#365Gratitude Day 317: Limited Reflection

Last night Missy & I braved the wet, cold dark to go to a last minute Ingress build in Old Town Alexandria. 

A build is an event where you and your fellow faction members take over a series of portals and turn them into the opposing faction's, so you can farm gear from them. 

You do this by repeatedly walking around them, and hacking them. Last night that worked out to be about 2.5 miles worth of walking. 

By the time we were done, we were wet, cold, and tired. 

We got in the car and headed for home. At one point, this very aggressive driver got behind me, and had his brights on.  It was very distracting, and really hurt my eyes.

Because of the flow of traffic, I couldn't change lanes to get away from him.  For a few minutes it was really distressing. 

I reached up, and flipped the little change-perspective knob on my rear view mirror. 

 Instantly it blunted his lights, and I felt better.  

Funny thing was nothing had really changed. He was still back there, crowding me.  But I took what steps I could to limit how much he could mess with me, and then promptly did my best to, without anger, get out of his way. I was calm, and not afraid. 

Shortly after that, traffic opened up and he shot into the other lane, and rocketed past me. 

I was grateful to see him go. Today, I'm glad he was behind me, and that that whole incident is behind me. 

#365Gratitude Day 316: 3 Days Worth of Cracked Cookies

When I was a kid, I was really fussy.  My mom tells me that I hated to have a messy face, wouldn't wear mismatched pajama tops and bottoms, and most crazily of all, refused to eat cookies if they had cracks in them!

I know, what was I, insane?!

Really, it was just that I was a perfectionist.  Which, for some things, I still am, but for others, I've learned to be more lax.

Anyhow, this morning, I was catching up my blog when I had the mad notion that I should just double-check that I had the current day number correct.

I didn't.  Somewhere along the way, I lost 3 days.  Today is the 316th day of the year.  

For a moment, I got really annoyed.  I went back in my blog entries, about a month, trying to find wherever-it-was that I'd somehow goofed things up.  

Then I realized that it didn't matter.  This is a blog, a sort of mental experiment, about which I'm accountable to myself, and not anyone or anything else.  What's more, there's a whole eastern aesthetic in Japanese art called wabi-sabi which is exactly about embracing imperfections as a sort of beauty.  The cracks in the cookie don't make it bad - they make it unique.  The three days missing from this practice of mine are much the same.

When I first started doing this project, I was doing it on twitter and Facebook.  Then I ditched Facebook, and started this blog.  Now I'm regularly posting here, updating twitter and google+ too.  Somewhere in all that mishmash, I lost 3 days.

It's okay.

I've actually come to love writing here at my blog, where I can really let loose when I feel like it. Plus, I love the fact that it's easy for me to go back many days and re-read.  I've already decided that I need to do this gratitude thing again, next year.  Losing the three days, that just makes it even more clear to me.

Next year, I'll try to NOT miss or lose any days.  I like to think of it as refining my blog-cookie making technique.  This year's batch has three cracks in it.

Still tastes pretty good.

#365Gratitude Day 315: Crying at the movies

Yesterday Missy and I went to see Big Hero 6, the new Disney animated movie, based on a not-very-well-known Marvel comic book.

It's about a 14 year old robotics genius, whose older brother dies under mysterious circumstances, and what he does about it.  It's also a superhero origin story.  It's appropriately emotionally moving in all the right places, with all the right beats.  Sometimes it's funny, sometimes sad. often exciting.  It's a great movie.

Missy and I both were swept up in the emotions of the story, together, at all the right places.  I love that we do that, and do it, together.

#365Gratitude Day 312: Wern Pernt

I changed technical disciplines about 18 months ago. For years I had been a Lotus Notes developer, even though I had earned my Java certification around a decade ago. 

But Notes has "sunsetted", an industry term for "no one gives a #%@! about it any more."​

So I lucked into some refresher training, and got back to working with Java. Since then, I've also begun learning Java frameworks like Spring, and now Grails, and working in agile development environments. ​

One of things about agile work is that tasks are divided up into tickets, sometimes called "stories", and given a point value based on how hard the group thinks they are to do. 

Yesterday, I got a 1 point ticket. I volunteered to do it. Even though it was in an area of the application I hadn't worked on yet, I had high confidence that it was a simple thing to do, and I would fix it quickly. ​

Turned out I was right. I knocked it right out. It was simple.

I love when stuff like this happens. 18 months ago I was super rusty, and didn't have a clue how Grails worked.  Now, slowly snd steadily I can see my skills growing. It feels good.  

#365Gratitude Day 311: Not According to Cannon

Yesterday Richard, Missy, Kate, Ollie, and I went to Gettysburg to go play Ingress. It's amazing up there. The historic battlefields, the monuments, and all that walking around are hella fun. 

There was also something really gratifying about being there to play the game. 

We weren't the only ingress agents there. We actually ran into a very nice couple who played for the opposite faction. Against their better judgement they even shared gameplay tips with us.  

But there was something cool and fun about doing this covert, oddball thing that the vast majority of the world was unaware of.  

At one point Ollie and I went out of our way to snag a hard to reach portal.  I was able to stretch my long arm far enough inside to get it. Ollie wasn't and actually climbed a fence to creep close enough to tag the portal.  

It's a funny, not exactly grown up sort of hobby. I'm grateful I get to share it with likeminded friends.