Lover of trading, tacos, 3D/AR/VR, cryptos, and most things Japanese

I had a client meeting this morning where we went over the web site work I’ve been doing for him for the past few months, and it looks like everything I’ve done, for very little money, has been for naught. I’ve migrated his site from Joomla to WordPress, integrated Jreviews after much dealing with their support, and now it appears that we have to go back to the Joomla site. This is very frustrating. All the work I’ve done, all the hours I’ve put in, looks like it may have been for nothing. Sigh.

Yesterday I went to Spur*, an espresso bar with communal workspaces, to get out of the house and into a go-to-the-office mode. It was a nice place, with a cool vibe, but its coffee was overpriced and only gave one free refill. I drink a lot of coffee when I work and I don’t think it’s going to be financially viable for me to go there as a regular office space. They also didn’t have any real food, just some pastries. It looks like I may have to resort to going to my local Starbucks again. At least they give free refills and have some comfy chairs. I’m finding myself a bit reluctant to do it though, probably because it will remind me of my time in Pueblo. Still, I may just have to do that to get out of the house on a regular basis. It is conveniently located, and there are good food options right there, I just need to get my head around the concept and move forward with it.

I need to write another post for Otaku. Right now I’m thinking of making it on how to grow follower counts in Twitter, as that’s what I’ve been spending a lot of time doing this past year. One of my goals for the year is to blog a lot more there about design, development and social media. Really build up a content base to help reinforce my expertise in these areas and make the site a worthy destination for others seeking information. Right now the home page is the “About” page, but I’ll switch it to the blog page once I get some more posts up.

I just got off the phone with Josh, the tech recruiter guy I interviewed with last week, and he has a Javascript developer position that he’s sending me the work req on. The pay is okay, not great, and it’s a nine month contract rather than a permanent position, but it could be a good stepping stone back into the working world and good Javascript front end experience too. I’m curious to see what they’re looking for in terms of Javascript expertise, and I’ll likely have to do some tutorial work to learn the framework they’re using, but that’s pretty much par for the course these days. Ya gotsta do whacha gotsta do.

I awoke naturally at 7:11 this morning, so it seems like my body clock needs me to go to bed at 11pm. I cheated and snoozed a bit, knowing that my alarm would go off in 20 minutes, I grabbed a few extra zees. 🙂

I had a little trouble going to sleep last night. I was excited about getting up and going spinning in the morning, plus I have an interview with a tech placement firm today, and I had had a particularly good evening play poker. That’s what I do in the evenings now. After a full day of work and working out, it’s nice to be able to kick back, relax, and challenge myself at the same time. Poker is very meditative for me, as I fold most of my hands, so there’s a lot of time for reflection while I wait for optimal spots to play. I’ve also stepped up my game, playing at the 1000/2000 level, and I find the players at that level are much better than at lower levels. It requires me to think, to calculate odds, to be mindful of when and where I choose to bluff. And I’m adapting to it – my game is getting better, more solid. If I were playing for real money, I would have made a million dollars last night. 🙂

This morning was all about getting on the spin bike. I got up and went to the gym, walked to the spin room in my socks, and set up the bike to fit me before putting on my new cycling shoes. (They have solid plastic soles with cleats and are very slippery to try and walk on floors in.) I had the spin studio to myself and fired up my new workout playlist to listen to while I started cranking away. I did foundation training, spinning at a steady rate, for most of the 30 minute session. I did do a couple standing climbs/intervals, just to get the feel for standing up and pedaling again and get my heart pumping a little harder. I considered taking the 9:30 spin class, but have that tech interview at 1pm and need to run an errand at noon, so I didn’t want to push things this morning.

Yesterday was about doing a bunch of client work, getting back up to speed on the site. I discovered an error in the code installation that requires me to set up FTP access for the developers to log in and investigate, and it took several hours to get the information I needed from the client, so much of yesterday afternoon was spent waiting. We finally connected and got the necessary info around 9pm last night, and today I get to deal with support tickets and that sort of fun before my interview. I also spent some time watching writing vids by Natalie Goldberg and a Creative Writing Master Class from Oxford University. I think I mentioned that I reconnected with the author, Barry, who’s going to collaborate with me to write the story of these past few years. Oh, and I’m going to be digging into code and getting those skills current after my interview later today. Working and learning is where it’s at these days… 🙂

A good day yesterday. I was able to get in a cheater workout in the morning (soak and steam). Then I went downtown to have lunch with Dana at our favorite pizza place: Two-fisted Mario’s. It totally reminds me of the place upstairs in The Garage at Hahvahd Sqwayah, by Newbury Comix, but I can never remember the name of it. C-something? Mass peeps, a little help?

Dana and I enjoyed our slices. Same slices we always get there. He gets two cheese, I get two with no cheese, pepperoni, and sausage. We reminisced about old times, how happy we both are that I’m out, talked about our kids and how difficult it is to be parents of teenagers at times. We talked about getting older, how it was 22 years ago that we sat on his porch in Boulder, discussing IRAs and how 10 years before that we could never have imagined doing that. We talked about travelling the world, and when that may become a possibility again. We also made plans to go on some regular bike rides once summer rolls around and his son’s hockey schedule eases up.

For those who haven’t seen him lately, Dana has become a quite the stud. He is rocking the world at about 8% body fat – totally ripped. His wife is an amateur triathlete and they do a lot of bike rides in the summer. Our regular rides will be nice little 30 mile loops, and I’ve vowed to do a century (100 mile ride) with him this summer – he tries to do one every year.

Last night I made my second real purchase that didn’t require permission from somebody, which marked a sort of milestone: I bought cycling shoes. I’ve tried spin class in my skater sneaks, but I’ve gotten so used to pedaling with my heels (proper form) that the soles of my sneaks bend and really flex my foot uncomfortably when pedaling. So I invested $100 in some real cycling shoes. My other pairs are in storage and I won’t have access to them until I move out of Mom’s and get my own place. It felt good to invest in myself. To date, my expenditures have been around fitness and self-improvement – my first unqualified purchase was the gym membership, and now the shoes. 🙂

After I bought them I went to the gym again last night. My bod is sore from Monday’s workout and I couldn’t get motivated to do anything but sit and soak. It’s become part of my routine. Even if I don’t feel like training I go sit and soak and hit the steam or sauna. I call these my “cheater” workouts because, while they don’t involve much muscle, the heat does accelerate my heart rate to the low intensity aerobic zone, so it still counts as a workout. 😉

It also seems that my going to bed early is starting to pay off as I adjust to living here full time. The meds I take seem to require me to get eight hours of sleep a night or I’m a wreck in the morning, so I’ve started going to bed at 11pm. Ugh. It seems SO early to go to bed then, but getting up early is a priority and so I do it. This morning I woke up naturally at 7am, after about 7.5 hours’ sleep. I was stoked to have woken up early, without an alarm, and scampered eagerly off to the gym. I was going to do cleans today, but the bod is still sore from Monday, so I lifted back and shoulders and grabbed a 10 minute soak. If my schedule allows it, I may go back and hit the spin bike for some cardio this afternoon. I can feel my bod adapting, adjusting to exercise again, and even though I’m pitifully weak right now, progress is being made. And I’m all about progress. 🙂

Today is about getting back up to speed in the web world. I have a client meeting this evening after group and I need to re-learn the intricacies of this client’s site that I’m building but haven’t touched in about a month. It consists of a basic WordPress site with a very convoluted third-party plug in to manage subscriptions and reviews. There is no clear documentation, so much of today will be spent futzing around with it and watching YouTube vids to learn how to make best use of it. And I’ll be doing some design work, logos and header images mostly. Off I go…