I can always retrieve things that I have archived.
- Immediate Actions — if a note is something that I can do immediately, I go ahead and do it. For example, I weigh myself first thing in the morning and record my weight in Evernote because that is more convenient that pulling out the laptop and putting it in the spreadsheet. When I process my Inbox, I take the weight and log it in a spreadsheet for further tracking.
- Projects/Tasks — if a note is something more involved than an immediate action, I need to record it in my task tracking software either as a project or as an action on a project. For example, two weeks ago I was attempting to calculate some statistics on task data and really struggled with it. So, I stashed a note in Evernote of "Refresh myself on statistics". Obviously, this is something that will take a little while to do, so it has become a project in my task tracking software.
I process my Inbox every night; an empty Inbox is the goal of this review.
What is my workflow for managing projects and tasks in my task tracking software? That will be the subject for next time.
Task Management Tools
I am more than willing to admit it; I am horrible at managing tasks on my own. Some people are able to remember what they need to do and where they need to be all on their own. I am not one of those people. I depend on technology to be my memory. It all started so innocently back in college. I needed a reminder of when my classes were and what assignments I had due. So, I purchased a Handspring running PalmOS. I was able to keep track of my calendar, my tasks, and my contacts; everything that you would expect a PDA to do. Life was good.
Then, I started to notice that my cell phone and my PDA were bulky. I hated to carry both of them together. Plus, my address book on the PDA was always getting out of sync with the address book on the phone. I thought, "You know, if they would just put a cell phone and a PDA together, life would be good again." And lo, I discovered the Palm Treo. It was very expensive, so I just made due with what I had and gradually the PDA got less and less use until I had been working for a few years and could afford to get a Palm Treo. Now, I had my calendar, my tasks, and my contacts all together AND I could make phone calls with the same device using the same address book that I synced to my computer! Life was good again.
Then, I started to notice that my Treo and my iPod were bulky. I hated to carry both of them together. I needed the life-line that was the Treo, but I really got used to listening to music while I worked. So, I thought, "You know, if Apple would just put a cell phone, PDA, and iPod together, life would be good again." And lo, Apple did just that and released the iPhone. It was very expensive, so I made due with what I had. Finally, Apple came out with a version that had a lower up-front cost, so I jumped on that and purchased an iPhone 3G. Now, I had my calendar, my tasks, my contacts, my music, my email, the Internet, AND I could make phone calls with the same device. Life was good again.
Then, I started to notice that I had lost the ability to easily track my tasks using the iPhone. It took too long to interrupt my train of thought to pull out the iPhone and enter in appointments and tasks using the iPhone interface. Ideally, I really wanted to be able to just capture information quickly and come back and enter it in at my leisure. So, I signed up for Evernote and installed its iPhone application. Plus, Evernote also has Windows and Mac clients which make it even easier to stash information.
Finally, I became dis-enlightened with the iPhone task-tracking application that I was using. Once again, it just took too long to enter information into it. I could purchase an expensive Mac client that would wirelessly sync with it, but the keyword here is expensive. So, I decided to give Tasks a try. It has some warts, but it is the best solution that I have used so far. Plus, it is a web application, so I can enter information into it from my desktop, my laptop, or my iPhone.
Next time, I will go over my work-flow and explain just how all of these tools work for me.
Playing in the Warmth
Except for today, and probably tomorrow, it has been warm enough for me to break out the grill and cook out some. Emily likes to take those opportunities to play on her slide in the backyard. We have a few pictures of her sliding in the album.
Occasionally we go out to eat for dinner. In this picture, we had gone to Red Robin. Emily carried on for 15 minutes wanting a balloon that they give away to the kids. Finally, we relented and got one for her. She went NUTS with it!
You can see some more pictures in the At Play album.
Iowa Supreme Court overturns same-sex marriage ban
On Friday, the Iowa Supreme Court found a law banning same-sex marriages to be unconstitutional. Good for Iowa! Hopefully, rational minds will prevail there and this court decision will be allowed to stand. Unlike Iowa, Alabama passed the Sanctity of Marriage Amendment in 2006. Although I voted against this, 81% of my fellow Alabamians voted for it so it was easily able to pass. At the time, I tried to reason through why so many of the residents of my state are against same-sex marriage, but was never really able to come to any conclusions. So, in light of the Iowa decision, I decided to do a little research and see if I could figure out why people are so against same-sex marriage.
The New York Times article made a reference to traditional marriage, so I hit up Wikipedia to see what it had to say about traditional marriage. Here is a summary of the arguments for traditional marriage and against same-sex marriage:
- Marriage has historically been defined as between a man and woman, thus it needs to be protected because that is how it has always been defined.
- Marriage between a man and a woman must be preserved for the children! Children need stable homes with two parents to become happy, productive members of society!
- Same-sex marriages would erode religious freedoms and encourage rampant homosexuality throughout the country.
- Same-sex marriage is unnecessary because the homosexuals can just decide not to be that way anymore.
OK, so my summary was slightly facetious, but it is only because I do not really consider any of these to be valid reasons. I think that the real reason is fear of people who are different.
Redefining institutions to correct social injustice is something that should be strived for, not shied away from. Just because slavery existed for hundreds of years in this country did not mean that is should be perpetuated (although that was one of the arguments for it at the time). Just because women and African-Americans had never had the right to vote in this country did not mean that they should not have the right to vote. So, why keep same-sex couples from marrying just because that is always the way it has been done?
The children issue is a sticky one. Now that Ashley and I have a child, I could not imagine raising one by myself; this is hard, people. However, people do it by themselves all the time and I greatly respect them for that. I believe that raising children is best done in a happy, loving home. Note, that happy, loving home could be with a single parent, two heterosexual parents, two homosexual parents, or a whole group of parents. If the parents love the child and the child loves the parents, I don't see the harm that can come of any of these households. I personally think that the more parents you have, the better off you are when it comes to raising kids. That way, when your kid is being a snot and irritating you, you can trade off with a parent that might not be quite so frustrated at the time.
I do not understand the "eroding religious freedoms" argument. I do not know of a group supporting same-sex marriage that says that your religion must allow same-sex couple to marry inside of your religion. This is a civil issue, not a religious issue. The government should not allow a ban on same-sex marriage; I do not care what your church allows or disallows inside its walls. If your church chooses not to allow same-sex couple to marry inside the church, then so be it. Additionally, the government allowing same-sex marriage does not mean you have to marry someone of your gender; same-sex marriage going on in your state is not going to make you gay.
No, I am pretty sure that the real reason people are against same-sex marriage is fear of people who are different, mixed with a bit of zealotry. So, if you are against same-sex marriage, try doing the following. Imagine you have found the perfect person that you want to spend the rest of your life with. For many of you, that is your spouse; for others, maybe you have just not found them yet. You love them with all of your heart and they love you back just as strongly. In fact, the two of you love each other so much that you want to get married and be together for as long as you live. Now, imagine that you are not allowed to marry, basically, because some other people just do not want you to be together. They do not think you belong together and, in fact, tell you that it is wrong that the two of you love each other. How do you feel now? None of you reading this would want this situation to happen to you; why would you want to put someone else through it?