Overview of What Happened at 8:15 PM for Me in 2015

Posted on January 1, 2016 by John F Croston III

Looking back at the year it’s been exciting and a bit more eventful than watching TV most nights. Which covers a majority of my nights, but the following are a few highlights from each month, along with a link to that month’s events. Some days include what else I had been up to during the day or what happened later in the evening.

A few months had more interesting things happen at night than others. Like the first two weeks of October had a bunch, since I was on a two week road trip to Austin, TX, for An Event Apart.

January

Jan 13 – Attended WordPress DC and listening to Anthony D Paul on “How to Create a Website Using WordPress on Your Cellphone”.

Jan 29 – Talking with the Army .MILers old and new at Refresh DC after listening to Megan Zlock talk about the differences between the CMS Craft and WordPress.

Febraury

Feb 5 – Talking with Cory, Emily, and Marisa about the design after the Dribbble DC event were a guy from Gannett talked about using the Oculus Riff. Spent the day reviewing ODEP PDF and UX for APIv2.

Feb 27 – Flying to SFO for Bay Area Accessibility Camp at IinkedIn in Mountian View, CA. Currently, over middle America somewhere between the western side of Iowa and eastern side of Nebraska. I’m sitting next to Nguyet and Doug how are headed to Sonoma Valley for a few days.

Feb 28 – Sitting in Agave Mexican Bistro with a dozen or so accessibility people after a great day at Bay Area Accessibility Camp at LinkedIn in Mountview, CA.

March

Mar 5 – Sitting in the 30th Anniversary opening event for CSUN. Watching Geri Jewell and another comedian, along with Mark Goffeney playing the guitar with his feet. Then off to meet people for Ramen.

Mar 7 – Sitting with William, Elle, Glenda, Karl, Billy, Sina, and his girlfriend at the reception dinner for Sassy and Pratik after a long week of CSUN. A great way to unwind and spend more time with friends.

Mar 18 – Listening to “Stacking the Bricks” with Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman, while reading their answers to people questions about their product “30 X 500” – http://courses.30×500.com/pages/pioneers-ama/. Also updated my iPad to iOS 8.2. The day was spent finishing and adding accessibility issues to GitLab, along with closing out 12 issues and passing three back and creating a new one.

Mar 24 – Out wandering the neighborhood to get me to 12,000 steps for the day. I added about 3,000 in a slow, leisurely stroll. Spent most of day correcting TABLEs to make them more accessible in the newly updated developer portal.

Mar 26 – ENTERED 2015/03/27 – Was on a North American accessibility camp call with people in Canada as well as the United States. We were discussing how to make the camps better, easier to start a new event, how to help sponsors, etc. We had people Toronto, New York City, Boston (while in Pittsburgh for a conference), Louisville, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Austin, San Fransisco, Boulder/Denver, and me from DC. Not sure our focus yet, but we will need to work on that before our next calls. Think we need to gather everyone’s information in one place and then point to their individual websites and events pages. Next we should improve the information on how to start/run a monthly accessibility meeting, which may turn into a year camp. Once people are our ready for a yearly camp, we need to have a roadmap for people to follow and be willing to help run/schedule, etc. an event. More information to come in the future.

April

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 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 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 23 – Sitting in the front row at iStrategyLabs listening to @moonstompnaggie 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.

May

May 2 – Sitting outside on the 6th-floor patio at Lorien Hotel (Kimpton Hotel) as part of Mary Elizabeth Kamin and Kevin’s engagement party. Went to Elmo’s and found out about the event. Went home and spent two hours cutting, raking, cleaning the front yard, then was down for a two-hour nap.

May 5 – It finally happened after four months. Today at 8:15 PM I was in my bathroom doing what I needed to do. I had finished reading some Twitter, and my second version of Amy Hoy’s Just Fucking Ship eBook and heading to my spare bedroom to update my nephew’s soccer website with completed and upcoming soccer camps. My day was spent mostly reading and playing with the interactive examples from the http://eloquentjavascript.net/ website. Bought the book, but have found reading it online has been great, so I can run the examples, along with making updates and changes to see what will happen.

May 7 – Sitting in the Atrisphere in Roslyn eating two breakfast tacos with chorizo tacos and two shrimp tacos while DC Night Owls gets started. After introduces, Mathew Lesko (guys in question mark suit from 80s and 90s TV) talk about doing your own thing that makes you happy because otherwise you’re working for others and most likely not happy. Plus, he talked about he had businesses that failed, write 100 books, and was happiest when he started wearing the question mark suits. Helped VETS come up with a great solution on how to bake infographics accessible by adding off-screen text.

May 14 – ENTERED – 05/15/2015 – Driving from UPS after picking up my new 13″ Retina MacBook Pro to Five Guys to grab a cheeseburger and small fry. More work on making developer.dol.gov dataset pages responsive, so TABLEs only show on desktop.

May 24 – Unpacking the car after going out to Shen-Valley Flea Market in White Post, VA, with my co-worker, along with stopping for bake goods at Creekside Bakery and Deli inSperryville. Then we stopped at Heritage Hollow Farms for pig jowl bacon after doing the tour of Copper Fox Distillery. We made stops at Caresaul Ice Cream for custard and a quick stop at Wegmans for a few groceries.

May 31 – Driving home from DC with Henny Swan after taking her on a driving sightseeing tour of DC after having a steak dinner at Ray’s the Steak’s. Figured she needed a bit of time out of the hotel before spending the next two days there for the M-Enabling Conference in Crystal City, VA, after spending the day flying from England.

June

Jun 5 – Talking with G C Meyer about his new paintings at Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. Ended up buying one of Gary’s smaller pieces with a red chair. Spent the day in Cabin John with most of the pig roast staff.

Jun 6 – Doing a bit of clean-up with Bev and Jeff before we headed home after we were done at the pig roast. Spent eleven hours in Cabin John working and attending the pig roast.

Jun 12 – Sitting in the Clarendon Apple Store as the third person in line to buy something. Never head to be put on the waiting list at a store to give them $500 – $600. After waiting ten minutes went up to ask how it was going, and they told me I still had two people aged if me. At that point, I was getting frustrated because I was paying for parking since they don’t validate irking anymore. Think one of the managers heard while walking by and had someone bring him a black 64 Gb iPad for more me.

Jun 16 – Checking my grammar using Grammarly for my responses to the three main questions asked by XOXO Festival to see if I can be part of the lottery to get a ticket for this September’s event. The three questions and answers are the following:

What do you do? Inform and teach people the importance of web accessibility as my day job at Department of Labor and whenever anyone asks outside out of work too. Along with spending time away from the computer with great friends over food and wine.
What are you working on right now? Getting monthly DC accessibility meeting back going and figuring out the best way to find more time to work on the side project of keeping track of places I want to eat when I travel. Plus, have been participating in the 100 Day Project. I’m on my 72 consecutive days of painting wine bottles on canvases.
What’s something you’ve made that you’re proud of? Starting www.AccessibilityCamp.org so others will learn about accessibility, which is a free to attendees. Other’s have run events around the globe in the following cities: London, Tokyo, Toronto, San Francisco, Los Angles, Boston, Seattle, Guelph (Canada), Missoula, MT, and many more.

Jun 20 – ENTERED – 06/21/2015 – Driving to Manassas, VA, to drop off co-worker after our day trip to Philly. Prior to this, I drove through the worst thunder and lightning storm I have ever driven through. Since maybe the time bring my aunts car back up north from Florida with my father when I was a new driver in my mid teens. Had a great day wandering around Reading Terminal Market trying a few different sandwiches from Di Nic’s (pork and sharp provolone, roast beef, and meatball with sharp provolone). Then it was a bit of shopping and off to Indy Hall to meet Sean and pick-up my art from my last trip. Sean had given my co-worker the ten cent tour before we each bought a JFDI print from the latest art show. Once done at Indy Hal we headed to South Philly to Di Bruno Brothers to get too much cheese and cured meats. The last stop before heading home was at Isgro’s for cannoli’s.

July

Jul 4 – ENTERED – 07/05/2015 – Walking from Go Fish in Rehoboth Beach, DE, towards my car after having fish and chips with a side of curry sauce. Was heading home so I would be home in time to do my 90th day in a row of painting wine bottles on canvas as part of my #100DayProject. Earlier in the day I had shrimp and large crabs at Crab Shack in Kent Narrows, MD. I followed crabs up with a trip to Ocean City, MD, for ice cream because I couldn’t find parking in Rehoboth for fish and chips, plus I wasn’t hungry enough yet for dinner.

