Overdue update

Well, it's been five years since my last blog post. I noticed that my previous blog post also started with a similar message. They are getting less frequent and after graphing the posts against a time line I now know my next post will be when I'm 80. Anyway, despite their similarities, I'm doing much better than confession.

I'll blame Facebook and Twitter for this (for my lack of blogging that is, not confession). It's hard to beat short and sharp updates. It's not completely Facebook and Twitter's fault however. It's probably more my penchant for order and general apathy. Once I missed a post I didn't want to post something new and out of order. That just raises the barrier to posting even higher and of course the missed posts just accumulate and eventually the backlog of postings just gets too much and it all stops.

I've just decided I'll skip those posts now and get on with things. Before I do, here's some of the postings I should have blogged but didn't...

1. Athena and I got married and had a nice reception
2. We went on a honeymoon to Thailand
3. Thomas Blake Kelcey was born
4. I bought a new computer that made my old computer seem like a piece of junk
5. We bought a house
6. I changed roles at work from Software Development Manager to Architect
7. I bought a bicycle and started riding to work
8. Melina Nysa Kelcey was born
9. The goldfish died
10. I bought a new computer that made my old computer seem like a piece of junk

*Phew*, all off my chest.

That's the catch-up aspect done and now I can get on with a regular little 'news' posting. If you're wondering what the difference is between a regular little 'news' posting and a Facebook posting then good question. I'm still trying to figure that out. I'd say the differences include...

1. My regular little 'news' postings will be longer
2. They are public on my web site (not just Facebook friends)
3. I can include more movies, pictures, code etc. and it will fit nicely
4. I'll use more numbered lists

Anyway, with that all out of the way, I can get on with what's been happening.

At work, we (i.e. Engineering department) just delivered Objective Connect (www.objectiveconnect.com). This is an online file sharing service which also does collaboration and workflow. I'll write a separate blog about it that goes more into the technical aspects. I am the lead architect on this project so it's nice to see it get released to the wild. It's been a nice journey and it should be an interesting 12 months of Cloud based work coming up to extend it.

Aside from that I've been on two weeks of annual leave. Once we released Objective Connect, I realized I needed a bit of a break so I took two weeks off before we really ramp up the next stage. Now when I say a 'break' I mean a 'do nothing' type of break rather than a 'lets go on a stressful holiday with two screaming kids' type of break. This was to be 'man in his shed' time. Athena was still at work and the kids were both going to be at daycare. For 10 days, I'd have about 8 or so hours to myself to chill or do whatever.

I have this habit of doing 'to do' lists. So, the first thing I did when I started my holiday was I filled my personal kanban board with a list of things I'd like to achieve on my break. This included reading books, doing some programming, playing some games and even writing a blog. What I forgot to put down however (*slaps head*) was 'get sick'. The first day I started getting sick (man flu) and it just went downhill from there.

I made jokes about man-flu and flu-topia and spent my time playing Skyrim. It was pretty much the only thing engaging enough to distract me from how rubbish I felt. If you don't know what it is, Skyrim is a computer game where you run around in a 3D world building up your character, following a storyline and running around and killing monsters.

At the end of the first week of my break, I started dying more regularly in Skyrim. I was quite out of it but as soon as my game became affected, I knew something must be done. I saw a doctor and he said I had a fever (39+) and I needed anti-bionics. After I had the anti-bionics, it helped immensely. In no time, I was again killing monsters left, right and center. I also felt much better.

I had a look at my kanban board and it had tasks such as...

1. Get some sun
2. Do some exercise
3. Read some books
4. Buy some new clothes

This was going to be a problem for me. I was on the mend but I doubted that these things would happen before I went back to work. Necessity is the mother of invention however.

In Skyrim, my character's name is Kitana so I created kitanakelcey@hotmail.com and registered her with the kanban board. Then I assigned those tasks to her and moved them into 'done'.

'Get some sun'. Although it's mainly snowing in Skyrim and you spend a lot of time in underground dungeons, I *cough* Kitana, did also spend a lot of time enjoying the sun as she chased wolly mammoths around the plains with her soul stealing axe. She also fireballed a number of rabbits, deer and little cute foxes trying to level up her destruction capability in the sunshine as well (what a bitch).

'Do some exercise'. See above.

'Read some books'. Kitana read a stack of books. Admittedly they are only like 2-3 pages long each but they are still fully thick leather hardcover books.

'Buy some new clothes'. She bought clothes, stole clothes (very Wyonna like I know) and even made clothes. Clothes that help make fireballs to blow the heads off bunnies.

So she helped out a lot and it really helps relieve the guilt associated with just playing Skyrim all the time. Seriously though, I didn't just do that. I did actually read half of a technical text book and I did some programming and I installed Windows 8 and played with it etc. But certainly not as much as I had planned.

Anyway, back to work after the weekend.