Today 27June2023: Tuesday

It is 9PM on Tuesday evening, and I have rested all evening as I thought it better than trying to do all the impossible things I need to do. I instead binged watched the latter half of Netflix’s Wednesday series. It was beautiful, and I liked it a second time. I am feeling better too, and it seems to be the right thing to adopt a more paced life this week. I have taken Thursday and Friday off. I reached 168 hours of Paid-Time-Off (PTO), so it was time to take some time; I have tried to keep my PTO number between 140 and 160, thinking this is about the time that a medical leave took to be approved for the last two times. Thus, I try to keep three to four weeks available.

I made dinner today; I found one of the bagel-like bread products locally produced in the freezer, toasted it and made a curry tuna fish salad melt for dinner. I found some celery and scallions on their last legs that were perfect for mixing with the tuna fish and roasting in a broiler. It was delicious.

I must go shopping and get various items to cook the frozen chicken in the freezer. I could use some fresh produce. I might do that on my day off.

I left the office, Nike’s Clubhouse building, not on the WHQ campus, after the last Zoom status meeting at 4:30. Today was the start of working from the office, and there was free lunch and free Starbucks until 10AM. I am sure, dear reader, that you are not surprised that we have our own baristas in Clubhouse serving Starbucks. Coffee and other like products are made in plastic glasses; later, these glasses are collected and washed, and reused. We also have free kombucha served cold from beer-like dispensers–excellent.

In the afternoon, I had status meetings and discussions about some post-go-live fixes (and some ASAP fixes). This was after visiting Susie at the hummingbird house in Portland (Tigard) at Allegiance Senior Care LLC, 9925 SW 82nd. Ave. Portland (Tigard), OR 97223; phone (503) 246-4116. Susie was happy to see me after lunch (both her’s and mine), and we quickly toured Metzger Park. I was dragging, and the heat was getting to me–I was exhausted. We found the shady bench off the path in the redwoods and cedars. These are not the giant redwoods; one, our favorite, loses its leaves, a Dawn Redwood. I have planted one, which has doubled in size, four inches now.

There we watched the kids and folks walking their dogs (some of the dogs seemed to be walking their humans). I saw fewer butterflies, only one instead of three. Oregon Swallowtails live only a few weeks.

We called Leta, Susie’s mother, and talked to her for a while. Michigan was overcast and damp. We talked for a while.

Soon, I was fading, and I returned Susie to the hummingbird house and Jennifer’s care (the weekday nursing aide) and kissed her goodbye. I returned to work without issue.

Going backward, I had lunch from the trucks and had a Cubano sandwich that came with a free nap. It was good, but I regretted that as I was dragging after eating it. I sat with Michelle V while we ate our lunches, who was my first boss at Nike, and we have been working together for years now on Nike’s SAP software. Michelle V and I chatted for a while–it was nice to catch up. After I ate the sandwich, sleepy now, I headed to Susie’s, as I described, and had no issues, and Hall Boulevard was no longer closed.

Before this, I woke at 6AM and then put off starting until 6:30, which seemed to be five minutes later! I had cereal with milk with liberal coffee made in my French Press (reassembled after running through the dishwasher). I read emails, Slack updates, and news reports to prepare for my day. I showered, dressed, collected my Nike computer, and boarded Air Volvo. There are no school buses as school is out, and the traffic is lighter as parents are no longer driving helter-skelter to get their kids to school. I arrived on time and started my status meetings at 8AM.

I also had some knowledge transfer sessions with our software vendor. I asked some hard questions, and the developers admitted, which is good, that they did not know the answers to my questions. I emailed the leads that we need to review the interfaces later and consider how we could harden them. The code I saw was not resilient, restartable, and had weak exception handling. This is not unusual as this is a new group writing code for a new system, and I am not sure they know how to produce code at the quality I expect. Adding resilience later is not unusual; you often need to run the software for a while to learn where the weaknesses are.

I spent the morning reviewing designs and code and attending meetings.

I was tired and put in for a few days off after checking if we expected a quiet few days before the cutover this weekend. It was going to calm down, so I took the days off.

Aside: I refueled Air Volvo and was unhappy that the oil companies decided they needed more money. Gas is $4.75 now. We continue to believe this is a fair market. Gas is priced differently by area, not national rates, like gold, grain, or crude oil. Instead, the refineries charge the most they can in the local areas.

Thanks for reading.