Enjoyed keeping track of what I did every night at 8:15 PM last year (2015) that I’m going to do it again in 2016. So here is the first installment of what I have been doing at 8:16 PM for January 2016.

After doing this for all of 2015, I noticed I tend to watch TV Monday, Thursday, and Sunday nights when I’m home. Also on the weekends (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) I tend to be leaving or coming back from dinner, sometimes even eating dinner.

I have also found it helpful writing down what happened during the day as a small journal/diary of what was good, bad, or interesting.

Little Background

I started keeping track of what I was doing at 20:16 (8:16 PM) every day for the last month 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.

January 2016

Jan 1 – Sitting at in my car at the corner of Mt. Vernon Ave. and Braddock Rd. in Alexandria, VA, coming home from dinner with two of my buddies at Gaijin Ramen Shop in Arlington, VA. We ended up splitting three orders of steamed buns. We ordered the pork belly, spicy chicken, and the curry chicken versions. I had the Tonkotsu Ramen (pork with extra noodles, which came with I think buckwheat noodles. My day was spent getting up at 7:20 AM after not falling asleep until 2:00 AM. I got going around 9:00 AM to head to Bahn Mi DC Sandwich to pick up two roasted pork Bahn Mi sandwiches to have while watching the Notre Dame vs. Ohio State college football game. Notre Dame lost 28 to 41. At least, I managed to get about an hour and a half nap in during the second and third quarter.

Jan 2 – Watching an overview of Mythbusters last season. It was cool seeing a behind the scenes view of their process, brainstorming, and how both Jamie and Adam appeared to be tape their overviews separately. I know they don’t seem to get along when not working on projects together, but this makes the point more obvious. Woke up at 7:20 AM today and did a bit of reading of Twitter along with my Lagom magazine. After showering wrote a few balls and my rent check. Next went to mail bills and paid my rent before heading to St. Elmo’s to meet with the crew. Once I got home, I did a bit of reading and napping while my upstairs neighbors, family, and friends were helping them move to their new house in Del Ray, VA. After waking up went and talked with other neighbors and their children then, I was off to Pho 75 for a small bowl with extra noodles, raw rib eye, and fatty brisket. Then it was off to Bocctto which is a coffee shop down the street to do some internet reading with a hot chocolate.

Jan 3 – Watching “The Big Bang Theory” in TBS. Woke up at 8 AM after hearing my old neighbors upstairs cleaning out their old apartment to get ready for the landlords walk through. Jeff the house a bit after 10 AM  to get breakfast sandwiches at Wegmans. Took a drive down the George Washington Parkway to listen to NPR. Next went to St. Elmo’s to do some reading in how to draw using the Pencil from 53 using Paper, which was great because I got to try different things on my iPad. I came home and read a bit then took about a two and a half hour nap. Managed to eat the Italian sandwich from the Marvelous Market deli.

Jan 4 – Sitting in my leather chair watching Mac Premo’s Creative Mornings talk were he talks about combining his art and commercial work to make awesome stuff. He does commercial work so he can spend money on his art, which means he makes a ton more money on commercial stuff than his art. Spent my day in two meetings and then reviewing the new WHD Contact Us page for accessibility issues after having I.E. tools installed on my machine.

Jan 5 – Sitting in my living room using Paper by 53 to draw three green wine bottles with a yellow label and capsule that has pink and light blue oval dot on them. Spent most of today doing an accessibility review of the new WHD Contact Us page and we are now down to one issue with accessible error messages because of the way they are found. Have been having a DM conversation about adding ALT text or description to images posted on Twitter.

Jan 6 – ENTERED 01/07/2016 – Laying on my sofa watching “2 Broke Girls”. I love the quick sarcastic wit of this show, plus, all the situations they all get in are great. Finalized testing and came up with a plan on when WHD will fix the usability issues with their new .NET Contact Us page. Before the watching TV, I was working on completing my read of Ferran Adria’s book “A Day at elBulli” since I’m down to the last 20 pages or so.

Jan 7 – Its been a relaxing week of watching TV. Tonight it was “The Big Bang Theory”. A co-worker and I reviewed the accessibility issues for the new Drupal version of DOL.gov. Seems that the Drupal team only managed to correct a third of the 30+ issues I found. In some cases, they fixed most of a problem but ended up missing something. Also, in the process, I showed a co-worker how to use some of the tools utilized in the DHS Trusted Tester process.