Jul 5 – Watching the United States Women’s soccer team in the second half of the FIFA Women’s World Cup Final. U.S. Women’s team ended up winning 5 – 2. Slept in until 10 AM and then read for two hours or so in bed, and then headed to Wegmans for lunch, more reading, and a bit of grocery shopping. Came home, read, napped, and read some more.

Jul 7 – Laying in bed reading “Starting and Sustaining” by Garrett Dimon, which is a great book on what to think of when starting a company/web application. In this book, Garrett talks about creating the bug tracker “Sifter” from coming up with the idea of building the application to launching to using other services to speed things up. How using other services, so you don’t have to build them yourself can save time and money, plus a whole lot more. I’m reading the book for a second time, since I have been toying with the idea of building my own web application to store places I want to eat while traveling. I’m always asking people or watching TV about where to eat in different cities. The problem is I end up with answers in e-mails, Twitter, Facebook, text, etc. I want one place where I can search by city.

Jul 10 – ENTERED – 07/11/2015 – Finishing up wine bottle painting #96 of my 100 Day Project. Painted early so I could meet up with my buddy for a late dinner at Bonchon Chicken in Arlington, VA. DOL did an article on him as part of their blog post on people with disabilities prior to the 25th anniversary of ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act).

Jul 15 – Listening to Yitzchok Willroth better known as @CodeRabbi as part of his “Wisdom World Tour”. The talk was titled “Talmudic Maxims to Maximize Your Growth as a Developer” sub-titled “Everything I Learned About PHP I Learned at Rabbinical School”. Great talk on just start by doing something, being part of the community, learning, teaching, helping others, etc. The talk was the first time hearing Yiddish as part fo a tech talk or any other for that matter. At least Yitz translated everything so we all could understand what the Yiddish was.

Jul 22 – Sitting at Long View Gallery listening to Kelli Anderson talk about her personal projects at the Adobe Creative Jam event. She did a lot of creative work with paper from building a five-page book that you make other things from the pages like a planetarium, a guitar, and much more. Most of the day was spent gathering information about how to test mobile websites and native applications besides using VoiceOver (iPhone) or TalkBack (Android) phones.

Jul 28 – Working on updating Trello board about the “Gotta Eat Here” website and web application, after writing bills to be mailed tomorrow. While this was happening, I’m updating my iPad mini to iOS 8.4. Always update the iPad before the phone to make sure there are no weird thing going on. Not sure If I’m going to update the old iPad 2 with the shattered screen or not.

August

Aug 2 – Creating new Trello board of blog post ideas for “Gotta Eat Here” from my larger list of issues for “Gotta Eat Here” website to help get people interested. Taking a list from the main board to and creating individual task outside of it so I can start outlining the posts. Which means adding a list of restaurants and other information about them like their location, along with what you should eat there, website, hours, etc. Met up with Matt Bowen and his wife Lauren for late lunch at Mandu in Adams Morgon. We all had bibim bop in a stone bowl that gives you crispy rice if you left it bake to the slides for a bit. We talked about food work, his weight loss of about 65 pounds over the last year or so, which is a great slow and healthy pace in my opinion. Afterward, we stopped at a high-end chocolate shop two blocks away. I picked up to 70% dark chocolate were they picked up two 90% bars, which I think is too dark for my tastes. Once home after a bit of reading ended up taking a couple hour nap, since I didn’t get one in yesterday.

Aug 8 – Sitting in row K seat 1 behind home plate at the Bowie Baysox game watching Joe Grunkel pitch a two-hitter up until the middle of the top of the sixth inning. I was there as his guest and my friend from North Carolina, his wife, son, daughter, and another friend. It was interesting getting to sit that close to watch a game. After the other team got a third hit and he only had 91 pitches he was taken out of the game after six and two-thirds innings and awarded the win.

Aug 13 – Adding places to eat in my Trello board about “Gotta Eat Here” blog posts. Changed the blog post titles from “Write about “XYZ City” to “XYZ City – meal”. The meal part was for some of the larger cities I have more locations to eat at like Washington, DC and New York City. Previously updated a few links on my slides and adding the event for Toronto to the accessibility camp website pages. Attended a few meetings today, along with testing a new API QA tool the tech team is working on.

Aug 14 – Sitting on the 7:10 PM train to New York City talking to a guy from Seattle about cyber security on his way to visit his parents and family in Philly. Today was an interesting day since I ended up breaking my glasses while outside during a fire drill at work. Had to leave work an hour and a half early go to my eye doctors in Crystal City to have them fix them. Got there in no time and they were able to fix my glasses easily. I made it to Union Station to catch my train to New York City for the weekend earlier than if I left directly from my office at 5:30 PM after work. DMd with Jimmy Chandler and Shawn Lauriat to see when they could both meet on Saturday to have a meal.

Aug 16 – ENTERED 12/27/2015 – Sitting on the Amtrak train back to DC from being in New York City for the weekend to see Penn and Teller’s live show earlier in the afternoon on Broadway. Ann Murray was sitting about eight seats away from me in the row in front of me to my right. Great show even though I had seen a lot of the trick before on other TV shows or more recently on “Fool Us”.

Aug 26 – Signing up for Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman’s online talk Monday afternoon called “Kick Procrastination’s Ass”. Did this while texting friend in Boston about accessibility camp, along with all the changes with her and her family in last two months. Busy Day at work with a bunch of meetings looking at responsive templates along with testing a few different new applications.

September

Sep 2 – In my spare bedroom watching the 12th episode of the third season of “Mind of a Chef” with Chef Magnus Nilsson which is about “Traditions”. It was great seeing how he and his family are keeping some of the old Swedish food traditions alive by teaching his kids who are around five years old. He had his mother and aunt there who taught him and they learned from his grandmothers. Another day spent reading about the Department of Homeland Securities Trusted Tester process. The rest of the day was spent looking into the newly updated enterprise scanning software after it has been unavailable for close to two months because of space, server, and other issues.

Sep 6 – Driving past the original Dogfish Head Brewery in Rehobeth Delaware. Had an interesting day traveling around Maryland and Delaware. First stop was for crabs at the Crab Deck then headed to Ocean City, MD, to drive around and kill some time so I could get fish and chips at Go Fish before heading home. Didn’t make it home until 12:05 AM, since I stopped at Hopkins Farm Creamery in Lewes, DE.

Sep 9 – Working on creating our first Accessibility DC event on EventBrite in over a year. Need to send out a notice to the person at the venue to make sure I have the information correctly before publishing and sending out invites. My day was spent re-working our enterprise scanning software that was having issues with old scheduled scans that used the old license. The rest was spent reviewing a new iPhone application for accessibility issues.

Sep 11 – Walking through the Tysons Galleria Mall on our way to the Ritz Carlton to have dinner at Jose Andres’s American Eats Tavern. Once my buddies and I got there, we ordered a whole bunch of food. We ordered bowls of summer corn soup, buffalo style chicken wings, Hoppin John with mushrooms, finely chopped tomatoes, celery, carrots, and peppers, and a plate of five different thinly sliced country hams. The final dish we ordered was a large order of suckling pig jambalaya. Oh, almost forgot about the awesome biscuits with the fresh light fluffy butter with a touch of cinnamon. Those were the best biscuits I have ever had in my entire life, and I’m old.

Sep 23 – Driving up King St. and crossing Patrick St. after leaving Caphe Bahn Mi for dinner. I had summer rolls with mint, vermicelli noodles, shrimp, and a few other veggies with a great peanut dipping sauce. My main course was lemongrass chicken with vermicelli noodles, mint, pickled veggies, lettuce, crushed peanuts, and a sweet fish type sauce. Had a good day working at hoe, since the pope is in DC until Thursday night. Having the pope here allowed me to sleep in an extra 45 to an hour and still take a 25-minute walk, which is about the same amount of walking I do to get to my office. At lunch time took the same walk and then heated up some leftovers to eat at my desk while working. Around 3:00 PM went for my normal planned walk to stretch which ended up being around the block. Once I was done for the day at 5:30 PM I did a little bit of reading on Twitter then headed out for about a mile and a half or more walk. Doing this would be similar to my commute home. I enjoyed this day. Got a lot more done without all the distractions of the office, plus walked about 4,000 or so more steps than normal, which is over one and a half miles more walking.

Sep 26 – Standing around talking to people at the TEDxMidAtlantic closing party at the Sidney Harman Theater. Again another great day at TEDxMidAtlantic. It’s worth going year after year because I get to meet interesting people along with learn things I never knew existed.

