Productivity and Curiousity

I'm a curious guy. When a thread piques my interest, watch out!!

What happens in between topics of interest? Laa dee da dee da, skipping around, eyes wandering in a lackadaisical fashion... dee dee doooo... Cheryl to David, "Honey, why does salt make ice melt?" *Poof, alert, interested* "Hmmm... I don't know" *gears revving, BAM!!, sonic boom, David flies through wikipedia and google scholar to related links, topics and visualizations* *crack-azapers* *the yellow brick road bursts into a million pieces as David's wake follows him past Oz...* "Aha!! ..."

I tend to drift while I'm between topics of interest, but when I'm interested, I fly. Time seems to do the same, passing slowly when I'm bored and cheating ahead when I'm interested.

Topics that caught my eye this weekend: 

• .NET and C#'s amazing catch-up to Java (including multi-platform runtime, open source support for projects like xStream, Spring, JUnit, and the frickin amazing new & free Web Developer Studio by Microsoft... http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/default.aspx)
• Java EE design patterns, security approaches, scalability concerns...
• NetLibrary's stunning varienty of technical refferences
• The drama involved in crowning Solomon king of Israel and Judea.
  
• The relationship between water phase changes and solutes
• Mind mapping tools as a solution for writing technical documents, authoring presentations, composing emails, keeping track of work... (see FreeMind: http://freemind.sourceforge.net)

What did you find interesting this week? Pique my interest with something cool!! I'll love you for it. :)

The Content of My Blog

Here's a visualization of my last six months of blog posts:

http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/334931/Untitled

Moments with Annabelle 8-10 Months

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrg4wDAaNlA&fmt=6

All the Small Things

I love my life. :)

Yesterday, Cheryl was out with some old friends. I started the day with an hour face-to-face chat with my brother via Skype. (P.S. If you have a skype account, email or facebook me your skype account sn so I can talk to you too...)

Allan's friggin brilliant and proving it at school. I love hearing about the ridiculously awesome things he's up to.

After our chat, I watched a B-movie on the sci-fi channel, then drove over to North Ponds park, strapped on my roller blades and went for a five mile jaunt up the path.

After that, a trip to wegmans, another B movie, some video games... It was a very relaxing day.

The beautiful thing about being me though, is that even with such an uneventful, relaxing day, I learned a lot and honed my existing skills...

My average day activities are what I love so much about my life. Right after waking up, I played blocks with Annabelle, had a delicious breakfast, danced around the apartment to the foo fighters, muse, blink and system of a down, juggled, stretched out, did hand stands, practiced balancing on one hand... The things that are novel to me include my trip to Wegmans where I visited each isle 1 or 0 times... the research I did on wood-working and how to build the shelves for our garage... the whitepaper I read on agile data management... the design patterns I investigated... service oriented architecture approaches.

All that's a heck of a lot of fun to do and learn, but it certainly doesn't make for good lunch-time conversation. I'm making headway in so many ways!! I've got our finances under control. I have a new method of approaching difficult topics with Cheryl and we're closer because of it. I've got a system for preparing great meals on a regular basis. They're all fantastic things!!! But how much of that is interesting to blog about? Believe me friends, my lack of blog posts recently doesn't mean that my life is slowing down... I'm simply filtering out the stuff that's not of general interest.

P.S. Here's the photo gallery of the Johnson-Herring annual apple picking trip: http://picasaweb.google.com/ultimadj/BerryPicking2008

Johnson Moving Day

Album Location: http://picasaweb.google.com/ultimadj/MovingDay

The night before the move, Cheryl, Annabelle and I brought our sheets, toiletries, a few blankets to our empty new apartment. We slept on the floor without a mattress after playing a few games and chasing Annabelle through various rooms and closets. We were all so excited that we could barely sleep. The evening was wonderfully cool, a luxury made possible through the central air conditioning. Our old apartment didn't have an air conditioner of any sort. Cheryl's dedication to living within our means can be attested by the fact that she went lived in the tiny apartment with no air conditioning and shoddy heat for the entirety of her pregnancy.

We woke the next morning feeling refreshed, sizzling with excitement about the task at hand. I drove out to Henrietta to pick up the moving truck. Trying to rent a truck only a week in advance had proven to be an issue... Budget and UHaul had no trucks of ANY size available in the area. Fortunately, AAA sent me to Penske where a truck was not only available, it was less than half the cost of either competitor.
I drove the truck to the old apartment where Cheryl's closest friends were already starting to gather, preparing the apartment for the move to come, putting knick-knacks and cleaning supplies into the final few boxes. I missed having Nate with me. For our last move, he was the first there, helping me to get the truck and the last to leave, chilling with us after the move was over.

Soon, others started to arrive. The first heavy lifters assisted me in placing furniture onto the truck though eventually, the movers were so efficient that I ended up managing placement of items in the truck more than actually carrying myself.
The truck was loaded swiftly and we headed off to the new apartment. The contrast between old and new was stunning. The truck was unloaded quickly, and it was time for pizza. After pizza, beer, soda and slides, the crew members gradually left 'til Cheryl and the final few unpacked the essential items. In the following days (two or three), Cheryl not only established an organizational system for the new space, she managed to unpack and reorganize the available space into a livable apartment.... her skill in such matters in unrivaled in my opinion.

The move was a blast, and the helpers a joyful blessing. Thanks to all involved!!

The Johnsons Went to Camp Tamar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjzfmu_E254

The Johnsons Moved! And I Got Lost...

We moved to our beautiful new apartment yesterday. So many team players showed up that a full 16' truck, 2 vans, and several personal vehicles got packed in only an hour and thirty minutes!! It was insane!! The ladies cleaned out the apartment and met us over at the new place where we unpacked in the record-breaking time of... 1 hr.

There are so many stories to tell!! We didn't have any of the usual heavy lifters (Brian, Toby, Nathan, Adrian, Rob), but we still managed to get everything onto the truck. The craziest moment for me occurred about half way down the third flight of stairs... with a piano. I was on the bottom (good leverage) with Chris and Curtis hunched over on the top (how they managed to hold the piano up while stooped over is yet to be explained by science). My foot slipped on one of the steps and the piano slipped an undetectable 1/2 inch. In that moment, my life flashed before my eyes.... having your life flash by rapidly is apparently very hard on your heart, because mine was thumping like a speedcore gabber. Nothing happened, but you know how terrifying the indication that something COULD happen can be. :)

Anyhoo, this morning, I woke up, gathered by bike gear (which was all easily findable thanks to our dear friend Alicia) and hit the road. Well, the road hit back. I completely missed a major turn and ended up in Greece before I recognized anything. Take a look at this link to see the ridiculous zig-zag I did to get to work: http://alnk.org/1fatsnake

All told, that trip took nearly 50 minutes. I can't wait to see what the ride home looks like... :D