Jan 8 – Switching channels between watching “Treehouse Masters” on TOC and ” Bitchin’ Rides” on Velocity. Today I managed to read through more of the 18F accessibility guide and submitted five more issues on GitHub for a total of nine issues in total. I have submitted four issues for 18Fs “Method Cards” and their PDF too. These issues were presented last month a and had to do with color contrast and color blindness.

Jan 9 – Watching the second episode of MythBusters final season about explosions. I’m looking forward to watching the rest of the season. After meeting up with a big crowd at St. Elmo’s I went to get gas before meeting up with a buddy to go shopping at Sam’s for olive oil, a big bag of candy for the office, bag of chips, some Ocean Spray drinks, Turbo Tax, etc. Next we went to Wegmans to first grab lunch and then grocery shop for bread, cured meats, and some smelly cheese. After dropping my buddy home so he could put away, his purchases ended up giving him a ride to another buddies place that was on my way home.

Jan 10 – Reading Benjamin Hardy’s Medium post entitled “50 Ways Happier, Healthier, And More Successful People Live On Their Own Terms”, which I think I read before back in November or December after it first came out. Slept in today until about 9 AM. Then went to Wegmans to grab a sausage, egg, and cheese croissant sandwich. Next went to St. Elmo’s to work on adding links to blog post but because I left my glasses in my car to worked on last few weeks worth of e-mail before heading outside to talk with a few coffee shop friends. Once done I drove over to Boccato Lounge in Arlinton, VA, to now work on adding Grammarly links to my what was I doing at 8:15 PM blog posts, after they e-mailed me asking if I minded doing so. I did not mind so added links to about five or six posts. Once done with that sent them an e-mail saying I had updated a bunch of posts and planned too but didn’t when trying get all the posts published by the end if the year. Plus, I gave them feedback on things I like about the product along with a few suggestions for improvement.

Jan 11 – Watching Joseph Simmons (Rev Run)  as he and his family traveling around the world with a stop in London. Spent my day responding to a few GitHub issues for 18Fs UX Method cards and PDF dealing with their improved color contrast along with a way for individuals that are colorblind. Also worked on Compliance Sheriff scans.

Jan 12 – Reading the last page of Ferran Adria’s excellent book “A Day at elBulli”.  Great book explaining and showing with awesome photos of what is involved in a day’s food and drink service for 50 or so people. They start at 6:00 AM with most people getting there at 8:00 AM and final clean-up and preparation for the next day ends at 2:00 AM. They do this for six months before closing up for the season to experiment on new things for next year or the year after that. Did some preliminary view to see what applications I would need login IDs for and which ones don’t exist anymore. Also found out I passed the DHS Trusted Tester exam today after waiting almost four weeks. I didn’t get the 100 some people expected to get without even taking the training. I did do very well and likely better than most that have taken the training over the years.

Jan 13 – Standing in DuPont Circle metro station waiting for a red line train to take me Gallery Place-Chinatown metro station to catch a yellow line train home after DC Euchre meet-up at James Madison. Managed to play five games in about an hour and a half and win three out of five games. Had the fish and chips, which weren’t the best. Should have had the shepherds pie like most everyone else did.

Jan 14 – Sitting watching “The Big Bang Theory” after a busy day at work. Helped co-worker with CSS and other coding issues. Reviewed a website on the OCIO QA server. The big accomplishment of the day was to review the two-page DOL FOIA portal using DHS’s Trusted Tester process. Today was my first time using this process after finding out I passed the exam earlier this week.

Jan 15 – Having dinner with Sam and Eric at Gaijin eating great curry chicken steamed buns while waiting for my curry chicken Ramen. The day went by a bit slowly, since it was the day before a long holiday weekend. Continued to watch the Treehouse accessibility videos to see how up to date they are and if they are giving out the correct information. It seems the HTML part 1 video had a few things I take issue with, but will push on to watch the rest of them.