October

Oct 1 – Sitting in the Ryman Auditorium listening to the live Opry Country Classics show hosted by Larry Gatlin with his brothers, Crystal Gayle, and others. Long day of driving to get here from DC. I stayed in the Tiny Red House, which was 200 square feet. Had plenty of room to sleep, even cook if you wanted. The place had a living room that could be used for reading and relaxing, but the bathroom could have used another eight or so inches to make easier for a slim guy like me get around. Taking that space from the kitchen wouldn’t matter much in my opinion. Adding pocket doors would be helpful too.

Oct 2 – Sitting in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel for the last half hour listening to an older gentleman play jazz tunes on the piano. While listening to the music, I was cleaning up a week’s worth of e-mail before heading over to Beale St. Had a nice day by starting the morning in the Hatch Show Print in the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, TN. Great place to see how they are keeping letterpress printing alive by printing posters for music events. Had dinner at the Rendezvous which consisted of an order of smoked sausage and a dinner of lamb riblets. They were some of the best BBQ meat I’ve eaten.

Oct 5 – Waiting at “Moonshine” to get seated for dinner in Austin, TX, with two other people. We had to wait for about 45 minutes that wasn’t too bad because it gave us time to catch up since it’s been a while. Had a great day at An Event Apart and learned a lot. Guess you miss out on things when you skip a few years. I won the super bingo/coverall were you are networking to meet people and find out certain facts that are true about then and fill one of your spaces.

Oct 6 – Sitting at the Razorfish offices in Austin, TX, talking about accessibility. The talk I was giving was called, “Everything I Learned about Accessibility I Learned from Wine and Cheese”. The talk was about how it takes years to get knowledgeable about accessibility. Which is similar to learning about wine and cheese in that a person needs to figure out what grapes, blends, etc. they like and keeping mental notes. With accessibility, you need to learn things all the time and try things that make sense to improve the accessibility of an entire page or even a small piece of it. Today was another great day at An Event Apart and looking forward to the Workshop on Wednesday.

Oct 10 – Standing in line with two guys from Glasgow, Scotland, a couple from Chicago, and a few people from outside New Orleans to see The Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Earlier in the day went to Port of call and had a mushrooms cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, pickle’, and a baked potato. Then went to the Garden District to wander around. Ended up at the cemetery across the street from Commanders Palace. Once done their tits and wondering in the neighborhood. Then I headed back to the French quarter so I could go back to Jackson Square and look for more art. Ended up buying a slate roof tile painting of the jazz trombone player. Then I grabbed a guitar player photo for only 25 bucks even though it was a repainting on top of another. After the Presentation Hall JAZZ Band, I went to are nods and head alligator sausage with baked onions and spicy mustard. My entrée was crawfish O’Connor, which was crawfish, some spice in a tomato butter cream sauce. They had wonderful homemade bread and butter.Could have eaten more of it, but wanted to cut back a bit.

Oct 11 – ENTERED – 10/13/2105 – Driving to my rustic cabin AirBnB. Got of Interstate 95 and drove 13 miles down a two lane road with no street lights then turned right and drove another eight-plus miles. Turned right at the only place with a street light. A few turns later I’m on a dirt road fro over 1.7 miles, driving at five or ten miles an hour looking for a sign that says Cabin and garden in pick darkness. Once I found the sign and turned left as the email said. Another quarter mile I see a light in the distance, and there it was a two room cabin, which one room is the bathroom, with the internal, external lights on. Grabbed laptop bag along with my clothes and went in. To my right, there was a TV with Direct TV standing on a bunch old glass bottle milk crates with two leather chairs. In Theodore if the room there was a small wood burning stove. In the kitchen area was a fridge, gas stove, and on the sink was a bottle of Bourbon and another of Johnny Walker Black. The next thing in the room was the bathroom. The part of the cabin next to the bedroom area was in had a bunk bed, gun cabinet, and then a twin bed in a stand that you needed a step stool to get into. Also, over the fridge was a stuffed male turkey and raccoon on a log over the sink and a deer head over the main door. It was great to be able to use my Your Karma to check e-mail and others things in the middle of the Georgia mountainous back-country.

Oct 12 – ENTERED – 10/13/2105 – Having dinner at my friends house south of Raleigh with his wife talking about my travels the previous twelve days. We had a great dinner of strip steak, Brussel sprouts and bacon fat cooked in a cast iron skillet, along with homemade cornbread, German potato salad with bacon and some cooked mushrooms with onions. Spent the day driving from the rustic cabin in Hamilton, GA. Had great nights sleep in this wonderful place.

Oct 24 – Sitting at the dinner table at the Cedarville manner talking with friends at my friend Sarah and Mike’s wedding. Was waiting for the music is third so it wouldn’t get on the dance floor. Managed to sleep until only 7 AM realize they didn’t have my phone charger so I went out to my car use my catchers you’re going to read for an hour from 8 AM to 9 AM. The client went in to have breakfast with friends. Then we went to one of my buddies rooms had a little bit of wine they had some breakfast room. Once it got to be noon we went out to lunch and came back and nap for a short time. It’s 3 PM I left to go to Citizen Barber to have them clean up my beer to make sure it was Lacey shake for the wedding this evening.

November

Nov 6 – Sitting in Bangkok Golden with Eric, Sam, and Pratik to have some Loa food for the three week in a row. We ordered a bunch of different foods from two veggie crunchy rice salad, spicy duck lamb, roasted pork shoulder, and beef drunken noodles.

Nov 7 – Listening to the best man and brides made tell stories about the bride and groom or watching everyone on the dance floor, because I missed the time because I was having a good time. The best food at the event I had to be the chocolate cake which part of he larger wedding cake made by the bride’s sister who is a master baker from San Fransisco.

Nov 14 – ENTERED 11/16/2015 – Was eating the second third of my four meat grinder from Stachowski’s while flipping between college football and car building shows. Earlier in the day went to St. Elmo’s to talk with friends to see how everyone did after the wedding last weekend. Once that was done, I headed to the post office to mail bills and send my friends external hard drive that he let at my place to him. Then I was off to DC to get cupcakes at Baked and Wired, which was followed by a stop at Stachowski for their four meat grinder to be cut in thirds it’s so easier to eat. I had the first third while watching Notre Dame beat Wake Forest 28 – 7. Once I was done with all that and my second helping of sub I watched a bunch of different TV shows to keep myself distracted for no particular reason.

Nov 25 – Eating turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing covered with gravy while watching ‘American Pickers’. The government sent us home two hours early the day before Thanksgiving so I ended taking a two plus hour nap. Once I got up, I headed to “Unwined” to pick up some Pinot Noir and Syrah. I was greeted by the owner even though they had closed about 15 minutes earlier. They offered me some of the wine they had been tasting earlier in the day. The owner was tasting a Bourbon that someone brought in and offered me some if hers. TheBourbon and trying five reds was a bit much after waking up 20 minutes before and had not eaten anything in six hours. Ended up purchasing two bottles of private label Pinot Noir by Lanny from California, along with two bottles of 2003 J. J. Prum Riesling.

Nov 26 – Sitting at a small round kitchen table with friends and others invited to their house for a late Thanksgiving dinner. First reason dinner was late was because their eldest daughter had to work at the Army hospital as a nurse for the day, along with a few of her co-workers that came along too. The other reason was the main stoves oven decided not to work. We had a great time talking about a bunch different things, and we managed not talk politics or religion. My contribution to the meal was a nice bottle of Lanny Pinot Noir and a bottle of Shiraz from Two Hands winery.

December

Dec 2 – Sitting at iStrategy Labs listening to Chris Coyier and others talk/demo Pens at the Code Pen DC meet-up. Was interesting to see what kinds of things CodePen can do and what new features were coming out soon, along with some cool things people were working on or built using CodePen. Worked on reviewing the new ILAB ‘Sweat and Toil’ Android applications to see how much more accessible they made it. Now, for the most part, the issues seem to be with how Talkback (screen reader) does different things that I’m used to working in JAWS, NVDA, or even VoiceOver.

Dec 5 – ENTERED – 12/07/2015 – Sitting in St. Elmo’s listening to two musicians after dinner with a few friends at Pork Barrel (still now a fan). We had gathered earlier in the evening to see the Del Ray, VA, tree lighting, along with a few of us going down the street to the Purple Goose consignment shop for a used babies crib. Earlier in the day met most of these friends at St. Elmo’s for coffee and our weekly gathering of the minds as we call it. Plus, to see how everyone’s week went and discussed the news. After that headed home to read for a bit, then went to Pho 75 for lunch, which was a small bowl of number 10 (rib eye and fatty brisket) with extra noodles. Then it was off to Java Hut in Arlington, VA, near the Whole Foods for hot cider while doing prep work Sunday’s mini Just-F’ing-Ship-athon, which was going to be doing research and reading about my web application idea I had for keeping track of places to eat. Posted a blog post about stopping work for now on my event registration application because it got too large for one person or, at least, me with what I know now, along with the first part of a post on Sunday morning about what I want to work on next.

