Category Archives: 8:16 PM

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

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

Little Background

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

July 2016 Events

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

Little Background

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

June 2016 Events

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

Little Background

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

May 2016 Events

May 1 – Reading articles about how to save money so I can retire by 30 years old while my MacBook updates a few things along with doing a back-up and transfer of Dropbox files. Managed to sleep in until close to 10 AM. After reading for a while headed to Wegmans in the rain to grab two breakfast of sausage, egg, and cheese sandwiches on croissants. While eating and shopping later used the iPhone and earbuds to listen to TED Radio Hour, which talks about TED talks in more detail. Once done stopped home to drop off groceries and then to St. Elmo’s for tea and sending out overdue e-mails along with a conversation with Roy and Big Dan. Left St Elmo’s to head to Boccato Lounge do more e-mailing along with working through old e-mails to myself with articles to read which were about food, places to eat, or how to retire in my 30’s or even 40’s. From Friday night until Sunday afternoon went to three different coffee shops for a total of six visits.

May 2 -Watching all the Jekyll videos to get a general idea of what and how to code in Jekyll.

May 3 – Was in Cabin John drinking beers that I brought it others had. The hit of the night was the Bourbon barrel raspberries stout that I bought. People wanted me to pick up a few beers at Wegmans for them this week. Had homemade pasta sauce with Al dentate pasta for dinner.

May 4 – I’m cashing out at Wegmans. After grabbing beers for Jeff and the Beer kids. Then had dinner. Went to Carmines for Neil’s last day. Did more work on making that SVG map or accessible.

May 5 – Sitting in the audience at Sixth and I listening to Chris Anderson talk about how to give a great Ted talk along with being interviewed by a guy arise from the Ted Radio Hour.

May 6 – Standing in line at Boccato Lounge waiting to order a hot chocolate after finishing a bowl of fatty brisket and raw round eye Pho at Pho 75. Continued updating the accessible SVG map with actual real data and the tables.

May 7 – Working on connecting my updated COMCAST TV video box. Had mixed the cables up at first so it would not set up. After switching them, the signal made the TV snowy. Looking to complete the setup and asked for my account number along with my phone number and gave me an error message. Then called COMCAST to work my way through this. After a bunch of signals sending and resetting the box remotely the customer service person had my enter my information again and still didn’t work. The person asked for my account number and informed me that I didn’t need the last digit which had a dash before it. It would have worked much better if that was in the instructions. Earlier in the day went to Courthouse Farmers Market to pick up a few things; then it was over to St. Elmo’s to meet with people and only one person showed up so worked on clearing out my e-mail. Once done there went to M. E. Swing Coffee Roasters to finish up on e-mail along with reading and taking notes on a bunch of articles/blog posts open in my browser. Left for home around 12:40 PM, to be home in time for the live streaming Jekyll Conference, which was free. Spent at about three or so hours listening to 30-minute talks and taking notes before taking a nap for a couple of hours. Once I woke up went to hear the last few talks.

May 8 – Continuing to read about setting goals and decluttering your life, which I have been taking notes about earlier today at St. Elmo’s and a bit at Wegmans. Managed to get up around 8 AM and went to Eastern Market to grab a brick (sausage patty, fried egg, cheese, and home fries on a great soft kaiser-type roll. After wondering around looking for more cast iron pigs. I managed to grab a cherry and apple strudel. After that headed over to the DuPont Circle Farmers Market to get some duck eggs, along with some mixed salad greens from Hans.

May 9 – Trying to figure out where to stay for Biz Bacon conf in Philly. Debating between one bedroom studio or an 1856 hotel. They’re both around the block from each other and less than a half mile from the conference. Also need to decide if I’m going to go and take Amtrak or drive. If I take Amtrak be harder to get to Reading Terminal market, and two S. Philly goes to Bruno’s in the lake but will save me having to deal with parts cars. Managed to finish importing all the data for the accessible SVG map prototype. Along with changing all the colors on the map.

May 10 – Walking back into my apartment/house after mowing the lawn which was a mess because of all the rain and the upstairs neighbor having someone only mow the part in front of her front door. Ended up getting in 15,000 steps for the day because I had to make multiple passes on the lawn to get all the grass that was close to a foot high or higher. Started doing a quick test of the updated OSHA Heat Index iOS application, which nearly crashes right after opening.

May 11 – ENTERED 05/16/2016 – Not sure what I was doing but it must have been exciting at the time that I didn’t write it down or type into Simple Note for my records. Was most likely doing some reading before watching “American Pickers”.

May 12 – Watching the season finale of “The Big Bang Theory”. Made adjustments to the accessible SVG map per the request of the stakeholder.

May 13 – At Boccato Lounge drinking Cherry and Fig tea that they let steep too long, so it was bitter while starting a blog post about mobile resources because of two Twitter DM’s I got from two different people the day before. Did more screen reader testing on the accessible SVG map and changed the working of the earning disparity TABLEs summary statements so they would read better, along with removing the SVG DESC tag and text because it made JAWS a bit too verbose while reading with a couple of different browsers.

