Guess I forgot to post April, May, and June’s a few weeks ago. So here at least is what I was up to at 8:15 PM in April. Will post the May, June, and July over the next two weeks.

Background about Posts

Started keeping track of what I was doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) every day for the last few months 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.

I thought this was a great idea to see if I could find any patterns in my nights. So far I tend to watch TV Monday, Thursday, and Sunday nights when I’m home. Also on the weekends I tend to be leaving or coming back from dinner, sometimes even eating dinner.

Here is my post of what I’ve been doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) in January, February, and March.

April

Apr 1 – ENTERED 2015/04/02 – Standing at the top of the second-floor stairs of Clyde’s in Chinatown attending the Innovation in Accessibility meet-up. Talking with William, Jason, and others discussing with a deaf guy about building single page applications using JavaScript frameworks and how they are mostly not accessible. Interestingly he hadn’t thought much about their accessibility for others after a long discussion about captioning.

Apr 2 – In REI purchasing new hiking shoes and three Isis of Smartwool socks. Used my dividend, plus I got 20% off the $90 shoes and 10% off the socks because I got three pair. A day spent looking at the code to improve developer accessibility and what needs changing for the “Standards for Application” demo websites.

Apr 3 – Re-reading Elle Luna’s (@elleluna) blog post on Medium, called “The Crossroads of Should and Must”. Thought it made sense to re-read this post after reading the introduction to her new book by the same name before going any further with the book. Was listening to B.B. King’s “Live in Cook County Jail” while reading.  Once done heading over to District Taco to grab a few breakfast tacos (egg, cheese, and chorizo in a flour tortilla). Might even add a bit of the leftover hot green papaya salad to add a bit of flavor and punch.

Apr 4 – Watching Duke Blue Devils beat Michigan St. Spartans by 15 points with less than three minutes to go in the game. Woke up at 6:30 AM after the upstairs neighbors alarm went off. Then went to Giant to turn in $90+ of change. Next went to Heller’s Bakery for donuts, but they were closed after being open since 1928. Sad day. Would have gone to Citibank to cash birthday check, but the branch in Foggy Bottom branch didn’t open until 10 AM. Got to Plaza Arts to pick up canvases to start my 100 days project to paint wine and food related paintings each day. Stopped at Union Market for lunch and found out Toki pop-up was closed because Maketto is opening next Friday. At A. Litteri’s stocked up on cured Italian meats while one if the guys made me a free cured nears sandwich after ordering a meatball sub.

Apr 5 – Walking past the corner of Commonwealth Ave. and Camron St. Was out on a 5,600+ step walk over the course of an hour wandering into Old Town Alexandria to watch the tourist on Easter. The day was spent sleeping in and then heading to DuPont Circle Farmers Market shopping for food. Had a great vegetarian shiitake mushroom, brown rice, and other herbs, etc. sandwich. Next we drove around DC to see what was going on. Then headed to Eden Center to check out the new Gold Fortune grocery store. Next walked to the opposite end of the shopping center for Pho and back to get more food. Picked up roast pork finely chopped along with pickled veggies to make my version of Banh Mi and a few other items. Total steps walked was 13K+ or over 6 miles.

Apr 6 – Opening up old paint tubes so I can start my 100-day project with paintings of wine bottles and food. First wine painting turned out okay after not painting for like six or eight years. The day was spent updating developer accessibility issues and CSS, plus testing VETS for accessibility issues.

Apr 7 – ENTERED 2015/04/08 – Started cleaning up the apartment by gathering all the trash in the wastebaskets. Then moved on to dinner and painting wine bottle paintings, while watching TV.

Apr 8 – Reading Elle Luna’s post on her “My Morning Routine”, while watching “The Best Bars in America” in the background. Had Trusted Tester/accessibility meeting for two hours in the morning and then read the document for tomorrow’s meeting. The afternoon was adding spent working on CSS fixes to the developer to improve keyboard accessibility and fix skip navigation anchor issue. Then did JAWS testing of VETS. Still need dinner and finish my third 100-day project painting.

