Monthly Archives: August 2016

July 2016 – What I’ve Been Doing at 8:16 PM (20:16)

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Here is my July 2016, installment of what I had done at 8:16 PM each night during the month. I also found it helpful writing down what happened during the day as a small journal/diary of what was good, bad, or interesting.

Little Background

I started keeping track of what I was doing at 20:16 (8:16 PM) every day for the last month after reading Kitt Hodson’s Pastry Box article from Jan 1, 2015. Which was about how a year earlier she read Erica Douglass’s article about writing down what she did at 11:11 AM and 20:14 (8:14 PM) everyday.

July 2016 Events

Jul 1 – checking on my computer what if anything news on television being that it’s Friday before Fourth of July. Most of my “early leave” day was spent working on the FRD for the accessible SVG map.  After coming home early from work, I read a bit and then managed a three and a half hour nap.

Jul 2 – waiting to be seated for crab dinner at the Crab Deck in Kent Narrows, MD.

Jul 3 – Watching “American Pickers” after a slow day of going to DuPont Circle Farmers Market and having an excellent pulled pork veggie leaf wrap with dill lime rice, thinly slide age cured ham, pickled red onions, and pickled yellow beets. Then it was off to the Georgetown flea market and then home to read until I met up with my buddy Sam to go to José Andres’s American Eat Taverns for their indoor picnic. The picnic included a great variety of food which included cured aged ham, Serrano ham, three types of deviled eggs (jalapeno, pickled, and traditional), pickles, etc. Then the next batch of food was suckling pig jambalaya, shrimp fried rice, fried oyster slider, cheeseburger, bacon wrapped mini hot dogs, and Texas beef brisket chili. Next moved on to the seafood of shrimp cocktail, Alaskan King Crab cocktail, and other mixed seafood. Finally, made it to the desserts which were mini key lime pie, mini chocolate cake with chocolate whip cream in a small jar, dark chocolate tart, more of a lemon tart/pudding. The meal was well worth the cost, but will go earlier next time so some of the dishes won’t have sat out so long, since being the Sunday of 4th of July weekend not so many people were there. After dropping Sam home went and took a few hour nap and never had dinner until close to 10 PM because I was still full.

Jul 4 – watching and taking notes during Amy and Alex’s 30 x 500 “Sales Safari in Action” with special guest Brennan Dunn.

Jul 5 – was visiting with a friend from Ottawa Canada and his family and mother. I met them at their AirBnB in Capitol Hill area after stopping to grab some cheese and crackers to go along with the wine I brought with me. I left cheese, open wine, and an extra bottle since they were going over to other friends for dinner on Wednesday after a visit to the National Zoo.

Jul 6 – sitting at my desk in my spare bedroom adding removing people from my EventBrite mailing list. Doing this should take more time than it does to create a new event and prepare and e-mail announcing the event. I should be able to see which people asked to be removed and those that bounced. Plus, be able to add easily new people that signed up. Once done with that relaxed to watch some TV.

Jul 7 – walking out of the kitchen after grabbing a few slices of hot soppressata, along with a Kind bar while the two samosas I pulled out of the fridge get to room temperature before heating them up as my dinner. Worked on adding my accessible SVG map HTML and CSS to GitLab. Had to work on a readme file after I created and an empty one to make things easier. The process took much longer than planned because we tried using one product before giving up on it and that I did not have the proper access to be able to add, updated, delete, etc. on GitLab.

Jul 8 – Driving to Momo Sushi listening to “Dinner Party Download” on NPR. After dinner, I stopped at Sugar Shack Donuts and picked up a red velvet cake donut along with a maple bacon yeast leaven donut. I have noticed I like their cake donuts better unless you can get the others once they come out such as their salted caramel leaven donut.