May 14 – Laying on my bed in my spare bedroom catching up on Twitter, which is mostly about Eurovision. Which is a song and dance spectacle from one see year that lasts about four hours and has the participation of 30+ countries around Europe along with Australia for some reason? Slept until close to 930 this morning but most that were because I was awake from about 4:00 AM till 5:30 AM. Then went to Saint Elmo’s going to some friends grabbed some stuff from the Delray farmers market. After that when to M. E. Swing coffee roasters to work on creating a blog post about mobile resources after two different people the other day DM me for information. Figured it was better to publish this is a blog post so I could just give people link in the future. Once I was done there went to Union market and grabbed Rabbit Ragu with Tagliatelle pasta along with some French pastries for later. I came home and read a bit and napped for a couple of hours.

May 15 – Reading the year of hustle emails from Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman on my laptop in my spare bedroom. I was a few emails behind and had to catch up. Had been waiting to do the first one because I needed to do some writing I want to have the proper amount of time to do so. Sleep until around ten even though I was awake from like 6 to 730. Then attempted to go to swing coffee roasters but they don’t start their Sunday hours until June 5th. Ended up over at Saint Elmo’s for a bagel and some tea for going for an hour massage. After the massage, I went to Pho 75 for lunch. Next went to the Boccato Lounge to have some tea finish up checking my links on my mobile resources blog post along with getting my what I was doing at 8:15 PM post for a ball done as well. After that went home and did some reading.

May 16 – Reading through the Year of Hustle “Slay Your Schedule” PDF from Amy Hoy/Alex Hillman. Looking at ways to free up my time to be able to spend more time on creating my new web based application. Actually, will have to do more prep work first to make sure I’m building the right thing even though from the people I talked to said it’s a cool/great idea. Need to find out if it’s application that people will pay money for on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis. The larger chunks of time  (quarterly, every six months, annually) people pay for, the less money is lost to fees to companies like Stipe, PayPal, etc.

May 17 – Sitting in Cabin John drinking Cabernet’s and zinfandels all eating pasta with homemade sauce with friends. A few of them moved back from Richmond for the summer for internships. Spent more time today working on the map along with creating a test plan. Did another DHS Trusted Tester review after making changes to the code to correct some of the issues we found.

May 18 – At Blackboard giving my accessibility talk on GAAD (Global Accessibility Awareness Day). This was our most well-attended event since starting back a little over a year ago.

May 19 – At Agency chief listening to Matt Kemp give his UX talk. Where he’s talking about Marshall, make she will, and media would be cool to Kaitlyn from a literate nation to a tribe and nation.

May 20 – Finishing up dinner at Wegmans and heading to get a shopping ca
LOCATION // 115 and 117 East Church Street and do some grocery shopping. Mostly picked up fruits and vegetables some cured meats cheese oh yeah and like 130+ dollars worth of beer.

May 21 – Sitting on the first floor of the Artomatic building in Frederick, MD, talking to a guy named Don that was painting with water colors and he let me try watercolors for the first time. Worked on paying my bills, then met up with friends after which went to create June’s Accessibility DC event on EventBrite. Once done headed to Frederick, MD, to get my beard cleaned up before Biz Bacon Conf in Philly next week. I had some time to kill before my beard trimming so stopped at Gravel and Grind for a hot chocolate and creating the Meetup event for Accessibility DC. Got my beard trimmed and then headed over to Artomatic to check out the first floor. Went to Lucky Corner for Vietnamese and then back to see the art I missed earlier.

May 22 – Updating both my iPhone and my MacBook Pro. I managed to have a little slow leave the morning of reading. Finally left the house after 11 AM and went to Wegmans to grab breakfast along with check out their coin return the machine and some cookies. Came home and took a nap along with some cleaning off of the top of my dresser along with gathering up all my change. I then went back to Wegmans to turn in $300+  worth of change. Wegmans takes 10.9% of the total value of your change which is which left me with $283.91.

May 23 – Walking to the spare bedroom to do a bit of reading on the computer along with listening to a podcast or two while taking notes. By taking notes, it can take two to three times longer since you stop the talk nad then type what you can and then go over it to make sure you wrote it down correctly. Spent the day making some adjustments to the accessible SVG map page, along with attending my every morning standup at 10:00 AM.

May 24 – Drinking “Right Proper Brewing Company” beers along with a hearty would bourbon barrel’s raspberry stout in Cabin John, MD, with a few friends talking politics and what not.

May 25 – Ona north bound Amtrak train headed to Philly to attend Bacon Biz Conf Thursday and Friday while reading Amy Hoy’s “Lesson – Backwards Plan, a Twisted Fairy Tale.”

May 26 – Sitting outside in the courtyard of Frankford Hall Beer Garden talking with other people that are bootstrapping their startups or lower info products or the like. Was a very enlightening day learning about all the ways of processing email and all that from all the speakers at Bacon Biz Conf in Philly.

May 27 – So busy talking with different people at the Bacon Biz Conf after party at the Freckle headquarters in Old City Philly. The after party was a great way to get to spend more time talking with others about their current jobs, products, apps, etc. or what their idea was for a new or additional business opportunities. Great conference to learn what I need to do and what to avoid when starting out. The tacos for lunch by Chef Patterson and the dim sum with soup dumplings were awesome.