Dec 6 – ENTERED – 12/07/2015 – Sitting on my sofa downloading food and restaurant related iPhone application that I wanted to see if they had any features I might want to have in my application or if they had anything like it at all. Started Googling information at 9:00 AM. Hit publish on my blog post of what this 12-hour sprint or hack-a-thon is about. Spent the majority of the morning Googling and then updating the blog post. Then at noon showered and headed to St. Elmo’s to do more work there to get out of the house. Spent two hours there and updated post before leaving. As I was walking out ran into a friend I had seen in close to a year so stood around and talked for about 30 minutes then it was off to a late lunch at 3:00 PM. Once lunch was done went to head to another coffee shop again near Whole Foods in Arlington, VA. Did a bunch of reading of articles and posts I found. Headed home around 7:00 PM to spend the last hour or so from 8:00 Pm to 9:00 PM or so downloading applications to my iPhone. Lots more to read and applications to try out, which will then require more digging.

Dec 14 -Watching Rev Run from Run DMC’s show on Travel Channel called “Rev Runs Around the World” in Tokyo. They are celebrating his oldest son’s birthday. They travel to a bunch of places and do different things. Completed the DHS Trusted Tester exam in about five and a half hours including about an hour for lunch and a few breaks. Managed to get through everything in six pages except the software part of the recipes pages by 12:30 PM. Came back to complete the software part. Once I was done, I went back through all the pages to double check my work because of they way DHS words the questions. By doing this, I found about four answers I had to correct but more importantly found four questions I never answered in the software section of the recipes page. Now we wait about four weeks because of the Christmas and New Years holiday.

Dec 15 – I was in Cabin John for Amiee’s coming home wine dinner homecoming from Afghanistan. It was great to see her home in one piece in the United States. She had a layover after getting here before heading to Indianapolis and then home in Chicago. From what she was saying we were the only ones that knew she was back in country as not to worry others if it took longer to get home than planned. We Skyped with another friend in Chicago that she knows for like 15 minutes before she wandered pas the camera when she thought our other friend distracted when her husband came home. When she saw her and realized what was going on she screamed “You B*itch” and then burst into tears of joy, which made most of the guys manly men start to cry or, at least, tear up.

Dec 18 – Sitting in wine friends kitchen at his holiday party talking with other friends who are mostly Republicans what they thought of the top candidates. For the most part, they agreed the top few were crazy and that the RNC must be having a cow/fit worrying that one of them could be the candidate for the party.

Dec 24 – Sitting at friends kitchen table with the young adults drinking a few wines (1983 Ridge York Creek Zinfandel, 2011 Piccolo Cru, and a 2013 Shotfire Shiraz) I brought with our Christmas Eve dinner. As usual, the food was beyond awesome. They had baked ham, prime rib, roasted pork, Mac and cheese, green beans, stuffing, and many more items that didn’t fit on my plate. Later in the evening, I had homemade pumpkin pie with fresh whipped cream for dessert. I had a shortened four hour day at work. Managed to grab lunch with a few co-workers and then home for a couple hour nap.

Conclusion

Looking back at what I was doing most night’s this year wasn’t as boring as I thought it would be. Managed to write 28,000+ words about it and what happened during my days.

Next year I need to visit more with friends and family and do a lot more than watch TV to relax after a day of work. Need to do more reading and work on side proejcts so some day I can work when I want during the days.

What I’ve Been Doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) – December 2015

Posted on December 31, 2015 by John F Croston III

Another month’s worth of what I have been doing at 8:15 PM every night. Doing this has become a great way to see what I’ve been up to on a particular day along with what else I add in about my day. It’s become a regular habit of what I’m doing and what has happened that day and a wonderful little one paragraph diary/journal of my actions and thoughts.

A Little Background on This Post

I 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) every day.

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 on what I’ve been doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) in January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, and November.

December

Dec 1 – ENTERED – 12/02/2015 – I was watching TV, but can’t remember exactly what it was. Spent most of my day taking the last Trusted Tester prerequisite class.

Dec 3 – Waiting for takeout from South China. As usual, I got the Malaysian Lo Mein, which has shrimp and Tofu. During the day, I tested the new ILAB Sweat and Toil Android application and found they fixed most of the issues and that Android’s screen reader TalkBack reads information much differently than iOS’s VoiceOver or even what you would expect out of JAWS or NVDA. One thing that was weird if you place valid HTML into a view TalkBack doesn’t read any of the headings. Another thing that is weird is that TalkBack reads the text of list item then the bullet/number and the text a second time before moving on to the next item.

Dec 4 – Putting my name on the wait list for a table at Caphe Bahn Mi. Spent my day tying up loose ends before heading to DHS’s Trusted Tester training all next week and then the full day exam the following Monday. Hope it goes well, since 70% of the people don’t pass the test the first time. My guess is most of those people that don’t pass are either people who have never done accessibility testing or those that have done it a certain way for years and have difficulty switching their process.

Dec 7 – Sitting in my spare bedroom on my old white MacBook entering in the last two days worth of what I was doing at 8:15 PM. Today The class at one of GSA’s office building for the first day of DHS Trusted Tester training. The class wasn’t too bad, since I know a few things about accessibility, but need figure out and use their process. The biggest thing I think is to be able to figure out what tool and what part of that tool I need to use to do a given test to see if the code passes or not.

Dec 8 – Sitting in Cabin John having a second bowl of pasta Fagioli, which is commonly made using cannellini beans or borlotti beans and some type of small pasta such as elbow macaroni or ditalini. Ours had some kale and leftover chopped up ham on the side along with some grated cheese. We all were there trying a lot of different beers. My favorite of all the ones we tried was “The Eleventh Labor”, which is a sour Berliner Weiss brewed with 62 pounds of apricots per barrel, then aged for six months. Not being a beer guy this was the best one I have ever tried. Another day of DHS Trusted Tester training and getting my mind to think like them and to realize some of the things pass because it’s a negative question.

Dec 9 – Walking to my spare bedroom to check on how the updates to Microsoft Windows 8.1 on my netbook were going. Still at 10% or 15% completed. Another big day at DHS Trusted Tester training today. Today seemed to make more sense because they have a way of doing things that isn’t the way I do things or would mark stuff right or wrong. A case in point is page had the correct ARIA HTML code, but the tool and IE11 don’t recognize it, so it was wrong.

Dec 10 – Laying on my sofa watching “The Big Bang Theory” while reading Linda Eliasen’s blog post “On Quitting Part II. Had finished reading the first part. Another day at DHS Trusted Tester training were we finished going through all the rest of the necessary testing steps. Need to pay attention to the software sections, along the with any of the negatively worded questions and things I don’t agree with to make sure I pass the test.

Dec 11 – ENTERED – 12/13/2015 – Standing in the high-end wine room at Wegman’s in Alexandria looking to see if they had any older Ridge Zinfandel. Finished up the final day of DHS Trusted Tester training. Think I will do well if I take my time, read the criteria for passing, failing, or not necessary.

Dec 12 – ENTERED – 12/13/2015 – I was sleeping. I had a long week with the DHS Trusted Tester training this week. Got up early and attempted to go back to sleep after reading for a bit, but after falling back to sleep a friend texted me, which woke me up with a chime of a text on my phone. After that, I went to the local coffee shop to meet a friend and then home for a short bit before meeting two of them for lunch and then going to two wine stores. They enjoyed learning a bit about wine, and I spent way too much on 11 bottles of wine. Part of my trip was to find a bottle or two of Ridge Zinfandel for a tasting on Tuesday at a buddies place. Once done with that I drove around the DC area to enjoy the nice weather. Once home read for a bit and then I napped for two and a half hours, which is why I’m writing this at 1:28 AM on Sunday, Dec 13th.

Dec 13 – ENTERED – 12/14/2015 – I was watching This is Life with Lisa Ling on CNN. The show was about teaching men how to pick up women called ‘The Seduction Game’. From what Lisa read on the teachers website, it was completing different of what they showed on TV. It was mostly about building up the guys confidence, along with ways to start a conversation with women. I spent the day reading and then heading to Bob and Edith’s in Crystal City for breakfast. It took forever to get my food, and I’m not sure why. Then I headed over to St. Elmo’s to mostly go over my notes for the DHS Trusted Tester exam for Monday. Luckily I was able to zip up the baseball website, and one of my other classmates did the same for the template website. Having these examples gave me a variety of pages to test and, more importantly, software to test. Next I did some work on my “What Was I doing at 8:15 PM” daily text, which ended up mostly being cleaning up the grammar using Grammarly for the last four or five months.

