Detente

The scene in my office last night. No fighting, just reading. Very nice.

Summer

It is warm and humid now. I think there is a 10 degree difference between my office temperature (70ish) and the temperature upstairs (80ish). We went to the outdoor pool yesterday for the first time after a hot hike on the trail. It's not quite here all the way, but summer is coming.

Jefferson

A couple of pics from our little walk up Mt. Jefferson on Sunday. It was a beautiful day for both man and beast.

June

It's time for the monthly update on my New Year Resolutions. We are halfway through the year, and I'm about halfway through the resolutions.

1. Do two triathlons. I did two events in June (neither very well, but that is besides the point).


2. Coach my daughter's lacrosse team. The season is over and I miss it already. We only lost two games (and one was against middle schoolers) and it was a fun season. Maybe it won't rain so much next year.


3. Learn something new. I'm converting my old Cannondale to be a single speed bike. So, I'm learning bicycle maintenance. I'm really tempted to build a bike from the frame up next.


4. Swim 50 miles over the course of the year. I swam 7,850 yards in May (4.5 miles) for a total of 53,350 (30 miles) on the year. If I can swim 4 miles a month, I'll be done in October. I also ran 24 mi and rode 117 mi in June.


5. Pass an SAP certification exam. Nope.

May

Time for the monthly update on my New Year Resolutions:

1. Do two triathlons. I'm signed up for two events in June. I swam 5600 yds, rode 156 mi and ran 35 mi in May, so I think I'm ready to go.


2. Coach my daughter's lacrosse team. The season is over and I miss it already. We only lost two games (and one was against middle schoolers) and it was a fun season. Maybe it won't rain so much next year.


3. Learn something new. Not much going on here. Lots of ideas, but no real action.


4. Swim 50 miles over the course of the year. I'm over halfway there. I swam 5,600 yards in May (3.2 miles) for a total of 45,500 (26 miles) on the year.


5. Pass an SAP certification exam. I might schedule this for early July since we are heading to Philadelphia anyway.

update

A (belated) update on the status of my New Year's Resolutions:

1. Do two triathlons. They cancelled the easy one in Blacksburg, so I might have to actually do two real ones. I'm keeping up with the swimming, but the running and cycling are so-so.
2. Coach my daughter's lacrosse team. The season is almost over and we are now 5-2. We lost our last game to Lexington 9-8. It was a good game and all tied up at half, but we fell asleep right after halftime and gave up 4 quick goals because we couldn't win a draw or get a ground ball. After a few minutes, the girls seemed to realize that they were getting killed and brought it to within 2 goals with about 20 seconds left. Sophie won the draw right off and scored to make it a one goal game with 1o seconds on the clock. Then she won the next draw and was just getting ready to shoot when time expired.
   
3. Learn something new. No progress. I'm relearning C++ on a project I'm working on, but I guess that doesn't count.
   
4. Swim 50 miles over the course of the year. Still ahead of schedule here. I swam 7,000 yards in April (4 miles) for a total of 39,900 (22.8 miles) on the year.
5. Pass an SAP certification exam. Need to work on this one.

Quarter

Here is the quarterly update on my goals for 2009.

1. Do two triathlons. The running and swimming are in gear. I've done a few rides, but need to step that up a bit.
2. Coach my daughter's lacrosse team. We won our first game last week, so that is going well.
3. Learn something new. No progress.
4. Swim 50 miles over the course of the year. Still ahead of schedule here. I swam 10,000 yards in March (5.7 miles) for a total of 32,900 (18.8 miles) on the year.
5. Pass an SAP certification exam. I've been studying for the SAP PM exam and plan on scheduling it for March April or May (been too busy with work to get this one in).

A mixed bag, but nothing has completely fallen off yet.

Status

Here is my status report on my goals for 2009.

1. Do two triathlons. Running is just about back. I ran three times this week without pain in my right foot. Now I can start to do a bit more.
   