May 28 – I was doing a bit a TV watching to unwind after three plus days in Philly for  Bacon Biz Conf. Went to bed Friday night by 11:00 PM or so since I was tired from the whole week of waking before 6:00 AM. Did some catch-up reading of Twitter and then went to the Menagerie coffee shop to register for a bunch of the speakers newsletters. When I got there a few of them were there so, I sat with them and attempted not to bug them too much but pipe in now and an again with their conversations before leaving to walk over to the Reading Terminal Market to wander around. I managed to order three sandwiches while there. I order the roast pork with aged Provolone and the meatball sub with aged Provolone from DiNic’s cut into thirds which I then ate a third of each before heading to Becky’s Cajun Cafe to order a Train Wreck. Once done walked the mile or so back to the AirBnB. Along the way, I ran into Allan and his family who were heading back to Freckle to return the fake money bag he tried to fool his son with from his wish after finding a four-leaf clover. After parting ways with them stopped back at Menagerie for a cold drink and to check my e-mail, etc. I ran into Kern again and talked with him before heading to AirBnb to relax and have some of my Train Wreck before heading over to 30th Street Station to get my Amtrak train back to DC. Once I got there, my train was delayed about 25 minutes. While there ran into another Bacon Biz attendee, who was taking the train back to Boston. Finally, my train left, and I read more on the train to pass the time instead of napping. I ended up getting home about 30 to 45 minutes later than planned because of the delayed train and issues with the DC metro trains too.

May 29 – Sitting in my leather chair in my living room reading Aaron Draplin’s new book “Pretty Much Everything”. Went to bed early last night so I was awake at 6 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I left for Shen-Valley Flea Market at 7:30 AM in the morning. Which ended up being a good thing since it got so hot I was able to finish that flea market in the Front Royal, VA. Didn’t manage to buy anything while there even though I saw a few I wanted but didn’t need.

May 30 – Reading over the “Marketing Content ebombs” by Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman along with taking notes from the different videos that are part of the 30 x 500 lessons they gave me as part of the “Year of Hustle” e-mail course. Again attempted to sleep in, but was awake before 6:00 AM. Stayed in bed and read a bit of Twitter along with other things then went back to sleep from about 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM where I showered. I got ready to go to St. Elmo’s to see who might be there. Ran into Susan and talked with her for over three-plus hours about stuff from the conference I attended to food, some of our common friends, and more. After leaving, I went to Pho 75 for a small bowl of raw round eye and fatty brisket with extra noodles. Once done there went to Baccotto Lounge for some tea and making the June 15th Accessibility DC event live on both EventBrite and Meetup. It would be so much easier to do if EventBrite removed all the people that unsubscribed, along with adding the new people from last month to one of my two lists. Once that was done spent some time before leaving to catch up on Twitter. After getting home started reading the “Year of Hustle” and processing other Bacon Biz Conf information. I still need to work through a bunch of e-mails from attendees that I signed up for their e-mail newsletters for free books as part of the conference.

May 31 – in Cabin John doing a beer tasting with the usual suspects along with a few other friends we haven’t seen in a long time. We ended up having a great time along with having some slow cooked pork mashed potatoes Brussel sprouts to dive for dinner.

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

Little Background

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

April 2016 Events

Apr 1 – Driving up 30th street in Georgetown section of Washington, DC, after not finding any parking near Baked and Wired to get cupcakes. First had dinner of a small bowl of beef eye round and fatty brisket at Pho 75. Did more work gathering evidence that the new version of Compliance Sheriff we updated to is making scans take anywhere from twice to ten plus times longer to run. We used to have 2,000-page scans take 20 to 30 minutes which now take hours. Not sure if it is software related or possibly server related.

Apr 2 – Laying on my bed reading the latest edition of Edible DC, which is about spring veggies and new bakeries that are opening. Got up around 8 AM and did some reading before heading over to the Post Office to pick up my mail after having it held while out in Las Vegas and San Diego. Next went to St. Elmo’s to visit with friends to see what they had been up to the last few weeks while I was gone. After stopping at the Del Ray Framer’s Market to grab two blueberry scones, I went to M. E. Swing’s Coffee Roaster for hot chocolate and dealt with my e-mail inbox which needed work after not doing much with it besides deleting junk while gone. Once I was done there went to Wegmans for a late lunch from the hot bar and to grab some cheese, toilet paper, and facial tissues. The next thing on my list was to read in bed some more and take a nap.

Apr 3 – Sitting in a comfy chair at Boccato Lounge reading Scott Hurff’s “Designing Products People Love” after having a blood orange tea while setting up the April Accessibility DC event. Slept in until 9:30 AM, before meeting up with old co-workers, their child, and significant other for brunch at the Royal Restaurant in Old Town Alexandria. Afterward, we stopped at Buzz Bakery for coffees, hot chocolates, and of course cupcakes. They have made a bunch of changes to the layout along with the types of cupcakes they make. Sad there was no 9:30 Cupcake, at least, today. Once I got dropped home did some reading and had a short nap or at least short for me.

Apr 4 – Sitting in my living room reading but I can’t remember what, since I’m posting this two days later. If you’re going to try and keep track of what was going on at 8:16 PM or any other time you need to do it then or if busy spending time with people, at least, out in a few notes as soon as you can so you can jog your memory.

