Day 30 retrospective.

It has been a while since my last entry. Friday I spent the whole day with a computer game, then had a great night with my colleagues at lønningspils. Sat. was more game, fixing T's CD drive then trying to plan the renovation on this house, then more game. Sunday we went to Sweden to catch up with some friends while we did a bit of shopping. Monday was spent running around on property maintenance issues. During this time I have been thinking about my goals the next few months, and have some observations. Firstly I have not come as far as I wanted. Secondly is that my planning so far has not been adequate. To address this going forward I need to come up with some new ideas. Today I will come up with some improvements and post back later.

Day 25 SAN

The main event for today was a welcome/ congratulations meeting and seminar. It was an odd feeling attending while I was on flex leave, but very rewarding to be able to hear some of my company's highest country leaders sharing some of their insights and experiences. One of the key take homes was how important networking is, which again was a bit odd as someone that didn't attend either NTNU or BI, but school was only one of the links mentioned. :) NTO Has been a great resource for me in this area, and with the high level of Norwegians studying in Australia, I met some more people that had studied down there. I feel I put my foot in my mouth a few times, but overall it was a great evening.

Day 24

Yesterday I gave t a lift down to the city and did some food shopping and other household purchases on the way home, by the time I got home it was 14:00, which only left limited time for blender, although I did sign up for a google apps account. Today I Worked a bit more from my first blender book, but the changes in 2.5 have made some of the material wrong, making it more challenging to follow the tutes. Tomorrow morning I am going to revise and write up some long term hours. I think the main thing missing with my selfstudy is some more concrete lesson planning. One thing I didn't count on was that with cooking and extra Alex and T taxi duties I only have about 6 hrs in the day, it sure is different to self study before Alex came in the scene. ;)

Day 22 I suck at maths.

But admitting you have a problem is the first step to resolving it. :) I spent a great morning with basic algebra, solving for X with various exercises. I have over the years forgotten so many of the basics, but I really am enjoying finding the holes in my knowledge then fixing them. The morning went by all to quick, and in the afternoon it was time for blender. As you can see, I didn't really achieve all that much, but there are plenty of things going on that you can't see in this picture. I practiced and double checked lots of the hot keys, I used various selections, and I also used both mirroring and spin modifiers. Tomorrow morning I will try to make something a bit more, well a bit more. It's 8:30, Terese is out, time to start playing Dragon Age!

Day 21 Sunday planning.

I have been looking a bit at setting up dad's site on google apps, it looks like it should be possible to move the whole site, and give him free email, but they don't exactly telegraph those possibilities. Other blogs or sites I want to set up are ones for monitors, blender, maths, dump winnings and perhap others... I like the idea of removing/ retiring drupal and just linking to these other sites from my URL. With sites.google.com It even offers free hosting that probably would cover that. Living in the cloud certainly makes some interesting free options available for people that can get their heads around all the possible offerings out there. Other than a bit of research it was a pretty quiet weekend, I was out splitting the stump 8am Saturday, and by the time terese came out a few hours later it was small enough to get in the car, so it's all cleared out! Now the only project outside I have left to do is to rake a bit more small roots up and to put some more tiles underneath the bins so they don't get stuck in the ice over winter. Basically all ready ( finally ) to huddle inside on the computers and do some solid hours on blender and maths. It seems both subjects are going to take me longer than I have to master, but I still expect to have built plenty of competency when time is up. Well, off to sleep now, see what things i can accomplish the coming week. :)

Day 19 finally!

The winter tires were not yet on the car this morning, so Terese and Alex had to bus it today, I got up with them, and was able to get my math on finally. Very basic revision today, but I want to get the basics solid before continuing. I am thinking of creating a few different blogs for various themes. Doing this rather than using a dedicated machine or one blog seems to make sense. After the math morning I changed the tires and chipped some more off the stump, it is small enough now to move easily, and hopefully will be liftable within a few more sessions. I still have not put as much time into blender or my maths studies, but at least now a large chunk of obstacles are out of the way.

Day 18 sickie?

I think today gets written off as a sick day. I took two loads of roots to the tip, backfilled the hole and evened out most of it. I was all done by about 10:30, but by the time I came in to start on the days real activities the cold I have made it difficult to be motivated to learn new things. Chance of snow is predicted for tomorrow, so it looks like the garden was done just in time.

I was able to tidy up the open monitor downstairs and even do some basic blender tutorials, so despite missing my morning goal the day wasn't totally unproductive.

Day 17 just dirt remains.

The stump came up today, although now it will take a bit of effort to get rid of it, way to big to lift by myself, even though I have been able to move it up near the car park. I will quickly replace the dirt tomorrow morning, and take a boot load full of roots to the tip, but after that i am looking forward to an inside day.

Day 16 love it when a plan comes together.

