Here is my October 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.
October 2016 Events
Oct 1 – Working on my 543rd painting or digital painting in the last 545 days. Somehow I have managed to only miss two days in all that time is hard to believe. Attended another excellent Boston Accessibility Camp and think it’s my fifth or sixth one out of Sven years. Had only planned on attending and not speaking but was asked to talk on a panel of what new people to accessibility should know. I volunteered to do my accessibility basics talk since there were so many new people attending the event.
Oct 2 – Watching Treehouse Masters on TV where the team built space crab structure for Zack Brown the musician for his camp after coming home from Boston after another Boston Accessibility Camp. Managed to get to sleep by 10:45 PM last night after only getting three hours sleep the night before. I managed to sleep until 7:15 AM and then rest some more until about 9:00 AM. I got dressed and went to Veggie Galaxy for breakfast. Had a great veggie omelet with Portobello mushrooms, caramelized onion, Feta cheese, and roasted red pepper sauce along with a side of seitan sausage. Once done there I flew home on a 1:00 PM flight which got me to my house by about 3:30 PM with enough time for a couple of hour nap.
Oct 3 – Watching The Big Bang Theory.
Oct 4 – Not sure what I did her bit it must have been so exciting I was too busy to write what it was or boring and not memorable to talk about a few days later.
Oct 5 – Walking past Murphy’s Grand Irish Pub after going for a three and a half mile walk since I’ve only managed 3,500 steps the last two days because I’ve been doing a lot of running around getting things done I normally wouldn’t while working. During my walk, I stopped at Eamon’s Dublin Chipper for some fish and chips. I hadn’t been there in a while so thought it would be great to go but not the best again today. Last few times haven’t been great. The extra curry sauce was a bit bland, and the fish batter was a bit thick and dense. Think it’s time to take them off my Northern Virginia area places to eat list.
Oct 6 – Watching more TV after another busy day and getting a massage today to use up my last prepaid massage. Figured it was a good time to help me relax and loosen up a bit.
Oct 7 – Watching TV after napping because I ran around Northern Virginia all day. Met up with two old co-workers for lunch at Punjabi by Nature out in Leesburg area. Once done went with one of them to my buddies house in Purcellville, VA, to visit plus see his pigs. Once we go there, we had to go and wander in the woods since the pigs where out there foraging for extra food along with napping. It was interesting how the larger/older pigs would let you pet them and then rub up against you to get your attention while the younger ones would come up to sniff your head but pull away when you went to pet them. After seeing the pigs, we both raided the freeze to take a few things home. On the way home we stopped at Four Sisters for Vietnamese food for a light dinner.
Oct 8 – Eating dinner at Kalos with a few friends from St. Elmo’s Coffee Pub. I had the oyster Po’Boy with salt and vinegar chips.
Oct 9 – Watching “American Pickers” while catching up on what happened during the day on Twitter.
Oct 10 – Watching The Big Bang Theory. Met up with a few friends at At. Elmo’s Coffee Pub along with working on reviewing Dropbox pages for accessibility issues for my interview in the early afternoon. The interview went well and once done headed to M. E. Swing Coffee Roasters to work through old e-mails and read a few articles. Next, I headed to Wegmans for a light lunch and some veggie shopping, along with some Wegman’s pasta that was on sale to stock up since I’m going to make soup stock and pasta sauce.
Oct 11 – Catching up on Twitter after spending the day in Bethesda, MD, at the Government interagency Accessibility conference where I talked to people I knew about looking for a job, and they made suggestions and told me to send them my resume. To which I informed one of them I had to make sure it was accessible first with me being an accessibility person to which they said they never thought to do that themselves. Plus, they would be the only person that would know and those they would be passing resume on to would have no clue whether it was accessible or not. The other fun part of the day was helping a buddy of mine who is blind get through the crowds on the rush hour metro at Metro Center sine I could take the blue line the long way around. Only issues with that were the blue and orange lines were single tracking because of track issues in SW DC. By doing this, I added an hour to my commute home. Fun times.
Oct 12 – Finalizing an e-mail to send to someone about a job. Spent most of my day working on updating my resume along with figuring out what is going on with a job offer, along with conversing with old co-workers through chat. Attempted to watch some afternoon TV and nothing on was on that I cared to watch. Managed to get in an early evening walk of about a mile and a half since I had only done about a half mile up until that point. Plus, spent some time talking with different neighbors before and after my walk. Talked to one about their grass that was growing in a bit thinly another about the large tree that part of which came down over the long weekend and how the city came t take the rest of it down the other day. Then talked to a third neighbor about take out the weeds in his lawn while we talked with another neighbor about her having time to herself while the kids were at choir practice.
Oct 13 – Sitting the audience at the Naval Heritage Centers auditorium lessening to Sir Tim Berners-Lee the founder of the World Wide Web answer questions after watching “ForEveryone.Net”. Some days it pays to look at Twitter during the day so you can find out about events like this and even have someone put you on the list to attend on a few hours notice.