Apr 5 – Sitting in my leather chair with my feet on the ottoman continuing to reading Scott Hurff’s book “Designing Products People Love”. Did more research on when and possibly why the new OSHA Android Heat Index application was giving incorrect results.

Apr 6 -Reading “Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test in Just Five Days” by Jake Knapp and others from Google Ventures. I spent today explaining what you knew about the new OSHA Android Heat Index application issues, along with spending afternoon teaching a Compliance Sheriff training.

Apr 7 – Sitting at home watching “The Big Bang Theory” for the first time in a few weeks to over a month. Did another Compliance Sheriff training even though the application is running way to slow? Plus, I did more screenshot to document my findings.

Apr 8 – Writing bills in my spare bedroom that I should have sent out earlier this week. Once done I realized I was one stamp short to drop them in the mail. Did more testing of the updated OSHA Android Heat Index and found that not all of the locations were found when doing so in Spanish. The English version seems to be working but hard to tell when the country is in a cold spell.

Apr 9 – Listening to the radio in my bed while reading the Washington City Paper’s “Best of DC 2016” edition. Trying to find the best place to eat particular types of food, places to read, relax, etc. Went to the Courthouse Farmers Market and had egg, bacon, and to types of cheese ( Provolone and aged cheddar). Then went to St. Elmo’s. The post office for stamps. M. E. Swing Coffee Roasters to work on e-mail backlog and draft e-mail for accessibility meetup organizers. Then to pick up Sam for lunch at Pho 75 then headed to Boccotto Lounge for Cherry and fig tea to work some more on another e-mail draft, along with posting a blog post of what I did at 8:16 PM in March.

Apr 10 – In my spare bedroom launching Turbo Tax 2015 on my Windows XP PC so I can do my taxes for the year that are due in five days. Slept into 9:00 AM or so today. Headed over to Eastern Market but could not find anywhere to park so then went to the DuPont Farmers Market. Once I got there, I did my usual walk around to see what was there first. I noticed two things and the first being that the guys near the flower stand was making a breakfast dish of pork three ways with grits and some lightly pickled kale. The other item was Jose Andres restaurant Zaytinya was slow roasting a whole lamb. I then doubled back to get a single order of the pork and grits which had crispy pulled pork, stuffed pig stomach parts, and then what might have been a pork head cheese cooked in a pan with an over easy egg. Once I ate that wonderful dish I did my shopping and then camped out at the Zaytinya booth reading Twitter to kill some time to when the were going to be ready to carve. After taking the lamb of the spit and letting it rest, they started carving and asked if anyone wanted any of the skin, which of course I had a piece or two or three. What they served people was homemade tzatziki sauce on a Boston lettuce leaf and a few pieces of roasted lamb. What a killer dish to top the excellent pork and grits breakfast. Next, I managed to get to the Georgetown Flea Market to see what they had, and there was nothing I was interested in or needed that bad. I then headed towards home the long way through DC up the rest of Wisconsin Ave and then down Connecticut Ave to U St. and then down 14th St. to Del Ray to get tea at St. Elmo’s and send out a few e-mails and read an article or two. Once I got home did some more reading and then a two hours or so nap.

Apr 11 – ENTERED 05/07/2016 – must have been so busy doing cool things that I didn’t even put in a small note to say what I did that day or even the next day. My guess of what the exciting thing was working on my taxes and then submitting them closer to midnight.

Apr 12 – Catching up on Twitter after being home sick for the day. Didn’t feel like cooking after sleeping an extra five hours during the day.

Apr 13 – Walking home from Braddock St. metro after attending the DC Fem Tech awards a few of my friends won ( Maggie, Marissa, JoAnna, and a few more).

Apr 14 – Watching a repeat episode of “The Big Bang Theory” from Thanksgiving time that I never saw. Interesting to see Elon Musk on the show and working in the soup kitchen cleaning dishes. My day was spent reading and responding to e-mails.

Apr 15 – Sitting at Pho 75 texting with a co-worker while waiting to order a small bowl of Pho with raw round eye and fatty brisket and extra noodles. Attended two meetings and had the tech guys roll back to the old version of Compliance Sheriff because the newer one caused scans to run for hours instead of minutes.

Apr 16 – Sitting in Buzz Bakeshop drinking a chocolate cinnamon tea, not the best. Went and got my oil changed along with having the car dealership replace my front left headlight first thing in the morning. I used the time while I waited to publish a blog post about two different ways to create organizational charts using HTML (definition list and structured heading levels) and CSS, along with sending out a few e-mails. Once done went to St. Elmo’s to meet the gang, but only one showed up which is good because a few old friends I hadn’t seen in a year or year and a half were walking by and stopped in. Once I left there, I went to M. E. Swing Coffee Roasters for hot chocolate and to work on dealing with a bunch of old e-mails and to DM a group of people about talking at Accessibility DC either in person or remotely. Then went home for a bit of reading, listening to NPR, and a nap. All in all, I managed to deal with about 75 to 80 e-mails. Now I need to get through the last 100 or at least get closer to zero. Tomorrow it’s off to the Shen-Valley Flea Market in White Post, VA, which is between Winchester and Front Royal, for the first time this year.