As predicted not too much done today, I renewed my IEEE membership, walked terese to work in the arvo, bussed home with Alex, then did some planning and monitor work once A went to sleep. I now have a loose plan for the next two weeks, with some gaps and some fixed events. After doing a reasonable amount of mapping out my weeks I hit the monitors. As I was pulling apart #1 I noticed a loose connection. Reinserting it resulted in a functioning monitor! Gotta love the easy fixes. No easy fix for #2, yet. It is suffering from a white screen, documentation is sparse, but white screen points to the main card being faulty, rather than inverter or ps. A google search revealed a service manual, but no replacement boards. I might be able to find the one faulty component, but I am not optimistic.

Day 15 rock done now tree, still no Blender.

After dropping Alex and Terese off to work I did some work on the stump in the middle of the garden. With a bootload full of roots i went to the tip. At the recycling area there I found some lego and a better chair for the basement. Once I got home I was going to start inside, but then decided that I would push on with the stump. I dug and sawed and cut for another three hours. I was pretty beat the rest of the day, but I feel making the active choice to keep at it was a small positive step, in that I need to focus on a single task for an extended period rather than context switching more than once a day. In the afternoon I also realized that I need to have exercise part of my day in the afternoons if I need to do "thinking stuff" for the other part of the day - I was pretty wrecked after all that garden work. Terese is working a nightshift tomorrow, so we will probably get up to something together in the morning. It is not brilliant that I am now over two weeks in and have yet to start on blender, or put in serious math time. I have definitely achieved some other worthy things instead for the house, but not for my studies. The one thing I will do tomorrow is plan out every day for the next two weeks. Then we'll see if I can then stick to the plan.

Day 14 in retrospective.

As i write this i am winding up a nice weekend with my family. This post was started on iPhone and now I am finishing on the iPad, will pics work?

Anyway.. End of week two, now the test exam is out of the way I am more free in how I manage my time. Although I have not gotten into the planning habit properly yet, this is still a big goal. I knew that would be something to work on during this time. I still have not sat down and done any solid work on maths or blender, but this week should break the drought. I had a read of the pre calc book last night, and it looks great, just what I had in mind. Not sure what I will get up to tomorrow yet, testing of two of my monitors showed some problems, so they will have to be opened up at some stage to get the part lists. Also if weather allows there is still a bit to do outside, one thing is for sure, there will be plenty of inside days later in winter.

Day 12 Glad it's over.

I got into work by about 8:30, and spent the next half hour cramming for the test test. The others seemed to think the exam was hard, but I think I did pretty well. We won't know for weeks how we all went. Once I got home I was straight on to rock cutting, with hammer drill and grinder. It is slow going, but I am definitely making some progress. Now the test test is done I want to finish with the rocks so I can get onto maths and blender.

Day 11 Winter is coming

I had a productive day cramming for the test certification tomorrow. I am still not as ready as I would like to be, but consistently passing the practice exams, so it should be ok. I noticed on the weather forecast that we are having freezing temperatures tonight, so I am glad I have the garden where it is now, although I think I will be working out there tomorrow instead of getting into Blender as planned. The dummies books arrived today, so I have enough maths books to get into next week. After tomorrow my time is totally my own. Bring it!

Day 10 Pain.

I spent the morning studying, but the sun was shining too much to stay in all afternoon. All of the rocks are now moved, except for 4 monsters that need some jack hammer loving, maybe on the weekend. Tomorrow I will be working full time practice exams. Last night I was able to have a quick look through one of the math text books. It looks exactly like what I want, all the information is at the right level for me, I am looking forward to getting deeper into it next week. OK, only a tiny entry today, during the rock moving I managed to drop a rock on my left ring finger and it is slowly going more purple as the night progresses.

Day 9 The office, must be Tuesday.

Missed the deadline for Tuesday's entry, not much to report. I took the bus in to work, first time for me with Fornebu inside the new city zone. We had our last lesson on testing, and i handed back my locker key. I did a practice exam and only got 70%, a pass, but I still have plenty to work on his week. My maths books have started to come in, I got two from England yesterday, still waiting on three from USA and another two highly reviewed dummies books from Amazon UK. Wed I should be finishing the rock moving, as well as doing some more practice exams.

Day 8 Mondayitis?

No post yesterday, was much like Saturday without the shopping. Terese was home in the morning yesterday, with thanks to her looking after Alex I have moved well over half of the big rocks. We took some photos yesterday and today, but there's not really anything exciting about a big pile of rocks unless you were the ones moving them.

Today I again have not done much apart from house cleaning and cooking. Terese was home after her night shift, so studywise I didn't get up to much. I have typed up about half of my Testing notes and possibly will do some more later today. I will be heading off to work tomorrow around lunchtime to the last joint learning session before the exam on Friday. I am wishing I studied a bit harder earlier, but I guess that is normal. I have been hitting the books and there is still plenty of free time for me before the exam on friday. Nothing has arrived in the mail yet, despite still having plenty to do I hope it doesn't take all too long for the text books to come in.