Jul 9 – Sitting in Bocatto Lounge starting to read “Wild Fermentation” by Sandor Ellix Katz. I’m in the process to see how to make vinegar and pickled items such as beets, cabbage, carrots, etc. Spent my morning going to the Courthouse Farmer’s Market to pick up herbs (basil, mint, sage, oregano, dill, tarragon, etc.). Next, I stopped at St. Elmo’s to visit with friends before heading to the Del Ray Farmer’s Market where I got a few more bunches of basil so I can make two large batches of pesto and pork and beef empanadas. I then went to M. E. Swing Coffee Roasters for a hot chocolate while catching up on e-mails and taking notes from e-mail newsletters and blog posts. Finally, headed home after stopping at Pho 75 for lunch to read and nap.

Jul 10 – ENTERED 08/13/2016 – Since it is a Sunday night I was most likely watching TV, but not sure because I was too busy it seems to write anything down.

Jul 11 – in drawing class attempting to draw using one, two, and three-point perspective. My drawing was of three boxes stacked on top of each other but offset a bit for the middle box. Created QA sign-off document along with some testing and found issues with the search results not being correct anymore. My guess is mismatched code to content.

Jul 12 – Watching Massimo Bottura of Osteria Francescana which is in Modena, Italy, in the Chef’s Table documentary series on Netflix. Not eating dinner before the show is not the best way to watch the show because it makes you even hungrier than if you had eaten s at all the great food. Worked with the team to come up with ideas of what needed to be done to make updates to developer.dol.gov for now having offset for the APIv2 datasets. I went to the website and looked for all the broken or redirected links and any other weird things I noticed. Plus, created a list of all the pages that were using APIv1 and the few that were using APIv2 along with which section.type of dataset they were.

Jul 13 – having chicken, fig, and pine nuts risotto with a mixed green salad along with a Nigella Lawson’s sour cream chocolate fudge frosting and cake at Evan’s. I was there with two other couples, one of which live in the condo downstairs. We had one wine before dinner with some cheese and roasted cherry tomatoes on garlic toast. One of the best dishes was the watermelon gazpacho with finely chopped cucumber. All this came about because I had been wanting to drop off the new “Food Labs” book to Evan while killing some time, so the metro bus was less crowded because if metro’s yellow line is closed between Braddock Rd. Metro Station and Pentagon City metro. Most days it’s taking over an hour and a half to get to work or come home afterward.

Jul 14 – either walking around the beer section of Wegmans or checking out at the cashiers after shopping but first having dinner from the hot bar. Worked with co-workers to do QA testing of the new Appeals elastic search along with updating the dollar and cents of the earnings disparity column for the District of Columbia.

Jul 15 – ENTERED 08/13/2016 –  Since it was a Friday night I was most likely either at Wegmans grabbing dinner and then shopping, or I was at or driving to or from Pho 75 for dinner.

Jul 16 – walking around the parking lot of screen 2 at the Family Drive-in Theatre in Stephen’s City, VA, waiting for Ghostbusters to start.

Jul 17 – watching the “Chef’s Table” episode about Niki Nakayama of “N/Naka Restaurant” in Los Angeles.

Jul 18 – working on my first charcoal square to create the class portrait of Samuel Becket.

Jul 19 – since I wasn’t in Cabin John for wine or beer tasting I was in the process of unboxing my new 34 inch Ultra DELL monitor.

Jul 20 – met up with Mike and Kevin who were in DC for Drupal Gov Con. We were at Bangkok Golden with Sam for Loa food.

Jul 21 – waiting at a stoplight on Telegraph Rd.  On my way to Wegmans to grab dinner and do a bit of grocery shopping before the almost 100F heat until later next week.

Jul 22 – sitting in my car at the corner of S. Joyce St. and S. Glenn Rd. Waiting for the light to change on my way from dinner at  Pho 75 to get vanilla custards with hot fudge at Dairy Godmother for desert.

Jul 23 – ENTERED 08/13/2016 –  Since it was a Saturday night I was most likely either at Wegmans grabbing dinner and then shopping, or I was at or driving to or from Pho 75 for dinner.

