Day 60: Monday

Monday is a work-from-office day and the start of the meetings to restart the project and begin planning to execute the July Go-live. Yes, we need to start this early to make it work. I was happy to attend some planning meetings.

First, I rose with my alarm at 6:30 and thought the night short. Nonetheless, I found my robe; it took me longer than I would admit to find the right way to put it on, as well as dawning my slippers. Coffee, back to liberal Equal Trade coffee, was assembled using my French Press. A banana joined the coffee and was carried into the home office. There, I read emails, Slack updates, and the news. Time disappeared, as it seems to in the morning, and soon I was rushing to clean up and dress. Air Volvo returned me to get my phone, ugh, and then I headed to the Nike WHQ Swife Building.

Traffic was heavy for a Monday, and I picked an alternative path to prevent me from waiting at traffic lights to play through three times. I parked Air Volvo and headed into Swift.

I spent the morning in Zoom meetings, listening to details about installing software and the required prerequisites. While almost as exciting as watching paint drying, getting this stuff wrong is deadly to a project. Everyone was taking it seriously, and the plans were improved.

My new work reached a significant milestone; we finally got the software to work! We are now working on plans to expand our work and clean up data on many systems. Sorry if this is vague, but I cannot share the details. We were all excited, and tomorrow is the planning meeting. We can incorporate this into the next quarter’s plan and tie it into our Agile process. Excellent.

Two days ago, I should have put this in the blog before SparkFun finally sent me my new Raspberry Pi 5 8G computer. This single-board computer costs less than $100, and this latest creation, version 5 sort of, is quite powerful. I am looking forward to having some time to boot this and seeing what cool things I can do with it. But that will have to wait until the fall as I have enough booked for the year’s first half. These single-board computers are more powerful than some of our early servers Nike acquired to run SAP software to run the company’s account and fulfillment systems!

Returning to the narrative, I had lunch with Tim from the Nike Biz, who I have known for years. We met at the local cafe, and I mistakenly had a salad. Time had a burrito that looked good. We talked about my upcoming surgery and traveling. We both take interesting trips and follow along on Facebook.

After saying goodbye to Tim, I returned and held some more change control meetings. I also talked to some folks about our plans. Also, our critical path interface for master data has been asked to be replaced, and I will be involved in that. So, I was busy.

The salad did cause me to run to the bathroom. Salad passes right through me now. Ugh!

I headed home at 4ish, after ensuring that the salad-impact was done, and took Air Volvo to be refueled and washed. During the weekend, I forgot to fuel it. The local crows have begun the artwork on Air Volvo again. The local cats were also leaving paw prints on the hood. So, I went back through the car wash again. Air Volvo looks better. I will do it again later this week to keep the poo and cat from damaging the paint. I really need to get the garage back to properly store Air Volvo. Someday!

I returned and read and checked with Dondrea, as this Wednesday is St. V, Ash Wednesday, and choir practice. The service is at 6PM for Ash Wednesday, and then practice, so Z, Andrew, and I play board games during and after practice. This is my usual board gaming with Z. The board game Scythe needs to get in the cargo hold of Air Volvo! 4X for St. V!

Corwin had received dinner from his employer. They sometimes send him home with excellent food after a day of cleaning dishes. This was Kimchi-Flavored Pork Ribs, and there was enough for two. As you can imagine, there was no such item on my food app, so I assembled it from various ingredients. I still managed to not blow my calorie count–delicious!

I finished my NOLA history book, Empire of Sin: A Story of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans, and I can recommend it. It has references and even suggests listening and NOLA-based fiction. Some recreate the colorful characters in the book and the feel of the long-lost NOLA. I plan to return to NOLA and find the remains of some of the buildings mentioned. I also have a 1926 atlas that includes NOLA.

I wrote my blog after nodding off once reading NOLA. Thanks for reading!