Mokka mit Schlag » Personal

Wow. I just went through the blog posts from 2007/2008 while recategorizing them. I didn’t realize how long ago January 2007 was. Last year about now I was at JavaOne. This year I’m at Google IO instead, but that’s hardly the biggest change.

Since then I’ve written and published another book, stopped writing fulltime, taken my first W2 day job in years, quit that, resigned from Polytechnic (where I’d worked longer than anywhere else in my life), took another fulltime job, moved to California from Brooklyn (where I’d lived longer than anywhere else in my adult life), and bought my first car in almost 20 years (and my first ever new car. In fact, the first car I ever paid more than three figures for.)

A year ago I had no clue any of this was going to happen. (Well, I was starting to think about moving out of writing into more fulltime programming, but it certainly wasn’t definite.)

I wonder where I’ll be in another 1.5 years?

I’ve been thoroughly floored by a nasty stomach bug since Wednesday night which has pretty much kept me from doing anything except laying in bed and replaying my collection of Buffy DVDs. The bug’s been passing around half the people in my team lately, and I’m afraid I finally caught it. :-(

I may be finally coming out of it. This is the first time I’ve been able to sit up long enough to type this. I’m still pretty weak, but at this point I’m not sure if that’s the illness or simple calorie deficiency. I’ve dropped almost ten pounds since Wednesday. (Please don’t try this at home. Trust me: it’s not worth it.) I’m able to eat some real food today, though I’m still way below my typical daily calorie intake. With a little luck, maybe I’ll be functional by Monday (and if I’m not I’m going to the doctor), but in the meantime please don’t expect frequent updates or rapid responses to e-mail.

Has anyone found a source for a 43 pocket accordion file? The goal is to create a Getting Things Done tickle file. So far the largest I’ve been able to find is 31 pockets.

Today is an auspicious day. For the first time in several years I am putting fingers to keyboard to commence a completely new book, my first one since Effective XML. This is always an exciting and anxious time.

For the last few years I have written several second and third editions, and generated a copious amount of articles and conference presentations. However the book work has really slacked off. Quite a few good ideas never found a publisher; but the contract for the next book is now signed. It’s still a computer book, but it’s branching out into a new area I haven’t previously written about. Look for it in early summer 2007.

Once again this year I am celebrating Buy Nothing Day. For one complete day, I will buy nothing. I will not stand in lines, browse department store circulars, save $4.95 on a $19.95 toy I didn’t want anyway, and otherwise participate in our annual consumer frenzy. Instead I plan to sleep in, make love to my wife, maybe write a little, and wander around the park looking at birds and hunting for mushrooms (which I don’t have to pay for). Beats the hell out of a day at the mall.

Today I reached a milestone I haven’t seen in years: an empty inbox. Well actually, not quite, but close enough. There are now exactly 423 messages in my inbox and each one of them has one of four labels:

Action

Something needs to be done about this message

News

A tidbit I’ll eventually post one of my web sites

Waiting

Something I’ll need in the near future, but not until I get a response from someone else

Read and Review

Something interesting to look over when I have a minute, but not urgent. Mostly weekly updates from sites like IBM developerWorks and JavaWorld.

Along with Thunderbird’s built-in “Unread” label and sorting by date, these allow me to quickly and easily see what I need to deal with at any given time. Only the relatively small number of “Action” messages actually require me to do something. News, Waiting, and Read and Review can all be managed as time or interest permits. This also means I shouldn’t lose track of messages I need to reply to or act on for months, as I sometimes have in the past.

Several thousand other messages have been archived into various folders. This is all part of my ongoing efforts to implement David Allen’s Getting Things Done program.
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