Apr 9 – Cleaning off my paint brush after adding a dark orange background for tonight’s wine bottle painting. Need to start painting the backgrounds a day or more in advance so they can dry and make the bottle painting easier. Day of meetings and testing. Helping figure out Section 508 policy at work and what goes on with bringing Trusted Tester into work.

Apr 10 – At District Taco with Chris, Tony, and the kids. They enjoyed the tacos greatly. I had two fish tacos and two basic breakfast tacos with chorizo. Then took them out to Mt. Vernon to show them where George Washington lived. Ended evening at the Dairy Godmother for custard. The daily flavor was cherry blossom. Finished up last updates to Developer website to correct accessibility issues for TABLEs, skip navigation, and keyboard users, along with more VETS testing.

Apr 11 – Sitting the car reading Twitter while friends and their kids go see Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, and Korean Memorial. We spent the day wandering around National Zoo and then had dinner at 2 Amy’s. Best pizza in the area. We’re grabbing frozen custard again tonight at The Dairy Godmother once done.

Apr 12 – Working on my 2014 taxes. Spent good part of the day trying to install and update Turbo Tax 2014. Started around 12:30 PM and it was taking forever so left to meet Megan at Buzz Bakery to go over and help her with her accessibility slides. While I was gone in the of middle loading Turbo Tax, Windows XP decided to reboot for security updates so had to start over. Once rebooted Windows needed to download more updates and wouldn’t let the machine do anything else for like an hour. Finally, git everything loaded and slow time getting mist recent updates to Turbo Tax. Now download Virgina state tax information. Hoping to get done tonight so I can review thing tomorrow night.

Apr 13 – Watching “2 Broke Girls”, then grabbing takeout from South China before more TV and reviewing my taxes. Turbo Tax currently has me owing $0 to the state if Virginia. Never in 35+ years of doing taxes have never noticed or been owed money. Might also be the night to order my new Retina MacBook Pro.

Apr 14 – Driving to Five Guys to pick-up a cheeseburger with lettuce, grilled onions, and grilled mushrooms, along with ketchup and mustard. Worked on testing a native application iPhone with VoiceOver, which is a first for me. Spent time reading Section 508 testing document too.

Apr 15 – Sitting outside Clarendon Apple Store to see if they can fix my iPhone 4S. Late yesterday evening the top power button stopped working unless you press it hard. The other issue has been once my battery gets between 60% – 70% the phone will drop to 20% battery or shut off without warning. Most likely time to get a new phone.

Apr 16 – Finishing up Chicken Tikka Masala, garlic naan, and a samosa while watching “The Big Bang Theory”. Had a busy day starting with three-hour meeting about new accessibility policy and implementation at work. Then dealing with Compliance Sheriff not running because of lack of space, new intranet accessibility, what to do about some documents accessibility, and a few other things.

Apr 17 – REENTERED – 04/20/2015 – Driving between Cheesetique and Good Fortune Market to get roast pork from the food court. Got there around 8:25 PM and found out they closed the food court at 8:00 PM. You would think a food court in a grocery store would be open later on a Friday night.

Apr 18 – REENTERED – 04/20/2015 – Watching TV while my new iPhone 4S is updating my applications and music. Spent most of day restoring my iPhone 4S after getting a replacement one from the Clarendon Apple store. Pro Tip: remove music and other media files (TV shows, movies, videos, etc.) before your last backup, so you don’t have to wait nine hours for 12.5 GB to load. That is if you have a backup somewhere.

Apr 19 – ENTERED – 05/05/2015 – Lost this entry because over the weekend of April 19 my work computer rebooted. When I opened the SimpleNote web page, it refreshed to what was in there from Friday morning, which only had Thursday night’s entry. This meant I had to recreate Friday, Saturday, and Sunday’s entries that I never remembered what happened Sunday night beside most likely watching TV.

Apr 20 – Reading a Web Development Group article about Google changing their search algorithm to rank responsive websites higher when on searching on your mobile device or tablet, also watching 2 Broke Girls. Had a busy day getting a bunch of things done. From enterprise scanning software, figuring out PDF accessibility issues, and making recommendations on improving new website performance.