Dec 16 – Watching American Pickers after a day of starting to review the DOL FOIA pages for accessibility issues.

Dec 17 – Watching Big Bang theory to see what was going to happen with Sheldon and Amy after they kissed for the first time the week before. Sheldon had to choose between spending time with Amy or going to see Star Wars with the rest of the guys. I will leave it there in case people haven’t seen the episode yet. Finalized reviewing most of the DOL FOIA pages to see if they were accessible and found most of them had some kind of issues that needed to be corrected. A few issues will be easier to fix than others.

Dec 19 – Flipping through channels on the TV and had stopped to watch “Pit Bulls and Parolees” for whatever reason. Went to St. ELmo’s to meet friends in the morning then wrote out a bunch of bills to be mailed before meeting another friend for lunch. We went to grab Loa food at Bangkok Golden in Falls Church, VA. As usual, we ordered crispy rice salad, duck larb, and pork drunken noodles. Once we were done with lunch, we went to Union Market where I grabbed some French pastries. Then we went to A. Litteri’s to purchase some cured Italian meat for me and a meatball sub for him. I managed to give the two older guys that take care of me most times I’m there with a generous tip, at which point they were even nicer to me than they normally are.

Dec 20 – Sitting in Thia Lemongrass with a friend one last time before they move out west. Earlier today went to Wegmans and had one of their sausage, egg, and cheese croissant sandwiches before heading to Hoffman 22 to see “Bridges of Spies”. After the movie headed to Pho 75 for a small bowl of rib eye and fatty brisket and extra noodles. One I had finished my late lunch went to a coffee shop down the street to have a hot chocolate while creating two blog posts. First one was about what I did at 8:15 PM in August and the second one was for September. When I got home, I read a bit before taking an hour and a half nap.

Dec 21 – Watching older episodes of “Big Bang Theory”, since I had missed a bunch of episodes from last year for whatever reason. Started our first day of Kanban training to figure out the process we need to learn.

Dec 22 – Watching “Chasing Classic Cars” on Velocity. Wanted to be watching “Knife Fight” on the Esquire Network, but my COMCAST cable was stuttering, pixelly, and the sound kept dropping out. Another day of Kanban learning and looking into how to best use the process for us at DOL. Also had an hour and a half meeting in the middle of my Kanban meeting to discuss VETS 4212 projects accessibility issues and demoed them with JAWS when necessary. Even showed them some successful examples within DOL and other outside examples.

Dec 23 – ENTERED – 12/24/2015 – Eating dinner at Wegmans because I needed to get dinner. I wanted to pick up a few things like some cheese, bread, and cookies. The cookies were to take in for hopefully the last Kanban training/workshop of the year. Spent the full day working on getting our Kanban board and terms figured out as a team.

Dec 25 – Watching the Jeff Dunham’s “Tanked” for dummies. I got up at 8:13 AM and headed to Hoffman 22 to see the 8:30 AM screening of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”. I managed to get a seat in the last row center with a minute to spare before the previews started. After the movie went to the Crystal City location of Bob and Edith’s. Once done with my cheese omelette, home fries, rye toast, and sausage. When I got home, I managed to text with a few people before taking a few hour nap. Next did a bunch of reading before going to the Eden Center to grab roasted pork for lunch or dinners and then beef Pho.

Dec 26 – Sitting in spare bedroom double checking my text of my “What I Was Doing at 8:15 PM” from October. Met a few friends at St. Elmo’s, since the one group had family in from out of town and they figured they wouldn’t all be able to get there easily. After leaving around 12:45 PM I headed over to Pho 75 for a small bowl of raw rib eye, fatty brisket, and extra noodles. Once home read for a bit before taking an hour or so nap. Finally, headed over to Wegmans to grab dinner, a few cookies, salad greens, dark chocolate with cherries and almonds, and a couple of bananas.

Dec 27 – Laying on my sofa in my living room reading the latest edition (3) of the magazine Lagom by Elliot Jay Stocks, his wife Samantha Stocks, and others. I was reading about how to pickle sardines from a recipe from a book entitled “Fish and How to Cook It” written in 1932. Earlier in the day, I went to Wegmans and grabbed an egg, cheese, and sausage croissant sandwich, along with two donuts. The chocolate covered chocolate donut was the worst donut from there I had ever had, and I have a lot of them over my lifetime. It was extremely dry, which made me only eat the top part with the chocolate icing and as little donut as possible. After that, I headed over to the Hoffman 22 AMC Theater to watch Quinten Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight”, which was shot in 70MM. The movie was about a few bounty hunters trying o get people to the City of Red Rock to get their bounties and others attempting to make sure that didn’t happen all in the middle of a blizzard in the middle of Wyoming. Once the movie was over, I went to District Taco to grab a late lunch of two breakfast tacos with chorizo and two fish tacos. Once I was done with them, I headed to St. Elmo’s to work on gathering individual events from each month of what I was doing at 8:15 PM, along with talking to a few of the people that work there. Now back to adding a few months worth of highlights to my year end what was I doing at 8:15 PM blog post, along with doing a spell and grammar check with Grammarly on what I have so far for December.

Dec 28 – Updating my Fitbit numbers by turning my iPhone Bluetooth on, while reading and article about creating cassette tapes to have a physical form of music. Had put laundry in washing machine about 45 minutes ago and I’m waiting for it to finish so I can get the next load in and this one in the dryer. Today was mostly spent starting to review the new Drupal version of DOL.gov. Have found a bunch of accessibility issues with the templates, along with other issues with individual pages.

Dec 29 – Sitting my sofa watching to New Orleans episode of Andrew Zimmern’s “Bizzare Foods”. At this time, they were talking about boudin and other southern classics that were slowly fading away because none of the young generation are learning how to make them or seem to care about them. The type of boudin sausage they were talking about was made with cooked rice, pork, and a mix of herbs other can contain offal or even blood sausage.

Dec 30 – Sitting in my leather chair in my living room using the ottoman while reading Robert Mills article in Lagom magazine called “A Type of Nostalgia”, which is about his desire to use a 100-year-old typewriter to send letters to people. Today was spent reading over the information gathered by 18F on what they recommendation for accessibility. Towards the end of the day, I got the newly created WHD Contact Us application and went through looking for usability and accessibility issues, which I have found a hand full so far.

Dec 31 – Driving from Wegmans down King St. to get dinner at Caphe Bahn Mi. O ended up ordering the summer rolls and the Vermicelli roasted pork. A relatively easy day work, since the government sent us home three hours early. Added a bunch of issues to GitLab for the new WHD Contact Us application. This year was pretty impressive, since I kept track of what I did at 8:15 PM each night along with adding a sentence or two of what I did during the day if it was interesting. Think I managed to write about 28,000+ words on the subject over the course of the year.

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.

P.S. Need to go back through these 8:15 PM posts and add any links or photos that are relevant to make them more appealing.

What I’ve Been Doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) – November 2015

Posted on December 27, 2015 by John F Croston III

A Little Background on This Post

Here is my post on what I’ve been doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) in January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, and October.

November

Nov 1 – ENTERED 11/02/2015 – Watching TV at home while reading Twitter and waiting for the newest episode of Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” to air on CNN. He was headed back to Borneo to make good on a promise to the chief he made ten years ago. The only problem was the chief died a year ago. Went to the DuPont Circle Farmers Market then over to the market near the Big Bear Cafe, where I got myself a large pot of peach blossom tea. After that drove around DC and ended up at the Georgetown Flea Market where I bought something, but Simple Note lost the rest of the text or never finished writing the sentence.

Nov 2 – Reading Wendell Pierce’s book in my living room while sitting in my leather chair.

Nov 3 – Sitting in Cabin John having amazing sweet potato Gnocchi with salad, sticky toffee pudding and three awesome Zinfandel and a Cabernet from my buddy Evan.

Nov 4 – Sitting in National Geographic employee conference room listening to Jon Long talks about setting a process to move code to other environment using JavaScript and other tools.

Nov 5 – Talking with Pratik on my sofa after dinner and shopping at Wegmans. Was home sick today, but feeling much better after sleeping and rest most of the afternoon.