Jan 16 – Sitting in my living room watch the new MythBuster’s episode about a liquid train tanker car imploding. The entire episode was about doing this one thing, which might be a first for them. They did a bunch of smaller tests were they heated up the can or 55-gallon drum to over 200F with steam and then sealed it. They added a pressure gauge and a thermometer to be able to keep track of time, temperature, and pressure. Doing this gave them and idea what it might take to implode a giant 67-foot tanker car. Mythbusters found a car and then did all they could do to get it to implode, and it didn’t even with a mercury level of -27, where -30 is a perfect vacuum. The only way they got it to implode was by dropping a 3,200-ton block of concrete on an older and rustier one that they couldn’t get to implode. Finally, they got the older more corroded tanker car to implode after dropping the 3,200-ton concrete block on it and doing all the other things they had done to the others. Today I went to St, Elmo’s to meet up with friends then met a buddy at Braddock St. metro to then head over to Union Market for lunch. First we started with a pork steam bun each while waiting in line to order a potato curry and eggplant dosa that we split. Yes, it’s hard to believe we waited close to 15 minutes in line for vegetables. Next we went and split an order fresh cavatelli pasta with duck ragu. That was an outstanding pasta dish. Finally, we headed over to the Eastern market to pick up a few strudel, and we tried Filipino BBQ chicken skewers.

Jan 17 – Watching the Anthony Bourdain Charleston episode of “No Reservations”. Have seen this one before, but it’s great because he spends most of his time talking to Sean Brock, Bill Murray, and Glen Roberts about the southern lifestyle and bringing back those types of dishes with all the heritage grains and vegetables. Had another day of eating way too much with two buddies. We went to Maketto for dim sum at 12:30 PM. We ordered what seemed like most of the menu when it was only about a quarter or a third of it. After getting home and reading for a bit took about a three-hour nap.

Jan 18 – Watching a new Travel Channel show called “Best Bargain Places”, which they go to four destinations and tell you about great cheap places to stay, eat, and play. This episode is about Seattle, New Orleans, Chicago, and London. Went to St. Elmo’s to meet friends and then updating blog posts with links. Next went to Pho 75 for a small bowl of raw rib eye and fatty brisket with extra noodles. Once done with lunch, I went to Swing Coffee Roaster to continue to update blog posts with links and their excellent hot chocolate. Around 2:25 PM left Swing to head to Wegmans to do some grocery shopping were I picked up a bunch of fruit, veggies, cured meats, cheese, and a slice of chocolate pie, along with snacks for work. After putting everything away, I did some reading and then finalized my blog post about getting healthier in 2016 and beyond. Will read through the post one last time tomorrow before posting.

Jan 19 – Sitting in the audience at the WordPress DC at Chief. Was listening to Antti K talk about what it takes to run your own freelance business, which includes set up the proper paperwork, take care of yourself, and pay your taxes. Also watched Zac Gordon talk about starting to learn WordPress along with some resources. Today I worked on doing a DHS Trusted Tester review of the new WHD Contact Us home page.

Jan 20 – Laying on my sofa in my living room watching “American Pickers”.

Jan 21 – Sitting in the audience at iStrategyLabs listening to a talk about ES6, which is the newest version of JavaScriptthst doesn’t work in any browsers at the moment unless you pre-compile it first using Babel or something like it. That talk was above me since I haven’t done JavaScript more than to validate INPUT fields. Others near me were very impressed. Spent time in the afternoon doing Dhs Trusted Testing of DOLs new Drupal home page.

Jan 22 – relaxing in my house nice and warm watching TV while the blizzard was dropping snow on the DC area. I went out about 9:30 PM to start a bit of shoveling of the five or six inches of snow we had since about 1:30 PM or so. Today was a real pain day since we were supposed to go into work until noon and at like 11 AM we could go home and work if what we were doing got approved. If I’d know that in the morning, I would keep my sick self home all day. My average 35 or so minute commute took an hour and a half because everyone in the government got out at the same time and metro was only running every ten minutes. I did run into Dave Troy in the metro heading to Dulles airport to fly to Budapest. I took another hour before getting approval to work after three phone calls and one e-mail to find out I could work from home.

Jan 23 – watching the “Extreme Cooking” episode of MythBusters. They were trying to use an air cannon to cook tempura shrimp. They had to fire the shrimp through a cloud of flour, a stream of egg wash, next bread crumbs, and finally fire to cook them. Didn’t work on many levels because everything was happening too quickly. Not even with using four sword forge’s that put out three million BTUs. I managed to get outside twice to shovel for an hour or longer each time. Managed to clear of deck and majority of the driveway. I, at least, got an eight or ten-foot wide path to the sidewalk. Tomorrow’s plan is to finish driveway, which means re-shoveling most of what I have already done over again then move on to the sidewalks before they get more packed down than they already are.

Jan 24 – Watching mindless TV and relaxing after shoveling the driveway for a total of four and a half hours. Spent the day re-shoveling to first part of the driveway and then finishing to the street with the sidewalk to go. Went to shower and could hardly lift my arms over my head.

