What I’ve Been Doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) – March 2015

Started keeping track of what I was doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) every day for the last few months after reading Kitt Hodson’s Pastry Box article from Jan 1, 2015. Which was about how a year earlier she read Erica Douglass’s article about writing down what she did at 11:11 AM and 20:14 (8:14 PM) everyday.

I thought this was a great idea to see if I could find any patterns in my nights. So far I tend to watch TV Monday, Thursday, and Sunday nights when I’m home. Also on the weekends I tend to be leaving or coming back from dinner, sometimes even eating dinner.

Here is my post of what I’ve been doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) in January and February.

March

Mar 1 – Sitting at the counter with William at the Black Bear Cafe having the chicken fried steak after a great day in Napa with Cindy, Matt, Apollo, Doug, Nguyet, and William. Matt took as his guest to a wine tasting at Hall Winery. I started the day having tacos in another grocery store. Then it was on to Ad Hoc for brunch. Saw Thomas Keller was sitting at the bar. Grabbed pastries at Bouchon Bakery.

Mar 2 – ENTERED 2015/03/03 – Driving from outside LA towards San Diego with William for CSUN a day early. Traveled from Carmel-by-the-Sea south and stopped to take photos along the way if the Pacific Coast Highway. We saw vistas, lighthouses, a zebra in the middle of a herd of cows, elephant seals and had fish and Chios, along with haggis balls at Mac’s in Santa Barbara, CA.

Mar 3 – ENTERED 2015/03/08 – Hanging out with Denis, Lisa, and others from Deque waiting to grab dinner. Need to think a bit more about this.

Mar 4 – ENTERED 2015/03/08 – Attending the Deque party and waiting to for the karaoke to start. Saw more people sign during karaoke than ever before. Ian Pouncy even played air guitar. Some of the best performances were by the guy from NVDA, and Matt May filling in for Marcy Sutton doing “Push It” by Salt n Pepper. Along with group version “Live Shack” by the B52’s and many more.

Mar 5 – Sitting in the 30th Anniversary opening event for CSUN. Watching Geri Jewell and another comedian, along with Mark Goffeney playing the guitar with his feet. Then off to meet people for Ramen.

Mar 6 – Sitting in the Loin’s Share with Lisa, Gareth, and William on the last day of CSUN after wine up in the room.

Mar 7 – Sitting with William, Elle, Glenda, Karl, Billy, Sina, and his girlfriend at the reception dinner for Sassy and Pratik after a long week of CSUN. A great way to unwind and spend more time with friends.

Mar 8 – ENTERED 2015/03/09 – Was flying over the middle of America somewhere. 90% sure I was asleep because a bunch of us stayed up all night talking after the end of CSUN and Sassy and Pratik’s wedding. Went to sleep once on the flight from SAN to SFO sometime after 9:15 AM.

Mar 9 – Watching “2 Broke Girls” and need to relax after a great CSUN. A nice slow first day back checking e-mail, looking at Compliance Sheriff, and a few other meetings.

Mar 10 – Watching “Counting Cars”. Need another night of TV to recover from a great week in CA at Bay Area Accessibility Camp at LinkedIn and then CSUN in San Diego. Hoping the cough that started this afternoon doesn’t turn into something more.

Mar 11 – Leaving Caphe Banh Mi after a nice chat with a couple from Canada on their way back to Naples, FL, for the rest of the winter. I ended up getting a large house Pho with extra noodles. Spent the afternoon teaching Compliance Sheriff training.

Mar 12 – Watching “Big Bang Theory”. Spending another relaxing night resting after a busy CSUN. Doing it to help prevent what seems to be a cold from getting worse. Did accessibility review of budget PDF and then attended APIv2 UX meeting.

Mar 13 – Watching “Treehouse Masters” after an interesting week after CSUN. The cough seems to be getting worse at times. Had two breakfast tacos with chorizo and two fish tacos from District Taco. Ran into John Yuda and his dad in line.

Mar 14 – Driving Sam home from Pho at Hai Duong in Eden Center. Day of sleeping late and napping with a stop at St. Elmo’s to visit with everyone.

Mar 15 – Watching Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” Kurdistan episode. Need to do a bit of  laundry, so I have clothes for work. Spent the day sleeping, then breakfast at Hack’s Place in Old Town Alexandria, before heading to Wegmans, and then a three plus hour nap.

Mar 16 – Toasting bread for a cured meat, ham, and lacy Swiss Cheese sandwich with mixed greens, then watch Bizarre Foods Americas in Lima. Stayed home from work today to get rid of the rest of this cold. Spent most of the day sleeping 11+ hours, more resting reading, along with some on my computer cleaning up my e-mail.

Mar 17 – ENTERED 2015/03/18 – Reading an article about Anthony Bourdain in Wine Spectator magazine about his life, books, TV shows, and how he knows more about wine than he leads to believe you. Talked to Jim a day early for his 50th birthday and then to dad about what’s going on and his traveling to Jim and Lisa’s for the weekend birthday bash. The work was a day of entering accessibility issues into GitLab.

Mar 18 – Listening to “Stacking the Bricks” with Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman, while reading their answers to people’s questions about their product “30 X 500”. Also updated my iPad to iOS 8.2. The day was spent finishing and adding accessibility issues to GitLab, along with closing out 12 issues and passing three back and creating a new one.