Nov 8 – Talking with three accessibility friends at Four Sisters restaurant for Vietnamese food. We had a flavorful vegetarian green papaya salad, along with clay pot tofu and a clay pot chicken. The other two dishes were first a ginger curry chicken with onions and red peppers and the second was pepper steak wraps that you made with noodles, greens, basil, pickled veggies, and cucumbers. Pratik and I went to Big Bear Cafe for tea, which I had a pot of peach blossom and he had spicy golden tea, and then we went to the Royal Restaurant for brunch. Never did manage a nap because of the of co-workers brunch e-mail and having to create an Accessibility DC event and invite on EventBrite, along with some reading.

Nov 9 – Sitting at my desk in my spare bedroom watching episode 2 of “The Farm” on Google Prime. Not quite sure if I like this food show or not since it’s only one person talking to the camera and cooking until the end where all the food he cooked goes on the table for the family to eat, but no one else talks about what they like or don’t like. Time to give it another episode or two before moving on to something else.

Nov 10 – In Cabin John tasting beer while having conversations with wine friends and eating a great pasta dish made by my Tony with sausage, beans, garlic, etc.

Nov 11 – Sitting in front of the TV with a few pounds of salad and beans from Whole Foods as my dinner watching last week’s “American Pickers” episode. Ended up getting a bit too much sleep yesterday on my day off for Veterans Day. Met with Russell H. and Mike G. at Caphe Bahn Mi for lunch. Ended up dropping Mike back at his office (WDG) so Russell could see it and ended up talking to Mike’s boss about accessibility for a project they are looking to bid on.

Nov 12 – Watching “Big Bang Theory” which I haven’t seen much of the last year or so. Once it was over headed to South China to grab some takeout, since I wasn’t in the mood to cook again for what seems like the third month now. Not that long but it sounds like a funny number of months to say. Worked most of today updating accessibility related wiki pages. Not sure who wrote some of the original text, but, at least, they kept spelling/typing the same words wrong the same way over many pages.

Nov 13 – ENTERED 11/16/2015 – After waking up from a short nap, I headed over Whole Foods to grab some snacks from the kitchen before I started watching TV.

Nov 15 – ENTERED 11/16/2015 – Was eating the final third of the Stachowski four meat grinder that the roll had gotten soggy because of all the fresh veggies letting out their liquid. I also finished the meal off with my Doom (chocolate cupcake with dark chocolate frosting) cupcake. Ended napping/sleeping for about three hours this afternoon after having all-you-can-eat brunch at Masa 14 with old co-workers and their significant others and one baby. We all ate way too much because it was so good or, at least, most of them said that so we didn’t feel so bad eating everything that didn’t move.

Nov 16 – Watching a video on YouTube on how to use the 53 Paper pencil. I’ve been using 53’s Paper for almost two months to do digital wine bottle drawings instead of painting. I started dong this when I went on my nearly two-week road trip to the south while driving to Austin to attend An Event Apart in Austin, TX. It’s been great to use, but I need to learn more about how best to use it to improve my drawings along with making it easier and quicker to do them. It takes about 20 – 30 minutes to do a drawing while it only takes 10 -15 minutes to do a painting depending on the size of the canvas.

Nov 17 – Checking my phone for messages at Blackboard after our Accessibility DC talk with Aina Irbe’s talk on accessible eLearning. After Accessibility DC was over, I walked over to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library to meet Justin Thorp after the DC Tech meetup. He was standing outside with a few other people and the two of us headed over to the old 918 F ST (LivingSocial event space) to meet others for drinks. We ran into two friends I hadn’t seen in a long time. The one it had probably been three to four years and the other was about a year or more. The second one had been busy raising money for his start-up, which recently raised $12 million, which was great to see a DC company raise that kind of money to help prove you don’t have to be in Silicon Valley to do so. After meeting them and having a drink Justin and I went to Shake Shack to get a double patty burger for me and some ice cream item for him. It’s nice to be to meet-up with friends you haven’t seen in a while and had some time to talk quietly.

Nov 18 – Watching last weeks ‘American Pickers’ and a few other things. Spent my day doing Android TalkBack testing of the new ILAB ‘Sweat and Toil’ native application.

Nov 19 – Listening to Nick Whitmoyer talks about ‘Slicing Pizza’ at the new Viget office in Falls Church, which was about what’s the process for making pizza and how it’s similar to doing design related projects. Looks like I’m going to DHS Trusted Tester training sometime in December.

Nov 20 – Reading Twitter while watching re-runs of “2 Broke Girls” on a Friday night. Don’t I know how to live it up? It’s time to decide what and possibly where to get dinner. Reviewed the new ILAB ‘Sweat & Toil’ Android application on the second device with alimony, all the same, issues except those that dealt with font size.

Nov 21 – Watching Notre Dame football game against Boston College at Fenway Park in Boston. The first football game at Fenway Park since 1968. My morning was spent at St. Elmo’s talking about another friend that seems to have gotten married again after such a short time. Came home and took an hour and a half nap before heading to Good Fortune for roasted pork, then to Home Depot for air conditioning filters, and finally went to DC Bahn Mi Sandwiches to grab six BBQ roast sandwiches. Two each for two buddies of mine that I dropped off on my way home.

Nov 22 – Reading Cap Watkins article titled ‘Stop Worrying and Love Your Impostor Syndrome,’ along with watching re-runs of ‘The Big Bang Theory.’ Didn’t get to sleep until 4:00 AM and then got up at 9:30 AM. Headed over to Wegmans to grab a breakfast sandwich and do some shopping for cured meats before heading to Hoffman 22 AMC Theatres to watch the new James Bond movie ‘Spectre’. After the movie, I came home and read a bit and then took a two and a half hour nap.

Nov 23 – Happened to be scrolling through Facebook on my once every few weeks times I logged in to check some post by a friend or family member and was looking at an item from my youngest brother. Spent my day reviewing GitHub issues for new ILAB Android ‘Sweat and Toil’ application and closing out about 20% of the issues I opened. Now we wait for the rest of the necessary updates.

Nov 24 – Sitting in Cabin John talking and drinking a 2006 Ridge “Monte Bello” Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon. Worked on getting registered to DHS Trusted Tester classes the first full week of December.

Nov 27 – Eating turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing from Whole Foods while watching ‘American Pickers’. Met friends at St. Elmo’s then came home and did about 35 minutes f leaf raking before heading to Pho 75 for a small bowl of fatty brisket and sirloin with extra noodles for a late lunch. Once den headed to National Zoo to get about an hour or so of walking around while checking out the otters, elephants, bison, etc., along with all the people heading home for the night.

Nov 28 – Watching Notre Dame lose to Standford at the last moment on Notre Dame’s last game before the playoffs. Notre Dame needed to win big and gave a few other teams to lose so they can make the top four ranked teams in the NCAA. My day was spent at St. Elmo’s talking with friends, then home to rake leaves. After that picked up a buddy of mine to grab a small bowl fatty brisket beef based Pho broth with extra noodles. Next it was a walk to the other end of Eden Center to Good Fortune grocery for some roasted pork. Before dropping my buddy home, we stopped for BBQ pork Bahn Mi sandwiches and two egg rolls to eat while watching college football. Once home finished raking the last part of the yard before the, it started to sprinkle.

Nov 29 – Watching Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” New Jersey episode. Slept in until about 10:30 after working up early reading for an hour before going back to sleep. Around 11:45 AM went to Pho Viet to grab a bowl of Pho and summer rolls, which took forever for some reason. Came home and took a nap after a bit of reading. The nap was only about an hour and a half, but couldn’t get to sleep until close to 2:30 AM.

Nov 30 – Attempting to get to Christopher Schmidt’s Twitter feed to watch a talk by John Cleese on creativity. For some reason, every time I typed “chris” into the Twitter search box and attempted to click on his name Twitter kept giving me all the results for “Christmas”. Got excepted into the DHS Trusted Tester training and attempted to request the first prerequisite class. For some reason, it took a while ad then even longer to give me an account on another website so I could take the class.

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.

P.S. Need to go back through these 8:15 PM posts and add any links or photos that are relevant to make them more appealing.What I’ve Been Doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) – October 2015

What I’ve Been Doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) – October 2015

Posted on December 26, 2015 by John F Croston III

A Little Background on This Post

Here is my post on what I’ve been doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) in January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, and September.

October

Oct 3 – Arriving at my AirBNB in Baton Rogue, LA. I had driven from Memphis after taking care of soon to her factory tour. When leaving town, I took Route 61 which is more the back-country way and than taking Route 55 to Baton Rouge Louisiana. It was extremely interesting being able to look at Mississippi Delta farmland. Stopped in Jackson Mississippi do you have a pig your sandwich along with a smoked meat sandwich at the Big Apple Inn. It was in one of the sketches neighborhoods I have ever been in, and that was during the daytime. Both sandwiches were awesome well worth the trip. They cost six bucks for slider size sandwiches, two of each with and hot sauce.