Apr 17 – Walking into the house after grabbing dinner of shrimp, lime chicken, red curry chicken, pork pot stickers, and some rice at Wegmans after a day of wondering around near Shenandoah National Park area. Spent the day with a co-worker first going to Shen-Valley Flea Market where I bought three Griswold cast iron skillets and another cast iron skillet with a cover. Then we headed to the Front Royal Flea Market were all we bought was lemonade. Next stop was at Knotty Pine Restaurant, and I had cheese omelet with home fries, rye toast, and a side of sausage. We then made a stop near the quilt store to get some cherry apple cider. After that, it was a stop at the Copper Fox Distillery so he can pick up a few things for himself and friends. Then we walked across the parking lot to Pen Druid Brewery where we tried tastings of all six of their beers so that way I could purchase two of them to take with me Tuesday night in Cabin John.

Apr 18 – Reading an article about Jason Zook on http://minimums.com/, which is a website about featuring the most interesting possessions of the world’s most interesting people. So far of the three articles I have read they are cool people with interesting stuff. Think I saw this website a year or so ago. Did a quick Trusted Tester review of two Survey Monkey survey pages to see what was not accessible. Also, found out the rollback of Compliance Sheriff has at least gotten rid of the issue of scans running for hours or days when they should have taken minutes or an hour for the larger ones. Even managed to look at some code to try and figure out why the visual page display breaks. My guess is it is because it’s part of a FORM.

Apr 19 – Sitting in Cabin John having a beer tasting with friends.

Apr 20 – Giving a talk about ALT text at Blackboard. Finished correcting the show hide for the definition stuff at work.

Apr 21 – Talking with Jason and Rochelle after the performance talk at Refresh DC at Chief.

Apr 22 – Talking with the neighbor before for driving to Pho 75 for dinner.

Apr 23 – Driving from Wegmans after grabbing dinner and some more of the runny cheese that’s like butter to Boccatto Lounge for some tea nd doing research on iTunes about restaurant review applications to see what issues people have with them. Went to Arlington Courthouse Farmer’s Market to grab asparagus, heirloom tomatoes, along with bacon, egg, and sharp cheddar cheese breakfast sandwich. Next went to St. Elmo
s to meet up with friends and see what’s been going on with them for about an hour or so. After that went to M. E. Swing Coffee Roasters for a hot chocolate and sent out over a dozen requests for friends s to give accessibility talks at our monthly Accessibility DC events. Once done there came home to read and nap for a few hours. After the nap did a bit of cleaning up to get ready for my father’s visit on Monday, which was mostly taking paper and cardboard outside to be recycled, along with some plastics from the kitchen.

Apr 24 – Cleaning silverware and getting ready to do dishes to finish up the last part of cleaning before my dad comes on Monday. Slept in until about 9:45 AM. Then did some reading and took a shower. After that headed to the Dupont Circle farmers market. Ended up having the pork three ways with grits Friday egg and some greens. This time, the grits were a little bit flavorless compared to last time. Extra around DC up towards zoo and then down Wisconsin and then through Arlington before heading home. Then started cleaning my house, but had to stop to go over to Target to pick up a new Swiffer Sweeper to help clean the hardwood floors. While I was over in the plaza stopped at Barnes & Noble to look at a few magazines.

Apr 25 – Dinner with dad and James at Maketto for Cambodian food. Listened to my brother’s stories about bartering for items during his work trip to China.

Apr 26 – Cabin John drinking beer and eating jerk chicken wings.

Apr 27 – Watching American Pickers after getting home and spending an hour visiting with my sister who is in town for a conference. Continued working on accessible and Unites States map.

Apr 28 – Catching up on tweets during the commercials of the Big Bang theory. Found Edward Tufte forum post about creating charts and grafts that are usable by those that are colorblind.

Apr 29 – Finished up my small bowl of raw eye round and fatty brisket pho at Pho 75 and getting ready to pay my bill. More work on the accessible United States map along with finishing the review of a few PDFs and a required annual learning module.

Apr 30 – Sitting in a lounge chair at Boccato Lounge reading Jamie Oliver’s “Everyday Super Food” about creating a great healthy fruit salad. At my third coffee shop of the day. Woke up at 7 AM and read for a bit before writing bills which I nailed on my way to St. Elmo’s Coffee Pub to meet with friends. Once we left I went to M. e. swing Coffee Roaster for a hot chocolate while responding to e-mails about talking at Accessibility DC and a few other things. Ended up dealing with about 40 or 50 e-mails. After that drive the long way to Union Market so I could listen to “This American Life”. Once there ran into Chef Mike at the Toki Underground grocery store. He told me he had a pork belly pork based soup along with steamed Opel buns. Grabbed soup for lunch followed up with a chorizo and cheese kolache and a fruit and cream cheese one. Then went back to talk to chef Nike about him going to open a ramen place in the Foggy Bottom Whole Foods for Chef Eric. Ended up grabbing two steamed pork buns and a Concord grape and blackberry large bottles of vinegar. Dropped food in my car then went to A. Litteri’s to get a meatball sub for dinner and some cured meat. Finally, made it to Boccato Lounge to work on making the DOL developer dataset tables responsive and accessible using Dylan Barrel’s method, so we didn’t have to have tables for desktop and a whole other set of code for handheld devices. Productive day all around if I don’t say so myself.

