Life Really Is About The Journey!

Well, I had a right total hip replacement in August 2009. I bought a new bike about 2 years before the surgery, hoping that the right tool would give me incentive to get in shape.

It has been something like 20 months since the surgery, and at long last, I'm back on my bike, My strength and confidence are growing quickly.

So, I've been pushing myself a bit harder lately. I'm annoyed that i dont have the strength for hills. So I keep on trying, and pushing.

But on Tuesday night something changed.

Normally, when I am climbing a hill, I'm looking upi it at the crest. Focussing on the goal.

On Tuesday though, I tried something different. I looked about 3 feet in front of the bike, not up at the crest of the hill. I just kept telling myself that I was riding, going along the road. I was deliberately NOT focussing on the hill, but on the road that I was riding on.

Instead of feeling worn out 3/4 of the way up the hill, I found that I was dealing with the hill much more quickly, and easily. I was also climbing it without thought of its height, or length.

The Anthropologist woke up in me when I was having this realization on my Tuesday ride. Humans are symbol processing machines. The crest of the hill is a symbol for us, of the destination.

The crest of the hill, the goal, these are such attractive symbols for us that they easily distract us from the moment. Where we are right now, what we are doing right now. I wonder why the idea of the present or the current moment is so fleeting for us?

The goal is an easier symbol for us to process. We get positive reinforcement for reaching a goal -- whatever it may be. Reaching a goal gives us the capability to ask and answer better questions. There are lots of other reasons that goals are things that we focus on.

The now --this moment-- can have many different possible courses of action. Maybe things that we are scared of, or things that we do not know how to deal with. Moments are often simple. Quite often they are what they are. No explanation necessary. Perhaps there are no courses of action, no outcomes good or bad.

The lesson from my bike ride is that the goal is not the sustaining force that gets us to it. The moment is the sustaining force from which we find the energy to reach a goal. When I stopped looking up at the crest of the hill, when I was focussed on all the individual moments that it took to reach the crest of that hill, that is when i found success.

And you never know, if you keep focussing on all the moments that it takes you to acheive a goal, you might wind up with a situation where the goal is greater than the sum of its moments.

That's an idea that is worth being excited about!

Cultivating Sous Chefs

I do as much cooking as i possibly can. Its therapeutic. Until last night, I've either had a collaborator, or I've gone solo.

Jessica eating her pizza!I never thought I was much good at teaching. Because I'm not too patient. I made Pizza for some friends last night, and they brought their 13 year old daughter. I did not show her how to make the dough, but I did pass on the recipe. I taught her how to make a classic Margherita pizza.

Jessica's second pizza. Looking delicious!She learned how to roll the dough out, how to transfer it to the peel, and then how to dress it.

This is one of those children that normally does not eat the crust of her pizza -- this according to her parents... ;~) But she ate every bit of each piece of Pizza that was on her plate.

Once the pie she made had come out the oven, and she had a taste of it, she chimed in and asked to make the next one.

This time, I let her go in the kitchen, and get started, and if she had any trouble, she could call me and I'd be in there in a flash! Her mom went in the kitchen with her to help out! That second pie was fantastic!

Jessica with a Pizza at her side.

I think that cultivating an interest in food, and an enthusiasm for it is a really important thing. I've always wanted to try to teach someone how I do some of my cooking, and now have had the opportunity.

I like the idea of having a brigade of sous chefs on standby for any projects that i might need help with. But for now, I think I'll ask to borrow Jessica every now and then! And i'll use my new found confidence to continue to spread the knowledge and joy of cooking!

I used the rest of the dough to make a little loaf of bread, which I ate this afternoon with some of the ledft over locally grown tomatoes that I got from Soulard Farmers Market the same day.

Thanks Jessica!

Surveys and Reporting - Part 1

At work my big project is to rewrite - almost re-imagine - our Annual Report process.

The way that it works right now is this:

1. I construct the questionnaire using an home gorwn tool, that is built in MS Access - it goes against an SQL backend.
2. I get review and approval from the research department.
3. I take about the same amount of time to build the survey to make it available in our production web portal.
4. I hand code a bunch of stored procedures to produce charts and graphs that are available to our online users.
5. I hand code a bunch more Stored Procs that make reporting available to our internal staff.
6. The internal reporting gets reviewed and approved by the research dept.
7. Once it is approved, I then publish that to production.

Its not so bad. Except for the part where I'm wanting to put a spike through my eye, into my cranium every time I work on it.

The worst part is that all the database fenagling(sp?) makes this process VERY SENSITIVE to change. The Annual report, since its annual changes every year. Making this at minimum a four month process.

Believe it or not, I've found bugs in the old Stored Procedures that were introducing errors into calculations. This means that some of the old reporting was inaccurate.

From a philisophical standpoint, I dont believe that the database has any business implementing any logic for reporting, but in the existing system, it does math, and it decides how things should be counted. This is an error.

The abstract changes that I am thinking about these days are these: 

1. Create a report framework that uses the database engines aggregation functions, rather requiring code to do math.
2. Change my role from one of programming the report, to managing the database that drives the report.
3. Enable the research staff to manage the reporting process, build it toward the future in which the research staff will be able to take over maintenance and design of the report, with no assistance from me.

So, I'm thinking about this new report in these ways:

We'll be using a web service that delivers and stores surveys and their responses as the tool to create and disemminate the Annual Report Questions, and to retrieve the data for our reporting purposes.

Potentially I will know very little about the survey itself.

I will need to have access to the survey responses and the survey structure.

This last part is important to the output of the report, because how a question is presented to an end user says something about the intent of its presentation on the report.

How am I going to manage this very important detail, which can make or break the report?

The problem is this: If there is an array of checkboxes in a question, does that array need to appear in the results of the report? For the purposes of matching the two up, I'd say yes. For the purposes of matching the existing requirements of the report, I'd also say yes.

Now, assume that we have some survey data to collect. We go and get it, we even load it into our trusty well normalized database.

When we go to look at it, its only data. Its raw responses from the survey. The data itself tells us nothing about the presentation of the survey, and therefore the report that we need to generate.

Hows that for a problem.

The fact is that this problem has been solved before.

Stay tuned for part two, where i'll start to talk about other problems that I will be have to solve, and solutions I'm cooking up - honestly, i have not had time to think up any.

Dinner on Saturday

Well, I made Chicken Braised in Beer with Belgian Endives. I served Sea Scallops for Appetizers. The meal was fabulous. I was only cooking for three, which was a nice change from last week.

For the Sea Scallops, I marinated them in 1/3 cup of lime juice, with the pulp, and 2 tsp's of Soy Sauce.

Here's the finished product. The real key here was removing the Chicken and Endives from the Dutch Oven, and letting the liquid reduce to a sauce. Then spooning that sauce over the meat before serving.

Delicious.

Internet Service

My phone bill was massive. it was breaking my back.

But I loved serving geekforce out of the basement. That said, i had to update software, and manage server uptime, etc.

I was looking over AT&T's internet offerings, and i noticed that they now sell Dry Loops. A Dry Loop, in case you dont know is DSL without the local phone service attached. They sell a 6mbps service for $45/month. It's a great service at a decent price.

In my adventures listening to podcasts, I discovered squarespace.com. A great tool for hosting a blog infrastructure in the cloud. When that happenned, adn after i'd had a look at squarespace, the lightbulb went on in my head.

So, as you can see now, geekforce, and Phil's site the Cat's Paws are now served here at squarespace.

Enjoy.