Oct 4 – Driving back from Noble Pig in Austin, TX, where I have a half of Duck Pastrami sandwich and a half of Seared Beef Tongue sandwich. The day was mostly spent during on I10 and then state road 71 from Baton Rogue, LA to Austin, TX. Managed to get to Austin Hilton Downtown to register in time for An Event Apart.

Oct 7 – ENTERED – 10/14/2105 – I was driving back from Salt Lick in my friends car after a nice relaxing dinner of BBQ brisket, smoked sausage, and a BBQ pork rib. Which also came with cole slaw, potato salad, beans, bread, pickles, and onion. We talked about many things and had a good time catching up after not seeing each other for a few years. Much easier to do in person than over Twitter DM.

Oct 8 – I was settling into my AirBnB in New Orleans before heading out to the French Quarter and Bourbon Street. It was interesting walking French Quarter and Bourbon Street. I didn’t realize there were so many strip clubs/gogo bars in that area. Another thing was people wandering the street with plastic cups of alcohol. I got back to AirBnB by 10:30 or 11 PM. After a breakfast of breakfast tacos at Torchy’s I drove to Lockhart, TX, for some BBQ at Smitty’s. I got there around 10:45 AM and wasn’t quite ready for BBQ yet. I wanted to wander around town, but they were preparing to film a movie, so lots of streets were closed, and so were the shops around the town square. I got fatty brisket along with a smoked sausage and a Jalapeno Smoked Sausage and pink lemonade.

Oct 9 – Driving back from dinner at Bon Ton Cafe where I had turtle soup. It was a bit salty for my liking but supposedly helps with gaminess. My main course was Red Fish Bon Ton, which was pan seared fish with butter sauce and crab over the top of it, along with pan fried Brussel sprouts. When dinner was over headed over to Preservation Hall to see the 8 PM show of the Jazz band. Close to show time and way too many people ahead of me and stomach not feeling to hot I grabbed a cab back to my car headed home. I spent the day wandering around the Quarter and cleared out a bunch of old e-mail at a coffee shop. Then looked at a bunch of art which I bought a half dozen pieces. Most of them were small and two larger ones. The second largest one I needed to head back and grabbed information about the artist from their saleswoman, who forgot to grab a business card from the other day.

Oct 13 – Settling in for a bit of TV after not watching any got almost two weeks. Currently, watching the “Bizarre Foods” show were Andrew Zimmern is in Paris, France. Left my friends place in Raleigh, NC, at around 8:30 AM and arrived home at 1:00 PM. Doing so allowed me to stop and pick up my mail, which I had them restart delivery. Grabbed a pork chop sandwich with salt, pepper, and hot sauce on white bread. After unloading the car, it was time for a couple of hours nap. Finally, drove to Wegmans to eat dinner and stock up on a few things for the house.

Oct 14 – Looking at my “What I’m Doing at 20:15 in 2015” while sitting at my desk in the spare bedroom with a hoodie and shorts on. Guess my body doesn’t quite know what to do with cooler weather after a long vacation, it might be getting sick which I hope it doesn’t. I’m getting ready to put the month of October so far through Grammarly, along with last month if I haven’t done so already. Had a relaxing first day back at work catching up on e-mail. I did a bit of testing of a QA testing tool and explaining to everyone asking what my almost two-week road trip was like and what I did.

Oct 15 – Watching episode 10 of “Movable Feast” – Scribe Winery with Christopher Kostow and The Wise Sons. Which was about wine, blintzes filled with farmers cheese and strawberries on top, along with duck prosciutto, and truffle, asparagus, veggie, rabbit sausage, and egg casserole, along with an in-season salad with tomatoes, hand picked baby greens, walnuts, olive oil, and much more. My day was spent testing a new QA tool and updating the accessibility standards page on the wiki.

Oct 16 – Watching episode 1 of “Movable Feast” in Seattle with special guests Seattle: Tom Douglas and Thierry Rautureau. Great seeing Pikes Place Market and the bay/ocean when getting the seafood, spring onions, morels, etc. Another day of afternoon meetings of what we are going to work on next week and testing our new QA Tool, which I found a few issues with and reported them in our issue tracking system.

Oct 17 – Napping after an hour and a half massage to help loosen up my muscles after a two-week road trip to Austin, TX. Watching Notre Dame football against USC and it’s a tied game with a little over twelve minutes left to go in the fourth quarter.

Oct 18 – I was watching the “R-E-S-P-E-C-T the Butterbean” episode of “A Chef’s Life” on Amazon Prime. The day was mostly spent going out to the Shen-Valley Flea Market and not finding anything I needed to buy, but when I got to the Front Royal Flea Market, I purchased a chef’s knife ($5) and eight small wood bowls and one larger one for all of two dollars. My final, stop after having lunch at Blue Winged Frog in Front Royal where they have a huge picnic table in the middle of the restaurant was the Creekside Bakery to grab two donuts and two apple turnovers, which were well worth the trip.

Oct 19 – Watching commercials during “The Big Bang Theory”. Haven’t seen the show but only once this season because I have been traveling and missed it the other nights. Spent a good part of the day gathering information about the small possibility of changing accessibility scanning tools. Contacted a few people I know that work for some of the different companies to see if I could get some information from them without having to go to the sales people. I didn’t contact all of them at once since I wanted time to read through anything I found from each of them. Two of them wanted to set up a meeting, and I told them I was attempting to gather some general information first. One asked me a for questions over Twitter DM, and I sent a few and then realized maybe an e-mail with them all would be better. So I started gathering all those questions in one place.

Oct 20 – Sitting in the basement of my buddies house in Cabin John trying different beers, while talking about plans for friends wedding this weekend. Found out the bridal party or, at least, the groom and groomsmen need to be back to the hotel on Saturday and ready to go by 3:00 PM. So that means lunch might be ending closer to 2:00 PM, which is when my beard trimming was supposed to be taking place. Will need to move my appointment back until closer to 3:00 PM.

Oct 21 – Sitting on my leather chair and using my leather ottoman to prop up my feet as I read Jamie Oliver’s new book “Everyday Super Foods”, which he started writing over a year and a half ago when he realized he was turning 40 and need to make a change in his life. Te book is about making better meals to help you live longer along with other things I haven’t read yet. More wiki updates for pages the deal with accessibility.

Oct 22 – Listening to Laura McGuigan (@grafxnerd) talk about being the only designer at a start-up and how she didn’t know anything when she first got there about products, hiring, etc. Nice to see Viget Labs new space. More wiki updates for pages the deal with accessibility, along with testing the updates to the QA Testing Tool. Managed to give the two new people at the office my talk on making websites more accessible so the release management person and the new front-end person can each understand what needs to be done and think about when doing their jobs.

Oct 23 – Driving to Frederick Maryland to stay overnight in preparation for my friends wedding Saturday evening. After checking in the hotel closer to
8:45 PM I want to family meal for dinner. I have the bird Tony spicy chicken wings and the cakes with pimento cheese and bacon. For my meal, I love having catfish over the top of beans tomatoes cabbage in a few other vegetables.

Oct 25 – At Wegmans in the bakery department trying to get garlic bread sliced with the guy saying he just used a cleaning solution to clean it. He then explained that these little slice bread that late but I mentioned it done it many times after 9 PM. What I think you meant was we clean the slicer if you’re slicing bread for myself another customer. Went to bed about 3 o’clock this morning to the fact we have the after party for the wedding and the friends room drinking wine and talking and telling jokes. Then was up by 8:30 AM to be ready for breakfast with others froM the wedding party and friends. Left Frederick, MD, around 11 AM and headed back to DC and stopped at Golden Market” in the Eden Center to pick up some pork and take me. Period got home written to about 120 and then took a nap. You couldn’t care called maps, so I slept for over 5 1/2 hours. Around 730. Then headed to Wegmans to grab some dinner and do a bit of grocery shopping.

Oct 26 – Sitting in Granville Moore’s eating frites with a few buddies while we waited for Toki Underground to text us that our seats were ready. A friend from out of town that used to live in DC that had never been to Toki wanted to go so we did, and he loved it. Afterward, we walked down to Maketto to show both of them around. Once done there, we stopped into Dangerously Delicious Pies to grab a pie to go.

Oct 27 – Working on cleaning up my e-mail that had over 500 e-mails that I needed to deal with. Most of them were read and then filed away, and others need a bit more work. I didn’t get through them all but dealt with 150, which is a good start.