Jul 24 – walking in front of the White House while on a walking/bus tour of Dc with speakers and other attendees from An Event Apart DC. While dropping off my annual cupcakes to the An Event Apart staff, they asked if I wanted to go on the walking/bus tour since they had an extra seat. I said yes even though it was going to in the upper 90’s F with a heat index over 100F during the tour which started at 7:30 PM. The tour was great because I got to learn a few more facts about DC, such as Constitution Ave NW used to be a canal and the stone building at the corner of Constitution Ave NW and 17th Ave. NW was the lock keeper’s house which he lived in with his wife and thirteen children. The house is extremely small even for two people let alone 15.

Jul 25 – Sitting in my basic drawing class at Torpedo Factory Annex using charcoals to draw white cloth draped to form shadows.

Jul 26 – reading Twitter to see if and when to meet Kevin Hoffman other An Event Apart speakers/attendees to see Ghostbusters at the AMC Hoffman 22 Theater. Ended meeting there for the 9:35 PM show and dropped them back at the hotel after the movie to save them a cab or Uber/Lyft fair back to the hotel.

Jul 27 – Sitting at Blackboard listening to the end of Denis B.’s Accessibility DC UX talk.

Jul 28 – was at Wegmans grabbing dinner and then doing a bit of grocery shopping. I worked home so I could attend the GSA PULSE tool call and then head to the cemetery for Tony’s mom funeral. After the ceremony at cemetery went to Knights of Columbus hall for lunch and then headed home for a 3-hour nap.

Jul 29 – driving on Route 27 towards Washington Blvd to grab Pho at Pho 75 for dinner. I had a small bowl of Pho with raw eye round and fatty brisket along with extra noodles and more fatty brisket. Spent most of the work day figuring out the accessibility issue we had from the new GSA PULSE tool, along with other DOL websites. I noticed that the HSA tool had not scanned the home page of MSHA. I also ran a maximum of 200-page scan of each website I had never run before to get an idea of how right or wrong most were. Of the seven I tested four were 90% or higher, two were in the 70s, and one was in the mid-30s.

Jul 30 – ENTERED 08/13/2016 –  Since it was a Saturday night I was most likely either at Wegmans grabbing dinner and then shopping, or I was at or driving to or from Pho 75 for dinner.

Jul 31 – walking in my house after going to three farmers markets (DuPont Circle, Palisades, and the one near Big Bear Lounge in NE). Spent test of the day in four coffee shops answering e-mail and getting rid of a few hundred browser tabs by either reading articles, closing tabs, or placing it as a bookmark for later.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this has been helpful to you and gets you to keep track of what you do a particular time of the day, along with a short daily diary entry to see what you have done or can accomplish over the course of a year.

If you want to meet up to do something exciting at 8:16 PM some evening, please leave a comment. Or a suggestion of something that is not part of my ordinary life you think I should do.

June 2016 – What I’ve Been Doing at 8:16 PM (20:16)

Posted on by

Here is my June 2016, installment of what I had done at 8:16 PM each night during the month. I also found it helpful writing down what happened during the day as a small journal/diary of what was good, bad, or interesting.

Little Background

I started keeping track of what I was doing at 20:16 (8:16 PM) every day for the last month after reading Kitt Hodson’s Pastry Box article from Jan 1, 2015. Which was about how a year earlier she read Erica Douglass’s article about writing down what she did at 11:11 AM and 20:14 (8:14 PM) everyday.

June 2016 Events

Jun 1 – driving over to Five Guys to grab a cheeseburger and some fries for dinner. I spent a lot of my day responding to emails.

Jun 2 – Doing a bit of reading in my living room of Aaron Drapiln’s new book “Pretty Much Everything”. One thing to make it easier to read the more text-dense pages would be to use a larger font and have better color contrast too.

Jun 3 – Walking around the Principle Gallery in Old Town Alexandria, looking at G C Meyer’s newest art, along with talking with him ad his wife about what they were up to the last six months or so since I saw them last. It was interesting seeing some of his new work were he was adding in swirly winds or rays of sunlight.