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

Little Background

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

March 2016 Events

Mar 1 – Listening to episode 17 of Stacking the Bricks “Kids Incorporated” by Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman (30 x 500). http://www.stackingthebricks.com/episodes/26159-ep17-kids-incorporated. Today was spent in a few meetings and testing VETS 4212 and Ideamill while also testing the new ODEP reports/charts pages.

Mar 2 – changing into sweats from my jeans after coming home from dinner at Wegmans I am doing a bit of shopping. Another day of testing along with trying to schedule training and figure out what to do with the end of the vets 4212 stuff.

Mar 3 – Eating vegetarian crispy rice salad, tofu laab, and an awesome tofu curry soup of some kind at  Bangkok Golden with Ted Drake, Eric Wright, and Sam Joehl.

Mar 4 – Eating sushi at Momo Sushi with Eric Wright. Had some great mackerel, along with eel, and scallops. Finalizing this round of testing of VETS 4212 and waiting for Ideamill updates to retest.

Mar 5 – Watching the final episode of Mythbusters of the 250+ episodes I have to have seen at least 200 or them over the years. Was nice seeing them honoring their greatest myths with ending with an explosion of a cement truck that they thought was one of the things that put them on the map so to speak? Went to St. Elmo’s to meet up with the gang, and then it was off to M. E. Swing Coffee Roasters for a bit to add more phone, location, hours, etc. information to my Gotta Eat Here blog posts. Also, created blog posts for both January and February of what I was doing at 8:16 PM this year.

Mar 6 – Sitting in my spare bedroom add restaurants to “Gotta Eat Here” blog posts by separate food categories such as breakfast, lunch, donuts, pizza, ramen, etc. I was in the process of loading up what ended up being 22 breakfast places around the country, nine of which were in DC area. Slept in until 9:30 AM after gong to bed at 1:45 AM, so didn’t sleep in at all. Went to Pho 75 for a small bowl of Pho with extra noodles, round eye, and fatty brisket. First time in all my times there or any other Asian noodle place where the noodles were soft and mushy making it hard to eat. Once done there I went to Boccato Lounge for hot cider and to work on adding more restaurants to my Gotta Eat Here blog post outlines. Then went to St. Elmo’s for tea and sorting daily information for both my January and February what I was doing at 8:16 PM posts. Came home from Elmo’s read and then took about a three-hour nap.

Mar 7 – Again I’m sitting in my spare bedroom add restaurants to “Gotta Eat Here” blog posts outlines for BBQ. Most of the ones I have listed are in Texas and mostly in and around Austin. Finished up testing to new Ideamill board status button, along with trying to figure out what is going on with Compliance Sheriff stop running the scans over the weekends. We have found a few things but now need to check on them to see if they are the actual cause or happen to be happening when things stop.

Mar 8 – In Cabin John in my buddies basement having a beer tasting. We were talking about a trip to Mexico that a friend had with her mother and younger brother on a bus from Mexico City to the beach. She told of how all the people in the front of the bus were chain smoking while speeding along and hitting potholes, etc. At one point she ended throwing up as a six eight-year-old girl. The bus driver looked over at her and laughed while continuing to drive on.

Mar 9 – Sitting on the blue line at the Pentagon City station after leaving LivingSocial at the “Indie Web Home Brew” club, where people gather to work on their websites, along with having your website to be the primary source of your content.

Mar 10 – On blue line home from meeting up with Tony, Jeff, and Mike at BBQ Joint to try the newly opened restaurants food. We tried the pork nachos, chicken wings, and braised beef brisket slides. Along with a four meat platter of pork ribs, pulled pork, brisket, and smoked turkey. Plus, sides of beans, coleslaw, collard greens, and smoked sausage. The sleeper dish of the night was the smoked tofu chili along with the ten beans and some cheese. I would go back only to have the tofu chili.

Mar 11 – Driving to Peter Chang’s with Eric and Sam to eat Sichuan style Chinese food. We ended up ordering a bunch of different things starting with scallion bubble pancake, BBQ pork ribs, pan fried dumplings,  and large individual soup dumplings. The two primary courses we order were “Hot and Numbing Beef Brisket in a hot pot” and pan-fried steamed pork belly. A great meal would go back again and should bring more people so we can order and try more dishes. Finally, managed to get VETS to sign-off on the first part of the VETS 4212 accessibility updates.

Mar 12 – Leaving Wegmans parking lot after grabbing dinner to go along with some cured meats, cheese, and fruits to get me through the week until I leave for Las Vegas on Friday. Woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep so went to M.E. Swing Coffee Roasters for a hot chocolate while doing some more work gathering list of places to eat for different blog posts. Then it was off to St. Elmo’s for an hour and a half to hang out and chat with friends. Next was quick stop home before going to Frederick,  MD, to get my beard trimmed to make me look less homeless at Citizen Barber. First had to stop for lunch at Family Meal for he Catfish with beans and other veggies, along with grits. Once my haircut was done wandered around E. Patrick St. and then N. Market St. to see what was around. Finally, got back to my park to head over to “Gravel and Grind, which was recommended to me by my barber. The parking only cost me $2.00 to park in the city parking garage for almost four hours.