Oct 28 – Sitting in a conference room at Blackboard listening to Megan Zlock talk about accessibility in her talk “Building A More Beautiful and Accessible Web”. Wish more of the people that signed up and let a little rain discourage them from not showing up to hear this great talk. We had a nice discussion afterward about other accessibility issues not covered in the talk. Spent most of the day reviewing PDFs in an iPhone application that were too small to read, along with helping with some CSS issues and reviewing a few documents.

Oct 29 – ENTERED 11/16/2015 – This what you get to write when you didn’t write things down when they happen or, at least, a few notes to jog your memory later in the night or the next day. Not sure what I did that night, but most likely it was watching TV or reading, but I will never know because I didn’t write it done.

Oct 30 – ENTERED 11/02/2015 – Getting settled in at Ron’s house for a bit of music. Only stayed there for about an hour because I was tired and not many people were there when I left, and that was after taking an hour nap after work before heading over. Found out on Saturday a bunch of people I know showed up a short time after I left.

Oct 31 – ENTERED 11/02/2015 – Talking to neighbors that have been out of the country for the last three years while their kids hand out candy for Halloween. It was nice to get some time to talk to them a bit and see what they had been up too. Spent time earlier talking with the upstairs neighbors about their trip to Italy in the next few weeks. They are headed to Tuscany while in Italy to wander the country sides and see what they can and eat and drink local wine.

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.

P.S. Need to go back through these 8:15 PM posts and add any links or photos that are relevant to make them more appealing.

What I’ve Been Doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) – September 2015

Posted on December 23, 2015 by John F Croston III

A Little Background on This Post

Here is my post on what I’ve been doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) in January, February, March, April, May, June, July, and August.

September

Sep 1 – Sitting in Cabin John drinking wine and eating a great triple cream cheese from Wegmans with my buddy who owns the house and a few other friends. As usual we are talking about many things but decided to put the Nationals game on in the background on the huge 60+ inch HD flatscreen TV. Was nice watching the Nationals play well for the first few innings before heading out? The team had all nine players bat in the fourth (?) inning while scoring four runs.

Sep 3 – Watching more of a “Mind of a Chef” with Magnus Nilsson. Interesting watching a young chef from Sweden showing traditions that others are keeping alive and cooking dishes from when he was younger with a bit of a modern twist.

Sep 4 – Walking out of Wegmans after having dinner and a bit of shopping for the long weekend. Picked up hot dogs and rolls, along with some desert and triple cream cheese.

Sep 5 – Watching Josh Adams taking his first carry for Notre Dame against Texas University and scoring a 14-yard touchdown. Spent time at St Elmo’s with friends after mailing bills, paying rent, and picking up nectarines, heirloom tomatoes, and Cortland apples. Came back home and napped for three hours then did a bit of reading. After that went and watched “A Chef’s Life” from PBS on my Amazon Prime accounts live streaming.

Sep 7 – Sitting in my spare bedroom watching San Francisco episode of the “Movable Feast” on my Amazon prime. Interesting show with the chef going to a new city and talking with one or two or even three chefs to create a meal for about 15 or 20. Not as good as a chef’s life.

Sep 8 – Sitting in my buddies basement Cabin John with a few friends having beers instead of wine. We tried a bunch of sour beers which that were not too bad since I’m not a beer person. I brought some pig jowl bacon, heirloom tomatoes, and herbed bread to make mini sandwiches that everyone loved even though I didn’t have mayo or lettuce.

Sep 10 – Was adding updates to the Accessibility DC event on EventBrite. Had to set up the e-mail invite to be sent out at 11:45 PM Thursday and 4:15 AM on Friday morning, so everyone can get the invites in the morning. Another day was spent checking the new iPhone app for accessibility issues. Tended to find the same types of issues on all the screens.

Sep 12 – Eating dinner at Wegmans from their hot bar. Grabbed some General Taos tofu, shrimp, and two different types of Indian curried chicken along with some spicy pork. Had a good day today met with old coworkers at Union Market for lunch. We walked around, and everyone got different things to eat. Even though it was raining most of the time we were there it started to rain hard for a few minutes. Was nice to see everybody after every six months or so and was glad to see everyone. Managed to get a nap in once I got home during the first part of the Notre Dame vs. Virginia football game. In the end, Notre Dame won the game.

Sep 13 – Standing outside CVS on the 500 block of King Street. Just finished purchasing in Arizona Green paid. Needed something to drink since I haven’t had much to eat. The sugar and would be great. I spent most of the day resting, napping, reading, watching television on the Internet. Managed to get 8,000 steps in today even though I didn’t start with my fit bit until 8 PM.

Sep 14 – ENTERED – 09/22/2015 – Watching Penn and Teller’s “Fool Us”.

Sep 15 – ENTERED – 09/22/2015 – Drinking beer and wine while eating pork jowl stew with pasta with friends.

Sep 16 – ENTERED – 09/22/2015 – Watching the review show of America’s Got Talent to see how Piff the Magic Dragon did with his performance from the day before. Once that was over wait to see him perform with Penn and Teller.

Sep 17 – At the new Chief office listening to Ross Nover speak about design back at school for the 100th Refresh DC.

Sep 18 – Waiting at National Airport (DCA) to head to Boston for accessibility camp Boston.

Sep 19 – In my room at the Doubletree Inn in Danverse, MA, after a great day at Accessibility Camp Boston. Learned about Deque’s aXe tool for checking pages, along with listening to Molly Jane Watt from England talk about being deaf and blind. The final talk was by Dale Cruse about “Using the Language of Love”.

Sep 20 – Approaching DCA on my way back from Boston. Was in Boston for the weekend attend the Boston Accessibility Camp. Spent most the day Sunday with Char and her husband Jim having breakfast and then watching the Bills game against New England, which we lost, before heading back home.

Sep 21 – Watching Penn and Teller’s “Fool Us” during the commercial of the first episode of the season for the Big Bang Theory. Missed a few episodes last year so didn’t realize Penny and Leonard were going to elope. Spent the day mostly in meetings and when not doing that reviewing accessibility wiki entries that improve anything.

Sep 22 – Standing at the cheese counter at Wegmans waiting to get some triple cream Gorgonzola. Had dinner at the hot bar that was some red and yellow curried chicken, spicy lamb, General Tso tofu, along with some breaded shrimp with a cream sauce. When I was done at the cheese counter, I shopped for some cured meats, bananas, grapes, and double chocolate chip cookie half dipped in chocolate. Most of the day was spent updating an almost eleven thousand word “Accessibility Standards” wiki page after three meetings.

Sep 24 – ENTERED 11/16/2015 – This what you get to write when you don’t write things down when they happen or, at least, a few notes to jog your memory later in the night or the next day. Not sure what I did that night, but most likely it was watching TV or reading, but I will never know because I didn’t write it done.

Sep 25 – Walking over to Prequal at 818 F St. for the after party of TEDxMidAtlantic. Great day for inspiration along with some time to realizing that you need to do more with my life.

Sep 27 – I was watching the review of the fifth season of “Parts Unknown”, while I wait for the new season to start about Anthony Bourdain in Cuba.

Sep 28 – I was watching “The Big Bang Theory” is about how Leonard kissed another woman while away on a research project. Today was spent working on accessibility documents.

Sep 29 – I was flipping through the TV and landed on “Counting Cars”. Today was spent trying to finish things up with leaving for vacation on Thursday. Did a review of the new Developer page for ILAB Child Labor dataset pages and found a few issues. The other thing I reviewed was the new Android OSHA Heat Index in English. Found a bunch of usability issues and still have to check the Spanish version and check both for accessibility issues using Androids Talk Back, which I’ve never done. Asked on Twitter if anyone had any resources I could check out and be given at least one slide deck to read.

Sep 30 – Sitting in Blackboard conference room talking about what the Accessibility DC meet up should do next. Joanna Hunt did a great talk about how Blackboard is improving their accessibility. Busy day at work and after meeting went home to pack to for my two-week vacation. At around 11 PM left for Front Royal to get a head start on my trip.

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.

P.S. Need to go back through these 8:15 PM posts and add any links or photos that are relevant to make them more appealing.

John F Croston III

It’s only words and photos on the internet

Category Archives: 8:15 PM

Overview of What Happened at 8:15 PM for Me in 2015

January

Febraury

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Conclusion

What I’ve Been Doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) – December 2015

A Little Background on This Post

December

Conclusion

What I’ve Been Doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) – November 2015

A Little Background on This Post

November

Conclusion

What I’ve Been Doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) – October 2015

A Little Background on This Post

October

Conclusion

What I’ve Been Doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) – September 2015

A Little Background on This Post

September

Conclusion