Jun 4 – Reading over the 30 x 500 ask me anything questions and answers to cuddle lounge. Met up with a few friends at St. Elmo’s Coffee Pub. Spent most of my day getting through emails and responding setting up reminder e-mails for Accessibility DC along with taking a two and a half hour nap.

Jun 5 – Sitting at Boccato Lounge drinking tea while finishing up e-mail and Accessibility DC reminders. Was in Cabin John at a buddies house to get ready for his annual pig roast the following Saturday for 500 or 600 people. We mostly cleaned up the yard of sticks, leaves, poison ivy, etc. along with putting up the portable carport where the food goes and some lawn furniture from the neighbors across the street. Once done we sat and had some wine along with a couple of frozen pizzas. When I got home, I read a bit on my bed and then “napped” for four hours. Guess I was a bit tired after working and sleeping the night before for only five hours.

Jun 6 – In Cabin John for pig roast prep with pulled pork over rice with roast hot pepper sauce.

Jun 7 – In Cabin John for pig roast prep drinking wine and chatting with friends.

Jun 8 – walking back into the house after spending over an hour of mowing the lawn on a cool evening with not much humidity. One of the nicest evenings in the last month. Started functional testing of the new elastic search project.

Jun 9 – talking with friends in Cabin John that I haven’t seen in months or since last year’s pig roast. Started doing some accessibility testing of a new elastic search project after finishing up most of the functional testing.

Jun 10 – watching the first mopping of the base on the pigs after a day of relaxing and drinking wine with friends before the storm we call pig roast the next day.

Jun 11 – walking around buddies yard in Cabin John doing clean up before heading home since I was there starting around 9:30 AM. Took two friends and a friend of theirs back to their summer rental (internship) toss be them waiting for along with for an Uber. Hot day and didn’t eat all that much because of the heat.

Jun 12 – watching mindless TV to recover from a week of after-work work for the pig roast and the party and clean up. Was in Cabin John by 8:00 AM to start the clean up process which took an hour and fifteen or so minutes which included taking the tarp off the lighting rig over the smokers.

Jun 13 – walking around Wegmans produce section gathering up some red seedless grapes, a few bananas, salad greens, etc. after having dinner from the hot bar. Worked on testing the appeals search accessibility and usability issues.

Jun 14 – in Cabin John talking about pig roast and any other thing that came to our minds while tasting beers.

Jun 15 – sitting in a conference room at Blackboard listening to Dylan Barrel’s talk about agile accessibility as part of a team’s build process.

Jun 16 – walking from Toki Underground to Maketto to kill time and say hello to the staff with a friend who is moving out of town next week.

Jun 17 – eating Pho at Pho Viet after going to JC Penney to pick up some new casual work pants, polo shirts, a pair of shorts, and a few t-shirts because of the 40% – 50%off for the Father’s Day sales.

Jun 18 – Met friends at St. Elmo’s for coffee and then headed to Swing Coffee Roasters to work on dealing with old e-mails. Went to Pho 75 for dinner after a few hour nap. Once done went to Bocatto Lounge for tea while reading and taking notes from newsletter e-mails.

Jun 19 – I was watching TV. Mostly Viceland for most of the afternoon after driving around DC. Had tried to go to DuPont Circle Farmers Market but couldn’t find parking so went one near Bear Cafe in NE. Stopped for late breakfast at  American City Cafe if a cheese omelette, hash browns, rye toast, and a side of sausage.

Jun 20 – drawing negative space at the Torpedo Factory in my first basic drawing class. Worked on figuring out why Magic 13 with IE 11 wasn’t allowing the user to click any links on the new OFCCP home page. The issue ended up being a pop-up that was blocking non-secure content, but once the content was allowed the links worked.

