Saturday, October 29, 2005

Contest! A Contest!

Ever since my sister won a trip to New Orleans (before the flood) I have been interested in entering contests. She entered just because someone told her to. She never did it before and ended up winning the grand prize. Go Figure. Isn't that always the way?

Well if you never enter contests - I'm telling you to do it now! You'll probably win.

If you want a list of contests this is a great site for it.

http://www.somewhereincanada.com

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Working Out

So I recently (umm...3 mos ago) purchased a membership...ok! ok! Renewed my membership to club fit (a local gym) for 2 years. I've gone there off and on...sort of. I won't go into the details of how often...suffice it to say at least 2 times a week...umm once a week....sometimes never.

Anand: "Ahhhhhhhhhh........" (long exhaled breath...followed by even longer pause, followed by spacing out for 5 minutes then thinking about time management)




So why don't I go to the gym as often as I would like? I am definitely interested in going, I forked out the money for the stinking membership...but why don't I go? I'll tell you why. It is because of my old arch nemesis....Time. He is always working against me.

So it is right now 10:00pm (MST) Oct-25-2005 and I'm going to the gym. I'll continue blogging when I get back!


I'M BACK!! Did you miss me? Now you have to...forget it!

In one and a half hours I was able to spend 30 minutes on the cross trainer and burn 300 calories. Pretty amazing considering the fact that 300 calories isn't very much and I probably put that on just by breathing. So what happened to the hour I was out of the house? Not a clue. Honestly. It must have been chewed up in the black hole that I like to call life.


I always end up going to the gym this late because it is the only time I seem to be able to go. Usually after I get home after work I eat a little and sit around for an hour trying to relax. But before you know it I'm back on the computer. You see I've got a little gig on the side that occupies most of my evenings developing software. It is a small, part-time thing but it is a great way to make extra money. I find that when I'm developing software I need to concentrate on what I'm doing for a fixed amount of time...usually 4 hours. If I'm in the zone I get lots done. Without this kind of focus I don't really accomplish enough. (I honestly wish it were like this at work!) So from 6-10 I'm working then I head out to the gym...only if I don't run into trouble during development, or have a problem that requires more time. If it is around 10:30pm I don't even bother going because club fit closes at 11:00pm. (Only the west-end location. The southside and northside locations are open 24hours. But I'm not prepared to drive for 45 minutes to an hour just to get in a 30 min workout!)

By the time I take a shower and settle down it's like 12:00am and I need to start thinking about getting to sleep!

Which brings me back to time. How to manage it? How to respect it? I haven't got a clue. But I'm interested in learning because it is very obvious to me I don't really know how. I don't have too many things going on in the evening so you would think I could always sqeeze in the workout but it doesn't always workout that way.

Anand: "Ahhhhh....."

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Debugging

Ok, so I spent the better part of my day debugging a problem that I just couldn't figure out. Do you ever get into those types of funks? You see a problem, you have an inkling of what the solution could be but you just can't figure it out. So you keep digging...not knowing that your day is slowly, steadily.... just...slipping....away.

You know you should stop but you end up wanting to try one more thing. Pretty soon it is 4:30 and time to go home! So at exactly 4:30 you try something really simple and it works!

Why oh why couldn't I have tried that in the morning. I was thinking about it but I thought:

"too simple anand."

- Arghh