2. Coach my daughter's lacrosse team. We've got most of the girls signed up and are starting in two weeks.
   
3. Learn something new. No progress.
   
4. Swim 50 miles over the course of the year. I put in 7400 yards in February, so I'm at 22,900 (13 mi) for the year which is ahead of pace.
   
5. Pass an SAP certification exam. I've been studying for the SAP PM exam and plan on scheduling it for late March.
   

I'm still on a pretty decent track. A couple of things will get knocked off this month.

Goals

As a good project manager, I'm providing a status report on my goals for 2009.

1. Do two triathlons. I am able to run again. I'm slow, but at least I can run.
2. Coach my daughter's lacrosse team. Still planning to do this.
3. Learn something new. No progress.
4. Swim 50 miles over the course of the year. Ahead of schedule here. I swam 15,500 yards in January (8.85 miles). I'm still insanely slow, but improving.
5. Pass an SAP certification exam. I've been studying for the SAP PM exam and plan on scheduling it for March.

Overall, a decent showing. Nothing is off the list yet, but we've got 11 months to go.

Retrospective

This has certainly been an interesting year.

Personally, it was very good. Except for the foot thing and the wife's back issues (both on the mend), everyone is basically healthy. The kids are doing well in school. We had a fun lacrosse season. We survived no kitchen for 6 weeks. We did a home addition and remained married. The dog didn't get run over by a car despite being able escape the temporary construction fence at will. We had a great week at F8I. Goldie, my 10 year old Subaru Legacy, is still running. We got a Wii. I was able to finish a marathon and swim a mile. We hosted a fun Thanksgiving with friends. We hosted a fun Christmas with family.

Financially, it was pretty much a disaster. We lost close to 40% of our money that was in our 401k and IRA accounts. I don't even want to think about how many years of savings that is. Plus, the government managed to run up another trillion of debt we get to repay bailing out crooks. But, if that is the worst thing that ever happens to me, I'll be a very lucky person. We can pay our bills and live a comfortable life, which is much more than most other people have.

My goals for next year in descending order of fun:

1. Do two triathlons. Another family triathlon with Kate and Sophie is a must. I'd also like to do at least one myself. The NYC marathon is a bonus item here since I couldn't do it last year but that depends on my foot feeling 100% by June.
2. Coach my daughter's lacrosse team. This time around, I want to improve the practices by having a more structured plan for the hour.
3. Learn something new. I've got a couple of contenders right now. The first is drawing. I started on Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, but didn't finish it. The second is a musical instrument (not Rock Band). I have a guitar I haven't picked up in five years, but maybe something different. Bonus points for doing both drawing and music.
4. Swim 50 miles over the course of the year. Because I don't tend to swim when travelling, that works out to about a 2200 yards every week I'm at home. Easy-peasy.
5. Pass an SAP certification exam. I know the material, I just need to buck up, schedule an exam and take it.

Happy New Year!

Hiatus

I've been crushingly busy with work the past couple of weeks and we've been in our typical early summer busy mode which limits my extra energy for writing anything on this weblog. Just to keep it from gaining cobwebs, I'm writing this quick post.

Part of that early summer busy mode was the Bath County Triathlon. The race was a lot of fun. We did it as a family team with my wife swimming, me cycling and my daughter running and finished in a respectable time. The weather was absolutely perfect and we had fun at a friends post-race party at the family farm in the beautiful countryside. The only downer was that a friend came down from NYC to do the race and had to scratch due to a rib injury.

Movin' on up

I used to host a weblog on my own site using Moveable Type. Although MT has a nice degree of flexiblity, I grew a little sick of maintaining everything. So, I'm taking the easy way out and using Blogger. Now all I need to do is actually post things.

I used to be a fairly steady poster and I'd like to return to that mode. The basic theme of this blog is technology, business and life (in no particular order). I'm hoping to post on a daily basis and maybe even make it interesting.

One of the first things I'm going to do is take a fresh look at material I covered in my previous weblog. It goes back to May 2003, so I should have a lot of reruns to tide me over until the writers come back from the picket lines.

Welcome aboard and I hope you find something of interest.