Mar 13 – If I had known it was so close to 8:16 PM, I would not have gone to my bathroom, which is where I was at the given time. Today went to Taqueria Poblano to have their breakfast burrito which contains, rice, beans, cheese and scrambled eggs. Next went over to St. Elmo’s for tea and to add more restaurant information to my Gotta Eat Here blog posts. After that got into my car and drove over to Boccato Lounge for a hot chocolate to drink while updating more Gotta Eat Here blog post outlines and then an hour or so worth of reading of “Designing Products People Love” by Scott Hurff. Around six in the evening, I headed home to do more laundry and then catch-up on Twitter.

Mar 14 – Working my way through all the photos on my phone and deleting one’s hat I don’t really, need since I backed them up the other day. Had two meetings today and finished up checking some charts and graphs for accessibility issues. The first problem was that I could only look at the pages in IE, which made it in-accessible for most from the start. Also met with the programmer from VETS on what was still needed to be corrected in the next two weeks or so.

Mar 15 – Sitting Cabin John tasting beer with about eight or ten other people while eating homemade chicken tacos with rice and beans. The three best beers and not being a beer guy like the rest of the people were the two by our friend Mike from CA and the Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Regal Rye Stout. Managed to grab my laptop and bring it home so I can work from home Wednesday because WMATA (Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority) is closing he DC metro system for 29 hours to inspect all the cabling. Feel sorry for co-workers that had already left and didn’t have a chance to bring their laptops home so they could work from home too.

Mar 16 – Cleaning up peanut shells up at Five Guys after ordering a cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, sautéed mushrooms, and sautéed onions, along with a small fry. Got to work from home today do to the fact that the DC metro was close for 29 hours to inspect all the electric cables in the system. I managed to clean up my laptop desktop along with gathering all my accessibility resources files all in one place.

Mar 17 – Sitting in my spare bedroom booking one-way car rentals from Las Vegas, NV, to San Diego, CA and then back five days later. The price of the Las Vegas to San Diego one-way rental went up about $60 or $70 since I waited an extra day or two. Luckily the San Diego to Las Vegas one-way rental stayed at $34 since it looks like Fox Rental Car needs to move cars out of San Diego to Las Vegas. Today managed to do a small bit of Android testing on of the updated OSHA Heat Index application before heading out on vacation and then speaking at CSUN next week. Also did a bit of reviewing of a couple of projects that I was doing accessibility testing but need to be finished most likely while I’m gone.

Mar 18 – Checking into the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas after a busy day traveling and giving an accessibility talk at Web Development Group. We ended up having dinner at Chine Poblano, which is a Jose Andres restaurant at the Cosmopolitan. We order the following dishes: “When Pig Fly” which are steamed pork buns, lamb dumplings, mojo shrimp, and lengua tacos.

Mar 19 – Walking around Fremont St. in downtown Las Vegas and listening to the Angry Brian’s which a Celtic band from Bakersfield, CA. They even had a young woman who played the bagpipes. Managed to only sleep about four hours last night. We went to the Bellagio Hotel to have their all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. I had shrimp, rare prime rib, roast leg of lamb, scrambled eggs, some dim sum style pot stickers, chicken sausage, and chorizo for my first plate. When back for a second which was some bread pudding that I put a bit of chocolate sauce on, mini cheese blintz, mini apple crepe, carrot cake, gluten free chocolate tart/cake, and I think that was it for me. My buddy had a few more plates than me. Took an hour and forty-five minute nap later in the day before we headed to John Mulls Road Kill BBQ were I had baked beans, mac-n-cheese, cornbread, smoked chicken thigh, smoked sausage with sauce, which I didn’t care for as much, and finally, rib tops.

Mar 20 – Laying on my hotel bed reading Twitter to see what might have happened the last few days. Managed to sleep until 6:30 AM this morning after going to sleep at 12:30 AM. Hoping tonight, I can stay up until closer to 11:30 PM and the sleep to after 7:00 AM, which will get me more towards the west coast time before heading to San Diego Tuesday morning. Today we went to Mr. Mamas for breakfast. After that, we went over to Counts Kustoms to take a free tour and see all the cars from TV. Next, we went down the street less than a half-mile to Welder Up to check out all the rat rods. Once we were done there, I had William drop me off at the Bellagio so I could get my 80-minute massage, which worked out great. I then stopped at the Bellagio’s Fine Art Gallery to see all the photos of famous artists, actors, politicians, etc. by Yousuf Karsh. It was unbelievable to see all those black and white photos he took of them over the course of 50 years starting in the 1930’s through the 1990’s. During his career, he held 15,312 sittings and produced over 150,000 negatives. I next walked over to the Linq to meet William, his co-worker, and his wife at Guy Fierri’s restaurant for dinner. Managed over 15,600+ steps for today. My steps have stopped being counted at 9:00 PM  Las Vegas time which is 12:00 AM eastern time.