Oct 14 – Watching “Tony Robbins: I’m Not Your Guru” on Netflix on my 34″ widescreen monitor which is about what happens at one of his six-day Unites States events. After that, I watched a few episodes of “Street Food Around the World” where this guy goes to large international cities and spends twenty-four hours eating street food. He usually, gets a few shop owners/employees to let him in the back to watch and help make whatever their specialization is. Along with meeting up for lunch with another chef friend so show them the best local place to go. I spent my day making a couple of runs to the post office to pay bills, buy stamps, and mail in some paperwork. While earlier re-working a social media widget to have fewer items, along with no images. The only issue is that it was originally written using jQuery which means adding 90 Kb of minified code to the page wait of a page that weighs less than 20 Kb. Still having issues with the Twitter link, so once that’s corrected I will work on converting the widget to JavaScript. Doing so will give me a project to work on while trying to finally, learn JavaScript or at least put a dent in my knowledge.
Oct 15 – I was half watching football on TV. I think I was watching the Notre Dame vs. Standford game at 8:16 PM. The game was pretty good with Notre Dame leading most of the game until they lost in the late parts of the fourth quarter. Managed to get to the Courthouse Farmer’s Market along with the Del Ray Farmer’s Market. Also stopped into St. Elmo’s to visit friends and found a friends family there which was unexpected since I figured they would be at the hospital visiting after her brain surgery which went fine. After that went to M. E. Swing for a hot chocolate and a bit of reading before picking up a buddy around 1:30 PM to have lunch at Peter Chang’s. Once we were done, we went to Super H Mart so I could pick up some pork necks and backs and chicken necks to use in homemade soup, along with fish fillets. On our way to drop my buddy off, we stopped at Banh Mi DC Sandwich to pick up a few egg rolls, which I consider the sleeper dish there. I would have never thought about getting them until a guy came in with friends and family and order like eight of them for four people. Asked him about them and eh said they were great and the reason he was there to have them try them. He was correct that they are the best. I dare say the best ones I have ever had not that I eat a lot of egg rolls because so many are bad.
Oct 16 – I was watching TV waiting for Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” show to come on CNN. Earlier in the day, I drove out to the Shen-Valley Flea Market in White Post, VA. On my way there and again when going home, I noticed that there were a lot less Republican Presidential signs and the ones I did see seemed small than in years past. Not that there were a lot of Democratic Presidential signs either. Guess this year’s election is so much different in the last few years that people are not necessarily saying which candidate they are voting for or at least not publicly.
Oct 17 – Watching a new episode of the Big Bang Theory. I spent my day sending e-mails and dealing with computer stuff so could spend Tuesday learning about JavaScript. Late in the afternoon, I left the house for about a two-mile walk.
Oct 18 – Talking about diversity and inclusion with people after the panel discussion about gave they thought of individuals with disabilities as part of their hiring or customer base over at WeWork Crystal City. Earlier in the day, I started reading A Book Apart’s JavaScript called “JavaScript for Designers”. I didn’t get too far because I spent time taking notes and responding to e-mails and Twitter direct messages.
Oct 19 – Listening to Marcy Sutton’s closing comments from her great “Accessibility Testing with Angular 1 and 2” talk at Blackboard. Had planned on getting more done reading about “JavaScript for Designers” today but wasn’t feeling well so napped instead so I was better to go run today’s Accessibility DC event at Blackboard with JoAnna Hunt.
Oct 20 – Listening to Carrie Hane’s closing remarks of her Content Strategy talk at Refresh DC at WeWork Crystal City, VA. I did an accessibility talk at Pivotal Labs Crystal City, VA, office which is in the WeWork office space for now. Had hoped I could have more time to do the talk, so I didn’t have to rush through the content. I stuck around for a while to continue reading through more of “JavaScript for Designers” and taking notes while testing JavaScript in the Chrome console. While there Nick Whitmore challenged me to some ping pong, which I did pretty good for not playing in a long time.
Oct 21 – Talking with Chef James from Makatto at the TEDxMidAtlantic after party.
Oct 22 – Talking with TEDxMidAtlantic attendees at the closing party at the xxx venue.
Oct 23 – Watching last weeks “Parts Unknown” show about Sichuan and eating dinner on the couch while waiting for the newest episode to air about London. They were there right after the Brexit vote.
Oct 24 – Watching “The Big Bang Theory” for the last time on Monday night this season.
Oct 25 – Sitting in Cabin John drinking Matt Kline wine, eating BBQ pulled pork with coleslaw, while talking politics.
Oct 26 – Watching TV of some kind it must have been so exciting that I forgot to write it down while watching. Started uploading accessibility test results, etc. to SharePoint at the office.
Oct 27 – Watching The Big Bang Theory. I spent a good part of the day help and reviewing the accessibility updates the Presidential Innovation Fellow were making to the WORKER.gov website.
Oct 28 – Watching TV of some kind it must have been so exciting that I forgot to write it down while watching. Finished uploading accessibility test results, etc. to SharePoint at the office.
Oct 29 – Driving to Lost Dog to get a meatball sub along with some cake donuts from Sugar Shack afterwards.
Oct 30 – wWatching the repeat of the London episode of Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown”.
Oct 31 – Adding issues for phone numbers missing parenthesis “(” in the front of the them for nine locations. Spent the early evening outside talking to the neighbors while handing out quarters to the children as they gave them candy.
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.