Jan 25 – Was reading Ferran Adria’s “Food for Thought and Thought for Food” book on my leather chair and otter man. Excellent book on his participation at “Documenta 12” in Kassel, Germany, in 2007. Were they flew two people for 100 days to el Bulli eat their food and report back to create the book.  Today I spent over three and a half hours outside digging out the driveway a bit more, then started on the sidewalk. We saw a plow coming down my street. The only issue is my driveway is on the side street, which never gets plowed until days later. Luckily some ultra maroon got his truck/van stuck in the street so the plow needs somewhere to go The plow driver took the first pass down the street and realized he couldn’t get past the two cars on the end safely. At that point, all the neighbors on the side street and a few others helped dig out the end of my driveway so we could move all the other cars on the street there. Once my driveway was cleared out at the end, we dug out the last car on the street and moved it in, and then they moved the next two and the snow plow driver has plenty of room to get by and even do a few passes to clean things up. Next we dug out the end of the rest of the driveways using a neighbor’s snow blower and each time moving cars to my driveway, so they were in the street. Once done one my neighbors drove his car into his driveway while we rearranged the other neighbors three cars and put the two they were not using in the back of my yard/driveway, so they were off the street. Again at the end of the day, my arms were tired because I then had to shovel out the front walk.

Jan 26 – Mindlessly watching TV, it was so impressive that I didn’t write it down when I was watching, Today after going to St. Elmo’s for a short time to work on a few things on my computer I met up with two friends to grab Pho at the Pho 75 near Banh Mi DC Sandwich. They were out a thinly sliced rib eye. And I’m not sure what I ended up since the waiter didn’t know which bowls were which. Once done with Pho, we went next door to order a bunch of bahn mi and fresh egg rolls, which are the best I have ever had not that I have eaten that many, but these are are great. After dropping everyone home, I came home to take an hour or two nap, which I hadn’t done all while off for all the snow days and the weekend up until then.

Jan 27 – Watching a new episode of “2 Broke Girls” on CBS. Spent my day starting to test the newly updated WHD Contact Us page for accessibility issues on the DEV server.

Jan 28 – Watching “The Big Bang Theory” rerun which I had never seen. My day was spent finishing testing the newly updated WHD Contact Us page for accessibility issues on the DEV server. The other thing I did was explain to a person in ASP (DOL agency) how to make their Word document accessible.

Jan 29 – Listening to the first return episode of “Stacking the Bricks” podcast by Alex Hillman and Amy Hoy, which is called “What are Your New Years Pants?”. The episode is about how they spent last year finishing up the version of 30 x 500. Today I spent the morning in a Kanban training class and then the afternoon was a planning and deciding rules for our Kanban board.

Jan 30 – ENTERED 01/31/2016 – Watching the MythBusters episode about “Driven to Destruction” where Adam wants to lift a car with one vacuum cleaner and Jamie wants to pancake a car using explosives, which he flattens the car using a thick sheet of metal and explosives on top of the car. My day was spent relaxing, reading, eating Pho for lunch, napping, watching TV, and a trip to Wegmans to grab dinner at the hot bar and pick up a few more groceries. The last week or so I have been having a big bowl of fruit as an evening snack, which consisted mostly of blueberries, blackberries, a banana, and a pear depending on what was in the house. So the fruit ended up being three or four servings of fruit in one go depending on the day.

Jan 31 – Listening to episode 15 of the “Stacking the Bricks” podcast by Alex Hillman and Amy Hoy, which is called “Why Lambo Goals Never Keep You Motivated?”.  The episode was about keeping or getting motivated when you don’t want to do something to keep you on track for a much bigger goal like being able to do what you want and spend time with family and friends wherever you want. Today was spent relaxing and working at getting rid of the rest of this chest cold. I first went to Pho 75 and had a small bowl of Pho with raw round eye and fatty brisket, along with extra noodles. I next went to Boccato Lounge to have a hot chocolate and start cleaning out my e-mail and downloading eBooks. After being there for about an hour and a half I went to St. Elmo’s Coffee Bar for some tea and to continue to reduce/file e-mails away. I’m now down to 125 e-mails after being at over 400 at the start of the day. Once I had had enough of doing the e-mail thing, I headed home to read and take a nap for about three hours. It’s been a productive weekend even though I didn’t do much besides sleep, eat Pho, read, watch TV, and recover from my chest cold.

Conclusion

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 entery to see what you have done or can accomplish over the course of a year.

If you want to meet up to do something exciting at 8:16 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.