Day 6 Daddy time.

Today was a good Father / Son day. Shopping, Gardening (moving rocks), Playing peek a boo, Some TV, then an early night for him. It seems I finally was able to find out how to wear him out, all it took was his own wheelbarrow and a multi ton pile of rocks. I got some parts for my monster monitor mount(those free monitors keep costing), some screws to fix the whipper snipper, and managed to change the headlight bulb. I have been really slacking off all evening, just veging out in front of the TV, but after moving a few barrow loads of rocks feel like I am going to sleep well tonight. The weather tomorrow is looking pretty average, maybe I will try to get Alex's machine up and running downstairs.

Day 5 end of week one.

Same pattern as yesterday, I worked on the ISTQB material in the morning, and as the weather was fine worked a bit in the garden in the arvo. I finished the test material, so Monday is revision time and I will go to work for a session on Tuesday. The garden was also productive, I cleared the area for the rocks and started moving them. I regained another few square meters of grass from the jungle, looking forward to having this done before snow fall.

Overall the first week has been ok, I have got quite a few things done around the house, I have ordered textbooks for my math studies, and had plenty of time for the certification studies. Next week I want to get started with some blender tutes, that was the only thing I missed out on this week.

Math can wait 'til after the test exam next Friday.

Terese is working this weekend, so it'll be just Alex and I for a change. Terese suggests I get Alex moving rocks tomorrow, the weather looks fine, so I might give him a trial run and see how he goes.

Day 4

Better day than yesterday, up early enough to have breakfast before taking A&T to work. Home by 8:30 and worked solidly on Testing material till about 13:00. Study wise I worked through the rest of black box testing, and then all of white box testing. After lunch I made a roast for dinner, seems like we will be eating it for a while, heaps left. I then did some garden work and more brainstorming over the renovation. I also got the new Wheelbarrow assembled, wheely bin cleaned and decided where the rocks should be moved to this year.

Not that any of this makes for good reading to the new reader, but it's only day 4, improving my writing skills is part of the process. ;). With taxi and chef duties I don't seem to be getting as many hours for projects as I wanted, but things are happening ok. Terese and Alex going solo tomorrow morning as I will be picking up Alex early in the afternoon. Tomorrow I should get a chunk of test management covered then it's just tools and revision to go next week. Ordered a crazy amount of maths books last night, as well as crysis 2, Paul, a bazinger t shirt for me and a cookie monster t shirt for Alex. Seems finally memorizing my play password will prove to be an expensive feat. See you tomorrow!

Day 3 Off the rails

Not a productive day. Missed breakfast when i dropped terese and alex off, from there went shopping and got some hardware for one of the outside projects, i was home by 10:45. Only read 20 pages of my testing book. The rest of the day went on ... Don't know really. A friend posted a great link: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/BrainBytesBackBunsTheProgrammersPriorities.aspx . Very true, and perfect timing. From tomorrow I will try a bit harder to get my environment conducive to productivity. Including proper breakfast!

Day 2 testing and CV writing

With Terese back to work and Alex at daycare i was able to trial the two things a day work style today. It went pretty well. I am at page 100 of the ISTQB foundations book and at this rate I have about 6hrs more needed to finish it, assuming uniform complexity. The afternoon was spent redoing my cv to the latest company standard. Last time I redid it to the newest standard was only two months ago, so hopefully this one will last longer - at least the duration of my flex leave. Tomorrow is more test studies, and ironing out some more days in the schedule. The weather looks ok, so I think bookwork might have to be put off a little to give me some time in the garden before it is covered by snow.

Day 1

My better half Terese had a free day, so not so much done today towards the master plan. Still, we had a good scavenging visit, and in addition to two new seats for Alex and some kitchen things I got some nice boards for the home office (one pictured below). I have set up a rolling two week methodology and even populated a few days worth of activities. The activity grain is going to be two things a day, should be an ok balance between planning and complexity. Tomorrow I study for my upcoming testing certification, and finalise my updated CV in the latest company template. Wed will be more test work, then fleshing out the backlog and figuring out how much I am likely do be able to get done in the first three months.

This will be my 2 weekly plan. Terrible iPhone 3GS camera - I miss my Nokia!

Day 0

The key to achieving something of value out of my time off will be self discipline. I need a way to focus the tangle of potential projects into a clear list of possible projects. Happily I recently completed an introduction to an agile methodology at my work that may help. Aimed at slightly bigger teams than one, scrum is not a perfect fit but I think I can borrow some of the concepts to help me. I have a testing certification to study for in two weeks time, that is goal number one. By that time I hope to have established a pattern of daily blogging and a clear idea of what projects can be achieved in the next three months.