My thesis, bound and finalized, takes its place in my professor's box.
This is actually dessert. Breakfast was a Diet Red Bull.
Picked up my bound final draft just now.
Koa House in Moanalua. Protein, cholesterol, and carbs!
At Koa House in Moanalua. Protein, cholesterol, and carbs.
Just to demonstrate the level of my growing apathy toward web development ...
In the past two days, I've toyed with the idea of setting up a shopping cart system online so I can offer MP3s of my demos. The purpose is more to track listeners than to earn an income. In fact, I would rather the system offer them for free.
I experimented with Zen Cart, which is available from Dreamhost as a one-click install, and it was too robust for what I had in mind. Other solutions were paid services using outside servers, and I have more than enough space on my web site to accomodate my files. I'm not concerned with bandwidth at this point because, well, no one is listening to my stuff.
The more I looked into it, the more it became apparent that my needs are way too specific for what is available. And if I went with a third-party tool, I would need to hack it extensively to do what I wanted.
I've built my own applications, and I've hacked other people's applications. The time sunk into them is equal.
I wanted something to run out-of-the-box. That's not possible.
Five years ago, I would have dove straight in and started coding. Today, I'm filing the idea in the mental cabinet to wait for a time when I'm not feeling so apathetic.
This apathy even extends to my blogs. I have a lot of reviews I've been intending to write but no drive to write them.
I want a sabbatical.
I'm the precinct chair this year. Training last Thursday at Stephenson Middle.
I'm usually hesitant to fire up the home studio and work on music. Something happens when I get deep into the throes of recording -- I don't want to concentrate on anything else. There's always something to tweak, something to adjust, something to edit.
When I get into that mindset, everything else is a distraction, the least of which is the means by which I pay the bills. I've tried (unsuccessfully) to set up the Windows XP VPN server so I can make a Remote Desktop connection from my work computer to my home computer. (Yes, I have a VPN connection from home to work, but I'd like to make the appearance of face time.)
It's these times that make me dread heading into an office, which then results in a spiral of doubt and fantasy. What would I be doing if I weren't doing what I was doing?
First off, I'm feeling restless with web development. As professions go, development has always been something I could do that doesn't annoy me, but my identity is not entirely wrapped up in it. I read these articles on dzone all the time bestowing the virtues of good developers -- the ones who constantly learn, the ones who recognize the holes in their training and try to plug them -- and I resembled a lot of those traits about three years ago.
(Huh. Three years ago. That's about the same time I started building up the home studio again.)
Now I've hit a wall, and I'm not certain I want to get past and/or around it. I could do much more to be better at PERL, PHP and all the rest, and I could probably even take a deeper plunge into Ruby and Ruby on Rails. But the time spent doing that means time away getting better with effects processing, mixing, rehearsing ...
I don't even know if I want my day job to be "developer". Oh, I still want a day job -- I like how music serves as a refuge. It would stop being so if it became the focus, and I would develop the same restlessness for it as I have for web development.
I think more than anything, this restlessness is more about mental stimulus than anything else. Solving problems with code is a great fit for me, but at some point, how many more ways can I look at the same control structures and data types?
Which brings us back to the question of what I would be doing if I weren't doing what I was doing.
I don't have a concrete answer. Some vague ones in which I might indulge at some point, but nothing solid.
In short, I don't know.
This job must be sooo fun if you get to cruise Fort St. Mall in this thing!
Today I went to the Kapiolani Medical Center for the Sweeter Choice program, designed for expectant mothers diagnosed with gestational diabetes (GD). We met in a small conference room adjacent to the hospital cafeteria where we learned the basics about gestational diabetes (what causes it, potential risks to the baby if left unchecked, and how to manage it), how to monitor our blood sugar levels, and a dietitian explained all about portion sizes and healthy eating.
They gave us each a blood glucose monitoring system (OneTouch Ultra) and showed us how to use it. They also had us each take turns doing a test with the nurse observing closely to ensure that we could perform it properly to get accurate results. A few women were very hesitant to do the needle poke, but ever since going through IVF and being poked everyday for months on end with much bigger needles than that, it didn't phase me at all. My blood glucose measured at 78 -- but that was about four hours after my last meal, so it wasn't a good indication of my levels.
They also fed us a hearty lunch to end the class: meatloaf with mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli, salad with French dressing, assorted fruits, sugar-free jell-o, and a small carton of milk. It was more food than I could eat, but the instructor said that it was a good example of a healthy meal within our GD guidelines.
Two hours later, I took my first reading and it was a bit high at 134. It's supposed to be less than 120. Tonight, two hours after dinner, I took my evening reading: 123. Better, but still higher than it should be. I have a feeling that this isn't going to be easy. I just hope I can manage the GD with diet and exercise and that I won't have to go on medication.
Recommencing my food and exercise diary and also including my blood sugar levels:
Breakfast: Special K with Strawberries cereal with milk
Lunch: Meatloaf with mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli, salad with French dressing, assorted fruits, sugar-free jell-o
Snack: Glucerna mini snack bar
Dinner: 2 pieces of shoyu chicken, brown rice, salad, a small serving of salsa and tortilla chips
Dessert: Sugar-free jell-o
Late night snack: Glucerna mini snack bar
Exercise: 2 mile walk, 5:30 - 6:15 pm
Blood Sugar Tests:
(Guideline is less than 90 fasting and 120 after meals)
Fasting: none
Breakfast: 78 (not accurate, taken 4 hours after eating)
Lunch: 134 (high)
Dinner: 123 (high)