Mar 19 – Continuing to listen to “Stacking the Bricks” with Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman, while reading their answers to people questions about their product “30 X 500”. My day at work was spent closing accessibility issues on GitLab, along with helping Neil place device name/programming languages off-screen to help screen reader users.

Mar 20 – Again listening to “Stacking the Bricks” with Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman, while reading their answers to people questions about their product “30 X 500”. Next it’s off to District Taco from some breakfast tacos for dinner, then a little TV and back to more “Stacking the Bricks” podcast and reading 30 x 500 questions and answers.

Mar 21 – Watching the AT&T halftime show with Charles Barkley of the NC State and Villanova while waiting for Notre Dame NCAA college basketball game and eating Banh Mi. Went with Sam to Wegmans, Super H Mart, DC Banh Mi Sandwich.

Mar 22 – Listening to Boag World season 11, which are masterclasses from web experts, along with reading the FQAs for the 30 x 500 Pioneers lessons. The first episode is with Rachel Andrew to talk about starting her products. Wandered around DC and went to the Dupont Farmers Market, then for a drive to listen to “Dinner Party Download” on NPR. Next stop was Georgetown Flea Market, which I purchased a painting. Then stopped at Baked and Wired for cake tops (cake top trimmings with frosting between the layers) and a Doom cupcake (dark chocolate frosting and chocolate cake).  Took a two and a half hour nap, Then went for a two and a half mile walk to get me to 10,700 steps and twelve flights of stairs. Doing so got me to 4.91 miles for the day.

Mar 23 – It’s a Monday so yes, I’m watching “2 Broke Girls”. Spent most of the day updating developer dataset TABLE pages with properly coded TABLEs, along with looking at  the  and running Compliance Sheriff scans. Need a bit more relaxing and TV watching, then it’s back to a bit more 30 x 500 reading.

Mar 24 – Out wandering the neighborhood to get me to 12,000 steps for the day. I added about 3,000 in a slow, leisurely stroll. Spent most of day correcting TABLEs to make them more accessible in the newly updated developer portal.

Mar 25 – ENTERED 2015/03/26 – Was toasting Wegmans Tuscon Garlic bread to make a cured meats sandwich with mixed greens added to get a few veggies in, along with a few pickles. Watched “American Pickers” while eating. Then went to watch a few of the shorter Bacon Biz videos – “Making Loads of Cash with Newsletters”, “4 Stories About Product Launches”, etc. Spent the day finishing up the rest of developer accessibility TABLE issues.

Mar 26 – ENTERED 2015/03/27 – Was on a North American accessibility camp call with people in Canada as well as the United States. We were discussing how to make the camps better, easier to start a new event, how to help sponsors, etc. We had people Toronto, New York City, Boston (while in Pittsburgh for a conference), Louisville, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Austin, San Fransisco, Boulder/Denver, and me from DC. Not sure our focus yet, but we will need to work on that before our next calls. Think we need to gather everyone’s information in one place and then point to their individual websites and events pages. Next we should improve the information on how to start/run a monthly accessibility meeting, which may turn into a year camp. Once people are our ready for a yearly camp, we need to have a road map for people to follow and be willing to help run/schedule, etc. an event. More information to come in the future.

Mar 27 – Waiting to be seated at Momo (sushi) and talking food with the Robertsons. Ordered about 40 pieces of sushi, which is probably the way to much. Finished up developer TABLE accessibility updates and a few other things. Ended up having a relaxing afternoon.

Mar 28 – Eating leftover sushi from last night, which is from Momo Sushi. The sushi wasn’t too bad, even though, the rice was a bit dried out. Looking for different ways to do a hamburger menu that is accessible and using ARIA, but is not built with jQuery, since I don’t want to add the extra bandwidth to an already small page size. Doing so would triple or quadruple the page weight and not something I want, since I’m only using JavaScript for this effect. Managed to get Curry Ramen from Toki Underground after an hour wait and a nap.

Mar 29 – Out on a 25 to 30 minute wander of the neighborhood to get more steps on my FitBit, along with more exercise in general. Started day at Eastern Market with a brick, which is a fried egg, cheese, potatoes, pork sausage, on a soft toasted roll. Then I was off to Union Market to grab Boa (steamed pork buns) and to see if Honey Comb had ingredients for Pho and some vinegars, which I didn’t find. Next drive around town to enjoy the scenery. Once home, I did a bunch of reading of Twitter, Luke W’s research PDF of what they learned with creating Polar, which was easy to use polling application. Luke sold Polar to Google last year (2014). Also did some more reading of Ferran Adria’s “A Day at elBulli”.

Mar 30 – Watching another episode of “2 Broke Girls”. Once the show is over I’m heading out for a 15 – 20 minute walk to add more steps for the day. Was trying to add another 2,000 plus steps. Spent the day looking at APIv2 and developer accessibility issues.

Mar 31 – Running the events that happened at 8:15 PM every night through Grammarly to correct spelling and other simple grammar issues.

Conclusion

In the future, I plan to post this information once a month at the beginning of the following month once I’m caught up.

Hopefully, this has been helpful to you and gets you to keep track of what you do a particular time of the day, along with a short daily diary.

If you want to meet up to do something exciting at 8:15 PM some evening, please leave a comment. Or a suggestion of something that is not part of my ordinary life you think I should do.