Jun 21 – It’s Tuesday, so I’m in Cabin John with friends having some wine, along with a spicy pork ragu with penne pasta. Spent the time all over the place talking about politics and how messed up we will be depending on who wins the election in the fall. Think either primary candidate will not be the best for the country, but one could be worse than the other, and it all depends on what side of the fence you are on. We all agreed that if you don’t vote you’re not helping the problem.

Jun 22 – Reading Twitter while waiting to be seated at Caphe Banh Mi. Ended up sitting next to a couple that introduces themselves. They had never been there so I made a few food suggestions and then we started talking about other food places and he suggested a few places in and near San Diego that I added to my list of places to eat. And I suggested to them Las Cuatro Milpas for tacos and tamales with red beans and rice, along with Tajima Ramen Bar Hillcrest for Ramen. Plus, I mentioned how when I go with three or more people we got all four types so we can share and try each one, which is the best way to get to try all the kinds and pick a favorite. The reason I was there for dinner was that I had gone to the Torpedo Factory to pick up my Basic Drawing class supplies to have for Monday’s class.

Jun 23 – Sitting in Wegman’s lounge after grabbing dinner reading Twitter before going grocery shopping. Did more work on reviewing other agencies accessibility issues.

Jun 24 – driving from Wegmans towards Dairy Godmother after grabbing dinner and cashing in my change, so I had cash to walk around with while I waited for my new debit/credit card to show up Saturday. Never stopped at Dairy Godmother because I was too full from dinner earlier. Spent most of my day fighting fires with accessibility issues for another agency within DOL.

Jun 25 – Driving over to Boccato Lounge to grab some gelato and read a bit, which is mostly my open tabs in my browser of articles and blog posts I opened either from Twitter or other articles or posts I was reading. Went to bed at midnight last night and woke up before 7 AM and stayed up reading on the internet until about 8:15 AM. Then fell back to sleep until 10:10 AM. Before leaving for St. Elmo’s to meet friends I checked and my new debit/credit card had not arrived yet. After meeting with my friends, I stopped back home, and the card was there. I then activated it right away and proceeded to go to 7 Eleven’s ATM to get some cash. Next went to M. E. Swing Coffee Roaster for a hot chocolate and to answer e-mails and read articles and blog posts. Went to Pho 75 for lunch before heading home to nap for close to three hours.

Jun 26 – deleting photos and visors from my iPhone so iCloud will back up my phone. For some reason, iTunes thinks all the photos and videos are still there. Went to Hoffman 22 to Yo-yo Ma’s new movie “Music for Strangers” which is a documentary about the Silk Road Project. Was interesting seeing how passionate the musicians from countries around the globe and how some can’t go home and perform? Then went to M. E. Swing Coffee Roaster and St. Elmo’s Coffee Pub to respond to e-mails, along with taking notes from articles. Once done there went to  Pho 75 to get a late lunch of a small bowl of Pho with fatty brisket and raw round eye along with extra noodles and extra fatty brisket. Then headed to Boccato Lounge for tea and more article notes.

Jun 27 – basic drawing class that wasn’t going so well. Hoping it was a bad day and not things to come. Was having trouble getting things to scale. Spent my morning finishing up making the weekly ETA HTML page accessible.

Jun 28 – in Cabin John celebrating the beers kids one year anniversary of hanging out with the group while eating homemade beef beer stew. Started making the RFD Word document accessible.

Jun 29 – cleaning out the fridge of old moldy food since it’s garbage night. Didn’t get as much work done as I planned because a few odd things that came up during the day.

Jun 30 – sitting in the audience at Agency Chief at Refresh DC to listen to Kit talk about UI animation. It was great to see a few friends I hadn’t seen in years. One has been busy while the other moved out of the country for a year and a half then was home when the family was ill, and finally, she and her husband left the country to travel to Asia for over six months.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this has been helpful to you and gets you to keep track of what you do a particular time of the day, along with a short daily diary entry to see what you have done or can accomplish over the course of a year.

If you want to meet up to do something exciting at 8:16 PM some evening, please leave a comment. Or a suggestion of something that is not part of my ordinary life you think I should do.