Monday, May 26, 2014

The News From Hiatus

Just dropping in, feeling guilty, thought I'd do a quick update...

The cello continues apace; I'm learning some songs and scales, etc. The half-marathon didn't happen: I tried to keep up with my original training plan after snow time off, bit off more than I could chew, and got shin splints -- I just ran for the first time, a half mile along the towpath, two weekends ago.

I got in a visit to Kevin and his family in early March, and was there for Olivia's 10th birthday, which was nice. Then, immediately after I got home, my online class ("Intro to Computer Technology" or some such at the community college) started. That was fairly easy, but was compressed enough to keep me jumping to stay on top of the work the whole time. Got an A, of course...

The bike is coming along, I wasn't doing much riding before but the past month or so I've been getting out on the towpath at least, building up my stamina and aerobic capacity. Anne and I rode American Standard yesterday, and I am going on a towpath ride in a few minutes.

I haven't done much with the computer (except schoolwork) lately, but I got back into that header calculation program this weekend. I added code to have the program read stress values etc from a database, revised the input data accordingly and finished making the database with the materials and stress values. (It seems so much simpler and more straightforward when written here, but it was a big deal for me at least, and I was impressed with how well the coding went.) Works great.

Work continues to get busier and busier, and more and more stressful. We got bought, and bought another company, and so on and so forth. Several heart attacks, panic attacks, stress-induced resignations; layoffs may be coming and I personally wouldn't cry too hard, even after all those years at the same place, if I was one of the ones let go.

Anyway, that's all I have to say for now, maybe I'll say more, about these things or something else, soon or eventually -- until then, sayonara.