Mar 21 – sitting front row to the right of the stage to see Penn & Teller. Saw some of the same tricks last summer (2015) sitting eight or ten rows back center and still couldn’t figure out how they did some of the tricks. Went to late breakfast/lunch at El Gordo Tacos where I order seven tacos and some roasted scallions and a few hot peppers. I ordered one al Pastor, one beef, two lengua, two tripa, and one sesos (brains) taco. They were well worth the thirty or so minutes to get them. Dinner managed to be a late double double animal style at In-N-Out Burger after Penn & Teller.

Mar 22 – Eating Ramen with Makoto Ueki and his wife at “Tajima Ramen Bar” Hillcrest located at 3739 Sixth Ave, San Diego, CA 92103. The three of us order all four types of Ramen so that we could try each one. The waiter brought us extra bowls so we could try a bit of each. Once that was done we each chose the one we liked the most. We let Makoto’s wife go first, and I think see chose the curry ramen, and both went with the lighter ones. I ended up with the chicken and extra garlic. Since I had a late lunch at 3 PM, I had Makoto finish the spicy one. I spent the day traveling with William from Las Vegas to San Diego with side trips to Joshua Tree National Park where we stopped a bunch of time to take photos. Next, we traveled to the Salton Sea and Bombay Beach to have lunch at the Ski Inn. We ordered the patty melt with coleslaw and a side of french fries. When we got there, it was the bartender, a cook, and one local guy who left right after we got there. Once I food go there three locals, and another woman from the area stopped, and we had a grand time talking with them. We signed dollar bills and placed it on the ceiling and took a photo of where it was so we knew where it was when we came back.

Mar 23 – Back again at “Tajima Ramen Bar” Hillcrest for Ramen with buddy and co-worker that work at 18F. We order the same as yesterday which one of each kind of four types of Ramen so they could try each one. Busy day talking to people about accessibility work options while attending a few different talks about testing and performance.

Mar 24 – Talking with different accessibility people over at Puesto during Google’s party. Spent the day attending a few talks while also making the Knowbility Hero Awards ceremony before the Tweetup. During the Tweetup went to talk accessibility with a person I know from the Boston Accessibility Camp group out on the patio to enjoy the evening weather and sunset.

Mar 25 – Cheesecake Factory with Gareth and two of his co-workers from the BBC. I presented my accessibility performance talk to about a dozen people, which usually happens when I get a late Friday afternoon time slot and even more so when it’s Good Friday and people are heading out early to be home by Easter for the international travelers.

Mar 26 – Wandering around the container park in Las Vegas with William heading to get chocolate from Jinju. Had a fun day driving from San Diego to Las Vegas. We took mostly back roads so we could see more the Unites States countryside, plus it made it easier to make stops. One of our planned stops was at a flea market outside of Joshua Tree National Park in a small desert town. We saw some interesting items, but they were too big to take home. The two redwood slabs would have made a great desktop, printer shelf, and maybe even coffee table. We next stopped at the small farmers market on the way to the  “Joshua Tree Country Kitchen” restaurant, which is owned and run by an old Asian couple. While waiting in line to be seated in this tiny restaurant, we were talking with the people in front of us. The old Asian lady came out and told the two older ladies in front of us she had a table for four for them. Of course, me being the shy introverted one that I am said: “We could share the table if they didn’t mind.”  The older of the two women said sure while the other one gave me the impression she wasn’t so thrilled with the idea. He managed to talk pretty much the entire time with each other and learned the one women was eighty-four years old. I would have never guessed that. After a lunch of patty melts with cole slaw. We again headed towards Las Vegas with a stop at Bristol Lake and then through the Mojave desert. Bristol Lake is a mostly dry lake most months out of the year which they dig large trenches to get to the water that then produces salt as it evaporates. Dinner in Las Vegas was at Lotus of Siam. We ended having a few hour wait, which is why we were at the container park at 8:16 PM.

Mar 27 – Was in the process of landing at DCA from Las Vegas. My day was spent sleeping until 8 AM then waking William around 10 AM, so we could get ready to leave for the airport to travel back home to the DC area. Breakfast ended up being two Whooper Juniors at a Burger King in the airport because we didn’t have enough time for a sit-down meal before taking our direct flight from Las Vegas to Washington, DC.

Mar 28 – I was writing a follow-up accessibility e-mail. Again had a busy day catching up o e-mail, while in the beginnings of a stuffy head and hacking cough after coming home from CSUN.

Mar 29 – walking down the international aisle at Wegmans after shopping for bread, cured meats, cheese, fruits, cookies, and some candy for the office, along with grabbing dinner from their hot bar. Got called out more or less for coming into work with a hacking cough and stuffy head after CSUN. It looks like DOL is starting over in awarding our contract, so we got a six-month extension because of it.

Mar 30 – I was home watching TV, after a day of work with the middle part of my cold retesting the new OSHA Heat Index with TalkBack and looking at Compliance Sheriff issues.

Mar 31 – Laying on my bed talking accessibility with a guy from NC. Had a busy day finalizing the new OSHS Android Heat Index application to make sure others understood that there were accessibility issues using TalkBack on our device, but things worked with TalkBack on other devices. Also, did some testing and review of Compliance Sheriff to try and figure out why scans are now taking so long to run after the upgrade. One thing that helps some was adding more memory to the database server.

Conclusion

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

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