Apr 21 – Starting to look into best and easiest way to convert my main jfciii.com website pages into responsive pages, since Google changed their search algorithm to give a higher ranking to responsive pages. Updated page TITLEs for APIv2 application so assistive technology users will understand what the page is about from the TITLE. Next, tested iPhone application with VoiceOver at work and tomorrow get to see how it works when I change the language of Spanish on the phone. Supposedly it’s going to switch to being in Spanish.

Apr 22 – Laying on sofa killing time reading Twitter to see what I missed while working today. Then I’m heading out to grab takeout Chinese to eat while watching “Best Bars in America” and “Brew Dogs” on Esquire Network.  Worked with a co-worker to check the accessibility of iPhone application with VoiceOver for the Spanish version. This application changes to Spanish when iPhone has the language set to Spanish. Taught him VoiceOver while he listened to Spanish to make sure it was correct.

Apr 23 – Sitting in the front row at iStrategyLabs listening to @moonstompmaggie and @elifitch talk about the project they did for Facebook’s F8 conference. In a short time, they built a 3D interactive experience using Three JS, with not much knowledge of either. Put accessibility issues into GitHub for URL shortener, along with finished testing iPhone application using VoiceOver in Spanish.

Apr 24 – Driving with Devorah to meet one of Jen Strickland’s friend near the White House at 18F to show him around, since he’s new to town. Drive around 14th St. and end up at Izakaya Seki for sushi, beef tongue, monkfish liver, and more. Ended night at Dangerously Delicious Pie. Mostly worked on read new Trusted Tester and Section 508 Policy document.

Apr 25 – Relaxing on the couch watching “The Big Bang Theory” reruns after driving up to Philly and back to meet Alex Hillman at Reading Terminal Market to grab a roast pork sandwich from Tommy Di Nic’s and two Train Wreck’s from Becky’ Cajun Cafe. After getting them, we headed back to Indy Hall to eat and have some old Zin, along with cured meats. Before heading home, I stopped at Di Bruno’s in south Philly for cured meat and cheese for cured meat and cheese. The last stop was Isgro’s to get two cannoli’s.

Apr 26 – Was in kitchen toasting Wegmans Tuscan garlic bread for sandwich with roasted pork and pickled veggies while watching Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” on CNN, which is a clip show from last years shows. CNN is getting ready for the premier of this season tonight at 9 PM. Ran over to DuPont Circles farmers market (saw chef Jose Andres) and then to the Georgetown Flea Market. On my way to Good Fortune Supermarket, I stopped at Pho 75 for a small bowl of round-eye and fatty brisket with extra noodles. Once done there went to Clarendon Apple Store to get a replacement the iPhone 4S for the iPhone 4S that I got eight days ago. The problem was with the wifi antennae. Now spending the night restoring the phone.

Apr 27 – Catching up with Twitter while half-watching what’s going on on the TV about police and protestors in Baltimore. Did additional reading on how to use VoiceIver on an iPhone to make accessibility testing easier?

Apr 28 – Sitting in my buddy Tony’s basement with him, Barry, Lori, Jim, and myself drinking two Matt Cline “Three” Zinfandel wine, Merlot, and a Sauterne. Worked on a quick demo of how to display a mobile version of datasets and for the desktop.

Apr 29 – ENTERED – 04/30/2015 – standing  at the corner of M St. and 1st St. NE in front the Harris Teeter talking about DC’s bike share with Kevin Cole after the Accessibility Innovation meet-up at Tynan Tea shop, listened to two talks. The first was about a company that is helping people with disabilities. While demoing one product and looking at their other one realized why not add a suction cup to hold the pill-holding tool to a surface so a one-handed person can open bottles. The room started laughing, and the two guys thought it was brilliant.  Told them I’d like one of the first prototypes and they said sure. Guess I should have patented it when I got home.

Apr 30 – Updating my phone’s calendar to pick-up my car Friday night at Landmark Honda after work, while watching “The Big Bang Theory”. Spent time today reviewing a few PDFs.

Conclusion

In the future, I plan to post this information once a month at the beginning of the following month once I’m caught up.

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.

If you want to meet up to do something exciting at 8:15 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.